Infallibility

Three Inferences

From this dogma of infallibility, understood as it has been stated and proved, three inferences flow:—

I. That the sacred Scriptures hold a collateral place in the teaching department of the Church; in other words, that they were a supplementary not an essential element in the plan of her construction.

II. That the denial of a continuous infallible voice, that is, the denial that perpetual infallibility was an essential element in that Divine plan, undermines the religion of those who make the Scriptures their rule of Faith.

III. That the denial of such continuous infallible voice leads to Agnosticism.

Inference I

I. That the sacred Scriptures hold a collateral place in the teaching department of the Church; in other words, that they were a supplementary not an essential element in the plan of her construction.

As it is the Holy Ghost, residing perpetually in the Church, who makes her infallible for the purpose of teaching His whole revelation officially, it follows that everything which is a vehicle of that revelation, whether in the form of writing which He has inspired or in any other form, must be entirely subject to her control. Were it otherwise, one inference would be that the dead letter of a document, which a man had once dictated, would have more weight than the testimony of the man himself given orally when actually present; and that even in a case where it was absolutely certain the man could not state anything except what was strictly true.

“It (the written word) is,” says Cardinal Manning, “to the Church, guided by the Spirit of God, what the writings and letters of a man are to his personal identity. They would recognise all; but record only a part, imply many things, and express only such things as fall within their scope.”¹³13The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost, p. 193. And following this line of reasoning at some length he adds: “From all that has been said it follows that the Scriptures separated from the Church perish. The appeal from the living voice of the Church to the letter of Scripture destroyed the Divine custody of the letter and of the sense of the Sacred Books.”¹⁴14Ibid., p. 205.

Streams of revealed doctrine, however highly inspired, can never be independent of the fountain from which they flow; and that fountain is the Paraclete who lives, breathes, energises and speaks through the Church.

It was the thought of this that brought from the lips of St. Augustine the following striking and emphatic words: “I would not believe the Gospel,” he says, “if the authority of the Church did not move me thereto”. “Ego vero evangelium non crederem nisi me commoveret ecclesiæ auctoritas.”¹⁵15Contra epistolam Fundamenti, cap. v.

And let it be observed this is the same great Doctor who tells us that in the Bible God Himself speaks;¹⁶16Confess., lib. xiii., cap. 44, tom. i., p. 241. that Holy Scripture is the handwriting of God;¹⁷17Enarrat in Psalm cxliv., cap. 17, tom. i., p. 1620. the adorable style and pen of the Spirit of God.¹⁸18Confess., lib. vii., cap. 27, tom. i., p. 143.

This, however, will stand out in stronger light in the reply to the following question.

It will be asked by many: Had not the Scriptures, those sacred records which contain a large part of Christian revelation and which were written under direct guidance from above, a place in Christ’s plan of His Church? We answer: Not as an essential element. This statement, in the breath in which it is uttered, may shock the susceptibilities of many non-Catholics; but a moment’s reflection will show how reasonable it is.

Of course we mean by the phrase—essential element—an element, or a part, or a thing without which she could not exist. If they had been in this sense an essential part of that Divine plan, she could never have been realised in actual life without them; and consequently she could not have lived (and she did live) one entire century and more before the New Testament, as we have it now, was formed.

The life of her first fervour was lived without them. The best and most perfect part of the period of “primitive purity” had passed before they became generally available. Hundreds and thousands of the faithful in various countries lived and died in holiness without having ever seen them.

Written documents, however sacred or however fully inspired, were in no sense to belong to her essential structure. Her hierarchy was to be part of her essence, so were her Sacraments, so too her doctrine, with the unfailing power of teaching it infallibly, but not the Scriptures.

Her Divine Founder meant those sacred writings to be useful and powerful auxiliaries. It was for this reason He inspired them, and for this also He prearranged in His providence she should have their aid. But He never looked upon them as things necessary to the continuance of her life, or as conditions without which she could not extend her influence or propagate her Gospel of truth. Else He would have made them a part of her being from the outset. Even those who differ from us, at least many of them, concede that she was perfect and complete in her constitution and powers on the day of Pentecost; and to hold this is equivalent to admitting that the Scriptures were not a necessary portion of her framework, since no inspired record had been written by Evangelist or Apostle at that date nor for several years after.¹⁹19“The first Gospel, that of St. Matthew, was not written till five years after the Ascension, and then in Hebrew only. In Greek it did not exist for five or six years later; that is, for ten years at least none of the four Gospels, as we have them now, were written” (Cardinal Manning, Temporal Mission, pp. 193-4). Smith, in his Dictionary of the Bible, states St. Matthew’s Gospel was written most probably between 50 and 60. Vol. ii., p. 278. Hence in her function of teaching, or if we may so call it, in her teaching department, these sacred writings have always held, hold now, and must ever hold a place which is relatively subordinate—we mean subordinate in this sense: first, that they can hold only the place which she, under the direction of the Holy Ghost who inspired them, has assigned to them; secondly, that it was she who, under the same Divine guidance, by her declaring them to be inspired established their title to the high elevation which they have since then occupied; thirdly, that it is she therefore who, still under the same infallible guidance, has ever had the right to determine how they were to be used, and to determine also the meaning which their words conveyed.²⁰20To prevent misapprehension it is well to observe: We do not mean that God’s word “written” is subordinate or secondary in se. In reality the written and delivered word are co-ordinate elements of Catholic Faith, only that we insist on the union and not the separation of the two, and on the interpreting authority of the Church. The “subordinateness” we speak of is relative i.e., as far as the plan of the Church is concerned; otherwise God’s word written would in se (duly interpreted) be equal to God’s word delivered.

