Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 13.djvu/26

 REVELATION

REVELATION

Church to be the sole guardian of God's Revelation. These quahties indeed appertain in so transcendent a degree to the teaching of the Church, that the argu- ment must needs carr>- conviction to an earnest and truth-seeking mind. Another criterion which at first sight bears some resemblance to this claims a mention here. It is based upon the theory of Im- manence and has of recent years been strenuously advocated by certain of the less extreme members of the Modernist School. These wTiters urge that the vital needs of the soul imperatively demand, as their necessary complement, Divine co-operation, super- natural grace, and even the supreme magisterium of the Church. To these needs the Catholic religion alone corresponds. And this correspondence with our vital needs is, they hold, the one sure criterion of truth. The theory is altogether inconsistent with Catholic dogma. It supposes that the Christian Revelation and the gift of grace are not free gifts from God, but something of which the nature of man is absolutely exigent, and without which it would be incomplete. It is a return to the errors of Baius. (Denz. 1021, etc.)

VThile the Church, as we have said, is far from under\-aluing internal criteria, she has alwaj's re- garded external criteria as the most easily recognizable and the most decisive. Hence the Vatican Council teaches: "In order that the obedience of our faith might be agreeable to reason, God has willed that to the internal aids of the Holy Spirit, there should be joined external proofs of His Revelation, viz: Divine works (Jacla divina), especially miracles and prophecy, which inasmuch as they manifestlj' display the omnipotence and the omniscience of God are most certain signs of a Divine revelation and are suited to the understanding of all" (De Fide Cath., cap. iii). As an instance of a work evidently Divine, and yet other than miracle or prophecy, the council instances the Catholic Church, which, "by reason of the marvellous manner of its propagation, its sur- prising sanctity, its inexhaustible fruitfulness in all good works, its catholic unity and its invincible stability, is a mighty and perpetual motive of credi- bihty and an irrefragable testimony to its own divine legation" (1. c). The truth of the teaching of the council regarding external criteria is plain to any unprejudiced mind. Granted the presence of the negative criteria, external guarantees establish the Divine origin of a revelation as nothing else can do. They are, m to say, a seal affixed by the hand of God Himself, and authenticating the work as His. (For a fuller treatment of their apologetic value, and for a discussion of objections, see Miracles; Apologetics.)

V. The Christian- Revelation. — It remains here to distinguish the Christian Revelation or "deposit of faith" from what are termed private revelations. This distinction is of importance: for while the Church recognizes that Gfxi has spoken to His servants in every age, and still continues thus to favour chosen Bouls, she is careful to distinguish fhese revelations from the Revelation which haw been conmiittcd fo her charge, and which she proposes t<^j all her members for their acceptance. That Revelation was given in its entirety to Our Ujrd and His Apostles. After the death of the last of the twelve it could receive no increment. It wa.s, hh the Church calls it, a deposit —"the faith once delivered to the saints" fjude, 3)-;-for which the Church was to "contend" but to which she rxmUl arid nothing. Thus, whenever there has bef-n question of defining a doctrine, whether at Nicsa, at Trent, or at the Vatican, the sole point of debate has been as to whether the dortrine is found in Scripture or in Apostf)lic; trafhtion. The gift of Divine assistance <ivi- I), Hoinf'tim«;s ronfoundefl with Revelation by the Ifss iristru(ted of anti-Catholic writers, merely preserves the supreme [wntiff from

error in defining the faith; it does not enable him to add jot or tittle to it. All subsequent revelations conferred by God are known as private revelations, for the reason that they arc not directed to the whole Church but are for the good of individual members alone. They may indeed be a legitimate object for our faith; but that will depend on the evidence in each particular case. The Church does not propose them to us as part of her message. It is true that in certain cases she has given her approbation to cer- tain private revelations. This, however, only signi- fies (1) that there is nothing in them contrary to the Catholic Faith or to the moral law, and (2) that there are sufficient indications of their truth to justify the faithful in attaching credence to them without being guilty of superstition or of imprudence.

It may however be further asked, whether the Christian Revelation does not receive increment through the development of doctrine. During the last half of the nineteenth century the question of doctrinal development was widely debated. Owing to Guenther's erroneous teaching that the doctrines of the faith assume a new sense as human science pro- gresses, the Vatican Courfcil declared once for all that the meaning of the Church's dogmas is im- mutable (De Fide Cath., cap. iv, can. iii). On the other hand it exjilicitly recognizes that there is a legitimate mode of development, and cites to that effect (op. cit., cap. iv) the words of Vincent of Lirins: "Let understanding science and wisdom [regarding the Church's doctrine] progress and make large in- crease in each and in all, in the individual and in the whole Church, as ages and centuries advance: but let it be solely in its own order, retaining, that is, the same dogma, the same sense, the same import" (Commonit. 28). Two of the most eminent theolog- ical writers of the period. Cardinal Franzelin and Cardinal Newman, have on very different lines dealt with the progress and nature of this development. Cardinal Franzelin in his "De Divina Traditione et Scriptura" (pt. XXII-VI) has principally in view the Hegelian theories of Gucnther. He consequently laj's the chief stress on the identity at all points of the intellectual datum, and explains development almost exclusively as a process of logical deduction. Cardinal Newman wrote his "Essay on the l)e\clp- ment of Christian Doctrine" in the course of the two years (1S43-45) iniin(>(liately preceding his re- ception into the Catholic Church. He was called on to deal with different adversaries, viz., the I'rot- estants who justified their separation from th(> main body of Christians on the ground that Rome had cor- rupted i^rimitivc teaching by a series of additions. In that work he examines in detail the difference be- tween a corruption and a development. He shows how a true and fertile idea is endowed with a vital and assimilative energy of its own, in virtue of which, without undergoing the least substantive change, it attains to an ever completer expression, as the course of time brings it into contact with new aspects of truth or forces it into collision with new errors: the life of the idea is shown to be analogous to an organic development. He provides a series of tests dis- tinguishing a true development from a corruption, chief among them being the preservation of type, and the continuity of princnjjles; and then, applymg the tests to the case of the additions of Roman teach- ing, shows that these have the marks not of corrup- tions but of true and legitimate developments. The* th(M)ry, though less scholastic in its form than that of Franzelin, is in perfect conformity with orthodox belief. Newman no less than his .Jesuit (iontemporary teaches that the whole doctrine, alike in its later jis in its earlier forms, Wius contained in the original revelation given to th(^ Church by Our Lord and His Apostles^ and that, its identity is guaranteed to us by the infallible magisterium of the Church. The