What’s Wrong with the World

Just a thought: Perhaps LK has it backwards. Perhaps the Devil began to work many centuries before the Reformation, and perhaps God began to reverse the Devil's work by restoring the Gospel that had been suppressed for so long. But we won't know any of this until God tells us so at the end of time, if ever He does. Until then, this kind of speculation is all shameless and self-serving guess work.

In other words, LK is historiographically and theologically under-informed, indeed shockingly so. This is precisely the sort of arrogant silliness CS Lewis so effectively pillories in his essay called "Historicism." LK's view about the Devil's work (and God's) is as ill-considered as when a fundamentalist pastor assures us that the 9/11 attacks occurred because God was punishing America for harboring homosexuals. Persons like LK, who write history in such a way that they think they can see just what the Devil and God are up to, are going far, far beyond the reach of real historical or theological knowledge.

Michael Bauman

I've never myself been at all convinced that the Reformation was a disaster.

M Bauman,

Dr Kolakowski was a Marxist theorist before he came to Christianity by a rounabout route. He has written many books including the highly regarded three-volume Main Currents of Marxism that by European standards is a model of readability. Like his great countryman JP11 he has seen a lot of life in the 20th century. He is a gentleman, you can trust his judgement.

Well, it doesn't follow that because someone is a gentleman and a scholar one can trust his judgement on every topic, esp. not on so controversial a topic as whether the Reformation was of the Devil.

The validity of Kolakowski's historical judgments would seem to be contingent upon the truth-values of the Protestant claims themselves, which entail distinct and contestable positions concerning history (a declension from Apostolic purity so vast yet so invisible to the historical record), epistemology (Sola Scriptura), fundamental philosophy (Protestant scepticism regarding, or outright repudiation of, the hierarchical Church and her sacraments involved de facto philosophical nominalism; and, in point of fact, both the demotic conception of the Church and the insistence upon an unmediated grace presupposed that same nominalism, and would have been unpersuasive in its absence...). As a matter of historical ironies and sociological processes, his judgments are common among historians and sociologists of religion; it was profoundly ironic that a movement which sought to purge Christianity of its alleged worldliness ended up subordinating the Church to the State; and the rejection by Protestantism of the Tradition did lead, by various twists and turns, to the horrors of rational religion, religion by the light of reason alone.

Lydia -- I won't go so far as to presume the action of the devil in historical events, but it seems hard to argue with the causality here: The enlightenment project--indeed all of modernism--has at its core a rejection of authority, placing individual investigation, rational analysis, and "conscience" in the place of authority. What was the great rebellion that touched off this project, if not the Reformation? To name scripture as the sole authority is a mere stop-gap measure--though certainly Luther was sincere in wanting to maintain some authority--for the step from sola scriptura to nulla authoritas (pardon the amateur Latin) is a small one after you've first made the leap away from an Apostolic tradition (unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam). I don't think you have to take Kolakowski's word for it; many, if not most, historians with a broad view would place the seeds of modernity at least partly in Luther's hands. (Jacques Barzun comes to mind.)

I'm afraid to step into this one. I think I'll let Zippy go first.

Chris,
Consider an alternative historical reconstruction: The "great rebellion," as you call it, was actually the rejection of divine authority for ecclesiastical authority by the RCC. The Reformation was a return to proper authority, which had been held in suspension for centuries.

In other words, you can see how historical reconstruction of the sort practiced here in this debate -- by either side -- is theologically tendentious and not at all convincing.

Further, consider this reconstruction: If you wish to invoke cause and effect to explain the Enlightenment, and to arrive at the Reformation in so doing, you'll also need to invoke cause and effect for the Reformation, which means arriving at at least two prior factors: centuries old RCC abuses and Renaissance methodology. (For the sake of brevity, the alleged abuses I'll not recite here. We all know the things to which Protestants refer on this count.) Renaissance methodology means "ad fontes," or the movement back to classical-era sources. In philosophy, for example, the Renaissance meant a return to Plato and a move away from the predominant Thomistic Aristotelianism of the day. In theology it meant a return to the Bible and to the church fathers. When they moved back to the Bible and the church fathers, the Reformation began almost immediately -- from Erasmus' Greek New Testament and his simultaneous publication of patristic texts in 1516 to theological and ecclesiastical restoration both in Germany by Luther and in Switzerland by Zwingli in 1517. In short, the Reformation was a conservative movement back to an older authority and a rejection of Roman usurpation.

In other words, I think you can see how this kind of historiography is highly suspect. I reject LK's, and you, I suspect, will reject mine. Why? Because this kind of tendentious historical reconstruction tells us far more about the commitments and predilections of the writer than it does about history itself. On this point, I humbly suggest taking a look at my and Martin Klauber's book Historians of the Christian Tradition, which identifies the ways in which the theology of the great religious historians has influenced their historiography, and how their historiography has influenced their theology, whether or not they were ancient, medieval or modern, and whether or not they were Roman Catholic, Protestant or Eastern Orthodox.

Best,
Michael Bauman

I'm a fan of individual conscience, individual investigation, and rational analysis. I have believed for many years that it is mistaken to attribute the philosophes' rejection of Christianity to too much rationality in religion. In fact, that is to accept their own evaluation and to place, as they did, faith and reason at odds. As a matter of fact--and this can be demonstrated historically--it's a sad truth that while Protestants were defending the faith vigorously and, in terms of the case itself, successfully, against the very Enlightenment deists Kolakowski would deplore, the Catholics were almost to a man either doing nothing in the way of response or actively undermining the case they were making. Earlier (in the 17th century), advocacy of radical skepticism as the real "philosophical" position if one did not accept the Church had been actively and deliberately used by Roman Catholic apologists for purposes of trying to convert Protestants. Something similar is, alas, true of the Oxford movement later on in the 19th century--they openly taught young men to disdain the case made by Paley, Campbell, etc., told them that this was all rot and that the only way to have true belief was through authority _instead of_ reason. Thereby some lost their faith altogether. Who, then, was doing the devil's work for him?

I also think it isn't necessary if one is a non-Protestant (Catholic, Anglo-Catholic, Orthodox, for example) to take the line Kolakowski takes. One could both make a more measured evaluation of the Reformation and also have less horror at the notion of a "rational religion." There is actually nothing in Catholic doctrine (that I know of) that precludes agreeing with Locke that God reveals some things (e.g. his existence) to reason directly and others by revelation *which validates itself to reason to be a true revelation by means of signs*. I could imagine St. Thomas and Locke having a perfectly amicable discussion about that thesis and agreeing about it. Perhaps they are doing so.

Locke was instrumental is contributiing to the separation of self from God by relegating faith to the purely private sphere. St Thomas would have found his project anti-Christian and taken up the battle. He probably prays for him, but there is no reason to think they're together, though the existence of purgatory is something that offers solace to us all.

"Modernity on Endless Trial" does sound like a book well-worth reading. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

"Relegating faith to the purely private sphere" meaning what, exactly? Evidence, after all, can be quite public.

And I said nothing about any full-scale Lockean "project"--whatever people might understand by that--but spoke only specifically about a particular view concerning the relation of faith and reason.

Lydia and Michael, you both make fine points. I wouldn't argue with the premise of Michael's book, and I will readily admit my Roman Catholic predelictions. However, my argument was not so much theological as it was cultural-philosophical. That is, even if I believed Luther's theology to be right, the historical consequences of his actions and the philosophical thrust of his ideas, apostolicity aside, seem pretty clearly to lead toward the slippery slope of radical individualism, faith/reason dualism, and an idiom of "progress" more generally. Perhaps we would say that those consequences resulted from a historical situation that was the confluence of the Church's (sometimes unfortunate) history and Luther's (et al.) ideas; that's reasonable and probably true. But it was Luther who was promoting individualism and undermining authority as a concept. He was the one tugging in the direction of modernism. Or does it really appear otherwise to the two of you?

Lydia, there's nothing wrong with individual investigation. But is it preferrable to thinking within a well-developed doctrinal tradition or an established creed? Maybe it's just me, but I would put more trust in a centuries-old tradition of some kind than in my personal powers of investigation or reason.

I would say perhaps that Calvin was more promoting faith/reason dualism than Luther, but I don't claim to be a Luther scholar (nor a Calvin scholar). In any event, the historical development of ideas shows a decided list towards a faith/reason dualism on the part of counter-Reformation Catholic apologists and a robust Protestant rejection of such a conflict from Anglican and dissenting apologists. As for individualism, I'm afraid I can't see that as a bad thing per se. It depends on where it goes from there, as it were.

In answer to the latter question, I'm afraid I can't hide the fact that I think there's no getting away from individual investigation. Even understanding the meaning of the established creed or doctrinal tradition takes individual investigation at some level--just to read the words on the page (or screen, as case may be). I would say, perhaps trying to be as irenic on the Protestant side, that there is nothing _wrong_ with developed doctrinal traditions or established creeds (per se), but that they cannot in the nature of things preclude the need for making up one's own mind at some level, even if it is only making up one's own mind to accept whatever is taught by some particular body. For myself, I do consider it preferable to make up my own mind on more of a doctrine-by-doctrine basis, and the result is, as it happens, quite traditional on many things. And tradition can be a guide (as Hooker pointed out) and a source of information without being accepted as infallible or on all points.

One place where I consider very early Church tradition to be especially useful is purely as an historical record concerning the provenance of texts. I think that even a secular historian ought to recognize the historical relevance of traditions quite close in time to the writing of the texts in question concerning who wrote what when and where.

GO, LYDIA!

Chris,
The individualism that you attribute to Luther was in the air literally centuries earlier with the rise of the more optimistic Renaissance anthropology, as with Petrarch, Pico, and Ficino. Luther's views on salvation were also in the air for more than a century with Huss and, before Huss, with Wycliffe.
Best,
Mike

I'm afraid that I've a constitutional aversion to the "individual investigation" argument, and that not merely because it was the argument my parents deployed as a last bulwark against my departure from Protestantism. No, I simply think it somewhat equivocal, at least as it is most frequently expressed, moving as it does from the acknowledgment of the necessity of some decision on the part of the individual, even if that decision is as formally bare as, say, remaining within the tradition within which one has been raised from childhood, to the more substantial claim that each discrete doctrinal commitment must be brought before the tribunal of private judgment. The latter can only be thought to follow from the former if it is assumed that it is the formality, the fact, of a decision that imparts its character, and not the substance per se; this, I would observe, is representative of modernity in any number of spheres of human endeavour (ie., Democracy as the ground of legitimacy, as opposed to the normative status of democratic acts, etc.). But there is a vast difference between evaluating each discrete doctrine to determine its conformity to a private standard of rationality, and evaluating rival claims to authority, and purposing to submit to one of them, come what may, even if said submission entails affirming things that may be difficult of understanding. In a sense, it is the difference between understanding becoming, or building, a faith, and faith seeking understanding.

This is not to state that Lydia is equivocating, only that reasons - whatever they may be - for evaluating each claim on its "merits" ought to be distinct from the formal claim that individual judgment, at some level, is inescapable. The latter, like many formal truths, is trivial and unilluminating. We do not have these controversies because Catholics and Orthodox have failed to comprehend that individual judgment is always in play, in some sense of the term. We have them because the question of modernity, whether in religion or politics, is the question of the status of authority, whether it is something one accepts or repudiates, or, on the other hand, is mediated through the decisions of countless individuals, each exercising a private judgment that - objectively speaking - most are not qualified to assert. (In other words, to give a concrete example, the average Protestant, to the extent that he even thinks about the distinctives of what he believes, believes what he does, not because he has pored over the Fathers and the historical record, the Scriptures and a Greek lexicon, but because it more or less feels right to him.)

"...he has pored over the Fathers and the historical record, the Scriptures and a Greek lexicon..."

Are you saying that the above characterizes "the average" Catholic? Give me a break.
And, if it doesn't, then how does the average Catholic know that what he is being told by priest, bishop, or pope, is accurate? Why is the Catholic better able to make that judgement concerning the Magisterium than is the average Protestant to make his judgement directly from Scripture? The same Holy Spirit is the Source of Truth in either case.

Of course not. Why would I assert such an absurd thing? No, I'm merely stating the obvious, namely, that Protestants, who, when pressed, proclaim the imperative and right of private judgment, are seldom qualified to exercise any such judgment. They, as much as anyone else, believe things because they like them, which often reduces, in a really profound, echoes of the existential angst of Luther sense, to a sort of therapeutic remission. Moreover, all too often, Protestants simply recapitulate the same "genuflection before authority" of which they accuse Catholics and Orthodox: they believe X, Y, and Z merely because someone they (believe they have reason to) trust told them so, or because they read or heard that Luther and Calvin said X, Y, and Z in the course of battling the "Roman Whore of Babylon", or some such thing, and this suffices for them as proof of their validity.

