Newman's Analysis of Development

Extract

The notion of a development of Christianity is found in Tertullian and in Vincent of Lérins; indeed it is an immediate conclusion from the words of Our Lord, ‘I am not come to destroy but to fulfil.’ Yet no one gave the subject especial attention before Newman. The historical spirit is not rarely alien to the mind of the theologian, and theology has been received with little sympathy since the rise of modern historical science in the eighteenth century.

Newman, widely read in the Fathers, but saturated in the spirit of the Oxford of his day, approached the question by attempting to explain away a suspicion that the Roman Catholic Church of 1845 was the same body as the Primitive Church of historical research. Startling divergence seemed to reveal, as well as to conceal, an ultimate identity. His reconciliation of this seeming contradiction was the conclusion, but not the purpose, of his writing the essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. The historical, theological, philosophical and psychological vistas which the book opens up are manifold: we can here concern ourselves only with its analysis of the subject itself.