This tradition which comes from the Apostles develops in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. For there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down. This happens through the contemplation and study made by believers, who treasure these things in their hearts (see Lk. 2:19, 51), through a penetrating understanding of the spiritual realities which they experience, and through the preaching of those who have received through Episcopal succession the sure gift of truth. For as the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her.

The words of the holy fathers witness to the presence of this living tradition, whose wealth is poured into the practice and life of the believing and praying Church. Through the same tradition the Church's full canon of the sacred books is known, and the sacred writings themselves are more profoundly understood and unceasingly made active in her; and thus God, who spoke of old, uninterruptedly converses with the bride of His beloved Son; and the Holy Spirit, through whom the living voice of the Gospel resounds in the Church, and through her, in the world, leads unto all truth those who believe and makes the word of Christ dwell abundantly in them (see Col. 3:16). (Vatican II, Dei Verbum, no. 8)

Like a light shining from a hilltop (Mt. 5:15–16), or a yeast that provides leavening throughout the ages (Lk. 13:21), the truth that was promised throughout the whole of salvation history and definitively made manifest in Christ is declared infallibly by the Catholic Church in fulfillment of the Lord’s own promise: “When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth.” (Jn. 16:13 RSV).  In accord with the gradual progress of revelation—which has,  with the passing of the Apostles, come to its close —the Church is like the true scribe spoken of by Christ: “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (Mt. 13:52, RSV; see Mt. 5:17ff.).

Through the course of the centuries, the Magisterium has proposed definitively the truths of faith in a way that explicates the treasure that has been received from the Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit.  The Magisterium does not present these truths as though they were mutable opinions, shifting their meaning with the various eras of history and human culture.  Rather, they are the sure and stable message which it is the Magisterium’s vocation to faithfully maintain and declare in accord with her exercise of the charism of infallibility given to the Church by her Lord.  Therefore, in so teaching, the Church declares truths which, in themselves, remain one and the same.  However, with the progress of the ages, there is a true growth in human understanding of this sacred deposit entrusted to the Church for the salvation of mankind and the glory of God.  Thus, one can rightly say that the dogmatic declarations made throughout the life of the Church are “not really new, but evolved out of what is already there.  So Christian dogma really grows, rather than accumulates.  There is no new beginning of truth, but the continuance of a real tradition” (Newman, Roman Writings, prop. 4). 

The aim of this article is to lay out a basic theological framework for understanding the nature of dogmatic development. To do so, the itinerary of this article will be as follows: First, a series of philosophical and theological principles will be presented, providing a background framework for the sections that follow thereafter.  Then, the essence of dogmatic development will be presented, followed by a discussion of the various causes involved in this process.  Next, in order to provide further insight into this wholly unique process, certain analogies will be presented, not as argumentative principles but as images that help to stabilize and deepen one’s appreciation for what was analyzed in the discussion of the essence and causes of dogmatic development.  Then, as a kind of methodological or epistemological consideration, a number of rules for the discernment of legitimate development will be considered.  Finally, to close, a basic history of the notion of dogmatic development will be presented.

I. Philosophical and Theological Principles

Philosophical Principles

Realism

Although the Church permits a variety of philosophical explanations concerning the nature of knowledge, “the indispensable requirements of the word of God” and of the Church’s magisterial declaration of the truths of faith presuppose that the human mind is capable of definitive knowledge of reality (see John Paul II, Fides et ratio, nos. 80–91).  The great creedal statements of the Church, prayed throughout her various liturgical rites, presume that those who state, “I believe…,” thereby affirm something concerning the very reality of the Triune God and His providential designs in the economy of salvation.  The same is also true of the assent that is made to dogmatic and doctrinal declarations made by the ordinary and extraordinary Magisterium over the course of the centuries. The truths of faith are both “speculative” statements about reality and truths that have a bearing on the grace-bestowed divinization of believers.  Nonetheless, when the Church, acting as “mother and teacher,” proposes dogmatic and doctrinal truths to her faithful, she does not thereby propose merely pragmatic norms that may well guide our conduct but would lack any true bearing on reality itself (see Lamentabili sane exitu, no. 26).  The various dogmas concerning the Trinity, the nature of Christ and His headship over the Church, Eucharistic transubstantiation, the nature of supernatural grace, the various virtues, and so forth all have a bearing first and foremost upon reality.  This foundation upon reality is what founds the moral and spiritual implications of these truths for those who have been reborn in Christ.

Therefore, although conceptual human knowledge is marked by many limitations and will call for development and deepening over the whole course of human history, nonetheless, the articulation of reality by means of notions provides some true grasp of being: sometimes in the form of hypothetical and doubtful propositions; at other times with a solid probability that inclines toward the truth; and at other times with a certainty that articulates the acquisition of a necessary and definitively attained truth.  Such necessity does not foreclose the possibility of further deepening and explication.  Yet such firm acquisitions are marked by a definitive character and provide a solid foundation for further development.  In the supernatural order, this possibility of achieving absolute cognitional acquisitions will provide a point of homogeneity that will be built upon by the Church’s own infallible authority.  And thus, too, the Church’s infallible declaration of dogmatic truths is the fulfillment of the mind’s own fundamental orientation toward definitive acquisitions of the truth.  Here too, as in many domains, grace both elevates and perfects nature itself.

This implies a matter of great importance for understanding the nature of dogmatic development.  Although the Church allows significant latitude for the “precognitional” elements of human experience, both in the orders of intellection itself and, especially, in the order of love, it is nonetheless not permissible for one to hold that formulated truths are nothing other than a kind of useful imagery for expressing a more fundamental but de iure inexpressible experience of reality (see Pius X, Pascendi dominici gregis, nos. 7–15, 26–28).  Rather, cognition involves—to the degree that this is possible for finite human knowers—a process of manifesting and expressing the very truthfulness of the reality that we experience, to the degree that this can be manifested to human reason or to human reason superelevated by the light of faith.  Therefore, despite its limitations, notionally articulable knowledge is essential to human knowledge, whether as purely rational or as expressing supernatural dogmas.

Defining, Judging, Reasoning

Traditional logic distinguishes three broad genera of acts performed by the human intellect as we attempt to articulate our knowledge: (1) the defining of essences, (2) the forming of propositions, and (3) the process of discursively reasoning.  Each of these acts bears the mark of a kind of “developmental” character and, therefore, will be involved in the “logical” aspect of dogmatic development discussed below.

The human capacity for defining is a critical element of human cognition.  The dialogues of Plato furnish their readers with excellent and lively examples of the work of passing from an obscure and vague notion to clearer and more distinct articulations of the nature and properties of a reality under discussion: justice, piety, knowledge itself, etc.  Often human definitions begin by being imperfect and accidental, as when someone might define justice as “that virtue by which elderly people do deeds for others.”  In general, elderly people might be more inclined to justice.  However, this is not a proper attribution which belongs only (i.e., “properly”) to justice. Therefore, as one grows in knowledge, one might refine such a definition and perhaps provide a definition that articulates some property or even proper cause of the reality thereby defined.  Thus, in accord with certain classical theories of justice, one can define justice in terms of “material causality (materia in quo)” as “the moral virtue inhering in the human will.”  Or, finally reaching an essential definition, one can define justice formally as “that virtue by which one readily renders to others what one owes them.” 

Although one can broadly speak about how such definitions are “true” insofar as they correctly articulate reality, nonetheless, strictly speaking, truth is articulated in the second kind of intellectual act: the formation of statements which we judge.  In categorical statements, we combine two simple terms together and assert that a given predicate belongs to a subject: acts contrary to justice require restitution; the duty of “filial piety” can never fully recognize what we owe to our parents and country, but should nevertheless be rendered to the degree that this is possible; the sacrament of baptism confers an indelible mark (a “character”) upon the soul.  In each of these judgments, we assert statements that we can judge to be either true or false.  The deposit of faith, considered in its objective content, is a deposit of truths expressed in the form of judgments. 

As is taught in theological accounts explaining the assent of intellect and will involved in supernatural faith, the judgments of faith elevate the terms that make up their subjects and predicates.  Therefore, when we profess, “The Word is a unique Person in the Triune Deity,” the notions Person and Word take on a supernatural meaning which is only knowable because of the assent of faith, given to a truth revealed by God and proposed by His Church.  For this reason, the philosophical and theological treatment of analogy are of great importance for understanding the nature of dogma.  Such analogy and “faith-analogy” or, as some have called it, “superanalogy,” is very important for adequately understanding the supernaturality of dogmatic truths, as well as the way that the “chiaroscuro” of faith calls for the apophatic mysticism for its full perfection.  Nonetheless, never will the mind leave behind such analogies or the dogmatic truths that use them.  Not even Christian mysticism, even in its most apophatic moments, can ever wholly leave behind the theological virtue of faith and its notional content concerning the revealed divine realities. As Cardinal Journet well summarizes:

Upon the path faith opens by means of concepts, love causes faith to go farther than concepts do… Upon the path faith opens by means of concepts: Upon this route and upon no other… The revealed statements of Scripture, of the Apostle’s Creed, of the Church’s infallible teaching, wherein are expressed the double original revealed fact, necessary for all times that men may draw near to God, namely the fact “that He exists and is the rewarder of those who seek Him” (Heb. 11:6)—these are the foundation upon which all the interior certitude of the mystics rests and without which they know their whole spiritual adventure would founder in illusion. (Journet, The Dark Knowledge of God, 77–8, translation lightly modified)

Finally, the human mind is discursive.  On the basis of multiple proposition-statements that we know, we draw further conclusions.  For example: the sacrament of baptism is an act conferring an indelible mark (a “character”) upon the soul; an act conferring an indelible mark cannot be repeated; therefore, the sacrament of baptism cannot be repeated.  The logic involved in the classical theory of syllogistics is addressed in detail in those branches of logic that came to be referred to as “formal” and “material” logic, developing—often in great detail—the accounts respectively found in Aristotle’s Prior Analytics and his Topics, Posterior Analytics, Rhetoric, Poetics, and Sophistical Refutations.  The acquisition of definitive and “demonstrative” human knowledge is often preceded by much argumentation based upon likenesses (“poetic logic”), rhetorical persuasion, and dialectical probability (“topical analysis”).  Therefore, the process of dogmatic development—especially during the period of “ferment” as the Church’s magisterium and faithful ponder possible new dogmatic declarations—will often involve all of these various logical forms.  And even if the human knowers pondering the truths of faith do not openly and explicitly reflect on the logical structure of their thought, nonetheless, this structure is present as a kind of relational framework that structures their discourse.

However, what is most important regarding the logical form involved in infallible dogmatic declarations will be the logic of demonstration.  According to the developed vocabulary of later Latin Scholasticism, one distinguishes between (1) demonstration properly so called, when a new truth is deduced from two premises and (2) demonstration improperly so called.  The latter sort of “improper syllogism” can be either (a) an expository syllogism, which is in no way inferential and solely enables the mind to furnish an example based upon previously achieved knowledge, or (b) an explanatory or explicative syllogism which enables the human mind to infer a conclusion that is inferential but only in a way that merely explicates the notions pre-contained in the premises of such argumentation.

Implicit, Explicit, Virtual

As a final clarification of philosophical terminology, the terms implicit, explicit, and virtual will be used in this article in a very specific sense. In Latin Catholic philosophy and theology, these terms have been subject to no small development and variability.  For this reason, when one is reading a given author, especially from the Latin Middle Ages onward, one must take great care to understand the potential ambiguity and nuances involved in how the author uses these terms.  For the purposes of this article, the following delimited senses will be given to these terms.

As will be discussed below in a very important theological principle (concerning implicit and explicit faith), the terms “implicit” and “explicit” are used to describe how one truth contains another.  The general sense of the two terms can be seen in the etymology of the terms themselves.  Both words share the Latin root plicare, meaning “to fold.”  A truth that is “explicated” is “unfolded,” implying that in some way (still to be specified) the truth in question was contained in a “folded up,” implied or implicated, way in some other truth.  Even at the level of etymology, the term explication shares similarities with another term occasionally used, though with some ambiguity, for the development of dogmas: evolution (“to be unrolled”).

For the purposes of this article, a very specific meaning will be attached to this relationship between “implicit” truths and those which express such truths more “explicitly.”  In short, it will be presumed that the term “explicit” (and its related verbal form “explication”) refer to a truth that re-expresses another one in a clearer and more distinct fashion (by further explication of the subject and predicate of the truth in question), though without fundamentally changing the truth in itself.  Thus, one truth is implicit in another, explicit truth, and one can then “explicate” this and make the implicit truth itself explicit.  However, such development involves formally the same truth in itself (quoad se), though in a more explicit form of expression (quoad nos).  That is, the newly articulated truth is objectively conformed to one and the same understood reality, even though the means for expressing one’s understanding have been rendered more explicit.  For example, one may restate the fundamental truth, “The Word became flesh,” as “The Word, who is eternally from the Father, assumed a complete human nature.”  The latter truth does involve novelty and clarity in our understanding.  But, the more explicit statement does not involve novelty in the truth known through the statement itself. 

