Doctrine, acorn to tree?

[Montie_Claunch]

I was wondering, I have occasionally heard of doctrines being like acorns turning into trees or some such thing. I could follow if were structre (as the Church grows more than 12 bishops would be needed, various offices such as that of the congregation of the causes of the saints) but, I can’t think of anything like that on Dogmas. I thought all that composed Catholicism (in Dogma at least) could be found in the Early Church. How could it do any growing? Thanks and God bless.

 

[Veritas41]

Maybe this article will help:

catholic.com/library/Can_Dogma_Develop.asp

 

[Genesis315]

How’s this for an example:

Acorn: Jesus Christ is God and Man.

Tree: read the countless treatises by the Fathers and early Christological Ecumenical Councils on this subject–volume after volume–and you’ll see how a basic doctrine is developed and all the truth contained in that acorn is brought forth in spendor.

 

[Atreyu]

I was wondering, I have occasionally heard of doctrines being like acorns turning into trees or some such thing. I could follow if were structre (as the Church grows more than 12 bishops would be needed, various offices such as that of the congregation of the causes of the saints) but, I can’t think of anything like that on Dogmas. I thought all that composed Catholicism (in Dogma at least) could be found in the Early Church. How could it do any growing? Thanks and God bless.

I’ll give you something else to think about. Catholics believe that the Immaculate Conception is a dogma, right? OK, but the earliest Catholics didn’t fully understand how conception itself worked. Not even Thomas Aquinas understood this. In fact, it is only very recent that scientists have been able to fully understand how this works. So how could we have had a fully-developed teaching on the Immaculate Conception, when we did not understand the science of conception? But of course, the acorn of the teaching is there in the early church fathers, as shown in the library page here at CA.