Doctrinal Development

[byzgrl]

I tried to express, with this baptist, the concept of development…and he has asked this. I’m not sure how else to describe it. I expressed that, over time, new ways of understanding these mysteries have been revealed to the Church, but that they were always present, implicitly, in seed form…that they have never changed, but that they have been made more clear. This is his response. Can someone help me to further explain to him the understanding the Church has in regard to doctrinal development. This man, by the way, has a group on Facebook regarding the ante-Nicene Fathers. The main focus of his ‘group’ is more about the attempt to bring down Catholicism (prove it to be false) rather than proving that the Baptist Church is most like the 1st century church (which is what he believes).

Here’s his remark:

“How can knowledge become clearer over time? Are we going to now know more about Christ and his teachings, 2000 years later, than the Apostles knew? That makes no sense? Do you know more about your ancestors than they did? Do you know more about what your great grandfather was thinking and doing than he did?”

Any help would be appreciated. I’m running out of steam.

 

[AmbroseSJ]

A good example of Doctrinal development is the Holy Trinity. This was not taught per se, in the Sacred Scriptures, but now we have a comprehensive doctrine regarding the Holy Trinity, and it is fundamental to Christianity.

 

[paul_c]

Well, the truth doesn’t change. It is eternal. How we come to understand that truth changes as our perspective changes. Nothing the Catholic Church teaches contradicts what it had previously taught. But sometimes it is expressed differently to make it more understandable. For instance, the dogma of the immaculate conception, which will be celebrated next week, was only pronounced in 1854. However, nothing in previous church teachings said that Mary wasn’t immaculately conceived. In fact, when the Archangel Gabriel addresses her as Full of Grace in Luke’s gospel, he supports that she was sinless. And there is existing Christian hymns (call the Nisibene hymns) dating from 370 AD that talking about Jesus and Mary say " there is no blemish in you nor any stains upon your Mother". So its an ancient concept, accepted in the church from very early on, that was only made official doctrine in the last century.

 

[Joe_5859]

We see so far because we stand on the shoulders of giants.

A wise man once told be that the Church without Tradition and doctrinal development is a Church with amnesia. We end up constantly trying to reinvent the wheel.

In any other academic discipline, development of knowledge is a given. Would anyone seriously assert that the first biologists knew more about Biology than the biologists of today? No. And yet, the same fundamental truths of biology existed then as they do now. The same unchanging natural laws applied to them as they apply to us. Science advances because it builds upon the body of work that comes before it. Theology advances similarly.

I recommend taking a look at what the great Anglican convert Cardinal John Henry Newman had to say about this in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.

 

[OchsFam]

“How can knowledge become clearer over time? Are we going to now know more about Christ and his teachings, 2000 years later, than the Apostles knew? That makes no sense? Do you know more about your ancestors than they did? Do you know more about what your great grandfather was thinking and doing than he did?”

A lot of protestants like to act as though they have not developed doctrine and blame the Church for developing pagan beliefs into Christianity. The argument is that the Catholic Church moved away from Christ’s teachings and developed a pagan form of Christianity.

Ask your friend to explain why prior to 1930, his beloved Baptist church taught the immorality of contraception, then after ABC became the popular standard changed their mind and now teach that it is morally acceptable? If this is not a development of doctrine, then nothing is. Previously, they taught contraception was a sin, now they teach it is not.

They may argue they didn’t have a teaching prior to 1930, but then this would be a development of doctrine that does not contradict their previous stance. The truth is that they did have a teaching; even though they were smart enough not to write it down so they could change it in the future and claim not having a teaching. It is quite genius in a way.

One has to give credit to the protestant tradition. They don’t write anything down definitively as a church, and will denounce the teachings of a member if they decide to change their mind later. They can say whatever they want and claim to never have changed because there is no history to check it against. They don’t have to agree with any Church Father, they don’t have to agree with protestant reformers, they only have to believe what they currently believe. If they change their mind, they will not have anything to prove what they used to believe. I love the line, “I only agree with person X in so much as he agrees with the Bible”. It doesn’t matter that person X uses the Bible to prove all of their claims because in the end, what is meant is “I only agree with person X in so much as they agree with my interpretation of the Bible”.