Such implicit containment of one truth in another will be distinguished from saying that one truth is virtually contained in another truth.  For the purposes of this article, such “virtuality” will refer solely to those truths which are inferred from other truths but which explain, formally or objectively speaking, a different truth from what is found in either premise taken by itself.  For example: Christ is a single hypostasis; the relationship between hypostasis and existence is such that a single hypostasis can only have one act of existence; therefore, Christ has only one divine act of existence.  This is a simplified form of one of the main arguments used by most Thomists for the unity of existence in Christ.  The conclusion in question spells out a truth that requires a true inference to a new truth, viewed only in light of the discourse which passes through the two premises to the conclusion. In such cases, the conclusion is contained in the premises, but since it involves a new truth, not contained in either of the premises taken by themselves, such a truth is said to be in the premises not formally but only, as it were, within their “power” or “virtuality.”  This is somewhat like, mutatis mutandis, how one says that God is formally Good, True, and Intelligent, even though He only virtually has those perfections which belong to merely material realities such as plants, mammals, etc.  Hence, one will say that they are virtually contained.  At least some conclusions in theological reasoning are of this character and are, therefore, said to be “virtually revealed.” 

The work of distinguishing between a mere explication and a truth that is only “virtually” contained in two premises is often quite difficult.  Especially in questions related to revealed truth, such a discrimination can take centuries.  As a generally workable rule, theological truths that are virtually revealed in this restricted sense are the fruit of a premise drawn from faith and a premise drawn from natural reason (though illuminated by faith) so as to draw the final, virtually revealed conclusion. 

Concerning the kinds of inference involved in dogmatic development, several additional observations will be made in the section below dedicated to the causes of dogmatic development.

Theological Principles

Supernatural Revelation

The Church definitively teaches, as a divinely reveled truth, that the human intellect, even in its fallen state, is capable of knowing God by its own rational powers (Vatican I, Dei filius, ch. 2 and canon 2.1; Vatican II, Dei verbum, no. 6).  Nonetheless, due to the limitations of human finitude and the effects of the Fall, such truths are only arrived at with great difficulty.  And so, for this reason, God has revealed to man, from the very start and in all the various regimes of grace (the “law of nature,” the time of the Old Law, and in the definitive age of Christ and His Church), His existence and providential designs.  Such revelation included many truths about the nature of the created order, the human person, and even about God Himself which could, by rights, be discovered by reason’s own unaided powers, at least by some people, after much intellectual labor.  However, most essentially, revelation is not merely a supernaturally bestowed manifestation of natural truths (something Latin theology classically called “modally supernatural”).  Most essentially, such divine revelation is the manifestation of the truths that are, in their essence, supernatural: the life of the One God who is Triune and the supernatural designs by which He providentially creates, redeems, and glorifies the rational beings that come forth from Him, as well as the whole of creation, which is in some way mysteriously implicated in the drama of redemption and glorification.

In short, such revelation manifests the truth of the Triune God who saves mankind by mystically incorporating all the redeemed into the body of the Church, through union in supernatural knowledge and love.  Because the Church jealously guards this pearl of great price (Mt. 13:45–46), she asserts the subjective and objective supernaturality of such revelation as something that is definitively taught as a matter of divine faith:

The perpetual common belief of the Catholic Church has held and holds also this: there is a twofold order of knowledge, distinct not only in its [subjective] principle but also in its object: in its principle, because in the one we know by natural reason, in the other by divine faith; in its object, because apart from what natural reason can attain there are proposed to our belief mysteries that are hidden in God that can never be known unless they are revealed by God…

But, [human reason] never becomes capable of understanding them [i.e., the mysteries] in the way it does truths that constitute its proper object.  For divine mysteries by their very nature so exceed the created intellect that, even when they have been communicated in revelation and received by faith, they remain covered by the veil of faith itself and shrouded, as it were, in darkness as long as in this mortal life, as is said in 2 Cor. 5:6:“We are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight.” (Vatican I, Dei filius, nos. 3015–3016; see can. 2.3, Denzinger, no. 3028; can. 4.1, Denzinger, no. 3041)

This revelation finds its definitive form first and foremost in Christ Himself, who is the full revelation of the Triune God: “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world” (Heb. 1:1–2); “The life was made manifest, and we saw it, and testify to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us” (1 Jn. 1:2); “Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father… Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me” (Jn. 14:9–11; see Vatican II, Dei verbum, nos. 2–6). However, because the Church, who is Christ’s mystical body, does not experience here below the wholly simple vision of God that will be her definitive beatitude, the knowledge that she has concerning these supernatural mysteries is attained as a body of truths, contained both as a teaching and as the objective content of supernaturally revealed practices (e.g., elements of sacramental praxis) handed down from the apostolic Church to our day.  Therefore, although the full Catholic notion of revelation cannot be reduced to a deposit of “Catholic truths” that would be held as a kind of disaggregate bundle of propositions, nonetheless, the dual mystery of the Triune God and His Providence culminating in the Redemptive Incarnation—the two, central “prima credibilia”, the first truths to be believed—is manifested in the form of truths that are at once known and vitally important for the moral and spiritual life of those who are being gathered together into a single, mystical body in Christ (see 1 Cor. 12). In other words: supernatural revelation is propositional precisely because, in our current pilgrim or wayfaring state, we only know and act as Christians in light of the manifold objective refractions of the One Truth of the Triune God Who communicates Himself to us in and through Christ.  These “manifold objective refractions” are the many dogmas which have been revealed by God and which are taught by the Church.  In a way that bears a likeness to the Incarnation itself, God has chosen to “incarnate” dogmatic truths in fixed propositions, so as to express, in the form of many revealed truths, a message which, when it will be known in the Beatific Vision, will be one in the pure simplicity of the Glory of the Triune God.  These propositions are the means by which the believer comes to know the mystery of God who thereby reveals himself: the act of the believer does not terminate in the proposition but, rather, in the reality grasped therein (see Thomas Aquinas, ST II-II, q. 1. a. 2, ad 2).

Mystery, Dogma, Doctrine

The notion of supernatural revelation already provides us with the necessary preamble for understanding the notion of mystery involved in dogmatic declarations.  When it is said that dogmas enunciate revealed “mysteries,” this latter term does not refer primarily and essentially to natural mysteries (including even the natural mystery involved in our rationally attainable knowledge of God as First, Uncreated Cause) but, rather, to intrinsically supernatural mysteries that manifest to us the Triune God and His supernatural designs to recapitulate all things in Christ (Eph. 1:10).  Unless otherwise specified, this will be the sense of mystery presupposed in relation to questions of dogmatic development.  Although some revealed truths are, in themselves, natural (e.g., moral truths, metaphysically attainable truths concerning God’s existence and nature, etc.), nonetheless, they have been revealed by God in relation to the central supernatural mysteries of the Trinity and the Redemptive Incarnation.

Secondly, it is helpful to draw a distinction between doctrine in the broad sense and dogma in the strict sense.  For the purposes of this article the term “doctrine” will be used to refer to any teaching by the Church, whether part of the revealed deposit or some sort of addition thereto.  The term “dogma” will be retained strictly speaking for classifying those truths which make up part of the revealed deposit, which does not over the course of time develop in itself (quoad se) but only from the perspective of how we know it (quoad nos). 

To understand this distinction, it is useful to summarize the different kinds of assent that can exist in relation to the Church’s teaching.  In line with the terminology promulgated by the then-Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith in 1998, we can identify the following:

1. Truths held on Divine Faith as Divinely Revealed (De fide credenda), “dogma” in the specific sense used in this article: Assented to by the theological virtue of faith, “these doctrines are contained in the word of God, written or handed down, and defined with a solemn judgement as divinely revealed truths either by the Roman Pontiff when he speaks ‘ex cathedra,’ or by the College of Bishops gathered in council, or infallibly proposed for belief by the ordinary and universal Magisterium” (CDF, Doctrinal Commentary on the Concluding Formula of the Professio fidei, no. 5).  These truths are believed “as being divinely revealed” (ibid., no. 9) and are affirmed “directly on faith in the authority of the word of God” (ibid. no. 8).

2. Truths held definitively (De fide tenenda), “doctrine” in a more specific sense as distinct from dogma: these truths are held definitively, with an assent “based on faith in the Holy Spirit’s assistance to the Magisterium and on the Catholic doctrine of the infallibility of the Magisterium” (ibid. no. 8).  Following upon controversies against the Jansenists, Latin theology came to call such assent fides ecclesiastica, so as to emphasize the foundation upon the Church’s own infallibility.  Although this latter terminology has fallen into disuse, the basic definition of truths De fide tenenda remains effectively the same as the older definitions of this secondary genus of objects falling under infallibility: “all those teachings belonging to the dogmatic or moral area, which are necessary for faithfully keeping and expounding the deposit of faith, even if they have not been proposed by the Magisterium of the Church as formally revealed” (ibid. no. 6).

To cite but one example, many definitive teachings concerning bioethical matters fall within this domain of truths.  However, with the passage of time, some truths that are definitively taught as De fide tenenda can be magisterially discerned as belonging to the deposit of faith and, hence, to be held as truths De fide credenda.  The range of truths belonging to this category of definitive teaching is broad, including both those which have logical connection to the deposit of faith, as well as truths having only some kind of historical connection (ibid., no. 7).

As we will see, the distinction between truths De fide credenda and those which are De fide tenenda will play a central role in an important theological dispute regarding the extent of those truths which can be considered legitimate developments of the dogmatic deposit.

3. Religious assent (“religious submission of will and intellect”): truths receiving such assent can also can be considered “doctrines” in the sense used in this article: Finally, there are “those teachings—on faith and morals —presented as true with great sureness, even if they have not been defined with a solemn judgement or proposed as definitive by the ordinary and universal Magisterium” (ibid., no. 10).  Although not definitively taught, such truths are to be received with the greatest of docility. Over the course of her discernment, the Church may declare that truths at first judged to belong to this category of teachings deserve to be declared in a definitive manner, whether as truths De fide credenda or De fide tenenda.

As will be clear below, many cases of dogmatic development involve a gradual process by which the magisterium discerns, with increasing rigor, the definitive character of the truth in question.

Finally, it will be noted that dogmas express the revealed mysteries.  That is, “dogmas are related to revealed mysteries as assertions are related to the reality that is asserted” (Garrigou-Lagrange, On Divine Revelation, 337).  Therefore, the notion of dogma implies the teaching activity of the Church as sine qua non condition for the objective proposing of the truths of faith.  This means that one and the same mystery can give rise to many dogmas.  Thus, the mystery-reality of the Hypostatic Union has given rise to various dogmatic-truth declarations regarding Christ’s single hypostasis (or, person), His duality of natures, etc.  Moreover, these dogmas themselves are subject to development in the way that will be discussed below, thus giving rise to many dogmatic statements.

The topics discussed in this particular section involve many further nuances, and the terminology in use over the course of the Church’s history has been subject to no small variation.  For the purposes of this article, “dogma” will be used in the restricted sense for those truths declared (whether extraordinarily or ordinarily) concerning revealed mysteries belonging to the deposit of faith, whereas “doctrine” will refer (a) broadly and generically to all Church teachings, including dogmas, but (b) primarily and specifically to those teachings which do not belong to the deposit of faith but are only proposed for belief either as matters De fide tenenda or held on religious assent.  For further discussion of these topics, see articles dedicated specifically to magisterium, theological censures, theological sources (De locis theologicis), dogma, the theological virtue of faith, ecclesiastical faith, and religious assent.

Implicit and Explicit Faith

In the history of theology, the notions of “implicit” and “explicit” faith have played an important role for understanding the development of dogma.  However, depending upon the era under consideration, as well as the particular context of usage, the terminology is subject to various meanings.  At least four senses of implication and explication can be distinguished.

In a first, very broad sense, the terms implicit and explicit refer to the way that explicit belief in truths of the faith are implied in those who have a desire for baptism without, however, having received sufficient proclamation of the faith (the case of “the righteous on the outside”) for explicit faith in the bare minimum of credibilia necessary in the current age of salvation history.  Secondly, there is the way that, during earlier stages of revelation, the truths of faith to be fully revealed are implied in earlier, simpler revealed truths.  In this case, explication involves the revealing of new truths, a topic to be discussed below in the sub-section dedicated to the “development of revelation.”  In a third sense, which is most important for the case of dogmatic development, the Church can explicate truths which are contained within the deposit of faith, doing so without adding to the truth in itself but only unfolding the meaning of the original datum with greater clarity and explicitness.  Finally, in a fourth sense, one can speak of the way that the faithful can hold various developed truths implicitly in other central, explicitly believed truths.  Thus, in the affirmation of the divine personhood of Christ in two natures, some believers may only implicitly hold the dogmas relative to the duality of intellects, wills, and actions in Christ.  However, they are ready to receive whatever the Church teaches and, therefore, hold the further explicated truths in an “implicated” way.  Protestant polemicists derisively referred to such faith as fides carbonaria, “a coal-miner’s faith,” meaning that it was an ignorant faith that cared little about the revealed truths.  However, the Church, for her part, sees in this fourth notion of implicit faith the kind of saving faith that Protestants (and Orthodox, who indeed hold many more explicit truths of faith than do Protestant believers) can have, despite the deficiencies of their teaching regarding later, explicated dogmatic notions.

