Posted on 10/09/2023 5:40:05 PM PDT by ebb tide
Not long ago Pope Francis, in lamenting the existence of “backward-looking” American Catholics, said that “doctrine evolves…doctrine also progresses, expands and consolidates with time and becomes firmer, but it is always progressing.” The pope was essentially arguing that Catholics should not be upset about potential changes to doctrine, because doctrine is not static, but always developing.
Well, yes and no.
Development of doctrine is a concept made most famous by St. John Henry Newman in the 19th century, but it is an idea that actually goes back to the early Church, particularly to St. Vincent of Lerins, whom the Holy Father is fond of quoting. It’s a concept well-accepted by Catholics, but also one little understood.
In a nutshell, development of doctrine recognizes that our understanding of the mysteries of faith deepen over time. Just as an adult can understand a teaching more deeply than a child, so too can the Church come to understand a doctrine with more precision through the centuries.
The development of the doctrine of the Trinity provides a clear example. Our Lord revealed to His apostles that He is God, yet also acknowledged His Father as God, as well as the Holy Spirit, all while maintaining that there is only one God. This is beyond the human mind’s capacity to fully comprehend, and over time Christians grappled with the implications of these seemingly-contradictory beliefs. This led to mistakes and confusion among the faithful. Some posited that God presented Himself in different modes over time—sometimes as Father, sometimes as Son, sometimes as Holy Spirit. Others rejected the idea that Jesus Christ could be fully God as the Father was. They believed he was a divine being, but created— a “god,” perhaps, but not God.
Eventually the Church had to resolve these conflicting ideas by defining the doctrine of the Trinity, which was accomplished particularly at the great ecumenical councils of the 4th and 5th centuries. But note that this happened more than three centuries after the time of Christ. It took that long for the doctrine to “develop”—the underlying belief itself did not change, but our understanding of it was more precise.
Development of doctrine is not, however, a doctrine transforming from one belief into a contrary belief. That is not development, but change. While it’s not clear what exactly Pope Francis meant when he used the terms that were translated as “evolve” and “change,” we know as Catholics that doctrine cannot fundamentally change, for the nature of truth is such that what was true yesterday is true today. Jesus Christ, who is the Truth, is “the same yesterday and today and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8). Development of doctrine is not a doctrine transforming from one belief into a contrary belief…we know as Catholics that doctrine cannot fundamentally change, for the nature of truth is such that what was true yesterday is true today.
So when John Paul II wrote that the divorced and remarried cannot receive Communion, asserting that this teaching is based on Sacred Scripture (cf. Familiaris Consortio 84), or that the Church has no authority to ordain women to the priesthood because this is the constant and universal Tradition of the Church (cf. Ordinatio Sacerdotalis 4), he recognized that he could not change these teachings any more than he could change the teaching on the Trinity. If it was not true that divorced and remarried could not receive Communion and women couldn’t be ordained in 123 AD or 1023, then it can’t be in 2023. X cannot develop to mean Not-X.
Yet what I find interesting is that Francis’s apparent push to insert fundamental change into the long-standing meaning of doctrinal development might actually lead to a legitimate development of doctrine; namely, our understanding of the role of the papacy itself.
If there’s one doctrine that’s undergone almost constant development since the first century, it’s that of the papacy. It’s evident from the beginning that Peter was given a special leadership role among the Twelve, and that this special role was passed on to his successors, the bishops of Rome. Yet if you study the history of the Church, you see a deepening of the Church’s understanding of exactly what that role means.
This development in fact is the fundamental issue that ultimately led to the tragic schism between East and West. While the West expanded its understanding of the papacy, many in the East tended to minimize the role of the papacy more and more over time until it became nothing more than ceremonial, inconsistent with the actual authority given to Peter by Our Lord.
Yet once the East broke away from the West, there was no brake, so to speak, on developments in the West when it came to papal doctrine. Over time the increasing political role of the pope was melded in many minds with his essential and theological spiritual role. The Church eventually became a “top-down” structure in which everything centered on Rome, and most problems, big and small, were referred to the papal office.
This new understanding of the papacy was fundamentally different from the early Church’s understanding. For centuries and even into the Middle Ages, how the Church operated and the faith was lived was more “bottom-up”—one starts with the family, then the parish priest, then the diocesan bishop, and only then moves up the ranks if necessary to resolve issues.
The growing centrality of the pope, both political and spiritual, was exacerbated even further in the wake of the French Revolution. In response to the worldwide upheaval caused by revolutionary forces, which upended the primary role of the family, popes began to take on a more direct pastoral role in the Church, writing more and more universal encyclicals on diverse subjects. (The process is documented by Timothy Flanders in a recent article at OnePeterFive.)
In this context, we easily see how the overall situation in the West eventually led to the 19th century Vatican I declarations on the infallibility and universal jurisdiction of the pope. However, some Churchmen of the time, including St. John Henry Newman and the Melkite Patriarch Gregory II Youssef, were concerned with these definitions, not necessarily because they believed them to be false, but because they worried they would give Catholics an improper understanding of the role of the papacy.
English theologian William George Ward, who converted to Catholicism a month before Newman, famously said, “I should like a new Papal Bull every morning with my Times at breakfast.” This is exactly what concerned faithful Catholics like Newman and Youssef. It’s not a doctrinal issue as much as a practical understanding of that doctrine that can be a problem. They worried that the pope would come to acquire a cult of personality, that he in time could be seen as a semi-divine religious leader who could do no wrong. They were right to be worried, as that’s exactly what happened.
Here is where we see the important connection between official teachings and unofficial attitudes. An official teaching is, for example, the definition of the pope’s infallibility when speaking ex cathedra. An unofficial attitude, however, is the widespread belief among Catholics of the pope as the definitive source on all manner of issues, both spiritual and political. Vatican I did not declare that the pope should be issuing daily bulls in which Catholics received their marching orders, but for many Catholics like Ward, that is exactly what they saw Vatican I urging.
It’s important to understand the interplay between official teachings and unofficial attitudes (I go into detail about this relationship in my book Deadly Indifference). Often it is unofficial attitudes that lead to a development in the official teachings; and likewise, it is often official teachings that push forward certain unofficial attitudes.
This distinction is too often ignored by Catholics. If a particular unofficial attitude is widely-held (and well-liked!) enough, most Catholics come to believe it is a sacrosanct official teaching. For example, the Church’s official teaching is that “outside the Church there is no salvation,” but most Catholics today have the attitude that non-Catholics have almost as much chance of salvation as Catholics, and so ignore or even reject the official teaching in favor or the commonly-held unofficial understanding.
A similar divergence exists when it comes to the papacy, but in the opposite direction. While the powers and responsibilities of the pope as found in Vatican I are actually limited, the view of the papacy by most Catholics following that council is far more expansive. The pope in many ways has become the center of the Catholic Faith, the lodestar that guides all Catholic life. While the powers and responsibilities of the pope as found in Vatican I are actually limited, the view of the papacy by most Catholics following that council is far more expansive.
While the powers and responsibilities of the pope as found in Vatican I are actually limited, the view of the papacy by most Catholics following that council is far more expansive.
Today’s crisis might move the needle in the opposite direction. By his abuse of Catholics’ unhealthy attitude toward the papacy, Francis is leading many of them to now look more closely at the underlying official teaching. Should the pope be such a central figure in the day-to-day life of every Catholic? Or should his practical role perhaps be diminished, while keeping the doctrinal authority that Vatican I declared? A change in our attitude toward the papacy might be what it takes for the Church to achieve further precision in her official teachings as to the role of the papacy in Catholic life, from the pope’s relationship with his fellow bishops to the importance of his views on political matters.
Almost thirty years ago Pope John Paul II recognized that how the pope exercises his ministry of primacy must be “open to a new situation” (Ut Unum Sint 95). He was speaking from the perspective of the pope, suggesting that how popes exercised their office in recent centuries is not the only—or even necessarily best—way it should be practiced today. Likewise, Catholics’ overemphasis on the centrality of the papacy in Catholic life in recent centuries is not the only—or even necessarily best—attitude going forward.
Examples of how these attitudes can change could be Catholics becoming more spiritually connected to their local bishop, or no longer following the latest news (or political encyclicals) coming out of the Vatican, or even advocating for bishops to be selected in a more decentralized fashion. When we no longer see the pope as the source of all teaching—and of all problems—in the Church, then we can drop our addiction to the papal drug.
The development of doctrine can be a dangerous business. In trying to better understand a mystery of the faith, one may easily veer off the path toward the truth. Many theologians got the Trinity wrong before the Church finally settled the issue, and many over the centuries have gotten the papacy wrong as well. But today’s deep confusion and crisis shows clearly that Catholics must be willing to take a hard look at the role of the papacy in the Church, fine-tuning the Church’s official teachings as well as our attitudes to ones that conform more to Our Lord’s desire for the role of the successor to St. Peter.