You can look into any protestant denomination and find changes in doctrine. Ask him who founded the Baptist church. Look up some quotes from that person and you are almost guaranteed to find some differences in their reformation founder and their current beliefs. The difference is, they contradict previous beliefs (as in the case of contraception) where the Catholic Church does not. We expand on a belief or definitively announce a belief where as they simply change what was previously believed and then try to deny history.

The fact is that our “development” occured in a few hundred years and is in line with every person before and not in contradiction to a properly understood Bible. Their development took 1500+ years and is direct contradiction to the Bible at any level of understanding at some point(s). Their beliefs contradict the Church Fathers and in a lot of cases, the protestant reformers. For example, Martin Luther and John Calvin both believed in the ever-virginity of Mary while most protestants today would not believe this. This is a case of trying to point out a spec in the Catholic eye which is not even there while they have a log in their own eye which make it impossible to see.

God Bless.

 

[Mark77]

The answer to his question; “How can knowledge become clearer over time? Are we going to now know more about Christ and his teachings, 2000 years later, than the Apostles knew?” is YES!

The Apostles were personally taught by Jesus for 3 years & yet, until they received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, they understood little or nothing of what Jesus taught them.

**Ask your Baptist friend what Sacred Scripture says about embryonic stem cell research? Without the Holy Spirit guiding the One, Holy, Catholic & Apostolic Church, then we would be lost on this topic.

We would be left to be our own church & our own personal popes, deciding for ourselves what is right. Kind of like our Protestant brothers & sisters, with their 20,000 + denominations, each interpreting the Word of God differently, often incompletely or totally in error!**

"And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen. (Jn 21:25 KJV for your Baptist friend since he surely believes Jesus had a KJV in His possession for reference).

Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, Ora Pro Nobis Peccatoribus!

mark

 

[ziapueblo]

I would ask this individual if his understanding of the faith has grown over the years.

Christ is among us,
ZP

 

[Ignatius33]

The Church teaches that public revelation, i.e., the entire deposit of faith, was completed by the close of the apostolic era (with St. John’s death, around 100 AD). It does not teach progressive revelation. Rather, it teaches that some doctrines and concepts require generations or even hundreds of years of contemplation, prayer and “hammering out” before their implications are fully realized or understood (the same is basically true in science). Doctrine doesn’t change; the Church’s collective understanding of it does. The concept of the Trinity – pretty much the most central dogma – is a good example of this. The term “Trinity” wasn’t even used until around 180 AD by St. Theophilus of Antioch (To Autolycus [181 AD]). And it wasn’t formally defined until the 4th century councils of Nicaea and Constantinople.

By analogy, in the history of physics and mathematics, often a consensus begins to emerge among practitioners that a proposition is true, but it takes a long time for a logical proof to be found. One cannot object to calculus, for example, by showing, historically, it came to birth based on vague notions in Newton’s mind and so it is only questionably valid. The fact is after Newton, Cauchy proved it was valid – I think nearly 200 years later. A consensus can emerge because practitioners of a science “see” the conclusion must be so, but cannot quite spell it out. This also happens in the history of dogma. The Assumption of Mary is a case in point.

 

[AmbroseSJ]

Ignatius33:

The Church teaches that public revelation, i.e., the entire deposit of faith, was completed by the close of the apostolic era (with St. John’s death, around 100 AD). It does not teach progressive revelation.

That’s both true and false. It is true that “public revelation” (as opposed to private revelation) ended with the death of the last Apostle. It is also true that the deposit of Faith, which the Church preserves and teaches, was complete by the close of the Apostolic era. But it is NOT true that Divine Revelation has ceased. The Church is the oracle of Divine Revelation. Therefore when the Trinity was defined in the 4th century, which was always contained in the deposit of Faith, this new definition was still a Divine Revelation, as having come infallibly from the Church of Christ. It is not just an institutional utterance.

That is what Protestants object to in fact, as they see that is what is happening. But it’s true, the Catholic Church continues to expound on the Deposit of Faith, and that teaching is indeed Divine Revelation of something that was already present (although hidden or obscure) in the Deposit of Faith.

So my point is, Divine Revelation has not ceased. It is still proclaimed throughout the ages by the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.