How do we avoid everything boiling down to "Me and my Bible"? SurelyThis gets to the heart of the matter, because Protestantism enthrones the individual as the final judge of what the truth is. There is really no way to avoid this conclusion, although it can be dressed up in fancy clothes. Protestants may say that the Holy Spirit is the final judge...but how does He speak? How do we know what He says? Some will say that He speaks in the Bible, but how do we know what the Bible says? Who decides? Still others will say that the truth is to be measured by some confession or other, but again: on whose authority should we accept such an opinion? And what do these confessions say? After all, in no case has any Protestant denomination achieved unanimity even about what their own confessional standards say. Presbyterians haven't. Lutherans haven't. Anglicans/Episcopalians haven't. And in any case, they all uniformly deny that their standards are infallible. Consequently they have no choice but to deny that even their own standards have any binding force on the individual conscience. And that, of course, means that a man need not feel any compulsion whatsoever to accept those standards...and that means once again that he is free to accept them or reject them as he sees fit.
we must do that. How can we do it if the Church does not have the
authority to bind consciences?
But truth is not like that. If, as I have asserted - and surely no Protestant would disagree - there are certain truths which are non-negotiable, how do we know them? And who says what is non-negotiable? If it is not the Church, it is no one at all. But if it is the Church, then it must be the Catholic Church. There are no other reasonable options. Certainly no Protestant body, coming into existence as they did barely five centuries ago, has any credible claim to be the Church to which we must all give our assent. Only the Catholic Church can make such a credible claim.
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