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Newman & Early Church Papal Infallibility & Supremacy

Newman & Early Church Papal Infallibility & Supremacy

Last updated on: June 13, 2026 at 1:04 pm by Dave Armstrong

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Newman & Early Church Papal Infallibility & Supremacy 2026-06-13T13:04:16-04:00 Dave Armstrong

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Reply to Jordan Cooper’s Miscomprehensions of St. Cardinal Newman’s Views on the Development of the Papacy & the 1870 Dogma

Photo credit: cover of my book (2012), designed by Caroline McKinney.

Rev. Dr. Jordan B. Cooper is a Lutheran pastor, adjunct professor of Systematic Theology, Executive Director of the popular Just & Sinner YouTube channel, and the President of the American Lutheran Theological Seminary (which holds to a doctrinally traditional Lutheranism, similar to the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod). He has authored several books, as well as theological articles in a variety of publications. All my Bible citations are from RSV, unless otherwise indicated. Jordan’s words will be in blue.

This is my 19th reply to Jordan (many more to come, because I want to interact with the best, most informed Protestant opponents). All of these respectful critiques can be found in the “Replies to Jordan Cooper” section at the top of my Lutheranism web page. Thus far, he hasn’t responded to any of my critiques, for reasons that he explained on my Facebook page on 17 April 2024:

I appreciate your thoughtful engagement with my material. I also appreciate not being called “anti-Catholic,” as I am not. Unfortunately, it is just a matter of time that I am unable to interact with the many lengthy pieces you have put together. With teaching, writing, running a publishing house, podcasting, working at a seminary, and doing campus ministry, I have to prioritize, which often means not doing things that would be very much worthwhile simply for lack of time.

In an article sent to his readers on 1-2-25 regarding social media (I receive this, too), a further relevant explanation was made:

As you may have noticed with my writing, podcasting, and YouTube content, I don’t tend to address controversies. Further, those occasional times that I do, I merely use that controversy as a springboard to talk about something more universal. This has all been purposeful, . . . The mystical union will matter to Christians a century from now. Whatever current controversy Doug Wilson is involved in will not.

I appreciate the explanations and the expressed principled resolve as to the stewardship of time, but I continue to think we could have some good and constructive — and civil – discussions. In the meantime, I will continue to try to write what Jordan himself regards as “thoughtful” and “worthwhile” responses because the issues we disagree on within the Body of Christ still remain, and I’m committed to both defending the Catholic view as long as I continue to adhere to it (no end in sight!) and seeking and following truth as best I can, by God’s grace. But in the final analysis I think interaction and serious dialogue and interaction with serious critiques of our views are crucial and indispensable and not things to be regarded as a low priority or even unnecessary altogether. Both Jesus and Paul vigorously argued and defended their viewpoints and they are our models.

*****

This is a reply to the first third of Jordan’s video, “John Henry Newman on Papal Infallibility” (12-28-24). My last response to him was on a closely related topic: “Papal Infallibility: Reply to Lutheran Jordan Cooper (Including Documentation of Popes’ Massive Consultation with Bishops and Others Before Declaring Dogmas, and Particulars of the Voting at Vatican I)” [8-7-24]. Part II of this reply continues my analysis. St. John Henry Cardinal Newman’s words will be in green.

1:56 we are going to look at what is sometimes termed [a] more moderate form of papal infallibility from John Henry Newman

I would simply call it “orthodox Catholicism” or what was actually decreed by Vatican I. If Jordan considers that to be “moderate” then he thinks the dogma is “moderate” because Cardinal Newman had believed in it for many years before it was made, as I have documented in several of my articles, going back at least 19 years, and in my book, The Quotable Newman: A Definitive Guide to His Central Thoughts and Ideas (Catholic Answers, 2012).

9:32 Newman is very well read in history. He’s very well read in the church fathers and he’s very well read in the medieval sources

Indeed he was.

11:05 though he is clearly sympathetic to Rome in a lot of ways from pretty early on, he does refer to the pope as the Antichrist and things like that

. . . which he later retracted, of course. But this proves that he was very much a zealous “classical” Protestant, as both Luther and Calvin used the same sort of derogatory language.

11:54 he has this he has this letter to Bishop Ullathorne which is written just prior to the Vatican Council. He talks about some of his kind of concerns or fears or worries about the dogma of papal infallibility and he is really so concerned with trying to get Protestants into Rome, and because of that he feels like Vatican I — if it declares this as dogma is really going to put up this really significant barrier to to to Protestants coming into Rome

Cardinal Newman was what is called an “inopportunist.” Thought he personally believed in papal infallibility, and essentially in the particular viewpoint of it that became dogma in 1870 at Vatican I, as I have documented in three articles (one / two / three), he thought it wasn’t yet time to define it as dogma, at the highest level of magisterial authority.

