De immutabilitate traditionis contra modernam haeresim evolutionismi

St Thomas says in the prologue of the little work contra errores Graecorum: « Errors that have arisen concerning the faith have given the holy doctors of the Church occasion to hand down the things of faith with greater circumspection, in order to eliminate the errors that have arisen; as is evident, the holy doctors who lived before the error of Arius did not speak so expressly of the unity of the divine essence as the doctors who followed; and the same happens in other errors, which appears expressly not only in different doctors but in one eminent doctor, Augustine. For in the books he published after the Pelagian heresy arose, he spoke more cautiously of the power of free will than in the books he published before the rise of that heresy, in which, defending the freedom of the will against the Manichees, he brought forward certain things which the Pelagians, adversaries of divine grace, took up in defence of their error. And therefore it is not surprising if modern doctors of the faith, after various errors have arisen, speak more cautiously and, as it were, more refinedly about the doctrine of faith, in order to avoid every heresy. Hence if anything is found in the sayings of the ancient doctors which is not said with as much caution as is observed by the moderns, such things are not to be despised or rejected, nor indeed ought they to be extended, but reverently explained ». Thus the Angelic Doctor in the cited passage, who had taken this doctrine, as he is wont, from Augustine himself: « We have learned, he says, in de dono persev. n. 53, that each heresy brought into the Church its own questions, against which divine Scripture would be defended more diligently than if no such necessity compelled. » And elsewhere the same Augustine notes that one ought not to look for so exact a manner of speaking in the Fathers who wrote before the heresies were born as in those who came afterwards: both because, not yet assailed by any question, and thinking that in the Catholic Church they were understood in a good sense, they spoke more securely¹; and because, touching briefly and in passing on matters not yet discussed, they lingered rather on the things they were then disputing against the enemies of the Church, and also in the exhortations to the various virtues by which God is served for obtaining true happiness². And this too is the common response, not only of theologians, but also of Athanasius, Jerome, Vincent of Lérins, and others. This is the rule in theology, and the solution of difficulties concerning tradition, whose doctrine is indeed always the same, but not always clear and expressed in the same way. For it receives in the course of time, as Vincent of Lérins says, evidence, light, distinction or precision, and that principally on the occasion of heresies newly arising. For the heresies themselves are those which create the most pressing necessity of scrutinizing the dogmas, of unfolding the concepts of which they consist, of distinctly proposing the notes that are to be discerned in them, of separating the modes of understanding and signifying from the things themselves understood and signified, of finding also suitable terms by which the highest things may be fittingly expressed — in a word, of perfecting all that pertains to theological explanation, and these can be obtained only by the most laborious and studious inquiry³.

