The Logic of Certitude
A thought occurred to me, and it seemed to make sense - I'll have to mull it over some more and see if it develops one way or the other.
Assuming that you believe in the existence of God, and that ultimately His desire for you is to return to Him as your Source ... we know that He has given us a rather concrete set of directions for how to get to where we're going.
The way is narrow - that is to say, it's very definite. Not a lot of possibilities here.
And if our final destination depends on which path we're following - the narrow path or the wide road that leads to destruction - it would seem to me that God's Justice logically leads us to this simple necessity: certainty of direction.
If I could stand before God and say, with all honesty, "I didn't know how to get to you - the directions were ambiguous, conflicting, contradictory, and confusing ..." then (assuming it was true) how could He judge me? Would that be just?
If I said to my son, "Junior, I want you to do some yardwork today; if you do it, I'll take you out for ice cream, and if you don't, I'm going to ground you," wouldn't I need to be more specific?
What does "some yardwork" mean? If Junior weeded the flowerbed, and I came home and said, "Nope, sorry - I wanted you to mow the lawn, not weed the flowerbed. You're grounded," would that be fair?
Let's say Junior asked his siblings and a few neighbors what I meant, and they all gave him different answers - would I be just in punishing him for doing the wrong thing?
Ah, but if I told my wife "please make sure he mows the lawn," and if he failed to listen to her explanation, then I could rightly say, "Junior, if you didn't understand what I wanted, you should have listened to your mother - I made it quite clear to her what I wanted."
You can probably see where I'm going with this. If my eternal destiny hinges upon following the path God has laid out, then He must have left me with some certain method of discovering His wishes.
So I read the Scriptures. And it's very confusing. Because in one place, Jesus says, "if you would enter into life, keep the commandments"; in another place, St. Peter says, "baptism now saves you"; in another place, Jesus says "if you do not eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you"; in still another place, St. Paul says "if you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, you will be saved."
What am I to believe? Must I do all of those things? Some of those things? Are they all different things, or are they all just different ways of saying the same thing?
I can ask my neighbors - the various scholars, theologians, pastors, etc., but they're all saying different things, contradictory things.
Who do I believe?
I think this is why it only makes sense that Our Lord had to leave us an infallible Teaching Church, a single and solitary voice (like Junior's mother) who can say - and whom I can trust with certainty - exactly what it is that God wants.
Some people say that no one denomination can possibly have a monopoly on Truth; just saw a bumper sticker the other day that said "God is too big for any one religion."
Gosh, I hope that's not true. It's not very fair of Him if that's the case, because now I'm pretty much left to my own devices as far as charting my course to return to Him. How can I ever be certain I'm on the right track?
And don't say "the Holy Spirit will guide you." The Holy Spirit supposedly is guiding all of these sincere folks in different denominations - or so they would claim. And why shouldn't they claim as much? What gives me any more right to claim the Holy Spirit's guidance than someone who disagrees with me?
But we can't both be right. So one of us is certain of the Holy Spirit's guidance, yet is sadly mistaken - one of us is being duped in a big way.
This is the problem I have with relying on Scripture alone. There is no one to whom I am accountable; I can struggle to understand my bible, but who is my Teacher, who can check my homework and correct it definitively?
Imagine if Mathematics were run like this! I do my lessons, and one of my solutions is 2+2=5. At least here I have an authority, my teacher, who can check that work and say, "No, 2+2=4 - you're wrong on this point." There is no room for me to say, "Well, different people have other opinions on this, so I'm going to research the matter and conclude for myself."
Anyhow ... I could go on forever illustrating the problems with that kind of system.
The point is this: I wish people would see the inherent illogic of such a system, and at least come to the point of saying, "Ok, there must be only one true Church that God has authorized to speak definitively and to settle theological disputes."
The next step, of course, is to find out which denomination fits that description - but we can't even begin that search until we come to the first conclusion that such a Church must of necessity exist.
