Dear Danette:

Your question is not combative, in fact it is an excellent question; I am glad you asked it.

Now keep in mind that I am answering this question with the presumption that God exists and that Jesus Christ is who he says he is--the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity. This essay will not present arguments for proofs for the existence of God or the proof that Christianity is the true religion of God. This essay, rather, discusses how we can know which Christian sect accurately and truly teaches the original Christian faith as taught by Jesus and the Apostles and interprets the Bible correctly. In otherwords, this essay seeks to explain how we can sift through the 30,000 Christian sects to discover which one can be relied upon to teach genuine Christianity in it fullness. We can know the True teaching of Christianity by answering this question.

First, the differences in the text of the Bible that you find in the various translations are not significant. Sometimes they may appear to be, but they really are not. They are merely the result of translation issues. Some translations are better than others, some contain subtle bias in translation, but there is no such thing as a perfect translation. What is more important is that we have extant manuscripts from the early centuries in the original languages, thus scholars can study the Bible in the original languages, which eliminates the translation problems.

While there are minor differences in the translations you mentioned, the message is the same. The problem we have is not in the translation, especially since we have those extant manuscripts to rely upon, but in the interpretation and who has the authority to definitively make that interpretation. That is the core issue behind the question you ask.

Back in the days when I was a Baptist evangelist I remember knocking on doors and talking with anyone who would invite me in their house. I talked to them about Jesus and the need for them to make a profession of faith for the salvation of their souls.

I will never forget talking with this one young couple. They were not Christian but they were attentive to my presentation and seemed to be seeking.

After I presented the case for Jesus, they asked me how they could know that what I said was the truth as opposed to someone else. They explained to me that another Christian from another denomination had talked to them the previous week. What he said was different than what I said, yet both this other person and myself used the exact same Bible verses to prove our differing points.

I found myself rather stumped. It was the first time being stumped. What I told them was that we must first use an interpretative technique (called hermeneutics) of the Bible that is the most reliable we can find. There are different methods of hermeneutics, some more reliable than others. The technique we need to use, if we are to be honest and genuinely seeking the truth, is to use a method that seeks to discover the biblical author's original intent and message. This must be done without pre-conceived notions from our own opinions about things.

"But, what if this other guy and you use the same interpretative technique but still come to different conclusions?" they asked me. This question made me a little nervous.

I said, "Well, I guess after you start with a solid interpretative technique you have to pray about it and listen to the still small voice of the Holy Spirit to tell you which interpretation is correct."

They replied, "What if other guy and you do that and still come up with different interpretations, and we do that and come up with an interpretation different than both of you. How can we sort out the truth?

By this time I am really fidgeting in my chair and beginning to sweat.

The problem I had then, and the problem that all 30,000 non-Catholic Christian sects out there have yet today, is that there is no definitive authority to rely upon to settle honest disputes between scholars. All these non-Catholics can do is to do they best they can, pray about it, and just make a decision hoping they decide right.

That is no way to run a religion.

God is not so cruel as to reveal Himself in the miraculous way of the Scriptures, the prophets, and ultimately in His Son, Jesus, and then leave us with a faith we cannot know for sure.

God is not so cruel to leave us without a way to KNOW the Truth about Himself and His teaching. There has to be a way to settle doctrinal and interpretive disputes since scholars can honestly disagree with each other. How can those disputes be settled? Such disputes MUST be settled or the result will be 30,000 sects all thinking they have the Truth, yet they contradict each other. Everyone cannot be right. Everyone can be wrong, but everyone cannot be right. So how can we know who is right? what is the truth? which of the teachings of the various Christian sects are accurate and true to the teachings of the founder of Christianity--Jesus and His apostles?

These are all excellent questions. Protestants do not have an good answer, but Catholics do.

First of all, the basic principle of historical investigation of documents is that the closer a copy of a document is to the original author the more accurate it will be.

As I mentioned above we have manuscripts in the original languages still in existence going all the way back to the first and second centuries that show that the what we know as the New Testament today is accurate. No other work of antiquity has this sort of historical verification. For example, the oldest surviving copy of the Dialogues of Plato go back only to the 7th century, some 900 years after Plato's death. From a historical verification perspective we haven't the slightest idea what Plato actually wrote. But this is not the case with the Bible. We have the manuscripts that are only decades after the original. This is unheard of in antiquity and provide unparalleled proof of the veracity of the Bible as we know it.

