De immutabilitate traditionis contra modernam haeresim evolutionismi

But that we may proceed in a certain order, we must first consider those three states of doctrine enumerated in the thesis, according to which the testimonies and learned works of the Fathers can conveniently be reduced to three categories likewise.

1. The first is what we may call the state of simple faith. This is reported in the first place by the letters or confessions of the most ancient bishops and martyrs, in that golden age in which, still having the first-fruits of the Spirit and, as new wineskins, full of that new wine which was poured out at Pentecost, they did not yet have the most laborious occupation which God gave to the sons of men that they might be occupied in it — namely, disputing and dialecticizing; but from the treasury of their heart they brought forth the ingenuous doctrine which they had received from the apostles. Indeed, Ignatius, as he was going to martyrdom, clearly testified the simple faith concerning the Trinity, when he wrote to the Magnesians, c. 13: « Strive therefore to be confirmed in the doctrines of the Lord and of the apostles, that all things you do may prosper for you in faith and charity in the Son and the Father and the Spirit... Be subject to the bishop and to one another, as Jesus Christ was to the Father according to the flesh, and the apostles to Christ and to the Father and to the Spirit »¹. The same most holy martyr testified the simple faith concerning the Incarnation, epist. to the Ephesians c. 7: « There is one physician, both carnal and spiritual, made and not made, God existing in man, true life in death, both from Mary and from God, first passible and then impassible, Jesus Christ our Lord »². And to Polycarp, c. 3: « Await him who is above time, the timeless one; invisible, for us visible; impalpable, impassible, for us passible, who in every way endured for us »³. The simple faith concerning both mysteries was reported by that last prayer of Polycarp himself, when the pyre had already been kindled: « Lord God almighty, Father of thy beloved and blessed Son Jesus Christ, through whom we have received the knowledge of thee,... I bless thee, because thou hast deemed me worthy this day and this hour to receive a part in the number of thy martyrs, in the cup of thy Christ... Wherefore for all things I praise thee, I bless thee, I glorify thee with the eternal and heavenly Jesus Christ thy beloved Son, with whom to thee and to the Holy Spirit be glory both now and for ages to come. Amen »⁴. And that confession of blessed Epipodius, who, with teeth mingled with blood, uttered these words: « I confess that Christ is God with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and it is fitting that I pour out my soul to him who is both my creator and my redeemer. Nor does it matter by what end the bodily weakness is dissolved, provided that the soul, carried to heaven, returns to its author »⁵.

To this also pertain the passages of the more ancient writers, where it is set forth simply and without amplification what was the preaching of the Church, and what rule of believing was to be held. Such is that passage of Irenaeus, l. 1, c. 10: « The Church, sown throughout the whole world even to the ends of the earth, and having received from the apostles and their disciples that faith which is in one God, the Father almighty, who made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Jesus Christ, the Son of God, incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who through the prophets preached the dispensations of God, and the advent, and the generation that is from the Virgin, and the passion..., and that all flesh of the human race is to be raised, so that to Christ Jesus our Lord, and God and Saviour and King, according to the good pleasure of the invisible Father, every knee should bow of things in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth ». Such also is that passage of Gregory Thaumaturgus, in the Exposition of the Faith which he left to his church at his death, and which Nyssen testifies that he read in the autograph itself: « One God, the Father of the living Word, of subsistent wisdom..., perfect begetter of the perfect, Father of the only-begotten Son. One Lord, alone from the alone, the Word accomplishing all things, wisdom comprehending all things, and the power by which the whole creation was able to be made: true Son of the true, and invisible from the invisible, and incorruptible from the incorruptible, and immortal from the immortal, and eternal from the eternal. One Holy Spirit, having his substance from God, the perfect cause of things living, the holiness that bestows sanctification... The perfect Trinity, in majesty and eternity and kingdom is in no way divided or alienated. Therefore neither anything made nor anything servile is in the Trinity, nor anything superinduced.... Nor was the Son ever lacking to the Father, nor the Holy Spirit to the Son, but the same Trinity is ever unchangeable and immutable » ⁶.

In the same category you will still count those testimonies in which the Fathers, before the heresies arose, outside all ardor of disputation and necessity of controversy, not speculating, not glossing, not arguing, not assuming the patronage of some special cause, but discoursing from the sole abundance of a faithful heart, assert a dogma not yet attacked by any negation so ingenuously that it plainly appears that it is not so much they who speak as the native spirit of faith and tradition which speaks in them. Testimonies of this kind concerning the dogma of original sin Augustine brings forward in l. 1 c. Iulianum, n. 5-20. These, afterwards briefly resumed by him in n. 32-33, will serve you as an example: « Saint Irenaeus says that the ancient wound of the serpent is healed by the faith of Christ and the cross, and that by the sin of the first parent we were bound as it were with chains. Saint Cyprian says that a little child perishes unless it has been baptized, although there are remitted to it not its own sins but another's. Saint Reticius says that the sins of the old man, whom we put off through the bath of regeneration, are not only old but inborn. Saint Olympius says that the vice spread from the first parent into the offspring, so that sin is born with man. Saint Hilary says that all flesh is from sin, except that of him who came in the likeness of flesh of sin, without sin. He says that he was born under the origin of sin and under the law of sin, whose voice is: I was conceived in iniquities. Saint Ambrose says that little children who have been baptized are reformed from malice into the beginnings of their nature. He says that in Adam we all die, because through one man sin entered into the world, and his guilt is the death of all. He says that in his wound the whole human race had died, unless that Samaritan, coming down, had healed his grievous wounds. He says that Adam existed, and that all existed in him; that Adam perished, and that all perished in him. He says that we are stained by contagion before we are born, and that human conception is not free from iniquity, because, he says, we are conceived in the sin of our parents, and in their transgressions we are born... Saint Innocentius says to you that by the bath of regeneration every past vice is purged, which came through him who, falling by free will, was plunged into the depths. Saint Gregory (of Nazianzus) says that it would have been better not to have fallen from the tree of life by the most bitter taste of sin, but that we ought to be amended after the fall... He says that by regeneration from water and the Spirit the stains of the first birth are purged, by which we are conceived in iniquities. Saint Basil says that we have contracted the disease of sin, because Eve was unwilling to fast from the forbidden tree.... Finally, the holy bishop John (Chrysostom) says...., he too says that Adam so sinned that great sin as to condemn the whole human race in common. He says that Christ wept at the death of Lazarus because mortality, shaken from its everlasting state, had loved the lower world. He says that Christ found us bound by our ancestral bond which Adam wrote, and by our own subsequent debts. He says that Adam was therefore called the figure of him who was to come, because just as he became the cause of death, which was brought in through food, to those born of himself, although they did not eat of the tree, so Christ became the provider of justice for those who are from him, although they have done nothing just, which he bestowed on all through the cross. He says that it does not seem to have much reason that one should be condemned for another, and yet it was done through Adam; whence he rather persuades us to believe what appears more fitting and reasonable, that one is saved for another, which is fulfilled in Christ, etc. ». These things indeed the more ancient Fathers said concerning original sin, under the sole guidance of the primitive tradition, still running in its native simplicity. But you will also take splendid examples of testimonies of the same kind from those things which Augustine himself left written concerning divine grace, before all theological inquiry, in his first works. Such is that passage of the Confessions, l. 10, c. 29, 31, 37: « O love, who ever burnest and art never extinguished, charity, my God, set me on fire. Thou commandest continence. Give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt... I hear the voice of my God commanding: Let not your hearts be weighed down with surfeiting and drunkenness. But remember, Lord, that we are dust, and that thou madest man from dust, and he had perished, and was found. Strengthen me that I may be able. Give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt... We are tempted by these temptations (of human praises) daily, Lord; without ceasing we are tempted. Our daily furnace is the human tongue. Thou commandest us continence also in this kind. Give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt ». Likewise that passage in l. 2 de Ordine, n. 52, where, addressing his mother Monica, he says: « Let us pray therefore, not that riches may come to us, but that those things may come which make us good and blessed. That these vows may be most devoutly fulfilled, I entrust this business especially to thee, mother, by whose prayers I believe without doubt and affirm that God has given me this mind, that I should prefer nothing at all to the finding of truth, wish nothing else, think nothing else, love nothing else ». But lest it be thought that the prayer itself by which other gifts are obtained from God is from us, and not descending from divine grace: « O God, creator of the universe, he says in l. 1 Soliloq. n. 2, grant me first that I may pray to thee well, then that I may conduct myself as worthy to be heard by thee, and finally that thou mayest set me free ». Certainly, not incited by the ardor of disputation, not preoccupied by some preconceived end, not even instructed by profound theological study, did Augustine say these things, but led by the sole doctrine which he had learned as a neophyte in the Church, and full of the spirit of grace which he had received in baptism, what he simply believed he also simply professed, according to that saying: I believed, and therefore I spoke.

