250. ELEVENTH PROOF. - Leaving
aside, so as not to make this chapter excessively long, other proofs or
confirmations, we conclude with
an argument which, in our
opinion, is one of the clearest as well as fully conclusive. It can be
formulated in the five propositions that follow:
1. God has revealed that the
Church is infallible in defining the mediate or connected.
2. Hence, God has revealed that
the definitions of the mediate or connected made by the Church are infallibly
true.
3. Therefore, it is of divine
faith that the definitions made by the Church of the mediate or connected are
infallibly true.
4. But, the proper and specific
object of ecclesiastical faith are the definitions made by the Church of the
mediate or connected.
5. Therefore, ecclesiastical
faith is divine faith.
The first proposition is admitted
by all or almost all, theologians, ancient as well as modern.
The second is the very same
proposition in another form, or put into passive form. It is evident that to
say that “the Church is infallible when defining the mediate or connected” is
the same as saying that “the definitions made by the Church of the mediate or
connected are infallibly true”.
The third is the same second
proposition where the phrase “God has revealed” is replaced by the phrase “it
is of divine faith”.
The fourth is the definition
itself of ecclesiastical faith.
Therefore, the fifth proposition
is evident, viz., that ecclesiastical faith is divine faith.
We are absolutely certain that
any reader who considers those five propositions with unjaundiced eyes, will
clearly see that they are really identical and that the subsequent ones are
nothing but the simple explication of the previous ones. To affirm, as some
people affirm, that the infallibility of the Church when defining the mediate
or connected is of divine faith, but that the infallibility or truth of the
thing defined is not of divine faith, does not make sense. To say that the “the
Church is infallible in what she defines” is the same as saying that “that
which is defined by the Church is true”. Hence to say that “it is of divine
faith that the Church is infallible in what she defines” is the same as saying
that “it is of divine faith that that which is defined by the Church is true”
or that “the truth of that which is defined by the Church is of divine faith”,
or that “that which is defined by the Church is of divine faith”. (Francisco
Marín-Sola, The Homogeneous Evolution of Catholic Dogma [trans. Antonio
T. Piñon; Manila, Philippines: Santo Tomas University Press, 1988], 482-84)
