Ultramontanism and Gallicanism.
The Vatican dogma is the natural completion of the Papal polity, as the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary is the completion of the Papal cultus.
If we compare the Papal or Ultramontane theory with the Episcopal or Gallican theory, it has the undeniable advantage of logical consistency. The two systems are related to each other like monarchy and aristocracy, or rather like absolute monarchy and limited monarchy. The one starts from the divine institution of the Primacy (Matt. xvi. 18), and teaches the infallibility of the head; the other starts from the divine institution of the Episcopate (Matt. xviii. 18), and teaches the infallibility of the body and the superiority of an oecumenical Council over the Pope. Conceding once the infallibility of the collective Episcopate, we must admit, as a consequence, the infallibility of the Primacy, which represents the Episcopate, and forms its visible and permanent centre. If the body of the teaching Church can never err, the head can not err; and, vice versa, if the head is liable to error, the body can not be free from error. The Gallican theory is an untenable via media. It secures only a periodic and intermittent infallibility, which reveals itself in an oecumenical Council, and then relapses into a quiescent state; but the Ultramontane theory teaches an unbroken, ever living, and ever active infallibility, which alone can fully answer the demands of an absolute authority.
To refute Papal infallibility is to refute also Episcopal infallibility; for the higher includes the lower. The Vatican Council is the best argument against the infallibility of oecumenical Councils, for it sanctioned a fiction, in open and irreconcilable contradiction to older oecumenical Councils, which not only assumed the possibility of Papal fallibility, but actually condemned a Pope as a heretic. The fifth Lateran Council (1512) declared the decrees of the Council of Pisa (1409) null and void; the Council of Florence denied the validity of the Council of Basle, and this denied the validity of the former. The Council of Constance condemned and burned John Hus for teaching evangelical doctrines; and this fact forced upon Luther, at the disputation with Eck at Leipzig, the conviction that even oecumenical Councils may err. Rome itself has rejected certain canons of Constantinople and Chalcedon, which put the Pope on a par with the Patriarch of Constantinople; and a strict construction of the Papal theory would rule out the old oecumenical Councils, because they were not convened nor controlled by the Pope; while the Greek Church rejects all Councils which were purely Latin.
The Bible makes no provision and has no promise for an oecumenical Council. [326] The Church existed and flourished for more than three hundred years before such a Council was heard of. Large assemblies are often ruled by passion, intrigue, and worldly ambition (remember the complaints of Gregory of Nazianzum on the Synods of the Nicene age). Majorities are not necessarily decisive in matters of faith. Christ promised to be even with two or three who are gathered in his name (Matt. xviii. 20). Elijah and the seven thousand who had not bowed the knee to Baal were right over against the great mass of the people of Israel. Athanasius versus mundum represented the truth, and the world versus Athanasium was in error during the ascendency of Arianism. In the eighteenth century the Church, both Catholic and Protestant, was under the power of infidelity, and true Christianity had to take refuge in small communities. Augustine maintained that one Council may correct another, and attain to a more perfect knowledge of truth. The history of the Church is unintelligible without the theory of progressive development, which implies many obstructions and temporary diseases. All the attributes of the Church are subject to the law of gradual expansion and growth, and will not be finally complete till the second coming of our Lord.
Papal Infallibility and Personal Responsibility.
The Christian Church, as a divine institution, can never fail and never lose the truth. Christ has pledged his Spirit and life-giving presence to his people to the end of time, and even to two or three of his humblest disciples assembled in his name; yet they are not on that account infallible. He gave authority in matters of discipline to every local Church (Matt. xviii. 17); and yet no one claims infallibility to every congregation. The Holy Spirit will always guide believers into the truth, and the unerring Word of God can never perish. But local churches, like individuals, may fall into error, and be utterly destroyed from the face of the earth. The true Church of Christ always makes progress, and will go on conquering and to conquer to the end of the world. But the particular churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, Asia Minor, and North Africa, where once the Apostles and St. Augustine taught, have disappeared, or crumbled into ruin, or have been overrun by the false prophet.
