A Magisterium of YOU: Private Judgment and the Root of Biblicism

JM Zabick
Dec 29, 2025
24 min read

Updated: Dec 30, 2025

How the Rejection of Sacred Tradition in Favor of Sola Scriptura Inevitably Collapses into a “Tradition of One” to the Neglect of the Biblical Blueprint

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INTRODUCTION

In the modern religious landscape, "Bible-believing" has become a ubiquitous brand. A neon sign flickering over Protestant congregations, evangelical megachurches, and digital ministries. To the casual observer, this suggests a unified front standing on the divine bedrock of a single text. Yet, beneath this veneer lies a chaotic sea of contradiction. Within any suburb, one finds "Bible-believing" communities that fundamentally disagree on salvation, baptism, and morality. Each claims the same source of authority, yet each arrives at a different, often disunifying doctrine. This fragmentation is the inevitable fruit of a system that has severed the Word of God from the Body of Christ.

I encountered cracks in this facade while serving in the teaching ministry of the Assemblies of God (AoG) congregation where I was a long-time member. Tasked with instructing others, I felt a heavy burden to ensure my lessons rested on the firmest biblical footing. Yet the more I researched, the more I realized that the "fundamental truths" touted by the AoG were often at odds with the conclusions of other equally "biblical" tribes. Seeking a resolution, I enrolled in a graduate program at Liberty University. I expected academic training to finally uncover the true biblical basis for doctrine. Instead, I found a microcosm of the problem. Even among doctoral faculty, there was division, sometimes bitter, on central matters of the faith, as taught in the Bible.

My trust in this system collapsed further shortly after graduating with a Master's degree in biblical studies. In an online discussion, a high-ranking AoG leader remarked on his path to ministry, claiming, “After I got saved, I read the Bible and just went and found someplace where people were doing what it said.” The statement was jarring. Here was a man stating that, as a new convert, he discerned the “plain meaning” of the text with the unmediated clarity to judge that a twentieth-century denomination (which is primarily founded upon a maverick and arguably wholly unbiblical nineteenth-century theology called dispensationalism) was the true expression of Christianity. To believe one can pick up a book and simply see "the truth," while ignoring two millennia of Christian testimony that said otherwise, seemed the height of historical and spiritual hubris.

Claiming to be biblical has evolved into a sophisticated form of narrative control. By labeling a community "Bible-based," leaders create a shield against critique. To question their interpretation is no longer a dialogue; it is likened to questioning God Himself. This maneuver allows the individual to play the "biblical” card to shut down historical inquiry, effectively "taming" the Holy Spirit within the narrow confines of private judgment.

Ultimately, the rejection of Sacred Tradition in favor of sola scriptura (the Reformational doctrine that the "Bible alone" is the sole, self-interpreting, and sufficient rule of faith) functions as an act of unintentional intellectual and spiritual arrogance. It replaces the cross-generational wisdom of the Spirit-led and ongoing dialogue within the Church with the sovereign, fallible "I."

This article argues that the "Bible alone" model is a logical impossibility that inadvertently forces the believer into the role of an isolated, individual interpretive authority. To understand the alternative, one must look to the Magisterium: the living, teaching office of the Church. Rather than a human addition to the Word, the Magisterium is the divinely commissioned authority, consisting of the Pope and the bishops across the ages of the Church, tasked with authentically interpreting and guarding the Deposit of Faith. This office does not sit above, or in place of, Scripture but serves it, ensuring the "map" of revelation is read consistently across every generation.

The argument will be supported by discussing four primary points. First, we will analyze the collapse of the "Biblical vs. Biblicist" distinction and the logical paradox inherent in the sola scriptura position. From there, we must examine how the blueprint of Scripture itself is set against the idea of "Bible alone," advocating instead for the Church as the necessary defender of the Word by joining it to apostolic tradition rather than casting it off. Next, we will confront the historical reality that the Bible was born, canonized, and entrusted to the very authoritative Church that biblicism rejects.