Frankly, I think it much easier to arrive at the conclusion that the Catholic Church, or the Orthodox Church, is the Apostolic Church in its fullness, the Church established by the Apostles and guided by the Holy Spirit as promised by Christ, than it is to derive every essential doctrine, of one's own resources, from Scripture, whether directly or by "good and necessary consequence". In other words, it is easier to yield to a claim of authority, or to recognize authority, than to discriminate between the wise and the devil-possessed lunatics, all of whom assert that they possess the truth long concealed by authority; the fissiparous nature of Protestantism tells us as much.

Of course not. Why would I assert such an absurd thing? No, I'm merely stating the obvious, namely, that Protestants, who, when pressed, proclaim the imperative and right of private judgment, are seldom qualified to exercise any such judgment. They, as much as anyone else, believe things because they like them, which often reduces, in a really profound, echoes of the existential angst of Luther sense, to a sort of therapeutic remission. Moreover, all too often, Protestants simply recapitulate the same "genuflection before authority" of which they accuse Catholics and Orthodox: they believe X, Y, and Z merely because someone they (believe they have reason to) trust told them so, or because they read or heard that Luther and Calvin said X, Y, and Z in the course of battling the "Roman Whore of Babylon", or some such thing, and this suffices for them as proof of their validity.

Frankly, I think it much easier to arrive at the conclusion that the Catholic Church, or the Orthodox Church, is the Apostolic Church in its fullness, the Church established by the Apostles and guided by the Holy Spirit as promised by Christ, than it is to derive every essential doctrine, of one's own resources, from Scripture, whether directly or by "good and necessary consequence". In other words, it is easier to yield to a claim of authority, or to recognize authority, than to discriminate between the wise and the devil-possessed lunatics, all of whom assert that they possess the truth long concealed by authority; the fissiparous nature of Protestantism tells us as much.

I think that people who go through a crisis where they try to decide whether to be part of this or that church--whether to become Protestant, Orthodox, Catholic, or whatever--do indeed try to evaluate rival claims using their reason. They worry about it and try to figure out who is right. Now my point would be that there's no point in knocking "private judgement" in that sort of sweeping way that one runs into in much anti-Protestant polemic if one is going to laud the slow, careful, private judgement that brought so agonized a person as, say, Newman, into the Fold. And the sort of people I have in mind are usually of the intellectual stripe such that, _if_ they are at all qualified to go into the question of which is the One True Church, what church history shows them, to whom did Christ commit authority, and so forth--and they themselves assume that they are and that they must investigate these vexed questions--then there is no real reason in terms of sheer intellectual ability why they shouldn't be just as qualfied to make at least passably reasonable judgements about Scriptural teaching on, e.g., the doctrine of justification, baptism, etc. Now, of course, if it is your set doctrine that no one is thus qualified to interpret Scripture, then there's no arguing with that. But if we're talking about ordinary intellectual qualifications, then I can't see the point to all the reviling of private judgement one so often hears while at the same time being pleased (and considering this to be the work of God) when intellectual converts have their minds satisfied with the claims of one's own Church to be the True Church.

Is this equivocation? I don't think so. In terms of sheer time, fussiness, and detail I suppose one could well end up doing a lot _more_ thinking and private-judging if one were indeed interpreting Scripture for oneself and making up one's mind on individual doctrines than if one had one Gigantic Intellectual Crisis at the age of 25, thought over the claims of this or that Church, got it over with, and thenceforth went with the tradition of that church on specifics. Though it is rather amusing to a Protestant to see Catholics arguing as earnestly about the interpretation of passages in encyclicals, papal speeches, and so forth, as Protestant argue about the interpretation of passages of Scripture. And they have an ever-growing set of material to work on! But although this is indeed an important difference of approach, as I'd be the first to acknowledge, I really cannot see that one can commend the latter rather than the former procedure on the grounds that "private judgement is a bad thing." It seems to me one would do better from a purely logical and apologetic point of view just to say, "As a matter of fact, though it didn't have to be this way, I think Christ committed the job of interpreting Scripture to such-and-such a visible human body, and here are my reasons for thinking so," rather than to try to argue as a matter of principle that we should greet individualism and private judgement with horror.

""Relegating faith to the purely private sphere" meaning what, exactly? Evidence, after all, can be quite public."

Locke's Empiricism was destined, if not designed, to supplant Revelation, not sustain it. How could it be otherwise when he held that man would one day be able to make moral judgements as free from doubt as mathematical proofs? He may not have been the ultimate rationalist, but he was surely one of the first.

""Relegating faith to the purely private sphere" meaning what, exactly? Evidence, after all, can be quite public."

Locke's Empiricism was destined, if not designed, to supplant Revelation, not sustain it. How could it be otherwise when he held that man would one day be able to make moral judgements as free from doubt as mathematical proofs? He may not have been the ultimate rationalist, but he was surely one of the first.

Kevin, have you ever read "The Reasonableness of Christianity"? Even part of it? "How could it be otherwise [than that reason was supposed to supplant revelation for Locke]?" Welllll, maybe because Locke wasn't an idiot and saw that there were certain specifics of theology that, if true, needed to be revealed (e.g. "Christ died for our sin") but that one needed a way to tell what is revelation from God and what is hooey promulgated by a charlatan, so God gave signs whereby one could tell, etc. In other words, common sense, which in my opinion all Christians should embrace. I can get you the money quote from the Essay (I believe it is) saying almost exactly this in almost exactly these words tomorrow, if you're interested in something other than bashing that bogey-man..."Enlightenment Rationalism."

Lydia,
Locke is troublesome precisely because he was a Christian who properly uses reason to support faith and then goes off the rails.

Contending that divisive matters of morality could eventually be scientifically resolved was based on his hope for a truly tolerant social order. Noble motive, but delusional. Don't you agree?

Luther's views on salvation were also in the air for more than a century with Huss and, before Huss, with Wycliffe.

Indeed. It was Wycliffe who attacked the doctrine of the Real Presence in the Eucharist, substituting (in mirror image if not willful imitation of his Moslem contemporaries) a literal Real Presence in a scriptural text for the priest-mediated Sacrament. Unlike Wycliffe Luther was anti-reason though, probably because he wasn't as well equipped in that respect.

(Sorry, I couldn't resist. These discussions never convince anyone, but the food fight is always fun :-).

Bill wrote:
I'm afraid to step into this one. I think I'll let Zippy go first.

I don't have to say anything really. Everyone who cares knows I agree almost completely with Maximos (if only he could be won over on one minor matter of ecclesiology and that little filioque :-). He's got valid Sacraments. He's got Christ Incarnate in the Real Presence. He's got everything that matters, though ecclesial unity would be better still.

"As a matter of fact, though it didn't have to be this way, I think Christ committed the job of interpreting Scripture to such-and-such a visible human body, and here are my reasons for thinking so," rather than to try to argue as a matter of principle that we should greet individualism and private judgement with horror.

Leaving aside that clause about things not having to be this way, which can cover quite a breadth of theological territory, I would argue that the very reason that individualism and private judgment should be greeted with horror is precisely that the question of authority is more easily resolved, more easily investigated, than the question of how best to parse the doctrine of justification. It is easier, that is, to trace the Church and Her hierarchy back to the Apostles than it is to resolve the most contentious questions of theology. Submitting to an authority external to one's own conscience and consciousness is quite different from accepting a claim to doctrinal authority (which is what it must be, since private judgment effectively negates institutional authority) insofar as this is mediated by one's reason. You can articulate the argument that what Newman did and what a Baptist does both amount to "private judgment", but the concept of private judgment in that case will be pretty dessicated, and if one moves from the formality of decision-making to the specificity of Protestant private judgment, of the private mediation of authority, then a massive equivocation is taking place. The entire movement of an enterprise such as that of Newman is of gradual surrender, of exercises of reasoned judgment that lead to an acceptance of an authority to which one will submit; the movement of Protestant private judgment, so long as it remains true to itself, and does not become sidelined into its own appeals to authority - its own pseudo-Magisterium or Tradition - continues to turn in on itself, retaining the "right" to rule ex cathedra against any claim that fails the bar of the subject's reason. Interestingly, at least as I read matters, particular doctrinal questions cannot really be settled until and unless one has first, whether expressly or tacitly, resolved the question of authority; one is not going to get justification right unless one admits that cracking open the Greek New Testament, along with a lexicon, is not going to settle the controversy. The meaning, in Christianity, is always, and has always been, more than the formal properties of the text; in other words, it is inseparable from liturgy, prayer, and the entire discipline of a way of being. Lex orandi, lex credendi.

Well, Lydia, my personal experience--in which I returned to my Catholic faith after spending my twenties in doubt--wasn't much like how you describe it. It was not like decoding a cryptogram or untangling threads through force of intellect. On the contrary: It was more of an admission that I am not remotely capable of untangling those threads; and a surrender to the embrace of the Church about which I could at least say, "They've thought about this stuff a lot." I can't imagine saying the same thing about a Protestant denomination, unfortunately.

But I am certainly no Cardinal Newman, nor do I write impressive treatises on Hume or books of historiography. I'm the guy who gets whupped by his betters in discussions like this one. Individual investigation is not something I put my faith in. And something tells me (or perhaps I just like to think) that even Cardinal Newman knew his limitations and did his share of surrendering.

Or:

What Maximos Said.

Max,
If identifying the right church authority were a comparatively easy thing to do, then a billion Catholics wouldn't have gotten it wrong -- or a billion Protestants and Eastern Orthodox. That's another way of saying that church history and Scripture are not nearly as univocal on the issue as perhaps some folks might think.

I'm not ready to greet private judgment with horror. After all, private judgment might be precisely the task God Himself gave us. If so, then we ought to be embracing it with optimism, faith, care, and courage, not recoiling in fear and disgust. If it is what He intended, then it is quite good enough.
Best,
Mike

If identifying the right church authority were a comparatively easy thing to do, then a billion Catholics wouldn't have gotten it wrong -- or a billion Protestants and Eastern Orthodox.

I am not at all sure that "most people do it" is a necessary condition of something being easy. I can think of plenty of things that are easy that people still do not do. For example: signaling a change of lanes.

Myself, I don't actually think that the question "Is such-and-such visible human body a true authority to which to submit my judgment in matters of theology" is _at all_ easily resolved. Not only are there rival claimants, but--more seriously--it isn't at all clear to me that there needs to be any such interpretive authority at all, so that's a prior question. (Due to site wonkiness, a comment of mine has gone into the ether that probably wasn't that great anyway. This is a warning that it may suddenly appear upthread or downthread. It had to do with the question of whether people are likely to become, specifically, Roman Catholic if they start off with and maintain a fairly loose and agnostic ecclesiology rather than becoming concerned as a transitional stage about *which is the true church*--to my mind a rather interesting psychological, epistemological, and sociological question.) In any event, I tend to think that Scripture is relatively clear on the really crucial stuff and very, very unclear on a whole bunch of other stuff about which I don't worry about too much anymore. I certainly don't think most Christians are going to hell if they haven't accepted the authority of some Church, so perhaps this is why I don't regard private judgement with such horror.

I'm a bit surprised as a sheerly factual matter to hear that the RC view is that the Orthodox not in communion with Rome have valid sacraments. I hadn't known this and like to keep all my ducks in a row on this stuff as a matter just of knowing what's up.

Kevin, I think that moral knowledge is a priori, possibly analytic, though ethics is the one area in which I hold out that there may be a synthetic a priori. That doesn't, of course, mean that it's an easy matter to get it all right. But as I understand it, the Catholic Church itself teaches that many moral truths are accessible to mankind generally by the Natural Law. That isn't the area in which--again, even according to Catholic Natural Law theorists--special revelation is supposed to be strictly indispensible, though of course it helps a lot. So I'm unlikely to agree that Locke or anybody else was obviously trying to "supplant" revelation (especially as we have his own sensible words to the contrary making clear what he thought was the crucial need for revelation) just because he had even an overly optimistic view about the prospects for human knowledge of ethics.

Brief addendum: Maximos said something about Protestants' "believing something because it was taught by someone they trust" (it's upthread somewhere--I haven't looked up the exact wording). Now, I'm not sure how far he would want to press the idea that Protestants are really not engaging in private judgement anyway, or just how far he wanted to push that; it was a passing comment. But one does sometimes hear the claim that "you can't get away from trusting authority" or something like that as an argument for ditching Protestant private judgement--indeed, an argument that ditching it is inevitable anyway, so you might as well look for the "right" Church authority to which to submit.

I think this is a poor argument (though I'm not sure anyone here has actually made it) pretty much because, as Maximos said in a different comment, submitting to a Church authority is very different from accepting authority as it is "mediated through one's reason." I think that really, however much credit we give people on an informal basis, most of us are unconsciously reserving the right, at least in theory, to change our associations in the future if somebody does something that seems to us truly wacky. Take doctors, mechanics, and other experts: However much you might trust them, you aren't formally swearing never to go to another doctor or mechanic for the rest of your life. Choosing a doctor isn't at all like getting married. Joining the Catholic Church is. And even getting married doesn't involve saying that you will believe whatever your spouse teaches ex cathedra.

