Papal Infallibility - Theological History

Theological History

Klaus Schatz asserts that "it is impossible to fix a single author or era as the starting point" for the doctrine of papal infallibility. Others such as Brian Tierney have argued that the doctrine of papal infallibility was first proposed by Peter Olivi in the Middle Ages. Schatz and others see the roots of the doctrine as going much further back to the early days of Christianity.

Brian Tierney argued that the Franciscan priest Peter Olivi was the first person to attribute infallibility to the pope. His idea was accepted by August Bernhard Hasler, and by Gregory Lee Jackson, It was rejected by James Heft, and by John V. Kruse. Klaus Schatz says Olivi by no means played the key role assigned to him by Tierney, who failed to acknowledge the work of earlier canonists and theologians, and that the crucial advance in the teaching came only in the 15th century, two centuries after Olivi; and he declares that "it is impossible to fix a single author or era as the starting point". Ulrich Horst criticized the Tierney view for the same reasons. In his Protestant evaluation of the ecumenical issue of papal infallibility, Mark E. Powell rejects Tierney's theory about 13th-century Olivi, saying that the doctrine of papal infallibility defined at Vatican I had its origins in the 14th century—he refers in particular to Bishop Guido Terreni—and was itself part of a long development of papal claims.

Schatz points to "the special esteem given to the Roman church community (that) was always associated with fidelity in the faith and preservation of the paradosis (the faith as handed down)". Schatz differentiates between the later doctrine of "infallibility of the papal magisterium" and the Hormisdas formula in 519 which asserted that "the Roman church has never erred (and will never err)". He emphasizes that Hormisdas formula was not meant to apply so much to "individual dogmatic definitions but to the whole of the faith as handed down and the tradition of Peter preserved intact by the Roman Church". Specifically, Schatz argues that the Hormisdas formula does not exclude the possibility of individual popes become heretics because the formula refers "primarily to the Roman tradition as such and not exclusively to the person of the pope".