07 — Reception and Controversy
The Vincentian canon is the rare formula claimed by nearly every Christian confession — and fully satisfying none. This section sets out, evenhandedly, how Rome, the magisterial Reformers, the Anglican via media, and the Orthodox have each appropriated it, each with its own logic; and then lets the famous objection stand in full force — that homoousios, the very word of Nicaea, was not believed “everywhere, always, by all” before 325, the case on which the canon is most severely tested.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism West; the canon of catholicity)
No text in the history of the doctrine of Tradition has been so widely and so contradictorily claimed. The canon has been read as a charter for the Roman magisterium and as a Protestant weapon against it; as the foundation of the Anglican appeal to the undivided Church and as the natural property of Orthodoxy. This section presents each appropriation on its own terms, without adjudicating among them, and then turns to the hardest internal problem: the cases — Nicene homoousios above all — where strict application of the three notes would seem to condemn what the Church has dogmatized, and the scholarly critique that follows from them.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Catholic and Orthodox Uses | How Rome (Trent, Vatican I, and the development theology of Newman), the magisterial Reformers, the Anglican via media (Lancelot Andrewes, the Tractarians), and the Orthodox have each claimed the canon — set out evenhandedly per METHODOLOGY §4. |
| The Limits of the Canon | The cases the canon struggles with: homoousios was not “always, everywhere”; the problem of doctrines true but not antecedently universal; the charge of circularity; and the scholarly critique from Newman through the moderns. |
See Also
- Quod Ubique, Quod Semper — the canon being received
- The Threefold Test Examined — the internal logic the critiques press on
- Vincent and Newman — the development theory that answers the limits
- The Canon in Orthodox Thought — the Orthodox appropriation in depth
- Orthodox vs. Catholic — the confessional differences the canon is made to serve
References
- Vincent of Lérins. The Commonitory. Trans. C. A. Heurtley. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. 11. 1894.
- Newman, John Henry. An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. London: James Toovey, 1845.
- Guarino, Thomas G. Vincent of Lérins and the Development of Christian Doctrine. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013.
- Oakley, Francis. The Conciliarist Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.