He alone who dwells in her, and with whose voice she speaks, can with unerring precision extract from those words the sense which He Himself put into them.

How could we give credence, with security or discretion, to those venerated chronicles as inspired, unless she had pronounced them to be inspired and told us we could safely trust them, so far as they went, as genuine vehicles of revelation.

It is clear from the traditions of the past, that this was the feeling of the faithful and the general belief of the Church in the fourth century, when the parts which form the New Testament were gathered together.

For it was patent to the world of that day that it was under her eye, by her direction, and at her bidding that, out of a number of documents which were considered holy and were looked upon by many as containing unalloyed doctrine, some were put aside and others selected; and that those thus chosen were declared by her to be writings of Divine inspiration, and to be therefore trustworthy channels of revealed religion.²¹21This was done at the Third Council of Carthage, in the fourth century.

Hence the value of these books is known for certain only from the fact that the Holy Ghost, speaking through her, singled them out, sanctioned and prescribed their use, and sealed them with the seal of His Divine authority as the result of direct guidance from on high. But they were never meant to supplant or supersede that oral teaching which had been commanded on the mountain of Galilee. No; oral teaching through His Church was and is the normal, Divinely pre-ordained method, by which the Redeemer intended to have the doctrines of His Gospel propagated and preserved among the nations of the world. And the promises which He made to that Church gave her an authority for teaching and a capacity for teaching aright, with living, articulate voice, integrally and unerringly, everywhere and always down to the consummation of the world, an authority and a capacity of which she could never be deprived, which could never be superseded,—an authority and a capacity which were at the beginning, and which were to continue ever to be, supreme, paramount, perfect in themselves, thoroughly and in all respects adequate to the propagation and preservation of His whole revelation, quite independent of every other teaching agency or appliance in the line of written records, even though such records were inspired in the fullest and highest degree.

All this will become more intelligible, in the light of the following considerations, to those who look at the Scriptures from a wrong point of view and give them an unauthorised, an abnormal place in the teaching department of the Church.

The writings which constitute the New Testament were during the first three centuries and part of the fourth in comparatively few places. For over three hundred years there was hardly any city or country in which they were to be found in their entirety. But even if they had been forthcoming in every region of the globe in their full completeness, their presence would have been useless without some definitive voice to testify to their inspiration and to give the exact meaning of their contents. Such authority was indispensably required, else, as we have already indicated, doctrines of even the most momentous import would become and would remain doubtful for ever.

Take for example the fundamental dogma of the Trinity. That dogma was not obvious beyond cavil on the surface of the Scriptures, nor did it appear distinctly on the surface of the Apostles’ Creed. Not one reader out of a hundred (if even that proportion) could make out, with the aid of the Scriptures alone, or of the Apostles’ Creed alone, or with the aid of both united that the Son was, in the strictest sense, co-eternal with the Father, that the Holy Ghost was strictly coeternal with both, and that all three Divine Persons were distinctly and essentially co-equal in all things. This is only one case out of many which could be adduced, but it is sufficient to represent the lamentable state of helplessness and confusion to which Christianity would have been reduced, if the supposition of our separated brethren had any solid foundation.

Here is what we wish to lay special stress upon: If a dispute arose about the interpretation of any passage, a reliable decision would be beyond the reach of possibility. For a commanding, an infallible voice that would set the thing at rest would be looked for in vain. Hence, whatever doctrine was contained in a disputed passage would continue to be a matter of doubt throughout. And as almost every passage from the first page of the Old Testament to the last of the New, in the absence of a definitive authority, could be made the subject of dispute, then all the doctrines, which the sacred volumes were supposed or alleged to refer to, would become enveloped in the same impenetrable cloud of conjecture.

