An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine

Part 1. Doctrinal Developments Viewed in Themselves

Religion is an idea

The idea which represents an object or supposed object is

commensurate with the sum total of its possible aspects, however
they may vary in the separate consciousness of individuals; and in
proportion to the variety of aspects under which it presents itself to
various minds is its force and depth, and the argument for its reality.
Ordinarily an idea is not brought home to the intellect as objective
except through this variety; like bodily substances, which are not
apprehended except under the clothing of their properties and
results, and which admit of being walked round, and surveyed on
opposite sides, and in different perspectives, and in contrary lights,
in evidence of their reality. And, as views of a material object may be
taken from points so remote or so opposed, that they seem at first
sight incompatible, and especially as their shadows will be
disproportionate, or even monstrous, and yet all these anomalies will
disappear and all these contrarieties {35} be adjusted, on
ascertaining the point of vision or the surface of projection in each
case; so also all the aspects of an idea are capable of coalition, and
of a resolution into the object to which it belongs; and the primâ facie
dissimilitude of its aspects becomes, when explained, an argument
for its substantiveness and integrity, and their multiplicity for its
originality and power.

Tôn giáo là một ý niệm

Một ý niệm đại diện cho một đối tượng hay một đối tượng được giả
định thì tương xứng với toàn bộ những phương hiện có thể có của
nó. Tuy nhiên chúng có thể biến dịch trong các ý thức riêng biệt của
các cá thể khác nhau, và cân xứng với những phương diện khác
nhau. Dưới các phương diện ấy, nó tự phơi bày sức mạnh và chiều
sâu cũng như lý do hiện hữu của nó cho mọi tâm trí. Thông thường,
một ý niệm sẽ không trở nên quen thuộc với tâm trí như là một điều
gì khách quan ngoài chính sự đa dạng (như vừa nói). Ta ví chuyện
này tựa như những sự vật có một hình dáng thì thường được nhận
dạng dưới dạng những dạng quần áo bao bọc cho nó, tức là những
thuộc tính và những kết quả, chính nó, khi được khảo sát tới lui hay
cân nhắc từ các mặt đối lập và từ những góc nhìn khác nhau và trong
ánh sáng tương phản, người ta nhận ra hiện thực của nó như là một
dạng bằng chứng chắc chắn. Và cũng như khi người ta nhìn các đối
tượng vật chất từ nhiều khoảng cách dài ngắn, thì ban đầu ta có vẻ
nhìn thấy nó như là những sự vật không tương thích và bóng của
chúng thì mất cân đối hay thậm chí nhìn xấu tệ, nhưng khi tất cả
những dị thường ấy biến mất và những tương phản được điều chỉnh
lại, nhất là khi gia cố điểm nhìn của chúng ta cho chắc chắn, thì toàn
bộ mọi phương diện của một ý niệm có khả năng đi vào một sự hoà
quyện và đưa ra một độ sắc nét cho đối tượng, và một khi những dị
biệt ở ngoại diện này trở nên một lý lẽ cho sự đồng chất và hội nhất
của nó, chính là sự phong phú và đa dạng trong nguồn gốc và sức
mạnh.

The Antecedent Argument in behalf of Developments in

Christian Doctrine

Roman Catholic Doctrine as known today is “…the historical and

logical continuation of the body of doctrine…in every preceding
century successively till we come to the first. Whether it be a corrupt
development or a legitimate, conducted on sound logic or fallacious,
the present so-called Catholic religion is the successor, the
representative, and the heir of the religion of the so-called Catholic
Church of primitive times” (240).

The Historical Argument in behalf of the existing developments

“…the doctrines of which the present Catholic religion consist are

prima facie the correct, true, faithful, legitimate development of the
doctrines which preceded them, and not their corruption” (240.) No
“case can be made out against that religion, to prove that it is
materially corrupt, and not in its substance Apostolic” (240). So, “It
appears then that there has been a certain general type of
Christianity in every age, by which it is known at first sight…. And it
appears that this type has remained entire from first to last, in spite
of the process of development which seems to be attributed by all
parties, for good or bad, to the doctrines, rites, and usages in which
Christianity consists; or, in other words, that the changes which have
taken place in Christianity have not been such as to destroy that
type…” (335).

