Premises must precede such an enquiry. I lay them down as follows:
(1) The refutation of any argument against the Faith is not a
demonstration of the truth of the Faith. It is the removal only
of an obstacle to the Faith. For the Faith is not arrived at by
demonstration, but by demonstration it is shown to be at least tenable.
The Faith is not a conclusion which all can reach by the formal action
of reason, but a revelation to be defended by reason. The Faith is not
a theory, but a thing. It is rational, but not deductively arrived at.
There is no process whereby all mankind can be convinced of it as of an
abstract proposition. But there is a process whereby all mankind can be
convinced that each particular proposition against it has failed.
This principle in what is called “Apologetics” (that is, writings in
defence of Catholic truth) is so generally neglected that it is of
the first importance to make it quite clear at the opening of any
discussion upon revealed religion.
A man who can see colours will never be able to prove colour
to a colour-blind man. He can show that the colour-blind man’s
arguments--e.g., that colours do not exist because if they did they
would affect surface--are false. If he proceeds to establish the
presence of colours positively, he must do so by analogy, by convergent
evidence, by the manifest action of others, by the proved nature of
other senses than that of sight. He can only _prove_ (in the strict
deductive sense of the word “prove”) that the sense of colour is
rational, acceptable without violence to the human mind; but that it is
present he must establish by other methods.
Nearly all our modern debates in this matter are confused by the fact
that one of the parties misconceives the nature of these debates. The
opponent of Catholicism thinks that its apologist is, in arguing,
trying to prove Catholic truth as one proves a case for a positive
verdict. He is not. He is rebutting the supposed value of opposing
evidence; he is pleading for a negative verdict; for acquittal of
the charge “irrational.” When he comes to establishing the Faith
positively, he does not do so by following one line of deductive
reason, but by a mass of converging considerations.
History cannot be said to prove the Faith, save in the very extended
use of the word “prove” to mean a general process of increasing
conviction from the examination of what is revealed of the Church’s
action on the world, of men’s attitude towards it, of the moral and
intellectual activities of acceptors and rejectors compared. But it can
be _proved_ that an increasing knowledge of History does not shake the
Church’s claim to Divine Authority: while, on the contrary, a lesser
knowledge is almost invariably more hostile to that authority than a
greater.
(2) I have used the term “reason,” and this leads me to my second
premise: The human reason is absolute in its own sphere.
That elementary truth is often denied to-day (though the minds which
deny it can only use reason to arrive at this very conclusion!), but it
is fundamental and I must postulate it as a necessary prelude to any
discussion. For to argue with men who deny the basis of all argument
is futile; it is like pleading in a court where the judge is a corpse
and the jury a set of waxworks.
A man says, “The river Ohio flows eastwards.” I show by the compass,
the map, and the sun, or in any other rational way you like that it
flows westward. If he then answer me, “Oh! that is formal logic--I have
no use for it! Westward and eastward are but apparent contradictories.
They can be resolved into a higher unity. And, after all, what is
‘flowing’? And here is a bend of the river which does flow eastward
for a mile or two. And a statement may well be true in a higher sense
than the geographical one. And anyhow, the modern mind is no longer
bound by the mediaeval fetters of dialectic”--if he replies with
this sort of rigmarole, I must leave him to it. I am writing not for
modernists--that is, not for people who think that a proposition can be
both true and untrue at the same time--but for men of sane tradition
who admit logic as a court of final appeal in things of the mind. For
we Catholics regard reason as supreme in its own sphere and will admit
nothing contrary to reason.
(3) Lastly, I must premise that we are discussing things as they are:
the real Catholic Church; and are excluding from the discussion what
is not germane to it. We are discussing the claim of the Catholic
Church to authority, the claims of its accredited organs to express
divine truth--not what some opponent may in ignorance regard as an
accredited organ of the Catholic Church, when it is nothing of the
kind, nor a supposed doctrine of the Church which the Church has never
taught. Conversely, I do not admit as rebutting evidence such phrases
as “all the best authorities” or “all the latest authorities”--they are
worthless as evidence. I examine the grounds on which the affirmations
are made, not the mere affirmation unsupported by anything but fashion.
(Thus, if an opponent advance, “Marcus, a priest, said the earth was
flat: it is proved round; therefore the Catholic Church was wrong,”
it is replied that Marcus, a priest, is not the Catholic Church.
Or if it be said, “The Catholic Church teaches that mankind is but
six thousand years old,” it is answered, “Many heretical sects have
taught this but the Catholic Church has never taught it.” Or if it be
said, “The Catholic Church affirms the witness of the fourth Gospel
but all reasoning men admit that it is spurious,” it is replied,
“All reasoning men do not admit that it is spurious: that is but the
affirmation of a fashionable school.”)