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The Authority of Doctrinal Development
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2024
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The first part of this article, in the October Blackfriars, was designed to show that, in the Catholic view, Scripture is constitutive of the content of revelation; it embodies the Word of God in inspired writing, while Tradition is regulative of that content; for it interprets the sense of Scripture, and defines that sense by Apostolic authority to be what God’s word to men is and means. This authority, which is exercised both in the Church’s ordinary and in its supreme magisterium, is not the sole regulative element in Tradition, though it is the finally decisive one. The true direction of the developing mind of the Church is continuously maintained, though in a relative and less final sense, by a twofold operation, the lex orandi and the work of the schola theologorum. The former (through liturgy and devotion) draws out the implications of dogma in terms of living, and thus clarifies to the worshipper the full meaning and inter-connection of the truths of Faith. The latter, by the science of theology, brings rational analysis to the elucidation of revealed truth, making use of the researches of various branches of scholarship; philosophical, exegetical, historical and scientific. The function of sound learning therefore is to provide the checks by which human reason, under the guidance of Tradition, assesses new developments in the light of their coherence with the constant teaching of the Church and their consonance with the biblical data, in which the substance of the depositum fidei is embodied.
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- Copyright © 1955 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 This is the meaning of the famous ex sese clause in the Vatican Decree: ideoque ejusmodi Romani Pontificis definitiones ex sese, non autem ex consensu Ecclesiae irreformabiles esse. Denzinger—Bannwart 1839; Freiburg 1932.
2 Evanston Report. S.C.M. Press 1954, pages 93‐94.
3 The learned and impartial historian Duchesne sums up the position in Christendom of the Church and See of Rome in the time before Constantine as follows: ‘Thus all the Churches throughout the known world, from Arabia, Osrhoene, and Cappadocia to the extreme west, felt the incessant influence of Rome in every respect, whether as to faith, discipline, administration, ritual or works of charity. She was as St Irenaeus says, “kn own everywhere and respected everywhere, and her guidance was universally accepted”. No competitor, no rival stands up against her; no one conceives the idea of being her equal. Later on there will be patriarchs and other local primates, whose first beginnings can be but vaguely perceived during the course of the third century. Above these rising organizations, and above the whole body of isolated Churches, the Church of Rome rises in supreme majesty, the Church of Rome represented by the long series of her bishops, which ascends to the two chiefs of the Apostolic College; she knows herself to be, and is considered by all, the centre and the organ of unity.’
4 In spite of their boast of unchanging antiquity their theology, rites and Canon Law represent, not the first ages but a comparatively advanced development, that of the Byzantine period. And they stay there satisfying neither the need of continuous development that is the mark of a living Church, nor the rival ideal of unchanged primitive observance. The Orthodox Eastern Church by Adrian Fortescue, London 1911, page 394.
5 The Times, March 2, 1905.
6 The Fullness of Christ—The Church's Growth into Catholicity. London 1950, page 63.
7 The Infallibility of the Church by George Salmon, d.d. Abridged Edition, London 1952, page 30.
8 Article xx.
9 The Via Media by J. H.Newman, Volume I. London 1891, page xii.
10 op. cit., page 190.
11 op. cit., page 201.
12 op. cit., page 207.
13 Movement in the latter direction is illustrated in the writers of Essays Catholic and Critical, in Sir Will Spens' Belief and Practice and in The Nature of Catholic Authority by Canon Wilfrid Knox in Theology, February 1929.
14 Catholicity—A Study in the Conflict of Christian Traditions in the West. London 1947.
15 The Fullness of Christ, page 63.
16 Jew and Greek—A Study in the Primitive Church by Dom Gregory Dix, London 1953, page 67. The immediate reference is to the Nazarene Church, the heir in the second and third centuries of primitive Judaeo‐Christianity.
17 In this connection see also a valuable Appendix (C) ‘The Concept of Infallibility’ in Spiritual Authority in the Church of England by Canon E. C. Rich, London 1953. page 209.
18 V.Lossky: Panagia, an Essay in The Mother of God, edited by E. L. Mascall, London 1949, page 26.
19 Evanston Report, page 94.
20 op. cit., page 93.
21 The Vatican Council by Cuthbert Butler, London 1930. Volume I, pages 93‐94. The Patriarch of Constantinople, and the other Patriarchs with him, refused the invitation on the ground that the only basis of reunion must be that the Western Church revert in doctrine and practice to the norm existing before the schism, giving tip all that has been added since then.
22 Anglicanism and Orthodoxy, a study in dialectical Churchmanship by H. A.Hodges, S.C.M. Press, 1955.
23 op. Cit., page 47.
24 op. Cit., page 43.
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