La evolución homogénea del dogma católico

**221. NOTABLE ANALOGIES.—**As a complement to the ways by which the evolution of dogma takes place, it will be well to say something about the various analogies that this evolution has with the various natural evolutions we observe in the natural order. These analogies give rise to the various metaphors with which dogmatic evolution is usually represented.

Among these images, only three seem to us worthy of consideration:

1. The image of the seed, or better yet, of the plant.
2. The image of the human body.
3. The image of the first principles of a science.

One is taken from vegetative life; the second, from animal life; the third, from intellectual life.

These three metaphors or images are commonly admitted and used; but their meaning is very diverse, depending on whether only purely subjective progress, or of formulas, is admitted in the dogma, or whether subjective-objective progress, or of true implicit virtuality, is also admitted¹.

222. THE IMAGE OF THE PLANT OR SEED.—Those who reduce dogmatic progress to purely subjective progress or of ratiocinative reason compare it to a field or panorama of which a spectator saw one part today and another tomorrow, or saw it first in dim light and then in full daylight. The field or panorama would be exactly the same, without any development; the development or progress lies solely and exclusively in the vision of the spectator. This image of dogmatic progress seems to us somewhat childish, and in no way conformable either to traditional theology or to the history of dogmas.

In our judgment, if one wishes to compare dogmatic progress to a field or garden, it ought to be compared to a field or garden whose plants, when a spectator visits them today, are at a certain degree of development, and when he visits them another day, he finds the same plants, but more developed, with new branches, flowers, and fruits. Because they are the same plants (and not new plants or new seeds surreptitiously introduced), the progress is fully homogeneous; but because they are more developed plants, the progress is not purely subjective or of mere vision, but rather progress of intrinsic and inclusive virtuality. And this second image, and not the first, is the traditional image of dogmatic progress.

Let us hear the great Doctor of dogmatic progress, whose doctrine has merited the rare privilege of being cited by the Vatican Council: “For example. Our ancestors of old sowed in this ecclesiastical field the seeds of wheat-like faith. It is exceedingly unjust and unfitting that we, their descendants, should gather, instead of the genuine truth of wheat, the counterfeit error of tares. Rather, this is right and fitting, that, with the first and the last not disagreeing with each other, we may reap from the growths of the wheat-like Institution the harvest of a wheat-like dogma as well; so that when something from those first beginnings of seeds unfolds with the passage of time, and now flourishes and is cultivated, yet nothing of the property of the shoot is changed. Let species, form, and distinction be added; still, the same nature of each kind remains. For far be it that those rosy plantings of Catholic understanding should turn into thistles and thorns. Far be it, I say, that in that spiritual paradise, from the juices of cinnamon and balsam, tares and aconites should suddenly spring forth. What therefore in this agriculture of God’s Church was sown by the faith of the fathers, the same it is fitting that by the industry of the children be cultivated and observed; the same let it flourish and mature; the same let it advance and be perfected. For it is lawful that those ancient dogmas of heavenly philosophy, with the passage of time, be elaborated, polished, and refined; but it is unlawful that they be changed; unlawful that they be truncated, that they be mutilated. Let them receive clarity, light, and distinction; but they must retain fullness, integrity, and propriety” (VINCENT OF LÉRINS, Commonitorium, 22: MIGNE, PL 50, 668).

223. THE IMAGE OF THE HUMAN BODY.—In the same way, if we wished to take as an image of dogmatic progress, not plants, but the human body, the image of purely subjective progress would be that of the body of a fully developed man, but of whom today we see some members and tomorrow others, or now we see them in partial light and later in a fully illuminated environment. Here the progress would be purely and exclusively of vision, without any progress or development whatsoever of the thing seen.

In contrast, the image of virtual-inclusive progress would be that of a child or a young person whose limbs we see today at a certain degree of development, and after some time we see him again with the same limbs, but more developed. Here, progress has not been purely that of our vision, but also of the thing seen, although it is inclusive and homogeneous progress of the same organism we saw before. And this second image, and not the first, is the traditional image of dogmatic progress.

“Let religion imitate the principle of bodies, which, although they unfold and develop their numbers over the course of years, nevertheless remain the same as they were. There is great difference between the flower of childhood and the maturity of old age; yet the same individuals who were adolescents are now old men, so that although the state and condition of one and the same man changes, there is nonetheless one and the same nature, one and the same person. The small limbs of infants, the large ones of youths: the same they are, nevertheless. As many joints as little children have, so many do adults have; and if there are any things which are produced at a more mature age, their principles were already sown in the seeds; so that nothing new is later brought forth in the elderly which had not already lain hidden before in children. Hence it is not doubtful that this is the legitimate and correct rule of progress, this the ratified and most beautiful order of growth, if the number of years always reveals in the more grown those parts and forms which the wisdom of the Creator had preformed in the little ones. But if the human species should afterwards be turned into some image not of its own kind, or something were certainly added to or subtracted from the number of limbs, it would be necessary that the whole body either perish, or become monstrous, or certainly be weakened; so also the dogma of the Christian religion ought to follow these laws of progress, namely that it be consolidated by years, expanded by time, elevated by age, yet remain uncorrupted and unimpaired, and be full and perfect in all the measures of its parts and in all its members and, as it were, its own senses, admitting nothing further of change, suffering no loss of property, no variety of definition (VINCENT OF LÉRINS, loc. cit.).