His stance is exactly analogous to my own regarding the question of Mary as Mediatrix: a doctrine I believe in and have vigorously defended many times, but one which I think shouldn’t be defined as a dogma at the highest levels in the near future. But if it is defined, I will wholeheartedly accept it, since I hold to the doctrine itself, just as Newman accepted the decree of Vatican I when it defined a doctrine that he had already held for many years.

Secondly, Newman’s primary concern was with the extreme ultramontane (that is, ecclesiastically “far right”) advocates like Manning and Ward, whose view went far beyond what the Council at length decreed. He feared that this view might predominate in the Council. But, as the Holy Spirit would have it, it did not.

It’s true Newman did express some concern to Bishop Ullathorne in a letter to him dated 28 January 1870, but it was not in the sense of disagreeing with the doctrine per se. Hence he wrote,

“I cannot help suffering with the various souls which are suffering, and I look with anxiety at the prospect of having to defend decisions, which may not be difficult to my private judgment . . .”

When he first saw the decree (Letter to Ambrose Phillipps de Lisle, 24 July 1870), he wrote that he was “pleased at its moderation” and that

“I have no difficulty in admitting it.”

Three days later he wrote in a letter:

For myself, ever since I was a Catholic, I have held the Pope’s infallibility as a matter of theological opinion; at least, I see nothing in the Definition which necessarily contradicts Scripture, Tradition, or History; . . .

And I confess, the fact that all along for so many centuries the Head of the Church and Teacher of the faithful and Vicar of Christ has been allowed by God to assert virtually his own infallibility, is a great argument in favour of the validity of his claim. (A Letter Addressed to the Duke of Norfolk on Occasion of Mr. Gladstone’s Recent Expostulation [Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching] – online; Chapter 8: “The Vatican Council”, [book and chapter both linked to the left], Volume 2, 1874; reprinted by Longmans, Green, and Co., London, 1900, 299, 301-305, 308-315, 339-340; see also Chapter 9, “The Vatican Definition,” for an excellent discussion of many epistemological and ecclesiological aspects of infallibility)

The remarkable thing is that Cardinal Newman believed in papal infallibility as early as June 1839 (!), as he reported in 1843, while still an Anglican:

In June and July 1839, near four years ago, I read the Monophysite Controversy, and it made a deep impression on me, which I was not able to shake off, that the Pope had a certain gift of infallibility, and that communion with the See of Rome was the divinely intended means of grace and illumination. . . . Since that, all history, particularly that of Arianism, has appeared to me in a new light; confirmatory of the same doctrine. (Correspondence of John Henry Newman with John Keble and Others, 1839-45 [edited at the Birmingham Oratory, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1917], 219; Letter to John Keble, 4 May 1843)

We have much similar documentation of his views prior to 1870:

Popes, . . . are infallible in their office, as Prophets and Vicars of the Most High, . . . (Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England [1851; London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908], Lecture 8; cf. Note 1)

As to the Infallibility of the Pope, I see nothing against it, or to dread in it, . . . (cited in Wilfrid Ward, The Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman [vol. 2 of two volumes: London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1912], 101; Letter to Edward B. Pusey, 17 November 1865)

Applying this principle to the Pope’s Infallibility, . . . I think there is a good deal of evidence, on the very surface of history and the Fathers in its favour. On the whole then I hold it; . . . (in Ward, ibid., 220-221; Letter to Edward B. Pusey, 23 March 1867)

I hold the Pope’s Infallibility, not as a dogma, but as a theological opinion; that is, not as a certainty, but as a probability. . . . To my mind the balance of probabilities is still in favour of it. There are vast difficulties, taking facts as they are, in the way of denying it. . . . (in Ward, ibid., 236; Letter to Peter le Page Renouf, 21 June 1868)

I agree with you that the wording of the Dogma has nothing very difficult in it. It expresses what, as an opinion, I have ever held myself with a host of other Catholics. (in Ward, ibid., 310-311; Letter to O’Neill Daunt, 7 August 1870)

As I have ever believed as much as the definition says, I have a difficulty in putting myself into the position of mind of those who have not. (in Ward, ibid., 308-309; Letter to Mrs. William Froude, 8 August 1870)

***

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12:28 prior to this the idea of papal infallibility [it] was often — by Roman Catholic apologists — . . . spoken of as this Protestant invention; this total caricature of what Roman Catholics believed, and so it was often viewed as this really extreme idea that Protestants just kind of — I don’t know — make up in order to make Rome look bad or something

That wasn’t Newman’s view, as I just proved. I can’t respond to whoever held such views unless Jordan identifies them. As I documented in my first book, A Biblical Defense of Catholicism (completed in May 1996), on pages 212-213, St. Francis de Sales wrote something remarkably similar to the definition, 275 years earlier, in 1596:

When he teaches the whole Church as shepherd, in general matters of faith and morals, then there is nothing but doctrine and truth. And in fact everything a king says is not a law or an edict, but that only which a king says as king and as a legislator. So everything the Pope says is not canon law or of legal obligation; he must mean to define and to lay down the law for the sheep, and he must keep the due order and form.

