The Orthodox Rejection of Doctrinal Development
Daniel J. Lattier
There is a widespread notion today that Eastern Orthodoxy rejects
the idea of doctrinal development. This notion is a major thesis of Paul
Valliere’s Modern Russian Theology—Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov: Orthodox
Theology in a New Key, where Valliere locates the difference between
these thinkers and more recent Orthodox authors in the former’s acceptance of doctrinal
development and the latter’s rejection of it.1 One finds objections to doctrinal development raised
by such Orthodox authors as Georges Florovsky, Vladimir Lossky, Olivier
Clément, Thomas Hopko, John Behr, and Andrew Louth. Most recently, Louth has
provided an Orthodox evaluation of doctrinal development in an essay entitled
“Is Development of Doctrine a Valid Category for Orthodox Theology?”2 Louth answers the
question posed by his title in the negative and seems to imply that there
exists an Orthodox consensus against doctrinal development.3 A key theme in
his and other Orthodox authors’ objections to the idea is that doctrinal
development is fundamentally opposed to the Orthodox understanding of
Tradition.
John Henry Newman’s understanding of doctrinal development is considered
normative among those who accept the idea today. The locus classicus is
Newman’s 1845 Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, which he
considered “an hypothesis to account for a difficulty.”4 The difficulty
revolved around Tradition, namely, how to explain apparent changes that have
come about in the transmission of divine revelation since the apostolic age of
the church. This question had been at the core of Protestant-Catholic polemics
since the time of the Counter-Reformation. In seeking an answer, Newman tried
to navigate between those who affirmed all changes in Christian teaching and
those who denied that any changes had taken place.5 Newman found his via media in the idea of doctrinal
development. According to Newman, new doctrinal definitions were developments
resulting from the church’s growth in its understanding of revelation, rather
than a growth in revelation itself. True developments were those teachings
deemed to be contained inchoately in the original revelation, whereas
corruptions were those teachings that were not so contained.
My goal in this essay is to challenge the foundations of the
Orthodox rejection of doctrinal development. I will principally do so by
arguing that Newman’s understanding of doctrinal development is in fundamental harmony
with the Orthodox understanding of Tradition. I will especially focus on the
religious epistemology operative in Newman’s understanding of development. This
epistemology is present in the Essay on Development, but is better
clarified and expounded in other works of Newman.
I will also question the idea that there exists an Orthodox
consensus against doctrinal development. Contrary to popular opinion, Georges Florovsky
cannot be included among those who reject doctrinal development. What he
rejects in doctrinal development is nothing Newman claims. In addition,
Florovsky explicitly supports the idea of doctrinal development in certain
passages. So too does the Romanian theologian Dumitru Staniloae, who along with
Florovsky is considered a representative thinker by Orthodox today. Finally, I
will devote the majority of the paper to a consideration of the objections to
doctrinal development raised by Vladimir Lossky and Andrew Louth. I will argue
that these objections are rooted in their particular understanding of
apophaticism, which fails to ascribe an adequate role to theology in the life
of the church. This type of failure is opposed by not only Newman, but
Florovsky and Staniloae as well.
1 Paul
Valliere, Modern Russian Theology—Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov: Orthodox
Theology in a New Key (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000). See especially the
last chapter, “The Limits of Tradition” (373–403). References in Bulgakov’s
works to doctrinal development include his essay “Dogma and Dogmatic Theology,”
in Tradition Alive: On the Church and the Christian Life in Our Time /
Readings from the Eastern Church, ed. Michael Plekon (Lanham: Rowman and
Littlefield, 2003), 67–80, and The Orthodox Church (London: Centenary
Press, 1935), 37–47. For Soloviev’s understanding of doctrinal development, see
“Dogmaticheskoe razvitie tserkvi v sviazi s voprosom o soedinenii
tserkvei,” Sobranie sochinenii Vladimira Sergeevicha Solov’eva,
supplementary vol. 11 (Brussels: Izdatel’stvo Zhizn’s Bogom, Foyer Oriental
Chrétien, 1969), 1–67. The essay also exists in French translation: Le
Développement Dogmatique de L’Église, trans. François Rouleau and Roger
Tandonnet (Paris: Desclée, 1991).
2 Andrew
Louth, “Is Development of Doctrine a Valid Category for Orthodox Theology?” in Orthodoxy
and Western Culture: A Collection of Essays Honoring Jaroslav Pelikan on His
Eightieth Birthday, ed. Valerie Hotchkiss and Patrick Henry
(Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 2005), 45–63.
3 In
addition to Louth and Valliere, John McGuckin has also recently assumed an
Orthodox consensus against doctrinal development. The Orthodox Church: An
Introduction to Its History, Doctrine, and Spiritual Culture (Malden,
MA: Blackwell, 2008), 116.
4 John
Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 30. This is a republication of
Newman’s 1878 edition of the Essay.
5
Newman dismisses the former group—who claim “that Christianity has even changed
from the first and ever accommodates itself to the circumstances of times and
seasons”—as having a view incompatible with the “special idea of revealed
truth” (Essay on Development, 10). Among the principles applied by the
latter group in their defense of the unchanging character of Christian
tradition were the Vincentian Canon (teneamus quod ubique, quod semper, quod
ab omnibus creditum est) and the Disciplina Arcani. While not
disregarding a moral interpretation of the Vincentian Canon, Newman argues that
it cannot be applied in a literal fashion. The Disciplina Arcani, or the
“discipline of the secret,” referred to the practice of keeping the deeper
truths of the Christian faith from pagans and catechumens for fear of their
profanation. Against this argument, Newman points out that “the variations
continue beyond the time when it is conceivable that the discipline was in
force,” and that the teachings appear gradually, not suddenly, as one would
expect them to be if they were suddenly revealed (Essay on Development,
29).
Doctrinal
Development: An Augmentation of Tradition?
The Orthodox concerns with doctrinal development (“DD”) typically revolve
around the idea of Tradition. This is not surprising, since the very term
“doctrinal development” implies this category of fundamental theology. The
adjective “doctrinal” refers to “doctrines”—the human formulations that
historically arise in the attempt to express truths revealed by God—which
comprise part of Tradition. “Development” attempts to describe something about
the traditioning process, namely, that certain defined doctrines are not
indicative of a static handing on of revelation, but are developments of the
human understanding of revelation.