Lastly, I propose that the only coherent way to affirm the plain meaning of Scripture is found within the magisterial dialogue of the last two millennia, which acts as the essential floor of truth, protecting the Word of God from the diluting waters of private judgment. By holding Scripture aloft, above the tide of those waters, the Catholic Church acts as the actual pillar and protector of truth. If the Bible is the absolute authority that biblicists claim, they must reckon with the fact that the Bible itself testifies that the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, not the individual or their favored denominational outlook, is its God-ordained defense.

THE ILLUSION OF DISTINCTION AND THE LOGICAL PARADOX

This crisis of authority is not merely an external observation made by critics of the Reformation; it is an internal "fire in the hole” that modern Protestant thinkers are increasingly forced to address. In his 2023 article for The Gospel Coalition, Carl Jan Christian Roth attempts to draw a line between what he calls "Biblical" and "Biblicist" churches. Roth’s concern stems from the "post-Christian wasteland" of the West, where he observes a growing trend among Christians who disregard historic creeds to make themselves "the only trustworthy interpreters of Scripture." He rightly identifies this "biblicism" as a rut of individualism that pits personal exegetical shortcuts against the heavy lifting of systematic theology.[1]

The Problem of the Grounding Authority

However, Roth’s attempt to rescue biblical Christianity from biblicism exposes the very dilemma he seeks to cure. While he encourages readers to engage with "various traditions" and "historic creeds," he offers no objective standard for which traditions are authoritative or why a believer should submit to them. Without a central Magisterium, the biblical Christian is simply a biblicist with a more refined library. Both are still standing on the same shaky ground of private judgment, attempting to navigate the vastness of divine revelation without the map provided by the Church. To understand why this distinction ultimately collapses, we must look past modern labels and return to the blueprint Jesus actually left behind, a blueprint that relies not on the isolated reader, but on a commissioned, apostolic Body.

The logical paradox of the Protestant position is found in the very claim of "sola." If Scripture is the only infallible rule, one must ask: on what infallible authority do we know which books belong in the Scripture? The Bible does not contain an inspired table of contents. To accept the sixty-six (or seventy-three) books of the Bible as the Word of God is to make an act of faith in the tradition and the Church that identified them. Thus, the biblicist is in the impossible position of using a tradition (the Canon) to deny the authority of Tradition. This is not merely a historical oversight; it is a foundational logical rupture that necessitates the "sovereign I" to bridge the gap

The Collapse of the "Essentials" Defense

A common defense for the fragmentation of the Bible-believing world is the popular maxim: "In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity." Proponents of this view, including many of my former fellow adherents in the AoG and my seminary peers, argue that the thousands of disparate denominations are merely valid, variegated expressions of a singular faith. They suggest that as long as there is agreement on a core (the deity of Christ, the Resurrection, etc.), the Holy Spirit grants a wide berth for "secondary" disagreements on baptism, church government, or the nature of the Eucharist, among many others.

However, when held against the light of the biblical blueprint, this defense reveals itself as a theological white flag … a way to manage defeat rather than achieve the victory Christ demanded. In John 17, Jesus does not pray for a loose confederation of disagreeing tribes who share a common core. He prays for a specific, ontological oneness: “... that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us” (John 17:21).

The standard Jesus sets is not "mere agreement," but the Trinitarian model. The oneness of the Father and the Son is not a "unity in essentials" while maintaining "liberty in non-essentials." It is a perfect, complete, and visible communion of being. Jesus reinforces this by praying that the world would see this oneness so that the world might believe. A world looking at three Bible-believing churches on a single street corner, each teaching a different gospel regarding the necessity of baptism or the security of salvation, does not see Trinitarian oneness. It sees a house divided.

