Francisco Marín-Sola

Francisco Marín-Sola (1873–1932) was born at Cárcar in Navarre and entered the Dominican order. After teaching in the Philippines and at the Dominican house of studies in Spain, he taught dogmatic theology at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland from 1912 to 1927, and he spent his last years in Manila, where he taught at the University of Santo Tomás.

His major work, La evolución homogénea del dogma católico, first published in 1923, is one of the most important Catholic studies of the development of doctrine. Drawing on Thomas Aquinas and the Thomist commentators, he argued that a doctrine can be defined as revealed when it is contained in revelation, even when it is reached only through theological reasoning, and he distinguished homogeneous development from change. He also took part in the debate with Garrigou-Lagrange and others on the Thomist teaching on grace and premotion.

The library holds La evolución homogénea del dogma católico. The opening chapters, which set out the problem and the principles of the solution, are the best place to begin; the Commonitorium of Vincent of Lérins is the classical source behind it.