"You don't claim to have your own authority, yet if you deny the authority of the Church, then you are saying you yourself the individual IS the authority. You make yourself Pope out of thin air."
The above comment was posted by a Catholic on the Facebook version of my article "The need of authority". The basic point of this article is that, whereas the Catholic Church claims sole authority to interpret scripture, enabling them to make it say things it clearly doesn't, Christian theology simply flows naturally from the text. Therefore, I don't need to claim some special authority. I can open the book, show you what it says, and hope you believe it as much as I do.
But to Catholics like the man above, simply letting the word of God speak is me "making myself Pope". Allegedly, by denying the authority of his Church, I make myself the authority. But here's the question: How am I treating scripture any different from how he treats his Church?
As I have shown in the past, giving authority to a Church does not solve the interpretation problem, it merely shifts it. If anything, it makes it worse. I find while Catholics often boast about the large number of "Protestant" denominations (which they grossly exaggerate), they are quite divided within their own community. I can't even get Catholics to agree on whether I'm a Hell-bound heretic, or a "separated brother" set for a long stretch in Purgatory. There are many disputes between them, and even when they commit to coming at me with full force, they often bash each other for not knowing enough about their own religion. Of course, they could easily say "well yeah, it's called being wrong and not knowing your own religion well enough". But that is the identical reason for the many, significantly lower than 30,000 "Protestant" denominations. So they can't win that argument. The answer either works for us, or doesn't work for them. Either way, they fail to solve the interpretation problem by adding their Church to the mix.
Which, again, is because at the end of the day, they treat their Church the same way I treat scripture. They study what their Church says, try to understand its meaning to the best of their abilities, then commit to believing their understanding of it. At the same time, I study what scripture says, try to understand its meaning to the best of my abilities, then commit to believing my understanding of it. The only difference is the level of authority of the sources we study. The end result is always the same: You are the final interpreter.
But isn't that still making myself the authority? No. See, as I've just pointed out, there's literally no way to not be your own final interpreter. You put a Church between you and God, all you're doing is making yourself the final interpreter of the Church instead. The reason I would rather be the final interpreter of the Bible than of the Catholic Church is because the Bible, which the Catholic Church admits is the word of God, is, in fact, the word of God.
As much as Catholics, in my experience, dance around the issue, they cannot escape the inspiration problem. If the Bible is inspired by God, it has authority both greater than, and separate from, their Church. Therefore, they cannot have authority over it, nor give it authority, nor take away authority, nor claim that anyone submitting to its authority is, in any way, claiming authority for themselves.
If Catholics are honest, they will affirm this one simple truth: When God says one thing, no man may say another. In fact, Paul tells us "I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to a different gospel, which is not another; but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed." (Galatians 1:6-9).
So here we see that neither an Apostle, including Paul himself, nor even an angel of Heaven, can preach a different gospel. Not too long after, in this same epistle, we read "Now when Peter had come to Antioch, I withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed; for before certain men came from James, he would eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision. And the rest of the Jews also played the hypocrite with him, so that even Barnabas was carried away with their hypocrisy." (Galatians 2:11-13).
Now obviously, Paul isn't saying Peter was preaching a different gospel. Only that, out of fear of the Jews, he acted inconsistently with it. Nevertheless, it is beyond clear that Paul did not consider himself, nor any of the Apostles, including the alleged "first Pope" (who, in actuality, was no Pope at all), to have any kind of authority over the word of God. The Apostles believed themselves to be mere stewards (1 Corinthians 4:1), preaching the word, but never altering it.
Of course, Catholics will agree. But at the same time, the Bible contradicts their religion in a number of ways, and their dogmas do not flow naturally from scripture. This is where their mythical authority kicks in. The Bible, they say, is not for the common man to interpret, but for "Holy Mother Church". The Bible may seem to be a non-Catholic book, but the Catholic Church has the authority to tell you what it really means, regardless of what it actually says.
With any other religion, we would rightly call this "eisegesis". When you start with a conclusion, and read that conclusion into the Bible, you are doing something very wrong. No amount of "authority" can excuse eisegesis. This is why, though Jesus affirmed the authority of the Pharisees, and told His disciples to do likewise (Matthew 23:1-4), He constantly came to blows with them, rebuking their reliance on tradition (Matthew 15:1-6; Mark 7:1-13), and chastising them for failing to obey scripture (e.g. Matthew 23:23-24).
When it comes to scripture, no one has the authority to pick and choose, no one has the authority to disobey or teach disobedience, and no one, not even an Apostle, has the right to preach a different gospel. But how do we know whether the Catholic Church is doing this? The same way the Bereans tested Paul. In Acts 17:10-12, we read "Then the brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. When they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so. Therefore many of them believed, and also not a few of the Greeks, prominent women as well as men."
And so we see that "searching the scriptures daily" to "see if these things are so" is good practice. Furthermore, it is to be expected that if we do this with a legitimate messenger, such as Paul, we will see that these things are so. We may be Jews, we may be Greeks, when we are noble minded enough to search God's word to test God's messengers, we will see that they preach the truth, and we can even, if necessary, rebuke them for acting inconsistently with it. And if someone happens to claim to be a messenger from God, yet when we search those scriptures we find them to be in error, they cannot say "well actually, I'm a successor of the Apostles, so you don't know what the Bible means, I tell you what it means".
So what are we to make of this Catholic's claim that I am making myself Pope by acting as the noble minded Bereans did? Put simply, it is the Pope who made himself Pope, for the word of God, which is a greater authority than any Church, is not consistent with a Papacy. Nor does it naturally tell us to receive salvation by way of the 7 Sacraments, to accept the Marian dogmas, to be concerned about a state called "Purgatory", to "venerate" saints, or to submit to the authority of a Church that made all of these things up long after the last legitimate Apostle of God drew his last breath, became absent from his body, and entered the presence of his Lord. Therefore, this Catholic's comment, which is reflective of a very common attitude among Catholics, is nothing short of hypocritical, and it is absolutely not Christian. If you wish to submit yourself to the authority of a usurper, you may follow him even to the depths of Hell. But it is far from arrogant to humble yourself before God, hearing and receiving His word. Believing God over a fake Church is not idolatry, it is Christianity.