These are helpful clarifications. But the question arises: did the Catholic/Orthodox Church of the first millennium even hold to the infallibility of councils (whether in whole or in part)?
There is a tendency, post-Reformation, in wishing to define the faithful by their tenets of faith or their assent to a belief. But unless we are talking about something more than a useful taxonomy for the study of comparative religion, then there is a danger of falling into this sort of fallacy: “The true church is that which teaches the true faith” and “The true faith is what the true church teaches.”
One can, of course, try to set up an explicitly doctrinal test – “The true faith is contained in the three catholic creeds,” or “The true faith is that Jesus Christ is Lord,” although, if anyone objects that one’s chosen formula is too inclusive/exclusive, it is difficult to discover grounds on which to refute him. (Which is why I don’t quite understand threads such as this. There are special pleadings and unstated premises inherent to the question making dialogue impossible.)
Now, it is perfectly possible to avoid the question-begging assumption of defining Christians by examining their tenets, or the Church by its teaching. After all, the Edict of Thessalonica of 380, which stands in pride of place at the beginning of the Codex of Justinian, did so very neatly, by referring to “that religion which from then to now declares itself to have been delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter, and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness.” Not only does it avoid the vice of circularity, but, suitably updated to refer to living authorities, it is remarkably easy of application; just what one would expect of the criterion of a divine message, intended for all, regardless of learning, capacity or circumstances.
And so it is with our relation to the councils. They are infallible because they are protected from error in a negative sense, not in a sense that “no error” could come out of them. And they are recognized as such because the majority of bishops and the Church recognized them as such, and we believe the Church to be infallible because God revealed this. It is in the actions of holding the councils and cutting off those errors by defining and warning the faithful in what those errors are that is recognized universally,.
(Of course, when we say we believe the Church to be infallible because God revealed this; and we believe God revealed it because it is affirmed by the Church; in the second proposition “because” is not taken in the same sense as in the first, for it does not signify the formal motive of faith, but only the indispensable condition of faith, that is, the infallible proposition of the object of faith. Such a sentiment can be applied to the councils as well.)
This is why it can be said religion rests on immediate experience. As Abbé Bremond said, “In the course of the normal development of man there occur moments in which the discursive reason gives place to a higher activity, imperfectly understood and indeed at first disquieting.” “This activity—this hidden inhabitant—is intuitive rather than logical in its methods. It knows by communion, not by observation. It cannot give a neat account of its experience: for this experience overflows all categories, defies all explanations, and seems at once self-loss, adventure, and perfected love.” This experience is “like bathing in a fathomless ocean, or breathing an intangible and limitless air. It gives contact and certitude, but not understanding: as breathing or bathing give us certitude about the air and the ocean, but no information about their chemical constitution.”
Revelation presupposes this experience and joins it with understanding.
As witnesses to the Resurrection and tasked with preaching and maintaining the Gospel, the Church enjoins understanding to that experience and has actively passed it on down through the generations. I think the traditional Catholic view as said by Monsignor Ronald Knox is analogous to the Orthodox understanding, when he says: “the faithful, be they many or few, be their doctrine apparently traditional or apparently innovatory, be their champions honest or unscrupulous, are simply those who are in visible communion with the see of Rome. No doubt, in the long run, this means the people who are so orthodox that Rome has seen no reason to excommunicate them, so that unity and orthodoxy still react upon one another” [of course without the emphasis on Rome herself.]
[continued in next post]
