Bonaventure Problems On Doctrinal Development

St.
Bonaventure and the Problem of Doctrinal Development

John R. White
Abstract. The problem of doctrinal development, first formulated by John Henry Newman, is usually assumed to be a distinctly modern theological issue, since it originates in modern scholarly history and its application to problems of doctrine. My thesis, in contrast, is that St. Bonaventures theology of history as presented in his Hexaemeron is also a theory of doctrinal developmentthough it appears some six hundred years prior to Newmans Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. I begin by discussing the relationship between theology of history and doctrinal development, from which I conclude Bonaventures theology of history is a theory of doctrinal development. Secondly, I discuss Bonaventures theory and how he uses it to justify the mendicant and Franciscan ways of life. Finally, I develop elements of Cardinal Newmans theory as points for comparison and evaluation of Bonaventures theory.
ntroduction. One does not often see the notion of doctrinal development coupled with the name of a medieval scholastic. Among the reasons for this is the widely held assumption that the problem of doctrinal development is only formulated in the nineteenth century, after the advent of the academic discipline of history and its application to problems of doctrine. Only then, so it is assumed, could the issues of doctrinal variation clearly come into focus and, only then, would there be a need to posit a theory both explaining the nature of doctrinal development and articulating criteria by which to judge what counts as valid versus invalid development. On this account, then, theories of doctrinal development come out of a set of specialized circumstances arising from nineteenth-century scholarship. However plausible this assumption might seem, I believe St. Bonaventure presents, at least in a rudimentary form, what must be understood as a theory of doctrinal development in his Lectures on the Six Days of Creationa text written some six hundred years prior to Newmans Essay on the Development of Christian
I.
2011, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 85, No. 1
178
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly
Doctrine. That Bonaventures work is a theory of doctrinal development, however, is not necessarily obvious at first glance. Several excellent scholars have analyzed these texts of Bonaventure as a theology of history, such as Joseph Ratzinger in his magisterial Theology of History in St. Bonaventure, but never (so far as I know) has this theology of history been interpreted as a theory of doctrinal development. I, in contrast, will make the case that some theologies of history are by nature simultaneously theories of doctrinal development and that Bonaventures is definitely one of those. I will begin by outlining, systematically and in general terms, how I see the relationship between theology of history and doctrinal development. I will then turn to Bonaventures theory, showing how his theology of history is simultaneously a theory of doctrinal development. Finally, as a way of evaluating Bonaventures theory, I will discuss schematically some of the elements of Cardinal Newmans theory of doctrinal development and conclude by comparing and contrasting Bonaventures and Newmans ideas as well as pointing to directions of research that still need to be undertaken both to understand the nature of the connection between theologies of history and theories of doctrinal development in general and also to assess the value of Bonaventures theory in particular.
II.
Theology of History and Doctrinal Development. Our first challenge is to understand the relationship between the theology of history and theories of doctrinal development. A key factor for comparison of these kinds of theories is the way in which each views the notion of history. For when one takes a theoretical point of view on history, an inherent duality appears. On the one hand, we mean by history the mode of temporal existence which humans, human communities, and artifacts undergo, i.e., these all exist in time or in history. On the other hand, we mean by history the narrative account by which we interpret and articulate this existence in time, a narrative account often formulated as the history of x. This duality in the notion of history is not an accident: it arises from the fact that history is not an object of knowledge in the conventional sense of the term.1 History is something lived; it is experienced not as an object vis--vis a knowing subject, but as something integral to human knowing and, indeed, to human life as such.2 Hence, both history as a set of temporally contiguous and potentially meaningful events and history as a narrative interpretation of the meaning of those events are in fact diverse aspects of one and the same history. There is, so
1 What is History? in What is History? and Other Late Unpublished Writings, ed. Thomas A. Hollweck and Paul Caringella (Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University, c1990), 10ff. 2 See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh, (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1996) esp. paragraphs 44, 68a, 727.
St. Bonaventure and the Problem of Doctrinal Development
179
to speak, a two-in-one structure to history, such that ones interpreting the events of history is simultaneously an event of history, itself subject to interpretation, and proceeding through many such interpretive layers potentially ad infinitum.3 This interplay of duality and unity in the notion of history is crucial for Christian theologies of history and for theories of doctrinal development, because each hinges particularly on the second side of this duality. That is to say, for both sorts of theory, history is conceived not just as a theater in which historical events occure.g., events concerning personal and communal salvation or events associated with doctrinal variationbut also and primarily as the interpretation of those events. This point should be evident enough for theologies of history: just what theologies of history mean to do is give some theological interpretation to what historical events relevant to salvation mean. Or, put in terms of the duality mentioned above, theologies of history are narrative interpretations, in the light of revelation, of the ultimate meaning of human existence in time.4 What distinguishes them from philosophical, poetic, or other interpretations of history is not the fact that they are narratives but the fact that they are specifically theological narratives, i.e., narratives based on an understanding of revelation. But though the link between the interpretive side of the concept of history and actual theologies of history is relatively evident, the interpretive side of history is also crucial for theories of doctrinal development: these too amount to theories of the historical interpretation of the event of defining doctrine. For example, the theological validity of the historical process by which doctrine is articulated and defined is essential to establishing it as genuine: the process either demonstrates its validity or implies a derailment from a valid process, judged theologically. Thus, even dogmatic statements themselves, as a rule, cannot be interpreted outside the context of this historical process. By way of example, the validity of the Christological doctrines associated with Nicaea, Constantinople, and Ephesus assume not only the truth of the dogmas but their roots in the historical events which led to their formulations, such as the validity of the councils, the problems which evoked the questions to be answered, the understanding of the events producing heretical conceptions and requiring their formulation as such, and so forth. Furthermore, the very sense of the terms contained in such doctrine is equally dependent on the historical process, whereby certain meanings are clarified and others are excluded from the doctrine and without which the terms themselves are ambiguous. Hence,
3 Eric Voegelin, Equivalences of Experience and Symbolization in History, Published Essays, 19661985. Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 12, ed. Ellis Sandoz (London and Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1990), 11533. 4 Oscar Cullman suggests that just this is essential to New Testament theology. See his Christ and Time: The Primitive Christian Conception of Time and History, trans. Floyd V. Filson. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1950).
180
doctrinal statements are not merely propositional positings of doctrine, but more importantly shorthand statements expressing not only the doctrinal formulation itself but the historical process by which the doctrines meaning is established. Not just the statement, therefore, but the process of defining it is implicitly contained within the meaning of the dogmatic statement.5 If the dogmatic statement is not simply a timeless doctrine but expressive of the historical process by which it is defined, it follows that the historical process itself is assumed to be meaningful, precisely in its historical constitution. Thus the conception of history that colors both theologies of history like that of Bonaventure and theories of doctrinal development like Newmans is that, for both, history is not simply a series of contingent and more or less accidental events, but a unique locus of theological meaning itself, whose interpretation theologies of history aim to elucidate and upon whose theological validity theories of doctrinal development depend. To elucidate this point, we might contrast what I have been saying to perhaps the greatest treatment of history in the Christian tradition, St. Augustines City of God. While we should not insist too rigidly on this distinction, we can say with Bernard McGinn that Augustines theologizing about history is not so much a theology of history as a theology of historicity.6 Augustines main conclusion seems to be that in fact history has no meaning in and of itself. Its meaning is determined solely through the transcendent end that human existence aims atsalvationand whether that end is fulfilled beyond history.7 Thus, though Augustine does discuss the historical constitution of our pilgrimage on earth, he avoids (though not completely) attributing meaning to events as such, other than the events of Jesuss own life.8 For example, Augustine breaks with more or less the entire patristic tradition by insisting that even the great Roman Empire has no intrinsic significance, from a theological standpoint, because history is an old man waiting to die: it has no meaning other than being the theater in which redemption occurs.9 In contrast to Augustine, then, the kinds of theory represented by Bonaventure and Newman suggest that the very historical events themselves are pregnant with theological meaning and are therefore in need of theological interpretation. Indeed, this latter may be among the most important points