In addition we have ex-biblical documents from the first and second and third centuries that are sermons, letters, and essays that prove how the early Christians interpreted the Faith and Scriptures. This is not a mystery. Although these writings are not Holy Scripture, they do tell us how the early Christians practiced and thought about their faith.

When we look at those manuscripts we find that the early Christians believed and practiced essentially as the Catholic Church does today. In fact the Didache, a second century Church manual, describes a Mass liturgy that is remarkably similar to the Mass liturgy of the Catholic Church today.

Thus, the Catholic Church can historically prove its teachings and practices and trace them to Jesus and the Apostles and Fathers of the Church. Protestants cannot trace their novel man-made ideas to the first century, but only to their various founders, the oldest of which goes back only to the 16th century.

Why does this matter? Well, if we are to be Christians then we ought to believe what the founders of Christianity believed. If we believe essential doctrines that are inconsistent with the Founders, then we have ceased to be Christian. We become something else.

How can we know what the original Christians believed? By examining the documents that tell us what they believed and how they interpreted the Bible.

Thus, from a historical point-of-view, there is documentary proof that the original Christians practiced and believe essentially the same as the Catholic Church today. This historical consistency is one of the several markers of the True Church.

But, that is not the primary point or answer to your question. Even though we have the manuscripts of the early Church, there can still be disagreements over doctrine and interpretation; scholars can still honestly disagree. In fact, there have been several theological disagreements over the centuries in the Catholic Church among her own theologians. But, how can these disputes be definitively resolved so that the faith remains intact as ONE UNIFIED faith?

What God has done, long before Christ was on the earth, is create a "Magisterium" to teach and protect the faith against error. In Old Testament times this Magisterial authority was invested in the Chair of Moses. Jesus mentions the Chair of Moses in Matthew 23:2. That passage shows us that even if those who sit in that chair of authority are corrupt personally, it does not effect the validity of their authority or the truth that they officially teach. Jesus warned the disciples to not follow how the Pharisees behaved because they were hypocrites, but when they sit in the chair of Moses they were to be obeyed. Why? because they were the official authority in God's name on this planet at that time and God protects those "in the chair" from error because if He didn't we would end up with 30,000 denominational opinions splitting the Body of Christ into pieces.

The Body of Christ is to be ONE, not many. In addition, the chair of authority guaranteed a unity of faith, that all the faithful could trust to settle disputes.

When the old covenant came to an end and a new covenant was put into place by Jesus, a new chair of authority had to be established. This new chair was the Chair of Peter.

This is getting to be too long, so the long and the short of it as God has provided a "supreme court" for the Church to settle disputes in order to guarantee the faith so that we can KNOW what the faith truly is. That supreme court is the Pope and Magisterium. Because God loves His children and wants them to know the Truth ("you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free," as Jesus taught), the Holy Spirit protects the Pope from making an error in faith and morals. Thus, we have our guarantee of assurance of the Faith.

Only the Catholic Church has God's Prime Minister, the Pope. Thus only the Catholic Church has the mechanism in place that God designed to guard and guarantee the faith. Thus, the Catholic Church, not the other 30,000 sects can know for certain what the truth is.

How can we know who is right? We can know by finding the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church in the fullness of the faith under the Pope who sits on the chair of Peter established by Jesus Himself and protected from error on issues of the faith by the Holy Spirit.

The Protestant abandoned God' ancient Magisterial system that goes all the way back the the Garden of Eden. They split from the True Church and went their merry way according to their personal opinions.

We can know the truth because God has protected the Truth in His ancient system, which in resided in times past with Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses and their successors, but which now resides in Peter and his successors who sit in the Chair of the King Jesus' Prime Minister, the Pope.

That is how we know what's what in biblical interpretation and the Faith. There is no other way to guarantee the truth except by this magisterial economy that God created long, long, before Christianity was born.

I hope this help at least a little.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary