the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Casuistry
Watson's Biblical & Theological Dictionary
or the doctrine and science of conscience and its cases, with the rules and principles of resolving the same; drawn partly from natural reason, or equity, and partly from the authority of Scripture, the canon law, councils, fathers, &c. To casuistry belongs the decision of all difficulties arising about what a man may lawfully do or not do; what is sin or not sin; what things a man is obliged to do in order to discharge his duty, and what he may let alone without breach of it. Although the morality of the Gospel is distinguished by its purity and by its elevation, it is necessarily exhibited in a general form; certain leading principles are laid down; but the application of these to the innumerable cases which occur in the actual intercourse of life, is left to the understanding and the conscience of individuals. Had it been otherwise, the Christian code would have swelled to an extent which would have rendered it in a great degree useless; it would have been difficult or impossible to recollect all its provisions; and, minute as these would have been, they would still have been defective,— new situations or combinations of circumstances modifying duty continually arising, which it would have been impracticable or hurtful to anticipate. When the principles of duty are rightly unfolded, and when they are placed on a sound foundation, there is, to a fair mind, no difficulty in accommodating them to its own particular exigencies. A few cases, it is true, may occur, where it is a matter of doubt in what way men should act; but these are exceedingly rare, and the lives of vast numbers may come to an end without any of them happening to occasion perplexity. Every man may be, and perhaps is, sensible, that his errors are to be ascribed, not to his having been at a loss to know what he should have done, but to his deliberately or hastily violating what he saw to be right, or to his having allowed himself to confound, by vain and subtle distinctions, what, in the case of any one else, would have left in his mind no room for hesitation. The manner, however, in which the Gospel inculcates the law of God, combined with other causes in leading to a species of moral discussion, which, pretending to ascertain in every case what ought to be practised, and thus to afford plain and safe directions to the conscience, terminated in what has been denominated casuistry.
The schoolmen delighted in this species of intellectual labour. They transferred their zeal for the most fanciful and frivolous distinctions in what respected the doctrines of religion to its precepts; they anatomized the different virtues; nicely examined all the circumstances by which our estimate of them should be influenced; and they thus rendered the study of morality inextricable, confounded the natural notions of right and wrong, and so accustomed themselves and others to weigh their actions, that they could easily find some excuse for what was most culpable, while they continued under the impression that they were not deviating from what, as moral beings, was incumbent upon them. The corruption of manners which was introduced into the church during the dark ages rendered casuistry very popular; and, accordingly, many who affected to be the most enlightened writers of their age, and perhaps really were so, tortured their understanding or their fancy in solving cases of conscience, and often in polluting their own imaginations and those of others, by employing them on possible crimes, upon which, however unlikely was their occurrence in life, they were eager to pronounce a decision. The happy change which the Reformation produced upon the views of men respecting the sacred Scriptures, tended to erect that pure standard of duty which for ages had been laid in the dust. Yet for a considerable time Protestant divines occupied themselves with the intricacies of casuistry, thus in some degree shutting out the light which they had fortunately poured upon the world. The Lutheran theologians walked very much in the tract which the schoolmen had opened, although their decisions were much more consonant with Christianity; and it was not uncommon in some countries for ecclesiastical assemblies to devote part of their time to the resolution of questions which might have been safely left unnoticed, which now are almost universally regarded as frivolous, and about which almost the most ignorant would be ashamed to ask an opinion. Even after much of the sophistry, and much of the moral perversion connected with casuistry, were exploded, the form of that science was preserved, and many valuable moral principles in conformity to it delivered. The venerable Bishop Hall published a celebrated work, to which he gave the appellation of "Cases of Conscience Practically resolved;" and he introduces it with the following observations addressed to the reader: "Of all divinity, that part is most useful which determines cases of conscience; and of all cases of conscience, the practical are most necessary, as action is of more concernment than speculation; and of all practical cases, those which are of most common use are of so much greater necessity and benefit to be resolved, as the errors thereof are more universal, and therefore more prejudicial to the society of mankind. These I have selected out of many; and having turned over divers casuists, have pitched upon those decisions which I hold most conformable to enlightened reason and religion; sometimes I follow them, and sometimes I leave them for a better guide." He divides his work into four parts,—Cases of profit and traffic, Cases of life and liberty, Cases of piety and religion, and Cases matrimonial; under each of these solving a number of questions, or rather giving a number of moral dissertations.
Casuistry, as a systematic perversion of Christian morality, is now, in the Protestant world, very much unknown: though there still is, and perhaps always will be, that softening down of the strict rules of duty, to which mankind are led either by self-deceit, or by the natural desire of reconciling, with the hope of the divine favour, considerable obliquity from that path of rectitude and virtue which alone is acceptable to God. But the most striking specimen of the length to which casuistry was carried, and of the dangerous consequences which resulted from it, is furnished by the history of the maxims and sentiments of the Jesuists, that celebrated order, which combined with profound literature, and the most zealous support of Popery, an ambition that perverted their understandings, or rather induced them to employ their rational powers in the melancholy work of poisoning the sources of morality, and of casting the name and the appearance of virtue over a dissoluteness of principle and a profligacy of licentiousness, which, had they not been checked by sounder views, and by feelings and habits favourable to morality, would have spread through the world the most degrading misery. See JESUITS .
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Watson, Richard. Entry for 'Casuistry'. Richard Watson's Biblical & Theological Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/wtd/c/casuistry.html. 1831-2.