Wonderful discussion, ladies and gents.

It so happens that there was a contemporary of Newman who may provide an even more poignant example for us to chew on: Lord Acton.

Now Acton was of course a faithful Catholic, but he also desperately wanted to be a good Liberal, in the old classical sense of that word. During the mid-nineteenth century this was a rather precarious position. Liberalism was condemned in the Syllabus of Errors, for instance. The tension came to a head with the First Vatican Council, and above all, over the doctrine of infallibility.

Some in Acton's faction, including his mentor, a German whose name eludes me at the moment, split with the Church over all that. Acton himself went to Rome to work against the promulgation of this doctrine -- unsuccessfully, as it turned out.

Yet he remained in communion with Rome all his life.

So even a great Liberal like Acton, in the great age of Liberalism, in the very isle of Liberalism itself, went for authority over individual inquiry when the chips were down.

What we make of this episode will tell us much about how we think of such matters. Is Acton's decision evidence of weakness? did he fail to "be true to himself"? Or is it evidence of a noble humility?

I'm a bit surprised as a sheerly factual matter to hear that the RC view is that the Orthodox not in communion with Rome have valid sacraments.

Perhaps surprising, but true. Valid Apostolic succession = valid sacraments. Validity is ontological; liciety in this context is juridical. It would be better for our sacramental unity to be juridical in addition to ontological, but alas, for the time being it is not.

Do you think he _believed_ the doctrine of infallibility after they refused to listen to him and went ahead and promulgated it? I myself doubt it very much. Yet if I'm right about that, then in a sense he wasn't really being a good Catholic, because the whole point (or one of the whole points) isn't just that you are supposed to continue going to that church, being in outward communion, but that you are supposed to submit your mind and believe what is taught.

I think he was faced with a dilemma, or maybe a trilemma: 1) He could remain in outward communion while privately disbelieving the doctrine; 2) He could break with the Catholic Church formally; 3) He could decide that, if the Church persisted in teaching the doctrine, he must believe it and hence believe it, although oddly, it would seem that he would think himself strongly obligated to take this final route only if he _already_ believed the doctrine in question, or at least its very near cousin (Church infallibility) which he manifestly didn't before!

Lydia,
Locke went well beyond maintaining the healthy tension between faith and reason which every Christian must embrace.

Instead, he held that matters of faith could ultimately be "proven." That is both unreasonable and antithetical to the role Mystery plays in the life of genuine faith. In attempting to graft rationalism unto faith he damaged the latter by accelerating the process of de-mystification. He was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the arid rationalism that would ultimately unravel Christian civilization. That is his legacy.

Zippy, has the Catholic Church definitely stated that the Orthodox have ontologically valid succession? Again, I obviously am just behind the eight-ball on this one. In any event (and I hope this doesn't sound like I'm trying to set friends by the ears) I tend to think the differences between East and West are bigger than the filioque, or even the filioque and the Pope. For one thing, someone converting from East to West would have to accept an _ongoing_ teaching magisterium engaging at times in the "development of doctrine," which the Orthodox don't have in any clear, visible, and active form. There are even moral issues on which the Catholic Church has taught definitively which, as far as I can tell, remain at least somewhat fuzzy or up in the air for Orthodox. And the whole question of whether or not we can know God in his essence (the Eastern position on which ["no"] has been stated to me quite clearly by an Orthodox friend) is rather an important divide, too. (On that one I'm thoroughly Western.)

Yet if I'm right about that, then in a sense he wasn't really being a good Catholic, because the whole point (or one of the whole points) isn't just that you are supposed to continue going to that church, being in outward communion, but that you are supposed to submit your mind and believe what is taught.

I think people tend to use the word "believe" where the more appropriate word - given what has happened to our language with respect to faith - is "trust". If "belief" is viewed as an interior purely epistemic autonomous-individual thing rather than as a relational thing then I don't think it is the right word for the job: indeed that concept of "belief" in a sense even begs the question, because it is not a Catholic sense of "belief" as I understand the Catholic sense of belief.

Right, Kevin, so your "issue," in contemporary jargon, isn't really just with some specific Lockean position on ethics but rather with the whole question of rationalism vs. "mystery." Well, put me with the rationalists on that one. As for the word "proven," that word of course has had many different meanings in the history of ideas and sometimes merely means "very strongly supported by evidence as available to fair-minded men." I will eat my hat if Locke believed that Christian doctrines such as the atonement could be known with absolute certainty as can logical truths. For one thing, his own position as to their being indirectly supported by signs given by God would seem definitely to preclude such a position. So far, you have only even claimed that he said such a thing w.r.t. moral issues. But if your overall concern is to maintain some sort of mysticism or fideism, and your complaint against Locke is that he wasn't mystical or anti-evidential enough, then you will find me unsympathetic to this broader complaint.

Zippy, has the Catholic Church definitely stated that the Orthodox have ontologically valid succession?

That is my understanding, though I don't have a cite handy. The person I know who knows the most about EO/RC relations is Mike Liccione. I think he would agree with you that development of doctrine is a big, and perhaps the biggest, barrier to reunification.

But if Lord Acton "trusted" the Church on this one, then presumably he said somewhere to himself, "Okay, then I guess the pope must be infallible, since the Church teaches that he is infallible. I trust them to get it right." Is that the kind of thing you are talking about, Zippy? I would call that "believing in infallibility." Why not? That would be going with the third horn of the trilemma I mention.

Is that the kind of thing you are talking about, Zippy?

That still doesn't strike me as quite right. There seems to be an implicit law of excluded middle at work which doesn't apply, as if I can hold in my own mind all at once everything which might possibly be meant by (say) the filioque or the Immaculate Conception or the doctrine of infallibility itself. On that vision there is really no such thing as trust, because I have a comprehensive grasp of what is at issue: I am omniscient in that little domain and simply cannot help but submit to my own interior adjudication of (say) the mystery of the Immaculate Conception.

I don't think trust and raw epistemic belief are quite the same thing, and I think the notion that infallibility creates the kind of dilemma you posit depends on them being the same thing.

I can't say for sure what Acton believed in his, so to speak, heart of hearts. One would assume that his doubts remained.

It is interesting to consider how Acton would view infallibility today. The air is rich with irony: the "Old Catholic" schismatics are largely forgotten; infallibility has become the bulwark against Liberalism; and Newman has been beatified.

I'm not sure where the question of holding everything in one's mind that could be meant by a doctrine comes into play in this particular case. Isn't everyone agreed that Acton opposed the doctrine of infallibility? But in that case there was some sort of content that he had in his mind that he opposed and on which he lost his battle against the Church's declaration of that doctrine. So then the question is, what should he do about that? Just stick with the part of the doctrine that he did understand and that he fought against. What should he do about _that_?

My own guess (and this is very tentative and could be easily refuted if there were some writing or something by Acton to the contrary), for what it's worth, is that since Acton never accepted infallibility in the first place, he disagreed with my above statement about what it takes to be a good Catholic, and he went with the first of the three options I listed. Probably he figured he'd been sufficiently open with everyone about his not "buying" infallibility, so no one could reasonably take his continued formal association with the Church to mean that he believed in infallibility. Perhaps he thought that being a Catholic didn't mean believing everything the Church teaches. There _are_ churches like that, where they are willing to have you, as it were, even if you state reservations about their doctrine at the outset; only a smaller subset of agreement is sometimes required.

Lydia, if Locke thought moral issues could be resolved by mathematical proofs, why would he stop at theological ones? Certainly his heirs didn't hesitate to take the next logical step.

Well, because moral matters and matters of theology are quite different. (On the moral matters, I'm not enough of a Locke scholar to say you are definitely wrong there, but is it possible you are confusing Locke with Leibnitz? Not that much turns on it.) Again, I assume you are Catholic. Does not your own Church teach this difference between natural law and truths given by special revelation? That it is wrong to do murder is supposedly knowable by the natural light without the _necessity_ of special revelation in the form of Scripture, miracles, and the like. (Again, God has also revealed in the ten commandments that murder is wrong, but the Christian teaching in the natural law tradition as I understand it has always been that even tribes that never had the ten commandments can have access to the truth that murder is wrong.) That the Son is of one substance with the Father is not thus knowable. Jesus had to come to earth and reveal himself for us to have any clue that there even is a Son in the first place. Locke makes this point explicitly:

"[R]evelation is natural reason enlarged by a new set of discoveries communicated by God immediately; which reason vouches the truth of, by the testimony and proofs it gives that they come from God." Essay Concerning Human Understanding 4.19.4 I take the reference to a "new set of discoveries communicated by God" to be quite clear.

Kevin writes:

Instead, he [Locke] held that matters of faith could ultimately be "proven." That is both unreasonable and antithetical to the role Mystery plays in the life of genuine faith. In attempting to graft rationalism unto faith he damaged the latter by accelerating the process of de-mystification. He was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the arid rationalism that would ultimately unravel Christian civilization.

In any event, unargued and tendentious assertions regarding the damage Locke ostensibly did will not advance this discussion. Such shoddy historical claims have gone unchallenged for too long. It would be a great deal more just to say that Locke laid the groundwork for a common-sense empiricism that enabled the rational Christian apologists to defeat the deists of the 18th century and the mythologizers of the 19th, while the mystery-mongers were leading people into an unjustified enthusiasm that frequently ended in bitter agnosticism. Read Anthony Froude or Francis Newman for details.

Kevin writes:

... if Locke thought moral issues could be resolved by mathematical proofs, why would he stop at theological ones? Certainly his heirs didn't hesitate to take the next logical step.

Perhaps he thought that being a Catholic didn't mean believing everything the Church teaches.

I would find that somewhat difficult to accept for someone of his intellectual caliber. My understanding is that to be a Catholic in good standing one must believe everything the Church teaches must be definitively held as true.

Here's a conjecture on Acton: Suppose that infallibility made membership in the Roman Catholic Church a much more committal and demanding matter. Then one could say that Acton came in initially under the "old rules" before this "development" and might well not have considered himself bound by the new, more submission-demanding, concept of Catholicism. I myself would never join the Catholic Church unless I was prepared to submit myself according to the full-fledged understanding, because those are clearly the rules now. Which is one reason why I will never be a Catholic.

It's important to note that the doctrine Acton opposed was papal infallibility, a specific expression of the Church's infallibility--a doctrine that no faithful Catholic would have disputed before Vatican I or after. As papal infallibility was defined by a Church Council and not by the Pope, it falls under the much more indisputable category. Of course Acton, I'm sure, still had his misgivings about the doctrine, but at that point I would think his responsibility was to struggle with the conflict and bring himself to peace with the Church's teachings. It makes it easier, I think, for a faithful Catholic to do so when he trusts--as he should--that the Holy Spirit will never lead the Church irretrievably astray.

Myself, I don't actually think that the question "Is such-and-such visible human body a true authority to which to submit my judgment in matters of theology" is _at all_ easily resolved. Not only are there rival claimants, but--more seriously--it isn't at all clear to me that there needs to be any such interpretive authority at all, so that's a prior question.

Well, that wasn't precisely my assertion, which was that the resolution of the question of legitimate authority is easier than the resolution of, for example, the technicalities of the doctrine of justification. The Church is a frequent theme of Christ throughout the Gospels, and the conciliar functioning of the Church is exemplified in Acts, and in both instances the substance of the teaching is hardly opaque, whereas, even in the Epistles, the technicalities of certain doctrines are often obscure and abstruse - and Peter even says as much about the writings of Paul. You'll not find anyone asserting with any credibility that the Catholic and Orthodox understanding of the Church is a "genuine theological novum" traceable to a definite moment in history, which is precisely what a dispassionate historical analysis must conclude concerning the origination of the distinctively Protestant doctrines of justification. It is still easier to perceive the continuity of the Church than it is to cross every 't' and dot every 'i' on the minutia of Christian doctrine. In other words, it is easy to perceive in Scripture the Church and the necessity of believing on Christ; as for much of the matter on which Protestantism has come to differ from the Tradition, not so much.

I certainly don't think most Christians are going to hell if they haven't accepted the authority of some Church, so perhaps this is why I don't regard private judgement with such horror.

Neither do Catholics and Orthodox, though, admittedly, for these latter, salvation is more than a matter of merely escaping damnation; there is, in addition to the fact of the matter, the quality of the experience itself.

Maximos said something about Protestants' "believing something because it was taught by someone they trust" (it's upthread somewhere--I haven't looked up the exact wording). Now, I'm not sure how far he would want to press the idea that Protestants are really not engaging in private judgement anyway...

