Evolutionary theology

Yes, it feels like a so-bad-it's-good Chuck Norris movie. At the climax of yet another such flick, the words of the steely-eyed hero played by Chuck resounded in the villain’s head: “It’s time…to die.” The poor fellow promptly turned around to see Chuck fire a live RPG into him. In tackling the subject to which my title alludes, I feel like that villain. I can sense some combat-hardened defender of orthodoxy behind me, ready to fire his overkill and watch me blow up. The time has come to address the subject; indeed, that time is overdue in the Church. But at least I’m not the villain of the piece, and the conversation will continue regardless.

I do, after all, have a legion of well-intentioned company. A few weeks ago, as my radio droned over my chores, I heard Barbara Bradley Hagerty conducting an NPR piece that their webmaster entitles “Evangelicals Question the Existence of Adam and Eve.” At first, I rolled my mind’s eyes: Since when is it news that not all evangelicals, never mind other sorts of Christian, are fundamentalists?  Of course it’s possible for a faithful Christian to doubt that the first several chapters of Genesis are literal history. E.g., the chronological order of creation described in the first chapter does not square with that of the second—a fact that surely cannot have escaped the notice of whoever first put these stories together in a single written text. And many scholars, including one Joseph Ratzinger, have pointed out the similarities between Genesis and Babylonian myth. As a Catholic, I tend to think of the first eleven chapters of Genesis as myths and legends given a distinctive theological interpretation in their divinely inspired, written form. What’s important is not that they be history as the modern mind understands that genre, but that their theological interpretation be—well, divinely revealed truth. That, to be sure, must bear some relationship to what literally happened in the past. But it’s not clear exactly what that is, and it’s doubtful that we can ever get clear enough about it to satisfy intellectual curiosity. I’m far from alone in that attitude, not only among Catholics but among Christians generally.

But despite my inclination to let the matter rest there, other Catholics won’t. I’ve noticed over the years that whenever the question of humanity’s origins comes up, many thoughtful Catholics will take the evolution of the body for granted (as did Pope John Paul II), but all will zero in on the question of monogenism.

Last week, e.g., science writer John Farrell observed on his blog at Forbes.com:

The question arises: Can theology adapt to the findings of science? Can the strict monogenism of the human race as traditionally understood by Christians, be modified to the scientific consensus that the human species originated in a small population, not a single couple? In famous cases, of course, such as the trial of Galileo, and acceptance of the reality of heliocentrism, the answer is yes, though it took the Catholic Church a long time to officially come around. But as Coyne points out, the erosion of the idea that the human race descended from a single couple is something that is much more necessary to the theology of salvation in Christian tradition than is the issue of, say, whether God really made the sun stand still for Joshua and the Israelites. Christians have for centuries adapted to a more allegorical interpretation of many books in the Old Testament. But not the Book of Genesis and its account of the Fall and Expulsion from Eden.

The question at issue here is really dual: Did the human race today descend from a single couple? And: Is an affirmative answer to that question necessary for preserving Catholic soteriology? From a scientific standpoint, the first question seems to be settled in the negative. Many faithful Catholics think the second is settled in the affirmative. So, to that extent, we have a conflict. Farrell worries that the Catholic Church has not tried to resolve the conflict. He’s right to worry, for the conflict is a serious test of faith for many educated Catholics.

At the magisterial level, the only explicit treatment of the matter we find is Pope Pius XII’s  1950 encyclical Humani Generis. Here’s the passage Farrell quotes, like many others before him:

For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.

That came partly in response to the speculations of Jesuit paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin, who indeed had little compunction about coloring outside the lines of orthodoxy. The Vatican, needless to say, was not pleased. Even today, most champions of orthodoxy believe that Pius XII settled the matter in favor of monogenism, “science” be damned. But I’m not so sure about that.

Since I’m not a scientist, and my academic credentials are not in theology, I’m not the one to solve the problem. But I suggest that, to make progress, we should first ask whether the conflict is real or apparent, temporary or permanent. For answers, there are three basic options:

1. The conflict is real and permanent: the “surrender” option.
2. The conflict is real but temporary: the “truce” option.
3. The conflict is only apparent: the “creative” option.

WWhich option is the faithful Catholic to take?  Clearly not (1). Since the Church has long insisted that “reason” and “faith” complement rather than contradict each other, surrendering the confirmed results of natural science to theological dogma on this point is not an option. So the debate among thoughtful Catholics is really about whether to embrace (2) or (3). Do we settle for a temporary truce, waiting science out a while longer? Or do we take the present results of science for granted as a point of departure for some creative theological re-thinking?

It’s tempting to go for (2). Science does develop and change, after all. Prima facie, waiting science out still seems to be the Vatican’s preferred route. Largely for that reason, it is the preferred route of orthodoxy’s champions. But after six decades of scientific progress since Humani Generis, continued silence on their part is a theological and apologetical embarrassment. What, then, can be done with the creative option while remaining within the bounds of orthodoxy?

As a philosopher, my instinct is to look for the logical wiggle-room. And in Pius XII’s words, that’s what we find. To be sure, it is irreformable dogma that an individual couple committed the first sin and transmitted the resulting loss of grace to their descendants as “original” sin. With the usual two exceptions understood, those descendants are all of us. But a conflict with current science arises only if we assume that the “generation” by which original sin is transmitted logically entails that a first couple, Adam and Eve, were the first humans in a purely natural sense, i.e. the genetic sense. Nothing in magisterial documents requires adopting that assumption. So it is no more theologically irreformable than scientifically defensible. We may and should dispense with it.

Why not hold instead that Adam and Eve—whoever they really were, and wherever they really lived—were the first humans in a supernatural sense? As a couple, they were the first people to be called and elevated by grace to a state of fellowship with God meant to culminate in a greater union with him. That doesn’t entail that they were genetically the first humans. It entails only that they were the first humans God gave a destiny beyond Nature. So when they sinned and lost his grace, they largely reverted to Nature, which is the state all of us since then find ourselves in until we are somehow incorporated into Christ.

Of course such a proposal raises many questions. There are always questions, and I don’t pretend to have all the answers. But centuries ago, the Church slowly came to see that affirming biblical inerrancy did not entail rejecting heliocentrism. It is not unreasonable to imagine her coming to see that affirming monogenism need not entail rejecting evolutionary biology.

OK, time to duck the RPGs….

Is there development of doctrine in the New Testament?

To some theologians--mostly modern biblical theologians--the answer is obviously yes. See, e.g., the late Raymond E. Brown's Biblical Exegesis and Church Doctrine, a fairly middle-of-the-road view of the matter by a pre-eminent Catholic scholar. To others, the answer is equally obviously no. In their view, the New Testament records divine revelation, so that even if revelation itself was progressive during the time recorded in the NT, the very category of development of doctrine is simply inapplicable to the Bible. Rather than rehash that impasse, though, I'd suggest this: assuming that the Bible records, in written form, the unfolding of the definitive events of divine revelation to humanity, the pattern of that unfolding tells us a lot about how we, as church and as individuals, come to understand it more fully over time. And the means by which the Church comes to state her understanding achieved over time just is development of doctrine.

I should think such a principle underlies the ubiquitous and salutary use of Scripture to gain insight into what God does within our own lives as Christians. But on a more abstract level, we can see the same principle at work in doctrine. Consider the following passage from a long essay that I don't agree with on every point, but certainly agree with on the present point:

A good example of the Church’s authority, and of Tradition in action helping to develop a doctrine not formally presented in the Scriptures of the time, is the Council of Jerusalem, and the debate over whether believers needed to be circumcised. Acts 15 describes how the leadership of the Church, the apostles and elders, met in Jerusalem to discuss whether the flood of gentile converts to the Church needed to be circumcised. If the decision was to be based on the plain text of Scripture, they would have unrolled their Scriptures and seen that God gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision as an “everlasting covenant” (Gen 17:7, 10). They would have seen that circumcision, the sign of the covenant, applied not just to Abraham’s descendants but to those who were “not of your offspring” (Gen 17:12), those who wished to join the covenant by conversion (Ex 12:48). They would have seen that all the Patriarchs were circumcised, that Moses was circumcised and the covenant renewed and reinforced in the Law (Lev 12:3), and that all the prophets, all the apostles, and Jesus himself were circumcised (Luke 2:21). They would also have recalled that Jesus said not one jot or tittle of the Law would pass away (Matt 5:18).

