De locis theologicis

THREE RULES FOR DIRECTING EXTERNAL JUDGMENTS OF FAITH

The first rule is ready to hand: a person’s testimony against himself when he errs is proof of an admitted crime in any court, especially if the accused testifies to his crime of his own accord and willingly. Even a confession that a judge extracts from the accused by questioning and torture is adequate to establish proof in an external court under both civil and canon law. But this whole subject of confession and questioning is more suitably discussed—not only by jurists but also in private conversation by some excellent men—than by any theologians in a school. I would not want anyone to interpret the words of this rule to mean that an accused person who perhaps does not know the nature and force of heresy should judge for himself whether he is a heretic, and the judges should follow his judgment. Rather, the accused should be a witness against himself both in his actions and words and in his own conscience and mind; judges should detect heresy from his actions, words, mind, and character, keeping before their eyes the definition they ought to apply in every judgment concerning faith and religion. My former teacher once encountered a man who vehemently declared himself a heretic. “Why so?” he asked. “Why do you think you are a heretic?” The man replied that he held a position contrary to the Catholic faith. The teacher pressed him: “Do you believe the Catholic faith is false?” “Certainly not,” the man replied. “That is why I consider myself a heretic—that is, in error and estranged from the truth—because my opinion is contrary to the Catholic faith.” My teacher could scarcely contain his laughter. “Go away, fool!” he said. “You are all the less a heretic the more you think yourself one. The matter is safe if you realize that you are in error when you oppose the Catholic faith.” The man’s folly was grasped not so much by theological arguments as by common sense. It once happened to me as well that judges of the faith asked me to identify certain errors. They were the errors of a man who, as I later discovered, had not come to the tribunal at the judges’ order or summons, but at the urging and advice of a priest he had as his confessor. Of his own accord and in his own judgment, he disclosed to the notary numerous heresies against himself—or so he thought. I was asked to mark the errors. When I saw that they were many and varied, I began to consider carefully what kind of author he might be. Whoever he was, he seemed to have drawn little streams from the sources of Arius, Macedonius, Wycliffe, and Luther alike. You would have thought he had spent all his time reading every heretic. If there had been any coherence and connection among the claims or any composition and joining together of the errors, I too would have suspected as much. But when I saw that in so great a mass of errors there was neither a combination nor a link, I thought rather of the man’s madness than of heresy. I therefore refused to judge the errors until I had examined the author’s mind and judgment. I asked the judges whether I could see the man. They said I could, for he had been taken into custody and thrown into prison. His bonds were removed and he was brought before us. I looked at him and saw with my mind that his was not a sound intellect. I tested the matter through present facts, which would take too long to recount, and confirmed that he was as I had suspected. Yet I could scarcely dislodge the opinion fixed in the judges’ minds. In the end, however, I prevailed and persuaded them. Being good men, they gave way and sent the man, who was mad and had confessed of his own accord and by his own judgment, back to his parents’ home, empty of brains but also free of every penalty.

Theologians need not lay down rules about such matters, but they must know them, since they concern the use jurists will make of theological topics, the subject of this book. Let us pursue the rest, for this rule was touched on only briefly. St. Thomas gave a second rule in Prima pars (question 32, article 4) and in his commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians (chapter 11, lectio 4). It is this: if an error contrary to the faith concerns matters that those who err could not plausibly fail to know certainly pertain to the Catholic faith, judges can safely pronounce it heresy. For example, if someone—even an ordinary person from the common crowd—denied that Christ was fastened to the cross, truly died, and truly rose from the dead, or said it was useless and vain to pray for the dead, that God rewards no just person with any reward and punishes no wicked person with any punishment, or similar things. The same is true if a man who has spent a long time in the school of theology argued that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, that the Father and Son are two principles of the same Spirit, that there are not three parts of penance, that Christians may never wage war on their enemies, that a bishop is not superior to a simple priest, or anything of this kind—matters it would be unbelievable for theologians not to know pertain to the Church’s common faith, especially if they have long and extensively studied in the schools. I do not doubt that judges have sometimes erred in this matter through excessive leniency or great ignorance. I do not want to suspect that the rules of faith have been yielded to the people’s fury or to the will of powerful men as a favor. A few days ago, certain theologians reputed to be very learned were found holding errors that anyone with even moderate theological education could not doubt were peculiar to Lutherans and opposed to the Church’s common faith. They were compelled to abjure heresies as suspects of heresy, not as convicted. Yet if these cases were not measured by the very strict standards of poets or musicians but by the straightedge of common law and ordinary reason, the judgment would have been easier and more straightforward. It was shameful for experts to doubt things that even laymen do not doubt: it is simply not plausible that people could be ignorant of matters they had studied for a long time. Who would believe that men considered highly theological by the common people were ignorant and unlearned in matters familiar and widely known to every theologian? I had intended to set down the errors of those theologians, so that through this example the rule might become clearer and future judges be warned to learn from another’s danger, not to mistake weakness and softness of mind for clemency and mercy. I feared that a harmful precedent had been made for both the accused and the judges. For people think that what is done by way of precedent is done by right. But since those men have now died and are free from all hatred and envy, I did not think these errors should be exposed. If I published them with attestation and documentation, preserving their disgrace for all time, I would seem to be attacking not only the dead accused but also the living judges. Perhaps, though, I fear where there is no cause for fear. In any event, I have warned jurists not to persuade themselves that no one is obstinate except those who have despised the judges’ admonitions and commands. Believe me, the true obstinacy of heretics is found before such warnings: it belongs to those who are fully aware that their opinions contradict the Church’s faith. The common voice and shared judgment of all the faithful is enough—not for one warning, I say, but for a thousand. Therefore whoever scorns the single voice of the Church is much more obstinate than someone who had scorned six hundred theologians or judges.

