De immutabilitate traditionis contra modernam haeresim evolutionismi
Louis Billot (1846–1931)
First published 1907
Louis Billot's De immutabilitate traditionis contra modernam haeresim evolutionismi, second edition (Rome, 1907). The edition prints the title page, Prooemium, six chapters with their numbered theses, the Index and the Approbatio. The separately titled De inspiratione sacrae Scripturae (1906), bound before it in the same volume, is excluded.
Title Page
Proem
Capitulum I: Chapter One — On the Catholic Concept of Sacred Tradition
Sectio I: § 1. — That the Authentic Organ of Tradition Was Instituted by Jesus Christ in His Church, Namely the Apostolic Hierarchy with Which He Promised to Be Present unto the End of the Ages.
Sectio II: § 2. — That Tradition, Taken in Its True and Catholic Sense, Is the Rule of Faith.
Sectio III: § 3. — That Tradition Is Prior to Scripture as the Rule of Faith, Both in Order of Time and in Order of Knowledge and Comprehension
Sectio IV: § 4. — That from What Has Been Said It Follows That Tradition Has Indeed a Certain Evolution in the Course of Time, but One Joined with Complete Immutability and Consensus in the Same Dogma and the Same Sense
Capitulum II: Chapter Two — On the Cause of Apparent Oppositions in the Testimonies of Tradition
§ 1.
§ 2.
§ 3.
Capitulum III: Chapter Three — On the Vice of the Historical Method in the Crisis of the Monuments of Tradition
Sectio I: § 1. — That the Historical Method, in Opposition to the Method of Immanence, Is the Only Legitimate Method in the Preambles of Faith, When What Must Be Proved Is the Fact of Revelation
Sectio II: § 2. — That the Historical Method, in Opposition to the Theological Method, Is Not Only Wholly Insufficient and Disproportionate but Also Productive of Errors of Every Kind
Capitulum IV: Chapter Four — On the Error of Relative Truth in the Dogmas of Tradition
Sectio I: § 1. — That the Concept of Relative Truth Is Absurd in Itself, and That Apart from the Definition Consecrated by Ancient Philosophy, Namely the Adequation of Intellect and Thing, No Other Notion of Truth Is Admissible.
Sectio II: § 2. — That the Dogmas of Our Religion Are Truly and Properly from Heaven, and Therefore They Would Still Resist the Notion of Relative Truth Even If They Were Not Elsewhere Marked by Contradictory and Mutually Conflicting Notes.
Sectio III: § 3. — That for the Defense of Their Error They Vainly Appeal to Notions or Doctrines Which They Say Were Imported from Profane Schools into Sacred Doctrine, or to Past Adaptations of Theology to Philosophy, Especially Aristotelian Philosophy, Which They Invent.
Capitulum V: Chapter Five — On the Consummation of Ruin through Moral Dogmatism
Sectio I: § 1. — That Moral Dogmatism Vainly Seeks a Means of Restoration on the Side of the Will, to Which It Ineptly Attributes Primacy in the Business of Acquiring and Knowing Religious Truth.
Sectio II: § 2. — That Moral Dogmatism Not Only Does Not Restore the Collapsed Building of Truth by Setting the Will for the Good as Principle and Foundation, but Heaps Ruin upon Ruin
Sectio III: § 3. — That Moral Dogmatism Consummates the Irreparable Destruction of the Truth of Faith by Proclaiming the Purely Practical Value of the Dogmas of Religion
Capitulum VI: Chapter Six — On the Heap of Errors in the System of the Living Faith
§ 1.
What they call revelation could have been nothing other than the consciousness acquired by man of his relation to God1.
The beginning of revelation was the perception, however rudimentary, of that relation which must exist between man conscious of himself and God present beneath the world of phenomena. Specifically, however, Christian revelation in its principle and its origin was nothing but a perception in the soul of Christ, both of the relation by which Christ Himself was united with God, and of the relation that binds all men to the heavenly Father2.
Likewise, the progress of revelation was the perception of new relations, or rather a more precise and more distinct determination of the essential relation, confusedly perceived from the beginning, while man was being formed to know ever better both the greatness of God and the nature of his own duty3.
Moreover, this is the difference between perceptions of the scientific order and perceptions of the truths that are called revealed: that the latter are not, like the former, the fruit of reason alone, but a certain elaboration of the intellect under the pressure of the heart and the direction of the moral sense, or of the will for the good4.
Now this elaboration, which has an ever more and more perfect result in the Israelite religion, and then in the Christian religion, is first and principally the operation of God in man, or the operation of man with God: insofar, namely, as it involves the action of God exciting man to seek, and helping him in his continual and endless effort toward the better5. Although account must also be taken of the historical events that came along, from which revealed religion took the occasions, the incitements, the helps, the matter of its own evolution, and all the more, the greater the vitality with which it was endowed. Hence it is no wonder either that the religion of Israel and the Christian religion, precisely because of their most intense vital energy, were more than all other religions subject to change6.
Therefore, two things in the present matter are by no means to be confused, rather they are to be adequately divided. On the one hand, religious ideas, which alone constitute the object of faith, and evolve day by day. On the other, historical facts, which supply the cause of the evolution of ideas, whether determinative or at least occasional.