Dogma

DOGMA. - The current technical theological meaning is that of a doctrine revealed by God and proposed as such by the Church with the guarantee of infallibility.

I. THE CONCEPT

1. The term d. did not definitively prevail in expressing precisely this concept until the 18th century. The earlier meanings are based on the ancient usage of classical Greek.

Δόγμα, from δοκέω, had the fundamental meaning of τὰ δεδογμένα: that which has seemed to be either true or good or fitting. Hence, when it concerns theoretical views: a) in general: opinion; b) in particular: philosophical opinion or doctrine, whether theoretical or moral, especially if held to be firm and fundamental in a given system (the decreta or placita philosophorum). When it concerns a practical volitional attitude taken as a result of a theoretical view: a) in general: determination, decision, will; b) in particular: an official decision authoritatively promulgated, ordinance, decree, edict. This last meaning, in the profane sense of imperial decree, is found in the Septuagint (Eth. 3, 9; Dan. 2, 13; 6, 8). In the religious sense of divine ordinances contained in the Mosaic law it is found in Jewish Hellenism (III Mach. 1, 3; Josephus, Apologia, 1, 24). In the New Testament the sense is that of ordinance, decree, whether imperial (Lk. 2, 1; Acts 17, 7), or of the Apostles (Acts 16, 4), or Mosaic (Eph. 2, 15; Col. 2, 14). All the preceding meanings are encountered in ancient ecclesiastical tradition, which moreover used the word to indicate Christian doctrine whether orthodox (d. of the Lord, right, taught by God, pious, true, ecclesiastical, divine), or even heretical (heretical, perverse, false d.). Although some Fathers distinguished between d. and practice, the usage remains varied throughout the Middle Ages. The modern technical sense is already encountered in M. Cano (d. 1560), but throughout the 16th-17th centuries it is by no means exclusive. It becomes so, however, in V. L. Gotti (d. 1742) and thereafter becomes usual, even with the specification d. fidei (cf. G. Kittel, in Theologisches Wörterbuch zum neuen Testament, II, pp. 233-35; A. Deneffe, D. Wort und Begriff, in Scholastik, 6 [1931], pp. 381-400).

2. The thing expressed, on the other hand, is already clearly visible in the New Testament under the concept of tradition.

Especially in the Pauline epistles, both the Good News in its generality (Rom. 6, 17; Gal. 1, 9-12; I Tim. 6, 20; II Tim. 1, 13 ff.) and specifically the precepts of Christian life (Phil. 4, 9; I Thess. 4, 1; II Thess. 2, 15; 3, 6), or even individual doctrines such as the Eucharist and the Resurrection of Christ (I Cor. 11, 23 ff.), are presented with a similar term and an equivalent expression. The general idea thus expressed is that the Christian religion is a complex of facts and doctrines that are absolutely objective, not invented by those who preach them, but simply given by God through Jesus Christ, and toward which the propagators of the Gospel have no other task than to receive, preserve intact and transmit without changing anything in them. The Christian religion is therefore a παραθήκη, a deposit (I Tim. 6, 20; II Tim. 1, 13 ff.), a juridical expression to indicate a thing that the legitimate owner entrusts for safekeeping to another as his agent, with the task of preserving it and restoring it intact. It is thus that the faithful, although receiving everything from the Church through its heads, the Apostles and others (II Tim. 2, 2), does not adhere to human doctrines but properly to divine ones (I Thess. 2, 14). And, since it is impossible for this Church to teach a doctrine different from that which it has received the order and charism to teach by mandate and indefectible divine assistance (Mt. 28, 18-20; Mk. 16, 15-16; Jn. 14, 16 ff.; 15, 26; 17, 18-20; I Cor. 1, 17; II Cor. 5, 20; I Tim. 3, 14 ff.), every man must fully adhere to it (Mk. 16, 16; Rom. 1, 5; II Cor. 10, 4; I Jn. 2, 24), nor ever give ear to contrary doctrines (Rom. 6, 16; Gal. 1, 8; II Jn. 1, 10) under penalty of shipwreck in the faith (I Tim. 1, 19). In these simple propositions: there are truths revealed by God, of which the sole depositary and infallible interpreter is the Church and to which one must give assent in order to be saved, lies the whole essence of the concept of d. The subsequent ages in this field have done nothing but better clarify: a) what in concrete terms are the authentic organs of the Church's magisterium (v. CHIESA, CONCILIO; PAPA; TRADIZIONE); b) what precisely is the relationship between the Church's proposition and Revelation; c) what is the nature of the faith that is owed to the revealed truths proposed by the Church (v. FEDE).

The reflective determination of the concept of d. is the fruit of the struggle against the rationalism and modernism of the 19th-20th centuries, which directly rejected every d. as such, denying its divine origin, its substantial immutability, its objective sense. An equivalent definition of d. that can be considered as the result of all the preceding work is given by the Vatican Council: « everything contained in the word of God written or handed down by tradition, and proposed by the Church, whether by solemn judgment or by ordinary and universal magisterium, to be believed as divinely revealed, must be believed with divine and catholic faith » (Denz-U, 1792).

