The great 19th Century Catholic convert from Anglicanism, Blessed John Henry Newman, once pronounced that “to be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.” The Beati was describing his own path to the Catholic Church based on historical study. But his point was not just that once you study the Church Fathers you will necessarily turn to Catholicism, but that there is an “utter incongruity between Protestantism and historical Christianity.” He thought the “safest truth” in the centuries old debate between Catholic and Protestants is that “the Christianity of history is not Protestantism.” A “safe truth” because the sola scriptura of Protestantism is, in principle, a rejection of history (which is just another word for Tradition) in favor of the Bible alone. Protestantism turned Christians into a “people of the Book.”
Of course, Protestants will counter that this is the only way to protect against the corruption of God’s saving words. Catholics have added to these words, something that is explicitly condemned in Scripture (Rev 22:18). For Newman and for Catholics as a whole, they would plead guilty as charged. Otherwise Scripture is doomed to become a dead letter. But if it is “living and active” then to be living means, according to Newman, “to change, and to change often.” In other words, Newman is not only defending what Catholics call “the development of doctrine” but is saying it is an absolutely necessary component of Christianity.
To come to this conclusion, Newman looks at the nature of ideas and the human mind. Ideas when they pass before different human minds are considered under different aspects. These different minds will draw different truths from these ideas. So for an idea like “the sky is blue” two different minds may run along the tracks of different trains of thought and come to two different, though equally true, doctrines. One may turn to the “color” of the sea and conclude that water is merely reflecting the sky. Another may turn to the composition of the atmosphere and conclude that it filters light such that it turns the black of space into blue. Living ideas, that is, ideas that are constantly “carried forward into the public throng” will constantly have new lights shed upon it. Relevant to the point at hand, if Scripture presents ideas, and these ideas are living in the sense that they are consumed by public minds then you should expect that there be development.
A Bridge Too Far?
That last statement might seem like a bridge too far until we observe the behavior of Catholic and Protestant alike. They argue about interpretation. Neither side says “the Bible says this” and leaves it at that. They argue about the meaning of what the Bible says. The Biblical ideas meet two separate minds and two separate doctrines emerge. It is inevitable. In other words, if you even begin to argue about the interpretation of Scripture then you are already admitting the principle of development. This is why I said that without development Scripture becomes a dead letter. It simply says something like “Christ was born in Bethlehem” and says only that thing, not allowing us to draw any conclusions. Scripture becomes collection of “God facts” of which we simply intellectually assent and then summarily ignore.
Otherwise, once the ideas of Scripture pass before our minds, we will make judgments upon them and thus develop them in our minds. Or, as Newman says, “it is characteristic of our minds to be ever engaged in passing judgment on the things which come before them. No sooner do we learn that we judge; we allow nothing to stand by itself.” It is human nature for ideas to have consequences. Divine ideas, spoken to man, are no different in this regard.
All of us have had the experience of encountering a certain passage of Scripture and each time that we do realizing completely different things. That is because no single term can exhaust all the contents of an idea. This is especially true of God Who has the power to use an economy of words to convey more content than mere human words can. As St. Justin Martyr said of Christ, “His sayings were short and concise; for He was not rhetorician but His word was the power of God.”
Moving from Implicit to Explicit
Take for example Hebrews 11:6, what St. Thomas calls the credibilia—”But without faith it is impossible to please him, for anyone who approaches God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” In this one sentence all Christian doctrine is contained implicitly. Everything we believe, all that is in Scripture and Tradition, is connected to this waiting to be made explicit.
It is this movement from explicit to implicit that is described by the theory of the development of doctrine. In truth Scripture leaves many important and vital questions unanswered. In other words, Scripture is not wholly explicit. There are always further implicit truths contained in every explication. Newman uses the example of the fact that Baptism is necessary for the forgiveness of sins. But what happens to those who sin after Baptism? If that question is to be answered then there must be either additional revelation or development. Our Lord Himself came to fulfill and not abolish the law and the prophets implying a rate of gradual growth in doctrine. At what point can we say that growth ceased? At Pentecost, at the Council of Jerusalem, on Patmos with John the Apostle, at Chalcedon when the Biblical Canon was closed, at Wittenberg, or what?
The development of doctrine itself is a biblical principle. Christianity is not some esoteric philosophy but instead a historical religion. The Bible itself reveals a plan of progressive revelation. As an illustration Newman points to the seemingly unimportant meeting between Abraham and Melchizedek and the importance placed upon the ancient priest and his sacrifice of bread and wine in the Letter to the Hebrews. Does this development cease in that letter or does it continue to progress down to our own day in the doctrine of the Eucharist?
Once we establish that development is necessary then there is a strong antecedent argument in favor of an authority checking those developments. To give Revelation without securing it against corruption is not to really have given it at all. This is his argument in favor of the authority of the Catholic Church as the guardian and preserver of Revelation. St. Paul and St. John show that heretics, like ravenous wolves, were active in the Church. As the ideas of Scripture develop over time we should expect more heresies, not less, than the Apostles did. How can Revelation be protected without further doctrinal development, development that not only condemns but clarifies? The moment you admit the development of doctrine, you must admit an authoritative Church.
The question then, is not whether there will be development, but how to decipher between authentic development and corruption. A living Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, is the only possibility for doing this. After all, revelation that has been corrupted is not revelation at all. It is lost to history. And this is why Newman thought that Protestantism suffered not only from being unhistorical, but also untrue.