¹ For a concise treatment of the origin and the spirit of this so-called “new theology,” particularly, with regard to one's general approach to tradition as revelation, see D'Ambrosio, Marcellino, “Ressourcement theology, aggiornamento, and the hermeneutics of tradition,” Communio 18 (Winter 1991)Google Scholar.

² For the Catholic reaction, see, for example, the “Ten Roman Propositions of 1938” that Marie-Dominique Chenu was compelled by Rome to sign after circulating a manuscript which became his Une école de theologie: Le Saulchoir. See also the following Papal Encyclicals: Pope Pius X, Lamentabili Sane; Pope Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis; Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis.

³ The last scholastic revival is considered to have followed Leo XIII's praise of Thomas Aquinas and his commentators in his Encyclical Letter, Aeterni Patris.

⁴ Soon after he was made Pope, Benedict XVI (now Emeritus) approached the interpretation of the Council that accompanied its implementation not in terms of the rival academic journals, as I am here, but in terms of reform and continuity versus rupture and discontinuity, which is perhaps a more adequate division of the ensuing hermeneutics since it may be argued that a couple thinkers associated with each school did not follow the mainstream trend operative in their respective groups. In his Christmas address to the Roman Curia in 2005, Pope Benedict opposes a hermeneutic of reform to the hermeneutic of discontinuity, harkening back to Yves Congar's monumental work, Vraie et fausse reforme dans l'Eglise, which purportedly inspired John XXIII to call the Second Vatican Council: “The problem in [the Second Vatican Council's] implementation arose from the fact that two contrary hermeneutics came face to face and quarreled with each other. One caused confusion, the other, silently but more and more visibly, bore and is bearing fruit. On the one hand, there is an interpretation that I would call ‘a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture’ . . . On the other, there is the ‘hermeneutic of reform’, of renewal in the continuity of the one subject-Church which the Lord has given us. She is the subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.” Again, “the hermeneutic of discontinuity is countered by the hermeneutic of reform, as it was presented first by Pope John XXIII in his Speech inaugurating the Council on 11 October 1962 and later by Pope Paul VI in his Discourse for the Council's conclusion on 7 December 1965” (“Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Roman Curia Offering Them His Christmas Greetings,” Thursday, 22 December 2005, available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2005/december/documents/hf_ben_xvi_spe_20051222_roman-curia_en.html [accessed 10/18/14]).

⁵ See, for instance, Balthasar, Hans Urs von, Schliefung der Bastionen: Von der Kirche in Dieser Zeit (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1952)Google Scholar; ET, Razing the Bastions, trans. McNeil, Brian (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

⁶ See Garrigou-Lagrange, Réginald O.P., “La Nouvelle Théologie, où va-t-elle?,” Angelicum 23 (1946), pp. 126-145Google Scholar; “Vérité et immutabilité du dogme,” Angelicum 24 (1947), pp. 124-139Google Scholar; “Les notions consacrées par les Conciles,” Angelicum 24 (1947), pp. 217-230Google Scholar; “L'immutabilité des vérités divines et le surnaturel,” Angleicum 25 (1948), pp. 285-298Google Scholar; “Le relativisme et l'immutabilité du dogme,” Angelicum 27 (1950), pp. 219-246Google Scholar. Concerning his greatness, see Peddicord, Richard, Sacred Monster of Thomism: An Introduction to the Life and Legacy of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