I'm agnostic on the entire question of whether private judgment, strictly construed as the rendering of judgment upon some matter independently of the influence of any external influence, inclusive of that of authors one likes, teachers one respects, etc, ever transpires. To resort to a different idiom, I have no difficulty accepting that an individual might contribute his own portion to an ongoing discourse, thus becoming a participant in a developing conversation which precedes and encompasses him, but find the notion of someone standing outside of the discourse itself, evading even the merest whisper of its influence even as he condescends to influence it, somewhat murkier. In a sense, many who assert the right to exercise private judgment would be asserting a privilege of judging the very Tradition upon which they were dependent for all of their cognitive furniture.

As a rougher, more heuristic conception, I have no objections to the empirical differentiation of "Protestants who more or less believe something because Calvin (or whomever) said it" - of whom there are many - and "Protestants who 'search the Scriptures' to validate whatever anyone tells them". This distinction is valid because it is empirically confirmed, and that quite consistently.

I don't think private judgement should mean "not being influenced by anyone else." That seems to me a red herring. I'm influenced by tons of people, but I retain my private judgement in the sense that I retain the option of disagreeing. This is true even in an area like auto mechanics where I don't know much, where I am heavily influenced by the opinions of others, and where I have people I trust and whose word I take quite happily. But much as I enthuse about Shaun and Joe, if they suddenly started charging me ten times as much as before, encouraging me to have a lot more work on my car for which they couldn't give reasons that sounded sensible, or telling me that aliens have taken over the engine, I would get new mechanics. I retain my private judgement in relation to Shaun and Joe, even though I am and will probably remain a faithful customer. The faithful Catholic, on the other hand, does not retain the option of disagreeing with the authoritative teaching of the Church, as Chris has just emphasized.

My strong impression is that even Protestants who more or less believe something because Calvin said it have taken no oath of allegiance to submit to Calvin's teachings, even if they became convinced that he supported female ordination, taught that the death penalty is always wrong, or something like that. (Not that he did. Those are silly hypotheticals.)

It makes it easier, I think, for a faithful Catholic to do so when he trusts--as he should--that the Holy Spirit will never lead the Church irretrievably astray.

Yes. It ultimately comes to trust, which is to say, to faith. "Private judgment" as I understand it is the obstinate refusal to allow that trust to be displaced to any authority other than the imperial self. Again it isn't an epistemic issue per se; it is an issue of trust, combined with acceptance of the fact that one can never personally completely possess the Deposit of the Faith within onesself.

Does not one need to arrive at the conclusion, through his own private judgment, that the Catholic Church is the proper authority in order to be a Catholic? Who says, “I have come to the conclusion that the Catholic Church is wrong on such and such, but I will continue to follow such and such?” It seems to me that this would be lying to yourself. Using private judgment does not make that judgment correct, but it seems unavoidable that everyone makes private judgments, including the judgment of whom to trust. If it takes a private judgment to conclude that private judgments lack authority, how is this not self-refuting? Or maybe I simply do not understand the “authority” vs. “private judgment” dichotomy being discussed here.

Tim wrote;
"Locke's friend Molyneux pressed him to develop a moral theory in demonstrative form, but Locke never attempted this."

Locke's later writings diverged from his original views on natural law. He opted for an ethical "hedonism" with pleasure & pain corresponding to bad and good. A moral theory of sorts.

"Locke laid the groundwork for a common-sense empiricism that enabled the rational Christian apologists to defeat the deists of the 18th century and the mythologizers of the 19th,"

Locke is hailed as a "father of the Enlightenment". Are you contending he was misread by his supporters or his critics? Or that his influence was not that great? At any rate, I missed the great defeat of the deists, as some of them survived to write the Declaration of Independence.

You seem to deny the slippery slope of his philosophical insights with; "unargued and tendentious assertions."

It sounds as though private judgment is essentially a labour of the negative, a withholding of some degree of assent, a modulation of authority inasmuch as it will accept some things - usually a majority of them - while reserving a right to dissent with respect to others. It is, in a sense, privative in nature, an ongoing "yes, but...". The scandal of private judgment is that, proclaimed as either an ideal or (dubiously) as an inescapable epistemic procedure, it renders impossible of attainment the fullness of Christian unity envisioned in the Gospels. A billion people can be, more or less, of one mind in the sense of sharing a common faith, but they cannot be of one mind if they're all making up their own minds about just what authoritative teachings they will accept.

"...a modulation of authority inasmuch as it will accept some things - usually a majority of them - while reserving a right to dissent with respect to others. It is, in a sense, privative in nature, an ongoing "yes, but..."...A billion people can be, more or less, of one mind in the sense of sharing a common faith, but they cannot be of one mind if they're all making up their own minds about just what authoritative teachings they will accept."

That sounds about right to me. And it doesn't bother me in the slightest. As for the unity envisaged in the Gospels, Jesus prays "that they may be one" but I'm missing the footnote where that means, "That they may all take a pledge of everlasting epistemic fealty to one, visible, institutional ecclesiastical authority such that they do not retain even in principle the option of dissenting from what that authority teaches as definitive dogma."

If anything, St. Paul's bit about "though we or an angel from heaven declare unto you any other gospel, let him be accursed" sounds--as far as it goes--like an endorsement of the kind of in principle mental reservation I consider fully healthy.

Yes, Kevin, it's my understanding that Locke's critics and even some of his fans misinterpreted him. Tim is far more qualified than I to go into detail on this, though.

As for the great defeat of the deists, you're tampering there with the mains without having turned off the electricity. Or, to change the metaphor, Tim is loaded for bear on that one, even more than I am, though our co-written paper is relevant to the subject. Argumentatively, guess what, the deists lost. That some people, including some of the founders of this country, were still deists or even more radical unbelievers just shows that people don't disappear in a puff of logic when their positions are evidentially refuted. Thomas Paine was, as far as the historical evidences regarding Christianity are concerned, a buffoon. He did not even know that there was more than one Herod and seriously put forward as an argument against Christianity that Herod ostensibly died when Jesus was a small child but appears again later in the Gospels. Oh, yah, those fiercely rational 18th-century infidels...

By "that sounds about right to me" I mean the picture of a billion people being more or less of one mind in the sense of sharing a common faith but doing so by the contingent method of making up their own mind about what authority they will accept rather than by means of having all accepted the same authority. I'm sorry if that was unclear.

Heck, that's what we have now: Catholics, Orthodox, Baptists, etc., don't all accept the same authority, but it's my opinion that most of us (no doubt as many as a billion and many more, counting the dead) share a common faith. That would itself seem to indicate that even granting that many details and doctrines are underdetermined, the broad outlines of many of the biggies aren't that hard to divine from sources accepted by all these parties.

Does not one need to arrive at the conclusion, through his own private judgment, that the Catholic Church is the proper authority in order to be a Catholic?

If "arrive at the conclusion" means "decide to trust" then sure; though the extent to which any judgement at all is exclusively "private" is probably open to debate.

Mind you I'm deeply sympathetic to the evidentiary Protestantism articulated by Tim and Lydia. I think Christians in general, these days, have more of an anti-rational problem than an overly-rational problem. And I firmly believe in natural religion (truths about God discoverable through natural reason) and natural law (truths about morality discoverable through natural reason). But a revealed religion also requires revelation, revelation requires the mediation of that revelation through some authority, and acceptance of that authority requires, not belief understood as an epistemic conclusion about some formally complete and definite body of content, but trust.

Kevin writes:

Locke is hailed as a "father of the Enlightenment". Are you contending he was misread by his supporters or his critics? Or that his influence was not that great? At any rate, I missed the great defeat of the deists, as some of them survived to write the Declaration of Independence.

Locke was misappropriated by his critics. On the question of Locke's relation to the deists, see Samuel Hefelbower, The Relation of Locke to English Deism (1918).

If you would like to begin to educate yourself on the deist controversy, I would suggest that you read:

* John Leland, A View of the Principal Deistical Writers (1808 ed.),

* Gotthard Lechler, Geschichte des Englischen Deismus (1841),

* Adam Storey Farrar, A Critical History of Free Thought (1862),

* John Cairns, Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century (1881),

* R. M. Burns, The Great Debate on Miracles: From Joseph Glanvill to David Hume (1981),

* William Lane Craig, The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus During the Deist Controversy (1985), and

* John Earman, Hume's Abject Failure (2000).

These works will give you sufficient background to recognize the distortions in the accounts of writers like Leslie Stephen, A. C. McGiffert, and Colin Brown.

If you would like to go into the matter more deeply, I would suggest that you begin to read the primary sources such as:

* Jacques Abbadie, A Vindication of the Truth of the Christian Religion (1694),

* William Adams, An Essay in Answer to Mr. Hume's Essay on Miracles, 3rd ed. (1767),

* Joseph Addison, Evidences of the Christian Religion, in Purdy's translation, with de Correvon's notes (1807),

* James Beattie, Evidences of the Christian Religion, 4th ed., 2 vols. (1795)

* Richard Bentley, Remarks upon a Late Discourse of Free-Thinking (1737),

* George Berkeley, Alciphron: or, The Minute Philosopher, 3rd ed (1752), as well as Berkeley's contributions to The Guardian, numbers 3, 27, 35, 39, 49, 55, 62, 70, 77, and 126,

* Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion (1736)

* Robert Boyle, The Christian Virtuoso (1690) and "Mr. Boyle’s answer to Spinoza,"

* Jean Baptiste Bullet, History of the Establishment of Christianity, in Salisbury's translation (1776),

* George Campbell, A Dissertation on Miracles, 3rd ed. (1797),

* Samuel Chandler, A Vindication of the Christian Religion (1728) and The Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ Re-examined (1744),

* Humphry Ditton, A Discourse on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, 2nd ed. (1714),

* Philip Doddridge, Three Sermons on the Evidences of the Gospel, 3rd ed. (1752) and Christianity Founded on Argument, which you can find reprinted in The Works of the Rev. P. Doddridge, vol. 1 of 10 (1802), pp. 467-590.,

* John Douglas, The Criterion (1757)

But it is going to take a long time to get through the alphabet at this rate, so I will stop, for now, with the recommendation of William Paley's View of the Evidences of Christianity, in Whately's edition (1859), and the first fourteen volumes of Nathaniel Lardner's Credibility of the Gospel History.

As regards, "Sounds about right to me...", what I intended, but evidently failed to make sufficiently plain, was that a billion people can repose their trust in an ecclesiastical institution with continuing teaching authority, while none of them fully possess or comprehend the deposit of faith, while no possible set of any billion people could ever achieve any unity of belief through the exercise of private judgment. And the unity for which Jesus prayed was evidently understood to be a visible unity, inasmuch as this unity was envisioned as a witness to the unbelieving world; certainly, this was the accepted understanding of the passage for over a millenium, prior to the Great Disintegration (as Voegelin termed it), which necessitated more ethereal readings of the passage.

Yikes! Looks like contemners of Locke have some reading to do!

Tim, can't we just dislike Locke because his influence on the American Founding was grossly exaggerated by mid-twentieth century political scientists, some of whom were given to setting him up as a foil from their Marxian analysis?

Paul,

I strongly recommend instead that we should dislike 20th century political scientists. It's simpler.

;)

Tim
I appreciate your effort, but can't you summarize your exhaustive readings on Locke to clear my confusion.

Example; During the controversy between the Anglican Church and the Dissenters, Locke called for the Church to discontinue it's hierarchy, Liturgy, iconography and the Common Book of Prayer. Is this position inconsistent with his philosophy, or a logical result of his outlook? To me this suggests an inclination to Jacobinism more than an adherence to Orthodoxy, but I am open to persuasion.

Kevin,

I make no pretense to being a Locke scholar, though I have published on Locke and taught his works at both the undergraduate and the graduate level. My area of special historical interest is the deist controversy.

I suspect the answer to your question is that Locke's attempt to accommodate the dissenters was neither inconsistent with nor the inevitable result of his empiricism. Recall that Archbishop Tillotson, too, advocated liberty of conscience far beyond what was granted by the Act of Toleration. This irenic attitude has its origin not in the writings of Locke but earlier in the 17th century in the works of people like Chillingworth (who suffered at the hands of Cheynell for it) and Wilkins. The Comprehension Bill nearly passed. Baxter, Bates, Calamy, and Howe were satisfied. But the High Church party of Beveridge, South, and Jane scuttled the deal.

But let's get down to particular texts and we can have a more profitable discussion.

Tim,
"I suspect the answer to your question is that Locke's attempt to accommodate the dissenters was neither inconsistent with nor the inevitable result of his empiricism."

What about his understanding of Christianity? You're holding back. Such a proposal would have ended the Anglican Church. Isn't that revolutionary? I suspect you have a both q well-informed opinion on this matter and an appreciation for the problem Locke poses for us.

