Truth Unites - Was the Early Church Infallible? No, That's Not How it Works

Episode Date: November 22, 2023

In this video I respond to Joshua Charles' claim that post-apostolic ecclesial infallibility was present the early church, as represented by Clement, Ignatius, and Irenaeus. Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

Did the early church understand herself to be infallible? This is one of the key differences between Protestants and many other Christians in this video. And it's such a huge watershed kind of issue, you know. So it's so important. I want to argue no and try to clarify a few figures in particular where I think there can be confusion about this topic. Recently I put out a tweet about this on X. I'm just going to start calling it X and not Twitter anymore. And basically I was articulating concern about the bodily assumption of Mary,

being an infallible dogma. I was saying, this is why we need Sola Scriptera, so you don't change Christianity by adding on later accretions. And this whole, yeah, I make that appeal a lot. And I mentioned that this whole idea of ecclesial infallibility, that is that the post-apostolic church has certain organs that are capable of speaking or pronouncing in a way that is preserved from error, as you have with the definition of Mary's bodily assumption, is a historical accretion that was unknown to the early Christians. And I think that's very clear from the historical evidence. Well, Josh Charles quoted it and put up a post claiming that ecclesial infallibility was known, and he gave three examples from Clement, Ignatius, and I'm in this video, I just want to work

through these three examples and kind of make my case for why I disagree, because this is so important. At the end of the video, I'll respond to four possible objections that I kind of anticipate that come up a lot in this discussion. I had the privilege of getting to know Josh a little bit recently. I really like him. Nothing here is personally against him at all, but I just want to engage his argument. And I'm doing it in a video because he's put out a number of these quote tweets of me, and several times I felt they missed the mark. But when I pushed back on X, it wasn't as productive of dialogue, and I think a lot of that is just the nature of X.

It's a very limited medium for having disagreement. The character limitations, the general culture of it, I'm doing a video instead because I think I can lay out my case a little better here. And this is such an important issue that we need to get to the bottom of. that's pretty foundational to know for how you construe Christianity. Can the church after the period of divine public revelation speak infallibly in a way that's preserved from error? Huge issue.

So the way I put it in my initial tweet was that basically this is a later accretion. Post-apostolic infallibility is not known to the early Christians. That's the position I want to defend and reaffirm in this video. Josh responded by saying it was quite known to early Christians. Dr. Orland, it's why St. Pope Clement of Rome, a disciple of the apostles, affirmed in the first century the divine establishment of the Episcopit, and that disobeying him came with great spiritual danger. Now, there are two problems here. First, Clement of Rome did not teach a view of the episcopate that's in any way compatible with contemporary Roman Catholicism, as I want to show,

he was a witness against that model. And second, even if he had, that would not come remotely close to this idea of ecclesial infallibility, like the church can promulgate a dogma in a way that is preserved from error, and that's the topic at hand. Divine establishment, or spiritual danger for disobeying, are just completely different things than infallibility. So let's just work through this a little bit. I'll first just want to talk about Clement as a witness against contemporary Roman Catholic ecclesiology, because this is pretty much universally recognized outside of internet apologetics. I don't want to be triumphalist.

One of my concerns is the triumphalist claims here. And I don't want to be triumphalist, but I also have learned I have to state, as difficult as all these conversations are, I try to be careful here and state my concerns, my sincere concerns about truth, with sufficient forcefulness

but not cross the line to be obnoxious. That's a tricky balance. But I want to state it with sufficient forcefulness because I think it's overwhelmingly just clear. I mean, again, I don't know anybody who thinks Clement believed in something like a three-office view outside of internet apologetics. I really don't. So first to Clement, then to the scholars about Clement, in his first epistle dating sometime to the late first century, he teaches that the apostles appointed two offices in the church, and he identifies them as bishop and deacon.