⁷ Concerned with defending the proper notion of truth according to metaphysical realism, Garrigou opens the first aforementioned article (“La Nouvelle,” p. 23) with a key text from Bouillard's Conversion et grâce on truth and proceeds to attack the relativistic implications he sees with Aristotelian rigor. Bouillard states: “Quand l'esprit évolue, une vérité immuable ne se maintient que grâce a une évolution simultanée et corrélative de toutes les notions, maintenant entre elles un même rapport. Une théologie que ne serait pas actuelle serait une théologie fausse.” These words can certainly be interpreted more charitably than they are by Garrigou, but they could have also been more carefully chosen. Garrigou points out immediately that the old notion of form, derived from Aristotle's ‘outdated’ science, is essential to Thomas’ theology of sanctifying grace, which Bouillard nevertheless wants to maintain, at least in some form (see p. 126). Bouillard points out that the Council of Trent does not canonize the notion of ‘form’ even though it uses it and thus other, potentially better, notions could be substituted for it (unforeseen at the time of the Council). Garrigou agrees the notion of form was not itself canonized, but he retorts that the Council did approve it and other concepts as stable human notions (e.g., it defined the permanence of virtue), which opposes Bouillard's understanding of truth (see p. 128). Garrigou paraphrases Bouillard's limitation of immutable truth as obtaining only where notions have the same relationship amidst change, which gives rise to the question for Garrigou of how truth itself can be immutable if the notions ‘truth’ and ‘immutability’ are in principle subject to change. His resolution to the conundrum is that Bouillard's understanding of truth ends up in absurdity because: (1) given the mutability of truth, one can suppose that notions x and y are not immutable, which, by the laws of predication, yields that (2) ‘y’ cannot be immutably predicated of ‘x,’ and (3) propositions cannot be immutably true (see p. 127). This is, of course, my formalized paraphrase of his condensed argumentation. He attributes the fallacy regarding truth inherent in Bouillard's statement (taken literally) to the “philosophy of action,” but he does not name Maurice Blondel. The much needed dialogue between the latter philosophy and Thomism would be a voluminous endeavor, already initiated to some extent (e.g., in the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar).

⁸ See O.P.Labourdette, Marie-Michel, “La Théologie et ses sources,” Révue Thomiste 46 (1946), pp. 353-71Google Scholar; O.P.Nichols, Aidan, “Thomism and the Nouvelle Théologie,” The Thomist 64 (2000), pp. 1-19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Not directly impugning Bouillard with modernism, Labourdette merely asks how anyone can avoid historical relativism if there are no immutable human expressions of divine truth (see p. 356), that is, if by his ‘law of incarnation’ dogma is entrenched in contingent notions (see p. 364), or if eternal affirmations are necessarily tied to changing representations. He questions the subjectivist and evolutionary tendencies of a pseudo-philosophical (or a-metaphysical) historical method apparently favored by some in the nouvelle theologie (see pp. 360ff.). He argues in favor of building upon the prior edifice of scholastic thought rather than replacing it with an ‘art’ that regresses beyond the scientific character of theology developed in the middle ages (see pp. 258ff.). He concludes that for dogma to be intelligible there must be some human expressions that are perennially adequate expressions of immutable truth (see pp. 366-7).

⁹ See Bouillard, Henri S.J., Conversion et grâce chez S. Thomas d'Aquin (Paris, 1944), especially p. 219Google Scholar.

¹⁰ See Daniélou, Jean S.J., “Les Orientations présentes de la pensée religieuse,” Études 249 (1946), pp. 5-21Google Scholar. He endorses the evolutionary perspective of Teilhard de Chardin, S.J, on p. 15. Throughout the article he invokes existentialist philosophy as a promising path (e.g., see p. 16 on Simone de Beauvoir and original sin). Garrigou spends much of his first article drawing out the consequences of such a philosophical mistake for the doctrines of original sin and the Eucharistic presence of Christ.

¹¹ See Torre, Michael, “Francisco Marín-Sola, OP, and the Origin of Jacque Maritain's Doctrine on God's Permission of Evil,” Nova et Vetera 4, no. 1 (2006), pp. 55-94Google Scholar, which depends largely upon the letters of Charles Journet (in terms of what transpired in the debates between Garrigou-Lagrange and Marín-Sola, with Jacques Maritain somehow in the middle). He notes there that “Garrigou-Lagrange had himself dealt with this issue [the evolution of Catholic dogma] in his De Revelatione (Rome: Ferrari, 1918). He favored the view of Reginald Schultes, OP who had argued against Marín-Sola's view. See the latter's [sic] Introductio in historiam dogmatum (Paris: Lethielleux, 1922)Google Scholar; and De Revelatione, vol. 1, p. 509, for Garrigou-Lagrange's view. Marín-Sola acknowledged their differences … but sought to minimize their differences and to laud their respective virtues” (p. 56 n. 7).

¹² Francisco Marín-Sola's articles appeared in successive issues of La Ciencia Tomista between 1911 and 1922, originally compiled in 1923, later elaborated for a French edition in 1924 and finally translated back into Castellano in La evolución homogenea del dogma catolico (Madrid, Third Edition: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1963)Google Scholar, to which I will be referring.

¹³ For the division of perspectives on revelation into propositional and experiential-expressivist, see Lindbeck, George A., The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (25^th anniversary edition, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009)Google Scholar, one of the seminal works founding the post-liberal movement, which cannot be (explicitly) engaged here.

