The Development of Doctrine

Not All Changes in Doctrine are True Developments

Saint John Henry Newman, 1801 - 1890

An acorn never grows into a Bassett Hound or a Ford Explorer; it always becomes an oak tree. Between the little seed and the towering tree there is organic continuity standing underneath all the visible changes, but everything the mighty oak will ever become is contained within the acorn. And when time, sun, and rain are added to the acorn, the mature oak is the result because that is its nature.

Just so with the Church. What was revealed to the world in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost was the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, but at that moment, the entire Church could fit inside one room - one Upper Room which was also the Supper Room, the place where the Passover of Israel became the Eucharist of the Church. But the Church did not remain small for long. Within minutes of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the preaching of Simon Peter added three thousand new disciples of Jesus Christ to his growing Body, and from that day forward the Church has never ceased to grow.

But in addition to healthy growth, the Church has also experienced disease and deformity of many kinds, and much of the New Testament was written as a corrective to false doctrine and immoral behavior which had been embraced, defended, and advanced by those who had thought of themselves as true disciples of Christ. From the very beginning, the dangers of heresy and schism confronted the Church’s pastors with the necessity of constantly clarifying what does and what does not conform to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the sacramental economy of salvation by which the Savior unites us to his Paschal Mystery. Those dangers of heresy and schism will be with the Church until the Last Day, which is why we should never be surprised to find them in our own time.

In recent days, the Cardinal Archbishop of Luxembourg has denounced as false the teaching of the Catholic Church on several dimensions of human sexuality, and the German Synodal Way has called for the ordination of women to the priesthood and the blessing of same sex friendships as a form of holy matrimony. In certain parts of the developed world, these positions are as popular as Gnosticism and Arianism once were, but the current novelties are no more in keeping with the gift of divine revelation than were those ancient falsehoods. But even Catholics who believe this to be true need a tool kit for understanding and explaining why it is so, and happily there is such a kit containing many useful tools, one of which was contributed by Saint John Henry Newman, the 19th century Anglican convert and cardinal who will one day, I believe, be acknowledged as a Doctor of the Church.

In 1845 Newman published An Essay on the Development of Doctrine, in part to explain to Protestants why certain Catholic beliefs like the reality of purgatory or the Immaculate Conception and Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary are examples of true and organic development of our understanding of revealed truth rather than illegitimate innovations or corruptions of the Gospel. In explaining what he meant by the development of doctrine, Newman proposed seven tests that would distinguish mere novelty from genuine growth in Christian teaching, and the seven can be summarized this way. A true doctrinal development must:

1. Exhibit preservation of type.

2. Possess continuity of its principles.

3. Have the power of assimilation.

4. Show its logical sequence.

5. Anticipate its own future.

6. Conserve its own past.

7. Demonstrate chronic vigor.

Newman held that the whole Bible discloses development of doctrine over time and that Christian doctrine admits of formal, legitimate, and true developments provided for by God in his eternal Plan of Salvation. One example of the self-evident existence of the development of doctrine is pointed out by Saint Augustine, who insisted that the New Testament is concealed in the Old, and the Old is revealed in the New (Saint Augustine, Quaet. In Hept., 2, 73: PL 34, 623).

But while Newman taught that Christian doctrine does develop, he also held that no Christian doctrine could ever mutate into a contradiction of itself (like an acorn becoming a dog or a car) and so any effort to interpret Scripture or make a theological argument which resulted in such a contradiction was thereby revealed to be heresy. Using Newman’s seven notes or tests, I believe that the innovations called for by Cardinal Hollerich and the German Synodal Way can be demonstrated to be illegitimate corruptions of doctrine and not true developments in organic continuity with what the Church has believed always and everywhere.