It appears there are a number of versions of Christianity throughout the world, and it is legitimate to ask which, if any, is the authentic version. Let me begin by saying there is no such thing as a Christian country: while there are countries with a sizeable proportion of Christians, in every society non-believers outnumber the Christians so the moral ethos of a country is never as an ideal Christian society would look like. One should not judge Christianity as evil simply because so-called Christian countries exhibit a very evil and un-Christian lifestyle. The Christians in such countries are the first to lament such ungodliness.

While there are various forms of ecclesiastic organisation (Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox…) each with its own traditions and customs, they all are based on the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. His historic life, amazing miracles, profound teaching, his ultimate death, resurrection and ascension to heaven are the essential elements of the faith of all Christian churches. These basic facts are recounted in the Bible.

Now the Bible is an extraordinary book, written over a thousand years by about 40 writers, all inspired by the same Holy Spirit of God. While the basic message of the Bible can be understood by a child, it is a long book and contains some passages hard to understand. So the question of how to interpret the Bible has given rise in church history to three different approaches to Christian truth, each following one of three “authorities”.

Some have a great respect for the longstanding customs of their church and are trained to revere those traditions as authoritative. This is notably the position of the Roman Catholic Church, one of whose traditions is to believe in the infallibility of its world-wide leader, the Pope, and another is to honour all the traditional positions raised to the level of official teachings of the Church. In practice, this unfortunately submits the authority of the Bible to the official tradition of the Catholic Church leaders who alone can interpret it. 

All churches have theologians whose task is to study and teach the Bible. In certain church groups, however, some erudite theologians fall into a subtle temptation, holding themselves to be wiser than the Bible. When they believe that by their human thinking they can correct the Bible, adjusting its teaching according to their personal opinions, their work becomes illegitimate. The problem is that human reason ousts the Bible itself as the ultimate authority for Christian faith and life. 

During the Protestant Reformation in the 16^th century, the reformers, Martin Luther and John Calvin, saw these two approaches as calculated to undermine the absolute authority of the Bible itself; they understood the Bible as God’s divine word, as did Jesus himself who treated the Bible of his day (our Old Testament) as authoritative for all questions of faith, life, and doctrine. The reformers insisted therefore that the source of authority for Christian truth must be neither the Pope nor tradition, nor human reason, but the Bible itself. They encouraged all Christians to read the Bible for themselves, so that by comparing hard passages with those clearer they would understand God’s Word. The Reformers saw that maintaining the Bible as the supreme authority was the way to faithfully follow Jesus’ example. 

Authentic Christianity is therefore that which shows most love, reverence, and whole-hearted trust in the Bible’s truth, which makes every effort to study it, to understand and teach it faithfully, and which applies it in personal faith and life, submitting to the authority of its commandments.

Clive Every-Clayton