Doctrine of Development and the Development of Doctrine

Doctrine of Developmentand theDevelopment of Doctrine

by Tobias Philip

The world exists in a state of perpetual permutation, its innate engine of change burning as a Heraclitean fire. As for the permanence of thought, Gerard Manley Hopkins phrases it, “Man, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone!...death blots black out; nor mark / Is any of him at all so stark / But vastness blurs and time | beats level.” 1 Nonetheless, the great literary and philosophical treasures of antiquity appeal to us for the appearance, at the very least, of timeless applicability. We delight to find glimpses of what we may deem the essentially human be they in the overwhelming pathos of Antigone, the existential dilemma of Hamlet, or the archetypal aestheticism of Don Juan. These dramas doubtless exhibit characters in whose being we find something continuous with our own existence. Such ought to be the case also with the cosmic drama of Christianity. The Christian religion of old must also carry timeless principles, so as to have anything of value to the present. I will argue that the Christian religion is a living system growing from the initial principle of the incarnation, more definitely revealing and elaborating on itself throughout history. I will further argue that not every change constitutes a true development, but that it is necessary to distinguish between development and corruption. As an exercise of this logic of development, I will consider

whether Christianity may embrace contemporary secular sexual ethics while maintaining internal consistency.

With a system held for so long and with such popular prevalence as the Christian Faith, it is necessary that its adherents may at times modify their religious practice according to the conditions of the world in

If the Christian faith is entirely subjective, then one can call something Christian only according to an entirely individual interpretation. In this sense the most disparate groups can contemporaneously exist with antithetical opinions as to what it means to be Christian.

which they live. Christianity is generally believed to have been in existence after the first century C.E., but unless these Christians were able to preserve the precise historical circumstances which furnished the world in which Christ and his apostles preached, then there seems to be some essence of the faith, or at least some kernel of belief, which allows us to predicate the term

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“Christian” of both Mary Magdalene and Mother Teresa, or of Saint Paul and Pope Francis. For Christians and non-Christians alike, I believe it may be a helpful exercise to determine what this idea of Christianity is and when we can call a change in Christian practice a real development.

This investigation, however, must presume the existence of some objective Christianity. If the Christian faith is entirely subjective, then one can call something Christian only according to an entirely individual interpretation. In this sense the most disparate groups can contemporaneously exist with antithetical opinions as to what it means to be Christian. The polemics-flinging Westboro Baptists would have to share the faith of the progressive female Archbishop of the Lutheran Church of Sweden. Rather than speaking of any universally Christian beliefs, we must concede that all Christians are simply “a law to themselves.” 2 Hence, it would be entirely unproductive to argue anything regarding the teaching of Christianity, unless there exists a Christianity which has a definite message to communicate. Furthermore, it is to be wondered what import Christianity really bears in the world, if any two individuals can extrapolate utterly bipolar meanings from it. Let us, then, draw the distinction between Christianity as a self-identifying

marker, and Christianity as the idea generally held to have been preached by Christ and his apostles. Next it must be clarified whether there can be said to exist a continuous Christian body of believers, which is to say, a Church. It was the great gnostic heresy in the first and second centuries of Christianity that first claimed an esoteric message behind Christ’s word attainable only to an enlightened few. One can believe very little in the world-transformative power of the incarnation, if it remained but a single point in history with no effect greater than the spatial and temporal limits of the person of Jesus Christ. To view Christianity as simply a historical fact, as is so often the risk when limiting its meaning to the unmediated communication between the Bible and the individual (if we should concede that purely unmediated communication between a a text so ingrained in culture and a person living in that culture on is even possible, not to mention the centuries-long mediation that resulted in the canonical Bible), would force the believer to reenter the historical circumstances of Christ in order to grasp the fullness of his message. On the other hand, it is not a historical contingency whence proceeds an idea, but an idea that takes root in historic contingency. That is the eternal Idea of the Incarnation.

I believe that it is at this point helpful

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to introduce Hegelian language. Hegel believes religion to be the apprehension of the Absolute Being “in its own distinctive nature,” which is simply that which is. This Absolute is pre- and super-material, existing rather as Spirit or Mind, which for Hegel is both the essence and actuality of an existing thing. 3 The Absolute Spirit, moreover, is conscious of itself as Spirit. That consciousness is something analogous to the Christian doctrine of the Logos, or God’s image of himself. As far as the religious endeavor goes, it must be an individual person, a self-conscious being, who pursues the Absolute Self.

Spirit is known as self-consciousness, and to this self-consciousness it is directly revealed, for it is this self-consciousness itself. The divine nature is the same as the human, and it is this unity which is intuitively apprehended. This incarnation of the Divine Being, its having essentially and directly the shape of self-consciousness, is the simple content of individual religion. 4

Hegel views the Incarnation as necessary, therefore, for the human and divine Spirit to regain their natural unity. Such unity is rendered impossible if the human being, as the subject of religious thought, can only relate to Absolute Being as an object. God is not a real self-consciousness to us unless made man and accessible to immediate perception. For God to be made man he must be made an actual individual. As a result, the historical contingencies of Christ’s birth in Roman Judea and his suffering under Pontius Pilate is made as essential to Christian doctrine as his dual nature as God and Man. It is equally essential that the incarnation be eternally relevant, beyond the historical Christ, else only the original disciples could have achieved the direct and immediate revelation of Divine Being.

Just as the truth of the incarnation requires the individuality, historicity, and passability of the God-Man, so does the relevance of this revelation require the eternal endurance of the God-Man with humanity. Therefore, the resurrected

Christ assures his apostles “behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.” 5 Either the addressees of these words were those eleven apostles, or their successors are implied recipients of the message as well. Since the consummation of the world did not transpire during the lives of the apostles, Christ must also be speaking to all those who succeed them through the course of time. It is clear then, if we should accept the Gospel accounts, that the incarnate God is present with humanity eternally through the ministers of that society which follows him, which we call the Church.

Hence we reach the question of development, or how the Absolute Idea, which is the essence of Absolute Spirit, eternally abiding in the Church, manifests itself differently through time. It must be remembered that God, as consciousness, reveals himself through conscious Spirit, which is “real, what is self-establishing, has life within itself, existence in its very notion.” 6 As a living consciousness, then, the Absolute Idea must take on varying forms with the development of the society in which it dwells eternally incarnate. Development is no new idea in Christianity, but rather finds clear expression as early as the fifth century with Saint Vincent of Lerins, who argues in favor of progress in doctrine:

“For progress requires that the subject be enlarged in itself, alteration, that it be transformed into something else. The intelligence, then, the knowledge, the wisdom, as well of individuals as of all, as well of one man as of the whole Church, ought, in the course of ages and centuries, to increase and make much and vigorous progress; but yet only in its own kind; that is to say, in the same doctrine, in the same sense, and in the same meaning.” 7 These last words, in Latin “eodem sensu eademque sententia,” would go on to be used by one of the most renowned masters of English prose in the nineteenth century, John Henry Cardinal Newman.

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Since the publication of Cardinal Newman’s “An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine,” the phrase “doctrinal development” has dreadfully inflated the marketplace of ideas with its overcirculation, often by those with incomplete knowledge of the Cardinal’s theory. Newman recognizes that very few developments can meet the qualifications for true development as defined by Saint Vincent, namely “quod ubique, semper, et ab omnibus” (what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all). Nonetheless, he asserts that development occurs when an idea’s “beginnings anticipate its subsequent phases, and its later phenomenaprotect and subserve its earlier.” 8 To use Hegel’s analogy, “The bud disappears whenthe blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter,” although the blossom is but the natural development implicit in the bud itself. 9 Embellishment from a more primitive form is no counterargument to the legitimacy of any given development of doctrine, but contradiction of previous doctrine is. Moreover, the veracity of development, which does not contradict previous doctrine, can be corroborated by historical investigation of the prevailing belief of the faithful, as expressed in prayer, practice, and agreed theology. From this principle, Christians come to accept the canonical Bible, the Nicene Creed developed at the Ecumenical Council of Nicea, and the very authority of the apostolic faith itself. The divine consciousness finds itself expressed in the universal Spirit of the faithful, and so the faith’s continuous elaboration in the life of the Church is ground enough for its truth.

Finally we may proceed to the concrete example of sexual ethics. I will not enter the specifics of what can be considered Christianly permissible, but rather consider what

Embellishment from a more primitive form is no counterargument to the legitimacy of any given development of doctrine, but contradiction of previous doctrine is.

of sexual ethics itself can qualify as amenable to development, as able to grow from Christianity itself without contradicting it. It may be helpful to regard Augustine’s categorizations of the different natures of laws within Christianity. Before converting to Christianity, the young scholar was perplexed by the apparent variability of divine judgement; what was condemned at one point in the Scriptures, was approved at another. “Is justice, then,” Augustine asks, “various and changeable? Nay, but the times over which she presides are not all alike, because they are times.” 10 There is, nonetheless, a distinction to be made between those divinecommands that are always and everywhere valid, and those revealed with regard to a temporal or locational circumstance. The two great commandments, inwhich all the law consists, namely that one must love God with all one’s heart, and all his soul, and with all his mind, and one’s neighbour as oneself 11 —these, Augustine claims, are always inviolable and immutable. 12

