Herewith, some comments on an excerpt from Michael Liccione, Faith, Private Judgment, Doubt, and Dissent.
So understood, private judgment can yield at least a measure of certitude, but not in any fashion certainty.
I agree that private judgment cannot deliver certainty, if objective certainty is in question. But I should think that the same is true of any collective judgment as well, including the collective judgments of the Roman Catholic magisterium. I am a cradle Catholic, but my 'inner Protestant' demands his due. In what follows, I will quote Liccione, agree with much of what he says, but try to explain why I cannot accept his ultimate conclusion.
If no human collectivity can be counted on implicitly to preserve and transmit the deposit of faith in its fullness, still less can any fallible, human individual. One can, for a lesser or greater time, feel certain that one is in possession of the faith once delivered; it can and does happen that the cognitive content of one’s faith thus contains much truth; one can even and thereby develop a genuine relationship of love and trust with Jesus Christ. But by one’s own profession one is no closer to infallibility, and probably less so, than any external human authority.
I agree with the above.
Faith must accordingly co-exist with a principle if not always a feeling of doubt, and be hedged about by that principle. For if councils and popes can err even in their most solemn exercises of doctrinal authority, then so a fortiori can anybody who eschews for themselves or their own faith community the kind of authority those sources have claimed. Ultimately, then, one’s faith is a matter of opinion. No matter how great the certitude which which one holds one’s religious opinions, they are just that—human opinions, always and in principle open to revision, just as any and all churches are human organizations semper reformanda.
If there is no ecclesial any more than individual indefectibility, then there is no ecclesial any more than individual infallibility. In principle if not always and everywhere in practice, everything remains up for grabs. If by nothing else, that is proven by the apparently limitless capacity of Protestantism to devolve into denominations and sects who can agree only on the proposition that, whatever the Bible means, it doesn’t have God giving the Catholic or even the Orthodox Church the kind of interpretive authority they claim.
The above too strikes me as correct as long as it is understood that matters of opinion needn't be matters of mere opinion and that some opinions are better than others, whether these be the opinions of individuals or the opinions officially endorsed by groups.
Faith so constituted and developed is radically different from what the Catholic and Orthodox churches both think of as faith. On the latter showing, part of the content of faith is that the Church teaches about faith and morals with an authority divinely bestowed and maintained; the differences between Catholicism and Orthodoxy about how “the Church” manifests such authority are secondary; in either case, the assent of faith entails accepting, as divinely revealed, what the Church definitively proposes as such. Such assent is not a matter of opinion, as it would be if it were a merely human product rather than a divine gift. It does not merely entail certitude; the certitude is itself based on the objective relation of certainty. By that latter relation, what is believed is understood to be unchangeably true because its ultimate object, a God who neither deceives nor can be deceived, is the same who proposes, through his Church, what is to be believed. When faith so understood is accepted as a gift of the Holy Spirit, and thus of grace, it is a virtue infused into the soul and its faculties, chiefly the mind. While its cognitive content can and should deepen and develop along with the coordinate virtues of life, nevertheless one either has such a virtue or one does not. It is not a human product and does not depend on human opinion. And if one has it, then one has eo ipso abandoned private judgment in matters pertaining to it.
The crucial proposition is the following. For the Catholic and Orthodox churches, "part of the content of faith is that the Church teaches about faith and morals with an authority divinely bestowed and maintained . . . ." Part of what one believes, then, is that the Church teaches with divine authority: God himself teaches us through the Church. If so, then its specific teachings with respect to faith and morals are objectively certain. Being taught by God himself is as good as it gets, epistemically speaking. We also note that if the Church teaches with divine authority, then this teaching itself, namely, that the Church teaches with divine authority, is objectively certain.
But what justifies one's belief that this particular church teaches with divine authority? If it teaches with divine authority, then not only are the particulars of the depositum fidei objectively and absolutely secured beyond all private judgment, but also the meta-claim to teach with divine authority is objectively and absolutely secured beyond all private judgment. But how do I know -- where knowledge entails objective certainty -- that the antecedent of the foregoing conditional is true?
That is, how can I be objectively certain that the Catholic and Orthodox churches teach with divine authority?
Of course, I can believe it, and perhaps I can believe it reasonably. Reasonable belief does not, however, amount to objective certainty. So I can't be objectively certain of it, whence it follows that I can't be objectively certain that the collective judgment of the Roman Catholic magisterium with respect to faith and morals is infallible. But I hear an objection coming.
"You believe it because the Church teaches it. And since the Church teaches with divine authority, you can be objectively certain that what you believe is true. And since part of what the Church teaches is that it teaches with divine authority, you can be objectively certain that the Church teaches with divine authority."
This objection, however, is plainly circular. I want to know how I can know with objective certainty that a particular church, the Roman Catholic Church, is the unique divine mouthpiece, and I am told that I can know this with objective certainty because it is the unique divine mouthpiece. But this doesn't help due to its circularity.
Liccione speaks above of the assent of faith as a divine gift and not as something I create from my own resources. Thus my acceptance of the Church's absolute authority and reliability with respect to faith and morals is a gift from God. But even if this is so, how can I be objectively certain that it is so and that my acceptance is a divine gift? Again the circle rears its head: it is objectively certain that the acceptance is a divine gift because it is God who gives the gift through the Church.
What Liccione is claiming on behalf of the Church is that it is an objectively self-certifying source of objectively certain truth with respect to faith and morals. As objectively self-certifying, it needs no certification by us. The Church is like God himself. God needs no external certification of his beliefs; he is the self-certifying source of his own certainty which is at once both subjective and objective.
Unfortunately, this doesn't help me. After all, I am the one who has to decide what to believe and how to live. I am the one who needs salvation and needs to find the right path to it. I am the one who needs to decide whether I will accept the Church's authority. The Church doesn't need my certification, but I need to certify to my own satisfaction that the Church's CLAIM to be the unique objectively self-certifying source of objectively certain moral and soteriological knowledge is a CREDIBLE claim that I ought to accept.
The aporetic philosopher regularly finds himself in a bind. What bind am I in now? It looks to be the old business about Athens and Jerusalem whose recent heroes are Husserl and Shestov. Autonomous reason demands validation of all claims by its own lights. Faith says, "Obey, submit, stop asking questions, accept the heteronomy of the creature who owes everything to his Creator, including his paltry reason and its flickering lights. Accept the divine gift of faith in humility."
To end on a romantic note, it seems somehow noble to stand astride the two great cities, with a leg in each, seeking, but not finding the coincidentia oppositorum, maintaining oneself in this tension until death reveals the answer or puts an end to all questions.
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