Furthermore, this "essentials" defense creates a new, unanswerable question: Who defines the essentials? The Bible does not provide a list labeled “Crucial Doctrines vs. Optional Opinions.” By deciding which doctrines are "non-essential" enough to allow for division, the individual once again ascends the throne of the Magisterium. If a pastor decides that the mode of baptism is a "non-essential," he is making a dogmatic claim that 1,500 years of Christians (who viewed baptism as a matter of eternal life or death) were simply overreacting.

If the Holy Spirit is truly the Spirit of Truth leading every individual "magisterium of one," we must ask why He would lead sincere believers into such variegated and contradictory confessions. Does the Holy Spirit whisper "Presbyterianism" to one and "Pentecostalism" to another? Does He affirm the Real Presence of Christ consubstantial in the Eucharist to the Lutheran while telling the Baptist it is merely a symbol? To suggest so is to accuse the Holy Spirit of being the author of confusion.

The Catholic claim is far more humble and consistent: The Holy Spirit leads the Body into the fullness of truth through the Head. The oneness Jesus prayed for is not an invisible, spiritualized unity that ignores doctrinal contradiction; it is a visible, magisterial oneness that reflects the perfect order of the Godhead.

The Sophisticated Biblicist & The Sovereign I

In his attempt to navigate the "post-Christian wasteland," Roth offers a well-intentioned rescue operation for the term "biblical." He seeks to distance the faithful from biblicism, which he defines as a naive, individualistic disregard for the historic, orthodox creeds. Roth’s "biblical" church is one that reads the giants of the past, engages with systematic theology, and respects the "cloud of witnesses." On the surface, this sounds like humility. But under closer scrutiny, this distinction reveals itself to be a distinction without a difference.

The fatal flaw in Roth’s proposition is the lack of a grounding authority. If a believer is told they should follow "historic creeds" and read "various traditions," the immediate and unavoidable question is … Which ones? But then … Says who? In Roth’s model, the individual remains the supreme arbiter of the answer. If I read Bavinck or Grudem and decide they are "biblical," I am not submitting to their authority; I am merely congratulating them for agreeing with my own interpretation of the text.

This is the key insight of the biblicist’s dilemma: If I choose which parts of tradition to keep based on my own reading of the Bible, I am still the ultimate authority. I have not escaped the "sovereign I"; I have simply dressed it in the robes of historical study. Without a central, living, teaching office to define the boundaries of orthodoxy, every man is his own magisterium. Every believer becomes a "magisterium of one," sifting through 2,000 years of Church history (if they even regard it enough to look) to find the pieces that fit their pre-existing puzzle.

The fatal flaw in the biblicist’s rejection of a central Magisterium is not just a lack of order, but a profound self-deception regarding authority. When a believer claims to stand on the Bible alone, she is making a claim that is linguistically pious but logically impossible. A book cannot explain itself; it must be interpreted. Therefore, the moment the biblicist rejects a communal, historical, and authoritative interpreter (the Church), she does not actually leave herself with the Word of God. She leaves herself with her own mind as the final court of appeal

THE SCRIPTURAL BLUEPRINT AGAINST ISOLATION

In this system, the individual becomes a "magisterium of one." While he may use the language of submission to Scripture, he is only ever submitting to his own latest conclusions, which are themselves conditioned by his underlying presuppositions. If his study of a "chapter and verse" leads him to a new doctrine, he doesn't change his mind to fit the Church; he simply changes his church to fit his mind—or peels off to start his own.

There is a subtle but profound arrogance in this curated approach to Christianity. It suggests that the Holy Spirit failed to preserve a visible, coherent Church, and instead left a scattered trail of breadcrumbs that only the sufficiently sophisticated or well-read believer can find. At its best, that revelation came five hundred years ago. But what about those that were discovered in the last few centuries, or even decades?

“I read the Bible and just went where [of all the many hundreds of possibilities] people were doing what it said.”

Such superficial sentiment reduces the Gospel into an intellectual scavenger hunt. By contrast, a truly biblical approach requires the humility to submit to an authority that we did not author, an authority that exists independently of our agreement with it. Without the floor of the Magisterium, the difference between the "naive biblicist" and the "sophisticated biblical Christian" is merely a matter of how many books they have on their shelf, not who has been given the keys to the Kingdom of Truth.

