Does Doctrine Develop?

The sharpest question in the theology of Tradition: does Christian doctrine develop? This file sets John Henry Newman’s influential theory of the development of doctrine beside the classic Orthodox account — that there is no new revelation and no new doctrine, only the one unchanging faith ever more fully and precisely articulated against heresy. It reports Newman’s theory fairly and in its own terms, and marks the real point of disagreement; the Orthodox account — no new doctrine, only the fuller articulation of the one faith — is stated as the teaching of the Church, from whose standpoint this file is written.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Problem

The problem is unavoidable for any theology of Tradition. On the one hand, Orthodoxy confesses that “the faith was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) — that the deposit is complete in Christ and the Apostles, and that nothing can be added to it. On the other hand, the Church plainly said new things over the centuries: the word homoousios is not in the Bible, nor is Theotokos as a defined title, nor the two wills of Christ, nor the fourteenth-century distinction of the divine essence and energies. If the faith is unchanging, what are these? Development, or merely more exact expression? The question is not merely academic; it touches the very nature of Tradition, and the answers given to it mark real differences among the Christian confessions.

Newman’s Theory of Development

The most influential modern answer came from John Henry Newman (1801–1890), in An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845), written as he moved from the Church of England to Rome. Newman confronted the fact that many defined Roman Catholic doctrines seemed absent, or present only in seed, in the early Church, and answered with a bold thesis: doctrine develops — the Church’s understanding of the one revelation grows organically over time, as a great idea, planted in the mind of the Church, unfolds its implications through history under the guidance of the Spirit. “In a higher world it is otherwise,” he wrote, “but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often” (Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 1845, ch. 1). The revelation is not augmented, but the Church’s grasp of it develops, drawing out what was implicit; a later doctrine can be a true and legitimate development of the apostolic deposit even where it is not verbally attested in the early centuries. Newman offered “seven notes” (later “seven tests”) to distinguish a genuine development from a corruption — preservation of type, continuity of principles, assimilative power, logical sequence, anticipation of its future, conservative action on its past, and chronic vigor (Newman, Essay, 1845, ch. 5). Development thus became, for Newman and for much subsequent Roman Catholic theology, the key that reconciled an unchanging revelation with a visibly growing body of defined doctrine.

The Orthodox Account: No New Doctrine, Only Fuller Expression

The classic Orthodox response does not deny that the expression of the faith has grown, but it resists the language of “development” as applied to doctrine itself, and it locates the growth differently. The Orthodox account holds that there is no new doctrine — no addition to and no evolution of the deposit — but only the ever-fuller and more precise articulation of the one unchanging faith, drawn out under the pressure of heresy. When Arius denied the Son’s full divinity, the Church did not develop a new doctrine; she stated, in the new word homoousios, the same faith she had always held, now defined against the error that had made the old language ambiguous. The councils’ new terms are new words for the old faith, minted precisely to exclude a novelty — the novelty being always on the side of the heresy, never on the side of the definition (Lossky, “Tradition and Traditions,” in In the Image and Likeness of God, SVS Press, 1974, pp. 155–158, on the growth as deepening, not addition; Florovsky, “The Function of Tradition in the Ancient Church,” in Bible, Church, Tradition, Nordland, 1972).

The Orthodox writers therefore prefer the language of deepening, unfolding, or articulation to that of development. As the topical article puts it, Tradition “does not grow by addition… but by deepening — the Church’s ever-more-profound apprehension of the same unchanging truth” (see Holy Tradition; Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, James Clarke, 1957, ch. 1). Vladimir Lossky put the point with characteristic sharpness: the Church’s dogmatic definitions are not a progress in the content of revelation, which is given whole in Christ, but a progress in its expression, and even this “progress” is really the guarding of the same fullness against successive attempts to diminish it (Lossky, “Tradition and Traditions,” 1974). Georges Florovsky similarly insisted that the councils added nothing to the faith but bore witness to it, so that the new terminology was the servant of an unchanging confession (Florovsky, “The Authority of the Ancient Councils and the Tradition of the Fathers,” in Bible, Church, Tradition, 1972). St. Vincent of Lérins had already articulated the acceptable sense of “progress” in the fifth century: there is indeed a “great progress” (profectus) of religion, but it must be “progress in the faith, not alteration (profectus fidei, non permutatio)” — a growth like that of a body from infancy to maturity, which becomes greater without becoming different (Vincent, Commonitorium 23; trans. NPNF II/11).

Where the Disagreement Really Lies

Stated carefully, the difference between Newman and the Orthodox account is narrower than a slogan suggests, and precision is owed to both sides.

