La evolución homogénea del dogma católico

189. ANTI-INTELLECTUALIST TENDENCY.—Even among theologians who admit the evolution of dogma, there are some who believe that in that evolution the purely speculative or rational path, which they usually dismissively label as “pure dialectic,” has had little or no influence.

For those theologians, the development of dogma has occurred and occurs only, or almost exclusively, through the path of practice or Christian sense. They base this on the fact that, in their judgment, the primitive deposit, or revealed datum, consisted mainly of facts or institutions; and if it contained some intellectual statements, they were not explicit or clear, as needed for speculative reasoning to be possible, but rather vague and confused, more suited to being developed through the path of practice and experience of the whole Christian society than through the abstract speculative path of a few dialectical theorists.

190. AN INTERESTING LETTER.—So that it may be seen how deeply rooted these ideas are even in great Catholic theologians, we shall copy some interesting paragraphs from a letter with which a renowned professor and writer of theology honored us when years ago we wrote on these matters in La Ciencia Tomista. They read as follows: "Considering a priori dogmatic development, it indeed seems that it should be as you say, and so it will be in what is realized dialectically. But this process I believe to be very scarce or null. First, because, in my view, a great part of the deposit is not from the beginning, even implicitly, in intellectual statements, but only embodied in facts and institutions whose explanation, supported by sound experience and guaranteed by the Church, leads to recognizing such doctrines as contained therein virtually; thus I am accustomed to understand this word. Second, because what is implied in certain statements is not easily deduced from them by simple dialectic: a) because it is not in clear statements, like the first principles of a science, but in vague and even confused expressions, from which, without other light and guide than dialectic, I do not know that anything can be deduced in all rigor; b) because when dealing with ineffable or mysterious realities, where terms are not used in a univocal sense but an analogous one, the supposition sometimes varies a little, without our noticing it, and the propositions that appear to be equivalent are not entirely so. Hence a certain vice infiltrates the deduction, and this, however logical it may appear, does not conclude unless its legitimacy is well verified by Christian good sense and guaranteed by the Church. Hence also it is that dialectical development so often leads to a going astray, to a heresy, to an error, or to mere school doctrines, without hope of ever being defined. "In short, dogmatic development will very rarely or almost never be by pure dialectic. This usually comes afterward to justify what has been done spontaneously or intuitively with Christian practice or experience. Thus the saying of Saint Thomas is fulfilled: "Life comes before doctrine". Were it not so, it would be easy for you to point out concrete, real examples of that dialectical development; and you ought not to content yourself with some hypothetical one". As can be seen, our objector agrees with us that there exists in the Church, even after the Apostles, true dogmatic development and not merely theological development. He also agrees with us that the cause or principal agent of this dogmatic progress is the divine authority of the Church or, by another name, the assistance of the Holy Spirit, which the Church has not only to preserve, but also to explain or unfold or develop the revealed deposit.

The divergence, then, is not about the existence of dogmatic progress nor about its principal cause, but only about the instrument or way or human means of that progress. For since the Church has neither revelation nor even inspiration, but only assistance from the Holy Spirit, some human means must be indicated which the Church uses for that explanation or dogmatic development of the revealed deposit.

We said that the ordinary means used by the Church for that dogmatic development is reason, or, by another name, ratiocination, or, by another name, the path of theological conclusion. Our objector, on the contrary, says or seems to say that dogmatic progress is never or almost never verified by way of ratiocination.

At first glance, the divergence could not be more radical; but we suspect that this divergence is more in name than in reality, and that it lies only in the peculiar and limited sense that our objector gives to the word reasoning. This suspicion is inspired in us by the fact that, where we have always used the words reason, ratiocination, reasoning, our objector never uses such words, but only and exclusively those of dialectic, mere dialectic, pure dialectic, as if there were no reasoning other than the formal or that arranged in the form of a syllogism, which is what dialectic deals with.

So that a question as grave as that of dogmatic progress does not become a mere question of names, it is fitting to recall briefly what Saint Thomas understood and what we have understood by the words reason, reasoning, and ratiocination when affirming that this was the most common path of dogmatic progress.