Apostolic Teaching and Oral Tradition

By refusing to submit to a Magisterium that exists outside of their own intellect, the biblicist ensures that their faith is never allowed to contradict them. They create a god in their own image, bound by the limits of their own linguistic skills and historical biases. They have not escaped the human traditions they so fear in Catholicism; they have merely narrowed the circle of tradition down to the diameter of their own skull. The sophisticated Christian who reads Roth’s recommended list of theologians is doing the same thing. They are merely selecting a more scholarly set of advisors to tell themself exactly what they already wanted to hear.

Ultimately, the biblicist doesn't want a King; she wants a consultant. She treats the Holy Spirit not as a guide into the "Pillar and Bulwark of Truth" (the Church), but as a personal research assistant for her own private theological project. This mindset is the natural conclusion of the Enlightenment's "autonomous individual" projected onto the sacred text. It is a form of spiritual consumerism where the "truth" is whatever the individual finds most compelling at any given moment.

The "magisterium of one" scenario is not a modern accident. It is the exact chaos the New Testament was written to prevent. When we move from the private library of the biblicist to the actual pages of the Word of God, we find a blueprint that relies not on the isolated reader, but on a commissioned, authoritative Body. To claim to be biblical while rejecting the Church’s authority is to ignore the very instructions contained within the text.

Jesus did not command His Apostles to go and write a book and distribute it for private interpretation. In the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19), He told them to make disciples by passing on the teachings they had received from Him. This was the formal commissioning of the Church's founders. Sacred Tradition is simply the living "handing on" (paradosis) of those teachings. To reject Tradition in favor of a Bible-only model is to reject the very method Jesus chose for the survival of the Gospel.

In the book of Acts (2:42), we see that the early believers did not wander about with a "me and my Bible" mentality. Instead, they "dedicated themselves to the Apostles' teaching." They were committed to transmitted doctrines guarded by an office, not by a printed page. Biblicism suggests that the "purest" form of Christianity is a man alone with a text; the Bible itself shows that the purest form was a community submitting to an oral, apostolic authority. The early Church was a "listening" Church before it was a "reading" Church, and that listening was directed toward those who held the office of the Apostles.

The Pillar and Bulwark of Truth

Biblicists frequently weaponize 2 Timothy 3:16 ("All Scripture is God-breathed") to argue for the Bible’s total sufficiency. However, they exercise a profound structural arrogance by ignoring the context. It was only after St. Paul instructed St. Timothy that the Church is the "pillar and bulwark of truth" (1 Timothy 3:15) that he described Scripture's utility. This is a passage far less frequently observed in the biblicist’s repertoire.

Nevertheless, Paul’s language is a powerful reminder of the crucial role given to the visible Church. A pillar’s job is to hold something aloft; without the Church as the pillar, the "God-breathed" truth of Scripture has no objective support in the world and inevitably crashes into the sea of subjective interpretation. And a “bulwark” is a defensive wall, or fortification. Thus, the Church is a fortress erected to guard the Truth from assaults on its sanctity.

The structural metaphor used by Paul is essential. For instance, a pillar does not replace the foundation, nor does it replace the roof. It is the structural necessity that connects the two. By removing the "pillar" of the Church, the biblicist has not made the "roof" of Scripture more accessible; he has made it unstable. He has forced the individual to act as the pillar, a weight that no human intellect was designed to carry.

Still, there is a final, even more devastating irony. Nowhere in the Bible is the doctrine of the “Bible alone” actually taught. There is no chapter and verse that explicitly states that the Bible is the sole rule of faith. In fact, Paul explicitly commands the opposite in 2 Thessalonians 2:15: "Stand firm and hold fast to the traditions we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter." By demanding a scriptural warrant for every Catholic practice while being unable to provide one for their own foundational principle of sola scriptura, the biblicist reveals a staggering double standard.

