A document of any type is only as valuable as its comprehensibility, its ability to be understood and interpreted. We both believe the Bible to be the inspired, infallible Word of God. I would submit that a document that purports to be infallible needs an infallible interpreter. Otherwise, its very infallibility is rendered useless. Jesus does not generally come down personally, in visible, human form, to resolve Scriptural disputes. He has delegated that responsibility to His Church, and guides it to correct interpretation through His sending of the Holy Spirit. There is still an interpretation that is entirely authentic, but is delivered through the human agency He Himself has delegated.
This is only fitting, really, since we are to walk by faith and not by sight. It takes faith (and trust in that faith) to follow and embrace all that the Church teaches in its Deposit of Faith as coming from God Himself. But there is really no viable alternative short of God personally taking us individually by the hand and walking us through everything. But, for God to reveal Himself that explicitly would quite radically remove from us the free will to accept or reject Him, wouldn't it? Who could be free to choose Him or not, if He physically taught each one of us in this life? We would have no freedom at all. Which is why He teaches through the agency of His Church, established, as I already said, to teach all nations to the end of time all things that He and the Holy Spirit have taught, either directly from the Mouth of Christ Himself, or through the inspired oral and written teachings of the Apostles. In other words, to teach the Deposit of Faith, which can be found intact and entire from Pentecost until the end of time.
>> All of this presupposes that there is a yardstick upon which determinations can be made regarding the “turth” or its “interpretation.” In other words, who gets to be “right,” and upon what does that authority rest?
That authority rests in God alone. Thus, we will not definitively know the answers until we meet Him.
>> A document of any type is only as valuable as its comprehensibility, its ability to be understood and interpreted. We both believe the Bible to be the inspired, infallible Word of God. I would submit that a document that purports to be infallible needs an infallible interpreter. Otherwise, its very infallibility is rendered useless.
The infallibility of the Bible is not rendered useless by the fallibility of its interpreters any more than the Bible’s moral code is rendered useless by the fallibility of its practicioners. Fallibility is inherent in humanity. Anyone claiming his own infallible interpretation of the Word of God is himself claiming to speak with the authority of the Almighty. That authority does not rest in one man, or one heirarchy.
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