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APPENDIX
EVOLUTION OF DOGMA1
Primarily, “dogma” means a truth expressly and formally revealed by God to men. As such, it is said to be an object of “divine faith”, where faith means a morally firm mental state of belief that involves by its own essence a strictly intellectual assent. It is said this faith is “divine” as much by its object (an immediately revealed truth by God) as by its fundament (the authority of God).
“Evolution of dogma” expresses that the initial revelation made by God to men is something that continues to develop in the course of history, providing in it a great flourishing of religious truths. These are truths that the Church defines infallibly as contained in one form or another in the initial revelation, and because of this they are also dogmas. As such they are called “divine-Catholic” truths of faith. To distinguish them from those of the initial revelation we shall call them “defined dogmas”. Except when noted to the contrary or by the context of the phrase, when discussing dogmas we usually refer in general to the defined dogmas.
{488} In this concept is contained the problem of the evolution of dogma together with the essential topics it covers. The problem of the evolution of dogma consists in determining with rigor the articulation of the dogmas the Church is defining with the initial revelation, or if you will, with the initial dogmas. This articulation is expressed in a very precise concept; the articulation is “evolution”. The structure of this evolution as articulation of the defined dogmas with the initial dogmas is precisely the problem of the evolution of dogma. In the previous definition there are involved two questions the clarification of which constitutes the structure of the evolution of dogma, namely the following.
§ 1. What are the initial dogmas, i.e., what is the initial revelation out of which the defined dogmas are developing by evolution?
§ 2. Why and in what form is this revelation evolving?2
§ 1
THE INITIAL REVELATION
Revelation is the manifestation (phanérosis) of God or of something he communicates to men. This manifestation is made to the whole man. By virtue of this, it involves above all a moment that is essentially and strictly intellectual and it is in this moment that the formal reason for revelation consists. But nothing is exhausted in its formal reason; this is why revelation is also not exhausted in a “mere” manifestation to the intelligence, but other moments not exclusively “theoretical”, so to speak, do constitute an essential part of it.
A) First, revelation as intellectual manifestation. As such, it occurs in an illuminatio, and it concerns something supernatural, it is an illuminatio supernaturalis. Insofar as reality is manifested to the intelligence the revealed should be called “truth”. Therefore, revelation is formally the manifestation of a truth to men by God; it is a divine truth. But this truth is not primarily and formally the truth of the intellectual act in which I apprehend it, but that, which is manifested insofar as reality. That which is revealed is a truth, but understanding by truth the true “reality”, the reality in its condition of truth or, what I might call, the “real truth”. What revelation gives us is “manifest reality”. Therefore, the manifestation itself must be understood from the reality manifested, and not the reverse. From the point of view of reality, the manifestation is something more than a merely objective and intentional moment. It is a gift, a “donation” {490} of reality to the intelligence. Formally “manifestation” is nothing but the intellective mode of the donation, a divine donation of light. The manifestation must be understood from the donation. Either by its terminus or by its own proper character, revelation is, therefore, a question of reality; it is the reality that is given or manifestly communicated by God to man.
In order to understand this correctly some fundamental observations are needed.
1) Revelation is a question of reality. But this reality is not the integral reality of the thing as it is, in and by itself. Not everything the thing is becomes manifested when the thing manifests itself to us. God manifests himself to us as Trinity, and in this revelation the reality of God is manifested; but this does not mean that God may have exhaustively revealed to us in the Trinity everything He is (aside from considering this would be intrinsically impossible). Revelation as manifestation has a precisely delineated ambit; revelation is essentially “preciseness”. What does not fit in this ambit, although real and might be surmised by man on the basis of the revealed, is not eliminated by this from being something real or a revealed truth. The only thing we wish to say is that what God reveals is a moment of the thing insofar as reality. This will be essential to us later.