Kevin, I can't help feeling a touch of impatience: Your earlier claim, as I understood it, was that Locke's views _logically_ entailed that special revelation is unnecessary. I think that even the brief quote I gave from the Essay, combined with your own failure to do anything to argue for that claim but to cite his views on _ethics_ (which really isn't quite to the point), shows that you really cannot support that claim. But you have since hared off on everything from broad-brush historical labels like "Father of the Enlightenment" to the ways Locke was understood by critics and followers to the history of the establishment of the Book of Common Prayer. Could you perhaps pause for a moment and say something like, "Gee, I never did establish that anything Locke said has as a logical consequence that reason can or should supplant special revelation; perhaps I should withdraw that claim"?

But a revealed religion also requires revelation, revelation requires the mediation of that revelation through some authority, and acceptance of that authority requires, not belief understood as an epistemic conclusion about some formally complete and definite body of content, but trust.

Thanks Zippy, your response was helpful.

If Catholics want people to trust the Catholic Church, shouldn’t Catholics give reasons and evidence as to why one should put their trust in the Catholic Church?

Maximos, I'm afraid I just disagree with this statement: "[N]o possible set of any billion people could ever achieve any unity of belief through the exercise of private judgment." That is, as I understand the statement. It's possible that by "private judgement" you mean something I've never endorsed, like "coming to one's conclusions without any influence or information from anyone else." But in fact I've explicitly disavowed that notion of private judgement and argued that it's not relevant. I certainly do think that a set of a billion people or many more could have a very important unity of belief without adhering to the same ecclesiastical institution as having continuing teaching authority. For that matter, isn't that exemplified on earth already? Even if you won't let me count the Catholics and Orthodox for some reason (perhaps because each group of them adheres within the group to the same teaching authority), haven't there been an awful lot of Protestants already (perhaps as many as a billion, counting them all) in the last five hundred years who have quite a significant unity of belief though some are Presbyterians, some Baptists, some Lutherans, some unspecified evangelicals, some Anglicans, some Methodists, some Assemblies of God, and so forth? And if we haven't yet made it to a billion (I'm not good enough with numbers to be confident that we have), let history keep going for a few hundred more years, and I'm sure we will. But then, I'm a big fan of mere Christianity, and I have a sinking sort of feeling that you are going to say that these people _don't_ all share a significant unity of belief, because those things on which they agree are insufficient to be truly significant. Or something along those lines. But here I am guessing.

As for visible, institutional unity as the thing referred to in Christ's prayer, I have just two responses: First, if that was what he was praying for, it got questionable as to how much of that unity there was even during the book of Acts. They settled the bit about whether Gentile believers had to obey the law of Moses, but whether Jewish believers still had to was left up in the air and was a real source of strife. At that point "visible unity" becomes more or less a matter of degree, even among people all of whom have good will and all of whom mean to go along with Apostolic doctrine. For that matter, the Apostles weren't agreed among themselves on all of these things. And we certainly (manifestly) don't have institutional unity now. And Jesus probably knew that this would happen, unless you have a fairly radical kenosis theory according to which his omniscience was withdrawn during his High Priestly Prayer. So either he was praying for something he knew wouldn't happen, or he was praying with an eschatological fulfillment in mind, or the institutional unity interpretation of his prayer is wrong. You can pick for yourself.

Second, if he was praying for institutional unity, I know you won't like this answer, but it seems to me the Protestants have as much of a right to tell those who believe in [fill in the blank] that _they_ are destroying that unity with those extra doctrines and should ditch them as the Orthodox or Catholics have to tell the Protestants that _they_ are destroying that institutional unity and should start believing in [fill in the blank], accept the authority of the Pope, etc., and come on over to their institution.

Kevin writes:

What about his [Locke's] understanding of Christianity? You're holding back. Such a proposal would have ended the Anglican Church. Isn't that revolutionary?

Kevin, . . . Your earlier claim, as I understood it, was that Locke's views _logically_ entailed that special revelation is unnecessary. . . . Could you perhaps pause for a moment and say something like, "Gee, I never did establish that anything Locke said has as a logical consequence that reason can or should supplant special revelation; perhaps I should withdraw that claim"?

Though I am not averse to discussing the Comprehension Bill as time permits, I do agree with Lydia that you have changed the subject here.

I have not gone on record saying that Locke was "not revolutionary" -- it is hard even to assess this claim without defining terms more clearly. But he was neither the intellectual nor the spiritual leader behind the Comprehension Bill. Tillotson was far more important in that regard. The Royal Commission did suggest numerous changes in the Prayer Book (e.g. substituting "presbyter" or "minister" for "priest"; rendering daily service optional; excluding the apocryphal lessons from the lectionary; eliminating the feast days of the legendary saints), but they did not advocate its discontinuation. The Book of Common Prayer had already undergone various changes, and it has continued to do so after that time. I do not see how the Comprehension Bill would have been tantamount to the end of the Anglican Church -- though it would have meant the end of the High Church.

If you have more specific quotations from Locke that you would like to discuss, feel free to bring them up. But as Lydia said, let's admit that the question of an a priori connection between Locke's empiricism and anti-Christian deism is no longer on the table.

If Catholics want people to trust the Catholic Church, shouldn’t Catholics give reasons and evidence as to why one should put their trust in the Catholic Church?

Sure, and Christian apologetics are as old as Christianity, though to be honest apologetics isn't a personal interest of mine. But it is a both/and thing not an either/or thing the way I understand it: trust and reason, not trust-opposed-to-reason or reason-opposed-to-trust.

Lydia,
Sorry but you don't get to exclude from discussion those issues which put his legacy in a light not to your liking.

I cite Locke's substantial contribution to the Enlightenment, his proposal for the Anglican Church and his ethical hedonism to support my contention, which is Locke helped to sire a rebellion from which Christian civilization has yet to reoover.

He held that moral questions would one day be resolved by empirical proof, such was his faith in reason. Not only was this wrong, but why stop there? Obviously, many didn't. Granted, he can't be blamed for all that was unleashed in his name, but he is responsible for some of it. His view of human nature was wrong then and hard to imagine given the times he lived in. Even harder now.

Lydia,
Sorry but you don't get to exclude from discussion those issues which put his legacy in a light not to your liking.

I cite Locke's substantial contribution to the Enlightenment, his proposal for the Anglican Church and his ethical hedonism to support my contention, which is Locke helped to sire a rebellion from which Christian civilization has yet to reoover.

He held that moral questions would one day be resolved by empirical proof, such was his faith in reason. Not only was this wrong, but why stop there? Obviously, many didn't. Granted, he can't be blamed for all that was unleashed in his name, but he is responsible for some of it. His view of human nature was wrong then and hard to imagine given the times he lived in. Even harder now.

Tim,
"But as Lydia said, let's admit that the question of an a priori connection between Locke's empiricism and anti-Christian deism is no longer on the table."

I never said anti-Christian deism. I said his philosphy lead to the erosion of Christian civilization. Has that been rebutted?

Kevin,

You write:

I cite Locke's substantial contribution to the Enlightenment, his proposal for the Anglican Church and his ethical hedonism to support my contention, which is Locke helped to sire a rebellion from which Christian civilization has yet to reoover.

Locke's Empiricism was destined, if not designed, to supplant Revelation, not sustain it.

This is not compelling historical analysis, and reiterating the claim does not make it any stronger.

I earnestly suggest that you read Hefelbower.

While we're all busy arguing over Kolakowski's understanding of the Reformation in Modernity on Endless Trial and Kevin's attempt to paint horns on John Locke, it would be a pity if we overlooked the real, substantial, permanent contribution Kolakowski has made to human thought. I therefore present you with his

GENERAL THEORY OF NOT-GARDENING

Those who hate gardening need a theory. Not-gardening without a theory is a shallow, unworthy way of life.

A theory must be convincing and scientific. Yet to different people, different theories are convincing and scientific. Therefore, we need a number of theories. The alternative to not-gardening without a theory is to garden. However, it is much easier to have a theory than actually to garden.

MARXIST THEORY
"Capitalists try to corrupt the minds of the toiling masses and to poison them with their reactionary 'values.' They want to 'convince' workers that gardening is a great 'pleasure' and thereby keep them busy in their leisure time and prevent them from carrying out the proletarian revolution. Besides, they want to make them believe that with their miserable plot of land they are really 'owners' and not wage earners and in this way win them over to the side of the owners in the class struggle. To garden is therefore to participate in the great plot aiming at the ideological deception of the masses. Do not garden! Q.E.D."

PSYCHOANALYTICAL THEORY
"Fondness for gardening is a typically English quality. It is easy to see why this is so. England was the first country to take part in the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution killed the natural environment. Nature is the symbol of Mother. By killing Nature, the English people committed matricide. They are unconsciously haunted by feelings of guilt, and they try to expiate their crime by cultivating and worshiping their small, pseudonatural gardens. To garden is to take part in this gigantic self-deception. You must not garden. Q.E.D."

EXISTENTIALIST THEORY
"People garden in order to make Nature human, to 'civilize' it. This, however, is a desperate and futile attempt to transform being-in-itself into being-for-itself. This is not only ontologically impossible; it is a deceptive, morally inadmissible escape from reality, as the distinction between being-in-itself and being-for-itself cannot be abolished. To garden, or to imagine that one can 'humanize' Nature, is to try to efface this distinction and hopelessly to deny one's own irreducibly human ontological status. To garden is to live in bad faith. Gardening is wrong. Q.E.D."

STRUCTURALIST THEORY
"In primitive societies life was divided into the pair of opposites work/leisure, which corresponded to the distinction field/house. People worked in the field and rested at home. In modern societies the axis of opposition has been reversed: People work in houses (factories, offices) and rest in the open (gardens, parks, forests, rivers, etc.). Such distinctions are crucial in maintaining the conceptual framework whereby people structure their lives. To garden is to confuse the distinction between house and field, between leisure and work; it is to blur, indeed to destroy, the oppositional structure that is the basis of thinking. Gardening is a blunder. Q.E.D."

ANALYTICAL PHILOSOPHY
"In spite of many attempts, no satisfactory definitions of 'garden' and of 'gardening' have been found; all existing definitions leave a large area of uncertainty about what belongs where. We simply do not know what exactly a garden and gardening are. To use these concepts is therefore intellectually irresponsible, and actually to garden would be even more so. Thou shalt not garden. Q.E.D."

Kevin, Saying that Locke is known as the "Father of the Enlightenment" counts as putting his legacy into its proper light? I mean, that's just throwing about labels. The comment of mine that kicked this off concerned the idea of revelation specifically contained in the quotation I gave. I still maintain that that is pure good sense. You countered with the bit about "destined, if not designed, to supplant revelation." Nope, you just haven't come even remotely close to establishing that. So I gather you continue to maintain that there is some undeniable logical connection between Locke's actual philosophical positions and the proposition that special revelation is _unnecessary_? That is supposed to be the topic of disagreement here, not his being or not being in some sense or other "revolutionary." (God knows, just being religiously tolerant in the sense of not lengthening people on the rack for differences of religious opinion was "revolutionary" at that time. We could use more "revolutions" like that!)

But then there was the question of who is authorized to to interpret it? In principle, anyone who listens to the voice of the Holy Ghost is capable of doing that. But then the Church, as an organized community, simply could not exist, because everyone, including heretics or the devil-possessed, would make claims to a special revelation or inspiration, and no binding canon could be enacted.

If this were true, the mainstream Protestant denominations would have self-destructed almost immediately.
He asks "...who is authorized to interpret it?" after it has already been interpreted. Apparently he assumes the need of an earthly mediator where no such need exists and where no such mediation is necessary.
The devil-possessed and the heretic will be quickly identified in any congregation and either expelled or corrected. Those who approach the Scripture with an open heart will receive the teaching of the Holy Spirit complete with the correct interpretation. That interpretation will be corroborated from the pulpit by the preacher.
The Church is that set of those persons who have accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior. Whenever two or three of them come together in His name, He is with them.

"If this were true, the mainstream Protestant denominations would have self-destructed almost immediately."

O.k it took a while, but hasn't that pretty much occurred?

Lydia,
Locke's admirers gave him the title; "father of the Enlightenment" and since he held that "faith can never convince us of anything that contradicts our knowledge" he may deserve it.

Certainly, hoping for mathematical formulae to establish moral truths is incompatible with Wisdom. Eventually, Revelation lost it's primacy to Reason and a disaster ensued. Yet, you absolve Locke of all responsibilty without explaining why.

Tolerance is a great good and Locke showed plenty, though I wish he could have extended more towards my fellow communicants.

Locke's admirers gave him the title; "father of the Enlightenment" and since he held that "faith can never convince us of anything that contradicts our knowledge" he may deserve it.

Is faith outside the bounds of logic?