On the other hand, there are also customs of men which vary with time and place. With regard to such custom, “an agreement made, and confirmed by custom or law of any city or nation, may not be violated at the lawless pleasure of any, whether citizen or stranger,” in accordance with Christian reverence for authority. 13 Such obedience follows clearly from prudence and the desire to maintain civic order. For example, concubinage, though never proclaimed as divine law, was at least implicitly acknowledged as permissible according to the customs of the Jewish people at one point in the Bible, then came to pass away as customs progressed. 14 As far as sexual ethics are concerned, societal measures to assure modesty and propriety are surely variable but sensible boundaries to ensure

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against cupidity, which orders a particular away from the universal good. Development can easily be applied here, since a Christian ethic can most certainly change according to the situation of local and temporal custom. It is for this reason, that the literal meaning of Saint Paul’s commands regarding head covering can be often disregarded in contexts where such covering no longer carries the implication of reverence and modesty that it did in first century Corinth. 15 When these customs contradict a divine ordinance, however, “[the divine ordinance] is to be done; and if intermitted it is to be restored, and, if never established, to be established.” 16The remaining sort of law that Augustine outlines is the natural. For Augustine it follows from the two greatest commandments that “those offenses which be contrary to nature are everywhere and at all times to be held in detestation.” 17 That which intrinsically offends the dignity of humanity, a dignity essential to the principle of the incarnation, must always fall under this category. For this reason, the subject of sexual morality has been handled so strictly, although with different mores and specificities according to time and place, because the exercise of lust has been always deemed so offensive to the dignity of a spiritualized human being, that is to say, a Christian, whose active being as human is divine. Furthermore, those sins which damage the ability of man to selflessly love his fellow man must indeed offend against the two greatest commandments, since “that same nature of which [God] is author is polluted by the perversity of lust.” 18 When an individual

views another as a sexual object, as opposed to a complete human being fully deserving of love, the relationship may not be one of Christian charity. Over the centuries, therefore, Christian teaching has determined that the unitive and procreative functions of sexual acts must never be actively separated, so as to prevent sexual relationships from ever being subordinated to lust. As a result, sexual activity is bounded to Church affirmed circumstances according to fundamental judgements on human nature.

It must lastly be decided whether traditional teaching on sex and marriage can suffer change. As demonstrated previously from the classifications of laws, to argue Christian teachings on sex and marriage can take new forms is to argue that human sexuality is a matter not of natural law but of custom, and can therefore change over time. Either sexual activity continues to arise from the same essential motivations and intrinsically produces the same results as it did throughout the historical consciousness of the Church, or these aspects of human nature have evolved in the past two thousand years. If we should hold the former of the propositions, then we cannot maintain that Christian sexual morality can agree with the violent vicissitudes of post-modernity without contradiction. Otherwise, it remains to prove that Christianity can indeed contradict itself as part of its process of development. In this case, earlier questions must be revisited, and the objective entity of Christianity and the life of Christ in his Church must be reevaluated.

It has not been the purpose of this essay to explore the nu-

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ances of Christian sexual morality over the history of the Church, although I can only imagine how edifying such an endeavor may be. I have, however, sought to reconcile the essential language of Hegelian idealism with Cardinal Newman’s articulation of Doctrinal Development. I consign this insufficient undertaking to a thought experiment, valuable if only for the assonance of the juxtaposed “Doctrine of Development” and “Development of Doctrine.” Hegel’s application of his theory to Church History, I believe, fails to reach the conclusions implicit in its formulation. Truly, in the divine Word there can be no contradiction, but only fulfillment. That fulfillment reveals itself like an ever expanding patterned tapestry, always perfect in any given stage, but weaved and elaborated over time, without any excisions from earlier work. For the Church to contradict its formerly unanimously and univocally professed propositions is a precarious path that leads to perdition. r

Endnotes 1. Gerard Manley Hopkins, “That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and the Comfort of the Resurrection,” Poems, (London: Humphrey Milford, 1918), Bartleby.com, 1999. 2. Romans 2:14. 3. Georg W. F Hegel and J B. Baillie, The Phenomenology of Mind: Translated, with an Introduction and Notes by J.b. Baillie, (London: Allen & Unwin, 1971), 685.

4. Ibid., 759-760. 5. Matthew 28:20. John 16:33. 6. Hegel, 105. 7. Saint Vincent of Lerins, Commonitory, Translated by C.A. Heurtley, From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 11, edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1894), Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. 8. John Henry Cardinal Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, (16th impr.; London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1920), 171. 9. Hegel, 68. 10. Augustine, Confessions, Translated by J.G. Pilkington. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 1, Edited by Philip Schaff, (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887), revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight, Book 3, Chapter 7, <http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/110103.htm>. 11. Matthew 22:37. 12. Augustine, Book 3, Chapter 7. 13. Augustine, Book 3, Chapter 8. 14. See the domestic situation of Jacob, for example. 15. 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. 16. Augustine, Book 3, Chapter 8. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid.

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