THE WITNESS OF HISTORY AND THE ECCLESIAL CONTEXT

This biblical appeal continued seamlessly into the early Church. Saints like Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus, and Basil the Great did not fight heresy by merely trading proof-texts; they appealed to the received orthodoxy of the apostolic tradition and the authority of the bishops as apostolic successors. They relied on the Rule of Faith, the received teaching of the Church maintained across centuries, long before (in the case of Ignatius and Irenaeus) a final New Testament canon was even a priority.

The Voice of the Fathers

Examples confirming all of this abound in the early centuries of the Church. Here are three, to quickly underline the point. First, consider Ignatius, who in the first decade of the second century communicated the following caution to the Smyrnaeans: "See that you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father... Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop." [2]

Near the end of that same century, Irenaeus could hardly be plainer in his description of the vital importance of fidelity to the received tradition, and the threat posed by those who reject it. He wrote of the day’s heretics, “... when we refer them to that tradition which originates from the Apostles, [and] which is preserved by means of the succession of presbyters in the Churches, they object to tradition, saying that they themselves are wiser not merely than the presbyters, but even than the Apostles, because they have discovered the unadulterated truth …”[3]

For Irenaeus, fighting the Gnostics, the defense was not "here is my Bible against your Bible," but rather, "here is the public, visible succession of bishops from the Apostles to the present day."

And lest anyone maintains the received tradition of apostolic succession fell victim to the grand corruption of the so-called and mythologized “Constantinian Shift” (and is therefore of no value after the Council of Nicaea), may the words of St. Basil the Great contend against them. Writing close to fifty years after the Council’s close, he emphasized, “Of the beliefs and practices whether generally accepted or publicly enjoined which are preserved in the Church some we possess derived from written teaching; others we have received delivered to us ‘in a mystery’ by the tradition of the Apostles; and both of these in relation to true religion have the same force.”[4]

READ: Deconstructing the "Constantinian Shift"

There is a profound irony in the biblicist’s position. He uses the Second Letter to Timothy to claim that the Bible is all he needs, while ignoring Paul's first communiqué to the young bishop, which tells him where the authority to interpret that Bible actually resides. He accepts the Apostles' words as God-breathed but rejects the Apostles' successors as unnecessary. This selective obedience is the hallmark of the arrogant mind. It accepts the authority it likes and discards the authority that asks for submission.

This is the "checkmate" moment in the argument, in that it exposes the internal contradiction (or logical circularity) of the sola scriptura position. If a biblicist insists that "everything we believe must be found explicitly in the Bible," they are caught in a trap because that very rule is nowhere to be found in the text itself. To adhere to a rule that isn't in the Book, while claiming the Book is the only rule, is the ultimate expression of the "sovereign I" masquerading as piety. It is a house built upon a foundation of sand, held together only by the force of will of the individual interpreter.

The Mother of the Canon

To fully grasp the arrogance of the biblicist position, one must confront the cold reality of history. The Bible did not fall from heaven, king-size and leather-bound, with a cross on the cover. For the first centuries of the Church's life, there was no New Testament. There was only the Church, the Apostles, and the oral tradition they passed on. When Paul wrote his letters, he was writing to existing churches that already had a rule of faith. He was not creating the faith; he was clarifying it for those who were already under the authority of the Apostles.

Of course, the preserved writings of those Apostles, their epistles, and the Gospels, were received as authoritative from early on. But not without significant debate, as other important texts were also widely regarded for their importance. The only recognized and infallible standard for the adolescent Church, however, was the apostolic tradition, passed on in the care of the succession of its bishops.

The process of canonization (deciding which books were truly God-breathed) took centuries of discernment. This discernment did not happen in a vacuum of private reading. It happened in the context of the liturgy, the councils, and the magisterial authority of the bishops. The Church had to decide: Is the Shepherd of Hermas inspired? Is the Apocalypse of Peter? Is the Letter of James?