Kevin,

Finally, you've given us a quotation from Locke! I take it you mean to refer to this bit from the Essay, 4.18.5:

Even original revelation cannot be admitted against the clear evidence of reason. In propositions, then, whose certainty is built upon the clear perception of the agreement or disagreement of our ideas, attained either by immediate intuition, as in self-evident propositions, or by evident deductions of reason in demonstrations we need not the assistance of revelation, as necessary to gain our assent, and introduce them into our minds. Because the natural ways of knowledge could settle them there, or had done it already; which is the greatest assurance we can possibly have of anything, unless where God immediately reveals it to us: and there too our assurance can be no greater than our knowledge is, that it is a revelation from God. But yet nothing, I think, can, under that title, shake or overrule plain knowledge; or rationally prevail with any man to admit it for true, in a direct contradiction to the clear evidence of his own understanding. For, since no evidence of our faculties, by which we receive such revelations, can exceed, if equal, the certainty of our intuitive knowledge, we can never receive for a truth anything that is directly contrary to our clear and distinct knowledge; v.g. the ideas of one body and one place do so clearly agree, and the mind has so evident a perception of their agreement, that we can never assent to a proposition that affirms the same body to be in two distant places at once, however it should pretend to the authority of a divine revelation: since the evidence, first, that we deceive not ourselves, in ascribing it to God; secondly, that we understand it right; can never be so great as the evidence of our own intuitive knowledge, whereby we discern it impossible for the same body to be in two places at once. And therefore no proposition can be received for divine revelation, or obtain the assent due to all such, if it be contradictory to our clear intuitive knowledge. Because this would be to subvert the principles and foundations of all knowledge, evidence, and assent whatsoever: and there would be left no difference between truth and falsehood, no measures of credible and incredible in the world, if doubtful propositions shall take place before self-evident; and what we certainly know give way to what we may possibly be mistaken in. In propositions therefore contrary to the clear perception of the agreement or disagreement of any of our ideas, it will be in vain to urge them as matters of faith. They cannot move our assent under that or any other title whatsoever. For faith can never convince us of anything that contradicts our knowledge. Because, though faith be founded on the testimony of God (who cannot lie) revealing any proposition to us: yet we cannot have an assurance of the truth of its being a divine revelation greater than our own knowledge. Since the whole strength of the certainty depends upon our knowledge that God revealed it; which, in this case, where the proposition supposed revealed contradicts our knowledge or reason, will always have this objection hanging to it, viz. that we cannot tell how to conceive that to come from God, the bountiful Author of our being, which, if received for true, must overturn all the principles and foundations of knowledge he has given us; render all our faculties useless; wholly destroy the most excellent part of his workmanship, our understandings; and put a man in a condition wherein he will have less light, less conduct than the beast that perisheth. For if the mind of man can never have a clearer (and perhaps not so clear) evidence of anything to be a divine revelation, as it has of the principles of its own reason, it can never have a ground to quit the clear evidence of its reason, to give a place to a proposition, whose revelation has not a greater evidence than those principles have.

Where, in all this, is there anything to object to? Are you suggesting that Christianity, as you understand it, requires assent to matters that can be seen immediately and with certainty to be false, like the assertion that all circles are squares, or that vice is virtuous? These are the sorts of claims that are intuitive for Locke; to know them with certainty requires nothing more than the recognition of the congruence or incongruence of our ideas.

It is important to remember how Locke goes on in this same chapter:

7. Things above reason are, when revealed, the proper matter of faith. But, Thirdly, There being many things wherein we have very imperfect notions, or none at all; and other things, of whose past, present, or future existence, by the natural use of our faculties, we can have no knowledge at all; these, as being beyond the discovery of our natural faculties, and above reason, are, when revealed, the proper matter of faith. Thus, that part of the angels rebelled against God, and thereby lost their first happy state: and that the dead shall rise, and live again: these and the like, being beyond the discovery of reason, are purely matters of faith, with which reason has directly nothing to do.

8. Or not contrary to reason, if revealed, are matter of faith; and must carry it against probable conjectures of reason. But since God, in giving us the light of reason, has not thereby tied up his own hands from affording us, when he thinks fit, the light of revelation in any of those matters wherein our natural faculties are able to give a probable determination; revelation, where God has been pleased to give it, must carry it against the probable conjectures of reason. Because the mind not being certain of the truth of that it does not evidently know, but only yielding to the probability that appears in it, is bound to give up its assent to such a testimony which, it is satisfied, comes from one who cannot err, and will not deceive. But yet, it still belongs to reason to judge of the truth of its being a revelation, and of the signification of the words wherein it is delivered. Indeed, if anything shall be thought revelation which is contrary to the plain principles of reason, and the evident knowledge the mind has of its own clear and distinct ideas; there reason must be hearkened to, as to a matter within its province. Since a man can never have so certain a knowledge that a proposition which contradicts the clear principles and evidence of his own knowledge was divinely revealed, or that he understands the words rightly wherein it is delivered, as he has that the contrary is true, and so is bound to consider and judge of it as a matter of reason, and not swallow it, without examination, as a matter of faith.

"Yet, you absolve Locke of all responsibilty without explaining why."

Kevin, this really strains my patience. This is silliness. I made specific reference to one specific view of Locke's concerning the relation of reason and revelation, a view expounded at greater length in the long quotations Tim just gave. You responded to my limited and specific point by saying that Locke's view meant that reason was "destined, if not designed, to supplant revelation." I made it clear with great specificity which view of his I had in mind and why I endorsed it. You have given _nothing_ in the form of clear or direct evidence for your claim about "supplanting revelation" besides statements about ethics and morals (for which you have not cited chapter and verse anyway), the relevance of which I have shown, time and again and by argument, to be irrelevant to your claim regarding "supplanting revelation." You refuse to respond to my request for specific evidence for that specific claim of yours and somehow think you have thrown some sort of weird burden of proof on me to "absolve" Locke of responsibility for this or that historical or ideological evil (as you perceive it) that followed afterwards in history. Are you incapable of sticking to a limited and clearly defined subject, refraining from changing the subject, and providing direct evidence for your own specific claims, are you incapable of seeing that you have not done so, or are you incapable of seeing your responsibility to do so?

I really think that teaching people to paint their historical pictures with a five-foot-wide roller constitutes a kind of academic malpractice. I could start talking about how "the Catholic Church taught such-and-such" or "did such-and-such" and "eventually a disaster ensued" if I wanted to engage in such shoddy historical behavior. I prefer not to.

O.k it took a while, but hasn't that pretty much occurred?

Not nearly so completely as one would have expected. And, to the extent that it has, not to worry: Many are called, but few are chosen.

Kevin said:
"If this were true, the mainstream Protestant denominations would have self-destructed almost immediately."

O.k it took a while, but hasn't that pretty much occurred?

I say:
No -- emphatically no. There are more Protestants now than ever in history. They are not self-destructing. It's rather surprising that you think so. Protestantism is growing and spreading quite impressively -- worldwide. Although some Protestant denominations indeed are shrinking, they are nearly all quite theologically liberal. They shrink not because they are Protestant, but because they are no longer authentically Christian. But Protestant churches that subscribe to the content of the ecumenical creeds (though not necessarily to the creeds themselves), are growing steadily.

The report of Protestantism's demise and destruction are either radically overstated or else wishful thinking.

Best,
Michael Bauman

If we're to say that Protestantism has "self-destructed" based on nonsense that is going on in various Protestant churches, then the Protestants should have the right to say that "Catholicism is self-destructing" based on nonsense going on in Catholic churches. I suggest that neither practice is profitable and prefer to deal with individual people than with huge and plausibly meaningless claims of that sort.

Michael,

Well said!

But Protestant churches that subscribe to the content of the ecumenical creeds (though not necessarily to the creeds themselves)

What exactly does that mean?

Kurt,
"Is faith outside the bounds of logic?"
Miracles. The Eucharist. The Holy Spirit. All have been condemned as such.

Tim,
"...and the mind has so evident a perception of their agreement, that we can never assent to a proposition that affirms the same body to be in two distant places at once, however it should pretend to the authority of a divine revelation: since the evidence, first, that we deceive not ourselves, in ascribing it to God; secondly, that we understand it right; can never be so great as the evidence of our own intuitive knowledge, whereby we discern it impossible for the same body to be in two places at once."

Uh, that pretty much puts Padre Pio and a whole church-yard of saints in their place. So, Bi-location is out. What about the Real Presence?

Michael,
"Although some Protestant denominations indeed are shrinking, they are nearly all quite theologically liberal."

Exactly. Liberalism results once Authority is replaced by "private judgement". As Dryden said; 'What weight of ancient witness can prevail / If private judgement hold the public scale?"

Protestantism is strong amongst the non-mainline evangelicals and Pentecostals. Though they too show strain from lacking a recognized Teaching Authority. Hence the constant growth in break-away churches.

Lydia,
"...this really strains my patience."
Mine too. You would apparently isolate Locke from friend & foe alike and ignore his role in history.

"...then the Protestants should have the right to say that "Catholicism is self-destructing"

Of course they do. But many would also acknowledge that the one institution that most effectively stands in the way of the "Abolition of Man" is the Catholic Church.

In my experience, it means that they'll accept the doctrines as those of Christianity, but not the mode or manner of their promulgation in the form of the Creed, which was, after all, hashed out by Bishops in Council, defining dogma to be received as authoritative and binding, on pain of anathema.

I never thought that this made any sense, which is why I'm no longer Protestant.

Also, for what it is worth, I've no objections to mere Christianity, though I'm exceedingly dubious that mere Christianity was in view in John 17, inasmuch as the mere Christianity interpretation is not the historical interpretation of the passage.

Tim,
"Indeed, if anything shall be thought revelation which is contrary to the plain principles of reason, and the evident knowledge the mind has of its own clear and distinct ideas; there reason must be hearkened to, as to a matter within its province."

Yikes! The fun the Devil had with that one!

Kevin,

You quote and then gloss Locke:

"...and the mind has so evident a perception of their agreement, that we can never assent to a proposition that affirms the same body to be in two distant places at once, however it should pretend to the authority of a divine revelation: since the evidence, first, that we deceive not ourselves, in ascribing it to God; secondly, that we understand it right; can never be so great as the evidence of our own intuitive knowledge, whereby we discern it impossible for the same body to be in two places at once."

Uh, that pretty much puts Padre Pio and a whole church-yard of saints in their place. So, Bi-location is out. What about the Real Presence?

As for the Real Presence, if you think this requires transtemporal bilocation, tant pis.

And again, Locke with your gloss:

"Indeed, if anything shall be thought revelation which is contrary to the plain principles of reason, and the evident knowledge the mind has of its own clear and distinct ideas; there reason must be hearkened to, as to a matter within its province."

Yikes! The fun the Devil had with that one!

No, wait -- don't bother to answer that.

Kevin,

My mistake regarding your beliefs about Padre Pio: apparently what you believe is that he was located in his rooms at Foggia and simultaneously in the air over San Giovanni Rotondo in World War II.

I'm sorry to have to say that this doesn't help a bit.

William asked:

But Protestant churches that subscribe to the content of the ecumenical creeds (though not necessarily to the creeds themselves)

What exactly does that mean?

I answer:

By that I mean that even though some Protestant churches (most notably the Baptists) do not subscribe to or approve creeds as such, nevertheless they typically consent to the content of the ecumenical creeds. That is, even though they are non-creedal, their beliefs are in line with the ecumenical creeds.

Michael Bauman

"Mine too. You would apparently isolate Locke from friend & foe alike and ignore his role in history." Uh-huh. So you don't, Kevin, think that you must either stick to your specific claims and, if you do, defend them with specific and clearly relevant and telling arguments and respond to clear textual counterarguments from the person you are attacking or else abandon them. Broad-brush historical painting is enough to throw the burden of proof onto the other guy. Well, it must be convenient to be you, argumentatively, but I would prefer if you'd either clearly and specifically defend that bit I've quoted again (and again and again) from you about how Locke's view meant that reason "supplants revelation"--defend it against _specific_ Lockean quotes showing the necessity for special revelation--or else withdraw it. But I guess you just plain won't.

Bill, I think what Michael means by the "content, though not the creeds themselves" would be some sort of idea of doctrinal equivalence between different wordings. Of course, that may not be the case on all points. For example, "One Catholic and apostolic church" may have initially had reference to a literal sacerdotal apostolic succession, which would as a matter of doctrinal content be rejected by the Protestant denominations I think Michael has in mind. But many of the other clauses (e.g. "incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the virgin Mary, and was made man") can be worded in other ways and mean essentially the same thing, and is accepted by Christians who for whatever reason don't use all of those words in that order to express the idea.

"Is this supposed to be an argument?"

Is this;
"...Pio as "an ignorant and self-mutilating psychopath who exploited people's credulity."

I guess you don't like him, but John Paul II did when he said during his canonization; "May this holy Capuchin to whom so many people turn to from every corner of the earth point out to us the means to reach holiness which is the goal of our life as Christians."

"As for the Real Presence, if you think this requires transtemporal bilocation, tant pis."

Clearly not.

"Did you even try to understand what Locke means by this?"

