Are you infallible?

It’s a question that requires little thought to answer; are you infallible? It ranks right up there with, “Are you God?” But to Catholic apologists the question is quite serious; that’s because they believe that there is a man on earth who, on the subject of faith and morals, is infallible; they call him, “holy father.” See, it does rank right up there with, “Are you God,” at least when coming from people who think their leader is equal with God on deciding issues of faith and morals.

According to Catholic apologist, John Martignoni, this question should cause Protestants to suddenly doubt everything they believe, and Catholics should take comfort in knowing they and only they, have an infallible leader here on earth. But how can they know? Is there one Catholic person out there, besides the pope of course, who will confess to being infallible? And if a Catholic is not infallible, how can he or she “know” their pope is infallible? They can’t! So if they cannot infallibly declare their pope to be infallible, then their assertion is nothing more than a fallible opinion. And if they are wrong, which my fallible counter-assertion says they are, then they are being deceived.

The logic that so often accompanies claims of papal infallibility goes something like this: “Jesus did not leave His people vulnerable to the doctrinal whims of competing leaders.”

The logic used is quite revealing; it indicates very strongly that those who use it have no idea what it means to have the gift of the Holy Spirit, because if they had the gift of the Holy Spirit they would not be looking to Rome for infallible direction. It also reveals that they think everyone else is like them, wanting to follow the whims of their leaders. It also denies the notion that Christ has relationship with man through the gift of the Holy Spirit. Their magisterium reserves that privilege for themselves and people buy into it. It’s no different than Mormons following their prophet in Utah.

The pope is the head of the Roman Catholic Church, but the Apostle Paul explicitly said that Christ is the head of His Church and He reconciles all things to Himself. To wit, Catholics will be quick to agree that Christ is the head, but then immediately contradict themselves by saying, “but He established the papacy through which He reveals His truths .” Based on what? If Christ is the head and we are the body, where does the papacy fit in? I see no evidence of this claim in Scripture or history, so if the evidence is not there the papacy must belong to a different body; one that is not associated with Christ and His church.

In his newsletter on his website where he shares chapter one of his new book, “Blue Collar Apologetics,” John Martignoni instructs his faithful followers to establish the fact that Protestants are not infallible early on in discussions with them. The purpose of doing this is to attempt to convince the Protestant that he could be wrong about what he believes. The funny thing is Martignoni never tells his readers what to do if the Protestant turns the question back on them; and that is most certainly what is likely to happen.

Does Martignoni really not see this coming, or is he simply at a loss for how to address it? Once a Catholic apologist is faced with admitting their own fallibility, they will immediately be forced to deal with the realization that their claim of papal infallibility is itself a fallible opinion; so they must, therefore, admit that they could be wrong as well. And once they realize the playing field is level, the evidence will do the talking.

A Catholic apologist who is willing to concede that his belief regarding papal infallibility is nothing more than a fallible opinion will likely ask another similar question, “What church do you belong to and how old is it?” In their minds this is the true “gotcha” question. They believe, in their fallible opinions of course, that they belong to the church founded by Christ nearly 2000 years ago. But the fact is, and yes it is a fact, there was no Roman Catholic Church 2000 years ago; it took a few hundred years for that to develop. Furthermore, by their own admission, the doctrines they hold equal in authority to the Bible, which they call “sacred traditions,” did not exist at the time of the apostles; that also is a fact.

There is something, however, that is clearly older than any Protestant or Roman Catholic Church and that is the written books of the Bible. If a person bases his or her faith on these written works then no supposed authority that came later can undermine the power of God working through them. It is unfortunate that when a person comes to Christ in faith through reading the Bible, that there are so-called Christians who come along to cast doubt in their minds. For example, in a tract on the Catholic Answers website called, “By What Authority,” it is stated, “In fact, not one book of the Bible was written for non-believers.”

Not according to the Apostle John who explicitly wrote, “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name”? He did not say these are written because you believe; he said, these are written that you may believe. John’s gospel is a firsthand written testimony of the ministry of Jesus for the purpose of bringing people to Him, and Catholic apologists are telling us it was never John’s intention for us to become believers by reading it? Amazing; isn’t it? The Catholic Answers philosophy seems to be to make up facts rather than face them.

