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Development of Doctrine: Smokescreen or Explanation?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2024
Extract
‘The problem of orders must be looked at . . . facing squarely the question whether the new situation calls for a new policy in the Catholic Church. This policy would include a careful determination of the arguments behind the Bull Apostolicae Curae and a candid judgment whether the development of doctrine has superseded the theological assumptions of 1896.’ That statement was followed, a week later, by a letter in The Tablet from Fr Edward Quinn: ‘May one express the hope, in good time, that this really will be a candid judgment ... if a new investigation shows that the assumptions have been superseded, let it also be clearly admitted that the decision was mistaken. Even if the Bull was not infallible, Pope Leo XIII declared in the most forceful terms that Anglican Orders were null and void, and followed this up by a letter stating that the decision was irrevocable. Development of doctrine cannot mean that one statement was true in 1896 and its opposite true in 1980 or whenever we come to revise our former conclusions.’ The following week, Bishop Clark, Roman Catholic Co-Chairman of the International Commission, wrote: ‘Fr Quinn touches the nerve of this discussion when he seeks to clarify the relationship of Apostolicae Curae to a development of doctrine. What, however, has guided the thinking of the commission is the principle that any development in doctrine must be consistent with its past.’
In spite of the very general title of this paper, my aim is extremely restricted. I do not propose to discuss past or present theories of doctrinal development, nor the relationship between notions of ‘development’ and related notions such as ‘progress’, ‘growth’ or ‘evolution’. Although I shall be obliged to touch on it at one point, I do not propose to discuss in detail the problem of the normative status to be accorded to the New Testament witness and to subsequent moments in the doctrinal history of the Church.
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- Copyright © 1971 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 A paper read to the ‘D’ Society, Cambridge, 30th October, 1970. Since the purpose of this paper was, and is, to stimulate discussion, no attempt has been made to provide it with detailed references to recent studies of the history of dogma and of the nature of dogmatic statements.
2 Extract from the statement issued by the Church of England's Council of Foreign Relations, on the September, 1970, meeting of the Anglican‐Roman Catholic International Commission. Quoted from The Tablet, 3rd October, 1970, p. 966.
3 The Tablet, 10th October, 1970, pp. 981‐‐982.
4 The Tablet, 17th October, 1970, p. 1006.
1 Wiles, M., The Making of Christian Doctrine: a Study in the principles of early Doctrinal Development (Cambridge, 1967), p. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
1 Butler, B. C., Vatican II: an interfaith appraisal, ed. Miller, John H. (Notre Dame, 1966), p. 91Google Scholar.
2 By thus restricting the concerns of the paper, nothing that follows is directly relevant to the problems of Anglican Orders with which, as a topical illustration of the wider problem, it began. Even the most enthusiastic defenders of Apostolicae Curae have not usually maintained that it constitutes a dogmatic definition or an article of the creed.
1 Concilium General Secretariat (eds), ‘The Creed in the melting‐Pot’, Concilium, Vol. 1, No. 6 (January, 1970), p. 137Google Scholar.
2 Schlink, E., ‘The Structure of Dogmatic Statements as an Ecumenical Problem’, The Coming Christ and the Coming Church (London, 1967), p. 22Google Scholar.
3 Kasper, W., ‘The Relationship between Gospel and Dogma: an historical approach’, Concilium, Vol. 1, No. 3 (January, 1967), p. 74Google Scholar.
4 Cf. McGrath, M. G., The Vatican Council's Teaching on the Evolution of Dogma (Rome, 1953), p. 79Google Scholar.
1 Farrar, A., ‘Infallibility and Historical Revelation’. Infallibility in the Church: an Anglican‐Catholic dialogue (London, 1968), p. 23Google Scholar.
1 On 25th March, 1905, Von Hügel wrote to Blondel: ‘Certainly if it is matter of defined doctrines, never could they cease to be true for the believer in a very real sense of the word. But in the history of dogma we see modifications in the interpretation of the category to which such and such a doctrine belongs. This tryly seems to lead to the conclusion that while it is impossible for all the “facts” of Christianity not at all to be also fats of a full and ordinary historicity, one or another, may in time be discovered to be not less true than formerly but of another type of truth‘ it may be worth pointing out that two of the doctrines which Von hügel had in mind were the Resurrection and the Virgin Birth. Cf. Heancy, J. J., The Modernist Crisis: von Hügel (Washington, 1968), p. 106.Google Scholar