Thursday, April 4, 2024

E. Sylvester Berry (RC) on Augustine's Attitude Towards the Authority of Ecumenical Councils

  

OBJECTION II.-St. Augustine expressly declares that ecumenical councils are fallible, for he says: “Councils which are held in the several districts and provinces must yield, beyond all possibility of doubt, to the authority of plenary councils, which are formed for the whole Chrisitan world; and even of the plenary councils, the earlier are often corrected by those who follow them.” (“De Baptismo,” ii. 3; P.L. 43, 128) Councils thus subject to correction cannot be infallible.

 

ANSWER.—When St. Augustine wrote these words, only two ecumenical councils had been held,--one at Nicaea in 325, and one at Constantinople in 381. Consequently, he was not referring to ecumenical councils when he said that “the earlier are often corrected by those which follow them.” Plenary councils are evidently those which represent more than one province or district of the Church, but not the whole Chrisitan world in the literal sense. But even granting that ecumenical councils are meant, there is nothing to indicate that St. Augustine denied them infallibility. He says: “The earlier are often corrected by those which follow them, when, by some actual experiment, things are brought to light which were before concealed, and that is known which previously lay hid.” A doctrine defined by one council in its more general aspects may be taken up by another council and defined more in detail, because further study or controversy has made such action necessary or advisable. The doctrine of transubstantiation, for instance, was defined by the Fourth Lateran Council, but was afterward defined in more definite terms by the Council of Trent, because controversies on this subject in the sixteen century made such action necessary. The words of St. Augustine naturally suggest just this sort of correction. (E. Sylvester Berry, The Church of Christ: An Apologetic and Dogmatic Treatise [Frederick County, Md.: Mount Saint Mary's Seminary, 1955; repr., Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and Stock, 2009], 264-65)

 

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