3. The analysis of the Catholic concept of d. reveals the following elements: a) It is a doctrine, an assertion about a thing, presupposing a judgment and communicated to others in teaching. This judgment about the thing expressed and the concepts that enter into it are understood as having objective value, that is, as capable of reaching and expressing the being of things, as it is in itself, independently of us, especially independently of our cognitive or affective activity; concepts and judgments normed by being, which is distinct from them, and thus an objective norm of thought, so as then to be an objective norm of life (Denz-U, 2026, 2079, 2145). There is nothing that under some aspect cannot be the object of a dogma, insofar as everything is either the divine or has some relation to it; but the very affirmation about this thing, in order to constitute a dogma, must be one of those in which the infallible judgment of the Church is competent, that is, one that concerns faith or morals, or that aspect of things which can, in the judgment of the Church, affect the religious relations between man and God (Denz-U, 796, 1688, 1839); b) It is a doctrine revealed by God. This means the supernatural Revelation, a divine utterance, essentially transcending the natural order, in which God manifests a truth to man; therefore a fully free action of a personal and transcendent God, absolutely distinct from the simple manifestation that God makes of himself through the natural laws intrinsic to creation, that is, from natural revelation (Denz-U, 2020, 2075). But it is not necessary, in order to constitute a dogma, that it be a manifestation of mysteries properly so called, such as the Trinity or the Incarnation; it can also be a truth in itself accessible to the natural powers of reason, such as the immortality of the soul, or even simple historical facts such as the Birth, Life and Passion of Christ. By Revelation is further meant public Revelation, that is, the one destined by God for all men and therefore entrusted to the custody and authority of the Church as a public society. Private revelations, on the other hand, are those made by God, not with the intent of binding the faith of the religious society as such, but destined only to individual persons, even though in fact numerous. These never constitute a dogma, nor does the Church intervene to propose them as such, but only, at most, to declare that they contain nothing contrary to public Revelation, and that it is lawful, according to the dictates of human prudence, to adhere to them with spiritual profit. Public Revelation, according to Catholic doctrine, was closed forever with the death of the last of the Apostles (Denz-U, 2021). No dogma has therefore been revealed by God since that moment. This public Revelation is all contained in canonical Scripture or in the tradition called oral, because it was not handed down in the canonical scriptures, but transmitted orally by the Apostles (Denz-U, 1792). But it can be contained therein in various ways which, because in their particulars they give rise to divergent opinions among theologians, will be explained further below (v. II. 3); c) Proposed as such by the Church with the guarantee of infallibility. This proposition of the Church is the formal element of the dogma: before it, the revealed truth is a dogma only materially, in itself, not formally with respect to us. In dogma the doctrine is proposed as revealed; this is necessary, since the faith to which dogma gives rise is divine faith, in which the thing is believed formally on the authority of God revealing (Denz-U, 1789). It is the Church that proposes the dogma; concretely, it is the authentic and infallible organs of the ecclesiastical magisterium: the Catholic episcopate united with the pope and the Roman pontiff himself. There are therefore two kinds of infallible ecclesiastical magisterium by which dogmas can be proposed: a) the ordinary and universal magisterium of all the bishops united with the pope (Denz-U, 1792) when, although dispersed throughout the world, they teach with moral and conscious unanimity a doctrine as revealed and therefore of universal faith (cf. J. M. A. Vacant, Etudes théologiques sur les constitutions du Concile du Vatican, II, Paris 1895, p. 82 ff.; id., Le magistère ordinaire de l'Église et ses organes, ibid. 1887). That this is a legitimate way of proposing dogmas follows necessarily from the hierarchical-monarchical nature of the Church and from its infallibility. Otherwise this infallibility would be ridiculous, since the other kind of infallible ecclesiastical magisterium, the extraordinary one, is by its nature occasional. To those who would like to see in the solemn definitions of the extraordinary magisterium the point of arrival to which every dogmatic development must necessarily tend, it can be conceded that for points in some way uncertain even among Catholics it is practically difficult to arrive, by the sole path of the ordinary magisterium, at deciding apodictically whether this or that doctrine is or is not sufficiently proposed by the Church as a dogma. In such a case, soliciting a decision of the extraordinary magisterium can be justified, among other reasons, by that of eliminating this uncertainty in a clear and also psychologically most effective way. β) The extraordinary and solemn magisterium, so called because it is occasional and itself bears a certain solemnity. It is in turn subdivided into ecumenical council and solemn definition of the Roman pontiff speaking ex cathedra (Denz-U, 1839). For there to be a dogma, this ecclesiastical magisterium must propose the doctrine with the guarantee of infallibility, committing in this approval its supreme doctrinal authority. Any other guarantee inferior to this is not enough to constitute a dogma formally, but renders the doctrine, from the point of view of absolute supernatural certainty, only more or less probable (Denz-U, 483, 792).

