Indefectibility: Game Over

[christulsa]

Blah blah blah.  Just random emotional reactions to a word or phrase that sets you off in disagreement.  No wonder Greg often called people stupid.

Sounds a lot like your very post.

You miss the point Dellery.  It's just plain stupid and adolescent to go off on endless tangents disagreeing about God knows what, for the umpteenth time.  Pick a topic and hash it out like rational men, not teenagers.

[christulsa]

Not directed at you per se.

[PerEvangelicaDicta]

VO, I along with the other SD traditional Catholics have been subjected to months of contempt, escalating the past few weeks.  I hit the wall today in disgust, and unfairly took it out on you with sarcasm.  I apologize, and I will modify those few threads.
Typically you are honest and civil, even though you don't like when we appeal to Authority ; indeed, many of your comments I have thanked.
Nothing is more important than our salvation, and we need to assist each other to that end.

[Nazianzen]

You asserted something, then when challenged, you dodged.  So much for your intellectual integrity - and you claim to be governed by reason???

What have I dodged?

I'm quite fascinated by your lack of precision in the use of words.  Here is your assertion, which I challenged.  You didn't attempt to back up your assertion once it was challenged, you just moved on.

The certitude of faith is higher than the certitude of fact.

Said any cult whatsoever in the history of mankind.

My challenge was "Name one, then quote the doctrine from that cult's own documents."  Name a cult that said this.  Then quote its own documents.  I say you made up that claim, that "any cult whatsoever in the history of mankind" says what the Church says about the certitude of faith. 

The certitude of faith is higher than that of reason, because faith has the guarantee of God Himself, Who can neither deceive nor be deceived.  Fact "only" has the evidence of our senses, and our fallible reasoning powers interpreting it.

Your textbook copy/paste answer is, frankly, spectacularly pathetic because it reveals that you can't meaningfully interact with other people that have grown out of 9th grade level. Certitude of faith is only possible, in the first place, because you're a rational animal able to assent to propositions that conform to reason. Truth is the proper object of the mind and it is because our intelligence is able to distinguish fact from fiction, through reasoning processes that conform to the laws of logic, that we are able to have certitude of anything whatsoever, including faith. If the propositions of faith do not conform to reason, they can't be assented to by your mind, even if you wanted to. Irrationality is not faith, nor is logical contradiction faith.

Look, maybe I only made it to eighth grade, so try and be kind.

Propositions that do not conform to reason cannot be assented to, conceded.  Propositions that are not incompatible with reason, but are not knowable by reason alone, cannot be assented to, denied.  Faith is precisely that virtue by which grace aids nature to assent to a proposition which reason alone cannot "see" to be true, but which God informs us is true.  Therefore we assent to it.

To affirm that "certitude of faith is higher than that of reason," you still need reason. In other words, faith may be conceptually and theoretically higher than reason but absolutely dependent on it to be validated. There's no escaping this fact. Reason is the mechanism by which you make sense of things and it is, in fact, the main thrust behind the development of Western theology.

You will not understand how this works, because you don't have supernatural faith, but I will state the fact for you, and for others who might find your sophisms confusing.

We are speaking chiefly (but not exclusively) about truths which of their very nature are unable to be known to be true by reason alone.  For example, that God is three persons in one nature, or that the Church can never defect.  The first is not knowable by unaided reason, because the data is not naturally available to reason.  It can only be known by another revealing it to us.  The second truth is not knowable by unaided reason because it's partly a future contingent fact, and our nature does not include the power of knowing the future.  But there is nothing incompatible with reason in either of these truths.  Neither conflict with known fact, or with logic. 

Faith, I repeat, is that virtue by which grace aids nature to assent to propositions which are beyond our natural knowledge (either because we lack the intelligence, or time, to reach certitude, or because the data itself is outside the realm of the naturally knowable).  Faith, being a supernatural gift, yields a higher level of certitude than mere unaided reason.  This is not something that you can really grasp from a faithless position, it is something that you experience (if you have faith).  The position of the unbeliever is somewhat analogous to a man blind from birth being told about sight - he not only cannot see himself, he cannot even really grasp what it might be - until he receives the gift of sight, then he knows.

[Nazianzen]

Nazianzen. Come back and post here more. I believe you are a sedevacantist. Your views would be appreciated by me. I believe you stopped posting regularly here when the sedevacantist forum becamse semi-private but you were a good poster here. Some say that you are John Lane. I don't know if you are but I used to read his forum years ago. Peace.