There were deep disagreements and lengthy debates. The only reason we have a New Testament today is that the Church, acting with the authority given to her by Christ, made a final, definitive judgment. And nowhere in the course of doing so did they pull up the anchor on the central authority of the received Tradition and shove it out to sea.

When the biblicist picks up his Bible and says, "This is my only authority," he is standing on the shoulders of the very Church he claims has no authority. He is using the fruit of the Church's labors to deny the Church's life. This is not just an intellectual error. It is a form of spiritual ingratitude. It is like a child who, having been raised and educated by his parents, turns around and says, "I have no parents; I am a self-made man, and I only answer to a heritage of my own making."

Furthermore, history shows that without the Magisterium, the Bible is quickly used to justify any and every heresy. The Arians had their verses. The Pelagians had theirs. The Gnostics had theirs. In every case, the Bible alone was not enough to settle the matter. It was only when the Church met in Council … at Nicaea, at Ephesus, at Chalcedon, and so on … that the truth was secured. The biblicist who claims he can find "the plain meaning" on his own is claiming to be smarter than the greatest saints and doctors of the first five centuries. He claims that, with his limited resources and modern biases, he can do what the whole early Church struggled to.

This historical amnesia is a hallmark of the "magisterium of YOU." It requires the believer to imagine a "Great Apostasy" in which the Church went dark for 1,500 years, until a few reformers in Europe rediscovered the truth. But this narrative is not biblical. Jesus promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church (Matthew 16:18) and that the Holy Spirit would lead her into all truth (John 16:13). To believe in biblicism is to believe that Jesus failed in His promise, and that the Church was a lie until the printing press arrived.

THE NECESSITY OF THE MAGISTERIAL FLOOR

To the modern “Bible alone” Christian, the concept of a central Magisterium often sounds like a threat to the authority of Scripture—a human addition to a divine work. However, the reality is exactly the opposite. Roth attempts to navigate this by suggesting a biblical approach that uses systematic, historical, and exegetical theology, like the legs of a table, to support a stable understanding of truth. It is a helpful metaphor, but it remains incomplete. If these theological disciplines are the legs of the table, the Magisterium is the floor upon which they must stand. Without that floor, the legs have no purchase; the table cannot hold weight because it is being set down in the shifting sands of private judgment. By holding Scripture aloft and out of the diluting waters of subjective interpretation, the Church acts not as the Bible’s master, but as its protector.

Servant, Not Sovereign

This authority is rooted in a profound theological humility: the Magisterium is a servant, not a sovereign. Just as a bodyguard does not replace the King but ensures his message is not kidnapped by impostors, the Church sits in service to the Word. The biblicist claims he wants the Bible to be the final authority. Still, by rejecting the Magisterium, he has actually ensured that the Bible can never be the final authority, because he has left the final word to his own fallible interpretation. Roth admits that biblicists are often "grossly in disagreement with one another," yet he fails to see that this chaos is not an accident … it is a feature of the system. If the Holy Spirit is the author of clarity, then the existence of tens of thousands of competing denominations is not a failure of the Spirit, but a testament to the failure of the “Bible alone” method.

Furthermore, the "biblical" label serves as the ultimate tool of narrative control. It allows the individual to bypass the hard work of submission to a historical community and instead claim a direct, unmediated line to the Divine. But a Spirit that tells ten different "Bible-believing" pastors ten different things about the nature of baptism, atonement, predeterminate salvation, or whatnot, is not the Spirit of Truth; it is the spirit of the age. By taming the Holy Spirit within the pages of a book they alone interpret, they have not escaped tradition. They have simply started a new, fragile “tradition of one.”

This collapses the "middle ground" Roth tries to stake out. He suggests we avoid biblicism by reading "various traditions," such as Bavinck or Grudem, but this remains an exercise in theological consumerism. If I am the one deciding which theologians are biblical enough to follow, I am still sitting on the throne. I am still the judge, the jury, and the executioner of truth. I am merely choosing which advisors to hire to bolster my own preconceived notions.

