On Rocks and the Authority of Scripture

I love being right. I love being right so much that if I’m wrong, I will change my mind in an instant. All I need is Biblical evidence. In response to my last video, and over on Instagram, dozens of commenters have provided 0 Biblical evidence that we should pray to dead people.

While most didn’t care to provide any verses at all, some provided verses that were totally irrelevant.

So, if you actually care about what the Bible says and you believe we should be getting our theology from the Word of God, it should tell you that there is something seriously wrong with your church if it teaches something that is nowhere to be found in the Bible.

That is an issue for any individual denomination. church, or cult that believes their church is authoritative over the Word of God. Luckily however, this isn’t an issue for Biblical Protestants, because we are entirely comfortable with the idea that there’s something seriously wrong with the church.

On top of that, I think this is a wonderful argument for postmillennialism, which says the church is young and needs to grow up. And as it matures, it will actually get better.

The Awful Consequences of a “Perfect” Church

If we start to believe there’s nothing wrong with the church then we start to believe that diddling children is a good thing. There are certain denominations out there that start with a capital C that have a long tradition of sexual deviancy. And not just children diddling, but church funded and supported prostitution, and other sexual incontinence, among other things like:

• Burning people you don’t like
• Imprisoning people you don’t like
• Branding people you disagree with as heretics
• Praying to dead people
• Outlawing normal people from translating the Bible into understandable languages
• And much more…

But not only that. Even Protestants can fall into the trap of believing nonsense if our church (or the opinion of man) is authoritative over the Word of God. Churches that don’t actually care about the Word of God start to support things such as:

• Abortion
• Same sex marriage (which the Pope recently affirmed as something that priests should bless out of love for their neighbors)
• Critical Race theory
• Transgenderism
• And much more…

The Catholic/EO argument goes something like this: The church, because it is an institution put in place by God, is perfect and sinless. (Just like Mary the mother of Jesus and her miraculous breastmilk. Seriously. Look it up.)

As a side note demonstrating how unbelievably off the rails Christians can go when they don’t actually care about the Word of God, John Calvin criticized Catholics and their obsession with relics (particularly, breastmilk supposedly from Mary) saying “With regard to the milk, there is not perhaps a town, a convent, or nunnery, where it is not shown in large or small quantities… Indeed, had the Virgin been a wet-nurse her whole life, or a dairy, she could not have produced more than is shown as hers in various parts.”

But also, Mary, according to crazy Catholic tradition is a perpetual virgin. But virgins don’t produce breastmilk…

Anyway, the point is, if you believe your church is authoritative, it leads to some strange problems. Instead, if we believe the Word of God is authoritative, we are given solutions to all of these problems and more.

The Attempt at a Biblical Argument Against the Bible

Now I want to go over an argument that I received from a professing Eastern Orthodox who said the church is authoritative over the Word of God. His argument boiled down to the idea that the church put the word of God together. The church assembled the Bible. Therefore the church has authority over the Word of God.

First this is simply not true. I would be more than happy to cover this in more detail in a future article, but suffice it to say this didn’t happen. The Canon of Scripture very organically came to be. The Council of Trent didn’t put together the Canon of Scripture. They affirmed it. It was already in use and broadly accepted well before the Council of Trent.

Similarly, no one should (or would) argue the Council of Nicaea created the doctrine of the trinity. They affirmed something that was already there.

Some Catholics and Orthodox go further to say that there is actual Biblical evidence that the Church is authoritative over God’s Word. So let’s take a look at that argument too. The primary verse that these folks point to is Matthew 16:18 where Jesus tells Peter that he is the rock that he will build his church on. Therefore, they argue, that the foundation of our faith is not the Bible, but the Church that Peter was the foundation for.

Now, I should note, if the Word of God is NOT authoritative, and it says that the Church actually has authority over it, why should we trust it to tell us that the church is authoritative? We shouldn’t. It’s a self-defeating argument. They’re using a non-authoritative source to prove the authoritativeness of their beliefs. It doesn’t make sense.

Consider if Matthew 16:13-20 actually implies that Peter will have authority over the Word of God.

¹³ Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” ¹⁴ And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” ¹⁵ He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” ¹⁶ Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” ¹⁷ And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. ¹⁸ And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. ¹⁹ I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” ²⁰ Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.

Matthew 16:13-20

There are a couple of different ways to interpret what Jesus says to Peter. Catholics and EO argue that Jesus is calling Peter the rock that he will build his church on. Some Protestants argue that Jesus isn’t calling Peter the rock, but that Jesus himself is the rock. This disagreement is due to a possible ambiguity with the phrase “upon this rock.” However, let’s assume the Catholics and EO folks are right and that Peter (which literally means rock) really is the rock Jesus is referring to. This still doesn’t actually justify Peter or the church having authority over God’s Word. It doesn’t even justify calling peter the first Pope. It’s just not in the text.

What This Really Proves

So let’s break down what this really means by reading Peter’s own words in Acts 4:10-12.

¹⁰ let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. ¹¹ This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.¹² And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

Acts 4:10-12

Maybe Peter is a rock that the church was built on. But Peter himself recognizes that Jesus is a far more important rock. Jesus is the cornerstone. Without Jesus, there would be no foundation at all. Ephesians has more to show us in this analogy of house-building.

¹¹ And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers,¹² to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, ¹³ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,

Ephesians 4:11-16

Ephesians shows that God laid down the foundation of the Body of Christ consisting of apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers. Peter, as an apostle, was one of the rocks of that foundation and Jesus was the cornerstone. On top of that foundation is the Body of Christ, which is the church. Jesus doesn’t tell Peter that upon him alone, he will build his church. Jesus’s words instead indicate that Peter will be merely a piece of the foundation that he is laying that the kingdom will be built on.

Using passages like these, alongside many others, we can put together a theology of the church.

What these verses do NOT say, is that Peter is the first in the line of many great high priests over the church. It does not institute Bishops, Priests, and Popes that diddle kids, hire prostitutes, and who people confess their sins to. It does NOT say that the church has authority over the Word of God. Nowhere does Jesus give that authority to any man. God’s Word is God’s.

What it does say, is that Jesus is the cornerstone of the Kingdom of God, and apart from him alone, no one can be saved.

Salvation, therefore, does not come through Jesus and.

It does not come through Jesus and the church. It does not come through Jesus and coredemptrix Mary. It does not come through Jesus and works. It simply comes through Jesus, “for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

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