The subject of Tradition has received a considerable amount of
attention among the Orthodox authors surveyed in this essay. In spite of
idiosyncrasies, there are some common characteristics that emerge from these
authors’ understandings of Tradition. The Orthodox understanding of Tradition
includes the entirety of revelation—its expression in both Scripture and the
doctrines of the church. This corresponds to what Lossky terms the “horizontal”
aspect of Tradition. But the Orthodox also emphasize what Lossky refers to as
the “vertical” aspect of Tradition.6 For the Orthodox, Tradition is the lens through which
the members of the church view revelation. According to Behr, this lens is none
other than Christ himself: “Tradition is the continuity of this interpretative
engagement with the scriptures in the contemplation of Christ, as delivered
(‘traditioned’) by the apostles.”7 This lens is not only a rational principle applied to
the content of revelation, but is possessed sacramentally through the indwelling
of the Holy Spirit. That is why Lossky can define Tradition as “the life of the
Holy Spirit in the Church, communicating to each member of the Body of Christ
the faculty of hearing, of receiving, of knowing the Truth in the Light which belongs
to it.”8 Through
the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the members of the church can be said to
possess revelation in its fullness. Because Tradition is a pneumatological
phenomenon, it is also an ecclesiological phenomenon. Thus Florovsky writes
that “the Church alone is the living witness of tradition, and only from inside,
from within the Church, can tradition be felt and accepted as a certainty.”9
In their discussions of DD, it is clear that Orthodox authors wish
to protect the concept of Tradition I have summarized above. Because the Orthodox
understand Tradition to be the church’s possession of revelation in its
fullness through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, they could not accept DD if
it meant an “augmentation of Tradition.”10 On the other hand, according to Lossky, the
“‘dogmatic tradition,’ though keeping its stability as the ‘rule of faith’ from
which nothing can be cut off, can be increased by receiving, to the extent that
may be necessary, new expressions of revealed Truth, formulated by the Church.”11 In other
words, Lossky allows that Tradition can be said to increase in the sense that the
church periodically formulates new doctrinal definitions that are “added” to
its theological deposit. Or, to use Lossky’s own terminology, the “horizontal”
dimension of Tradition can be increased, but not the “vertical” dimension.
Georges Florovsky initially rejected DD under the guise that it
did indeed imply the development of the vertical dimension of Tradition.
Florovsky writes in his 1931 essay “Revelation, Philosophy and Theology” that “dogma
is by no means a new Revelation. Dogma is only a witness. The whole meaning of
dogmatic definition consists of testifying to unchanging truth, truth which was
revealed and has been preserved from the beginning. Thus it is a total
misunderstanding to speak of “the development of dogma.”12 In this
passage, Florovsky understands the term “dogma” in a twofold sense. The first
sense is the more common one referring to a human expression for a truth of
divine revelation. The second sense is that of “that ‘inner word’ which
acquires force in its external expression,” “an intuitive truth, not a
discursive axiom which is accessible to logical development.”13 In other
words, Florovsky also understands “dogma” to refer to Tradition. Florovsky
intends this second sense when he rejects the “development of dogma.”
Behr rejects DD on the same grounds as Florovsky. According to Behr,
“from an Orthodox perspective there is no such thing as dogmatic development,”
for “a tradition with potential for growth ultimately undermines the Gospel
itself; it would leave open the possibility for further revelation, and
therefore the Gospel would no longer be sure and certain.”14 As Behr points
out, a growth in the vertical dimension of Tradition would imply new
revelation. The idea of new revelation, of course, contradicts the basic
principle of Christian orthodoxy that the period of public revelation ended
with the death of the last apostle.15 For Behr, theology’s task is not to contribute to Tradition’s
growth, but to provide “more detailed and comprehensive explanations elaborated
in defense of one and the same faith.”16
Since neither Florovsky nor Behr cites any sources that link DD
and new revelation, it is uncertain where their concern may have originated. Newman
certainly did not countenance any notion of new revelation.17 In order to
defend Newman on this count, one must have recourse to the basic schema of his
religious epistemology. The outline of this schema, which has obvious
dependencies on British empiricism, is “object-impression- idea.”18 According to
this schema, when the senses perceive an object that is external to them, the
object makes an impression on the senses that is coterminously the source of
ideas, or reflections, on the part of the beholder. Applied to revelation, this
schema means that (1) God is the object of revelation, (2) the impression is
both the action of God in communicating himself and the reception of that
communication by human beings, and (3) the idea is the human reflection on the
object as mediated by the impression.
Newman understands the impression of revelation to be received and
possessed by both the Christian and the church.19 The impression and the idea derived from the
impression are one, and they constitute a unified whole due to their source in
the one God. As Newman explains, “Surely, if Almighty God is ever one and the
same, and is revealed to us as one and the same, the true inward impression of
Him, made on the recipient of the revelation, must be one and the same; and,
since human nature proceeds upon fixed laws, the statement of that impression
must be one and the same, so that we may as well say that there are two Gods as
two Creeds.”20 Inasmuch as the impression and idea of revelation are a whole, possessed
as a unity by each individual Christian and the church, and have their source
in God, they correspond to the Orthodox notion of Tradition. Indeed, whereas
the Orthodox describe Tradition as “the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church,”
Nicholas Lash has pointed out that Newman hypostasizes the idea of revelation
to the point that there is an “identification of the ‘idea’ with the presence
of the risen Christ, God’s living Word.”21
For Newman, developments of doctrine are not augmentations of Tradition
but are expressions of the one, infinite mystery contained within Tradition:
“That idea is not enlarged, if propositions are added, nor impaired if they are
withdrawn: if they are added, this is with a view of conveying that one
integral view, not of amplifying it.”22 Furthermore, Newman writes that “the dogmatic statements
of the Divine Nature used in our confessions, however multiplied, cannot say
more than is implied in the original idea [of revelation], considered in its
completeness, without the risk of heresy.”23 The gift of the Holy Spirit, according to Newman, “was,
not to make a new revelation, but expressly ‘to bring all things to their
remembrance.’”24 This “bringing of all things to their remembrance,” the
growth in the church’s understanding of revelation, is essentially what Newman
means by DD.25
Thus, the phrase “development of doctrine,” as Newman understands it,
corresponds to Florovsky’s demand that the “fullness of truth” contained in the
“apophatic vision” of revelation “must be expressed.”26 It also corresponds
to Behr’s call for “more detailed and comprehensive explanations elaborated in
defense of one and the same faith.” It is interesting to note that Florovsky
later changed, or perhaps further nuanced, his position on DD. In his 1937 Ways
of Russian Theology we find Florovsky defending Vladimir Soloviev’s
understanding of DD against his detractors: “Strictly speaking, [Soloviev] goes
no farther at this point than Vincent de Lérins. For Solov’ev, ‘dogmatic
development’ consists of the fact that the original ‘pledge of faith,’ while
remaining totally inviolate and unaltered, is increasingly disclosed and
clarified for the human consciousness.”27 It is unclear what accounts for Florovsky’s changed
position. Nevertheless, he clearly understands DD in Ways of Russian
Theology to refer not to the development of Tradition, but to the development
of the human understanding of Tradition.
6 Vladimir Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God (Crestwood,
NY: SVS Press, 2001), 147.
7 John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death (Crestwood,
NY: SVS Press, 2008), 68. Behr’s promotion of Christ as the proper
hermeneutical key through which to view Scripture is an attempt to retrieve an
Irenaean understanding of the regula fidei.
8 Lossky, Image, 152.
9 Georges Florovsky, Collected Works, vol. 1, Bible,
Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View (Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1972),
46.
10 Lossky, Image, 164.
11 Lossky, Image, 166.
12 Georges Florovsky, Collected Works, vol. 3, Creation and
Redemption (Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1976), 30. “Revelation, Philosophy, and
Theology” originally appeared as “Offenbarung, Philosophie und Theologie” in Zwischen
den Zeiten, book 6 (München, 1931). The Orthodox authors to whom I will
refer in this paper typically use the term “dogmatic development” rather than
“doctrinal development.” As the Orthodox authors use the term, “dogmatic” is
not intended to distinguish between a development of more authoritative teachings
(dogmas) and that of less authoritative teachings (doctrines). Rather, they use
“dogmatic development” to refer to the same thing I mean by “doctrinal
development,” namely, the general theory proposed by Newman et al. Thus, I will
continue to treat the terms as interchangeable.
