The Childers-Childers Debate
A Virtual Cross-Time Debate Between Jeff Childers 1996 and Jeff Childers 1998 About the Identity of the New Testament Church
1998 Fifth Rebuttal
(Resolved: The Church founded by Jesus Christ is the Holy Roman Catholic Church, not the Protestant denomination, the Church of Christ.)
My former self has reflected in his answer a misconception that is common to Protestant anti-Catholics, and particularly those in the Church of Christ. He argues that the Church is not the author of the truth. With this, Catholics agree.
He argues that the Church can not proclaim as dogmas new revelations of God. With this, Catholics agree. Catholics believe that the truth was "once and for all handed down to the holy ones." (Jude 3) We believe that, just as my opponent has said, the Church's responsibility is to teach and uphold the truth as its "pillar and foundation" (1 Tim. 3:15), so that "the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the Church." (Eph. 3:10) The Church proclaims dogmas merely to clarify disputes over the one revelation of God. When the Church proclaimed the doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity, or the canon of Scripture, or the Immaculate Conception of Mary, or papal infallibility, she was not inventing new doctrines.
To return to the question at hand, St. Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, declared that the Church is the pillar and foundation of truth. He inerrantly writes that the Church does, in fact, teach and uphold the truth. It follows then, that the doctrine taught and upheld by the Church is the truth. What follows if the Church's infalibility. Unless the Church is infalible, readers of this epistles would be led astray to follow false teachers as upholding the truth.