In spite of all this, the Council declares that Gentile converts did not have to be circumcised. The unwritten apostolic Tradition (paradosis, in Greek) plays a big part in determining how the Scriptural information is interpreted. There was the paradosis of Jesus’ command to preach the Gospel to all nations (Matt 28:19), the paradosis of Peter’s revelation from the Holy Spirit not to call unclean what God has made clean (Acts 10:15), the experience of Paul and Barnabas in their work with the Gentiles (Acts 15:12), and of Philip with the Samaritans (Acts 8:5-6) and with the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:28-38). Peter stands up at the Council and appeals to the apostolic authority delegated to him by Christ and tells how God showed his acceptance of the Gentiles by giving them the Holy Spirit and purifying their hearts by faith. It’s not until the end of the Council that James quotes from Scripture (Acts 15:16-18, cf Amos 9:11-12). Scripture is seen to agree with the Church’s authoritative judgement (“with this the words of the prophets agree”, Acts 15:15), but is not necessarily used to determine the Church’s judgement.

The point of all this is that the Council of Jerusalem, just like the Catholic Church, views Scripture in the context of the Church’s Tradition and magisterial, apostolic authority. All of the Church’s doctrinal developments proceed in a similar fashion. Each development has a basis in Scripture, either explicit, or in implicit, “mustard seed” form, and the connection of the text to the doctrine is most clearly seen when the Bible is read in the light of the apostolic Tradition.

What's significant here is that one could not have deduced, just by formal logic, the decision of the Apostles from the sources available to them. They used both biblia and paradosis: both what they knew as "Scripture" at that time and what they knew as "tradition," i.e. what else was "handed down" to them at the time from the Lord. Given that combination, their decision was reasonable. But even granted as much, it was not rationally necessitated even by the combination of sources available to them. If it had been, there would have been no dispute requiring a "council." The decision was one to which they were led by the Spirit: "It seems good to the Holy Spirit and to us..." Yet the influence of the Holy Spirit did not violate reason; for given what the Apostles took as the sources of divine revelation, pre-eminently Jesus Christ himself, they interpreted biblia and paradosis in a way that harmonized an apparent conflict between them.

That, I should think, is the model of how doctrinal disputes can and ought to be resolved even today. Of course, appealing to that model is not, by itself, going to solve the fundamental disagreement between Catholics and magisterial Protestants about the nature and locus of ecclesial authority. But I think the model itself is one piece of the truth about how we come to understand divine revelation over the centuries. I think so because, as I argued in my hoary doctoral thesis, the primary sense of 'mystery' is the notion that certain realities can be intelligibly explained without being necessitated by what must be cited to explain them.

Picking your hermeneutical circle

On February 5, I posted a piece called "The authority question restated." I argued that the uncommitted inquirer, seeking the full and true presentation of the deposit of Christian faith (DF) as an object of faith rather than just of opinion, faces a choice between three mutually incommensurable "hermeneutical circles": the Protestant, the Orthodox, and the Catholic. Each such circle can be viewed as a set of criteria for identifying the objective content of the DF precisely as an object of faith not opinion; as such and necessarily, each HC identifies an authority of ultimate appeal for distinguishing between true and false doctrine. Despite the rather considerable range of readers with whom I have discussed such matters, the only serious objection I got in the combox to my characterization of the three circles was from a Catholic who suggested that my characterization of the Protestant HC made that HC seem too irrational to be true. But I got no similar objection from Protestants—indeed no objection at all, despite the eagerness of some Protestant readers and their sympathizers to engage me on closely related matters, such as "the development of doctrine." I shall accordingly proceed on the assumption that my brief characteriztion of the Protestant HC, at least for present purposes, is fair.

In my post of February 20, I set forth epistemological criteria for assessing proposed doctrinal developments: "consistency," "capaciousness," "parsimony," and "others depending on the subject matter." On my account, if a proposed instance of DD, call it 'D', does a good job of satisfying such criteria, then D counts as a good "abductive" explanation of its proper subject matter; and D's being such an explanation is in turn a good reason to view it as belonging to the DF. Yet no such reason is or could be compelling as an argument for an article of faith; for abduction yields only probability and thus, in itself, licenses only opinion. To treat D as an article of faith as distinct from opinion, one needs to incorporate D into one of the three HCs, thus giving its content the stamp of some authority which, ex hypothesi, is beyond appeal. But the very next day, in an interesting reply to my recent efforts, Jonathan Prejean urged:

But why not simply join the battle plainly at this point? The Catholic hermeneutical circle is the abductive explanation for the objective sensus ecclesiae. The difficulty with claiming this or that doctrine developed by abduction, even if that doctrine happens to be the authority of the Pope, would to me take too narrow a view of the strength of abduction. If we are going to use abduction as a criteria for what to believe in this or that other case, then why not use abduction to determine the best global theory of authority?

What's interesting about JP's move is that it invokes abduction not merely as a means to assess the rational justifiability of this or that particular instance of DD, but also as a means to evaluate each of the HCs as a whole against each other. As a Catholic, he naturally sees the Catholic HC as abductively superior to the alternatives, and on that score I would ultimately agree with him. I would even agree that the species of abduction known as "inference to the best explanation" can be a fair way to evaluate the three HCs against each other. But I have a deep reservation about proceeding in such a fashion for purposes of debate, as distinct from dispassionate inquiry; and the reasons for that reservation suggest to me an alternative approach that the uncommitted and dispassionate inquirer might find useful.

The problem is this. Even granted that the data which each HC is offered to explain can be relevantly and accurately characterized independently of commitment to one of the HCs, each HC perforce organizes and interprets the data in its own terms. Thus, given the same large and detailed set of data, an adherent of any one HC will organize and interpret them in a way designed to fit within the HC to which he is committed. The most common example of the difficulty that poses is the centuries-old, indeed interminable debate over what non-Catholics call "the papal claims." Given the same first-millennium historical data drawn from Scripture, Tradition, the resolution of schisms, various statements of the Fathers, and the practice of ecumenical councils, Protestants and Orthodox will organize, interpret, and in due course explain that data differently from, indeed incompatibly with, how Catholics do. Thanks to the efforts of church historians and other scholars, there might be very considerable agreement as to what the raw data are; but there is no theologically significant agreement on what the raw data mean. The same goes for many other points of doctrinal contention between the three main traditions of Christianity.

That is why debate, even if it occasionally induces this-or-that individual to change their mind, will ultimately resolve nothing between the three main traditions as a whole. And that is just what we should expect, given that the data are interpreted from within the three mutually incommensurable HCs defining the three traditions. In the very nature of the case, it is not possible to rationally induce somebody committed to one of the three HCs to see the others as doing more than begging the key questions. Indeed, an adherent of any one HC will often see the others as viciously circular. That presents a problem for the uncommitted and dispassionate inquirer seeking to determine which of the HCs is abductively superior to the others, at least regarding that aggregate of data which interests her; for it is virtually impossible to organize and interpret the data in any theologically significant way without committing oneself to one of the three HCs. Professionals engaged in non-confessional "religious studies" can and do offer helpful perpectives, but those do not and cannot settle any of the theologically significant questions.

In view of that difficulty, I'd recommend splitting up the choice for the dispassionate and uncommitted inquirer. Rather than undertake to compare each of the three HCs directly and severally against each other, as abductions from agreed-upon and putatively neutral data, it would be more fruitful to divide them into two pairs of alternatives and only then abductively evaluate the members of each pair against each other.

The first pair consists of the Protestant HC on the one side and the Catholic and Orthodox HCs on the other. On my account of the Protestant HC, the complete objective content of the DF can and ought to be reliably identified, via Scripture, in a way that is entirely independent of the question whether some visible, historically continuous body called "the Church" has inherited from the Apostles their divinely-bestowed office of teaching in a manner that binds all believers. For once one has been given—by scholarship, the Holy Spirit, or both—the right hermeneutic for interpreting Scripture, then employing that hermeneutic will yield up the "inherently intelligible" content of Scripture as the Word of God, and thus obviate the need to rely on merely human ecclesial authority. Indeed, the Word of God will come to be seen as convicting any such authority of hubris if it claims for itself any more authority than that of handing on the raw data of the DF and reminding people of the ancient hermeneutic rendering them intelligible and adequate as an expression of the DF.

The Orthodox and Catholic HCs, on the other side, each insist that something called "the Church" has received from the Lord the same degree (though not the same kind) of authority as the Apostles to teach in a manner binding all believers. That is because both traditions take such a self-understanding on the Church's part to belong, itself, to the objective content of the DF "given once for all to the saints" and handed on to us through the apostolic succession of the bishops. There are of course important differences between Catholicism and Orthodoxy on the questions just how that authority is to be recognized and by whom it is exercised; and as I said in my post on authority, those differences are great enough that each communion, the Roman and the Orthodox, sees itself rather than the other as "the" Church. I shall return to that difference shortly; for now, I want to bring out what the uncommitted and dispassionate inquirer needs to consider toward the goal of deciding between the two pairs.

