Truth in Faith, or Faith in Truth?

Is it logically justifiable to believe in something without any assurance that the object of that faith has a basis in truth? More specifically, can Protestantism’s faith in the Bible as the sole fountain and foundation of truth, be justified in light of its inherent contradictions? I think not.

Protestants are not the first people to believe in a groundless system of faith. Mankind has a long history of believing strongly in ideas despite the obvious contradictions staring them in the face.

For a thousand years or more, from the time of Aristotle until the Enlightenment, people believed, because Aristotle said it was so, that the Universe was made up, fundamentally, of the “Elements” Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Through the techniques of logic taught by Aristotle, it was deduced that everything in the Universe was made up of differing concentrations of these four elements.

To our modern ears, this four-element paradigm sounds ridiculous, but to the Greeks of Aristotle’s time and to the entire western world for hundreds of generations, this was unshakable “truth”.

People believed. They believed because they had been taught that it was true, or because, upon a little investigation, they found that Aristotle had asserted it to be true and they believed because of their faith in his infallibility.

But, the belief of thousands of people in the 4-element paradigm didn’t make it true. Truth is completely independent of our belief or failure to believe in it. Our belief in a falsehood (or truth, for that matter) will not make it true and failure to believe in a truth does not make it false.

Some truth can be reliably discovered through testing and verification; the “Scientific Method” we all learned about in school. Using this method, the physical properties of the Universe have been and continue to be investigated and reliably discovered.

Science is quite good at discovering provable truth (or falsehood), but is ill-equipped to deal with those areas where proof or disproof is not possible. For these, faith is required.

Now, I appear to have contradicted myself. How can I have asserted on the one hand that Protestants are not justified in their belief in the Bible based solely on their faith and then on the other hand state that some things must be taken on faith?

The answer lies in the difference between how Protestants and Catholics define, “faith”. To a Protestant, “faith” is belief. Nothing else is required to legitimize their paradigm. Their belief in their religious construct validates it. For a Protestant, their belief makes their object of faith correct, real and true.

The result of this logical inconsistency is that not only is what everyone believes true, but each man can believe a different “truth” and there is no way (and in many cases no desire) to dispute it. So long as that man believes it, for him at least, it is “true”. The result of this philosophy has been, first the Protestant Revolt (“Reformation” to Protestants) of Martin Luther and his followers and then, all subsequent schisms from his ideas which have split the Christian Church into so many denominations in the last four centuries. All because there is no definitive, authoritative definition of truth.

This obviously begs the question, “How do you accurately discover truth?” For a Catholic, the object of belief must be true before it is believed to be so. But, how do you determine what is true before you believe in it? This boils down to a question of authority and strikes at the largest and most fundamental difference between Protestants and Catholics.

For Protestants, the final authority is the Bible, usually the “Authorized” King James Version or one of its variants, as interpreted by the reader for himself through the exercise of his faith. The problem for the Protestant is that the Bible upon which his faith is founded and from where he derives his faith is also being interpreted by that same faith to state that the Bible is the source for the faith in the first place. The truth contained in and the veracity of the Bible are dependent on one’s belief in it and one’s belief is dependent on the truth contained in and the veracity of the Bible.

Any freshman logic student will tell you, circular arguments of this kind do not provide definitive answers. The tenants contained in the KJV could be true or false and this type of logic would still hold up.

So, by what authority do Protestants make the claim that their version of the Christian faith is the true and correct one if the faith alone argument fails?

The answer appears to be one that the Protestants themselves have problems with and which will also not stand up to logical scrutiny. Essentially, they believe what they do because Martin Luther and other founding Protestants like Calvin, Wycliffe, etc. said that that is the way it should be.

Martin Luther was a Catholic Priest in late 15th century Germany who protested certain practices of the Catholic Church which he considered egregious, by nailing 95 theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany, thereby sparking off the Protestant Reformation (or Revolt, if you’re of the Catholic persuasion). He later went on to edit the Bible, leaving out several books and parts of books, and editing the text of others so that the Bible was now in accord with what Luther thought Christianity should teach.

But, Protestants don’t like it when it is suggested that a mere man could in some way dictate what we are to believe. I have often herd Protestants say that there is only one mediator, Christ and that they need no man to come between them and Christ. This is the argument they use against the validity of the Catholic priesthood in general and especially against the Papacy.

Protestants claim that the Scriptures are unchanging and would agree that no one should rewrite any part of the Bible, regardless of what their faith led them to believe. Many denominations require that their adherents use only the King James version of the bible stating that it is the only true translation. Protestants would immediately reject the idea of the Catholic Church or an individual Catholic priest editing the Bible as sacrilege.