It is true these inspired writings were most opportune, were of untold advantage, formed a most powerful instrument in spreading the new revelation farther and farther; yet they would have been entirely useless without the coexistence of the continuous infallible teaching of which we speak. Besides, they were not (we repeat the statement for the benefit of those who make them their sole guide) absolutely indispensable. The Church which is Christ’s (whichever or wherever she is) would teach all the doctrines she teaches at present, and which are alleged to be found in those sacred volumes, even though a sentence of the Gospels or a line of the Epistles had never been penned. The truths enunciated in the Gospel of St. John had been taught by her for more than sixty years before that great Evangelist committed them to writing. The truths found in the writings of the other Evangelists and Apostles had been preached to the nations long before they appeared in manuscript. “Fides ex auditu,” “faith comes by hearing,” says St. Paul, he does not say it comes by reading.²²22Rom. x. 17. The meaning is that the ordinary means our Lord instituted for conveying a knowledge of His revelation to the peoples of the earth, and for preserving that knowledge from generation to generation, was teaching by word of mouth; and that while writing was a potent auxiliary, yet it was not an essential one. The Church was so constructed that her authority, her capacity, her accuracy in teaching were not made to depend on written or printed documents of any kind—on the pen of any writer even though inspired, or on the type of any printer or publisher however orthodox or conscientious. The Apostles were commanded to teach, they were not commanded to write; and though the inspired words which they wrote made the work of teaching easier for their successors, yet the writing was a method of instruction which, rigorously speaking, could have been done without.

When after the Last Supper the Redeemer proclaimed the advent of the Divine Spirit, and when after His resurrection He issued the Apostolic commission to teach, and promised His own abiding presence, He gave no command or even intimation that these words of promise of His or that any words of His should be put on record.

Nor is any such command or intimation found concerning any part of the Gospels or Epistles. Nor did He direct that His revelation should be written out in full by the Apostles before they preached it to the nations, as if that method of proceeding were to be a means of communicating it to the world with the required degree of accuracy. Neither did He insist that the Apostles, when they had produced such records, should add to them words of warning of their own intended for their successors,—to the effect that these were writings without which it would be impossible for the Church through the course of ages to continue to teach correctly. In no place, at no time, so far as information has come down to us through the intervening centuries, did He suggest that writing, or the written word was to be an essential condition without which she could not possibly teach His revelation to the nations in its purity and completeness. “The Church,” says Cardinal Manning, “its Sacraments and its worship were spread throughout the world before as yet the books of the New Testament were written. It was not till the faith had been everywhere preached, believed, defined in creeds, recorded in the mind of the universal Church, embodied in Sacraments and manifested in its perpetual worship, that the New Testament was formed.”²³23Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost, pp. 192-3.

She could and would have lived the same life that she has lived all through the generations that have passed since she first saw the light, even though not a syllable of the deposit of faith had ever been placed on record. This is so true that if all the original manuscripts, and all the copies of the four Gospels and of all of the Epistles, had been burnt a century or two after they were written; and if any writings of Saints or Fathers, (such as Polycarp, Ignatius, Irenæus) which contained citations from them, had perished in the flames as well, so that not even a trace of the original, or of copy, or of quotation or reproduction survived, the disappearance of the whole would not have changed or affected her essential teaching one iota. Her faculty of conveying the deposit of faith to the peoples of the earth had been raised at her origin to a higher level,—to a level which made her entirely independent of all contingent or extraneous help. Their destruction might have had the effect of rendering her progress more slow, but not less sure, and in the long run not the less extensive. As the original revelation had lived many years without any part of it being written, so it had lived fourteen hundred years before printing was invented; and if pen or stylus had never been used to record its doctrines, or type had never been used to put them in print, these doctrines would have survived all the same, and have retained their complete identity; for the promised living, infallible voice was ever there to teach them, and to teach them with unerring correctness. Had the art of printing not been discovered, copies of these inspired writings would have come within the reach of comparatively few. And (let us say en passant) better, far better, people should be for ever without such copies, and have the contents explained to them by competent instructors, than possess them individually with only the right of private judgment to guide them, and so be inevitably exposed to pervert their meaning. But whether those venerated records were to be found in every Christian home, or whether they were never to have seen the light at all, the doctrines of the Church of Christ would have continued to be the same both in substance and in detail; for, we repeat, He was ever there who could not teach contradiction. It is clear then that the Scriptures had not a place as an essential element in the plan of the Church. It is clear that oral teaching was commanded. It is clear that teaching by writing was not commanded. And it is equally clear that those sacred writings could never supply the place of, much less supplant or supersede, the living, unfailing, infallible voice which speaks for ever.