I honestly tried to and have come to this conclusion; I either do understand and don't agree, or I find the man so abstract as to understand why it might inspire; "whatever fool thought comes into some infidel's head." I contend it did.

I think this just about Locke's things up. For now.

"Is faith outside the bounds of logic?"
Miracles. The Eucharist. The Holy Spirit. All have been condemned as such.

What I am suggesting is that if I thought the concept of an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent being was self-contradictory that I could not possibly have faith in such a being. What I gather from Locke is that faith cannot violate rules of logic. Round squares cannot exist inside theology anymore than they exist outside it.

Kevin,

The description of Pio was not mine; it was the assessment of Agostino Gemelli, founder and chancellor of Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome. My point was not that Gemelli must be correct but that his assessment did not help your case against Locke.

But I think we have come to an understanding of sorts. You believe that Pio's body -- one and the same body, not another type-identical body, not an apparition of the body, but the very same body -- was located in two considerably separated places simultaneously. Locke, however, says that one and the same body cannot simultaneously be in two separate locations. So you conclude that Locke must be wrong.

I can't say that I am moved by this argument, but it does put the contrast between our perspectives in a clearer light than I would have thought possible. I am content to leave it there.

Peace, and be well.

That is, even though they are non-creedal, their beliefs are in line with the ecumenical creeds.

But why? It seems unlikely they would have their beliefs without those creeds. I don't think they came up with them independently, only to later discover that they happily coincided with those of an ecumenical council. If Lydia's summary is correct, it sounds like a way of having your cake and eating it too.

William said:
That is, even though they are non-creedal, their beliefs are in line with the ecumenical creeds.

But why? It seems unlikely they would have their beliefs without those creeds. I don't think they came up with them independently, only to later discover that they happily coincided with those of an ecumenical council. If Lydia's summary is correct, it sounds like a way of having your cake and eating it too.

I say:
They have their beliefs because they read the Bible with care and insight. In other words, the content of the ecumenical creeds is fundamentally Biblical. The ecumenical creeds teach basically what the Bible teaches. Anyone who reads the Bible with care and insight ends up with a theology that is very close to the ecumenical creeds. That Baptists, who venerate the Bible but eschew creeds, normally end up with a theology that agrees with the creeds is surprising only if the creeds are full of unbiblical theology. I don't think they are.

Best,
Michael Bauman

Tim,
I've enjoyed these exchanges as you forced me to rummage through books, reconsider my position and stay up way too late. I think our key difference relates to how we view the Enlightenment and Locke's contribution to it. Perhaps, if folks like you and Lydia were around at the time, Locke's writings would have not been appropriated the way they were.

I have no problem believing Padre Pio bi-located, but think you should rightly counsel medical assistance if I make a similar claim. All things are possible with God, we both agree and the Eucharist tops anything we are to experience in this life.

Locke's mechanical conception of morality would be expanded upon by others as they lay waste to both the classical and traditional Christian moral vision.

Time to make room at the Inn. I wish you a Merry Christmas and good tidings in all your endeavors.

"One part of these disadvantages in moral ideas which has made them be thought not capable of demonstration, may in a good measure be remedied by definitions, setting down that collection of simple ideas, which every term shall stand for: and then using the terms steadily and constantly for that precise collection. And what methods algebra, or something of that kind, may hereafter suggest, to remove the other difficulties, it is not easy to foretell. Confident I am, that, if men would in the same method, and with the same indifferency, search after moral as they do mathematical truths, they would find them have a stronger connexion one with another, and a more necessary consequence from our clear and distinct ideas, and to come nearer perfect demonstration than is commonly imagined."
John Locke

I think Michael is right, with a few minor caveats about the fact that--e.g.--Baptists would quibble over "one baptism for the remission of sins." My point there being merely that even in the Nicene Creed there are a coupla phrases on which Christians differ among themselves as to whether, as originally intended, they are biblical. I do think it's relevant to point out (apropos of Bill's comment) that even if some given church has been causally involved in a line behind some individual, even causally crucial, in that person's coming to believe something true, it doesn't follow that all of that church's claims are correct and that the individual is obligated to belong to that church. One could admit that something much like the Catholic Church was already well developed in the 4th century and be very grateful for the Council of Nicea, one could admit that without it we might all be Arians, without therefore being obligated to be Catholic. For that matter, let's hear it for Athanasius contra mundum--an individual against many of the bishops of his own day.

Maximos, just to clarify, I brought up "mere Christianity" in pondering your claim that no set of a billion people will have a significant agreement in faith if they don't all follow the same ecclesiastical authority. By a sort of Fermi estimate, haven't we plausibly already had a billion Protestants of many-a stripe over the years, or aren't we headed for it in the foreseeable future? And if you think theirs counts as a significant agreement in faith, doesn't that counterexample the claim about the sociological necessity for following the same authority?

Significant agreement in faith is not equivalent to unity, and was not what was envisioned in John 17, at least not according to the historic understandings of the passage. Now, there is a substantial degree of agreement among Protestants, although, even there, I'd not desire to argue that the concurrence-amidst-incorrigible-fissiparousness of Protestantism is entirely consonant with John 17, at least not as the passage historically has been understood by the Churches that actually existed in antiquity. Hence, I don't consider the agreement among Protestants as a counterexample; according to the traditional interpretations, an institutional unity and a doctrinal unity are mutually conditioning, and such unity will effect the sociological aim of providing a credible witness to an unbelieving world; the reason, however, to maintain that unity is not the somewhat utilitarian one of bearing witness, but that doing so is honouring to Christ Himself.

To make a more meta- or methodological point, I'm just not a fan of theories of "spontaneous order". At all.

"[N]o possible set of any billion people could ever achieve any unity of belief through the exercise of private judgment."

I guess I just misunderstood. I know you interpret John 17 to be talking about institutional unity, and I've already given my probably offensively Protestant responses on that subject, even granting the interpretation. But I took just this sentence to mean by "any unity of belief" just what is to my ear the ordinary meaning of the words "unity of belief," for which non-institutional united belief would count.

Well, the trouble with the unity of belief that you perceive to exist among adherents of different Protestant groups is that it is a sort of "mere Protestantism", and presupposes answers to an entire set of questions concerning what is essential and what is adiaphora. But there are vast differences between what, say, a Presbyterian would consider a licit, biblically-mandated form of Church polity, and what a Baptist would consider licit. There are such vast chasms dividing different Protestant groups as to the order of operations in the process of salvation - this would be the entire Calvin-Arminius-hybrid - controversy, which, I can assure you, rages largely unchecked in more literate corners of the Protestant world (ie., not among followers of Bill Hybels and Brian McLaren). Illustrations could be multiplied, but it is apparent to me that one only gets that "unity of belief in the absence of an institutional structure" by presupposing an answer as to what will be permitted to count as unity of belief.

But is what they agree upon significant? Is it an important place to do line-drawing? That's part of what I mean by the importance of mere Christianity: that drawing the line in that place--e.g. classifying Presbyterians and Baptists together, but ruling out non-trinitarians like Quakers or Socinians--does in fact pick out an important "natural kind" that is worth labeling "Christianity."

Now, I think what your original sentence meant was something like this: "No billion people will achieve agreement of belief _about church structure and the form of church government_ if they do not acknowledge a common authority." If that's a correct interpretation, the statement isn't a tautology, but it's to my mind less important than the question of whether Christians will achieve agreement about a lot of other things necessary for salvation (as in "if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus"), in general outline, the deity of Jesus Christ, his dying for our sins, and so forth. To be sure, this involves deciding what's more important than what. I would consider your prediction a more interesting one (for reasons related to Michael's point about the contents and understandability of Scripture) if you were saying that Christians couldn't achieve any significant creedal agreement absent agreement on a single institutional authority. Interesting, but already clearly counterexampled.

Thought experiment: If in your lifetime 99.9% of all Christians spontaneously became Baptists, and the only holdouts were a small remnant of Orthodox and Roman Catholics, so that visible, institutional unity could be achieved if they would convert to being Baptists, would this be to any degree an argument that the minority should switch in order to fulfill Jesus' prayer? Or are we just basically saying, "Visible unity is what we're after, but Protestants don't count by definition."

even if some given church has been causally involved in a line behind some individual, even causally crucial, in that person's coming to believe something true, it doesn't follow that all of that church's claims are correct and that the individual is obligated to belong to that church.

But it might follow, mightn't it, that all of that church's claims are correct and that one ought to belong to it?

I'm just trying to follow the chain of evidence. It sounds ahistorical to me for Protestants to pretend that they do not absolutely depend on those conciliar degrees for what they believe, and to further pretend that, with their own origin, they were granted by God the authority to work backwards, cherry-picking the doctrines they like, bestowing their imprimatur on this one but not that. And it is an authoritative claim that is being made. When Michael says that "Anyone who reads the Bible with care and insight ends up with a theology that is very close to the ecumenical creeds," I say tell it to the Jehovah's Witnesses. And when he tells me that he is right and they are wrong, I must take it on his authority that he brings greater "care and insight" to his reading of the Bible.

In reading Newman's Arians of the Fourth Century, I have been stunned by the multiplicity of renegade speculations on the nature of Christ, the Trinity, etc. There were schools of thought and subschools of that one ad infinitum. The heresies were put forth with great subtlety and sophistication, such that I don't think the average Joe, like me, would be capable of refuting them based solely on my reading of the Bible. This history reads very much like a divine mystery story, so much so that if today I am in possession of the orthodox Christian faith, I would find it very difficult to believe that the truth just "got lucky" in surviving that long-ago labyrinth of intellectual subterfuge.

You're simply presupposing that institutional unity is of a comparatively lesser degree of importance than the major doctrinal headings. Which is true in some abstract sense, but false in the more important sense that Christianity has never been about reductionistic, minimalist readings of the Faith. It has concerned the fullness of the Faith once for all delivered to the saints. In other words, these discrete judgments presuppose distinct theological positions, and the only real way to step outside the hermeneutical and methodological circles is to investigate the history, which really ain't Protestant, when you get down to it.

Hence, if 99.9% of all Christians spontaneously converted to the Baptist variant of Protestantism, there would be no obligation on the part of the holdouts to convert, so as to preserve a facade of unity. The imperative of unity is not purely positive, formal one, but substantive: this Church, this confession, etc. That's what the whole bit about Apostolic succession and valid sacraments concerns.

One of the crucial canons by which the heretical claims were weeded out from among the sound wheat of orthodoxy was simply the old rule of faith: lex orandi, lex credendi, one aspect of which was simply, what must be true, theologically, for the redemption we preach, and in which we participate during the Liturgy, and receive in the sacraments, to be valid? For example, if the humanity of Christ is bereft of a human will, then the human will is not assumed, and therefore not redeemed. This is already an extra-biblical, Traditional construct, a development of an authoritative discourse governing the reading of the sacred text itself, and not something that simply bursts into one's consciousness upon a reading of the bare, unadorned text.

In other words, I associate myself with Bill's comment.

Maximos, here's the thing: If you are going to say that in my imaginary 99.9% case, this would provide no evidence for the rightness of the group (Baptists or Methodists or whatever), then you really can't use the "disunity of organization" point as an argument against Protestantism. I mean, I thought one argument here was supposed to be something like this: "Look at all those different Protestant sects. They have no institutional or organizational unity. Everybody's all scattered around. So the Orthodox or the Catholic churches are more likely to be the kind of thing Jesus had in mind when he prayed for [institutional] unity." But if it isn't going to _count_ in your book even if, surprisingly, all the Protestants did happen to have visible outward unity, then this argument is just a sort of circular reasoning--a trick. If what you meant by "unity" all along was "not being a Protestant," it's _trivially_ true that Protestants don't have "unity." If you're to use their disunity as an argument against them, then it must be the case that unity is something they could have had but that we happen to observe that they don't have; hence, their multiplicity of sects and disagreement among themselves might be used (given the interpretation you advocate of John 17) as an argument for non-Protestant bodies.

Bill, you mention pretending that one does not "absolutely depend" on conciliar declarations for what one believes. Well, it depends on what you mean by "absolutely." Historically, it may be a contingent fact that contemporary Protestants wouldn't be trinitarians if the Council of Nicea hadn't happened. I wouldn't call that "absolutely depending," because it's not a necessary truth. But suppose the counterfactual happens to be true, and in that causal sense we historically "depend" on some of the conciliar declarations. Well, so what? Just because someone gives you a gift, you don't owe it to him to swear eternal obedience to him. God can use flawed instruments, both institutional and individual, to do his work. And I would say that I can't really see that it was a gift unless I have some independent access to the truth of the doctrine of the Trinity. That is, if I have no way to check it at all, how do I know if the Council of Nicea gave me a gift or a heresy? I think it is a gift and am accordingly grateful to the Athanasian bunch because I have some ability of my own to interpret the texts. By the same token, I happen to think that some of the later councils passed on some errors--such as the perpetual virginity of Mary.