5 See John White Doctrinal Development and the Philosophy of History: Cardinal Newmans Theory in the Light of Eric Voegelins Philosophy, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 83 (2009): 20118. 6 Bernard McGinn, The Calabrian Abbot: Joachim of Fiore in the History of Western Thought (New York: MacMillan, 1985), 222. 7 Karl Lwith, Meaning in History (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1949), 169. 8 Ibid., 167. 9 Ibid., 172.
181
that Newmans theory brings to light: it is not just that doctrine develops but that the historical process by which it does so is theologically significant and subject to theological speculation and judgment. Newmans recognition of this fact allowed him to differentiate his conceptions from neo-Scholastic, more or less purely inferential notions of doctrinal development, which assumed that the historical process through which the doctrine is consciously articulated is incidental (except to the extent authoritative definition is historically significant) and therefore without intrinsic significance.10 In contrast, Newman came to interpret the very process by which doctrine unfolds in the life of the Church as significant enough that differentiating what counts as a valid process and what does not is both possible and necessary. Given this admittedly generic sketch of our problem, we can begin to see that every theory of the historical development of doctrine implies a theology of history. If by development we do not mean simply the drawing of logical consequences from doctrinal propositions but actual historical development, then of course any theory of doctrinal development assumes a theology of history. This is so because it assumes that history in the first sensethe historical process associated with doctrinal developmentcan and indeed must be interpreted in theologically meaningful ways, at least to the extent that one can differentiate valid from invalid processeshistory in the second sense. Furthermore this historical interpretation is undertaken in the light of revelation, i.e., as a part of salvation history. Newmans theory of doctrinal development therefore assumes a theology of history, even if only implicitly. The converse, however, is not necessarily the case: theologies of history need not assume a theory of doctrinal development. This is so because one can interpret history, including salvation history, in such a way that development in the understanding of revelation is not an essential part of it or at least accidental and insignificant from a theological standpoint. It is in principle possible that to interpret, for example, the notion of the depositum fidei in a more or less static way, to claim that this deposit was given in full to the Apostles, who possessed it in full consciousness, and passed on without need or possibility of development, and still to propose a theology of history. One could, for example, understand Bossuet in these terms.11 As we will see, however, Bonaventures theology of history is not of that kind, but includes a theory of doctrinal development in a sense analogous to Newmans and it does so because it assumes that a significant part of the
See White, Doctrinal Development. Owen Chadwick, From Bossuet to Newman, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 56. According to Chadwick, Bossuet thinks that any variation on doctrine is a mark of error.
10 11
182
theological meaning of history is the growth of wisdom within the life of the community of the Churchsomething theoretically equivalent to development of doctrine in the modern sense. Thus Bonaventure will see the movement of history as a growth in communal understanding of revelation, one that could not have happened except by means of the Church living through the vicissitudes of history and thereby growing in its understanding of the meaning of revelation in a specifically historical fashion. One of the striking conclusions that one can draw from this analysis, therefore, is that St. Bonaventure actually has a theory of doctrinal development, some six hundred years prior to Cardinal Newman. Now before we move on, I should offer one more point of clarification. At first glance, it might appear that what I have just argued is trivial and obvious, namely, that theories of doctrinal development and theologies of history are connected. After all, one might argue, who would deny that any theory of doctrinal development will simultaneously have to assume, at least implicitly, some theory of history? The point of this discussion is neither trivial nor obvious, however. The crucial issue is not that a theory of doctrinal development implicitly assumes a theory of historya point which does indeed border on the trivial and obvious (though not always well understood). It is rather that theories of doctrinal development are simultaneously narratives of the Churchs growth in the understanding of revelation through its history. In other words, theories of doctrinal development, insofar as they are historical, are not dealing merely with narrow intellectual problems. Rather, they act as narratives of how and to what extent the Church has responded to the original revelation of Jesus Christ, throughout the trials and tribulations of history, by a growth and differentiated development of understanding and wisdom. Hence, to put it bluntly, this problem is only as trivial and obvious as the question of the meaning and success of the Churchs seeking wisdom in its pilgrimage on earth is trivial and obvious.
III.
Bonaventures Theology of History and Doctrinal Development. Bonaventures theology of history is found primarily within his final work, the set of sermons which has come down to us as the Collations on the Six Days of Creation.12 This
12 These are found in Opera Omnia (Quaracchi ed.) vol. 5. The English translation is Collations on the Six Days, The Works of St. Bonaventure, vol. 5, trans. Jose de Vinck (Paterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild, 1970). There are at least two distinct reports of these lectures, usually termed the A and B reports. Reportatio A was edited by Delorme and published as Collationes in Hexaemeron (Ad Claras Aquas: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1934). Reportatio B was edited and published earlier in the Opera Omnia, vol. V, and it is on this edition that the current paper and my sources are based. The editors of the Opera Omnia were aware of the Reportatio A, but they did not use
183
work has posed very serious challenges to commentators, in large measure because of its basically symbolic structure. Indeed, the English translator of the text seems unable to restrain himself in footnotes from accusations that Bonaventure is being ridiculous or childish as the latter plays on the multiplicity of the meanings of symbols. Yet Bonaventures use of symbolic forms of thinking and his simultaneous decision to move away from Scholastic methods is neither ridiculous nor childishnor indeed is it accidental. For first of all, for reasons we will see below, the Franciscan Order was at risk of dissolving due to the diverse interpretations of its significance by its own members. The use of symbolic methods permitted Bonaventure to unify the diverse interpretations, because the multivalence of symbols allowed multiple meanings to be subsumed under a single symbol.13 Furthermore, as Bonaventure moved into the latter years of his life, he seems to have believed that rationalistic methodsthose characteristic of the Schoolmenwere inadequate for grasping the ultimate mysteries associated with the divine, including the divine activity in history. He therefore turns to symbolic ways of thinking for articulating these mysteries, ways of thinking which can easily seem absurd or childish in a literalistic age and highly speculative in an age of scientific history. Because of the sweeping nature of his theology of history and because of its unfinished character, it will take some effort to articulate Bonaventures ideas. Furthermore, understanding Bonaventure requires that we move outside the text to grasp the specific sets of problems which engendered the Collations, and any treatment of it will therefore have to remain schematic. At least the following must be said. The sermons were intended for Franciscans at the University of Paris, where Bonaventure lived during his generalate, and they were meant to diagnose and respond to what Bonaventure considered the spiritual diseases manifest there and elsewhere in the Church.14 Bonaventures sermons respond to (at least) three sets of problems: the seculars attack on mendicant poverty; the rise of radical Aristotelianism or Latin Averroism; and the problem of radical Joachism, especially in the Order itself. I will treat briefly each of these.
it for their text because it appeared to them to be a significantly different and abridged version of Reportatio B. In contrast, Delorme demonstrated that Reportatio A was independent of Reportatio B. A new phase in the scholarship of the Hexaemeron begins with an hypothesis by J. Guy Bourgerol in 1984 and the preliminary analysis offered by Pietro Menaresi of the St. Petersburg manuscript, which appears to be the same as the Assisi manuscript, a very early manuscript which was thought to be lost at the time of the work on the Opera Omnia. See Manaresi, Bonaventure of Bagnoregio: A Transcription of the Third Collation of the Hexaemeron from the St. Petersburg Manuscript, Franciscan Studies 53 (1993): 4778. 13 C. Colt Anderson, A Call to Piety: Saint Bonventures Collations on the Six Days (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 2002), xviixviii; also 60ff. 14 Joseph Ratzinger, Theology of History in St. Bonaventure, trans. Zachary Hayes (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1971), 6.