13 Florovsky, Creation and Redemption, 29, 30.
14 Behr, “Scripture, the Gospel, and Orthodoxy,” St. Vladimir’s
Theological Quarterly 43 (1999): 247, 248.
15 See, for instance, Dei Verbum 4: “The Christian
dispensation, therefore, as the new and definitive covenant, will never pass
away and we now await no further new public revelation before the glorious
manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ (see 1 Tim. 6:14 and Tit. 2:13).” See
also Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, 3421.
16 Behr, “Scripture, the Gospel, and Orthodoxy,” 248.
17 Paul Valliere makes a major misstep in Modern Russian Theology in
understanding doctrinal development as implying “substantive additions” to
tradition (376).
18 Terrence Merrigan, Clear Heads and Holy Hearts: The Religious
and Theological Ideal of John Henry Newman (Louvain: Peeters Press, 1992),
82. On the influence of British empiricism on Newman see J. M. Cameron,
“Newman and the Empiricist Tradition,” in The Rediscovery of Newman: An
Oxford Symposium, ed. John Coulson and A. M. Allchin (London: Sheed and Ward,
1967), 76–96.
19 Newman, “Letter to Flanagan,” 15 February 1868, in The
Theological Papers of John Henry Newman on Biblical Inspiration and on
Infallibility, ed. J. Derek Holmes (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1979), 159–60.
20 Newman, Fifteen Sermons Preached Before the University of
Oxford (London: Longmans, Green, 1909), 328. Hereafter referred to as University
Sermons.
21 Nicholas Lash, Newman on Development: The Search for an
Explanation in History (London: Sheed and Ward, 1975), 75.
22 Lash, University Sermons, 336.
23 Lash, University Sermons, 331.
24 Lash, University Sermons, 35.
25 Owen Chadwick has accused Newman’s theory of implying that
doctrinal definitions amount to new revelation: “we are in difficulties about
the language in which these ‘new’ doctrines are expressed. This language is new language. As language
it is not part of the original revelation. Nor is it a restatement of part of
the revelation already expressed in propositions. Nor is it logically deducible
from the original revelation, since you cannot ‘infer’ propositions from a
wordless experience or feeling or (in Newman’s sense) ‘idea.’ . . . If it were
established (for example) in Catholic theology that ‘revelation ended at the
last apostle,’ Newman’s theory could hardly survive without a restatement so
drastic as to leave it almost unrecognizable.” From Bossuet to Newman: The Idea of Doctrinal Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1957), 160. Ian Ker answers Chadwick by pointing out the latter’s
failure to take into account Newman’s position that the church’s doctrinal statements are derived from its
intuitive knowledge of revelation, which it possesses in its fullness, and not
from some “wordless experience or feeling.” Ian T. Ker, “Newman’s
Theory—Development or Continuing Revelation?” in Newman and Gladstone: Centennial
Essays, ed. James D. Bastable (Dublin: Veritas Publications, 1978), 145–59.
26 Florovsky,
“Revelation, Philosophy, and Theology,” 30.
27 Georges
Florovsky, Collected Works, vol. 6, Ways of Russian Theology: Part Two (Vaduz,
Liechtenstein: Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1987), 158. Florovsky’s explicit support
of Soloviev’s understanding of doctrinal development seemingly contradicts
George H. Williams’s strong statement about Florovsky: “So inveterately opposed
is Florovsky to every naturalistic or organismic theory of history and
development (entwicklung) that he feels called upon to safeguard also the
Church and its dogma from any suggestion of ‘development.’” George Hunston
Williams, “Georges Vasilievich Florovsky: His American Career (1948–1965),”
Greek Orthodox Theological Review 11, no. 1 (1965): 88.
Doctrinal
Development and Apophaticism
Both Vladimir Lossky and Andrew Louth, however, take issue with
the idea of the church’s growth in the understanding of revelation—an idea that
Florovsky and Behr accept. According to Lossky and Louth, if DD means that the
church continually grows in its understanding of revelation, then Christians
today would necessarily have a greater knowledge of revelation than Christians
of the past. For Lossky, the example of the Church Fathers argues against such
a conclusion: “If one were to embrace the whole account of doctrinal history from
its beginnings down to our own day, by reading the Enchiridion of
Denzinger or the fifty in-folio volumes of Mansi, the knowledge that one would
thus have of the mystery of the Trinity would be no more perfect than was that
of a Father of the fourth century who speaks of the o‘μοούσιος.”28 Similarly,
Louth writes, “If development means that there is an historical advance in
Christian doctrine, making our understanding of the faith deeper or more
profound than that of the Fathers, at least in principle, then such a notion of
development cannot be accepted as a category of Orthodox theology.”29
It would be tempting to dismiss Lossky’s and Louth’s concern as indicative
of an Orthodox tendency to exalt the Fathers above the rest of Christian
tradition—a manifestation of what others have dubbed a “theology of
repetition.”30 However, closer examination reveals that both Lossky and Louth
wish to safeguard “the faculty of knowing the Truth in a fulness”31 that is
central to the Orthodox understanding of Tradition. The source of this faculty
is the life of the Holy Spirit in the church, which is communicated to Christians
through the sacraments and is fostered through a life of ascesis and
growth in holiness. According to Lossky and Louth, it is Christians’ holiness,
not their grasp of dogmatic theology, that primarily illustrates their
knowledge of God and revelation. In sum, Lossky and Louth do not ascribe to the
idea of DD because they believe it views knowledge in terms of quantity, rather
than quality. They believe it implies a view of Tradition that seeks out the
fullness of truth through each additional doctrinal definition, rather than one
that regards the fullness as already possessed. Furthermore, they believe it
depends upon a view of religious knowledge divorced from holiness and religious
experience.
But Newman, too, accounts for the church’s and the Christian’s possession
of the fullness of truth in his understanding of DD. In his important “Letter
to Flanagan,” in which he clarified certain areas of his theory of development,
Newman acknowledges that the apostles “had the fullness of revealed
knowledge.”32
According to Newman, the church possesses this fullness at all times of
its history and communicates this fullness to its members. Development does not
refer to a movement toward the achievement of this fullness, since this
fullness is always possessed implicitly; for Newman, development refers to the
making explicit of this fullness.
This distinction between explicit and implicit knowledge is key to
understanding Newman’s theory of DD. Again, Newman believed that an idea makes
an initial impression on a mind as a whole, but the aspects of this whole only
become explicit over time.33 In this sense, the idea of revelation exhibits a
pattern similar to other ideas. Though Newman affirms that the apostles
implicitly possessed the fullness of revelation, he qualifies that it was “a fullness
which they could as little realize to themselves, as the human mind, as such,
can have all its thoughts present before it at once.”34 The apostles
(and the Church Fathers) were human beings who lived in a particular context.
They simply did not have access to all of the intellectual and linguistic
categories that later generations of Christians used to explain their faith.