191. INTUITION AND RATIOCINATION.—Every truth must be known either in itself or known in another truth. Between being known in itself or known in another, there is no middle ground.

This applies equally to intrinsic or scientific knowledge and to extrinsic knowledge or knowledge by authority. In intrinsic knowledge or knowledge by evidence, every truth is either evident in itself or evident through another truth. "Per se notum; notum per aliud," say the philosophers. In turn, in knowledge by revelation or faith, every truth is either revealed in itself or revealed in another. "Revelatum in se; revelatum in alio," say the theologians. Knowledge of a thing by itself and without the intervention of another objective truth in which it is enveloped is called simple intelligence or intuition. Knowledge of a truth not in itself, but through another virtually distinct truth in which it is enveloped, is called reason or reasoning¹.

According to this doctrine, which we have set forth in greater detail elsewhere, to reason is nothing other than to know one truth by means of another, or to pass from the knowledge of one truth or proposition to that of another, or to affirm one truth by relying on another. The kind of that other truth on which it relies or from which it proceeds is accidental. Whether it be revealed or unrevealed truth, whether it be metaphysical, physical, or moral truth, whether it be a speculative truth or a practical truth, whether it be a truth of fact or a truth of right, whether it be a theory or an experience, there will be different kinds of reasoning, but there will always be reasoning, because there will always be knowledge of a truth, not in itself, but by means of another virtually distinct from it. All of that is reasoning or argumentation, all of that is science, all of that is conclusion; in contrast to simple intelligence or intuition, which is knowledge of a truth in itself, and in contrast to faith, which is knowledge of a truth by simple and sole authority (61-64).

192. CONSCIOUS REASONING AND SPONTANEOUS OR UNCONSCIOUS REASONING.—We do not always perform this reasoning or this comparison of one truth with another consciously, but rather we very often practice it in a spontaneous or unconscious manner. Many truths that seem clear and obvious to us are so without doubt; but they are not so by themselves, but rather by virtue of other truths that our mind habitually possesses and with which we are continually comparing them without realizing it. And the proof is that, if someone doubts the truth of one of those affirmations of ours or asks us the reason why, we immediately give the reason or proof of our affirmation, thereby showing that what seemed clear to us by itself was so because of another truth that existed in our mind and on which our affirmation was supported, even without our expressly being aware of it.

Whenever, therefore, there is in our mind a why or an intrinsic reason for what we affirm or opine, there is reasoning. If we point out the why or become aware of it, the reasoning is conscious. If the why exists in our mind, but we are not expressly aware of it, the reasoning is unconscious or spontaneous. But, in any case, whenever there is in our mind an objective or intrinsic why for what we affirm, there is not simple intelligence or intuition, but reasoning.

193. REASONING IN FORM OR DIALECTICAL AND FORMLESS REASONING.—The same conscious reasoning in which we affirm the why of our affirmation or become aware of it may be done in form of reasoning or may be done without form. The various forms of reasoning are well known, and they are treated in dialectics. The primary one is that in which from a major proposition and from a minor one that carries an atqui or a sed a third proposition or conclusion is deduced with an ergo or igitur. When we reason in this way, our reasoning is not only real, since it is a passage from one truth to another, but it is also formal or dialectical, that is, done in dialectical form.

But this manner of reasoning is too technical, too formal, too artificial for the exercise of a function as natural and daily as reasoning is for our intelligence. Hence it is that we rarely use that formal manner of reasoning. In its place we ordinarily use formless reasoning, in which, instead of three distinct propositions with atquis and ergos, a single one suffices for us, in which we express our reason or our reasoning by a simple conjunction, by an adverb, by a participle. Instead of saying with the dialecticians: “Everything spiritual is immortal; now the human soul is spiritual, therefore it is immortal,” we say simply: “It must be immortal being spiritual,” or “Since it is spiritual, it is also immortal.” This is the common manner of reasoning; these are true reasonings, although they are not in dialectical form. Reasoning in dialectical form is so rare a case that it is almost reduced to scholastic books or to the intellectual gymnastics of the acts or conclusions of the schools.

