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“The Tradition that comes from the apostles makes progress in the Church,
with the help of the Holy Spirit. There is a growth in insight into the
realities and words that are being passed on. This comes about in various ways.
It comes through the contemplation and study of believers who ponder these
things in their hearts (cf. Lk. 2:19 and 51). It comes from the intimate sense
of spiritual realities which they experience. And it comes from the preaching
of those who have received, along with their right of succession in the
episcopate, the sure charism of truth. Thus, as the centuries go by, the Church
is always advancing towards the plenitude of divine truth, until eventually the
words of God are fulfilled in her.”
Dei Verbum. ‘Dogmatic Constitution on Divine
Revelation’ no 8, in The Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents,
ed. by A.FLANNERY, Dominican Publications, Dublin 1975, p. 754. See full
chapter here.
True Tradition is not static. It grows; not in the sense that it differs
substantially from the inspiration received from Jesus Christ and the Apostles,
but in the sense that many of its latent implications are gradually realised
with the help of the Holy Spirit.
“Regarding its substance faith does not grow with the passage of
time, for whatever has been believed since, was contained from the start in the
faith of the ancient fathers. As regards its explication, however, the number
of articles has increased, for we moderns explicitly believe what they believed
implicitly.”
St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74)Summa Theologica,
2-2,2,7.
We will follow three steps:
- Doctrine develops.
- Dynamic Tradition is the whole truth and reality
of Christ preserved by the whole Church.
- The ‘sensus fidelium’ is a norm to
recognise a doctrine in the process of development.
Doctrine develops
From the earliest times, the Church has realised that Christian faith is
not static, even if it holds on to a firm kernel of revealed truth. There is
constant progress. The classic patristic text on this growth goes back to St.
Vincent of Lérins (434 AD) who stressed both the fidelity to what was
received and the growth in understanding.
“But, it will be said, is not religion then open to any progress
in the Church of Christ? On the contrary, there must be progress, considerable
progress. Who would be sufficiently hostile to humankind and to God to oppose
it? But a reservation must be made; this progress must constitute a real
progress for the faith, and not an alteration: the characteristic of progress
being that each element grows and yet remains itself, while the characteristic
of alteration is that one thing is transformed into another. Therefore, let
intelligence, knowledge and wisdom increase and progress greatly, as well those
of individuals as those of the community, those of a single person as those of
the whole Church, according to the ages and centuries—but on condition
that it be greatly in keeping with their particular nature, that is to say in
the same teaching, the same sense and the same thought” Vincent of
Lerins, Commonitorium, c. 23. The last line was quoted by the First
Vatican Council in Session III, c. 4 (Denzinger, 1800).
Progress “in the same sense and the same thought” may simply
be the unfolding of an idea that is already present. For instance, the dogma of
Nicaea (the Son being “consubstantial” with the Father, a term not
found in Scripture) clarified the content of an idea already contained
explicitly in the Bible. The same is true for the dogma of Christ’s real
presence in the Eucharist, for which the term “transubstantiation”
has been declared highly fitting. Progress “in the same sense and the same
thought” may also be the development of the latent
qualities of an accepted idea or reality believed. The dogma of the
Immaculate Conception, for example, or that of the corporal Assumption of Mary,
Mother of God, can scarcely pass as the simple explanation of a formal
statement of Revelation, explicitly found in Scripture. And yet these dogmas
have strong ties with Revelation, by means of what is called the analogy of
faith.
The Church possesses other sources of knowledge besides written
documents. She has the experience of Christian reality as such continually
present within her, motivated and directed by the Holy Spirit, sometimes called
‘the Gospel in the heart’.
‘Tradition’, if properly understood, is precisely the place where the
synthesis is realized between the historical transmission and the present
experience which, thus united, produce, in the present and in preparation for
the future, a profound knowledge of Christian reality transcending the text of
written documents of the past. Tradition is not merely memory, it is actual
presence and experience. It is not purely conservative, but, in a certain way,
creative. After nineteen centuries of existence it presents a certain
additional value with regard to its primary statements, at least in so far as
we can deduce these from the documents. From this aspect of development, the
Tradition of the more or less distant past has prepared the Tradition of today,
and today’s Tradition will prepare that of the more or less distant
future. In its actual role as channel, since it is not inert but living, it is
to a certain extent a source. By nourishing the tissues of the body the blood
is rejuvenated in the arteries that carry it. Tradition is the living artery
which receives an increase of the very life it communicates, in its act of
transmission.
