Franciscan Studies

EVASION AND AMBIGUITY: OCKHAM AND TIERNEY'S OCKHAM In this paper I will revisit an earlier and incomplete exchange with Brian Tierney on Ockham's discussion of infallibility in the Church1 in order to set out just what Ockham thought about infallibility. Constraints of time will prevent me from detailing how much I agree with Tierney's general assessment of infallibility as a doctrine and even how much I sympathize with his reaction to Ockham's polemical writings. I will be able only at the end to indicate where I think Tierney has understood something peculiar and important about Ockham's presentation of infallibility. But for now I must begin by saying that my study of Ockham's ecclesiological writings2 shows Tierney to be wrong and, considering his persistence, wrong-headed in his understanding ofwhat he calls Ockham's "anti-papal infallibility." His mistake is engendered by his shifting the focus of argument away from papal prerogatives to papal documents, a move which enables him to cite Ockham's ambiguous appeal to a papal pronouncement as immutable. Then, in an ambiguity ofhis own, he mixes immutability with infallibility, and has Ockham claiming a papal infallibility which in no sense does Ockham admit, who everywhere insists upon quite the opposite. It is not so 1 See Brian Tierney, Origins of Papal Infallibility 1150-1350: A Study on the Concept ofInfallibility, Sovereignty and Tradition in the Middle Ages (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972) 205-37. John Ryan, "Ockham's Dilemma: Tierney's Ambiguous Infallibility and Ockham's Ambiguous Church," Journal of Ecumenical Studies 13:1 (Winter, 1976): 37-50. Brian Tierney, Ockham's Ambiguous Infallibility ," Journal of Ecumenical Studies 14:1 (Winter, 1977): 102-05. 2 See my The Nature, Structure and Function of the Church in William of Ockham, American Academy ofReligion Studies in Religion 16 (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1979). 286JOHN J. RYAN much that Tierney is wrong about Ockham as that he is quite wrong, indeed perverse, in calling what he finds in Ockham "papal infallibility " in any sense ofthose words. Tierney's response to me when I pointed this out was to suggest that I don't seem to know the modern discussion of infallibility. I would rejoin that I was merely taking him at his word when he says that he is giving us the historical background of the Vatican I definition (the text ofwhich is the first item of his study), not ofcontemporary efforts to wriggle out ofits reasonably clear claims. I had no intention then, as I have none now, of wading through that morass of reinterpretations, which I (like him, I believe) regard as futile maneuvers. Tierney's appeal to these maneuvers3 as evidence that no one can have even a minimal idea of what infallibility historically meant, apart from straining credulity, is unhistorical, logically flawed, and self-defeating. It is unhistorical in reading back into Ockham present confusions in a matter on which he was quite clear. It is logically flawed in implying that to agree with qualifications to a position is to agree with the position. It is self-defeating in that Tierney can hardly give us a credible history of a doctrine whose minimal historical meaning cannot be established. I will attempt only to demonstrate now, as I indicated then, that Ockham has no such teaching as could be remotely construed from that conciliar definition (and its quasiofficial interpretation at the time by Bishop Gasser of the Deputation of Faith) and that his teaching is the very opposite. The Vatican I definition of infallibility, which Tierney gives us in Butler's translation, is as follows: We teach and define that it is a dogma divinely revealed: that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in discharge of the office of Pastor and Doctor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, is possessed ofthat infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that His Church should be endowed for defining doctrine regarding faith or morals: and that therefore such definitions of...