We have, then, that one thing is intuition or simple intelligence and quite another is reason or reasoning. We also have that reasoning can be spontaneous and conscious, and that the conscious kind can be informal and dialectical. To know a truth in itself and not in another is intuition or simple intelligence. To know it not in itself, but in another truth in which it is intrinsically contained and from which we deduce it, is always reasoning, though not always formal or dialectical reasoning.

194. REPLY TO THE OBJECTION.—We said that the most common human instrument used by the Church for dogmatic development is reasoning or ratiocination. This means no more than that dogmatic development is ordinarily brought about by comparing some truths with others that are virtually distinct, whether by comparing the revealed truths among themselves, or by comparing them with truths of reason.

On the other hand, our illustrious correspondent says that it is never or almost never verified by dialectics, by pure dialectics.

If by dialectics our correspondent understands formal reasoning or reasoning in syllogistic form, we have no objection to telling him: let it pass. We could equally deny it, for there has been some case of dogmatic development carried out in dialectical form. But since we, when speaking of reasoning with respect to dogmatic development, have never taken it in that very narrow sense of reasoning in dialectical form, but rather in the broad and proper sense of knowing one truth through another virtually distinct from it, we therefore prefer to say: let it pass; for it is not fitting to mix the questions.

But if by dialectics or by the speculative path our correspondent were to understand any kind of true and proper reasoning, his assertion would amount to saying that the dogmatic development through the comparison of some truths with others or the rigorous deduction of some truths from others has never or rarely taken place. But in that case, this assertion goes against the common sentiment of traditional theology and against the patent facts of the history of dogmas.

Our correspondent asks us for concrete and real examples of dogmatic development by way of speculation or reasoning. We believe that this is not a difficult matter, although it is a most delicate one, and we will provide him with numerous examples in the following two sections. But let us first deal with his other two observations concerning the scarcity of speculative or intellectual statements in the revealed deposit and the obscurity and vagueness of such statements.

195. THE SCARCITY OF INTELLECTUAL STATEMENTS IN THE DEPOSIT OF REVEALED TRUTH.—There are two kinds of intellectual statements: some, expressed in abstract, conceptual, philosophical terms, which Cardinal Newman usually calls notional statements; others, expressed in concrete, individual, ordinary terms, which we all call terms of common sense.

When the Councils or the theologians say: "In God there is a trinity of hypostases in unity of essence," "the Son is consubstantial with the Father," "in Jesus Christ there are two natures and one single person," these are intellectual statements, but abstract or notional statements, because the terms "essence," "hypostasis," "nature," "consubstantial" are conceptual or philosophical terms, not vulgar or common ones.

On the other hand, when Holy Scripture says: "There is but one God," "Jesus Christ is the true Son of God," "He is like us in all things, except sin," these are also true intellectual statements, and no less intellectual than the former; but they are concrete and individual statements, not abstract or notional ones, because the terms "one God," "Son of God," "like us" are vulgar terms, of common sense, of universal use.

We readily concede, then, that the revealed deposit is not, as a rule, expressed in abstract or philosophical statements, but rather in concrete, singular, popular, common-sense statements. The reason for this is quite obvious. The revealed deposit was not written for the learned alone, like the works of Aristotle or Plato, but for all of humanity, for the simple people, as much as or more than for philosophers or theologians. And when one speaks or writes for everyone and not for an educated group, when one addresses popular intelligence and not specialists, the language is, and must be, concrete, singular, made up of common terms, of common sense. Such is, generally speaking, the language of Sacred Scripture and of divine tradition, and this is the surest guarantee of its perenniality and catholicity, since it makes it suited to every kind of person, place, and time.

But if abstract statements are scarce in the revealed deposit, concrete statements, on the other hand, abound. With these concrete statements which, because they are concrete or common, are no less intellectual than abstract or notional ones; with those statements overflowing with divine truth and divine life, and overflowing with life precisely insofar as they overflow with truth, the Holy Bible is filled, and above all the New Testament is filled, and most especially the fourth gospel and the epistles of Saint Paul are filled. For good reason today so much is said and written about the so-called "theology of Saint John and Saint Paul."

