IN RELATION TO THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE INVISIBLE
§ 153. As in every branch of the Visible Church error is possible, and therefore also in some respects actual, so also there is never lacking in any the corrective power of truth.
- Every error, in so far as it is an act of thought completed with knowledge and will yet not in agreement with the object thought of, is sinful in character, and hence must be in general overcome or prevented by the increasing action of the Holy Spirit, not directly, but by the Spirit’s counteracting its sinful cause. Yet here we speak solely of truth and error in the religious sphere. What was said above1 regarding the absolute purity of impulse must be applied here; yet error is possible everywhere, alike in the formation of religious ideas and in the religious formation of purposes, and possible on every point. If a sensuous movement of feeling should pervert a purpose unconsciously, it is possible that the will, as it bears on religious ideas, may be perverted at the same time, and error must then enter into every part of the execution of the purpose. And so long as the view we take of our relations within the Church may be corrupted in this fashion, no purpose can be formed wholly without error, so that no real element of life in its fulness has its being in pure truth. In every act of the religious consciousness truth is more or less infected with error. The formulæ just used reflect the whole circle and compass of error as it mingles with the action of the Spirit of truth, and at every point each individual will find the source of falsification in himself; his own consciousness will not suffer him to doubt that error is everywhere real, although in particular cases it may be reduced to scarcely perceptible dimensions.
It is equally certain, however, that even if in this or that quarter of the Church error has accumulated in mass, yet we cannot suppose that any part of the Church, organized as a separate whole, could be wholly devoid of the action of the Spirit of truth. Where acknowledgment of Christ forms the basis of common life, a foundation is thereby laid for all worship of God in spirit and in truth, even if corruption of such worship should be the most conspicuous feature of the body in question. This follows from the simple fact that in no branch of the visible Church (even though the sacraments were absent or had to be regarded as absent in consequence of the abnormal style of their administration) is there lacking the recognition of Scripture or the Ministry of the Word of God. Hence in every communion there are at least some who rise superior.to prevailing errors, and in whom the germs are to be found of a more precise development of truth.
- Our statement, however, assumes the presence of error everywhere, if only in a minute degree, and thus appears to contradict what we formerly asserted about Scripture.2 For if even Scripture be so exposed to the possibility of error as in some degree to contain it, it cannot be the norm of all religious thinking; for its normative authority, thus communicated to error, could only spread and confirm it. In that case truth would have to find within the Church some other firm seat, so as to bring its corrective forces to bear on the errors contained in Scripture itself. But at the moment we have to do not with Scripture as it lies before us now, but with its origin; and in perfect consistency with what has just been said we can easily make the admission that even in the religious thinking of the Apostles the general possibility of error became a reality here and there without affecting Scripture, for Scripture precisely as a collection of all that was freest of error was brought together under the Spirit’s guidance. Nay, Scripture itself testifies3 to the fact that human error occurred as a passing phenomenon even in the thought of the Apostles, and allows us to surmise from this how perhaps still oftener the first movements of error may have been suppressed before their influence could make itself felt. Hence in the second place (in order not to sever its natural connexion with the rest of things) we may well admit as regards Scripture that among the many peripheral ideas which prevailed at the time yet were not ultimately given a place in the Bible, but none the less belonged to the thought-processes of the sacred writers, slight traces of human error might have been found. This does not in any way detract from the normative authority of Scripture, or from the influence of the Holy Spirit in its composition.