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 di