Tradition, tradition, and traditions

Similarly, it is necessary to specify the various senses of the term “tradition,” which shares many of the ambiguities involved with similar uses of Greek cognate παραδίδωμι in Sacred Scripture when the latter is used for indicating the notion of “handing on” a truth or teaching (see Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament, vol. 3, 17–18).  The details of the theological meaning and dogmatic development of the term “tradition” will be treated in a separate article in the Encyclopedia of Catholic Theology.  In view of the question of dogmatic development, three important senses of tradition must be disambiguated (see Journet, Le message révélé, sa transmission, son développement ses dépendances, 21–52; see Congar, Tradition and Traditions and The Meaning of Tradition).

The first sense of Tradition is what one might call “vertical.”  The primordial sense of such “tradition” is found in the fact that all that the Son has is from the Father, including the truth that He reveals in His person and in His message:

I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes;  yea, Father, for such was thy gracious will.  All things have been delivered [παρεδόθη] to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. (Mt. 11:25–27)

By way of the prophetic light of revelation given during the Apostolic era, this divine message was also “handed on” to those who received this divine message from Christ and the Holy Spirit (an immediately divine teaching, under the light of divine revelation).  Likewise, the immediate apostolic magisterium handed on this message to the Church in inspired form, whether in written form or in the unwritten form of practices, teachings, etc., that were guaranteed by a particular charism of inspiration.  Thus, one could consider, globally, the “rule of doctrine” and praxis, as a whole passed on to the Churches (see Rom. 6:17, 1 Cor. 11:23, 1: Cor. 15:3; and Jude 3).

A second sense of tradition, within the first broader sense of the term, would indicate the preaching and practice that is specifically non-written.  In this sense, the Catholic Church has come to speak of “Tradition” alongside Scripture as a deposit of revealed truths that are unwritten.  In older terminology one would refer to tradition in this sense as either a fons revelationis, a “source of revelation,” or (from the perspective of theological methodology) as a locus continens, a theological source that contains revealed truths (rather than those that manifest these truths, as the case for the Papal and Conciliar Magisterium, Fathers, etc.).  Following upon the 20th century debates concerning the works of Josef Geiselmann and others, the relationship between the content of Scripture and Tradition remains a contested theological topic, with some partisans holding that all truth is in some way materially contained within Scripture and others holding that Tradition in this second sense refers in particular to those truths which, at least in part, constitute a separate deposit of revealed data which cannot be found in Scripture. These topics will be discussed in other articles in the ECT.  In relation to the topic of dogmatic development, it is most important to recognize that the Church teaches that Tradition in this sense is closed and, in some way, constitutes a body of truths that are a deposit to be handed on and explained without addition.

Finally, there is a third broad sense of “tradition” indicating the continued teaching of the Church, manifesting or declaring the deposit of faith.  This activity of handing on the revealed data concerning the Triune God and the Economy of Salvation does not add to the deposit but explicates this deposit or spells out some further truth or practice in light of the immutable deposit itself.  Therefore, this activity includes definitive and non-definitive teaching in the senses mentioned above.  However, it also involves the non-dogmatic and non-doctrinal cultural elements of ecclesiastical practices that are particularly mutable.  And it includes the way that the message of the Gospel illuminates, from above, even temporal, cultural realities within their own particular domain, as is especially clear in the case of the Church’s social teaching.  The activity of such tradition, “handing on” the truths of the faith, includes, as an integral part, the declaration of dogmatic developments.

Various Types of Development

In order to avoid ambiguity and focus specifically on the development of dogma, it is also necessary to distinguish a number of different senses of development.

Development in Human Sciences.  In the human sciences development takes place primarily and essentially through the labors of our natural intellectual capabilities.  (Secondarily, but importantly, the light of faith can also play a role illuminating human reason in the latter’s own domain.  Such influence is particularly evident in those who philosophize within the Church, although faith can play a more or less proximate, albeit extrinsic, role in other disciplines as well.) Advancement in such knowledge sometimes involves revolutionary changes, as has taken place, for example, on multiple occasions within the physical and social sciences, and even within mathematics.  Throughout the course of the centuries, such human knowledge grows objectively with the progress of culture, as humans come to know, understand, and explain new truths, in new ways.  Although all truly established scientific disciplines will include truths that are definitively acquired as first principles, those bodies of inquiry which most aim at wisdom concerning the first principles of the speculative and moral orders—e.g., natural philosophy, metaphysics, and moral philosophy—will be particularly marked by an appreciation for knowing and expositing, above all, these main principles within their particular order of knowledge.  For this reason, philosophy (at least, as it is broadly, and correctly, conceived of by the Church) will—without neglecting the demonstration of new truths—focus above all on achieving an ever-new appreciation of first principles.  That is, their particular kind of progress will be marked by focus placed upon many of the same truths which, nonetheless, over the course of the ages can be appreciated in new ways.

Development of Revelation. Bearing in mind what was said above concerning “implicit faith,” there is a discernible development within the revealed message itself.  From the earliest monotheism of that portion of mankind with which God sought to form a covenant to renew all things after the Fall, up until the full revelation of the Trinity in Christ, there took place an ongoing development of awareness of the many implications of the two great credibilia, namely that the supernatural, Triune God exists, and that He is engaged in a supernatural order of redemption. A cursory reading of the Old Testament bears witness to the gradual growth of awareness experienced by the people of Israel, whether one considers the growing explicitness regarding the immortality of the soul, the true meaning of the beneficence and mercy of God, the prophesying of the Suffering Servant, the salvific universality of the calling of Israel, and so forth.  Then, in Christ, the monotheism of Israel is revealed as being a Triune monotheism; the loving entreaties of the God spoken of in the prophets are manifested in the Kenosis of the Word; the gathering of Israel is at last manifested in its full reality, namely, the Church, the mystical body of Christ.  And within the New Testament itself, we see testimony to continued development of the Evangelical message, up to the death of the last Apostle.

In addition to new knowledge of older truths, such development involves the revelation of new truths.  Ultimately, according to a general scholastic theological consensus based upon solid Patristic foundations, such new truths are in some way reducible to the two great credibilia, for all revealed truths manifest either God Himself or some aspect of His providential designs leading to, and flowing from, the Redemptive Incarnation.  Therefore, as was discussed above in the section concerned with the principles related to implicit faith and explicit faith, one is justified in saying that those who lived prior to the time of Christ had the same faith as we do today, although we have a more explicit knowledge of a number of new truths that are connected to the two central credibilia: the supernatural God exists; and He is supernaturally provident.  This novelty of revealed truths indicates an important point of difference between the development of revelation and the development of dogma.

Development of Dogma. The development of dogma begins once the deposit of revelation has been fully constituted.  Although it is arguable that such development took place during the Apostolic Era, such dogmatic development would have been marked by the unique graces of the Apostolic Era and the establishment of the fully constituted body of truths that make up the revealed deposit in its final and definitively closed form.  For that reason, this article will only consider the nature of post-apostolic dogmatic development.

In contrast to the development of revelation, the development of dogmas must in some way retain objective continuity with the revealed truths themselves.  Therefore, in themselves (“quoad se”) no new truths would be defined, although from the perspective of human knowers in the midst of history (“quoad nos”) the constituted truths of revelation would be known in a new and more explicit way.  Thus, during the early centuries of the Church’s history, the revealed data concerning Christ would come to be explicated by means of the notion of “consubstantial” or ὁμοούσιος; during the Middle Ages, the revealed truths concerning the ultimate state of the blessed were further specified when the Church more explicitly decreed that, even prior to the general resurrection, the blessed experience the beatific vision; and at the Council of Trent, many dogmas received detailed explication in response to the challenges raised by early Protestants.  

Development of Theology.  Although we can speak of the “theology of Paul” or the “theology of Luke,” or even the “theology” that is mystical experience, nonetheless, in the later Latin tradition, the term “theology” came to be used primarily to designate the faith-illuminated human labor to achieve some understanding of the faith, especially by understanding the profound meaning and interconnection of the revealed mysteries, though also by continued interaction with the intellectual culture of the various ages of human existence.  In order to differentiate this latter sense of “theology” from the “theology” of a given sacred author or of a mystic saint—we will use the term “theology” here to indicate, somewhat generically, all discursive attempts by Christians to exposit the revealed truths, their interconnections, and their various rational implications.

Such theology is at once rooted in faith yet is also the labor of human minds.  For this reason, it stands at a level “below” the revealed truths, which will always be a kind of measure and pregiven datum, a “given” to be received with the greatest of docility.  The theologian undertakes two kinds of tasks.  The most important such task is reflection upon the revealed data themselves, explaining their profound meaning and, in this way, also providing a ready instrument for the Magisterium in the development of dogma itself.  Another aspect of this first task of unfolding the data of faith from within is the work of showing the interconnection of the mysteries themselves, illuminating one revealed truth by another (see Vatican I, Dei filius, ch. 4).

The second kind of task performed by theology is to elaborate the connections that exist between the truths of faith and other truths and insights drawn from purely human disciplines.  As we will see below, depending on how one understands the relationship between these two kinds of theological tasks, different theories of dogmatic development will be formulated.  However, no matter how one explains the nature of discursive theological reflection, its various tasks remain forms of ecclesial service (see CDF, Donum Veritatis).

The development of theology will be marked by many different schools and approaches.  In the genera of theological tasks, the authority of theological argumentation itself will play an important role in the development of theological truths.  Moreover, as some theologians have held, the truths reached by the second sort of argumentation mentioned above (in more immediate connection with the data of science and culture) will be particularly marked by a development that is uniquely human, involving the articulation not only of new ways of understanding the revealed data but, also, new truths rationally deduced in the light of faith.

Affective vs. Logical Development.  In this article, our primary focus is on the official and express kind of development that dogmas can undergo.  However, it is important to remember that both dogmas and tradition itself are not free-floating propositions, independent of the human agents who receive and hand on the deposit and its connected truths.  As the Church officially teaches both doctrines and dogma, the faithful live in accord with these truths.  Under the influence of the theological virtues, perfected by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, Christians know the mysteries of faith and live in accord with them.  Through this divine action, there is, within the personal lives of the faithful themselves, a true development from implicit to explicit faith, especially as expressed amid the moral and spiritual life, though always with some presupposition of repercussions on faith itself.  It is here that we encounter the sensus fidelium—both as individual and collective, involving true adherence to revealed truth by the baptized directed by the Church’s authority—which plays an important role in the life of faith in the Church, both as a preparation for, and a crosscheck of, legitimate development.  Such development can be called “affective” insofar as one thereby concentrates primarily on the important role played by the will in all of the theological virtues, as well as the gifts of the Holy Spirit and in the exercise of Christian virtue flowing therefrom.  The hierarchical Church, by divine mandate and office, must faithfully discern such “affective development,” which therefore plays a subordinate role in the official and definitive development of dogmas.  Nevertheless, such development represents an important, and indeed essential, aspect of the life of dogma in the Church (see Journet, 87–98; Meszaros, The Prophetic Church; Healy; and also some elements of the discussion in Walgrave, 278–347).

II. The Essence of Dogmatic Development

Nominal and Real Definitions of Dogmatic Development

Nominally, the notion of dogmatic development is already hinted at in certain terms that have been used for it in English, such as explication, evolution, development, and progress. (Theological discussions of this topic in other Indo-European languages have used cognate terms as well.)  Each such term hints at a general aspect of such development.  The first three terms all share the idea of the “unfolding” or “unrolling” of something that is pre-contained in the reality in question.  This was already discussed above for the case of explication.  The term “development” (like the German Entwicklung) has similar implications as “explication,” although the term “development” sometimes connotes the working of an internal principle of growth.  This sort of internal vitality is even more pronounced in the term “evolution,” which, in addition to its original etymological meaning (“to unroll”), has taken on implications from the phenomenon of biological evolution and the vitality implied by such a historical, organic process.  And finally, the notion of “progress,” applied to the development of dogmas, indicates something of this sort of active development, as though the truth in question is “forward-walking” (in Latin, pro-gradi).  Thus, nominally, dogmatic development would seem to be a kind of living process by which what is already contained within revealed truths is unfolded.

More strictly speaking, we could define dogmatic development as the successive and infallible proposal and explication of revealed truths.  Or, in order to put this definition into stricter and clearer form, we could say that the genus is the proposal and explication of truths, with the specific difference being taken from the fact that such truths are revealed and that the proposal is successive and infallible.  In order to understand the definition in full, each part should be considered.

A proposal and explication of truths.  In its genus, dogmatic development is a process that takes place by way of some kind of statement of truth. This presumes that there is some stating party and that the particular mode of statement is to render a given truth more explicit.  Such explication can take place by way of clearer definitions as well by as some kind of explanation of the further implications of the truth in question.  As we will see below, at the level of official teaching, the Church allows for latitude regarding various theories of implication.