So for the sake of the next John Martignoni disciple who wants to ask me if I am infallible, the answer is no; and incidentally your answer to my identical question is also no. Thus I am not interested in your fallible opinion that your pope is infallible when speaking on faith and morals. Perhaps one of you can go tell Mr. Martignoni that chapter his one is incomplete, and that he might want to consider adding a realistic response to his question rather than a bunch of scenarios where the Protestant is simply dumbfounded. His current scenarios might have been fun for him to write, but they are only going to embarrass his readers when they go out armed with the Martignoni sword.

Rome has another ‘gospel’ and another Jesus

The Church of Rome has been around since Peter. What other made-up church can make that claim?

“And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Mat 6:18

“I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.” John 16:12-13

“But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.” 1Tim 3:15

Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." Mat 28:18-20

Fortunately, we have Christ’s promise that heresies will never prevail against the Church. They will arise, endure sometimes for centuries, like Protestantism, but we can be confident in Christ’s promise that the Church He established will always teach the Truth.

Now, look at Scripture and you see Christ gave much power to His Church :

"Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Mat 18:18

The author of this blog post would do himself a favor to read what one of the commenters of this post said/posted in reply to it. Namely the arguments here: $EasyMoney$ - A Response to Eric Svendsen’s 18 Challenges to the Catholic Faith.

I note that the commenter, shortly after he posted that link was banned from posting any more replies to the blog post. I won't comment on that decision by Mr. Culliton; it's entirely possible that the commenter in question was as uncivil as Mr. Culliton claims (I didn't read all the posts there). But it would have been interesting to see any of the Protestants there, Mr. Culliton included, comment on the following below (taken from the link above) which directly, and in my opinion, clearly demonstrates the weakness of the type of argument Mr. Culliton employs here.

Note, the following (italicized) arguments taken from the Catholic Legate site are addressing the issue of "is it possible to demonstrate there is a NEED FOR, an infallible authority here on Earth with regards to Christian teaching/doctrine/dogma. These arguments alone (just the ones below) don't address whether or not "Rome" is the "true Church". For more on that, see the link.

Challenge 1: Tell us how you came to decide that Rome was the "true" church without engaging in the very private judgment that Rome condemns as illegitimate.

Response 1: Rome has never condemned private judgement per se. It condemns the error that sometimes comes from private judgement. St. James no doubt uttered his private judgement when he said, “Therefore, my judgement is….” (Acts 15:19). His judgement was singular, and therefore was private.

The question essentially reduces to the infallible-fallible card that Protestants try to play against Catholics. Catholics rightly ask Protestants to guarantee that they are preaching the ‘true gospel’ since there are many of them out there (Cf. Galatians 1:6-9). No Protestant, however, can guarantee the truthfulness of his gospel since it would mean calling in the question of the speaker’s infallibility. In order to validate his interpretation over his Protestant opponent, the first Protestant must claim something that his opponent does not have; namely, the charism of infallibility. For the Gospel to have any true and definitive meaning (which it must), the Protestant must be able to appeal to a source which *cannot* be common to everyone. This source must be *outside* of the bible to show that any one Protestant’s interpretation is correct. If indeed the Gospel is God’s inspired, infallible Word, then what good is it if Christians cannot be certain that they are indeed hearing the true Gospel preached? If God did not make sufficient provision for the Gospel message to be declared infallibly, then God would not be God, He would be a sadist.

But, the Protestant will say, the Catholic is in the same position since he must make a private, fallible judgement on the claims of the Roman Catholic Church. He will claim that the Catholic is simply substituting one alleged infallible source (the Bible) with another (the Church). So we have the fallible Protestant reading an alleged infallible bible, and we have a fallible Catholic listening to an alleged infallible Church.

But is the Protestant construction of the problem a fair one? Nope. You see, some propositions are manifestly infallible by their very nature. For instance, there are plenty of historical, mathematical, and scientific facts which are beyond speculation. Likewise, I propose that it is a naturally manifest and infallible fact that the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church of Christ. Now, there are not too many Churches that even claim such a charism so I will restrict myself to simply proving from reason alone that one must believe that God established an infallible Church. Once this is conceded, then we may turn our attention to try and find out which Church it is.

