FUNDAMENTAL ARTICLES. – To designate the truths of faith, the Scholastics began to use the word “articles” instead of the older and classical “sententiae.” Thus the usage arose of calling the principal truths of revealed doctrine, and especially those contained in the Apostolic Symbol or Credo, “a. of faith.”
But theologians do not agree in precisely determining the nature and number of these a.; nor can one simply rely on those contained in the Credo, since it omits certain important matters, such as the Eucharist. Catholics therefore adhere to a broad and general concept, because they do not regard the question of the a. f. as a problem of particular importance. Protestants, on the contrary, attach great weight to it and have been discussing it for four centuries, without yet having reached a definitive conclusion. They have always felt the need to establish certain fundamental truths that might serve as a mark of recognition for the faithful of the true Church of Christ; but, lacking a supreme teaching authority, the determination of those truths, or a. f., has always been left to individual arbitrariness, which is the dissolving acid of the entire Lutheran Reformation. Thus numerous lists of a. have arisen, differing in content and scope, but all agreeing in excluding those revealed truths that condemn Protestantism, such as, for example, the primacy of s. Peter. Now, neither Sacred Scripture nor tradition in any way authorizes a selection among the truths revealed by God, or the rejection of any one of them: Revelation is either accepted as it is, and opens the way to salvation, or rejected in its entirety, and heaven closes above our heads.
For this reason, it was always easy for Catholics to refute, on the basis of Revelation and the very spirit of Christianity, the Protestants’ claim. Christ presents the entire content of his Revelation as inviolable and recommends that the Apostles transmit it as they received it: “Go and teach all nations... teaching them to observe all things (omnia quaecumque) that I have commanded you” (Mt. 28:19-20). And history, together with the writings of the Fathers and Doctors, demonstrates the scrupulous care that the Church has always exercised in preserving the divine deposit of Revelation whole and intact.