Do We Need Certainty Regarding Dogma?

This post is a slight adaptation of a comment I recently left at the website Called to Communion. If you have not already, I highly recommend making the site a regular part of your reading diet.

_______________________________________

The question of "epistemic certainty" was germane to my own spiritual journey. Albeit, I did not dip my toe in the Tiber because of it, but I certainly did begin to question the basic framework of my ecclesial home which eventually led me to Rome.

Mixer-upper of ontology
and epistemology

Let me just say, that in epistemology there are distinguishable features of “knowing”. For any type of knowledge we have, we can recognize and distinguish (1) the knower, (2) the thing known and (3) the method by which we know a thing. On 1 and 2, we agree with our Protestant friends. I make this point because often questions of epistemology in Catholic and Protestant dialog quickly devolve into conversations about “total depravity” or “the nature of revelation”. I am willing to grant the one who holds to “total depravity” that, in fact, they know stuff despite their theological commitment to a position that seems to undermine the possibility of any kind of certainty with regards to the function of their fallen cognitive faculty. That is besides the point, because I can move that fact to the bottom and top of the fraction for both of us and redact it out of the formula.

We also agree that the deposit of faith comes to us from God, and thus is a supernatural object of knowledge. Therefore, we agree fundamentally as to the nature of the knower and the nature of the thing known. However, we disagree fundamentally on the methodology by which we know the thing. This, I think, is the onus of Michael Liccione's article, and the reason the Protestant should click over to it, read and wrestle with it; keeping in mind the distinct epistemological contention he raises.

In short, the distinction between opinion and dogma, which outside of theology just means opinion or fact, should shed light on what is at stake. In short, the credibility of Christianity is at stake. Think about it. It would appear that for all species of knowledge accessible to the human faculty, there is a principled method by which humans can agree, if used, will result in certain knowledge (e.g., observation, historical study, abstraction, etc. — and in theology, dogma). “Certain” here not meaning the removal of all doubt (for we are irrationally prone to it), but rather meaning a certain trust in the credibility of a method that produces results worthy of assent. The ball drops twice. George Washington is always the first president. A=A. Then comes theology.

The Catholic position does not thrust upon theology something external to itself. It is not, as some have alluded, a wanting for more than God would have us have. It is, in fact, simply asking of theology what is requisite itself for attaining something more than just opinion in general, and since theology is a supernatural object, it is fitting that it would require a supernatural methodology (of courses in harmony with natural processes). This just means we are being human as God has made us. If God did not want us to have certainty regarding theology, then he would have created us without rational minds. If we did not have rational minds, then we would be fine if the ball drops and does not drop, that there is no rational principle in the world or in the mind of God, and that it does not matter what baptism really does as long as you believe something (an approach to the world more resembling Islam than Christianity).

To hold to this principle, the principle of what I will call “theological nihilism”, flavored with a positivism imbued by an evangelical vigor, is to act less than human. It is to look at the image of God in you and to reject it in favor, ironically, of your own opinion. This, of course, is the sin of Adam: to become less than human by becoming the autonomous man. The primacy of the individual conscience bit Adam in his soul, for between the fruit and his mouth was a decision that he knew better — that somehow his latest interpretation of the commandment was more enlightened than his previous interpretation.

The Church, the ground and pillar of truth, is the principled method by which we can distinguish between opinion and fact. I can “tell it to the church” (Matthew 18:17), and get an answer that if I reject, I become as a tax collector or pagan.

That is the “difference”.

The Chair of St. Peter