Building on Bedrock - Response to Chapter 1
Building on the True Bedrock:
A Catholic Apologetic Response to Mark Bullen’s “Building on Bedrock,” Chapter 1
In his first chapter, Mark Bullen asks his readers to return to the “bedrock” of Christianity - a noble and sincere goal. He wants the foundation of faith to be nothing but the pure Word of God, the example of early believers, and a simple obedience to God’s will. For any sincere Christian, such zeal to avoid error and cling to the truth is admirable.
Yet, as St. Francis de Sales patiently demonstrated to the Protestants of his time, good intentions are not enough. Unless we build on the whole truth revealed by Christ - and preserved in its fullness only in the Catholic Church - we are at risk of repeating the very mistakes of history we so desperately wish to avoid.
1. Affirming the Unity of God’s Plan
Mark’s opening chapters rightly affirm that God’s plan of salvation did not begin in the New Testament. From the beginning, God made promises to Adam and Eve, called Noah, Abraham, and Moses, and always dealt with His people through covenants, faith, and a call to holiness. The Catholic Church wholeheartedly affirms this: “And, indeed, never, from the very creation of the world, has God, most merciful and benignant, been wanting to His own; but at sundry times and in divers manners spoke to the fathers by the prophets, and pointed out to them in a manner suited to the times and circumstances, a sure and direct path to the happiness of heaven” (Catechism of the Council of Trent).
Scripture is clear: the faithful of the Old Testament were saved by looking forward in faith to the Redeemer who was to come, just as Christians are saved by looking back to His coming in the flesh. The Church has always venerated the faith of Abel, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and the righteous of Israel, precisely as Hebrews 11 recounts.
2. The Danger of “Bible Alone” - What Is the True Foundation?
Mark is, however, mistaken in thinking that the Scriptures alone - separated from the Church and apostolic tradition - are sufficient to preserve the fullness of Christ’s teaching. He claims that “uninspired” Christian writers of the second, third, and fourth centuries are a hindrance or even a danger to true doctrine. This is precisely the root error of Protestantism: to treat the Bible as a self-interpreting manual, instead of the living Word of God entrusted to a living Church.
Consider this: Who gave us the canon of Scripture? Who preserved, copied, and transmitted it through the centuries? Who interpreted the hard passages when disputes arose in the first centuries after Christ? It was not isolated individuals reading their Bibles - it was the visible, apostolic, and hierarchical Church, united under the successors of the apostles. The earliest Christians did not rely on “Bible alone.” They relied on the teaching of the apostles, their successors, and the whole Church - just as the Bereans searched the Scriptures, but did so within the Church.
St. Francis de Sales put it sharply:
“We must not say that the Church depends upon the Scriptures, but that the Scriptures depend upon the Church.”
(The Catholic Controversy, Part I, Article 3)
3. Faith, Obedience, and Justification - The Catholic View
Mark presents a view of salvation rooted in “justification by faith,” as if the main issue is simply believing God’s promise. But here is the critical error: he fails to see that God always demands a living faith - a faith that works by love and is shown by obedience, not a mere intellectual assent. The Catholic Church teaches, as Scripture does, that faith is only the beginning. “You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone” (James 2:24).
What about the Law? Christ did not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17). The Law was not set aside; it was brought to perfection. In the Old Testament, God’s people were bound by many outward rites and ceremonies as “shadows of things to come” (Col. 2:17). In Christ, these are replaced by the reality: the sacraments, which truly give grace. So, Christians are not lawless - but called to live the higher law of charity, strengthened by God’s grace, as St. Paul and St. John teach throughout the New Testament.
The error, then, is to pretend that all “ceremonies” are merely external, or that Christianity is nothing but a return to an imagined primitive faith without hierarchy, sacraments, or visible Church. In truth, God’s plan was always to prepare His people for the real and living worship of the New Covenant.
4. The Role of History and the Early Church
Mark Bullen warns his readers not to trust the witness of the Christians who lived and suffered under Roman persecution, who defined the canon, and who handed on the very text of the Scriptures. Yet, as St. Francis de Sales reasoned, if we reject the men closest to the apostles, why trust ourselves, two thousand years removed? The early Church, as the writings of St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Irenaeus, and countless others prove, was unmistakably Catholic: it had bishops, priests, sacraments, and a liturgy. To build on “bedrock” means to accept what the first Christians did and believed in actual history, not an imagined reconstruction.
To reject the witness of the early Church is to become the victim of modern opinion, not to be a follower of Christ or the apostles.
5. The Visible Church: The Pattern Established by Christ
Mark asserts that “our church today must be patterned after the First Century Apostolic Churches,” yet he rejects the means Christ actually gave to make this possible. The “pattern” of the early Church was not merely a gathering of Bible readers, but a visible, united Body, governed by apostles and their successors (see Acts 15, 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1). The Church is the “pillar and ground of truth” (1 Timothy 3:15), not simply an invisible collection of like-minded believers.
To build on the “bedrock” means to be united with the apostles not only in faith, but also in sacrament, government, and visible worship. The Church is indefectible; it cannot be “restored” by human effort, because Christ Himself preserves it in truth and unity. As St. Augustine said, “He cannot have God for his Father who does not have the Church for his mother.” (On the Unity of the Church, ch. 6)
6. The Law, the Gospel, and the Real Meaning of Continuity
Finally, Mark’s notion that Christianity is just the continuation of “God’s reconciliation program” since Adam, with little truly “new” in Christ, is a grave misunderstanding. Christ did not merely repeat the old; He fulfilled it - raising the Law to its true perfection in the Gospel.
Christianity is not a new lawless religion, nor is it a carbon copy of the Old Covenant; it is the fullness of God’s plan, realized in Christ and perpetuated in the Church.
If you seek the “bedrock” of Christianity, you must find it not in the shifting sands of private interpretation, nor in nostalgic reconstructions of the “early church,” but in the one Church Christ founded, which alone has preserved His Word, His sacraments, and His authority for two thousand years.
Anything less is not bedrock - but quicksand.
If you desire to believe as the apostles believed, to worship as the first Christians worshipped, and to know the fullness of the Gospel, you will find it not in modern experiments, but in the unchanging Catholic Church.
“Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it.” (Psalm 126:1)
