To Be Deep in History is to Cease to Be Protestant?

In response to Cardinal John Henry Newman’s (1801-1890 A.D.) claim, “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.” (John Henry Cardinal Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, [London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1890], Part I, Introduction, p. 8.)

Answer. This assertion appears rather hypocritical coming from a man who was impelled to invent his “acorn” to “oak tree” [1.] development theory of Roman Catholic doctrine (Cf. Idem, Part I, Ch. 2, §. I.16, pp. 73-74; cf. Idem, Part II, Ch. 5, §. I.1, pp. 171-172.) inorder to explain away his inability to adduce any substantial historiographical evidence from the Patristic authors in support of most of Rome’s modern dogmatic pontifications (e.g., papal infallibility). [2.]

Additional Context Regarding Newman’s “Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.” “It had been long recognized that the growth of church authority depended on claims in documents that were fabrications and forgeries, most notably The Donation of Constantine and the Pseudo-Isidiorian Decretals. …Newman had been exercised about this problem.” (Robert Letham, Systematic Theology, [Wheaton: Crossway, 2019], 2.7.3, pp. 229.) George Salmon:

When Dr. Newman became a Roman Catholic, it was necessary for him in some way to reconcile this step with the proofs he had previously given that certain distinctive Romish doctrines were unknown to the early Church. The historical arguments he had advanced in his Anglican days were incapable of refutation even by himself. But it being hopeless to maintain that the present teaching of Roman Catholics is identical with the doctrine held in the primitive Church, he set himself to show that though not the same, it was a great deal better. This is the object of the celebrated Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, which he published simultaneously with his submission to the Roman Church. (George Salmon, The Infallibility of the Church: Second Edition, [London: John Murray, 1890], p. 31.) [3.]

Excursus. It must be noted that historical Protestantism has no objection to the idea of (genuine) “development” of doctrine. [4.] E.g., the Trinitarian theology of the fourth and fifth centuries has clearly “developed” (in terms of the church’s theological understanding of the doctrine) when compared with Patristic writings from the first and second centuries. However this is a legitimate example of a “development” (i.e., the church’s understanding of the nature of the Triune God has grown via the contemplation of the holy Scriptures, as guided and enabled by the Holy Spirit). [5.] “No addition has been made to their number, and no new explanation has been afforded of their nature or relations. …They are now what they have been from the beginning. They are, however, far better known, and more clearly understood…” (Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology: Vol. I, [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1871], pp. 116, 116-117.) However, what Newman speaks of is not the “development” of doctrine but rather doctrinal creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing). [6.] Or, if the reader prefers, doctrinal corruption (or devolution) via the accretion of foreign (i.e. pagan) elements. [7.] The fundamental problem with Newman’s theory was his failure to “...allow in his definitions of development and corruption the possibility of corruption through excess and exaggeration.” (Peter Toon, The Development of Doctrine in the Church, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1979], p. 20.) Ultimately the seven tests Newman proposes fail to achieve their stated purposes “…because the fact of development by excess was not allowed for by them; thus, they could not discover the corruption of exaggeration.” (Idem, p. 21.) [8.] Additionally we would note, with William Cunningham, that there are significant issues regarding the application of Newman’s (flawed) system to the ongoing debate between Roman Catholics and Protestants:

Mr Newman has an ingenious and subtle, but not a very logical mind, and he has taken no pains to explain the conditions and precise results of his argument, or to point out the exact way in which it stands related to, and bears upon, the general argument between Protestants and Romanists. …The theory of development, if established and conceded, merely removes a general preliminary objection against Romanism. It gives no positive weight or validity to any Romish arguments . . . so the new theory of development, even when proved or conceded, requires to be followed up by specific proof, that every Romish addition to the New Testament system is a true and legitimate development, and not a corruption. (William Cunningham, Discussions on Church Principles: Popish, Erastian, and Presbyterian, [Edinburg: T. & T. Clark, 1863], pp. 45-46, 52.) [9.]

The Abuse. “…Newman’s ideas have enabled Rome to argue that whatever it teaches now is the church’s tradition.” (Letham, Op. cit., 2.7.3.1, p. 231.) See, for example, the words of the respected Roman Catholic theologian Walter Burghardt:

A valid argument for a dogmatic tradition, for the Church’s teaching in the past, can be constructed from her teaching in the present. And that is actually the approach theology took to the definability of the Assumption before November 1, 1950. It began with a fact: the current consensus, in the Church teaching and in the Church taught, that the corporeal Assumption was revealed by God. If that is true, if that is the teaching of the magisterium of the moment, if that is the Church’s tradition, then it was always part and parcel of the Church’s teaching, part and parcel of tradition. And that, understandably enough, is what the Bull of definition actually asserted: we know that the Assumption is revealed truth, because the whole Church believes it. (Walter J. Burghardt, S.J., “The Catholic Concept of Tradition in the Light of Modern Theological Thought;” In: The Catholic Theological Society of America: Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Convention, [Detroit: 1951], p. 74. Ecclesiastical approbation: Nihil Obstat: John M. A. Fearns, S.T.D., P.A., Censor Librorum. Imprimatur: Francis Cardinal Spellman, D.D., Archbishop of New York. New York, December 3, 1951.) [10.]

Additionally, we would note with John Jewel that:

…the false prophets of all ages, which stood up against the prophets of God, and resisted Esaias, Jeremy, Christ, and the apostles, at no time craked of any thing so much, as they did of the name of the church. And for none other cause did they so fiercely vex them, and call them renegades and apostates, than for that they had forsaken their fellowship, and kept not the ordinances of the elders. Wherefore if we would follow the judgments of those men only, who then governed the church, and would respect nothing else, neither God nor his word, it must needs be confessed, that the apostles were rightly and by just law condemned of them to death, because they fell from the bishops and priests, that is, you must think, from the catholic church: and because they made new alterations in religion, contrary to the bishops’ and priests’ wills, yea, and for all their spurning so earnestly against it. (John Jewel, The Defense of the Apology of the Church of England, Part IV; In: The Works of John Jewel, D.D., Bishop of Salisbury: In Eight Volumes: Vol. V, ed. Richard William Jelf, [Oxford: At The University Press, 1848], pp. 456-457.) [10.5]

A More Appropriate Aphorism. Contra Newman, I find the words of the Roman Catholic Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Henry Edward Manning (1808-1892 A.D.), to provide a far more honest and accurate depiction of the Roman position:

It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine. ...The only Divine evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the Church at this hour. (Henry Edward Manning, The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation, [London: Longmans, Green, And Co., 1865], pp. 226, 227-228).

Similarly, observe the words of St. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556 A.D.), the founder of the Roman Catholic Jesuit order, who also offers a more truthful representation of the Roman position:

…that we may be altogether of the same mind and in conformity with the Church herself; if she shall have defined anything to be black which to our eyes appears to be white, we ought in like manner to pronounce it to be white. (St. Ignatius Loyola, “Rules for Thinking with the Church,” Rule 13; trans. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, trans. Charles Seager, [Louisville: Webb, M’Gill & Co., 1849], p. 206. Cf. Documents of the Christian Church: Second Edition, ed. Henry Bettenson, [London, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1967], p. 260.)

Likewise, the words of the Roman Catholic Cardinal Yves Congar (1904-1995 A.D.):

It is the Church, not the Fathers, the consensus of the Church in submission to its Saviour which is the sufficient rule of our Christianity. …Historical documentation is at the factual level; it must leave room for a judgement made not in the light of the documentary evidence alone, but of the Church’s faith. (Yves Congar, O.P., Tradition and Traditions: An Historical and a Theological Essay, [New York: The Macmillan Company, 1967], p. 399.)

Finally, observe the words of Pope Pius IX (1792-1878 A.D.), in whom we find the epitome of the Roman position (i.e. sola Roma):

Yes, it is an error, because I, I am tradition, I, I am the Church! (Pope Pius IX, Quoted In: Owen Chadwick, Oxford History of the Christian Church: A History of the Popes: 1830-1914, [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003], p. 210. Cf. Idem, p. 211, fn. 39.) [11.]

Many contemporary Roman Catholics are quite enamored with Newman’s aphorism: “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.” (Newman, Op. cit., p. 8.) However, a far more accurate aphorism might look something like this: “...one can be a good Roman Catholic and a bad historian, and one can be a good historian and a bad Roman Catholic, but one cannot be a good Roman Catholic and a good historian.” (Keith A. Mathison, “Book Review: Reforming Apologetics: Retrieving the Classic Reformed Approach to Defending the Faith by J.V. Fesko,” (March 30, 2020).)

Cardinal Newman would have done well to heed the words of Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage (c. 200-258 A.D.), concerning the relationship between custom [12.] and truth: “…for custom without truth is the antiquity of error [Nam consuetudo sine veritate vetustas erroris est].” (Cyprian of Carthage, Epistle 73.9 [To Pompey]; PL, 3:1134 [Epistola LXXIV]; trans. ANF, 5:389.) See also: ccel.org. [13.] Alas he did not.

Appendix: John Calvin Contra Cardinal Newman.

John Calvin: (commenting on Roman Catholicism)

     Moreover, they unjustly set the ancient fathers against us (I mean the ancient writers of a better age of the church) as if in them they had supporters of their own impiety. If the contest were to be determined by patristic authority, the tide of victory—to put it very modestly—would turn to our side. Now, these fathers have written many wise and excellent things. Still, what commonly happens to men has befallen them too, in some instances. For these so-called pious children of theirs, with all their sharpness of wit and judgment and spirit, worship only the faults and errors of the fathers. The good things that these fathers have written they either do not notice, or misrepresent or pervert. You might say that their only care is to gather dung amid gold. Then, with a frightful to-do, they overwhelm us as despisers and adversaries of the fathers! But we do not despise them; in fact, if it were to our present purpose, I could with no trouble at all prove that the greater part of what we are saying today meets their approval. Yet we are so versed in their writings as to remember always that all things are ours [I Cor. 3:21-22], to serve us, not to lord it over us [Luke 22:24-25], and that we all belong to the one Christ [I Cor. 3:23], whom we must obey in all things without exception [cf. Col. 3:20]. He who does not observe this distinction will have nothing certain in religion, inasmuch as these holy men were ignorant of many things, often disagreed among themselves, and sometimes even contradicted themselves. 

     …It was one of the fathers who said that our God neither drinks nor eats, and therefore has no need of plates or cups.[Acacius, bishop of Amida, addressing his clergy as he was about to melt the gold and silver vessels of the church to obtain food for captive Persians. Socrates, Ecclesiastical History vii. 21 (MPG 67. 781-784; tr. NPNF 2 ser. II. 164).] Another, that sacred rites do not require gold, and those things not bought with gold do not please with gold.[Ambrose, De officiis clericorum ii. 28 (MPL 16. 140; tr. [On the Duties of the Clergy] NPNF 2 ser. X. 64).] They therefore transgress this limit when in their ceremonies they take so much delight in gold, silver, ivory, marble, precious stones, and silks; and think that God is not rightly worshiped unless everything swims with untoward splendor, or, rather, mad excess.

     It was a father who said that he freely ate meat on the day others abstained from it, because he was a Christian.[From Sozomen’s description of Spyridion, bishop of Trimithus in Cyprus, Ecclesiastical History i. 11; Cassiodorus, Historia tripartita I. 10 (MPL 69. 895; tr. NPNF 2 ser. 2. 247).] They transgress the limits, therefore, when they execrate any person who has tasted of meat in Lent.

     There were two fathers, one of whom said that a monk who does not labor with his hands must be considered equal to a thug, or (if you prefer) a brigand;[...Serapion, head of a monastery near Arsinoë in Egypt, who required his monks to earn their food by labor. Sozomen, op. cit., vi. 28; Cassiodorus, Historia tripartita VIII. i (MPL 69. 1103; tr. NPNF 2 ser. II. 365).] the second, that it is not lawful for monks to live off the goods of others, even though they be assiduous in contemplation, in prayer, and in study.[Augustine, On the Work of Monks xiv-xvii (MPL 40. 560-564; tr. NPNF III. 511-513).] They have also transgressed this limit when they have put the lazy, wine-cask bellies of monks in these stews and brothels to be crammed with substance of others.

     It was a father who termed it a dreadful abomination to see an image either of Christ or of some saint painted in the churches of Christians.[“Epistle of Epiphanius to John of Jerusalem,” translated by Jerome, in his Letters li. 9 (CSEL 54. 411; tr. NPNF 2 ser. VI. 89). Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, tells how in a church at Anablatha he tore up a curtain bearing an image and replaced it by a plain curtain. He declares images in churches “contrary to our religion” (A.D. 394). Cf. I. XI. 11, 16; I. XII. 2.] “What is reverenced is not to be depicted upon walls” was not the mere declaration of one man but the decree of an ecclesiastical council.[Council of Elvira (Illiberitanum) in Spain, ca. A.D. 305, canon xxxvi: “That there ought not to be images in a church, that what is worshiped and adored should not be depicted on the walls.” Hefele-Leclercq I. 240; Mansi II. 264.] They are far from remaining within these limits when they leave not a corner free of images. Another father counseled that, after having exercised in burial the office of humanity toward the dead, we should let them rest.[Ambrose, De Abraham I. ix. 80 (MPL 14. 472).] They break these limits when they stir up perpetual solicitude for the dead.

     It was one of the fathers, who testified that in the Eucharist the substance of bread and wine remained and did not cease to be, just as in Christ the Lord the substance and nature of man remained, joined to the divine nature.[“Et tamen esse non desinit substantia vel natura panis et vini.” Gelasius, De duabus naturis in Christo adversus Eutychem et Nestorium, Tract. iii. 14 (Epistolae Romanorum pontificum, ed. A. Thiel, I. 541).] Therefore, they overstep the bounds in pretending that when the Lord’s words are repeated the substance of bread and wine ceases and is transubstantiated into body and blood.[Canon i of the Fourth Lateran Council, A.D. 1215, declares that in the sacrament of the altar the bread is by divine power transubstantiated into the body and the wine into the blood of Christ. (Mansi XXII. 954; Hefele-Leclercq V. 1325; tr. H. J. Schroeder, Disciplinary Decrees of the General Councils, p. 338.)]

     They were fathers who, as they set forth only one Eucharist for the whole church and consequently excluded wicked and criminal persons, most gravely condemned all those who though present did not receive it.[Chrysostom, Commentary on Ephesians, ch. I, hom. iii. 4, 5 (MPG 62.28-30; tr. NPNF XIII. 63-65), and Calixtus as quoted by Gratian, Decretum (De consecratione) III. ii. 18 (Friedberg I. 1320; MPL 187. 1759).] How far have they removed the boundaries when they fill not only churches but also private houses with their Masses, admitting anyone at all to observe them, each one the more willingly the more he pays, however impure and wicked he may be! They invite no one to faith in Christ and believing communion of the sacraments; rather, they put their work on sale, as the grace and merit of Christ.

     There were two fathers, one of whom decreed that those content with participation in one kind, but abstaining from the other, were to be excluded entirely from participation in the Sacred Supper of Christ;[In a passage dubiously attributed to Pope Gelasius and found in Gratian (Decretum III. ii. 12; Friedberg I. 1318; MPL 59. 141; 187, 1736), communicants are required to take the wine with the bread or abstain from both: “aut integra sacramenta percipiant, aut ad integris arceantur.” The withdrawal of the wine from the laity called forth the protests of Scriptural sects, especially the Hussites.] the other strongly contends that one must not deny the blood of their Lord to Christian folk, who, in confessing him, are bidden to shed their own blood.[Cyprian, Letters lvii. 2 (CSEL 3. ii. 651 f.; tr. ANF [letter liii. 2] V. 337).] They have removed these landmarks when they have commanded by an inviolable law the very thing that the former father punished by excommunication and the latter reproved with a valid reason.[Council of Constance, session 13 (1415), definition on communion in both kinds. This was confirmed by Martin V’s bull In eminentis (1418) (Texts in Mansi XXVII. 727 f., 1215, 1219).]

     It was a father who affirmed it rashness, when judging of some obscure matter, to take one side or another without clear and evident witness of Scripture.[Augustine, De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptismo parvulorum II. xxxvi. 59 (MPL 44. 186; CSEL 60. 128; tr. NPNF V. 67f.): “In obscure matters where the Scriptures do not give guidance, rash judgment is to be avoided.” Cf. Augustine, Letters cxl. 37. 85 (MPL 33. 576; tr. FC 20. 135).] They forgot this limit when they established so many constitutions, canons, and doctrinal decisions, without any word of God. It was a father who reproached Montanus for, among other heresies, being the first to impose laws of fasting.[Apollonius, cited in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History V. 18 (MPG 1:472; tr. NPNF 2 ser. I. 235 ff.).] They also passed far beyond those limits when they ordained fasts by very strict law.[Gratian, Decretum III. iii. 9 (MPL 187. 1734; Friedberg I. 1354 f.).]

     It was a father who denied that marriage should be forbidden to the ministers of the church, and declared cohabitation with one’s wife to be chastity. And other fathers agreed with his opinion.[Sozomen (Ecclesiastical History i. 23) records that Paphnutius the Confessor, an ardent ascetic, swayed the decision of the Council of Nicaea (325) against requiring clerical celibacy by the declaration here reported. Calvin probably used Cassiodorus’ text, op. cit., II. xiv (MPL 69. 933; tr. NPNF 2 ser. II. 256).] By severely enjoining celibacy for their priests, they have gone beyond this limit. It was a father who deemed that one must listen to Christ alone, for Scripture says, “Hear him” (Matthew 17:5); and that we need not be concerned about what others before us either said or did, but only about what Christ, who is the first of all, commanded.[Cyprian, Letters lxiii. 14 (CSEL 3. ii. 712; tr. ANF [letter lxii. 14] V. 362).] When they set over themselves and others any masters but Christ, they neither abode by this boundary nor permitted others to keep it. It was a father who contended that the church ought not to set itself above Christ, for he always judges truthfully, but ecclesiastical judges, like other men, are often mistaken.[“Non igitur debet ecclesia se Christo praeponere.” Augustine, Contra Cresconitum Grammaticum Donatistam ii. 21 (MPL 43. 482; CSEL 52. 385).] When this boundary is also broken through, they do not hesitate to declare that the whole authority of Scripture depends entirely upon the judgment of the church.[This view, asserted by John Eck, Enchiridion (1526), ch. i. (1541, fo. 76).]

     All the fathers with one heart have abhorred and with one voice have detested the fact that God’s Holy Word has been contaminated by the subtleties of sophists and involved in the squabbles of dialecticians.[Tertullian, De praescriptione haereticorum vii (CCL Tertullianus I. 192; tr. LCC V. 35 f.); Augustine, On Christian Doctrine II. xxxi (MPL 34. 57; tr. NPNF II. 550; also FC 4. 102-103).] When they attempt nothing in life but to enshroud and obscure the simplicity of Scripture with endless contentions and worse than sophistic brawls, do they keep themselves within these borders? Why, if the fathers were now brought back to life, and heard such brawling art as these persons call speculative theology, there is nothing they would less suppose than that these folk were disputing about God! But my discourse would overflow its proper limit if I chose to review how wantonly they reject the yoke of the fathers, whose obedient children they wish to seem. Indeed, months and even years would not suffice me! Nevertheless they are of such craven and depraved impudence as to dare reproach us for not hesitating to pass beyond the ancient boundaries.

(John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Prefatory Address to King Francis, 4; trans. The Library of Christian Classics: Volume XX: Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion: In Two Volumes (Vol. XX: Books I.i to III.xix), ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, [Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960], pp. 18-19, 19-23.)

Appendix: C. S. Lewis on the Novelties of Romanism.

C. S. Lewis:

Dear Mr. Stebbing– 

     My position about the Churches can best be made plain by an imaginary example. Suppose I want to find out the correct interpretation of Plato’s teaching. What I am most confident in accepting is that interpretation wh. is common to all the Platonists down all the centuries: what Aristotle and the Renaissance scholars and Paul Elmer More agree on I take to be true Platonism. Any purely modern views wh. claim to have discovered for the first time what P. meant, and say that everyone from Aristotle down has misunderstood him, I reject out of hand.

     But there is something else I wd. also reject. If there were an ancient Platonic Society still existing at Athens and claiming to be the exclusive trustees of P’s meaning, I shd. approach them with great respect. But if I found that their teaching in many ways was curiously unlike his actual text and unlike what ancient interpreters said, and in some cases cd. not be traced back to within 1000 years of his time, I shd. reject these exclusive claims: while still ready, of course, to take any particular thing they taught on its merits.

     I do the same with Xtianity. What is most certain is the vast mass of doctrine wh. I find agreed on by Scripture, the Fathers, the Middle Ages, modern R.C.’s, modern Protestants. That is true ‘catholic’ doctrine. Mere ‘modernism’ I reject at once.

     The Roman Church where it differs from this universal tradition and specially from apostolic Xtianity I reject. Thus their theology about the B.V.M.[i.e. the Blessed Virgin Mary] I reject because it seems utterly foreign to the New Testament: where indeed the words ‘Blessed is the womb that bore thee’[Luke 11:27-8 (Revised Standard Version): ‘As he said this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore thee, and the breasts that you sucked! But he said, “Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.” ’ Cf. Luke 1:28, 42.] receive a rejoinder pointing in exactly the opposite direction. Their papalism seems equally foreign to the attitude of St Paul towards St Peter in the Epistles. The doctrine of Transubstantiation insists in defining in a way wh. the N.T. seems to me not to countenance. In a word, the whole set-up of modern Romanism seems to me to be as much a provincial or local variation from the central, ancient tradition as any particular Protestant sect is. I must therefore reject their claim: tho’ this does not mean rejecting particular things they say.

     I’m afraid I haven’t read any modern books of Roman–Anglican controversy. Hooker (Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity) is to me the great formulation of Anglicanism. But the great point is that in one sense there’s no such thing as Anglicanism. What we are committed to believing is whatever can be proved from Scripture. On that subject there is room for endless progress. However you decide, good wishes. Mention me in your prayers.

Yours sincerely 

C. S. Lewis

(C. S. Lewis, Letter, To H. Lyman Stebbins (BOD) [May 8th 1945 Magdalen College, Oxford]; In: Walter Hooper, ed., C. S. Lewis: Collected Letters: Volume II: Books, Broadcasts and War 1931-1949, [London: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2004], pp. 645-647.) [14.]

Endnotes.

[1.] Newman’s “acorn” to “oak tree” developmental theory of doctrine is predicted upon the Aristotelian distinction between potentiality and actuality (e.g., while there is no Patristic evidence for papal infallibility in actuality Newman would assert that the potentiality exists from which it can later be developed (first emerging in the 14th century A.D.) and codified (in the 19th century A.D.). Return to Article.

[2.] Cf. John Henry Newman:

My new book is going through the Press and has cost me an immense deal of trouble. It is on the Pastoral Office of the Church, as opposed to Romanism and Popular Protestantism. I treat of Romanism’s neglect of the Fathers; of infallibility; of Private Judgment; of the Indefectibility of the Church; of Fundamentals of Faith, and of Scripture as its foundation. 

(John Henry Newman, Letter, To Miss M. R. Giberne [13 January 1837]; In: The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman: Volume VI: The Via Media and Froude’s Remains January 1937 to December 1838, ed. Gerard Tracey, [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984], p. 13.)

Cf. John Henry Newman:

WE differ from the Romanists, as I have said, more in our view of historical facts than in principles; but in saying this, I am speaking, not of their actual system, nor of their actual mode of defending it, but of their professions, professions which in their mouths are mere professions, while they are truths in ours. The principles, professed by both parties, are at once the foundation of our own theology, and what is called an argumentum ad hominem against theirs. They profess to appeal to primitive Christianity; we honestly take their ground, as holding it ourselves; but when the controversy grows animated, and descends into details, they suddenly leave it and desire to finish the dispute on some other field.

(John Henry Newman, Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, Viewed Relatively to Romanism and Popular Protestantism: Second Edition, [London: J. G. & F. Rivington, 1838], Lecture II: On Romanism as Neglectful of Antiquity, p. 59.)

Cf. John Henry Newman: 

I am but showing how Romanists reconcile their abstract reverence for Antiquity with their Romanism,—with their creed, and their notion of the Church’s infallibility in declaring it; how small their success is, and how great their unfairness, is another question. Whatever judgment we form either of their conduct or its issue, such is the fact, that they extol the Fathers as a whole, and disparage them individually; they call them one by one Doctors of the Church, yet they explain away one by one their arguments, judgments, and testimony. They refuse to combine their separate and coincident statements; they take each by himself, and settle with the first before they go to the next. And thus their boasted reliance on the Fathers comes, at length, to this,—to identify Catholicity with the decrees of Councils, and to admit those Councils only which the Pope has confirmed. 

(John Henry Newman, Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, Viewed Relatively to Romanism and Popular Protestantism: Second Edition, [London: J. G. & F. Rivington, 1838], Lecture II: On Romanism as Neglectful of Antiquity, pp. 70-71.)

Note: Ultimately Newman’s conversion to Rome appears to have been driven not by a study of history but by a desire for epistemic certainty. Ironically, something which even Newman conceded could not ultimately be found with Rome, despite protestations to the contrary (Cf. John Henry Cardinal Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, [London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1890], pp. 80-81.). Cf. Phillip Blosser (Roman Catholic Apologist): Newman admitted that by strict philosophical standards, the Catholic position could only speak of the “probable Infallibility” of the Church (Essay, 80), a position comparable to the “fallible collection of infallible books” position of some Protestants (Sproul, in SS, 66). I am reminded of Pascal’s remark in the Pensées that there is apparent evidence on both sides of the argument concerning God’s existence, enough light to give hope to the seeker, enough darkness to blind the arrogant unbeliever and keep the believer humble. The same could be said for the evidence supporting the Infallibility of the Bible and the Church. (Phillip Blosser, “What are the Philosophical and Practical Problems of Sola Scriptura?” In: Not by Scripture Alone: A Catholic Critique of the Protestant Doctrine of Sola Scriptura, ed. Robert A. Sungenis, [Santa Barbara: Queenship Publishing Company, 1997], p. 64 fn. 76.) Cf. Cecil John Cadoux: …when, four years later, Newman joined the Roman Church, on what authority rested that decision in regard to the rightness of the Roman claims and the heresy of Anglicanism, on the strength of which he changed from the one communion to the other? Only one answer is possible: it rested on Newman’s own private judgment. (Cecil John Cadoux, Catholicism and Christianity: A Vindication of Progressive Protestantism, [London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1928], p. 125.) Cf. John Henry Newman: Now, if man is in a state of trial, and his trial lies in the general exercise of the will, and the choice of religion is an exercise of will, and always implies an act of individual judgment, it follows that such acts are in the number of those by which he is tried, and for which he is to give an account hereafter. So far, all parties must be agreed, that without private judgment there is no responsibility; and that in matter of fact, a man’s own mind, and nothing else, is the cause of his believing or not believing, and of his acting or not acting upon his belief. (John Henry Newman, Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, Viewed Relatively to Romanism and Popular Protestantism: Second Edition, [London: J. G. & F. Rivington, 1838], Lecture V: On the Use of Private Judgement, p. 157.) Return to Article.

[3.] Cf. David King:

Newman came to realize that Rome’s claims could not be substantiated on the basis of patristic evidence or the history of the early Church. Thus he found refuge in his “development of doctrine,”... 

(David King, “A Discussion on Newman’s Pre- and Post-Conversion Positions on the Historical Legitimacy of Roman Catholic Patristic Work,” (September 30, 2010).)

Cf. Robert Letham:

Increasingly, it became evident that Rome’s belief that it rested on unbroken apostolic traditions was fragile. It had been long recognized that the growth of church authority depended on claims in documents that were fabrications and forgeries, most notably The Donation of Constantine and the Pseudo-Isidiorian Decretals. …Newman had been exercised about this problem. He coined an explanation in the form of a distinction between explicit and implicit tradition. In this way he could account for the absence of explicit justification for the current teaching of the church by arguing that it was present in implicit form earlier. In effect, this represented a loss of confidence not only in Scripture but also in tradition; Scripture was not the supreme authority and tradition itself needed saving from clear vulnerabilities. 

(Robert Letham, Systematic Theology, [Wheaton: Crossway, 2019], 2.7.3, pp. 229, 229-230.)

Cf. George Salmon:

The first strategic movement towards the rear was the doctrine of development, which has seriously modified the old theory of tradition. When Dr. Newman became a Roman Catholic, it was necessary for him in some way to reconcile this step with the proofs he had previously given that certain distinctive Romish doctrines were unknown to the early Church. The historical arguments he had advanced in his Anglican days were incapable of refutation even by himself. But it being hopeless to maintain that the present teaching of Roman Catholics is identical with the doctrine held in the primitive Church, he set himself to show that though not the same, it was a great deal better. This is the object of the celebrated Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, which he published simultaneously with his submission to the Roman Church. The theory expounded in it in substance is, that Christ had but committed to His Church certain seeds and germs of truth, destined afterwards to expand to definite forms: consequently, that our Lord did not intend that the teaching of His Church should be always the same; but ordained that it should go on continually improving under the guidance of His Holy Spirit. This theory was not altogether new. Not to speak of earlier anticipations of it, it had been maintained, not many years previously, by the German divine, Mohler, in his work called Symbolik; and this mode of defending the Roman system had been adopted in the theological lectures of Perrone, Professor in the Jesuit College at Rome. But Newman’s book had the effect of making the theory popular to an extent it had never been before, and of causing its general adoption by Romish advocates, who are now content to exchange tradition, which their predecessors had made the basis of their system, for this new foundation of development. You will find them now making shameless confession of the novelty of articles of their creed, and even taunting us Anglicans with the unprogressive character of our faith, because we are content to believe as the early Church believed, and as our fathers believed before us.

(George Salmon, The Infallibility of the Church: Second Edition, [London: John Murray, 1890], pp. 31-32.) Return to Article.

[4.] Cf. Charles Hodge:

All Protestants admit that there has been, in one sense, an uninterrupted development of theology in the Church, from the apostolic age to the present time. All the facts, truths, doctrines, and principles, which enter into Christian theology, are in the Bible. They are there as fully and is clearly at one time as at another; at the beginning as they are now. No addition has been made to their number, and no new explanation has been afforded of their nature or relations. The same is true of the facts of nature. They are now what they have been from the beginning. They are, however, far better known, and more clearly understood now than they were a thousand years ago. The mechanism of the heavens was the same in the days of Pythagoras as it was in those of La Place; and yet the astronomy of the latter was immeasurably in advance of that of the former. The change was effected by a continual and gradual progress. The same progress has taken place in theological knowledge. Every believer is conscious of such progress in his own experience. When he was a child, he thought as a child. As he grew in years, he grew in knowledge of the Bible. He increased not only in the compass, but in the clearness, order, and harmony of his knowledge. This is just as true of the Church collectively as of the individual Christian. It is, in the first place, natural, if not inevitable, that it should be so. The Bible, although so clear and simple in its teaching, that he who runs may read and learn enough to secure his salvation, is still full of the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God; full of τὰ βάθη τοῦ θεοῦ, the profoundest truths concerning all the great problems which have taxed the intellect of man from the beginning. These truths are not systematically stated, but scattered, so to speak, promiscuously over the sacred pages, just as the facts of science are scattered over the face of nature, or hidden in its depths. Every man knows that there is unspeakably more in the Bible than he has yet learned, as every man of science knows that there is unspeakably more in nature than he has yet discovered, or understands. It stands to reason that such a book, being the subject of devout and laborious study, century after century, by able and faithful men, should come to be better and better understood. And as in matters of science, although one false theory after another, founded on wrong principles or on an imperfect induction of facts, has passed away, yet real progress is made, and the ground once gained is never lost, so we should naturally expect it to be with the study of the Bible. False views, false inferences, misapprehensions, ignoring of some facts, and misinterpretations, might be expected to come and go, in endless succession, but nevertheless a steady progress in the knowledge of what the Bible teaches be accomplished. And we might also expect that here, too, the ground once surely gained would not again be lost.

     But, in the second place, what is thus natural and reasonable in itself is a patent historical fact. The Church has thus advanced in theological knowledge. The difference between the confused and discordant representations of the early fathers on all subjects connected with the doctrines of the Trinity and of the person of Christ, and the clearness, precision, and consistency of the views presented after ages of discussion, and the statement of these doctrines by the Councils of Chalcedon and Constantinople, is as great almost as between chaos and cosmos. And this ground has never been lost. 

(Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology: Vol. I, [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1871], Introduction, Ch. 5, §. 6.C, pp. 116-118.) See also: monergism.com and ccel.org.

Cf. George Salmon:

     And yet there is such a thing as a real development of Christian doctrine. We acknowledge that all the precious truth of Scripture does not lie on the surface, and that continuous study applied to the Bible, by holy men who have sought for the aid of God’s Spirit, does elicit much that might have escaped a hasty reader, but which, when once pointed out, remains for the instruction of future generations. But we draw a distinction between things essential to salvation and things true, but not necessary. The way of salvation does not alter from age to age; those truths which were effectual for the salvation of souls in the second or third century are sufficient for salvation still. We hold that, therefore, a Church takes a step unjustifiable, and which must lead to schism, if she imposes new articles of faith to be held of necessity for salvation which were unknown to the Church of past times.

     Again, there is a development of Christian doctrine due to the increase of human philosophy and learning. It is impossible to prevent these from playing their part in modifying our way of understanding the Bible. For instance, in the case which has already come before us, that of Galileo, we see that the progress of astronomical knowledge not only modified the manner in which texts of Scripture were understood which seemed to teach the immobility of the earth, but also made Christians understand that God, who does not work miracles to do for men what He intended them to learn to do for themselves, did not mean the Bible as a supernatural revelation of the truths of astronomy or other sciences, but left the attainment of knowledge of this kind to stimulate and reward the exercise of men’s natural powers.

     Well, when it is agreed on all hands that the Church of one age may be on several points wiser than the Church of a preceding age, the Gallican theory of infallibility at once breaks down. According to that theory it is consistent with God’s promises to His Church that disputes, and consequently that uncertainty, on several important points of doctrine, should prevail for a considerable time; only it is maintained that when once the majority of Christians have agreed in a conclusion about them, that conclusion must never afterwards be called in question. But why not, if the Church has in the meantime become wiser? If God, without injustice and without danger to men’s souls, can leave many of His people for a considerable time imperfectly informed, and even in erroneous opinion as to certain doctrines, what improbability is there that He may have left a whole generation imperfectly or erroneously informed on the same subject, and reserved the perception of the complete truth for their successors?

(George Salmon, The Infallibility of the Church: Second Edition, [London: John Murray, 1890], pp. 276-277.)

Cf. James Orr: 

The late Dr. J. H. Newman, e.g., in his famous essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, laid down what we must recognise as sound general principles—the very soundest—however much we may differ from him in the application of them. The first note of a genuine development, he tells us, is Preservation of Type; the second is Continuity of Principle; the third, Power of of Assimilation; the fourth, Logical Sequence; the fifth, Anticipation of the Future; the sixth, Conservative Action in the Past; the seventh, Chronic Vigour. The principles are excellent: by their help we might, I think, refute very successfully much that is advanced by Dr. Newman himself. 

(James Orr, The Progress of Dogma: Second Edition, [London : Hodder and Stoughton, 1907], p. 20.)

Cf. B. B. Warfield:

The affirmation that theology has been a progressive science is no more, then, than to assert that it is a science that has had a history—and a history which can be and should be genetically traced and presented. First, the objective side of Christian truth was developed: pressed on the one side by the crass monotheism of the Jews and on the other by the coarse polytheism of the heathen, and urged on by its own internal need of comprehending the sources of its life, Christian theology first searched the Scriptures that it might understand the nature and modes of existence of its God and the person of its divine Redeemer. Then, more and more conscious of itself, it more and more fully wrought out from those same Scriptures a guarded expression of the subjective side of its faith; until through throes and conflicts it has built up the system which we all inherit. Thus the body of Christian truth has come down to us in the form of an organic growth; and we can conceive of the completed structure as the ripened fruit of the ages, as truly as we can think of it as the perfected result of the exegetical discipline. As it has come into our possession by this historic process, there is no reason that we can assign why it should not continue to make for itself a history. We do not expect the history of theology to close in our own day. However nearly completed our realization of the body of truth may seem to us to be; however certain it is that the great outlines are already securely laid and most of the details soundly discovered and arranged; no one will assert that every detail is as yet perfected, and we are all living in the confidence so admirably expressed by old John Robinson, “that God hath more truth yet to break forth from His holy Word.” Just because God gives us the truth in single threads which we must weave into the reticulated texture, all the threads are always within our reach, but the finished texture is ever and will ever continue to be before us until we dare affirm that there is no truth in the Word which we have not perfectly apprehended, and no relation of these truths as revealed which we have not perfectly understood, and no possibility in clearness of presentation which we have not attained.

(Benjamin B. Warfield, “The Idea of Systematic Theology;” In: The Presbyterian and Reformed Review: Volume VII: 1896, eds. Benjamin B. Warfield, et al., [Philadelphia: Presb’n and Ref’d Review Association, 1896], April, IV, pp. 263-264.)

Cf. Charles Hodge:

The real status quæstionis, on this subject, as between Romanists and Protestants, is not (1) Whether the Spirit of God leads true believers into the knowledge of the truth; nor (2) whether true Christians agree in all essential matters as to truth and duty; nor (3) whether any man can safely or innocently dissent from this common faith of the people of God; but (4) whether apart from the revelation contained in the Bible, there is another supplementary and explanatory revelation, which has been handed down outside of the Scriptures, by tradition. In other words, whether there are doctrines, institutions, and ordinances, having no warrant in the Scriptures, which we as Christians are bound to receive and obey on the authority of what is called common consent. This Romanists affirm and Protestants deny.

(Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology: Vol. I, [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1871], Introduction, Ch. 5, §. 6.C, p. 120.) See also: monergism.com and ccel.org.

Cf. Philip Schaff:

     Enough has been said already to vindicate an absolute historical necessity to the Reformation, and to expose in its utter emptiness and nakedness the reproach, cast upon it by its enemies, as an uncalled for innovation. We go farther however, and affirm, that the entire Catholic Church as such, so far as it might be considered the legitimate bearer of the Christian faith and life, pressed with inward necessary impulse towards Protestantism just as Judaism—not in its character of Pharisaism and Sadduceeism indeed, but as a divinely appointed preparatory institute, and viewed in its true historical import—rolled with steady powerful stream, in its interior legal, symbolical and prophetical principle, directly towards Christianity, as the fulfilment of the law, the prototype of all its symbols, and the accomplishment of all its prophecies.

(Philip Schaff, The Principle of Protestantism as Related to the Present State of the Church, trans. John W. Nevin, [Chambersburg: “Publication Office” of the German Reformed Church, 1845], p. 47.) Return to Article.

[5.] William Cunningham:

We have said that we suspect that Mr Newman intentionally overlooked the very important distinction which is so clearly brought out by Wegscheider in this passage, between the subjective and objective improvement or development of Christianity; and the ground of the suspicion is this, that in the statement of his theory which we have quoted, he formally asserts chiefly, if not exclusively, a subjective development of Christian doctrines, which all in a sense admit both in individuals and in churches; while in his more detailed explanation and application of his theory, he throughout assumes—what, indeed, his argument and object manifestly require—an objective development, or an actual external addition to the objects of faith, or the doctrines believed. There is a subjective development of Christian doctrine both in individuals and in churches, whereby men grow in the knowledge of God’s revealed will, and whereby theological science is extended and improved. But the result of this development is merely to enable individuals and churches to understand more fully and accurately, and to realize more thoroughly, what is actually contained in, or deducible from, the statements of the written word, and can be shown to be so. This, however, is essentially different from, nay, it is in a certain sense the reverse of, an objective development, which changes and enlarges or diminishes the external revelation, the standard or system of faith. Wegscheider saw, and distinctly admitted, that a merely subjective development, without an objective one, would not serve his purpose. This holds true equally of Mr Newman’s purpose; but he either did not see the important distinction, or he has carefully concealed it; and while it is perfectly manifest that an objective development alone can be of any practical use to him, he formally contends for only a subjective one, and brings to bear, as if in support of his theory, many analogies and illustrations, derived from the nature, operations, and progress of the human mind, the improvement of human knowledge, and other sources, which apply only to a subjective, and not to an objective, development. 

…The only thing in this section which has the appearance of novelty is, the position that God’s revelations to men from the beginning, through the series of the prophets, and the ministry of our Saviour and the apostles, have been conducted upon the principle of development, the later revelations bringing out more fully what was, in some sense, contained in previous ones, though not so as to be generally available. But the analogy fails in one essential particular,—namely, that God made all these developments of previous revelations through inspired men, who were commissioned, not merely to develop previous revelations, but also to communicate new ones. And as God has given us no inspired men since the time of the apostles, the fair inference is, that He did not intend to make any further objective developments of previous revelations, which it should be incumbent upon the church to receive.

(William Cunningham, Discussions on Church Principles: Popish, Erastian, and Presbyterian, [Edinburg: T. & T. Clark, 1863], pp. 56, 64.) Return to Article.

[6.] Cf. David King:

But if development proceeds from the seed to the tree (e.g., acorn to the Oak), there has to be, at the very least, the seed itself from the beginning. But the anachronistic planting of seeds that were never there in the first place is just as barren as the field in which they are imagined.

(David King, “A Discussion on Newman’s Pre- and Post-Conversion Positions on the Historical Legitimacy of Roman Catholic Patristic Work,” (September 30, 2010).)

Cf. W. H. Griffith Thomas:

One argument of Rome calls for special consideration, the theory of Development, associated with Cardinal Newman. It is urged that Roman Catholicism is the legitimate development of what is found in germ in the New Testament. But is this capable of proof? What are we to say about the ages before the full development was reached? Germs do not produce full-grown trees at once. Then, too, is Roman Catholicism a true development from within or an accretion from without? Are the distinctive Roman Catholic doctrines legitimate developments of the New Testament? When we consider such subjects as the place of the Mother of our Lord, or the sacerdotal character of the Christian ministry, or the doctrine of Transubstantiation, we naturally ask if these are found in germ in the New Testament, and no historical student or properly-equipped exegete would for a moment allow this to be the case. Development must always be according to type. It is, therefore, impossible to beg the question by saying that we need infallibility, and therefore God will give it. This represents our own thought alone, and is no part of the true Christian position.

(W. H. Griffith Thomas, The Principles of Theology: An Introduction to the Thirty-Nine Articles, [London: Church Book Room Press, Ltd., 1963], Article XIX, pp. 274-275.) 

Cf. W. H. Griffith Thomas:

This ‘faith’ as a ‘deposit’ of truth needs to be guarded, because, as then, so now, dangers imperil the integrity and reality of the deposit. One peril is that associated with the doctrine of Development, now so well known in connection with the name of Newman. His theory was set forth in support of the distinctive positions of Rome, which he claimed were the legitimate development and outcome of apostolic teaching. He laid down certain general principles by means of which development was to be tested. His requirements are seven:

     1. Preservation of Type. 2. Continuity of Principle. 3. Power of Assimilation. 4. Logical Sequence. 5. Anticipation of the Future. 6. Conservative action in the Past. 7. Chronic Vigour.

     These are all as true as they are admirable, but everything depends upon their application. We readily admit the truth of development of doctrine, whether we use the figure of an oak developing from an acorn, or the simile of a case unpacked as needed, though the former is probably more correct. But all true development will bear at least two marks: (a) Continuity, (b) Progress. There will be a clear continuity from the original germs, and an equally clear progress in harmony with those germs, and if we test the distinctive doctrines developed in Roman Catholicism by the principles laid down by Newman, it would not be difficult to see the entire baselessness of the Roman position. There is in fact a real danger of confusing between legitimate development and growth by accretion. Development from apostolic germs is as undeniable as it is necessary, but the result must bear a true relation to the germs without any admixture of foreign elements. Anything else would mean growth from alien germs, planted side by side with the apostolic deposit, and this is really parasitic in tendency and inevitably means the destruction of the original germs. Herein lies the danger of the theory of Newman, as applied to Roman Catholicism, for it represents a development which is not legitimate and involves the peril of changing the apostolic deposit by addition. If we take any distinctive doctrine of Roman Catholicism, and compare it with the corresponding germinal doctrine in the New Testament, we see that the apostolic deposit has become so overlaid with erroneous additions that it has lost its true character. We can compare the teaching of Scripture with that of Rome on such subjects as the Church, the Ministry, the Sacraments, and the Mother of our Lord in order to see the vital and fundamental differences. To take two instances only: a ministry to-day which finds its essence in a sacerdotal priesthood cannot possibly be derived from an apostolic ministry which never uses the term ‘priest,’ and never prescribes any essentially priestly functions. So a religion which speaks of the Mother of our Lord as ‘the Queen of Heaven,’ addresses her in prayer, and pleads for her interposition with her Son, cannot find its origin in the simple statements of the New Testament concerning the Virgin Mary. The fact is that in the Church of Rome Scripture is no longer the sole fount of truth and the supreme authority, but, as the Bishop of Oxford (Dr. Gore) has said, it has become ‘merged in a miscellaneous mass of authorities.’

     This question of the relation of Holy Scripture to the Church and of the Church to Scripture is of supreme importance. We fully believe that it is impossible to ignore Christian history and to start our consideration of doctrine de novo. But we also believe in the essential identity between the product of to-day and the germ of the first days, our criterion of this being the litera scripta of the New Testament. We believe that Holy Scripture, as therein found, constitutes the title-deeds of the Church, the law of the Church’s life, the test of its purity, the source of its strength, and the spring of its progress.

(W. H. Griffith Thomas, The Holy Spirit of God: Second Impression, [Chicago: The Bible Institute Colportage Ass’n, 1913], pp. 212-214.) Return to Article.

[7.] Cf. Emil Brunner:

Now, however warranted this notion of development may be, it is not without its dangers. For it may happen all too easily that, with the aid of such a theory, an identification of quite another kind may take place: the equation of terms that are not equal, the equation of things that are plainly incompatible. Therefore, quite a different sort of process might easily be exchanged for that of development—the process of transformation and distortion. This quid pro quo could so much more easily arise in that the process of transformation was effected slowly, continuously, and in small, hardly perceptible stages. Even such tiny deviations can cumulate in the opposite of the original term. The continuity of this movement of deviation and its imperceptibility, thanks to the small stages by which it is accomplished, does not affect the fact that the final result may be antithetic to, and irreconcilable with, the original.

(Emil Brunner, The Misunderstanding of the Church, trans. Harold Knight, [Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1953], p. 39.)

Cf. Emil Brunner:

It is a mistaken opinion frequently to be observed—current even within the context of modern evolutionary thought—to suppose that what changes slowly, continuously, gradually, and in accordance with principles of organic growth, does not in reality change at all, but remains essentially the same. Hence not only does the latter remain unnoticed in consequence of the gradualness of the change, but there is added to the psychological failure a logical one, namely, the confusion of two different things.

…contemporary Catholic thought . . . introduces the concept of Providence in the philosophy of development. God has so ordained it, at least so permitted it, hence such a development must be right. This use of the concept of Providence receives no encouragement from the Bible, but springs from a very different intellectual source; it is a mode of the Hegelian principle: “The real is the rational.” It is, therefore, an evolutionary line of thought, resting upon metaphysical-religious foundations, to ascribe value to the historical process as such, and to regard it as being necessarily a channel for the continuous unfolding of truth. It goes without saying that in this way every heresy can be justified, if only it results from a steady uninterrupted process rather than from the violence of revolution. 

…Thus we see that in the early Catholic notion of tradition a series of completely heterogeneous elements are at work, which yet are held together through the single magic word “tradition”—tradition in the sense of preserving the purity of the original Gospel, as in primitive Christianity: tradition in the sense of legitimate ecclesiastical succession; tradition in the sense of organic development: tradition in the sense of equating development with gradual transformation: tradition in the sense of continuous historical evolution generally.

(Emil Brunner, The Misunderstanding of the Church, trans. Harold Knight, [Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1953], pp. 40, 41, 41.)

Cf. Vittorio Subilia:

However, the historical criticism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had been able to penetrate far enough into the world of study to bring home the fact that this attitude of invariableness could not be further sustained. In its hour of need the Catholic position found timely help in Möhler, and especially in the ex-Anglican Newman. These introduced Catholic thought to the notion of the seed-idea, gave credence to the concept of the evolution of dogma and gave rise to the remark that it was not Newman who had been converted to Catholicism, but Catholicism that had been converted to Newman. It would certainly be an exaggeration to say that such an idea was ‘quite unknown to previous generations’: already ‘St Vincent of Lerins, St Augustine, St Anselm and others had already admitted a development of dogma’. But, ‘having made this reservation’—we use the phrase of a Catholic theologian—‘it is true to say that the work of applying the principles of evolutionary theory to Catholic dogma, and to Christian events in general, is the peculiarity of the nineteenth century’. The idea had to overcome not a little distrust and not a little opposition in so far as ‘it seemed difficult to reconcile the indubitable principle of doctrinal immutability with the evolutionary theory coined by Newman’. But the hour was bound to come when ‘the conception of Catholic dogma as a living organism, developing and growing without check through the ages, would be hailed as one of the most important and most pregnant viewpoints of (Catholic) theological science’.

(Vittorio Subilia, The Problem of Catholicism, trans. Reginald Kissack [Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1964], pp. 33-35.)

Cf. Kenneth J. Stewart:

His now-famous treatise on The Development of Christian Doctrine (1845) was viewed with as great suspicion in his adoptive Roman communion as in the Church of England from which he was departing.

(Kenneth J. Stewart, “John Henry Newman (1801-1890) in His Second Century;” In: Themelios 39.2 (2014): 280.)

Cf. Vittorio Subilia:

This biological principle is then used to explain the whole history of dogma, even to the extent of explaining the appearance of new doctrinal formulae. Even where, instead of a normal process of development, there is an abnormal transformation, even deformation; even where new and spurious elements are added to the original authentic ones—still, all is justified on the ground that no one can deny that in the beginning, it all existed in germinal form. We can see the dubious nature of this theory very strikingly in the Marian doctrine, which, even in its most improbable developements, can always refer back to its germ of origin, the fact that the mother of Jesus is certainly mentioned in the New Testament. In this way, any heresy whatsoever, granted that it has taken root slowly, almost imperceptibly, can be put forward as the recognition and the rendering explicit of some truth originally implicit, even if in its later stages of growth it has reached positions diametrically opposed to original ones. As Brunner rightly observes, ‘this kind of thinking involves nothing less than the abdication of the idea of truth itself before the movements of history’.

(Vittorio Subilia, The Problem of Catholicism, trans. Reginald Kissack [Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1964], pp. 35-36.)

Cf. Vittorio Subilia:

Why have all attempts, past, and present, to adopt the vernacular in the Roman Church failed? Should we not seek the answer in this contamination by elements that do not belong to the gospel, but have been so naturalized and incorporated into Catholicism that it no longer knows how to rid itself of them? These accretions have come to affect not only forms, but the very conception of God himself. …Catholicism is a grandiose synthesis of syncretism and authority. It has become a complexio oppositorum, in which gospel elements exist alongside non-gospel elements in a confusion that at times prevents their recognition, and the whole is ruled by a rigid hierarchical discipline. What is the explanation of the phenomenon? It is this. Catholicism has made the norm of the Church the Church itself, without there being over the Church any authoritative point of reference to determine in the ultimate instance what is truth.

(Vittorio Subilia, The Problem of Catholicism, trans. Reginald Kissack [Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1964], pp. 84, 103-104.)

Cf. George Salmon:

     When we actually study Church history we see that there were many causes in operation having a tendency to introduce into the stream of Christian teaching the defilements of which I have spoken. There was the influx of heathen into the Church, bringing with them their own systems of philosophy, and applying them to their new faith; there was the desire to conciliate prejudice by the softening of what in Christianity might give offence; and there were, finally, principles of fallen human nature itself, ever seeking to be gratified, and having thus a tendency to corrupt what had been committed to it. No one now ventures to deny that the tone of Church teaching has not been uniformly the same from age to age: doctrines assume importance which in former times were little dwelt on, and in many cases what was at first conjecture or pious opinion passes by degrees into a fixed and unquestioned article of belief. This fact of gradual growth, not to say alteration of doctrine, which was long vainly denied by Roman Catholic advocates, is now generally admitted by them, and a power is claimed for the Church, not indeed of publishing revelations of totally new doctrine, and proposing them for articles of faith, but at least of developing old doctrines, and drawing from them consequences unsuspected by those who held them in former generations.

     This theory sets aside completely the old Roman Catholic rule of Scripture and tradition. It gives up tradition; and it must in consistency abandon as completely irrational that respect for the Fathers which even still distinguishes uneducated Romanists from uneducated Protestants. In earthly science Lord Bacon pointed out that the Fathers were the children. If we think an old man likely to be wiser than a young one, it is because he has had so much more experience, and is likely to know many things of which the young man is ignorant. But the world is older now than it ever was. To ask us to defer to the opinion of men who lived two centuries ago, and who consequently were ignorant of all that the world has learned in the last two hundred years, is as absurd as to ask a trained philosopher to defer to the opinion of a youth just commencing his studies. And if the theory of the development of Christian doctrine be true, the same rule exactly ought to hold with regard to religious truth; and a Romanist cannot consistently censure a Protestant if he thinks Luther and Calvin teachers likely to be twelve centuries wiser than Chrysostom and Augustine. But if in the theory of Development the Fathers lose all claims to respect, it is still worse with Scripture: the Fathers may have been but children, but the Apostles were only infants. They lived when the Church had but just come into being, and before it had learned all that the Holy Spirit has taught it in the course of nineteen centuries. If so, it ought to be only for curiosity that we need look into books written in the very infancy of the Church; and to seek for our system of Christian doctrine in the Bible would be as absurd as to try to learn the differential calculus from the writings of Archimedes. In other words, the theory of Development, as taught by Cardinal Newman, substantially abandons the claims of Christianity to be regarded as a supernatural revelation which is likely to be preserved in most purity by those who lived nearest to the times when it was given.

(George Salmon, The Infallibility of the Church: Second Edition, [London: John Murray, 1890], pp. 275-276.)

Cf. Robert Rainy:

     The history of the Church in this department, then, has not proceeded according to any theoretical or ideal programme. It has included much that did not spring from her proper destiny of privilege; not only sound development, but unsound and erroneous divergence. Melancholy aberrations led her at last into a wilderness of error, so as greatly to mar the fruit even of those sound attainments in doctrinal truth which were still retained. I say that those aberrations led the Church; for, as I have already remarked, whatever we may hold of a remnant preserved when general apostasy had fallen upon Christendom, we cannot doubt that the prevailing condition of things involved.

(Robert Rainy, Delivery and Development of Christian Doctrine: The Fifth Series of the Cunningham Lectures, [Edinburg: T. & T. Clark, 1874], Lecture V, p. 221.) Return to Article.

[8.] Cf. James Bowling Mozley:

On the first opening, then, of this subject, two great lines of thought encounter us, each of them a true, natural, and legitimate line, and one of them tending to check and balance the other. One of these lines of thought takes up the idea of Development. We see unquestionably everywhere a law of development operating. It meets us in nature and art, in trade and politics, in life vegetable, animal, intellectual. The seed grows into the plant, the child into the man; the worm into the butterfly, the blossom into the fruit. Education develops the individual, civilisation the nation. The particular ideas we take up, grow. A simple thought, as soon as the mind has embraced it, ramifies in many directions, applies itself to many different cases, sees reflections of itself in nature and human life, gathers analogies around it, and illustrates and is illustrated in turn.

     …This is one great line of thought which encounters us, on a primâ facie view of the progress of any great political or religious institution. There is another equally genuine, natural, and true. If the idea of development has established itself as a natural and familiar one in our minds, the idea of corruption has done the same. If we see things grow larger, we also see things grow worse. History and experience have contrived to fix very deeply in us the apprehension of perversion, in some shape or other, and, in one or other degree, accompanying the progress of institutions, nations, schemes of life, and schools of thought. There is the maxim that the stream is purer at its source. It is observed that the intention with which a movement begins often insensibly declines, or becomes alloyed, in the progress. We attribute a mixed set of results to time, and welcome its operations in one aspect, and fear them in another. With all its functions of growth and enlargement, a general suspicion attaches to a class of slow, gentle, insinuating influences it betrays: the notion of the lapse of time suggests indefinite apprehensions, and the mind forms an instinctive augury of some change for the worse which it is to bring. Legislators, philosophers, and founders of institutions are haunted by the image of a progress destined for their creations, which they never designed for them; and portend some departure from original principles which would elicit their protest, by anticipation, could they foresee it accurately enough. That things are better at first, and then deteriorate; that freshness and purity wear off; that deflections arise, and that the inclination from the strict line, once made, widens with insensible but fatal steadiness; in a word, the tendency of things to degeneracy is one of those observed points which has naturalised itself in men’s minds, and taken the position of an axiom. 

…it next proceeds specially to remind us that this tendency acts by the perversion and abuse, as well as by the positive extinction of the good element which it accompanies. There is the corruption of exaggeration and excess, as well as that of decay. We see good tending to bad, without wholly losing its original type and character in the process. How this takes place, we are not at present concerned to inquire. Indeed, what the essential truth, the deep internal metaphysical reality in the case is,—what the thing is which really and at bottom takes place when we speak of good thus changing into bad,—is a question which perhaps lies below the reach of any limited powers of analysis. We are only concerned here with broad and practical truth, as the general sense of mankind has laid it down; and, practically speaking, we see corruption taking place constantly by some good principle’s simple exaggeration and excess. Our fine moral qualities are proverbially subject to this change. Courage becomes rashress, and love becomes fondness, and liberality becomes profuseness, and self-respect becomes pride. In these and such like cases the original type of the virtue remains, but undergoes disproportion and disfigurement: the original disposition, which was good, does not evanesce and cease to be; but, continuing, is carried out beyond a certain limit, and transgresses some just standard.

…Upon the Roman system, on the other hand, the special charge made is, that in various doctrines, keeping the original type, it has introduced an exaggerative corruption of it. The care for the dead, the veneration of saints, the peculiar reverence to the Mother of God, the acknowledgment of the change in the Eucharist, the sense of punishment due to sin, are all Christian feelings and doctrines, and they all exist in the Roman system; but they are asserted to exist in an immoderate and disproportionate way. The system which intensifies the spiritual by denying the material substance in the Eucharist; which gives the Mother of our Lord, because great honour is due to her, the place which it does give her; which makes, because it was natural to imagine some purification of the soul before its entrance into heaven, the whole intermediate state a simple penal fiery purgatory; which pushes out doctrines and expands feeling towards particular objects to the extent to which it does, has had one general fault very prominently charged to it, viz., that of exaggeration, including in that term all that, commonly called, extravagance, all that abuse and perversion of the exaggerative kind, which it practically means.

(J. B. Mozley, The Theory of Development: A Criticism of Dr. Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine: Reprinted from ‘The Christian Remembrancer’ January 1847, [London, Oxford, and Cambridge: Rivingtons, 1878], pp. 3-4, 5-6, 6-7, 30-31.)

Cf. Peter Toon:

Mozley concluded that Newman did not allow in his definitions of development and corruption the possibility of corruption through excess and exaggeration. For him, as long as the original type was maintained, there was no such thing as over-development, or excessive development. …Addressing himself to Newman’s seven tests, Mozley claimed that they were unable to achieve their purpose as tests because the fact of development by excess was not allowed for by them; thus, they could not discover the corruption of exaggeration. In fact, Newman escaped this particular problem because he never saw or admitted that there was a problem.

(Peter Toon, The Development of Doctrine in the Church, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1979], pp. 20, 21.)

Cf. William Archer Butler:

All varieties of real development, so far as this argument is concerned, may probably be reduced to two general heads, intellectual developments, and practical developments of Christian doctrine. By “intellectual developments” I understand logical inferences (and that whether for belief or practical discipline) from doctrines, or from the comparison of doctrines; which, in virtue of the great dialectical maxim, must be true, if legitimately deduced from what is true. “Practical developments” are the living, actual, historical results of those true doctrines (original or inferential), when considered as influential on all the infinite varieties of human kind; the doctrines embodied in action; the doctrines modifying human nature in ways infinitely various, correspondently to the infinite variety of subjects on whom they operate, though ever strictly preserving, amid all their operations for effectually transforming and renewing mankind, their own unchanged identity. Intellectual Developments, it is thus obvious, are in the same sphere with the principles out of which they spring: they are (even when regarded with a view to rite and practice) unmingled doctrine still: they are propositions. Practical Developments, on the other hand, essentially consist of two very different, though connected, elements; divine doctrine, and human nature as affected by it; they are historical events. I am not aware of any thing reasonably to be called a development of Christian doctrine which is not reducible to either of these classes, the Logical or the Historical.

(William Archer Butler, Letters on Romanism: In Reply to Mr. Newman’s Essay on Development: Second Edition, ed. Thomas Woodward, revised by Charles Hardwick, [Cambridge: Macmillan and Co., 1858], Letter II, pp. 57-58.)

Cf. William Goode:

I should conceive it to be impossible for any impartial person not to see, that Mr. Newman has been here confounding two things that are totally distinct, namely, the gradual development of the ideas suggested by a doctrine in individual minds according as those minds gradually fathom its depth, and the gradual development of a system of philosophy, according as successive minds perfect it by gradual discoveries. A development of the former kind no doubt often takes place in religion as much as in other matters; but a development of the latter kind there cannot be in religion, except by a fresh Divine revelation. …Mr. Newman reasons about the matter just as if Christianity was a mere discovery of man, a system of human philosophy that was to be perfected by the efforts of the human intellect.

(William Goode, The Divine Rule of Faith and Practice: In Three Volumes: Vol. I: Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, [London: John Henry Jackson, 1853], pp. 441, 441-442.)

Cf. Peter Toon:

Without any doubt the most learned and elaborate reply to the Tractarian doctrine of Tradition came from the pen of William Goode. Taking over 1,200 pages The Divine Rule of Faith and Practice (1842, reprinted 1853) defended the position that Holy Scripture has been and is the sole, divine Rule of Faith and practice to the Church. Edward Hawkins, Provost of Oriel, from whom Newman had learned to look carefully at Tradition, especially at the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, appreciated Goode’s work calling it ‘a learned discussion’; and the Bishop of Chichester, Dr Gilbert, presented copies of it to the deacons whom he ordained. Evangelicals thought it struck a death-blow at Tractarianism. According to Goode the major question was ‘whether there is sufficient evidence of the divine origin of anything but Scripture to entitle it to authority over the conscience as a divine revelation?’ Put another way the question was ‘whether in the testimony of the Fathers there is to be found anything which either in form or in substance we are bound to receive as the Word of God delivered to the Church by the apostles and consequently forming part of our Divinely-revealed Rule of faith and duty’.

(Peter Toon, Evangelical Theology, 1833-1856: A Response to Tractarianism, [Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1979], p. 117.)

Cf. Charles Smith Bird:

Now, if this theory were not extended to essential truths—if it were confined to prophetic passages, or to those general rules respecting the order and discipline of the Church which did not receive their full application in the days of the apostles or their immediate successors, whilst the Church was small and persecuted, we should not object to speak of development in such cases; though even then, with respect to that class which is prophetic, I am not aware that the Clergy alone would be entitled to pronounce what the true development is. Should the clergy, from the nature of their studies, be the first, in any particular case, to announce the meaning of a prophecy, yet to be accepted by the laity, it must commend itself to the reason and understanding, as exactly suitable to the sacred text, when once the prediction and the fulfilment are placed side by side. But we must altogether refuse to extend this theory to the great practical truths of Holy Scripture. To do this, would be to suppose that the early Christians were destitute of some essential knowledge, and were yet saved; which is a contradiction in terms. Moreover, we can see immediately, how liable this theory is to be perverted by enthusiasts or deceivers. There have been enthusiastic persons who have contended, that under the surface of Scripture were contained all the treasures of human knowledge, physical and intellectual, as well as spiritual—just as there have been admirers of Homer, who have alleged that it is possible to find all kinds of truth in the Iliad. These are harmless hallucinations. But in claiming the right and power of developing essential truths from Scripture, hitherto unknown, the matter becomes a most serious one. The world has had experience of this. From such a slight expression as that used by St. Paul, “so as by fire,”—when he speaks of self-deluded teachers, who after building “wood, hay, stubble,” on the true foundation, might themselves be saved from the destruction which would happen to their wretched superstructure, “yet so as by fire,” i.e. with a narrow escape, and after a rigid scrutiny—from this slight metaphorical expression has been developed by the Church of Rome the utterly unscriptural dogma of purgatory, with its long train of abominable evils, doctrinal and practical. From the declaration of our Lord to the bold confessor, St. Peter, “Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my church,” is developed by the same Church the claim of the pope’s supremacy, as the supposed successor of St. Peter. From the few but significant words, “This is my body, which is given for you; this do in remembrance of me,” is deduced by development the theory of Transubstantiation, whereby the very body of Christ, which was in every respect like our own (sin only excepted) at the administration of the first Eucharist, (the greatest of all,) is supposed to have been literally eaten by his disciples. And on transubstantiation depends, more than on anything else, the power of the Romish priesthood. I need not give more instances. If men once allow that “the Church” is in possession of the key to the imagined cypher, in which even the essential doctrinal parts of Scripture are supposed to be written, there are no bounds to the errors in which they may be involved, through the ignorance and superstition, or the tyranny and fraud, of a corrupt hierarchy. But to proceed with the Theory of which the foundation is thus laid.

(Charles Smith Bird, A Defence of the Principles of the English Reformation from the Attacks of the Tractarians: Or, A Second Plea for the Reformed Church, [London: J. Hatchard and Son, 1843], pp. 101-103.) Return to Article.

[9.] Cf. William Cunningham:

Mr Newman has an ingenious and subtle, but not a very logical mind, and he has taken no pains to explain the conditions and precise results of his argument, or to point out the exact way in which it stands related to, and bears upon, the general argument between Protestants and Romanists. He does not indeed claim, formally and in words, for his theory, more than, if fairly supported, it is entitled to; but, by failing to mark out its true place and logical relations, and by introducing many collateral topics, he has succeeded, to some extent, in conveying an impression, that he has achieved much more than, even if his theory were admitted, he could be fairly held to have accomplished.

…The theory of development, if established and conceded, merely removes a general preliminary objection against Romanism. It gives no positive weight or validity to any Romish arguments, but only clears the field for a fair discussion. It is but a substitute for the doctrine which the Romanists used to maintain,—namely, that the apostles taught many things which were not contained in, or deducible from, the New Testament, but which might be learned from other sources; and as the old doctrine of tradition, or catholic consent, required, in order to its serving any positive practical purpose in controversy, to be followed by specific proof of the apostolicity of particular tenets and practices, so the new theory of development, even when proved or conceded, requires to be followed up by specific proof, that every Romish addition to the New Testament system is a true and legitimate development, and not a corruption. Mr Newman does not formally deny that this is the true logical position and bearing of the theory of development, and, indeed, on several occasions he incidentally admits it; but he never gives to this idea anything like explicitness or prominence, and often writes as if he wished and expected it to be taken for something much more positive and effective.

(William Cunningham, Discussions on Church Principles: Popish, Erastian, and Presbyterian, [Edinburg: T. & T. Clark, 1863], pp. 45-46, 52.)

W. Dalton:

In truth, it is difficult to draw any one distinct proposition from it,—save, perhaps, that Divine truth is not revealed in Scripture; but only suggested, and the idea given to the Church, to be “developed” in the lapse of future ages.

(W. Dalton, “Our Dangers and Our Duties at the Present Crisis;” In: The Churchman’s Monthly Review: MDCCCXLIII, [London: Seeley, Burnside, and Seeley, 1843], April 1843, p. 263.) Return to Article.

[10.] Cf. Keith A. Mathison:

…in reality it is not Scripture and tradition which are the standards of truth for Rome; the standard of truth is whatever Rome currently teaches. When the claims of infallibility are combined with the novel theory of development proposed by Cardinal Newman in the nineteenth century, Rome can summarily dismiss any and every argument raised against her. 

(Keith A. Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, [Moscow: Canon Press, 2001], p. 185 fn. 2.)

Cf. William Cunningham:

They have never, indeed, attempted to adjust authoritatively the logical relations of tradition and infallibility; but they make tradition to establish infallibilty, or infallibility to guarantee tradition, according to the exigencies of the occasion.

(William Cunningham, Discussions on Church Principles: Popish, Erastian, and Presbyterian, [Edinburg: T. & T. Clark, 1863], p. 49.)

Cf. Matthew Poole: (original spelling from the 1671 edition)

There then is another shift, which some subtle Romanists have lately invented, who perceiving how their brethren have been beaten out of that field by strength of Scripture and argument, in the conceit about the infallibility of the Pope or Councel, come in for their succour with an Universal Tradition, and the authoritie of the present Church. This is the way of Rubworth in his Dialogues, Mr. White, and Holden, and Sir Kenelm Digby, and S. Clara.

…Mr. White spends one entire chapter upon the proof of this Proposition, that the succession of doctrine is the only rule of Faith (a), and saith, that whether we place this infallibilitie in the whole body of the Church, or in Councels, or in Scriptures, in each of these their authority is resolved into and all depends upon Tradition (b). And he spends several Chapters to shew, that neither the Pope, nor Councels can give any solidity, or certaintie to our Faith but what they have from Tradition.

…The opinion and language of most papists in the world is this. That Tradition is therefore onely infallible, because it is delivered to us by the Church which is infallible. (a) If you ask Bellarmine what it is, by which I am assured that a Tradition is right, he answers because the whole Church which receives it cannot erre. (6) So the late Answer of Bishop Laud. There is no means left to beleive any thing with a divine infallible Faith, if the Authoritie of the Catholick Church be rejected as erroneous, and fallible, for who can believe either Creed, or Scripture, or unwritten Tradition, but upon her Authoritie. (a) Nay, S. Clara himself, notwithstanding his Romantick strain, That Tradition, and the naked Testimonie of the present Church is sufficient, yet elsewhere confesseth the Churches infallibilitie must necessarily be supposed to make my Faith certain. His words are these: The Testimonie of the Church, by which Traditions come to us, is infallible, from a Divine Revelation, because it is evident from the Scripture, that the Church is infallible: and prefently after, If the Church were not infallible, it could not produce in me an infallible Faith (b). And this was the constant Doctrine of the Romish Masters in all former Ages. Now come a new Generation, who finding the Notion of Infallibilitie hard beset, and the pillar shaken, they support their cause with a quite contrary position, that it is not the Churches infallibilitie that renders Tradition infallible (as their former masters held but the infallibilitie of Tradition that makes the Church infallible, and therefore they say, the Church her self is no further infallible than the followes Tradition. Thus Mr. White plainly tels us, that Councels are not infallible because the special assistance of Gods spirit makes them infallible, but because by irrefragable testimonie they confirme the succession of their Doctrines, and are such witnesses of Tradition as cannot be refufed.

(Mathew Poole, The Nullity of the Romish Faith: Second Edition, [Oxford: Printed by Hen; Hall Printer to the University, for Ri; Davis, 1671], Chap. V, pp. 130-131, 134-135, 135-137.)

Cf. William Goode:

Such is Mr. Newman’s account of the development of Christian doctrine in the successive ages of the Christian Church. And whatever may be thought of it in other respects, one thing certainly must be admitted, namely, that this theory forms a most convenient defence for the additions of the Church of Rome to the primitive Creed. They are but the leaves and fruit gradually springing out of the Gospel seed. And, according to Mr. Newman’s hypothesis, it is only consistent with what the right development of Christianity demanded, that the Christianity of an age distant a few centuries from the Apostles, should be as different from that of the first Christians as a full-grown tree differs from its seed; and that constant additions should be made to the faith of the Church with the advance of time. Whether Rome’s additions are the genuine produce of the original seed, is certainly a further and very important question; but this theory of development tends undoubtedly to smooth the way to their admission.

(William Goode, The Divine Rule of Faith and Practice: In Three Volumes: Vol. I: Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, [London: John Henry Jackson, 1853], pp. 442-443.)

Cf. William Goode:

And the separation of true from false developments is to be effected through the infallibility of the Church. …The dictum of what Mr. Newman calls “the Church,” therefore, is at last to settle everything. And thus Transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the Mass, Purgatory, and all the other peculiar doctrines of the Church of Rome, utterly unknown as they may confessedly have been to the Primitive Church, are without difficulty resolved to be genuine developments of the statements of Revelation.

     Such is the progress of self-delusion when God’s Holy Word has been dethroned from the seat of authority.

(William Goode, The Divine Rule of Faith and Practice: In Three Volumes: Vol. I: Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, [London: John Henry Jackson, 1853], p. 443.) Return to Article.

[10.5] Cf. N. T. Wright:

Whereas for Thomas Aquinas the definition of “tradition” had been, more or less, “what the church has said as it has expounded scripture,” by the sixteenth century a position had been reached which regarded “tradition” as the essential supplement to, and indeed interpretative framework for, the Bible. (This development is in some ways at least parallel to the Jewish idea of the “unwritten Torah” which, along with the “written Torah,” was supposedly given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai.) This meant that anything which could be regarded as well established in ecclesial tradition, even if there was nothing about it in the Bible, and even if it appeared to go against some of the things which the Bible itself said, could be taught as authoritative and backed up with clever allegorical exegesis. (The perpetual virginity of Mary would be a good example.)

(N. T. Wright, Scripture and the Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today, [New York: HarperOne, 2011], p. 71.) Return to Article.

[11.] Cf. Owen Chadwick:

Guidi’s speech in G. D. Mansi, Collectio conciliorum recentiorum, ed. J. B. Martin and L. Petit (Arnhem and Leipzig, 1923-7), lii. 740 ff.; and vast literature on the case. See esp. G. Martina in DHGE s.v. Guidi. Various historians denied the probability of the Pope’s words but they are now proven by the text of Tizzani, repr. in Martina, Pio IX (1867-78), 555 ff.: excellent modern treatment of evidence in K. Schatz, Vaticanum I 1869-70 (3 vols.; Paderborn, 1993— ), ili. app. I, 312 ff. For the bizarre rumours about it, U. Horst in RSCI 34 (1980), 513 ff. 

(Owen Chadwick, Oxford History of the Christian Church: A History of the Popes: 1830-1914, [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003], p. 211, fn. 39.)

Note: After outlining the Roman Catholic Partim-Partim viewpoint (“Oral tradition is a separate and different revelation; Oral tradition is necessary, inspired revelation The Bible is materially sufficient”) and the Material Sufficiency viewpoint (“Oral tradition does not contain other revelation; Oral tradition is necessary for proper interpretation; The Bible is materially insufficient”), James White writes:

     Both viewpoints on tradition boil down to an argument not for “Scripture plus tradition” but for “Scripture as taught by the Church.” In both cases tradition is defined and revealed by the Church alone. It cannot be said, even in the first viewpoint, that tradition exists separately from the Roman Catholic Church, its guardian and protector. Therefore, tradition functionally becomes in both systems another word for the teaching of the Church, so that the Church’s teaching authority becomes supreme over both Scripture and tradition. When all the smoke is cleared and all the fancy words are reduced to their simplest form, Protestants believe in sola scriptura and Catholics believe in sola ecclesia, the Church alone. And when the special claims of Rome are mixed in, the best description of the resultant position is sola Roma. (James R. White, The Roman Catholic Controversy, [Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1996], p. 80.)