Now he knew that everything by which we are made good is a gift of God, and that faith together with works is a gift of God, making no distinction between first and subsequent things, between beginning and end, but comprehending the very beginning of piety, whose foundation is faith, the very first desire and thought of conversion, and finally the prayer itself through which the rest are obtained. Nevertheless, what difference there is between those simple confessions of simple faith and the books in which afterwards, copiously, clearly, and learnedly, he expounded and defended the same dogma of grace against the rising Pelagian heresy, there is no one who will not see. There, therefore, is a new example of those testimonies which report the simple faith of primitive tradition, prescinding from every explanation or consideration of difficulties⁷.

2. But now the second state of doctrine comes to be considered, in which explanations still imperfect are joined to simple faith. This is especially to be seen in some Fathers of the second and third centuries concerning the dogma of the Trinity, namely when they intended to declare somewhat and expound credibly the most high mystery to pagans or Jews, or when they refuted the Sabellians, who said that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit were one and singular God not only in nature but also in person; and that (which must be carefully noted) before the heresies of Arius and Macedonius arose, which denied the divine nature to the Son and the Holy Spirit and attributed to them a created nature.

Athenagoras in his Legation for the Christians wishes to clear the Christians themselves of the crime of atheism with which they were accused by the pagans, by showing that they are not atheists, « who assert God the Father, and the Son God, and the Holy Spirit, and demonstrate their power in unity and distinction in order »⁸. Behold, you have a simple and pure confession of the Christian faith. But lest anyone should think it ridiculous that God has a Son of his own, or that Christians think of God the Father and the Son as the poets fabled, who introduced gods no better than men, lo, the explanation subjoined: « The Son of God is the Word of the Father in idea and operation; for from him and through him all things were made, while the Father and the Son are one. But since the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father, by the unity and power of the Spirit, the Son of God is the mind and word of the Father. But if it occurs to you, according to your supreme intelligence, to inquire what the Son means, I shall say briefly that he is the first offspring of the Father, not because he was made (for God had the Word in himself from eternity, as being rational from eternity), but because he came forth so that he might be the idea and act of all material things which lay like formless nature and inert earth »⁹. In this explanation it is obscure, first, that the Son is called the mind of the Father, and then that he is said to have come forth so as to be the idea and act of that empty and void earth of which Moses speaks in the beginning of Genesis.