Through exposure to different categories of thought, along with different
contexts, events, and ideas, what is implicitly contained in revelation is
gradually made explicit.
One should note that both Lossky and Louth affirm this
relationship Newman posits between implicit and explicit knowledge. Lossky recognizes
that, as a function of the fullness of faith he or she possesses, “the
Christian knows all, but theology is necessary to actuate this knowledge.”35 Louth
describes theology as “a search for truth, because we are seeking to find ways
of expressing that truth, using the historically conditioned categories
available to us.”36 Thus, both authors acknowledge that theological
reflection makes explicit what the Christian holds implicitly through faith.
However, Lossky and Louth part ways with Newman by denying that the
explicit contributes to a greater understanding of the implicit. Their denial
is illustrated by their position that new doctrinal language does not
contribute to a greater understanding of revelation for the individual Christian
or the entire church. Lossky recognizes that the church must preserve its
dogmatic tradition by occasionally renewing the language in which it
communicates this tradition, but he argues that “‘to renew’ does not mean to
replace ancient expressions of the Truth by new ones, more explicit and
theologically better elaborated.”37 A doctrine only “each time opens anew an access
towards the fulness outside of which the revealed Truth can be neither known
nor confessed.”38 Louth echoes Lossky through the words of his former
student:
The profound dogmatic elaborations of the fourth century, on the
side of the orthodox theologians, did not bring the apostolic faith somewhere
further, on to a deeper level of understanding. Given their relative
flexibility regarding the language, the champions of orthodoxy in the fourth
century only provided new means of conceptualization of what is
essentially encapsulated in the proclamation of Christ’s lordship and divinity.39
For Lossky and Louth, then, theology makes explicit certain
aspects of the implicitly held mystery of revelation without ever penetrating
that mystery. Doctrines “open an access” toward understanding revelation but do
not reveal a path toward further understanding. They are merely points along
the circumference of the mystery of revelation that do not afford one the
ability to progress toward the center.40
What accounts for the position of Lossky and Louth that new
doctrinal language does not result in any new understanding of revelation? In
seeking an answer, one must examine the role they ascribe to apophaticism in the
human ascent toward union with God. Both Lossky and Louth have devoted
attention to promoting the orthodoxy of Pseudo-Dionysius’s model of the
Christian life. For Ps.-Dionysius, union with God is achieved through both the
cataphatic and apophatic modes of theology. Cataphatic (“affirming”) theology
refers to positive predications made of God, such as “God is truth” or “God is
love.” Yet, God is more unlike than like our human concepts of Him, and we thus
need apophatic theology to complement cataphatic theology. Apophatic
(“denying”) theology holds that God is infinitely above our human concepts and
that it is more true to deny statements about Him than to affirm them.
Apophatic theology is therefore superior to cataphatic theology. For Lossky and
Louth, however, apophaticism does not simply refer to the intellectual exercise
known in the West as negative theology but is “an existential attitude which
involves the whole man.”41 In Ps.-Dionysius (and Lossky’s and Louth’s
interpretation of him) knowledge eventually gives way to experience, and union
with God takes place when the soul “becomes completely speechless and is
entirely united to the Inexpressible.”42
Lossky’s particular understanding of apophaticism has been subject
to criticism among fellow Orthodox authors. In his review of Lossky’s
magisterial Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, Florovsky critiques
Lossky for the diminished role he assigns to knowledge in one’s union with God.
Specifically, Florovsky sees Lossky as positing a dichotomy between religious experience
and knowledge. Florovsky concedes to Lossky that “the ultimate knowledge of God
is available ‘by faith’ only, in an ‘experience’ which transcends ‘logical
reason.’” “But,” Florovsky qualifies, “‘knowledge’ is still an integral part of
this beatific ‘life’”—something he believes is affirmed by the Cappadocian
Fathers.43
Dumitru Staniloae makes a similar critique of Lossky by affirming
the role of knowledge in one’s union with God: “In reality unknowability in a
mystical way is joined with knowledge; and in the measure in which we ascend
toward the divine mystery, we are filled with more and more knowledge, of
course with another kind of knowledge, but also with the knowledge that the
divine nature is above all knowledge.”44 The basis of Staniloae’s qualification of Lossky’s
apophaticism is Gregory Palamas’s theology of the uncreated light. According to
Palamas, the “divine darkness” of unknowing is but the penultimate step to
union with God. Staniloae charges Lossky with regarding this unknowing not as
the penultimate step, but as the ultimate step. For Palamas, however, darkness
eventually gives way to light, where Staniloae points out that “the experience
on the higher steps isn’t called knowledge because of the absence of knowledge,
but because of its superabundance.”45
As I established earlier, Florovsky accepts some idea of DD. So,
too, does Staniloae.46 Significantly, then, both apply their critiques of
apophaticism to those who reject DD based on the notion that new language does
not yield new understanding. Neither author explicitly critiques Lossky on this
point, yet their critiques are applicable. In Ways of Russian Theology,
Florovsky references the St. Petersburg Religious-Philosophical Meetings
(1901–1903) that, among other things, discussed the topic of DD. Among those
who opposed DD was Professor P. I. Leporskii, who believed that it was
impossible to progress toward a deeper apprehension of the mystery behind
dogmas. Florovsky’s evaluation of Leporskii was that “he exaggerated the
incomprehensibility of revelation, leaving an aftertaste of an unexpected
agnosticism.”47
Staniloae criticizes opponents of DD for this same form of
linguistic “agnosticism”:
I think one may say that it is not only the mission of these new
expressions [doctrines] to be the means which by their novelty will awaken the
human mind to see anew the amazing meaning and importance of the words and formulas
of Scripture and Tradition. It is not only a question of an exterior renewal,
or of an “aggiornamento” of language. It is impossible to separate language and
content so clearly as that. If one uses new expressions, one throws new light
onto the content expressed.48
In defending the ability of new language to “throw new light onto
content,” Staniloae is defending the ability of human language to know and express
truth, and to progress in understanding this truth. Both Staniloae and
Florovsky ground this ability in human beings’ creation in the image of God. As
Florovsky affirms, “The Word of God may be adequately and rightly expressed in
human words. . . . For man is created in the image and likeness of God—this
‘analogical’ link makes communication possible.”49
Both Lossky and Louth are right to defend the character of
revelation as mystery. One should note, however, that Newman’s understanding of
revelation is not devoid of this emphasis.50 In numerous passages Newman uses the term “mystery”
to refer to divine revelation. In fact, Newman holds that “mystery is the necessary
note of divine revelation, that is, mystery subjectively to the human mind.”
Doctrines are reasonings derived from the mystery using “language which only
partially corresponds to eternal truths.”51 But, though human language only “partially corresponds”
to the mystery of revelation, Newman affirms that there is indeed a
correspondence. Like Florovsky and Staniloae, he maintains that doctrinal
definitions can never go “beyond their subject, but [are] adequate to it.”52
In rejecting DD on the basis that new doctrinal language yields no
new understanding, Lossky and Louth fail to maintain an important antinomy: the
antinomy between the infinite God and finite human knowledge. This failure is
both unfortunate and ironic, given that Lossky and Louth maintain a parallel
antinomy in affirming finite human beings’ ability to progress in their
participation in the divine life of the infinite God. Though God as the object
of human knowledge is infinite and can therefore never be fully grasped by finite,
rational human knowledge, this knowledge can paradoxically make progress toward
understanding God. By not affirming this antinomy one risks descending into
what Florovsky labels “agnosticism,” but which might more accurately be called
nominalism.