Maurice Blondel (1861 - 1949 AD) explained it as follows:
- “Tradition is not merely an oral substitute for the written
teaching; it retains its raison d’ètre even in matters where
Scripture has spoken; it is the progressive understanding of the riches
possessed objectively from the beginning of Christianity, held and enjoyed in a
truly Christian spirit, and transformed by reflection from ‘something
lived implicitly into something known explicitly’.”
- “ Tradition brings to the surface of consciousness elements
previously imprisoned in the depths of the faith and of its practice, rather
than expressed, expounded and reasoned. So this conservative and protective
force is also instructive and progressive. Looking lovingly towards the past,
where its treasure is enshrined, tradition advances towards the future, where
its victory and glory lie.”
- “ Even in its discoveries it has the humble feeling of
faithfully regaining what it possesses already. It has no need of innovation
since it possesses its God and its all: but its constant task is to provide us
with fresh teaching, because it transforms something lived implicitly into
something known explicitly.”
- “ Whoever lives and thinks in a Christian fashion is in fact
working for tradition, whether it is the saint perpetuating the presence of
Jesus among us, the scholar returning to the pure sources of Revelation, or the
philosopher engaged in opening the way to the future and ensuring the continual
production of the Spirit of renewal. And this activity, shared by the different
members, contributes to the health of the body, under the direction of its
head, who, united to a conscience receiving divine assistance, alone orders and
encourages its progress.”
Source: Maurice Blondel, ‘Histoire et
Dogme: les lacunes de l‘exégèse moderne” in La
Quinzaine 56 (January and Februarv 1904), pp. 145-167, 349-373,
433-458.
Yves Congar speaks of developing Tradition in terms of ‘interest
accrued to its capital’, a completing of our knowledge of God's love, an
‘enrichment’ of faith.
“Tradition in its historical journey, is as much development as
memory and conservation. In this way it earns interest, as it were, during the
centuries, which is added to its capital foundation. Although living in a
moment of time subsequent to it, what I receive is still the apostolic
heritage: “the faith that was handed down, once for all, to the
saints” (Jude 3), but as it has been lived in and by the Church, in the
communion of saints. It is given to us, but also asked of us, with all the
saints, “to measure, in all its breadth and length and height and depth,
the love of Christ, to know what passes knowledge. And to be filled with all
the completion God has to give” (Eph. 3. 18-9). I am called to live it
today in a religious relationship, in the form given it by Jesus Christ once
and for all, but also in the way it is presented, and in certain
respects enriched, for having been lived, pondered and expressed by
generations of believers inhabited and vivified by the Spirit of
Pentecost.” (The Meaning of Tradition, Hawthorne, New York 1964, p.
114).
Some of the best expositions on the dynamic growth in Christian
Tradition have been written by John Henry Cardinal Newman. Here are some
excerpts from his classic An Essay on the Development of Christian
Doctrine (1845), edition published by Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1989.
- “Granting that some large variations of teaching in its long
course of 1800 years exist, nevertheless, these, on examination, will be found
. . . to proceed on a law, and with a harmony and a definite drift, and with an
analogy to Scripture revelations, which . . . constitute an argument in their
favour, as witnessing to a superintending Providence and a great Design.”
(pp. vii-viii).
- “Principle is a better test of heresy than doctrine. Heretics
are true to their principles, but change to and fro, backwards and forwards, in
opinion; for very opposite doctrines may be exemplifications of the same
principle . . . ” ( pp.181-182. Part 2, ch. 5, section 2, no. 3).
- “It becomes necessary . . . to assign certain characteristics
of faithful developments . . . the presence of which serves as a test to
discriminate between them and corruptions . . . I venture to set down Seven
Notes . . . as follows: - There is no corruption if it retains one and the same
type, the same principles, the same organization; if its beginnings anticipate
its subsequent phases, and its later phenomena protect and subserve its
earlier; if it has a power of assimilation and revival, and a vigorous action
from first to last.” (pp.170-171. Part 2, chapter 5, nos. 2, 4).
Dynamic Tradition is the whole
truth and reality of Christ preserved by the whole Church
What is tradition?
- It is that sense of who we are as God's people, that sense of what
God has revealed to us, that we find in the life, the worship, and the teaching
of the Christian community which is the Church down the centuries and across
the world.
- “The whole truth and reality originally communicated by Christ
and the Spirit to the apostles, preserved and presented ceaselessly by the
whole Church in the fullness of its vital existence and
operation” (Walter J. Burghardt, Christian Tradition, a Paulist
Videocassette (New York, 1984).
- “The normative Tradition is . . . a living force whose
contingent expressions . . . can change” (Robert Taft, "The Frequency of
the Eucharist throughout History," Concilium 152 (1982), 21).
- “Tradition is understood by the Second Vatican Council as
something dynamic, not static, a sense found in the ongoing life, thought,
prayer and worship of the Christian community. It involves progress and
development and change. No longer can Catholics accept the dictum of the
fifth-century Vincent of Lerins that "what is Catholic is that which has been
believed everywhere, always and by all." (Commonitorium II: 3). That
philosophically "substantialist" mindset is no longer acceptable. It produced
an image of the Church as unchangeable and allowed for only accidental,
external, changes in the Church's passage through time. "Tradition," in this
understanding, was a sort of arcane treasure trove of propositional statements
waiting authoritative enunciation. It is no longer seen that way” (James
Hennesey, ‘Searching for the Tradition’, in Catholic
Southwest, 1992). Read the full article here.
The Church is a reality that changes, that finds different forms and
shapes according to the changing demands of time and place, that embodies, as
the great French Dominican theologian, Yves Congar, has said, "the one content
of faith diversifying and finding expression in different cultural contexts."
Congar has also pointed out that this historical approach to understanding the
Church has been highlighted by the Council's emphasis on the description of the
Christian community as "the People of God" (Yves Congar, "Church History as a
Branch of Theology," Concilium57 (1970), 87).
For Tradition to be valid, it needs to “live in the Church”.
This means it needs to rest on the sensus fidelium, a spontaneous,
supernatural appreciation of the faith by the faithful.
The ‘sensus fidelium’ as
a norm to recognise a doctrine in the process of development
This section is based on John E.Thiel, ‘Tradition and
authoritative reasoning: a nonfoundationalist perspective’, Theological
Studies 56 (1995) p. 627-51. Read the full text here.
According to the Second Vatican Council, the “whole body of the
faithful who have an anointing that comes from the holy one ... cannot err in
matters of belief.” This unerring belief appears in “the supernatural
appreciation of the faith (sensus fidei) of the whole people, when ...
they manifest a universal consent in matters of faith or morals” (Lumen
Gentium no. 12).
The sensus fidei is not a self-subsistent belief isolated from
other dimensions of ecclesial life and practice, including the hierarchical
teaching office. Indeed, the unerring sense of the faith is guided by the
magisterium, relying on its teaching for the preservation of its truth.
Yet, at the same time, the sense of the faith is the faith of the
"people of God, ... from the bishops to the last of the faithful,"(Lumen
Gentium no. 12) and so it cannot simply be reduced to the teaching of the
magisterium.
Magisterial teaching that has not been received in belief and
practice by a wide segment of the faithful offers a more reliable, but still
incomplete, criterion for judging whether doctrine is currently in a state of
dramatic development.
This criterion is not without its ambiguities. Sociological findings
may be helpful in locating teaching not received by the faithful, but polling
results alone cannot establish the extent of doctrinal reception. In addition,
there remains the theological issue of how one understands Lumen Gentium's
reference to "the whole body of the faithful" in which infallibility resides.
Does this phrase refer to the baptized, to
practitioners of the faith, or more self-referentially to those who do indeed
possess the unerring sense of the faith, however difficult it may be to
determine its character or their number? This question points to the inherent
difficulties attending judgments about doctrinal reception. Although appeal may
be made to social-scientific data in testing the reception of doctrine in the
Church, one must rely finally on the sense of the faith itself in judging
whether doctrine has been received by the faithful, who in turn evaluate the
legitimacy of the judgment. In any case, defining the unerring faithful as
those who receive all magisterial teaching in faith and practice wrongly
equates the infallibility of the Church with obedience to the magisterium in
any particular historical moment, and ignores both the dynamics of doctrinal
development and the fact of dramatic development in the tradition . The
criterion of reception, then, remains ambiguous, though by nature and not by
fault.
This ambiguity can be mitigated somewhat by other criteria. A second
criterion for judging current dramatic development is that the magisterium
also invokes theological argument in the presentation of its teaching. The
magisterial practice of supporting teaching with or actually offering teaching
through theological argument can be found as early in the tradition as Leo I's
fifth-century Tome on the person of Christ(FN7) or as recently as an encyclical
of Paul VI (Humanae Vitae) and an instruction of the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith (Inter Insigniores). The magisterial use of
argument to convey authentic teaching is not necessarily a symptom of its
noninfallible character, as the illustration of Leo's Tome, a strong textual
influence on the Chalcedonian decree, testifies. But the use of theological
argument in magisterial teaching is a reliable symptom that the doctrine taught
is in a state of development which itself prompts the need for
argument.
