Can the church err?

Hezekiel

Hi,

In Col 1:18,the bible states;

"And he (Christ) is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence."

This verse is saying the church is the body of Christ. If that is so, then the church is infalliable,since Christ can not err.

For example in John 16 :13, Jesus says at the last supper:

However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.

I understand this verse to mean the church is taught and guided by the Holy Spirit and therefore the church can not err ,be deceived or deliberatly choose untruth.

So my question is ;what do we mean when we say that some of the teachings of the RCC church or other Orthodox churchs that are not in full communion with us are not right? If we claim , for example, the RCC is erring, then we are virtually saying,that the RCC is not being guided by the Holy Spirit of truth and therefore is not the body of Christ or that a saint of the league of St Augustine and others who originated some of the teachings were not devinely inspired? This is to say the RCC has ceased to be the body of Christ and is no longer a church.  Any ideas?

peterfarrington

The Church is made up of humans, and humans are often not living and acting in the grace of the Holy Spirit, therefore humans err.

Yet despite the failures of humans the Church continues. Infallibility only belongs to the Holy Spirit, and the promise that the Church will not fail is to be understood as God's promise, not as a characteristic of any human, or group of humans. Bishops have often gathered together and erred. Many in the Coptic Church in the past have erred and adopted Arianism or Julianism. But the Holy Spirit preserves the Church and keeps a remnant out of every fall into error as the seed for the renewal of the Church.

The Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches are not the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church in the same way that our Orthodox Church is. They have been and/or still are, defective in a variety of matters. The Orthodox Church has always wanted to exclude error from the teaching of the Church, but it has not wanted to be so absolute about where the grace of God is. Therefore, even though the teaching of the Eastern Orthodox about Christ was uttrely rejected as heresy, nevertheless those wishing to join themselves to our Orthodox Church from the Bzyantines were always received only by a confession of faith and the rejection of error. They were always considered to be already members of the Church.

I am not going to go on for ages, but I will suggest a few things:

i. That infallibility belongs only to the Holy Spirit and not to any group of people.

ii. The Church WILL always be preserved but many people have done, and will in the future, fall into error, sometimes be restored and sometimes not. But ther remnant of the Church is always preserved.

iii. The true Church separates itself from error, but continues to believe that there is something of the Church in those groups which are separated from her, until they have moved so far from the truth that there is nothing left. This is why even the baptism of many heretical groups was accepted as a sacrament.

iv. The Roman Catholic and the Byzantine Churches are more closely connected to our Orthodox Church, and historically their sacraments were accepted as being Christian. This is still the case with the Byzantines. But it is possible for error to be mixed with truth, and in both these other groups there is a degree of error either presently or historically.

Father Peter

John_S2000

Thank you Father Peter.
As usual this is an excellent, clear and to the point reply.

Plus I like your good usage of the word 'remnant'.

GBU

Hezekiel

Fr Peter,thanks for the clear explanation. But I still wonder what happened to the remnants of truth in the ROC? Is the ROC deliberately falling into error or has the Holy Spirit ceased to work in their church? 

Let me explain:

I heard many bishops and priest , for instance, referring to the apparition of St Mary in Lourdes, France in their sermons, that is, when they speak about St Mary's miraculous apparitions throughout the world.

Although there is no offical COC declaration that the Lourdes apparition was true, it appears to me that many church clergy generally accept it as authentic.But I am not sure how much of the whole story qualifies as truth to them. For example, it is said the Catholic diocese in Lourdes  began accepting the visions of St Bernadette  as authentic only when she claimed that St Mary revealed herself as the ‘immaculate conception’.

This dogma is rejected outright by the Orthodox churchs, for it contradicts scriptures.Yet,most aspects of the apparitions are deemed to be true, but not how St Mary revealed herself. The explanation that I heard was that the Orthodox think, while the apparition may possibly have been true ,the title that St Mary told the visionary girl about being "the immaculate conception" were not true. The argument goes,either the poor peasant girl who had no clue about such theological terms lied or the church misconstrued her words to fit its new dogama. Let me assume that this argument is valid: Why would the ROC deliberately mislead its own church by spreading lies about its faith or why would the Pope who few years prior to the apparition declared the dogma of the immaculate conception wilfully insist  or make the bold claim that the Blessed Virgin did indeed appear as the "immaculate conception", the only advantage being, perhaps not to dent the image of his infalliablity? I am just wondering, if the ROC or other churchs that have similar sacraments to ours would advertently spread lies that is not in God's will? I hope you can elaborate more on this one.

peterfarrington

These are good questions.

I think that my view would be that Lourdes was not a true apparition of the Virgin Mary, and nor were the other Catholic Marian apparitions.

I do think that the Church has a human component, and that it is possible for a group of people to so change their beliefs that the cease to be the fulness of the Church, and in some sense (I am writing shorthand) the Holy Spirit begins to work externally to bring them back to faith rather than internally to preserve them in the faith.

I think that the Byzantine communion, in so far as it accepted a form of Nestorianism, did drift away, while our Fathers bore with persecution and martyrdom. But I also believe that it came back to a more or less Orthodox point of view by the working of the Holy Spirit even if I have questions about some aspects of Byzantine belief. It seems to me to have become Orthodox enough where I think that the Catholic Church is not yet Orthodox enough and in the 19th century even moved further away from Orthodoxy. But in modern times there are signs that some Catholics are moving closer again, and this is to be encouraged as a work of the Holy Spirit.

In our own communities there are pressures to fall away from Orthodoxy, and we have to resist these. The influence of Protestantism for instance, and the introduction of Roman Catholic ideas and terminology. It is not so much that these immediately make a difference, but if followed far enough then we find ourselves having lost something, and being on the outside trying to get back.

I think that people have often had visions, without being blamed for them. And that in the case of Lourdes who knows what suggestions were made to the girl. I am sure that she thought that the apparition used the words Immaculate Conception. But this is error, and if the vision used those words it was not of St Mary, and if the Catholic Church established this teaching as dogma then it was in error. I would not want to say it lied, but I would want to say that it was deceived. Yet it is still in some sense A Church and even related in some way to THE Church. Which way will it go? As the Holy Spirit seeks to win the community back for Orthodoxy, will it move further away, like Anglicanism, or closer are closer to the Truth we have preserved.

Personally, I do not think it is a matter of advertent deceit, but inadvertent deception. There is still a very great deal within Roman Catholicism which we can recognise as belonging to the Orthodox Church. There is still hope for reconciliation where I think this is now impossible for the Church of England, at least in its present state. But it requires a response within the Catholic Church to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.

I do not believe that the various Catholic apparitions of St Mary are true because they seem to confirm the Catholic Church in a path away from Orthodoxy. I would not mention them in my own sermons where I would mention Zeitoun.

Father Peter

pets10

Fr. Peter can you be my friend ? :) ~pete~