I'm not sure what you mean by "assuming that God has given the authority" to interpret Scripture. How do I need a special reason to start picking up the Bible and reading and understanding it? I don't need God to speak to me in an audible voice before I can read and interpret your blog posts. I don't need a sign in the heavens before I have the "authority" to interpret any other book in the entire world. Why should the default position be that the Church of Rome has this authority and anybody else needs a special license to be allowed to comprehend the Bible? That's just beyond me. If anything, the argument needs to go the other way. The Apostle Paul sent his letters, hot off the quill pen from the Holy Spirit's inspiration, off to the churches of Asia Minor and the entire Mediterranean region, and he didn't tell them to have some special apostolic legate on hand to tell them how to understand their contents, from the most profound ("in whom dwelleth all the fullness of the godhead bodily") to the most trivial ("Greet so-and-so, my fellow-laborer; I commend unto you Phoebe, who bears this letter.") Paul _assumes_ that the recipients can understand them, and indeed will read them to the whole gathering of believers, who will understand them, as they could any other written communication! This whole "How do you get the authority to interpret the Bible?" thing is absolutely and entirely beyond me.

And when he tells me that he is right and they are wrong, I must take it on his authority that he brings greater "care and insight" to his reading of the Bible.

No way would Michael agree with that or tell you to take it on his authority. I'm sure he'd tell you to read John 1 (and many another passage) for yourself and see that he's right and they're wrong. :-) And if you have serious doubts, I'm sure he, or at least his type of Protestant, would offer to discuss them with you, with--Jeff's harrumphs notwithstanding--lexicon in hand, if necessary. I understand you might not want to do that, but never try to saddle the committed Protestant with the authoritarian mantle. A good and consistent Protestant won't accept it. Many is the time that my father-in-law has gone out onto his porch (following the biblical mandate not to receive heresy-teachers into your home) with JWs with Bible and Greek Testament in hand to discuss the matter.

Consensus is not determinative. The 
people of God have been stunningly wrong on a wide and 
embarrassingly diverse array of issues, occasionally
 for centuries. That embarrassing fact about us goes all the way back to the ancient Jews, who
 wallowed in error for centuries at a time. When
 someone argues that God wouldn't let his people live
 in error, the plain answer is that, in fact, He has
 actually done so. I recall, for example, that when Erasmus published a
 corrected version of the Vulgate on the facing pages 
of his Greek New Testament in 1516, he was able to 
correct errors that had stood for centuries, all the
 way back to Jerome. When, in John 1, Jerome 
translated "logos" as "verbum," he made a significant 
translational (and theological) error, which Erasmus 
corrected with the word "sermo" -- a far better and more 
accurate translation. "Verbum" is a particle of 
speech, a word in a sentence. "Sermo," by contrast, is an eloquent 
utterance, or discourse. Christ is God's eloquent and redemptive 
utterance to a fallen race, not a word in a sentence. 
Those Roman Catholic scholars who opposed Erasmus asked him if God
 would have left his church in error for centuries on 
this point, all the while just waiting for Erasmus to come along and 
bring the light -- as if that ad hominem question proved that 
"logos" ought to be translated "verbum" in John 1.
In other words, even under the providence of God, error is sometimes 
persistent among God's people. Protestants and EO Christians assert, rightly or wrongly, that such enduring error is indeed the case with the RCC, the declarations of its defenders notwithstanding. God's people 
sometimes live in error for centuries. The fact that
 they lived in error for centuries cannot be invoked to
 prove that they were right. Pointing to them or to 
the persistence of their views does nothing to prove
 the truth or falsehood of their beliefs. The issue is
 not what they believed or did not believe. The issue 
is whether or not what they believed is true.
The issue is how Jesus' or Paul's words are most accurately interpreted in their own historical, theological, and cultural context, which we are better able to do now than scholars were in centuries past. The centuries of research and reflection that have occurred since the church fathers were not a complete waste of time. We actually have learned many important things since then. We actually made significant progress in our understanding of the ancient Jews and of Jesus. We now know some things far better than we did in the past. Take David Instone-Brewer's excellent work on divorce and remarriage in ancient Palestine, for example, which helps us better understand Jesus' teachings on the issue in their proper context. The same is true of the Biblical theology movement, and especially the work of scholars like Oscar Cullmann, who identified many of the ways the scholastic reading of Scripture was ill-informed and therefore misleading. That's the case not because I say so, but because their work is truly first rate. To refute it you must do better and more accurate work, not simply appeal to your own church's views. If your church's views are correct, that correctness will be borne out by careful research, not ecclesiastical claims or by that church's interpretation of Scripture. After all, that very interpretation is itself the issue, not the resolution of the issue.
Truth is not determined by consensus or by 
universality. Truth is determined by agreement with 
reality.
Best,
Michael Bauman

I certainly agree that "such-and-such has been believed for centuries" isn't much of an argument. Though I have to say, apropos of the specific example, that if the worst thing that had been done for centuries was to translate "logos" as "verbum," we wouldn't be doing too badly. Indeed, to my mind very often "expert knowledge" is not the issue on either side so much as a sensible refusal on the Protestant side to accept fairly extravagent pious fancies for which there is not one shred of direct evidence and against which there is a fair bit of biblical evidence merely because they have a certain amount of antiquity to commend them. If the Catholic asks the Protestant "by what authority" he "picks and chooses" what to accept and what to reject in the teaching of the Catholic Church, the Protestant might more fairly ask by what authority that church teaches some things as religious dogma that go so wildly far beyond Scripture and yet others that are clean contrary thereunto. But there I guess I show just what sort of response I feel moved to give when the "by what authority" question is raised.

...the Protestant might more fairly ask by what authority that church teaches some things as religious dogma that go so wildly far beyond Scripture and yet others that are clean contrary thereunto.

A Catholic would doubtless object to the latter claim; as for the former, the answer to a more properly phrased "by whose authority" is "by Christ's", of course.

But then we all know that. Whether Catholicism is overdetermined or underdetermined by the historical evidence is an interesting question. (Well, I suppose it is an interesting question to some folks, and it is even mildly interesting to me). Prescinding from that, the same question with respect to whether a concrete Apostolic Church was or was not founded by Christ on His authority is also interesting. It isn't so much historical evidence and its underdetermination/overdetermination that made me relapse to the faith of my youth though; not much that at all. It is a higher order question of what would be a more generous act of a loving God Who Reveals: to institute a concrete unified community in history to care for His people, or to leave a bunch of abstracted intellectual table scraps around for self-assembly into a system of individual beliefs (where "beliefs" here refers to intellectual assent rather than trust). When faced with a number of possibilities one of which is the most objectively generous, I know - I trust - which one our generous Father chose.

But that's just me. Apologetics isn't really my cup of tea. I don't know all the standard moves, and in any case it often seems very aptly named at least in practice: we can stand in a circle and smite each others' faiths and then apologize. (And even that sounds more negative about apologetics than I intend. I know it has a place in the scheme of things. It just isn't my deal.)

Yeah, actually, I usually refuse resolutely to get into the Catholic-Protestant thing. Someone wrote to me about five weeks ago--a Catholic--and asked me why I wasn't and what I thought the arguments were against it. I demurred actually for quite a while before telling him. Didn't want to do it. I'm a little surprised at how far I'm going here, and it's probably only because both the main post and some of the comments have seemed to me to be coming first from the other side, so I'm getting into a mild form of Protestant high dander and responding. I should probably cut it out.

Right, the 99.9% conversion-to-Baptistic-theology hypothetical would never satisfy my criteria for the fulfillment of the mandated 'unity of organization', precisely because that unity of organization is not a purely formal construct, an admonishment that "you believers on My Name ought to be in one accord, theologically, but I'm granting wide latitude as to the content and institutional expression of that concurrence." In other words, the desired unity-of-organization entails unity in the Church established by Christ, entrusted to the Apostles and their successors, and preserved in the valid succession of Her sacerdotal ministry.

As regards this conception of the Church, as well as the notion that the Church was the recipient of a divine charism - the abiding, sustaining presence of the holy Spirit, really - to formulate doctrine as a surety of the Apostolic deposit, well, what can I say but that, no, I don't believe that the Church can fall into serious error, error concerning the very fundamentals of faith, morals, and Christian life (into which latter category I would place such matters as the fundamentals of liturgical and sacramental life, etc.). Error concerning the Latin translation of the term logos in John's Gospel, a mistranslation which, while regrettable, affected in no substantial and detectable manner the unfolding discourse of the Word in Christian thought - though its correction certainly gave us a richer metaphor - well, yes, and no one conversant with Catholic and Orthodox dogmatics will perceive any contradiction here. The notion that Christ could promise his Apostles that He would send upon them the Holy Spirit, Who would guide them into all truth, and that this could mean, "in reality", that they and all Christians to follow them would thrash about in a miasma of perpetual indeterminacy regarding virtually everything, ranging from how Christian life is to be structured to just what justification is and entails, save as regards a few common rudiments, the significance of which would be apprehended differently by each sect, achieving at best a probabilistic determination on "other" matters, strikes me as self-evidently absurd. "I shall send upon you the Holy Ghost, Who shall guide you into all truth, except that He shall speak ten thousand doctrinal tongues" seems to me a travesty. Such was never the historic understanding of the relationship of the Spirit to the Church and the doctrinal content of the deposit of faith, but since Protestantism evacuated history of its authority - and this authority, as I have stated, was always taken to be the ongoing manifestation of Christ's promise - this is not permitted to count. And if the words of the text are so limpid in their theological clarity, such that there never was any necessity of Apostolic interpretive guidance, there ought never have been any necessity of councils and canons, or of Peter's judgment that Paul's writings were often obscure - nor, for that matter, of the guidance of the Spirit. Moreover, as to the reasons why this claimed guidance often seems to Protestants to go beyond what is contained in the Scriptures - the very canon of which the Church determined - they would involve the fact that Christ established a Church and promised the Holy Spirit to guide her into the fullness of truth - of Himself, really - rather than saying, simply, "I shall send to you the Book, and in this Book, there shall be found the veritable extremities of the truth which I mean for you to possess."

Yes, I think that Kolakowski's verdict upon the transubstantiation of Reformation into Enlightenment, wholly apart from the question of apologetics, which was not his burden, is sustained: one either has Authority, or one has religion as the deliverance of some positive science, perhaps some muddled confusion of the two.

While we're making wrap-up statements, I think Kolakowski is talking nonsense through his hat on the issue of the Dire Consequences of the Reformation and hasn't got an argument that can stand up to historical or philosophical scrutiny. Lydia's phrase -- "academic malpractice" -- seems apt here.

I'll gladly take my stand with the rational defenders of Christianity in the Enlightenment tradition, folks like Robert Boyle, Claude François Houtteville, Thomas Sherlock, Joseph Butler, Samuel Chandler, Philip Doddridge, William Adams, George Campbell, Nicolas-Sylvestre Bergier, William Paley, Thomas Chalmers, Richard Whately, and C. S. Lewis.

Well said, Tim. I heartily agree.

I am pleased to say that I am getting married next week, and so probably won't be online a good deal in the next several days. If so, then in my absence be assured of my good will toward the respondents on this list. It is both a pleasure and a blessing to interact with you all. I already have learned a great deal from what you have written. Many thanks all around.

Best,
Michael

Well, while we're patting each other on the back, I'd like to give one to Jeff Martin.

Bill,

I'll second that -- a most interesting, vigorous discussion. Thanks, Jeff!

A hearty thanks to all, for sustaining a robust, if intermittently contentious exchange. In point of fact, were I offering my own archeology of modernity, inclusive of the Reformation and the relationship of Protestantism to Enlightenment and modernity as a sociological and political phenomenon, I'd posit the Reformation as merely one tributary feeding into a broader historical river. Essentially, I'd align myself with the subtle analysis of Louis Dupre, along with those of Weaver, Voegelin, and others whose names and works are more familiar to conservatives. On the specific point of whether the Reformation rejection of the ongoing Tradition or Magisterium unleashed a complicated dialectic, one which accelerated in certain respects the secularization that other intellectual trends, as well as the fact of religious pluralism itself, had already set in motion, I'd have to answer in the affirmative. But then, we've already been over that. On the other hand, were I writing an expansion of Kolakowski's whimsical treatment of the historical chess match between God and the devil, I'd add that God parried the devil's thrusts by drawing out from the same stream that gave us rational religion and the embarrassment of freethought the very resources by which these could be overthrown. Freethought was more or less refuted in its own heyday, and it stands to reason that the apologetic works which accomplished this would not have been written had not the Tradition first been questioned.

Historical causality, that is to say, is complex and multiform, and it is an error to affirm or reject most historical events or tendencies categorically. So, I tip my hat to Tim and Lydia, for while I was aware of that massive body of apologetic literature, I'm not terribly conversant with it in detail, and some of us who take a dim view of the Reformation overall need to be reminded that the historical and philosophical legacy ain't all bad.