There are three reasons for this argumentative need
to which we can refer respectively as the circumstantial, the logical, and the
rhetorical. First, argument is deemed necessary because the teaching addresses
changing cultural circumstances in which a simple reiteration of traditional
doctrine would not suffice. Argument serves as a way of mediating traditional
meaning to novel issues, problems, or situations. Second, argument is deemed
necessary because this mediated teaching requires a specific and convincing
application of the tradition 's more basic beliefs, an application that
represents a movement to doctrine more derivative, though not necessarily less
authoritative. Logic (here following its traditional rules!) serves the
magisterium by demonstrating the reasonableness of the application, by showing
how the teaching's conclusion derives its authority from a major premise (more
basic beliefs) rightly modified by its minor (changing cultural
circumstances).(FN9) Third, argument is deemed necessary because unanimity in
the Church is lacking for the doctrine in question. Argument thus has the
rhetorical goal of persuasion.
These first two criteria for dramatic development, when taken
together--magisterial teaching that one judges not to have been widely received
by the faithful and that presents its teaching through theological
argument--provide good direction for determining doctrine clearly in a state of
development.
A third criterion must be added, however, for distinguishing development
that is more likely to be dramatic. That criterion, itself a supplement to the
previous two, is that the theological argument by which magisterial teaching
is supported or conveyed does not prove convincing to a wide segment of
Catholic theologians. If the magisterium supports or conveys its teaching
by the logical application of more basic beliefs to changing circumstances in
order to persuade the faithful who are disinclined toward its reception, and
that argumentation does not convince a wide segment of those in the Church
knowledgeable about the tradition to which it appeals and able to assess the
viability of the argumentative application to present circumstances, then there
is a greater likelihood that such teaching is developing dramatically than if
such conditions did not prevail.
Dramatic development could be encouraged in such an eventuality as
theologians offered criticism of the current teaching, showing how and why the
doctrinal argument advanced did not justify the teaching or offering
alternative arguments that advanced another version of consistency with
traditional beliefs and with the current beliefs of many in the Church.
The principle applied to INTER INSIGNIORES
Inter insigniores, which presents a rationale for the Church's
long-established practice of restricting priestly ordination to men, ... seems
not to have met wide reception among the faithful. In fact, sociological
evidence suggests that the acceptability of the ordination of women among
Catholics in the years since the document's publication has increased
substantially. For example (and one typical of North American and Western
European countries), a 1977 Gallup poll found 41% of American Catholics to
favor the ordination of women, a statistic that increased to 63% by 1993.
A 1993 Gallup poll found that 33% of Catholic
respondents "strongly agreed" and 30% "moderately agreed" that it would be "a
good thing if women were allowed to be ordained as priests" (The Gallup
Poll: Public Opinion 1993 144). A 1994 New York Times/CBS News poll found
that 59% of American Catholics favored the ordination of women to the
priesthood (The New York Times [1 June 1994] B8).
As noted earlier, one must be wary about reducing the sensus fidei to
the findings of sociologists and doubly wary about the Catholic beliefs of some
nations standing as the belief of the whole Church. Yet this increase of belief
in the ordination of women is telling, and enough so to judge that the teaching
of the Church in question has not been widely received by the faithful. The
most likely explanations for this increase are a growing awareness of
injustices toward women in traditional societies, the strength of movements for
the equal rights of women, and a resulting expansion of the role of women in
social structures and responsibilities customarily reserved for men. One cannot
completely discount, however, the influence of the document's argument itself
on the increasingly wider lack of reception of the teaching among the faithful
over this period of time.
We find in Inter insigniores all three
reasons, circumstantial, logical, and rhetorical, for the appeal to argument in
the promulgation of magisterial teaching. The exclusive ordination of men to
the priesthood is, after all, a practice that dates in some form to the
first-century Church. The felt need to justify such an ancient practice stems
from changing circumstances in which argument is called upon to defeat
challenges to the tradition . The document's opening paragraphs identify those
changing circumstances as the modern recognition of the full equality of women,
the wider participation of women in the apostolate of the Church, the
unqualified admission of women to pastoral office in some Protestant churches,
and arguments by Catholic theologians for the ordination of women to the
priesthood. Logical mediation is deemed necessary in Inter insigniores to bring
the tradition 's most basic beliefs to bear upon these changing
circumstances.
