Debating with Protestants: When the Apostolic Fathers Get Under Your Skin

A short while ago I had the chance to share my latest article in the Early Catholicism series on social media. Some replies from certain Protestants gave me occasion to reflect on several things, and I wanted to set them down here.

Is the Church Indefectible?

The article evidently bothered one person in the group; I suspect it was because it made plain that already in the first century one of the most celebrated Christians was teaching Catholic doctrines. In response he tried to suggest the possibility that by then it was already corrupted:

“But the Galatians were disciples of Saint Paul and look what happened, read Galatians chapter 1

And Paul was left aghast; he says: “I am amazed that you are SO SOON removed…!!! SO SOON! Imagine if I had trusted the Galatians because they were direct disciples of Paul. No doubt they had the laying on of hands and everything.
I would have been filled with the gospel, but a twisted, distorted, perverted one.”

In another comment he added:

“The fact that ‘the apostolic fathers’ were close to the apostles should not lead us to suppose that they did not err and misinterpret the sayings of the apostles. The person closest to the apostles could commit the greatest misinterpretation, just as a person two thousand years later understands the apostolic message correctly. The point is what Scripture says. Paul warns: ‘Take heed to yourselves, and to the whole flock, wherein the Holy Ghost hath placed you bishops, to rule the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. I know that, after my departure, ravening wolves will enter in among you, not sparing the flock. And of your own selves shall arise men speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.’ (Acts 20:28-30)

The thesis of the argument is basically this: the Bible speaks of how, already at the beginning of the Church, there were people who misinterpreted Revelation (heretics). From there he moves on to introduce the possibility that Saint Ignatius, and even the whole Church, could have become corrupted; after all, he thinks, if a part becomes corrupt the whole can become corrupt.

What Is the Problem with This Argument?

While it is true that such texts serve to prove that within the Church people would arise who would objectively try to corrupt Christian doctrine, they do not allow us to prove that this corruption would spread to the whole Church. The very example our friend mentions, that of the Galatians, serves to dismantle his thesis, because we also know that they returned to orthodoxy after Saint Paul’s admonitions; therefore, the corruption in that concrete case did not spread.
In the text from the book of Acts that he also cites, it says that these men, whom he identifies as “perverse,” would try to draw disciples after themselves, not that they would draw them all, and it is precisely to prevent this that bishops were established, whose duty is to protect the faithful. Of course, if the text is read in isolation from its context and extrapolated to a broader context, one can arrive at fallacious conclusions.

In the same way, if we go to each text that speaks of the heretics, we see that the problem is precisely that the Protestant germ was already present back then: wanting to interpret Revelation on one’s own, in an individualistic manner and separated from the ecclesial body. Saint Paul and the apostles did not say that these would prevail, but they did warn about them:

“A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid; knowing that he that is such an one is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned by his own judgment.” (Titus 3:10-11)

“This precept I commend to thee, O son Timothy, according to the prophecies going before on thee, that thou war in them a good warfare, having faith and a good conscience, which some rejecting have made shipwreck concerning the faith. Of whom is Hymeneus and Alexander, whom I have delivered up to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme.” (1 Timothy 1:18-19)

“Shun profane and vain babblings, for they grow much towards ungodliness, and their speech spreadeth like a canker; of whom are Hymeneus and Philetus, who have erred from the truth, saying that the resurrection is past already; and they have subverted the faith of some.” (2 Timothy 2:16-18)

Did these first heretics act with malice, or was it only ignorance? God alone knows each particular case, but that did not keep Saint Peter from warning of the danger of interpreting the Sacred Scriptures on one’s own:

“In the scriptures there are certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest to their own destruction.” (2 Peter 3:16)

“But first understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is made by private interpretation; for prophecy came not by the will of man at any time, but the holy men of God spoke, inspired by the Holy Ghost.” (2 Peter 1:20-21)

In several of these texts Saint Paul writes to Timothy, who was one of the first bishops he placed at the head of a first-century church. It is a constant to see him warning Timothy about heresies, but he never says that the Church would succumb to them. Let us turn to another example:

