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§ 2
EVOLVING CHARACTER OF TRADITION
That the initial revelation expands into a series of “defined dogmas” in the course of history, i.e., which possesses a characteristic that, in order not to prejudge future questions we shall call progradient, is above all a verifiable fact. But it is also a doctrine that the Church has constantly claimed for itself. In the first place, the Church has always applied to itself in some sense (we shall see, which one) what Christ said to his Apostles, “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when He comes, the Spirit of Truth, he will guide (hodegései) you to all truth” (cf. Jn 16:12-13). And in second place, it is a constant affirmation in the whole of tradition. Suffice it to recall, for example, two contemporary Fathers of the Church. First, a Greek Father, St. Gregory Nazianzen (329-389), who insists that God is declaring little by little to the faithful the truths discreetly enunciated in the beginning. Second, a Latin Father, St. Augustine (354-430), for whom the Church is only acquiring the full understanding of its doctrine in the course of time. At almost the same time, St. Vincent of Lerins (V cent.), the great theoretician of tradition, formally and expressly teaches the dogmatic “growth” (crescat) and “progress” (proficiat) in a famous passage that the First Vatican Council reproduces literally, and makes its own1. Further historical details would be superfluous.
{498} But it is not enough with a verification of the fact or this doctrinal affirmation. We need to know why revelation is progressive, and what is the formal characteristic of this profectus. Indeed, revelation is progressive “constitutively”, and its profectus, its progress, is formally “evolution”, as it is commonly said.
I. REVELATION IS “CONSTITUTIVELY” PROGRESSIVE
The initial revelation is “constitutively progressive”; in other words, it is such by its own character. In such a fashion that the progress is not only a fact, but also an inexorable intrinsic necessity. We have seen, actually, that in its integral reality revelation is not something merely notified and contemplated, but a vivifying “principle”. If revelation is constitutively progressive its progradient characteristic must be inscribed in the way revelation is principle. The whole point centers on accurately detailing the characteristic that makes this a principle.
A) Considered in itself, revelation is “principle”, but only inchoatively, since it can be impeded. Under this aspect, revelation is principle out of which a life “can” be brought out, and therefore, as principle it seems it might be a simple “potentiality”. But it is something more, because revelation is not there waiting as a dormant potency, but is something “donated-for” vivifying. Its way of being there, so to speak, is to be a positive candidate for vivifying, i.e., its mode of being there is to be there as “offered”. By virtue of this, it is principle {499} in a much deeper sense than “potency”; it is “possibility“ of life. Therefore, what man does when impeding it or not impeding it, is to accept or refuse it, i.e., to “appropriate it” positively or negatively. Let us just consider the positive, it is an “appropriation” of possibility. With this possibility appropriated, it is incorporated to us in a most precise way, conferring a “power” to us, something quite different than a “faculty”. In other words, the possibility appropriated by man “seizes” him. It is the essential cycle of every possibility as such. The thing “manifested” in “donation”, and “intimacy” is “offered” as possibility that man “appropriates”, and when appropriated it “seizes” him. This difference between potency and possibility is essential. It is not enough for a thing just to be real in order to be offered in the form of possibility. From time immemorial the resistance of air had been known together with its real properties. However, it has only been known for almost the last hundered years that the atmospheric air offered a possibility for travel. Hence, reality as principle of acts of the naked human potencies is something that by virtue of its properties has an active or passive potency for those acts to be performed. But reality as principle of actuation, not of naked potencies, but a particular “use” of them, is something that possibilitates that use. And in this precise sense we say it is possibility; its mode of actualizing this use is “seizure”, and its very actuation is the “occurrence”. We shall soon discuss these structures with a somewhat greater precision.
