Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 2:27am

Cardinal Newman Development of Doctrine-Sixth Note-Conservative Action Upon its Past

 

Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman, among his many other services to the Church, clarified the concept of development of doctrine as opposed to corruptions of doctrine that occasionally fasten on the Church and are shed off by the Church over time.

Newman posited seven notes, I would call them tests, for determining whether something is a development of doctrine or a corruption.

1.  Preservation of Type

2.  Continuity of Principles

3.  Power of Assimilation

4.  Logical Sequence

5.  Anticipation of Its Future

6.  Conservative Action upon Its Past

7.  Chronic Vigour

Each of these notes are explained by Newman in detail.  The concepts aren’t simple either in theory or in application, at least to me, but Newman does a first rate job of explaining them.  The note that has always fascinated me is number six, no doubt because I have always found history fascinating, and the history of the Church especially so.

Newman is quite clear that under the Sixth Note a Development of Doctrine does not reverse what has gone before:  

A true development, then, may be described as one which is conservative of the course of antecedent developments being really those antecedents and something besides them: it is an addition which illustrates, not obscures, corroborates, not corrects, the body of thought from which it proceeds; and this is its characteristic as contrasted with a corruption.

As developments which are preceded by definite indications have a fair presumption in their favour, so those which do but contradict and reverse the course of doctrine which has been developed before them, and out of which they spring, are certainly corrupt; for a corruption is a development in that very stage in which it ceases to illustrate, and begins to disturb, the acquisitions gained in its previous history.

Newman sums up the Sixth Note as follows:  

And thus a sixth test of a true development is that it is of a tendency conservative of what has gone before it.

We live in a time of massive change for the Church.  Change there has always been in the Church, but change on the scale since the calling of the Second Vatican Council is unprecedented.  Newman gives us an analytical tool in his theory of Development of Doctrine to try to discern what changes represent true developments of doctrine and what changes are mere corruptions fastened upon  the Church due to popular intellectual and political movements and prejudices of our time, or reactions to such movements and prejudices,   rather than organic developments from the past history of the Church. 

An example of an organic development of doctrine and what I think is a corruption will now be given.  An organic development is illustrated by Pius XII’s proclamation of the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary.  In Munificentissimus Deus Pius XII took pains to show how the doctrine had developed over the centuries.  An example of a corruption I think is the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX.  Although a defense of the Syllabus can be mounted, and I have done so in the past, and there is much in the Syllabus that is still held by the Church,  it is also fairly obvious that Pio Nono was writing largely in reaction to intellectual and political trends in his time with which he was not in sympathy.  Pio Nono was deeply wedded to an intellectual and political world view that was dying before his eyes.  He sought to enlist the Church in support of what he cherished.  Time has demonstrated that, great Pope though he was, the attempt of Pius in the Syllabus of Errors to outline how the Church should deal with the modern world has proven transitory and a corruption that the Church today merely ignores.  Pope Benedict, before he became Pope, referred to Gaudium et Spes as a “counter-Syllabus”.  What new bedrock doctrines and teachings of the Church, which have made an appearance over the last few pontificates, will be totally ignored by popes a century or more hence, only time will reveal, although Newman and his Development of Doctrine analysis may give us hints. 

A caveat here is in order.  Like any tool of analysis, Newman’s Development of Doctrine must be used in an intellectually honest manner.  Just because we may find a new current teaching of the Church personally uncongenial, does not mean that it does not represent an authentic development of doctrine.  Likewise a new teaching of the Church that we find congenial may be a corruption if that is what an honest use of the Development of Doctrine analysis indicates.  

During this Lent I will have posts on each of the remaining six notes.

