Question:
Answer:
Start by telling your Protestant friend that you’re glad that he recognizes the authority of the Catholic Church in at least some sense, and that you wouldn’t think of attempting to interpret Scripture in a way that is unfaithful to the Church’s teaching.
The Church need not infallibly pronounce on every verse of Scripture, because its God-given teaching authority necessarily extends to the full expanse of the Bible. After the Resurrection, recall that Jesus tells his apostles, “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you” (John 20:21). How did the Father send Jesus? Jesus explains to his apostles in another post-Resurrection encounter: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18).
So the apostles teach God’s word with full authority and do so centered in and faithful to Jesus, not independent of him. That’s why Scripture not only speaks of God’s word and the teachings of Jesus, but also “the teaching of the apostles” (Acts 2:42), precisely because they teach God’s word with the infallible God-given authority Jesus gave them.
That’s how Christians throughout Church history have been able to discern God’s authentic word: Is a teaching in conformity with the teachings of the apostles and their successors, or not? So we see the need for a God-given authority extrinsic to but not independent of the Bible, especially in those many centuries in Church history when the overwhelming number of Christians were illiterate.
And so in reading and interpreting Scripture, even if the Church has not pronounced definitively on a particular verse, we have the God-given doctrinal guidelines that any interpretation cannot contradict the teaching of the Apostles, including their apostolic successors who lead the Church today, i.e., the Pope and the bishops in union with him. The Catechism of the Catholic Church consequently summarizes well how we should read Scripture:
111 But since Sacred Scripture is inspired, there is another and no less important principle of correct interpretation, without which Scripture would remain a dead letter. “Sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted in the light of the same Spirit by whom it was written.”
The Second Vatican Council indicates three criteria for interpreting Scripture in accordance with the Spirit who inspired it.
112 1. Be especially attentive “to the content and unity of the whole Scripture”. Different as the books which compose it may be, Scripture is a unity by reason of the unity of God’s plan, of which Christ Jesus is the center and heart, open since his Passover.
The phrase “heart of Christ” can refer to Sacred Scripture, which makes known his heart, closed before the Passion, as the Scripture was obscure. But the Scripture has been opened since the Passion; since those who from then on have understood it, consider and discern in what way the prophecies must be interpreted.
113 2. Read the Scripture within “the living Tradition of the whole Church”. According to a saying of the Fathers, Sacred Scripture is written principally in the Church’s heart rather than in documents and records, for the Church carries in her Tradition the living memorial of God’s Word, and it is the Holy Spirit who gives her the spiritual interpretation of the Scripture (“. . . according to the spiritual meaning which the Spirit grants to the Church”).
114 3. Be attentive to the analogy of faith. By “analogy of faith” we mean the coherence of the truths of faith among themselves and within the whole plan of Revelation (footnotes omitted).
For related information, see also CCC 84-87 and our article “Pentecost and the Papacy.”