True humility is found in submission to a wisdom that precedes us. While a denominational leader can use "the Bible says" as a cudgel to enforce a private narrative, the Catholic Church operates under the constraint of the ages. The Pope himself is bound by 2,000 years of Sacred Tradition and the consensus of the Fathers and the Saints throughout the age of the Church. He cannot simply "read the Bible" and invent a new theology the next morning. The Catholic Church, by contrast, exercises the humility of a steward. She knows she did not write the map, but she also knows she was commissioned to be the only one authorized to read it for the safety of the travelers.

From Narrative Control to Holy Submission

The weight of this reality became clear to me through my time at Liberty University. I saw hundreds of sincere students searching for the biblical truth and finding myriad variations of it. We were like a Supreme Court where every justice brought their own version of the Constitution and expected the others to yield to it. To claim one can be truly biblical without the Magisterium is to claim the ability to reconstruct 2,000 years of theology by oneself. It’s the very definition of intellectual arrogance. It was only when I looked toward the Church that I realized the firm footing I was sweating for wasn't something I had to build; it was a floor that had been laid down at Pentecost, and all I had to do was finally have the humility to stand on it.

By framing the Magisterium as a "threat," the biblicist misses the profound peace it offers. The "magisterium of one" must wake up every morning and decide for himself if he has correctly parsed the Greek or correctly understood the historical context of a passage. He carries the weight of the entire Christian world on his own shoulders. This leads to a frantic, restless faith, one that is always "reforming" because it never has a foundation.

The Catholic, by contrast, walks into a room that has already been lit. She submits her intellect not to a tyrant, but to a historical consensus that has survived every storm of heresy for twenty centuries. She has the freedom to be a child of God because she doesn't have to be the parent of the Bible.

Beyond the theological and historical failures of biblicism, we must also address its sociological reality. In the world of “Bible-only” Christianity, the text often becomes a Rorschach test for the political and social biases of the interpreter. Because there is no external, authoritative voice to check the individual, the Bible is easily molded into a weapon for narrative or even cultural control.

In many evangelical and post-Christian "Jesus communities," the claim of being biblical is used to create an insular world where the leader’s interpretation is absolute. Because there is no historic creed or magisterial office to appeal to, the congregant has only two choices: total submission to the leader’s biblical vision or leaving to start a new biblical community elsewhere. This leads to a culture of constant schism and spiritual isolation.

The biblicist lives in a state of perpetual reinventing of the wheel. Every generation, every congregation, feels they must "get back to the early church," as if the Holy Spirit had been on vacation for two thousand years. This creates a deep sense of historical homelessness. The biblicist has no ancestors; he has only precedents that he selects based on his current needs. He is a theological orphan, forced to build his own house in a wasteland where everyone else is doing the same. Perhaps he finds a tribe aligned closely enough to be tolerable, even if just for a short while—perhaps he does not.

In contrast, the Magisterium provides a sense of continuity and belonging. To be Catholic is to be part of a conversation that not only spans continents but centuries. It is to know that you are not alone in your interpretation, and that you are not responsible for defending the entire edifice of truth by yourself. The Church is the Body of Christ, and in that Body, we each have a role. But the role of ultimate interpreter belongs to the Head, and He has delegated that authority to His stewards.

The "arrogance" I have described is often not a conscious choice. Most biblicists are deeply sincere, godly people who love the Word of God. But the system they are in (sola scriptura) requires them to be arrogant. It requires them to say, "I, and my reading of this book, am a more reliable guide to truth than the collective witness of two thousand years of saints." It is an impossible burden, and it is no wonder it leads to burnout, deconstruction, and the very "post-Christian wasteland" that Roth laments.