Is Lossky’s and Louth’s rejection of DD therefore a result of
their apophaticism? The answer is yes, in the sense that both Lossky and Louth
fail to assign an adequate role to theology and knowledge in the human person’s
path toward union with God. In their promotion of Ps.-Dionysius’s model of
Christian life, knowledge can appear as something one eventually sheds in order
to ascend to God, rather than something that accompanies one along, and
contributes to, the ascent. As a result, Lossky and Louth end up assigning an
essentially negative role to doctrine, namely, as a protective against
heresies. According to Louth, “The main concern of theology is not so much to
elucidate anything, as to prevent us, the Church, from dissolving the mystery
that lies at the heart of the faith.”53 In Lossky’s words, doctrines therefore function as “boundaries,”
as Tradition’s “external limit,” outside of which lie false interpretations of
revelation.54
Florovsky is also critical of this tendency to limit doctrine to
its negative role. The opponents of Soloviev’s understanding of DD exhibited
such a tendency. Florovsky sees implicit in this view a belief that
Christianity existed in its most pure form in its beginnings and that the
dogmatic definitions of subsequent councils were but an unfortunate necessity
caused by the decline of the Christian faith in the form of heresies. “The
entire discussion,” writes Florovsky, “is a variation on the typical theme of
Protestant historiography: church history as decay.”55
Florovsky’s opposition to this view is further illustrated by the
fact that he describes doctrines as not only “boundaries,” but as “‘logical icon[s]’
of divine reality.”56 “In this ‘quest for words,’” writes Florovsky, “human
thought changes, the essence of thought itself is transformed and sanctified.”57 Thus,
Florovsky conceives of theology not only as a safeguard against heresies—the
forced construction of propositions to express the mystery of faith—but as “the
fulfillment of man’s religious calling and duty.”58 Those who exalt experience too far above knowledge, according
to Florovsky, end up conceiving of doctrines “more in a canonical manner, as
protective words, than in a theological manner, as the life-giving truth.”59
While Lossky and Louth both have their apophatic excesses, it
would be untrue to claim that they completely divorce the experience of union with
God from knowledge. In his critique of Lossky, Staniloae quotes exclusively from
Lossky’s Mystical Theology, where Lossky is perhaps most emphatic about
the darkness of union with God. In later works Lossky better incorporates the
Palamite correctives to the Ps.-Dionysian model of ascent. Thus, in his essay
“Darkness and Light in the Knowledge of God” Lossky speaks of the final union
with God as a kind of knowledge: “And it is this perfect lack of knowledge,
taken in the best sense of the word, which is the knowledge of Him who
surpasses all that can be known.”60 The
danger of separating experience from knowledge is even less evident in Louth,
who considers the way of apophaticism as “the path to a deeper knowledge of
God.”61 For
Louth, Lossky’s most significant description of apophaticism is “the repentance
of the human person before the face of the living God.”62 In summary,
though Lossky and Louth do not assign a positive role to theology in one’s path
to union with God, they do nevertheless maintain that knowledge is part of that
union.
Lossky and Louth’s promotion of apophaticism is in part a reaction
against both pre-ressourcement Western theology and German idealism. As
Lossky and Louth see it, the principal weakness of Western theology since the
schism of 1054 has been its intellectualization—its separation of faith and
theology.63 In
his foreword to John Behr’s The Way to Nicaea, Louth remarks, “Most
Orthodox are critical of the development of theology in the West, in particular
the way theology has developed as an academic discipline, remote from the life
of prayer.”64
Orthodoxy did not completely avoid this intellectualizing trend in
Western theology. Echoing Florovsky, Louth laments that the Russian Orthodox
Church was subject to a “Babylonian Captivity” of Western theology between the Petrine
reforms of the eighteenth century to the early twentieth century.65 As it so happens,
the theory of DD was articulated during these years of Orthodoxy’s “captivity”
to Western theology, and it is likely that Lossky and Louth view it as having
sprung forth from the fount of this theology.
Whereas Lossky views Western theology as separating faith and
theology, he views the Russian religious philosophers as conflating them. Aidan
Nichols argues that the influence of German idealism on Russia led thinkers
such as Soloviev and Berdyaev “to identify faith with rational understanding .
. . to possess a philosophical doctrine of man, and especially of the human
mind, according to which faith is really the fullest development of our natural
powers of knowing God.”66 According to Nichols, Lossky’s emphasis on apophatic
theology was in part in opposition to this idealist influence on Orthodox
theology. As noted in Valliere’s Modern Russian Theology, the Russian
religious philosophers shared an assent to the idea of DD. It is likely that
Lossky’s opposition to DD was in part driven by his association between it and
the theological errors of these thinkers.
Louth’s critiques are directed more at idealist philosophy than at
the Russian religious thinkers supposedly inspired by it.67 In the essay in
which he rejects DD, Louth describes it as “a product of both the Enlightenment
and the Romantic reaction against the Enlightenment, of the power of reason to
analyze the structures of human society and at the same time of the rejection
of the Enlightenment’s attempt to escape the constraints of history in some
universally valid society.”68 Louth’s earlier treatise on the nature of theology—Discerning
the Mystery—constitutes a tour de force against the Enlightenment and the
way theology has been conducted in its aftermath.69 Louth also links DD to Hegel, “for whom a grasp of
philosophy is gained through understanding its historical development and our
place at the culmination of this centuries-long process of the human spirit.”70
Lossky and Louth have sought to correct erroneous trends in
Western theology and Russian religious philosophy by emphasizing that the ultimate
goal of theology is holiness and union with God. Indeed, this emphasis is
present in many modern Orthodox authors, who are wont to cite Evagrius’s
aphorism that “the theologian is one who prays, and one who prays is a
theologian.”71 In the spirit of Evagrius, Lossky famously maintains, “The eastern
tradition has never made a sharp distinction between mysticism and theology;
between personal experience of the divine mysteries and the dogma affirmed by
the Church.”72
In emphasizing this point, however, Lossky and Louth make their own
conflation of faith and theology. Their conflation differs from that of Russian
religious philosophy in that it shifts the weight to the side of faith instead
of theology. Lossky and Louth rightly maintain that faith and theology are
inseparable, that theology’s ultimate goal is union with God, and that any
theology constructed apart from this goal is dubious. However, their defense of
“true” theology is often done at the expense of reason’s role in theology.
Their writings seem to portray reason as subsumed by faith, rather than as a
creative cooperator with faith in the pursuit of union with God. Illustrative
of this tendency is Lossky and Louth’s habit of making unnecessary dichotomies
between “academic” theology and their vision of a more proper theology. For
instance, Louth, referencing the liturgical character of theology, writes that
“when we speak of God, we are not describing an object more or less accurately,
but rather we are praising the One to whom we owe everything.”73 Both Lossky
and Louth even go so far as to give the impression that theology, speech about
God, is incommensurable with human reason outside of the context of faith.
“Outside of faith,” Lossky writes, “theology has no sense: it can only be based
on interior evidence of the truth in the Spirit.”74 Louth writes of dogmas that they “are not ‘objective’
truths which could be appraised and understood outside the bosom of the Church:
rather they are part of the Church’s reflection on the mystery of her life with
God.”75
Lossky’s conflation of faith and theology also manifests itself in
his supposition that DD implies growth in holiness. His conflation forces him
to claim that growth in theological knowledge necessarily implies a consequent
deepening of one’s faith. Lossky allows for such a growth at the individual
level: “This knowledge of the Truth in the Tradition thus will be able to
increase in a person, in company with his increase in sanctification (Col.
1:10): a Christian will be more perfect in knowledge at the age of his
spiritual maturity.” However, Lossky mockingly denies that one could predicate
such a growth of the history of the entire church: “But would one dare to
speak, against all the evidence, of a collective progress in the knowledge of
the Christian mystery, a progress which would be due to a ‘dogmatic development’
of the Church? Would this development have started in ‘gospel infancy’ to end
today—after a ‘patristic youth’ and a ‘scholastic maturity’—in the sad senility
of the manuals of theology?”76
Lossky rightly observes that the history of the church does not
seem to witness to a continual, collective, and progressive growth in holiness.
“Humanity as a whole, and Christian humanity in particular, has its halts and
setbacks in the course of history,” writes Staniloae.77 But because Newman
does not conflate faith and theology, he does not need to claim that the
church’s gradual uncovering of what is implicit in revelation necessarily
corresponds to its gradual growth in holiness.
To understand how Newman avoids this claim, it is important to understand
his distinction between real and notional knowledge. Real knowledge is
knowledge of the particular, the concrete, gained by one’s experience of a
thing or person. Thus, one can be said to have real knowledge of a flower, or
the sun, or one’s mother, through actually experiencing these realities with
one’s senses. Real knowledge corresponds to the faculty of faith and is its
foundation, for one cannot be said to believe in God unless one has experience
of Him: “When we pray, we pray, not to an assemblage of notions, or to a creed,
but to One Individual Being; and when we speak of Him we speak of a Person, not
of a Law or a Manifestation.”78
Notional knowledge, on the other hand, represents knowledge in the
abstract, gained through the reflection of human reason on particulars. It is
the work of “regarding things . . . as they stand in relation to each other,”
of comparing and contrasting, of defining, that is natural to human beings.79 Whereas real
knowledge corresponds to faith, notional knowledge corresponds to theology, which
is human reason’s reflection on revelation. One of the fruits occasionally borne
by this reflective process is a doctrinal definition. Thus, it is important to
note that, for Newman, DD falls under the heading of notional knowledge: “Each
use of propositions has its own excellence and serviceableness, and each has
its own imperfection. To apprehend notionally is to have breadth of mind, but
to be shallow; to apprehend really is to be deep, but to be narrowminded. The
latter is the conservative principle of knowledge, and the former the principle
of its advancement.”80 According to Newman, the act of notionally
apprehending is what human beings do naturally when they encounter an object or
an idea. They seek to understand what they know really, as a whole,
through a process of abstraction. DD is thus in part the natural result of
revelation’s encounter with human minds, which over time uncover a number of
the infinite aspects of an idea. The resulting notional development is not
unique to revelation but rather is the pattern exhibited by all ideas. It is at
this level of notional knowledge that Newman believes one can claim that the
church today possesses a “particular superiority” over earlier periods of the
church.81 That
is, the members of the church today have the advantage of access to years of
Christian reflection on revelation.
The distinction between real and notional knowledge means there
are limits to Newman’s application of the organic metaphor to his understanding
of DD. Much has been made of Newman’s use of the organic metaphor in his Essay
on Development, where he refers to the growth of “a flower” and “vegetable
bodies” as analogies for DD.82 Not only Lossky and Louth, but Florovsky as well, have
expressed concerns about the application of organic metaphors to DD in
particular, and history in general. As Lossky writes, “The dogmatic development
in question is in no way determined by an inner necessity, which would effect a
progressive increase in the Church of the knowledge of revealed Truth.”83 Florovsky’s problem
with organic models is that history is merely portrayed as a process that
necessarily unfolds according to an intrinsic principle. According to
Florovsky, what is not accounted for in such models is extrinsic, free human
acts that help lead the historical process to its God-given telos. This freedom
is a mark of God’s creation of the world ex nihilo and is bestowed on humanity
through its creation in the divine image.84 A persistent theme in Florovsky’s writings is his
insistence that human freedom must be accorded its proper place in history: “Therefore
the process of created becoming is real in its freedom, and free in its
reality, and it is by this becoming that what-was-not reaches fulfillment and
is achieved.”85 This lacuna Florovsky
sees inherent in organic models of history explains why he was never
comfortable with the use of the term “development” in describing the church’s
growth in the understanding of revelation.86
While Newman’s understanding of development is not completely devoid
of a certain necessity, it is a qualified necessity. The necessity is attached
to human nature and the human intellect, which cannot regard things as wholes
but must break them up into various aspects in order to understand them. Thus,
it is solely at the notional level that Newman would claim doctrine necessarily
develops. Yet, there is freedom in this necessity, for a doctrine’s
development “is not like an investigation worked out on paper, in which each
successive advance is a pure evolution from a foregoing.”87 Rather, “it is
carried on through and by means of communities of men and their leaders and guides”
whose particular minds and contexts provide new lenses through which a doctrine
may be viewed.88 In other words, DD
is the result of men and women’s free engagement with the idea of revelation.
It is not predictable what the outcome of this engagement will be or when
particular developments will be acknowledged. On the other hand, Newman does
not claim that this same development necessarily applies to faith (real
knowledge) or holiness, precisely because the appropriation and living out of
doctrine requires free assent.
Though Newman primarily locates DD in the realm of notional knowledge,
he does not disassociate the process of DD from real knowledge. In fact, Newman
anticipates this charge in his Grammar of Assent: “Not as if there were
in fact, or could be, any line of demarcation or partywall between these two
modes of assent, the religious and the theological. As intellect is common to
all men as well as imagination, every religious man is to a certain extent a
theologian, and no theology can start or thrive without the initiative and
abiding presence of religion.”89 As this quote makes clear, Newman would not necessarily
be in disagreement with Evagrius’s definition of a theologian. Though DD
occasionally manifests itself at the level of the notional in the form of a
definition, Newman recognized that there were many factors, rooted in faith,
that contribute to the coming-to-be of a definition. These factors also
manifest the “idea” of revelation. Newman scholar Terrence Merrigan aptly
summarizes Newman’s thought on this matter:
Ultimately, then, the contours of the idea, so to speak, are to be
discerned, not simply in dogmatic definitions (which, as it were, only isolate
aspects of the idea), but in all the variegated forms of the whole, complex
reality of the believing community’s life. All these forms—the devotional, the ethical,
and the organizational, no less than the theological—are, or at least ought to
be, grounded in that prehension (individual as well as collective) of the one
Object of faith which the imagination makes possible.90
Newman also repeatedly acknowledges the role of Divine Providence
in the process of development, as the developments of Christianity that occur with
the passage of time “were of course contemplated and taken into account by its
Author.”91
Though Newman would not disagree with Evagrius’s definition of a theologian,
he would most certainly disagree with a literalistic reading of same. The
prevalent thesis throughout Terrence Merrigan’s writings on Newman is that
Newman had the “ability to hold in tensile unity apparently opposite tendencies
and concerns.”92 This thesis holds true for Newman’s understanding of
faith and theology. For Newman, DDs are the result of a dialogical relationship
between real and notional knowledge, between faith and theology. Faith neither
subsumes theology, nor vice versa; each has its role to play. Whereas faith is
“the principle of action,” based on our experience of the one, personal, and living
God, theology is “the fundamental and regulating principle of the whole Church system.”93 True, without
an emphasis on faith, theology degenerates into mere intellectualism devoid of
a living character. But without an emphasis on theology, faith risks
degenerating into mere sentiment, devotional excess, and moralism—a danger of
which Florovsky was well aware.94
28 Lossky, Image, 161.
29 Louth, “Is Development of Doctrine a Valid Category for Orthodox
Theology?” 55.
