Private Judgment by Felix Blachowski

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jun 17, 1908

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 34, No. 25.

"Private Judgment."

By Felix Blachowski

OUR Catholic friends tell us that the Protestant doctrine of "private judgment" is a heresy; that it has no counterpart in any department of human thought and activity.

They will say that the social organism is so complex and the division of labor has made of the human family such an army of specialists that no one man has the time or means to sound all knowledge. Hence every man must submit to authority on every subject except his own. On the subject of footwear he must submit to the shoemaker; on clothing, to the tailor; on law, to the jurist; on medicine, to the doctor, etc. And so also must he do in theology and religion. They say, "When I have a matter pertaining to law, I would not study law for myself, but simply pay my lawyer, and the thing is done without any trouble on my part. When I am sick, I go to a man who devotes his life to nothing else but the science of healing; I pay him and rest my case in his proficient hands. In religion I do the same thing. I have not the time to spend in studying theology. I pay specialists who do that for me, the same as I do in everything else.

"And this is just the reason the Catholic church is such a solid body, while the Protestants are disintegrating more and more. Protestants, leaving to every man his choice as to what he should believe in religion, follow an irrational course—a course which can not be tolerated in other spheres of human endeavor. And since religion is one of the deepest subjects that can engage the mind of man, and since so deep a subject is left to the whims of private judgment, Babylonian confusion in Protestant ranks naturally follows."

So will argue our Catholic friends. And their theory seems fair on the face of it. But studied more carefully, taken even from their own premises, it can be seen that the argument is illusive and can be turned into a boomerang.

In the first place, our Catholic friends exercise private judgment in everything except religion. Altho they are not experts in shoemaking, in tailoring, in law, in medicine, etc., yet they will pass judgment as to the quality of goods and workmanship, and they will purchase where their judgment dictates. When in need of an attorney, they will go to one of the best reputation. Is there any one sick in the house?—the best physician is secured. And, altho my Catholic friend has never studied medicine, he will exercise his private judgment in getting the best doctor.

If Roman Catholics are free to select the best in every walk of life, why not in religion? We have one Pattern, one Standard—even Jesus Christ. The very humblest man can know which of all the religions comes the nearest to the great Pattern; and is he not free to exercise his private judgment in its selection, even as he is in everything else in the world?

It is true that the Protestant world is in chaos and the Catholic Church in apparent cosmos. But the unity, so-called, in the Catholic Church is forced at the expense of the greatest prerogative vouchsafed to man—spiritual liberty. And it is infinitely better to have no unity in the church with the freedom of the Spirit than to have it with such spiritual paralysis as we behold in the church of Rome.

The spiritual process in the Protestant ranks is advancement to greater and still greater light. Those churches which follow light at any cost leave the others in the same crystallized condition that the Roman Church is in. Should all churches follow light with the same advancing step, we would have the most wonderful unity and the most wonderful spiritual power that this old world has ever seen.

FELIX BLACHOWSKI.