“For there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine, but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears, and will turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables.” (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

Once again he says that there will be people who go astray: will they be everyone, or even Christians at all? He neither affirms it nor does the context seem to point in that direction, because in that regard his recommendation is an exhortation so that, when that moment comes, they may remain firm in the truth:

“But be thou vigilant, labour in all things, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil thy ministry.” (2 Timothy 4:5)

On the other hand, it should not go unnoticed that Saint Paul identifies these unfaithful men with those who will teach “novelties.” Does this description fit better the first Fathers of the Church or today’s Protestant denominations, whose doctrines differ not only from those of the primitive Church but also from one another? The Protestant reformers themselves admitted that their doctrine was rejected by the whole prior Christian Tradition, and hence they had to be left only with the Bible interpreted in their own way.

But just as the apostles by no means say that these heretics would succeed, what is said is rather the opposite: that they would not succeed and that they would end up going out from the bosom of the Church (schismatics):

“Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that Antichrist cometh, even now there are become many Antichrists, whereby we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have remained with us. But that they may be manifest, that they are not all of us.” (1 John 2:18-19)

Among the reasons why I have always found this Protestant thesis incoherent is that the Sacred Scriptures themselves leave evidence that this could not happen:

A Church already corrupt in the very first century could not achieve such an end, still less one that had to wait sixteen centuries until the arrival of a Luther or a Calvin.

Our friend, on the other hand, prefers to believe in a kind of incompetent Christ, one who founds a Church that hurries to corrupt itself in the days of Saint Ignatius, only because what he writes allows the first-century Church to be identified with the Catholic Church. For anyone who thinks this way, it is no coincidence that the texts of Saint Ignatius give them hives.

Consequences of the Church’s Infallibility

Later in the same debate, the same person writes:

“There is a logical problem with the principle of the universal consensus of the fathers; in reality it is indeed possible that all the fathers were mistaken in a given doctrine of unanimous consensus. After all, both Catholics and non-Catholics do not believe that their writings are divinely inspired and infallible. But if they are fallible, it is logically possible that all of them could be mistaken on a given point. So that even the universal consensus could be nothing more than a consensus in error.”

Now we come upon an ingenious but fallacious argument. Our friend knows that no Catholic thinks that Saint Ignatius or the Fathers of the Church were individually infallible. And from there he supposes that, if one of them was not, the sum of them could not be either. Of course, this way of reasoning reveals an endless string of contradictions that we will see below:

First: That each Christian individually may be fallible does not imply that the consensus of the fathers on some doctrine of faith must be fallible as well. Christ promised to guide his Church into all truth, not each Christian separately.

Second: Let us suppose for a moment that it is true and that the whole Christian Church, even when it defines truths of faith and dogmas, can err. In that case our friend would be left with a Bible he believes to be infallible, but one whose books were selected by a fallible Church.

After all, it was those same Christians in an Ecumenical Council who defined which were the books that today belong to the Bible. Is it reasonable to believe that they can err in everything except in that one particular point? If he is going to be consistent, he must also admit that the Bible too is a collection of fallible documents, or at least fallibly selected ones. Our friend will have won, but he will have cut off the branch on which he is standing.

An example of this is that when I put this to our friend he replied:

“Those things, although they have not been infallibly defined, can nevertheless be held with sufficient certainty, and that is enough.”

And here we are: after having “sawn off” his own branch, he has no choice but to affirm that the Bible is a collection of documents selected “fallibly,” of which one can have “sufficient certainty,” and for him “that is enough.”

Third: Continuing along the same line of thought in which we admit, without conceding, that the whole Church, even when it defines dogmas of faith, can err, why does he not admit the same possibility for them?

