‘The whole church is here listening’: Tracing the sensus fidelium in public discourse in the early church

Abstract

AbstractThis essay forms the basis for the case that contemporary application of the concept of the sensus fidelium as a vehicle for transmitting accurate doctrine relies primarily on shifts in power structures in the first several centuries of the church. By investigating two documents depicting public theological dialogues in the presence of both clergy and laity, Origen's Dialogue with Heraclides from the third century and the Dialogue of Heraclian from the fourth century, I argue that the intersection of a widening gap between lay and clergy with a shrinking importance in public theological debate served actually to relocate the sensus fidelium from the efforts of powerful clergy into the lived churchly practices of the laity.