INTRODUCTION.

ON THE PRINCIPLE OF THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS.

It can hardly be doubted, that one of the most important theological questions of the day, on which many of our detailed controversies will be found to hinge, and into which they must ultimately be resolved, is that of developments in Christian belief. From failing to recognize this great law of revealed as of scientific truth, thousands are prejudiced against dogmatic Christianity altogether, while others hold it with but a feeble and uncertain grasp. Nor can we look with any confidence for the return to unity of separated religious bodies, while some rigidly adhere to the principle of a lifeless and unfruitful tradition, and others insist on an exclusive appeal to the bare letter of Scripture. This question will accordingly be found, if I mistake not, to lie at the root of half our religious disputes, and some understanding upon it is an indispensable preliminary for their appreciation or adjust

ment.

There is of course a broad line to be drawn between matters of faith, and of theological opinion, between what is put be

b

fore us as a portion of the revealed deposit, and what may be reasonably, or probably, or piously believed as an inference from it. But there are also theological inferences, which come to be so clearly ascertained in the course of ages, that they are at length fixed by authoritative decisions, and accepted as part of the original revelation, which, though not explicitly contained in the words of Apostles and Evangelists, is felt to be involved in the general scope of their teaching, and to supply the right key for its harmonious interpretation.

It is natural, then, to prefix to a work occupied with tracing the history of a particular doctrine some observations on this principle of growth and development in Catholic theology, though all that can be attempted within our present limits is to sketch out roughly some main outlines of thought on the subject. And as the method of my Treatise is not controversial but historical, so it will be my aim in this Introductory chapter to speak as little controversially as the subject admits. A statement of principles cannot be made too clear, but it is never less persuasive than when thrown into a polemical shape. Most earnestly would I desire to take for my motto in all that I may say that noble maxim of Christian antiquity, which, if not verbally stated in the works of St. Augustine, has ever been held to express the mind of that great Saint and Teacher in the Church of God; In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas.

The development of doctrine, it can hardly be needful to observe, does not mean that there is a constant succession of fresh revelations in the Church to supplement or to supersede

the revelations of Christmas and Pentecost. Still less does it mean, as others have objected, that Christian doctrine receives, as time goes on, a series of fresh accessions, from the admixture or fusion of heterogeneous elements. Let me illustrate my meaning by an example. Supposing, as has sometimes been maintained, that the invocation of Saints had originally sprung from a gradual adoption of polytheistic practices, as the converted heathen began to multiply and dominate in the Church, instead of being the natural outgrowth of a deeper view of the Incarnation; or suppose, as others have urged, that the doctrine of the Trinity was imported from Neo-Platonism into the Gospel;—that would, in either case, be an accretion, but not a true development. What is meant is simply this that the Christian revelation once, and once for all, ‘delivered to the Saints,' through the Incarnation of the Eternal Word, and from the lips of His inspired servants, though fully apprehended from the first for all necessary ends, has grown, and was intended to grow, by degrees on the consciousness of the Church, illumined by the abiding presence of the Divine Comforter.

In the process of development, as in Scripture, in sacraments, and in everything which concerns our relations with the unseen world, there must be two factors, an earthly and a divine. The human element is here supplied by the labours of theologians, the meditations of Saints, and even by the external, perhaps antagonistic, speculations of men of

On the combination of divine and human elements in the Church, see Möhler's Symbolism, Pt. I. ch. v. sect. 36.

science, men of the world, heretics and unbelievers.* All these last are in truth unconsciously serving a common end, as the Gibeonites of old were 'hewers of wood and drawers of water' to the chosen people, whom they hated or despised. Those opposite tendencies of the Eastern and Western mind, which have made ancient Greece the mistress of speculative philosophy, and Rome the fountain of law even for modern Europe, reappear in the history of Christian theology. To the one it was given to investigate the revealed nature and attributes of God, to the other His purposes and His gifts for man. Thus, again, theology took its rise in the third century at Alexandria, the centre alike of the Neo-Platonist revival and of Gnosticism, and had something to learn from both; while afterwards, the accidental introduction, as men count accident, of Aristotle's writings into mediæval Europe by the Crusaders, in an Arabian translation, was the immediate origin of scholasticism, which, beginning with St. Anselm, shaped through four centuries the whole theology of Christendom. And thus, to use the words of a high authority, “gradually, and in the course of ages, Catholic inquiry has taken certain

* I subjoin all the more readily the following apposite passage from the Commonitorium of St. Vincent of Lerins, as his famous quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, has been frequently, but most incorrectly, quoted, in opposition to the theory of development altogether. "Nullusne ergo in Ecclesia Christi profectus habebitur religionis? Habeatur plane et maximus. Nam quis ille est tam invidus hominibus, tam exosus Deo, qui istud prohibere conetur? Sed ita ut vere profectus sit ille fidei, non permutatio. Siquidem ad profectum pertinet ut in semet ipsum unaquæque res amplificetur; ad permutationem vero ut aliquid ex alio in aliud transvertatur. Crescat igitur oportet, et multo vehementerque proficiat, tam singulorum quam omnium, tam unius hominis quam totius Ecclesiæ, ætatum et sæculorum gradibus, intelligentia, sapientia, scientia: sed in suo duntaxat genere, eodem scilicet dogmate, eodem sensu, eademque sententia."