Dialogue on the Meaning and Consequences of Private Judgment (vs. Tim Enloe)

[originally uploaded on 23 November 2000, from discussions on Steve Ray's discussion board (October 2000) ]

Tim's words will be in blue.

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Don't tell me you are overlooking the fact of Luther's extensive theological and patristic studies in the years prior to Worms.

He didn't show a very good understanding of St. Thomas. He equated Scholasticism with the nominalism which was a gross corruption of it (apparently common in the Augustinian ranks in that period); hence much of the seedbed for the serious errors - theological and historical - of the Protestant Revolt.

It's easy to rip on Dr. Martin's famous statement about his own conscience,

I merely take it at face value . . .

but you have to keep in mind that his conscience (at least from his point of view) was very well informed on the issues he was rendering decisions about.

Hardly. But it sounds nice, like much of Protestant rhetoric. Here again we are on this slippery subjective ground, where nothing can be resolved.

Like it or not, that is exactly the same kind of "private judgment" that you yourself used in your process of converting to Rome.

Not at all; it is not only different, but essentially different, as I have gone over many times in many papers on my website. I explained it to you in our debate - obviously unsuccessfully, as you come back with the same old line, not showing that you even grasped the point, whether or not you disagreed with it (which of course you would). But unless you interact with my actual argument then these exchanges are futile, because they are based on shadows and caricature and the fallibility of memory and pull of inherent bias, not the actual thing or argument itself.

It would be child's play to slander your conversion by taking a few phrases about your mental processes out of your story and blow them up to the Nth degree such that I could say "Dave Armstrong thought he possessed infinitely more power than the entirety of the Christian tradition for two thousand years, and the proof is that he used his private judgment to judge that tradition and conclude that Rome was the True Church."

This isn't about internal mental, psychological processes; it is a straightforward deduction about what the man said!!! But note how you don't deal with the logic of my position and critique of Luther-at-Worms and "Here I stand!", which isn't really all that difficult to grasp. Instead you make a bombastic complaint and belittle it as if it has no force at all. This will not do. You protest too much. You have bypassed the internal logic and thrust of the Lutheran sea change in the principle of authority and apostolic precedent and opted for mere showy rhetoric. BOO!

C'mon, Dave. This really isn't as simplistic as you make it out to be.

No? How? Why don't you explain your subjective rhetorical claims? This is the burden of argument, you know.

You're in the same boat as Luther was, but you just refuse to see it.

This is nonsense. You just don't get it. Luther said things like this:

Inasmuch as I know for certain that I am right, I will be judge above you and above all the angels, as St. Paul says, that whoever does not accept my doctrine cannot be saved. For it is the doctrine of God, and not my doctrine; therefore my judgment also is God's and not mine . . . It would be better that all bishops were murdered, and all abbeys and cloisters razed to the ground, than that one soul should perish . . . If they will not listen to God's Word . . . what can more justly befall them than a violent upheaval which shall root them out of the earth? And we would smile did it happen. All who contribute body, goods . . . that the rule of the bishops may be destroyed are God's dear children and true Christians.

(Against the Falsely So-Called Spiritual Estate of the Pope and Bishops, July 1522; emphasis mine)

Now, you're welcome to search my writings in a futile effort to try and come up with a similar statement, since I am "in the same boat" with Luther. I say it is poppycock.

I saw that . . . you complained I was pulling out arguments about private judgment that you had already more than adequately answered (e.g., the "You are in the same boat as Luther" comment). Then you further complained that I had not dealt with your answers and that I have "not even grasped the point". Just to make sure I'm on the same page as you as I try to put together responses . . . , I wanted to ask you which argument of yours you think I didn't "grasp". Here's a brief recap of the relevant discussion, culled from a re-reading of it early this morning:

We were discussing the supposed difference between Protestant and Catholic "private judgment", and your statements led me to propose that we were using two different definitions of the term. For me it meant "the faculty of choosing itself combined with the responsibility before God for the choices one makes with that judgment." When I stated that "Nobody ever gets past this", you agreed.

