J
justasking4
Guest
Does it apply to the NT though?
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L
Lampo
Guest
Matthew 16:18-19 / Isaiah 22:22
L
Lampo
Guest
An inanimate object cannot possess the charism of infallibility.
J
justasking4
Guest
I’m confused again. Where do these passages say Peter will be infallible?
Secondly in Galatians 2:14 Paul rebukes Peter for being wrong about the Gospel. How could this be if Peter was infallible?
L
Lampo
Guest
You might have to stay confused until tomorrow!
Sorry, I must go, but will DEFINITELY try and get back to you tomorrow to help you become unconfused. 
U
Usagi
Guest
Bam, right there.
“The universal testimony of the Universal Church” is exactly what we mean by Sacred Tradition.
Even when you include both Scripture and Tradition, public revelation from God ceased with the death of the last apostle (traditionally John).
Past that point, the teaching authority of the Church can explain the revelation in new words or bring out aspects that may only have been implied, but no one can add to revelation.
Now, of course, Catholics consider dogmatic definitions like that of the Immaculate Conception in 1854 and that of the Assumption of Mary in 1950 to be “bringing out aspects that may only have been implied” (and certainly both of those were long-held beliefs, not brand-new truths foisted on the believers by the Pope). The Orthodox, by contrast, take such recent definitions as evidence that Catholics have broken away from the historical Orthodoxy and are indeed introducing new doctrine (or, at least, improperly promoting pious beliefs to the level of dogma). Both churches, however, firmly believe in Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and God-granted authority within the Church to settle disputes.
Tradition is the context of belief and practice in which Scripture is embedded. When Scripture is unclear, looking at the widespread historical understanding of the Church (her constant testimony, as you said) can allow us to see how those who learned from the apostles themselves understood the matter.
Where do we turn when confronted with the claim that other ancient writings about Jesus and His followers are “just as good” as the New Testament canon, if not more so? The universal Tradition of the Church.
Some passages of Scripture seem to treat Jesus as God Himself; others focus on Him as a man doing the will of God. Which is correct? The universal Tradition of the Church says it’s not one or the other, but both, and the Church in council has given us the technical formulation of “one Person with two natures” to reduce the danger of misinterpretation.
Likewise, Scripture is clear that we are to worship only one God. Yet New Testament characters worship Jesus, who distinguishes between Himself and His Father. In another place, it is said that to deceive the Holy Spirit is to lie to God – yet Father, Son, and Spirit are clearly distinguished in Jesus’ own descriptions of His imminent departure and sending of the Spirit. Do we then have three gods, as Muslims and even some non-Trinitarian Christians say? Nope, again the constant Tradition of the Church says there is but one God, yet Father, Son, and Spirit are true distinctions within the one Godhead. When heresies arose, the Church in council again defended the truth by defining precise terminology – one Substance in three Persons.
That’s Sacred Tradition. Not new truths made up willy-nilly, but the proper understanding and unfolding of the truths that were already conveyed by Jesus or the Spirit to the Apostles, and by them to those who came after them. Of course, we all agree that a great deal of what they taught was ultimately written down under divine inspiration, but even Scripture can be misread, taken bit-by-bit, or twisted, so it is good to have the historical testimony of our Christian forebears to confirm how the teaching came down to them.
The Scriptures are the Word of God, absolutely, but they are best used and understood within the Body of Christ, the Christian community. Handing a Bible to Unbeliever Bob and praying that the Spirit leads him to the correct understanding is certainly one way of doing things, made possible in relatively recent times, but that’s not the traditional way the Church has spread the message. Historically, the Spirit’s guidance has operated primarily not on the level of the individual Bible reader but on that of the Church as a whole. Individuals and splinter groups could and did mangle doctrine terribly and claim Scriptural warrant for doing so, but the Church as a whole stood firm against such twistings of the teaching that had been handed down, and welcomed the breakaway groups back into the fold or watched them die out. Thus, early on, the true Church was distinguished from splinter groups as both “orthodox” (teaching the right doctrine as handed down from the apostles, both explicitly in their writings and in the constant belief and practice of the Church) and “catholic” (the same across the whole world, very different from the heretical groups that would tend to spring up in a specific region following a charismatic teacher).
With all due respect, from the viewpoint of the elder Churches the Protestant movement is just another set of splinter groups, albiet a particularly long-lived one with a pronounced tendency to internal splintering of its own. I acknowledge that God continues to work in Protestant Christianity, and am glad that He does. I could even believe that He inspired the very beginnings of what is commonly called the Reformation, but I don’t believe that the present multiply-divided state of Christianity could possibly be His Will.
Usagi
J
justasking4
Guest
i can’t wait----:ballspin:You might have to stay confused until tomorrow!
U
Usagi
Guest
Those are of even higher status, not merely infallible (protected from outright error) but directly inspired by God and inerrant.
Infallibility proper only applies to the formal teachings of a human teacher or collection of same. It’s part of God’s promise of the Church’s indefectibility, that the Church as a whole will never go astray.
Infallibility is not so much a power given to the pope or bishops so that they can declare new truths (it’s not divine inspiration). Rather, it’s a protection given to the believers, so that despite having human leaders, they can trust that God will not allow them to be led completely astray by those men.
Usagi
J
justasking4
Guest
Where did Jesus promise this to the church i.e. indefectibility?
C
CHESTERTONRULES
Guest
John 15
12"I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. 13But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. 14He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.
