57. THE MEANING OF THE FORMULAE
IN THE MIND OF THE APOSTLES.—What has just been said of God’s mind must be
likewise said of the minds of the Apostles. Not precisely because revelation
was made to them immediately by God—since both the Prophets and the
Hagiographers also received their revelations immediately from God,--but
because revelation was made to them as the heads or chiefs of the Church of the
New Testament, in whom the plenitude of divine revelation on earth was
consummated and brought to a close.
Where mere prophets or inspired authors
are concerned it is not absolutely necessary that they should explicitly know
all the implicit meaning contained in the formulae revealed or inspired by God
to them. According to St. Thomas, not even true prophets know all that the Holy
Spirit intends to signify by the visions, words or events revealed to them; and
there is no inconsistency in saying that today we understand the prophecies and
revelations of the Old Testament much more explicitly and fully than the
Prophets themselves on account of the fuller divine or dogmatic explication of
those prophecies and revelations given us by Jesus Christ, the Apostles, and
His Church.
But the Apostles were much more
than mere prophets or mere hagiographers. As supreme teachers of the full and
definitive revelation, and as foundations of the Church until the end of time, traditional
theology acknowledges in the Apostles the special privilege of having
received through infused light an explicit understanding of divine
revelation greater than that which all the theologians, or even the Church as a
whole, possess or will possess up to the end of time.
Hence, all the dogmas are
already defined by the Church and all those that will be defined in the future existed
in the minds of the Apostles, not mediately or virtually or implicitly, but immediately,
formally, explicitly. Their mode of knowing the revealed deposit was not
like ours. We know by means of partial and human concepts, that implicitly
and virtually contain much more understanding than they express, and require
effort and time successively to unfold or explicate what is contained in them.
They knew by means of divine or infused light, which is a simple
supernatural understanding that in one stroke actualizes and illumines all the implicitude
and virtuality.
Thus, if we take as a term of
comparison the meaning of the revealed deposit as it was in the mind of the
Apostles in order to compare it with the meaning that we know, then something
similar to what we said of the mind of God must be said; namely, that there has
been no progress but rather diminution or retrogression. We know, and will
know, the meaning of the revealed deposit much less and less explicitly than
what the Apostles knew. When we talk of dogmatic progress, it must not be understand
to mean progress beyond what the Apostles knew. Therefore, the mind of the
Apostles cannot be the starting point or primitive datum required in order to
detect the presence or the absence of dogmatic progress. (Francisco
Marín-Sola, The Homogeneous Evolution of Catholic Dogma [trans.
Antonio T. Piñon; Manila, Philippines: Santo Tomas University Press, 1988], 171-73,
emphasis in bold added)