A successive proposal and explication.  The definitional-difference “successive” indicates that the proposal and explication in question is not merely the explanation of a static datum given once and for all without any further unfolding or reexplanation.  Rather, this proposal takes place over the course of history, as an essential and central activity of the handing on of the truths of faith.  In other words, this successive process of proposal and explication is an important element in the overall activity of “tradition” in the third sense discussed above.

Of revealed truths.  The kind of truths that are proposed and explicated are not, however, primarily natural truths.  Instead, they are truths that have been revealed, either as supernatural mysteries, or as other truths necessarily connected with those supernatural mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation.  For this reason, therefore, the proposal and explication in question takes place in some way under the light of supernatural faith and cannot be interpreted without such faith.  Moreover, because such truths are received as a kind of “datum” or “given,” the process of proposal and explication will in some way bear witness to the fact that human reasoning, illuminated by faith, is uniquely subservient to the original “given” which it never completely has under its grasp.

This also indicates that the specific domain of truths in question here are those truths which belong to the deposit that has come to a close with the death of the last-living Apostle.  What are being proposed and explained are not primarily new truths connected to revelation but, rather, the more explicit meaning of truths that have been revealed.  Thus, the domain of concern is that of truths that are De fide credendum, as discussed earlier in the theological principles.  The relationship between such truths and those that are held only as secondary matters De fide tenendum is partially a question still open to theological debate.  However, the Church does designate that there are some truths which are definitively taught while being, by rights, not revealed.  In the question concerning dogmatic development, strictly so-called, this latter domain of truths does not represent the matter of dogmatic development.  Only those supernatural truths that are immediately revealed, at least implicitly in some way, are explicated by this kind of development.

Proposed in an infallible way. The proposal of such truths does not fall under the authority of theological reasoning.  Rather, it is an effect of the infallibility of faith in believing and, especially, the exercised infallibility of the magisterium in teaching, not on its own authority but, rather, in the name of God, who is the formal motive for belief in those truths which are held as matters falling under the primary domain of the Church’s infallibility (veritates de fide credendum).  Whatever role is played by theological reasoning in preparation for the definitive declaration of a dogmatic truth, the infallible proposal of the truths of faith is effected by the Teaching Church and is received, as a truth revealed by God, by the Believing Church hearing the message of God, taught by the Infallible Magisterium.

All of this is well summarized in the closing words of the First Vatican Council’s constitution Dei filius, which declares:

For the doctrine of faith that God has revealed has not been proposed like a philosophical system to be perfected by human ingenuity; rather it has been committed to the spouse of Christ as a divine trust to be faithfully kept and infallibly declared.  Hence also, that meaning of the sacred dogma is perpetually to be retained which our Holy Mother Church has once declared, and there must never be a deviation from that meaning on the specious ground and title of a more profound understanding.  [In the words of St. Vincent of Lérins:] “Therefore, let there be growth and abundant progress in understanding, knowledge, and wisdom, in each and in all, in individuals, and in the whole church, at all times, and in the progress of ages, but only within the proper limits, i.e., within the same dogma, the same meaning, and the same judgment. (Vatican I, Dei filius, ch. 4, Denzinger, no. 3020)

Further Explanation of this Definition

In light of the principles already laid out, much of the explanation of this definition follows rather easily. As we have already noted, the activity of dogmatic and doctrinal development represents an important aspect of active tradition, the handing on of the truth of the faith, from generation to generation, in a way that is living: conservative, yet ever-new.  Dogmatic development, strictly so-called is the explication of revelation itself. This kind of explication can take place by the growth in holiness and spirituality that visits the Church in every age. However, in this article, we are primarily concerned with the development that takes place by way of teaching, and hence, in a way that can be articulated through human reasoning.

It is clear that over the course of the Church’s history, the number of articles of the creed as well as the dogmatic statements themselves grew, even while the realities revealed as mysteries remained the same in number (Newman, Roman Writings, prop. 1).  And what is more, this development was not merely concerned with minor or secondary details regarding the revealed mysteries (Newman, Roman Writings, prop. 2).  In the early Church, there were many new dogmatic statements expressed concerning the mysteries of the Hypostatic Union, the distinction and union of persons in the Trinity, the Mother of God, Original Sin, grace, etc. The Latin Middle Ages and Reformation would see continued growth regarding the nature of the Eucharist, merit and redemption, the Sacraments, the Church, etc.  And the modern period would continue to experience growth in matters such as the Papacy, the relationship between faith and reason, etc.  All of these touch on matters of central importance, and many of these topics elicited multiple dogmatic statements, intrinsically developing these particular dogmas in new ways that remained, nonetheless, in continuity with earlier Church teaching. 

Moreover, history itself bears witness to the fact that as this process unfolded, the passage from some implicit state of truth to an explicit, new dogma appeared in the eyes of some to be a kind of novelty (Newman, Roman Writings, prop. 5).  Sometimes such a novelty aroused counter reactions at the time of the declaration itself, leading to schism, as took place in the Monophysite (or Miaphysite) and Nestorian churches or in those who followed Döllinger into heresy and schism following the First Vatican Council.  Even prior to the declaration itself, on many points of doctrine, there was no small amount of uncertainty experienced by holy doctors (Newman, Roman Writings, props. 6 and 7).  However, although such authors may have indeed theologized incorrectly, it often remains possible for one to piously interpret such authors from the past, in light of what they explicitly believed (Newman, Roman Writings, prop. 9).  Indeed, it is often the case that the very process of expressing a dogmatic definition is needed in order to rouse the minds of the faithful into a state of sufficient and attentive contemplation of a given truth (Newman, Roman Writings, prop. 8).  However, upon definition, ambiguities which might have been permissible in an earlier age are no longer acceptable (Newman, Roman Writings, prop. 10).  This final point is communicated well in an image taken from Msgr. Louis Duchesne, who despite himself being caught up in the heat of the modernist crisis, here observes an important truth regarding the passage of time and the necessity for more explicit faith by believers in later ages:

The waterline rises along the hull. In other words, it sinks into the sea. A gash above the waterline at the start of the trip would not allow water to flood this ship. Now, however, it would be underwater and would sink it; and the ship would be endangered by damage that, at the beginning of its voyage, would have been inconsequential. . . . Through its long voyage, the vessel of tradition has penetrated more deeply into the ocean depths; the submerged surface of the hull has become larger than at the start, although this is always the same doctrine, always the same ship. In the second or third centuries, it could be struck, with impunity, in certain places which are now under water and must be respected for fear of jeopardizing everything. (cited in Garrigou-Lagrange, Thomistic Common Sense, 298–9)

This last point, however, raises a very important question, namely: what is the exact relationship between the Church’s declaration of a new dogma and prior theological speculation?  To see the point, one might consider the case of those who did or did not, prior to the Church’s official definition, hold that the Mother of God was immaculately conceived.  At first glance, it seems simple enough to say: prior to the declaration, this truth is not de fide credendum; however, after such declaration this truth becomes elevated to this higher level of assent.  In fact, this is how many authors would write, even into the Baroque period of scholasticism, and at times today.

However, in relation to this point, it is necessary for a theologian to consider the particular nature of the conclusions drawn within theological discourse or “theological science.”  Especially from the 13th century onward, the Latin West developed a general methodological vocabulary that applied the Aristotelian notion of science (ἐπιστήμη, episteme) to theology understood as a kind of “faith seeking understanding.”  According to such an understanding of scientific logic, one distinguishes between those truths which function as first principles of a discourse and those which are deduced from those principles.  In the case of theological science, the truths of faith function as the pre-given first principles.  As a number of scholastic authors argue, including the Thomists, although such truths of faith lack “immediate evidence” (due to the fact that they are held through supernatural faith), nonetheless, through their foundation upon the supernatural veracity of God who reveals, they provide sufficient certainty for one to draw conclusions with certitude sufficient for theological science to be a science properly speaking, even if its state of exercise is marked by deficiencies caused by our state as wayfarers who know by faith and not by sight. (Such application of the Aristotelian notion of ἐπιστήμη to theological reasoning can also be found in the later Byzantine East, though this is a question for a more specific article.  On this, see Kappes.)

The general consensus of those who commented on the Posterior Analytics (the Aristotelian logical work dedicated to scientific-demonstrative logic) has been that truths that are drawn as properly scientific conclusions enunciate new truths in their conclusions, drawn in light of the premises.  This is why, applied to the question of Theology, later Baroque theology came to refer to the conclusions drawn from a “premise of reason” and a “premise of faith” as being “virtually” revealed, in the sense of virtuality discussed above in the section dedicated to philosophical principles.  There was a marked tendency within later Latin scholasticism to speak as though theology only was concerned with these kinds of conclusions, at least for what would be termed “scientific theology” strictly so called.  However, not all thinkers fell into this foreshortened notion of theological labors (see Minerd, “Wisdom be Attentive”).

As applied to the question of dogmatic development, this terminology leads one to ask: can such conclusions be defined as explications of truths belonging to the revealed deposit?  In the terminology that is used today in the Church, this would be akin to asking, “Can truths De fide tenendum be defined as De fide credendum?”  As we saw above, in a schematic way, there are some truths that can be so defined. But the question remains: how do we understand the particular boundaries between these two sorts of truths?

Some Baroque scholastic authors, following the work of Francisco Suárez (although in line, also, with developments that had been long under way for several centuries), made a stark distinction between those truths which are held on divine faith and those which are “theological conclusions.”  However, not all later scholastics followed Suarez in holding that the Church could, herself, impart a kind of completion to revelation by proposing even “virtually revealed” conclusions as matters to be held by faith, thus—to use the more current terminology—elevating a truth de fide tenendum to the domain of those truths which are de fide credendum.  If pushed to its logical extreme, this position would mean that the development of dogma involves an expansion of the truths contained in the revealed deposit.  For this reason, Suarez himself found it necessary to minimize such consequences of his particular theory.

During the intervening period, various theories accounted for doctrinal development.  Gradually, in the wake of the speculations of Juan de Lugo and others, as well as in the practical context of the Jansenist controversy, the notion of “ecclesiastical faith” (fides ecclesiastica) was developed as a kind of assent given to secondary truths that are taught infallibly. As noted above in the theological principles section, this notion of ecclesiastical faith served as the foundation for the current language used to describe truths De fide tenendum.  The First Vatican Council had intended to make a declaration concerning this particular degree of infallibility but did not make it part of its official declarations (see Gasser and O’Connor, The Gift of Infallibility, 128ff; also, Washburn).

During the first half of the 20th century, in the wake of the First Vatican Council and the modernist crisis, many of these topics came to be discussed once again with significant vigor.  A number of authors, from a generally scholastic position, began to question the focus on “virtually revealed” conclusions in theological discourse.  In contrast to a supposed “conclusion theology” that would begin in its virtuality precisely where formal truths of faith would leave off, increasing emphasis was given to those tasks of theology which work within the very nexus of the mysteries of faith (a topic partially discussed above in the section of theological principles).

These debates occasioned both important precisions regarding the broader genus of kinds of inference and reasoning involved in theological science; however, they also occasioned certain depreciations of the scientific status of theology, in particular leading to the Indexing of several works of theology (e.g., volumes by Marie-Dominique Chenu and Louis Charlier) in the late 1930s and early 1940s (see Fouilloux).  Moreover, continued disquietude concerning the revival of theological modernism (in the sense given to that term by Pope St. Pius X) led to a major controversy during the second half of the 1940s, often remembered as being concerned with the so-called “nouvelle théologie” (see Mettepennigen, Shortall, and Minerd and Kirwan).  In the history section below, a very brief account will be given regarding the theory of dogmatic development offered by one of the partisans involved in this controversy.

In the middle of this context, during the 1910s and 1920s, Dominican Father Francisco Marín-Sola wrote a series of articles which came to be published in Spanish as La evolución homogénea del dogma católico.  This lengthy work, based upon extensive interpretation of the scholastic patrimony, sought to provide a full account of the nature of dogmatic development in a way that shows the “homogeneity” between faith and theology while respecting the distinction between the two.  By means of a somewhat sui generis account of scientific reasoning (see Wallace, The Role of Demonstration in Moral Theology, 33–35, 58n171), Marín-Sola proposed a theory of demonstration in which so-called “metaphysically deduced” truths would state truths about one and the same reality and, thus, would thereby be statements of one and the same truth.  Thus, according to such a theory, the deduction of the various “divine names,” ultimately terminating in the reality that is God, could be said to state the same truth and, therefore, be susceptible to definition as belonging to the deposit of faith.  In other words, such “metaphysical” deduction—which supposedly would be most proper to demonstrative science in the Aristotelian sense—would involve only a kind of explication of truths, not a “virtually revealed” truth, in the sense of the latter expression as used from at least the time of Suarez. (Marín-Sola’s notion of “metaphysical” deduction at least in part draws upon the later scholastic notion of metaphysical properties in distinction from physical properties.  He seems, however, to have added to this notion when speaking of a “physical deduction” as being based upon contingent laws of nature.)