CONCLUSION

The journey from the "sovereign I" to the Sacred Tradition is, ultimately, a journey from exhaustion to rest. As we have seen, the landscape of modern biblicism is a sea of contradiction, where the term "biblical" is used not as a standard of submission but as a tool for narrative control. Whether through the lens of my own struggle for a firm footing at Liberty University or the internal admissions of Protestant thinkers like Carl Roth, the verdict is the same. Without a central, authoritative teaching office, every believer is left to play the part of a "magisterium of one."

This article has sought to prove that the rejection of Sacred Tradition is fundamentally an act of intellectual and spiritual arrogance. Even if that arrogance is born of a sincere but misguided desire to protect the Word of God. We have traced the failure of this "Blank Slate" approach through four critical points:

The Logical Paradox: Sola scriptura is a self-refuting doctrine; the Bible nowhere teaches that the Bible alone is the sole rule of faith. It is a tradition that denies tradition, a house divided against itself.

The Scriptural Blueprint: The New Testament itself defines the Church, not the isolated reader, as the "pillar and bulwark of truth" (1 Tim 3:15). It commands the keeping of oral tradition and the submission to apostolic authority.

The Historical Witness: The very Bible the biblicist claims to cherish was birthed, preserved, and canonized by the authoritative Church he rejects. To accept the Bible while rejecting the Church is to accept the fruit while hacking at the roots of the tree.

The Necessity of the Floor: Without the Magisterium to act as a servant-steward of the Word, theological disciplines collapse into shifting sands. The “biblical” label becomes a mirror of personal preference rather than a window into Divine Truth.

The "Peace of Rome" is the relief of realizing that the Truth is not a puzzle we must solve with our own limited intellect, but a Person we encounter within a living Body. To step into the Catholic Church is not to abandon the Bible; it is to finally place the Bible in the only ecosystem where it can be protected from the diluting waters of private interpretation. It is to move from being a "consultant" to a "subject," from a consumer of theological opinions to a participant in a 2,000-year-old conversation.

When we lay down the burden of having to reconstruct the Faith from scratch every time we open the Book, we find the firm footing that only humility can provide. We stop trying to tame the Holy Spirit within the narrow diameter of our own skulls and finally submit to the Spirit who has been speaking clearly through His Church since Pentecost.

Biblicism is a weight. It is the weight of having to be your own teaching authority, your own theologian, and your own historian (neither of which you likely are, despite what you are told). Even if you have yielded that to a denomination, an elder board, a pastor, or a confession that is somewhat less historically ad hoc, the conundrum remains. It is a weight that leads only to fragmentation and pride. But the Magisterium is a gift. It is the gift of a floor beneath your feet, a roof over your head, and a map in your hand that you can actually trust.

In the end, being truly biblical requires the one thing the biblicist fears most: the humility to stop being the final word. It is only in this surrender that the Word of God truly becomes the authority it was always meant to be. We do not lose our minds when we enter the Church. We finally find the Mind of Christ, preserved and protected for us through the ages.

Notes & Sources

[1] Roth, Carl Jan Christian. "Biblical or Biblicist?" The Gospel Coalition. May 23, 2023. Accessed December 29, 2025. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/biblical-biblicist/.

[2] St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 8.

[3] St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, III.2.2.

[4] St. Basil the Great (of Caesarea), On the Holy Spirit, 66; emphasis added.

Primary: The Church Fathers

St. Basil of Caesarea. On the Holy Spirit. Translated by David Anderson. St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980. (See specifically Chapter 27, 66 on written and unwritten tradition).

St. Ignatius of Antioch. "Letter to the Smyrnaeans." In The Apostolic Fathers, edited and translated by Michael W. Holmes. Baker Academic, 2006.

St. Irenaeus of Lyons. Against Heresies. Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1. Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885. (See Book III, Chapters 2-4).

Secondary and Contemporary

Catholic Church. Catechism of the Catholic Church. 2nd ed. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997. (See Paragraphs 74–95 on the Transmission of Divine Revelation).

Roth, Carl Jan Christian. "Biblical or Biblicist?" The Gospel Coalition, 2023.

Smith, Christian. The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture. Brazos Press, 2011.