The choice presented by the first pair is between denying and affirming that the DF includes a belief that some communion of churches called "the Church"teaches with a living, authoritative voice enjoying the same degree (though not kind) of authority as the Apostles. Another way to put the same point would be this: the choice is between denying and affirming that the objective content of the DF includes that special, epistemically crucial point about the authority of the receiving subject of the DF, namely God's people, the Church.

I would further suggest, nay insist, that the question the inquirer first needs to ask herself here is which choice better facilitates the assent of faith as distinct from and beyond opinion. The preferable choice is the one that better facilitates the former. But one may well ask why I frame the choice in such terms.

The purpose of comparing all the HCs with respect to abductive quality is to determine whether any of them is a more reasonable HC to adopt than its competitors. Assuming that each HC is meant to cover the same set of data—in this case, those of Scripture and Tradition—each can be evaluated in abductive terms: the more reasonable one to adopt is the one with the best abductive qualities such as internal consistency, capaciousness, parsimony, and the like. The more "reasonable" an HC is by such measures, the more suited it is to facilitating the assent of divine faith as opposed to mere opinion.

Now I believe that there is a genuine, rationally justifiable choice, in terms of relative abductive quality, between the two members of the pair I've been describing. But for the reasons I've given above, they cannot by themselves settle the choice in a rationally compelling way. Things could hardly be otherwise. The logic of the situation entails weighing inductive probabilities rather than exhibiting deductive necessities, and the measure of such probabilities will always be imprecise and uncertain opinions. Precisely because they are opinions, they cannot substitute for the assent of faith. The relative, abductive quality of such opinions will only tell us which HC is the more reasonable one to adopt, and therefore which is better suited to facilitating the assent of faith.

The other pair of choices is that between the Orthodox and Catholic HCs themselves. Even if one rejects the Protestant HC, thus affirming that the DF posits the living, unitary voice of "the Church" as an authority beyond appeal in matters of doctrine, one has still not settled the question which of the two communions, the Roman and the Orthodox, is "the Church" and thus speaks with the authorized voice. In order to settle that question for herself, I would suggest, the uncommitted and dispassionate inquirer who has got thus far needs to shift focus from the full range of abductive criteria I named above to those of capaciousness and simplicity in particular. Which HC explains "the most with the least," and thus yields the most elegant explanatory model?

I put the question that way for several reasons—the most important of which is that I believe there is little to choose between the two HCs on the question which better facilitates the assent of faith as distinct from opinion. As far as I can tell apart from the criteria of capaciousness and simplicity, they both facilitate the assent of faith equally. For, apart from how they respectively satisfy said two criteria, both are equally reasonable. But once again, and as I've explained before to my Orthodox interlocutors, I don't believe that applying even those two particular abductive criteria by themselves is enough settle the question in principle, even though it did work for me in practice. If one could "prove," from agreed-upon but theologically neutral data, which communion is "the Church," then the thing would almost certainly have been done by now and the loser would have withered away accordingly. That hasn't happened and isn't going to happen. But I've said enough to imply that, to my mind, the choice between Protestantism and the two older traditions is an easier one than the choice between the two older traditions. In my next post, I shall explain why I find that to be so.

Minns and Irenaeus: a reply to an objection

Yesterday, I wasn't planning to make my next post a continuation of the previous one. There are many issues of interest to Catholics being discussed in the blogosphere. They need to be discussed, and I want to contribute to that discussion. I shall do so tomorrow. But as my best interlocutors are those who discuss development of doctrine (DD) with me, I see a need here to reply to one of them, "Ioannes," who wrote below in the combox to my previous post:

Dr Liccione:

...neo-Catholics from Newman onward have turned the deposit [of faith] into a nebulous construct more anchored in present fancy than spanning from the past to today. Tradition is in principle cut adrift from historical reality. What the apostles passed on to their successors is no longer a proclamation, sacraments, and a body of teaching. It is more abstract: a special authority to define the truth which accompanies a unique receptivity to the Spirit who makes present the mind of Christ. Teachings are apostolic in the fullest sense which have no demonstrable connection to the apostles. Why? Because they are contained in the many-sided idea of Christianity which the apostles (though perhaps themselves perceiving it dimly) somehow transmitted. This idea their successors are just faithfully re-articulating even when, as it must look from the outside, they happen to discover their novelties in it. I am not a fan of Orson Scott Card, but a passage from Speaker for the Dead comes to mind:

"...I know all the arguments of your Calvinism, but even John Calvin would call your doctrine stupid."

"How do you know what Calvin would--"

"Because he's dead," roared Andrew, "and so I'm entitled to speak for him!"

There is, however, no humor in Rome's boast. When in her fashion she claims to speak for the apostles, she is deathly serious, and those who disagree have fallen away completely from the divine and catholic faith.

The epistemological merits of the neo-Catholic stance are one question. Whether that position corresponds to the catholic Christianity of the fathers is another. I am not prepared to weigh in on philosophical matters where you have by far the greater expertise. I will only say this: I do not recognize the face of the early Church in Newman's romanticized Romanism. The exercise which gave rise to this thread is a case in point. I cannot help but think St Irenaeus would be as baffled reading your version of his thought as he would be reading Dei Verbum. Indeed, I believe you were on surer footing when you implied that Irenaeus may well have been mistaken about the nature of catholic tradition, with Vatican II a more reliable guide than he to how the Church's teaching office operated in his day. Better to forgo the historical gymnastics altogether, in favor of a hermeneutic which renders them superfluous.

What Santayana (quoted by Kirk) said of the old liberal order offers an ominous parallel for the neo-Catholic ascendancy: It "was like a great tree with the trunk already sawed quite through, but still standing with all its leaves quietly rustling, and with us dozing under its shade." The new tradition has likewise cut out the foundation. All who value Rome's influence where it is genuinely beneficial should hope to God that the new view of tradition falls before the old edifice does.

I'm struck by how scandalized John is by the Catholic Church's developed understanding of her own teaching authority. And let us make no mistake: the claims of Rome have been a scandal to many for over a millennium. For some, the scandal has only been exacerbated by the assertion of the ecumenically-minded Second Vatican Council that "...the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ" (Dei Verbum §10). As a Catholic, I imagine the scandal to be rather similar to that which Peter afforded many educated Jews of his time. But I must now address Ioannes.

_____________________________________

John:

I think it's the emotion elicited by finding oneself scandalized that explains why you're letting your rhetoric outrun your arguments. The Catholic Church most certainly affirms and maintains "a proclamation, sacraments, and a body of teaching" handed on from the Apostles. That's why she put together, preserves, reads, studies, and preaches on the Bible; that's why she celebrates and administers all her sacraments, which are founded on practices described in the New Testament; that's why she continues to propound ancient moral teachings—such as that on contraception, which from the 1st century until 1930 was taught consensually throughout Christendom, but which now earns her the execration and ridicule of most Christians, never mind "the world." The question at issue between us is how, and to what extent, the Apostles' "body of teaching" can be developed by that Church which is led by their successors. In other words, given that the Church maintains a whole lot of stuff from the Apostles, are their successors ever authorized to teach, as belonging to the deposit of faith (DF), doctrines that we have no record of the Apostles' having taught?

Let's get one red herring out of the way: distinctively Catholic doctrines (DCDs) are not mere "present fancy." The filioque, the papal claims, purgatory, the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption—such DCDs reflected the consensus fidelium in the Roman communion for centuries before they were formally defined as dogma. As Jaroslav Pelikan showed in his (as it were) magisterial studies of DD, such DCDs and others arose as answers to questions which themselves naturally arose out of earlier data we both agree are relevant and important. The interesting question we face, then, is not how "new" such DCDs are, but rather whether, as developments, they can plausibly be said to belong to the DF.

Your position is that authentic development can only consist in "demonstrating" some connection of a proposed development to the Apostles. I have asked you before what kind of argument would count as such a demonstration. Your answer has been that, given the perspicuity of the Scriptures, such a demonstration must consist in exhibiting how the proposed developed arises by some form of "rational necessity" from the words of Scripture. I then asked you whether that kind of necessitation must consist in deductive necessity: i.e., given the actual words of Scripture, no more and no less, must the proposed "development" follow as an ironclad logical consequence?

As I recall, you denied that deductive necessity is always necessary. But in the absence of deductive necessity, what sort of necessity is there? Even when acceptable, inductive arguments do not yield their conclusions of necessity, but only as probabilities. So either you stick to deductive necessity and thus stand on the formal sufficiency of Scripture—which result strikes me as a reductio ad absurdum—or you grapple with the question what sort of inductive argument is acceptable, though short of being logically compelling.