Thanks Matto.  I can't post here, at least very much, and it's not at all apparent that it's worthwhile doing so.  I really believe the below (that I posted earlier) and it applies to me as much as to anybody else.  Posting on forums takes time.

________________________________________________

A message for all of you.

First, if you have the faith, you need to maintain it.  That means, make acts of faith, pray regularly, and avoid occasions of sin (in this matter, that can include entering into questions you're not equipped to handle, leading to unnecessary doubts).

Second, the faith informs us that the Church cannot defect, so she hasn't, and she won't, and that includes, as people have rightly pointed out, the local church of Rome.  How this squares with present facts, as far as they are known to us, is not immediately apparent, but the doubt remains in the realm of fact, not in respect of the faith.  The certitude of faith is higher than the certitude of fact.  As James Rogerson pointed out, when some archaeologists claimed to have found the bones of Jesus Christ, we knew that it was false.  We didn't need to assess the facts at all, our faith informed us that they had to be wrong.  The crisis in the Church is the same.  Somehow this crisis is compatible with the indefectibility of the Church, and one day we'll know how - but that could be centuries away, after much theological effort over generations.

Third, and this is the voice of experience, do your duties.  Focus on what you know, without a shadow of doubt, is the will of God for you - your duties.  Everything else is superfluous.  I have seen so many families fall apart, kids raised who don't practice, all manner of issues, which when examined critically, can all be traced to the father spending his time solving the problems of the world, political or religious, instead of doing his duties.  It's easy to deceive ourselves about this, and imagine that we are acting virtuously when actually we're avoiding what we should really be doing. 

None of this means that modest and intelligent discussion of issues is bad, it's all about true principles and proportion.  This thread is a great example of where principles have been lost, and proportion is absent. 

My two cents.  As you were!

[PerEvangelicaDicta]

I don't think I've ever done this - I somehow posted in the wrong place.  I was modifying another comment, it's late, fatigue....   

[Jayne]

Faith is hardly the superior. Every proposition, even those taken on faith, must conform with reason. They must be both internally and externally coherent. As Vetus has stated several times, no proposition (even those made by "God" or the Church) can contradict logic.

I am a Catholic on a Catholic forum taking the Catholic view on the relationship between faith and reason.  If there are any Church documents which show me to be mistaken in my understanding, I would gratefully accept correction.

Some posters, however, offer secular epistemological assumptions as if they were self-evident truths and treat those of us who think like Catholics with contempt.

I don't think that's fair at all.

The Church has not, and never will, admit that there can possibly be any conflict between a doctrine of faith, properly understood, and reason, properly used.  If it did Catholicism would be an irrational cult.

When there is an apparent conflict the Church does not demand that one automatically assume one's use of reason is wrong, and that one accept what is (to him) contradictories.  That would be an irrational demand, since reason simply cannot accept two contradictory propositions at the same time, even if the conclusion of contradiction eventually turns out to be mistaken.  You can say you assent to both propositions, but you cannot do so in reality.  Moreover, there is the other possibility that a doctrine was not properly understood.  Reason can be self-verifying.  What the Church wants you to do is investigate further.  If you misunderstand the Trinity as tritheism, you cannot simultaneously assent to that and also the proposition that there is one God.

It's true that the doctrine of Indefectibility was understood by many to mean the Church could never promulgate something intrinsically harmful in the ordinary Magisterium.  The logic being, that if the Church is an intrinsic means to salvation, that it could never do anything to lead souls to hell.  Reason tells us that Pope Francis' teaching on the death penalty is intrinsically harmful.  If accepted, it means the Church sanctioned a horrible evil for centuries, encouraging people to do "cruel and inhumane" things.  Thus, the doctrine of Indefectibility was not formerly properly understood, at least by those theologians who promulgated it. 

The fact that you might not like the implications of what I just said does not make it not true, or that I am taking a "secular epistemological assumption" as a self-evident truth.

I agree with you that one cannot assent to apparently contradictory propositions.  I already said as much in an earlier post.  I also agree that we are called in such situations to investigate further.  I don't think I am going to be around the forum much longer, so I am unable to pursue this discussion.

I do not think that you are one of the people who has been treating Catholics with contempt.

[Quaremerepulisti]

My challenge was "Name one, then quote the doctrine from that cult's own documents."  Name a cult that said this.  Then quote its own documents.  I say you made up that claim, that "any cult whatsoever in the history of mankind" says what the Church says about the certitude of faith. 

