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How do Protestants justify their belief in sola fide (salvation by faith alone) if it didn’t exist prior to the sixteenth-century? How do Catholics explain their belief in the Assumption of Mary when it wasn’t dogmatized until the twentieth-century? How does Eastern Orthodox justify their under-developed beliefs and tendency to punt to “mystery”? What’s going on with all this changing doctrine?
Free Video – Session 1 from the Church History Boot Camp
How we answer these questions is our doctrine about the development of doctrine itself. Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and Catholics have to account for the way truth has been progressively understood over time. Here are the problems each tradition faces:
Why do we hold so strongly to doctrines such as sola scriptura and sola fide when, prior to the Reformation, many (if not most) in the church didn’t? The typical answer is “because the Bible is clear about these teachings”. While true, it causes us to wonder, if the Bible was so clear, why did these doctrines take so long to develop?
In 1950, the doctrine of The Assumption of Mary was dogmatized in Catholicism, and enforced under pain of excommunication. However, it finds no biblical warrant and little support in church history. In fact, the first mention of the Assumption of Mary we find in church history isn’t until the fifth-century. Why wasn’t it heard of before this? Why did it take so long for it to become dogma? This is only one of the many doctrinal “developments” Catholicism must explain. Here is a partial list:
Both Catholics and Protestants face the same question: What about those who came before? Why didn’t they understand or emphasize these issues to the same degree?
Eastern Orthodoxy has a very different approach to doctrinal development. In short, they don’t really believe in it, at least not in the way we’ve been talking about it. They hold that the fullness of doctrine was developed in the first few centuries of the church. All future developments are deemed novel and/or heretical. In short, if the early church didn’t articulate it, neither should we.
What’s the problem with this perspective? It sounds good. The difficulty is that the early church articulated doctrine only to the degree that those doctrines were challenged. In other words, there wasn’t enough time for all doctrines to be fully established, challenged, and refined in the first few centuries.
Because of their perspective on doctrinal development Eastern Orthodox have difficulty with:
They’re frozen in the past. Issues that weren’t dogmatized and articulated in the first few centuries are doomed to a perpetual state of apophatic necessity. In other words, just insert the word “mystery”, and you’ll be fine.https://credohouse.org/blog/changing-doctrine-how-can-anyone-justify-this
Free Video – Session 1 from the Church History Boot Camp
How do Protestants justify their belief in sola fide if it didn’t exist prior to the sixteenth-century?
How we answer these questions is our doctrine about the development of doctrine itself. Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and Catholics have to account for the way truth has been progressively understood over time. Here are the problems each tradition faces:
Protestant Problems
Why do we hold so strongly to doctrines such as sola scriptura and sola fide when, prior to the Reformation, many (if not most) in the church didn’t? The typical answer is “because the Bible is clear about these teachings”. While true, it causes us to wonder, if the Bible was so clear, why did these doctrines take so long to develop?
If the Bible was so clear, why did these doctrines take so long to develop?
Catholic Problems
In 1950, the doctrine of The Assumption of Mary was dogmatized in Catholicism, and enforced under pain of excommunication. However, it finds no biblical warrant and little support in church history. In fact, the first mention of the Assumption of Mary we find in church history isn’t until the fifth-century. Why wasn’t it heard of before this? Why did it take so long for it to become dogma? This is only one of the many doctrinal “developments” Catholicism must explain. Here is a partial list:
- Doctrine of Purgatory
- Dogmatization of the seven sacraments and the specific role they play in one’s salvation in the Middle Ages.
- Papal infallibility
- The Marian Dogmas
- What “outside the Church there is no salvation” meant (pre and post-Vatican II).
The first mention of the Assumption of Mary we find in church history isn’t until the fifth-century.
Both Catholics and Protestants face the same question: What about those who came before? Why didn’t they understand or emphasize these issues to the same degree?
Eastern Orthodox Problems
Eastern Orthodoxy has a very different approach to doctrinal development. In short, they don’t really believe in it, at least not in the way we’ve been talking about it. They hold that the fullness of doctrine was developed in the first few centuries of the church. All future developments are deemed novel and/or heretical. In short, if the early church didn’t articulate it, neither should we.
If the early church didn’t articulate it, neither should we.
What’s the problem with this perspective? It sounds good. The difficulty is that the early church articulated doctrine only to the degree that those doctrines were challenged. In other words, there wasn’t enough time for all doctrines to be fully established, challenged, and refined in the first few centuries.
Just insert the word “mystery”, and you’ll be fine.
Because of their perspective on doctrinal development Eastern Orthodox have difficulty with:
- The meaning of the atonement
- The instrumental cause of salvation
- The canon of Scripture
- The authority in the Church
- The “ransom to Satan” theory of the atonement
They’re frozen in the past. Issues that weren’t dogmatized and articulated in the first few centuries are doomed to a perpetual state of apophatic necessity. In other words, just insert the word “mystery”, and you’ll be fine.https://credohouse.org/blog/changing-doctrine-how-can-anyone-justify-this