Infallibility of the Church
[citation needed] Lutherans recognize the first four councils,[6] whereas most High Church Anglicans accept all seven as persuasive but not infallible.
[7] Catholicism teaches that Jesus Christ, "the Word made Flesh" (John 1:14), is the source of divine revelation and, as the Truth, he is infallible.
[8] The Second Vatican Council states, "For this reason Jesus perfected revelation by fulfilling it through His whole work of making Himself present and manifesting Himself: through His words and deeds, His signs and wonders, but especially through His death and glorious resurrection from the dead and final sending of the Spirit of truth."
The Supreme Pontiff, while not wishing to proceed to a dogmatic definition, intended to reaffirm that this doctrine is to be held definitively, since, founded on the written Word of God, constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.
As the prior example illustrates, this does not foreclose the possibility that, in the future, the consciousness of the Church might progress to the point where this teaching could be defined as a doctrine to be believed as divinely revealed.
[13] Of the ordinary magisterium, the Second Vatican Council said: "Bishops, teaching in communion with the Roman Pontiff, are to be respected by all as witnesses to divine and Catholic truth.
By this revelation then, the deepest truth about God and the salvation of man shines out for our sake in Christ, who is both the mediator and the fullness of all revelation.Methodists and Anglicans teach the doctrine of prima scriptura, which suggests that Scripture is the primary source for Christian doctrine, but that "tradition, experience, and reason" can nurture the Christian religion as long as they are in harmony with the Bible.
[19][20] Yves Congar, who thought Catholics could acknowledge a substantial element of truth in the Lutheran and Reformed doctrine sola scriptura, wrote that "we can admit sola scriptura in the sense of a material sufficiency of canonical Scripture.
A study by Bernard Hoose states that claims to a continuous teaching by the Church on matters of sexuality, life and death, and crime and punishment are "simply not true."
