“If you have the right to interpret Scripture according to your judgment why do I not have the same right?”
Hope you don’t mind, but I’d like to take a shot at answering your question. First, so you know where I’m coming from, I am Reformed and Baptist. But I also have some familiarity with and respect for the Fathers, as well as Augustine, Aquinas, etc. Truth is wherever you find it.
With that in mind, I’d like to probe your thoughts a bit, because I have always been fascinated by this authority question dividing so-called Protestants from Catholics, because it messes with my head like an Escher diagram.
The puzzle begins like this. You say there is a prohibition on private judgment in interpreting Scripture. I don’t have a textual basis for that (we can discuss 2 Peter 1:20 later if you like), but assuming it is so for the sake of argument, how can you comply with your own principle of non-private judgment?
Here’s the syllogism:
Minor Premise: God, being God, would be able and willing to make truth knowable to us to a reasonable level of certainty
Major Premise: Private judgment doesn’t produce reasonable certainty because reasonable people can arrive at significantly different conclusions using the same text
Therefore, private judgment cannot be God’s chosen path to reasonably certain truth.
From this syllogism, you get the motivation to look for something other than private judgment as a way to discover God’s truth, and you posit in it’s place an infallible interpreter, the Church.
Now here’s where Escher comes in. At first glance, the structure of the syllogism appears inarguable. So, for the sake of argument, let us assume it is correct. Now what? Now we must look for that alternate means of finding God’s truth, and we must find it without the use of private judgment, else we have introduced, according to the syllogism, a fatal uncertainty.
So by what means may we know truth? Through the Church, you say. But how do I know anything about the Church? So you present me with an array of facts about the history of the Church. Fine. Now what do I do? Sit passively staring at those facts like an unprogrammed automaton? No, I have to decide if I believe those facts as presented, along with an army of theological inferences that follow close behind. How do I do that? Because I am not yet in the fold. I am only standing at the door, looking in. To step in, I must judge those facts. No one else can do that for me. It happens in me. It is my private judgment, the very thing I am, under the syllogism, forbidden to do.
So I go back to the syllogism, because it is preventing me from finding my infallible interpreter. For if I use my private judgment to decide that the Church is that infallible interpreter, then I cannot be reasonable certain that my judgment is correct. In fact, if my major premise is correct, I cannot verify anything to be correct, even my major premise. And if I cannot rely on my major premise being correct, then my conclusion that an alternative to private judgment must be found cannot be verified as correct either.
You see how the system implodes on itself.
So, if you have a solution, I will listen patiently. And I will use my private judgment to determine if you are correct. Because happily, under my epistemology, I am allowed to do that. Indeed, I appear to have no other choice.
Read “Rome Sweet Home” by Scott Hahn
Beautiful, well written.
Brilliant !!!
Marvelous logic, but you do realize that you’ll still be playing wack-a-mole with the Nicolaitans.
They cannot accept something that simple and clear, for they have chosen to be ‘children’ in the spiritual sense forever, and with your algorythm, they must become responsible adults.