Monday, June 11, 2012

Jason Stellman’s Epistemological Crisis


I had mentioned that Jason Stellman’s resignation letter lifted a quote right from another Roman apologist, Michael Liccione. It is:

unless the church’s interpretation of Scripture is divinely protected from error at least under certain conditions, then what we call the “orthodox” understanding of doctrines like the Trinity or the hypostatic union is reduced to mere fallible human opinion.


An anonymous student of the Scriptures has pointed out a particular epistemological crisis that is often faced with this type of statement:



Reformed Protestant “de-conversions” and “conversions” to Rome (where it sounds like Stellman is heading) typically involve an epistemological shift and crisis (e.g. lack of certainty, the nagging reality of subjectivity vs. the “pure objectivity” that Rome purportedly offers, the “unanimous consent” of the Fathers, etc.). And this quote provided above, found in his resignation letter, is nothing but odd and naive for a number of reasons, which I will list.

1.       “…divinely protected from error…” Does Stellman believe that the dogma quoad se [doctrines in themselves] and dogma quoad nos [as they have to do with us] are identical with one another and perfectly correspond at every single point? Is content and expression, essence and form, God’s absolute truth and the Church’s assimilation into her consciousness, confession, cultural language and ideas, articulation, and proclamation identical at every point (cf. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 1:30-32)?

2.       “… at least under certain conditions…” We should ask, “What are these certain conditions that you speak of? Without resorting to question begging and vicious circularity, when do we know that we are and are not encountering one of these certain cases and conditions? Without begging the question, from where do we arrive certainty that these conditions (and no others) are instances when the church is divinely protected from error?” And then we can ask (ad infinitum), “And from what authority do you appeal to in order to have certainty about the certainty of these conditions and no others?”

3.       “…what we call the “orthodox” understanding of doctrines like the Trinity or the hypostatic union is reduced to mere fallible human opinion.” This goes back to my first question concerning whether the dogma quoad se and dogma quoad nos are identical at every point. Obviously, this cannot be without falling into epistemological naivety and arrogance, for God is the Creator and we are His creatures, and our knowledge of Him and His truths, are analogical, and never univocal. We can know God truly, but never exhaustively. And this is the same for the Church’s articulation of doctrines such as the Trinity or hypostatic union. The church’s articulation of the Trinity and hypostatic union cannot exhaust nor fully grasp these truths in its entirety (cf. James Anderson’s Paradox in Christian Theology).

But we can ask another question about the “orthodox” confession, for example, of the Trinity, and fallible human opinions. Let us consider the filioque clause in the Nicene Creed, which was added over two centuries later in the West (but still to this day rejected by the East). Which creed is fallible and which is infallible? Did the Church fall into error in the 4th century because it did not include the filioque clause or did the Church fall into error centuries later the West added it? It depends who you ask.

So Stellman attempts to seek epistemological refuge by wanting to fall back upon the Church (in his mind, the “Roman Catholic” church) and her being divinely protected from error, for example, in her articulation of the Trinity…but of which creedal statement? With or without the filioque clause? And how does Stellman know this?

2 comments:

  1. Some great points, John. Another point is that even if Jason can show that the Church is the depository of truth on par with the Scriptures, (which is itself against Scripture), how can he demonstrate that the RC church would be that depository? So he has several hoops to jump through, not the least of which is a non-guarantee of heaven at the end of it all. It is a devastating blow to the faith of both himself and others in his church, not to mention those on the web who followed him from afar. I wonder if he thought about that before making this announcement? Troubling on so many levels.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Scott -- At some point, the "hoops" just simply go away as the supplicant is instructed, if there is a discrepancy between what Rome says and what he thinks he sees, to have a presumption of error on his own part. So there ma be something like that going on.

    I believe I know what Jason was thinking at some point, because he told me. But that was a long time ago. We really can't know what he's been thinking more recently.

    Although, one commenter at his blog brought up this comment of his, from comments in this thread:

    http://deregnisduobus.blogspot.com/2008/08/is-bibles-table-of-contents-inspired.html:

    Trust me, I would LOVE to be able to believe what Rome believes, it would solve so many areas of tension for me. But the fact is that I just don't see what they see. Adding to the tension is the fact that if I accept their view of tradition I would have to believe doctrines that I can't ever see myself embracing (not the least of which would be to deny sola fide, which just ain't gonna happen).

    ReplyDelete