There are several ancillary arguments in the document
that serve to refute defenses of the ordination of women based on Scripture and
history. The teaching notes in passing, for example, that the "undeniable
influence of prejudices unfavorable to women" in the writings of the Church
Fathers had negligible effect on their pastoral practice and spiritual
direction. The argument "from origins" continues by observing that "Jesus did
not call any woman to become part of the Twelve" even though his attitude
toward women did not conform to, and indeed even "deliberately and courageously
broke with," the customs of his time. Moreover, the apostles did not consider
women candidates to complete the Twelve in the Pentecost Church, even though
Mary herself occupied a privileged place in their circle. Nor did Paul extend
full ministerial powers to women.
As important as these arguments "from origins" are in
the document for defending the continuity of ecclesial practice against
counterarguments for change, they are secondary to what we will call its
argument "from representation." Although Inter insigniores portrays its
reasoning "from representation" as a matter "of clarifying [its] teaching by
the analogy of faith" and not as a matter "of bringing forward a demonstrative
argument," the manner in which its premises lead to its conclusion seem to
involve elementary deduction. The argument's major premise is the "Church's
constant teaching" that "the bishop or the priest, in the exercise of his
ministry, does not act in his own name, in persona propria: he represents
Christ, who acts through him...." In the ministry, then, the priest "acts not
only through the effective power conferred on him by Christ, but in persona
Christi." This major premise is qualified by the minor premise that the
incarnation of the Word "took place according to the male sex," a fact that
does not imply a superiority of men over women but which nonetheless conveys a
harmony in the plan of salvation revealed by God and symbolically important for
the economy of revelation.
Logical mediation yields the conclusion of the teaching that women
cannot be priests because as females they could not act ministerially in
persona Christi since the savior was a male. This argument's minor premise
addresses contemporary cultural shifts in which feminist sensibilities would no
longer assume that metaphysical conceptions like persona are intrinsically male
or would insist that such conceptions transcend social (and ecclesial) bias
only when they are understood in a gender-inclusive manner. The rhetoric of the
argument exhibits an awareness of the claims of these sensibilities and of the
need to convince those who find the traditional belief incredible--even to the
point that the document anticipates and rebuffs counterarguments to the
centrality it accords to the maleness of Christ. As we found in the case of
Humanae vitae, so many theologians have found the argumentation of Inter
insigniores to be problematic that demonstrating its lack of cogency to a wide
segment of their number becomes a redundant task.
Both teachings, then, Humanae Vitae and Inter Insigniores,
appear to fit our criterion of dramatically developing doctrine, primarily
because they seem not to have been widely received by the faithful and
secondarily, yet importantly, because they also advance their teaching by
arguments that have not proved convincing to those in the Church professionally
committed to the task of bringing understanding to faith.
By way of conclusion:
“The changes in Church doctrine that have actually taken place in
the course of history show that a tradition could hold firm until advances in
human knowledge or culture obliged the church to look at the question in a new
light. Through honest reexamination of its tradition in this new light, the
church has sometimes come to see that the reasons for holding to its previous
position were not decisive after all.”
“There is no denying the fact that many of the reasons given in
the past to justify the exclusion of women from the priesthood are such as one
would be embarrassed to offer today. No doubt, better reasons than those have
been presented in the recent documents of the Holy See. The question that
remains in my mind is whether it is a clearly established fact that the bishops
of the Catholic Church are as convinced by those reasons as Pope John Paul
evidently is, and that, in exercising their proper role as judges and teachers
of the faith, they have been unanimous in teaching that the exclusion of women
from ordination to the priesthood is a divinely revealed truth to which all
Catholics are obliged to give a definitive assent of faith.”
FRANCIS A. SULLIVAN, ‘Guideposts from Catholic
tradition . Infallibility doctrine invoked in statement against ordination by
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’, America 173 (Dec. 9
'95) pp. 5-6. Sullivan was professor of ecclesiology at the Pontifical
Gregorian University in Rome for 36 years before retiring in June 1992. He
is author of Magisterium: Teaching Authority in the Catholic Church
(Paulist, 1983) and Creative Fidelity: Weighing and Interpreting Church
Documents (Paulist, 1996).
Conclusion
The Tradition of the Church is not static. It grows. It is enriched
by new insights in truth and new spiritual experiences. Tradition thus rejects
false interpretations and discovers explicitly what it has always held
implicitly in its treasury of faith. This growth in understanding is carried
forward by the undying activity of the Holy Spirit in the Church.
John Wijngaards
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