La evolución homogénea del dogma católico

170. THE CONSERVATION AND EXPLANATION OF THE DEPOSIT.—The dogmatic magisterium of the Church has with respect to the revealed deposit two functions that the Vatican Council has very clearly indicated, and that the great exponent of dogmatic progress, Vincent of Lérins, had previously set forth with admirable clarity and beauty. These two functions are: first, to conserve the revealed deposit; second, to explain it; "sancte custodire et fideliter exponere" ¹. "If there are things anciently informed and begun, let him polish and refine them; if things already confirmed and defined, let him guard them" ².

Hence arise the two fundamental characteristics of the Catholic dogma: immutability and progress. Not only immutability as regards dogma and progress as regards discipline, as is commonly said, but immutability as regards dogma and progress as regards that very dogma itself, since as regards discipline, not only progress is possible, but also true transformation, by adding, removing, changing, reforming, and abolishing whatever may be fitting in purely disciplinary matters.

These two functions of preservation and explanation with regard to dogma itself are correlative, but distinct, and it is fitting to fix our attention carefully upon them ³.

Every living or progressive being, conserving itself, develops, and developing, conserves itself. Without the conservation of something fixed and identical, there would be not merely progress, but transformationist evolution; without the development or acquisition of something new, within that same conserved thing (for if it came from outside it would be addition and not pure development), there would be no real progress, but only nominal.

As in revelation, according to St. Thomas, there are two distinct elements, the object revealed and its proposition or explanation (139), God and the Apostles, in delivering to the Church the revealed deposit of Scripture and Tradition, delivered to her two things: first, a body of truths or propositions divinely revealed; second, a quantity or degree of explanation or explicit sense of those propositions. The primitive Church, therefore, received from the mouth of the Apostles the revealed object and the divine explanation of that object. This is the primitive datum, this is the starting point of dogmatic progress (55).

For there to be no transformism, it is necessary that this revealed object and this divine explanation be preserved substantially immutable; but for there to be true progress, and not merely verbal, it is necessary that this starting point develop, that is, that it acquire something new.

Given two things at the starting point—the revealed object and the divine explanation of that object—novelty can arise only through two channels: by an increase in new objects revealed, or by an increase in new divine explanation of the object already revealed. The former is not admitted by Catholic doctrine since the death of the Apostles; therefore, for there to be true progress, and not merely preservation of the revealed deposit, it is necessary to admit a new explanation or greater divine explanation of the revealed truth. That is the purpose of the Church's dogmatic authority; that is the second of the Church's two functions regarding the primitive datum; that is what the Church does in developing and defining the inclusive intellectual virtuality of the revealed deposit.

171. REDEFINITIONS AND DOGMATIC DEFINITIONS.—The Church’s definitions of faith or dogmatic authority must not, therefore, be conceived as repeating only the explanation already given by the Apostles and already possessed by the primitive Church. That is, without doubt, what the Church often does; but that is not properly definition, but rather redefinition; that does not properly belong to the second function of explaining, but rather to the first function of preserving, by repeating and solemnly proclaiming, the explanation already given by the Apostles themselves to the primitive Church. Rather, they must also be conceived as giving, by divine authority or assistance, a new explanation or a greater explanation regarding the explanation that the Apostles gave to the Church, resulting, therefore, in something new; not a new revealed object, nor a new revelation of the same object, but rather a new divine explanation of the very same object or deposit revealed by God to the Apostles and entrusted by them to the custody and explanation of the divine authority of the Church.

It is true, and we have already indicated it elsewhere (57), that the Church cannot give a greater dogmatic explanation than that which the Apostles received from God, but it is also true that it can have—and in fact has—a greater dogmatic explanation than that which the Apostles gave to the primitive Church.

172. FURTHER EXPLANATION THAT THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH.—The primitive Church was, then, in possession of two things: first, of a determined number of revealed articles; second, of a determined degree of divine explanation of those articles.

Future generations of Christians have found themselves, find themselves, and will find themselves until the end of the ages in possession of something new, of a third element that they acquire by virtue of the dogmatic authority of the Church. They find themselves, or we find ourselves, in possession, not of two, but of three things: first, the same revealed articles; second, the same explanation given of those articles by the Apostles. All of this the Church has preserved and will preserve unchanged and unchangeable, and to these two things corresponds the first function of preserving the deposit. But besides that we have a third thing, and it is a new explanation, which in no way contradicts the previous one nor comes from outside, but is drawn or deduced from within, and increases or develops, without changing it, the explanation given by the Apostles.