 

Newman on the Sixth Note:

It is the rule of creation, or rather of the phenomena which it presents, that life passes on to its termination by a gradual, imperceptible course of change. There is ever a maximum in earthly excellence, and the operation of the same causes which made things great makes them small again. Weakness is but the resulting product of power. Events move in cycles; all things come round, “the sun ariseth and goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.” Flowers first bloom, and then fade; fruit ripens and decays. The fermenting process, unless stopped at the due point, corrupts the liquor which it has created. The grace of spring, the richness of autumn are but for a moment, and worldly moralists bid us Carpe diem, for we shall have no second opportunity. Virtue seems to lie in a mean, between vice and vice; and as it grew out of imperfection, so to grow into enormity. There is a limit to human knowledge, and both sacred and {200} profane writers witness that overwisdom is folly. And in the political world states rise and fall, the instruments of their aggrandizement becoming the weapons of their destruction. And hence the frequent ethical maxims, such as, “Ne quid nimis,” “Medio tutissimus,” “Vaulting ambition,” which seem to imply that too much of what is good is evil.

So great a paradox of course cannot be maintained as that truth literally leads to falsehood, or that there can be an excess of virtue; but the appearance of things and the popular language about them will at least serve us in obtaining an additional test for the discrimination of a bonâ fide development of an idea from its corruption.

A true development, then, may be described as one which is conservative of the course of antecedent developments being really those antecedents and something besides them: it is an addition which illustrates, not obscures, corroborates, not corrects, the body of thought from which it proceeds; and this is its characteristic as contrasted with a corruption.

2.

For instance, a gradual conversion from a false to a true religion, plainly, has much of the character of a continuous process, or a development, in the mind itself, even when the two religions, which are the limits of its course, are antagonists. Now let it be observed, that such a change consists in addition and increase chiefly, not in destruction. “True religion is the summit and perfection of false religions; it combines in one whatever there is of good and true separately remaining in each. And in like manner the Catholic Creed is for the most part the combination of separate truths, which heretics have divided among themselves, and err in dividing. So that, in matter of fact, if a religious mind were educated in and sincerely attached {201} to some form of heathenism or heresy, and then were brought under the light of truth, it would be drawn off from error into the truth, not by losing what it had, but by gaining what it had not, not by being unclothed, but by being ‘clothed upon,’ ‘that mortality may be swallowed up of life.’ That same principle of faith which attaches it at first to the wrong doctrine would attach it to the truth; and that portion of its original doctrine, which was to be cast off as absolutely false, would not be directly rejected, but indirectly, in the reception of the truth which is its opposite. True conversion is ever of a positive, not a negative character.” [Note 10]

Such too is the theory of the Fathers as regards the doctrines fixed by Councils, as is instanced in the language of St. Leo. “To be seeking for what has been disclosed, to reconsider what has been finished, to tear up what has been laid down, what is this but to he unthankful for what is gained?” [Note 11] Vincentius of Lerins, in like manner, speaks of the development of Christian doctrine, as profectus fidei non permutatio [Note 12]. And so as regards the Jewish Law, our Lord said that He came “not to destroy, but to fulfil.”

3.

Mahomet is accused of contradicting his earlier revelations by his later, “which is a thing so well known to those of his sect that they all acknowledge it; and therefore when the contradictions are such as they cannot solve them, then they will have one of the contradictory places to be revoked. And they reckon in the whole Alcoran about a hundred and fifty verses which are thus revoked.”

Schelling, says Mr. Dewar, considers “that the time has arrived when an esoteric speculative Christianity ought {202} to take the place of the exoteric empiricism which has hitherto prevailed.” This German philosopher “acknowledge that such a project is opposed to the evident design of the Church, and of her earliest teachers.”

4.

When Roman Catholics are accused of substituting another Gospel for the primitive Creed, they answer that they hold, and can show that they hold, the doctrines of the Incarnation and Atonement, as firmly as any Protestant can state them. To this it is replied that they do certainly profess them, but that they obscure and virtually annul them by their additions; that the cultus of St. Mary and the Saints is no development of the truth, but a corruption and a religious mischief to those doctrines of which it is the corruption, because it draws away the mind and heart from Christ. But they answer that, so far from this, it subserves, illustrates, protects the doctrine of our Lord’s loving kindness and mediation. Thus the parties in controversy join issue on the common ground, that a developed doctrine which reverses the course of development which has preceded it, is no true development but a corruption; also, that what is corrupt acts as an element of unhealthiness towards what is sound. This subject, however, will come before us in its proper place by and by.

