04 October 2007

20,000 Popes vs. 1

One of my favorite reads in the blogosphere, Michael Spencer (aka The Internet Monk) posted this quote in a post about Catholicism:
"I would rather have 20,000 “little popes” with their Bibles, all believing they can err and be corrected by scripture, rather than one pope who cannot err or be corrected by scripture."

What I can't figure out is why this is better. How does this solve the problem? These 20,000 Protestant popes all believe they hold the correct view of Scripture already. They are mostly seeking to correct the other 19,999, not be corrected. This still leaves us with a conundrum, that thus far I'm unable to figure out, which is: whose interpretation of Scripture are we to follow?

I mean, I'm sure we all agree that Truth is knowable and that God intended for us to know what it was. So how does having 20,000 little popes help things? Perhaps a fellow Protestant could explain why this should be comforting to me.

1 comment:

Qatfish said...

I would rather have 20,000 “little popes” with their Bibles, all believing they can err and be corrected by scripture

I think the Internet Monk never met Paul (DA, not the Apostle).

Kidding, kidding! It was a joke! ;)