His point was that all cults in the history of mankind use similar argumentation when facts are appealed to against them, even if they don't use the exact terminology "certitude of faith".  They all claim a Divine revelation that is not to be questioned.  There must be some way of distinguishing truthful claims of Divine revelation from false ones.  If you say that this is reason, then V.O. wins the argument.

Now, an annoying habit (for me) is when serious questions are responded to merely by simply repeating the same quotations from wherever (Summa, Catechism, etc.) which don't actually happen to constitute a serious response to the argument and are often even misunderstood.

The certitude of faith is higher than that of reason, because faith has the guarantee of God Himself, Who can neither deceive nor be deceived.  Fact "only" has the evidence of our senses, and our fallible reasoning powers interpreting it.

This is not the way theologians interpret the "certitude of faith is higher than that of reason" (e.g. faith is absolutely, epistemologically certain, reason is not).  It is a higher kind or type of certitude, but not necessarily a higher degree.

In the first place, you need your reason to realize that God can neither deceive nor deceived, and therefore what He reveals must be true, to even get off the ground.

And, while reason is in itself fallible in some situations, it is nevertheless also possible (and must be so, if faith is to have any value, for the above must be true and knowable as true), it is also possible for reason, in other situations, to be infallible and know itself it be so.  We know that 2 + 2 = 4, that the Law of Identity and Non-Contradiction are true, and so on.

Propositions that do not conform to reason cannot be assented to, conceded.  Propositions that are not incompatible with reason, but are not knowable by reason alone, cannot be assented to, denied.  Faith is precisely that virtue by which grace aids nature to assent to a proposition which reason alone cannot "see" to be true, but which God informs us is true.  Therefore we assent to it.

But to get there, you need to first assent to the proposition that God is informing us that such and such a proposition is true, by logical necessity.  Now, is this proposition assented to on the basis of reason alone (meaning, reason alone can "see" that it is revealed by God)?  If so, then the revealed proposition is also knowable via reason alone, since reason unaided can know that what God informs us of must be true.  If not, then God has to inform us that He is informing us that such and such a proposition is true, and the same question repeats itself.

IOW, making the essence of faith the assenting to propositions ends in absurdity, either an infinite regress or a proposition which can in fact be known through reason and therefore everything else logically entailed by it.

We are speaking chiefly (but not exclusively) about truths which of their very nature are unable to be known to be true by reason alone.  For example, that God is three persons in one nature, or that the Church can never defect.  The first is not knowable by unaided reason, because the data is not naturally available to reason.  It can only be known by another revealing it to us.  The second truth is not knowable by unaided reason because it's partly a future contingent fact, and our nature does not include the power of knowing the future.  But there is nothing incompatible with reason in either of these truths.  Neither conflict with known fact, or with logic. 

Faith, I repeat, is that virtue by which grace aids nature to assent to propositions which are beyond our natural knowledge (either because we lack the intelligence, or time, to reach certitude, or because the data itself is outside the realm of the naturally knowable). 

Well, V.O. would argue that "the Church can never defect" actually does conflict with known fact, which can be known by reason alone, and that therefore the Church's claim to have this Divine revelation is false, and merely repeating ad nauseam that "the Church can never defect" is a Divine revelation does nothing whatsoever to solve the objection.  He is right that every cult acts the same way when facts are appealed to against them, and pounds the table about how all opposing them are faithless, wicked, and despicable, and so on.

In short, you need a better epistemology of faith to satisfactorily answer objections like V.O.'s.  This here shows some promise:

Faith, being a supernatural gift, yields a higher level of certitude than mere unaided reason.  This is not something that you can really grasp from a faithless position, it is something that you experience (if you have faith).  The position of the unbeliever is somewhat analogous to a man blind from birth being told about sight - he not only cannot see himself, he cannot even really grasp what it might be - until he receives the gift of sight, then he knows.

[awkwardcustomer]

Regardless, Rome cannot, by definition, defect. There was never a time where individual Catholics, or groups of Catholics, would hold the true faith against heretical popes non-stop. Catholics aren't Protestants or Orthodox. That scenario is nonexistent in traditional western theology and the fact that it is now a reality beyond any shadow of a doubt is a blow to any pretension that Rome is necessary for salvation. It isn't. Period.

Vatican II was an Ecumenical Council presided by two popes and ratified by the whole body of Catholic bishops of the world. Let that sink in. Accepted as legitimate by the whole body of the Church for more than 6 decades. Clear as daylight.