John 17
Prayer for the Church:
16They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. 17Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. 18As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. 19For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.
Jesus Prays for All Believers:
20"My prayer is not for them alone. **I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, **(<<<THIS IS US!)21that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.
T
The_GreyPilgrim
Guest
Matt 16:[16] Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
[17] And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.
[18] And I tell you(Peter), you are Peter, and on this rock(Peter) I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it.
[19] I will give you(Peter) the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you(Peter) bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you(Peter) loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
Before you start don’t even try to give me the whole “rock/pebble” arguement with the Greek-it’s irrelevant. Jesus didn’t speak Greek to the Apostles, He spoke Aramaic, and there is only one word for “rock” in Aramaic-kephas,
Now the issue of the “keys”. Let me ask you j4, if I give you the keys to my house, what does that mean to you? Am I not giving you authority over everything I have?
Secondly, you bring up Gal 2:14. Was Paul correcting Peter on a teaching of his, or was he correcting Peter on his failure of will-his inability to follow his own teaching?
J
justasking4
Guest
If you look at the context for these passages they are not to any church but to the immediate disciples. It was to them that He pormised. What Jesus does pray for is the message He does give to His immediate disciples would be believed by those in the future. The message is not change but to be preached and taught that others would also believe in this same message. Its not about all other kinds of doctrines and teachings that churches will teach that cannot be grounded in the Scriptures.
J
JMJ_coder
Guest
God only protected His disciples long enough for them to write a Bible and then He washed His hands of the whole thing and said ‘guess what, you’re on your own’. That’s a pretty messed up theology your one man band of an ecclesial community has.
J
justasking4
Guest
Not true. Now we have the written inspired-inerrant Word of God to guide us. We need men and women to know it well and to teach it well so those that follow Christ will be well grounded in Christ…God only protected His disciples long enough for them to write a Bible and then He washed His hands of the whole thing and said ‘guess what, you’re on your own’. That’s a pretty messed up theology your one man band of an ecclesial community has.
C
CHESTERTONRULES
Guest
It was to the disciples, the leaders of the Church.
This promise was not to you and I.
Jesus did not promise you that the Holy Spirit would lead you into all truth.
Jesus established the Church to protect you and I from falling into error.
U
Usagi
Guest
Yup. In Catholic terminology, those disciples were to be the original magisterium, the teaching authority embodied in the human leadership of the Church as guided by the Holy Spirit.
Correct. The message must not change. That’s why we believe that God has endowed the magisterium with the charism of infallibility, so that they never lead us wrong just as their predecessors the Apostles did not.
There’s no mention of the Scriptures in those passages. It would later turn out, of course, that one of the ways the Holy Spirit would provide and preserve His true teachings within the Church was to inspire new writings, but we’re not told that the Spirit’s help stopped there. You seem to be fine with the Spirit inspiring the writing of Scripture, and with the Spirit now moving within individual Christians to help them understand Scripture, but balk at the idea that the Spirit could similarly indwell and guide a visible Christian organization.
Even when it comes to the Old Testament Scriptures, which the Church of course took for its own at God’s command, Christians follow a pattern of interpretation and understanding that had been hidden from the vast majority of readers until Jesus explained it – the “Sacred Tradition” by which the Old Testament is properly understood, if you will (though of course much of that explanation and interpretation came to be written down in the New Testament).
Many Protestants seem to view the completion of the written Scriptures as a point of complete change in how the Church operated and how God via the Holy Spirit dealt with his people. Before that, authoritative human leaders and teachers appointed by God Himself and “guided into all truth” to teach others were fine … but after that, humans are all untrustworthy and it’s all about the Book. Some even go so far as to equate the written Scripture with “the perfect” that Paul writes about in his “now we see in part, and prophesy in part” passage. (You might not, of course.) I just don’t see that at all.
Usagi
J
justasking4
Guest
The message has changed in the Catholic church though. Is it not true that to be saved you must believe all that the church teaches and be a member of the Catholic church?
I know this is believed and taught in the church but its not grounded in the Scriptures. There is no place in Scripture where any man is promised infallibly.
Secondly we can have cases where the church has erred anyway. If infalliblity were true then this would not be the case.
J
justasking4
Guest
True. It was just to the immediate disciples.
This is the function of a healthy church but this has not always been true.
C
cfrancis
Guest
It appears you are saying the writers of the NT, when they were writing, were protected by the Holy Spirit from recording error in/being mistaken in matters of doctrine and dogma; they were, while they were writing through the power of the Holy Spirit, by your definition, infallible.
T
The_GreyPilgrim
Guest
Matt 16:[16] Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
[17] And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.
[18] And I tell you(Peter), you are Peter, and on this rock(Peter) I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it.
[19] I will give you(Peter) the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you(Peter) bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you(Peter) loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
Before you start don’t even try to give me the whole “rock/pebble” arguement with the Greek-it’s irrelevant. Jesus didn’t speak Greek to the Apostles, He spoke Aramaic, and there is only one word for “rock” in Aramaic-kephas,
Now the issue of the “keys”. Let me ask you j4, if I give you the keys to my house, what does that mean to you? Am I not giving you authority over everything I have?
Secondly, you bring up Gal 2:14. Was Paul correcting Peter on a teaching of his, or was he correcting Peter on his failure of will-his inability to follow his own teaching?
Where in the bible does it say this?
Where in the bible does it say that Jesus ever abandoned His Church?
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