¹⁴ “En ese studio creemos haber puesto en claro, entre otras cosas, los cuatro puntos siguientes: 1. Es un hecho histórico, fuera de toda duda, que muchos dogmas se han desarrollado o han evoluciónado por la vía de conclusión teológica propiamente dicha, y que ese hecho debe ser reconocido por todo teólogo moderno, como fue reconocido por toda la teología tradicional hasta el siglo xvii. 2. Es un principio filosófica y teológicamente cierto que el raciocinio propio y riguroso puede intervener en el desarrollo o evolución del dato revelado sin destruir su perfecta homogeneidad. 3. Ese hecho histórico, como ese principio filosófico-teológico, fueron admitidos por todos los teológos anteriores al siglo xvii, y que la persuasión contraria que hoy día existe en algunos proviene de una confusión introducída por Suárez sobre la naturaleza de la verdadera virtualidad del depósito revelado, confusión continuada por Lugo y no advertída por los Salmanticenses y Billuart. 4. Una vez restablecída la verdadera inteligéncia del virtual revelado, es fácil entender como puede existir y existe de hecho en el dogma católico verdadera y propia evolución, pero evolución homogénea, con lo cual desaparéce esa antinomía que parecía existir entre la enseñanza de la teología católica y los hechos de la história, y se desvanéce por completo la objectión modernísta sobre el transformísmo del dogma.” “In [this] study we believe to have clarified, among other things, the following four points: 1) It is a historical fact, without a doubt, that many dogmas have developed or evolved by way of theological conclusion properly speaking, and that such a fact must be recognized by every modern theologian, as it was recognized by all traditional theology until the seventeenth century. 2) It is a philosophically and theologically certain principle that proper and rigorous reason can intervene in the development or evolution of the revealed given without destroying its perfect homogeneity. 3) The [aforementioned] historical fact, like the [aforementioned] philosophical-theological principle, [both] were admitted by all prior theologians into the seventeenth century, and the contrary persuasion today exists in some comes from a confusion introduced by Suárez concerning the nature of the true virtuality of the revealed deposit, confusion continued by Lugo and not avoided by the [Carmelites of Salamanca] and Billuart. 4) Once the true understanding of the virtual revealed is reestablished, it is easy to understand how true and proper evolution can exist and exists in fact in catholic dogma, with which that antinomy that would seem to exist between the teaching of catholic theology and the facts of history disappears and the modernist objection concerning the transformism of dogma completely vanishes” (La evolución, no. 11 [emphasis original]).

¹⁵ See La evolución, especially nos. 19ff.

¹⁶ See La evolución, nos. 11, 60, 71ff.

¹⁷ See La evolución, nos. 213ff.

¹⁸ See La evolución, no. 359, for example.

¹⁹ See O.P.Nichols, Aidan, From Newman to Congar: The idea of doctrinal development from the Victorians to the Second Vatican Council (Edinburgh: T&T Clarke, 1990), p. 50Google Scholar. See Marín-Sola, nos. 213ff.

²⁰ He subtly links Garrigou to Schultes and Schultes to Bossuet and Kilbert, which in turn are influenced by Suárez’ via media (see La evolución, nos. 516-519, 359, 246 n. 42, 87, and 11 in that order).

²¹ See La evolución, nos. 216ff.

²² See La evolución, c. 5.

²³ The introductory essay to the second (and third) edition of La Evolución concisely treats the relationship between Marin-Sola's thought and some of the central ideas of the so-called nouvelle theologens, particularly, Bouillard and Danielou (without naming names).

²⁴ See Mettepenningen, Jurgen, “Yves Congar and the ‘Monster’ of Nouvelle Theologie,” Horizons 37, no. 1 (2010), pp. 52-71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁵ Regarding the latter point, see Congar, Yves, The Word and the Spirit, trans. David Smith (San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1986), pp. 78ffGoogle Scholar. For his theology of tradition, see La Tradition et la vie de l'Eglise (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1963 [2^nd ed. 1984]); English translation, The Meaning of Tradition, trans. Woodrow, A. N. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004)Google Scholar; and especially, La Tradition et les Traditions: Essai Historique (Paris: Libraire Artheme Fayard, 1960)Google Scholar and La Tradition et les Traditions: Essai Theologique (Paris: Libraire Artheme Fayard, 1963)Google Scholar; English translation, Tradition and Traditions: The Biblical, Historical, and Theological Evidence for Catholic Teaching on Tradition, trans. Michael Naseby and Thomas Rainborough (San Diego: Basilica Press, 1966). The latter work is largely a collection of articles appearing originally in Dieu vivant, no. 23 (1953) and the Scottish Journal of Theology (1950, 1953).

