ORLAPUBS P. R95: THREE KINDS OF DEVELOPMENT

There are three basic and mutually distinct kinds of development in theology:

But since the deposit of Faith includes not only the beliefs of Apostolic Christianity but also the Apostles' framework of assumptions about what is really real--assumptions that filter out what that point of view disallows concerning religion--the foregoing cannot be understood until one's prior assumptions or premises about reality are examined. In addition, there is the idea of Fr. J. Romanides that, whereas the Latins have clung to fides quærens intellectum, the Orthodox think more of participating in the divine Life.

If you start out accepting inherited guilt (from Eve and Adam: inherited by everyone), as the West does--and as the East does not--then the Immaculate Conception can be argued against because it is not explicit in Scripture and (in the instance of Denominationists other than Liberals) because all post-Apostolic development is ex hypothesai excluded from legitimate doctrine. To argue for it, Papal Catholics have got to claim that the development in question directly derives from prior beliefs about the Virgin and is implied by them--at least in the claimed Holy Spirit-inspired infallibility of whatever pope proclaimed the Immaculate Conception a required belief. Whether this particular doctrine is in Scripture or not is irrelevant for the Orthodox in view of the fact that Orthodoxy does not accept the premises necessary for a special immaculate conception of the all-holy Theotokos to make sense, viz. inherited guilt, sinful natures, etc.: Everyone is born sinless in this view--with reason and freewill (the Icon [Image] of God, an essential part of human nature) but without the Likeness of God (the Grace or Energy that enables humans to follow the divine will.) If everyone is born sinless, so is the Mother of God--and most appropriately in her case.

If the Assumption of the Theotokos is of the second type--an optional or permitted but not required belief--for Orthodoxy belief (since the evidence comes from apocryphal books), it follows that the Orthodox hold that the Assumption or special resurrection of the Theotokos before the Last Judgment (something that happened to a couple of Old Testament Saints) is compatible with prior fundamentals accepted with regard to the a.-h. Theotokos, i.e. prior to the Assumption's coming to be generally accepted among Christians. It is obvious that for the Orthodox the Assumption is not implied by fundamentals accepted prior to the rise of belief in the Assumption. In other words, the Assumption is a type-2 development. In contrast with this, Papal Catholicism has in recent times made the Assumption a required dogma--treating it as though it belonged to type (1) above, while Denominationists reject it as a corruption--i.e. treating it as type (3) above. The absence of the Assumption in Scripture excludes the Assumption from the view of sola scriptura Denominationists who (at least in principle) reject doctrinal development; whereas the absence of the Assumption in Scripture and the fact that it is not a necessary inference from prior-established beliefs make it optional for the Orthodox, given its compatibility with prior Orthodox views concerning the a.-h. Theotokos. For the Assumption (attested in apocryphal documents) is certainly not incompatible with from the teaching that Jesus's Mother is the Mother of God (Luke 1:43)--the "Birth-giver of God"--"full of Grace" and "blessed among all generations" to come. What would be a corruptive development would be a denial that Luke 1:43 terms the Theotokos "the Mother of my Lord"--that the Hebrews called YHWH (God) "my Lord" in most situations, God's name being impermissible for them to utter. The reasoning is simple: The Mother of God is higher than the Angels, the Cherubim, and the Seraphim--none of whom bore and gave birth to One Who was God; and her special Assumption to Heaven is not incompatible with this status. Finally, if the all-holy Paraclete has led the Church to believe it, believe it we should.

If one begins with the assumption of the priority of will over being, as the Reformers did, then God can "impute" the sins of our first ancestors to everyone, our (imputed) sins to Christ, and His virtues to believers; likewise, the pope can transfer Saints' merits to souls in purgatory (given that purgatory is accepted on its own grounds). If, however, "being" determines what accords with reason, and if "being" takes priority over will (only someone that is can will--something that robots cannot do!), then God cannot call the evil good without lying (which He doesn't do; Heb. 6:18). Luther's view that believers are simul justus, simul peccatores "at once righteous and sinners"--not ontologically new creations--because God declares it so is a virtual reality that the Orthodox cannot accept. And the parallel Latin view (the parallel is about will, since the willers--God and the pope--are anything but parallel) that the pope can transfer the merits of one person (viz. a Saint) to another person--even a departed person--is equally alien to Orthodox thinking--and the logic of morality.

