Understanding the Hierarchy of Knowledge

Resident Genius

Recently in a combox at Called to Communion, Dr. Mike Liccione (who blogs at Sacramentum Vitae) made this comment. Instead of leaving my comment there and muddying up the dialogical waters, I thought I would just share my thoughts here.

Mike said:

That’s because truths of faith are supernatural, not natural, so that by definition they cannot be shown to be factual by any method of human reasoning, no matter how reliable that method may be. For that reason, our epistemic access to the revealed truths of faith must ultimately rely on authority–specifically, divine authority. And given as much, the central task for the apologist is to show that accepting some agency’s claim to divine authority is reasonable, even though he cannot prove, by human experience and reasoning alone, that such a claim is actually true.

Bravo! I think I have tried to make this point a thousand different ways. This is the crux of the matter. What is interesting is that I understood this distinction before I converted -- in fact -- before Catholicism was on my radar. Then, it was Catholic apologists who showed me that it was reasonable that such a claim (the authority of the Catholic Church) was true (apologists like, Blessed Newman, Scott Hahn, Jacques Maritain and Edith Stein, to name a few). Before their efforts, I nearly despaired the possibility of theological dogma.

Notice that theology doesn't even make it on this "chart"

You guys really messed
this up

Let me just add, and for the benefit of the interested reader (not Mike), that in the history of philosophy (the history of ideas, even), theology used to be at the top of the epistemic pyramid -- the hierarchy of knowledge (scientia). It (theology) was that for which we could be most certain. Through a laundry list of historical, philosophic moves, that pyramid has been turned on its head, and today, men think that the natural sciences give us the most certain knowledge (which used to be at the bottom of the pyramid). Thus, I'm led to believe that many brush aside Mike's distinction because they have no tacit, visceral, or even primitive grasp of what is at stake. "Of course we know the earth is round," they say, "but of theology, we know not what." To the modern ear, this sounds right. However, to the Christian of times past, this is profoundly wrong, since the knowledge of theology rests upon God's movement toward us -- not man's movement toward God. So, while the tentative nature of other species of knowledge is acceptable, such should not be the case for the divine science. If there is anything that God wants us to know, it is that for which he has made known in His Son. That is why His Son promised, "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you." (John 14:26)

Who is getting taught "all things"? Is it John Calvin? Jimmy Swaggart? Me? I can hear the immediate objection:

"Brent, don't you believe that God speak to the hearts of individual Christians?"

You bet, I do!

However, that is not the Catholic question. The Catholic question is to whom is God speaking to speak on behalf of Him to His Church? Has the voice of the prophet died -- a gift given by Christ at His ascension? We cannot have faith unless we hear, and hear unless someone is sent. Are there no "sent ones" anymore? What is the relationship between faith and the Church? Which is why I ask all my Protestant brothers and sisters to look at their theology and realize that cessationism -- the doctrine that the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit ceased with the death of the last Apostle -- is cart-for-the-horse with Protestantism. That is why any non-Reformed, non-cessationist Christian must come home to the Roman Catholic Church. Now. Before Protestantism destroys your faith or you become a total and complete heretic and give up all Christian dogma in favor of some inner light.

That is where the train is chugging.