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Bishops should not be constantly looking over their shoulders to see if they have run afoul of the Vatican for simply teaching the Faith. Instead they should be allowed to keep their eyes on their flocks, embracing their roles as shepherds.
Ping
ANTI pope. This evil POS tool of satan is NOT the pope.
Agree. He is the imPopestor.
Oh, the ever evolving machinations of the Roman Catholic Church. Chock full of heresies of their own making, then at a loss on how to ‘adapt’ to the modern world. It is true that doctrine deepens, or becomes better understood over the centuries...which allows us now to see that the office of ‘pope’ was not established until long after Peter, and that teachings such as purgatory and dispensation of grace are unsupported in scripture.
If the ‘Church’ has such intimate knowledge of the scriptures, then why have they thwarted understanding of the bible at every turn? What of the vaunted ‘Magisterium’ at the Vatican, charged with interpreting scripture? Why have they only interpreted a handful of verses over the last thousand years?
Why am I surrounded by lost Catholics who have not the first idea about Salvation? Is it because they have been busy praying to Mary, reciting creeds, and thinking of infant baptism as a saving work? SHAMEFUL. SHAMEFUL, you false priests and teachers of the law. How many of your 1.2 billion adherents are being misled, and will probably go to hell?
Come to Christ. Read your bible. It is not by faith + works that we are saved, as you have wrongly taught throughout the centuries. It is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
Read James chapter 2 to find out exact how far you’ve strayed from the truth. The only time the Bible uses the phrase “saved by faith alone,” it’s preceded by the word “not”. That’s why Mr Sola Scriptura himself, Martin Luther, thought that James should be removed from the Bible. That way, he could thump his chest about “sola scriptura” while getting rid of the “scriptura” that didn’t agree with his ideas.
IF you have faith, you will have works demonstrating that faith, else it is dead. The Apostles had faith but they didn’t stay at home smug in it. If a person is saved they will do for others and let their light shine so others will want to be around them. Works do not save but they are the result of being saved.
Yep
Exactly correct
Another self important fool on FR who thinks he knows everything about God.
Oh I’m quite familiar with James 2, which the RCC uses as false justification for a works-based faith. “Are you sure you will go to heaven when you die?” “Well, only if I have completed enough sacraments, then hopefully so.” That is hogwash, unsupported in sola-scriptura. Sorry that church traditions and teachings are NOT co-equal to scripture, as some would like them to be.
As others have stated here, works are the result of faith. Evidence OF that faith, plain for all to see. But works salvation is leading people straight to hell. It is a dangerous theology, and many false teachers will have to answer for it. Dont be one of those.
Matthew 16:23
Mark 8:33
Sounds like all you read is one side, for Luther said a lot including opinionated hyperbole, and what Luther also said includes:
faith is a living and an essential thing, which makes a new creature of man, changes his spirit...
Faith cannot help doing good works constantly... if faith be true, it will break forth and bear fruit... where there is no faith there also can be no good works; and conversely, that there is no faith.. where there are no good works. Therefore faith and good works should be so closely joined together that the essence of the entire Christian life consists in both.
if obedience and God's commandments do not dominate you, then the work is not right, but damnable, surely the devil's own doings, although it were even so great a work as to raise the dead... if you continue in pride and lewdness, in greed and anger, and yet talk much of faith, St. Paul will come and say, 1 Cor. 4:20, look here my dear Sir, "the kingdom of God is not in word but in power." It requires life and action, and is not brought about by mere talk.
Works are necessary for salvation, but they do not cause salvation... “This is why St. Luke and St. James have so much to say about works, so that one says: Yes, I will now believe, and then he goes and fabricates for himself a fictitious delusion, which hovers only on the lips as the foam on the water. No, no; faith is a living and an essential thing, which makes a new creature of man, changes his spirit and wholly and completely converts him. It goes to the foundation and there accomplishes a renewal of the entire man; so, if I have previously seen a sinner, I now see in his changed conduct, manner and life, that he believes. So high and great a thing is faith.”...
faith casts itself on God, and breaks forth and becomes certain through its works... faith must be exercised, worked and polished; be purified by fire...
it is impossible for him who believes in Christ, as a just Savior, not to love and to do good. If, however, he does not do good nor love, it is sure that faith is not present...
