Is Moral Certainty Possible?

For me, ‘moral certainty’ is a category error. Such talk has to be refused, not engaged.

One example.

The New Testament recounts that the apostles and elders encountered a genuine moral quandary very early in the Church’s life. At stake was eternal life itself: did The Way morally obligate Gentiles to first become Jews — be circumcised, observe Jewish dietary restrictions, etc. — before they too could be saved by baptism and belief in Christ Jesus?

We read that there were notable vacillations, visions, testimonies, strenuous arguments pro and con. Moreover, the facts in themselves were not dispositive.

So: which Priorities had priority? The schools would eventually conclude that there are no true moral dilemmas.

For the schools, in which something called ‘moral certainty’ exists, in the fullness of time, the Holy Spirit led the apostles to see that God’s Unchanging And Perfect Law required the priorities to be sorted in exactly the way that the apostles eventually affirmed.

The answer had always existed in the Mind of God before time itself began, there are no true moral dilemmas, ‘moral certainty’ exists for every situation even if we mere mortals cannot necessarily detect it accurately, etc.

And of course, the schools would find it anathema, not merely incorrect, to posit that there was no pre-existing Rule In The Sky regarding the matter. That the situation had never before existed. That there simply were no precedents that could ‘automatically’ be brought to bear.

In effect the schools found it unimaginable that fallen men could truly act in the Lord’s Name and [ Jn 14:12 ] “do the works that I do, and greater works than these.”

The schools eventually — inadvertently — decided that fallen, imperfect, sinful human beings could not infallibly mediate the Risen Christ by doing works “greater” than He had done on earth.

For the schools, the apostles and elders could not decide something truly new that defined *within history* for all time *what reasonableness meant* in that situation, doing something that He Himself did not do *and could not have done* without them.

Was ‘moral certainty’ available to those fallen sinful men in that very grave, very morally weighty circumstance?

Or rather, was He available to them? Did our Lord give them not just the Keys, the burden to decide, but the Holy Spirit, Who enabled them to do a work that was “greater” than His, that He *could not do without them*: to decide, forever, a particular ‘this’ and not ‘that’?

No; everything already had to be in the mind of God before the beginning of time, and the apostles and elders merely ‘accessed’ it.

Is the Way, the Truth, and the Life a ‘moral certainty’? The ‘answer’ to that is: Category Error. The question makes no sense; it must be refused, not engaged.

‘Moral certainty’ is not the Lord, for He Himself is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. ‘Moral certainty’ is a mere category; an invention of philosophers. It is not wholly wrong, but still inadequate to Catholic moral thinking.

And, as we have just seen, ‘moral certainty’ can obscure rather than reveal.

Contrary to the schools, the apostles did exactly what Jesus said they would do: they performed in this life a “greater work” than He had done in His own earthly life, a work (of decision) which He very plainly had not done during His earthly life, which He could not have done without them, and which defined *within history* for all time what reasonableness meant, what Good and True and Beautiful meant, in that circumstance.

I am morally certain that murdering innocent children for fun and profit is evil.
There. That was easy.