CHAPTER 5 [sic]
Doctrinal
innovation, and innovative ways of unfolding
traditional doctrines
30. Efforts are made, therefore, to penetrate the truths of faith with understanding, and illustrate them orally and in writing for the sake of greater knowledge on the part of the faithful who have received from God the ability and the time to learn more. In carrying out this work, the greatest care must be taken to avoid godless innovation, as St. Paul teaches with all the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. The ‘deposit’ consigned by Christ to the apostles, and handed over by them to their successors (consigned, too, in a special way to the safekeeping of Peter and the bishops of Rome who have succeeded him and will succeed him throughout the ages) cannot be diminished, increased or changed in the slightest. Its divine origin precludes this. The promise of lasting assistance given by Jesus Christ to his Church is a firm guarantee that not even the smallest part of the deposit will be lost. It will be taught in its entirety, and handed on in its entirety, until the second coming of the Redeemer. The teaching, already condemned, which foolishly maintains ‘the presence in these last centuries of a general obscurity veiling truths which are the foundation of the faith and of moral teaching’(43) is clearly heretical.
31. But if the deposit of the truths of our holy faith is not susceptible of increase, diminution or change, can we rightly say that it is possible and necessary to meditate, unfold and illustrate them? We must follow the Fathers and Doctors, the best Scholastics, and the soundest of the ecclesiastical writers coming after them. We must do as they have taught. All of them upheld the same unchangeable doctrine of the Church, and through this wonderful harmony of teaching became authoritative witnesses of revealed truths.
This is especially true of the Fathers. However, they were not satisfied with attesting and faithfully handing on these truths. Besides acting as witnesses, they undertook the office of teachers. They defended the truths with abundant arguments; they explained and ordered the truths; they deduced wonderful, inexhaustible consequences implicitly contained in the truths which they compared and co-related when they appeared in contrast with one another; they expressed them in suitable language, applied them to life-situations, and showed their perfect agreement with everything taught by right reason and philosophy, to which they added splendid new light.
There is great scope in sacred doctrine for inventiveness which does not overstep the boundaries of the sacred deposit. St. Antoninus praises Aquinas for this very reason: ‘He kept his reading and his methodology up-to-date, and offered new reasons for his conclusions.’*(44) {OLR} And St. Augustine is impelled to say: ‘The longer things lie hidden, the sweeter they are when found.’*(45) {OLR} They did not exceed the limits of the deposit because they adhered to Tertullian’s advice: ‘Let us search in what is our own, and from our own people and what concerns our own; and for that only which, granted the rule of faith, can be questioned.’*(46) {OLR} The part of doctrinal teaching drawn from their own understanding and spirit bestows upon the Fathers and other ecclesiastical writers variety of richness and style, but because style makes them progress in different, individual ways and modes they do not constitute at this level the same unshakeable authority proper to their unanimous witness of unique doctrine.
32. This is the explanatory unfolding of sound, unchangeable doctrine to which each particular intelligence can contribute according to its own God-bestowed gift. Vincent of Lerins, a 5th century Father, spoke about this unfolding in commenting on St. Paul’s famous words to Timothy: ‘Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you. Avoid the profane innovations and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge.’*(47) {OLR} He first defines the deposit, asking: ‘What is “The deposit”? That which has been entrusted to you, not that which you have yourself devised: a matter not of wit, but of learning; not of private adoption, but of public tradition; a matter brought to you, not put forth by you, wherein you are bound to be not an author but a keeper, not a teacher but a disciple, not a leader but a follower.’*(48) {OLR} Here lies the unity of doctrine. Then he goes on to consider how each doctrine is unfolded. He asks whether the inviolable unity of doctrine does not as a necessary consequence prevent any religious progress in the field of doctrine: ‘But perhaps some one will say. “Shall there, then, be no progress in Christ’s Church?”’*(49) {OLR} He replies that progress, the unfolding of doctrine, is not only not lacking, but that it is endless, and the cause of concern amongst mankind which, in opposition to God, would prohibit it if possible: ‘Certainly; all possible progress. For what being is there, so envious of men, so full of hatred to God, who would seek to forbid it?’*(50) {OLR}
Nevertheless, he wants this progress, described by him with great wisdom, not to detract in any way from the faith which progress is intended to help. ‘It must, however, be real progress, not alteration of the faith. For progress requires that the subject itself be enlarged, alteration requires that it be transformed into something else. The intelligence, then, the knowledge, the wisdom, as well of individuals as of all, as well of one man as of the whole Church, ought, in the course of ages and centuries, to increase and make much and vigorous progress; but yet only in its own kind; that is to say, in the same doctrine, in the same sense, and in the same meaning. The growth of religion in the soul must be analogous to the growth of the body, which, though in process of years is developed and attains its full size, yet remains still the same.