Every “medium” of revelation can be used only according to the will of Him who is its everlasting source; and His will is made known (for certain) only by the Church which by His own appointment is the official organ of His voice.

This is but equivalent to saying that if a faculty of infallible teaching were not an element in Christ’s ideal of the Church, the Scriptures would be valueless and useless.

But perhaps the reasoning embodied in the preceding remarks will come home to our readers in a more direct way, when we draw separate attention to the utter untenableness of the Anglican formulary, which attributes to the Scriptures the unwarrantable efficacy we have been considering. That formulary is the sixth, and the words of it to which we refer are: “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation, so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation”.

Here, of course, the onus probandi necessarily falls upon those who subscribe to this formulary as one of the articles of their creed.

Before the article can have any force it is incumbent on Anglicans to show:—

(1) That the Apostles and Evangelists wrote the Gospels and the Epistles with the intention that they should contain the whole deposit of faith, i.e., the whole body of revealed truth which is necessary to be believed.

(2) That they wrote them with the intention that everything which was to be an article of faith could be proved by them to be such. Or, at all events, to show that, without having this intention present to their minds, they were so guided by the Spirit who inspired them that their collective writings should adequately serve this twofold purpose. This is the plenitude and potency which the article ascribes to these sacred records and plainly supposes to be embodied in them.

Where is there any evidence of such intention or of such supplementary inspiration? Does St. Matthew or any of the three other Evangelists give intimation of it? Do any of the Apostles who wrote an inspired letter make allusion to it? Or is there anything to show that the Apostles and Evangelists agreed amongst themselves, that each should contribute a certain amount of the deposit of faith, so that their united writings, when collected in a volume, should in due time form an exhaustive catechism or an extended Apostles’ Creed comprising everything which the faithful should be bound to believe as necessary for salvation? And further, can it be proved from any authoritative source that they had an additional understanding, and did they leave instructions to that effect, that after a period the method of oral infallible teaching previously in use should cease; that these sacred writings should replace it, and should thenceforth constitute the rule of faith?

Where do we find anything to indicate that such agreement was ever entered into, or that instructions of the kind were ever given? Yet all this should be demonstrated before the above article could be licitly or validly formulated or accepted.

Then let us come down three centuries later. When the Church had gathered these sacred treasures and declared them by a public official act to be works of Divine inspiration, did she then and there cede her right of infallible oral teaching and proclaim: “For the time to come, I, who have taught infallibly in the past shall no longer be able to teach infallibly with articulate voice; whatever faculty of unerring teaching I heretofore possessed has now, by Divine decree, been transferred to and concentrated in these hallowed records; henceforth in them shall be found all that is requisite to be believed for salvation; they shall form the only test by which true doctrine is to be distinguished from false; and each person shall be free to interpret them according to the lights of his or her own conscience?”

Or did she make any declaration akin to this when the Greek Schism was imminent and before East and West separated? Or was any notification given that in case a large body of members should fall away from her, or (to use the phraseology of our opponents) in case a notable division, such as the Greek Schism, took place in her, her own voice as an articulate teacher, from that date forth, would cease to be unerring; and that the only infallible source of doctrine within reach would be found in the sacred Scriptures?

Further still,—let us view this article in direct reference to Him who is the author of all the truth which those holy records contain, and who is at the same time the fountain of the light which inspired their authors.

A document, the latest portion of which did not exist until the Church had been already propagating His whole revelation by oral teaching, throughout the nations, for sixty years, and which was not available in its complete form for general use until she had taught that revelation orally for more than three hundred years, could not take the place of or supersede that method of oral teaching, unless He Himself (our Lord) had declared that it should be so; or unless He commanded His Apostles or His Church to give intimation to that effect. Is there any record to tell that He ever said: ‘When My Church, as the organ of My voice will have borne My Gospel in all its bearings to the ends of the earth, and will have taught My people to distinguish My truth from the errors of seducers and false teachers; and when she will have continued to do this for a period, then certain writings, which I will have inspired beforehand, shall be gathered from the various cities and countries to which they were originally addressed. Once they have been united in one book, they shall supersede the authoritative teaching of My Church; for they contain the whole of My revelation, and they are to form the standard by which it is to be kept free from the corruption of falsehood.’ Until some evidence of the kind here mentioned has been produced, the article in question has no foundation to rest upon.

We close this inference with another citation from Cardinal Manning’s admirable book: “By the inspiration and impulse of the same Divine Teacher who had already revealed the whole truth to the Apostles, it (the faith) was for the most part put in writing. I say for the most part, because the written Scripture is not coextensive with the Revelation of Pentecost, nor with the preaching of the Apostles. The written Scripture presupposes and recognises in those to whom it is addressed the knowledge of the whole truth.”²⁴24Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost, p. 193.