This third thing is what corresponds to the second function of explaining the deposit, of which Lirinensis and the Vatican Council speak. That new dogmatic explanation immediately passes to the first function of being preserved immutably as an integral and divine part or development of the deposit, so that from there new explanations and new preservations of what has been explained may emerge, which is what constitutes the true living, continuous, perennial, homogeneous progress of Catholic doctrine.

Of that dogmatic progress or development, human reason, with all its varied manifestations of theological, exegetical, critical, historical works, etc., etc., is nothing but a human and fallible instrument; the Church, with its ordinary or solemn magisterium, is likewise nothing but an instrument, although an instrument divinely assisted and infallible, and the Holy Spirit, who perpetually assists and guides the Church in the double progressive function of conserving and explaining what has been revealed is the author or principal cause.

173. GROWTH IN THE DOGMA ITSELF BY WAY OF EXPLANATION. From this it is clearly seen where the weakness lies in that common objection which many beginners are wont to raise against the evolution of dogma. They argue thus: "The formal object of dogma or of divine faith is divine revelation; but after the Apostles no new divine revelation is possible; therefore no new dogmas or dogmatic growth are possible."

If those theological novices paid more attention to the two elements that enter into the object of faith and to the two functions that the Church has, they would argue in this other way: The formal object of dogma or of divine faith is not only divine revelation, but also the divine explanation of what has already been revealed; and since the divine explanation of what has already been revealed can grow and does grow with the definition of the Church, therefore dogma can grow and does grow.

CAN IT BE SAID THAT THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH IGNORED SOME OF OUR CURRENT DOGMAS?—What is known only implicitly can be said in some way not to be known or to be ignored. “It must be said that just as something is believed implicitly, so it is known implicitly. That which is not known explicitly is said to be ignored” ⁴. “To believe explicitly is nothing other than to believe in the thing itself, so that it is the proximate object upon which the assent of faith falls: but to believe implicitly is to believe only in another, because what is thus believed is not really known, nor does the intellect form its own concept of the proposition which is said to be believed only implicitly, but of another in which it is contained” ⁵.

There is, therefore, no difficulty in saying that the primitive Church, setting aside the Apostles, ignored certain of our present-day dogmas, provided that by this is meant only that it did not know them explicitly, although it explicitly knew others in which such dogmas were implicitly contained.

When, therefore, the Councils or the Popes use the phrases “perpetuus Ecclesiae sensus,” “persuasum semper fuit in Ecclesia Dei,” “ab ipso Ecclesiae initio,” and others of the same kind, it is not absolutely necessary in every case to understand by those phrases that the Church knew or believed such a truth always explicitly, but rather in some cases it suffices that she knew and believed it implicitly in other truths which she already explicitly knew and believed, and in which that truth was implicitly contained. Speaking regarding the minor orders, Pesch expresses himself thus: “What the Council of Trent says: From the very beginning of the Church, the names and ministries of the following orders... are recognized as having been in use, refers to the time of Pope Cornelius: for it is certain that the Fathers of the Council had no such knowledge concerning earlier times”⁶. The Church, in teaching and defining, does not always need to rely on what is explicit, but can also rely on what is implicit in Scripture or Tradition.

But although it can be said that some dogmas were not explicitly believed or known in the first centuries, it would be false to say that such dogmas come neither from Sacred Scripture nor from divine Tradition, for then they could not be dogmas; just as it would be most imprudent to affirm without explanation that they were unknown, since that word, said without explanation, usually or can mean that they were denied or rejected by all. For this reason, the article Pensées sur la question de l'Union des Eglises, published in the newspaper "Roma e l'Orient", was justly censured by Pius X. Let us hear the Pope's words: "Nimirum ibi non minus temere quam falso huic opinioni fit aditus, dogma de processione Spiritus Sancti a Filio nequaquam ex ipsis verbis Evangelii profluere aut antiquorum Patrum fide comprobari: pariter imprudentissime in dubium revocatur utrum sacra de Purgatorio ac de Immaculata Conceptione B. Virginis dogmata a sanctis viris priorum saeculorum agnita fuerint"⁷. All dogmas, without exception, were known explicitly by the Apostles; and all are found, at least implicitly, in the apostolic statements that the early Church explicitly knew and believed.