The doctrinal writings of the Fathers of the second half of the fourth century appear to us to be of a highly intellectual and speculative character. So indeed they are. But the evidence which we have considered so far has shown clearly enough that they were much more than an intellectual pastime, much more than the enjoyable exercise of the speculative imagination. In the eyes of the Fathers the presence of heresy made the task of doctrinal definition inevitable, while the close relation which they believed to exist between the doctrines being defined and the way of salvation made it not only an inevitable task but a vitally important one as well.

In the last three chapters we have been concerned with the main sources of doctrinal reasoning. But there is more to an argument than its source. We need to consider not only the grounds to which appeal was made, but also the way in which such appeals were conducted; not only the basis of the argument but also the pattern of argumentation is important.

The framework of thought in terms of which early doctrine was developed was provided by Greek philosophy. Our own approach to Christian faith is so firmly rooted in that tradition that it is not easy for us to imagine how it could ever have been otherwise. Père Danielou's book Théologie du Judéo-Christianisme, recently translated into English as The Theology of Jewish Christianity, is a useful aid towards such an act of historical imagination.

The last chapter was concerned with the influence exercised by the worshipping life of the Church on the development of doctrine. The Church's doctrines of Christ and of the Holy Spirit had to keep pace with the role ascribed to them in prayer and worship. Prayer and worship take many different forms. At their purest and highest they are concerned simply with the adoration of God in himself. It was for such worship that Basil argued the propriety of using a doxology in which the three persons of the Trinity are coordinated in equal balance. But worship is not always or all the time so disinterested a process.

In prayer man asks. He asks (if he is obedient to the famous saying which, though appearing in no known gospel, is ascribed by Clement of Alexandria and others to Jesus) ‘for the great things’, the things most needful for his spiritual well-being. In worship, especially in sacramental worship, he expects to receive those things for which he asks, the things which go to make up his salvation. Certainly Christian faith was never presented as nothing more than information about the true way of worshipping God. It was that but, because it was that, it was also and emphatically a way of salvation.

The basic distinction in the whole realm of human thought is that between the self and the not-self. It is here that the baby begins as he takes his first steps in human reasoning— first steps which may be the start of a road leading to the highest pinnacles of philosophical reflexion. So the Christian Church from the very start of her life found herself forced to articulate her beliefs and practices over against the non-Christian environment in which she was set. In the course of distinguishing between the self and the not-self the baby pays particular attention to those things which appear to stand somewhere on the borderland between the two—the extremities of his body, his fingers and toes, and the gloves and socks which he finds so closely associated with them. So also with the Church: it was those who stood on the borderland between her and the distinctively non-Christian environment outside who demanded the closest attention. It was in grappling with the heretic, the would-be Christian whom she was unwilling to recognize, that the Church was forced to articulate her beliefs with an ever-increasing measure of precision. It is only as the child grows up that he begins to indulge in reasoning as a conscious activity undertaken for its own sake in comparative detachment from the stimulus of immediate need.

The last chapter was an attempt to survey some aspects of the reasoning of the Fathers in doctrinal debate. But the aspect of their thinking which is most directly linked to the question of the development of doctrine is the way in which new ideas arose and were related to existing beliefs. Disputants about the theory of development have debated in what sense, if any, it is proper to speak of the emergence of new ideas at all. With this broader issue we need not now concern ourselves. It is self-evident that there was in some sense an emergence of new insights, whether in the ultimate analysis they are to be regarded as new revelation or new understanding of the old. The question which I wish now to investigate is the historical question how such new insights were assimilated and related to old ideas and formulations of belief.

There are two main ways in which new beliefs can be incorporated into an existing body of ideas. The most natural initial assumption is that all that is required is simply to add in the new beliefs without any modification or alteration of those already held. If this can be satisfactorily done, no problem arises. But very often the new belief does not conveniently fit into the existing pattern of ideas. In that case the new beliefs cannot simply be added in; they have rather to be added on as a series of awkwardly attached appendices.

Scripture as a source of Christian doctrine—it is tempting for one nurtured in the Reformed tradition to change the indefinite article into the definite. Is not sola scriptura the ground of Christian truth? Would it not therefore be truer to speak of Scripture as the source of Christian doctrine? However great one's sympathy with the concept of sola scriptura as a dogmatic principle, such a change would clearly falsify the facts with which we are here concerned and would also obscure the primary purpose of this section of our inquiry. It would falsify the facts because the emergence of the Scriptures and the development of doctrine were not successive stages in Christian history; in the earliest period of that history the two processes went on simultaneously. Scripture in the sense in which we use that word today could not be the source of the earliest developments in Christian doctrine for the very obvious reason that it was not then in existence in its present form to fulfil that role. But the change from speaking of Scripture as a source of Christian doctrine to speaking of it as the source would also obscure my intention in another way. To speak of it as the source of Christian doctrine would suggest to our minds the general content of the biblical revelation as a whole, but I shall be more concerned in this chapter with the influence of the written form upon the way in which doctrine developed.

It is not always easy to remember that theo-logians say their prayers and take their part in the worship of the Church. We are most likely to overlook this basic fact when we read some of the more harshly polemical writings of the early Fathers. Yet many of them were bishops, not merely participants but leaders in the liturgical life of the Church. And the fiercer the controversy in which they were involved, the more important it is to recall the influence of the Church's worship upon their doctrinal beliefs. For it is often there that the key to understanding the fervour and the bitterness of the controversy lies. Men do not normally feel so deeply over matters of formal doctrinal statement unless those matters are felt to bear upon the practice of their piety. The close interrelation of doctrine and worship is an important element in explaining the desperate seriousness with which issues of doctrine were regarded in the early centuries.