184
The issue of poverty was an essential concern for the Franciscans because of the relative importance St. Francis himself had placed on poverty. For Francis, the Franciscan ideal was to live the vita apostolicaa life in imitation of the apostlesand Jesus commanded the apostles to live poverty. Indeed, both of the two new mendicant orders (Franciscans and Dominicans) considered poverty essential to their vocations, and their founders intended the orders to live out that poverty by begging for food. As the mendicant orders grew in popularity and the friars attended the universities, a counter-reaction to them ensued. In particular, some of the secular priests at Paris strongly criticized the life of the mendicants. The heart of this reaction was especially against the suggestion that only those living poverty lived a genuinely apostolic life. This primary reaction was in turn amplified by the favors bestowed on the mendicant orders, especially on the Franciscans, by popes and papal documents confirming that the Franciscan life was indeed the genuine life Jesus had enjoined on the apostles.15 There were concerted written attacks on the mendicant way of life and Bonaventure (as well as Aquinas) was among those answering the objections in writing. These sermons were in part a response to the seculars attacks.16 The second party to whom Bonaventure reacted was the radical Aristotelians or Latin Averroists. Much has been written on Latin Averroism in the last hundred years and there are varying interpretations both of what Latin Averroism was and of the extent of its seriousness. For our purposes, what is
Ibid., 82. It is important to recognize the specifically theological dimension of the disputes with the seculars, lest the issue appear to be nothing more than turf wars. Tensions had existed between the friars and secular masters from the beginning of the friars presence at Paris and finally came to a head when the friars refused to participate in some strikes organized by the university and secular masters. The appearance of Friar Gerard of Borgo San-Donninos Joachite On the Eternal Gospel (see below), however, provoked a reaction, especially on the part of the secular master William of St. Amour, condemning all friars, as if all friars held to positions as heretical as Friar Gerard. See Andrew Traver, The Opuscula of William of Saint-Amour, vol. 63, Beitrge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, Neue Folge (Mnster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2003), 16. Thus, though Gerards positions motivate the polemic, William does not treat only of Gerard but often has Bonaventure in his sights because of the cogency with which Bonaventure argues the case of the mendicants (see Traver, Opuscula, 1122). The most controversial and well-known parts of Williams polemic appear in his De Periculis Novissimorum Temporum, a text born in an era of high apocalyptic expectation, which argues that the friars have appeared in this final age because they are in fact forerunners of Anti-Christ (Traver, Opuscula, 3152). Bonaventures direct response to William is his Disputed Questions on Evangelical Perfection (Opera Omnia, vol. 5), while the Hexaemeron treats of these attitudes as part of a broader problem. Williams polemics in some measure explain the apocalypticism in Bonaventures teaching, which I discuss somewhat below. See Robert J. Karris, Introduction, in Disputed Questions on Evangelical Perfection, vol. XIII of Works of St. Bonaventure, trans. Thomas Reist, O.F.M. Conv. and Robert J. Karris, O.F.M. (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2008), 814.
15 16
185
important is that Bonaventure considered Latin Averroism a very significant problem, in particular the Averroists belief that human reason could attain to God and to genuine wisdom of its own power, i.e., unaided by divine illumination. For Bonaventure, Aristotle was certainly a man of knowledge, but not a man of wisdom, because he had made the crucial intellectual mistake of rejecting Platos Ideas. For Bonaventure, the Ideas of Plato were not logical universals (as Aristotle suggested), but modes by which finite beings partake of the perfection of the Logos, the second person of the Trinity. These Ideas are not known by means of objects (e.g., through abstraction from experience), but by means of a unique intellectual activity (contuition)17 and through the reception thereby of the divine light. To reject the Ideas was therefore, for Bonaventure, to reject the capacity of the soul to participate in and cooperate with the divine in knowing and thus to reject the necessity of divine involvement in the process of gaining wisdom. Needless to say, issues associated with the Ideas and illumination theory are therefore more than purely epistemological questions for Bonaventure. Finally, the third party Bonaventure had to deal with was perhaps the most challenging for him: the radical Joachites. The twelfth-century monk Joachim of Fiore had, at the behest of some popes, set to writing some of his prophetic claimswhat amounted to mystical readings of Scripture.18 Among Joachims prophetic claims, made popular later by Gerard of Borgo San Donnino, was that the Churchs history included passing through three different ages before the end of time: the age of the Old Testament, which Joachim designated as the age of the Father; the age of the New Testament, which Joachim designated as the age of the Son; and a new age still to come, the age of the Spirit.19 This new age would be heralded in by a novus dux, according to Joachim, a new leader
For a general description of Bonaventures illumination theory see White, The Illumination of Bonaventure: Divine Light in Theology, Philosophy and History According to Bonaventure, Fides Quaerens Intellectum: A Journal of Theology, Philosophy, and History 1(2001): 20123. Also White, Divine Light and Human Wisdom: Transcendental Elements in Bonaventures Illumination Theory, International Philosophical Quarterly 48 (2008): 17585. For a description of Bonaventures illumination theory in terms of phenomenology, see White, Illuminating Josef Seiferts Theory of A priori Knowledge in Back to Things in Themselves: On Whatand HowWe Learn from St. Bonaventures Illumination Theory, in To Love All the Truth and in All Things: Essays in Honor of Josef Seifert/Amar la verdad, toda y en todas las cosas. Ensayos en honor de Josef Seifert (Santiago, Chile: Ediciones UC, 2009), 11356. 18 There are many outstanding studies of Joachims work. McGinns The Calabrian Abbot, mentioned above, is the most relevant to these themes. Also Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), 10721, on the significance of Joachim for Western historical speculation and the rise of political gnosticism. It may be that Voegelin overstates the significance of Joachim for these movements. The same might be said of Lwith. See Appendix I, Modern transformations of Joachism, in Meaning. 19 Lwith, Meaning, 1489
17
186
who will be sufficiently filled with the Spirit that he will symbolize and initiate this new, third age.20 What was troubling about these prophecies, for the Church hierarchy, was especially the implications of the three-age historiography of Joachim. For it suggested that, just as the Old Covenant passed into the New Covenant, so there would be a new revelation implying the passing of the New Covenant into a third.21 Furthermore this third age would probably not include any specific need for the clergy, since the agents of the new age were to be contemplatives, i.e., those whose connection with God was sufficiently immediate that the clergy and its various mediating functions would pass away.22 As it turned out, the hierarchy was not so keen on a theology which would effectively put them out of business. Nonetheless, as such, these prophecies might have appeared fairly innocuous, just one more set of eschatological prophecies in an age rich in such prophecies, were it not for the appearance of the extraordinary person of St. Francis.23 It is perhaps difficult for us to imagine just how significant this appearance was. In an age when sanctity was in any case profoundly respected, not only was Francis seen as a holy man, but as something of a super-saint: he was sealed with the seal of the living God (Apoc 7:2)as the stigmata were interpretedwhich seemed to confirm Franciss fundamental and unique significance in history from the divine point of view. Though Joachim thought that the novus dux would appear around 1260, Franciss appearance was close enough in time and dramatic enough in scope that many Franciscans thought he had brought with him the new age Joachim had prophesied. The Herald of the Great King was also to be the precursor of the Third Age.24 Bonaventure, when he took over as the general of the Order, was put in a particularly difficult position because of this last situation.25 The previous general of the Order (John of Parma) had been sympathetic to the Joachites, though he was not by any means a fellow traveler.26 Nonetheless, he had encouraged especially the vision that the Franciscans particular role in history was to bring forth the new age, the age of the great contemplatives. Bonaventure had to worry, then, not only about the Order becoming hopelessly divided over this issue but that the hierarchy would strike the Order with its thunderbolts and there would be no more Order of St. Francis.
Ibid., 1513 Anderson, Call, 234. 22 Traver, Opuscula, 5. 23 On the importance of the person of Francis, see Ratzinger, Theology, 315. 24 Lwith, Meaning, 157. Friar Gerard literalized many of Joachims prophecies, which is part of what provoked William of St. Amour and the secular masters. See Traver Opuscula, 5. 25 McGinn, Calabrian Abbot, 2134. 26 Anderson, Call, 13.
