Protestants often object to the Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility by appealing to Galatians 2:11 where Paul records how he rebuked Peter because “he clearly was wrong” (NAB Translation). “You see,” the argument goes, “the Bible says Peter was wrong. Therefore, he wasn’t infallible.”
Does this prove the Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility false? No, it doesn’t. Here’s the reason why.
Peter was not proclaiming a teaching on faith or morals in a definitive way. The Catholic Church teaches in paragraph 891 of the Catechism that a pope engages the Church’s infallibility only when he, as supreme pastor and teaching all the faithful, proclaims definitively a doctrine pertaining to faith or morals and binds Christians to believe it for salvation.
Peter’s action recounted in Galatians doesn’t meet this condition for infallibility. Peter wasn’t even proclaiming a doctrine. He simply stopped eating a meal with Gentile converts to save face with Jewish converts.
Paul even highlights that the mistake was behavioral. In verse thirteen, he says that the rest of the Jews, along with Barnabas, “acted insincerely” with Peter. Paul uses the Greek word sunupokrinomai, which literally means “to act hypocritically along with others—’to pretend together, to join in hypocrisy.”[i]It also has the connotation to act with cowardice.[ii]
Again, in verse fourteen, Paul emphasizes that the failure was in moral action: “But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel.” “Were not straightforward” translates the Greek phrase ouk orthopodeō. Ouk means “not” and orthopodeō means “to live a life of moral correctness—’to live right, to live as one ought to.”[iii]
This challenge thus attacks a straw man. It targets Peter’s action as if papal infallibility should apply to it, extending the conditions of papal infallibility way beyond what the Church actually says. Peter may have made a mistake, but the Church has never said that popes are unable to make mistakes. The Church simply says that a pope can’t err when he definitively proclaims a doctrine of faith and morals. Choosing lunch companions is hardly a dogmatic declaration.
For more responses to this objection, see my book Meeting the Protestant Challenge: How to Answer 50 Biblical Objections to Catholic Beliefs.
[i] Louw and Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains, 765.
[ii] See Barclay M. Newman Jr., A Concise Greek-English dictionary of the New Testament (Stuttgart, Germany: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, United Bible Societies, 1993), 176.
[iii] Louw and Nida, Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament, 507.