We must not think that in everything and everywhere his judgment is infallible, but then only when he gives judgment on a matter of faith in questions necessary to the whole Church; for in particular cases which depend on human fact he can err, there is no doubt, though it is not for us to control him in these cases save with all reverence, submission, and discretion. Theologians have said, in a word, that he can err in questions of fact, not in questions of right; that he can err extra cathedram, outside the chair of Peter. that is, as a private individual, by writings and bad example.

But he cannot err when he is in cathedra, that is, when he intends to make an instruction and decree for the guidance of the whole Church, when he means to confirm his brethren as supreme pastor, and to conduct them into the pastures of the faith. For then it is not so much man who determines, resolves, and defines as it is the Blessed Holy Spirit by man, which Spirit, according to the promise made by Our Lord to the Apostles, teaches all truth to the Church. (The Catholic Controversy, translated by Henry B. Mackey, Rockford, Illinois: TAN Books, 1989, 306-307)

In other words, this was nothing new, even in the form that Vatican I codified in 1870.

12:50 something kind of like you know if I were to just grab on to the most extreme forms of Marian devotion: those who talk about Mary is kind of a co- mediatrix and co-redemptrix

In other words, views that I hold myself and that are already long established as Catholic beliefs. What Jordan classifies as “most extreme forms of Marian devotion” are in fact, considered “probable” and “pious opinions in agreement with the consciousness of the faith of the Church” (see Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 1952; revised edition by Dr. Robert Fastiggi — a good friend of mine, who has been in my house many times — Baronius Press, 2018, pp. 11, 229). But I don’t expect most Protestants to understand fine points of Catholic Marian teaching.

13:02 and say “look how wild Rome is with their Marian claims”, you know the response is always going to be, “well, that’s not the teaching of Rome, that’s just these extreme people and that was kind of the response of the Roman apologists of this time to those who taught people infallibility,

Again, who are these people Jordan refers to? They sound like theological liberals to me: the types that might follow the excommunicated Joseph Dollinger, who denied the defined doctrine and formed — as a good Protestant would — another sect (called the Old Catholic Church, major portions of which now ordain women as priests and conduct same-sex “marriages”). The belief in Mary as Mediatrix has a long and respectable pedigree.

St. Ephraem of Syria (c. 306-373) taught that Mary is the only virgin chosen to be the instrument of our salvation [Sermo III] and called her the “dispensatrix of all goods” (in William Most, Mary in Our Life, Garden City, New York: Doubleday Image, 1954, p. 48). The expression Mediatrix or Mediatress was found in two 5th-century eastern writers, Basil of Seleucia (In SS. Deiparae Annuntiationem, PG 85, 444AB) and Antipater of Bostra (In S. Joannem Bapt., PG 85 1772C). St. John of Damascus (c. 675-c. 749) spoke of Mary fulfilling the “office of Mediatrix.” (Hom. S. Mariæ in Zonam, PG 98, 377). St. Bernard of Clairvaux (c. 1090-1153) stated that “God wished us to have nothing that would not pass through the hands of Mary” (Sermon on the Vigil of Christmas; PL 183, 100).

Vatican II, Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, §62), acknowledges this legitimate strain of Marian theology in stating, “the Blessed Virgin is invoked in the Church under the titles of Advocate, Helper, Benefactress, and Mediatrix. This, however, is so understood that it neither takes away anything from nor adds anything to the dignity and efficacy of Christ the one Mediator”. Are people like St. Bernard and councils like Vatican II also to be tarred with the charge of advocating “the most extreme forms of Marian devotion”?

This overall teaching is even more explicitly laid out in the encyclicals of several popes, thus is far from being “novel”:

Benedict XIV (Gloriosae Dominae, between 1740-1758),

Pius IX (Ineffabilis Deus, 1854),

Leo XIII (Iucunda semper, 1894 / Adiutricem populi, 1895),

St. Pius X (Ad diem illum, 1904),

Pius XI (Explorata res, 1923 / Miserentissimus Redemptor, 1928),

Ven. Pius XII (Mystici Corporis, 1943 / Munificentissimus Deus, 1950 / Ad Caeli Reginam, 1954),

St. Paul VI (Signum magnum, 1967 / Marialis Cultus, 1974),

St. John Paul II (Redemptor Hominis, 1979 / Salvifici Doloris, 1984 / Redemptoris Mater, 1987 / Veritatis Splendor, 1993).

