The Pillar and Ground

This is from a recent email to my sister, but I thought it would make a good post for later rumination:

"I think I do get the whole common grace concept. The entire doctrine [of man's depravity, total vs utter] does have plenty of choice verses on either side, which is something which seems to be true of just about any doctrine. It has become very clear to me that we approach the Scripture through a prism, and proceed to get out of it what we set forth to get.

This realization (that the Bible can be taken to say a great many different things) has impressed me of late. There are 30,000+ denominations in the world, all claiming to be Bible-based and Spirit-led. Many of these denominations take diametrically opposed views of various doctrines. Something's wrong with this picture. I believe that the Bible is the infallible word of God, but when put into the hands of fallible men, it seems to be taken a million different ways. How do we rightly interpret and read it?

Surely, it is through prayer and careful study. But I think it would be unwise to neglect the "pillar and ground of the truth". At which point, you've got to select one of 30,000+ pillars and say: "OK, I guess I'll lean on that one!" But what makes you sure that your pillar is "THE pillar and ground of the truth", as opposed to one of the other 29,999 pillars? (For example, it seems exceedingly unlikely that a pillar which formed roughly 40 years ago, such as the PCA is "the pillar" Christ spoke of.) You could take the pillar to mean the mystical body of the church, composed of all true believers across all denominations and all time. And I think you'd be much closer to the mark. I think "the pillar" must encompass this. But I think it must also be true to the traditions handed down from the Apostles, as suggested by St. Paul in Thessalonians when he asked that we be faithful to the traditions he handed down to us, both written and verbal.

It seems to me that to fail to turn to the pillar that Christ set up as a safeguard of the truth is to turn to a theology of individual subjectivity."

...

Now I wonder, can I philosophically get away with saying: "One man's reason and subjective thoughts are insufficient to properly interpret scripture, but are sufficient to distinguish the proper interpreter of scripture (e.g. the Catholic Church)?" Hmm... Don't know. But it's late and time for bed.