THE SOURCES OF REVELATION
How do we know that Catholic teaching truly
represents the faith of the ancient Church?
Dr. M. Katherine Tillman
A
s Divine Revelation advances through time, the Spirit
guides us into a deeper understanding of unchanging
truths. This is how Catholic doctrine develops.
Doctrine does not “change.” In
change, the form of a thing is different in
substance from that of another preceding
thing: the bread and wine are changed
into the Body and Blood of Christ. Nor
does doctrine “evolve,” in the modern
sense of the term. In biological evolution,
the form of a thing is new and different, arising out of a previous form: a dog
evolves from a wolf.
What doctrine does is “develop.” In
development, the thing remains the
same but, invested in history, it is further
unfolded, articulated, delineated, and
intensified. For example, the doctrine
of the Immaculate Conception lately
affirmed of the Blessed Virgin Mary fittingly enunciates and further develops
the declaration of her as Mother of God.
As Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman, the nineteenth century English
scholar and convert from Anglicanism
writes, “It changes . . . in order to remain
the same” (Dev, 40).
What Is the Difficulty?
Newman’s two main writings on the
subject of development are his 1843 Oxford University sermon, “The Theory of
Developments in Religious Doctrines”
(US), and his 1845 book, Essay on the
Development of Christian Doctrine (Dev).
Although Newman was not the first to
formulate this principle, which, he wrote,
“has at all times, perhaps, been implicitly
adopted by theologians” (Dev, 29), he was
the first to argue with such studied detail
and to test this “hypothesis to account for
8
all but a Catholic in early 1845.
How Does Doctrine Develop?
Newman begins the great Essay by stating what no one can deny: that Christianity is an objective fact in the world’s history; that Christianity has long since passed
beyond the thoughts of individual minds,
making the entire world its home and public property of its sacred words. Roman Catholicism, he argues, is the historical heir
of the Christian tradition in its fullness.
The Protestantism of the Reformation is
not a historical religion, he states, in the
sense that it forms a Christianity from the
Bible alone and falls back on the private
judgment of the individual as the sole expounder of its doctrine (Dev, 6).
Rather, maintains Newman in an oftenquoted phrase, “To be deep in history is
to cease to be a Protestant” (Dev, 8).
a difficulty” (Dev, 30) with such originality, subtlety, and permanent influence.
The difficulty for which Newman sets
forth his hypothesis is this: From the
words and half sentences of a few simple
fishermen of Galilee two millennia ago,
we have the creeds and confessions, doctrines and dogmas, the systems of theology, forms of worship, and varied institutions of worldwide Christianity today.
How did all of this come to be?
The question being raised here is
whether the Catholic faith, as now held,
is logically, as well as historically, the representative of the ancient faith.
The Sermon on development deals with
the implicit, tacit, or mental locus of the
The theory of development is based on huChristian Idea before and as it becomes man nature and its embeddedness in history.
explicitly
expressed
. . . From the nature of the
verbally, either in the
human mind, time is neces“Time is necessary
individual’s own mind
sary for the full comprehenor speech, or in the
for the full
sion and perfection of great
language and doctrine of
comprehension and ideas; and . . . the highest
the Church, whereas the
and most wonderful truths,
perfection of great
Essay on development
though communicated to
deals more with the
ideas.”
the world once for all by inexplicit development or
spired teachers, could not be
realization of the Christian Idea in the comprehended all at once by the recipients, but,
public, historical life of the community.
as being received and transmitted by minds not
The Sermon is more concerned with how inspired and through media which were human,
developments emerge from and relate to the have required only the longer time and deeper
Revelation of Scripture. We might even say thought for their full elucidation. (Dev, 29-30)
the Sermon is in search of Tradition, for
Newman is still an Anglican in 1843.
The development of an idea, from its
The Essay, on the other hand, is more inward contemplation in the individual or
focused upon Tradition itself, Tradition in the bosom of the Church, to its external
as made up of the actual continuity of expression and formulation in doctrines
doctrinal development, for Newman is and creeds is thus “the germination and
Sacred Heart Major Seminary | Mosaic | Spring 2015