Although a number of influential figures have taken up Marín-Sola’s position (for example, though with various nuances and adaptations, Gardeil, Journet, Doronzo, and more recently, Hütter, Meszaros, and Mansini), it did receive weighty critiques from several important Dominican figures of the time (Schultes, Garrigou-Lagrange, and Labourdette).  With slight variations, these latter authors all agreed in the basic critique that although one and the same reality as a reality (ut res est) might be aimed at by a given dogmatic truth, nonetheless, this one reality can be understood as an object of knowledge (ut obiectum est) in various ways.  Thus, even though God is utterly simple, nonetheless, precisely as an object of knowledge, one can pass from one divine name (e.g., always-actual Love) to another (e.g., always-actual Providence) and thereby know different truths, despite the fact that the Triune Deity remains, in simplicity, one reality.

Fr. Labourdette also observed issues connected with certain classes of what are called dogmatic facts, in particular the canonization of saints, which he judged would require one to claim—according to Fr. Marín-Sola’s theory of deduction—that truths concerning newly canonized saints (“Saint Thérèse is in heaven”) are in some way notionally implied in the general truth, “Every person canonized by the Church is in heaven.”  Or, drawing an example directly from the history of the notion of Fides ecclesiastica “Jansen’s Augustinus is justly condemned” would be implicitly contained in the universal, “Every book condemned by the Church is condemnable” (Labourdette, La foi, 119).  For Schultes such dogmatic facts, as well as objectively inferred theological truths, would require some sort of fides ecclesiastica; for Labourdette, such assent would be a kind of maximal case of religious assent; and for Garrigou-Lagrange, it would seem that such assent would be something ancillary to faith, not a separate habitus of fides ecclesiastica.  Attempting to sidestep the details of the controversy, Santiago Ramirez held that the theological virtue of faith would elicit such assent precisely as defending the full integrity of its object, even if the object itself was not objectively in the deposit and, hence, had not itself been revealed supernaturally by God (see Ramirez, De fide divina, 423–430)

In this section, our primary focus has been on the logical form of such development.  However, it is important to recognize the role that is played by the deepening of faith in the Church, both as teaching magisterium and as “taught” faithful.  This kind of lived and affective development, discussed briefly above, represents an important moving (or efficient) cause of dogmatic development.  For that reason, it will be discussed in the next section, amid the various causes of dogmatic development.

A word should be stated, however, regarding certain vitalist or irrationalist tendencies that the magisterium has felt the need to combat in regard to questions of dogmatic development.  In increasingly clear teachings since the mid-19th century, the Church has taught that, although supernatural and subject to the activity of the grace-moved will, supernatural faith is a kind of knowledge and, hence, presupposes conceptual content of some sort.  During the modernist crisis, Pope St. Pius X saw fit to condemn those who would hold that faith’s assent is nothing more than a kind of religious sentiment, which could only be expressed by means of transient and ultimately symbolic accounts of the mysteries.  A somewhat similar, though more nuanced, form of vitalism or irrationalism can be found in more recent theories of dogmatic development which emphasize the non-rational aspects of faith itself (and hence the development of the truths known by faith).  Although often laudably attempting to maintain the supernatural unknowability of the mysteries of the faith, as well as the important role played by affectivity in the life of grace, such theories risk, through their opposition to propositional aspects of revelation, at least some of the errors which roused the papal magisterium during the first half of the 20th century (see Mansini, “The Development of the Development of Doctrine in the Twentieth Century”).

III. The Causes of Dogmatic Development

Having discussed the essence of dogmatic development as the successive and infallible proposal and explication of revealed truths, we will now set forth an account of the causes of such development, so as to more fully manifest this essence.  Understanding the notion of causality in the broad sense of “that upon which something depends for its existence,” we will use an Aristotelian analysis of fourfold causality so as to provide a more supple account of these matters.

Material cause.  Taken in the sense of “that which is determined,” the material cause involved in dogmatic development is nothing other than the dogmas themselves.  However, a precision is necessary here.  The revealed dogmas are not those truths so far as they were known by means of the unique knowledge that the Apostles had concerning these truths, precisely in their charism as Apostles.  Rather, revealed dogmas are the revealed truths insofar as they have been and are proposed to the Church as a whole for belief and grasped through supernatural faith, to be perfected through the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  In other words, that which develops are the dogmatic truths which, in a manifold way, present the Church with the message of salvation.

As was already intimated in the principles above, such dogmatic truths are composed of concepts that are drawn from general human experience and are superelevated to express truths which are at once communicable to all people in all cultures and, moreover, are susceptible to continued development.  As was summarized by Pope St. Paul VI in Mysterium fidei, nos. 24–25 (see Garrigou-Lagrange, Thomistic Common Sense, 217–299):

These formulas—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.

Formal cause.  The formal cause of dogmatic development is the new statement itself, with its newly articulated form.  As was noted above, the Church allows no small latitude concerning theories that explain the legitimate logical form in question.  All orthodox Catholics agree that a mere explication of terms can be legitimately defined as a new dogmatic formula.  Moreover, strong arguments can be drawn on behalf of the claim that when the premises of a theological argument are both drawn from dogmatic truths, the conclusion drawn therefrom (by a process of reasoning that is indeed objectively inferential and not merely explicative) is also definable De fide credendum, whether or not such a conclusion is already revealed in itself (see Garrigou-Lagrange, Reality, 66–67; Gagnebet, “La nature de théologie spéculative”, 221–253).  However, in the case of theological conclusions which are only “virtually revealed” (in the sense of “virtuality” noted in the principles above), controversy exists, as was already discussed.  Some (e.g., those who are in the line of someone like Marín-Sola) hold that such conclusions can be defined, precisely because these theorists hold that the virtuality involved in such deductions (at least when, according to the vocabulary of Marín-Sola, such reasoning is “metaphysical” and not “physical”) does not, in fact, involve the stating of a new truth.  Others, however, hold that this logical form is not susceptible to being defined as De fide credendum but, rather, only as De fide tenendum.  Finally, for reasons presented above, a similar controversy exists regarding the form of argumentation which would apply dogmatic truths to particular contingent events, giving rise to various sorts of “dogmatic facts” such as the canonization of saints, the legitimacy of a duly elected pope, etc.

Efficient causes.  In the line of efficient causality, we need to make a sub-distinction, given the subordination of causes involved.  Thus, we will briefly consider each of the following: the Primary Cause, the secondary and proximate cause, the preparatory and disposing causes, the instrumental cause, and occasional cause of dogmatic development.

The Primary Efficient Cause of dogmatic development is God Himself, guiding His Church by means of the charism of infallibility for proposing revealed truths.  For this reason, truths that are defined dogmatically are believed “as being divinely revealed” (CDF, Doctrinal Commentary, no. 9) and are affirmed “directly on faith in the authority of the word of God” (ibid., no. 8).  Although the laws of such development vary according to the particular circumstances of the dogma and time in question, nonetheless, this process “follows an invisible ordinance of God and is regulated by certain laws.  This is what the Councils discern when, while exercising a human means, they are divinely guided to an irreformable conclusion” (Newman, Roman writings, prop.3).

To the degree that such causality takes place in the line of efficient causality, strictly speaking, it is exercised by the Triune Deity as a whole.  To the degree that the “divine missions” are involved in such development, one can speak of a unique relation to each of the persons as well.  Moreover, based upon Scripture itself, it is traditional to appropriate this causality to the Holy Spirit:

When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak, and He will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for He will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore, I said that He will take what is mine and declare it to you. (Jn. 16:13–15)

The secondary and proximate cause of dogmatic development is the Church exercising her magisterial role (the “Teaching Church”).  A dogmatic truth can only be definitively declared by the Pope and the Bishops in union with him, according to the nature of the ordinary and extraordinary magisterium (see the article on the “Magisterium”).  The proclamation of the Gospel, although incumbent upon all the faithful, is first and foremost the duty of bishops, who through their sacred office conferred upon them through the fulness of the sacrament of holy orders, fulfill the episcopal duties of sanctifying, teaching, and governing, belonging to them as successors to the Apostles (see Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, ch. 3 and Vatican II, Christus Dominus).

The preparatory and disposing, secondary causes of dogmatic development are several in number.  Preeminently, the Fathers of the Church, amid the great dogmatic debates of the early Church, prepared the way, through preaching and argumentation, for the definitive declaration of truth determined by synods and the Ecumenical Councils of their eras.  Their charism was a unique grace which, therefore, marks them out as unique causes in the process of dogmatic development and continual sources for the renewal of theological reflection.

However, the Church does not live without continued reflection on the faith. And for this reason, theologians have continued through the ages to serve her in preparation for the declaration of new dogmatic formulas.  Precisely in such service (as distinct from their personal work of speculation), theologians function primarily as instruments of the Magisterium, though as free and intellectually reflective instruments.  Although the ultimate discernment of a dogmatic truth to be declared is a task falling to the Magisterium, nonetheless such preparatory labor—a kind of continuation, in diminished form, of the patristic charism—is an essential aid to ecclesial discernment concerning the declaration of dogmatic truths.

Moreover, in all ages, the “sense of the faithful” (both individually as the sensus fidei fidelis and as the sense of the whole Church, the sensus fidei fidelium) provides a “a sure criterion for recognizing a particular teaching or practice as in accord with the apostolic Tradition” (ITC, “Sensus Fidei in the Life of the Church,” no. 66).  As the living acceptance of the word of God on the part of all those who received, in docility and love, the saving truths proposed by the Church, this sensus fidei can itself undergo the “affective” development briefly discussed above in the principles section.  Although not the definitive Magisterial proposing of the truths of faith, this “received” and “lived” affirmation of the truths of faith provides a very important motivation and source for the discernment exercised by both the Magisterium and theologians (see ibid., nos. 66–84).

All such disposing causality, in order to be legitimately exercised, must be exercised in a spirit of fidelity to the Magisterium.  All such “dispositive” development must await the Magisterium’s own determination concerning the appropriate moment to declare a given development, for as the history of the Church makes manifest, precipitant and premature determination of dogmatic matters has led Christian thinkers into heresy (see Newman, Roman writings, prop. 12).

The instrumental cause of development is human reason enlightened by faith.  In the case of the latter, the Magisterium is also the recipient of the special graces belonging to the Church’s charism of infallibility.

The occasional causes of the development of doctrine are those events which furnish the conditions arousing doctrinal development, even though such occasions are perhaps historical accidents aroused by contingent causes.  Such occasionality is clearest in the case of heresy, which over the centuries has furnished many occasions for magisterial explication of the truths of faith, such that it is difficult to think of the convening of any ecumenical council without also, thinking of the heresies that occasioned such a convocation.  The same is true for various papal statements regarding dogmatic matters.  Moreover, dogmatic development can be occasioned by theological debates without an immediate need to meet a given heresy, as was the case for the declarations of the Marian dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption-Dormition of the Mother of God.  Finally, it is also at least possible that, without significant controversy, the development of theological thought and culture itself may furnish the occasion for dogmatic development.

Final causes.  The final cause or ultimate end of the development of doctrine is, like all else in the order of the economy of salvation, the honor and glory of God, brought about through the salvation of men and women.  In particular, such development honors God through a greater manifestation of this saving truth and fuller knowledge of God and the divine mysteries by men and women in every age.  Among the more proximate ends of such fuller knowledge by the faithful are numbered: the preservation of purity of faith; the perfection of Divine worship; the promotion of holiness and spiritual growth through greater clarity concerning the nature of the Christian vocation in grace; and the execution of the duties and power of the Church’s hierarchy on behalf of the salvation of human persons. (For this section, Schultes and Dublanchy are particulary important).

IV. Analogies for Describing Dogmatic Development

Because the process of dogmatic development is supernatural, it is susceptible to a number of analogies that help to focus the mind on its sui generis nature and, by their very multiplicity, avoid reducing it to any particular physical or human reality of development.  Such analogies cannot be substituted for rigorous analysis. Nonetheless, they provide additional depth to our understanding of this particular theological teaching and (to the degree that it has itself been defined) dogma of the faith (see Schultes, 287–296).  For the sake of organization, we will begin with analogies that are more distant and more physical and ascend therefrom.