Intellective intimacy, I mentioned above, expands into inchoative principle of life. Therefore, the inchoation is possibilitation, and the expansion is offering. Seizing man, revelation, as possibility of his life, possibilitates it in accordance with its structures and their concrete situation. Consequently, when seizing man, it molds the structures in a divine way, and revelation then unfolds its inner wealth, or indeed, the multiple {500} possibilities included in the global possibility of revelation. Let us consider only the manifestative aspect of revelation. Depending on the intellective situations of man, revelation expands, i.e., manifest reality is there in a richer way than in its initial manifestation; it has progressed. We shall soon discuss in greater detail how this happens. Nevertheless, because it is something that seizes man, revelation as possibilitating principle is constitutively progradient; it is not only a fact.
In order to correctly understand this progradient characteristic of revelation we must distinguish in it several planes or aspects.
1) Revelation seizes human intelligence. And this seizure itself exerts a kind of pressure to which intelligence responds with a personal reflection, properly and formally human, on the manifest reality in order to apprehend its internal coherence and its articulation with the rest of the knowledge and the manifest realities. This is what “theology” is. The most modest human reflection of this type is already theologic. Its “scientific” structuralization constitutes theologic science. In this dimension, the progress of revelation is merely a theologic progress. As the work of personal reflection, exclusively, it is a constitutive progress, which can never fail to be performed by each one. When seizing man revelation expands into theology.
2) Another progress is quite different and fundamentally much deeper. When seizing intelligence, manifest reality forces it to assimilate it better, i.e., to progress in accordance to different ways of apprehending it on our part. In his faith a child apprehends distinctly, for example, the articles in the Creed, but not many other truths, which are simply gathered together in the act with which he believes “everything the Church teaches” (cf. DS 3011), even though not knowing with precision what {501} it teaches. As an adult perhaps he will acquire a more detailed knowledge of revelation. There has been a progress, which not only concerns the way of codifying the revelation among other knowledge, but also is a progress that concerns revelation itself. It is not a theologic progress, but dogmatic. But it is a progress concerning the way we reach to comprehend manifest reality. And this not only happens to children, but in one way or another to all men. To be aware of revelation, to be conscious of it, is a painful effort never concluded not even for the greatest of thinkers and the greatest of saints. We shall call it dogmatic-cognitive progress, a progress in our way of knowing revelation. By its constitutive characteristic, insofar as it is something that seizes man, the content of revelation expands with different degrees and modes of being assimilated, that is, apprehended and known. The purpose is to unravel revelation, in other words, the reality already manifest exactly and just the way it is manifested.
3) But there is, finally, a progress still much more profound. When seizing man, revelation not only forces man to assimilate it better each time, but this progressive effort of discovery may even have a repercussion on the revelation itself making it something more manifest than it was before. It is a progress that concerns revelation also, but not to our way of knowing and unraveling it, but to the very way the revelation is made, as it were, to man. Revelation in itself is manifest reality, but there are many different ways of being manifest. For example (nothing more than just “one”), there are real truths that God himself has manifested, but in a veiled way. When seizing the intelligence and the whole man they can remain manifest in a direct way and not veiled. That which {502} had been proposed to faith before, but only in a veiled way, now it is proposed directly. Regardless of the degree of knowledge we may have of the revelation, this revelation, before being unraveled cognitively by me and independently of my cognitive effort, has been presented in two different forms, reality in itself has been manifest in two different ways. For example, the Immaculate Conception, which up to a century and a half ago had only been manifested in a veiled way, now it is manifested directly, and expressly. There has been a progress, but it has been in the very mode the reality is revealed; it is not only a difference in the way of knowing it and unraveling it. By seizing human intelligence revelation has to be able to continue opening itself by its own form of manifestation. Since it is different than the previous one, we shall call it dogmatic-real progress. Its result is not a greater consciousness of revelation, but a greater mode, so to speak, of being revealed. This is the emergence of a “defined dogma”. Of course, in order for what we have just said to be true, it is not necessary that this happen in every intelligence seized by revelation; but sooner or later it has to take place, precisely and formally because manifest reality seizes man through its own mode of being manifested. It is a case of a necessary progress in principle.