5.

Blackstone supplies us with an instance in another subject-matter, of a development which is justified by its utility, when he observes that “when society is once formed, government results of course, as necessary to preserve and to keep that society in order.”

On the contrary, when the Long Parliament proceeded to usurp the executive, they impaired the popular liberties  which they seemed to be advancing; for the security of those liberties depends on the separation of the executive and legislative powers, or on the enactors being subjects, not executors of the laws.

And in the history of ancient Rome, from the time that the privileges gained by the tribunes in behalf of the people became an object of ambition to themselves, the development had changed into a corruption.

And thus a sixth test of a true development is that it is of a tendency conservative of what has gone before it.

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Paul
Monday, February 22, AD 2010 11:01am

Could you please provide a passage, directly from Newman, that clearly and manifestly indicates that Newman thinks his seven notes are to be used in judging the teaching of Popes?

Paul
Monday, February 22, AD 2010 2:35pm

Certainly, Newman applies his principles to various Church teachings. Yet where has Newman ever indicated that we can use his seven notes to somehow distinguish true papal teachings from corrupt? I can find no example. Yet your post seems to imply that that was his intention. Do you have evidence? (The evidence I can find seems to point to the contrary. For example, at one point Newman says: “wherever the Pope has been renounced, decay and division have been the consequence”.)

Paul
Monday, February 22, AD 2010 5:02pm

Donald: “The application of his test to the teachings of Councils and the Popes indicates that it was Newman’s intention to so use his Development of Doctrine analysis.”

Newman asserts that the Catholic doctrine of Councils and Popes can develop in a legitimate way consistent with his seven notes. Nowhere at all does he says that his seven notes are a way of deciding whether that doctrine is true or corrupt. One does not necessarily follow from the other. You have asserted this, but still have provided nothing from Newman. All Newman’s examples of corrupt doctrine come from places other than Councils and Popes.

In effect, Newman says “All teachings of the Councils and the Popes develop consistently with the seven notes.” You are claiming that what he really meant was “All true teachings of the Councils and the Popes develop consistently with the seven notes, and all such false teachings don’t”. Those are very different statements, and you have not provided any evidence that Newman ever meant the second.

Reading what Newman says about the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX shows that Newman is of the opinion that the Syllabus should be treated as a reference index to other teachings of Pius IX — which such teachings Newman says are to be treated as authoritative. So Newman considers that the Syllabus itself is simply not the kind of teaching that his seven notes are to be applied to, but that the things it points to are.

Paul
Monday, February 22, AD 2010 6:15pm

Donald: “Applying the tests of the seven notes Paul would be a completely useless exercise by Cardinal Newman if the result was a forgone conclusion as to the teachings propounded by all councils and all popes.”

The purpose of Newman’s writing on the development of doctrine was to demonstrate that while the Church’s teaching had definitely developed, it had never changed. Hence he carefully described what could legitimately constitute the development of doctrine, and so lays out his seven notes. His motive is given right in his introduction: “It would be the work of a life to apply the Theory of Developments so carefully to the writings of the Fathers, and to the history of controversies and councils, as thereby to vindicate the reasonableness of every decision of Rome..”

Hence, following Newman, if some particular doctrine is carefully examined, and found to be a change of doctrine from what was taught earlier in the Church’s history — and not a development along the lines of Newman’s seven notes — it will also be found not to be a teaching of the Church. (The false teaching will not be found to be false teaching of a Council or Pope — it will be found never to have been taught by any Council or Pope.)

Paul
Monday, February 22, AD 2010 9:38pm

If, as you claim, Newman was “privately opposed” to some actions, or thought them “completely mistaken”, then what does that have to do with Newman’s defence of the development of doctrine? I still see no evidence at all that Newman intended his seven notes ever to be used in judging authoritative Church teaching.

