How Certain Are We

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adorer

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Can Catholics make an infallible claim that their’s is the one true Church of Christ, or does it come down to a fallible decision to follow Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium. Is there a theological explanation that gives us absolute assurance?

My Calvinist friend asked me the following question when I asked him why he believed in sola scriptura:

"Could you tell me how you came to decide that Rome was the “true” church without engaging in
the very private judgment that you have already dismissed as illegitimate?

Then he followed it up with this question:

“Without engaging in private judgment and interpretation, demonstrate
how you can be certain that you chose the “true” church from among all
the other so-called “true” churches that say you cannot rightly
understand the Bible and church history without their help (Eastern
Orthodox Church, Watchtower Society, Mormonism, Branch Davidians, and
numerous other cults).”

How do I argue this? He claims that “The Bible is a fallible collection of infallible books.” The canon,
because it is not inspired, is fallible, but the Bible itself is infallible. Has anyone ever run into this?
 
How can one claim that the Bible is infallible, while claiming that the canon of Scripture is fallible? That is indeed a strange argument! You might ask him is the Bible is infallible, how was the Bible determined (obviously the canon was established by the Catholic church).

If he makes an historical argument (ie. this is the BIble as handed down to us) he falls into a belief in Tradition. You can then use this historical or Traditional argument to show the unbroken line of succession from Peter to Pope John Paul II. If he can use an historical argument, why can’t you?

Also, and this is very common, point to the fact that there are thousands of different interpretations of the Bible; what makes his correct? Is he infallible?

Let me know if this helps!http://forums.catholic-questions.org/images/icons/icon7.gif
 
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adorer:
Can Catholics make an infallible claim that their’s is the one true Church of Christ, or does it come down to a fallible decision to follow Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium. Is there a theological explanation that gives us absolute assurance?
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Unless you recieve inerrant knowledge by direct illumination of the HS directly into your mind with no mediation of your senses, then yes, you rely on less than infallible knowledge. Everything that comes into your mind via your sense must be interpreted and is therefore possibly subject to error.

You can be reasonably certain your interpretations of writings or events are correct, but your knowledge is always potentially fallible in light of the fact that there is nothing you know from your senses that is purely objective and not interpreted by your mind (including anything you hear or read). If you think about it, even your own thoughts are often in words that must be interpreted even to yourself.

IMO - arguments about the neccessity of absolute assurance are largely fantasy because they really cannot be practically useful because of the preponderance of things we need to interpret and the lack of things directly put into our minds by God. If you start with the presupposition that God has built you with generally reliable senses and interpretive abilities, you can then argue that your knowledge is generally accurate and proceed from there.

You can read here
leaderu.com/truth/3truth06.html
for an article that explains this in a bit more depth. It is a little complex, but it gets to some of these issues.

ken
 
Could you tell me how you came to decide that Rome was the “true” church without engaging in the very private judgment that you have already dismissed as illegitimate?

Saving faith is a supernatural gift from God. All that we can do with our reason is show that our faith is reasonable. Your friend is making the erroneous assumption that you could only have acquired your faith through a process of private judgement, and that Catholics do not receive their faith through a supernatural action by God.

Faith is caught, not taught.
 
Your friend seems to be implying that we as Catholics are guilty of using a circular argument to support our claim that the Catholic Church is the “one true Church.”

In his eyes we are not permitted to use Scripture as proof for the Catholic Church because we reject the idea of Sola Scriptura. However, it is precisely because we reject sola scriptura that we can defend our faith by appealing to both history and Tradition, which is the antithesis of sola scriptura!

History and Tradition both provide extra-Scriptural proofs for the Catholic Church, which is why we reject sola scriptura in the first place. The truths proclaimed by the Catholic Church can be proven with or without Scripture. We always prefer the use of Scripture because of its “inspired” nature, but we certainly are not prohibited the use of anything non-Scriptural.

Your friend obviously hasn’t thought out his argument very well. If he doesn’t believe that we can prove our belief in the Catholic Church without the use of Scripture, does that imply that he believes that these things can be proven with Scripture? And if so, why is there need of any further proof?

To further his absurdity, he will then reject our historical and Traditional claims for the simple reason that they are not Scriptural. The final effect is that, in trying to catch the Catholic in a circular argument he himself imployed the use of the very same circular argument he set out to expose!!! Go figure…😉
 
adorer << The canon, because it is not inspired, is fallible, but the Bible itself is infallible. Has anyone ever run into this? >>

Yes, its from Svendsen’s couple years old $100,000 challenge questions to Roman Catholics, and he got it from George Salmon, the Anglican anti-Catholic of the 19th century.

The first part, the answer is we can be certain the Church is infallible, even if we are fallible, otherwise we couldn’t be certain God is infallible, unless we were infallible. You can be certain without being infallible. We can be certain 2+2 = 4 even though we are not infallible when we do long hand addition.

Answer Here in the reply to Salmon’s Infallibility

Its basically a play on the words “private judgment” defining it as “making a choice” for something. Of course a convert to the Catholic Church makes a choice, so that is private judgment if you define it simply as “choice.” I originally responded to his $100,000 Challenge saying I am not a convert, so the “private judgment” charge doesn’t apply to me. I’ve always been Catholic, I didn’t make a choice, it happened to me as a baby. 😛

The “fallible collection of infallible books” comes from R.C. Sproul on the canon. Search the web for that phrase, you’ll find answers.

Phil P
 
A question at this level is really one semantics.

What do you mean by “faith”?

What do you mean by “certainty”?

Jesus himself founded the Catholic Church which selected the books to compose the New Testament. The authority of the Bible rests on the discerment of the Church guided by the Holy Spirit.

Denying the Church’s role in the compilation of the canon creates a problem. Jesus didn’t pick the canon. So where does the authority for the canon of the NT come from and who did it?
 
This is sometimes known as the “infalliability regress” argument.

Read Cardinal Newman’s Grammer of Assent that shows how falicious this line of reason is in all its dorkyness.

Scott
 
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