La evolución homogénea del dogma católico

55. REVEALED FORMULAS AND REVEALED MEANING.—In divine revelation, two elements must be carefully distinguished:

a) the revealed formulas, whether verbal formulas or imaginative formulas;

b) the revealed meaning of those formulas.

St. Thomas refers to these two by the names:

a) apprehension of the thing (acceptio rei);

b) judgment concerning the things apprehended (iudicium de acceptis).

Now then: the revealed sense, and not purely the formulas, is the formal element in divine revelation. If God had limited Himself to revealing new formulas to us without revealing their sense, that would not be true revelation, but mere vision, and such vision would be as useless for divine faith as Pharaoh’s divine dreams or Belshazzar’s divine vision of Mene, Tekel, Peres would have been, had God Himself not subsequently explained their divine sense through Joseph and Daniel.

For there to be true revelation and not mere vision, it is not necessary for the prophet or inspired author to understand the whole meaning that God intends to convey through such formulas, and which is truly enclosed in them. Nor is it necessary for the prophet or apostle, when promulgating the received revelation by word or in writing, to express in explicit terms the whole meaning that he is seeing with divine light in the divine formulas. Much less is it necessary for his hearers to grasp from the very first moment the whole meaning that the prophet's or apostle's formulas actually contain.

But it is indeed indispensable, for there to be true revelation and true divine faith, that God should have given some explicit sense to the revealed formulas; it is also indispensable that the prophet or apostle should have explicitly understood something, at least, of that divine sense; it is, finally, indispensable that the hearers of the prophet or apostle, which in our case is the primitive Church, should have understood from the very first moment some sense, but an explicit sense, of the apostolic formulas. Without any understanding of sense, neither would the one who receives the formulas from God be a true prophet, but rather a visionary or a dreamer, nor could the one who subsequently received them from the prophet or apostle perform any act of divine faith. The divine sense, and not the formulas, is therefore the formal element of revelation and of faith. The reception of divine formulas without a divine reception of any explicit sense, or progress in mere formulas without any progress of sense, does not properly deserve the name either of divine revelation or of dogmatic progress.

Let us listen to Saint Thomas:

Prophecy (or divine revelation) is a certain supernatural knowledge. Now for knowledge two things are required, namely reception (formulas) and judgment (meaning) of the things received. Therefore sometimes knowledge is supernatural in respect of reception only: sometimes in respect of judgment only: sometimes in respect of both. But if it is in respect of reception only (revelation of formulas without revelation of meaning) someone will not on this account be called a Prophet: as Pharaoh is not to be called a Prophet who supernaturally received a sign of future fertility and sterility under the figure of cattle and ears of grain. But if he has a supernatural judgment (sense), or simultaneously judgment and reception (sense and formulas), for this reason he is called a prophet¹.

“For unless the intellectual light is present for understanding the likenesses of sensible things formed in the imagination, he to whom such likenesses are shown is not called a prophet, but rather a dreamer. Sometimes he is called a prophet, but nevertheless improperly and very remotely”²

“It should be noted that there is a difference between vision and revelation: for revelation includes vision, but not vice versa. For sometimes things are seen whose understanding and meaning is hidden from the seer, and then it is vision only; as was the vision of Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar. But when with the vision there is had the meaning and understanding of the things that are seen, then it is revelation. Therefore as regards Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar the vision of the ears of grain and the statue was only vision: but as regards Joseph and Daniel, who had the meaning of the visions, it was revelation.”³.

“Faith cannot be actualized except by believing something determinately and expressly.”⁴

“For a man would not assent by believing to some things proposed, unless he understood them in some way.”⁵

That is why Cardinal Billot rightly said: “The reception of revealed truth does not consist in the material possession of the dead letter, but in the attainment of the sense and understanding of the sentences”⁶.

The point, then, of departure of dogmatic progress must be an explicitly revealed sense. Without some explicit sense, there can be nothing implicit or virtual, nor, therefore, any progress or evolution.

56. THE MEANING OF THE FORMULAS IN THE DIVINE MIND.—As we have just seen, the divine meaning of the revealed formulas is what is essential in revelation and in faith. But that meaning can be considered in three distinct stages before reaching us, namely: a) in the divine mind, which conceived it and revealed it to the Apostles; b) in the mind of the Apostles, who received it from God and communicated it to the early Church; c) in the mind of the early Church, which received it from the Apostles and has transmitted it to us.

The meaning of the formulas was not in the divine mind partly explicit and partly implicit, partly immediate and partly mediate, partly formal and partly virtual, partly revealed and partly revealable. There, on the contrary, all meaning was and is most explicit, containing in a formal, immediate, actual state all the implicitness and virtuality of which such formulas are capable. If, then, when discussing whether there can be progress of meaning in dogma, we were to take as our starting point or point of comparison the meaning that this dogma has in the divine mind, in order to compare it with the meaning it has in us, it is clear that there has been no progress, but rather a diminution or regression. However much we unfold the dogmatic formulas, we will always know in them far less meaning than that which they contain and which God sees in them. When, therefore, theologians affirm that dogma progresses in meaning, it is evident that it is not progress if we take the divine mind as the term of comparison. Therefore, the starting point for assessing whether or not there has been an increase of meaning or dogmatic evolution is not the meaning as it exists in the divine mind. With respect to that starting point, no increase is possible.