Therefore, three types of progress exist, a theologic progress, a dogmatic-cognitive progress, and a dogmatic-real progress. The three are constitutively necessary; because revelation is a possibility that appropriated by man seizes him and forces him in this triple way. On the one hand, pressing our intelligence until achieving a greater reflection and greater consciousness, and on the other, revelation at the same time opening itself in the very way of being revealed because of this pressure. These are three progresses of different qualitative and formal types, {503} but are, however, congeneric as a result of the intrinsically seizing characteristic of revelation. Hence, these three progresses almost always actually appear blended.
And thus, what we must underline here is that when we mention dogmatic progress we refer strictly and formally to the dogmatic-real progress, to the progress in the very mode of revelation, to the very way reality is manifested there. The dogmatic-real progress is an inexorable consequence, I repeat, of the integral reality of revelation as something that seizes man. Since God makes revelation, precisely and formally to be a reality that seizes man, it follows that in the economy of revelation this moment of progress entered as an essential determinant of the mode of revelation. In other words, God has made manifest reality in a form initially quite varied, precisely “to be” able to allow for a real progress. The economy of revelation has been the economy of a real progress in the ways of manifestation. Therefore, by its own constitutive type the initial revelation is progressive. And this is made even clearer through a further consideration.
B) Revelation, actually, was not made only to possibilitate the life of its direct benefits, but also to possibilitate “human life”, i.e., the life of all men from all times. And this involves new aspects of the question.
We have already considered reality manifest “to” intelligence, i.e., to an intelligence that might belong to only one. But now we consider that reality is manifest to all. And this constitutes a new dimension of manifestation as such. Because the fact that reality may be manifest to all does not mean that each and every man, {504} distributively considered may have the same manifestation of reality than the rest. If it were only this, it would mean that among men there is a mere coincidence or material equality in the manifestation made to them. But here it means something more; it means that to each one, not only is the reality in question manifest, but it is also manifest that the same reality is manifest to all the rest. And this is no mere material coincidence, but a formal coincidence; it is a unity that is known formally and expressly as “one”, in a certain way a manifestation reduplicatively so, a manifestation of the manifestation. This new dimension of manifestation constitutes what is called “publicity”. Revelation is constitutively “public”, and it is so because it is a truth that can be reached by men. Truth is in and of itself, and in principle constitutively public. And the concrete way this public manifestation is accomplished is “kérygma”, in the primary sense of “annunciation” (only secondarily it came to mean “preaching”, the physical act that realizes it). Truth in the abstract is “denunciation” (which sometimes can take the form of “enunciation”; every enunciation is founded on denunciation). On the other hand, truth as public manifestation is “annunciation”. It is lamentable that the usual logic is only the logic of enunciation. Insofar as annunciation of something good, i.e., of good news, it was called “euaggélion”, Gospel.
Nevertheless, precisely because the publicity is annunciation, it unifies the minds in what is announced. Men form a unity, but always being one “in” something. And one of those something “in” which men are formally one is precisely the truth. The truth is a constituent of a special unity among men, unity in the reality; every truth, every reality is, by the mere fact of being such, unifying. And this means, on the one hand, {505} that men are one inasmuch as they have “communion” in the truth. On the other hand, it means that precisely because it is a formal unity, in the sense just explained, men know each other as one in the truth, i.e., they constitute “community”. Their subjectual2 character is expressed in the “we”. The community is fundamented, in this case, upon the communion in reality. When the public revelation as such seizes the “community”, this community in the “communion” of revelation is the “we” as “faithful” (hoi pistoí). In the end, preaching as “annunciation” constitutes “publicity”, and published truth constitutes the “unity” of the “we”.
Hence, revelation is constitutively progradient not only as denunciative manifestation, but also as annunciative manifestation. The annunciation, actually, could have taken place in multiple ways, but above all in the two ways that correspond to the two types of human unity that undiscernibly are involved in the expression “all men”.