He sees those two specific offices as the fulfillment of prophecy, and he quotes the Old Testament, saying these were predicted. Later in his letter, on three separate occasions, he uses these terms bishop and presbyter interchangeably. So two chapters later, chapter 44, he teaches that the apostles established the office of the episcopate. Then he immediately refers to the holders of this office as presbyters. Later in chapters 47, and then again in chapter 57, Clement again refers to the leaders of the church in Corinth, who the very people who had been deposed and he's now saying you have to submit to them, he calls them presbyters. People try to read later developments back into Clement's letter, but read on its own terms, it fits perfectly with

the two-office view that is universal in the first century evidence. The didache, which also references two offices, presbyter and bishop, and the entire New Testament, which uses these terms interchangeably. In Titus 1, for example, you've got the two qualifications lists in 1st Timothy 3 in Titus 1, using the terms interchangeably, and so forth. So this is pretty much universally recognized. I'll just quote some Roman Catholic scholars to this end that I've quoted before. By the way, I guess I was going to say this later. Let me say it up front to defend the scholarship. One of the things that I experience is I transition from doing more pastoral and scholarly-type activities. Most of my life I've been a pastor who does scholarly writing to online apologetics,

is that scholarship is often unfairly dismissed. Nobody can just, indiscriminately reject all scholarship. So people have to find criteria to distinguish good and bad scholarship. And sometimes people just, whatever scholarly claims they don't like, they just label it as skepticism or liberalism. But you have to make a distinction between a scholarly claim that's rooted in skepticism versus a scholarly claim that results from just a fair reading of the texts. And in this case, there's no skepticism here. Like, I'll give an example. I reject the majority, though not universal, scholarly view about the date of Daniel, because I think it's rooted in an anti-supernatural hermeneutic that thinks future predictive prophecy cannot happen.

So I have a reason to reject that scholarly claim. But what you can't do is just reject a scholarly claim that doesn't have any kind of anti-supernatural hermeneutic or anything like that, and it's just carefully reading the early texts without a good reason. Or you'd at least have to make an argument for why the texts are skeptical. So, because scholarship is dismissed too easily sometimes. So I've referenced many of these passages before, but I'll do so again. Eamund Duffy is a Roman Catholic scholar.

He says Clement made no claim to write as bishop. His letter was sent in the name of the whole Roman community. He never identifies himself or writes in his own person. The letter makes no distinction between presbyters and bishops. And he says, basically, it suggests that at Corinth and at Rome, there's a plurality of leadership, and he says that persists for another generation in Rome. will come back to that to see why he says that in a moment. Here's another Roman Catholic scholar, Francis Sullivan.

He opens his whole book on this topic like this. I won't read through this entire quote, but you can pause and read it. Basically, he says, everybody agrees, everybody agrees, that the three-fold structure of Bishop, Presbyter, and Deacon, three different offices, doesn't go back to the apostles. It's a development, and he says at the end of this, basically nobody doubts, hardly anybody doubts, that the Church of Rome, specifically, was led by a group of presbyters for at least a part of the second century. Note that Sullivan's not stating his own view. He's summarizing the scholarship. Roman Catholic scholar Raymond Brown similarly. Presbyter bishops, basically, he says they don't go back

to the apostles the way to affirm the Episcopate in this three-tier structure. So presbyter and bishop as distinct offices is to say that it's a Holy Spirit-inspired development or emergence. The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia identifies as fully established facts, the following three things that I'll put up on the screen you can read. We could cite a lot of other sources. Those are all Roman Catholic sources. You get the general idea. The evidence is just overwhelming that from the beginning, back in the first century, you had two offices. And the reason, by the way, that people say that that persisted in the West longer than in the East.

So people are trying to look at all the evidence and put it all together is because of things like the Shepherd of Hermis, which was written in Rome. sometime in the early second century, and just talks about the presbyters who preside over the church. And it always speaks of the leadership of the church there in the plural. And you have other things like polycarps, letter to the Philippians, which has qualifications for two offices in the church. So it looks like basically you just have this gradual emergence of exactly what Jerome tells us. One of the presbyters is elected up, and the term bishop is applied to him, and you see this developing, and I'll come back to Ignatius on that in just a moment.