     It is the Roman Catholic magisterium that determines the scope of Scripture (i.e. the canon), it is the Roman Catholic magisterium that determines the meaning of Scripture (i.e. interpretation), it is the Roman Catholic magisterium that determines the content of “sacred tradition” (i.e. what does and does not constitute “tradition”) and it is the Roman Catholic magisterium that determines what “tradition” does and does not mean. Hence sola ecclesia or sola Roma (i.e. the Church alone, or Rome alone). Return to Article.

[12.] Cf. Tertullian of Carthage (c. 155-220 A.D.):

For these, for the most part, are the sources whence, from some ignorance or simplicity, custom finds its beginning; and then it is successionally confirmed into an usage, and thus is maintained in opposition to truth. But our Lord Christ has surnamed Himself Truth, not Custom. If Christ is always, and prior to all, equally truth is a thing sempiternal and ancient. Let those therefore look to themselves, to whom that is new which is intrinsically old. It is not so much novelty as truth which convicts heresies. Whatever savours of opposition to truth, this will be heresy, even (if it be an) ancient custom. …They who have received Him set truth before custom.

(Tertullian of Carthage, On the Veiling of Virgins, 1; trans. ANF, 4:27, 28.) See also: ccel.org.

Cf. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage (c. 200-258 A.D.):

Hence it is in vain that some who are overcome by reason oppose to us custom, as if custom were greater than truth [Proinde frustra quidem qui ratione vincuntur consuetudinem nobis opponunt; quasi consuetudo major sit veritate]… 

(Cyprian of Carthage, Epistle 72.13 [To Jubaianus]; PL, 3:1117 [Epistola LXXIII]; trans. ANF, 5:382.) See also: ccel.org.

Cf. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage (c. 200-258 A.D.):

Neither must we prescribe this from custom, but overcome opposite custom by reason [Non est autem de consuetudine præscribendum, sed ratione vincendum]. 

(Cyprian of Carthage, Epistle 70.3 [To Quintus]; PL, 4:410 [Epistola LXXI]; trans. ANF, 5:377.) See also: ccel.org.

Cf. Castus of Sicca (c. 3rd Century A.D.): 

He who with contempt of the truth presumes to follow custom, is either envious and malignant in respect of his brethren to whom the truth is revealed, or is ungrateful in respect of God, by whose inspiration His Church is instructed.

(Castus of Sicca, Quoted in: The Seventh Council of Carthage under Cyprian: Concerning the Baptism of Heretics, trans. ANF, 5:568. Cf. Augustine, On Baptism, Against the Donatists, 3.5.8.) See also: ccel.org.

Cf. Libosus of Vaga (fl. 256 A.D.): 

In the Gospel the Lord says, “I am the truth.” He said not, “I am the custom.” Therefore the truth being manifest, let custom yield to truth… 

(Libosus of Vaga, Quoted in: The Seventh Council of Carthage under Cyprian: Concerning the Baptism of Heretics, trans. ANF, 5:569. Cf. Augustine, On Baptism, Against the Donatists, 3.6.9.) See also: ccel.org.

Cf. Felix of Bussacene (c. 3rd Century A.D.):

…let no one prefer custom to reason and truth, because reason and truth always exclude custom.

(Felix of Bussacene, Quoted in: The Seventh Council of Carthage under Cyprian: Concerning the Baptism of Heretics, trans. ANF, 5:571. Cf. Augustine, On Baptism, Against the Donatists, 3.8.11.) See also: ccel.org.

Cf. Honoratus of Thucca (c. 3rd Century A.D.):

Since Christ is the Truth, we ought rather to follow truth than custom… 

(Honoratus of Thucca, Quoted in: The Seventh Council of Carthage under Cyprian: Concerning the Baptism of Heretics, trans. ANF, 5:571. Cf. Augustine, On Baptism, Against the Donatists, 3.9.12.) See also: ccel.org.

Cf. Basil the Great, Bishop of Cæsarea Mazaca (c. 329/30-379 A.D.):

They are charging me with innovation, and base their charge on my confession of three hypostases, and blame me for asserting one Goodness, one Power, one Godhead. In this they are not wide of the truth, for I do so assert. Their complaint is that their custom does not accept this, and that Scripture does not agree. What is my reply? I do not consider it fair that the custom which obtains among them should be regarded as a law and rule of orthodoxy. If custom is to be taken in proof of what is right, then it is certainly competent for me to put forward on my side the custom which obtains here. If they reject this, we are clearly not bound to follow them. Therefore let God-inspired Scripture decide between us; and on whichever side be found doctrines in harmony with the word of God, in favour of that side will be cast the vote of truth.

(Basil the Great, Letter 189.3 [To Eustathius]; trans. NPNF2, 8:229.) See also: ccel.org.

Cf. Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa (c. 335-395 A.D.):

What then is our reply? We do not think that it is right to make their prevailing custom the law and rule of sound doctrine. For if custom is to avail for proof of soundness, we too, surely, may advance our prevailing custom; and if they reject this, we are surely not bound to follow theirs. Let the inspired Scripture, then, be our umpire, and the vote of truth will surely be given to those whose dogmas are found to agree with the Divine words.

(Gregory of Nyssa, On the Holy Trinity, and of the Godhead of the Holy Spirit [To Eustathius]; trans. NPNF2, 5:327.) See also: ccel.org.

Cf. Jerome of Stridon (c. 347-420 A.D.):

The error, neither of parents nor ancestors, is to be followed; but the authority of the Scriptures, and the government of God as our teacher [Ergo nec parentum nec majorum error sequendus est: sed auctoritas Scripturarum, et Dei docentis imperium]. 

(S. Eusebii Hieronymi, Commentariorum in Jeremiam Prophetam, Lib. II [Cap. IX, Vers. 12 seqq.]; PL, 24:743; trans. William Goode, The Divine Rule of Faith and Practice: In Three Volumes: Vol. III: Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, [London: Hatchard & Co., 1853], p. 151.)

Cf. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (c. 354-430 A.D.):

Libosus also of Vaga says: “The Lord says in the gospel, ‘I am the Truth.’ He does not say, ‘I am custom.’ Therefore, when the truth is made manifest, custom must give way to truth.” Clearly, no one could doubt that custom must give way to truth where it is made manifest. 

(Augustine of Hippo, On Baptism, Against the Donatists, 3.6.9; trans. NPNF1, 4:439.) See also: ccel.org.

Cf. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (c. 354-430 A.D.):

“Further,” Cyprian goes on to say, “in vain do some, who are overcome by reason, oppose to us custom, as though custom were superior to truth, or that were not to be followed in spiritual things which has been revealed by the Holy Spirit, as the better way.” This is clearly true, since reason and truth are to be preferred to custom. But when truth supports custom, nothing should be more strongly maintained. 

(Augustine of Hippo, On Baptism, Against the Donatists, 4.5.8; trans. NPNF1, 4:449.) See also: ccel.org. Return to Article.

[13.] Context. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage (c. 200-258 A.D.):

Let nothing be innovated, says he, nothing maintained, except what has been handed down [traditum est, traditioned]. Whence is that tradition [traditio]? Whether does it descend from the authority of the Lord and of the Gospel, or does it come from the commands and the epistles of the apostles? For that those things which are written must be done, God witnesses and admonishes, saying to Joshua the son of Nun: “The book of this law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate in it day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein.” Also the Lord, sending His apostles, commands that the nations should be baptized, and taught to observe all things which He commanded. If, therefore, it is either prescribed in the Gospel, or contained in the epistles or Acts of the Apostles, that those who come from any heresy should not be baptized, but only hands laid upon them to repentance, let this divine and holy tradition [traditio] be observed. …But there is a brief way for religious and simple minds, both to put away error, and to find and to elicit truth. For if we return to the head and source of divine tradition, human error ceases; and having seen the reason of the heavenly sacraments, whatever lay hid in obscurity under the gloom and cloud of darkness, is opened into the light of the truth. If a channel supplying water, which formerly flowed plentifully and freely, suddenly fail, do we not go to the fountain, that there the reason of the failure may be ascertained, whether from the drying up of the springs the water has failed at the fountainhead, or whether, flowing thence free and full, it has failed in the midst of its course; that so, if it has been caused by the fault of an interrupted or leaky channel, that the constant stream does not flow uninterruptedly and continuously, then the channel being repaired and strengthened, the water collected may be supplied for the use and drink of the city, with the same fertility and plenty with which it issues from the spring? And this it behoves the priests of God to do now, if they would keep the divine precepts, that if in any respect the truth have wavered and vacillated, we should return to our original and Lord, and to the evangelical and apostolical tradition; and thence may arise the ground of our action, whence has taken rise both our order and our origin.

(Cyprian of Carthage, Epistle 73.2, 10 [To Pompey ]; PL, 3:1129, 1135-1136 [Epistola LXXIV]; trans. ANF, 5:386-387, 389.) See also: ccel.org.

Note: According to Cyprian tradition is only authoritative when it is subservient to the authority of Scripture. It has no authority in and of itself (apart from Scripture).

Cf. Gottfried Lumper, O.S.B. (Roman Catholic Theologian and Historian):

…neither in this, nor the preceding passages, do St. Cyprian’s words refer to divine traditions, distinct from Holy Scripture. Any one will easily be convinced of the truth of this my assertion, if he will only at his leisure read the whole of the letters quoted… Cyprian acknowledged no other tradition than what is contained in the Scriptures [...neque in hoc, neque in præcedentibus locis S. Cyprianum de Traditionibus divinis a Scriptura sacra distinctis sermonem habere. De hujus asserti mei veritate quilibet facile convincetur, si laudatas Epistolas per otium integre evolvere voluerit… Nullam ergo aliam Traditionem agnoscebat Cyprianus, quam quæ in scripturis continetur.].

(P. Gottfridi Lumper, Historia Theologico-Critica de Vita, Scriptis Atque Doctrina SS. Patrum Aliorumque Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Trium Priorum Sæculorum: Pars. XI, [Auguste Vindelicorum: Sumptious Matthæi Rieger P. M. Filiorum, 1795], pp. 522, 523. trans. William Goode, The Divine Rule of Faith and Practice: In Three Volumes: Vol. III: Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, [London: Hatchard & Co., 1853], p. 65.)

Cf. Justin Martyr (c. 100-165 A.D.):

…as they who have recorded all that concerns our Saviour Jesus Christ have taught [ὡς οἱ ἀπομνημονεύσαντες πάντα τὰ περὶ τοῦ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐδίδαξαν]... 

(Justin Martyr, The First Apology, 33; PG, 6:381; trans. ANF, 1:174.) See also: ccel.org.

Cf. Justin Martyr (c. 100-165 A.D.):

Even as there was no ignorance on God’s part when He asked Adam where he was, or asked Cain where Abel was; but [it was done] to convince each what kind of man he was, and in order that through the record [of Scripture] we might have a knowledge of all… 

(Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 99; trans. ANF, 1:248.) See also: ccel.org.

Cf. Irenæus, Bishop of Lyon [Lugdunum] (c. 130-202 A.D.):

We have learned from none others the plan of our salvation, than from those through whom the Gospel has come down to us, which they did at one time proclaim in public, and, at a later period, by the will of God, handed down [tradiderunt, traditioned] to us in the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith.

(Irenæus of Lyons, Against Heresies, 3.1.1; PG, 7:844; trans. ANF, 1:414.) See also: ccel.org.

Cf. Irenæus, Bishop of Lyon [Lugdunum] (c. 130-202 A.D.):

When, however, they are confuted from the Scriptures, they turn round and accuse these same Scriptures, as if they were not correct, nor of authority, and [assert] that they are ambiguous, and that the truth cannot be extracted from them by those who are ignorant of tradition. For [they allege] that the truth was not delivered by means of written documents, but vivâ voce [orally, sed per vivam vocem, lit. by a living voice]… 

(Irenæus of Lyons, Against Heresies, 3.2.1; PG, 7:846; trans. ANF, 1:415.) See also: ccel.org.

Cf. Irenæus, Bishop of Lyon [Lugdunum] (c. 130-202 A.D.):

…blessed Polycarp sat as he discoursed, and his goings out and his comings in, and the manner of his life, and his physical appearance, and his discourses to the people, and the accounts which he gave of his intercourse with John and with the others who had seen the Lord. And as he remembered their words, and what he heard from them concerning the Lord, and concerning his miracles and his teaching, having received them from eyewitnesses of the ‘Word of life,’ Polycarp related all things in harmony with the Scriptures [πάντα σύμφωνα ταῖς γραφαῖς].

(Irenæus of Lyons; Quoted in: Eusebius of Caesarea, Church History, 5.20.6; PG, 20:485; trans. NPNF2, 1:238-239.) See also: ccel.org.

