The Doctrine of the Papacy
The Development of the Papacy. By H. Burn-murdoch. (Faber & Faber. 42s.) Tx's book, of which the title is more apt than a reader of the Preface might guess, is " an attempt to set the opposing views and arguments concerning the doctrine of the Papacy " side by side. It is offered ` to the searcher,' and " it is not its purpose to disturb the belief of anyone." The difficult task thus outlined has been sincerely attempted and, within limits, accomplished. The author himself, on the internal evidence of the book, "holds firmly to the Nicene Creed and its redeclarations, and believes that our Lord founded a visible Church and endowed it with a continuing ministry of apostolic authority " ; he has had a long and distinguished forensic experience of trained minds in controversy on questions of fact and word ; he is therefore well qualified to isolate this single, but crucial, matter from other controversial issues, and to present it judicially.
On such a topic, ranging over twenty centuries and touching upon Scriptural exegesis, patristic teaching, • medizeval history, modern controversy and the imponderables of a great spiritual issue, no one could be universally expert, and perhaps, if such a task is to be attempted, the acute and trained mind of a non-expert is most likely to observe proportion and justice. Certainly the documentation of the book, at least on the diamond-points of controversy (for the historical sections are thin), is adequate, and if sometimes the works are missing that a specialist would demand, those used are of a kind that neither party could except against.
The book, with its resolute Aye and No in each section, recalls inevitably Abelard's Sic et non, Oration's Harmony of Discordant Laws and even the dialectical framework of Aquinas's Summa. There is, however, an essential difference. For Ab6lard and Gratian the end of it all was harmony, either by synthesis or by resolution ; for Aquinas there was the hidden syllogism in the body of the article. Here there is, of set purpose, no resolution, save in so far as the statement of the issue provides one ; we are left on every page with the thesis and antithesis, two duellists caught at the moment when each has discharged his pistol, and neither fallen. How is the searcher for whom the book is written to resolve the issue ? By adding up points ? Or by the first blood drawn ? Here, perhaps, lies the flaw of the method. For looked at closely, the doctrine of the papacy, as held by the Church of Rome, is throughout in a posture of defence' Though a careful reader can certainly build up a positive and adequate statement of that doctrine from these pages, every chapter does in fact see a different shot fired at it, and the reader is therefore pre- disposed to think that sooner or later one must have gone home, whereas the reply is made to a whole series of scattered and moving targets. Moreover, the isolation of the doctrine of the papacy gives an impression that it alone is vulnerable, and supremely so. Yet, shifted ever so little in aim, the same technique, and many of the same arguments for and against, as well as new ones, could be applied to the belief outlined in the early lines of this review. In a very real sense, it n'y a que le premier pas qui coate : did our Lord establish any visible Church and give it any permanent governing and teaching authority ?
In the marshalling of arguments perhaps the most interesting pages are those (379-83) containing a sympathetic though not wholly lucid exposition of the so-called 'profound' sense to be attached to the theological term 'tradition'. Here, surely, if adequately stated, rather than in any evolutionary theory of development, is to be found the most fruitful, though perhaps also the most exacting, thought for those who would take neither a purely static and fossilised, nor a fluid and merely positivist, view of Christian doctrine. For tradition' is not only the handing down by word of mouth or writing of the teaching of Christ and the Apostles ; it is also the preservation and declaration by the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, of the very Word Himself, as manifested in the totality of His human life and its relationships. It is the fulfilment of our Lord's words : " The Holy Ghost ... will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you.. .. I have yet many things to say to you ; but you cannot bear them now. . . . He shall receive of mine and shall show it to you."
DAVID KNOWLES
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