2) Revealed truth is not identified with the proposition or true judgment, which enunciates it or expresses it. The proposition has, of course, a truth of conformity or adequation with the revealed, but the revealed truth does not consist primarily or formally in the true proposition as such, but in the revealed truth as manifest reality. And this, either by what concerns the copula of judgment or by what concerns its conceptual termini. With respect to the copula “is”, the illuminatio is not originally the light under which God makes us {491} see the convenience of a predicate with a subject, but the light, which manifests before our eyes the revealed truth. The light of the copula is only the enunciative expansion of the manifesting truth. This is with respect to what concerns the conceptual termini, because these termini do nothing but expose the manifest reality, but in a non-exhaustive way, and rather much more poorly than it is. Because concepts do not always completely adequate themselves to the reality of what is revealed, but sometimes are only analogical. And also because every concept has a formal content (the ancients would say a “formal supposition”) much poorer than the reality in which they are realized despite not being but their realization. The conceived reality is much richer than the concepts with which we express it mentally. This is why the revealed reality leaves open an indefinite field of propositions and true judgments that will never exhaust it.
This does not mean that the predicative proposition may not exist always in one form or another or not have a very important function. It always exists because in one form or another it is consubstantial to human intelligence to conceive reality manifested to it and to express it in true judgments; we shall return to this presently because it will be essential to us. But the function of the predicative formula, although most important, is not primary in the issue that concerns us. On the one receiving the revelation directly from the part of God, the function of judgment is, as I have just mentioned, derived; it is fundamented on a previous illumination in which the “presentation” of the reality occurs, its manifestation. Therefore, the proposition is nothing but a “re-presentation” of the reality already manifested; it has a truth, but fundamented, not the originating and fundamenting truth. And in one receiving the revelation in the form of mere transmission, the proposition does not formally have an “enunciative” function, but rather a {492} “presentative” function of the reality that enunciates. The proposition transmits to us the first line of presence of a reality, which is eo ipso infinitely richer than what the said proposition enunciates formally and with truth about it. Revelation does not consist, therefore, in a series of true theses, but in the truth insofar as manifested reality, such as the Incarnate Word, his redemptive death, the sanctification by the Holy Spirit, the dispensation of grace by the sacraments of the Church, etc.
The manifest realities in revelation can be called dogmas. But in general these realities are called such insofar as expressed in enunciations, in formulas. In other words, dogmas are the true formulas, which enunciate manifest reality. If they immediately enunciate the initial revelation, the formulas are called “articles”; if they enunciate the defined dogmas they are more properly called “dogmatic formulas”. Sometimes we also designate all enunciations with the latter name, even though they may be articles. Therefore, the articles and the dogmatic formulas are true, but they do nothing but enunciate the strict truth of the revealed truth, fundamented upon it and never exhausting it.
3) Although the manifestation of reality qua reality may be always anterior secundum rationem to the dogmatic formulas, however, it formally contains a strict “knowing”; it is not the mere presence of an inert block facing intelligence. The fact is that to know is not primarily and formally to judge predicatively. The lover “knows” about love and the beloved with a knowing prior to any enunciative predication, and infinitely richer than the sum of all imaginable predicative propositions. It is a strict knowing, but an “ante-predicative” knowing that is intrinsic to communicating with manifest reality. In the one receiving the revelation directly this knowing involves an “acceptance”, also ante-predicative, of such {493} reality, a “belief” (Sp. “creencia”) in the most etymological sense of the term, cor-dare. Reciprocally, every belief involves a moment of strict ante-predicative knowing; it is a belief that “knows” what it believes. And the judgment does nothing but to express in the form of a predicative adhesion this primary knowing belief, which serves as a base for it. Because of this revelation is not made necessarily in the form of a propositional “dictation”. Thus, for example, the Apostles did not enunciate the divinity of Jesus Christ in forms conceptually as precise as the councils, but they dealt with it and pointed to it as God. They had a knowledge, an infuse and ante-predicative sense of the plenitude of the divine realities, a knowing that, although not always encased in formulas positively rigorous, however, was much richer than the one the conciliar formulas give us in the course of the post-Apostolic history. A knowing, also, that as infuse knowledge it was exhaustive; so much so, that all the subsequent formulas are nothing but its expression. And Suárez himself tells us that Christ did not need “to say” with words what his Mother was; it was sufficient to show her and honor her the way he did in order to allow us to understand what she was.
Thus, when transmitting to us the manifest reality, in its very manifestation is transmitted that primary and radical knowing, the “initial” knowing. Of course, the ante-predicative knowing does not exclude its enunciative predication; furthermore, if it has to be transmitted with fidelity it inexorably needs some enunciation. And in fact, the Apostles bequeathed to us the manifest reality as reality, in a knowing not only ante-predicative, but in numerous formal enunciations that the Church will do nothing else but explain. However, it will always be the case that the ante-predicative knowing is richer than the enunciative, and it is to the former that we have to appeal to explain the latter.