An example (presented as a purely speculative possibility) for future development involves the morality of prolonging the life of a hopelessly suffering person against that person's wishes and those of his or her nearest kin. It must be remembered that, properly translated, the Ten Commandments forbid murder, not killing or the taking of life. Killing in a self-defensive war was allowed, as was capital punishment for notorious crimes. The question is, can a Church that has sanctioned some kinds of killing--self-defensive wars, capital punishment, and even burning people at the stake for not accepting its belief--also sanction the ending of lives that have lost their purpose, i.e. when the most competent judges assert that there is less love shown in keeping the person artificially alive than in taking measures whose side-effects will result in the death of the patient?

It is necessary to point out the contrast between this kind of relativism with respect to differing prior-assumptions-about-reality and an absolute relativism that would treat all assumptions about reality as "the same" or at least as equally acceptable. The latter is not what is being spoken of here. And let me add one more thing: The Apostles wrote and thought in terms of energy and its adjective and verb cognates. (Admittedly, energy was originally an Aristotelian concept.) The question then poses itself: Is it possible to view as a proper "development: the discarding of the Apostolic framework in favor of either a Dominican Aristotelianism or a Franciscan Nominalism (the "via moderna," even more intimately derived from Cordovan Muslim Aristotelianism and theletism: the Reformers' framework)--static frameworks that ignore energy as a basic concept, a framework that unifies a number of apparent contrarieties of a fundamental nature? (SEE HERE.)

It should be clear that what is a development "compatible with" prior assumptions is also dependent on general assumptions about what it most real--being (and reason) or will--that lie outside of the domain of the whole business of what is or is not consistent with prior fundamental beliefs held by the early Christians. Once one's framework is established in one's own discernment, one can then determine which developments are (1) compatible with prior fundamentals and are necessarily implied by them; (2) which are compatible with prior fundamentals but not necessarily implied by prior fundamentals; and which are incompatible with prior fundamentals--and are therefore divorced from or corruptions of prior fundamentals). One does not have to be a theologian to view the matter thus. If revelation is the more important part of "prior fundamentals" from the viewpoint of their content, it must be conceded also that prior assumptions about what is really real determine which parts of revelation one can accept or reject. Thus, even the most "literalist" Gnostics reject John 6:48-58 as a teaching about the m.h. Eucharist; and, as already seen, the acceptance of inherited guilt and sinful natures makes the Immaculate Conception arguable: The Latins argue for it; Denominationists, against it. It is unarguable if no one inherits guilt or has got a sinful nature: Everyone is free of guilt and sin before reaching whatever the age of responsiblity is in terms of their mental and other capacities. And this is the "Biblical" view (cf. Dt. 24:16, 2 Kg. 14:6, 2 Chr. 25:4, Gal. 6:5) that makes sense for any who hold (a) the moral assumption that one can only be guilty of what one freely consents to do or not do (but SEE HERE); and (b) the assumption that only individuals, not natures, are capable of sinning.

There is another aspect of the matter that is of the utmost importance for considering development, viz. the guidance of the Church into all truth by the all-holy Paraclete (John 16:13). While it is reasonable to infer that He does not guide the holy Church into impossible contradictions and inconsistencies--these can be ruled out--it is also problematic to apply this comforting belief to groups that have broken with or unilaterally adopted innnovations incompatible with the prior holy tradition. Anyone who believes that the time beginning with the end of the Apostolic Age and coming to an end with Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, etc., was a time of false belief cannot literally accept John 16:13--since the two beliefs are incompatible. For the Denominationist, the all-holy Paraclete did not guide the Church (any Church) into all truth during that time.

      It really is not on to believe that the scholastic philosphy (whether Dominican or Franciscan--and it was the latter Nominalists that produced Luther and Calvin) can in any be way imputed to the first-century apostles who wrote the new testament
and used the term energy and its adjectival and verb cognates.    Further,
if later beliefs were added because of the "development of a non-apostolic
framework--in short, a framework of assumptions about reality unknown to the
apostles--then how can anyone accept that as a true development--unless one could
be shown that frameworks can be discarded or replaced in true development?

      From all that has been said, it is clear that until one has determined what reality actually is--whether a will (divine, papal, or other human) that can overrule reality and create virtual reality by so willing it; or on the contrary, whether reason depends on what IS or is compatible with what IS--it will not be possible (aside from a non-replicable private vision) for a person to decide whether an idea is to be deemed compatible with prior fundamentals or not. And if that cannot be determined, how can one determine which developments corrupt prior fundamentals, which establish them, and which are merely compatible with but not demanded by them?

Elsewhere on this website (e.g. CLICK HERE) is found a discussion of how tradition creates development. It's a very messy process is which every answer to some question is tried out and all but one is found wanting (i.e. ultimately in conflict with established truth); the survival of the fittest is able to stand for time to come--and that's the Orthodox answer to the question and teaching on the matter.