²⁶ Nichols, From Newman to Congar, pp. 260-261.

²⁷ Marín-Sola states: “En realidad, inmutabilidad y desarrollo no son dos cosas opuestas, sino dos aspectos armónicos y dos facetas complementárias de la misma cosa, esto es, de la evolución homogénea. . . . Eso explica cómo dos apologistas católicos tan grandes como Bossuet y Newman hayan podido emplear, en defensa de la Iglesia católica, razonamientos que parecen contradictorios. Bossuet dijo al protestantísmo: ‘Cambias, luego no eres la verdad.’ Newman dijo al anglicanismo: ‘No admites evolución, luego no tienes vida.’ En realidad, esos dos aspectos, lejos de contradecirse, son las dos características que distinguen a la verdad, cuando esa verdad está depositada en inteligéncias y corazones humanos, para ser la vida del individuo y de la sociedad.” “In reality, immutability and development are not two opposed things, but rather two harmonious aspects and two complementary facets of the same thing, that is, of the homogeneous evolution. . . . That explains how two such great catholic apologists as Bossuet and Newman have been able to utilize, in defense of the Catholic Church, arguments that seem contradictory. Bossuet said to Protestantism: ‘You change, therefore you are not the truth.’ Newman said to Anglicanism: ‘You do not admit evolution, therefore you do not have life.’ In reality, those two aspects, far from contradicting each other, are the two characteristics that distinguish the truth, when that truth is deposited in human intellects and hearts to be the life of the individual and of society” (La Evolución, no. 359). Regarding Eastern Orthodox attitudes toward the idea of doctrinal development, see Nichols, From Newman to Congar, Appendix.

²⁸ Congar, Yves, La Foi et la theologie (Tournai, 1962)Google Scholar, cited by Nichols, Aidan O.P., Yves Congar (Wilton, CT: Morehouse-Barlow Co., 1989), p. 47Google Scholar.

²⁹ Nichols, Yves Congar, p. 47.

³⁰ See True and False Reform in the Church, trans. Philibert, Paul (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2011), pp. 10-11.Google Scholar

³¹ See especially his “Le Débat sur la Question du Rapport entre Ecriture et Tradition au Point de Vue de Leur Contenu Matériel,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et theologiques 48, no. 4 (1964), pp. 645-657Google Scholar. Interestingly, Marín-Sola approvingly quotes a statement of the early Dominican commentator, Capreolous, which would support Congar's thesis, even if Marín-Sola quotes it only in support of the notion that all doctrinal developments are explications of what lies implicit in revelation (without addressing the question of the relationship between scripture and tradition): “Omnia implicite continentur in S. Biblia, dice Capreolo comentando ese mismo artículo [ST I, q. 1, a. 3].” “‘All things are contained implicitly in the Holy Bible,’ says Capreolous commenting on that same article” (see La evolución, no. 215).

³² “[A]ssez curieusement, les partisans des deux sources ou de l'insuffisance matérielle de l'Ecriture, ou de la Tradition constitutive, opèrent généralement en dehors de ces perspectives, avec une notion de la Tradition orale (par parole).” “Rather curiously, those who advocate the two-source theory or the material insufficiency of Scripture or Tradition as constitutive, work generally outside of this perspective, with a notion of Tradition as oracular” (“Le Débat,” p. 650 [my translation]).

