What is Development of Doctrine and How does it take place?
What is the Development of Doctrine?
So we have a fixed Revelation that can nevertheless produce a growing body of religious knowledge. This growth in understanding is often called the “development of doctrine.” It is the gradual unfolding of the meaning of what God has revealed. The truth of a revealed mystery remains unchanged. What changes is the degree of the personal human understanding of the revealed truth.
How Does the Development of Doctrine Take Place?
Development of doctrine takes place primarily through the working of the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of truth and the Soul of the Church. The Holy Spirit works in many ways to enlighten the faithful. One primary means the Holy Spirit uses to push the Church toward a deeper understanding of revealed truth is the occurrence of confusion on points of revelation. One early example of this in the history of the Church involved the controversy concerning the person and nature of Jesus Christ and his relationship to God. Some groups in the Church known as Arians were denying that Jesus Christ was fully divine. The way in which this controversy was resolved is telling for how Tradition and the development of doctrine work.
Top theologians in the Church like St. Athanasius noted the lived tradition of Catholics everywhere—that in Masses and divine liturgies Jesus had been worshipped as God for as long as anyone could remember. Second, these leading theologians made appeal to what the Bible itself said about God and Jesus while answering the claims of the Arians. Third, the Church’s formal response to the Arians occurred when two great councils were convened in Nicea in 335 AD and at Constantinople in 381 AD. Here the bishops in the Church, the successors to the apostles made an authoritative declaration concerning the person and nature of Jesus Christ. They introduced several important new terms to capture and safeguard the complex testimony of the Bible on the subject. One term was that Jesus was “of one nature” or homoousios (“consubstantial” CCC 242) with the Father. Another term was that God was a Trinity or three divine persons in one God (CCC 232-242). Fifth, the Council of Constantinople also composed the famous creed that Catholics (as well as many non-Catholic Christians) recite all over the world during divine worship (CCC 195, 242). The total unity of Christians everywhere on the central question of Jesus Christ and his relation to the Father is a testimony to the work of the Holy Spirit. In other words, it was the same Holy Spirit who 1) inspired the Scriptures 2) moved Christians to worship Jesus as God 3) guided the bishops of the world to pronounce authoritatively on Jesus’ divinity and 4) moved the Church to receive the teachings of the Councils of Nicea and Constantinople. The result of the whole controversy is that the Church has a far deeper understanding of the precise relationship between Jesus and God the Father than she had before the Arian controversy. The Church also now has important new words like homoousios and Trinity which give her a way of speaking that preserves and safeguards the truth about Jesus Christ that God had revealed.
This above framework for how implicit teachings in an earlier stage, become explicit in a later stage derives largely from the very important work of Blessed John Henry Newman whose "Essay on the Development of Doctrine" you are reading part of this week. .
So we have a fixed Revelation that can nevertheless produce a growing body of religious knowledge. This growth in understanding is often called the “development of doctrine.” It is the gradual unfolding of the meaning of what God has revealed. The truth of a revealed mystery remains unchanged. What changes is the degree of the personal human understanding of the revealed truth.
How Does the Development of Doctrine Take Place?
Development of doctrine takes place primarily through the working of the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of truth and the Soul of the Church. The Holy Spirit works in many ways to enlighten the faithful. One primary means the Holy Spirit uses to push the Church toward a deeper understanding of revealed truth is the occurrence of confusion on points of revelation. One early example of this in the history of the Church involved the controversy concerning the person and nature of Jesus Christ and his relationship to God. Some groups in the Church known as Arians were denying that Jesus Christ was fully divine. The way in which this controversy was resolved is telling for how Tradition and the development of doctrine work.
Top theologians in the Church like St. Athanasius noted the lived tradition of Catholics everywhere—that in Masses and divine liturgies Jesus had been worshipped as God for as long as anyone could remember. Second, these leading theologians made appeal to what the Bible itself said about God and Jesus while answering the claims of the Arians. Third, the Church’s formal response to the Arians occurred when two great councils were convened in Nicea in 335 AD and at Constantinople in 381 AD. Here the bishops in the Church, the successors to the apostles made an authoritative declaration concerning the person and nature of Jesus Christ. They introduced several important new terms to capture and safeguard the complex testimony of the Bible on the subject. One term was that Jesus was “of one nature” or homoousios (“consubstantial” CCC 242) with the Father. Another term was that God was a Trinity or three divine persons in one God (CCC 232-242). Fifth, the Council of Constantinople also composed the famous creed that Catholics (as well as many non-Catholic Christians) recite all over the world during divine worship (CCC 195, 242). The total unity of Christians everywhere on the central question of Jesus Christ and his relation to the Father is a testimony to the work of the Holy Spirit. In other words, it was the same Holy Spirit who 1) inspired the Scriptures 2) moved Christians to worship Jesus as God 3) guided the bishops of the world to pronounce authoritatively on Jesus’ divinity and 4) moved the Church to receive the teachings of the Councils of Nicea and Constantinople. The result of the whole controversy is that the Church has a far deeper understanding of the precise relationship between Jesus and God the Father than she had before the Arian controversy. The Church also now has important new words like homoousios and Trinity which give her a way of speaking that preserves and safeguards the truth about Jesus Christ that God had revealed.
This above framework for how implicit teachings in an earlier stage, become explicit in a later stage derives largely from the very important work of Blessed John Henry Newman whose "Essay on the Development of Doctrine" you are reading part of this week. .
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