MODERNISM AND TRADITIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



Ill 



belief in a proposition under the direction of the will acting on 

 reasonable proof, and nol trusl in a Person. 



The third section of the Summct centres the Christian religion 

 on the Inearnation, whence all grace flows, through the < Jhurch 

 and its Sacraments, for the redemption of the world. God 

 became man thai men mighl become partakers of the Divine 

 nature. Aquinas did not live to finish this section, but it was 

 completed later by other hands. 



" Till about the date of my first essay," writes Tyrrell 

 (Life, ii, 164), " I bad not a firm faith, but a firm hope in the 

 sufficiency of the philosophy of St. Thomas studied in a critical 

 and liberal spirit." His hope was not realized, and he began to 

 cast about for other means to bring about his reconciliation of 

 the Church with what he considered the demands of modern 

 thought. Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian 

 Doctrine (London, 1845) seemed to Tyrrell at first to offer a 

 means of solving his difficulties. 



The Theory of Development. 



The doctrine of development was not new in theology. Even 

 as far back as the Commonitorium of Vincentius Lerinensis 

 (434 a.d.), it had been advanced as illustrating how what was 

 implicit in doctrine might come to be explicit.* 



Newman applied the theory of development some years before 

 the issue of Darwin's Origin of Species to explain how the 

 original " Deposit of the Faith " could be called the same as that 

 held by the Koman Church to-day. 



* St. Vincentius writes: "But someone will say, perhaps, 'Is there, 

 then, to be no religious progress in Christ's Church ? ' Progress, 

 certainly, and that the greatest. For who is he so jealous of men and so 

 odious to God who would attempt to forbid it ? But progress, mind you, 

 of such sort that it is a true advance, and not a change, in the Faith. 

 For progress implies a growth within the thing itself, while change 

 turns one thing into another. Consequently, the understanding, know- 

 ledge, and wisdom of each and all — of each Churchman and of the whole 

 Church — ought to grow and progress greatly and eagerly through the 

 course of ages and centuries, provided that the advance be within its own 

 lines, in the same sphere of doctrine, the same feeling, the same senti- 

 ment. 



" The growth of religion in the soul should resemble the growth of the 

 body, which, though it develops and unfolds in the course of years, yet 

 remains the same. . . . 



" In like manner it is proper that the doctrines of the Christian 

 Religion should follow these laws of progress, so as to be consolidated by 

 the course of years, amplified by time, refined by age, and yet remain 



