Developing Doctrines and Changing Beliefs

Abstract

The notion of doctrinal development has become increasingly popular with Roman Catholic theologians in recent years, and has received official recognition in the decree of the second Vatican Council on Revelation. ‘There is’, the document maintains, a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down. … As the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fulness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfilment in her. But, if dogma develops, how can revelation be constant? This, starkly put, is the dilemma to which many Roman Catholic theologians have directed their attention in recent years. If there has been a growth in dogma, must we not say that the contemporary Church is in a better position than the early Church? How can we deny that the Church today, in which dogmas have been better understood and more fully expressed, has an advantage over the primitive Christian community? As one nineteenth-century theologian observed, If there be a difference of any sort between Augustine and Liguori (and if there be not, what becomes of Mr Newman's theory?) it must manifestly be incalculably to the advantage of the latter … to compare the catachetical schools of Alexandria, Antioch, Gaesarea, with our Irish Maynooth, would palpably be an insult to the latter, too gross even for the licensed bitterness of religious controversy.