It’s also reiterated in the 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church (#410-411, 488, 494, 502, 511, 529, 964, 967-970, 973, 975, 2618), which quotes frequently from Lumen Gentium. Pope Francis holds these views as well. See:

Pope Francis’ Deep Devotion to Mary (Esp. Mary Mediatrix) [12-23-19]

Pope Francis vs. the Marian Title “Co-Redemptrix”? (+ Documentation of Pope Francis’ and Other Popes’ Use of the Mariological Title of Veneration: “Mother of All”) [12-16-19]

Pope Francis and Mary Co-Redemptrix (Robert Fastiggi, Where Peter Is, 12-27-19)

Pope Francis and the coredemptive role of Mary, the “Woman of salvation” (Mark Miravalle & Robert Fastiggi, La Stampa, 1-8-20)

13:59 Newman wrestles with this issue of papal infallibility largely because he knows that historically it’s it’s pretty much impossible to defend

That’s precisely the opposite of the truth, as I have already shown above. Jordan misunderstands and presents with (to put it mildly) incomplete selectivity the historical record of Cardinal Newman’s actual views on papal infallibility. I’ll return to this issue below, as I delve deeply into and actually document what Newman believed was the view of the early Church regarding the institution of the papacy, grounded in Holy Scripture and guided by the Holy Spirit.

14:43 Newman knows that if you’re really engage with the fathers you’re not going to find papal Supremacy; you’re just not

What Newman “knows” is that we won’t find a fully developed papacy in the first few centuries, because, well, it required a lot of time to develop, just as every other doctrine did, including, notably, even trinitarianism and Christology: aspects of which were still being actively developed as late as the 6th and 7th centuries, in response to Christological heresies; monothelitism being the last major heresy in this respect. It was condemned by the Third Council of Constantinople in 680-681. Newman wrote famously about the development of the papacy in the early centuries (note how he casually refers to “papal supremacy”: the exact opposite of what Jordan claims that he believed):

Let us see how, on the principles which I have been laying down and defending, the evidence lies for the Pope’s supremacy.

As to this doctrine the question is this, whether there was not from the first a certain element at work, or in existence, divinely sanctioned, which, for certain reasons, did not at once show itself upon the surface of ecclesiastical affairs, and of which events in the fourth century are the development; and whether the evidence of its existence and operation, which does occur in the earlier centuries, be it much or little, is not just such as ought to occur upon such an hypothesis.

. . . While Apostles were on earth, there was the display neither of Bishop nor Pope; their power had no prominence, as being exercised by Apostles. In course of time, first the power of the Bishop displayed itself, and then the power of the Pope . . .

. . . St. Peter’s prerogative would remain a mere letter, till the complication of ecclesiastical matters became the cause of ascertaining it. While Christians were “of one heart and soul,” it would be suspended; love dispenses with laws . . .

When the Church, then, was thrown upon her own resources, first local disturbances gave exercise to Bishops, and next ecumenical disturbances gave exercise to Popes; and whether communion with the Pope was necessary for Catholicity would not and could not be debated till a suspension of that communion had actually occurred. It is not a greater difficulty that St. Ignatius does not write to the Asian Greeks about Popes, than that St. Paul does not write to the Corinthians about Bishops. And it is a less difficulty that the Papal supremacy was not formally acknowledged in the second century, than that there was no formal acknowledgment on the part of the Church of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity till the fourth. No doctrine is defined till it is violated . . .

Moreover, an international bond and a common authority could not be consolidated, were it ever so certainly provided, while persecutions lasted. If the Imperial Power checked the development of Councils, it availed also for keeping back the power of the Papacy. The Creed, the Canon, in like manner, both remained undefined. The Creed, the Canon, the Papacy, Ecumenical Councils, all began to form, as soon as the Empire relaxed its tyrannous oppression of the Church. And as it was natural that her monarchical power should display itself when the Empire became Christian, so was it natural also that further developments of that power should take place when that Empire fell. Moreover, when the power of the Holy See began to exert itself, disturbance and collision would be the necessary consequence . . . as St. Paul had to plead, nay, to strive for his apostolic authority, and enjoined St. Timothy, as Bishop of Ephesus, to let no man despise him: so Popes too have not therefore been ambitious because they did not establish their authority without a struggle. It was natural that Polycrates should oppose St. Victor; and natural too that St. Cyprian should both extol the See of St. Peter, yet resist it when he thought it went beyond its province . . .

On the whole, supposing the power to be divinely bestowed, yet in the first instance more or less dormant, a history could not be traced out more probable, more suitable to that hypothesis, than the actual course of the controversy which took place age after age upon the Papal supremacy.

