Development of Doctrine

The unity of faith, then, is the unity of a living body; this was clearly brought out by Bl. John Henry Newman when he listed among the characteristic notes for distinguishing the continuity of doctrine over time its power to assimilate everything that it meets in the various settings in which it becomes present and in the diverse cultures which it encounters, purifying all things and bringing them to their finest expression.^[1]

Pope Francis

One of Newman’s lifelong convictions was belief in the unbroken continuity of authentic Christianity from the time of the Apostles till the present day. Early in his Anglican career he adopted as a litmus test the words of St Vincent of Lérins - the true faith was what had been believed ‘everywhere, always, and by all’. Any belief or practice not found in the early centuries – such as the centrality of the Papacy or prayer to the Virgin Mary – must therefore be a “corruption”. But this was an essentially static formulation, and deep study of the Fathers of the Church convinced him that even more central Christian beliefs – like the doctrine of the Trinity – seemed to be only obscurely present in those early centuries. This dilemma became more acute as he himself was increasingly drawn to Catholicism. How could one reconcile the apparently simple Christianity of the New Testament with the elaborated beliefs and rituals of the nineteenth-century Catholic Church?

To solve this problem, Newman wrote a theological masterpiece, the Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845). In it he argued that Christianity, like all world-changing ideas or movements, needed time for its full understanding and perfection, and its unfolding was not merely the logical teasing out of the meaning of a complex statement, but an historical and social process involving human ingenuity and responsiveness to new situations. At any one time the Church may not be fully aware of what is implicit in what she already believes. The more vital and living an “idea” is, the greater is its ability to adapt, thrive and surprise, without betrayal of its original energy and principles. Developments are not necessarily “corruptions”, but may be expression of organic growth, means of preserving the original idea in new circumstances. Later developments can be implicit in the original revelation, but take time to unfold.

Like most of Newman’s writings, the Essay on Development was an “occasional” work. Though he had reflected on the problem for years, he wrote the book in six months to clear his way to becoming a Roman Catholic, and published it unfinished once he had decided he could and must convert. It included seven “tests” (subsequently and more cautiously described as “notes”) by which to distinguish authentic developments from false: some are more satisfactory than others, and none is conclusive. But the basic concept was soon recognised as a theological breakthrough, which provided an adequate response to the challenges posed for all Christian communities by the apparent discrepancies between ancient and modern Christianity highlighted by modern biblical criticism and a new and more searching historicism. Though some theologians attacked it as heretical, it was tacitly used to justify the 1854 dogmatic definition of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. In the twentieth century it was increasingly drawn on by Catholic and Protestant theologians sensitive to the historical sources for Christian doctrine, and it helped to formulate the Second Vatican Council’s dogmatic constitution on revelation, Dei Verbum.

Newman’s insights in the nature of development of doctrine and his “notes” to distinguish between authentic and false developments are highly important for the correct interpretation of the Second Vatican Council and some burning questions in the Church of our days. In 1986, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger claimed that Newman’s concept of doctrinal development had become “one of the decisive and fundamental concepts of Catholicism”.[2] Cardinal Ratzinger would later state that Newman teaching on doctrinal development “had placed the key in our hand to build historical thought into theology…to think historically in theology and so to recognise the identity of faith in all developments.”[3] And its acceptance and deployment by many of the churches of the Reformation has profoundly contributed to ecumenical understanding.

[1] AAS, Vol. 105, no. 7 (2013), 588. Lumen Fidei (29 June 2013)

[2] Joseph Ratzinger, “The Ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council,” Communio 13 (1996): 241–242.

[3] “Presentation by His Eminence Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger on the Occasion of the First Centenary of the Death of Cardinal John Henry Newman” (28 April 1990), in L’Osservatore Romano (English Edition), 1 June 2005, 9.