So the claim here, you know, to adduce Clement as a witness for the divine establishment of the Episcopit is extremely problematic because he believes in two offices in the church, not three. He always speaks of the leadership and the church in Corinth in the plural, and he uses the terms presbyter and bishop interchangeably. The second problem, though, is even if Clement had believed in the divine establishment of the episcopate in the Roman Catholic sense that is irrelevant to the topic at hand, namely the church's ability to promulgate an infallible dogma like Mary's bodily assumption. So this is pretty cut and dry. So just to say it clearly and then I won't ramble on, infallibility means

preservation from error. Being divinely established is just a completely different thing, you know. You just think about this or even to speak in a way that has spiritual authority. Completely the different thing from infallibility. The Pharisees had a divinely established office and they taught with authority and Jesus said you have to obey them in Matthew 23, 2 to 3, but they were not infallible. The Sanhedron had a real spiritual authority, but it was not infallible. When you think about it, most of the offices among the people of God in the Old Testament and in the New Testament are divinely established but not infallible. That's true for a large majority of them. So there's absolutely nothing about something being divinely established or having spiritual authority

that implies or entails infallibility, namely the preservation from error. But I just find that these basic distinctions are glossed over, and what a lot of times people do is they'll, you know, anything that it speaks of the church highly or speaks of church authority or something like this is put forward as though it was tantamount to a contemporary Roman Catholic view of infallibility or sometimes an Eastern Orthodox view or something else like that. Even within the concept of infallibility,

there's a lot of distinctions that need to be made. So in my videos on papal infallibility, I've talked about infallibility in the promulgation of dogma versus in the preservation of tradition. Personal infallibility versus ecclesial infallibility and so forth. Another big distinction would be infallibility, meaning preservation from error and indefectibility, meaning preservation from death or the failure to accomplish your purpose. And yet a lot of times these very distinct things get mushed together. And my concern is that that's what's happening in Josh's tweet here where he's saying, oh, you know, post-apostolic ecclesial infallibility is definitely known. Look, Clement is talking about the divine establishment of the Episcopate,

and it has spiritual authority and so forth. It's like Clement is a problematic figure for Roman Catholic ecclesiology, but he certainly doesn't talk, even if he wasn't, this is nothing to do with infallibility in promulgating dogma. The same is true for Ignatius. So Josh said it's why St. Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of the apostles, was so insistent on obeying the successors of the apostles and priesthood, not even 70 years after Christ's ascension. So there's the same two problems here. First, there's a naivety about the historical

development in this idea of apostolic succession, as though the thinking is like, well, Ignatius is like the same as a contemporary Roman Catholic view, which is not true. and then second, this passage has nothing to do. Ignatius says nothing about infallibility. So we just go through both of these real quickly because I need to address Ignatius a little bit. A lot of times people get tripped up with Ignatius because, again, the same kind of, I don't want to be provocative here, but just I will use the word sloppiness in these appeals as made. I'm not talking about Josh right now, but just the general thinking is like, oh, wow,

Ignatius talks about bishops, therefore, you know. but just defining the word bishop is kind of glossed over. So let's just unpack this a little bit. Who does Ignatius think are the successors of the apostles? What does Ignatius think is a bishop? Well, he never identifies bishops as the successors of the apostles in the way the contemporary Roman Catholic Church does and other churches do as well. Instead, he talks about the presbyters as in the place of assembly of the apostles.