From those biblical statements, which do not cease to be, we repeat, intellectual statements because they are concrete; from those theologies of Saint John and Saint Paul, which are no less divine word and primitive datum than the simplest statements of the Synoptics, for all are equally inspired, the dogmatic reasoning takes its departure, whether by comparing some revealed statements with others, or by comparing them with the clear statements of human reason. As a basis or starting point for dogmatic reasoning or ratiocination, an abstract statement serves just as well as a concrete one, provided it is divinely revealed: and for a statement of reason to intervene as a minor premise without danger of objective inhomogeneity, it is indifferent whether it be of speculative reason or of practical reason, of external experience or of internal experience, of immediate evidence or of mediate evidence, provided it be evident, from wherever that evidence may come.

Thus, for example, if the abstract statement that "Jesus Christ is consubstantial with the Father" has not been explicitly revealed to us, the concrete statements have been revealed to us instead, namely, that "Jesus Christ is true Son of God" and that "there is but one only God," and from these concrete statements, compared with one another, there emerges by true reasoning the abstract statement of consubstantiality. If the abstract statement that in Christ there are two natures and two operations has not been revealed to us, the concrete statements have been revealed to us that Jesus Christ is not only God, but also man "in all things like unto us," and from these two statements, combined with the minor premise of natural reason that every man has a human nature and, if he is in a perfect or connatural state, also has a human will and other faculties, the abstract statement of the two natures and the two wills and operations has emerged. If the abstract statement that all sins must be confessed in species, number, and specific circumstances has not been explicitly revealed to us, the concrete statement has been revealed to us that the ministers of the Church are true judges of the retention or forgiveness of sins, and from that concrete statement, combined with the natural minor premise of the nature of judgment, the abstract statement of species, number, and circumstances has emerged. If the abstract statement of transubstantiation has not been explicitly revealed to us, the concrete statement This is my body has been revealed to us, and from that concrete statement, combined with what is evidently required for the truth of such a mystery, the abstract statement of transubstantiation has emerged. And so it is with very many dogmas or dogmatic developments, that is, with all or almost all derived dogmas.

It is true that this, which when stated in a few sentences seems so simple, has required long labors and experiences, countless trials and discussions, and sometimes entire centuries of slow and uneven gestation. But this very fact is further proof that the development has taken place by the intellectual path or that of knowledge rather than by the path of affection or devotion. For, as Saint Thomas notes with delicate analysis, it is precisely in this that both methods of development are distinguished: in that development by the intellectual path requires experience and time, while for development by the affective or devotional path, time, external experience, or any other external element are accidental ².

196. ANOTHER REPLY.—But let us grant, for the sake of argument, that in the revealed deposit there were scarcely any intellectual statements, whether abstract or concrete, and that almost the entire deposit had been reduced to facts and institutions, as our objector seems to suggest. Even starting from that hypothesis, entirely gratuitous as it is, we do not see that anything against dogmatic progress by way of reasoning would follow from it. For true theological reasoning to be possible, it makes no difference whether the starting point is an intellectual statement or whether it is a fact or an institution, provided that those facts or institutions are revealed or divine, as everything contained in the deposit must be.

Indeed, let us take as an example any one of those dogmas that seem not to be contained in the revealed deposit in the form of intellectual statements, but rather in the form of facts or of the Church’s constant practice. Let the dogma be that, already defined as of faith, of the validity of baptism administered by a heretic. That dogma does not appear to be contained, at least explicitly, in any statement of Sacred Scripture, but only in a fact or practice of apostolic-divine origin, in the Church’s constant practice of never rebaptizing, upon their conversion, those baptized in heresy. Now then: it is evident that that single fact or practice would have sufficed and does suffice to deduce, through genuine reasoning, the dogma of the validity of such baptism, merely by comparing that fact with another revealed truth, which is the necessity of baptism for salvation. Taking as the major premise that revealed truth of the necessity of baptism for salvation and as the minor premise the Church’s constant practice of not administering another baptism to those already baptized in heresy, it is evidently deduced that the Church had always held the previous baptism as valid, even though administered by heretics, which is the defined dogma.