It will be said that all this is a theory. Certainly it is: it is a theory to account for facts as they lie in the history, to account for so much being told us about the Papal authority in early times, and not more; a theory to reconcile what is and what is not recorded about it; and, which is the principal point, a theory to connect the words and acts of the Ante-nicene Church with that antecedent probability of a monarchical principle in the Divine Scheme, and that actual exemplification of it in the fourth century, which forms their presumptive interpretation. All depends on the strength of that presumption. Supposing there be otherwise good reason for saying that the Papal Supremacy is part of Christianity, there is nothing in the early history of the Church to contradict it . . .

Moreover, all this must be viewed in the light of the general probability, so much insisted on above, that doctrine cannot but develop as time proceeds and need arises, and that its developments are parts of the Divine system, and that therefore it is lawful, or rather necessary, to interpret the words and deeds of the earlier Church by the determinate teaching of the later. (An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 1878 edition, Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1989, pp. 148-155; Part 1, Chapter 4, Section 3; my bolding and italics)

15:03 Newman doesn’t want this to get out. This is just a private discussion private letter

Exactly! Who in the world wants their private letters to be exposed to the public? It doesn’t follow, however, that Cardinal Newman was trying to keep it private because he was special pleading and denying the obvious facts of history, as Newman’s innumerable detractors often try to vainly argue.

15:14 I don’t think I’d be too happy if that happened to me, either

Yes, of course; so don’t try to make rhetorical hay out of it and build a mountain out of a molehill. There is nothing here suggesting that Newman was playing games of historical revisionism or engaging in some sort of nefarious cover-up. He simply expressed his personal inopportunism (which is not the same as disagreeing with the doctrine!) and concerns about ultramontane excesses that wound up being voted down at the Council.

*
15:26 Newman had this conception that that there has to be or should be at least some kind of unanimous consent that a council is actually declaring something which which is dogmatically true and there’s not the kind of consent among among theologians among Bishops among Cardinals that he sees in Trent

Really? In my previous reply to Jordan (which he very well may not have even read), I noted the overwhelming vote counts:

Encyclopaedia Britannica (“First Vatican Council of Pius IX”) reports:

. . . The decisive vote came on July 13 when 451 voted for it, 88 against it, and 62 in favour of some amendment. . . . the final definition was carried on July 18 by 533 votes to 2. Infallibility was confined to those occasions upon which the pope made pronouncements ex cathedra.

So even the initial vote of 601 participants was 75% in favor (451), with 62 (only 10%) in favor of amendment. Even if we discounted 120 whom Jordan (perhaps following the reasoning of disgruntled former Catholics like Dollinger) claims were mere hacks and bootlickers appointed by the pope because they agreed with him, it would still be 55% in favor. Those against (88) constituted only 15% of those who voted. That sounds like pretty strong consensus to me. The final vote was then 99.63% in favor. If we take away the “120” the vote would be 413 to 2. So how are they relevant at all to the final outcome? This is straining at gnats.

18:19 So eventually Newman does come to the conclusion that the word of the Pope can determine the veracity of a Dogma rather than just the council itself and he’s really forced into that position. I don’t think Newman would have come to that position were it not for the just necessity in doing so after the council

This is not at all how Newman viewed the matter, long before the Council and during it. It’s certainly not, for example, what Newman believed regarding Pope Leo the Great and his famous, majestic Tome at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, nor about Pope Gelasius in 493. He wrote about both when he was still an Anglican in 1845, not as a Catholic “after the council” 25 years later:

How was an individual inquirer, or a private Christian to keep the Truth, amid so many rival teachers? . . .

[In the fifth and sixth centuries] the Monophysites had almost the possession of Egypt, and at times of the whole Eastern Church . . .

The divisions at Antioch had thrown the Catholic Church into a remarkable position; there were two Bishops in the See, one in connexion with the East, the other with Egypt and the West with which then was ‘Catholic Communion’? St. Jerome has no doubt on the subject:

Writing to St. [Pope] Damasus, he says,

“Since the East tears into pieces the Lord’s coat . . . therefore by me is the chair of Peter to be consulted, and that faith which is praised by the Apostle’s mouth . . . From the Priest I ask the salvation of the victim, from the Shepherd the protection of the sheep . . . I court not the Roman height: I speak with the successor of the Fisherman and the disciple of the Cross. I, who follow none as my chief but Christ, am associated in communion with thy blessedness, that is, with the See of Peter. On that rock the Church is built, I know.” [Epistle 15] . . .

Eutyches [a Monophysite] was supported by the Imperial Court, and by Dioscorus the Patriarch of Alexandria . . . A general Council was summoned for the ensuing summer at Ephesus [in 449] . . . It was attended by sixty metropolitans, ten from each of the great divisions of the East; the whole number of bishops assembled amounted to one hundred and thirty-five . . . St. Leo [the Great, Pope], dissatisfied with the measure altogether, nevertheless sent his legates, but with the object . . . of ‘condemning the heresy, and reinstating Eutyches if he retracted’ . . .