For bishops, he has a completely different understanding of what a bishop is. characterizes bishops as having a congregational authority, not a diocesan jurisdiction. They don't have any authority outside of their local church. They're basically like just overseeing, they're like a senior pastor in a sense, overseeing their congregation. Herman Bafin puts it like this. In the writings of Ignatius, the episcopal idea is still at the beginning of its development. The bishop here is not the bearer of tradition nor a New Testament priest nor an apostolic succession. He is an office bearer in a local church and has no authority outside of it. Ignatius is best interpreted as the first witness to this emergence of the office of bishop as a distinct third office in the church

in its earliest stages of development. So this is why sometimes people think Ignatius is so emphasizing the authority of bishops precisely because that office is in its kind of early, fragile stage. Now, when people note this, they're not just being skeptics, they're just being accurate, they're just tracing out the specifics of what these early Christians are saying. place versus another, in one time versus another, and how these offices are described. It takes a long time to build up to the idea of apostolic succession. Apostolic succession proper, okay, in its technical meaning, because we all believe that the ministry of the apostles succeeds to the post-apostolic church.

But the apostolic succession and its technical meaning has four components. Number one, the office of bishop is distinct from the office of Presbyter by divine right by apostolic appointment. And so the bishop rather than the presbyter is the successor of the apostle. Number two, bishops have a regional jurisdiction in a kind of overarching hierarchical unity with one another. Number three, valid episcopal succession subsists in the laying on of hands from one bishop to another. And number four, apart from valid apostolic succession, there is normally no valid ordained ministry and thus no efficacious sacraments. Baptism will often be an exception to that. But Eucharist, for example, no valid Eucharist apart from valid holy orders or

ministry and no valid holy orders apart from valid apostolic succession. So it's this very tight and sort of mechanical way of understanding how the church, how church ministry is transmitted from one time to another. That is not what Ignatius believes. He believes nothing like that. So that's the first problem. The second problem is that even if Ignatius did believe in that, that's absolutely irrelevant to the topic at hand, which is ecclesial infallibility in the promulgation of dogma, like Mary's bodily assumption. Just as the divine establishment of an office is not the same as being preserved from error, so the necessity of obedience to that office does not entail infallibility. Hebrews 1317 commands obedience to a church's local leaders. They are not infallible.

Jesus commanded obedience to the Pharisees in Matthew 23. They are not infallible. We could go through again, most offices in Old and New Testament that are divinely established and have authority and we should obey them are not infallible. You could also look outside the church at other entities that you are to obey like parents or government. It doesn't imply infallibility. But, you know, again, these categories get mushed together. So I would simply summarize by saying, if you want to find a proof text for infallibility, you need to find something that talks about infallibility, either the idea or the concept of preservation from error. Okay.

Third and final witness is Ironaeus. Josh says it's why Ironaeus of Leone, in the quote below, quite explicitly affirms the infallibility of the apostolic priesthood as a whole. and thus the church as a whole. Now we'll go through this quote from I'm going to be, I'll summarize my response against the same as the last two. Number one, Iranaeus' view of apostolic succession is not the contemporary Roman Catholic view. And number two, this quote is not an assertion of ecclesial infallibility. It's certainly not an explicit assertion of that.

So to the first point, by the time you get to the late second century with figures like Ironaeus and Tritullian, you have the seeds of what will eventually become apostolic proper that are emerging. So you have a kind of apostolic succession, but not the kind of apostolic succession that is believed today, those four tenets that I mentioned. The most obvious way you see this is in the passage Josh cites where it's the presbyters, as well as the bishops, who are the successors of the apostles. And Irona says this in many other passages as well. He talked about the presbyters are the successors of the apostles. That's the first kind of little wrinkle you notice. More basically, while Ironaeus has the basic idea of a succession of ministry from apostles

to presbyters and bishops, he doesn't affirm apostolic succession proper. That is, the notion of a transmission of the spiritual grace necessary for valid ministry and sacraments from bishop to bishop through the laying on of hands. And there are good reasons. Now, so we could get into the scholarship on this and get into the first the texts from the time in question and try to chart this out, you know? If you want to get into that, when does that idea emerge? That's tricky. That's tricky to nail it down. A classic text on this topic is Arthur Headlum's treatment of it, where he basically argues that it's around the time of Augustine that you get apostolic succession proper. Michael Ramsey, who is the former Archbishop of Canterbury, made an observation that those who opposed Headlam