This is the crux of one of our fundamental disagreements/misunderstandings. This is not what a Catholic means when he uses the term "private judgment." We mean by that a key element of the whole Protestant formal system of authority (sola Scriptura): the exercise of the "private judgment" over against Church and Tradition (i.e., conceived of as a superior and ultimate arbiter, able to bind the conscience, and to proclaim binding dogmas). It is roughly equivalent to the term "supremacy of conscience," as classically understood in Protestant thought. It is a technical term, and a description of a principle of authority and epistemology.

How you have defined it above, on the other hand, we would simply equate with "the use of reason" or the faculty of choosing, and the will. So we have been using different definitions. I believe I tried to point this out in our debate, but maybe not, or not as clearly as I tried to do here. It is my understanding that this usage of the term is in use other than just Catholic circles, as a descriptive phrase having to do with ecclesiological vs. individual authority, but I might be wrong about that.

I further stated that for you, the term seemed to be "equivalent to some kind of epistemological solipsism--e.g., that the individual perceives his mind as totally disconnected from everything outside of himself, and therefore, as the ultimate criterion for determining truth and meaning in the universe." I stated that I, too, repudiate that kind of "private judgment".

Then you said that while I had hit upon an important distinction, your comments are all about Christian authority and ecclesiology, not philosophical epistemology. You characterized Sola Scriptura as a man-centered system of formal authority that places individual conscience over the three-legged stool of Scripture, Tradition, and Church Then you basically said that I don't really repudiate my second kind of "private judgment" ("epistemological autonomy"), because ultimately I reserve the right to judge unanimous consent doctrines of the Fathers if they don't line up with my present theological system, thus elevating my own conscience to supremacy over the three legged stool. This you see as a damning indictment against the Protestant formal system of authority, and one which apparently nobody (White, Webster, Svendsen, et.al.--and now Tim Enloe!) has ever answered.

Now I assume that since I never got around to replying to your e-mails . . . , that the argument summed up in the last paragraph is what you say I have yet to grasp. Is that correct?

Generally speaking, I don't think you understand the difference between how I exercised my so-called "private judgment" in the process of my conversion, and how you exercise it routinely as a Protestant. Briefly stated, we say that private judgment is making oneself the ultimate arbiter of spiritual truth (with the aid of the Holy Spirit, the Bible, godly teachers, etc., but in the end the individual reigns supreme).

The Catholic repudiates this. And I didn't use "private judgment" when I converted. What I did was precisely the opposite of that; I recognized that my private judgment was quite fallible and ultimately untrustworthy, and that the Catholic Church was infallible and entirely trustworthy, because (I believed, for other reasons, so that this is not a circular process) it was established by God, and has charisms and aspects such as indefectibility which I do not possess as an individual.

So I renounced my private judgment and accepted the claims of the Church in faith (yet not in opposition to reason, and also secondarily due to the myriad of rational, historical, and biblical difficulties in all of the Protestant Christianities; as well as issues of moral theology). Why I thought the Church was what it claimed to be is a whole different discussion. But I was not exercising private judgment (which has been your constant claim about myself and all Catholics); I was, rather, yielding and submitting to apostolic authority and apostolic succession, and repudiating the rejection of same by Protestantism. This brings us back to the historical arguments about apostolic succession and "lineal descent," which we have been touching upon.

And this is what happens when prior arguments are left unresponded-to (for whatever reason: legitimate or no) and the opponent simply makes sweeping, inaccurate (non-argument) statements about their opponents' views which the opponent feels have already been explained and dealt-with.

That's why I have always felt (passionate Socratic that I am) that a constructive dialogue involves dealing with each point, and either offering counter-responses, conceding, or claiming ignorance and asking for more time to study and ponder any given point. The one thing that should not be done is to simply act as if the topic has not been covered, and making statements which suggest this attitude.

I do understand that you are asking for clarification, which is good, and appreciated, but apart from this present nutshell-summary I will have to refer you back to our last debate, because the entire argument in all its intricacies and nuances is there (I labored very hard on it at the time). My clearest thoughts and presentations of what I believe come in the midst of a good exchange, and that's what that was.

But, at any rate, for you to claim that I am in the same epistemological boat as Luther is absurdly ridiculous. I couldn't be any further from his position than the east is from the west. But my position used to be almost exactly Luther's (he used to be perhaps my biggest hero), so I do understand it very well. I simply rejected it, as a result of serious discussion and study for almost a year.

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At this point, I presented a lot of research, that can be seen in the revised, "de-Enloeized" version of the same paper.