March of the Pigs

The Council of Google Plus convened on Holy Saturday, March 26th, and summarily declared most everyone else in Christian circles to be heretics. It made quite a splash around Google + and prompted some of my friends to publish rebuttals. I thought of doing some kind exhaustive take down of my own, but I could not stay motivated to finish. I just could not take the “Council” seriously.

I have to laugh because they seem to think they have some sort of binding authority based on their interpretation of Scripture. Matt Slick, the de facto leader (dare I say Bishop?) of this so-called council repeatedly criticizes other Christian doctrines as personal interpretations. He runs his Bible-believing train right off the tracks when he does this because he fails the test he sets up for other doctrines. Before I go on, you should know that by a Bible-believing I mean either implicit or explicit doctrines of sola Scriptura. Matt crashed the train because sola Scriptura  and its offshoots in no way show us how we can know which interpretation of Scripture is the right one.

Most believers in sola Scriptura, or as I like to call it sola haeresis, will say that either the meaning of the text is plain or that the Holy Spirit will provide the correct interpretation. What happens when two well, educated people differ on the meaning of the text? What if two righteous, Spirit-filled people differ on the meaning of the text? The disagreement will really boil down to who thinks their interpretation is correct. What kind of authority is that?

There is only one authority when it comes to Scripture. Only the Magisterium of the Church can interpret it. That's the only way to do it, through the lens of Sacred Tradition and the Church's authority. What happens when people stray outside the Church's authority is pretty clear from watching the “Council.”

A lot of people are angry about the “Council” and rightly so. I just cannot bring myself to much more than indifference, or maybe bemusement. These guys are coming at everything from the same position they do not like. They are subjectivists living in an objective world. Let us be objective and look to the authority that Christ established for truth. Above all, let us refrain from making up ourselves.