could only find in the second and third century's implicit affirmations of apostolic succession in the sense of the succession of valid ministry. So, you know, and then as you're getting into this, the other piece of data you look at is the fourth century church orders texts and some of the earlier ones. These are manuals of disciplinary and liturgical rules for the church where basically they're laying out this, and it really looks like for a lot of them, pretty late, you know, into the fourth century, like canon two of the canons of Hippolytus, also the apostolic constitutions, where it seems like they're describing a bishop being chosen by all the people.

And so that's a piece of data that then also needs to be integrated, and you're trying to work this out as how is this evolving. Now, people can have a good debate about this. People can say, you know, it's here, no, it isn't here, and you're trying to chart out how this idea is evolving, okay? But what's pretty clear is that it is evolving. The idea of apostolic succession proper is something that is gradually coming in rather than being present right away. And Ironaeus is a witness to that process of evolution at one stage in it.

Hence his irregular view of the role of presbyters, for example. That's the first thing. The second thing is even if Ironaeus had believed in full apostolic succession proper, the passage cited here simply does not say anything about infallibility in promoting and in promulgating dogma. It says basically four things, so we'll go through them one by one. First, it says you have to obey the presbyters. Okay, well, that, we've already kind of dealt with that with the Ignatius quote. This is like Hebrews 1317. It doesn't imply infallibility. Then he makes three other claims. Number one, these presbyters have received the certain gift of truth. Number two, they preserve the faith.

and number three, they expound the scriptures to us without danger. Now, faithfulness in preservation of apostolic teaching is not the same as infallibility in promulgating dogmas, especially when the dogma in question, Mary's assumption in this case, has no plausible relationship to that apostolic teaching. So somebody, so these passage, you know, a Protestant can say amen to each of those three things. But someone might say, no, no, no, no, when Irona says they received the gift of truth, that means they have a charism of infallibility. Now, I would say that's certainly not explicit. You could try to spin it out of it or infer it from it, but it's certainly not explicit. Receiving a gift

of truth and promulgating infallibly are not the same thing. But whenever there's a gray area, let's just make it crystal clear. There is another way to know for sure that that is not what Iranias means. And that is to read the entire quote. You'll notice there's an ellipsis in this quote that's skipping over about a page of text. If you go and read through those paragraphs, Ironaeus qualifies the necessity of obeying the presbyters by saying you only do it if they're godly and if they have apostolic doctrine. Okay. So first he says there are some who are believed by many to be presbyters, but they are ungodly. They follow their own lusts. They don't fear God and so forth. And then he says, from all such persons, therefore it behooves us to keep aloof, but to adhere to

those who, as I have already observed, do hold the doctrine of the apostles and who, together with the order of priesthood, that's the word presbyter, display sound speech and blameless conduct for the confirmation and correction of others. So it looks like Ironaeus is making a distinction between some who are believed to be presbyters but have ungodly behavior and others who are presbyters who of godly conduct and who are faithful to the teaching of the apostles, and he's basically teaching Christians to adhere to the latter, the godly presbyters, who have apostolic teaching, not the others. So that's very different from thinking that, oh, the church has a chasm of infallibility that's going to preserve them from error or something like that. On the contrary, it implies that you have

to measure what a presbyter might say by the apostolic deposit and by whether they have godly character from another spot in against heresies for the apostles were desirous that these men that's the presbyters the successors of the apostles should be very perfect and blameless in all things whom also they were leaving behind as their successors delivering up their own place of government to these men which men if they discharge their functions honestly would be a great boon to the church but if they should fall away the direst calamity so that doesn't sound like you can just assume the presbyters are going to teach infallibly or they're always going to teach the truth. He seems to assume that it's possible for the Presbyter's to fall away from the faith. So basically, I think I could just say the

upshot like this. I would just reiterate the depth of my conviction and my concern that the idea of post-apostolic ecclesial infallibility is simply unknown in the early church. The idea that the church can promulgate dogma in a way that is preserved from error is as unknown and unimagined to people like Clement, Ignatius, and Ironaeus, as was the bodily assumption of Mary itself. These early Christians were eager to preserve and maintain apostolic teaching. But there's a difference between preserving apostolic teaching and adding new things onto it. And the evidence is pretty overwhelming that Mary's assumption is adding a new thing onto it. And it's dismaying when people just kind of minimize that and give it a free pass. People like, yeah, okay, that's one of the

harder things to defend, but it's like, you know, we have to deal with that with full earnestness and seriousness. If a dogma is proclaimed infallibly, but if it's not true, that's a problem. And that's the kind of scenario that Ironaeus was envisioning there. So on the one hand, when you look at the early church, whether in Clement, Ironaeus, or Ignatius, or anyone else, to my awareness, you never see the idea that the church can infallibly promulgate dogma, like the assumption of Mary. You never see that. I'm not aware of any time. it ever happens. That's just not how the early church worked. Furthermore, you have contrary, countervailing testimonies that the church is fallible and that she is subordinate under scripture.

This is the essential backbone of the idea of Sola Scriptura. In my videos, I've talked about Augustine as a witness to this idea. Augustine doesn't use the language and he's in a different context, but the basic building blocks are there. He taught that scripture is superior to all post-apostolic productions in the church. And he includes plenary councils formed for the whole Christian world. He says they're often corrected by those that follow them, but the scripture is what we know is right and true. And I find the responses to this often seem like they're trying to get around what Augustine pretty plainly says. All right, let me deal with four objections here to finish. People say, I know people are going to say, well, what about Matthew 16 and Matthew 18? Simple

response. Those verses are talking about the apostles. This is why I put up in my tweet, post-apostolic ecclesial infallibility. You can't just assume that something given to the apostles is going to transfer to a completely different office. You'd need some reason to think that, either in the apostles saying so or in their successors saying so, but if neither says so, then you don't really have a good argument. You know, you can't just quote the verse and assume succession. The apostles are unique. In heaven there are 12 thrones for them to sit on to judge the 12 tribes of Israel. The New Jerusalem has 12 foundations on which their names are written. So you can't just assume that this very unique office is going to rumble on in a particular manifestation unless you have a good reason for that.

I've done another video on Matthew 16 if you want to chase that down a little bit further. Another objection is to look to other passages. Joshua made some comments about 1 Timothy 315, for example, the church is the pillar and bulwark of the truth, and also Ephesians 310, that God shows his wisdom to the angels through the church. But neither of those verses has anything to do with a particular teaching office or particular counsel within the church being able to promulgate infallible dogma. As Protestants, we totally agree that the church is the pillar and bulwark of the truth, and that God reveals his wisdom through the church.

Amen to that. What we reject is that that's referring to some specific entity within the church and that it has to do with infallibly promulgating dogma. I think basically people try to milk way too much out of these passages. And I'll do another video on 1st Timothy 315 sometimes specifically because I think people overuse, overutilize that verse very, very often. Okay, a third objection is people say, well, if you deny that the church has post-apostolic infallibility, then what are you saying that God just abandoned his church? But this is the fallacy of the excluded middle, where people make you choose between two extremes, as though the only options on the table are either A, the church has infallibility, per se, or B, the church is abandoned. But of course, those aren't the only two

options. Most Protestants hold to the indefectibility of the church, for example, historically. Basically, our position is pretty simple. You know, we believe the church is a lie. and well and protected and guided and preserved and watched over by the Holy Spirit. And every nanosecond of church history, she is alive. She never dies. Her offices are divinely instituted and established. There are authoritative standards within her to be employed like councils. There are expressions of authority within the church like excommunication, but the church is

fallible. That's it. So she's not dead and she's not abandoned. She's just capable of error. So she has to measure herself by the superior standard of God's inspired work. I think that's a pretty reasonable position. Fourth objection is that people say, well, Sola Scriptura wasn't in the early church either. And my response to that, because we're saying occlusial post-apostolic ecclesial infallibility is an accretion, they're saying, oh, well, Soliscriptura is an accretion too.