Cf. Hippolytus of Rome (c. 170-235 A.D.):

There is, brethren, one God, the knowledge of whom we gain from the Holy Scriptures, and from no other source. For just as a man if he wishes to be skilled in the wisdom of this world will find himself unable to get at it in any other way than by mastering the dogmas of philosophers, so all of us who wish to practice piety will be unable to learn its practice from any quarter than the oracles of God. Whatever things then the Holy Scriptures declare, at these let us look; and whatsoever things they teach these let us learn...

(Hippolytus of Rome, Against the Heresy of One Noetus, 9; trans. ANF, 5:227.) See also: ccel.org.

Cf. Tertullian of Carthage (c. 155-240 A.D.):

Take away, indeed, from the heretics the wisdom which they share with the heathen, and let them support their inquiries from the Scriptures alone [Scripturis solis]: they will then be unable to keep their ground.

(Tertullian of Carthage, On the Resurrection of the Flesh, 3; PL, 2:799; trans. ANF, 3:547.) See also: ccel.org.

Cf. Tertullian of Carthage (c. 155-240 A.D.):

Where such a statement is written, Hermogenes’ shop must tell us. If it is nowhere written, then let it fear the woe which impends on all who add to or take away from the written word.

(Tertullian of Carthage, Against Hermogenes, 22; trans. ANF, 3:490.) See also: ccel.org.

Cf. Basil the Great, Bishop of Cæsarea Mazaca (c. 329/30-379 A.D.):

What our fathers said, the same say we… But we do not rest only on the fact that such is the tradition of the Fathers; for they too followed the sense of Scripture, and started from the evidence which, a few sentences back, I deduced from Scripture and laid before you.

(Basil the Great, De Spiritu Sancto, 7.16; trans. NPNF2, 8:10.) See also: ccel.org. 

Alt. Trans. Basil the Great, Bishop of Cæsarea Mazaca (c. 329/30-379 A.D.):

But as for us, what our fathers said, we repeat… But we are not content simply because this is the tradition of the Fathers. What is important is that the Fathers followed the meaning of Scripture, beginning with the evidence which I have just extracted from the Scriptures and presented to you.

(Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, 7.16; trans. St. Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, trans. David Anderson, [Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980], 7.16, p. 34. Cf. NPNF2, 8:10.)

Cf. Basil the Great, Bishop of Cæsarea Mazaca (c. 329/30-379 A.D.):

Believe those things which are written; the things which are not written seek not. [Τοῖς γεγραμμένοις πίστευε, τὰ μὴ γεγραμμένα μὴ ζήτει].

(S. Basilii Magni, Homilia: Adversus Eos Qui Per Calumniam Dicunt Dici a Nobis Deos Tres, 4; PG, 31:1493; trans. Edward Harold Browne, An Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles: Historical and Doctrinal, ed. J. Williams, [New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1895], Article VI, p. 149.)

Cf. Basil the Great, Bishop of Cæsarea Mazaca (c. 329/30-379 A.D.):

What is the mark of a faithful soul? To be in these dispositions of full acceptance on the authority of the words [of the Scripture], not venturing to reject anything nor making additions. For, if ‘all that is not of faith is sin,’ as the Apostle says, and ‘faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God,’ everything outside Holy Scripture, not being of faith, is sin.

(Basil the Great, The Morals, 22; trans. FC, 9:203-204.)

Cf. Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria (c. 296/8-373 A.D.): 

Vainly then do they run about with the pretext that they have demanded Councils for the faith’s sake; for divine Scripture is sufficient above all things; but if a Council be needed on the point, there are the proceedings of the Fathers, for the Nicene Bishops did not neglect this matter, but stated the doctrine so exactly, that persons reading their words honestly, cannot but be reminded by them of the religion towards Christ announced in divine Scripture.

(Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia (De Synodis), 1.6; trans. NPNF2, 4:453.) See also: ccel.org.

Cf. Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria (c. 296/8-373 A.D.): 

These are fountains of salvation, that they who thirst may be satisfied with the living words they contain. In these alone is proclaimed the doctrine of godliness. Let no man add to these, neither let him take ought from these. For concerning these the Lord put to shame the Sadducees, and said, ‘Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures.’ And He reproved the Jews, saying, ‘Search the Scriptures, for these are they that testify of Me.’

(Athanasius of Alexandria, Letter 39.6; trans. NPNF2, 4:552.) See also: ccel.org.

Cf. Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem (c. 313-386 A.D.):

But in learning the Faith and in professing it, acquire and keep that only, which is now delivered to thee by the Church, and which has been built up strongly out of all the Scriptures. For since all cannot read the Scriptures, some being hindered as to the knowledge of them by want of learning, and others by a want of leisure, in order that the soul may not perish from ignorance, we comprise the whole doctrine of the Faith in a few lines. …I wish you also to keep this as a provision through the whole course of your life, and beside this to receive no other, neither if we ourselves should change and contradict our present teaching, nor if an adverse angel, transformed into an angel of light, should wish to lead you astray. For though we or an angel from heaven preach to you any other gospel than that ye have received, let him be to you anathema. So for the present listen while I simply say the Creed, and commit it to memory; but at the proper season expect the confirmation out of Holy Scripture of each part of the contents. For the articles of the Faith were not composed as seemed good to men; but the most important points collected out of all the Scripture make up one complete teaching of the Faith.

(Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, 5.12; trans. NPNF2, 7:32.) See also: ccel.org.

Cf. Edward Yarnold, S.J. (Roman Catholic Theologian and Historian):

Cyril subscribed to a form of scriptura sola doctrine, stating categorically that every doctrinal statement must be based on the Scriptures: ‘let us not presume to speak of what is not in Scripture’ (Cat. 16.24).

For where the divine and holy mysteries of the Creed are concerned, one must not teach casually without reference to the sacred Scriptures, or be led astray by persuasive and elaborate arguments. Do not simply take my word when I tell you these things, unless you are given proof for my teaching from holy Scripture. (Cat. 4.17)

The Creed summarizes the Scriptures which contain the whole of doctrine (Cat. 5.12).

(Edward Yarnold, S.J., Cyril of Jerusalem, The Early Church Fathers, [London: Routledge, 2000], p. 56.) Preview.

Cf. Jerome of Stridon (c. 347-420 A.D.): 

The other things, also, which they find and feign, of themselves, without the authority and testimonies of the Scriptures, as if by apostolical tradition, the sword of God [the word of God in the Scriptures] strikes down [Sed et alia quæ absque auctoritate et testimoniis Scripturarum quasi traditione apostolica sponte reperiunt atque confingunt, percutit gladius Dei]. 

(S. Eusebii Hieronymi, Commentariorum In Aggæum Prophetam, Lib. I, Vers. 11, PL, 25:1398; trans. William Goode, The Divine Rule of Faith and Practice: In Three Volumes: Vol. III: Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, [London: Hatchard & Co., 1853], p. 151.)

Jerome of Stridon (c. 347-420 A.D.):

‘In his record of the peoples the Lord shall tell’: in the sacred writings, in His Scripture that is read to all peoples in order that all may know. Thus the apostles have written; thus the Lord Himself has spoken, not merely for a few, but that all might know and understand [non ut pauci intellegerent, sed ut omnes]. Plato wrote books, but he did not write for all people but only for a few, for there are not many more than two or three men who know him. But the princes of the Church and the princes of Christ did not write only for the few, but for everyone without exception. ‘And princes’: the apostles and the evangelists. ‘Of those who have been born in her.’ Note: ‘who have been’ and not ‘who are.’ That is to make sure that, with the exception of the apostles, whatever else is said afterwards should be removed and not, later on, hold the force of authority. No matter how holy anyone may be after the time of the apostles, no matter how eloquent, he does not have authority [Quamuis ergo sanctus sit aliquis post apostolos, quamuis disertus sit, non habet auctoritatem], for ‘in his record of the peoples and princes the Lord shall tell of those who have been born in her.’

(Hieronymus, Tractatus in Psalmos, De Psalmo LXXXVI; CCSL, 78:115-116; trans. FC, 48:142-143 [Homily 18 – On Psalm 86(87)].)

Cf. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (c. 354-430 A.D.):

Therefore, when those disciples have written matters which He declared and spake to them, it ought not by any means to be said that He has written nothing Himself; since the truth is, that His members have accomplished only what they became acquainted with by the repeated statements of the Head. For all that He was minded to give for our perusal on the subject of His own doings and sayings, He commanded to be written by those disciples, whom He thus used as if they were His own hands [Quidquid enim ille de suis factis et dictis nos legere voluit, hoc scribendum illis tanquam suis manibus imperavit]. 

(Augustine of Hippo, The Harmony of the Gospels, 1.35.54; PL, 34:1070; trans. NPNF1, 6:101.) See also: ccel.org.

Cf. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (c. 354-430 A.D.):

You ought to notice particularly and store in your memory that God wanted to lay a firm foundation in the Scriptures against treacherous errors, a foundation against which no-one dares to speak who would in any way be considered a Christian. For when he offered Himself to them to touch, this did not suffice Him unless He also confirmed the heart of the believers from the Scriptures, for He foresaw that the time would come when we would not have anything to touch but would have something to read [in quo quod palpemus nos non habemus, sed quod legamus habemus].

(S. Aurelii Augustini, In Epistolam Johannis ad Parthos Tractatus Decem, Tractatus II.1; PL, 35:1989; trans. Martin Chemnitz, Examination of the Council of Trent: Part 1, trans. Fred Kramer, [St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1971], p. 152. Cf. NPNF1, 7:469. Cf. FC, 92:142.) Cf.: ccel.org.

Cf. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (c. 354-430 A.D.):

Receive, my children, the Rule of Faith, which is called the Symbol (or Creed). And when ye have received it, write it in your heart, and be daily saying it to yourselves; before ye sleep, before ye go forth, arm you with your Creed. The Creed no man writes so as it may be able to be read: but for rehearsal of it, lest haply forgetfulness obliterate what care hath delivered, let your memory be your record-roll: what ye are about to hear, that are ye to believe; and what ye shall have believed, that are about to give back with your tongue. For the Apostle says, “With the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” For this is the Creed which ye are to rehearse and to repeat in answer. These words which ye have heard are in the Divine Scriptures scattered up and down: but thence gathered and reduced into one, that the memory of slow persons might not be distressed; that every person may be able to say, able to hold, what he believes.

(Augustine of Hippo, On the Creed, 1; trans. NPNF1, 3:369.) See also: ccel.org.

Cf. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (c. 354-430 A.D.):

The apostle says: Since if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that the Lord raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto justice, and with the mouth one makes confession unto salvation (Rom 10:9-10). This is what the Symbol builds up in you, what you must both believe and confess, so that you may be saved. And indeed, the things you are going to receive in a short enough form, to be committed to memory and repeated by word of mouth, are not new things which you haven’t heard before. I mean, you are quite used to hearing them in the holy scriptures and in sermons in church. But they have been compressed into a brief summary, and reduced to a definite, tightly knit order; and that is how they are to be handed over to you, to build up your faith and to prepare you to confess it, without burdening your memories. This then is what you are faithfully going to retain, and to give back from memory.

(Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 214.1; WSA, III/6:150.)

Cf. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (c. 354-430 A.D.):

For among the things that are plainly laid down in Scripture are to be found all matters that concern faith [inveniuntur illa omnia quæ continent fidem] and the manner of life,—to wit, hope and love, of which I have spoken in the previous book.

(Augustine of Hippo, On Christian Doctrine, 2.9.14; PL, 34:42; trans. NPNF1, 2:539.) See also: ccel.org. Return to Article.

[14.] Cf. C. S. Lewis:

The difficulty that remains, and which becomes sharper as it becomes narrower, is our disagreement about the seat and nature of doctrinal Authority. The real reason, I take it, why you cannot be in communion with us is not your disagreement with this or that particular Protestant doctrine, so much as the absence of any real “Doctrine”, in your sense of the word, at all. It is, you feel, like asking a man to say he agrees not with a speaker but with a debating society. And the real reason why I cannot be in communion with you is not my disagreement with this or that Roman doctrine, but that to accept your Church means, not to accept a given body of doctrine, but to accept in advance any doctrine your Church hereafter produces. It is like being asked to agree not only to what a man has said but to what he’s going to say.

     To you the real vice of Protestantism is the formless drift which seems unable to retain the Catholic truths, which loses them one by one and ends in a “modernism” which cannot be classified as Christian by any tolerable stretch of the word. To us the terrible thing about Rome is the recklessness (as we hold) with which she has added to the depositum fidei – the tropical fertility, the proliferation, of credenda. You see in Protestantism the Faith dying out in a desert: we see in Rome the Faith smothered in a jungle.

     I know no way of bridging this gulf.

(C. S. Lewis, “Christian Reunion;” In: C. S. Lewis: Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces, ed. Lesley Walmsley, [London: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2000], p. 396.) Return to Article.

καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria