12
PARTlSAN REVIEW
Church's substance, the
corpus mysticum,
cannot be damaged or pol–
luted by human sins or offenses.
The collective memory of the Church is preserved not only in its sacred
books, in historical records of its vicissitudes, in the lives of the saints,
and in material monuments of faith such as temples and works of art; it
is also embodied in the long tradition of Church dogmas, considered
(along with Scripture) a source of doctrinal truth, and not merely as the
product of the exegetical labors of theologians, popes, Council fathers, or
the Holy Office. This tradition (when articulated in the official pro–
nouncements of authorized bodies) is, of course, considered to be the true
interpretation of Scripture, not the product of human thought: it is divine
truth, not human opinion.
It
extends our understanding of the meaning
of Revelation, but that meaning, although hidden, must already have
been there if the dogmas are to be valid; it is discovered, not created.
Here we touch upon the delicate question of the "evolution of dog–
mas"-an idea developed in the modernist heresy, condemned by the
Church, and revived by Bultmannist theologians. How far the matter
really affects the Church's sense of identity depends on how one inter–
prets this "evolution."
It
is obviously important for the continuous
identity of the Church body that the basic tenets of faith be preserved
forever as they are, untouchable, like the Apostolic symbols.
It
is equally
obvious, however, that there is hardly a word in them that has not been
the subject of theological and philosophical examination and dispute–
beginning with the adjective "omnipotent" (apparently stronger and
implying more than the Greek
"pantokrator").
Both the scholastics and
modern philosophers like Descartes and Leibniz have struggled with the
perplexing questions to which this word gave rise. Can God reverse time
and change the past? Do the truths of logic and mathematics depend on
His will? And so on. The Church, understandably, has always insisted
on the absolute validity of the credo, regardless of all the hermeneutics
and debates, and this insistence is one of the forms in which it asserts its
doctrinal identity. Whether the (tacit or explicit) consensus of the com–
munity of the faithful as to the meaning of this and countless other
words has changed over the centuries is a matter for historians to inves–
tigate; but it seems reasonable to suppose that there is a core of basic
beliefs-and thus a basic collective memory-which has withstood the
efforts of theologians and philosophers to erode it. We may doubt the
perfect consistency of all the proclamations issued by the Holy Office
over the centuries, but the majority of the faithful is not much con–
cerned with subtle theological distinctions, and the basic foundations
are strong enough to allay the suspicion that they are "evolving" (in the
