Episode 157-The Bible Made me Catholic w/John Bergsma

Yes, I can think of a couple of methodologies or interpretive principles that apply as a Protestant that I began to realize were wrong.

One was that I just assumed that everything that Jesus said to the apostles applied to every baptized believer.

Wow.

And it's so interesting, Keith, because there was actually a premonition in my spiritual journey that something was incorrect about this because I was pastoring this small Dutch Reformed church in western Michigan.

And there were four elders and myself on our board, you know, as it were, or the, I don't know, what do we call it, consistory, I think we called it.

And we were doing a Bible study together and looking at a passage from one of the Gospels, and one of the elders, the oldest elder who was on the consistory, turned to me and said, do you think that every time Jesus talks to the apostles, he means every believer, or does he sometimes mean kind of the leadership? And I said, well, of course he always means all the believers.

This is the subject.

And of course, I would walk that back now 100%.

So, for example, Matthew 18, 18, where he says, you know, where two or three of you are gathered and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.

Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

I realize now that it becomes completely incoherent if you think that that applies to every single baptized believer.

Because then everybody is an absolute authority.

Every group of three Christians has infallibility.

And that doesn't make sense at all.

And now looking back, I realize, no, it's important that he's addressing the 12 specifically.

So I'd say that one big thing that I've learned to be careful about when reading particularly the Gospels is that when Jesus addresses whomever, to look carefully at whom he's addressing.

Is he addressing the crowds, or is he speaking specifically to the Twelve? And now I realize that there's several places in the Gospels where his words are meant for the Twelve because they are the nucleus of what we would call, as Catholics now, those in holy orders, or just more generally, they are the nucleus of the leadership of the Church.

they represent those who are going to be an authority, like Hebrews 13.10 says, respect those in authority, they're going to give an account to God, etc., and make this easy for them.

So there is an authority structure present in the New Testament.

And sometimes Jesus is speaking specifically to those individuals.

I can think of a few other examples of that, you know, of course, like John 20, 23.

Yes.

But we used to read that, which is, you know, whoever sins you forgive are forgiven.

Whoever sins you retain are retained.

But I remember when I was reading the Bible as a Protestant thinking that all those verses applied to me.