The Infinite Regress Argument Against Catholicism

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]I recently came across a clever argument by Gavin Ortland that he used to refute the Catholic understanding of authority as a dynamic shared by scripture, tradition, and the magisterium in favor of a more Protestant solos scriptura understanding where scripture stands alone as an infallible authority. So just to quickly try to summarize his argument as I understood it, Gavin said that this idea that you need an infallible magisterium or a teaching authority to interpret an infallible document like the Bible, that just kicks the can down the road because for that to be of of any benefit, you need to be able to interpret the infallible interpreter for it to be of any use to you. And what this would effectively turn into is what he called an infallible regress of infallible interpreters where the intended infallible knowledge never reaches its audience in its pure infallible form because it's trapped in this endless regression.

[00:00:59]>> And rendered that way, I can understand why it's persuasive and and why Protestants find it convincing. Another way that they might say it is, okay, look, we have an infallible authority in scripture, right? We all agree on that point, Protestants and Catholics. So, what use is it for Catholics to then add in this extra layer of an additional infallibility?

[00:01:20]That just adds an unnecessary step between uh the contact point of you, the learner, and the infallible knowledge you're trying to get access to. and it it doesn't seem to solve anything other than adding an un an extra unnecessary step for you to make contact with that infallible information. And what's worse, what if the Catholic Church's claims about infallibility are false? Then what you have is an opaque distraction between you and the infallible authority in scripture. So why risk adding this extra layer? Why can't we all just agree to go directly to the authority that we all mutually recognize is an infallible authority, which is the Bible, of course. And again, I think this is a pretty strong argument, but where I think it falls apart is in an equivocation of this word infallible that makes it sound like the magisterium in the Bible are doing uh the same thing of communicating infallible information when they're not. which is why Catholics wouldn't use the word infallible for both because again uh that implies that the Bible serves a function and then the church steps in and says, "Hey, we're just going to go ahead and and add a layer of redundancy with the exact same function and say that we're in charge of that." But that's not what Catholics believe or or what the church teaches.

[00:02:38]So instead, it's helpful to make a distinction with our language to portray this distinction in understanding. We wouldn't say the Bible is infallible and the church is infallible and you need both to know what is true. We would say that the Bible is inherent and that the church is infallible and that this distinction describes how they serve different roles in helping us all arrive at the truth of the faith. Now, some people might object right away and think that by saying scripture isn't infallible and the church is, I've somehow demoted scripture to a position lower than the church, which is definitely not the case. And that's not what the Catholic Church teaches.

[00:03:17]Infallibility doesn't describe a higher authority than like inherency. It describes the difference in function, which is that one is a record and one is an interpreter of that record. Gavin's claim about an infinite regress of infallible authorities implies that we think that they're both just information of of truthiness. And and why bother having two when one will do? And since we all recognize that one is a reliable record, that should be good enough for for everyone. But it isn't because the church's teaching magisterium isn't a record of truth the way scripture is.

[00:03:51]It's an interpreter of that church or of that truth for for the application of the living followers of Christ in every successive generation. Dave Verbam from the second Vatican Council explains it like this. It says, quote, sacred tradition and sacred scripture form one sacred deposit of the word of God committed to the church. End quote. In other words, it's a deposit. It's a record of God's word. Okay, so that's what the word of God is. It then goes on to say the task of authentically interpreting the word of God whether written or handed on has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the church. So one is a record and one is an interpreter which is why we should have different adjectives like inherent and infallible for each in order to make this distinction.

[00:04:41]Otherwise, we fall into errors of equivocation. And and that's that's what Gavin's argument seems to suffer from.

[00:04:48]And the reason these two functions are necessary should be pretty obvious. But let me offer uh at least a couple analogies that I think will help illustrate it. So, think about something like a legal system in which you have the written law as it's defined by by binding legislation and then the judiciary who applies that law to living contemporary circumstances. So we have the law which is a record or an account of what is just or what ought to happen in certain circumstances often broadly defined and and principle-based. But then you need legal experts who can apply those principles to particular situations as interpreters of that record. So if someone breaks the law, someone will inevitably make an accusation against them and naturally the accused will say, "No way, man. I'm innocent. I didn't break the law." So, okay, fine. What happens next then? What do we do in that case? Do we just sit back and and and wait for the law to act and resolve the dispute? No, because the law doesn't act. It doesn't apply itself. It's just information. It requires a judge who is an expert in the law to consider the claims and then make a judgment. And in that scenario, the law and the judge aren't they're not adding redundant layers. They're not competing with each other. They're working together to ensure that the law is accurately understood and applied.

[00:06:11]And if there were such a thing as an ideal justice system, it would be composed of a law that accurately describes the truth of morality um without any errors, which would then be applied by an infallible judge who is incapable of making errors. It's the distinction between uh contain not containing errors or inherency and not being capable of making errors or infallibility. Or how about something like a school where you have the curriculum which is the deposit of information. But then you also need to have teachers to interpret the information for the students and also to interpret how well the students have learned the information and to resolve any misunderstandings that they might develop in the process of of their studies and of learning. And it's not like you know the teachers and the curriculum are doing the same thing as two separate and even competing authorities. They have different but complimentary functions. One is a deposit which provides reliable information. The other is an active agent who who explains the information.

