Vincent of Lérins is often appealed to by Roman Catholic apologists to support the Catholic understanding of the development of doctrine (e.g., Newman; Armstrong; Sungenis; Staples; Salza). Notwithstanding, when read in context, his writings on the development of doctrine prove to be very problematic to Catholic understandings of development. This came out explicitly during 1869-1870 during Vatican I between those who were supporters of Papal Infallibility and the minority party in attendance who opposed such a definition. Anglican W.J. Sparrow Simpson wrote:
Nothing can be stronger than St Vincent’s sense of the substantial immutability of the Faith. Nor is there any finer exposition than his of the principle of identity. What is perhaps even more remarkable, considering the period when he wrote, is his recognition that the principle of immutability requires to be balanced by the principle of progress. We have in his pages the earliest statement of the principles of theological development, drawn with a wonderful insight into this nature and limitations.
“But some one will say, perhaps—Shall there then be no progress in the Christian Church? Certainly all possible progress . . . Yet on condition that it be real progress, not alteration of the Faith. For progress requires that the subject be enlarged in itself, alteration that it be transformed into something else. The intelligence then, the knowledge, the wisdom, as well as of individual as of all, as well as of one man as of the whole Church ought in the course of ages and centuries, to increase and make much and vigorous progress; but yet only in its own kind; i.e., in the same doctrine, in the same sense, and in the same meaning.”
Thus according to Vincent, there may be all possible progress consistent with substantial identity. And the method by which the progress of the Church of the present day is safeguarded and controlled is perpetual reversion to the primitive type; any substantial deviation from which is a sign of variation from the truth.
The Romanist opponent of Papal Infallibility laid the greatest stress on St. Vincent’s principle, while the Ultramontane attempted a distinction between implicit and explicit truth. Grant that the Catholic faith must be contained in the original deposit of Revelation, must its recognition have been explicit from the first? The Canon of St Vincent was asserted to be true in an affirmative sense, but not in a negative. Whatever satisfies the test of universality was undoubtedly part of the Catholic faith; but it did not follow that a doctrine which failed to fulfil the test was therefore uncatholic.
This distinction carried no conviction to a very large minority in the Roman Church, partly because the doctrine in question did not satisfy the test of universality, even in the nineteenth century, and partly because of the doctrine’s intrinsic character. They failed to see how a doctrine which explicitly affirmed the Pope’s independence of the Church’s consent could be a legitimate outcome of, and implicitly contained within, the principle of consent, which is the negative of that independence. Vincent placed the whole stress on universality and consent. The Ultramontane considered the Pope’s utterance infallible without that universality and consent. To the Roman opponents of the Vatican view these two theories seemed mutually exclusive. They could not reconcile the Vincentian Canon with the Vatican claim, nor reject St Vincent’s demand that progress must retain substantial identity. They remembered how Bishop Bossuet, intellectually the head of the seventeenth0century Church in France, had claimed for the Roman Catholic Church the distinctive glory of immutability—the quod semper of St. Vincent—as contrasted with the variations of Protestantism.
In the Vatican Council itself the Bishops appealed repeatedly to the Canon of St Vincent as a proof that the Infallibility doctrine formed no portion of the Catholic faith. Bishop Maret had already affirmed in the treatise which he sent to all the members of the Council that the principles of St Vincent can never legitimately issue in a system of absolute Infallibility and monarchy of each individual Pope. Bishop Hefele said that
“when differences on matters of faith arose in the primitive Church appeal was made to the Apostolic Churches, Rome, Alexandria, Antioch; and that only was dogmatically propounded to the faithful, which was universally believed. None of the ancients ever imagined that an infallible decision of controversies could be obtained by any shorter method at the hands of any single individual. On the contrary, Vincent said, let us follow universality, antiquity, consent.”
Another Bishop urged that according to the principle of St. Vincent no definition could be made without moral unanimity. We have no proof, said another Bishop, least of all from the first five centuries. And if nothing can ever be defined except that which has been believed always everywhere and by all by what right can we defend the Papal Infallibility? None but the Bishops, said another, can testify whether a doctrine is held always everywhere and by all. Consequently, he, and others with him demurred to the opinion that a Pope’s utterance could be infallible without the consent of the episcopate.
More emphatic still was the statement of the American Archbishop Kenrick:--
“The famous writer, Vincent of Lerins, in his golden treatise the Commonitorium, which has been highly esteemed for the last fourteen centuries . . . gives the rule by which a believer should guide himself when conflicting opinions arise among the Bishops: namely, that nothing is to be considered of Catholic faith which has not been acknowledged always everywhere and by all. When the Bishops disagree Vincent affirms that antiquity and universality are to be followed. He makes no reference to the Roman Pontiff whose opinion, according to the Pontifical Party, instantly determines all controversies of faith. This theory assuredly Vincent never heard of. And his contemporaries entirely agreed with him.”
The authors of Janus mad an equally strong appeal to St Vincent of Lerins.
“if the view of Roman Infallibility had existed anywhere in the church at that time, it could not have been possibly passed over in a book exclusively concerned with the question of the means for ascertaining the genuine Christian doctrine. But the author keeps to three notes of universality, permanence, and consent, and to the Ecumenical Councils.” (W.J. Sparrow Simpson, Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility [Milwaukee: The Young Churchman Press, 1910], 24-28)