As for the 78th error that you quote, we would have to see the original language of “Allocution ‘Acerbissimum,’ Sept. 27, 1852.” that is being referred to, before we could decide exactly what was being talked about. (It seems to be something that was in reaction to something that ‘New Granada’ had done. But what?) On the face of it, I would guess that it condemns the idea that Catholic governments should do nothing to select its immigrants based on religion. What would be the problem be with that?

I find it considerably more likely that you (or I) should unwittingly read a single isolated sentence in a way at variance with the intention of the original author, than that the Church should make an error in its teaching.

DarwinCatholic
Monday, February 22, AD 2010 11:02pm

I still see no evidence at all that Newman intended his seven notes ever to be used in judging authoritative Church teaching.

At the risk of tautology, it seems to me that Newman was not intending his seven notes to judge authoritative Church teaching, but rather to judge whether something was in fact an authoritative Church teaching.

In other words, it would seem an obvious assumption that for Newman to have advanced such notes in the first placed he assumed that within the set of “Church teaching” there must be some teaching with is authoritative and some which is not — and thus a necessity of discerning between the two.

Paul
Tuesday, February 23, AD 2010 12:42am

DarwinCatholic: “At the risk of tautology, it seems to me that Newman was not intending his seven notes to judge authoritative Church teaching, but rather to judge whether something was in fact an authoritative Church teaching.

I agree with that — having said something exactly along those lines a couple of comments of mine back.

I think that Newman asserts the truth of these two propositions:

P1: All developed Church doctrine will have developed consistently with Newman’s seven notes.
P2: Heretical doctrine will (always? mostly?) be found to violate one or more of the seven notes.

So, finding the seven notes is either (a) for a Catholic, an excellent way of demonstrating that some particular true doctrine has indeed developed, and not changed, or (b) for a non-Catholic, a potential way to discern that a particular proposed false teaching has in fact changed at some point in history.

For a Catholic, I don’t think the seven notes are something particularly practical in discerning or judging whether something is true doctrine or not. They definitely might be — but perhaps not all that often. Take the case of the 78th error in that Syllabus, that Donald presents. I am quite sure that if (or when) we reconstruct the mid-19th century historical context of that reference, we shall find that Pius IX’s condemnation was accurate. But it’s all too easy to read it out of that context, and wrongly conclude that it is a change from today’s teaching.

Applying those seven notes is sometimes hard. Whereas, as a Catholic, if I want to discern what the current Pope is authoritatively teaching, I have a much easier task — I can use google, and I’m done. I don’t have to apply the seven notes to decide if Benedict XVI’s teaching is true, nor should I. I discern his teaching, because it’s plainly there right in front of me. (Would it satisfy the seven notes, were I to examine it in that amount of detail? Definitely so! But I don’t do that to discern if it’s authoritative — since there are easier and more direct ways.)

Which has more authority: what the Pope teaches, or the results of my personal application of the seven notes?

DarwinCatholic: “In other words, it would seem an obvious assumption that for Newman to have advanced such notes in the first placed he assumed that within the set of “Church teaching” there must be some teaching with is authoritative and some which is not — and thus a necessity of discerning between the two.”

Newman started his “Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine” a non-Catholic, and — logically — finished it as a Catholic. So such a discernment certainly worked for that non-Catholic. But for a Catholic, I think that the seven notes should serve a different purpose.

Paul
Tuesday, February 23, AD 2010 5:52pm

Donald: “Pio Nono was expressing the traditional teaching of the Church against freedom of religion.”

A piece of evidence that you proffered was that on September 27th 1852, Pius IX said something (exactly what, we don’t have before us) in response to some particular historical situation (and likewise, we don’t know what). And despite these significant unknowns, you are quite sure Pius IX is in contradiction to (say) Dignitatis Humanae.
This doesn’t sound reasonable to me in the slightest.