[00:07:14]And because you have those two working together, you can know that the students will be much better served than they would if they only had one. Like if they only had the curriculum that they had to figure out on their own or just teachers with no content to teach. And again in an ideal scenario in an ideal learning environment the curriculum would be without error and the teacher would be incapable of teaching error i.e. they would be infallible. So that when the student professes their understanding of the curriculum in say like a test or an evaluation scenario, the infallible teacher can evaluate that profession for its accuracy. They don't compete, they complement and they enhance the likelihood that the learners will learn what they need to learn. So that describes an ideal scenario in education. An ideal scenario for the faithful believers in the church would be one in which there is a record of God's revelation as in the Bible, but also a living interpreter who can ensure that those of us studying and impi applying what is revealed are getting it right and whatever some disagreement arises, it can be resolved by the interpreter. If you only have the record of revelation, you don't have a mechanism for making sure it's correctly understood and for resolving disputing interpretations, which by the way are devastating to the unity of the body. If you only have the interpreter but nothing to interpret, then you're obviously just stuck again. Ideally, you would have both. So then the question becomes, can God do both? Can God provide this ideal scenario? Well, we already agree that he can give an accurate record of his revelation in scripture. But notice he used human beings in the process of composing and compiling those books. First, Peter is so named because Peter wrote it. Is Peter is that because Peter's like a perfect man? Obviously not. So why are we confident that Peter's writing is without error? because the Holy Spirit who was promised to be sent by Christ to lead them into all truth protected him from error uh in the process of writing his epistles. Same with Paul, same with James and John and so forth. So if God can protect a writer from error in the process of recording his revelation, surely he can protect someone from error in interpreting that revelation for each successive generation. And since we've already seen it would be better to have both. Just from that logic alone, we can have some confidence that God would do that because he can. But aside from that logic, scripture even gives us further confidence in that arrangement because we see in places like Acts chapter 8 in which Philip discovers the Ethiopian reading scripture and asks him if he understand what he's reading. To which he says, "How can I understand it unless somebody shows me?" To which Philip doesn't rebuke him, saying, "What do you mean you how can you? It's an infallible text. No, instead he concedes the validity of his problem by interpreting it for him and helping him understand.

[00:10:16]In Nehemiah 8:8, it says that the way that the Levites or the priests taught the people was by reading to them the law of God or the scriptures and then explained it to them so that they understood what was read. In 2 Peter 3:15-16, uh Peter talks about Paul's letters which we know some ended up in the New Testament. And he says that some of them are hard to understand. It's not just obvious meaning that anybody will interpret correctly. He even says that some people are prone to distorting and manipulating them. And then earlier in 2 Peter 1:20-21, he says that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of private interpretation, which is probably why many Protestants admit that you should have an interpreter, someone who can explain the scriptures to you. So they're perfectly happy to add a layer of interpretation to the process of learning about God's word. They don't say, "Hey, this is an unnecessary layer or a redundancy that will just lead to an infinite regress of fallible interpretation." But it's it's still clearly flawed because what good is that if there isn't ultimately an infallible interpreter somewhere in the chain of authority? Because without that, adding those extra layers only increases the likelihood of error. So just think about it for a second. In the Protestant view of attaining to the the truthiness of scripture, you have scripture which is fully reliable. So you're good there. Um high truthiness content. But then you have the reader who is ignorant and fallible in their comprehension. Somehow those two have to combine to get truth.

[00:11:53]How is that problem then made better by adding a fallible interpreter to the equation? All you've done is multiplied that fallibility in the process of attaining to the truth. The difference between the layer that Protestants add and the one that Catholics add in the magisterium is that the latter is understood to be infallible, which means it's actually an improvement in that equation rather than just further degradation through fallibility. Um, which you need, you would need an infallible interpreter um to interpret an inherent text. Otherwise, all interpretation can be treated as suspect. So that's why Gavin's argument doesn't work and why the Catholic approach doesn't lead to an infinite regress of infallibility like he argues.

[00:12:33]It's because he's not making a necessary distinction in his argument between the two roles and how they are different, which is why the same word shouldn't be used to describe both. The distinction is that an inherent record is one that doesn't have errors. An infallible authority is one who is incapable of making errors which is a question of action. Which is why you can't say that the Bible is infallible infallible because the Bible doesn't do things. It it doesn't act. And because it doesn't act, you don't describe it as not being capable of making future errors. That's like saying that rock over there is incapable of breaking your heart. It's like, yeah, how is that a useful way to describe it? But an interpreter has the potential of acting now and in the future. And so far as they do, they can act correctly or incorrectly. Infallible is an adjective that means incapable of making mistakes. That's that's the actual Webster's definition. To be capable or incapable means you have ability. But scripture isn't capable of acting. So it doesn't make sense to use that terminology, which is why Gavin's argument falls apart. It depends on an equivocation of the word infallible.

[00:13:45]where it's used for two different things as if they're doing the same thing when they're not.

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