In the same way, the dogma of the universality of original sin can be deduced from the mere fact of baptism administered to infants; or the dogma of the real presence from the mere fact of the worship always rendered to the host and to the blood after the consecration, or the dogma of papal infallibility from the mere fact that in the Church nothing was ever held as firm or definitive in matters of faith without the approval of the Supreme Pontiff. The same could be said of many other dogmas.

Indeed, nothing is more frequent in Saint Thomas than to rely on facts, rites, customs, or institutions of the Church in order to deduce by true and rigorous reasoning the dogmas we believe. Thus, in the Summa contra gentiles (bk. 3, ch. 1) he deduces the dogma of original sin from the universal custom (secundum communem Ecclesiae consuetudinem) of administering baptism to children. In the Summa Theologica (2-2, q. 75, a. 2) he proves that no bread or wine remains after the consecration from the Church's custom (ritui Ecclesiae) of the worship of latria and of the eucharistic fast. In q. 2, a. 1, he had proved that the making of a creed belongs to the Pope from the constant fact that the greater causes have always belonged to the Pope (ad quem maiores et difficiliores Ecclesiae quaestiones referuntur) and from the fact that no council, not even a general one, has ever been considered valid without his confirmation (cuius auctoritate Synodus congregatur et eius sententia confirmatur). In q. 10, a. 12, of the same part, to prove that the children of infidels or Jews should not be baptized against the will of their parents, he adduces as a fundamental reason the constant custom of the Church (Hoc autem Ecclesiae usus nunquam habuit... Praeter consuetudinem in Ecclesia hactenus observatam). So far is the Holy Doctor from believing that dogmatic reasoning cannot rely on facts, or institutions, or customs when they are of divine origin, that he places the custom of the Church above the very authority of the Holy Fathers... "The custom of the Church holds the greatest authority, which is always to be imitated in all things; because even the teaching of the Catholic Doctors itself derives its authority from the Church. Hence, one must stand more firmly on the authority of the Church than on the authority of Jerome or of any Doctor." ³

So that our objector may see tangibly how a true and rigorous reasoning can be founded on a fact, or rite, or institution, and how from it, through what our objector calls simple dialectics, a true dogma may emerge, we shall transcribe literally the reasoning by which Saint Thomas deduces original sin in children from the constant practice of the Church. He says thus:

"Baptism and the other Sacraments of the Church are certain remedies against sin, as will be made clear below. Moreover, baptism is administered, according to the common custom of the Church, to newly born infants. Therefore, it would be administered in vain unless there were some sin in them. There is moreover no actual sin in them, because they lack the use of free will, without which no act is imputed to a human being as fault. Therefore, it must be said that there is in them sin traced by origin, since in the works of God and of the Church nothing is vain or futile"⁴.

This is truly a dogma deduced by genuine reasoning, resting upon a custom or fact or institution. The particles autem, igitur, cum are the indelible marks of ratiocination, or the links comparing the different truths among themselves. If our objector prefers to call this simple dialectics at times and Christian sense or intuition at others, "de nominibus non est curandum." It has always been called reasoning, and the history of dogmatic progress is full of such reasonings.

As can be seen, true reasoning and true dogmatic progress or development are no less possible when one has facts or institutions at one's disposal than when one has intellectual statements. Saint Thomas gives us the profound reason for this when analyzing the value of facts, customs, or institutions. Man has two means of expressing his interior thought: one, words; the other, deeds. Both means, words or deeds, are equally signs of the thought of the one who says or does them or of the one who instituted them⁵.

If we suppose, then, that these are facts or institutions of divine origin, that is, of the revealed deposit, through them we come to know the mind of the inspired author, exactly as if the inspired author had expressed himself in words or through intellectual statements instead of expressing himself through facts or institutions. The words or intellectual statements of the Bible are objects of dogma and of faith insofar as they are signs or expressions of the thought of the inspired author or of the thought of God: and such thought is expressed no less by facts or institutions than by abstract or concrete statements.