Most generically, using terms that can be applied to any process of change whatsoever, one can contrast change and progress.  The former can apply to any sort of mutability whatsoever.  Thus, icebergs melt; storms move the seas; salt dissolves; rivers deepen and move toward their mouths; plants grow and die; etc.  Progress, however, applies only to those changes which involve some kind of development in line with the form in question, toward the substantial end that orients the whole of its life’s activities: a plant grows and flourishes; an animal passes toward full adulthood; and even, more broadly speaking, stalactites and rivers “grow” in size.  The notion of physical progress, therefore, provides a very generic analogy for a process involving the preservation of type amid changes.  This general metaphor is implied in the passage from St. Vincent of Lérins cited, in part, by the Vatican I constitution Dei filius:

But perhaps someone will say: “Therefore, there will be no religious progress in Christ’s Church?” Let there be great and abundant progress... But let it take place in such a way that such faith would truly progress, not suffer alteration. For progress requires that each thing be enlarged into itself, whereas alteration involves one thing being transformed into another. Therefore, understanding, knowledge, and wisdom must grow and progress with vigor both individually and in all, both in particular persons and in the whole Church—through the ages and the centuries—though in its own kind, that is, in the same dogma, in the same meaning, and in the same judgment. (Vincent of Lérins, First Commonitory, ch. 23, no. 54, trans. C. A. Heurtley, altered)

The reader will note that Vincent here implies the particular analogy of organic growth.  Because such organic progress furnishes an example of progressive and differentiated growth within a single specific type, it has classically provided analogies for those who have reflected on the nature of dogmatic development.  As will become clear, however, all physical analogies of progress, though helpful, also suffer from important limitations.  Nonetheless, before considering organic analogies, it is helpful to consider a famous image used by St. John Henry Newman, namely that of a river that develops over the course of its progress toward its ultimate issue into a sea or lake.  Using language that somewhat treats a river as though it were a living thing, adapting to its environment, Newman provides an evocative image to respond to those who would claim that the truths of Christianity have nothing to gain from the gradual process of growth, passing from the initial headwaters toward their ultimate destination:

It is indeed sometimes said that the stream is clearest near the spring. Whatever use may fairly be made of this image, it does not apply to the history of a philosophy or belief, which on the contrary is more equable, and purer, and stronger, when its bed has become deep, and broad, and full. It necessarily rises out of an existing state of things, and for a time savours of the soil. Its vital element needs disengaging from what is foreign and temporary, and is employed in efforts after freedom which become more vigorous and hopeful as its years increase. Its beginnings are no measure of its capabilities, nor of its scope.

At first no one knows what it is, or what it is worth. It remains perhaps for a time quiescent; it tries, as it were, its limbs, and proves the ground under it, and feels its way. From time to time, it makes essays which fail, and are in consequence abandoned. It seems in suspense which way to go; it wavers, and at length strikes out in one definite direction. In time it enters upon strange territory; points of controversy alter their bearing; parties rise and fall around it; dangers and hopes appear in new relations; and old principles reappear under new forms. It changes with them in order to remain the same. (Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 1.1.7)

This analogy helps to focus on the way that the passage of time leads to a kind of purification in the understanding of a given teaching, disentangling it to the degree this is possible, from the particularities of controversy and rendering it ever clearer in its essence.  Thus, for example, the general intellectual culture of Hellenistic philosophies was essential for the early discernment of the truths of Christological and Trinitarian dogmas.  Over the course of several centuries, the Church labored to find the appropriate terminological basis for expressing the mystery of the Hypostatic Union.  Gradually discerning Greek philosophical terms such as hypostasis, physis, ousia, etc., the Fathers and the Magisterium of the great Councils came to use a kind of clarified essence of these terms, disengaging them as much as possible from their particular philosophical sources so that they might be used to articulate these mysteries by way of a kind of extension of common sense.  Thus, although the earliest patristic attempts to use such Graeco-Roman thought were still marked by the savor of the intellectual soil from which such speculations arose, the process of ecclesial reflection served to purify these sources of elements that were foreign to the revealed datum they were serving.

However, this analogy falls short in important ways. First and foremost, the river ultimately passively responds to its environment, whereas the process of dogmatic development will involve an active discernment at each stage of “making essays,” “wavering,” and “striking out.”  Moreover, the analogy perhaps minimizes the role of initial revealed truth itself, for the headwaters are quite minor trickles in comparison to the future grandeur of developed teaching.  As is obvious in the context of his entire work and the various explanations and analogies that he deploys, Newman in no way desired to minimize the preeminence of the revealed datum, apostolic era, or the time of the Fathers.  Nonetheless, by itself, the river analogy can lead the mind to think that the Christianity of today, which has indeed benefited from many explications that cannot be undone, would in some way be superior to the revealed datum itself and that theology of today is, in some way, superior to that of the Fathers of the Church.  (This same shortcoming marks the various organic analogies that are offered.)  Finally, the growth of a river involves the passive introduction of waters from many sources, such that the content of the river itself would expand by way of foreign addition.

This brings us, therefore, to one of the most classic analogies, namely, that of the development of life over the course of an organism’s existence.  Here, unlike the case of a physical river, an organism incorporates foreign elements actively into its own life pattern.  Thus, in accord with an internal principle of differentiated development, one and the same form of life can be considered from the beginning to end of the creature’s existence.  In fact, even in the river analogy above, Newman himself implied certain organic and anthropomorphic elements in his description, thereby enabling him even to close the analogy by a famous line, coming immediately after the selection cited above: “In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often” (Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 1.1.7, emphasis added).

The organic analogy itself was used by Vincent of Lérins, whose Commonitory, although not influential for many centuries regarding questions of development, came to exercise an important influence on the minds of 19th and 20th century authors.  Immediately following upon the passage cited above, he continues:

The growth of religion in the soul must be analogous to the growth of the body, which, though in process of years it 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, insomuch 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 maturer 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. Whereas, if the human form were changed into some shape belonging to another kind, or at any rate, if the number of its limbs were increased or diminished, the result would be that the whole body would become either a wreck or a monster, or, at the least, would be impaired and enfeebled.

In like manner, it behooves 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 uncorrupt and unadulterate, 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. (Vincent of Lérins, First Commonitory, ch. 23, nos. 55–56, trans. C.A. Heurtley, altered)

Such organic analogies, especially influential in philosophical-theological contexts marked by some form of romanticism, can be readily found in many authors, whether directly under the influence of Vincent, the 19th-century Tübingen School, Newman, or others.  It furnishes a very useful image for understanding both the diachronic stability and differentiated organicity involved in the process of dogmatic development.  Thus, original data concerning Christ came to be expressed by means of several, organically linked, notions mentioned above: οὐσία (ousia), ὑπόστασις (hypostasis), and φύσις (physis).  And such explication would continue its organismic growth by incorporating also the notions of will (θέλησις, thélēsis) and activity (ἐνέργεια, energeia) in order to explain the duality of spiritual faculties and activities in Christ.

However, there are also weaknesses to such an organic analogy.  Although dogma develops in response to its intellectual and moral environment, nonetheless, physical organisms are prey to their environment with much greater precarity.  Even where such environmental factors do not imperil the life of the organism in question, nonetheless, the inexactness of this organism-environment analogy will tend to lead one to blur together intrinsic dogmatic development and extrinsic changes to the cultural, moral, economic, and political environment brought about by Christianity as the latter externally illuminates realities that remain, in themselves, natural and temporal.

However, more problematic is the implication that the revealed truth itself, implicitly containing its future developments, would be imperfect and need to come to full maturity only in later ages, as though something were deficient in earlier ages of the Church’s life.  In scholastic terminology, the actualization that takes place over the course of an organism’s life involves the loss of various imperfections and, also, new states of imperfection.  As was already remarked in an earlier section, and as will be discussed shortly, analogies drawn from intellectual life are better able to articulate the unique kind of actualization that takes place in dogmatic development.

Finally, the process of physical organic growth involves not only passage toward perfection, but also, then, ultimate decline as well.  One can remedy this limitation in the analogy by imagining a process of continuous growth.  However, at that point, one has passed beyond the limits of what physical organicity can provide and thus will be compelled to consider the unique case of intellectual life, which alone furnishes an analogy that is open to a continuous and undying process of growth, deepening, etc.  Likewise, only intellectual life enables one to articulate a process that is not only organic but also free.

In the introduction to this article, passages were cited from Scripture indicating another related analogy, namely that of leaven.  This analogy, which does help one to imagine the active process of dogmatic development, nonetheless arguably emphasizes the way that revealed truth exercises its influence upon later thought, both in the form of development and upon the broader human intellectual and cultural environment.  This is important for a theory of doctrinal development in the broadest sense possible.  Moreover, it reinforces an important aspect of the more general organic analogy: organic assimilation affects the elements that are incorporated into a higher form of life; dirt becomes “plant food” because it is taken up by the labor of life.  Thus, for example, all of the Greek terms mentioned above were, in some way, transfigured by their use in dogmatic statements.  This is well summarized in a passage from Ambroise Gardeil:

The Church is a society, the sacraments are signs, sanctifying grace is a reality that exists in man, charity is a virtue. . . . All this is true, but it is not at all true if the words are taken in their usual and ordinary meaning as might happen in a first consideration. Rather, to take one example, it is necessary to say what signs are in our natural lives. Have you, in fact, ever seen signs that by their own power efficaciously effect what they signify? And what is it that these sacramental signs effect? They produce something divine, a participation in our soul of the divine life itself. What a sacrament is in its innermost nature is inaccessible to our minds, just as is the Holy Trinity. (Gardeil, Le donné révélé et la théologie, 145)

This is the “superanalogy” spoken of above in the section on principles.  All of this is possible only because of the “leaven” exercised by the process of dogmatic development. 

At last, one must pass to a higher form of life, namely to intellectual life.  In the life of the mind, there are stages of perplexity, questioning, and consolidation, through the gradual course of which a person or society arrives at a definitive resolution to a given question or problem.  The same sort of process is clearly indicated over the course of dogmatic development as it unfolded in the history of the Church as she articulated various teachings in a more explicit manner.  Sometimes over the course of many centuries, she slowly progressed through a period of debate and contention in response to some crisis, only gradually arriving at definitive solutions.  Thus, by way of rhetoric, dialectics, and gradual demonstration, the Fathers of the Church provided the ecclesiastical Magisterium with data to be used in the ultimate declaration of particular dogmas of the faith.

Very often, this logical process works out without being put into rigorous form.  That is, the arguments themselves are marshalled without the logical form itself being considered for itself and in its own right.  Moreover, to the degree that given doctrines are not only speculatively articulated but, also, are practically lived out in the prayer life of the Church, it is often the case that logical form—though implied even in practice—remains hidden in the very midst of the process of development.

Nonetheless, this form remains operative in so far as the human mind organizes its cognition by way of defining, judging, and reasoning.  Therefore, as was already discussed above, rigorous and scientific accounts of dogmatic development must ask about the logical form of implication involved in dogmatic developments.  As mentioned above, some will hold that the process of strictly scientific demonstration provides a sufficient analogy and explanation for the process of gradual development over time.  Others will prefer to avoid the analogy with science’s virtually deduced conclusions, at least for what pertains to dogmas that are defined De fide credendum.  Thus, some will prefer to liken dogmatic development to the kind of deepening that takes place in relation to first principles of knowledge, as takes place in philosophical disciplines in particular.  Therefore, as discussed above, greater limitations will be placed on the specific kinds of intellectual processes that can be said to legitimately involve an explication without objective novelty.

Also, in the practical and moral domain, it is possible to draw an analogy with the process of legislation and the juridical interpretation of laws.  Such an analogy helps to draw attention, in particular, to the authoritative role played by the Church in proposing dogmatic development.  However, because the great majority of civil laws are contingent determinations of broad principles drawn from the natural law, the process of legislation almost always involves a creative and contingent process that goes beyond the mere interpretation of a pre-existing datum.  Therefore, in this regard, such a political-juridical analogy falls short and, at most, would be applied to the practical determinations that can be made by the canonical authority of the Church. 

Although each of these analogies falls short in some way, they nonetheless help to orient the mind towards the unique process involved in dogmatic development.  Therefore, so long as they are appropriately qualified, they remain a traditional and important element for furnishing some understanding of the living process of dogmatic progress.

V. Rules for Discerning Authentic Development

Because of the difficulties involved in determining whether or not a given development has the appropriate logical connection with prior declared dogmas, certain rules or canons can be applied to a given case of potential development in order to discern whether or not the proposed truth is, in fact, sufficiently homogeneous with earlier formulations.  In this section, we will set aside the difficult logical rules concerning subjective and objective inference discussed above, although a complete scientific accounting of “rules” would require a resolution regarding the ongoing debates already mentioned.  Therefore, in this section, we will consider a series of important indicators that can be drawn from St. John Henry Newman’s An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.

In the context of Newman’s own work, it should be noted that these rules are primarily retrospective.  When he was writing the first edition of this work in 1845, Newman was living through the final stages of the process that led him to his conversion to Catholicism.  Therefore, throughout the text, including in the particular canons that he outlines, his primary concern is not to emphasize the “forward looking” aspect of dogmatic development (although this is also important for him) but, in particular, the “backward looking” fidelity of later teachings vis-à-vis earlier truths in the deposit of faith (see Pecknold).  This marks his Essay with a fundamentally conservative character, though his theories are quite obviously not a static account of doctrinal development.

As marks of legitimate dogmatic development, Newman provides seven criteria or canons: Preservation of Type; Continuity in Principles; Power of Assimilation; Logical Sequence; Anticipation of a Given Dogma’s Future; Conservative Action upon a Dogma’s Past; A Dogma’s Chronic Vigor.  In this article, we will only briefly outline these canons, the full details of which can be found in the lengthy second part of An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.