This is the most beautiful figure of dogmatic progress taken from the young body, a figure more perfect than the previous one of the same Lirinense taken from the seed, for in the seed everything is virtual, while in the young body there are already actual and formed members that contain virtually the future homogeneous developments of the organism.

And it would be an error to affirm that in the deposit or revealed datum everything is virtual, when the articles or fundamental dogmas were from the beginning in an actual and formal state (in articulis determinatis; ST. THOMAS), containing virtually and inclusively many later dogmatic developments²

But it must be borne in mind that these two images of dogmatic progress, taken from the development of the plant and of the human body, are metaphorical, as indeed every figure that, being taken from corporeal or physical things, is applied to what is divine, must of necessity be metaphorical. Those metaphors well express the existence of a true development in dogma itself within the identity of nature; but they fail or are incomplete on two points, relating to the manner in which that development takes place. In the plant and in the human body, development occurs through the absorption and assimilation of foreign materials, and not by the pure inner unfolding of the material itself and alone of the primitive germ. At the same time, the development of the plant and of the human body takes place in the external world of objective reality, and not in the purely inner world of intellectual ideality. If vegetable and animal life could develop without the absorption of anything foreign, and that development were to take place within, and solely within, the human intelligence, then we would have a perfect image of dogmatic development, such as the Vincentian described it and Saint Thomas explained it.

224. THE IMAGE OF HUMAN INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT.—Now then: that which does not happen in vegetable or animal life, happens literally in the intellectual life of man, in which there occurs true development or progress of inclusive virtuality with respect to any primordial or fruitful truth, or with respect to any first intellectual principle, without the need for the absorption of anything foreign, without addition, subtraction, or any mixture of objective reality, by the simple conceptual and homogeneous development of the virtuality already implicit from the beginning in the one and same known object.

Therefore, according to St. Thomas, the true image of dogmatic progress must be taken from intellectual progress rather than from vegetable or animal progress, since faith is intellectual knowledge, and the life of faith and of dogma is, above all, intellectual life. The revealed deposit was communicated by God to the Prophets and Apostles, not as a set of experiences or of life of feeling—as modernism would have it—but as a set of objective, intellectual statements; and, therefore, the reception, life, and development of the revealed deposit must follow laws analogous to the reception, life, and development of every intellectual statement. The law of every intellectual statement in man is to contain really greater objectivity than what it formally expresses (hence what we call the fecundity or virtuality of a principle or idea) and to go developing little by little in the intelligence itself that fecundity, which it really includes, without need of absorption or mixture of anything foreign, by simple development of its own virtuality, at the mere contact with, or comparison to, the transcendent principles of human intelligence, principles that are not physically connective with anything, but that are inclusive and really applicable, though analogically, to everything, whether human or divine, whether natural or revealed.

For St. Thomas, then, the proper and real image of dogmatic progress—although an analogical image (since everything created, whether bodily or intellectual, applied to what is divine, is analogical)—is human intellectual progress, that is, the progress of inclusive virtuality or of intellectual explication which takes place in man with respect to the inclusive consequences of the first principles of natural reason.

“Ita se habent in doctrina fidei articuli fidei sicut principia per se nota in doctrina quae per naturalem rationem habentur”³. “Potentia intellectiva cum sit collativa, ex quibusdam in alia devenit; unde non se habet aequaliter ad omnia intelligibilia cognoscenda; sed statim quaedam videt ut quae sunt per se nota, in quibus implicite continentur quaedam alia quae intelligere non potest nisi per officium rationis, ea quae in principiis implicite continentur explicando”⁴. “And this was the reason why it was necessary to issue several creeds, which differ in nothing else except that in one is more fully explained what is contained implicitly in another”⁵. “When many things are contained virtually in one, they are said to be in it implicitly, as conclusions are in principles”⁶.

Through this procedure, which is not one of addition, nor of subtraction, nor of change, nor of mixture, but rather of inclusive-intellectual explanation, the two characteristics of substantial immutability and explanatory progress, proper to every homogeneous evolution, are maintained in dogma.

From this we see how rightly the following proposition has been condemned by the Church, which is the fifty-fourth of the antimodernist Syllabus of Pius X: “Dogmata, Sacramenta, hierarchia, tum quoad notionem, tum quoad realitatem attinet, non sunt nisi intelligentiae christianae interpretationes evolutionesque, quae exiguum germen latens externis incrementis auxerunt perfeceruntque”⁷. In this proposition there are at least three errors. First, that it posits as its starting point a small, hidden, or potential germ, when what must be posited as the starting point is something actual and explicit, and in such quantity that it already contains implicitly and intrinsically all subsequent developments. Second, that it posits development through extrinsic additions, when dogma admits only intrinsic development. Third, that it posits progress not only notional, but also of objective reality, when dogmatic progress can only be notional, not objective real (182).