I get why people find the "only the Catholic Church can interpret the Scripture" argument appealing. The general Protestant world is full of chaos, hucksters, and uncertainty. I get why people want the peace and confidence of being under the magisterium. But it's not real.

Again, I get it. I get the whole "I don't want to interpret the Bible for myself. I want those with knowledge and godly wisdom to give me the True and Only Answers." But there are three major problems with trusting Rome to give you what you desire:

1. You can't get around personal interpretation of the Bible, even if you outsource it to Rome. By embracing Rome, either you're saying "I've read the Bible for myself and have interpreted it in such a way to conclude that only Rome is allowed to interpret it."

Or you're saying "I have not read the Bible for myself, but I trust the Roman Church when they say that it says only they are allowed to interpret it."

Either way, amidst competing interpretations, you have picked one.

2. Rome has no unified interpretation of the Bible. Catholics like to claim that the RCC is not divided over doctrine like the Protestants. They all agree on official church teaching. Cool. Ask them which doctrines are official church teaching and which aren't.

Know what you'll find? Catholics don't agree on what Catholic teaching is. So, as a Catholic, what do you do from there? You pick whichever sub-group you agree with and claim that they're the guys who are right. In other words, the same things that Protestants do.

So, as anyone who's ever encountered Trads vs. Progressive Catholics on Twitter can tell you, Catholics are just as divided as Protestants. They just stuff their divisions behind submission to the pope and then pretend that they don't exist.

3. The "we have the magisterium" argument gets weaker every time you have to cite it. So here's the thing: As the resurrection of Jesus proves, there is a God who knows us loves us and wants us to know Him and love Him in return.

Likewise, the entire point of the Scriptures is that this God who wants you to love Him and know Him speaks to you. Isn't it reasonable, therefore, to assume that He speaks to you clearly? That He means the things He says?

Again, I get it. The Bible can often be confusing, certainly. You have to know it fairly well to get a handle on much of what it teaches. So I get why you'd want to defer to someone else.

But, in practice, the Catholic Church tells you that God hasn't spoken to you clearly in His Word, and that you need them to understand, for example, that "man is justified by faith apart from works of the law" means the opposite of what it says.

It tells you that you need them to understand that "you are Peter and on this rock, I will build my church" means "I am establishing a political/ecclesial office that will not manifest for several centuries but when it does, everybody in the world will have to obey that office...

and you will also have the authority to speak infallibly, so everyone has to obey that too, but there's not really a unified consensus about when you speak infallibly."

It would be one thing if the RCC only claimed its "interpretive community" powers on passages that were a bit ambiguous and needed a little clarity. But to argue that Paul always means the opposite of what he says when he describes how salvation works...

or that, by divine right, the Pope has authority in both the sacred and the secular realm because the disciples had two swords with them before Christ's betrayal...Come on, man.

So it's pretty obvious, from both history and the Scriptures, that the whole "only we can interpret the Bible" thing is not a doctrine designed by God to give comfort and clarity to those whose sin is preventing them from understanding His word clearly.

Rather, it's a doctrine invented by men to muddy God's clear word in an attempt to defend an institution that refuses to return to the form of its institution.

So, in summary, I get the appeal of Roman Catholic unity. But it's a mirage. And there's far greater peace and treasure to be found clinging to the pure Gospel of justification by grace through faith alone--icky as those Lutheran waters may be.