So it is a slight improvement that you refer to Mirari Vos, since we at least have the text before us. Though, since it was written in 1832, we still have the necessity of understanding something about the historical situation, in order to understand what Gregory XVI was responding to. But that hasn’t been interpreted by you either. Likewise for Quanta Cura.

What exactly do the words “liberty of conscience” refer to? Does it mean that this is an absolute liberty — so that if your conscience says that you must chop off my head, I must allow you that liberty? Surely not. But, once it is admitted that such liberty is not absolute, then the limits of that liberty must be set out.

And where are the limits? Dignitatis Humanae, when it declared that freedom of religion was a right (i.e. freedom from coercion), also indicated that the freedom was not an absolute, but that it had to be a freedom subject to the objective moral law. And that such freedom also had to be in harmony with the rights of all citizens. And in harmony with genuine public peace. And in harmony with a guardianship of public morality. All these limits come right out of Dignitatis Humanae.

Whatever Mirari Vos was responding to, that problem had only to infringe on one of those conditions for Mirari Vos and Dignitatis Humanae to be in agreement. That hardly seems unlikely.

Donald: “Try as I might, I find the essay ultimately unconvincing”

I am finding extraordinarily difficult to respond to your position, since you are — for whatever reason — presenting particular quotes as those it were absolutely clear and unchallengeable as to what they mean, though you avoid any discussion of their context. And Cardinal Dulles long and detailed essay is simply described as “unconvincing”.

Donald: “I find the essay ultimately unconvincing and an argument, which I am sure that Cardinal Dulles did not intend, for changing Church teaching to accomodate changing times.”

I would guess that there are many people who have in mind some particular changes that they would like to see in Catholic teaching, and who are on that account unwilling to see that Catholic teaching may develop, but not change. Are you are one of them?

Paul
Tuesday, February 23, AD 2010 9:05pm

Donald: “Paul, are you seriously attempting to contend that the Church was not opposed to freedom of religion for the vast majority of the history of the Church?”

Look at the careful wording of Dignitatis Humanae (DH):

“This Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits.”

DH defines religious freedom as immunity from coercion, within due limits. (I already indicated those due limits in my previous comment.)

Then later DH says: “In the life of the People of God, as it has made its pilgrim way through the vicissitudes of human history, there has at times appeared a way of acting that was hardly in accord with the spirit of the Gospel or even opposed to it. Nevertheless, the doctrine of the Church that no one is to be coerced into faith has always stood firm.”

So, yes, I believe that the Church has never taught against freedom of religion — and that’s exactly what DH says, as well.

You give a long quote from the Fourth Lateran, but — yet again — miss out the necessary historical context. The heretics this canon was mainly aimed against were the Albigensians. One of their most notable teachings was that sexual intercourse was a sin. How can any society expect to continue if it does nothing to counter such a belief? Logically followed, that eliminates the human race. Another part of their teachings led to murder-suicide pacts (if a believer recovered from a sickness that initially was thought to be fatal). Allowing that is again outside the due limits of religious freedom.

I don’t see the point of you providing the long quote from Neuhaus — he nowhere says that there was a contradiction, but only that concerns were raised about it.

Paul
Wednesday, February 24, AD 2010 12:12am

Donald: “Actually Paul, as the text indicates, the Canon was against all heresies and not just the Albigensians.”

I said it was mainly aimed at the Albigensians.

Donald: “Ordinary members of the sect could reproduce freely. The “Perfect”, their clergy, among them were the only ones to abstain from sex.”

“Albigensian” was not something of fixed meaning, Different regions did not necessarily have the same beliefs.

I haven’t been able to figure out what you think ‘coercion’ actually refers to. The canon that you quote from the Fourth Lateran operates under two principles: (1) that a Catholic who becomes a heretic may be excommunicated, and that this may affect his relationship with other Catholics. I don’t seen any coercion in that. (2) that a heretic may also be punished by the secular authorities with (as the canon says) “due justice”. Again, I don’t see that as coercion. As I pointed out, the Albigensians promoted the idea of an ‘endura’, which was essentially a murder-suicide pact. So it can legitimately be said that their heresy was against the common good, and could properly be subject to secular punishment.

