Probabilism

PROBABILISM. - I. MORAL THEOLOGY. - The term is used in theology to designate the moral system that admits as a legitimate norm of conduct, in the face of uncertainty of obligation, a probable opinion.

1. Historical origins

Historically, for several centuries the difficulties of the Christian life were resolved case by case without any uniform principle being professed, although here and there affirmations are found that foreshadow probabilism. In the Decretals several texts favored probabiliorism (v.); however, the prominence that Scholasticism gives to prudence (v.) and to epikeia illuminates the problem in a light more inclined toward probabilism. Under Boniface VIII the favor for probabilism is more pronounced; in the Regulae iuris the principle of the Decretals of the pars tutior sequenda is not reported, while certain Regulae contain the bases of probabilism clearly enunciated (Regulae iuris, 11, 30, 49, 57, in 6º). From that time on, through the Summae confessorum, probabilism obtained ever greater affirmations. But the one who opened the way to an exact formulation of the system was Cardinal Cajetan with the introduction of a distinction, later summarized by Suárez, between speculative and practical doubt. Bartholomew of Medina, O. P., in 1577 (Expositio of the Sum. Theol., 1st-2nd, q. 19, a. 5 ff.), applied it without any restriction: «In omnibus negotiis etiam magni momenti et in maximam iniuriam tertii, licitum est sequi opiniones probabiles. Ergo etiam in materia Sacramentorum». As soon as the Expositio saw the light (1580), probabilism was favorably received by almost all theologians, divided however into the two currents of the pure and the moderate. The moderates (thus Bañez, Suárez) took care to specify and delimit the cases of application of the principle, in order to avoid the abuses that could derive from it, striving at the same time to create a solid basis for probabilism. The principle of Medina, for them, applies only when the lawfulness of the action is doubtful. One must therefore abstain from it when the validity of a Sacrament is at stake or when its application would risk causing harm to one's neighbor. Suárez founded the system on the principle, which he was the first to enunciate: Lex dubia non obligat, and he distinguishes doubt of fact from doubt of law: the latter permits applying purely and simply the principle lex dubia non obligat; as for doubts of fact, Suárez resolves them with the principle of possession (in dubio melior est condicio possidentis), when it is applicable. When however the law is clear and certain and the only question is whether it obliges in the particular case, it must be followed. On the other hand, in the conflict of two opinions, one of which is only probable and the other improbable, the first must be considered as certain (De legibus, VIII, cap. 3, n. 19).

Not all probabilists showed the same circumspection. In the last quarter of the 16th century one witnesses an exuberant development of casuistry. A part in this was played by the broad and imprecise probabilism of some, which favored a violent reaction that lasted for over a hundred years. Two opposite causes influenced it: Jansenism first of all, and the excess of some authors who slipped into lax affirmations. The ascendancy obtained by Jansenism in France with its apparently austere morality, despite repeated reprobations (1653 ff.; Denz-U, 1092-99), is attested by the condemnations of probabilism on the part of some French bishops and by the antiprobabilistic orientation of the Oratory and of the University of Louvain. Certain lax propositions of authors professing probabilism were collected and condemned by the University of Louvain (1653 and 1657). From the same authors were also drawn the propositions condemned by the Holy Office (24 Sept. 1665, 18 May 1666: Denz-U, 1101-45) under Alexander VII (v.). It also seems (some doubt the matter) that the same Pope, carrying out a personal action, expressed to the General Chapter of the Dominicans (1656) the desire that they assume an attitude of opposition to probabilism, and from that time the best Dominican theologians were probabiliorists. The struggle became harsher under Innocent XI (v.), personally averse to probabilism. Some French bishops asked the Pope for the condemnation of a series of propositions, of which the 7th contained a not obscure condemnation of it. The University of Louvain did more: it sent to the Pope three doctors with a hundred propositions drawn from probabilistic authors, in order to obtain their condemnation. The doctors stayed in Rome almost two years; after patient work the Holy Office selected and condemned 65 propositions, without probabilism being able to be said to be truly struck (ibid., 1151-1216). Probabilism was also shaken by the support given by Innocent XI and by other popes to Father Tirso González S. I., to Antoine (v.) and to other probabiliorists. In a decree of the Holy Office of 26 June 1680 one reads that the Holy Father is very satisfied with the action carried out by Father González in favor of the opinio probabilior and against probabilism, and that he has given the order to continue this action (ibid., 1219). In 1680 the same Pontiff worked to have González elected general of the Jesuits: all this reveals nothing but the personal action of the Pontiff. In fact, probabilism in general continued dominant in Italy, Austria, Germany, Spain, in many religious Orders. Only in 1700 with the Assembly of the French clergy, at the urging of Bossuet, was probabilism eliminated from the French seminaries, held by the Lazarists and the Sulpicians. But the Church's decisive struggle against rigorism had already begun, with the condemnations of Alexander VIII (1689, 1690); nevertheless probabilism would still be regarded with disfavor by Benedict XIII (1724-30) and by Benedict XIV (1740-58); but already the revival was approaching, with St. Alphonsus (v.). The 19th century sees the weakening of probabilitism and a division of the field between probabilism and equiprobabilism, with a very notable prevalence of probabilism.