I have long argued that a species of induction, namely "abduction" or "inference to the best explanation," is the standard form of DD's context of justification—as distinct from its context of discovery, which cannot and should not try to eliminate the charismatic element. It is the quality of the abduction, seen in light of the analogia fidei and thus to some extent charismatically, which suggests the difference between mere theological opinions and development of the Church's collective understanding of the DF.

In general, explanations are evaluated in terms of a certain set of criteria: e.g., consistency (is the explanation consistent with what we already know?), capaciousness (does it cover everything that calls for explanation?), parsimony (does it avoid making assumptions and positing entities beyond what's necessary?) and other criteria depending on the subject matter. But the application of such criteria, though partly objective, is also subjective to some extent. In an ecclesial context, the application relies to some extent on the sensus ecclesiae. The consensus patrum is certainly an expression of the sensus ecclesiae; but is it the only normative one? If so, why? If not, what else is there? I remain firmly convinced that, the more seriously one grapples with such questions, the more reasonable the teaching of Vatican II on DD will come to seem.

You write: I believe you were on surer footing when you implied that Irenaeus may well have been mistaken about the nature of catholic tradition, with Vatican II a more reliable guide than he to how the Church's teaching office operated in his day. Better to forgo the historical gymnastics altogether, in favor of a hermeneutic which renders them superfluous.

I am willing to entertain the possibility that I have read too much into Irenaeus, but I don't believe he was "mistaken about the nature of catholic tradition." Rather, I believe Minns and Congar are mistaken to assert that, for Irenaeus, the "sure charism of truth" resides not in the subject of the tradition, the church or its leadership, but in the objective tradition itself. I maintain that, for Irenaeus, there can't be a choice between one and the other; it had to both. But the Minns-Congar view is barely plausible because Irenaeus was not as explicit about the teaching authority of the apostolic succession as the logic of his own position required him to be. Part of my argument for that assertion may be found in my previous post. I shall not only restate it but also augment it here.

If the question which teachers in the Church were faithful to apostolic tradition could be answered without attributing the apostolic teaching charism to the Apostles' successors, then the question what hermeneutic to adopt for interpreting Scripture and Traditon as a unified whole could only remain a matter of opinion, even if the succession lists made the "orthodox" hermeneutic a more justifiable opinion than that of the Gnostics at the time. But it could not have been Irenaeus' intent to leave things at that. For the nature and authority of the Church was itself part of the "objective content" of the apostolic tradition, and therefore part of the DF. Accordingly, the answer to the question who was empowered to speak for and to the Church with her full authority could not remain a matter of opinion. Whatever the answer, it belonged to the DF.

That, in the final analysis, is no different from what Vatican II taught in Dei Verbum and Lumen Gentium.

Best,
Mike

Fr. Minns, St. Irenaeus, & the Development of Doctrine

This is the third time I have undertaken to defend the Catholic understanding of DD (cf. Vatican II, Dei Verbum §8; henceforth 'DV') from criticism by non-Catholic scholars. My fellow theology geeks will probably enjoy the fact that this effort will, of necessity, be the longest so far. Other readers can endure as they will.

My first two efforts analyzed and rebutted arguments by the Orthodox scholars Andrew Louth and John Behr. The latter post and its combox led to further, lengthy discussions with the two authors of the blog Fides Querens Intellectum, namely “Kepha” and “Ioannes”. To cut a long story short, Ioannes seems inclined to believe that the Church father St. Irenaeus’ view of Scripture and Tradition, as expressed in his Against Heresies (late 2nd century; henceforth 'AH'), is incompatible with DV's teaching on DD. Ioannes’ source for an argument to that effect is the book Irenaeus by the Dominican priest Denis Minns (G. Chapmen, 1994), to which Fr. Behr briefly refers in his own book The Way to Nicaea. If true, Ioannes' point would be rather embarassing for Catholics. That is partly because DV itself cites Irenaeus as a source for its teaching, and partly because the present pope, as a young peritus to Cardinal Frings at Vatican II, had a measure of direct and indirect influence in the drafting of DV—a document whose substance he continues to endorse because, if only by his understanding of magisterial authority, he is bound to. I'm also a bit piqued by Fr. Minns' interpretation because I love the Dominican charism and have sort-of fallen in with a chapter of the Dominican Laity (formerly known as the "Third Order" Dominicans.) In this post, then, I shall analyze and critique Minn's interpretations of AH and DV on the relevant points. (David Waltz, BTW, has been critiquing Minns' book on other points.) I shall argue that the combination of (a) Minns' error in interpreting DV and (b) Irenaeus' ambiguity about what is "novel" causes Minns to read into Irenaeus an incompatibility with DV's teaching on DD that just isn't there.

This is not to deny that, on the whole, Minns' scholarship on Irenaeus is balanced and sensitive. I especially benefited from his account of how much Irenaeus' theology was shaped by the exigencies of his polemic against the various brands of heretic that plagued the Church in his time, chiefly the Gnostics and the Marcionites. Irenaeus would probably have been quite at home in the chaotic, hard-nosed world of Internet religious polemics, some of which are fueled by the very sort of Gnostic ideas that he so successfully opposed. Indeed, the past several decades have seen a resurgence of such ideas, especially that of a dichotomy between the exoteric and esoteric sides of Christianity. I saw it all coming back in 1978 when Elaine Pagels, with whom I was taking an introductory course on the New Testament at Columbia, was readying the final draft of her book The Gnostic Gospels (still in print, three decades later). My roommate at the time, an older and wiser man, was preparing a seminar challenge to Pagels' account, in her final draft, of the relationship between the Gnostics and the orthodox church authorities. I did some research for him that he found helpful in what I considered his successful effort; but at the time I did not trouble to read more than a few snippets of Irenaeus, an odd omission given that Irenaeus was and remains a favorite target of Pagels' for his defense of "patriarchal" authority in the Church over against the Gnostics, who gave women a more prominent place. I had mostly contented myself with studying Irenaeus' theodicy, which I had viewed and continue to view critically. But now that I've just finished reading a lot more of AH, I feel I have rectified my youthful error.

As Minns points out, the main polemical exigency facing Irenaeus around 180 was that the Gnostics claimed the authority of apostolic tradition for their teaching just as "the Great Church"—i.e., the Catholic Church—did for her own. As bishop of Lyons, he was dealing with that claim right within his own diocese. Why was that such a serious problem?

Despite the various flavors and permutations of Gnosticism, spawned in ever-greater abundance by the outsized egos and speculative bent of its leaders, the Gnostics were in general agreement that the true God, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, was not the "God" who had created the physical universe (and hence the human body in particular). The latter, the God of the Old Testament, was thought to have been a mere demiurge, a jealous, vengeful rogue unfit for true worship, a prison warden useful only for the moral instruction of the ordinary run of "the faithful" who could not attain the "knowledge" (gnosis) enjoyed by the elect. This was the fundamental point of doctrine at issue between Irenaeus and all his main opponents. For in denying that the God of pre-Christian Judaism was the Father of Jesus Christ, the Gnostics were at one with the Marcionites, even though the latter were not Gnostics strictly speaking because they did not lay claim to esoterically acquired gnosis.

What made the Gnostic-Marcionite doctrine so plausible to so many Christians was a hermeneutic of a kind I've become very familiar with in other contexts during my blogging years: what the present pope, in a very different contemporary context, has called a "hermeneutic of discontinuity." The heretics of the mid-1st century argued that there was no way to reconcile what they saw as the capricious, vindictive character of the God of the Old Testament, the God regarded by the Church as the Creator of all, with that of the all-loving God claimed by Jesus, the Word and Revealer, as his "Father." The Gnostics claimed possession of an esoteric gnosis that could explain the discrepancy in terms of a higher synthesis unknown to the dull, bumbling leaders of the Church; for his part, Marcion simply threw out much of the Scriptures. The heretics brought a lot of people along with them.

Indeed, Marcion and his followers were quite prominent in Rome in the middle of the first century, and there is some evidence to suggest that what Catholics call "the Apostles' Creed" was originally formulated as a baptismal profession of faith with precisely the aim of excluding the Marcionites from the Church. (That creed begins: "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, Our Lord..." This was also to be a major issue in the Albigensian heresy centuries later, which was St. Dominic's first major assignment from the pope.) At any rate, and within Irenaeus' living memory, Marcion had been condemned and excommunicated, along with his followers, by the Bishop of Rome, Anicetus. It was the first major schism in the Roman Church's history; by the time Irenaeus wrote AH, Marcionism was well on the way into the dustbin of history. Yet Marcion's point of doctrinal agreement with the Gnostics had spurred Rome's crystallization of the biblical canon; for Marcion rejected nearly all the books of the LXX, which the Church had retained in its full integrity, and most of what we now call the NT, favoring only a truncated version of Luke and the clearly authentic letters of Paul. That fact was prominent in Irenaeus' mind, and he drew the right conclusion from it: the church catholic, exemplified by the church "of pre-eminent origin," that of Rome, had "the Scriptures" whose doctrinal content was at one with that of apostolic tradition and—even more important—equally available to all. Developing the hermeneutic of continuity such a move required was, and would remain, a huge theological task. But the die had been cast—and there were still the Gnostics.

