5 - Theories of Doctrinal Development in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century

Summary

We should remind ourselves to begin with of the central claims made in the second chapter of this book, namely, that, with the emergence during the Enlightenment of an approach to Church doctrine that no longer saw itself as apologetic doxography, but as a history of dogma that took a critical stance towards creed, the theology of the nineteenth century faced the challenge of thinking through the unstable simultaneity of continuity and discontinuity in an unprecedentedly radical way. This chapter will deal with some attempts that were made in the nineteenth century: the so-called Tübingen School in the shape of Johann Sebastian Drey and Johann Adam Möhler; John Henry Newman, who, despite his public activity, remained a solitary player in Catholic theology; the neo-scholastic controversies surrounding the concept of tradition and the conclusio theologica; and Alfred Loisy, who was an important representative of a position denigrated as modernism.