And since I am defending the teaching of the various Popes and Councils, it does no good to point out all the various historical actions by Catholics that were coercion. I agree that there were plenty of them. I am looking for some authoritative Catholic teaching that coercion against another religion is good.

Donald: “our doctrine of … allowing religious error free reign to grow in power.”

Dignitatis Humanae certainly doesn’t teach that.

Paul
Wednesday, February 24, AD 2010 4:40pm

The text from Augustine doesn’t demonstrate anything that goes against Dignitatis Humanae. At the time of the Donatists, the historical record shows that there were actions of great violence and disorder. Augustine thought it was right that the Donatists should be countered by appealing to the Emperor to restore peace by the use of force. That kind of use of force does not amount to the kind of coercion that is condemned by Dignitatis Humanae, which is careful to indicate that the freedom of religion is not absolute, but subject to due limits.

As for the Levi-Mortara affair: since I am defending teaching, and not actions, you need to point to some relevant teaching text, for there to be something I can discuss.

Paul
Wednesday, February 24, AD 2010 11:10pm

Donald, it’s very difficult to understand what your claims are. Are you making the claim that in the circumstances that Augustine found himself in (with great violence regularly being applied by the Donatists against Catholics), he nevertheless should not have appealed to the government of the time to repress this with force, and should have restricted Catholics to using only words against the Donatists? If so, both Augustine Dignitatis Humanae do not agree with you.

(Had, for example, Augustine been faced with a non-violent and peaceful sect, posing no threat to the common good, and appealed to the government to suppress it, then he would have been using an illegitimate form of coercion — a form of coercion that Dignitatis Humanae teaches against. But that simply wasn’t the case.)

Aquinas points out that the heretic is to be cut off from the flock, in order to protect the flock. In a Church context, that means excommunication — just as today. But at the time Aquinas was writing, the flock was not just a part of secular society — it was the bulk of secular society. How then to remove the heretic from secular society? Aquinas describes the most common solution that occurred to people during his historical times.

(And I should point out that Augustine’s and Aquinas’ writings in all their details are not authoritative Church teaching, however generally reliable they may be.)

More relevant to Dignitatis Humanae would be to look at how Aquinas thought other religions should be dealt with (at the time, that would be mainly Jews and Muslims). He was not in favor of forced baptism of Jews: “Injustice should be done to no man. Now it would be an injustice to Jews if their children were to be baptized against their will, since they would lose the rights of parental authority over their children as soon as these were Christians.” And elsewhere Aquinas quotes the Council of Toledo: “In regard to the Jews the holy synod commands that henceforth none of them be forced to believe; for such are not to be saved against their will, but willingly, that their righteousness may be without flaw.”

Donald: “[Pius IX] did not interpret a baptism of a Jewish infant without the parent’s consent as involving forcible baptism.”

On what grounds do you say that? The Jewish infant had been illegally baptized by a Christian servant girl, who had been illegally hired by a Jewish family. The laws were in existence to prevent the kind of thing that happened.

(And I again point out that Piux IX actions do not form the basis for authoritative teachings. He made a prudential decision. There were cases at the end of World War II where Jewish children, who had been protected from the Nazis by being baptized and raised as Catholics, were later returned to their parents.)

Paul
Thursday, February 25, AD 2010 2:41pm

For example, I can’t tell if you think that Dignitatis Humane is true teaching. After all, that document says at one point: “…the doctrine of the Church that no one is to be coerced into faith has always stood firm”.

Do you think that sentence is true or false? If you think it is true, I can’t understand your position at all. If you think it is false, then you would seem to be committed to the position that you will believe Church teaching when it seems reasonable to you, and disbelieve it otherwise.

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