The proceedings which followed were of so violent a character, that the Council has gone down to posterity under the name of the Latrocinium or ‘Gang of Robbers.’ Eutyches was honourably acquitted, and his doctrine received . . . which seems to have been the spontaneous act of the assembled Fathers. The proceedings ended by Dioscorus excommunicating the Pope, and the Emperor issuing an edict in approval of the decision of the Council . . .

The Council seems to have been unanimous, with the exception of the Pope’s legates, in the restoration of Eutyches; a more complete decision can hardly be imagined.

It is true the whole number of signatures now extant, one hundred and eight, may seem small out of a thousand, the number of Sees in the East; but the attendance of Councils always bore a representative character. The whole number of East and West was about eighteen hundred, yet the second Ecumenical Council was attended by only one hundred and fifty, which is but a twelfth part of the whole number; the Third Council by about two hundred, or a ninth; the Council of Nicaea itself numbered only three hundred and eighteen Bishops. Moreover, when we look through the names subscribed to the Synodal decision, we find that the misbelief, or misapprehension, or weakness, to which this great offence must be attributed, was no local phenomenon, but the unanimous sin of Bishops in every patriarchate and of every school of the East. Three out of the four patriarchs were in favour of the heresiarch, the fourth being on his trial. Of these Domnus of Antioch and Juvenal of Jerusalem acquitted him, on the ground of his confessing the faith of Nicaea and Ephesus . . . Dioscorus . . . was on this occasion supported by those Churches which had so nobly stood by their patriarch Athanasius in the great Arian conflict. These three Patriarchs were supported by the Exarchs of Ephesus and Caesarea in Cappadocia; and both of these as well as Domnus and Juvenal, were supported in turn by their subordinate Metropolitans. Even the Sees under the influence of Constantinople, which was the remaining sixth division of the East, took part with Eutyches . . .

Such was the state of Eastern Christendom in the year 449; a heresy, appealing to the Fathers, to the Creed, and, above all, to Scripture, was by a general Council, professing to be Ecumenical, received as true in the person of its promulgator. If the East could determine a matter of faith independently of the West, certainly the Monophysite heresy was established as Apostolic truth in all its provinces from Macedonia to Egypt . . .

At length the Imperial Government, . . . came to the conclusion that the only way of restoring peace to the Church was to abandon the Council of Chalcedon. In the year 482 was published the famous ‘Henoticon’ or Pacification of Zeno, in which the Emperor took upon himself to determine a matter of faith. The Henoticon declared that no symbol of faith but that of the Nicene Creed, commonly so called, should be received in the Churches; it anathematized the opposite heresies of Nestorius and Eutyches, and it was silent on the question of the ‘One’ or ‘Two Natures’ after the Incarnation . . . All the Eastern Bishops signed this Imperial formulary. But this unanimity of the East was purchased by a breach with the West; for the Popes cut off the communication between Greeks and Latins for thirty-five years . . .

Dreary and waste was the condition of the Church, and forlorn her prospects, at the period which we have been reviewing . . . There was but one spot in the whole of Christendom, one voice in the whole Episcopate, to which the faithful turned in hope in that miserable day. In the year 493, in the Pontificate of Gelasius, the whole of the East was in the hands of traitors to Chalcedon, and the whole of the West under the tyranny of the open enemies of Nicaea . . .

A formula which the Creed did not contain [Leo’s Tome at the Council of Chalcedon in 451], which the Fathers did not unanimously witness, and which some eminent Saints had almost in set terms opposed, which the whole East refused as a symbol, not once, but twice, patriarch by patriarch, metropolitan by metropolitan, first by the mouth of above a hundred, then by the mouth of above six hundred of its Bishops, and refused upon the grounds of its being an addition to the Creed, was forced upon the Council . . . by the resolution of the Pope of the day . . . (An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 1845, 6th edition, 1878, reprinted by Univ. of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana, 1989, 251, 274, 282-3, 285-6, 299-300, 305-6, 319-20, 322, 312)

13:59 Newman wrestles with this issue of papal infallibility largely because he knows that historically it’s it’s pretty much impossible to defend

14:43 Newman knows that if you’re really engage[d] with the fathers you’re not going to find papal Supremacy; you’re just not

The record shows that the converse of this opinion is the historical truth. The following (bolding and italics again my own) shows what Newman actually believed about early Church belief in Petrine primacy, the primacy of Rome, and papal supremacy (even using the latter phrase many times):

I found the Eastern Church under the superintendence (as I may call it) of Pope Leo. I found that he had made the Fathers of the Council to unsay their decree and pass another . . . I found that Pope Leo based his authority upon St Peter. I found the Fathers of the Council crying out ‘Peter hath spoken by the mouth of Leo’, when they altered their decree. (Letter to Mrs. William Froude, 5 April 1839)