[Disputed: whether and in what sense doctrine "develops." (a) Newman's theory, and much Roman Catholic theology after it, holds that the Church's *understanding* of the deposit genuinely develops over time, such that doctrines not explicitly held or definable in the early Church (Newman's own examples included aspects of Marian doctrine and papal authority; later, the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception of 1854 and papal infallibility of 1870, and the Assumption of 1950, were understood by Catholics as legitimate developments) can be true, binding developments of the apostolic faith. Newman's "seven tests" are meant to distinguish such developments from corruptions. (b) The classic Orthodox account holds that there is no new doctrine and no evolution of the deposit, but only the fuller articulation of the same unchanging faith against heresy — "profectus fidei, non permutatio" (Vincent) — and it is precisely on this ground that Orthodoxy has objected to certain later Roman dogmas (the Immaculate Conception, papal infallibility, the *filioque*) not merely on their content but as *novelties* that go beyond, rather than merely restate, the apostolic and patristic faith. The real point at issue is therefore not whether the *expression* of the faith grows — both sides grant that — but whether the *substance* of what may be dogmatically defined can legitimately expand beyond what the early Church held, and by what criterion the true unfolding is distinguished from illegitimate innovation. (c) A middle position, held by some modern theologians on both sides and in Orthodox engagement with Newman, observes that Newman's own insistence on continuity of "type" and "principle" is not far from the Orthodox "deepening," and that much of the quarrel is verbal where the actual doctrines are agreed and substantive only where they are not (the specifically Roman dogmas). Named proponents: Newman and the Catholic developmental tradition on one side; Lossky, Florovsky, and the Vincentian tradition on the other; with figures such as Andrew Louth and Georges Florovsky himself noting both the appeal and the limits of Newman's idea for Orthodoxy. This compendium reports Newman's account accurately in its own terms; the Orthodox account is not one option beside it but the confession of the Church, from within which this compendium is written (METHODOLOGY §4.1).]

The nub, then, is a criterion. Both traditions want to affirm an unchanging revelation and to account for the Church’s new formulations; both reject sheer novelty. They differ over whether the category of “development” rightly describes the appearance of doctrines unattested in the early centuries, and — more practically — over particular doctrines that Orthodoxy regards as innovations beyond the deposit and Rome regards as legitimate developments of it. The theology of Tradition and the theology of development are, at this point, two names for the same question approached from two convictions about how the one faith relates to its historical articulation.

The Orthodox Emphasis: Guarding, Not Growing

What is distinctive and consistent in the Orthodox emphasis is that the Church’s task before doctrine is fundamentally conservative in the deepest sense: to guard (phylassein) the deposit, not to grow it. The new definitions are defensive works, thrown up against successive heresies to protect the one faith; the Church coins a new term only when compelled by error, and reluctantly, to say no more than the Apostles said (Lossky, “Tradition and Traditions,” 1974; Florovsky, “The Function of Tradition in the Ancient Church,” 1972). On this account the history of dogma is not a story of the faith becoming more but of the faith being defended — the same treasure, hedged about with ever more precise formulas as ever more subtle attacks require. The Church is richer in words at the end of the conciliar age than at the beginning, but not richer in faith; she knows no more of God than the Apostles knew, though she has been forced to say it in more languages against more denials. This is the sense in which Orthodoxy can affirm both that the faith was “once for all delivered” and that the councils rightly spoke new words: the words are new, the faith is not, and the whole labor of Tradition is to keep it so.

See Also

• The Reception of Tradition — how the true articulation is recognized and the false rejected
• Tradition and Traditions — Tradition as deepening, not addition
• The Councils as Tradition — the new conciliar words for the old faith
• The Creed and the Rule of Faith — the filioque as a disputed case of novelty vs. development
• Holy Tradition — the topical article, on deepening vs. addition

References

• Newman, John Henry. An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. London, 1845; 3rd ed. 1878. (The theory of development; “to live is to change,” ch. 1; the seven notes/tests, ch. 5.)
• Vincent of Lérins. Commonitorium 23. Trans. C. A. Heurtley, NPNF II/11. (“Profectus fidei, non permutatio”; growth like a body’s, not alteration.)
• Lossky, Vladimir. “Tradition and Traditions.” In In the Image and Likeness of God, 141–168. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974. (Growth as deepening, not addition; pp. 155–158.)
• Lossky, Vladimir. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. Cambridge: James Clarke, 1957. (Ch. 1, the deepening apprehension of the same truth.)
• Florovsky, Georges. Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View. Collected Works vol. 1. Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1972. (“The Function of Tradition in the Ancient Church”; “The Authority of the Ancient Councils.”)
• Louth, Andrew. Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present. London: SPCK, 2015. (Orthodox engagement with development.)
• Scripture: Jude 3.