If it doesn't exist ... well, then we'd better start rethinking our ideas of God and how serious He really is about there being only "one way" to heaven ...
Assuming that you believe in the existence of God, and that ultimately His desire for you is to return to Him as your Source ... we know that He has given us a rather concrete set of directions for how to get to where we're going.
The way is narrow - that is to say, it's very definite. Not a lot of possibilities here.
And if our final destination depends on which path we're following - the narrow path or the wide road that leads to destruction - it would seem to me that God's Justice logically leads us to this simple necessity: certainty of direction.
If I could stand before God and say, with all honesty, "I didn't know how to get to you - the directions were ambiguous, conflicting, contradictory, and confusing ..." then (assuming it was true) how could He judge me? Would that be just?
If I said to my son, "Junior, I want you to do some yardwork today; if you do it, I'll take you out for ice cream, and if you don't, I'm going to ground you," wouldn't I need to be more specific?
What does "some yardwork" mean? If Junior weeded the flowerbed, and I came home and said, "Nope, sorry - I wanted you to mow the lawn, not weed the flowerbed. You're grounded," would that be fair?
Let's say Junior asked his siblings and a few neighbors what I meant, and they all gave him different answers - would I be just in punishing him for doing the wrong thing?
Ah, but if I told my wife "please make sure he mows the lawn," and if he failed to listen to her explanation, then I could rightly say, "Junior, if you didn't understand what I wanted, you should have listened to your mother - I made it quite clear to her what I wanted."
You can probably see where I'm going with this. If my eternal destiny hinges upon following the path God has laid out, then He must have left me with some certain method of discovering His wishes.
So I read the Scriptures. And it's very confusing. Because in one place, Jesus says, "if you would enter into life, keep the commandments"; in another place, St. Peter says, "baptism now saves you"; in another place, Jesus says "if you do not eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you"; in still another place, St. Paul says "if you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, you will be saved."
What am I to believe? Must I do all of those things? Some of those things? Are they all different things, or are they all just different ways of saying the same thing?
I can ask my neighbors - the various scholars, theologians, pastors, etc., but they're all saying different things, contradictory things.
Who do I believe?
I think this is why it only makes sense that Our Lord had to leave us an infallible Teaching Church, a single and solitary voice (like Junior's mother) who can say - and whom I can trust with certainty - exactly what it is that God wants.
Some people say that no one denomination can possibly have a monopoly on Truth; just saw a bumper sticker the other day that said "God is too big for any one religion."
Gosh, I hope that's not true. It's not very fair of Him if that's the case, because now I'm pretty much left to my own devices as far as charting my course to return to Him. How can I ever be certain I'm on the right track?
And don't say "the Holy Spirit will guide you." The Holy Spirit supposedly is guiding all of these sincere folks in different denominations - or so they would claim. And why shouldn't they claim as much? What gives me any more right to claim the Holy Spirit's guidance than someone who disagrees with me?
But we can't both be right. So one of us is certain of the Holy Spirit's guidance, yet is sadly mistaken - one of us is being duped in a big way.
This is the problem I have with relying on Scripture alone. There is no one to whom I am accountable; I can struggle to understand my bible, but who is my Teacher, who can check my homework and correct it definitively?
Imagine if Mathematics were run like this! I do my lessons, and one of my solutions is 2+2=5. At least here I have an authority, my teacher, who can check that work and say, "No, 2+2=4 - you're wrong on this point." There is no room for me to say, "Well, different people have other opinions on this, so I'm going to research the matter and conclude for myself."
Anyhow ... I could go on forever illustrating the problems with that kind of system.
The point is this: I wish people would see the inherent illogic of such a system, and at least come to the point of saying, "Ok, there must be only one true Church that God has authorized to speak definitively and to settle theological disputes."
The next step, of course, is to find out which denomination fits that description - but we can't even begin that search until we come to the first conclusion that such a Church must of necessity exist.
If it doesn't exist ... well, then we'd better start rethinking our ideas of God and how serious He really is about there being only "one way" to heaven ...
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