The Growth of Dogma

Extract

In these “talks” we have been trying to meet the difficulties of those thousands of people who say they have no use for creeds and dogmas. We have tried to show them that dogmas —doctrinal statements—are necessary because knowledge of God is necessary, and that such knowledge can be conveyed to us only by words. And not only so, but we hold it to be a matter of plain historic fact that it was by words that God has conveyed the knowledge of Himself, of His love and His salvation, to us. We have described, too, the response which that historic Self-Revelation demands of us: the response of Faith.

But a difficulty remains. Granting all that has been said: granted that the truth of God is available to us; granted that we can learn about God through nature, and still more through His Self-Revelation in Jesus Christ—a difficulty still remains. For what, it has been asked, has all this to do with the vast and complex dogmatic system of the Catholic Church of to-day as we find it in her dogmatic formularies and catechisms? What have they to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ? What is it that we claim for these dogmas and formulas? We know that many of them have been drawn up only in comparatively recent times; every one of them subsequently to the time when Our Lord was on earth. What authority do we claim for them? Do we pretend that they were all expressly taught by Him during his earthly sojourn? Or do we claim that God makes new revelations to Popes and Councils and compilers of catechisms, in such wise that they can add to the content of the Catholic Faith which that Revelation demands?