20 21
187
This last point was more than an issue of party interest. Bonaventure believed that the Franciscan Order was willed into being by God, that it was an order specifically meant, amongst other things, to heal the diseases of his age.27 Hence the diagnoses of the problems of the time also reflect the ideals and expectations Bonaventure had of the Franciscan Order. To demonstrate the importance of the Franciscan Order and of its continuance in history, therefore, Bonaventure needs to posit a theology of history which can make sense of both how and why St. Francis and the Franciscan Order are so important and particularly so at this specific moment in history. Developing a theology of history includes, by definition, a specific way of understanding historical events in the light of an interpretation of revelation. But the manner in which this interpretation develops tells us much about the potentialities of that theology. In Bonaventures case, his theology of history regards primarily the issue of wisdom. To Bonaventure, the three crises to which he was responding all centered (though not exclusively) on the issue of wisdom. Hence his theology of history will do three things: (1) it will highlight the historical pilgrimage of the Church as a journey toward greater wisdom; (2) it will thereby show how the three crises motivating the analyses are born of deviations and derailments of that historical process; and (3) it will illuminate how the Franciscan Order and its way of life are meant to heal that situation. Key to understanding this movement toward wisdom in history are the manifold ways of reading Scripture. For Bonaventure, the height of wisdom consists in the spiritual understanding of Scripture. But though Bonaventure holds to the standard four levels of scriptural meaning characteristic of medieval exegesis (originating in Origen), these are insufficient for his purposes, since there is nothing specifically historical about those levels. He therefore requires two other methodological tools for justifying his thesis: he requires, first of all, some tool to link up scriptural interpretation and the movements of history; and, second, some way to symbolize the specific historical events occurring at Paris. To do this, Bonaventure introduces two other tools outside of the standard four levels of interpretation: the Theories and the ChristAnti-Christ symbol. The first tool is the articulation of what he terms theoriae in Latin, a term which translates awkwardly as theories in English and runs the risk of being confused with talking about Bonaventures theories in the English sense of the termtherefore, I will always use the definite article and a capital letter and speak of the Theories in Bonaventures specific sense.28 In Bonaventures understanding, then, the Theories refer to embedded meanings in Scripture which, though present from the beginning in Scripture, can only be understood at a
27 28
Ratzinger, Theology, 42ff. Ibid., 79.
188
certain later moment of history. In other words, Scripture includes meanings which not only are not but in fact can not to be understood at the time of their writing, because their sense can only become manifest to the Church through its experiences of the vicissitudes of history. With the idea of the Theories, Bonaventure can posit history with a meaning, because the actual historical process of the Church includes (potentially) a growth in wisdom, as hidden meanings of Scripture become illuminated at a later time in the historical process and diffuse throughout the community of the Church. Thus there is a not only change and development in the understanding of Scriptureor what we would nowadays call the development of doctrinebut this process is itself a meaningful historical process, which can be understood in terms of sound versus unsound development.29 To explicate his idea of the Theories, Bonaventure introduces the old Stoic idea of logoi spermatikoi, i.e., seminal reasons, into his theology of Scripture. The notion of seminal reasons was developed by the Stoics as a way of explaining how matter is disposed to receive form. The assumption was that, embedded in matter, is an implicit ability to realize specific forms. It was as if matter was waiting for those forms which bring it to development in time. Augustine used this idea, for example, in his accounts of creation, when he sought to explain how all creation happens in a moment and yet some actual entities only appear later in time.30 Bonaventure uses this idea of seminal reasons in a quite original way, however, for explicating the growth in wisdom in the life of the Church. For Bonaventure, though revelation itself is closed with the death of the Apostles, the content of scriptural revelation includes seminal reasons, meanings which are held in readiness for the time when the Church, after having undergone the events of history, can as it were give them form, i.e., understand and articulate them.31 Thus the growth in wisdom is not an accident of history but a
29 Bonaventure develops this idea throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth collations. Though these developments can seem incoherent, it is one of the merits of Ratzingers study to have shown how these varying symbolizations fit together. See Ratzinger, Theology, esp. chapter 1. 30 Coll. in Hex.15 n. 11 (OO V, 400a): Haec consideratio theoriarum est inter duo specula duorum Cherubim quae refulgent in invicem ut transformetur homo a claritate in claritatem. Haec autem germinatio seminum dat intelligere secundum diversas temporum coaptationes diversas theorias. 31 For example, Coll. in Hex. 16 n. 1 (OO V, 403a): Dictum est etiam de theoriis, quae intelliguntur et per semen et per fructum. Habent enim theoriae sementivam multiplicationem et refectivam sustentationem; ideo intelliguntur partim per semen et pertim per germinationem fructuum. Quantum ad semen consistunt in coaptationibus temporum, secundum quod tempora sibi invicem succedunt; quantum ad arboris fructum, secundum quod tempora sibi mutuo correspondent. Secundum comparationem arboris vel seminis ad semen tempora sibi mutuo succedunt; secundum comparationem germinis ad germinans mutuo sibi correspondent. See also Coll. in Hex. 15:11 and 15:20. Also, Anderson, Call, 1278.
189
purposeful dimension of the historical process, providentially implied through the existence of the Theories, and confirmed through coherence with (at times newly understood) dimensions of tradition.32 History is not an old man waiting to die, as in Augustine, but is rather a positive dynamic process whereby the full meaning of revelation becomes more and more disclosed.33 Indeed, Bonaventures deviation from Augustine becomes clear when we see that he rejects Augustines division of history into seven ages, the sixth being that which comes with Christ, the fullness of history, the seventh being the end.34 Bonaventure, in contrast, looks at history in terms of two seven-fold divisions, one under the Old Covenant and one under the New. In this way, Bonaventure puts Christ not only at the end of history, as its purpose, but also at its center.35 Furthermore, though the Old Covenant and its process of growth in wisdom are closed, the New is still in process. Indeed, according to Bonaventure, the historical process of the Old Covenant actually foreshadows the historical process of the New in certain respects. It follows that through understanding the seven-fold process in the Old Covenant, one can also understand something of the process in the New.36 This last point becomes particularly valuable for Bonaventure, because it follows from this that the spiritual reading of Scripture can also illuminate the signs of the times throughout the era of the New Covenant, until the end of time. Hence Bonaventure thinks that the time he lives in has parallels to historical events in the Old Testament and that some of the Theories are illuminating his time, for those who have eyes to see. For example, Bonaventure thinks that the symbolic opposition of ChristAnti-Christ is foreshadowed in the Old Covenant and realized in the New and that signs of this opposition, similarly, have appeared in the Church and especially at the university in his time. Whichever phase of the New Covenant process Bonaventures time is inhe has differing
32 Coll. in Hex. 15 no. 11 (OO V, 400a): et qui tempora ignorat istas scire non potest. Nam scire non potest futura qui praeterita ignorat. Si enim non cognosco, cuius arboris semen est; non possum cognoscere, quae arbor debet inde esse. Unde cognitio futurorum dependet ex cognitione praeteritorum. Moyses enim, prophetans de futuris, narravit praeterita, per revelationem. Further, Coll. in Hex.15 n.18 (OO V, 400b): Haec sunt semina iactata ad intelligentiam Scripturarum, quae producuntur de illis arboribus secundum expositionem communem; et sic tempus dividitur in septem aetates. See Anderson, Call, 137. 33 Coll. in Hex. 17 no. 1 (OO V, 409a): Istae theoriae consistunt in considerationibus temporum sibi succedientium, quae sunt seminaria quaedam et in correspondentia eorundem. 34 Lwith, Meaning, 170. 35 Ratzinger, Theology, 114. For Bonaventure, the symbol of the Logos and Jesus Christ as the center is characteristic of all his theology. See Zachary Hayes, The Hidden Center: Spirituality and Speculative Christology in St. Bonaventure (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2000). 36 This is associated with the method of concordia developed by Joachim. Ratzinger, Theology, 158; Anderson, Call, 27ff. See also quotations from Bonaventure in notes 31, 32, and 37.
190