Well, my response to that is pretty simple. I would just say, yes, it is in the early church. First of all, it's inherent within the New Testament itself in the scripture's claims about itself. Scripture claims to be the inspired word of God. So it is of unique authority. All solo scriptura is is the application of that claim to a very specific question, namely, how does the rule of the church work with respect to infallibility? So the idea is derived from scripture's claims about itself. It's not fully laid out, and it doesn't need to be. But the idea in the early church, it absolutely is present. And if you'd like to really give a Protestant view, a good shake, and really

give a consideration, read this book by William Whittaker, written back in 1588, I think, and basically page 4, page 670 to 704. He gives 20 examples of church fathers. He starts with Ironaeus, he talks about Augustine, who basically, they don't use the word soloscriptura, and it's not always fleshed out with every nuance and he recognizes, yeah, they're in a different context. But the basic idea that the inspired word of God is of superior authority to any sort of ongoing capacities within the church, whether an office, a council, anything like that. These things are subordinate under scripture. We measure ourselves by scripture, et cetera, et cetera. That basic idea is resonant in the thought of early Christians and some medieval Christians as well. And I've talked

about that elsewhere. So you could read that as one testimony. And if you want a full case, you can see some of my other videos, like Augustine. But basically, to sum it up like this, I would say the idea of Sola Scriptura does have a good foundation in the scripture and in the early church, whereas the idea of post-apostolic ecclesial infallibility, I got to say this strongly, and I'm not trying to offend anybody or make anybody angry, but I got to say it strongly because of the level of triumphalism that comes against us. If you're one of the more gentle critics, let this one slide by you, okay? This is only for the people who are very triumphalist. There is simply no foundation whatsoever for post-apostolic ecclesial infallibility.

It is hanging on the mid-air off the ground. It is not present in the founding of our religion. Jesus and the apostles who taught abundantly about the offices and nature of the church, Ephesians 4, 1 Corinthians 1228 and following the pastoral epistles, Hebrews, etc. Not once. Is there any hint of this idea that there's going to be offices or capacity in the post-apostolic church that are infallible. That's simply not present early on in the apostles or in the early church.

So there's just no reason to believe that. It has no foundation. And so when you have a claim like the bodily assumption of Mary impressed upon us on the grounds that that does exist, what can we do but protests? Now, if you're wondering when it does come in, that's a complicated question. Where does infallibility start evolving? I do have a video on papal infallibility specifically where I try to trace out some of that development.

You can see that on YouTube if you want to. I won't put it in the video description, but you can hunt it down. It's not hard to find. But so that's on that. I haven't addressed other aspects like councils. Maybe I'll try to get to those one day. To sum it up, as Protestants, we are not trying to reject the church. We're not trying to be unruly or unsubmissive to the church.

Far from it. We want to submit to the church. We want to submit to Christ. We want to submit to the apostles. Our desire is to be faithful to what Christianity is. Our desire is to be faithful to what the apostles taught over and against that which is later accretion that doesn't have a foundation in what the apostles taught. That is what we are trying to do.

We are trying to be faithful to Christ. We want to place our trust in that which is of divine constitution, not in later human accretion. And in saying that, we're not saying that the church. died when those accretions are going on, but the church can make errors and errors come in. So that's the heart posture and desire of a Protestant position. So I hope this video will clarify that and commend that for others to consider. Thanks for watching everybody. Let me know what you think in the comments. If there's other church fathers or other topics on this, you want me to address, let me know. All right, God bless everybody.