Month: October 2015

Protes­tant apol­o­gists will often pose this ques­tion to Catholics: If your Church is real­ly infal­li­ble, why does it not just inter­pret every last verse of Scrip­ture for us? It has had two thou­sand years to do so. If it can­not do so, what good is infal­li­bil­i­ty to me? Most often they will raise this ques­tion in the con­text of a dis­cus­sion of author­i­ty. The Catholic will say, “With­out the infal­li­ble Mag­is­teri­um as a guide, all you have is your pri­vate inter­pre­ta­tion of Scrip­ture. That is why there are so many count­less denom­i­na­tions out there.” The Protes­tant will counter …

As Catholics, we believe in the inde­fectibil­i­ty of the Church — that the Holy Spir­it will pro­tect the pope, and the bish­ops under him, from teach­ing error. The bib­li­cal basis for this is Matt. 16:18, where Christ tells His dis­ci­ples that “the gates of Hell will not pre­vail” against the Church; and John 16:13, where he says that He will send the Holy Spir­it to “guide you into all truth.” But how does that hap­pen? you ask. We can begin an answer by strik­ing off some of the ways the Holy Spir­it could do it but prob­a­bly does not. The Holy Spir­it prob­a­bly does not strike heretics down.