A revealed doctrine, sufficiently proposed as such by the Church, whether by ordinary or by extraordinary magisterium and with the guarantee of infallibility, is a defined dogma, that is, declared and irreformable. Some, less properly, understand by defined dogma one defined by the extraordinary magisterium. The general rules for interpreting the documents of the magisterium and for knowing whether it has or has not defined a dogma are the subject matter of general treatises on the Church (cf. I. De Guibert, De Christi Ecclesia, 2nd ed., Rome 1928, p. 900 ff.).

To the sufficient proposition of a dogma made by the Church there corresponds, on man's part, the obligation of faith. This faith is divine because the formal motive of the assent is the very authority of God revealing. It is divine and Catholic, because the obligation extends universally to all. But this same obligation of faith derives from nothing other than the profound nature of things, because adherence to a truth sufficiently manifested, even if only indirectly as credible and not as intrinsically evident to us, while remaining free, is the inescapable imperative of the intellect, which is not identified with the First Truth itself, but rather in adherence to it has its end and its beatitude. And indeed the end for which God has manifested this truth to us and has furnished the Church with the charism of infallible proposition is none other than that, by adhering to these truths in faith, we adhere already from this earth to the first beatifying Truth and thus have within us the seed that in the other life will develop into the beatific vision (Denz-U, 1786).

4. Some consequences of this concept are

noted: a) The dogma is essentially immutable in the sense that the Church, proposing only revealed doctrines and, after the death of the Apostles, there having been no new public Revelation: a) the defined dogmas were not invented by the Church, but only known, from the elements handed down by the Apostles, without a new Revelation being necessary for this; β) the sense that the infallible Church gives at a given moment to a dogma cannot have been different in the past nor can it be so in the future. All this derives from the concept that the Church is only a transmitting means, not a transforming one, of revealed truth: (Denz-U, 1800, cf. also 2022, 2080, 2094). The mutability that is admitted in dogma is thus described by the same council with the words of Vincent of Lérins: «Let the understanding, knowledge, and wisdom therefore grow... and increase greatly and powerfully, both of individuals and of all, both of the individual and of the whole Church, according to the progress of the centuries and of ages; but, of course, in the same kind, in the same dogma, in the same sense, in the same doctrine» (Denz-U, 1800). It is therefore a matter of the progress of a greater knowledge on our part of the same objective dogma. Further determinations of this aspect are not provided by the magisterium and are the object of further theological investigation (v. below: II).

b) Dogma and theology are not identified with each other, theology being in its entire extent a further human scientific study of dogmas and of the other things proposed by the Church, although the results of this further study are not proposed as dogmas, insofar as they are further determinations made with a formally human guarantee, and as such they are not, it is evident, formally dogmas. Thus many reasons are brought forward to prove even a dogma, or at least to defend it from accusations; thus many deductions, made even from dogmas by means of bringing them closer to truths of a natural order that are more or less certain. Dogma is not identified either with what is today called dogmatic theology (v. TEOLOGIA). With even greater reason, dogmas and theological systems are not identified with each other, that is, dogmas and those theological constructions that attempt a further organic explanation of some part of the revealed datum, as it is proposed by the Church, derived from certain key principles, often philosophical, but which cannot be theologically demonstrated to be the only acceptable one, nor is it for the most part the only one accepted in the history of theology, for example, Thomism and Scotism in many theological positions, Thomism and Molinism in the question of Grace.

c) Dogma and philosophical systems. Here only the question is examined whether and in what sense Catholic dogma as such is connected to a determinate philosophical system. It certainly implies some philosophy: because Catholic dogma expressly uses concepts elaborated of a philosophical order such as nature, person, substance, consubstantial, transubstantiation, matter, form, instrumental cause, etc.: the dogmatic formula is precisely the formulation of a dogma in technical terms, often philosophical; because the Church presents as dogma a certain number of truths also of a philosophical order, proposing to these questions a specific solution of its own and excluding the solution contradictory to it — for example, on the possibility of knowing objective truth, at least for the things of faith (Denz-U, 2026, 2078 ff., 2145); on that of knowing with certainty the existence of God, ascending from created things (Denz-U, 1785); on the attributes of God (Denz-U, 1782); on the origin of things by creation and the origin of moral evil from a deficiency of created free will (Denz-U, 428); on the existence, origin, nature, and faculties of the human soul; the end of creation; the morality or otherwise of certain acts, etc. (cf. R. Garrigou-Lagrange, Le sens commun, la philosophie de l'être et les formules dogmatiques, 3rd ed., Paris 1922, p. 374 ff.).

Is this an undue connection with a determinate system of philosophy, and in particular the canonization of the Aristotelian system? The contact between dogma and philosophy in general is inevitable and legitimate, because, even speaking hypothetically, if a true Revelation exists, it cannot be contrary to truths of a natural order, but must rather presuppose them. The theory of the two truths does not hold (Denz-U, 738; 1634 f.; 1797; 2109; 2146). What can interest the philosopher justly jealous of the legitimate autonomy of his science is solely: α) that the believer, in rejecting philosophical doctrines contrary to dogma, and in positively proving those conformable to it, should make use, in the face of the unbeliever, of nothing but the philosophical method: which does not prevent him from taking dogma as a negative extrinsic norm; β) that he be capable of demonstrating thus that philosophical assertions contrary to dogma are either positively false or not necessary; γ) that he be capable of demonstrating equally the possibility of a supernatural Revelation in general and the reasonable credibility of the divine nature of the Catholic Church. As for the connection with the Aristotelian-Scholastic system in particular: the philosophical truths implicated by dogma are for the most part concepts and principles of common sense and universal experience (for example, the objectivity of truth, the possibility of attaining it, paternity, filiation, etc.), or they are indeed more elaborated concepts (nature, person, etc.), but in the immediate prolongation of common sense (cf. R. Garrigou-Lagrange, op. cit., p. 269 ff.). And it is for this reason that the Church makes use of them; not following the authority of a philosophical school, although they were perhaps scientifically elaborated in this school and the Church uses them with the technical expressions of the school because it deems them suitable. These concepts moreover do not properly impose a philosophical system, but at most certain principles that, according to common sense, should be at the basis of every system. And if they are in fact at the basis of the Aristotelian-Scholastic system, provided they are proved and defended there with the pure philosophical method, one does not see in what respect this de facto concordance between dogma and this system is reprehensible. Finally, let us not forget the distinction between dogma, theology, and theological systems (for the connection of these with Aristotelian-Scholastic philosophy v. TEOLOGIA).

d) The value of dogma for life and piety consists essentially in the fact that it gives an infallible answer on the sense of Revelation and therefore on its practical reflections, enlightening the intellect and directing the will in the face of the aberrations of error or the doubts of the intelligence. Dogma therefore does not have the purpose of replacing the direct contact in living faith between the believer and the sources of Revelation, in particular the Gospels, and even less between the believer and God, but has the purpose of making this contact possible, directing it according to truth. To wish to preserve the sanctifying mission of the Church in the world without dogma, preaching an adogmatic Christianity, in which only morality would be preserved, is to wish to preserve the tree by cutting off its roots. Dogma in the Catholic Church effectively remains the foundation of morality, of mysticism, of action, according to the constant apostolic tradition (Gal. 2:19 ff.; Rom. 14:15; I Io. 4:9 ff. [cf. A. Gardeil, Le donné révélé et la théologie, 2nd ed., Paris 1910, p. 319 ff.; E. Krebs, Dogma und Leben, I, 3rd ed., Paderborn 1930; II, 2nd ed. ibid. 1925; A. Rademacher, Religion und Leben, Freiburg im Br. (1926)]).

5. Note on non-Catholic concepts of dogma

The schismatic Photian Churches substantially agree with the Catholic concept (cf. A. Palmieri, Theologia dogmatica orthodoxa, I, Florence 1911, pp. 7-30). Orthodox Protestantism, on the other hand, rejects the Church's infallible proposition, replacing it with the free individual examination of Revelation, restricted to the Bible alone. This position, which supposes that everything the Christian must necessarily believe is clearly and unequivocally contained in the Bible, contradicts the New Testament documents and the history of Christianity, and reduces dogma from an objective norm of absolute value to a subjective norm relative to each individual. The fruit of this position is the rationalist concept whose philosophical foundation is Kantian agnosticism: thought imprisoned within itself cannot know things outside itself. The logical consequence is absolute immanentism and thus the absolute autonomy of thought, which creates everything. Therefore it is impossible to know God and validly express his attributes, impossible to have supernatural Revelation; the Christian fact and doctrine must be explained according to the laws by which immanent thought produces religious ideas within itself as an expression of its own mutable state: this is dogmatic transformist evolutionism. Schleiermacher, on this basis, explains religion and Revelation as the feeling of individual experience, of intimate dependence on and contact with God. Dogmas are inadequate and mutable attempts to express the momentary state of this experience in one or more individuals of a given era. Harnack, along the same path, but with the addition of criticism of the Gospels and of ecclesiastical history, affirms that early Christianity consisted entirely in the intimate experience that the man Jesus had of his intimate relations with God as Father. The preaching of this experience, the Gospel, created a religious movement which, coming into contact with the Greek world, sought to express itself in the forms customary to Greek culture, that is, in intellectualist philosophy. From this were born the dogmas that transformed into irreformable metaphysics, into orthodoxy, into a hierarchical-monarchical and cultic society, what at its beginning was only an experience of love. Dogmas are therefore: «a product of the Greek spirit on the soil of the Gospel... that is, a mental instrument with which in antiquity an attempt was made to render the Gospel intelligible» (Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 4th ed., I, p. 18). The attempt, moreover, would have been legitimate had it not claimed to be absolute, thus stifling the primal vital element: the experience of love. The Modernists start from Schleiermacher's presuppositions with fideistic-symbolistic determinations: agnosticism (Denz-U, 2072); religion is a matter solely of vital experience as religious consciousness or religious sense (Denz-U, 2074) identified with Revelation (Denz-U, 2075). This seeks an expression of itself first in vulgar formulas and symbols, then in more reflected and elaborate forms, of a more rigid appearance, because they proceed from a kind of average among different tendencies in society. This average thus formulated, if sanctioned by authority, constitutes dogma, as an approximate symbolic formulation of the religious sense, of value not absolute but relative to it (Denz-U, 2078, 2079). E. Le Roy, under the influence of the pragmatism of W. James and of Bergson (the truth of a concept is its practical utility in directing life), specifies that dogma is solely a norm of action, not of thought. «God is a person» means that we must behave toward this being as if it were a person, without its mattering whether it truly is one (Denz-U, 2026). Dogma, like the religious sense, is subject to a continuous substantial transformation, which takes place practically as the convergent and balanced result of two opposing forces in society: tradition, under the aegis of authority, a conservative force, and progress, an evolving force, proper to individuals with the most intense experiences (Denz-U, 2080). The Modernist notion of dogma is therefore summed up in these words of Loisy: «The dogmas that the Church presents as revealed are not truths rained down from heaven, but are an interpretation of religious facts that human thought has procured for itself with laborious effort» (Denz-U, 2023).

That all this has nothing to do not only with the Catholic concept of dogma, but with Christianity itself in what is most specific to it, needs no emphasis. The Catholic apologist will note instead: a) how all these theories are the inevitable fruit of the initial Protestant position; b) how all these constructions rest on the postulate of an agnostic immanentist philosophy always actively influential, even in works that posture as pure criticism and pure history, of the type of Harnack, Loisy, Turmel, Buonaiuti; c) how absurd was the Modernist claim to sponsor the aforementioned concepts, while wishing to remain within the bosom of the Catholic Church in order to «reform it from within», and how inalienable was the Church's right and duty to protect its sincere children from a system, «a congeries of all heresies», leading «in manifold ways to atheism and to the abolition of all religion» (Denz-U, 2105-2109). d) In the defense against the aforementioned positions the Catholic apologist presses simultaneously in two directions: a) in the philosophical field: to demonstrate the inconsistency of the adversaries' philosophical presuppositions and to establish rationally the possibility of objective knowledge, and therefore of a supernatural Revelation, as well as the credibility of the divinity of the Catholic Church. This is the task of general apologetics (cf. R. Garrigou-Lagrange, De Revelatione, 3rd ed., 2 vols., Rome 1937, which takes account, in a special way, of the agnostic point of view); b) in the critical and historical field, to demonstrate the arbitrariness, from the purely critical and historical point of view, of the adversaries' procedures and conclusions, especially of their general inductions, in biblical exegesis and in the history of dogmas. In this vast field of particular apologetics, which touches the successive historical state of dogmas, from their appearance to the present day, Catholic scholarship, as regards exegesis, has already made notable progress in a few years. This is the profound significance of the works of Fr. Lagrange and of his polemic against Loisy and liberal exegesis.

II. THE EVOLUTION OF DOGMA

The word evolution was applied to dogma by the rationalists, at the time when Darwinian theories were most in vogue, to indicate its supposed transformative changes; it is used today also by Catholics in the legitimate sense of development or progress in general. This is not a matter here of the progress of dogma before the death of the last of the Apostles. In that period dogma grew in an objective and substantial way through new revelations. It is a question only of the subsequent period.

1. The question therefore is posed thus: a) it is Catholic doctrine that dogma is substantially and objectively immutable (v. above I, 4 a). b) History, however, demonstrates that the Church did not arrive all at once at the definition of the complex of dogmas that she today proposes, but, for some of them, only after a long time and various vicissitudes.

The great epochs of the development of dogmas are well known: even leaving aside the period up to the 4th century because of the technical difficulty there may be in distinguishing, among the dogmas then proposed by the Church, what is a simple primitive apostolic datum from what implies a further dogmatic development, this is evident from Constantine onward. The period from the 4th to the 8th century is that of the great definitions concerning the Trinity, Christology, anthropology (original sin, Grace and works, predestination), Mariology, the Church and the Sacraments as objective means of salvation essentially independent of the personal holiness of the ministers, the veneration of images. The Middle Ages precise and define the dogmas on the Eucharist, the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, the last things, the primacy of the Pope. After the 16th century there are further precisified and defined the dogmas on the canonicity of the Scriptures, justification, the Sacraments in general and in species, the cult of the saints, indulgences, the Immaculate Conception, faith and its relations with reason, the concept of Revelation, of dogma and pontifical infallibility. These dogmas are expressed with formal dogmatic definitions, often highly elaborate.

c) Nevertheless, all this cannot imply a substantial change of Revelation itself because the Church has the charism to interpret it infallibly, not to transform it. One must therefore say that the Church herself, with the infallible assistance of the Holy Spirit, sees in Scripture and in tradition the sense intended by God and uniquely true, which, by a normal logical procedure, permits passing from Revelation to the definition of the evolved dogma without inducing substantial changes.

2. Historical notes on the question. The ancients attended almost exclusively to the immutable aspect of dogma. The aspect of progress is sometimes affirmed (Origen, Gregory of Nazianzus, Augustine). Vincent of Lérins explicitly posed in his Commonitorium (ed. Jülicher, Leipzig 1895, pp. 23, 28) the question of what progress of dogmas is legitimate, admitting only that of a clearer knowledge on our part with more precise expression and greater practical veneration of the ever-same objective truth (cf. J. Madoz, El concepto de tradición en s. Vicente de Lerins, Rome 1933). In the Middle Ages the matter was in reality touched upon only in connection with the question of which are the Catholic truths, that is, of universal faith. There were counted among these not only those which are revealed in their own words and of which there is a summary in the Apostles' Creed with its articles and what reduces to them, but also those which are deduced from them with right and necessary consequence (cf. R. M. Schultes, Introductio in historiam dogmatum, Paris 1922, pp. 58-87; J. M. Parent, La notion de dogme au XIIIe siècle, in Études d'histoire littéraire et doctrinale du XIIIe siècle, 1 [1932], pp. 141-62). The post-Tridentine theologians determined this idea further: a) by distinguishing between progress as to substance and as to explanation; b) by distinguishing different modes of Revelation and of faith: explicit-implicit, immediate-mediate, formal-virtual. There was on this point among authors a diversity of terminology that continues to this day; c) by being able explicitly to raise the question of the definability of theological conclusions (cf. Schultes, op. cit., pp. 58-87; F. Marin-Sola, L'évolution homogène du dogme cath., 2nd ed., II, Paris 1924, p. 217 ff.). In the 19th century the question of the evolution of dogma became acute first of all through the influence of idealist philosophical theories with a Hegelian background. A. Günther, allowing himself to be influenced, admitted that all dogmas must be the object of rational demonstration; but since this explanation of the sense of dogmas depends on philosophy and ancient philosophy was very imperfect, the sense that the Church has in the past attributed to dogmas cannot be absolute, but only relatively perfect. With the progress of philosophy this sense can even change substantially. It is against this error that the Vatican Council set forth the Catholic doctrine (v. above I, 4 a). Shortly afterward, the historical works and the theories of transformist evolution in the Darwinian fashion which the liberal Protestants, and then the modernists, applied to dogmas, in consequence of their concept of dogma in general (v. above I, 5), brought the question to the forefront. In the Catholic field the question was then on the order of the day among the theologians of the Tübingen school in Germany, especially through the work of J. A. Möhler, who insists on the idea of vital organic unity and on the total Christian life (cf. J. Ranft, Der Ursprung des katholischen Traditionsprinzips, Würzburg 1931, p. 46 ff.; A. Minon, L'attitude de J. A. Möhler dans la question du développement du dogme, in Ephemerides theologicae Lovanienses, 11 [1939], pp. 228-82). Great influence was exercised by the work of J. H. Newman: Essay on the development of the christian doctrine (London 1845), in the course of whose composition the author converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism. He develops the concept of unity and organic evolution through vital assimilation, in order then to deduce in particular the criteria distinguishing legitimate dogmatic development from illegitimate (cf. J. Guitton, La notion de développement et l'application à la religion chez J. H. Newman, Paris 1933; J. J. Byrne, Newman's anglican notion of doctrinal development, in Ephemerides theologicae Lovanienses, 14 [1937], pp. 230-86). The modernist heretical solution of the question, an inevitable consequence of their concept of dogma with its philosophical presuppositions (v. above I, 5), gave occasion to the ecclesiastical magisterium to reaffirm the fixed points of the Catholic concept (decree Lamentabili, Denz-U, 2201 ff.; encyclical Pascendi, Denz-U, 2071 ff.; anti-modernist oath, Denz-U, 2145), and greatly stimulated theologians to a careful examination of the question, as the numerous works from the close of the 19th century onward demonstrate (v. the principal bibliography up to 1922 in Schultes, op. cit., pp. 149-52).

3. The traditional solution of the question posed as above is: the Church, from her infallible way of understanding Scripture and Tradition, passes to the proposition of evolved dogmas without inducing essential change in Revelation, because she does nothing other than set forth in clear terms what in Revelation thus understood is contained implicitly. Up to this point there is no difficulty, because this way of speaking does nothing other than express in equivalent terms what the decisions of the magisterium condemning the heretical theories of Günther and of the modernists mean on the matter.

The disagreement among theologians (aggravated by a diversity of terminology which, for this very reason — since one must attend to the substance rather than to the terms — it is not appropriate to report here; it can be seen in Schultes, op. cit., p. 144, and in F. Marin-Sola, op. cit., II, p. 326) begins when it comes to determining more precisely the meaning of the word "implicitly"; a) all admit that in the case of dogmas one cannot be dealing with an explication of an implicit such that between the subject and the predicate there is only a physical connection (for example, between human nature and person) separable at least by miracle. Such an explication in theology would induce a substantial change. Therefore in theology, from the revealed fact that Christ has a human nature one cannot, without essential changes of Revelation, deduce that He also has a human personality, deriving this from the axiom that whoever has a human nature also has a human personality; b) many theologians hold that the Church, from Revelation as she understands it, explicates developed dogmas only by way of improper deduction — not illative but declarative — so that the developed dogma is always contained in Revelation as the Church understands it, whether as a definition in the thing defined (he is a man, therefore he is a rational animal), or as an essential part in the whole (man, therefore soul), or as the particular in the unconditioned universal (all men, therefore Peter), or as the correlative in the correlate (he is a father, therefore he has a son). This way of deducing one thing from an implicit is certainly legitimate and does not induce an essential change in Revelation; c) other theologians, on the other hand, admit as a legitimate explication also that which is made by proper, illative reasoning, from one concept to another formally distinct, if between them there is a metaphysically necessary connection such that man can see it with certainty without a new revelation. Thus if it is a question of a property of a thing contained in its essence, or of a metaphysical effect contained in the metaphysical cause (for example, the soul is spiritual, therefore it is immortal), or of a physical effect contained in its physical cause in the connatural state (it is a human nature in the connatural state, therefore it has a human personality). In these cases, they say, once the cause is revealed the effect is also revealed to anyone who is capable of having the right concept of the one and the other. It is revealed in its cause, virtually, insofar as one can deduce it from that cause, therefore analogically, but really. The progress between the principle and the conclusion is real, but not objective in itself (as if the conclusion said something that was not said in the principle), but subjective, relative to our knowledge. The conclusion is homogeneous with the principle; d) this difference of position has its importance in the question whether the Church can define as revealed, and therefore as dogmas and of divine and catholic faith, theological conclusions properly so called, that is, those which involve a proper, illative deduction from one revealed premise and the other of reason (for example, every man is capable of laughter: principle of reason; now Christ is a man: revealed principle; therefore Christ is capable of laughter: properly theological conclusion). All admit: a) that before the definition of the Church these conclusions cannot be believed with divine and catholic faith; the contrary opinion of Vega and Vasquez is regarded as singular. One premise being of reason and not revealed, before the definition of the Church the conclusion cannot be known infallibly as revealed; β) that the Church can define these conclusions with infallible authority, because of their necessary connection with the dogma, which otherwise could not be effectively proposed or safeguarded. But the supporters of the first opinion do not admit that the Church can define them as of divine faith, as proper dogmas, but only as of ecclesiastical faith (v. FEDE), because such conclusions, being only "virtually" revealed to us, insofar as we can deduce them from the revealed principle, are not for them truly revealed, nor truly contained in Revelation for our knowledge. The supporters of the second opinion, on the other hand, admit that the Church can define as revealed, and therefore as proper dogmas and of divine faith, those theological conclusions properly so called which in fact are deduced with metaphysical certainty from Revelation, as properties from the essence or the effect from the metaphysical or physical cause in the connatural state. For they hold that what is revealed to us in the aforesaid manner is truly revealed, although in its cause, that is, virtually, and therefore analogically. It is enough that the Church give its guarantee of infallibility to the conclusion, and this must be believed with divine faith (v. the exhaustive exposition of both points of view in the cited works of Schultes and of Marin-Sola).

4. The factors of the evolution from the implicit state to the explicit are: the Holy Spirit, as directing cause who guarantees the infallible homogeneity of the developed dogma with that in the implicit state; the human mind as the proper instrumental cause. The occasional causes are: the struggle against heresies; the innate tendency to deepen ever more the truths believed, examining all their aspects and consequences; the development of Christian piety, of the social organization of the Church and of discipline; the deepening or the extension of connected human knowledge, philosophical or other. The necessity of dogmatic evolution is a consequence of the vital character of the Church, which must effectively apply the dogmas to men of all times and in the most diverse circumstances of culture and concern.

5. The history of dogmas, notwithstanding rationalist insinuations, is possible also within the Catholic concept, because of the legitimately mutable aspect that dogmas involve. Its essential and primary task is to show the believer from what principles, in what forms and in what occasional circumstances of time and environment a dogma has been explicated. Its secondary task is apologetic: that is, when the thing is possible, to demonstrate positively, by the historical-critical method alone, that ancient tradition contains at least the principles from which the dogmas were afterwards homogeneously explicated; when instead the thing is not possible, because of the intrinsic limitation of the historical-critical method, at least to rebut the adversaries' attacks, showing that their conclusions in the face of pure criticism and pure history are either positively false or at least not necessary. The supreme methodological rule of the history of dogmas is: a) to apply integrally all the methodological rules proper to criticism and pure history; b) to check its results by the higher and definitive dogmatic criterion, which serves as an extrinsic negative control, because, in case of contrast, it warns the historian of the mistake committed and invites him to re-examine the process of investigation with a more precise application of the rules of criticism and pure history. The reasonableness, indeed the necessity, of this position in the face of reason is manifest, given the demonstration made by apologetics of the rationality of the Faith. Therefore the anti-modernist oath rejects the modernist errors in this field (Denz-U, 1799 and 2146). The usefulness and the necessity of the history of dogmas derive from its tasks. In particular the dogmatic theologian today cannot do without it, because one cannot fully understand a thing without knowing its genetic aspect. It is necessary in particular to vivify the argument from tradition and to sharpen the theological sense in distinguishing between dogmas, theological explanations, theological systems, theological opinions and to evaluate everything at its just measure from the point of view of Revelation.

6. The historiography of dogmas was begun, in its essential aspects, by the founders of positive theology in the 16th-17th centuries, among whom, in the Catholic field, were Dionysius Petavius, Theologiorum dogmatum tomi quatuor (Paris 1644-50); L. Thomassin, Dogmata theologica (ibid. 1680). Protestant rationalism of the 18th century made it a discipline of its own. Under the influence of Hegelian ideas, this discipline was assigned the task of identifying the general historico-philosophical laws followed in the supposed transformationist development of the entire dogmatic complex. The incomplete work of S. G. Lange (1796) was followed by that of W. Münscher, Handbuch der christlichen Dogmengeschichte (4 vols., up to Gregory the Great, Marburg 1797-1809). F. Chr. Baur, Lehrbuch der christlichen Dogmengeschichte (Tübingen 1847) and his school based their research into the primitive nucleus, the propelling forces, the guiding lines and the results of the development on the Hegelian schema of thesis, synthesis, synthesis. Against this apriorism A. Ritschl (d. 1880) reacted, replacing it with the influence of Greek philosophy. This tendency was developed to the highest degree by A. Harnack (Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 2 vols., Tübingen 1886-90, and countless monographs. See above I, 5). In Harnack's orbit, though often with notable nuances, move numerous German Dogmengeschichten written from the beginning of this century; notable among these: F. Loofs, Leitfaden zum Studium der Dogmengeschichte (Halle 1906); R. Seeberg, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte (4 vols., Leipzig 1895-1913). Others, again in the rationalist camp, to explain the origin and the ancient era of the history of dogmas, had recourse, more than to Greek philosophy, to the Hellenistic oriental religiosity of which the mystery cults and gnosis were the fruit. Here the primeval nucleus of the development of Christian dogma would be the idea of the liberation of the spiritual element of man, enclosed in essentially evil matter (dualism), through the work of a savior god who came down to earth and whose personal virtue we assimilate principally in worship. This would already be clear in St. Paul (W. Bousset, Kyrios Christos, Göttingen 1913) or even in Jesus himself, or in John the Baptist (Reitzenstein and others). In the modernist camp A. Loisy limited himself to exegesis. The origin of Christian dogmas [would be] from the autosuggestion of one who believed himself the messiah of the Jewish apocalyptic tradition. Convinced of his imminent triumphant return, which would soon be followed by the end of the world and the beginning of the Kingdom of God, he thought of nothing else but to prepare his followers for it. Thus a religious movement began; but the expected end not coming, the believers organized themselves into a Church, thereby giving rise to the creation of Christian dogmas, the fruit of the religious consciousness of the community. J. Turmel made the most logical and extremist application of the postulates of the modernist school to the history of dogmas properly so called, first with a series of monographs on various questions, published for the most part under the veil of various pseudonyms the better to "reform the Church," then, when the imposture was unmasked, openly in a Histoire des dogmes (6 vols., Paris 1931-36). In the Catholic field the first comprehensive histories appeared in Germany. H. Klee wrote a Dogmengeschichte (2 vols., Mainz 1837-38; Italian trans., Milan 1858). J. Schwane followed, Dogmengeschichte (4 vols., Münster 1862-90). Leaving aside works of lesser importance, the best in the Catholic field, for the period examined, remains J. Tixeront, Histoire des dogmes dans l'antiquité chrétienne (3 vols., Paris 1905 ff.). But, in this field, Catholic work, not yet synthesized, because synthesis presupposes a patient investigation of particulars not yet sufficiently accomplished, has rather devoted itself with good reason to the monographic study of a series of particular questions in which the problems are rigorously re-examined one by one and the results of modern criticism sifted. A long road, yes, but the only possible one, and one that will one day certainly also yield the desired fruits of synthesis (these monographs are noted under each dogma in particular).

Cipriano Vagaggini