“A canon of a council is not ipso facto a dogma, but conciliar canons can contain and define dogma.”
http://deregnisduobus.blogspot.com/2009/09/newman-on-development-of-papacy.html#85879
That’s a standard face-saving device which Catholic apologists use to immunize their church’s infallibilist claims from falsification. However, they pay a price.
When a teacher hands out an exam, he has a test answer key to grade the exam. The answer key has all the right answers.
However, Bryan is treating the text of an ecumenical council like an answer key with some wrong answers (who knows how many?). So he's trying to grade the exam using an errant answer key. How can you correct an exam using an answer key with incorrect answers?
You'd first need to know which answers on the answer key are correct and incorrect before you could use the answer key to correct the exam. So what are you using to correct the answer key before you use the answer key to correct the exam?
So this poses a dilemma:
i) Either we already know where the true lies before the council speaks. In that event, the council is superfluous.
ii) Or else we’re dependent on conciliar statements which are, by turns, true or false. In that event, we’re in no position to winnow the true statements from the false ones.
If the text of an ecumenical council contains both true and false statements, then you can't use an ecumenical council to winnow truth from error. Rather, you need some winnowing fan independent of the ecumenical council to thresh its true statements from its false statements. But if you’re dependent on the ecumenical council, then you’re lost in the jungle.
The Catholic rule of faith always devolves into a vicious infinite regress.
"If the text of an ecumenical council contains both true and false statements, then you can't use an ecumenical council to winnow truth from error. Rather, you need some winnowing fan independent of the ecumenical council to thresh its true statements from its false statements. But if you’re dependent on the ecumenical council, then you’re lost in the jungle.
ReplyDeleteThe Catholic rule of faith always devolves into a vicious infinite regress."
Aren't the Eastern Orthodox Church also susceptible to the same vicious infinite regress as well?
Indeed they are–since a church council can't self-select for a true church council or a false church council.
ReplyDeleteHmmmmm, I've read a little about the topic of "Ultimate Authority" and what I remember is that the issue of circularity can't be escaped.
ReplyDeleteHowever, IIRC, there are qualitative degrees of circularity, and from the Protestant perspective, Sola Scriptura is less damaging than the Ultimate Authorities used by the RCC and EO.
Would you agree?
Lastly, do the RCC and EO hold that these early "ecumenical" councils produced infallible and totally true texts? It seems that would be the only way for them to evade the conundrum that you posed for them.
TUAD -- Bryan posted this in the thread:
ReplyDeleteGravatar John,
To the point that the only things that are "infallibly" known are the two dogmas about Mary and that the pope speaking "ex cathedra" are infallible.
No, that's not true. There are many dogmas (each infallible), not just the latter two marian dogmas and the doctrine of papal infallibility.
Regarding the nature of the Church's doctrine of infallibility, the Catholic encyclopedia article on infallibility explains it thus:
But before being bound to give such an assent, the believer has a right to be certain that the teaching in question is definitive (since only definitive teaching is infallible); and the means by which the definitive intention, whether of a council or of the pope, may be recognized have been stated above. It need only be added here that not everything in a conciliar or papal pronouncement, in which some doctrine is defined, is to be treated as definitive and infallible. For example, in the lengthy Bull of Pius IX defining the Immaculate Conception the strictly definitive and infallible portion is comprised in a sentence or two; and the same is true in many cases in regard to conciliar decisions. The merely argumentative and justificatory statements embodied in definitive judgments, however true and authoritative they may be, are not covered by the guarantee of infallibility which attaches to the strictly definitive sentences — unless, indeed, their infallibility has been previously or subsequently established by an independent decision.
TRUTH UNITES... AND DIVIDES SAID:
ReplyDelete"Hmmmmm, I've read a little about the topic of "Ultimate Authority" and what I remember is that the issue of circularity can't be escaped."
Truths of reason and truths of fact are interconnected in logical, causal, and/or teleological networks. Truths of reason are indexed to the nature of God while truths of fact are indexed to the will of God.
However, that involves the metaphysics of truth. Except for God, the totality of truth is not an object of knowledge.
The way to break into the circle is if some truths can be known apart from proof. If they are evident or self-evident.
"For example, in the lengthy Bull of Pius IX defining the Immaculate Conception the strictly definitive and infallible portion is comprised in a sentence or two; and the same is true in many cases in regard to conciliar decisions."
ReplyDeleteSo which is it, a sentence or two? And which ones?
For EA:
ReplyDeleteHere's the link: http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9ineff.htm
And here's the "excathedra definition":
"Hence, if anyone shall dare -- which God forbid! -- to think otherwise than as has been defined by us, let him know and understand that he is condemned by his own judgment; that he has suffered shipwreck in the faith; that he has separated from the unity of the Church; and that, furthermore, by his own action he incurs the penalties established by law if he should are to express in words or writing or by any other outward means the errors he think in his heart."