tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14247942.post1983303191918064532..comments2023-08-10T05:32:21.163-04:00Comments on An Examined Life: Consensus FideliumVitae Scrutatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12808120163472036743noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14247942.post-79052636352282376192007-10-07T15:10:00.000-04:002007-10-07T15:10:00.000-04:00MikeThanks for your comment. You seem to be saying...Mike<BR/><BR/>Thanks for your comment. You seem to be saying several different things here, and I confess that I'm not entirely sure I understand what exactly it is you're trying to say in each and every case, so I'll just make a few random comments of my own here.<BR/><BR/>To begin, your first paragraph seems to me to be playing on an ambiguity in the word "authority", so I'll just stipulate that I have the technical meaning in mind, not the colloquial and, with you, I'm particularly interested in what you're calling instances in which the Church teaches with her "full authority".<BR/><BR/>On the ontological side, of course, the relation is an equivalence, that is, if T is true and a matter of faith or morals, then <I>were it to be formally taught</I> it would also be authoritative, and if it's authoritative it is also true. But this leaves open the question, if it is a legitimate question, What degree of authority does it have? I will put that on hold for a second, because it seems to me to be more relevant to the epistemological aspect.<BR/><BR/>On the epistemological question of how the believer is to recognize such an instance (i.e., authoritative teaching), that is, how we can be certain that teachings are true, I agree with you that we know them to be true when we know them to be authoritative. I don't believe there was ever any question about <I>that</I> level of epistemic causation. The question that was raised (not by you, of course, but by someone else) was rather, how is a Christian believer to know <I>that this relation</I> holds. But <I>that</I> question (at least as it was originally formulated in the context to which I was responding) is an instance of <I>ignoratio elenchi</I>, since grasping this relation is a matter of divine grace, not a feature of human cognition. That is, it is a matter of divine grace that the Christian is able to come to believe that the Church has the teaching charism that she has.<BR/><BR/>This means, I take it, that what you say in your last paragraph is possibly trivially true, at least on the epistemological side, unless we disambiguate some cases.<BR/><BR/>One case that we can put aside as irrelevant, is the case where I know T to be authoritative (in our sense). If I am a Christian who has been given the divine grace to believe that such teachings are also true, then I have warrant for thinking T to be true. The problem is rather going the other way, from knowing T to be true to knowing whether T is also authoritative.<BR/><BR/>I can think of three distinct cases that are relevant here. The first case is relevant only from a strictly logical point of view: suppose the content of T has nothing to do with faith or morals. Obviously in this sort of a case T will not be, strictly speaking, a "teaching" of the Church. I'm not at all sure what exactly it would be--matters of discipline are not, strictly speaking, true or false, and points of historical clarification are not, strictly speaking, teachings. But anywho, clearly, in this kind of case, if I know T to be true I do not have warrant for thinking T to be authoritative since the charism of the Church does not extend to cases that have nothing to do with faith or morals. If anything, I have warrant for thinking that T is <I>not</I> authoritative in this kind of case, since we are restricting our sense of "authoritative" to the technical sense.<BR/><BR/>That leaves two sorts of cases in which authoritativeness (in our sense) remains a question: (a) cases in which T has to do with faith and morals and is fully authoritative, and (b) cases in which T has to do with faith and morals and is less than fully authoritative.<BR/><BR/>It is just here, in this sort of a case, that we <I>may</I> have <I>some</I> sort of difference of opinion, but I'm not at all sure what it might be, since I'm having a hard time coming up with a taxonomy of "teachings about matters of faith or morals" that I'm comfortable with. But clearly, in order to assess the differences between (a) and (b) one would want such a taxonomy. So, if you think that this is where our difference lies, perhaps you can help me out: a list of three or four "teachings about matters of faith or morals", ordinally ranked from "fully authoritative" to "least authoritative", would be very helpful.<BR/><BR/>My own suspicion is that, for the general purposes of the average believer, cases of (a) and (b) represent a distinction without a difference. You are quite right that, simply knowing T to be true and pertaining to matters of faith and morals, I do not yet know <I>how authoritative</I> T is, but it seems to me that I do know it to be authoritative in <I>some</I> relevant sense, and I ought to act accordingly. Theologically, of course, there is a difference between the two kinds of cases, and the difference will represent something of the degree to which theologians may faithfully explore the limitations of the teaching in question. So I would be fairly interested in hearing your taxonomy, because having such a taxonomy to hand would be a great starting point for a conversation about <I>theologoumena</I> in general.Vitae Scrutatorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12808120163472036743noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14247942.post-10918526355063796752007-10-07T10:27:00.000-04:002007-10-07T10:27:00.000-04:00Scott:Let's leave aside the cases where Church tea...Scott:<BR/><BR/>Let's leave aside the cases where Church teaching is "authoritative" only in the bald sense of being propounded by Church authority. The Church has never said that all such statements are authoritative in virtue of being set forth infallibly, or even of being true. There are different degrees of authority, and not all exercises thereof call for the assent of faith. The case I have in mind are teachings that the Church has propounded with her <I>full</I> authority. Those are set forth infallibly, are true, and require the assent of faith. What are the relevant conceptual relations here?