Part 2. Doctrinal Developments viewed Relatively to Doctrinal

Corruptions

Application of the First Note: Preservation of its Type

“It was said, then, that a true development retains the essential idea
of the subject from which it has proceeded, and a corruption loses it
(241). This parallels the development of a living organism from
conception to maturity (241). “An empire or a religion may have
many changes: but when we speak of its development, we consider
it to be fulfilling, not to be belying its destiny” (122). “A popular leader
may go through a variety of professions, he may court parties and
break with them, he may contradict himself in words, and undo his
own measures, yet there may be a steady fulfillment of certain
objects, or adherence to certain plain doctrines, which impress upon
beholders, not his scrupulousness, but his sincerity and consistency”
(123).

Application of the Second Note: Continuity of its Principles

“Doctrines expand variously according to the mind, individual or

social, into which they are received; and the peculiarities of the
recipient are the regulating power, the law, the organization, or, as it
may be called, the form of the development. The life of doctrines
may be said to consist in the law or principle which they embody”
(124).

“Principles are abstract and general, doctrines relate to facts;

doctrines develop, and principles do not” (127). “Principles are
popularly said to develop when they are but exemplified; thus the
various sects of Protestantism, unconnected as they are with each
other, are called development of the principle of Private Judgment,
of which really they are applications and results” (129).

“Doctrine without its correspondent principle remains barren, if not

lifeless, of which the Greek Church seems an instance” (129).
“Pagans may have, heretics cannot have, the same principles as
Catholics…. Principle is a better test of heresy than doctrine” (129)
“The doctrines of heresy are accidents and soon run to an end; its
principles are everlasting” (129).

Application of the Third Note: its Assimilative Power

“In the physical world whatever has life is characterized by growth,

so that in no respect to grow is to cease to live. It grows by taking
into its own substance external materials; and this absorption or
assimilation is completed when the materials appropriated come to
belong to it or enter into its unity” (130). “Thus, a power of
development is a proof of life, not only in its essay, but in its success;
for a mere formula either does not expand or is shattered in
expanding. A living idea becomes many, yet remains one. The
attempt at development shows the presence of a principle, and its
success the presence of an idea. Principles stimulate thought, and
an idea keeps it together” (131).

Application of the Fourth Note: its Logical Sequence

“When an idea is living, that is influential and operative in the minds

of recipients, it is sure to develop according to the principles on which
they are formed; instances of such a process, though vague and
isolated, may occur from the very first, though a lapse of time be
necessary to bring it to perfection. And since developments are in
great measure only aspects of the idea from which they come, and
all of them are natural consequences of it, it is often a matter of
accident in what order they are carried out in individual minds; and it
is in no wise strange that here and there definite specimens should
very early occur, which in the historical course are not found till a late
day…. Nothing is more common, for instance, than accounts or
legends of the anticipations, which great men have in boyhood of the
bent of their minds, as afterwards displayed in their history” (133-
134).

Application of the Fifth Note: Anticipation of its Future

“Though it is a matter of accident in what order or degree

developments of a common idea which show themselves…, yet on a
large field they will on the whole be gradual and orderly, nay, in
logical sequence” (which may not be a conscious process) (136).
“Afterwards, however, this logical character which the whole wears
becomes a test that the process has been a true development, not a
perversion or corruption from its naturalness” (137). “Again, the
doctrine of the Sacraments leads to the doctrine of Justification;
Justification to Original sin; Original sin to the merit of Celibacy”
(199). “The Mass and Real Presence are parts of one; the veneration
of Saints and their relics are part of one; their intercessory power,
and the Purgatorial State, and again the Mass and that State are
correlative…. You must accept the whole or reject the whole;
rejection does but enfeeble, and amputation mutilate: (199).
“Moreover, since the doctrines all together make up the integral
religion, it follows that the several evidences which respectively
support those doctrines belong to the whole, and are available in the
defense of any” (199).

Application of the Sixth Note: Conservative Action on its Past

“As developments which are preceded by definite indications have a

fair presumption in their favour, so those which do but contract 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” (141). The development is gradual. However, “…so great
a paradox cannot be maintained as that truth literally leads to
falsehood” (142). But “True religion is the summit and perfection of
false religion; 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 is dividing” (143). “And thus
a sixth test of a true development is its being an addition which is
conservative of what has gone before it” (144).