The following arguments, obviously, presuppose that I am addressing this question to a Protestant who believes in God. Of course, I would have to prove a few of these premises if I were addressing an atheist which is not within the scope of this examination.

Argument 1

Premise 1: God exists.

Premise 2: God is omnipotent.

Premise 3: The Holy Scriptures teach the truth.

Premise 4: The Holy Scriptures cannot be infallibly interpreted by any human authority today.

Conclusion: God does not want the truth contained in the Holy Scriptures to be known infallibly (or He does want the truth to be known but has not provided the means - an impossibility give premise 2)

Argument 2

Premise 1: The truth can be known..

Premise 2: God does not want the truth contained in the Holy Scriptures to be known infallibly. (Conclusion of Argument 1)

Conclusion: Therefore, God wants the truth in the Holy Scriptures to be known ONLY fallibly.

Overall Conclusion

Since God wills the gospel message to be known only with the possibility of error (that is, fallibly), then God wills the possibility of error in communicating His truth. The conclusion therefore is that God has contradicted His very being by willing something that cannot be; namely, willing something other than the truth.

It is important to distinguish between the mere existence and tolerance of error versus the normative declaration and existence of it in communicating the Gospel message. We are not talking about simply willing the possibility of error. Obviously, God has, by definition, done that through free will. The implication of the above conclusion is not simply that God tolerates error, but that He also wills the possibility of error IN COMMUNICATING THE GOSPEL MESSAGE ITSELF. God can tolerate error ON OUR PART, but He cannot, by definition, even allow the possibility of it when He speaks about what is Truth. Now, the question for [any Protestant] is this: In order to reject the conclusion, which premise does he reject?

[To remain a Christian, one must reject Premise 4 in Argument 1. If this premise is rejected, however, sola scriptura is also rejected, and an infallible human authority is conversely conceded, which means I have at least proven that we require an infallible teacher. [The Protestants'] challenge specifically asks if Rome is that ‘true’ Church. I will address that issue in Challenge 3. This response at least establishes the necessity of having a true and infallible church in the first place, which represents half the battle.]

As I said, more at the link.

I re-post this here because it's something that comes up from time to time here, and these arguments weren't addressed (that I can see) in the blog's replies section. I'd be interested to hear how one replies to these, staying within the boundries of the arguments (that is, not trying to obfuscate the issue by bringing up Mary's sinlessness, or, how can we know that "Rome" is the true church [ for more on that see the link ]). I'd just be interested in replies that address these arguments. All others will be ignored by me for being off-topic.

Thanks,

History, tradition, structure, numbers, a direct connection to the Lord Jesus through the first pope, Peter upon which the Lord built his church.....

Pick one.

Those are all fallible truth claims, and claims do not equal proof.

For example, history as based on primary source material has no single "Bishop of Rome" until late in the Second Century.

The structural evidence doesn't help either, because it suggests the influence of Rome's pagan sacrel hierarchy, goddesses included, which has zip to do with the early Christian community. In fact, structure is one of the best arguments against Rome being the Ecclesia that Christ is building on the Rock of faith in Him.

And numbers? Really? Please. How many Muslims are there? Too many. How many Hillary Clinton supporters are there? Too many. When has the number of people who believe something ever been a measure of truth? Truth is not determined by the number of people who don't get it. What did Paul say about numbers versus truth? Let God be true, but every man a liar. Romans 3:4.

And every believer has a direct connection with the Lord Jesus through the Holy Spirit. What sort of argument is it that must always treat Jesus as if He were some dead historical figure and you have to belong to the right club to be able to claim His pedigree? Newsflash: Jesus is still alive!!! And more than that, every single Christian is necessarily vitally connected to Jesus, or else they can't be Christian:

But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.
(Romans 8:9)

It's either/or. If you belong to Christ, you have His Spirit. If you don't have His Spirit, you don't belong to Christ. It never ceases to amaze me how some folks think their so-called organizational pedigree trumps the resurrection power of Jesus Christ working in the dead heart of the lost sinner to bring about the life of a new creation. This is even more confounding when the so-called historical pedigree can't even be demonstrated by the serious historical analysis of primary sources. Fallibility on steroids.

Peace,

SR

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