‍Only God is infallible. No human being can be infallible

  Gary Hoge  ·  November  5, 2026

‍It’s certainly true that only God is infallible by nature. Human beings make mistakes. Even popes make mistakes. So how can the Catholic Church claim that the pope, or the Church itself, can teach infallibly?

‍There’s a problem with this objection. If human fallibility makes infallible teaching impossible, we’ve just ruled out something Protestants and Catholics both believe in: the infallibility of Scripture.

‍The Bible was written by fallible human beings. Moses, David, Peter, Paul, and the other biblical authors weren’t personally infallible. They were capable of making mistakes, and sometimes they made serious ones. Yet Christians believe that what they wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is the infallible Word of God.

‍How is that possible? Because God can work through fallible human beings to produce something infallible.

‍And Catholics believe God does something similar when the Church teaches.

‍Catholics don’t believe that the pope is personally infallible, or that everything he says is free from error. They believe that under certain carefully defined circumstances, God protects the Gospel by preventing him from teaching error when he definitively teaches a doctrine of faith or morals to the whole Church. The Church’s bishops, united with the pope, can also teach infallibly under certain conditions.

‍Jesus promised his apostles that the Holy Spirit would guide them into all truth (John 16:13). He promised to remain with his Church until the end of the age (Matthew 28:20). And Paul described the Church as “the pillar and foundation of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15).

‍These passages give us reason to believe that God intended to protect his Church from error.

‍The inspiration of Scripture and the infallibility of the Church aren’t identical gifts. Catholics don’t believe that popes receive the same inspiration that the biblical authors received. But both doctrines serve the same purpose: protecting God’s revelation and its faithful transmission through the ages.

‍So the objection proves too much. If we’re saying that only God can be infallible *by nature*, Catholics agree. But if the claim is that God cannot protect fallible human beings from teaching error, then the objection undermines the Bible as well as the papacy.

‍The real question isn’t whether human beings are fallible. Everyone agrees they are. The question is whether God has promised to protect his Church from error when it teaches definitively on matters of faith and morals.