There is a wide difference between the flower of youth and the maturity of age; yet they who were once young are still the same now that they have become old, inasmuch that though the stature and outward form of the individual are changed, yet his nature is one and the same, his person is one and the same. An infant’s limbs are small, a young man’s large, yet the infant and the young man are the same. Men when full grown have the same number of joints that they had when children; and if there be any to which more mature age has given birth these were already present in embryo, so that nothing new is produced in them when old which was not already latent in them when children. This, then, is undoubtedly the true and legitimate rule of progress, this the established and most beautiful order of growth, that mature age ever develops in the man those parts and forms which the wisdom of the Creator had already framed beforehand in the infant.’*(51) {OLR}
33. We need to pay great attention to what this Father says about religion’s continual advance through precious, new understanding not only on the part of the faithful, but also on that of the Church. The following words merit further explanation: ‘The intelligence, then, the knowledge, the wisdom, as well of individuals as of all, as well of one man as of the whole Church, ought, in the course of ages and centuries, to increase and make much vigorous progress.’*(52) {OLR} We can see how this is possible by looking at the history of the kingdom of God on earth.
34. Everything is preserved in the immobile deposit. But at the same time the Church defines single truths by means of new conciliar and dogmatic statements, or through papal bulls, and expresses them in precise canons. This occurs whenever it is clearly necessary or useful for the faithful, especially in the case of attacks and contradictions coming, under Providence, from the authors of different heresies and errors. Study, discussion and the writings of various Doctors and theologians prepare and formulate the canonical definitions which then become the fixed boundaries described by the Scriptures: ‘Do not remove the ancient landmark that your ancestors set up.’*(53) {OLR}
35. Moreover, the Church amplifies doctrine continually by means of new applications. Guided by the light of God, it focuses gospel morality on the new circumstances in which Christian society ceaselessly finds itself during its pilgrimage here on earth. The ample development of its disciplinary laws and of its magnificent worship serves the same purpose. This is the ecclesial progress and advance in understanding, knowledge and wisdom described by Vincent of Lerins, a successor in this matter to the holy Doctors and famous Fathers quoted by the Church herself in the great Councils.(54)
In his gospel, St. Luke says that Jesus ‘increased in wisdom and in years, and in favour with God and man.’(55) The same can be said about the Church, made in the image and likeness of Christ. From a child, as she was in apostolic times, she has become an adult, developing in all her members, in her action, and in her self-presentation, as we can see with our own eyes after nineteen centuries of history. In her growth, the Church acts as Vincent describes: ‘If there be anything which antiquity has left shapeless and rudimentary, [she intends] to fashion and polish it; if anything already reduced to shape and developed, to consolidate and strengthen it; if anything already ratified and defined, to keep and guard it. Finally, what other object have Councils ever aimed at in their decrees, than to provide that what was before believed in simplicity should in future be believed intelligently, that what was before preached coldly should in future be preached earnestly, that what was before practised negligently should thenceforward be practised with double solicitude?’*(56) {OLR}
36. This is the only progress possible in the Church, the only increase to which dogma can be subject. According to Vincent of Lerins, progress comes about entirely on the level of forms and of evermore explicit declarations, which he describes as follows: ‘In like manner, it behoves Christian doctrine to follow the same laws of progress, so as to be consolidated by years, enlarged by time, refined by age, and yet, withal, to continue incorrupt and unadulterated, complete and perfect in all the measurement of its parts, and, so to speak, in all its proper members and senses, admitting no change, no waste of its distinctive property, no variation in its limits.’*(57) {OLR}
He goes on to speak of the studies and labour with which individuals amongst the faithful who possess the appropriate gift may cultivate the sacred deposit of faith. The doctrine of faith, he says, is like a grain of wheat growing until harvest, but without the admixture of cockle. He continues: ‘This, rather, should be the result — there should be no discrepancy between the first and the last. From doctrine which was sown as wheat, we should reap, in the increase, doctrine of the same kind —wheat also; so that when in process of time any of the original seed is developed, and now flourishes under cultivation, no change may ensue in the character of the plant. There may supervene shape, form, variation in outward appearance, but the nature of each kind must remain the same.
