Questions But No Answers

Carrie has posted what she says is her last round of "answers" for questions asked by jswranch.

I put that word in quotation marks because she didn't really "answer" his questions.

He asks:

Can we be infallibly certain an infallible book even exists? We cannot.

To which she responds:

But apparently we can be infallibly certain that an infallible organization of men exists. Please, explain that one.

This is a nice debating trick, but it's nonresponsive to what he asked. If she is actually going to answer the question, she has to answer it - not evade it with a retort that is completely irrelevant to what he said. As for her retort, though... it has already been answered. But let's return to her non-answer. Please explain for us how, on your own Protestant terms, you can be certain that the Bible is infallible. That is the substance of his question, Carrie.

He asks:

If we deny that God established an institution of fallen, sinful human beings to infallibly teach the Gospel and the scriptures to us because they are fallen, sinful persons, can we believe that the Holy Spirit used fallen sinful human beings to even write infallible, inerrant books? No.

And she says:

Huh? I haven’t seen anyone make that argument. The question is not COULD God create an infallible organization, the question is DID he.

But this only shows that she apparently didn't understand the question. Because the argument is made all the time. Protestants love to wave at the human weaknesses inherent in the Church (which are really inherent in any human institution), and then scoff amongst themselves at the Catholic claim that God gifted the Church with a specific charism of infallibility, as though those human weaknesses refute the claim. And that is precisely the point of jswranch's question here: if Protestants say (and some do) that sin in the Magisterium disproves the Church's claims, then we ought to say the same about the Bible. Does the fact that sinful men were the human authors of the Bible mean that the Bible is therefore not inerrant? No. And in the same way, sin in the Magisterium does not mean that the Church is fallible with regard to faith and morals.

In order to actually answer this challenge, Carrie would either have to deny that she thinks that sin in the Magisterium disproves its claims (even if she thinks that she has other ways to disprove them), or else she would have to demonstrate how sin disproves the Magisterium's claims while leaving untouched the inerrancy of the Bible, since it too is the work of fallen men. But she has done neither. Hence she has failed to answer the question.

Lastly, jswranch asks at length:

Assuming FCIB (fallible collection of infallible books), does a source we can be dogmatically certain of exist by which we can know that there is such a thing as a bible? No. Assuming FCIB, we cannot be certain there is such a thing as the Bible. If you disagree, site a source we are certain of. A response such as a quote from lets say 2 Tim 3:15, begs us to state that we cannot be infallibly certain 2 Tim belongs in scripture. Can we say with certainty that we know scripture even exists or is inerrant from any source such as Acts 2:42? No. Why? Because we cannot be infallibly/dogmatically certain Acts is scripture.

Can we be infallibly certain Jesus rose from the dead? No. First, we have already established that we cannot be infallibly certain of anything. Second, we do not infallibly have any source that tells us He did rise from the dead. Some books tell us he rose, but we are not certain those books are actually scripture, therefore we cannot be certain he rose from the dead if FCIB is true.

Essentially what he is showing here is that the Protestant claims about the Bible leave them without any certainty about what the Bible says. Unfortunately Carrie doesn't seem to get it:

I am not going to answer these here as they boil down to the same issue – how does an infallible organization change anything? How can you ever infallibly prove that God established an infallible organization of men to infallibly validate the infallibility of scripture? How can you not see that problem?

I really cannot see how your objection, jswranch, can be chalked up to anything but a lack of faith. Seriously, I cannot even follow your logic – I would expect these kinds of objections from an atheist. To answer you I would have to start from the same point I would with a non-believer, and I don’t have the time right now to type all that out.

And, of course, once again she has substituted questions for answers.

And, of course, these questions have (like the others) already been answered in the same post of mine I linked above. The only thing that might possibly be added to it is that apostolic succession is the human means by which we have a chain of certainty going all the way back to the first century: a living testimony - the living voice of Christ in the Church.

As to her last paragraph there...she seems to be unable to follow the logic because she assumes (falsely) that the Catholic ought to approach the Bible on the same terms that she does. But we don't. We know that the Bible is the Word of God because the Church tells us so. Paraphrasing what St. Augustine said, we would have no reason to believe in the authority of the Bible apart from the testimony of the Church. And that is precisely the predicament in which the Protestant finds himself: he has no rational basis for believing that the Bible is the Word of God, precisely because he rejects the voice of Christ speaking in the Catholic Church.

And, lastly, we see Carrie say that she doesn't have time to answer jswranch's question. So once again: No Answer. And of course, we still do not have an answer from her to my challenge concerning Moses' infallibility. But I suppose we're not going to get one.