<BR/><BR/>Again, let's leave aside the question how one can tell when a given teaching has been propounded with the Church's "full" authority. There are many clear cases of that, and many that are not so clear. The question before us is simply this: if a given teaching T <I>has</I> in fact been propounded with the Church's full authority—if, that is, T is what I've been calling 'authoritative-1'—then how is that fact about T related to the truth of T?<BR/><BR/>My claim is just that one can <I>be justifiably certain that</I> T is true <I>precisely in virtue of</I> knowing that T is authoritative-1, whereas the converse does not hold. If I know that T is authoritative-1, then I am justified in being certain that T is true; but if T is true, that fact alone does not indicate that it's authoritative-1 or not. Hence truth and authoritativeness, even the highest degree of authoritativeness, are not only not the same; in some cases, I recognize the truth of a given statement by its authoritativeness, but not vice-versa.<BR/><BR/>Best,<BR/>MikeMike Lhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09060404905348849140noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14247942.post-6219147923636266092007-10-05T22:01:00.000-04:002007-10-05T22:01:00.000-04:00Fr. AlYour comment came in while I was still worki...Fr. Al<BR/><BR/>Your comment came in while I was still working on a longish post on infallibility. I've just now posted it, so perhaps it will serve as a response to your comment.Vitae Scrutatorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12808120163472036743noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14247942.post-25874132951443158692007-10-05T18:35:00.000-04:002007-10-05T18:35:00.000-04:00Scott, would you agree with the following statemen...Scott, would you agree with the following statement by Fr James T. O'Connor?<BR/><BR/>"Infallibility does not render a doctrine of the Church more true than it ever was Infallibility is formally concerned not with the truth as such but rather with the certitude with which the truth is known."Striderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07859685939890312325noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14247942.post-50518910889794510472007-10-05T15:28:00.000-04:002007-10-05T15:28:00.000-04:00Typo: "because (ontolologically or formally) autho...Typo: "because (ontolologically or formally) authoritative" should be "BECOMES (ontologically...."CrimsonCatholichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08623996344637714843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14247942.post-2679994139515421632007-10-05T15:27:00.000-04:002007-10-05T15:27:00.000-04:00I think the confusion was more in the initial ques...I think the confusion was more in the initial question than what you were saying. I took you to be saying that the reasons for believing in the objective sense were not simply that some particular person said it (in positivist fashion) but that what they said necessarily conformed to reality by the action of the Holy Spirit. In other words, the authority of the Magisterium is based on the certain truth of what they say, rather than <I>vice versa</I>. In that respect, the dogmatic teaching authority is somewhat unlike the case of the legislator, because we do not believe that the statement because (ontolologically or formally) authoritative <I>because of</I> the act.<BR/><BR/>I'd be inclined to bisect the baby as between you and Dr. Liccione and point out that even if there are other ways that we <I>might have known</I> what the Magisterium taught, the practical reality is that we will not know them apart from the Magisterium.<BR/><BR/>As St. Thomas says before anything else in the Summa (<A HREF="http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1001.htm" REL="nofollow">ST 1.1.1</A>):<BR/>'I answer that, it was necessary for man's salvation that there should be a knowledge revealed by God besides philosophical science built up by human reason. Firstly, indeed, because man is directed to God, as to an end that surpasses the grasp of his reason: "The eye hath not seen, O God, besides Thee, what things Thou hast prepared for them that wait for Thee" (Isaiah 66:4). But the end must first be known by men who are to direct their thoughts and actions to the end. Hence it was necessary for the salvation of man that certain truths which exceed human reason should be made known to him by divine revelation. Even as regards those truths about God which human reason could have discovered, it was necessary that man should be taught by a divine revelation; because the truth about God such as reason could discover, would only be known by a few, and that after a long time, and with the admixture of many errors. Whereas man's whole salvation, which is in God, depends upon the knowledge of this truth. Therefore, in order that the salvation of men might be brought about more fitly and more surely, it was necessary that they should be taught divine truths by divine revelation. It was therefore necessary that besides philosophical science built up by reason, there should be a sacred science learned through revelation.'<BR/><BR/>Given the inevitable error in reasoning, particularly due to the possibility of sinful denial of theological truth, it is a moral necessity to have a Magisterium even if not a matter of strict ontological necessity. As an ontological point, it is probably true that one <I>could have</I> extracted the conceptual content if one had such a flawless grasp of divine revelation that one could immediately identify every pertinent aspect of the life of the Church, could avoid error entirely in one's logical reasoning, and could avoid inadvertently denying any bit of truth along any step of the way through any taint of sin. For the rest of us, I believe that we are stuck with identifying the relationships and reasons behind theological truths after they have already been made clear to us. In the strict ontological sense, this was already implicit within our experience of the life of the Church, but as a practical matter, we never would have known it.CrimsonCatholichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08623996344637714843noreply@blogger.com