Running in place

Before Called to Confusion become such a dead zone, the two contributors with the most philosophical heft were Bryan Cross and Michael Liccione. Liccione was never formally a member of Called to Confusion, because–I guess–he's a revert rather than a convert. He has one argument which he recycles ad nauseam. I've been critiquing it for years. But recently on Facebook we got into a head-to-head debate. It was a useful opportunity to finally engage him directly. It looks like he dropped out of the debate. So here's an edited version of our exchange: 

Hays 

i) One problem with your position is that it was more pertinent in the past when the Catholic church had a long list of damnable sins and damnable errors. Likewise, that you were doomed unless you were a member of the Roman Catholic communion, in submission to the pope, receiving valid sacraments. Saving grace was channeled through the sacraments. 

But post-Vatican II theology has drastically softened all that. Not only is allowance made for the salvation of non-Catholics but the salvation of non-Christians. Indeed, hopeful universalism seems to be widespread among the hierarchy. Belief that while hell exists, it may be empty. So it's no longer the high-stakes gambit it used to be, where your immortal soul hung in the balance. There's such a thing as innocent theological error. So even if Protestant are wrong, that's not a damnable error.

ii) Another problem is that it only rises to the level of fallible belief in the infallibility of the church. If the church is infallible, then church teaching can be assuredly true. But a cradle Catholic or convert to Catholicism must rely on his fallible reason to convince himself that the church is infallible. Even if the church is infallible, he can't circumvent his fallible reasoning process to access that truth directly. So his conviction reduces to a fallible belief that the church is infallible. His epistemic warrant can't rise higher than the process by which he arrives at the conclusion.

Liccione

My response to them depends on the following conditional premise: If there is such a thing as said revelation, then its content cannot be reliably understood as such without a living, visible, and infallible interpreter. Without such an interpreter to resolve disputes, all we are left with is more or less plausible opinions about the content of said revelation–and human opinions are not divine revelation. We would thus have no reliable epistemic access to divine revelation precisely as such; hence, the assent of faith would be impossible, or at least ruled out by our epistemology...Reason will never suffice to establish, objectively, that there has been such a revelation, whether or not the Church and her role are part of said revelation. If one affirms the fact of said revelation at all, it will be on grounds that make the affirmation reasonable, but not certain. Yet on the Catholic/Orthodox understanding, divine revelation is objectively certain; and on the same understanding of the virtue of faith, it is subjectively certain...So my argument basically is that one can affirm divine revelation only by trusting in divine authority, to which we have epistemic access only through a church that is infallible under certain conditions. The Church's authority is not self-certifying; it is attested by Scripture and Tradition and supported by rational considerations.

Hays

Let's break that down. Suppose a seeker is considering whether to become Catholic. At that stage of the investigation/argument, all he has to work with are Scripture, tradition, and rational considerations. At that preliminary stage, he can't appeal to the authority of the magisterium, since that's what needs to be proven. But according to Liccione, Scripture and tradition cannot be reliably understood by unaided reason. Reason alone will never suffice to ascertain the correct interpretation with objective certainty. All he's got are more or less plausible opinions about the best interpretation of Scripture and tradition. But how can his conclusion ever rise above the starting-point? He may perceive Scripture, tradition, and rational considerations to establish the infallibility of the Church, but that's just psychological certitude rather than objective certainty. In his opinion, Scripture, tradition, and rational considerations establish the infallibility of the church, but his opinion or understanding is the product of unreliable reason. He can never escape the medium of his own mind. That's the instrument he must use to interpret/assess the documentary evidence. So how can he ever make the transition from the outside (subjective certitude) to the inside (objective certainty)? Where's the entry point to break into the charmed circle?

Liccione

I hope you grant my initial premises.

Hays

Speaking for myself, I don't concede that. I went along for the sake of argument to assess your case on your own grounds. That said, you seem to be operating with a kind of oracular, topdown model where the only way to achieve objective certainty is to have an infallible agent or agency tell you what's true and false. But is that the only available model?

Suppose God wants Betty to have saving faith, which requires knowledge, belief, and trust in certain theological tenets. Suppose God cultivates faith in Betty through social conditioning. He prompts her to attend a church where that is preached. The pastor is fallible. The sermons are fallible. But he gets the basics right with regard to the tenants of saving faith. 

God uses that oblique process to cultivate saving faith in Betty. She has true beliefs, and–what is more–her beliefs are the product of a reliable belief-forming process, since God engineered the circumstances to hit that target. 

Now, this isn't an oracular, topdown model. Rather, it operates at a providential and subliminal level. Betty is oblivious to the behind-the-scenes factors that are guiding her to a particular set of beliefs.

Liccione

I've already indicated that the truth, as distinct from the reasonableness, of Catholicism cannot be established by reason alone.

Hays

Actually, what you said falls short of even providing for the [superior] reasonableness of Catholicism. You've taken a very skeptical view of unaided reason, where it can only yield "more or less plausible opinions." Given your skepticism, atheism, agnosticism, evangelicalism, and Catholicism might all be reasonable options. It's reasonable to be Catholic but reasonable not to be Catholic. 

So you create a dilemma: the more unreliable you make unaided reason, the less justification to have rational confidence in the case for Catholicism–compared to rival positions. 

Liccione

Suppose, just for argument's sake, that Catholicism is true. If so, then the exercise of personal judgment to accept Catholicism entails a free decision to accept the gift of faith as the Church understands it. That gift does by grace what we cannot do by nature.

Hays

A gift which you attribute to the Catholic church. So if the hypothetical is true, that gift will be conferred on the Catholic believer, thereby raising epistemic warrant from psychological certitude to objective certainly. But that does nothing to show that the hypothetical is true. 

Liccione

Thus, when we accept it, we choose to submit our judgment to the Magisterium's, because we accept that the Magisterium speaks with divine authority, and thus infallibility, under certain conditions.

Hays

Which is either nothing more than your untrustworthy opinion regarding the divine authority of the magisterium or else a hypothetical gift of certainty. You have yet to explain how you bridge the gap. 

Liccione

So if Catholicism is true, the faithful have justified certainty by grace, because they obey God by submitting their judgment to the Church's. Such certainty is not opposed to reason but transcends it.

Hays

Which only gives you hypothetical justified certainty. But since the examination of Catholicism begins from the standpoint of unreliable reason, how do you ever prove the hypothetical? 

Liccione

But I have just shown that there is an alternative. Submitted personal judgment is logically possible, because Catholicism is logically possible.

Hays

But, once again, how to you make the transition from what's logically possible to what's demonstrably true? You can't appeal to "the gift of certainty by grace" to transcend your skepticism because that's a hypothetical advantage. It's not evidence that the hypothetical is true. 

Liccione

To remain Protestant, then, is essentially to take the view that the individual as such, apart from ecclesial authority, can reliably know the deposit of faith, and thus divine revelation, precisely as such by exercising their unsubmitted personal judgment.

Hays

i) To recast the issue in your terms, are you saying that's logically impossible? Why can't God providentially guide them to arrive at the truth? Why must it be a topdown process rather than a process operating at a subliminal level (like I outlined in another comment)? 

Which doesn't mean God preserves Protestant from error. Just that he cultivates saving faith in the elect.

ii) All you offer is a theological postulate. You then act as though you can use your postulate to prove your postulate. BTW, how does your appeal to supernatural assurance differ from the Protestant inner witness of the Spirit?

Put another way, you have yet to provide "objectively certain" evidence that your theological postulate is true. As it stands, you end up right where your argument began.

Your dilemma is that you're making an epistemic or evidentiary truth-claim about objective certainty. But do you have objectively certain evidence for your claim about objective certainty?

iii) My question is not "how do you know such-and-such is the word of God" but how do you know that your theological postulate is true. You've indicated that a divine teaching office can provide certainty in a way that private judgment cannot. But you've cast that claim in hypothetical terms. You have yet to provide evidence commensurate with the nature of the claim.

For instance, if someone claims that 9 out of 10 doctors recommend Bayer aspirin, evidence commensurate with the claim would be a survey in which 9 out of 10 doctors recommend Bayer aspirin. 

By contrast, you've made skeptical claims about the reliability of reason to assess the evidence for Catholicism or the interpretation of Scripture. It's reduces to more or less plausible competing opinions. 

How to you get from that to objective certainty? You can't appeal to the authority of the magisterium before you establish the authority of the magisterium.

Liccione 

Accordingly, I regard the notion that said authority must somehow be 'proven' from Scripture as a non-starter.

Hays

Now you're changing the subject. In our exchanges on this comment thread I never once used Protestant epistemology as the benchmark to evaluate your argument. Rather, I've been assessing your argument on your own grounds. I've confined my analysis to the assumptions you yourself provided. It's an internal critique. I haven't interjected my own theological assumptions into the discussion. 

Of course my own position is fair game. I'm happy to expound and defend the Protestant alternative. However, we need to settle one thing at a time. The attempt to poke holes in the Protestant alternative doesn't salvage your own position. 

Liccione

We're dealing here with a clash of interpretive paradigms, in which what counts as proof texts is predetermined by the paradigm to which one adheres.

Hays

Which pushes the question back a step, because it then shifts the issue to the evidence for one's paradigm. Is that independent of your ecclesiology? If not, what's the justification for your ecclesiology? 

Liccione

And I accept the authority of the Magisterium for the reason already stated. On the other hand, if you recognize no living, visible authority as infallible under any conditions, then anybody who affirms a particular scriptural canon and its inerrancy might be wrong…

Hays

But if the criterion is whether one's position might be wrong, you haven't shown how your own position is immune from error. On the one hand, you've said a reasonable case can be made for Catholicism based on Scripture, tradition, and rational considerations.

Of course, there are Protestant patrologists, Bible scholars, and church historians who examine the same evidence and conclude that Catholicism is false. For that matter, there are Catholic patrologists, Bible scholars, and church historians who challenge traditional Catholic prooftexts and the traditional history of the papacy. So it's unclear how your preliminary appeal even demonstrates that Catholicism is more reasonable than the competition. Your backup move is twofold: 

i) You appeal to the supernatural virtue of faith

ii) You appeal to the magisterium

Again, though, these are both theological truth-claims, so it's unclear how you can appeal to truth-claims to validate truth-claims. Whether those truth-claims are indeed true is the very issue under consideration.