The importance of the early Church's worship as a clue to the understanding of many features of the New Testament has been much stressed in recent years. The main emphasis in such studies has lain upon liturgical practice as helping to explain the way in which different New Testament writings have come to take their present form. But the practice of worship is almost equally important for any study of doctrinal development within the New Testament period.

The great doctrinal definitions of the early Church were the outcome of a closely contested process of reasoning. My aim in this study has been to give a critical review of some of the main aspects of that reasoning process. In particular we have considered three of the fundamental grounds of argumentation: the appeals to Scripture, to the experience of worship, and to the requirements of soteriology; and two important aspects of the way in which the reasoning was conducted: the tendency to objectification and the manner of incorporating new ideas into an existing body of agreed doctrine. In the course of this survey I have suggested a number of points at which the reasoning used seems to me to be open to serious criticism. Not everyone will agree with all the points that I have made, but equally few will, I imagine, be prepared to claim that the reasoning of the Fathers in these matters is wholly free from blemish. The final question we have to raise is what conclusions ought to be drawn from such a survey about the nature of the development of doctrine and about the attitude which it is reasonable to adopt towards the conclusions reached by the early Church.

‘Dr owen chadwick, in his book From Bossuet to Newman, has provided a superb historical survey of the material [relating to the question of doctrinal development] but no Anglican theologian seems to have thought the problem itself worthy of his attention.’ So writes Dr Mascall, charging not only my Cambridge colleagues who contributed to Soundings but Anglican theologians at large with this sin of omission. It is no disrespect to Dr Chadwick's scholarship to say that I find little cause for surprise that his historical researches should not have given rise to much modern theological discussion of the question of doctrinal development. The historical story is full of fascination. One reads and one admires; one admires not only the narrator of the story but also the characters within it; one admires the broad sweep of their intellectual convictions and the detailed subtlety of their individual reasonings. But it is like reading a debate about the movements of the planets before the invention of the telescope. The general problems with which they were concerned are real problems; but the particular problems to which they addressed themselves so vigorously are not ours; and, more emphatically still, the way in which they approached them is not and cannot be ours. And so it is only in the most general manner that the historical treatment points on to the theological.

THE BACKGROUND OF THE STRUGGLE

A salient feature of Roman domestic politics during the century or so preceding the final collapse of republicanism was the fierce antagonism between the so-called Optimates and Populares. They opposed and sometimes fought each other, and often claimed—each side after its own fashion—to be the champions of libertas. It would therefore be worth while seeing whether the rival contentions of the Optimates and Populares affected the conception of political freedom during Rome's transition from the Republican form of government to the Principate. For this purpose the true character of the Roman constitution, and the manner in which it actually worked—as distinct from its underlying principles and inherent potentialities—needs to be considered.

The form of government between the Second Punic War and the Gracchi, which Polybius and Cicero described as a mixed constitution, was in fact an aristocratic republic in everything but name. This fact was apparent to contemporaries, and even frankly admitted by the very supporters of that régime. It ought, however, to be added that the ascendancy of the nobility must have been established without straining the constitution, for observers so divergent in standpoint and opinion as Cicero and Sallust agree that the Middle Republic was, in the main, a period of concord and model government.

THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM

Lucan, writing the later part of his epic in defiance of Nero's tyranny, observed that ever since the battle of Pharsalus there had been afoot a conflict between liberty and Caesar, and Tacitus remarked that prior to Nerva the Principate and freedom were incompatible. It is a well-known fact that the Julio-Claudian and Flavian emperors had from time to time to face an opposition varying in form and intensity. After Caligula's assassination Libertas was the watchword of those who attempted to abolish the Principate; some of Nero's victims died with the name of Iuppiter Liberator on their lips; and after Nero's downfall Libertas Restituta became a popular slogan. It seems therefore that in some form or other freedom and the Principate clashed, and, in a way, Tacitus's historical writings, particularly the Annals, were perhaps conceived and executed as the story of that struggle.

But while the conflict between the Principate and libertas under the emperors from Tiberius to Domitian appears to have been a fact, it is by no means clear what was the nature of that conflict.

THE STRUGGLE OF THE ITALIANS FOR CIVIC RIGHTS

Of the two cardinal notions that Roman libertas comprised, namely the republican constitution and the rights inherent in Roman citizenship, the former, on the showing of the extant evidence, was by far the more prominent in the presentation of libertas by politicians and political writers at Rome during the Late Republican period. Except on such occasions as those on which the Populares upheld the civic right of provocatio against magisterial action supported by a S.C. Ultimum, libertas as a political watchword in the struggle of factions in Rome meant in the first place a form of government, and not the rights and liberties of the individual citizen. This tendency in the conception of libertas is due, not to a slackening of the appreciation of personal freedom, but to the fact that, while the rights inherent in Roman citizenship seemed firmly established, the traditional form of republican government underwent a severe test, and as time went on it became more and more doubtful whether that form of government was adequate, and whether it would continue at all.

But unlike the politicians in the city of Rome who regarded libertas as a certain form of government, the Latins and Allies who rose against Rome to assert their freedom seem to have had in mind civic rights above all else.