39 You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to me; 40 yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.
John 5:39-40
These words of Christ are in a nutshell how I see the fallacy of Sola Scriptura. The scriptures bear witness to Him, and are in the inspired word of God. They bear witness. And yet, the REALITY of Him is offered to us in the church in a very real and concrete way - that He may abide in us, and us in Him. Like reading a story about someone (all very edifying) when the actual person is standing right in front of you... and choosing the story. The real person is life-giving, even without the book - although the book tells us who that person really is. The book introduces us to the person standing before us. The book, though, is not life-giving without the real person. Because the book bears witness to, and the sacrament actually IS. If someone who also knows Him accurately introduces us to this person standing before us, we can know just as much about Him as reading the book, and recognize Him for who He is. But if our nose is in a book alone, and we do not look up to see Him standing right before us in concrete reality... how can we accept in concrete reality the gift He is offering to us?
At church yesterday, I was looking at all the stained glass windows, the images around the church. Each one told a story without words. An image of John the Baptist was holding a seashell, dressed in animal furs. If I had no access to the book (as the majority of Christians did NOT until the invention of the
printing press) but someone had
accurately told me the story, the image alone would confirm that he baptized with water, and lived in the wild. An image of Mary was clothed in blue (indicating her purity) and stepping on the head of a serpent, as told in Revelation, symbolizing her role as the New Eve. St. Paul held a sword, showing him as a defender of the gospel. These images, everywhere I turned, played out the book in ways that would speak to me, even if I did not have access to the book or could not read. Christians for 1500 years had images, and stories told to them. A few could read, and if you could, then you could access the immensely rare and expensive hand-written Bibles at the local church. But for the majority who could not, they were not lost. Their salvation was not through the book alone. They had the church, the liturgy. They were introduced to the real and actual Christ not only through their eyes by reading, but through their ears hearing, their hands touching, their bodies moving, their lips tasting. They lived the gospels with the rhythm of their lives as the celebrated feasts and the liturgical year. They came to be healed by Him in confession. They came to be made His child in baptism. They celebrated the union of the Church with Him in marriage. And - greatest of all - they became one with Him in the Eucharist, the most intimate union this side of Heaven. Because He was standing before them, through all generations, in the church, His body. When Jesus came to St. Paul, He did not ask why Paul was persecuting the church. He asked "why are you persecuting
ME?" Because the church is the Body of Christ. It is His hands, His heart, His presence, until He comes again. And the Scriptures bear witness to that fact.
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