To summarize, then, the two answers to the first objection, it turns out: a) that in the revealed deposit there may not be many abstract intellectual statements, but there are indeed very many concrete ones; b) that even if most of the revealed deposit were reduced to facts or institutions, those facts or institutions serve to develop the deposit dogmatically through reasoning just as much as if they were intellectual statements.

197. THE OBSCURITY AND VAGUENESS OF STATEMENTS.—The second difficulty against dogmatic progress by way of reasoning or conclusion is taken from the obscurity and vagueness of the statements of the revealed deposit, and our friend presents it in the following terms: “Secondly, because what is implied in certain statements is not easy to deduce from there by simple dialectics, because it is not in clear statements, like the principles of a science, but in vague and confused expressions, from which, without other light and guide than dialectics, I do not know that anything can be deduced in all rigor” (190). Response.—In every statement or principle, whether dealing with statements or principles of science or with statements or principles of faith or revelation, one must always distinguish two parts: an explicit, formal, determinate, clear part; another implicit, virtual, vague, obscure part. If everything were explicit, determinate, clear, there would be no room for progress, nor would such a statement be a principle. If everything were vague, indeterminate, obscure, there would be no room for understanding nor even for faith, nor would it merit even the name of statement or proposition, but rather of an undecipherable logogriph or puzzle ⁶ Nothing, in effect, can be deciphered if one does not start from something clear, just as no equation can be solved if all its quantities are unknowns or indeterminates. There must, therefore, be something clear (55).

From this clear part—small • large—that exists in the primitive datum or deposit, reasoning sets out to clarify the obscure part, to determine the vague part, and to actualize the virtual part. Precisely in this does reasoning consist, and this is the condition of all progress. Provided that there is something clear, and without it faith would not be possible, the virtual and obscure part, however great it may be, may be the reason that more work and more time must be employed, but it will at the same time be the source of broader, more fruitful, more inexhaustible progress.

Indeed, the deeper, the higher, the more divine a principle is, the greater the share it contains of implicitness, of virtuality, of indeterminateness, of vagueness, of obscurity: clear and transparent waters are not usually a sign of great depth. Conversely, as a principle becomes clearer, more fixed, more determinate, it also loses implicitness, virtuality, fecundity, just as every force loses potential insofar as it actualizes its energy. For this reason, the statements of councils, of popes, of theologians are much clearer, more precise, less vague than those of the sacred deposit; but the latter are more suggestive, more fruitful, more pregnant with truth and life than those of the theologians and even than those of popes and ecumenical councils.

Thus, if one merely means that in the primitive deposit—even regarding truths that today we have defined as dogmas of faith—there was much that was implicit, virtual, indeterminate, and obscure, which has required great labor and time to be explained, actualized, determined, and defined, we have no difficulty in acknowledging it. But if it is claimed that everything in the primitive deposit was obscure, or vague, or indeterminate, or virtual, as it is in a seed or in a still formless embryo, that would not only make theology impossible, but also faith itself, and would place oneself in manifest contradiction with what the history of dogmas teaches and with what stands out even from a simple reading of Sacred Scripture.

It is clear that in the primitive deposit one should not expect to find explicitly or clearly the multitude of dogmatic developments that appear, for example, in the so-called Athanasian Creed, in the ecumenical councils, or in the pontifical definitions. If such developments were found clearly in the deposit, they would cease to be developments or progress, and there would have been no need for the Holy Fathers or theologians to clarify or determine them, nor for councils or popes to define them. To claim to find in an explicit manner, and not even (in our judgment) in a formal manner, in the primitive deposit all the dogmas defined, for example, by the Council of Trent, would be like claiming to find already in a shrub the varied and splendid branches of the centuries-old tree.

198. THE DOGMA OF THE MOST HOLY TRINITY.—But if we do not find such developments explicit and clear, we nevertheless always find certain fundamental concepts from which such developments have issued, clear and explicit. Thus, for example, in the statements of the primitive deposit concerning the Trinity, we do not find explicitly, nor by any means fully, all that the councils and theologians have defined or said about hypostases and natures, about processions and notions, about absolutes and relatives, about concepts in and concepts ad, about properties and appropriations. Not even the names of persons or of trinity are primitive. But if we do not find any of that explicitly, we do find, on the other hand, clearly and explicitly the unity of God, clearly and explicitly the distinction between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, clearly and explicitly the procession of the Son and of the Holy Spirit from the Father, clearly and explicitly the divinity of the Father and that of the Son, and, in clearly equivalent terms, the divinity of the Holy Spirit.

