The Orthodox Rejection of Doctrinal Development

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.