Yet, that is exactly what happened. Protestants have allowed Martin Luther, who broke his priestly vows, to guide their path and determine the tenants of their faith by editing the Bible which they claim as the foundation of their faith. Luther had no authority to make changes to the scriptures, either granted to him by the Catholic Church or (by Protestant standards) by his faith in their erroneous content. But he did so anyway.

So, from where do Catholics derive their faith?

For Catholics, what they believe is founded both on the Bible (in its entirety, not the truncated version used by Protestants) and on the Church’s Sacred Tradition. Tradition (capital “T”) was handed down to us, through the priesthood, from the Apostles. The Apostles were the original receivers of the words of Christ, were there to ask Christ questions, received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and were the ones upon whom Christ’s church was founded. Who better to know what Christ intended for his Church than the Twelve? It’s from these original Apostles that the Church gets its Sacred Traditions.

Additionally, Christ gave to Peter the Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven and the power and authority to “loose and bind”. These were very specific and well-defined terms with which the Twelve would have been very familiar.

It was the practice in many Middle-eastern kingdoms at the time of Christ that when the king was away for any extended period of time, a trusted servant, or steward, was left in charge of the affairs of the realm (for example, Joseph in Egypt). The king gave to this steward the keys to the treasury and the granary and he was granted the authority to speak for the king and with his authority in the king’s absence. It was the tradition that this steward would wear these keys pinned to the shoulder of his tunic as a symbol that he had been granted the king’s authority. So, when Jesus told Peter that he was being given the keys to the Kingdom, all the apostles understood that Jesus was saying He would soon be leaving for a time and that Peter was to speak for Him and with his authority while He was away.

The terms “binding” and “loosing” referred to very specific legal terms with which the Apostles were also familiar. The power to bind and loose referred to a Rabbi’s authority to make decisions concerning faith and morals. Jesus was granting Peter the authority to determine, in matters of faith and morals, what was right and what was wrong. Because the Church was founded on Peter, by extension, the Catholic Church has the authority to teach what is right and wrong with respect to faith and morals when those teachings are approved by the Pope.

It was through this authority to decide right from wrong that the Bible took its form in the early Christian era in the first place. The Universal Christian Church (the body as a whole) had the authority to choose which few books out of the many circulating among the several Christian churches (individual communities of Christians living in different cities around the world) were to be included in the cannon and which were to be excluded. The Church determined the cannon.

This authority derived from the Pope alone, not the priesthood or the church by itself. Therefore, no priest, individually, (with the sole exception of the Pope) has the authority to bind or loose nor do priests, (again except for the Pope) have the Keys to the Kingdom.

Therefore, Luther, though a priest, did not have any authority to undo the Church’s decision as to which books were to be included in the Cannon, nor did he have any authority to nullify the Church’s teachings on faith and salvation. Luther had arrogated to himself the authority and power that had been granted to Peter and the Church by Jesus himself.

Protestants, therefore, believe in a paradigm that has no logical foundation. They believe what they believe for one reason only, because they believe it. As I stated at the beginning, believe is independent of truth and belief in something does not make it true.

So, why should Protestants believe in the Catholic paradigm? What makes the Catholic faith better than the Protestant faith? To answer this question, we need to look at the basic tenant of Protestant faith.

For a Protestant, to become a Christian and achieve salvation, all that is necessary is that you, “…accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior” and have faith in the Bible. Yes, it’s a little more complicated than that, but that is the basic foundation of Protestantism. Let’s look at these requirements.

To accept Jesus as “Lord” means to accept him as the boss. We are to follow his example and his instructions as recounted in the Bible. Therefore, faith in the Bible is required.

To accept Jesus as Savior also requires faith in the Bible as that is the place where the story of salvation is recounted. At no point is it even hinted at that there might be another source of knowledge about Christ. The personal experiences of those who knew Christ (except those recorded in the Bible) are ignored, despite the fact that the Bible explicitly states that not all the story of Christ was recorded there. Are not all the words of Christ precious? How can man have just decided to disregard some or even most of them by not writing them down?

The answer is, they were and remain precious and they were preserved, just not written down. They were preserved in the Traditions of the Catholic Church. Protestants, however, ignore this reality, just as they have ignored and defamed the authority of the Catholic Church from the beginning.

Jesus did not found his church on a book, but on men, and in a special way, on one man, Peter. There was no way that Jesus could have instructed Peter and the other Apostles to follow the precepts contained in the Bible. The Bible did not exist in Jesus’ time. Clearly, by granting Peter the authority of the Keys and the power to loose and bind, by instructing the Apostles to go forth to all nations and teach about Christ, by promising to send them the Holy Spirit, and finally by promising them that He would be with them even until the end of the world, He was setting up a church that would be self-sustaining and authoritative until He returned.

Jesus’ actions in this regard are not in dispute. They are recorded in the Bible which Protestants hold sacred and inerrant. There is no justification for the Protestant paradigm.