Application of the Seventh Note: its Chronic Vigour

“Since corruption of an idea, as far as its appearance goes, is a sort

of accident or affection of its development…it is as has been
observed, a brief and rapid process…. Corruption cannot, therefore
be of long standing; and thus duration is another test of a faithful
development” (145). “The course of heresies is always short. It has
a “’transitory character’” (147). “If Christianity is a fact…and
impresses an idea of itself on our minds, that idea will in course of
time develop in a series of ideas connected and harmonious with one
another, and unchangeable and complete, as is the external fact
itself which is thus represented” (148). “And the more claim an idea
has to be considered living, the more various will be its aspects; and
the more social and political is its nature, the more complicated and
subtle will be its developments, and the longer and more eventful will
be its course. Such is Christianity” (148). Newman adds, “Hence, all
bodies of Christianity develop the doctrines of Scripture” (150).
 An Essay in aid of a Grammar of Assent

Chapter 5. Apprehension and Assent in the matter of Religion

{98} WE are now able to determine what a dogma of faith is, and
what it is to believe it. A dogma is a proposition; it stands for a notion
or for a thing; and to believe it is to give the assent of the mind to it,
as it stands for the one or for the other. To give a real assent to it is
an act of religion; to give a notional, is a theological act. It is
discerned, rested in, and appropriated as a reality, by the religious
imagination; it is held as a truth, by the theological intellect.

Not as if there were in fact, or could be, any line of demarcation or

party-wall between these two modes of assent, the religious and the
theological. As intellect is common to all men as well as imagination,
every religious man is to a certain extent a theologian, and no
theology can start or thrive without the initiative and abiding presence
of religion. As in matters of this world, sense, sensation, instinct,
intuition, supply us with facts, and the intellect uses them; so, as
regards our relations with the Supreme Being, we get our facts from
the witness, first of nature, then of revelation, {99} and our doctrines,
in which they issue, through the exercise of abstraction and
inference. This is obvious; but it does not interfere with holding that
there is a theological habit of mind, and a religious, each distinct from
each, religion using theology, and theology using religion. This being
understood, I propose to consider the dogmas of the Being of a God,
and of the Divine Trinity in Unity, in their relation to assent, both
notional and real, and principally to real assent;—however, I have not
yet finished all I have to say by way of introduction.

Now first, my subject is assent, and not inference. I am not proposing

to set forth the arguments which issue in the belief of these doctrines,
but to investigate what it is to believe in them, what the mind does,
what it contemplates, when it makes an act of faith. It is true that the
same elementary facts which create an object for an assent, also
furnish matter for an inference: and in showing what we believe, I
shall unavoidably be in a measure showing why we believe; but this
is the very reason that makes it necessary for me at the outset to
insist on the real distinction between these two concurring and
coincident courses of thought, and to premise by way of caution, lest
I should be misunderstood, that I am not considering the question
that there is a God, but rather what God is.

And secondly, I mean by belief, not precisely faith, because faith, in

its theological sense, includes a belief, not only in the thing believed,
but also in the ground of believing; that is, not only belief in certain
doctrines, but belief in them expressly because God has revealed
{100} them; but here I am engaged only with what is called the
material object of faith,—with the thing believed, not with the formal.
The Almighty witnesses to Himself in Revelation; we believe that He
is One and that He is Three, because He says so. We believe also
what He tells us about His Attributes, His providences and
dispensations, His determinations and acts, what He has done and
what He will do. And if all this is too much for us, whether to bring at
one time before our minds from its variety, or even to apprehend at
all or enunciate from our narrowness of intellect or want of learning,
then at least we believe in globo all that He has revealed to us about
Himself, and that, because He has revealed it. However, this
"because He says it" does not enter into the scope of the present
inquiry, but only the truths themselves, and these particular truths,
"He is One," "He is Three;" and of these two, both of which are in
Revelation, I shall consider "He is One," not as a revealed truth, but
as, what it is also, a natural truth, the foundation of all religion. And
with it I begin. {101}