For it is evident that one thing is that simple notion of the dogmas which is also retained by simple faith, and another the unfolded, polished, refined notion which the theologian seeks for the understanding of the faith. It is evident also that in theological speculation there is always something that creates the difficulty and something that creates the solution of the difficulty. Whence it had to happen that, before the laborious study which individual heresies provoked and made necessary in each matter, Catholic writers fell into certain ambiguities which are no longer found in later writers⁴. If, for example, the Son of God is God, no less than the Father, the attestations of this perpetual faith are clear in every age. But when one comes to consider that God is from God, God proceeding from the Father, God begotten of God begetting, speech is often confounded. Before the concept of the divine origins has been purified by the twofold way of remotion and excellence, and refined into a distinct notion of subsistent relations, every explanation of the mystery will be maimed and imperfect. Concerning the unbegotten and innascible, they will seem to speak as if this innascibility contained something of greater perfection; concerning divine generation, as if it had an admixture of efficiency, which indeed every act of begetting implies among us; concerning God begotten, as if the begotten one depended on his principle, as among creatures the originated depends on its originator. And this imperfection in the manner of expounding and speaking is not altogether dissolved, except when the necessity of answering the most troublesome questions of heretics reduces minds to more precise modes of speech⁵. The same will also appear in the dogma of the Incarnation. One and the same is the Son of God and the Son of man, Son of God from eternity, Son of man in time, who, remaining what he was, began to be what he was not. This is the bare and simple faith. But when one comes to consider how the humanity was joined — by a union, indeed, that is physical and substantial — to him who pre-existed and remained in the form of God, no easy exposition will occur, since it all depends on unfolded and polished concepts of union in nature, union in person, and the formal differences of each. Wherefore, in that initial state of theological knowledge which preceded the categorical heresies concerning the hypostatic union, especially in view of the difficulty of expressing matters for which there was not yet a settled and fixed terminology, certain things cannot but be found which, to later writers already instructed by the knowledge and solutions of subsequent doctors, will appear ambiguous and, to all appearance, irreconcilable with the faith of the unconfused union of divinity and humanity in the one supposit of the Word⁶. The same again you will see in the dogma of original sin. It is indeed truly and properly called sin, but it is a sin of its own kind, which is not predicated univocally with the sin most known to all. A sin, I say, of nature, not of person; a voluntary sin, not by its own will, but by the will of the sole head of the human race; a sin which passes from the first parent to posterity, but as regards guilt, not as regards act; a sin, finally, which is in a certain way called another's, and in a certain way ours: another's by the propriety of the action, ours by the contagion of propagation. Therefore a newborn child is in one sense innocent and in another sense a sinner; therefore that great sin of Adam passes in some measure to posterity and in some measure does not pass; therefore, lastly, if before the rise of the Pelagian heresy there are patristic passages in which the truth of original sin shines forth, there will also be others where the doctrine will seem to be confounded and in some way obscured⁷. Nor must one speak otherwise about the dogma of grace, because if grace simply precedes the merit of good will, yet the good will of man still precedes many gifts of God, and especially the gift by which we are made and are just: namely, while man himself, by freely assenting and cooperating with the grace that stirs him, must dispose himself for his own justification. And therefore in the sacred writings it is said not only: Convert us, O Lord, to thee, and we shall be converted, but also: Be converted to me, and I will be converted to you.

Accordingly, just as you will find in the writings of the ancient Fathers testimonies where infants are said to be without sin, so you will also find others where it is said that God gives grace to those whom he finds worthy, or prepared to receive it. This indeed is in a certain way true, although it is true that by the help of grace itself they are made worthy, whoever are found worthy. And this last point is not altogether passed over in the doctrine of those same ancients, although it is not set out with that clarity and precision with which, after a diligent examination of the question, Augustine said that the whole is to be attributed to God: « He who both prepares the good will of man to be helped and helps it when prepared. For the good will of man precedes many gifts of God, but not all; and those which it does not precede, in them it is itself also. For both are read in the holy utterances: His mercy will go before me, and: His mercy will follow me. He goes before the unwilling so that he may will; he follows the willing so that he may not will in vain. For why are we admonished to pray for our enemies, who are certainly unwilling to live piously, unless that God may work in them also the will? And again, why are we admonished to ask that we may receive, unless that what we will may be done by him by whom it has been brought about that we will? We pray therefore for our enemies that the mercy of God may go before them as it also went before us; and we pray for ourselves that his mercy may follow us »⁸. And so it is also with the others.

Not therefore from the imperfection of explanations or the ambiguity of certain assertions may one conclude that the more ancient Fathers were, with regard to the dogmas of our religion, of another sense and another view than the later ones. For plainly a different solution presents itself: Either that they had not yet advanced so far in the penetration and intimate understanding of revealed truth as those who wrote on individual matters after the heresies were born; or that, intent on confuting one error, they were not solicitous about the opposite error (for in every dogma one walks between opposing crags, and he easily seems to stumble on one who expends all his care on avoiding the other); or finally, that they sometimes employed modes of speech ambiguous in themselves and less polished without any added declaration, doubting not at all that they would be understood and accepted by their hearers in a Catholic sense. That this solution, moreover, is not only probable and likely, but is in fact uniquely true and firmly to be retained, must now be demonstrated more diligently.