Preservation of Type.  This canon draws in part on the organic analogy mentioned above, and Newman himself cites Vincent of Lérins as a source. As he notes, this is a question concerning the fundamental and essential character of Christianity, not its surface level appearance, just as an organism has its fundamental pattern, often marked by many external changes and organic differentiations amid an essential unity of life:

However, as the last instances suggest to us, this unity of type, characteristic as it is of faithful developments, must not be pressed to the extent of denying all variation, nay, considerable alteration of proportion and relation, as time goes on, in the parts or aspects of an idea. Great changes in outward appearance and internal harmony occur in the instance of the animal creation itself. The fledged bird differs much from its rudimental form in the egg. The butterfly is the development, but not in any sense the image, of the grub. (Newman, An Essay, 5.1.4)

And Newman describes as follows the broad outlines of the original type of Christianity, identifiable all throughout its history:

There is a religious communion claiming a divine commission, and holding all other religious bodies around it heretical or infidel; it is a well-organized, well-disciplined body; it is a sort of secret society, binding together its members by influences and by engagements which it is difficult for strangers to ascertain. It is spread over the known world; it may be weak or insignificant locally, but it is strong on the whole from its continuity; it may be smaller than all other religious bodies together, but is larger than each separately. It is a natural enemy to governments external to itself; it is intolerant and engrossing, and tends to a new modelling of society; it breaks laws, it divides families. It is a gross superstition; it is charged with the foulest crimes; it is despised by the intellect of the day; it is frightful to the imagination of the many. And there is but one communion such. (Newman, An Essay, 6, intro.)

Continuity in Principles.  In his second mark of legitimate development, Newman distinguishes between the great principles that underlie a body of doctrines.  What he has in mind, in particular, are practical and ethical principles that, as kinds of fundamental orientations, underlie particular doctrines, which “expand variously according to the mind, individual or social, into which they are received” (Newman, An Essay, 5.2.1).  He notes, however, that principles also have a doctrinal basis, as can be seen for example in the case of Pelagianism’s heretical over-emphasis on the principle of personal responsibility.  By indicating this particular mark of development, he is not presenting a vitalist theory of dogmatic development (akin to what would be condemned in Pius X’s encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis) but, rather, is noting that legitimate dogmatic development must never imply something opposed to the great principles of Christian life and spirituality.

In the chapter devoted to the principles in question, he focuses on the Incarnation as the central truth of the Gospel (see Newman, An Essay, ch. 7).  Thus, in light of major texts that he draws from St. John and St. Paul, he presents nine principles that must be maintained in any legitimate dogmatic development.  In sum these principles are as follows.  First, Christianity is a dogmatic religion, expressing its truth definitively on the basis of divine communication, even if such dogma is marked by the limitations of human language.  Second, such dogma calls for absolute assent by way of faith.  Third, because this assent is not merely affective but is in its essence intellectual, it opens the way for further inquiry and understanding, thus giving birth to theology in service of faith.  Fourth, the truth of Christianity, as founded on the Incarnation, establishes a faith that is sacramental, an “announcement of a divine gift conveyed in a material and visible medium.”  Fifth, the use of language in Christianity is, in its own way, sacramental and expresses not merely human truth but has a second a mystical sense, which involves the expression of new ideas.  Sixth, Christian revelation is concerned with a project of truly sanctifying humanity through grace.  And, seventh, such sanctification can only take place through the mortification of “our lower nature,” thus meaning that legitimate development must retain the principle of asceticism.  And likewise, eighth, this means that the possible failure to live in accord with grace implies the danger and even active malignity of sin.  And, finally, as a kind of final confirmation of a number of points above, Christianity is not a form of anti-worldly Gnosticism but, rather, teaches “that matter is an essential part of us, and, as well as the mind, is capable of sanctification.”  Any development that in some way contradicts one of these principles should be judged questionable and even illegitimate.

Power of Assimilation. Again, akin to the organic analogies already discussed, Newman also notes that legitimate developments of dogma retain the vitality that Christianity has always expressed from its earliest days. One need only read the early Fathers like St. Justin Martyr or Clement of Alexandria to see a kind of bold but principled eclecticism, drawing into the service of doctrine all that is useful in the surrounding environment.  So too, in the Latin Middle Ages, the bold growth of the intellectual milieu drew many new resources into the service of the Church.  The gradual process of engagement with historical and hermeneutical studies likewise is a mark of such development.  And the living development of the liturgy, though mixed with many contingent factors, also marks out a practical example of the sense of the faithful, along with the legitimate authority of the Magisterium, assimilating foreign elements into the very life of dogma, doctrine, and practice.  Thus, as Newman summarizes: “An eclectic, conservative, assimilating, healing, moulding process, a unitive power, is of the essence, and a third test, of a faithful development” (Newman, An Essay, 5.3.1).  And as he goes on to explain, this means that true Christianity should not be a rear-guard action of merely providing safe limitations but, above all, should have a boldness like that of the saints themselves (Newman, An Essay, 5.3.5).

Logical Sequence.  Concerning this particular mark, Newman indicates points that are centrally stressed in some of the discussions above concerning the logical form of legitimate development.  Although he does not share all the particulars of the Scholastic logic mentioned above, he notes that legitimate development must in some way witness to the fact that there is a true and logical connection and continuity between the previous teaching and a new teaching.  He admits that formal statement of such logical analysis rarely leads the process of development, nonetheless, it is vital for setting in order the validity of such maturation.  Moreover, he notes that such logical formulation can be used as an instrument for the further function of helping to propagate dogma.

Anticipation of a Given Dogma’s Future.  At first glance, this particular mark, perhaps seems “forward looking.” However, what Newman means by such “anticipation” of dogma is that, when one looks back over the history of a given dogma, there will be found various cases of partial anticipation of later definitive declarations of this later dogmatic truth.  He considers the way that someone like Basil of Caesarea anticipated the later somewhat intellectualizing developments of monasticism in the West.  One could also consider the way that many early Fathers anticipate the later declarations regarding deification and sanctification that would only come to a definitive terminus at the time of Trent in response to Protestant denials (and, the present author notes, in the Orthodox context, in response to anti-Palamite controversialists).  And, Newman himself considers also the way that errors also experience such anticipation, for example in the way that certain elements of liberal Protestantism were already explicitly hinted at, sporadically, in Luther and Calvin.  Newman’s specific examples later in the book are rather limited, but such anticipations could be found all throughout the history of dogmas.  They bear witness to another aspect of continuity over the course of ecclesial-dogmatic discernment.

Conservative Action upon a Dogma’s Past. Already, the marks noted up to this point indicate that “a true development, then, may be described as one which is conservative of the course of antecedent developments being really those antecedents and something besides them: it is an addition which illustrates, not obscures, corroborates, not corrects, the body of thought from which it proceeds; and this is its characteristic as contrasted with a corruption” (Newman, An Essay, 5.6.2).  And in the brief specific section dedicated to this kind of conservative action of dogma (Newman, An Essay, ch. 11), he considers, for example, the preservation of orthodoxy in matters of asceticism, Christology, redemption, the Trinity, Mariology, etc.

A Dogma’s Chronic Vigor. Finally, again, as a kind of development of the earlier marks already discussed, a true development will be marked by a long life and promising future for continued Christian prayer and intellectual reflection.  Heresy and error are ultimately transitory—doubtlessly because of their failure to retain the vitality imparted by the marks discussed earlier.  By contrast, dogmatic truth, maintaining its type and principles throughout its history, with a consistent logical form, has a vitality that serves as a mark of true and legitimate development.

In addition to these canons presented by Newman, the threefold rule of Vincent of Lérins deserves mention as well: universality, antiquity, and general consent, or that which is held always, everywhere and by all (Quod semper, ubique, ab omnibus), which could be simplified to a twofold rule of antiquity and universality.  These very broad and conservative canons obviously require further specification, given the variability throughout the whole of dogmatic history.  Together, they can function as a positive norm. That is, if these conditions are met, one has the mark of legitimate dogmatic development.  However, these Vincentian canons do not have application as furnishing a negative norm, requiring all of these to be present as an absolutely necessary and sufficient condition of dogmatic development.  (For a fuller discussion of the application of these rules, see Journet, 120–125; Doronzo, nos. 401–406; Guarino, St. Vincent of Lérins and the Development of Christian Doctrine; Fichtner, The Influence of Vincent of Lerin’s Commonitorium).

It should be recalled, also, that while individual believers and, above all, theologians in the service of the Church can rightfully and dutifully investigate the status of developments by using canons such as those discussed in this section, nonetheless, it falls to the Ecclesiastical Magisterium to determine definitively, whether or not a given truth of faith is indeed a legitimate development.

VI. Brief History Concerning the Theology of Dogmatic Development

In Sacred Scripture itself, the development of dogma is connected immediately to the development of revelation.  The Old Testament itself bears witness to an ongoing deepening of the fundamental truths of the covenant, renewed sporadically throughout the course of Israel’s history.  Thus, as the fundamental declaration of Israel’s faith in God, one could consider the continued deepening of the shema, the message that call upon Israel to hear and acknowledge God and His lordship:

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD; and you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Dt. 6:4–9)

This fundamental truth would be gradually and consistently deepened.  Many of the Psalms, above all the lengthy poem to the Law in Ps. 119[8], speak of the righteous man who knows God and is filled with zeal for the law.  The knowledge of the One God is promised to become, through a new covenant, so intimate that the law will be written upon the hearts of men and women, and all will know God in purity (Jer. 31:31–34, see Is. 11), though He also remains utterly transcendent and mysterious (Job 38–42).  And in the late wisdom literature, even the mystery of the Trinity would itself be intimated at, though not yet in a fully open way (Prov. 8; Wis. 7).  Indeed, Christ would declare his message as being nothing other than a continuation and deepening of this message, now announced in purity:

Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.  For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Mt. 5:17–20)

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, to test him.  “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”  And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” (Mt. 22:35–40; see Lk.10:25–42; Mk. 12:28–34)

In the Gospels, Christ is thus presented as the one in whom the New Law is promulgated and the Old fulfilled.  His word is presented as having a living vitality that is meant to extend to the end of time as He leads His Church into the whole of truth (Mt. 28:18–20; Mark 13:10, 16:15–20; Luke 24:47; John 17).  And the Church, with Peter assigned to a unique role for confirming the brethren (Lk. 22:32), would enduringly fulfill Christ’s commission as though founded upon solid rock (Mt 16:18).  To her, He promised the spirit as advocate and the one who would teach the Apostles all truth (Jn. 14:26; Acts 2).

During the first centuries of the Church’s history, the Fathers emphasized the fundamental continuity of their message with the message handed down by Christ to the Apostles and by the latter to their successors.  Whether in Ignatius of Antioch (d.c. early second century AD), Polycarp (c.69–155), Irenaeus (c.130–202), Tertullian (c.155–some time after 220), or others, the general theme that is emphasized by the early Church is the continuity of teaching from the Apostles down to the Fathers’ own day.  Thus, too, the influential though problematic Origen (c.185–253) writes at the beginning of his On the First Principles: “Given that the teaching of the Church, transmitted in orderly succession from the apostles, and remaining in the Churches to the present day, is still preserved, [the following stands as a rule:] that alone is to be accepted as truth which differs in no respect from ecclesiastical and apostolic tradition” (De principiis, trans. Frederick Crombie, preface, no. 2).  However, making a further distinction, he continues:

In preaching the faith of Christ, the holy Apostles delivered themselves with the utmost clarity on certain points that they believed to be necessary for everyone, even for those who seemed somewhat dull in the investigation of divine knowledge. They left, however, the grounds of their statements to be examined by those who should deserve the excellent gifts of the Spirit, and who, especially by means of the Holy Spirit Himself, should obtain the gift of language, of wisdom, and of knowledge, while on other subjects they merely stated the fact that things were so, keeping silence as to the manner or origin of their existence. They clearly did so in order that the more zealous of their successors, who should be lovers of wisdom, might have a subject of exercise on which to display the fruit of their talents — those persons, I mean, who should prepare themselves to be fit and worthy receivers of wisdom. (ibid., no. 3, trans. slightly modified)

In Gregory of Nazianzus (c.329–390), evidence of the notion of implication-explication can be found:

Is it not evident that they are due to passages which imply them, though the words do not actually occur? What are these passages?—I am the first, and I am the last, and before Me there was no God, neither shall there be after Me. For all that depends on that Am makes for my side, for it has neither beginning nor ending. When you accept this, that nothing is before Him, and that He has not an older Cause, you have implicitly given Him the titles Unbegotten and Unoriginate. And to say that He has no end of Being is to call Him Immortal and Indestructible. (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 31-Fifth Theological Oration, trans. Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow, no. 23)

But if, when you said twice five or twice seven, I concluded from your words that you meant Ten or Fourteen; or if, when you spoke of a rational and mortal animal, that you meant Man, should you think me to be talking nonsense? Surely not, because I should be merely repeating your own meaning; for words do not belong more to the speaker of them than to him who called them forth. As, then, in this case, I should have been looking, not so much at the terms used, as at the thoughts (τα νοούμενα) they were meant to convey; so neither, if I found something else either not at all or not clearly expressed in the Words of Scripture to be included in the meaning (νοούμενον), should I avoid giving it utterance, out of fear of your sophistical trick about terms (ὄνομα). (ibid., no. 24, Greek provided by Schultes)

During the patristic era, however, special mention should be made concerning the Commonitorium of the fifth century monk, St. Vincent of Lérins (d.c. 445), already mentioned in the previous section. Since the 19th century, his relatively brief treatment of the progress and stability of dogma—emphasizing, above all, its stability—has been often cited.  Although, as is evident in Newman for example, the 19th century use of Vincent predated the First Vatican Council (1869–1870), the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei filius, provided magisterial support for the use of this text in many of the discussions and debates that would unfold through the first half of the 20th century.  Similar examples can be found in Athanasius, Augustine, and others.  (For an outline of this history, see the relevant sections of Mansini, Walgrave, Schultes, Dublanchy and Fichtner cited below.  Also, histories of the acts, texts, and reception of the Ecumenical Councils provide a host of examples concerning the debates aroused by the introduction of new terminology to spell out elements of the creed and other further dogmatic developments.)

