Saturday, September 8, 2007

A partially better response from Carrie

Carrie said, in defense of her question-begging: Sometimes all I have time for is a "you're wrong."

That's a fair response to my objection. I would suggest on such occasions that she insert a link to an already-existing argument, if one exists; otherwise she will continue to receive complaints like mine. Also, for the sake of extending common courtesy towards her readers, I would urgently suggest that she refrain from baldly declaring, "You're wrong." Not that she did that in this case, but she has done so before a time or two.

Then she turns to some of the substance of my reply.
Now, I think that saying we can have 100% certainty about God is foolish and from there the rest of your argument unravels. If you can't admit your fallibility in these matters then it is obviously why you cannot see the flaw in the infallible authority arguement.
It is the certainty we receive through the God-given gift of faith, as I said in my post. That is what "full submission of intellect and will to God who reveals, and freely assenting to the truth revealed by Him" (as I quoted from Dei Verbum 5) means. That is the obedience of faith. If we don't have that certainty...then to that extent we don't have faith. Faith is not merely trust. It is also assent. So it's not that I am infallible at all. It is that I believe in the truth, delivered to us by God through the Church, and because God cannot lie, that truth is certain.

Carrie says that Protestants and Catholics are alike in claiming an infallible authority, but really the two situations are different. In the first place, the Catholic does not deny the infallibility of the Bible. It is, after all, divine revelation.

In the second place, for the Protestant the belief in the infallibility of the Bible is irrationally arrived at. They have no rational basis for it. I am a poor advocate for this point myself, but (as previously noted) Jonathan Prejean is a very good one. See his argument concerning this, here and here especially.

In the third place, the infallibility of the Bible is of no practical benefit by itself with respect to the issue of discovering what infallible truth it contains. It is not able to adjudicate, because it is not a living judge. Consequently it needs an interpreter. But unless that interpreter is infallibly able to discern the infallible truth in the Bible, and is infallibly able to adjudicate disputes according to the terms of the infallible truth in the Bible, then we are effectively cut off from divinely revealed truth. This situation does not pertain to the Catholic, because the Magisterium is the living voice of Christ, able to tell us the truth infallibly - a truth that may be found either in the Bible or in Sacred Tradition, the other part of the deposit of faith.

This being the case, it is simply absurd for Carrie to say that Protestants "pull ahead" epistemologically because of "greater certainty" that she says they enjoy. They don't enjoy a greater certainty, because they do not listen to the living voice of Christ in the Catholic Church.

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