The medieval theologians and canonists never taught that the popes were infallible. In fact, just the opposite. It was universally believed that popes could err. It was not until the fourteenth century that one begins to see a reinterpretation of the primary texts of Matthew 16, Luke 22 and John 21 to reflect a theory of papal infallibility.
Brian Tierney makes the interesting observation that Vatican I mentions the formula of Hormisdas — that in the Roman Church or the Apostolic See, the faith has always been kept undefiled — as proof of papal infallibility. However, as he points out, the Church for centuries did not interpret this statement as meaning a personal infallibility in the bishop of Rome but that the Church of Rome as a whole had always maintained the true faith, even though individual popes had erred. This is clear from the fact that the same ecumenical council of 680 A.D. — the sixth ecumenical council — which approved this statement, also condemned a pope as a heretic for teaching heresy.
Thus, as with the interpretation of Matthew 16, we find the Roman Catholic Church interpreting Scripture completely contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers and the overall church throughout the centuries. Vatican I teaches that this was the view of the Church from the very beginning. If so we would find this view expressed in the patristic interpretation of Matthew 16, Luke 22 and John 21. And yet we do not find such a view. Prior to the fourteenth century there is lot one word from a Father, doctor, theologian or canonist in the interpretation of these foundational passages of Scripture, which supports the teaching of papal infallibility.
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Notes
1. For the decrees of Vatican I and II on Papal Primacy and Infallibility see Appendix 4.
2. In addition to the primary word luo, there are a number of derivatives which show that the word ‘loose’ when dealing with the kingdom of God refers primarily to release from bondage to sin and Satan.
Apoluo, which means to release; to set free; to send away; to loose from; to dismiss; to forgive.
Lutron means a ransom or the price for redeeming. So that it refers to a loosing that can take place, a setting at liberty that can be effected, where a ransom has been paid. The significance of this can be seen immediately in the fact that the Greek word for redemption in the New Testament is the word apolutrosis. This is a form of the word lutron which goes back to the word luo or loose as its primary root.
Apolutrosis means ‘a releasing effected by payment of a ransom; redemption, deliverance, liberation procured by the payment of a ransom’. Joseph Henry Thayer, The New Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Lafayette: APQA, 1979). This word is used in the New Testament to describe deliverance from Satan and forgiveness of sin based on the atoning work of Christ in shedding his blood and giving his life as a payment for sin. Note this relationship in Colossians 1:13-14; Ephesians 1:7; Romans 3:24-25.
3. James White, Pros Apologian, Papal Pretensions (Phoenix: Alpha and Omega Ministries, 1991), pp. 2-3.
4. There is, of course, no evidence that any church of the New Testament era was ruled by a single presbuteros (elder/bishop).
5. Richard P. McBrien, Catholicism, vol. II (Minneapolis: Winston, 1980), pp. 831-32.
6. For comments by the Fathers on the interpretations of the Rock of Matthew 16:18 see Appendix 5.
7. ‘Of all the Fathers who interpret these passages in the Gospels (Matt. 16.18, John 21.17), not a single one applies them to the Roman bishops as Peter’s successors. How many Fathers have busied themselves with these texts, yet not one of them whose commentaries we possess — Origen, Chrysostom, Hilary, Augustine, Cyril, Theodoret, and those whose interpretations are collected in catenas — has dropped the faintest hint that the primacy of Rome is the consequence of the commission and promise to Peter!’ Janus (Johann Joseph Ignaz von Dollinger), The Pope and the Council (Boston: Roberts, 1869), p. 74.
8. Philip Schaff, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. VI, Saint Augustin, Sermons on New Testament Lessons, Sermon 26.1-2 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956), p. 340.
9. ‘On thee,’ He says, ‘I will build My Church’; and ‘I will give to thee the keys’, not to the Church; and ‘Whatsoever thou shalt have loosed or bound’, not ‘what they shall have loosed or bound’. For so withal the result teaches. In [Peter] himself the Church was reared; that is through [Peter] himself; [Peter] himself essayed the key; you see what [key]: ‘Men of Israel, let what I say sink into your ears: Jesus the Nazarene, a man destined by God for you,’ and so forth. [Peter] himself, therefore, was the first to unbar, in Christ’s baptism, the entrance to the heavenly kingdom, in which (kingdom) are ‘loosed’ the sins that were beforetime ‘bound’ . . . Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. IV, Tertullian, On Modesty, ch. 21 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1951), p. 99.
10. A Library of the Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church, Treatise V, On the Unity of the Church, ch. 3 (Oxford: Parker, 1842), p. 134.
11. Michael Winter, St. Peter and the Popes (Westport: Greenwood, 1960), pp. 47-48.
12. A Library of the Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church, The Epistles of S. Cyprian, Epistle 43.4 (Oxford: Parker, 1844), p. 96.
13. Robert Eno, The Rise of the Papacy (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1990), p. 58.
14. W. A. Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, vol. II, St. Ambrose, On the Twelve Psalms, Number 1261 (Collegeville: Liturgical, 1979), p. 150.
15. ‘He, then, who before was silent, to teach us that we ought not to repeat the words of the impious, this one, I say, when he heard, “But who do you say I am?” immediately, not unmindful of his station, exercised his primacy, that is the primacy of his confession, not of honour; the primacy of belief, not of rank. This, then, is Peter who has replied for the rest of the Apostles; rather before the rest of men. And so he is called the foundation, because he knows how to preserve not only his own but the common foundation . . . . Faith, then, is the foundation of the Church, for it was not said of Peter’s flesh, but of his faith, that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”. But his confession of faith conquered hell. And this confession did not shut out one heresy, for, since the Church