Is Development of Doctrine a Valid Category for Orthodox Theology?

Abstract

Abstract Jaroslav Pelikan, in whose honour this lecture was given, and who had by then become Orthodox, subtitled his five-volume history of Christian doctrine, ‘A History of the Development of Doctrine’. And yet the notion is rarely used among Orthodox theologians, and when used it is used negatively. The modern use of the notion, especially in theology, goes back to Newman, for whom it designates something that cannot strictly be deduced from early beliefs (and needs an infallible authority to guarantee its authenticity); it was a product of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, two movements of thought that bypassed Orthodoxy. There are notions in Orthodox theology that could accommodate development, notably sobornost′, but the idea of progress, implicit in Newman’s concept, seems to suggest that we have advanced in theological understanding beyond the Fathers. It seems unlikely that any such notion could be acceptable in Orthodox theology.