Doctrinal Development, Doctrinal Corruption, and Law: A Contribution of Saint John Henry Newman, the New Doctor of the Church, to Legal Philosophy and to the Foundations of Canon Law

Abstract

This article explores the reception of the arguments of the new Doctor of the Church, St. John Henry Newman, regarding the development of doctrine and the necessary tests for identifying doctrinal corruption, by legal philosophers and by canon lawyers who study the foundational aspects of law in the Church. Having presented the status quaestionis of such scholarly reception and elaboration, the article offers some further remarks on the ways in which Newman’s ideas in this field provide the occasion for identifying and elucidating natural law and divine law – especially when these orders of law are understood to constitute the objects of the virtue of justice – as the legal analogues of immutable theological truths, which must be safeguarded from their potential distortion in the context of authentic organic development of (theological or legal) doctrines.