³³ “[S]i l'on considère la Foi catholique comme une série de propositions atomisées, sans lien organique avec un centre, on est porté a demander que chacune prise séparément soit appuyée d'une référence, et l'on cherche, dans une Tradition orale constitutive, la référence qu'on ne trouve pas dans l'Ecriture. Il serait aisé d'appliquer cela aux dogmes mariaux. Mais, d'autre part, il n'est pas besoin d'approfondir beaucoup la chose pour voir que les oppositions qui se sont manifestées dans les discussions récentes traduisaient un clivage des esprits entre ceux pour qui ‘la Doctrine’ était surtout une liste de propositions aux arêtes tranchées, et ceux pour qui elle était d'abord la prédication du mystère chrétien.” “[I]f one considers the Catholic faith as a series of atomized propositions, without an organic link to a center, one is led to ask that each taken separately be supported by a reference, and one searches, in an orally constitutive Tradition, the reference that he does not find in Scripture. It would be easy to apply this to the Marian dogmas. But, on the other hand, it is not necessary to go very deep in order to see that the oppositions that are manifest in the recent discussions reflect a mental conflict between those for whom doctrine is above all a list of propositions and those for whom it is first the preaching of the Christian mystery” (“Le Débat,” p. 654 [my translation]).

³⁴ See Wicks, Jared, “Yves Congar's Doctrinal Service of the People of God,” Gregorianum 84, no. 3 (2003), pp. 499-550, at pp. 524-525Google Scholar. He cites Congar's Mon Journal du Concile, pp. 1, 314, 388.

³⁵ True and False Reform, p. 132.

³⁶ While I would argue that Ratzinger transcends both the ressourcement and nouvelle movements, he is commonly classed as a member of these and certainly initiated his career within this context.

³⁷ See his essay, “Offenbarung und Uberlieferung,” which he wrote originally for a larger theological project, vol. 25 of a series called Quaestiones Disputatae, co-authored with Karl Rahner. The latest English translation appears in God's Word: Scripture, Tradition, Office, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), as “The Question of the Concept of Tradition: A Provisional Response.” For a comparison of Congar and Ratzinger on tradition and scriptural sufficiency, see Brotherton, Joshua R., “Revisiting the Sola Scriptura Debate: Yves Congar and Joseph Ratzinger on Tradition,” Pro Ecclesia 24, no. 1 (Winter 2015), pp. 85-114CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁸ The English version of this text contains only the first half, which was in the end approved as sufficient for Ratzinger to acquire teaching privileges in Germany.

³⁹ To be clear about the latter, speaking of the contrasting hermeneutical approaches toward the Council, Pope Benedict XVI argues for a delicate balancing of continuity and discontinuity with past ecclesial formulations: “It is clear that in all these sectors [of the Council's teaching], which all together form a single problem, some kind of discontinuity might emerge. Indeed, a discontinuity had been revealed but in which, after the various distinctions between concrete historical situations and their requirements had been made, the continuity of principles proved not to have been abandoned. It is easy to miss this fact at a first glance. It is precisely in this combination of continuity and discontinuity at different levels that the very nature of true reform consists. In this process of innovation in continuity we must learn to understand more practically than before that the Church's decisions on contingent matters – for example, certain practical forms of liberalism or a free interpretation of the Bible – should necessarily be contingent themselves, precisely because they refer to a specific reality that is changeable in itself. It was necessary to learn to recognize that in these decisions it is only the principles that express the permanent aspect, since they remain as an undercurrent, motivating decisions from within. On the other hand, not so permanent are the practical forms that depend on the historical situation and are therefore subject to change. Basic decisions, therefore, continue to be well-grounded, whereas the way they are applied to new contexts can change. . . . [T]he human person is capable of knowing the truth about God and, on the basis of the inner dignity of the truth, is bound to this knowledge” (“Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Roman Curia Offering Them His Christmas Greetings”).

⁴⁰ Nichols summarizes the pivotal fifth chapter of Newman's Essay thus: “[Newman] contrasts authentic developments with corruptions, suggesting seven ‘notes’ by which genuine developments will tend to show themselves. These are: (1) Preservation of the original type: in effect, preserving the quality of the original impact of some new thing. (2) Continuity of known principles. (3) Power to assimilate alien matter to the original idea. (4) Logical connectedness. (5) Being anticipated early in a partial way here and there. (6) A conserving attitude to the past: taking steps to preserve an old idea in a new form. (7) Chronic vigour: i.e. lasting in a healthy state for a long time” (From Newman to Congar, p. 51 [excerpt reformatted]).

⁴¹ Marín-Sola quotes a letter of Newman's in which he states: “Really and truly I am not a theologian… I am not, and never shall be” (see La Evolución, no. 215). He also cautions against utilization of the notion of “assimilation” and expresses reservations regarding the metaphor of biological development since animal and vegetative life are not entirely on par with the development of understanding which occurs in the minds of believers (see nos. 213 and 215).