Because what holds for some holds for others. If the Church in an Ecumenical Council can err, then the whole of Protestantism, divided exponentially into denominations, can do so with far greater probability. It is very curious to see many Protestants unconsciously profess a personal infallibility while at the same time denying it to the Church. Luther, for example, used to say:

“The Holy Fathers, the doctors, the councils, the Virgin Mary herself and Saint Joseph and all the saints together can err” (Martin Luther, Weimarer Ausgabe 17,2)

But concerning himself he thought:

“I am certain that I have received my dogmas from heaven. My dogmas will stand and the pope will fall” (Martin Luther, Weimarer Ausgabe 10,2)

So that, even though the first Fathers were not individually infallible, would they not thereby be even more trustworthy and closer to the purest and most authentic Christianity than a Luther or a Calvin, who received the gospel neither from the apostles nor from any of their direct disciples, but sixteen centuries later at the hands of the Catholic Church?

Resolving Doctrinal Conflicts in the Church

To keep trying to prove that the consensus of the fathers can err, he added:

“As is well known, truth is not determined by the majority, nor even by a unanimous vote.”

And in a certain sense he is right: if today, for example, a survey is taken and the majority of people vote in favour of legalizing abortion, the mere fact that they are the majority does not prove that they are correct. Many times throughout history, majorities have made decisions that have been mistaken.

What guarantees the infallibility of the Church is not majorities but Christ’s promise to guide her into all truth with the help of the Holy Spirit. If we are really governed by the Bible, as my friend says he is, then he ought to see how doctrinal problems were resolved there. When, for example, the first great problem arose in the primitive Church over the matter of circumcision, the apostles settled the affair by gathering in the Council of Jerusalem. Not all Christians took part there, but those who held authentic authority within the Church did, and although at first not all were in agreement, what they decided was received as the decision “of them and of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 15:28).

In contrast to this, Protestantism is left powerless when it comes to resolving its conflicts, because in the end each one can cling to his private interpretation of the Bible, the very principle they have established. Hence, whenever they have historically tried to do something similar to a council, they have always failed and ended up dividing.

What starker example than to see Luther himself, already advanced in age and near death, ending his days cursing and condemning other leaders of the Reformation who did not think as he did, even though he had previously tried on numerous occasions to reach agreement, beginning with the “Colloquy of Marburg”:

“That blasphemous mouth will never be with me, God willing; I will not address a single word to him; I do not wish to speak with him, nor to see him, nor to hear him. Whether he or his accursed gang of Zwinglian fanatics and others like them praise or censure me matters as much to me as if I were praised or censured by the Jews, the Turks, the pope, or the devil himself. And since I find myself but a step from death, I wish to give this testimony of my faith before the tribunal of my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, declaring that the fanatics and enemies of the sacrament, Karlstadt, Zwingli, Oecolampadius, Schwenckfeld and their disciples at Zurich, or wherever they may be, I have condemned with all severity and have avoided them, according to the command of the Apostle: A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid.” (Martin Luther, Kurzes Bekenntnis vom heiligen Sakrament: WA 54.141-67).

At the Synod of Dort the Calvinists and the Arminians could likewise never come to an agreement, with the Arminian leaders ending up executed or banished; yet even so they did not cease to cling to their private interpretation, different from that of the Calvinists, and their doctrinal differences endure to this day.

In all those cases, each one thinks like our friend: the Church has no reason to be right; I must be the one who is right. That is why, once the reformers had separated from the whole of Christendom, they tried not only to conceal their divisions, of which they were ashamed, but also to prevent others from using the very principle they had established, by means of persecutions and tortures.

See in this regard: Origin, causes and consequences of the doctrine of Sola Scriptura in the Protestant Reformation.

The alternative he proposes simply does not work.

Conclusions

Although I know I have already given my opinion, the question remains in the air: why that reaction to the texts of one of the first apostolic fathers, the attempt to show that already by then the Church had become corrupt? What would the real consequences be if that were true? Could we believe that a corrupt and fallible Church made an infallible selection of the books of the Bible? What likelihood would there be that they, with an origin so far removed from the apostolic age, actually interpret the Christian message even better and have not become corrupt as well?

Author: José Miguel Arráiz