Vatican II is a clear, and undeniable, departure from the Tridentine faith. Who can deny this?

Therefore, let the chips fall where they may. God alone is our judge.

You are looking at the surface of things only and missing the amazing part.  God, in the brilliance of His wisdom, has built in a 100%, absolutely fail-safe means by which His glorious and beautiful Catholic Church cannot ever, ever, defect.  It's so simple that a lot of people miss it, although some may choose to.

The only way the Catholic Church can defect is if a Pope preaches or teaches heresy and remains a Pope. 'The First See is judged by no-one', and therefore if a true Catholic Pope were to preach or teach heresy, it would be game over, because a true Catholic Pope cannot be deposed.

Keeping your attention on the surface of things, you look at Vatican II and make the following comments -

1) Vatican II was an Ecumenical Council presided by two popes and ratified by the whole body of Catholic bishops of the world. Let that sink in. Accepted as legitimate by the whole body of the Church for more than 6 decades. Clear as daylight.

2) Vatican II is a clear, and undeniable, departure from the Tridentine Catholic faith. Who can deny this?

Since your second point cannot be denied, your first point is the crucial one, obviously.  And it is here that God's guarantee comes into play, the beautiful fail-safe mechanism that you are missing.

The Church cannot defect because the scenario which would lead to defection - a true Catholic Pope preaching or teaching heresy and remaining Pope - cannot ever happen.  It is impossible because the moment a Pope preaches or teaches heresy he becomes a public, manifest heretic and immediately falls from office and out of the Church. The moment heretical teachings come out of the mouth or pen of a Pope, he is gone.   This is God's guarantee that the Church cannot fail.  Numerous Popes, Saints and theologians have pointed this out, not only Bellarmine.

Therefore, since your second point cannot be denied, the Vatican II 'popes' cannot be Popes and the 'bishops' who follow them cannot be Bishops.  They are public, manifest heretics who preach the modernism of Vatican II .  Consequently they have fallen from office, if they ever had it in the first place, and are not members of the Church.

You're right that this is an unprecedented situation.  Of course it is.  It's unprecedented because it's the 'revolt' of 2Thess 2.

The Church was already full of modernists in 1907 according to Pope Pius X.  During the decades that followed they regrouped and continued to work towards the destruction of the Church as Pope Pius X said was their intention.  In 1962 they got the 'ecumenical council' that they had been working for since the 1920s.  And here we are today. The cuckoos have taken over the next and are claiming victory.

Meanwhile God's beautiful guarantee will always hold and his magnificent drama enters it final stages. We should be proud to be alive at such a time.

This, I admit, is easier said than done.  Just keep the Faith whatever you do. 

[King Wenceslas]

Back then there was definitely an organised opposition to Arianism.  Two opposing camps.  Today the Church is completly dominated by compromise and as mentioned on the other thread the error this time was promulgated through the official channel of a council to define it.

This time there are 2000 years of praxis they are reblling against and turning on its head.  We expect a teenager to be rebellious as they grow quickly and turn into an adult, but we dont expect a grandfather to suddenly start decide he was born a women and get his meat and two veg chopped off.

Finally, Arianism didn't involve the wilfull distruction of the Church.  Arians didn't promote abortion, contraception, divorce, sodomy.  It was a theological argument back in the day when people cared much more about that stuff.  Today, these things are decided and rather than debating the nature of God modernists kinda sorta wonder whether he meaningfully exists at all or is just a useful construct for social control.

97% of the Bishops were Arians. Just where was this "organized resistance" to Arianism. With St. Athanasius when he was hiding in a well? Arianism denied the divinity of Christ. How much more can you deny the existence of God. Or do you think that you can have God without Christ after Christ's birth.

A little side note. Did you ever hear of the book, "The Rhine Flows into the Tiber"? Well there is a little background information on that theme. Germany was converted to the Faith by Arian Bishops. Therefore Northern Germany has really never been fully Catholic; a latent Karma of Arianism has existed in the German church since that time (Martin Luther and his denial of the Eucharist is a very good example of Arianism). That is why northern Europe Bishops were the vanguard of the takeover of the Vatican II. Vatican II in its essence is Arianism, the denial of the divinity of Christ once you boil it down to its singular point.

The Devil hides his strategy quite well.

