It is proved finally by reason. God was not ignorant of the fact that many difficulties would arise in the Church concerning the Faith. Therefore he had to provide a judge for the Church. But that judge cannot be Scripture…It is clear that Scripture is not the judge, because it is subject to various meanings, nor can it say which interpretation is true. Robert Bellarmine, Controversies of the Christian Faith (Keep the Faith 2016), 205.
In my experience, that's the most popular and influential objection to the Protestant faith. That objection is endlessly repeated and paraphrased by Catholic apologists. It's convincing to many cradle Catholics and evangelical converts to Rome.
Notice the nature of the argument. It's an a priori argument. The argument is premised on what Christians should expect God to allow or prevent. God would not allow something like that to happen. God would have a mechanism in place to prevent that outcomes. It reasons back from unacceptable consequences to divine provision and prevention.
As I say, many Catholics and prospective Catholics find that utterly persuasive. But is it in fact reasonable. Consider a few counterexamples that operate from the same principle:
It is proved finally by reason. God was not ignorant of the fact that many difficulties would arise in the Church concerning the Faith if Luther lived. Therefore God had to cause Luther to die in childhood.It is proved finally by reason. God was not ignorant of the fact that billions of people would embrace a false religion if Muhammad lived. Therefore he had to cause Muhammad to die in childhood.It is proved finally by reason. God was not ignorant of the fact that billions of people would embrace a false religion if Buddha lived. Therefore he had to cause Buddha to die in childhood.It is proved finally by reason. God was not ignorant of the fact that Bart Ehrman would be the most influential apostate of his generation. Therefore he had to prevent Ehrman from becoming Bruce Metzger's student.It is proved finally by reason. God was not ignorant of the fact that if Nabeel Qureshi died of cancer at 33, many Muslims would conclude that Allah punished him for apostasy. Therefore he had to heal Nabeel.
And so on and so forth. Point being, it's generally quite unreliable to predict what God would not permit.
When I talk to Catholic apologists online about this issue, there appear to be at least three things they affirm:
ReplyDelete1) God intended us to have certainty
2) The Bible is insufficiently clear to provide this certainty
3) The Roman Catholic church provides this certainty
If you ask them about how the Roman Catholic church provides this certainty, they'll then - when you get down to it - describe a quite complicated process of filtering, parsing and harmonising Rome's output. And no two apologists quite approach this in the same way. And when asked about the reasons how it's clear that this process of exegeting Rome's output is a superior process to the process of exegeting an infallible Bible, and how in doing so they don't come under their own condemnations of uncontrolled use of reason among Protestants when they do it, frankly, they bluster.
--3) The Roman Catholic church provides this certainty--
ReplyDeleteIf a Catholic layperson who thinks like this talks to a dawagandist well-read in liberal scholars, there'll quickly be a new convert to Islam and its one Quran which is 'certain' unlike the Bible's many variant extants.