The truth will ever be within the reach of the sincere inquirer wherever the gospel is preached and the sacraments are rightly administered. God has revealed himself plainly enough for all purposes of salvation; and yet not so plainly as to supersede the necessity of faith, and to resolve Christianity into a mathematical demonstration. He has given us a rational mind to think and to judge, and a free will to accept or to reject. Christian faith is no blind submission, but an intelligent assent. It implies anxiety to inquire as well as willingness to receive. We are expressly directed to 'prove all things, and to hold fast that which is good' (1 Thess. v. 21); to try the spirits whether they are of God (1 John iv. 1), and to refuse obedience even to an angel from heaven if he preach a different gospel (Gal. i. 8). The Beroean Jews are commended as being more noble than those of Thessalonica, because they received the Word with all readiness of mind, and yet searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so (Acts xvii. 11). It was from the infallible Scriptures alone, and not from tradition, that Paul and Apollos reasoned, after the example of Christ, who appeals to Moses and the Prophets, and speaks disparagingly of the traditions of the elders as obscuring the Word of God or destroying its true effect. [327]
In opposition to all this the Vatican dogma requires a wholesale slaughter of the intellect and will, and destroys the sense of personal responsibility. The fundamental error, the proton pseudos of Rome is that she identifies the true ideal Church of Christ with the empirical Church, and the empirical Church with the Romish Church, and the Romish Church with the Papacy, and the Papacy with the Pope, and at last substitutes a mortal man for the living Christ, who is the only and ever present head of the Church, 'which is his body, the fullness of him who filleth all in all.' Christ needs no vicar, and the very idea of a vicar implies the absence of the Master. [328]
Papal Infallibility tested by Tradition.
The dogma of Papal Infallibility is mainly supported by an inferential dogmatic argument derived from the Primacy of Peter, who, as the Vicar of Christ, must also share in his infallibility; or from the nature and aim of the Church, which is to teach men the way of salvation, and must therefore be endowed with an infallible and ever available organ for that purpose, since God always provides the means together with an end. A full-blooded Infallibilist, whose piety consists in absolute submission and devotion to his lord the Pope, is perfectly satisfied with this reasoning, and cares little or nothing for the Bible and for history, except so far as they suit his purpose. If facts disagree with his dogmas, all the worse for the facts. All you have to do is to ignore or to deny them, or to force them, by unnatural interpretations, into reluctant obedience to the dogmas. [329] But after all, even according to the Roman Catholic theory, Scripture and history or tradition are the two indispensable tests of the truth of a dogma. It has always been held that the Pope and the Bishops are not the creators and judges, but the trustees and witnesses of the apostolic deposit of faith, and that they can define and proclaim no dogma which is not well founded in primitive tradition, written or unwritten. According to the famous rule of Vincentius Lirinensis, a dogma must have three marks of catholicity: the catholicity of time (semper), of space (ubique), and of number (ab omnibus). The argument from tradition is absolutely essential to orthodoxy in the Roman sense, and, as hitherto held, more essential than Scripture proof. [330] The difference between Romanism and Protestantism on this point is this: Romanism requires proof from tradition first, from Scripture next, and makes the former indispensable, the latter simply desirable; while Protestantism reverses the order, and with its theory of the Bible as the only rule of faith and practice, and as an inexhaustible mine of truth that yields precious ore to every successive generation of miners, it may even dispense with traditional testimony altogether, provided that a doctrine can be clearly derived from the Word of God.
Now it can be conclusively proved that the dogma of Papal Infallibility, like the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, lacks every one of the three marks of catholicity. It is a comparatively modern innovation. It was not dreamed of for more than a thousand years, and is unknown to this day in the Greek Church, the oldest in the world, and in matters of antiquity always an important witness. The whole history of Christianity would have taken a different course, if in all theological controversies an infallible tribunal in Rome could have been invoked. [331] Ancient Creeds, Councils, Fathers, and Popes can be summoned as witnesses against the Vatican dogma.
1. The four oecumenical Creeds, the most authoritative expressions of the old Catholic faith of the Eastern and Western Churches, contain an article on the 'holy Catholic and Apostolic Church,' but not one word about the Bishops of Rome, or any other local Church. How easy and natural, yea, in view of the fundamental importance of the Infallibility dogma, how necessary would have been the insertion of Roman after the other predicates of the Church, or the addition of the article: 'The Pope of Rome, the successor of Peter and infallible vicar of Christ.' If it had been believed then as now, it would certainly appear at least in the Roman form of the Apostles' Creed; but this is as silent on this point as the Aquilejan, the African, the Gallican, and other forms.
And this uniform silence of all the oecumenical Creeds is strengthened by the numerous local Creeds of the Nicene age, and by the various ante-Nicene rules of faith up to Tertullian and Irenæus, not one of which contains an allusion to such an article of faith.
2. The oecumenical Councils of the first eight centuries, which are recognized by the Greek and Latin Churches alike, are equally silent about, and positively inconsistent with, Papal Infallibility. They were called by Greek Emperors, not by Popes; they were predominantly, and some of them exclusively, Oriental; they issued their decrees in their own name, and in the fullness of authority, without thinking of submitting them to the approval of Rome; they even claimed the right of judging and condemning the Roman Pontiff, as well as any other Bishop or Patriarch.
In the first Nicene Council there was but one representative of the Latin Church (Hosius of Spain); and in the second and the fifth oecumenical Councils there was none at all. The second oecumenical Council (381), in the third canon, put the Patriarch of Constantinople on a par with the Bishop of Rome, assigning to the latter only a primacy of honor; and the fourth oecumenical Council (451) confirmed this canon in spite of the energetic protest of Pope Leo I.