Reading Scripture in community

1. A popular Catholic trope is that, contrary to sola Scriptura, Scripture was meant to be read in community. It can't be properly understood apart from the interpretive community of faith. 

To flesh out the argument: the Bible is the Church's book. Scripture was written to and for the Church. The Church promulgated the  Bible by deciding which books are canonical. 

To understand the Bible, you must read it from the viewpoint of the interpretive community. You can't understand the Bible as an outside observer, but only as an insider.

You must experience the Bible as a member of the community. That's not something you can get just from reading the church fathers or papal encyclicals. Community is something you must experience firsthand. There's a difference between knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance. To experience community is different from reading Catholic expositors, with the critical detachment of an outsider. 

Compare watching a movie at home alone with watching the same movie in a movie theater. Watching a movie in a movie theater is a collective experience. There's a social dynamic. Crowd psychology kicks in. The reaction of the audience has an influence on how individual members of the audience experience the film. 

2. There's a grain of truth to that. Christian identity has a corporate dimension as well as an individual dimension. Christians belong to the family of God. We worship together. And the Bible is a common reference point. But the Catholic trope suffers from some basic problems:

i) What's their reference class for the interpretive community? For instance, suppose everyone in the Christian community reads Rom 4, then the ten most popular interpretations are collected, then a vote is taken. The winning interpretation represents a communal reading.

But, of course, that's not what Catholic apologists mean by communal interpretation. They mean church councils, church fathers, papal encyclicals. But a papal interpretation is individual rather than communal.

ii) By the logic of the Catholic trope, the only way to be Catholic is to be born into the community. It's not possible to become Catholic because an outsider can't break into the hermeneutical circle of the community. Unless he's already a member of the community, he can't experience the Bible in community. As an outsider, he can't know what the Bible means to an insider. He can never compare the two perspectives, for if he's one he's not the other. So that precludes conversion. 

iii) By the same token, suppose a Muslim says the Quran was meant to be read in community. You can't properly understand the Quran unless you share the communal experience of the ummah. A Mormon or Swedenborgian could deploy the same argument.

So a Catholic can't say the Quran, or Book of Mormon, or Arcana Cœlestia, is false–because a communal reading requires privileged access. But if a Catholic can't say what is false, then he can't say what is true. He can't say Catholicism is true without a point of contrast. Catholicism and Gnosticism can't both be true if Catholicism represents orthodoxy while Gnosticism represents heresy. What about reading the Westminster Confession in community?