30 Against the charge that Orthodox theology is a “theology of
repetition,” see Florovsky’s essay, “St. Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of
the Fathers,” in Bible, Church, Tradition, 105–20. See also Timothy
(Kallistos) Ware, The Orthodox Church (London: Penguin Books, 1963),
198.
31 Lossky, Image, 161.
32 Newman, “Letter to Flanagan,” 158. Newman addressed the letter to
Fr. John Stanislas Flanagan, a parish priest in Ireland, who wished Newman to
clarify his position on the apostles’ knowledge of the deposit of faith. I use
the word “theory” in the loose sense to refer to Newman’s general understanding
of doctrinal development. On whether Newman’s understanding of development can
be termed a “theory” in a more particular sense, see Nicholas Lash, “Literature
and Theory: Did Newman Have a ‘Theory’ of Development?” in Newman
and Gladstone, 161–73.
33 On Newman’s
distinction between implicit and explicit knowledge see especially his
thirteenth Oxford University Sermon, “Implicit and Explicit Reason,” University
Sermons, 251–77).
34 Newman,
“Letter to Flanagan,” 158.
35 Lossky,
Orthodox Theology: An Introduction, trans. Ian and Ihita Kesarcodi-Watson
(Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1978), 17.
36 Louth, “Is
Development of Doctrine a Valid Category?” 59.
37 Lossky,
Image, 160.
38 Lossky,
Image, 162.
39 Mihail
Neamt¸u, “The Unfolding of Truth: Eunomius of Cyzicus and Gregory of Nyssa in
Debate over Orthodoxy (360–381),” Archaeus 6 (2002): fasc. 1–2:113, quoted in
Louth, “Is Doctrinal Development a Valid Category?” 60, my emphasis.
40 Ironically,
in holding that new doctrinal language does not contribute to any new
understanding of revelation, Lossky ends up allowing for development only in
the sense understood by what are termed “logical” theories of development.
Logical theories of development had their heyday in the Counter-Reformation and
baroque eras, though advocates can also be found in the modern age. Employing a
number of distinctions such as the “explicitly” versus the “implicitly”
revealed, or the “formally” versus the “virtually” revealed, logical theories
implied that tradition can be said to “develop” only inasmuch as the church
comes to name an aspect of revelation through a syllogistic process involving
already acknowledged premises. Accordingly, Lossky writes, “Thus, one can speak
of dogmatic development only in a very limited sense: in formulating a new
dogma the Church takes as her point of departure already existing dogmas. . . .
Thus, the dogma of Chalcedon makes use of that of Nicaea and speaks of the Son consubstantial
with the Father in His divinity, to say afterwards that He is also
consubstantial with us in His humanity” (Image, 164).
41 Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood,
NY: SVS Press, 1997), 39.
42 Ps.-Dionysius, Mystical Theology III, quoted in Andrew
Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1981), 173. For Lossky’s understanding of
Ps.-Dionysius, see The Vision of God, trans. Asheleigh Moorhouse (London:
Faith Press, 1963), 99–110, and The Mystical Theology of the Eastern
Church, 23–43.
43 Georges Florovsky, review of The Mystical Theology of the
Eastern Church, by Vladimir Lossky, Journal of Religion 38, no. 3
(July 1958): 207.
44 Dumitru Staniloae, Orthodox Spirituality: A Practical Guide for
the Faithful and a Definitive Manual for the Scholar (South Canaan, PA: St.
Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 2002), 235–36.
45 Staniloae, Orthodox Spirituality, 236.
46 See Dumitru Staniloae, “The Orthodox Conception of Tradition and
the Development of Doctrine,” Sobornost 5 (1969): 652–62.
47 Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology: Part Two, 255.
48 Staniloae, “Orthodox Conception of Tradition,” 660.
49 Florovsky, “Revelation and Interpretation,” in Bible, Church,
Tradition, 27. See also Staniloae, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, vol.
1, The Experience of God: Revelation and Knowledge of the Triune God,
trans. Ioan Ionita and Robert Barringer (Brookline: Holy Cross Orthodox Press,
1994), 2–3.
50 On Newman’s affinity with the Eastern tradition in emphasizing the
importance of preserving a sense of God and His revelation as mystery, see C.
S. Dessain, “Cardinal Newman and the Eastern Tradition,” Downside Review 94
(1976): 88–89.
51 Newman, Select Treatises of St. Athanasius, vol. 2, Appendix
of Illustrations (London: Longmans, Green, 1903), 92.
52 Newman, University Sermons, 331.
53 Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery: An Essay on the Nature of
Theology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 71.
54 Lossky, Image, 162, 163.
55 Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology: Part Two, 159.
56 Florovsky, Creation and Redemption, 29.
57 Florovsky, Creation and Redemption, 31.
58 Florovsky, Creation and Redemption, 31.
59 Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology: Part Two, 197.
60 Lossky, Image, 39.
61 Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition,
168.
62 Lossky, Mystical Theology, 238; quoted in Andrew Louth,
“What Is Theology? What Is Orthodox Theology?” St. Vladimir’s Theological
Quarterly 51, no. 4 (2007): 448.
63 Lossky sees the rationalization of Western theology as a function
of its Trinitarian theology, which (he claims) tends to place emphasis on the
one divine nature rather than the three persons: “Once the different emphasis
of the two Trinitarian doctrines has been perceived, it will be understood why
the East has always defended the ineffable, apophatic character of the
procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father, unique source of the persons, against
a more rational doctrine which, in making of the Father and the Son a common principle
of the Holy Spirit, places the common nature of the persons; a doctrine which tends
to weaken the hypostases by confounding the persons of Father and Son in the
natural act of spiration, and in making of the Holy Spirit a connection between
the two” (Mystical Theology, 62).
64 John Behr, The Formation of Christian Theology, vol. 1, The
Way to Nicaea (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 2001), ix.
65 Louth, “What Is Theology?” 436; Georges Florovsky, Collected
Works, vol. 5, Ways of Russian Theology: Part One (Nordland, 1979),
121.
66 Aidan Nichols, O. P., Light from the East: Authors and Themes
in Orthodox Theology (London: Sheed and Ward, 1995), 29.