During the Latin Middle Ages, the primary debates that came down through the schools initially formed in the wake of the Victorines and Peter the Lombard (c. 1096–1160), focused on the question concerning the “growth of faith” primarily from the perspective of the growth of revelation.  Thus, various theologians took different positions concerning the degree to which the ancient patriarchs and those who lived under the Old Law would have continuity or distinction in relation to the faith had by those who have received the Gospel message.  It was during this time that the theological vocabulary of implicit and explicit faith underwent significant and important developments.

However, also, during this period, theologians asked whether the articles of faith increased in number.  Here too, theologians took up various positions.  St. Thomas Aquinas held in ST II-II, q. 1, a. 7:

Therefore, we must say that, as regards their substance, the articles of faith have not increased with the passage of time, for what was believed later on was already contained, albeit implicitly, in the faith had by those Fathers who lived earlier. However, the number of these articles has indeed grown in the form of explications, for certain things were explicitly known by those who lived later on, though they were not explicitly known by those who lived before them.

The context of these remarks remains that of the development of revelation.  However, during this time as well, scholastic writers (including Thomas) discussed the way that the explication of faith also takes place without new revelation but, instead, through the forming of new creedal statements and the declaration of truths by the Pope.  When reading their texts, it is always important to be aware of which of these two applications they are referring to.  The latter pertains to the development of dogma.

During the later Middle Ages, up to the time of the Council of Trent, the terminology of Latin scholasticism shifted, with a kind of general flattening of the truth of faith into a more general classification of “Catholic truths,” instead of the earlier terminology concerning whether the “articles of faith” or “faith” itself grew with the passage of time.  During this era, various debates concerning the nature of theological science and its conclusions led writers to take various positions concerning which deduced truths could be defined as “Catholic truths” and which not.  This question, although different from the earlier Medieval status quaestionis, provided the opportunity for important precisions regarding the nature of theological conclusions and their relation to the deposit of faith.  The developments within the various schools would give rise to background framework for the positions held by various Baroque scholastics.

As is summarized by Fr. Reginald Schultes, the era of post-Tridentine scholasticism involved at least five developments in the theological explanation of the development of doctrine.  Continuing the labors of the high Middle Ages, the post-Tridentine scholastics more fully applied the framework used for the explanation of the development of revelation now to the question concerning the development of dogmas in the Church herself.  Moreover, during this time, theologians further developed the distinction between explicit and implicit faith, applying it to the distinction between explicit and implicit revelation, while also developing more clearly the distinction between implicit and virtual revelation.  Third, they began deeper investigations into the belief-status and definability of theological conclusions, such that the theology concerning theological censures begins to operate in a more nuanced fashion within their writings.  The treatment of censures, which is closely connected to the theological explanation of dogmatic development, would continue to develop into the twentieth century.  Fourth, by continuing the discussions taken over from the 14th and 15th centuries, the Baroque scholastics would gradually make more explicit the notion of “Catholic truth,” isolating and defining the concept of “dogma” in distinction from other doctrines, whether infallible or only meriting religious assent.  Finally, the ongoing effects of the earlier medieval conciliarist debates, Gallicanism, and opposition to Protestantism would lead to clearer determination of the role played by the Pope in defining dogmas.  This last development would technically continue through the Second Vatican Council’s own teaching concerning episcopal collegiality.  It was also during this time period that the overall theory that is in the background of the present article came to be solidified in its general outlines. 

Likewise of importance during this era of Catholic theological development is the growth of positive theology as a branch of theological speculation.  The posthumous work De locis theologicis by Melchior Cano (1509–1560) represents an attempt to combine the humanistic concern for sources with the methodological rigor of a dialectical logic drawn from Cicero and Aristotle.  This work, in conjunction with certain apologetic themes from St. Robert Bellarmine, would have many emulators in the coming centuries.  Moreover, during the 17th century, important works in positive theology by the Oratorian Louis Thomassin (1619–1695) and the Jesuit Denis Pétau (“Petavius,” 1583–1652) would provide important sources for later developments in positive theology.

Alongside intra-Catholic developments during modernity, however, it is important also to note the influence of modern philosophy, which would continually exert its influence on the Catholic world either directly or indirectly.  Especially in the wake of post-Kantian idealism, Hegelianism, and Romanticism, along with the growth of historical methods applied to texts and ideas, it became increasingly necessary for the Church to respond to modern (and then, increasingly, what we would call post-modern) objections regarding the historical relativity of the Christian message.  Therefore, throughout the 19th-century, the Magisterium found itself forced to respond to various Catholic figures whose systems of thought either made excessive concessions to modern epistemological methods (e.g., Anton Günther, Georg Hermès) or, by contrast, depreciated the powers of human reason through various fideistic or semi-fideistic epistemological theories that have come to be known as “traditionalist” (e.g., Felicité de Lamennais, Louis-Eugène-Marie Bautain, and Augustin Bonnetty).  The 19th century interventions by the magisterium would come to a head with Vatican I’s dogmatic constitution on divine revelation, Dei filius.  As was cited above, the closing section of this constitution briefly but directly addresses the question of dogmatic development, in a generally conservative fashion.

Important also during this time were the figures gathered around the Tübingen school, in particular, Johann Sebastian von Drey (1777–1853) and Johann Adam Möhler (1796–1838) whose works in dogmatic and historical theology, although not completely untouched by Romantic Idealism, nonetheless, played an important role as a ferment for a Catholic appreciation for questions related to the development of doctrine.  Similarly, amid the strictures of the German Kulturkampf, Matthias Scheeben (1835–1888), the student of Giovanni Perrone (1794–1876), would produce his massive and erudite Handbuch der katholischen Dogmatik, in which the author attempts to deepen a truly scholastic theology (at once Thomist and, at times, Suarezian) with a deeper integration of positive theology.  Alongside him could be named the other figures of the “Roman School” of the second half of the 19th century, especially Johann-Baptist Franzelin (1816–1886) and Clemens Schrader (1820–1875).  Among the other figures of the 19th century, mention should also be made of Constantin von Schaezler’s (1827–1880) work in theological method, along with the continued development of the treatise De locis theologicis by Joachim Joseph Berthier (1848–1924).

No account of the history of 19th-century discussions regarding doctrinal development would be complete without mention of St. John Henry Newman (1801–1890).  His An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, written during the final throws of the crisis of faith that led to his conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism, remains a classic work concerning the phenomenon of doctrinal development.  As was discussed earlier in the section concerning the methodology for discerning legitimate development, Newman’s work is concerned with retrospectively considering Catholic developments in order to show that they do not bear witness to doctrinal corruption.  Therefore, although his work does introduce a number of important “progressive” elements into the framework of discussing doctrinal development in general, it remains a fundamentally conservative work.  Moreover, after his conversion, he re-stated in brief form a number of central propositions for his position, asking for critical comments from the Roman Jesuit theologian Giovanni Perroni, who for years thereafter defended Newman against those who held him in suspicion.  Later works by Newman, such as his On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine and his psychological and quasi-phenomenological account of the assent of faith, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, also bear witness to his continued reflection on the nature of revelation, its definitive teaching, and its reception.  The philosophical framework used by Newman suffers from certain deficiencies arising from the nature of Anglophonic philosophy in general, and in particular, from the philosophy of his era. Nonetheless, as a classicist and through his engagement in the composition of the logical work of Richard Whately (1787–1863), Newman had a sufficiently grounded intellectual background to avoid the particular nominalist tendencies that mark much of English philosophy.

During the early 20th century, the topic of dogmatic development came to the foreground in a cataclysmic way in the Catholic Church during what has come to be referred to as the “modernist” crisis.  In response to heterodox theories of biblical interpretation as well as idealist and vitalist conceptions of dogma, Pope St. Pius X (1835–1914) promulgated the encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis (1907), condemning those who would reduce faith to a kind of religious sentiment that must be expressed in categories and notions that merely answer to the felt needs of a given time, though in a way that was subject to complete notional fluidity (Pius X, Pascendi, nos. 26–28).  Several well-known Catholics were directly or indirectly in the crosshairs of this document, including Alfred Loisy (1857–1940), George Tyrrell (1861–1909), Édouard Le Roy (1870–1954), and Lucien Laberthonnière (1860–1932).  The encyclical was accompanied by a syllabus of condemnations, Lamentabile sane exitu (1907), promulgated by the Holy Office, as well as the “Anti-Modernist” Oath (1910) taken by clergy, pastors, confessors, preachers, religious superiors, and professors in philosophical and theological faculties in seminaries until 1967.

During the period that followed the promulgation of Pascendi, there was significant anxiety on the part of scriptural scholars, historical theologians, and even speculative theologians concerning the possibility of being condemned as a “modernist.”  Nonetheless, the decades that followed did not lack in renewal in all branches of philosophy and theology, including those dedicated to topics related to the development of doctrine.  Indeed, it was during this time that a number of works concerning dogmatic development were penned, including the lengthy and erudite work of Marín-Sola (1873–1932) cited above, as well as the vigorous and nuanced critiques registered against certain positions contained therein.

However, anxiety remained under the surface, and in the late 1930s a controversy began to be aroused regarding the regency of Dominican Father Marie-Dominique Chenu (1895–1990) over the Dominican studium known as “Le Sauchoir,” ultimately leading to his removal and to significant intervention by Dominican authorities.  Moreover, in the early 1940s, a published lecture by Chenu, as well as a work on theological methodology by Louvain Dominican Louis Charlier, were both placed on the Index of Prohibited Books, the former because of certain passages concerning the role of history and philosophy in theology, as well as the relationship between theology and spirituality, and the latter for implications of his theory of theological demonstration.  These events ultimately were the backdrop for a major debate during the second half of the 1940s, concerning what has come to be known, rather imprecisely, as the “nouvelle théologie.” It is a debate that is too complex to cover in detail here, but it is important to note that the central concern raised by conservative theologians at the time regarded not only their sense that scholasticism was being depreciated by certain authors but, even more importantly, that the theory of dogmatic development proposed by Jesuit Father Henri Bouillard (1908–1981) in his Conversion et grâce chez Saint Thomas d’Aquin represented a form of return to certain aspects of the “modernist” theories of dogmatic development.  Sensing the influence of the epistemology of Henri Bergson (1859–1941) and Maurice Blondel (1861–1949)—the latter of whom was tangentially ensnared by the modernist crisis itself at the turn of the century, though he was exonerated by Pius X himself—Dominican Fathers Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange (1877–1964), Michel Labourdette (1908–1990), and Marie-Joseph Nicolas (1906–1999) voiced significant concerns regarding his theory of dogmatic development, as well as regarding defenses offered for this theory by Msgr. Bruno Solages (1895–1983) and Jesuit Father Jean-Marie Le Blond.  The debate never came to a settled conclusion outside of the magisterial action taken in 1950 in the form of the encyclical Humani generis, promulgated by Pope Pius XII (1876–1958).

During the period of time that followed upon the Second Vatican Council, a number of these issues have remained under the surface and have elicited various Magisterial statements, including but not limited to: under Pope St. Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei (1965) and “The Credo of the People of God” Solemni Hac Liturgia (1968); during the papacy of St. John Paul II, the instruction Donum Veritatis: On the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian (1990), the new Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992), Fides et Ratio (1998), and the CDF declaration Dominus Iesus (2000); likewise, under the auspices of the International Theological Commission, of particular interest are the declarations related to Theological Pluralism (1972), Theses on the Relationship between the Ecclesiastical Magisterium and Theology (1975), Faith and Inculturation (1989), Christianity and the World Religions (1997), Sensus fidei in the Life of the Church (2014).  The theology and doctrine concerning dogmatic development remains, therefore, quite a living issue in the Church today and doubtless will call for further clarifications by Church authority when it sees fit to adjudicate the important questions that still remain in need of resolution. 

For an overview of more recent theological debates concerning this topic, it is useful to consult the works of Meszaros, Mansini, Dublanchy, and Walgrave cited below, as well as the extensive bibliography found in the work of Rahner there as well.