2. Doctrine

Probabilism affirms that speculatively and practically, in the face of a law uncertain or doubtful for any reason, when it is a question only of the lawfulness of an action (not of its validity or of a means necessary to a certain end or of the certain rights of third parties), one may follow the opinion contrary to the law in favor of liberty, provided it is truly solid, even if the opposite is more probable. It must however be a question of true and objective probability.

3. Proofs

To illustrate and defend their system, the probabilists appealed to various principles: to the principle of possession, since hominis libertas exterius ad legis obligationem possidet; to the principle that every probable action is an action prudently undertaken; to the more universal and more valid principle that an uncertain law cannot create a certain obligation. These proofs present vulnerable points (the principle of possession, for example, does not seem justly applied outside the matter of justice). Today one prefers to appeal solely to the principle of the doubtful law, taken as a norm by canon law itself (can. 15) and by civil law and logically included in every system that is not tuziorism. On the basis of the aforesaid principle it is argued that a law against which stands a truly and only probable opinion is precisely doubtful; therefore it does not create the obligation. The first premise, in substance, repeats the philosophical principle that there cannot be an effect greater than the cause: certainty cannot come from doubt. The second finds its justification in the fact that the motives which make an opinion solid and true necessarily weaken the certainty of the opposite opinion, since one cannot have in the same affirmation certainty and at the same time only probability. Not even when the opinion favorable to the law is more probable than the opposite does true certainty exist; for greater probability gives greater verisimilitude, not greater evidence: and it is evidence that is the sole foundation of certainty.

The Church, although jealous of preserving the integrity of morality, has not condemned probabilism, even when certain pontiffs personally followed a different course. Add to this the favor given to probabilism by St. Alphonsus (v.), who professed and defended it for years, and, if he detached himself from it in his last period, in order to draw closer to equiprobabilism, he did so for historical circumstances, while in his applications he remained a probabilist. Considerable weight must also be given to the consideration that the most bitter opposition to probabilism came from the Jansenist heresy or from circles consciously or unconsciously favorable to it.

4. Use of probabilism

Probabilism is applied by the Church not only to human laws (cf. Regulae iuris, in 6º; can. 15), but also to laws of divine and natural right (cf., for example, the case of doubtful impotence; can. 1608 § 2). But since probabilism upholds the legitimacy of not observing a truly doubtful law (doubt of law, from which speculative probability [v.] arises) and not in the face of a certain law and a necessary end to be attained in a certain manner, the field of application of probabilism undergoes certain limitations; that is, it does not hold: 1) in matters necessary for eternal salvation (for example, a probable Baptism; truths to be believed probably with necessity of means), which are governed by this general principle: nulla nimia securitas, ubi periclitatur aeternitas, imposed by charity toward oneself; 2) in the case of the performance of acts that affect the validity of the Sacraments (for example, the use of only probable matter or form). Apart from the fact that here what is at issue is validity and not merely the licitness of acts, the virtue of religion imposes as a general norm that holy things be treated holily, and the first irreverence would be to expose a Sacrament to the danger of nullity.