Therefore, because of its own formal reason, revelation is {494} the donation or communication by God to men of a real truth, i.e., of a manifest reality. But this does not yet constitute the whole formal reason of revelation as intellective manifestation. I insisted, actually, that manifestation is nothing but the intellective mode of something more radical, of a donation to intelligence. Consequently, manifestation is not only donation, but also an intimate possession of the intellectively understood reality, a possession certainly only intellective, but yet a strict possession. Something better, therefore, than the mere objective and intentional presence of what is manifested. Reality is, in every intellective act, not only “donating”, but also “bringing intimacy” (Sp. “intimante”)3; and in every intellective act manifestation is, at one and the same time, the intellective mode of donation and possession. And this intimate possession of reality in its manifestation is what the Hebrews called yada’, “to know”. It is the fullness of that ante-predicative “knowing” intrinsically inscribed in the intimacy with the manifest reality. The intellectual act, because of its own essence, is never a mere and (in a certain way) extrinsic vision of what is conceptually understood. And this radical unity of donation and intimacy in manifestation is the complete formal reason of revelation.
B) But, as I warned in the beginning, nothing is exhausted in its pure formal reason; the formal reason of something is one thing, but its integral reality another. From this follows that the integral reality of revelation is not exhausted in the formal reason we have just exposed, the integrity of what revelation is covers something much vaster. Revelation, actually, is made to the whole man and not only to his intelligence. It is not only an objective “notification”, but it is also a donation and something with intimacy precisely so that in the manifest reality and from it, man may realize his own life. In this sense of integrity, the revelation, {495} the dogmas are manifest and vivifying realities, verba vitae, and the illuminatio itself is lumen vitae. Obviously, revelation on this line may remain dead because of man, without ceasing to be revelation for that reason. We should understand that to be vivifying “in actuality” is something that does not belong to the integral reality of revelation since its vivification may remain impeded. But impeded or not revelation is always “inchoatively” vivifying; revelation is the inchoation of divine life in men. It is intrinsically “principle” of life. And this characteristic, although it may not constitute a moment of the formal reason of revelation it is a necessary part of its integral reality.
Every intellectual act actually is, as we have pointed out, a possession, an intellective intimacy of what has been intellectualized. When that, which is intellectualized has nothing to do formally, by the fact of being intellectualized, with the very man that intellectualizes it, this possession is nothing but an intellective experience of the thing, a contemplative fruition in its manifestation. But when that, which is intellectualized is manifested precisely and formally to be principle of life, then, its characteristic of principle is nothing but the inchoative expansion of what is formally the manifest reality as manifest; it is an expansion of the intellective intimate possession in vital intimacy. In that case, the characteristic of principle is not an appendix or an extrinsic adjunct to manifestation; it is something that despite not being its formal reason with respect to the type of what is manifested, it is a necessary property of the manifestation through the reason for its existence.
In short, revelation, through its own formal characteristic, is {496} a manifesting donation and intimacy of the revealed truth as reality, and in its integrity it is a manifestation inchoatively expanded into a “principle” that can be impeded of human life, and from that reality. This is what the initial revelation is.
We shall add that by its own character revelation has an evolving characteristic, i.e., it provides for a series of defined dogmas, why and in what way? That is the second question we must examine.
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1 The text we present here, typewritten by Zubiri, comes from 1967 and has the following dedication: “To my dear Fr. Ellacuría this intimate memento with a deep sense of friendship, gratitude and hope (Jan. 29, 1967)”. Zubiri had dealt with the problem of the evolution of dogma in the 1965 seminar, as can be seen in The Philosophical Problem of the History of Religions, op. cit., pp. 305-321. The same subject was undertaken again in December of 1967, and in the 1971 seminar, to which the previous pages belong. This chronological difference must be considered when studying the pages that follow.
2 Zubiri intended to cover four questions. (1) How are the defined dogmas pre-contained in the initial revelation? (2) How are the defined dogmas brought out from the initial revelation? (3) What is the organon of this dogmatic evolution? (4) In what does the definition itself consist? Actually, he only covered the first two.
3 (Tr. note: Zubiri neologism)