Minns puts the challenge they presented, and its importance, quite well (emphasis added):

..for ordinary and gnostic Christians alike, Christ was the revealer, and therefore the authenticity of the doctrines of both groups had to be established by appeal to a tradition going back to Christ. For both groups, this tradition was normally guaranteed by reference to the Apostles. Hence many of the gnostic texts which have survived, like the books of the New Testament, claim authorship by one or another of the disciples of Jesus. The gnostic Ptolemy told Flora that, if God permitted, she would learn more in the future, when she was "counted worthy of the apostolic tradition which we also have received by succession, because we can prove all our statements from the teaching of the Savior."

So long as both sides insisted that theirs was the authentic tradition, no progress could be made. How was one to differentiate between two contradictory sets of beliefs both claiming to have been handed on from the same set of Apostles? If Irenaeus was to meet the challenge of the gnostics he would need to establish a claim that he held the authentic Scriptures and the authentic tradition and that his opponents did not (p 118).

That differentiation could not be made by mere appeal to "the Scriptures" any more than to "tradition." For the gnostics claimed that they had the authentically apostolic "tradition" in light of which the "Scriptures" were to be interpreted with real "knowledge." So, what was the solution? Continuing on page 118:

[Irenaeus] achieved this by calling into play the succession lists of the leaders of the various churches of supposedly apostolic foundation and showing that the apostolic tradition of these churches had predated the novelties of the heretics....As Irenaeus puts the case, if Christ had handed on any secret teaching to the Apostles, then that teaching would have been preserved in the churches founded by the Apostles, for they would surely have handed on anything they had received from the Lord, secret or otherwise, to those whom they had appointed to be leaders of the churches in their place. But we do not find the secret tradition of the gnostics in those churches, and therefore, these so-called traditions are simply inventions of recent date, while the doctrines actually found in churches of apostolic foundation are the doctrines passed on, in all their fullness, to those churches by the Apostles, and thus from Christ (AH III.3.1-2; V.20.1-2).

The appeal to the apostolic succession of church leaders is what brings authority into play as a touchstone of orthodoxy. Those leaders who were demonstrably and publicly successors of the Apostles could be reasonably presumed to have received and handed on the undiluted apostolic teaching; while the Gnostics' only claim to apostolic "succession" was their claim to somehow know better than the official leaders what the Apostles had really received from Christ. Irenaeus' move here was crucial at this stage of DD, where the link between orthodoxy and ecclesial authority was made more explicit than before. For the Roman and Orthodox communions, the concept and doctrine of apostolic succession has retained just that kind of importance ever since.

In just this respect, Irenaeus was the first major contributor to what I call "meta-doctrine," i.e. the development of doctrine about doctrine. As far as we know, he was the first theologian to argue explicitly that the "true doctrine," the orthodox faith, was that which was received, held and professed publicly and in common by the communion of churches led by those who enjoyed a publicly verifiable apostolic succession. Given that kind of succession, the only reasonable conclusion was that there was no esoteric "tradition" or "knowledge" or "Scriptures" whose import was contrary to that claimed by the official leaders of the Church. And that is just what we would expect if, as the Catholic Church has always insisted, divine revelation was given publicly to all for the salvation of all.

Notice that Irenaeus did not appeal to ecclesial teaching authority as, itself, an article of faith. For even though it was at least an implicit point of faith that those who had demonstrably succeeded the Apostles in church leadership shared in the Apostles' teaching authority, Irenaeus needed an argument for that belief in order to avoid begging the main question at issue between the Church and the Gnostics. His argument was a good one; but it was not rationally compelling, for its conclusion did not follow from axioms or premises that all parties to the dispute accepted. The argument was rather that, given the public "succession lists," it was far more reasonable to accept the Church's than the Gnostics' claim to have preserved and taught the truth handed on from the Lord himself. But the Church's claim, even though rationally plausible, could only be accepted as an article of faith. For if it were to be accepted as an opinion only, then orthodoxy and gnosticism would perforce have been presented to the faithful as mere opposing opinions; and that would have been incompatible with the kind of authority Irenaeus was producing an argument for accepting. As Fr. Richard John Neuhaus (may he rest in peace) was fond of saying: "Wherever orthodoxy becomes optional, it will sooner or later be procribed." Treating orthodoxy merely as a more reasonable opinion than others would have been tantamount to rejecting it. That's because an argument for orthodoxy had to be, among other things, an argument for accepting the kind of ecclesial authority whose claims for itself transcended mere opinion. In Irenaeus' circumstances, it had become essential to cite, as a touchstone of orthodoxy, the consensus of churches led by those who had acceded to publicly verifiable apostolic succession. For only such leaders could plausibly lay claim to sharing in the teaching authority of the Apostles themselves.

That such an understanding of the epistemology, as it were, of faith was crucial for Irenaeus becomes evident through Minn's quite cogent account of how Irenaeus cited the traditional "rule of faith" in the Church against the heretical doctrine shared by the Gnostics and the Marcionites. After quoting AH III.4.2, Minns writes:

The heretics are very clever in their manipulation and distortion of the Scriptures, but they will not mislead anyone, Irenaeus says, who holds fast to 'the unchanging rule of truth, which was received in baptism' (AH I.9.4). Irenaeus several times refers to this rule of truth, and its connection to baptism suggests a creedal formula. However, it does not appear to have had a fixed form, but to have been adaptable to the polemical context in which it was invoked. Its fundamental features are that there is but one God, who created everything from nothing by his Word, and who is the Father of Jesus and the author of the whole history of salvation.

Irenaeus' claim here is not that there is a "rule of truth" accepted in some one, particular form by all who bore the name 'Christian'. For such a rule had no fixed form, and could accordingly be interpreted away or even replaced by clever heretics claiming apostolic authority. Rather, his claim was that the core doctrinal content of that profession of faith which was required, by the church leaders enjoying verifiable apostolic succession, from those receiving baptism was, in its generally accepted sense, logically incompatible with the doctrine held in common by the heretics. A variously formulated "rule" which all the same possessed such a core doctrinal content required, for its status as a touchstone of orthodoxy, that the rule in some-or-other form be that which was imposed by those who enjoyed verifiable apostolic succession—and who thus could make a stronger claim to apostolic authority than the heretics.

Such is the understanding of ecclesial teaching authority for which DV §7 cites Irenaeus: But in order to keep the Gospel forever whole and alive within the Church, the Apostles left bishops as their successors, "handing over" to them "the authority to teach in their own place." (Note 3: AH III, 3, 1). It can be safely said that, to this extent at least, Vatican II's understanding of the Church's general teaching authority is the same as Irenaeus'.

But according to Minns, there is a crucial point of difference between Vatican II, which presents the ordinary teaching of the Church about her own authority, and Irenaeus on the question of DD.

DV §8 says (emphasis added):

This tradition which comes from the Apostles develops in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. (5) 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 Luke, 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).

Thus says Minns (emphasis added):

It is fundamental to the logic of Irenaeus' argument that tradition cannot change, grow, or develop. It is not, in this sense, alive. Since the faith is everywhere one and the same it is equally immune from improvement in the discourse of an eloquent leader of the Church as it is from diminution in the mumbling of an inarticulate one (AH I.10.2). Bishops and teachers of the Church are not there to develop the tradition; there are there simply to hand it on. W. Wigan Harvey, whose edition of Adversus Haereses was published twelve years after [Newman's] Essay on the Development of Doctrine, refers pointedly, though anonymously, to...Newman's book in a note to the text of Irenaeus which I have just paraphrased. 'At least here', he says, 'there is no reserver made in favour of any theory of development. If ever we find any trace of this dangerous delusion in Christian antiquity, it is uniformly the plea of heresy' (28). He quotes Tertullian in support: 'The Valentinians allow themselves the same license as Valentinus, the Marcionites as Marcion: to invent belief at their own whim' (29). Harvey accurately reflects Irenaeus' position. A tradition with the potential to develop would ideally suit the gnostic cause, and be utterly fatal for Irenaeus' (p.119).

