John Henry Newman and Alfred Loisy, the former beatified by the Roman Catholic Church and the latter excommunicated, both recognized the need for an explanation of the variation in Catholic doctrine over the course of history. Each author produced such an explanation and used their respective explanations in the disparate arguments of their writings. Newman’s primary goal was to establish the legitimacy of the Catholic tradition’s variation over time, while Loisy was concerned with both explaining that variation and refuting the position that Adolf von Harnack had put forward regarding the essence of Christianity. Newman, in An Essay on the Development of Dogma, begins by addressing the fact that historical scholarship has reached the decisive
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This is, in brief, Newman’s theory on doctrinal development. To support these claims, Newman’s primary tool is argument by analogy in regard to nature. He calls to the attention of his readers the fact that scientific knowledge, that is, knowledge of God’s creation, follows the same pattern which he describes for knowledge of revelation. There has always been present around humans the same forces and occurrences of nature, just as there has always been the same deposit of revelation since the time of Jesus. Humans have slowly and methodically come to a greater awareness and understanding of nature by building increasingly complicated laws and formulas upon the older, already known laws and formulas. In the same way, Newman writes, understanding of Divine revelation unfolds over time as we gradually study it and make deductions from what we already know of it (An Essay on the Development of Dogma, page 72). God, according to Newman, must have the same method of operation displayed across all that He has created since God is perfectly unified in nature. This means that if understanding of God’s natural creation functions in the way, with “slow successive steps,” then it is quite reasonable to believe that the same would be true for God’s revelation. If, then, this slow …show more content…
This second argument, also contained in An Essay on the Development of Dogma, is in support of the Roman Catholic Church as the infallible authority on Christian doctrine. Newman begins this argument with the premise that if doctrine develops in the way that he has already argued for earlier in the essay, then conflicting interpretations of revelation and conflicting deductions will arise. We know that God intends for his revelation to remain uncorrupted since “preservation is involved in the idea of creation” and since Christ promised Divine guidance after He was gone from the earth (An Essay on the Development of Dogma, pages 85-86). Seemingly the only way for God to ensure that His revelation was preserved over the course of history would be for Him to have established some infallible authority which can decide between all of the conflicting directions that development is sprouting, to determine which of the developments are true and false. Newman notes that this is either the only way or the best way for God to have ensured preservation of His revelation as Newman writes, “If Christian doctrine…admits of true and important developments, this is a strong antecedent argument in favor of a provision in the Dispensation for putting a seal of authority upon those developments” (An Essay on the Development of Dogma, page
This is, in brief, Newman’s theory on doctrinal development. To support these claims, Newman’s primary tool is argument by analogy in regard to nature. He calls to the attention of his readers the fact that scientific knowledge, that is, knowledge of God’s creation, follows the same pattern which he describes for knowledge of revelation. There has always been present around humans the same forces and occurrences of nature, just as there has always been the same deposit of revelation since the time of Jesus. Humans have slowly and methodically come to a greater awareness and understanding of nature by building increasingly complicated laws and formulas upon the older, already known laws and formulas. In the same way, Newman writes, understanding of Divine revelation unfolds over time as we gradually study it and make deductions from what we already know of it (An Essay on the Development of Dogma, page 72). God, according to Newman, must have the same method of operation displayed across all that He has created since God is perfectly unified in nature. This means that if understanding of God’s natural creation functions in the way, with “slow successive steps,” then it is quite reasonable to believe that the same would be true for God’s revelation. If, then, this slow …show more content…
This second argument, also contained in An Essay on the Development of Dogma, is in support of the Roman Catholic Church as the infallible authority on Christian doctrine. Newman begins this argument with the premise that if doctrine develops in the way that he has already argued for earlier in the essay, then conflicting interpretations of revelation and conflicting deductions will arise. We know that God intends for his revelation to remain uncorrupted since “preservation is involved in the idea of creation” and since Christ promised Divine guidance after He was gone from the earth (An Essay on the Development of Dogma, pages 85-86). Seemingly the only way for God to ensure that His revelation was preserved over the course of history would be for Him to have established some infallible authority which can decide between all of the conflicting directions that development is sprouting, to determine which of the developments are true and false. Newman notes that this is either the only way or the best way for God to have ensured preservation of His revelation as Newman writes, “If Christian doctrine…admits of true and important developments, this is a strong antecedent argument in favor of a provision in the Dispensation for putting a seal of authority upon those developments” (An Essay on the Development of Dogma, page