suggestions as to which of the seven stages of the New Covenant he is in the ChristAnti-Christ opposition is always at work. Just as one would expect, the ChristAnti-Christ opposition is particularly manifest at the university: in the opposition between humble, poor, studious mendicant friars and those proud, comfortable, knowledge-loving secular Aristotelians! Thus the Franciscans are amongst the agents of this process of growth in wisdom. They represent a new step in the development of wisdom, because the life embodied in the Franciscan movement is an apostolic wisdom, a wisdom which comes through the literal following of Christ. This permits a three-fold response to the three-fold objections to the mendicants. To the seculars the argument in favor of wisdom is based on the literal following of Christ: if Jesus commands poverty, it is wisdom to follow his example. To the Aristotelians, Bonaventure responds to the claims of mere Aristotelian knowledge with the claims of Christian wisdom, a wisdom that comes from this following of Christ alone and by means of the natural and supernatural illuminations the New Testament describes.37 With Joachim, Bonaventure agrees that a decisive leap in the realization of wisdom in the Church has in fact occurred, in the form of the mendicant orders, but does so by insisting on the Churchs relationship to the complete revelation in Christ. The third age is therefore not a new age beyond the second, but the fulfillment of the wisdom promised in the second.38 St. Francis is not the novus dux of a third age, but a current symbol of a future reality: a symbol of the great age of the saints to come at the end of time.39 Bonaventures text, the Lectures on the Six Days of Creation, was left to us as a torso. He had given twenty-two sermons and had begun speaking on the fourth day (of six) in the series when he was called away to be the papal legate for the Council of Lyons. Furthermore, neither the theology of history nor the dimension of it equivalent to doctrinal development can be understood as a full-blown theory, because the sermons were, by definition, not theoretical but rhetorical works, using theological concepts to illuminate the spiritual crises of the day. Nonetheless, enough of this text exists for us to draw out the main lines of Bonaventures understanding of history and doctrinal development.
37 Important here is John 1:6, that the Logos is the light who enlightens all men. Typical to the illuminationist tradition, Bonaventure reads this as implying that any wisdom had by anyone, Christian or pagan, still comes from the illumination of the Logos. The difference is that the Christian understands that it is from the Logos, whereas the non-Christian wouldnt know that. 38 Bonaventure says explicitly that there is no age beyond the New Covenant, Coll. in Hex. 16 no. 2 (OO V, 403a): Post novum testamentum non erit aliud, nec aliquod sacramentum novae legis subtrahi potest, quia illud testamentum aeternum est. Ista tempora sibi mutuo succedunt, et multa est in eis correspondentia, et sunt sicut germinatio seminis ex semine, ut de semine arbor, et de arbore semen. 39 Ratzinger, Theology, 4251.
191
First, we can see that Bonaventure considers the sorry state of things at the university to be something more than a bare historical fact: it is a dramatic event, in need of theological interpretation for the pilgrimage of the Church. It is with respect to this dramatic event that Bonaventure develops the theology of history, since the event (history in the first sense) needs theological interpretation (history in the second sense). Hence Bonaventure develops a theology of history which spans the entirety of Christian history, yet the occasion of its inception and the historical problem he seeks to understand by means of this broad theory is the life of the university along with its purported goal: the teaching of wisdom. But Bonaventure sees the university as divided. Those who are wise should be able to read the signs of the times, should be able to recognize God acting in history.40 The attack on the mendicants, the attachment to Aristotle, and the flourishing of Joachism demonstrate that, in practice, many at the university cannot read those signs. According to Bonaventures diagnosis, the members of the university seek knowledge (scientia) at the expense of wisdom (sapientia). Knowledge, for Bonaventure, is primarily the work of reason and is certainly something of very high value. However, the ultimate value of knowledge consists in its being preparatory of wisdom. For Bonaventure, wisdom is a light coming down from the Father of Lights within the soul, and that by radiating through it made it in the form of God and the house of God. This descending light makes the intellective power beautiful, the affective power delightful, and the operative power strong.41 Thus Bonaventure offers what amounts to a Critique of Pagan Reason, since wisdom for Bonaventure is not exclusively or even characteristically an attribute of reason, as knowledge is, but something diffused throughout the spiritual powers of a person and closely bound up with charity. Theology and philosophy exist therefore not for the sake of knowledge itself but as spiritual exercises conducive to preparing the soul for the reception of wisdom.42 Those who seek the wisdom of God, therefore, understand the ideals of the mendicants and their importance for history. Those who attack the mendicants attack the work of God by using their mere knowledge against those who live wisdom. Those who honor Aristotle over the Patristic tradition opt for pagan knowledge against Christian wisdom. And those who follow Joachim lose the grace-filled sources of wisdom in the works of the Church (e.g., the Sacraments, preaching of the Gospel, etc.). Thus, in the contrast of wisdom-seekers and mere knowledge-seekers, Bonaventure sees examples of the ChristAnti-Christ symbol being lived out at the university. For if the University of Paris, the great
Anderson, Call, 137. Coll. in Hex. 2 no. 1 (OO V, 336a): sapientia est lux descendens a Patre luminum in animam et radians in eam facit animam deiformem et domum Dei. Ista lux descendens facit intellectivam speciosam, affectivam amoenam, operativam robustam. 42 Cf. Anderson, Call, 94.
40 41
192
international center for theological learning, can fall so far, how much hope can there be for the Church as a whole? There is a good deal of eschatological symbolism here; it even smacks of apocalypticism, at times.43 But the issues of poverty, theological knowledge, and the role of the mendicants in history appeared to Bonaventure as problems of the first order. One can appreciate therefore why his tone might be eschatological with more than a whiff of apocalypticism. Though Bonaventure puts aside Scholastic method in favor of a symbolic approach to these issues, in the final analysis his is still a highly speculative approach to the issue of history and the development of doctrine. Bonaventure does not have the benefits of modern critical standards and methods of historical analysis nor does he need them, since he only needs such theories to the extent that they buttress his personal belief in the divinely sanctioned destiny of the Franciscan Order and the papal statements justifying his claim that the Franciscan way of life is the true vita apostolica. Hence this approach can in no way satisfy modern criteria concerning what counts as doctrinal development, however much Bonaventure thinks he shows that the Franciscan vita apostolica, though not a new dispensation, is something of a new doctrinal development based on a new reading of the Theories embedded in Scripture. Nonetheless, Bonaventures achievement is significant in that he offers a theology of history, such that history is not only a context in which Christian life is lived but is itself something meaningful, something which is imbued with definite, theological meaning and purpose, even to the point of moving in definite stages with a definite foreshadowing in the Old Covenant concerning what will happen in the New. More importantly, the history of the Church, on Bonaventures account, includes a process which differentiates the original meaning of revelation and in fact discovers meanings embedded in Scripture which could not be understood except through the historical process itself. The history of the Church is therefore a history of the growth in wisdom as the vicissitudes of history lead to a new and richer understanding of what Scripture meant in the first place, a growth which therefore amounts to a theory of doctrinal development.
IV.
Newman and Doctrinal Development. As a way of evaluating Bonaventures theory, I want to offer some comparisons and contrasts to Newmans theory. Discussing Newmans theory requires fewer explanations than understanding Bonaventures, for several reasons: Newmans theory is significantly better known; it is much less a torso than Bonaventures; and the motivations for his work
43 Bonaventure in fact believes that some light can be shed on the future history of the Church through using his hermeneutic method. See for example collation 16, nos. 16 and 30.
193
are less complicated and more explicit. Whereas it is of the utmost importance to know something of the specific historical crises affecting the Order and the University if one is to understand Bonaventures theory, since he is sermonizing about the crises of his time and formulates his theory only to illuminate this crisis, Newman is in contrast writing a theory more or less for its own sake, i.e., he is writing about the process in order to understand it, not in order to understand something else. Consequently, I will dispense with developing the range of possible motivations for the text beyond saying that Newman was moved to write it largely by his own inner religious struggles and that he began the work as he contemplated the issues of the relative validity of Anglican and Catholic doctrines.44 Indeed, though Newman knew that other theories of development were being posited on the Continent, he did not study them: he appears to have been concerned not with comprehensive research on the subject but primarily with satisfying himself on what the nature of the issues was.45 Now before we proceed, it might be advantageous to remind ourselves that the notion of doctrine with which Newman is working is neither restricted nor reducible to issues of dogmatic or quasi-dogmatic propositional statements. Though this was also true of Bonaventure, it might not be as obviously true of Newman, given that the tendency to limit doctrine to dogmatic statements is characteristic of some modern theology. Newmans model of doctrine is evidently not a catechism or set of creedal formulae, but is rather the understanding of faith by the historical Church and in the light of the historical practice of Christianity, in its liturgical, intellectual, and social dimensions.46 Consequently, though we can correctly understand Newmans theory of doctrinal development as contrasting to more neo-Scholastic, inferentially based concepts, we need also to note that what is being said to develop is also different.47 Even though Newman does give examples of development which are in some measure based on the logical consequences of propositional doctrines, such as the doctrine of Mary as Theotokos, most of his examples in the Essay on the Development of Doctrine are about Christian practices and traditions ranging over the date of Jesuss birth to the constitution of the episcopacy to the canon of Scripture to the giving of the Eucharist under one species. And in each case, including that of Theotokos, the development is never solely based on logical implication but