[King Wenceslas]

The Church cannot defect because the scenario which would lead to defection - a true Catholic Pope preaching or teaching heresy and remaining Pope - cannot ever happen.  It is impossible because the moment a Pope preaches or teaches heresy he becomes a public, manifest heretic and immediately falls from office and out of the Church. The moment heretical teachings come out of the mouth or pen of a Pope, he is gone.   This is God's guarantee that the Church cannot fail.  Numerous Popes, Saints and theologians have pointed this out, not only Bellarmine.

Were you watching when Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio walked out on the balcony on March 13, 2013 and the Church proclaimed and accepted him Pope? To this day the Church still proclaims him as Pope.

You have a very big problem unless of course, like a large portion of the posters here, believe the Church no longer exists as we are seeing it in the media. Cupich's Chicago gone, Tobin's Newark gone, Dolan's New York gone.

[Vetus Ordo]

My challenge was "Name one, then quote the doctrine from that cult's own documents."  Name a cult that said this.  Then quote its own documents.  I say you made up that claim, that "any cult whatsoever in the history of mankind" says what the Church says about the certitude of faith.

Obviously, I was making a generalization. Quare already kindly responded to this (#532).

However, if you really want to be pedantic about it, Islam does posit a similar relationship between faith and reason. The famous Hanbali jurisconsult, reformer and theologian Ibn Taymiyyah, for instance, writes:

Reason is a requirement for acquiring knowledge and performing righteous deeds, through which knowledge and deeds are perfected, but it is not enough on its own. Rather, it is a faculty of the soul and an ability like the ability within the eye to see. If it is connected with the light of faith and the Qur'an, then it is like the eye receiving the light of the sun and torch. If it is left to itself, it cannot gain insight into matters that it cannot know alone. (Source: Majmu al-Fatawa 3/338)

Propositions that do not conform to reason cannot be assented to, conceded.

This is the core of the argument.

If propositions that do not conform to reason cannot be assented to, then religious propositions that do not conform to reason cannot be assented to. Therefore, reason is the mechanism by which any of us can verify our own religious beliefs. And this what we do.

Propositions that are not incompatible with reason, but are not knowable by reason alone, cannot be assented to, denied.

Strawman.

Please, kindly point out where in this exchange it was claimed that propositions that are not knowable by reason alone cannot be assented to.

In fact, the truths of faith that cannot be arrived at by reason alone and require a special revelation from God (The Holy Trinity, for instance) must, nonetheless, be verified by reason. If their formulation contradicts the laws of logic, then we can't assent to them. And if they are contradictory, then we know for certain they are not from God.

Reason, in the end, remains the sole arbiter to distinguish truth from falsehood. Faith illuminates reason, it aids reason, but it never supersedes it. It is wholesale dependent upon reason to function. There's no such thing as an irrational faith.

[Vetus Ordo]

VO, I along with the other SD traditional Catholics have been subjected to months of contempt, escalating the past few weeks.  I hit the wall today in disgust, and unfairly took it out on you with sarcasm.  I apologize, and I will modify those few threads.

No need to, PED. I didn't take any offense.

God bless you.

[Larry]

The Church cannot defect because the scenario which would lead to defection - a true Catholic Pope preaching or teaching heresy and remaining Pope - cannot ever happen.  It is impossible because the moment a Pope preaches or teaches heresy he becomes a public, manifest heretic and immediately falls from office and out of the Church. The moment heretical teachings come out of the mouth or pen of a Pope, he is gone.   This is God's guarantee that the Church cannot fail.  Numerous Popes, Saints and theologians have pointed this out, not only Bellarmine.

Were you watching when Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio walked out on the balcony on March 13, 2013 and the Church proclaimed and accepted him Pope? To this day the Church still proclaims him as Pope.

You have a very big problem unless of course, like a large portion of the posters here, believe the Church no longer exists as we are seeing it in the media. Cupich's Chicago gone, Tobin's Newark gone, Dolan's New York gone.

He could have been a real Pope when elected and then lost the seat because of heresy.

[Quaremerepulisti]

God, in the brilliance of His wisdom, has built in a 100%, absolutely fail-safe means by which His glorious and beautiful Catholic Church cannot ever, ever, defect.  It's so simple that a lot of people miss it, although some may choose to.

The only way the Catholic Church can defect is if a Pope preaches or teaches heresy and remains a Pope
....
The moment heretical teachings come out of the mouth or pen of a Pope, he is gone.   This is God's guarantee that the Church cannot fail. 

This is assuring that no combination of epistemological facts would ever be consistent with the Church's defection; IOW, making it empirically unfalsifiable.