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The Perennial Apologetic of the Church

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2024

Norbert Drewitt O.P.
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Hilaire Belloc defined the attitude of the Catholic apologete to his sources, when he wrote: “I say the Catholic ‘conscience’ of history—I say ‘conscience’—that is, an intimate knowledge through identity: the intuition of a thing which is one with the knower—I do not say ‘the Catholic Aspect of History.’ This talk of ‘aspects’ is modem and therefore part of a decline: it is false, and therefore ephemeral: I will not stoop to it.”

Tertullian, too, was a Catholic apologete in act, when he wrote, of the Church in the third century: ‘‘Is it likely that so many churches, and they so great, should have gone astray into one and the same faith? No casualty distributed among many men issues in one and the same result. Error of doctrine in the churches must necessarily have produced various issues. When, however, that which is deposited among many is found to be one and the same it is not the result of error, but of tradition.” As Thomists would express it, more exactly: for this agreement no cause is given except it be one alone, namely the identity of the primitive dogmatic and hierarchic seed set in the world by Christ. This is certain.

Type
Research Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 17 , Issue 193 , April 1936 , pp. 279 - 285
Copyright
Copyright © 1936 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Europe and the Faith, Introduction, p. vii.

2 De pascriptione haweticorurn, xxviii. We assume, the essential solidarity of the Church in the third century, the age of Tertullian, with the Catholic Church of to-day. The fact is granted by all great contemporary students of Christian origins, and has been so granted even since the floruit of Auguste Sabatier. And one need only mention the name of Harnack. The only notable exception is suggested by the illustrious name of Gore. But falsely, since he did not dissolve the work of his equally illustrious critic, Abbot Chapman. Even that interchange of ideas and source-penetrations is a thing long forgotten. Our emphasis here is upon the link behind that link, and upon the valid mode of approach.

3 St. Thomas, Summa Tbologica, Ia, q. I, a. 8. Also R. Gamgou-Lagrange, O.P., De Revelatione, 3rd Ed., pp. 19–28; P. Gardeil, La Crédibilité et L'Apologétique, 2nd Ed., p. xi; Jacques Maritain, De la Philasophie Chrétienne, pp. 89 et sqq.

4 Cf. Vatican Council (Denzinger, 1794).

5 Friedrich von Hügel, The Mystical Element of Religion, Vol. I, 2nd FA., p. 26.

6 Cf. St. Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles, lib. I, c. vi. Also von Hiigel's fine passage in The Mystical Element of Religion, Vol. I. pp. xxxi, xxxii. It completes and extends the beautiful development quoted above, showing the Saint as an Alter Christus, sharing in the majesty and beauty of the character of Christ, and hence extending the compelling “evidential strength” (if so banal an expression may enter here) of His Personality in all its holiness, to His members in the Church, His Body: hence communicating to her the probative, inevitable, “note” of Holiness, compelling assent.

7 Cf. St. Thomas' beautiful hymn, the Adoro te devote.

8 Irenæus, Adversus hæreses, iii, 3.

9 The famous dictum of Vincent of Lerins.