So much for the second rule. We shall have this as the third: if judges are uncertain about the obstinacy of someone in error, they must carefully address two matters, one proper to theologians and the other shared by theologians and jurists. The jurist must therefore borrow the first from the theologian and claim the second by his own right. First, judges must have the wisest theologians explain and define whether the error brought to trial plainly conflicts with the Catholic faith. For in one of two ways a judgment of heresy may be excluded: either it is uncertain that the dogma opposed by the error is a truth of the Catholic faith, or the conflict between the error and Catholic truth is obscure and a matter of opinion. For example, if someone once denied that the Letter to the Hebrews was written by Paul while being certain that it was canonical, and questioned its author but not its authority, some theologians would consider this heresy. I, however, unless the Church’s definition stood in the way, would not, because I think the faith of Christ is in no danger if we do not know the author of a canonical book, provided we know that the book is canonical. Therefore, whether someone says Paul, Luke, or Barnabas wrote that letter, as long as his belief in the authority of the letter is solid, fixed, and firm, he does not immediately overturn the faith of Christ. Since in the time of St. Jerome it was not yet clearly known as a certain truth of faith that Paul wrote the Letter to the Hebrews, if an opposing error had then been brought before a tribunal of the faith, it might have been judged a crime, but it would not have been judged heresy. Likewise, it is a very certain dogma of faith that we need God’s special help in order to believe, hope, and love as we ought. Those who deny that infused habits of hope and charity exist oppose this dogma, as some think. But although the conflict appears very probable, it is not established by clear reasoning. Their error should therefore be marked as rash and shameless; heresy should not even be suspected until the decrees of the sacred Council of Trent. This point, without anyone needing to mention it, reminds judges of the faith to obtain what they must borrow from theologians not from anyone they happen to find, but from learned, experienced, and practiced men. These men know which theological topics are certain and firm, which are only probable and not necessary, and, through their frequent and ready use of theological arguments, can easily detect any errors that clearly contradict Catholic faith. The second matter is that judges must diligently strive to uncover the obstinacy of the person in error. If it is in doubt and cannot be inferred from what he said or did earlier, or from his status, condition, and character, they will discover it best by showing him a clear sign of the Catholic truth his error contradicts. This might be an explicit passage of Scripture, a definition of a legitimate general council, a settled decree of the Apostolic See, or any other sure sign by which Catholic truths and opposing heresies are judged. If, when these signs and marks have been presented, he yields, that is the strongest probable evidence of ignorance; if he resists, it is the surest evidence of obstinacy, especially if he is not deficient in intelligence or learning. For if he is so crude and uneducated that he cannot understand these matters at all, I would not set out any certain rule or fixed prescription by which his obstinacy could be recognized.

Certainly, if there is any rule to be written with thick and clumsy Minerva, it will be this: the judgment of the Church and the unanimous, harmonious agreement of the faithful. If a person opposes them even when he sees that everyone is against him, he will be considered obstinate and therefore a heretic. It is not necessary to travel through the whole world and ask each of the faithful for his opinion. The beliefs of individual faithful are not assessed by any art or careful inquiry, but judged by a certain sense of prudence. For if someone denied that all fire gives heat, we would not need to prove through induction and demonstration of each individual fire that he was obstinate against nature; we would show the general proposition rather by signs and reasoning, since once some cases are demonstrated, the same reason applies to the rest. Likewise, in the faith of the Church, someone is obstinate if he opposes the judgment of faith held by all the faithful in his province or city. But let us leave this matter and concede it to our own laziness; we are clumsy and inexperienced when we attempt to bring such matters to rule and measure. All these things we have said in establishing this final rule may be right if measured by ordinary practical judgment; if you wish to assess them by the exact precepts of a more rigorous discipline, some may prove incorrect. What can we prescribe amid such unequal variety of things and minds that will be equally applicable to everyone and one rule for all? Especially since cases of this sort are almost conjectural: judges try to penetrate human hearts through certain signs and traces, and if they could know those hearts, they would need no straightedges, standards, or rules. What heresy is, what a heretical proposition is, and by what way and reasoning both a theologian and a jurist should recognize them—I think I have now said enough and more than enough.