⁴² The Theology of History in St. Bonaventure, trans. Hayes, Zachary (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1989), p. 69Google Scholar.

⁴³ Theology of History, p. 66. He makes clear thereafter that such understanding is not an individualistic enterprise, but one undergone in communion with the Church universal.

⁴⁴ Theology of History, pp. 92-93.

⁴⁵ Congar, Tradition and Traditions, p. 5 [F I, 17], p. 500 [F II, 249].

⁴⁶ See Ratzinger, God's Word, 79-80. Concerning the canon of scripture, see Theology of History, pp. 78ff. He further elucidates the relationship between scripture, tradition, and Church in his post-synodal apostolic exhortation as Pope Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini.

⁴⁷ God's Word, p. 51. Tradition is therefore viewed in part as the “surplus of revelation” (see pp. 69 and 72).

⁴⁸ Certainly, experience has not only subjective qualities, but also objectifiable ones. In fact, the subject subjectivizes the object and objectivizes itself. But one need not advocate a subject-object “dualism” in epistemology in order to avoid relativizing everything; even an epistemology that seeks to transcend the constructed division of “knowledge systems” into idealism/subjectivism and realism/objectivism is inevitably inadequate to the task of understanding the supernaturality of particular events, the nature of the truths therein communicated, and the relationship of doctrine to these essentially constitutive dimensions of the historical phenomenon of divine revelation. Everything within the purview of human experience may be “historicized,” which is not to deny normativity, and yet divine revelation transcends subject-object interdependence. In other words, man's ontological relationship to the supernatural events of historical revelation (and even more so, the divine itself) cannot be understood by means of any epistemological framework.

⁴⁹ “These formulas [of Trent on the Eucharist]—like the others that the Church used to propose the dogmas of faith—express concepts that are not tied to a certain specific form of human culture, or to a certain level of scientific progress, or to one or another theological school. Instead they set forth what the human mind grasps of reality through necessary and universal experience and what it expresses in apt and exact words, whether it be in ordinary or more refined language. For this reason, these formulas are adapted to all men of all times and all places. They can, it is true, be made clearer and more obvious; and doing this is of great benefit. But it must always be done in such a way that they retain the meaning in which they have been used, so that with the advance of an understanding of the faith, the truth of faith will remain unchanged. For it is the teaching of the First Vatican Council that ‘the meaning that Holy Mother the Church has once declared, is to be retained forever, and no pretext of deeper understanding ever justifies any deviation from that meaning’ (11)” (Mysterium Fidei: Encyclical of Pope Paul VI on the Holy Eucharist, nos. 24-35, available on the Vatican website). See also the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's Mysterium Ecclesiae: Declaration in Defense of the Catholic Doctrine on the Church Against Certain Errors of the Present Day, sect. 5, available on the Vatican website.

⁵⁰ See, for example, the speech of John XXIII at the opening of the Second Vatican Council. Marín-Sola speaks similarly (see La evolución, nos. 19-21).

⁵¹ I do not mean here to exclude the other faculties of the human person from receptivity to divine revelation, nor to defend a purely propositional view of revelation, which certainly would not cohere with the “new theology” of tradition. But the human mind, nevertheless, is recipient of revelation, and revelation is in part propositional, no doubt. Speaking of Heinrich Schlier's conversion in the context of the meaning of ‘incarnation,’ Ratzinger states the following regarding the propositional content of revelation: “[T]here is the correlation of tradition and living transmission. Intrinsically connected to this is apostolic authority, which interprets the Word which is handed down and gives it an unequivocal clarity of meaning. Finally, there is the insight that God has definitively decided in our favor. ‘According to the New Testament,’ this decidedness accounts for ‘the fact that the faith fixes itself in concrete propositions which demand from belief concrete acknowledgement of their truth.’ It is for this reason that Schlier could say that he had become a Catholic by strictly Protestant means – namely, sola scriptura” (The Nature and Mission of Theology, trans. Walker, Adrian [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995], p. 60Google Scholar).

⁵² By this statement it should be evident that I do not mean to say a dogma, for example, transubstantiation, could be supplanted by a “better” explanation of the mystery (e.g., trans-signification or trans-finalization, which Paul VI subordinated to transubstantiation in Mysterium Fidei), but rather that theological understanding of the mysteries of faith can, presumably, always be further refined, which build upon (rather than subtract from) the dogmatic formulas.