Now then: from these four primitive and clear concepts of unity, distinction, procession, and divinity have come forth and continue to come forth by reasoning, and by rigorous reasoning, all the dogmatic developments pertaining to the most holy dogma of the divine Trinity and all the numerous and complicated Trinitarian formulas elaborated by councils and theologians, until reaching that master formula of "in divinis omnia sunt unum et idem ubi non obviat relationis oppositionis", the key and crown of the entire treatise De Trinitate.

It is clear that not all dogmas are of such a purely speculative character as that of the Most Holy Trinity, nor does the logical rigor that has presided over their development stand out in them, therefore, with the same evidence. But all, without exception, are based on one or several formal and explicit concepts of Sacred Scripture or divine tradition, and from these data theological reasoning, the ordinary instrument of dogmatic progress, has always started and has continually relied upon them, under the directive norm of the Christian sense and the authority of the Church.

199. FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS AND DERIVED CONCEPTS.—In summary: if not all the dogmatic concepts that we possess and believe today were explicitly contained in the primitive deposit or revealed data, neither were they all purely implicit; if not everything was formal in the deposit, neither was everything virtual; if not everything was clear from the beginning, neither was everything confused.

In the primitive deposit there is a set of actual, formal, explicit, clear, determinate concepts, and that was the starting point of theological reasoning and dogmatic progress.

In that formal and determinate manner—says Saint Thomas—there are found in the apostolic deposit not all dogmas or articles of faith, but indeed all the principal dogmas or articles of faith, understanding by articles of faith not the derived dogmas, but the fundamental dogmas, and in these fundamental dogmas, not the secondary or concomitant concepts, but the primary or essential concept, which is what Saint Thomas calls the essence of the articles. The secondary or derived concepts, although also contained in the deposit, are contained only by way of consequence (ea quae ex articulis consequuntur), and these are not of faith until the ordinary or solemn magisterium of the Church defines them (134).

**200. SCIENCE CAN EXIST WITHOUT HOLINESS.—**The beautiful phrase of Saint Thomas: "Life comes before doctrine; for life leads to the knowledge of truth", on which our objector relies to reject the speculative path, means nothing more than that goodness of conduct is one of the conditions that contribute to a greater penetration or deeper knowledge of supernatural truths, by helping to increase charity and the gifts of the Holy Spirit and with them the "sense of faith", which we will discuss shortly (216-220), which is something like the "common sense" of the supernatural order.

Therefore, all things being equal, a saint or a fervent soul will penetrate more deeply into the Bible or into sacred theology than a sinner or a lukewarm one. "Hence it follows that, all things being equal, he who has charity will be more learned in theology than he who does not have it. Because without charity, these gifts of the Holy Spirit are not united with faith, which enlightens the mind and gives understanding to the little ones"⁷. One need only read the biographies of the great theologians to notice at once that almost all of them were eminent in holiness of life or great supernatural fervor. Teachers and students of sacred theology should never forget this⁸.

But that does not mean that holiness is the only means or indispensable condition for being a great theologian or for developing dogma. Lack of holiness of life can be compensated for by greater talent or greater application, and a clever or diligent man can be a greater theologian, even if not fervent, than another who is fervent but short on talent or occupied with other things. Let us hear Saint Thomas: “Not everyone who is good is more apt for having prophecy than any sinner, since some lacking charity have minds more apt for perceiving spiritual things, as being free from carnal and earthly concerns, and endowed with natural clarity of intellect: while on the contrary some having charity are involved in earthly affairs and give themselves to carnal generation, and do not have a naturally perspicacious intellect”⁹. To believe that without being holy one cannot be wise, even in divine matters, would be an intolerable ultra-mysticism¹⁰.