I certainly do think the Pope the Head of the Church. Nay I thought all churchmen so thought; . . . (Letter to Edward B. Pusey, 16 October 1842)

Again it has pressed most strongly upon me that we pick and choose our doctrines. There is more, I suspect, in the first four centuries, or as much, for the Pope’s Supremacy, than for the Real Presence, or the authenticity of certain books of Scripture. (Letter to Edward B. Pusey, 14 March 1845)

And do not the same ancient Fathers bear witness to another doctrine, which you disown? Are you not as a hypocrite, listening to them when you will, and deaf when you will not? How are you casting your lot with the Saints, when you go but half-way with them? For of whether of the two do they speak the more frequently, of the Real Presence in the Eucharist, or of the Pope’s supremacy? You accept the lesser evidence, you reject the greater. In truth, scanty as the Ante-nicene notices may be of the Papal Supremacy, they are both more numerous and more definite than the adducible testimonies in favour of the Real Presence. The testimonies to the latter are confined to a few passages . . . a cumulative argument rises from them in favour of the ecumenical and the doctrinal authority of Rome, stronger than any argument which can be drawn from the same period for the doctrine of the Real Presence. . . . If it be said that the Real Presence appears, by the Liturgies of the fourth or fifth century, to have been the doctrine of the earlier, since those very forms probably existed from the first in Divine worship, this is doubtless an important truth; but then it is true also that the writers of the fourth and fifth centuries fearlessly assert, or frankly allow that the prerogatives of Rome were derived from apostolic times, and that because it was the See of St. Peter. (An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 1845, Part I: Introduction)

“On this rock I will build My Church,” “I give unto thee the Keys,” “Feed My sheep,” are not precepts merely, but prophecies and promises, promises to be accomplished by Him who made them, prophecies to be fulfilled according to the need, and to be interpreted by the event,—by the history, that is, of the fourth and fifth centuries, though they had a partial fulfilment even in the preceding period, and a still more noble development in the middle ages. (Ibid., Part I: ch. 4, sec. 3)

The Emperor Gratian, in the fourth century, had ordered that the Churches which the Arians had usurped should be restored (not to those who held “the Catholic faith,” or “the Nicene Creed,” or were “in communion with the orbis terrarum,”) but “who chose the communion of Damasus,” the then Pope. (Ibid., Part II: ch. 6, sec. 3)

Cannot I bring as strong passages [in the Fathers] against original sin as you against the Papal Supremacy? . . . What are your grounds for holding the necessity of Episcopal Succession, which may not be applied to Papal Supremacy? (Letter to Henry Wilberforce, 8 June 1846)

If the Roman Church be the Church, I take it whatever it is – and if I find that Papal Supremacy is a point of faith in it, this point of faith is not to my imagination so strange, to my reason so incredible, to my historical knowledge so utterly without evidence, as to warrant me in saying, ‘I cannot take it on faith.’ . . . I believed that our Lord had instituted a Teaching, Sacramental, organized Body called the Church, and that the Roman communion was as an historical fact its present representative and continuation – and therefore, since that communion received the Successor of St Peter as the Vicar of Christ and the Visible Head of the Church, such he was. (Letter to Henry Wilberforce, 4 July 1846)

It is not a greater difficulty to suppose that the patriarchal theory developed into or (if you will) [was] superseded, I should rather say overgrown by, the Papal, than to admit that the Apostles’ Creed has been developed into the Athanasian. The Athanasian is at first sight as different from the Apostles’, as the Papal Church from the primitive. If the primitive Church can be proved to be anti-papal, it can as easily (I should say as sophistically) be proved to be Arian. (Letter to Lord Adare, 31 August 1846)

I saw that, from the nature of the case, the true Vicar of Christ must ever to the world seem like Antichrist, and be stigmatized as such, because a resemblance must ever exist between an original and a forgery; and thus the fact of such a calumny was almost one of the notes of the Church. (Apologia pro vita sua, 1864, ch. 3)

Nor is the point which is the direct subject of your question much or at all less an elementary difference of principle between us; viz. the Pope’s jurisdiction:—it is a difference of principle even more than of doctrine. That that jurisdiction is universal is involved in the very idea of a Pope at all. I can easily understand that it was only partially apprehended in the early ages of the Church, and that, as Judah in the Old Covenant was not duly recognised and obeyed as the ruling tribe except gradually, so St. Cyprian or St. Augustine in Africa (if so) or St. Basil in Asia Minor (if so) may have fretted under the imperiousness of Rome, and not found a means of resignation in their trouble ready at hand in a clear view (which they had not) that Rome was one of the powers that be, which are ordained of God. It required time for Christians to enter into the full truth, . . . there is no use in a Pope at all, except to bind the whole of Christendom into one polity; and that to ask us to give up his universal jurisdiction is to invite us to commit suicide. (Letter to Edward B. Pusey, 23 March 1867)

