INFALLIBILITY
793
INFALLIBILITY
their successors may define to be part of Christ's
teaching? But in so far as the Holy Ghost is respon-
sible for Church teaching, that teaching is necessarily
infallible: what the Spirit of truth guarantees cannot
be false.
(d) In I Tim., iii, 15, St. Paul speaks of "the house of Gotl, which is the church of the Uving God, the pillar and ground of the truth"; and this description would be something worse than mere exaggeration if it had been intended to apply to a fallible Church; it woukl be a false and misleading description. That St. Paul, however, meant it to be taken for sober and literal truth is aljundantly proved by what he insists upon so strongly elsewhere, viz., the strictly Divine authority of the Gospel which he and the other .\postles preached, and which it was the mission of their successors to go on preaching without change or corruption to the end of time. " When you had re- ceived of us", he writes to the Thessalonians, "the word of the hearing of God, you received it not as the word of men, but (as it is indeed) the word of God, who worketh in you that have believed" (I Thess., ii, 13). The Gospel, he tells the Corinthians, is intended to bring "into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ" (II Cor., x, 5). Indeed, so fixed and irreformable is the doctrine that has been taught that the Galatians (i, 8) are warned to anathematize any one, even an angel from heaven, who should preach to them a Gospel other than that which St. Paul had preached. Nor was this attitude — which is intelligible only on the supposition that the Apostolic College was infalliljle — peculiar to St. Paul. The other Apostles and Apostolic writers were equally strong in anathematizing those who preached any other Christianity than that which the Apostles had preached (cf. II Peter, ii, 1 sqq.; I John, iv, 1 sqq.; II John, 7 sqq.; Jude, 4); and St. Paul makes it clear that it was not to any personal or private views of his own that he claimed to make every understanding captive, but to the Gospel which Christ had delivered to the Apostolic body. When his own authority as an Apostle was challenged, his defence was that he had seen the risen Saviour and received his mission directly from Him, and that his Gospel was in com- plete agreement with that of the other Apostles (see, v. g.. Gal., ii, 2-9). Finally, the consciousness of corporate infallibility is clearly signified in the ex- pression used by the assembled Apostles in the tiecree of the Council of Jerusalem: " It hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us, to lay no further burden upon you", etc. (Acts, xv, 28). It is true that the specific points here dealt with are chiefly disciplinary rather than dogmatic, and that no claim to infallibility is made in regard to purely disciplinary questions as such; but behind, and independent of, disciplinary details there was the broad anil most imjiortant dogmatic question to be decided, whether Christians, according to Christ's teaching, were bound to observe the Old Law in its integrity, as orthodox Jews of the time observed it. This was the main issue at stake, and in deciding it the Apostles claimed to speak in the name and with the authority of the Holy Ghost. Would men who did not believe that Christ's promises assured them of an infallible Divine guitiance have presumed to speak in this way? — And could they, in so believing, have misunderstood the Master's mean- ing?
B. Proof from Tradition. — If, during the early cen- turies, there was no explicit and formal discussion regarding ecclesiastical infallibility as such, yet the Church, in her corporate capacity, after the example of the Apostles at Jerusalem, always acted on the assumption that she was infallible in doctrinal matters and all the great orthodox teachers believed that she was so. Those who presumed, on whatever grounds, to contradict the Church's teaching were treated as representatives of Antichrist (cf. I John, ii, 18 sq.),
and were excommunicated and anathematized. It is
clear from the letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch how
intolerant he was of error, and how firmly convinced
that the episcopal body was the Divinely ordained
and Divinely guided organ of truth; nor can any stu-
dent of early Christian literature deny that, where
Divine guidance is claimed in doctrinal matters, in-
fallibility is implied. So intolerant of error was St.
Polycarp that, as the story goes, when he met Marcion
on the street in Rome, he did not hesitate to denounce
the heretic to his face as "the firstborn of Satan".
This incident, whether it be true or not, is at any rate
thoroughly in keeping with the spirit of the age, and
such a spirit is incompatible with belief in a fallible
Church. St. Irena?us, who in the disciplinary Paschal
question favoured compromise for the sake of peace,
took an altogether different attitude in the doctrinal
controversy with the Gnostics ; and the great principle
on which he mainly relies in refuting the heretics is the
principle of a living ecclesiastical authority, for which
lie virtually claims infallibility. For example he
says: "Where the Church is, there also is the Spirit
of God, and where the Spirit of God is there is the
Church, and every grace: for the Spirit is truth"
(A.A-V. Haer., Ill, xxiv, 1); and again, "Where the
charismata of the Lord are given, there must we seek
the truth, i. e. with those to whom belongs the ecclesi-
astical succession from the Apostles, and the unadul-
terated anil incorruptible word. It is they who . . .
are the guardians of our faith . . . and securely
[sine periculo] expound the Scriptures to us" (op. cit.,
IV, xxvi, 5). TertuUian, writing from the Catholic
standpoint, ridicules the suggestion that the universal
teaching of the Church can be wrong: "Suppose now
that all [the Churches] have erred . . . [This would
mean that] the Holy Spirit has not watched over any
of them so as to guide it into the truth, although He
was sent by Christ, and asked from the Father for
this very purpose — that He might be the teacher of
truth" (doctor veritatis — "De Praescript", xxxvi, in
P. L., II, 49). St. Cyprian compares the Church to
an incorruptible virgin: "Adulterari non potest
sponsa Christi, incorriipta est et pudica" (De unitate
eccl.). It is needless to go on multiplying citations,
since the broad fact is indisputable that in the ante-
Nicene, no less than in the post-Nicene, period all
orthodox Christians attributed to the corporate voice
of the Church, speaking through the body of bishops
in union with their head and centre, all the fullness of
doctrinal authority which the Apostles themselves had
possessed; and to question the infallibility of that
authority would have been considered equivalent to
questioning God's veracity and fidelity. It was for
this reason that during the first three centuries the
concurrent action of the bishops dispersed throughout
the world proved to be effective in securing the con-
demnation and exclusion of certain heresies and main-
taining Gospel truth in its purity; and when from the
fourth century onwards it was found expedient to
assemble oecumenical councils, after the example of
the Apostles at Jerusalem, it was for the same reason
that the doctrinal decision of these councils were held
to be absolutely final and irreformable. Even the
heretics, for the most part, recognized this principle in
theory; and if in fact they often refused to submit,
they did so as a rule on the ground that this or that
council was not really oecumenical, that it did not
truly express the corporate voice of the Church, and
was not, therefore, infallible. This will not be denied
by anyone who is familiar with the history of the
doctrinal controveries of the fourth and fifth centuries,
and within the limits of this article we cannot do more
than call attention to the broad conclusion in proof of
which it would be easy to cite a great number of
particular facts and testimonies.
C. Objections Alleged. — Several of the objections usually urged against ecclesiastical infalUbility have