The “all” is, in first place, a specific unity. From this point of view, the “whole” of humanity is nothing but the mere “set” of all the members of the species throughout time. But, in second place, men also have another kind of unity. All those that surround each one constitute, actually, a social system of possibilities of life for this one member, a system that forms his “social body”. And each one, together with his social body also receives from the previous ones a system of possibilities for life. In this dimension, men have a unity, which is not specific; it is a historical unity, processual. In this process the possibilities for life are illuminated or darkened. And in this consists the formal reason for history, the historicity as such. Of course, the formal reason for history does not exhaust the integral historical reality. In it there are also, {506} or at least there can be, transmission of realities; but only the delivery of possibilities is what, in that transmission of realities, constitutes the formal reason for the historical.
Let us point out, once and for all, that here “historical” does not mean historical science, but mode of reality. And as mode of reality it does not mean something ephemeral, decrepit and relative, but only the mode of reality proper to real and effective occurrences. To occur does not formally consist in reaching existence as a mere actualization of natural potencies, but in reaching existence as realization of appropriate possibilities. As mere actualization of potencies the fieri is a “motion”, something “natural”, and the result is a “fact”. As actualization of possibilities, the fieri is an occurrence, something historical, and the result is an “event”. In this metaphysical sense, “historical” and “history” are a mode of reality, nothing that may possibly suggest relativism.
Assuming the above, from the first of those two points of view, the revelation made to one or several men could only be true for all men from all times. That would be so, if it had been made to those men not insofar as men of their time, but precisely the reverse, as men from any time. If we wish to use the metaphor of “elocution”, we will say that from this point of view, God would have talked for all times precisely because he would not have talked for any time in particular. And this would have been possible only if revelation were something that might be able to emigrate and float abstractly throughout time as an erratic block unaffected by time. Such would be the case of a revelation constituted by articles or theses like a supernatural code that would only be there to be understood or applied. But actually that was not the case. God revealed himself to all men from all times by revealing himself to some men precisely and formally as men of their own time, and in the form {507} of their time, constituting that way, in a temporally concrete way, the possibility of their lives. Therefore, this manifest reality must continue to be the possibility of life for the rest, for men belonging to other times, while it is also their own. In that case, then, this possibility must be delivered by the former, and received by the latter, in the proper form of their own time, as possibility of life granted to them. The predecessors leave us facing the same manifest reality as possibility of our lives. And in this is what history precisely consists. Its integral reality is the transmission of manifest reality as possibility of life, and its formal reason is the transmission of these possibilities; its seizure by those receiving them is formally an occurrence. Therefore, manifest reality is for all men from all times, but in unity and in a historical form.
In the case of a mere specific unity, revelation would cover all times simply by being outside time. History would only be but a mere “vehicle” of a revelation made once and for all. And the economy of revelation would formally be “information”. On the other hand, in the case of a historical unity, the revelation would be in all times covering their totality by an intrinsic insertion in time. In that case, history is not a vehicle for revelation; it is not a mere occasion or clothing of revelation, but an intrinsic moment of it, an intrinsic moment of the manifestation of reality as manifestation, its very mode of being manifest. Because of this, the moment and the supreme form of revelation were precisely the Incarnation, whereby eternity has been inserted into time. Revelation is not an abstract principle without historicity, but just the opposite, because it is intrinsically principle of life. In the history of revelation, history is not an extrinsic vicissitude to revelation; {508} but is the actuality of revelation as such, the revelation in act. Let us clarify this affirmation.
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1 “Crescat igitur oportet et multum vehementerque proficiat tam singulorum quam omnium, tam unius hominis quam totius ecclesiae, aetatum ac singulorum gradibus, intelligentia, scientia, sapientia: sed in duo dumtaxat genere, in eodem scilicet dogmate, eodem sensu, eademque sententia”, St. Vincent of Lerins, Commonitorium primum, no. 23, in J.-P. Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, series latina, vol. 50, op. cit., col. 668. The passage from Vatican I can be found in DS 3020.
2 (Tr. note: Zubiri neologism for the subject being affected by an apprehended reality in its first moment of reality, different from “subjective”, which denotes a second moment of the apprehended reality in the subject. Naked reality is the first, intellectualized reality the second)