7 Verses Every Catholic Should Know | Dr. John Bergsma

hi everyone this is Dr John bergsma I am

vice president of mission at the St Paul

Center for biblical Theology and this

video is about seven verses that every

Catholic should know now look friends I

know I'm going to be mostly talking to

Catholics watching this video but maybe

some Protestants will also be looking in

on this and let's be honest Catholics

have an inferiority complex when it

comes to scripture I know this well

because for four years I was a

Protestant Pastor up in Michigan and I

would go door Todo evangelizing and I

ran into a lot of basically

non-practicing Catholics and when I

would engage them in conversation and

start to share with them about religious

matters if I started to quote some

verses they would freak out and think oh

gosh I've got a Bible scholar here

because he's quoting verses now my

Catholic friends look when a Protestant

starts quoting verses at you that does

not mean that they are a Bible scholar

it may be that they only have five

verses of the Bible memorized and those

are the ones they quote to you it does

not mean that they have the whole Bible

committed to memory it is true that in

the Evangelical Protestant World there

tends to be better scripture knowledge

than you have among your typical uh you

know crosssection of Catholics at your

typical Parish but but there is frankly

abysmal lack of scripture education

among both Protestants and Catholics and

so if you are a Catholic watching this I

want to assure you you can get up to

speed with your Protestant brothers and

sisters and you can do that by

memorizing well to begin with seven

verses and if you're ready to quote them

you are going to look like a Bible

scholar to your friends acquaintances

and co-workers as well so let's get

started on it the first verse that I

would recommend in kind of no particular

order is this one and it is on the

church this is from 1 Timothy 3:15 now

the heart of the message is in verse 15

but I'm going to start with verse 14 to

get the context and it goes like this St

Paul is writing to his protoe Timothy

and says I hope to come to you soon but

I am writing these instructions to you

so that if I am delayed you may know how

one ought to behave in the household of

God which is the Church of the Living

God the pillar and bull workk of the

truth and it's especially that last

phrase that we want to look at look at

what St Paul says here he says the

Church of the Living God comma the

pillar and bull workk of the truth did

you catch that St Paul identifies the

church as the pillar and the Bull workk

of the truth and we can know from this

clearly that St Paul was not a

Protestant why can we know that because

no Protestant is going to say that the

church is the pillar and bull workk of

the truth now in my per personal

experience I read this verse probably

several times growing up because my

mother started me reading the Bible

through in a year when I was 12 years

old so I know that I've gone through the

Bible many times in my adolescence but

when my Catholic friend at the

University of Notre Dame pointed this

verse out to me when we were engaged in

a kind of back and forth about

Protestant Catholic issues when I was

about 30 years old and by the way I was

at the University of Notre Dame getting

a doctorate in scripture okay so it

wasn't like I was ignorant about the

Bible at that time I was doing advaned

studying it and again my Catholic friend

Michael pointed this verse out to me and

I looked at it and I was like taken

aback it was like I had never noticed it

before but again I I looked at it's like

the Church of the Living God the pillar

in the Bull workk of the truth I thought

to myself gosh I've never noticed this

verse before and and I remember thinking

to myself you know no Protestant would

say this what is a Protestant going to

identify as the pillar and the Bull

workk of the truth scripture right

because Sola scriptura the Bible alone

all that we need to be Christians is the

Bible so the Bible is the pillar and bul

workk of the truth right no that's not

what St Paul says and since what St Paul

says is in the Bible that's not even

what the Bible says so this is ironic

the Bible does not say that the Bible is

the pillar and buw workk of the truth

the Bible says the church is the pillar

and bull workk well what does pillar and

bull workk mean well a pillar is a

support of something we have this you

know this is the Greco Roman world that

we're talking about here uh that Paul is

living in and in that world they built

pillars to support rofes over for major

building buildings so a pillar was a

support something that you would rest

something upon that would bear the

weight of like the roof like everybody's

seen the Parthenon for example in Athens

right that famous temple to uh the

goddess of wisdom and it's got those

pillars some of which are still standing

and then the roof was supported by that

so that would mean the church supports

the truth and then a bull workk is like

a defense like a wall or something some

kind of protection that you build or

construct around something that you are

trying to preserve so that would be the

church is the defense of the truth huh

so the Church of the Living God the

support and the defense of the truth

that is what St Paul is saying now let's

think about this a little bit more

deeply if it's true that the church

supports and defends the truth then that

means if you want the truth you can go

to the church to find it like if you can

get to the church the church is the

entity in reality that is supporting the

truth and defending the truth so if I

want to know what the truth is got to

locate the church and then I will find

the truth there being defended and

supported okay so all I got to do is

find the church now think about what's

implied here if the church is the pillar

and bull workk the support and defense

of the truth it implies first of all

that there can only be one Church

right because if there are multiple

claimants for church then I don't know

which one to go to to find the truth so

if I've got Presbyterian over here and

I've got Baptist over here and I've got

Pentecostal over here and I've got

charismatic over here and I've got

Lutheran over there like which one is it

okay which one is supporting and

defending the truth because they are all

making mutually exclusive claims so that

cannot be a correct sit situation uh you

can't have multiple competing voices all

being the support and the defense of the

truth when they can't even agree on what

the truth is so this kind of protestant

denominationalism is clearly not the

perspective that St Paul has when he's

writing to Timothy what St Paul says

entails or implies that there's only one

church and secondly that that church is

visible if the church is the support and

the defense of the truth that implies

that the church is identifiable okay all

right I know that the church is is where

the TR where the truth can be found

where where the truth is supported and

defended so I just got to get to the

church but if the church is invisible

like where can I locate it you know and

this is the problem with Protestant

ecclesiology and I I speak from personal

experience as a Protestant in my

calvinist tradition we did believe in

the church but we did not believe that

the church could be visibly identified

with any human organization on the

planet the church was only the

collection of the elect okay the

community of those chosen by God for

salvation and it was known only to God

so the church was fundamentally

invisible it was this group of Believers

that is in the mind of God that God

knows will eventually be saved but you