57. THE MEANING OF THE FORMULAS IN THE MIND OF THE APOSTLES.—Concerning the mind of the Apostles, something similar must be said to what we have said about the divine mind, not precisely because they received the revelation immediately from God, for the prophets and hagiographers also received it immediately from God, but because they received it as heads or leaders of the Church of the New Testament, in whom the fullness of divine revelation on earth was consummated and closed.

When it comes to mere prophets or inspired authors, it is not absolutely necessary that they explicitly know all the implicit meaning of the formulas that God reveals to them or inspires in them. According to St. Thomas, even true prophets do not know everything that the Holy Spirit intends to signify through the visions, sayings, or deeds that He reveals to them, and there is no inconsistency whatsoever in saying that we today know the meaning of the prophecies and revelations of the Old Testament much more explicitly and fully than the prophets themselves, because of the greater divine or dogmatic explanation of those prophecies and revelations that Jesus Christ, the Apostles, and His Church have given us ⁷

But the Apostles were much more than mere prophets or mere hagiographers.⁸ As supreme masters of the full and definitive revelation and as foundations of the Church until the end of the ages, traditional theology recognizes in the Apostles the special privilege of having received by infused light an explicit knowledge of divine revelation greater than that which all theologians or the entire Church have or will have until the consummation of the ages.

Therefore, all dogmas already defined by the Church and as many as may be defined in the future were in the mind of the Apostles, not in a mediate or virtual or implicit manner, but in an immediate, formal, explicit manner. Their way of knowing the revealed deposit was not, as in us, through partial and human concepts, which implicitly and virtually contain much more meaning than they express, and require effort and time to go on unfolding or successively explaining what they contain, but rather it was by divine or infused light, which is a simple supernatural intelligence that actualizes and illuminates at one stroke all implicitness or virtuality.

If, then, the sense of the revealed deposit, as it was in the mind of the Apostles, is taken as the term of comparison, in order to compare it with the sense that we know, then one must say something similar to what we said when speaking of the divine mind, namely, that there has been no progress, but rather a diminution or regression. We know and will know about the revealed deposit less meaning and less explicitly than the Apostles knew. When we speak, then, of dogmatic progress, it is not understood as progress over the Apostles. Therefore, the starting point or primitive datum for assessing whether or not there is dogmatic progress cannot be the apostolic mind⁹.)

58. THE MEANING OF THE FORMULAS IN THE EARLY CHURCH..—Very different is what must be said of the revealed formulas, as they existed in the early Church. The Apostles communicated to the Church, in written or oral formulas, all that God had revealed to them for transmission. But concerning those revealed formulas, the Apostles did not give the Church the whole explanation or explicit sense that they themselves understood, and which was really and truly implied in those formulas. Instead, the permanent dogmatic magisterium gave it, which is nothing other than a perpetual prolongation of the apostolic divine magisterium, so as to go on explaining or unfolding more and more the implicitness of the deposit, as heresies, disputes, or the needs of each age might require.

The primitive Church thus received from the Apostles the entire deposit of Sacred Scripture and divine Tradition, without any need to expect, and without any possibility of, new revelation. But it did not receive from the Apostles that infused light which they had from God, enabling them to grasp at a single glance all the divine meaning truly included, though not formally expressed, in the revealed formulas. Therefore, such apostolic formulas, although of revealed and divine origin, are expressed in purely human language, and human formulas never succeed in expressing all the potentiality and meaning they implicitly contain, much more so when the sublime and fruitful divine realities are to be expressed by means of them. Such formulas resemble seeds pregnant with life or, better, trees overflowing with sap, which await only a favorable environment to develop into branches, flowers, and fruits the very potentiality and life that was already truly contained in them.

The true starting point, then, of dogmatic progress is the apostolic formulas just as they came from the pen or lips of the Apostles. Therefore, when the question is whether there has been dogmatic progress or evolution, or whether that progress has been only from the formal-implicit to the formal-explicit, or also from the virtual-implicit to the formal, it is a disorientation to focus on how those dogmas existed in the divine mind or in the apostolic mind. With respect to the divine mind or the apostolic mind, the question of formal and virtual, of mediate and immediate, of implicit and explicit has no meaning whatsoever. There everything was not only formal and immediate, but also explicit, and therefore the question of progress or evolution is meaningless.

What must be noted is how they were present not in the mind of God nor in the mind of the Apostles, but in the mind of the early Church: that is, whether in all our present dogmas they were already contained formally or only virtually in the written or oral formulas of the Apostles, giving to those formulas not precisely the meaning that the supernaturally enlightened intellect of the Apostles explicitly saw in them, but the meaning that such formulas of themselves express, understood as the early Church understood them.

59. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM OF THE EVOLUTION OF DOGMA.—As we have just seen, the starting point of all dogmatic progress is the revealed formulas that the Apostles delivered to the early Church. In these formulas, as in every formula of human texture, there is a part of meaning formally contained and another part of meaning virtually implied.

All Catholic theologians agree that not only are the formulas revealed, but also their immediate or formal content is revealed and, therefore, definable by divine faith. But is their mediate or virtual content also revealed and, therefore, definable by divine faith? If it is not, no true dogmatic evolution is possible, for there is no evolution without virtuality, nor dogmatic evolution without a virtuality that is truly revealed. If it is, dogmatic evolution is possible: evolution, because it is of virtuality; dogmatic evolution, because it is of revealed virtuality.

As can be seen, the whole problem of dogmatic evolution depends on the existence or non-existence of a true revealed virtuality. To resolve it, it is necessary, above all, that theologians be unanimous as to what is meant by revealed virtuality. But are theologians unanimous on that? That is what we are going to examine.