Therefore, whatever has been sown by the fidelity of the Fathers in this husbandry of God’s Church, the same ought to be cultivated and taken care of by the industry of their children, the same ought to flourish and ripen, the same ought to advance and go forward to perfection. For it is right that those ancient doctrines of heavenly philosophy should, as time goes on, be cared for, smoothed, polished; but not that they should be changed, not that they should be maimed, not that they should be mutilated. They may receive proof, illustration, definiteness; but they must retain withal their completeness, their integrity, their characteristic properties.’*(58) {OLR}
37. The matter could not be expressed more correctly nor precisely, and I shall have to limit myself to a comment on one of the many fine phrases in this passage. Vincent’s ut primis atque extremis sibimet non discrepantibus [there should be no discrepancy between the first and the last] contains the rule for rightly amplifying sound doctrine and for judging where human intelligence may have departed from and betrayed it. Does a certain consequence follow by necessary inference from one or other of the revealed truths defined by the Church? If so, accept it unhesitatingly as a step forward. If it does not follow, or proves contrary to what is already known, rej ect it as erroneous and harmful. In this way, the ‘principle of coherence’ with what is revealed provides a clear path leading to the increase and unfolding of sacred doctrine. On the other hand, the ‘principle of incoherence’ is a sure criterion for discovering what is false and harmful in opinions suggested by fallacious reasoning.
Thus, the revealed truth remains one and the same; what harmonises with it does not divide it, because such a consequence is already present to it as the plant is implicitly contained in a seed.
Vincent encourages Christian teachers to study, and follow the footsteps of Bezalel by erecting with exquisite workmanship a spiritual tent of knowledge from the jewels and precious metals provided by divine revelation alone. Without adding anything substantially new, they are to burnish, sculpt and harmonise the whole with new, well-developed skills. ‘O Timothy! O Priest! O Expositor! O Doctor! if the divine gift hath qualified you by wit, by skill, by learning, be a Bezaleel of the spiritual tabernacle, engrave the precious gems of divine doctrine, fit them in accurately, adorn them skilfully, add splendour, grace, beauty. Let that which formerly was believed, though imperfectly apprehended, as expounded by you be clearly understood. Let posterity welcome, understood through your exposition, what antiquity venerated without understanding. Yet teach still in the same truths which you have learnt, so that though you speak after a new fashion, what you speak may not be new.’*(59) {OLR}
Notes
(43) Bull Auctorem fidei, prop. 1.
(44) Part 3, Hist. tit. 23, c. 7.
(45) Exposition on Psalm 106, n. 14.
(46) On the Praescription of Heretics, c. 12.
(47) 1 Tim 6: 20.
(48) [Commentarium 22, 4].
(49) [Ibid., 23, 1].
(50) [Ibid.].
(51) [Ibid., 23, 2–7].
(52) [Ibid., 23, 4].
(53) Prov 22: 28.
(54) In the 5th Synod ( or 6th according to Gennadius): ‘In all things we follow the holy men who were also holy teachers of the church of God’* {OLR 54}(p 317). Many other Councils said the same.
(55) 2: 52.
(56) [Commentarium 23, 17–18].
(57) [Ibid., 23, 9].
(58) [Ibid., 49–50].
(59) [Ibid., 22, 6].