Justin, disputing with Trypho the Jew (n. 36), had asserted in most weighty words that Christ is true God, and is called in the old Scripture the Lord of hosts. But after the discourse had turned to other things, Trypho resumes the question (n. 48): « Resuming therefore the discourse at which you stopped, complete it. For it seems to me wonderful indeed, and one that cannot be demonstrated at all. For what you say, that this Christ pre-existed as God before the ages, and then endured to be born and made man, that seems to me not only abhorrent to opinion, but even foolish ». Then Justin answers that this doctrine truly seems abhorrent to opinion to those who are never willing to understand or do the things of God, and he premises that there are two distinct questions: whether Jesus was the true Messiah foretold in the Law, and whether he is true God; for there are some (namely the Ebionites) who confess him as Christ, although they pronounce him a man born of men: « To whom I do not assent, nor would I assent, even if the greatest part (of Christians) which agrees with me said the same. For we have been commanded by Christ to believe not human doctrines, but those which were preached by the blessed prophets and handed down by him ». Behold again a most firm and by no means ambiguous profession of the Catholic faith. But now, in order to expound this truth credibly to a Jewish man, Justin sets about showing that there is another besides the Father, the creator of all things, who is called God in the ancient Scripture, and who foreshadowed the future Incarnation by the theophanies of the Old Testament. He recognizes him in one of the three angels who appeared to Abraham under the oak of Mamre; in that mysterious angel, I say, of whom it is afterwards read: The Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah sulphur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. He sees the same in him who appeared to Jacob, and then to Moses among the flames¹⁰ of the burning bush, testifying of himself: I am who am. Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: He who is, sent me to you. Then he concludes, n. 60-61: « He who said to Moses that he was the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob will not be the creator God of the universe, but the same as he who was shown to you to have appeared to Abraham and Jacob, and to minister to the will of the creator of the universe, and by his counsel to have ministered in the judgment of Sodom, so that, even if, as you say, the angel and God were two, no one not altogether deprived of mind would dare to say that the author and parent of the universe, leaving the supercelestial things, was seen in a small part of the earth... By another testimony also from the Scriptures I will demonstrate to you that God, before all created things, begot from himself a certain rational power, which is called both the glory of the Lord by the Holy Spirit, and now Son, now Wisdom, now Angel, now God, now Lord and Word... For it has all these appellations from the fact that it ministers to the will of the Father, and was begotten by the will from the Father... Such is what we see, that from fire another fire is born, without that from which this one is kindled being diminished, etc. » ¹¹. Where it is equally obscure and difficult that Justin says it is absurd if anyone thinks that the unbegotten Father himself appeared in a small part of the earth, and therefore that the apparitions of God must be referred to another person; likewise that the Son ministers to the will of the Father, and was begotten by the will from the Father¹².

The martyr Hippolytus, writing against the heresy of Noetus, which is the same as that of Sabellius, says in c. 8: « It is necessary therefore that, whether he will or not, he confess the Father God almighty, and Christ Jesus the Son of God, God made man to whom the Father subjected all things except himself, and the Holy Spirit, and that these are truly three. But if he wishes to know how one God is demonstrated, let him know that there is one virtue or power of this ». Can what we believe, I ask, be said more expressly? But coming to explanations, Hippolytus says among other things in c. 10: « When God was alone, and had nothing coeternal with himself, he willed to make the world. And thinking and willing and speaking the world, he made it... But of the things that were made, he begot the Word as leader, counsellor, and worker. And when the Word had it in himself, and was invisible to the created world, he made him visible, sending forth the prior voice, and generating light from light, he brought forth for creation itself the Lord, his own sense; and he who before was visible to himself alone, but invisible to the world, he made this one visible, so that the world, seeing him who appeared, might be able to be saved ». And below, c. 14: « If the Word was with God, and was God, what then? Will anyone say that John says two Gods? Two Gods indeed I will not say, but one, and two persons... The economy of consent is reduced to one God. For there is one God who commands, the Father. He who obeys, the Son. He who teaches knowledge, the Holy Spirit. The Father who is above all, the Son through all, the Holy Spirit in all. Otherwise we cannot understand one God, unless we truly believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit » ¹³. Where again it is obscure what is said about the generation of the Word made visible in the creation of the world; difficult, what is added about the Father who commands and the Son who obeys. — Still more difficult perhaps might seem the things which Dionysius of Alexandria wrote against the same Sabellians; whose refutation is to be found in the fragments that survive of the apology sent by the same Dionysius to Pope Dionysius¹⁴. Nevertheless, since in it the holy bishop clearly clears himself of the errors objected, far from a new difficulty being added in this part, help is rather supplied, whence the others are washed away. And the Benedictine editors rightly note that this apology of Dionysius is of greater moment in that it is an example to us of what the other Fathers before the Council of Nicaea would have done, to whom certain things fell out that were in appearance akin to Arian impiety, if a similar necessity had compelled them to explain their mind more openly.

These things therefore will exhibit to you a kind of specimen of that state in which the explanations of dogmas were still imperfect, that is, the manner of expounding and speaking was not yet so precise, because the heresies had not yet arisen against which afterwards, with greater clarity of concepts and propriety of terms, the divine truth was defended. For what happened in the dogma of the Trinity, it will be easily understood, with due proportion preserved, happened also in the others. The same in the dogma of the Incarnation, concerning which before Nestorius and Eutyches there are found in the writings of the Fathers modes of speaking which, if they were tested by the strict rigor of dialectic, would imply a distinction of the supposits of God and man, or on the contrary, and more frequently, could provide an occasion for the perverse understanding of a certain mixture of the two natures coalescing into one third¹⁵. The same in the dogma of original sin, in which the Pelagians, its attackers, seemed to themselves to triumph, fortifying themselves with certain sayings of Chrysostom, which Augustine reduces to their legitimate sense in the first book against Julian¹⁶. The same in the dogma of grace, in which Augustine himself, as soon as he began to descend to the theological scrutiny of this matter, confesses ingenuously that he sometimes slipped, not indeed by a settled and fixed view, but as it were by inquiring, opining, examining less accurately¹⁷. The same also in the rest, nor is it necessary to linger longer in bringing forward examples.

3. Now therefore the third state of doctrine remains, to which a third class of testimonies also corresponds: namely the state of precise explanation, in which, to use the words of Vincent of Lérins, what was formerly believed more obscurely is understood more clearly, and posterity rejoices that what ancient times venerated without understanding is now unfolded. This stage, as regards most dogmas, begins with the peace of the Church given by Constantine. For from that time onward there was a great advance of knowledge in the penetration of revealed truths, and it was most conspicuous in the fourth and fifth centuries especially, according as the occasions of rising errors brought. Then in the works of Athanasius, Hilary, Basil, and Nazianzen there is a full treatment of the divine processions; which attains its perfection in the fifteen books of Augustine on the Trinity, that principle now being clearly enunciated which in the most high mystery supplies the key of understanding, as far as the condition of mortals allows: namely, that all things in God are the same where the opposition of relation does not stand in the way. Then shines forth the doctrine concerning the sacraments, grace, original sin, and the new economy of the Gospel in relation to the Old Testament, in the controversies of Augustine with the Donatists, the Pelagians, and the Manichees. Then come forth the Ephesine definitions concerning the hypostatic union, and that splendid letter of Leo the Great to Flavian, where the whole dogma of the Incarnation is expounded so clearly and with such precise terms and formulas.

But neither will it be doubtful to you that the authorities of this later age are absolutely to be preferred. For after the resolutions of the Fathers who fought against the heresies, always to appeal to the more ancient is nothing else than to spread a snare for the simple, so that they may prefer what is more obscure and more confused to what is clearer and more distinct, and what was said in passing to what has been more accurately unfolded. And this snare is known to be more dangerous because it is proposed under the appearance of antiquity. For what is more plausible, and in its depths truer, than to say with Vincent of Lérins that antiquity is to be followed? And who would believe that there is deception in this principle? And yet so it is. Antiquity is to be followed — this indeed is the rule of Vincent of Lérins. But one ought to add that, according to the same Vincent, posterity often speaks more clearly. And this is what the critics are wont to conceal, declining so far from the rule of Catholic understanding as not to fear to say that after controversies have arisen, the Fathers are not so easily to be heard, because the ardor of disputation drove them to say more than they wished. But one must not oppose the manner of speaking of the Fathers before and after disputations with heretics. Each is true, and each profits the Church, while in the first she sees the natural simplicity and wondrous perpetuity of her faith, but in the other she is instructed unto a deeper understanding and a more exact notion of the articles of the same faith. For heresies make doctors more solicitous. Although on the other hand it is also most certain that the Fathers who wrote before the heresies arose have something stronger, because they appear more evidently free from all partisanship¹⁸. Therefore these two modes complete one another, and in different respects each excels the other.

Thus therefore, since the truth of the distribution of the testimonies of tradition into the three classes mentioned above now sufficiently appears, and no difficulty occurs concerning the first and the third, but only concerning that intermediate one which marks the transition from simple faith to explanations either of deeper understanding or of more diligent caution against the novelties of heretics: it is now to be seen what is the legitimate interpretation with regard to those things which in that state of transition seemed to bear the appearance of heterodoxy.