where the works are absent, there is also no Christ... References and more by God's grace. http://peacebyjesus.net/Reformation_faith_works.html
And it has been evangelical believers who have testified to more commitment and unity in basic Truths than those whom Rome manifestly considers to be members. As for James, see here on Luther's "Epistle of Straw" Comment and here on Luther on the Book of James...Revisted. And in Historia ecclesiae 2.23.25, Eusebius classes James among the Antilegomena or disputed works, stating "it is to be observed that it is disputed; at least, not many of the ancients have mentioned it, as is the case likewise with the epistle that bears the name of Jude, which is also one of the seven so-called catholic epistles. Nevertheless we know that these also, with the rest, have been read publicly in very many churches." (Historia ecclessiae 3.23.25)
Also, the Roman Catholic writer Joseph A. Fitzmyer points out that Luther was not the only one to translate Romans 3:28 [Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)] with the word “alone.” See here.
Moreover, scholarly disagreements over the canonicity (proper) of certain books continued down through the centuries and right into Trent, until it provided the first "infallible," indisputable canon in 1546. RC scholars also while a general consensus was confirmed earlier, the , and contrary to "Catholic Answers" propaganda, scholarly disagreements over the canonicity (proper) of certain books continued down through the centuries and right into Trent, until it provided the first "infallible," indisputable canon in 1546. Thus there was no "infallible" canon of Scripture for RCs until after the death of Luther, and contrary to "Catholic Answers" propaganda, Who, as with other scholars, had freedom to question the canonical status of certain books, and which was not a charge against him. Read here.
Actually it is understood that those who quickly died after receiving Christ's holy Baptism, thus being made inwardly just and formally justified, would directly go to heaven. However, since the baptized soon realizes that he not all that holy inside, and it becomes apparent they were in need of further purification, then unless at the time of death such has once again become good enough for a direct flight into the presence of God, and if such needs to make no more atonements for sins, then after death such must make further expiation and undergo purification via RC Purgatory with its purifying punishments, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.
Which is what many RCs depend on, a play now, pay later delusion.
In contrast to which false gospel is that of Scriptural gospel, that of penitent, heart-purifying, regenerating, effectual faith, (Acts 10:43-47; 15:7-9) being what is imputed for righteousness, (Romans 4:5) and is shown in baptism and following the Lord, (Acts 2:38-47; Jn. 10:27, 28) who was sent by the Father to be the savior of the world. (1 John 4:14)
And those who come to God with this faith are those who the Spirit of God thus spiritually baptized into the body of Christ, the church. (1 Cor. 12:13) And by which faith the redeemed soul is "accepted in the Beloved" and positionally seated with Him in Heaven, on His account, glory to God. (Ephesians 1:6; 2:6; cf. Phil. 3:21)
And those who die in that obedient faith will go to be forever with Him at death or His return (Phil 1:23; 2Cor. 5:8 [“we”]; Heb, 12:22,23; 1Cor. 15:51ff'; 1Thess. 4:17) In contrast to those who were never born of the Spirit or who terminally fall away. (Gal. 5:1-4; Heb. 3:12; 10:25-39)
And you do?
Or are you just projecting?
So, here are the places where the phrase is used:
1. ESV - No, it's not there
2. ASV - No, it's not there.
3. CWSB - No, it's not there.
4. HCSB - No, it's not there
5. ISV - No, it's not there
6. KJV - No, it's not there
7. NET - No, it's not there
8. NASB - No, it's not there
9. NIV - No, it's not there
10. NIV '84 - No, it's not there
11. NKJV - No, it's not there
12. NLT - No, it's not there
13. RV - No, it's not there
14. YLT - No, it's not there
So, WHERE did you see it written? Huh?
I DID find this:
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Ephesians 2:8-10
Have you ever read THAT before? Huh!?
Or, have you ever read THIS:
O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Galatians 3:1-3
I'd like to hear your response...and Don't change the subject. Words have meaning. Your words need to be defended. Get with it.
Law keeping is useless because it cannot produce the righteousness God requires of us.
Jesus told us that unless our righteousness exceeded that of the pharisees, we would not see heaven.
We know that the pharisees could actually keep the letter of the Law, but Jesus raised the bar even higher, far higher, well out of man's reach, in the Beatitudes. It not only addressed the actions, it addressed the intent and the heart, and NOBODY has the kind of purity to do any works from pure enough motivation to satisfy the righteousness of God.
Our very beings are tainted and corrupted by sin, so any works we do also are. That's why our works could never qualify to save, if works were the means of salvation.
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