67 In fact, one might class Louth among those Orthodox today who are
interested in rehabilitating aspects of Russian religious philosophers’ thinking.
See, for instance, Andrew Louth, “Sergii Bulgakov and the Task of Theology,” Irish
Theological Quarterly 74, no. 3 (August 2009): 243–57; “Wisdom and the
Russians: The Sophiology of Fr. Sergei Bulgakov,” in Where Shall Wisdom Be
Found? ed. Stephen C. Barton (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999), 169–81; his
review of Modern Russian Theology—Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov: Orthodox
Theology in a New Key, by Paul Valliere, Scottish Journal of
Theology 56, no. 1 (2003): 101–30.
68 Louth, “Is Doctrinal Development a Valid Category?” 47–48.
69 Louth, Discerning the Mystery.
70 Louth, Discerning the Mystery, 48.
71 Evagrius, On Prayer 60. See Evagrius Ponticus, The
Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer, translated by John Eudes Bamberger OCSO
(Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1981), 65.
72 Lossky, Mystical Theology, 8. See also Lossky, Image,
49–50.
73 Louth, “What Is Theology?” 444. See also Lossky, Image, 52:
“The goal of this antinomic theology is not to forge a system of concepts, but
to serve as a support for the human spirit in the contemplation of divine
mysteries.”
74 Lossky, Orthodox Theology, 17.
75 Louth, Discerning the Mystery, 86.
76 Lossky, Image, 162.
77 Staniloae, “Orthodox Conception of Tradition,” 660. Interestingly,
Staniloae believes that doctrinal development does correspond to the church’s
growth in holiness. Indeed, Staniloae even maintains that DD corresponds to all
of humanity’s growth in holiness: “any progress in understanding the realities
of the abyss to which dogma points depends on the progress
of the human spirit.” Theology and the Church, trans. Robert Barringer
(Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1980), 216. Certain statements of Staniloae have a
Hegelian ring to them. Yet, his position on DD and humanity’s progress in
holiness is perhaps primarily attributable to his understanding of the
corporate personality of humanity, along with his belief that God in his Divine
Providence is guiding the world toward deification. The Experience of God:
Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, vol. 2, The Word: Creation and Deification
(Brookline: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2000), 191–200.
78 Newman, University Sermons, 330.
79.
John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), 44, 45.
80 Newman, Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, 47.
81 Newman, “Letter to Flanagan,” 159.
82 Newman, Essay on Development, 74. Newman quotes from Bishop
Joseph Butler’s Analogy of Religion in comparing doctrinal development
to organic growth.
83 Lossky, Image, 162–63.
84 Florovsky, “Creation and Creaturehood,” in Creation and
Redemption, 43–78.
85 Florovsky, “Creation and Creaturehood,” in Creation and Redemption,
73.
86 See Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology: Part Two, 49;
“Evolution und Epigenesis (Zur Problematik der Geschichte),” Der Russische
Gedanke 1, no. 3 (1930): 240–52; and “Le Corps du Christ Vivant: Une
interpretation orthodoxe de l’Église” in La Sainte Église Universelle: Confrontation
Oecuménique (Paris: Neuchatel, 1948), 45–46. For an extended treatment of
Florovsky’s difficulties with organic models of development, see Matthew
Baker’s unpublished master’s thesis, “Neo-Patristic Synthesis: An Examination
of a Key Hermeneutical Paradigm in the Thought of Georges V. Florovsky” (Th.M.
thesis, Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, 2010), 75–89.
87 Newman, Essay on Development, 38.
88 Newman, Essay on Development, 38.
89 Newman, Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, 93.
90 Terrence Merrigan, “Newman the Theologian,” Louvain Studies 15
(1990): 111.
91 Newman, Essay on Development, 75. On Newman’s understanding
of Divine Providence, and its role in his theology, see Terrence Merrigan,
“‘One Momentous Doctrine which Enters into My Reasoning’: The Unitive Function
of Newman’s Doctrine of Providence,”Downside Review 108 (1990): 254–81.
92 Merrigan, Clear Heads and Holy Hearts, 7.
93 Newman, Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, 91. John Henry
Newman, The Via Media of the Anglican Church, vol. 1 (London: Longmans,
Green, and Co., 1901), xlvii.
94 Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology: Part Two, 60, 257.
Conclusion
As I noted at the beginning of this essay, Orthodox rejections of
DD revolve around what they believe it implies about Tradition. I have argued in
this paper that the idea of DD, as represented by Newman, is in fundamental harmony
with the Orthodox understanding of Tradition. For Newman, DD does not imply a
growth of Tradition, but its elucidation and clarification. In addition, Newman’s
understanding of DD does not deny the church’s possession of the fullness of
truth; rather, it denies that the church can entirely comprehend this fullness.
I have also questioned the assumption that there exists an
Orthodox consensus against DD. Among those Orthodox who explicitly affirm the idea
of DD are not only Russian religious philosophers, but also representative thinkers
such as Georges Florovsky and Dumitru Staniloae. Some of the Orthodox rejections
of DD are attributable to misunderstandings about what DD means, which is
probably further attributable to a lack of engagement with primary sources on
DD. The objections voiced by Lossky and Louth cannot be so easily chalked up to
misunderstandings of DD, but they can perhaps be attributed to deficiencies in
their views of theology and its role in the church.
It is my hope that that there will be a greater Orthodox
engagement with the idea of DD in the near future. Aidan Nichols has rightly
noted that “the question of doctrinal development does not play in Orthodox thought
the major role it took on in Catholic reflection since the nineteenth century.”95 A greater
Orthodox engagement with DD must necessarily involve a greater reception of Newman
and his corpus of writings than has thus far taken place among Orthodox
theologians. As Louth himself once maintained, “To understand Newman we must
read lots, not just the great books, but sermons, essays, letters, and
so on.”96
A greater Orthodox consideration of DD also has potential
ecumenical implications. The issue of DD has been a hermeneutical key
underlying the Protestant-Catholic dialogue, such that John Courtney Murray
could say in 1964, “I consider that the parting of the ways between [Roman Catholicism
and Protestantism] takes place on the issue of development of doctrine.”97 Perhaps a
mutual acknowledgement of DD as a shared principle will help better frame
dialogue on particular doctrines. In addition, it seems that agreement on the
principle of DD raises interesting questions about the current model of ecumenical
dialogue with the Orthodox, which tends to favor the shared theological
inheritance of the first millennium at the expense of the developments of the
second millennium.
Irrespective of potential ecumenical fruits, one fruit of a
greater Orthodox engagement with DD is certain. Newman held that an idea
naturally develops through its exposure to other ideas. Thus, the exposure of
the idea of DD to Orthodox categories of thought will inevitably result in DD’s
own development.
95 Aidan Nichols, O.P., From Newman to Congar: The Idea of
Doctrinal Development from the Victorians to the Second Vatican Council (Edinburgh:
T&T Clark, 1990), 282.
96 Andrew Louth, “The Nature of Theological Understanding: Some
Parallels between Newman and Gadamer,” in Tradition Renewed: The Oxford
Movement Conference Papers (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1986), 97.
97 John Courtney Murray, The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), 53, quoted in Jaroslav Pelikan, Development
of Christian Doctrine: Some Historical Prolegomena (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1969), 1.
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