INFALLIBILITY
792
INFALLIBILITY
not infallible in her definitions regarding these truths,
what compelling reason can be alleged to-day against
the right to revive the Sabellian, or the Arian, or the
Macedonian, or the Apollinarian, or the Nestorian, or
the Eutychian controversies, and to defend some in-
terpretation of these mysteries which the Church has
condemned as heretical? One may not appeal to the
inspired authority of the Scriptures, since for the fact
of their inspiration the authority of the Church must
be invoked, and unless she be infallible in deciding
this one would be free to question the inspiration of
any of the New Testament writings. Nor, abstract-
ing from the question of inspiration, can it be fairly
maintained, in face of the facts of history, that the
work of interpreting scriptural teaching regarding
these mysteries and several other points of doctrine
that have been identified with the substance of histor-
ical Christianity is so easy as to do away with the
need of a living voice to which, as to the voice of
Christ Himself, all are bound to submit.
Unity of Faith was intended by Christ to be one of the distinctive notes of His Church, and the doctrinal authority He set up was intended by His Divine guidance and assistance to be really eff'ective in main- taining this unity; but the history of the early heresies and of the Protestant sects proves clearly, what might indeed have been anticipated a priori, that nothing less than an infallible public authority, capa- ble of acting decisively whenever the need should rise and pronouncing an absolutely final and irreformable judgment, is really efficient for this puq>ose. Prac- tically speaking the only alternative to infallibility is private judgment, and this after some centuries of trial has been found to lead inevitably to utter ration- alism. If the early definitions of the Church were fallible, and therefore reformaljle, perhaps those are right who say to-day that they ought to be discarded as being actually erroneous or even pernicious, or at least that they ought to be re-interpreted in a way that substantially changes their original meaning; perhaps, indeed, there is no such thing as absolute truth in matters religious! How, for example, is a Modernist who takes up this position to be met except by insisting that definitive teaching is irreversible and unchangeable; that it remains true in its original sense for all time; in other words that it is infallible? For no one can reasonably hold that fallible doctrinal teaching is irreformal>le, or deny the right of later generations to question the correctness of earlier falli- ble definitions and call for their revision or correction, or even for their total abandonment.
From these considerations we are justified in con- cluding that if Christ really intended His promise to be with His Church to be taken seriously, and if He was truly the Son of God, omniscient and omnipotent, knowing history in advance and able to control its course, then the Church is entitled to claim infalHble doctrinal authority. This conclusion is confirmed by considering the awful sanction by which the Church's authority is supported: all who refuse to assent to her teaching are threatened with eternal damnation. This proves the value Christ Himself set upon His own teaching and upon the teaching of the Church commissioned to teach in His name; religious indiffer- entism is here reprobated in unmistakable terms. Nor does such a .sanction lose its significance in this connexion because the same penalty is threatened for disobedience to falUble disciplinary laws, or even in some cases for refusing to assent to doctrinal teach- ing that is admittedly fallible. Indeed, every mortal sin, according to Christ's teaching, is punishable with eternal damnation. But if one believes in the ob- jectivity of eternal and immutable truth, he will find it difficult to reconcile with a worthy conception of the Divine attributes a command under penalty of damnation to give unqualified and irrevocable internal assent to a large body of professedly Divine doctrine,
the whole of which is possibly false. Nor is this
difficulty satisfactorily met, as some have attempted
to meet it, by caUing attention to the fact that in the
CathoUc system internal assent is sometimes de-
manded, under pain of grievous sin, to doctrinal
decisions that do not profess to be infallible. For, in
the first place, the assent to be given in such cases is
recognized as being not irrevocable and irreversible,
hke the assent required in the case of definitive and
infallible teaching, but merely provisional ; and in the
next place, internal assent is obligatory only on tho.se
who can give it consistently with the claims of objec-
tive truth on their conscience — this conscience, it is
assumed, being directed by a spirit of generous loyalty
to genuine Catholic principles. To take a particular
example, if Galileo, who happened to be right, while
the ecclesiastical tribunal which condemned him was
wrong, had really po.ssessed convincing scientific
evidence in favour of the heliocentric theory, he would
have been justified in refusing his internal assent to
the opposite theory, provided that in doing so he
observed with thorough loyalty all the conditions in-
volved in the duty of external obedience. Finally, it
should be observed that fallible provisional teaching,
as such, derives its binding force principally from the
fact that it emanates from an authority which is
competent, if need be, to convert it into infallible
definitive teaching. Without infallibility in the back-
ground it would be difficult to estabhsh theoreti-
cally the obligation of yielding internal assent to the
Church's provisional decisions.
(b) In Matt., xvi, 18, we have the promise that " the gates of hell shall not prevail" against the Church that is to be built on the rock; and this also, we maintain, imphes the assurance of the Church's infalli- bility in the exercise of her teaching office. Such a promise, of course, must be understood with limita- tions according to the nature of the matter to which it is apphed. As applied to sanctity, for example, which is essentially a personal and individual affair, it does not mean that every member of the Church or of her hierarchy is necessarily a saint, but merely that the Church, as a whole, will be conspicuous among other things for the holiness of life of her mem- bers. As applied to doctrine, however — always as- suming, as we do, that Christ delivered a body of doctrine the preservation of which in its literal truth was to be one of the chief duties of the Church — it would be a mockery to contend that such a promise is compatible with the supposition that the Church has possibly errcfi in perhaps the bulk of her dogmatic definitions, and that throughout the whole of her history she has been threatening men with eternal damnation in Christ's name for refusing to believe doctrines that are probably false and were never taught by Christ Himself. Could this be the case, would it not be clear that the gates of hell can prevail and probably have prevailed most signally against the Church?
(c) In Christ's discourse to the .\postles at the Last Supper several passages occur which clearly imply the promise of infallibility; "I will ask the Father, and he shall give you another Paraclete, that he may abide with you for ever. The spirit of truth ... he shall abide "with you, and shall be in you" (.lohn, xiv, 16, 17). "But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you" (ibid!, 26). " But when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will teach you all truth" (John, xvi, 13). And the same promise is renewed immediately before the .\scension (.\cts, i, 8). Now what does the promise of this perennial and efficacious presence and assistance of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of truth, mean in connexion with doctrinal authority, except that the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity is made responsible for what the Apostles and
