According to the Roman church, there are three pillars of its teaching authority: the “Magisterium of the Church”; what it calls “sacred tradition”; and holy Scripture.

The “Magisterium,” as Wikipedia explains, is “the church’s authority or office to give,” ultimately through the pope, “authentic interpretation of the word of God.” “Sacred tradition” is basically the development of church doctrine that has taken place over the centuries. And holy Scripture is, of course, the Bible, the word of God.

However, if we ask the apostle Peter, whom the Roman church claims as the first pope, how he feels about these three different authorities, we will find that what he says about the first two is very simple: absolutely nothing.

That is, never once, either in his speaking or in his writings, does Peter ever refer either to the church as being given authority to define the truth, nor to any kind of church tradition as a source for discovering what the truth is.

(It is true, though, that the apostle Paul speaks of the church as “the pillar, the support, of the truth”; 1 Tim. 3:15. In doing so, however, he is not speaking of any supposed teaching authority of the church, but of the genuine church as the manifestation of all that has been revealed in the New Testament.)

In striking contrast, Peter appeals over and over again to the authority of Scripture.

In his message on the day of Pentecost, as recorded in Acts 2:14-40, when he was exhorting the Jews in Jerusalem to be saved, roughly one-third of his speaking is simply quoting to them from the Old Testament Scriptures. And his two messages in Acts 3 and 4 contain three more such quotations.

And of course his two brief epistles are filled with appeals to the Scripture. He even tells the believers, regarding the Scripture, that they have been regenerated

…by the sowing, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the living and abiding word of God. For

All flesh is as grass,
And all its glory as
The flower of the grass;
The grass withers,
And its flower falls away,
But the word of the Lord
Endures forever.
— 1 Peter 1:23-25

Overall, his first letter contains ten quotations from the Old Testament, and the second adds another two. How Peter treasured the word of God, immersed himself in it, and brought it before the Lord’s children!

So, anyone today who truly wishes to follow in the footsteps of the apostle Peter must recognize, as he did, that there is no authority for defining the truths of the Christian faith outside of holy Scripture. For this we must not look to the so-called Magisterium, nor to supposedly sacred tradition, but only to the holy Bible, God’s unique word and revelation to man. Therefore, like Peter himself, we must immerse ourselves in the word as the sole authority we have for knowing God’s truth.

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—  26 July 2025 —