Chadwick, From Bossuet, 989. Ibid., 112ff. 46 Lash emphasizes the element of orthopraxis in Newmans thought, i.e., that living the doctrine is a mark of its legitimacy as development. See Nicolas Lash, Newman on Development: The Search for an Explanation in History (Shepherdstown, WV: Patmos Press, 1975), 1415. 47 According to Chadwick, logic plays a more important role in the revised edition, but still is never the essence of development for Newman. Chadwick, From Bossuet, 1567, 18691.
44 45
194
always also something expressive of the historical understanding of revelation by the Church in history.48 Thus Newman interprets the subject of development in terms of a living understanding of revelation, not primarily in terms of the propositions potentially expressing it.49 It is, so to speak, a lived doctrine, and its development therefore something lived out in historical experience.50 Newman describes this lived doctrine in terms of a sociological phenomenon he calls an idea. Ideas, for Newman, could be described as motivational complexes, i.e., units of meaning and value which in some way capture the imagination and therefore the life of a community. Though the term idea can sound rationalistic, it is less a rational or mental product than an ethos,51 a social complex of values, feelings, ideals, and the like which are socially shared and often only implicitly understood, but which motivate and guide the life of a community. Though Newman distinguishes different kinds of ideasmoral, political, religious, etc.for our purposes what is crucial is that revelation is one such idea.52 For Newman, revelation, not in and of itself, but as something experienced, sensed, and lived in the community is just such an idea. And like all ideas, the lived experience of revelation implies potentialities for expansion and differentiation, depending on what the community, gripped by the ideas power, draws from it.53 This important concept of an idea allows us to highlight the historical character of doctrinal development. Because revelation, as experienced, is posited as an idea of something gripping the minds, hearts, and imaginations of people, it is conceived of as a powerful social force, bursting the limits of the understanding of any one person or community or the understanding contained in one historical era. Like all powerfully motivating social realities, the idea is not easily articulated due to its relative affective strength and manifold potentialities
See White, Doctrinal Development. Compare in Rahner, The Development of Dogma, in Theological Investigations, vol. 1: God, Christ, Mary and Grace, trans. Cornelius Ernst, O.P. (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1961), 3978. See especially pp. 63ff. Rahner too puts the emphasis on experience of the Church over the propositions, though he avoids the rationalistic sounding language of idea. My suspicion is that this passage is greatly influenced by Newman. 50 One cannot overemphasize that, for Newman, this process has much more to do with praxis than purely intellectual processes. See Basil Mitchell, Newman as a Philosopher, in Newman after a Hundred Years, ed. Ian Ker and Alan G. Hill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 22346. 51 This is a term Newman himself uses. Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, http://www.newmanreader.org/works/development/index.html, 99100 (hereafter cited as Dev.). All references to Newmans text will be to the online edition. 52 For a fuller account of Newmans notion of an idea, see White, Doctrinal Development, and Lash, Development, esp. chapter 4. 53 Newman explicitly discusses the issue of development as not a matter of revelation but of how the revelation is received. See Dev., 82.
48 49
195
for differentiation. Thus through time, the community can begin to differentiate, describe, and bring to articulation some of these potentialities. In the case of revelation, the idea (sometimes) becomes differentiated and articulated in propositional form, in part through the challenges of history, including the historical challenges posed by heretical movements.54 Thus even in the case of propositionally formulated doctrines, such propositions are not just the positings of dogma but also a shorthand formulation of that original experience of revelation and the process of its differentiation into propositions. Otherwise put, doctrine is not only an articulation of the experience of revelation: it is also a commentary on the historical process by which revelation is understood, one which can only be grasped through some historical understanding.55 This model of doctrinal development poses an interesting parallel to Newmans own life. Reflecting back on the issue of how his position changed in his Apologia, Newman could not say definitely what made him move from the Tractarian view to the view of the Essay.56 As Chadwick emphasizes, Newman seems aware that his views are both an alteration from his earlier, Anglican views and yet somehow continuous with them. This no doubt has in part to do with Newmans particular trend of mind which saw the experience of the heart to be the origin of ones religious understanding.57 Like his theory of doctrinal development in the life of the Church, Newmans own experience appears to be one in which the principle of development is rooted in the life principle itself, in the experience of living religion, which evokes a process constituted of both continuity and change. Newman is gripped by an ideathe question of doctrinal developmentand the idea expands and becomes articulate, the more he lives that idea through.58 For Newman, then, revelation is received as an idea, with all its potentialities for historical realization and differentiation.59 Indeed, Newman goes so far as it say in a document not published in his lifetime that the Apostles had the fullness of revelation but, presumably because of the limits of the human mind, they could not, as it were, hold it all at once explicitly. Newman compares this to someone knowing Aristotles philosophy fully but not therefore holding it all explicitly before his mind at any given moment. What would come to mind, in such a case, would only be whatever the occasion provoked. The implication seems
Though my development of these ideas is from the Essay, it is clear that Tract 85 assumes such a notion though written well before the Essay. See especially lecture VIII. Newman himself suggests this connection. See Chadwick, From Bossuet, 129. 55 See White, Doctrinal Development. 56 Chadwick, From Bossuet, 123. 57 This characteristic of Newmans mind is well described by Chadwick: Of no one is it truer than of Newman that a mans thought is himself (Chadwick, From Bossuet, 127). 58 Lash, Development, 101. 59 White, Doctrinal Development.
54
196
to be that though the Apostles in some sense possessed the entirety of revelation, they did not have it in the form of propositions in the mind but as an idea with all its implications held in memory.60 A similar collective memory is present in the Church, for Newman, and is alive with the idea of Christianity, molding and forming its experience and understanding of the doctrinal content of Christianity. For this reason, Newman considered Christianity not a complex of discrete doctrines or number of formulae, but rather a complex unity held together by the idea. Christianity, as Newman puts it, is a system of thought, based on an original unifying idea, related to its propositional doctrines, I would suggest, as ground to consequents.61 This image, in fact, suggests that the idea is not a static thing but, by virtue of capturing the energy of the community, is dynamically oriented toward the differentiation into doctrine as a kind of crystallization of the Churchs experience of revelation. Though revelation is articulated into relatively independent propositions, what confers sense on those propositions is the underlying idea and its process of differentiation. The idea is in fact so important, that Newman thinks that the Apostles themselves would recognize the Church of his time, in spite of its many differences from the apostolic Church, because they would grasp the idea which underlies it.62 Newman offers a succinct illustration of how he understands this process with the doctrine of the Incarnation. He notes that even central doctrines of Christianity not only develop but in some sense must develop if they are to be more than the mere letter of Scripture, i.e., something which conveys a definite idea to its recipient. When therefore the Scripture declares that the Word became flesh, for example, questions immediately arise as a condition for understanding what is being claimed. And after the question of what is the meaning of the Word, what the flesh, and what to become, secondary questions also arise, to which propositions are given as answers. Hence a body of propositional doctrine arises, in order that some level of human understanding may be attained of this mystery.63 However, these propositional doctrines are not themselves either identical to the original doctrine (or idea) nor can they be understood as a collection the sum of which is equivalent to the idea. Rather, as Newman emphasized with regard to the teaching on the Trinity, it is the idea which stands behind the propositional doctrine which keeps the discrete propositions in their appropriate tension: The Catholic Truth [of the Trinity]
