What is "The Authority Bomb?"

A couple years ago a friend asked me a question about the structure of the Catholic Church.  It went something like this:

Why do you need to listen to bishops and the pope?  Why can’t you just use the Scriptures to have an unmediated personal relationship with God?

I started in on the typical explanation from Matthew 16 about the basis for the Papacy and so on.  But the bottom line was he didn’t see a need for any of it.  

So I went away wishing I had a way to demonstrate the criticality of an infallible Apostolic college that wears funny hats.  I needed to propose some kind of conundrum that would be:

1.  Possible – or else it would be dismissed as theoretical.
2. Critical to the Christian faith – lest it be dismissed as trivial.
3. Something about which Bible-reading people disagree – or it would not prove what I need.

But is there anything that fits that bill?

The Authority Bomb:

After sleeping on it, I awoke with a question in my head.  It went like this:

Three men are sitting in a police deposition room.  One is a Jehovah’s Witness.  One is a Oneness Pentecostal.  The third is a Southern Baptist.  Each of these men is well educated, trained in reading the Bible in the original languages, and is sincerely committed to their faith tradition.  In the center of the room is a Bible, written in the original languages. 

You are outside the room with a guest.  The guest knows nothing about Christianity – a blank slate.  He just wants to know what the true biblical Christian faith is. 

Then you toss in a single question, “What was Jesus of Nazareth.”

 Now, if you’re familiar with the beliefs of these three men, you’ll know that the Baptist believes in the Trinity.  The Jehovah’s Witness believes Jesus is a sort of super-angel (arianism).  The Oneness Pentecostal believes God is one person who manifests in three different ways (modalism).

The argument begins.  You watch these three men argue from the Bible for hours and hours.  Never coming any closer to a resolution.  After a long time, your guest turns to you and asks a simple question:  “How am I supposed to know who is right?”

Note that the question is NOT: “Who do you think is right?”

The question is:  “How am I supposed to know who is right?”

The Explosion:

When I presented the conundrum to my friend, it took a minute to focus in on the real issue.   

• You can’t answer with, “Here’s my answer to who Jesus is.”  Because yours is just one more opinion to add to the other three.

•  You can't say, "You just read the Bible and let the Spirit guide you".  Because all three men in that room tried that and at least two of them failed... without knowing it!

• You can’t answer by saying, “Well… I just know I’m right”.  Because the task is not to convince yourself… anyone can do that.  Your task is to credibly instruct another person. 

• Lastly, you cannot dismiss the question as unimportant.  I could have presented a similar conundrum regarding a notable particular of the Christian faith (the role of Baptism, for instance), but a person could say, “I don’t care about those details, I just care about Jesus.”  But this cannot be dismissed because we’re talking about the identity of Jesus. 

What needs to be given is a concrete, objective manner in which a seeker of truth can know the correct interpretation of the Bible amidst thousands of different and contradictory views which may have convincing arguments behind them.

So in response to the question, “How am I supposed to know who is right?”, my friend could only look me in the eye and say:

“There is no way to know.”

The Aftermath:

At that point I noted how incredibly debilitating that weakness would be to the Christian faith.  If the identity of Jesus cannot be known for sure, then nothing can be known for sure.  Christianity would not have lasted long without the ability to answer this query.

 “Then what is your answer?” he asked.

To which I replied, “The inerrant book demands a publicly recognizable infallible interpreter.  The problem can only be solved if God ordained some visible body that could interpret the Bible with divine assistance and divine authority.” 

He asked, “Can you show me that such a thing exists?”

“Yes.” (<= link)