Can Dogma Develop?

Development before Christ

As the opening verse of Hebrews says, God spoke in many and various ways through the prophets. Truth was not handed over neatly indexed. Doctrines had to be thought out, lived in the liturgy, and pieced together by the Fathers and councils, so the Church gained a deepening understanding of the faith "once for all handed down" (see Jude 3). Protestants admit a real development before Christ: revelation grew fuller until the Messiah taught the apostles what prophets longed to see (Matthew 13:17).

Revelation is closed

Public revelation ended with the death of the last apostle, John, around A.D. 100 (CCC 66-67, 73). Christ fulfilled the law (Matthew 5:17) and is our one teacher (Matthew 23:10). The apostles passed on his faith intact (2 Timothy 2:2; 3:14). But closed revelation does not mean no progress in understanding it.

What development means

The Church cannot change doctrines or add new ones. Development clears up obscurities and misunderstandings. Vatican II teaches that the apostolic tradition develops with the Spirit's help as understanding grows through believers' contemplation and study, their spiritual experience, and the preaching of bishops, so that the Church moves toward the fullness of divine truth (Dei Verbum 8).

We read Scripture already knowing doctrine, which is necessary: Peter warns that the ignorant and unstable twist Paul's letters and the other Scriptures (2 Peter 3:16). So Scripture must be read within the Church's tradition. But some central doctrines were not always so clearly expounded:

• The Spirit's divinity stands out to us, but a newcomer without Tradition or the Church guided into all truth (see John 14:25-26; 16:13) might miss it, which explains early heresies.
• Monothelitism claimed Christ had only a divine will. It arose because no one had yet drawn the necessary inference: fully God and fully man, Christ has a divine and a human will.
• Transubstantiation: the first Christians knew the bread and wine become Christ's body and blood, as Scripture says (cf. 1 Corinthians 10:16-17; 11:23-29), though it is silent on how. The term was formally adopted at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 to define precisely what was always taught and exclude wrong explanations.

Infallibility works only negatively: the Spirit prevents the pope and bishops from teaching error, but does not inspire them as he did the scriptural authors. They must use reason and study to define what is to be held.

Borrowing from paganism?

Fundamentalists say "development" is an accumulation of pagan beliefs added to win converts, and cite Christmas. But their real objection is that the Church established Christmas as an alternative to a pagan festival. Scripture sanctions this: the Feast of Tabernacles supplanted a Canaanite vintage festival, as Christmas coincided with Sol Invictus. Protestants do the same with "Reformation Day" in place of Halloween. Christmas is anti-pagan in origin.

Hold to the traditions

More serious is the rejection of apostolic Tradition, which conveys revelation and is essential to true development. Public revelation ended with the last apostle, but the apostles' unwritten inspired teaching (1 Thessalonians 2:13) and their binding interpretations of Scripture form sacred Tradition. Catholics obey Paul's command to hold to the traditions taught by word of mouth or by letter (2 Thessalonians 2:15; cf. 1 Corinthians 11:2).