As last year, I had some very good conversations with students (and one tutor) who are practising Roman Catholics. One, an African student, had never heard an evangelical explanation of the cross of Christ. She came back later in the week and showed me how her Bible readings have taken on a new freshness – I had directed her to Romans and Hebrews. She is now in a follow-up group. The tutor told me frankly that he had been going to church his whole life, his friends had now all given up, and he was seriously wondering if it was all worth it.
The way I approach Roman Catholics is this: I tell them they have a great tradition – the Creeds and Councils of early Christianity. But traditions are always mixed because the people who develop them are not pure in their motives and make mistakes. So, we need something that is not dependent on the tradition to critique it and correct it. That’s the Bible, that has come to us from God himself and therefore should be respected as the ultimate authority. And we go from there. Not all will buy it – one graduate I talked with in Newcastle was sufficiently astute to realise my argument didn’t fit with official dogma and would not countenance going any further with it. But he kept coming along to the lunch bars, as he has done for years.
Any thoughtful Roman Catholic will have loads of questions that follow. If they have understood the argument for the authority of the Bible (even if they haven’t yet come to agree with it) they will be happy to hear how the Bible answers those questions.
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