How and why Newman rejects the understanding of doctrinal development as new revelation
* An earlier version of this essay was presented at a seminar on “The Thought of John Henry Newman” hosted by the Lumen Christi Institute at Oxford University in July 2018. I am thankful for the feedback from Ian Ker, the seminar leader, as well as from the other participants.
Newman’s theory of doctrinal development, classically articulated in his 1845 Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, initially met with skepticism among the reigning Thomists in Rome, who considered it sufficient to affirm that all Catholic doctrine had been explicitly believed by the Apostles and logically explicated by subsequent doctors. Especially after the beginning of the Modernist controversy in the later 19th and early 20th centuries, Newman’s ideas were not widely embraced because it was difficult to distinguish his theory of development from a theory of doctrinal evolution or continuous revelation, wherein God uses the church as an instrument to reveal new ideas. Newman’s thinking on development proved highly influential at the Second Vatican Council, which nonetheless emphatically rejected any form of progressive or continuous revelation: “Jesus perfected revelation” with the result that “we now await no further new public revelation before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ.” [2] And yet, concerns persist about how any doctrine which is developed can carry full divine authority and not be the result of fresh revelation. Critics of doctrinal development contend that the Roman Catholic Church’s modern dogmatic pronouncements (on questions such as the Immaculate Conception or papal infallibility) are genuine doctrinal novelties. [3] Moreover, the objection continues, because such doctrines are proposed as divine but are contained neither expressly nor substantially in the revelation of Scripture, they can only be defended on the basis of a claim to new revelation. Further, such doctrines fail the Vincentian canon, which holds that orthodoxy is what is believed always, everywhere, by everyone. Some Catholics, in response, might be inclined to accept and defend the conclusion, perhaps averring that the Church does and can continue the revelation of Christ because the Church is the Body of Christ and the enduring presence of the Incarnation, having received from the Apostles their authority to convey new revelation in Christ.
In this essay I show briefly how and why Newman rejects the understanding of doctrinal development as new revelation. [4] For Newman, doctrinal development does not necessitate the giving of new revelation because it describes a process that naturally takes place with all ideas in proportion to their intrinsic intellectual fecundity. Although some passages suggest a parity between Scripture and Church within revealed religion, Newman clearly distinguishes between the “revelation” that is “given” and the Church’s given “authority to decide what it is that is given.” [5] The Church may have divine authority and infallibility, but that does not make it an organ of revelation. He insists, instead, that it is possible for doctrine to develop and for there to arise statements expressed for the first time without these counting as new revelation. Newman defends this claim by pointing to two important points which help explain why doctrinal development is not new revelation: (1) first, his understanding of the living idea; (2) second, his understanding of the inherent mysteriousness of revelation. I aim to use these two points to show why it would not be necessary that further revelation be given in order for doctrine to develop or why it is not necessary to think of these developments as new revelation rather than developments of the same revelation. This exploration of Newman’s thinking on development illuminates not only Newman’s own view but also provides a way of understanding the theory of doctrinal development in the Church today.
First, in a key passage in the Essay on Development, Newman states his central thesis that the developments in Christian doctrine and practice:
are the necessary attendants on any philosophy or polity which takes possession of the intellect and heart, and has had any wide or extended dominion…from the nature of the human mind, time is necessary for the full comprehension and perfection of great ideas…and…the highest and most wonderful truths, though communicated to the world once for all by inspired teachers, could not be comprehended all at once by the recipients. [6]
Here, Newman explains that doctrinal development is simply the natural consequence of the fact that Christianity is a living idea, an idea that takes root in human minds and society and thereby becomes alive. Newman understands an idea as a kind of mental object or image which resides in the mind as a “simple intuition” (as opposed to a “wordless feeling”). [7] In contemplating it, claims can be made about the idea which attempt to express some truth about it in human speech. Like all ideas, it is possible to view it under a great number of different aspects; like all great ideas, it is impossible for a human mind, which learns not instantaneously but discursively and step by step, to grasp it in its fullness at once—or even in a single lifetime. And like all living ideas, it is not just possible but natural that it grows and develops as one considers it. “When an idea,” Newman says, “is of a nature to arrest and possess the mind, it may be said to have life, that is, to live in the mind which is its recipient.” [8] As a result, “it becomes an active principle within them, leading them to an ever-new contemplation of itself.” [9] This contemplation includes the idea’s power to assimilate, influence, and incorporate other ideas; indeed, interaction with other ideas is a sign of its vitality. [10]
In other words, because an idea may be contemplated under many different aspects, from many different angles, and in relation to many other ideas, it is possible for it to be continually growing or filling itself out in the mind; more accurately, this process of contemplation under different aspects is precisely what is meant by speaking of its growth. Because human minds recognize and apprehend the aspects of an idea by means of language, each aspect can be captured in the form of a proposition. [11] In turn the multiplication of these propositions or statements fills the mind, giving it a thicker apprehension of the idea. Without this kind of logical, analytic, or propositional contemplation of an idea, it may be possessed and even influential, but it will not be clearly understood. Even just a single idea, if it is sufficiently rich, can result in an entire ethical, political, philosophical, and liturgical tradition as its aspects and implications are drawn out and recognized. Just like a living plant or animal, the idea grows into its fullest form based on a potential inherent to it. This “germination and maturation of some truth or apparent truth on a large mental field” and the bringing together of these aspects into a consistent shape is what Newman calls development. [12] This process of development need not taint an idea’s purity, but in reality makes it broader, deeper, and stronger. [13] It is, rather, weak and dead ideas which fail to develop because they never take hold of our minds.