This law, however, is tempered, within the same domain, by another law, equally grave: Sacramenta sunt propter homines. From the composition of these two laws arise various possibilities of applying probabilism in the same sacramental matter, which can be considered as exceptions to the exception: a) thus, in case of necessity, a Sacrament may be administered with elements that are doubtfully valid, if it is not possible to have certainly valid ones. b) Likewise, when what is at stake is the existence of an element that depends on a concession of the Church, such as jurisdiction, it is lawful to administer or receive the Sacrament in the case of doubtful existence of this element, because the Church has declared, once and for all, its will to supply (can. 209); 3) in the case of a certain right or harm of third parties (for example, using a medicine that is probably good but probably also harmful to the sick person; shooting with the doubt of hitting a man instead of game), one is faced with most certain laws that forbid harm to one's neighbor, laws inspired by the various kinds of justice, whether commutative, distributive or legal. In commutative justice the physician is bound to treat the sick person, using only effective or at least not harmful means; the hunter is bound not to expose himself to the risk of killing a man. By distributive justice the judge is bound in civil cases to give sentence according to the most probable findings; in criminal cases he must embrace the opinion favorable to the accused, if he fails to gather sufficient elements for guilt, on the basis of a juridical principle: In dubio favendum est reo. By legal justice, that is, by virtue of a general principle of the common good and of consequent respect for public order, the subject is bound to obey the superior, even if the imposed act is probably illicit, provided that good probabilities for its licitness remain; to obey even if there is doubt that the superior is exceeding his competence or that the precept may be useless. In all these cases one can no longer speak of doubt, because on one side there is a certain law under which all the cases in question fall. Nevertheless, even in these cases, since there is no other possibility of acting, in the absence of a certain means or valid matter or in the face of another right no less certain, it is lawful to follow probabilism, choosing however among the various probable means etc. the most probable, the least harmful to the law that obliges with certainty. In these circumstances the principle of the tutiorists holds: In dubiis pars tutior sequenda est.

Some opposing theologians, although they must admit the soundness of probabilism, assert that it constitutes the minimum for avoiding sin, and that Christian perfection is contrary to this measure in favor of human infirmity. The assertion taken so absolutely is not exact; true for many laws, it is not so for others, because perfection is not a property of the law as law, but of the work; and in some laws Christian perfection is better realized by probabilism.

Recently probabilism was targeted not as a doctrine, but as a method of teaching. In the desire to renew moral theology, some think it opportune to insist on speculative principles, in order to free it from the entanglements of probabilism, a hindrance to loftier elevations and broader conceptions. A suggestive question, but an old one. In accurate psychological analyses one may better present the science; but one cannot give a light, even though desired by humanity, that penetrates all its steps in the complex practicalities of life.

II. EPISTEMOLOGY

In the theory of knowledge (v.) "probabilism" denotes the doctrine according to which the human mind cannot attain certainty (v.) but only opinion and probability (v.). Probabilism was defended by Arcesilaus and Carneades (v. ACADEMY), who, in polemic against the Stoics, maintained that no representation of ours is such as to carry within itself the guarantee of its objectivity (in Stoic terms: there is no φαντασία κατὰ ληπτική), but that all our cognitions, both sensory and rational, can be subject to error (v.). The most reasonable attitude would therefore be that of suspending assent (ἐποχή); but since life imposes choices, and these presuppose opinions, one must adhere to what among the various opinions presents itself as the reasonable (εὔλογον, according to Arcesilaus) or the probable (πιθανόν, according to Carneades; cf. in the bibliography Dal Pra, pp. 203-14).

Sometimes, for example with A. Cournot (1801-77), by "probabilism" is meant not so much a skeptical or semi-skeptical theory, but the recognition of the limited and approximate character of all human knowledge.

Sofia Vanni Rovighi