And on p. 134, Minns quotes DV §8 and remarks:

We have seen how different this is from Irenaeus' understanding of the tradition. For him, as Yves Congar noted, the 'sure charism of truth' resides not in the subject of the tradition, the church or its leadership, but in the objective tradition itself (3). A developing, or changing, tradition clearly requires an arbiter to determine what is an authentic development and what is not....For Irenaeus, the function of leaders of churches, and especially of churches founded by the Apostles, is to witness to the unchanging tradition. They are to be obeyed not because they have authority to interpret Scripture or Tradition, but because their succession from the Apostles guarantees that what is taught in their churches will be one and the same as that which is taught in every other church which possesses the unchanging tradition.

As plausible as that may seem, however, there are two serious difficulties with Minn's interpretation of Irenaeus here, which is incompatible with my own.

As we have already seen, the logic of Irenaeus' main argument against the Gnostics did not permit him to cite knowledge of fixed, authentic apostolic tradition that could be verified as divine truth independently of ecclesial authority. If, according to Congar and Minns, that's what Irenaeus nonetheless tried to do, then either they've got him wrong or, if they've got him right, he was being self-inconsistent. I'd rather believe the former.

The way Irenaeus rebutted the Gnostics' claim to teach the authentic apostolic "tradition" and possess the authentic apostolic "succession" was to show that it was more reasonable, given the public succession lists, to accept the Church authorities' claim thereto than to accept the Gnostics' claim. Therefore, it was not as though one could compare what the Church authorities taught, on the one hand, with "the Scriptures" and/or the "rule of faith" from "tradition" on the other, to see whether what the Church authorities taught had been handed on from the Apostles unchanged. Rather, one could reliably identify what had been handed on from the Apostles only by reverting to what the successors of the Apostles did in fact consistently teach, both in their application of the "rule of faith" and in their interpretation of what themselves called "the Scriptures." Accordingly, the way to discover the authentic, uncorrupted content and meaning of what had been handed on from the Apostles was simply to discover what those who were demonstrably the successors of the Apostles consistently taught as interpretations of the rule of faith and of the Scriptures. Attempting the task in reverse would have left the orthodox with nothing but question-begging against the Gnostics.

That result renders Minn's interpretation of Irenaeus on DD almost entirely idle. Given the logic of Irenaeus' overall argument in AH, the uncorrupted deposit of faith, or the "unchanged" apostolic "tradition," could only be reliably identified as that which said collegium had always and consistently taught with the aid, and as authentic interpretations of, Scripture and the "rule of faith." Hence, if by "development" or "growth" one means purporting to add to the tradition some-or-other doctrine which the Apostles would not have recognized as divinely revealed, or subtracting something which the Apostles had taught as divinely revealed, then it follows almost trivially that what the authorized successors of the Apostles always and consistently taught just was the unchanging, "undeveloped" deposit of faith handed on from the Apostles. There was no standpoint, independent of true ecclesial authority, by which the fidelity of such authority to the apostolic tradition could be judged. The only way to verify such fidelity was to determine whether this-or-that individual Church leader, or subset of Church leaders, was teaching what the collegium of the successors of the Apostles had consistently taught as divinely revealed, with the teaching authority which it had inherited.

But this is only the secondary difficulty with Minn's interpretation. The primary difficulty arises from Minns' misreading of Vatican II.

From the text of DV §8, which I've quoted above, one may reasonably infer that what the Fathers of Vatican II meant by such terms as "develops" and "progresses" and "moves forward," as applied to Tradition, is not addition to or subtraction from the deposit of faith, but the Church's collective growth in the understanding of Tradition, of what has been handed on from the Apostles. There is no basis for inferring that Irenaeus would have opposed such a notion in principle. He himself has his own theological ideas—e.g., about humanity's prelapsarian state, about theodicy, about millenarism, and other points—some of which, in my opinion, are aids to deepening our understanding of the DF and some of which are not. What he opposed, vigorously, as "novelties" were ideas constituting either idle speculations unmoored to the DF—which the Gnostics went in for on a huge scale—or doctrines that were logically incompatible with the DF as professed by leaders enjoying publicly verifiable apostolic succession—which, as we saw above, is exactly what both the Marcionites and the Gnostics held regarding what was perhaps the most fundamental point of the DF.

Nevertheless, Vatican II itself is partly responsible for Minns' misinterpretation, which is a very common one. According to that misinterpretation, the Church (perhaps in the person of the pope) can and may reverse teachings propounded with diachronic consensus for as far back as we have records—such as those on women's ordination or birth control. On this view, "development" can and sometimes ought to include negation of what the collegium of bishops has always and consistently taught. That is the view which Irenaeus opposed with all his might. But in keeping with DV, the present pope and his predecessor have opposed it too; for no other interpretation of "development" is compatible with the Magisterium's self-understanding. DV's language is defective because does not exclude the aforesaid misinterpretation as a matter of logic. Its language does not distinguish between "development" of Tradition as a process of "handing on" and development of the content of what is "handed on."

Tradition as a process can and ought to develop or grow, because the process of handing on the content of the DF can and ought to include ever-deepening understanding of that content, of what is "handed on," along with ever-more refined expressions of it that are adapted appropriately to historical context. But such a "growth in understanding" (DV §8) may never include propounding as divinely revealed what has not been, or negating what has been presented in the past as divinely revealed. By failing to resolve the verbal ambiguity of "tradition" as process and tradition as content, Vatican II failed to rule out, explicitly, a "hermeneutic of discontinuity" of the kind that Irenaeus faced in his own day, and that the Catholic Church faces today, albeit over different issues. But of course, one of the beauties of DD is that each historical stage of it helps to resolve ambiguities left by the previous stage. That's what the great christological and trinitarian debates of the fourth and fifth centuries did; in my opinion, that's what we need to do again today about morality and ecclesiology. The study of how St. Irenaeus dealt with the discontinuants of his own day should aid us in that task.

Dr Witt on material & formal sufficiency

It's been brought to my attention that Dr. William Witt, who teaches systematic theology at the Trinity School for Ministry, has reformulated his critique of my view of the relationship between Scripture, the development of doctrine (DD), and ecclesial teaching authority (or: magisterium). I say 'reformulated' because he and I have had at least two exchanges on this topic in the past. Although our respective positions have not changed, I see that WW has advanced the discussion by stating his own ex professo view, and his critique of mine, in a way that is clearer to me than before. The discussion between him and me is certainly of interest to readers who have appreciated pertinent discussions of DD that have often been seen on this blog.

It goes without saying that WW's position and mine are mutually incompatible. I am a Roman Catholic; he is a conservative Protestant of the sort who, in my previous post, I identified as an adherent of the Protestant "hermeneutical circle." And yet, for reasons I have yet to fathom, he tries to enlist St. Thomas Aquinas in his cause. Thus WW:

I think the real issue of disagreement has to do with the question of the inherent intelligibility of Scripture. Followers of Newman often speak of the sufficiency of Scripture in terms of a “material” sufficiency. On the page on my blog titled “Who Are Those Guys?” I speak of how, as I read Aquinas, Arminius and Barth, they do theology as a penetration into the mystery of the inherent intelligibility of revelation as witnessed to in Scripture. I see the same kind of approach in Eastern theologians like Athanasius or Cyril of Alexandria.

Such an understanding of Scripture’s inherent intelligibility presupposes that the sufficiency of Scripture is not material, but formal. The difference here is between a blueprint to make a building, and the bricks of which the building is made. A merely materially sufficient Scripture is like a pile of bricks that can build anything from a cathedral to a tool shed, but the bricks themselves possess no inherent intelligibility (formal sufficiency) in one direction for another. The intelligibility derives from outside the bricks. Conversely, a blueprint is inherently intelligible, and thus has not material but formal sufficiency to create a specific building, whether cathedral or tool shed.

In terms of development, the claim that Scripture is materially sufficient presumes that the intelligibility of revelation derives from elsewhere than Scripture itself. A definitive magisterium (or external tradition) is necessary to decide what to do with the bricks. Without the magisterium it is impossible to know whether the bricks were intended to be a cathedral or a tool shed.

I cannot comment on Arminius and Barth, Protestant theologians whom WW knows far better than I. But for starters, I can and will say and unequivocally that Aquinas, while indeed affirming the "material sufficiency" of Scripture in the sense explained by WW, in no sense affirmed the formal sufficiency of Scripture. That is partly why Aquinas, like Newman and even Vatican II after him, most certainly did see a magisterium as necessary for interpreting Scripture reliably.

Consider this from ST IIaIIae Q5 A3 resp (emphasis added):

Now the formal object of faith is the First Truth, as manifested in Holy Writ and the teaching of the Church, which proceeds from the First Truth. Consequently whoever does not adhere, as to an infallible and Divine rule, to the teaching of the Church, which proceeds from the First Truth manifested in Holy Writ, has not the habit of faith, but holds that which is of faith otherwise than by faith.

The context of the questio from which the above quotation is taken suggests that we may put Aquinas' point as follows: Although it is quite possible to discern "the First Truth" in Scripture without adhering "to the teaching of the Church as to an infallible and divine rule," one can only do so as a matter of opinion rather than by the virtue of faith. Hence, even if Scripture is somehow "inherently intelligible," one who affirms the truth that is intelligible in Scripture while rejecting the Magisterium has only a set of opinions about the content of the deposit of faith, rather than the kind of certainty entailed by true faith. I agree with that view. As far as I can tell, it was the view of John Henry Newman too. As for Vatican II, see Dei Verbum §7-§10.

The distinction between apprehending the "First Truth" by opinion and doing so by faith may seem irrelevant to some, but it is actually of the utmost importance. Opinion is fallible and provisional, whereas the content of the deposit of faith, as the proximate object of the theological virtue of faith, is not and cannot be a matter of opinion. Many people imagine that one can get around this by saying that Scripture is "formally sufficient" for expressing the DF and making assent to its content a matter of faith. This would mean that, for purposes of apprehending the DF by faith, nothing need be added to what Scripture explicitly says; all one has to do is "get" the blueprint, perhaps as a kind of gestalt perception, and the rest follows. But that, in my view, just isn't credible.

Protestant scholars of WW's bent are forever frustrated and disappointed by the fact that even those Protestants who would, in general, agree that Scripture is "inherently intelligible" at some architectonic level—and might even find the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed helpful—often hold or reach doctrinal conclusions so different as to be, or become, church-dividing. Thus even when they do agree, the agreement doesn't last long enough to prevent others from eventually dissenting, hiving off to form their own church, and leaving a rump behind to rest on the old, unrevised "confession." Given the denominational proliferation occasioned by such differences, it would seem that Scripture, though inherently intelligible, is actually intelligible only to—well, to whom? That's my point. WW and some others seem to believe that if only Protestant church authorities would recognize and accept the best scholarship—as understood and expounded by men such as himself—and were willing to inculcate its results firmly enough to keep the pastors convinced enough to teach faithfully enough to keep the faithful convinced enough, then the inherent intelligibility of Scripture would shine forth globally enough to constitute actual intelligibility. In fact, WW seems to believe that something very much like that happened during and after the roaring, sometimes violent theological controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries. Thanks to men such as Athanasius, the Cappadocians, and St. Cyril, the Trinitarian and Christological orthodoxy that was painfully hammered out during that time demonstrated the inherent intelligibility, and therefore the formal sufficiency, of Scripture as a proximate object of faith!

Right?

I apologize to some if I've already overstated the irony, but others might need to have it pointed out. Almost a century-and-a-half of intellectual effort was needed to overcome the pre-Nicene theological vagueness, itself almost three centuries old, that occasioned Arianism and other forms of subordinationism. Was the resulting clarity and cogency really so great that Christians no longer needed to defer to the authority of general councils in order to identify the "orthodox" faith? Was it just obvious, by the latter part of the fifth century, that the credibility of orthodoxy consisted so much in its hermeneutical superiority to the alternatives that simple obedience to ecclesial teaching authority was unneeded? To anybody who knows church history, such questions virtually answer themselves. There were "heresies" not only before and during but also well after Nicaea and Chalcedon—and there still are. Indeed, as Dorothy Sayers so wittily showed, many people today (Catholics as well as Protestants) who accept and read the Bible as the Word of God also adhere to one of the ancient heresies without realizing it. But if Scripture were intelligible in the way and to the degree that WW says, then the cure for heresy would simply be a more thorough, more prayerful reading of the Bible. The failure of such a cure could only be explained by lack of "education" or, perhaps, sheer cussedness—i.e., by the kinds of factors which Protestants in the mid 1500s were already citing to explain their own divisions, even leaving aside their issues with the Whore of Babylon, aka the Church of Rome.

Well, it's not always or even usually like that. Even when people read the Bible correctly, and thus hold what is "of faith," they do not do so "by faith" unless they let themselves be guided, implicitly or explicitly, by the living, authoritative voice of the Church. Otherwise, even God's own truth can only be held as one opinion among others, and is thus legitimately susceptible to reversal (where have we heard things like: "The Holy Spirit is doing a new thing"?). At least that's what Aquinas thought, and I believe it.

Even so, I think even Aquinas went too far in affirming the "material sufficiency" of Scripture. For Scripture can be seen as the inspired word of God only because the same Holy Spirit who inspired it had the Church certify the writings it comprises as the pre-eminent written record of "Tradition" (i.e. of all that was handed down from the Apostles under his guidance) that could be read aloud in church. Scripture is therefore not, as the cessationists would have us believe, substitutable salva veritate for Tradition; it only constitutes the Word of God for us together with Tradition. I can therefore accept the joint material sufficiency of Scripture and Tradition, but not their separate material sufficiency. And to get formal sufficiency?

You need what Aquinas says: adherence to the teaching of the Church as to "a divine and infallible rule." I said that's what you need; I didn't say that's all you need. I like my CCC for that. But even the CCC...

Rebutting the Pelosi anti-catechism

The Speaker of the House apparently has her own account of Catholic teaching on the subject of abortion. At least she is to be credited for tackling the philosophical and theological issues instead of dodging them like St. Barack, who professed it was "above my pay grade." She is to be credited for courage because she knew the rebuttals would come, in spades.

Kathleen Parker, one of my favorite columnists, offers a biting summary of the best rebuttals. Read it, enjoy it, follow it up. I've addressed the history of abortion teaching in my Development and Negation treatise thus:

"In the case of abortion, for example, the Church’s teaching has developed toward greater strictness and gravity. Somehow that seems objectionable to many people who nonetheless have no problem with greater moral strictness about warfare, capital punishment, and domestic violence now than in the past; but I shall leave that fact aside as one of more psychological and political than theological interest. To be sure, the Church has always considered abortion immoral; and many early Christian writers condemned it as murder (see, e.g., Didache 2:2 and this list). But that injunction appears to have applied only to women who are unmistakably pregnant, either by their appearance or by the detection of quickening. It was not clear on that account that procuring abortion at any stage of gestation is a form of homicide, which is what the Church teaches now.

St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, held that the process of conception required forty days for boys and eighty for girls before the conceptus was ready for the infusion of the rational soul (Commentary on the Fourth Book of Sentences, d. 31 exp. text.). And that was the common view through the eighteenth century. Abortion prior to said infusion was not held by the Church to be the killing of a human person; it was condemned only as a particularly nasty form of contraception. What changed that, of course, was the development of the modern disciplines of obstetrics, gynecology, and above all genetics.

As soon as it became clear to the Church that even the blastocyst, under normal conditions, was a genetically unique individual member of homo sapiens—twinning being a separate, still controversial case—Pope Pius IX included abortion at any stage of gestation as a form of homicide in his renewed list of offenses incurring excommunication (Apostolicae Sedis [1869]). And so the teaching and discipline remain today. The reasonable-enough assumption has been that whatever is a genetically unique individual member of the species is a human person, not just part of a person such as an organ or a gamete. Disputes about the time or process of ensoulment thus recede into obsolescence. A good defense of that development, for which pro-lifers of varying or no religious affiliation are rightly fond of citing natural science, may be found in Robert George and Patrick Lee, Acorns and Embryos. Granted that science just by itself has nothing to say about moral norms, its considerable relevance to this question is the chief basis for claiming that opposition to legal abortion needs no specifically religious premises. That of course is politically very important.

The change here, then, has not been in the precept that abortion is gravely immoral but in the explanation why: due to the advance of science, the Church now condemns all, or almost all, abortion as murder, not merely abortion after a certain stage of gestation. What’s changed is the understanding of the empirical conditions under which the Fifth Commandment is applicable."

Of course there's always the CCC itself for those who, unlike the "ardently Catholic" Speaker, actually believe it.

The Immaculate Conception: trying to be erenic

Several friends have called my attention to a pair of posts over at Eirenikon: one called "On Original Sin and the Immaculate Conception," the other "More on the Immaculate Conception in Eastern Orthodoxy." Well, they have my attention.

I like Eirenikon: its Orthodox "editor," to whom I shall refer as "EE" in deference to his wish for anonymity, openly states that his blog's purpose is "Orthodox-Catholic reconciliation." That makes EE almost as quixotic as I and certainly braver, considering the reaction he sometimes gets from his co-religionists. At any rate, the long combox to the first of the two aforementioned posts, a combox that took me nearly an hour to read, tends to confirm that impression. EE's support came from "the West" not "the East"—unsurprising given that the post consisted of a quotation from a Jesuit theologian. Of course that should be balanced by the quotation of which the second post mostly consists; from a Greek-Catholic scholar, it impressively presents evidence for old, established Eastern-Christian belief in the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception ('DIC' for short). EE invited refutation of said scholar's point, but did not really get one.

Of course the naysayers had already said their nays in the combox to the earlier post. In response to them, I offer again two old posts of mine: Freedom, evolution, and original sin, and Our "solitary boast". The best point of that might be to take some of the pressure off EE.

The development of the "development of doctrine"

The Old Testament proclaimed the Father openly, and the Son more obscurely. The New manifested the Son, and suggested the Deity of the Spirit. Now the Spirit Himself dwells among us, and supplies us with a clearer demonstration of Himself. For it was not safe, when the Godhead of the Father was not yet acknowledged, plainly to proclaim the Son; nor when that of the Son was not yet received to burden us further (if I may use so bold an expression) with the Holy Ghost; lest perhaps people might, like men loaded with food beyond their strength, and presenting eyes as yet too weak to bear it to the sun's light, risk the loss even of that which was within the reach of their powers; but that by gradual additions, and, as David says, Goings up, and advances and progress from glory to glory, the Light of the Trinity might shine upon the more illuminated.

(St. Gregory Nazianzen, Orations, 31.26; HT to "Ioannes.")

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But some one will say, perhaps, Shall there, then, be no progress in Christ’s Church? Certainly; all possible progress. For what being is there, so envious of men, so full of hatred to God, who would seek to forbid it? Yet on condition that it be real progress, not alteration of the faith. For progress requires that the subject be enlarged n itself, alteration, that it be transformed into something else. The intelligence, then, the knowledge, the wisdom, as well of individuals as of all, as well of one man as of the whole Church, ought, in the course of ages and centuries, to increase and make much and vigorous progress; but yet only in its own kind; that is to say, in the same doctrine, in the same sense, and in the same meaning.

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....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 behoves 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....

Therefore, whatever has been sown by the fidelity of the Fathers in this husbandry of God’s Church, the same ought to be cultivated and taken care of by the industry of their children, the same ought to flourish and ripen, the same ought to advance and go forward to perfection.

For it is right that those ancient doctrines of heavenly philosophy should, as time goes on, be cared for, smoothed, polished; but not that they should be changed, not that they should be maimed, not that they should be mutilated. They may receive proof, illustration, definiteness; but they must retain withal their completeness, their integrity, their characteristic properties.

(St. Vincent of Lerins; HT to "e".)

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This Tradition which comes from the Apostles develops in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. (5) 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 Luke, 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 Council II, Dei Verbum §8.)

Creedal amplification

In the combox to my post The Filioque VIII, Photios Jones addressed me as follows:

If some Hierarch in the Orthodox Church were to use a formula of Gregory of Cyprus II that the "Holy Spirit the Lord the Giver of Life Who procheisthai (flows forth) from the Father and the Son" as an interpolation in the Creed it would be "another" Creed because it goes against the intentions of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed even though an Orthodox expression. It would be reflecting something else than what the original text established and breaking the bond of love in the Church as she professes Her faith. Of course, I think you already know this, but it is on that basis that the "filioque" should be dropped so we can profess the original intention of our Fathers as Pope Leo III engraved on those two silver shields. I know you don't have any control of such things, but one can only hope.

This is where the difference between the usual Catholic and Orthodox perspectives on development of doctrine makes itself so keenly felt. Photios and I agree that Gregory of Cyprus’s phrase is, in its context, a good bit of triadology, in the sense that it accurately expresses an aspect of the faith-once-delivered. But I simply cannot agree with Photios that interpolating said phrase into the Creed of 381 would run counter to “the intentions” of that Symbol. If that Symbol can be said to have an intention, the intention was to express the faith-once-delivered for the universal Church, in response to some heresies of the fourth century. Now for all I know, Gregory’s expression might run counter to the pneumatology of some of the bishops active at Constantinople I; that is an intensely academic matter of opinion; but since Photios concedes that the expression is Orthodox, he is logically committed to holding that the interpolation would not go against the Faith expressed by the Creed of 381. Therefore, on my account, it cannot go against the intention of that Symbol.

Of course Photios might be urging something more specific: that “the intention” of the Fathers of Constantinople was to rule out any formal amplification of their Symbol in future, even if such an amplification would accurately express the faith of the Church. If that is so, then any formal amplification would be “reflecting something else than what the original text established”; for the text only “established” what it actually and formally says; and hence adding any truth, even by way of explication and amplification, would be adding “something else” just in virtue of the formal difference. But why would interpolating an agreed-upon truth, by going beyond what the text formally says, thereby constitute “breaking the bond of love in the Church as she professes Her faith”? Ex hypothesi, Gregory of Cyprus’ expression is a truth, and is therefore at least compatible with the truths expressed by the Symbol of 381. Interpolating such a phrase would “break the bond of love in the Church” only if, unrecognized by many as expressing a truth belonging to the deposit of faith, the phrase were nonetheless imposed on the Church as a whole, without general agreement, by formal addition to the Creed. But if the phrase were to be recognized by the Church as a whole as expressing a truth, what would be the problem?

Even if the Fathers of Constantinople I did intend to rule out any formal amplification of their Symbol via interpolation of some phrase expressing an agreed-upon truth of the Faith, I do not believe that such a stricture binds all subsequent ecumenical councils (and, as a Catholic, I would also deny that it binds the papacy). That is because the question whether a given creed should be formally amplified by a truth expressing an aspect of the Faith is not, itself, a doctrinal question but a disciplinary one. That a particular creed should or should not be formally amplified by a truth is not a matter belonging to the deposit of faith. It is a matter of deciding which is best for the unity of the Church in a particular set of historical circumstances. That is why, as I’ve said many times, my objection to the papacy’s 11th-century interpolation of the filioque into the Creed of 381 is pastoral rather than doctrinal. The interpolation did not introduce a falsehood; rather, it broke the bonds of love in the Church as a whole by professing, as the faith of the Church as a whole, a truth that was not carefully enough formulated to be recognized by the Church as a whole as a truth in the sense intended.

But it is also for pastoral reasons that I reject the proposal simply to delete the filioque from the Latin Church’s creed. Of course I would not object to such a deletion in principle as an ecumenical gesture meant to reverse the Roman error of 1014. If Rome made such a move tomorrow, my faith would not be affected in the slightest, nor would the Catholic faith be compromised in principle. The filioque has, after all, been formally defined as a dogma by more than one council whose decrees were ratified by Rome as binding on the Church as a whole; and in the course of discussing that dogma in several of my previous posts, I have taken it for granted as an article of the divine and Catholic Faith. Logically, none of that would be affected by the ecumenical gesture of deleting the mere phrase from the Creed. But I say that only as a theology geek. I am also a lifelong, practicing Catholic who came of age in the decade following Vatican II. I know the mentality of Catholics, especially American Catholics, very well. Given as much, I would strongly advise against Rome's making such a move as a pastoral matter. I do not suspect, I know, what would happen in the Catholic Church if such a move were made.

A millennium has now passed in which Catholics have simply taken the filioque for granted as a truth of the Faith. They recite it every Sunday at Mass without a second thought. But only forty-odd years have passed since the close of Vatican II. During that time, many Catholics of my and the previous generation got the idea that everything is basically up for grabs in the Church, that even dogma is a kind of extended policy paper which the next administration in Rome might rewrite if and when it suits them. That idea is false, and deeply so; but I'm afraid that the average Catholic, who is not a theology geek, can be forgiven for holding it. For in the 25 years or so after Vatican II, many priests and theologians held it too, and taught accordingly. Some still do hold it. Of course, after 26 years of John Paul II and three of Benedict XVI, they are now a defensive minority. But if the filioque were dropped from the Latin-Church creed, at least within my lifetime, those guys would be right back in business. They would succeed in reinforcing, in the mind of the average non-geek, the idea that everything is up for grabs. After all, the thought would go, if even the Creed can be changed by subtraction, then what couldn't be? The resulting confessional chaos would make the fights over birth control and women's ordination look like garden-party repartee.

Let me hasten to add that there would be nothing logical about such a development. I've already explained why, logically speaking, nothing substantive about the Catholic faith would thereby be changed. But right now I'm not talking about the logic a theologian can savor in his study; I'm talking about the mass psychology of average believers. I shudder even at the thought of confronting that if the filioque were dropped from the Creed.

What I'd like to see instead is unlikely to happen for a long time, but could happen in principle: an ecumenical council of East and West in which the Symbol of 381 is amplified in such a way as to exhibit the harmony between the filioque, properly understood, and the original Symbol. To get to that point, of course, much will have to change by way of ethos. Any such changes will be glacial. But when it comes to issues of dogma, glacial change is almost always preferable.