I think it was generally received before the Vatican decrees (vid. eg. Perrone), that the confirmation of the pope was necessary for a Council being held as Ecumenical, and therefore infallible in its definitions of faith. (Letter to William Maskell, 15 February 1876)

It seems to me plain from history that the Popes from the first considered themselves to have a universal jurisdiction, and against this positive fact the negative fact that other sees and countries were not clear about it, does not avail. The doctrine doubtless was the subject of a development. There is far less difficulty in a controversial aspect in the proof of the Pope’s supremacy than in that of the canon of Scripture. (The Via Media of the Anglican Church: Illustrated in Lectures, Letters and Tracts Written Between 1830 and 1841, vol. 1; aka Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church [1837 / revised in 1877] Lecture 7; footnote 14 from 1877)

20:24 we’re all going to have a tendency to read more of our views into the sources than probably is merited, and that’s just the bias of reading things and wanting to see what we want to see

Exactly! But this is why we must document our opinions about what someone else thinks to a tee, in order to avoid the natural bias for our own views that we all have. I’ve done that; Jordan has not, and this is — I find all the time — the habitual shortcoming of videos. They have infinitely less substance than copiously documented writing does.

21:02 Newman himself has been on both sides. He was an Anglican, saying, “I can defend Anglicanism through the fathers”; now he’s a Roman Catholic and saying, “I can defend Roman Catholicism through the fathers.” How the heck do we know who actually is correct in their use of the fathers?

We do so by doing exactly what Newman did: relentlessly and comprehensively detailing what the fathers believed. As I just demonstrated in my collection of his utterances on the papacy (many written as an Anglican, and most of the rest from prior to 1870), the general drift of his Catholic views was already firmly present in his views as an Anglican, because he simply followed the facts of patristic teachings where they led and applied analogical argument, showing — again and again — that Protestant arguments about the history and development of various doctrines that they accept also support Catholic views, by analogy. This was arguably the primary insight that led him to Catholicism.

21:52 the greatest of the second generation of Lutheran theologians, Martin Chemnitz engages with the Council of Trent and compares the Council of Trent to what was actually written in the writings of the church fathers . . . Rome didn’t respond to Chemnitz by saying, “well, the fathers hadn’t yet developed their dogma. Instead they say, “no, actually the fathers agree with us” and you have basically these competing works that are being written and this happens for a couple hundred years. You’ve got all these competing works being written.

It’s true that Trent didn’t emphasize development of dogma. It’s emphasis was, rather, on contrasting true Christian doctrines with the various false doctrines that Protestantism had invented 15oo years after Christ. All ecumenical councils have particular emphases and problems that they are focusing on. It doesn’t follow, however, that development of doctrine was absent from Catholic historical analysis of theology until 1845 when Newman supposedly came up with the idea out of whole cloth. I thoroughly proved this over 22 years ago in my lengthy article, Development of Doctrine: Patristic & Historical Development (Featuring Much Documentation from St. Augustine, St. Vincent of Lerins, St. Thomas Aquinas, Vatican I, Popes Pius IX, Pius X, Etc.) [3-19-02].

St. Vincent of Lerins (d. c. 450) was the father who wrote most specifically and in great depth about development of doctrine, and his outlook is remarkably similar to Newman’s. But I found much more than merely his thoughts, citing in addition to the figures named in the subtitle, St. Irenaeus, Origen, and St. Gregory of Nyssa. Recently I compiled a collection of 80 Bible passages that arguably, teach development of doctrine and theological thought in some form. That’s where it really comes from.

It’s not “either/or” to claim that “the fathers agree with us [Catholicism]” and at the same time assert that early doctrine on the papacy developed just like all other doctrines. The Protestant critique of Newmanian development very often foolishly regards it as mere special pleading and desperate historical revisionism. It’s not at all. Newman actually makes serious arguments, relentlessly backed by ascertainable historical facts about patristic beliefs. He doesn’t just come up with dismissive slogans and highly selective “prooftexts” that ignore a much larger number of relevant passages in support of Newman’s view, as is usually the case in Protestant contra-Newman analysis: sadly including Jordan’s presentation here.

I would reply that (to use fellow Detroiter Joe Louis’s famous phrase about his boxing opponents), “they can run but they can’t hide.” Jordan can try to avoid and ignore all of this relevant information that refutes his view, but people like me can and will present the much wider array of relevant facts that must necessarily be honestly grappled with.

Go to Part II

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Summary: Lutheran pastor and apologist Jordan Cooper falls into the sadly common practice of misunderstanding St. Cardinal Newman’s true opinion regarding papal infallibility.

Development of Doctrine

Papacy & Infallibility

First Vatican Council

inopportunism

John Henry Newman

Jordan Cooper

Newman & early Church papal infallibility

ultramontanism

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January 2, 2025

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