60 Newman, Letter to Flanagan, in The Theological Papers of John Henry Newman on Biblical Inspiration and on Infallibility, ed. Derek Holmes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 1568. 61 Ibid., 158. 62 Newman thought this was so formative and powerful, in fact, that he suggested that if St. Paul were asked about the Immaculate Conception, in terms that Paul could understand, he would have answered in the affirmative that this doctrine was true. Ibid., 156. 63 Dev., 5960.
197
in question is made up of a number of separate propositions, each of which, if maintained to the exclusion of the rest, is a heresy.64 The distinct propositions, therefore, do not, for Newman, pose doctrinal truths of themselves, but rather must be understood as a constellation of truths, held together in tension by the experience of the idea. It is worth noting here that the implication of all this is not only that there is a controlling idea which is simultaneously understood insofar as the propositional doctrines are understood, but also that historical differentiation of the idea had to happen. For the implication is that as an actual historical event, the Apostles actually possessed the full revelation but did not have occasion to bring out all the content of that revelation. It seems to follow from this that, if we assume the fullness of revelation not only to be the possession of the Apostles but also to be the destiny of the Church as a whole, then the Church is meant to develop doctrine, if for no other reason than so that there be the unfolding of that fullness in and through history. I emphasize this point because it is perhaps this which shows more than anything else just how starkly different Newmans theories are from neo-Scholastic views of exclusively inferential development from propositional doctrine and does so precisely on the grounds that historical development makes a positive contribution to the Churchs pilgrimage. This point also highlights the implicit parallel with Bonaventure: the development of doctrine is simultaneously a growth in wisdom. It is not a growth beyond the Apostles, on Newmans account, since they were given it all. But such development is, minimally, a recovery of the idea insofar as what was revealed by Jesus to the Apostles was too big to be fully possessed by anyone or any group of people, at any one time. As the Gospel puts it: There were many other things that Jesus did; if all were written down, the world itself, I suppose, would not hold all the books that would have to be written (John 21:25 JB). In his Catholic phase, Newman speaks (in Latin texts) of an intimus sensus which is part and parcel of the experience of tradition. Chadwick understands this as an unconscious impulse which gives the sense and meaning of a doctrine and also supplies a sense of when a doctrine is not a genuine development. For Newman, though it is true that doctrines can appear which do not explicitly exist in the early Church, it is also true that doctrinal claims can exist which are not valid. These latter are always additions to the original faith, not developments of it. This unconscious mode of understanding illuminates the difference between the valid and invalid developments. The process of differentiation of doctrine in Newman expresses the twofoldness of history, as developed above. On the one hand, the historical reception of the revelation, the idea, is implicit in the movement of doctrinal development
64
Ibid., 145.
198
(history in the first sense). On the other hand, the formulated doctrines are not merely propositions positing that idea but a shorthand formula for a process which not only formulated the doctrines but differentiated the doctrines meaning from all the other potential understandings of revelation and requires that these various doctrines be held in a correct tension, according to the normativity of the idea (history in the second sense). This is precisely the function which the various marks of true development in the Essay were meant to guarantee: the marks guarantee that some claimed development actually meets the criteria of true or genuine historical development, i.e., the narrative, second sense of history distinguished above. Whatever the value of those marksand Newman himself seems to have had changing opinions of their valuethey are posited as ways of determining that the narrative of how the doctrine was articulated indicates a valid historical process.65 I think it is fair to say therefore that, with Newmans theory, we find a parallel to Bonaventures notion of the history of the Church as the growth in wisdom. As Newman puts it:
that the increase and expansion of the Christian Creed and Ritual, and the variations which have attended the process in the case of individual writers and Churches, are the necessary attendants on any philosophy or polity which takes possession of the intellect and heart, and has had any wide or extended dominion; that, from the nature of the human mind, time is necessary for the full comprehension and perfection of great ideas; and that the highest and most wonderful truths, though communicated to the world once for all by inspired teachers, could not be comprehended all at once by the recipients, but, as being received and transmitted by minds not inspired and through media which were human, have required only the longer time and deeper thoughts for their full elucidation. This may be called the Theory of Development of Doctrine.66
The increase and expansion of the Christian creed, the full comprehension and perfection of great ideas, longer time and deeper thoughts for their full elucidationsuch quotations seem to suggest that the development of doctrine is not just a fact of history but a meaningful direction in the life of the Church, engendered by the divines irruption into history in Christ, and moving in some God-directed way toward higher understanding, i.e., toward wisdom.67
65 This point is coherent with either way of interpreting how Newman thinks this historical process functions in defining doctrine. See Lash, Development, 11621. 66 Dev. 2930. 67 I am leaving open the question of how linear Newmans notion of history is, because this does not affect my analysis. Nonetheless, there is sufficient reason to think that Bonaventures theory is a good deal more linear than Newmans, in part because he doesnt have the advantages
199
Thus, Newmans theory of doctrinal development is simultaneously a theology of history, because it supposes that the contingent, historical events by which the Church differentiates original revelation into lived doctrine is itself a meaningful process. Second, this process is positive, not only because it crystallizes genuine differentiations of original revelation but also because it consists in a deepening, a growth in understanding.68 Finally, it follows from this that doctrinal development has something of the character of a means, whose end is the growth in supernaturally induced wisdom in the community of the Church.69 Hence there is a theology of history here, not only in the sense of a theological meditation on what history is, but specifically a narrative of how the events which characterize doctrinal development are simultaneously the narrative of how the pilgrim Church grows in wisdom. Newmans theory, therefore, seems to exemplify the point I made above, namely, that a theory of doctrinal development typically implies a theology of history, since the historical process of doctrinal differentiation itself has theological significance as part of the narrative of the Churchs historical life. What Newmans full-blown theology of history might have looked like, had he had any desire to build one, is certainly an open question. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a nineteenth-century English divine even thinking in such terms. But Newmans implicit theology of history is sufficient for us to see the interconnection between doctrinal development and theology of history, just as Bonaventures could show us the same.
V.
Conclusion by Way of Comparison and Contrast. My discussions of Bonaventure and Newman illustrate how theologies of doctrinal development and of history interconnect with each other. In each case, the theories of doctrinal development are simultaneously theologies of history, because the historical process of the Churchs pilgrimage is bound up with the assumption that the understanding of the original revelation of Jesus Christ, manifest in the Scriptures, leads to a deeper and richer understanding through time. In each case, as we have seen, the significance of the historical pilgrimage of the Church consists not only in the fact that it is by living through the vicissitudes of history the members of the
of modern scientific history to show just how non-linear a conception he would have to use. See Lash, Development, 5760, for a discussion of the linear versus episodic dimensions of development in Newman. 68 Dev., 2930. 69 While I cannot develop this point here, it also follows that misunderstandings could in principle be a part of a providential plan, assuming that not doctrine itself but wisdom is the goal of the process.
200