In the case of Christianity, its idea or ideas are primarily a matter of revelation, which means that they are communicated by God to human beings at discrete historical moments and conveyed through the words and writings of their recipients. An idea, then, may be given at a single time or at multiple times, but once it is given it has the power to develop and expand all in itself, without the need for additional or subsequent ideas to be given. When God conveys an idea through an inspired author, it comes by means of that author’s words, which words capture certain aspects of that idea. These aspects then expose the recipients to that idea, though only in a limited sense, after which the recipients develop it by continually contemplating it. The richer the idea, the greater the possibility for further contemplation. Just as a seed later becomes a tree that grows future seeds, even though the original seed does not contain any further seeds of its own, so Christian ideas are able to take on entirely new aspects or acquire new implications or be articulated in new statements without the need for any new ideas to be given by God. A religious idea no more needs new revelation to grow or spread than a living organism needs new DNA. As Newman says, “[The idea] changes with them [its circumstances] in order to remain the same. In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.” [14] Like a living organism, it changes insofar as it can adapt a new appearance, new aspects, and new parts, while nonetheless it retains the same form, substance, and identity. [15] Newman thus shows how a one-time revelation of an idea can be recognized and articulated under a plethora of new aspects without entailing any new revelation.
Note, especially, that Newman’s understanding of development is not uniquely theological. It does not contend that ideas develop because of the exclusive activity of the Holy Spirit in the Church. Rather, it offers a universal theory of how all ideas develop—revealed and non-revealed—and applies that theory to Christian doctrine in order to show its historical continuity over time. Newman, of course, does not deny the influence and safeguarding of the Holy Spirit, but the fact that his theory applies to all human ideas confirms that it is by no means necessary to invoke additional divine revelation in order to give an account of development. The revelation of Christ and the disclosure of his divinity is not a natural event. But the development of Nicene Christology in the 4th century is natural, insofar as it is a reflection of human minds on the ideas already revealed, even if we add that those minds are illuminated by faith and safeguarded by God. The initial revelation itself stimulates all future development and opposes all future corruption.
Second, Newman’s understanding of the inherent mysteriousness of revelation explains how it is not just possible but necessary that ideas be revealed in underdeveloped form. In his essay “On the Introduction of Rationalistic Principles into Revealed Religion,” Newman critiques both the rationalist and the evangelical attempt to turn revelation into something which the human intellect can completely grasp and master. Instead, he argues that revelation is inherently incomplete and mysterious, not from the perspective of God but on account of “the weakness of the human intellect.” [16] Newman describes doctrine as always bearing within it a revelatory and a mysterious character because all of God’s revelation simultaneously both reveals and conceals. It reveals insofar as it illuminates the human mind concerning a divine truth. But it conceals insofar as the revelation—precisely because it is the supernatural word of God delivered in human words—cannot possibly convey its whole self. It is always holding something back even as it is being delivered. This incompleteness of revelation leads us to further recognize how incomprehensible God is, with the result that God’s revealing makes him appear simultaneously more hidden than we previously thought. Our increase in knowledge about God also increases our awareness of our ignorance. This mysterious and alien quality is an essential part of the revelation of the Supreme God to limited, corporeal, fallen creatures. In fact, precisely because revelation is so illuminating and supernatural it would be suspicious and dangerous to think that revelation was anything less than mysterious and alien.
And yet, revelation is given according to our present capacity to understand divine truth, not according to our capacity to comprehend divine truth after we have been adapted to it. We receive revelation without yet being given or being able to recognize its connections or implications, [17] but it is possible for us to see those connections as the mind contemplates it. Indeed, were we not to investigate those aspects revelation would remain merely mysterious. In this way, Newman argues from the fact of revelation’s mysteriousness that it must be developed and is intended by God for our contemplation and development. In his 1843 university sermon on development, Newman responds to those who criticize all development as essentially involving the abusive intrusion of human reason into the sacred domain of God’s perfect revelation. Newman’s response is implied by the above passages: revelation cannot possibly come to us in such a pure way as to need no development, since the mind must be adapted to it. But the mind’s adaptation to revelation is precisely the process that happens in an idea’s development; the mind is acclimated to revelation by letting its ideas take root, grow, assimilate, and influence. Newman writes:
Revelation sets before [the mind] certain supernatural facts and actions, beings and principles; these make a certain impression or image upon it; and this impression spontaneously, or even necessarily, becomes the subject of reflection on the part of the mind itself, which proceeds to investigate it, and to draw it forth in successive and distinct sentences. [18]
There is no such thing as actively receiving revelation and not developing it, since development is exactly what active reception means and implies. The only way to receive revelation without developing it is to take it in passively, as something lifeless and useless. Development, on the other hand, describes what it means for revelation, in all its mysteriousness, to become understandable to us.
The initial question, as Newman repeatedly emphasizes, is simply one of identity: is the revelation given to the Church in the 1st century the same as that within the 19th, or not? The naturally continuous development of ideas and the inherently hidden fecundity of revelation both provide ways for seeing how it is possible for Newman to speak of an identity between 1st and 19th century Catholic religion while still allowing for difference—in other words, to speak of both a complete revelation and new developments of it.