Church find salvation. It is also that there is an important meaning to history itself for the Church, namely, an historical process through which the Church is destined to grow in wisdom. In both Bonaventure and Newman, therefore, we find an important this-worldly meaning to history which supplements and, indeed, in significant ways contrasts with the old Augustinian assumption that history is significant only in terms of time-transcendent salvation. While neither Bonaventure nor Newman would deny that transcendent meaning of history which Augustine emphasizes, both clearly attribute to historical existence an important immanent meaning, namely, the growth and expansion of wisdom in the life of the Church. Along with the transcendent end of salvation, therefore, there is also an immanent end to the Churchs pilgrimage, one which at least includes the richer understanding of revelation through a process of development and differentiation of doctrine through the process of historical existence.70 However, Bonaventures and Newmans contrasting treatments of these issues also provoke significant questions in need of further research. Let me outline two of the issues that I see. First, the contrasting treatments of Bonaventure and Newman hinge significantly on the issues provoking their respective investigations. Newman, dependent as he is on the achievements of the rise of the scholarly discipline of history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and specifically the English tradition of patristic scholarship, needs to posit a theory of development because of the fruits of these researches. Thus Newmans theory is in many respects a product of the new scientific history and the detailed analyses of actual doctrinal shifts it discovered.71 This historical study posed a problem which needed to be resolved in terms of systematic theology and Newman attempts to supply it.72 In contrast, Bonaventure does not begin with the fact of doctrinal development but actually requires a notion of doctrinal development, in order to justify the admitted difference between the life of the Franciscans (and the mendicant orders more generally) and modes of Christian living up to his time. Doctrinal variation is not the problem to be solved, for Bonaventure, but is itself the solution to what he sees as the more basic problem, namely, how to justify the new way of Franciscan life theologically. Indeed, in this respect, Bonaventure and Newman are in a sense on opposite ends of the spectrum: one attempting to justify change in the light of the tradition, the other admitting a new way of life which he believes cannot be justified by the tradition, but which nonetheless should be considered the next step in the tradition, since it is justified by the Theories
A fuller description of this in Newman can be found in White, Doctrinal Development. Chadwick, From Bossuet, 1434. 72 Though it should be noted that Newman typically calls the Essay a philosophical and not a theological work. This is in part, I suspect, because he thinks that many of the principles he articulates apply to all ideas, not only the idea of revelation.
70 71
201
embedded in Scripture and known through the illuminated practice of this new form of Christian life. Thus development, for Bonaventure, is not restricted to an already determinate past but juts into the present and even into a prophetic future. Another contrast can be found in the treatment that each gives to the issue of doctrinal variation. Bonaventure articulates a highly speculative, symbolic description of the process of development. His use of a symbolic method is important because the multivalence of symbols allows him to unite under one symbol the potentially varying interpretations of Franciscan life. Bonaventures way of uniting is therefore by allowing a certain amount of variation within a singular symbol. His analysis is also highly speculative, in that it is not based on actual empirical materials except in the very broad sense of empirical in that he tries to find historical parallelisms in the Old and New Testament and apply them to somewhat scanty historical materials regarding the life of the Church. Furthermore, Bonaventures speculation resides not only in the parallelisms of the Old and New Testament periods but also in some measure to the future, through a prophetic reading of the Scripture.73 If that is a valid description of Bonaventure, Newmans theory of development is in several respects the opposite. Newman develops his theory in a fully empirical way using the latest historical research. But such an analysis therefore has no (future) prophetical dimension to it: it does not seek the future direction of doctrine but only attempts to describe what really has happened and to proffer some theoretical explication of the validation of such change, an hypothesis to account for a difficulty. There is also therefore no specifically eschatological point of view or any specific polemics against anti-mendicant, anti-Christian, or anti-ecclesiastical thought in Newmans theorizing,74 whereas Bonaventures is aimed directly at the attack on mendicant poverty, pagan Aristotelianism, and radical Joachism. Newmans theory, in contrast to Bonaventures, concerns a much more modest inter-denominational Christian discussion as he attempts to understand who it is that inherits the Apostolic tradition. These contrasts help to highlight just how moderate Newmans theory is as compared to Bonaventures. The lack of strict empirical basis for his theory, the perceived disasters standing at the Churchs door, the belief in the specific significance of St. Francis and his Order all lead Bonaventure to vast speculative territories in which the issue of doctrinal development not only is not the
73 Because of Bonaventures highly speculative method, his use of doctrinal development would probably not be considered adequate by modern theological standards. Compare, e.g., Karl Rahner, The Development of Dogma, 3940, where one criterion for a valid theory of doctrinal development is that it is empirically based. 74 Though there are texts in Newman which suggest that the work of Anti-Christ consists fundamentally in obscuring and corrupting genuine doctrine. See Guenter Biemer, Newman on Tradition, trans. Kevin Smyth (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), esp. 1358.
202
biggest problem but is the solution to what he considers significantly deeper problems. Perhaps the closest contemporary parallel would be the development of liberation theology and the theology of basic communities in the 1970s as a reaction to the perceived threat to the poor and to Christianity itself in Latin America by industrial capitalism and political fascism: one might argue that, parallel to Bonaventures arguments for the original Franciscan communities, basic communities are not justified by tradition but are indeed the next step in tradition, as some liberation theologians have suggested. In any case, it appears that Bonaventure is willing to interpret contemporaneous events and even future events into his meditations on the developmental aspects of history. Comparatively, Newmans theory must seem quite moderate in its goals: it does not seek a new way of life but to justify an existing one. It does not attempt to investigate a broad theological territory but only to explain what historically occurred in the life of the Church. Nor is Newman attempting to understand any eschatological or still less apocalyptic issues as he works through the problem of doctrinal development. Compared to Bonaventures speculations, Newmans are extremely tame. Indeed, more than about Bonaventure or Newman, this may in fact tell us something significant about how surprisingly narrow the range of Catholic theology in the nineteenth century was in some respects, in that Newman could be considered a liberal for positing any change in doctrine at all, while the medieval Doctor of the Church, St. Bonaventure, poses far more radical and speculative theses about doctrinal possibilities and changes in Christian life than Newman would likely have countenanced. In the final analysis, these two approaches are interestingly similar in the midst of truly astonishing differences. Though these theories share some common themes, the varying motives and contrasting styles of each raises as many questions as answers. In particular, the study of Bonaventure and Newman seems almost to demand a discussion of the relative value and appropriateness of the historical versus speculative approaches to doctrinal development and between the factual analysis of doctrinal change versus the speculative and prophetic notions, such as those of the Theories or seminal reasons in Scripture. But whether or not such research is ever undertaken, there appears sufficient reason here to claim that Bonaventure has at least a rudimentary theory of doctrinal development, including some potentially valuable concepts for understanding doctrinal development in general, and some of its wide-ranging implications.75
Franciscan University of Steubenville Steubenville, Ohio
I would like to thank the National Institute of Newman Studies in Pittsburgh, PA, for awarding me a summer fellowship in 2008, which accorded me both the financial support and the leisure to do research for this paper.
75

Bonaventure Problems On Doctrinal Development

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Bonaventure Problems On Doctrinal Development

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

St.

Bonaventure and the Problem of Doctrinal Development

2011, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 85, No. 1

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

St. Bonaventure and the Problem of Doctrinal Development

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

St. Bonaventure and the Problem of Doctrinal Development

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

St. Bonaventure and the Problem of Doctrinal Development

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

St. Bonaventure and the Problem of Doctrinal Development

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

St. Bonaventure and the Problem of Doctrinal Development

Ratzinger, Theology, 42ff. Ibid., 79.

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

St. Bonaventure and the Problem of Doctrinal Development

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

St. Bonaventure and the Problem of Doctrinal Development

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

St. Bonaventure and the Problem of Doctrinal Development

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

St. Bonaventure and the Problem of Doctrinal Development

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

St. Bonaventure and the Problem of Doctrinal Development

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

St. Bonaventure and the Problem of Doctrinal Development

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

St. Bonaventure and the Problem of Doctrinal Development

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

You might also like