Doctrine or Doctrinal Policy?
This essay draws inspiration from a curious yet telling expression used by the Italian theologian Massimo Faggioli in his work, A Council for the Global Church: Receiving Vatican II in History.[1] When commenting on the efforts of John Paul II and Benedict XVI to interpret the Second Vatican Council, he refers to their “doctrinal policy” several times.[2] The term “policy” has its natural habitat in the realm of politics. Statesmen implement policies to achieve particular results for the common good entrusted to them. Thus, the Oxford English Dictionary defines “policy” as “a course of action adopted and pursued by a government, party, ruler, statesman, etc.; any course of action adopted as advantageous or expedient.” From here, the word also acquired a more general meaning, always in reference to conduct or action: “prudent, expedient, or advantageous procedure; prudent or politic course of action.” We may think of the procedures companies have to deal with potentially dissatisfied clients, such as when vendors formulate “return policies.” From these examples and definitions, we can conclude that policies can be more or less appropriate for achieving more or less desirable ends. Someone implements a policy in pursuit of a practical goal he wants to advance.
In what follows, I will ask what notion of doctrine is necessary to allow us meaningfully to speak of doctrine as something at the service of a policy. Next, I will consider the repercussions of this idea of doctrine for our understanding of theology. I am not claiming that Faggioli thinks this way about doctrine or theology. I am simply trying to make sense of an expression he uses because I consider it symptomatic of a more general tendency. While I hope to provide a coherent account, I cannot exclude the possibility that his would be different.
Faith Seeking Understanding
The traditional understanding of theology is “faith seeking understanding,” as St. Anselm said. We may also emphasize that what motivates this movement is love, as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith clarifies in its Instruction Donum Veritatis. The Congregation draws on St. Bonaventure for this point. Love wants to know more about the beloved and endeavors to understand him better.[3] This striving to know more is an intellectual activity that seeks the truth about the beloved.
Joseph Ratzinger considers theology to be a distinctive feature of the Christian religion. According to him, theology “results from the fusion of biblical faith and Greek rationality on which even the historical Christianity to be found in the New Testament already rests.”[4] Christian faith is faith in the Logos, the Eternal Reason through which all things were created. This faith believes in a divinity that decided to reveal itself. While this revelation is not reducible to or deducible from reason, it has something reasonable about it that can be understood and explored more deeply by the human intellect. Indeed, the Church believes that, as she learns from the Gospel of John, in Christ, the Eternal Logos, the Eternal Word or Reason was made flesh. Faith, the human response to this divine initiative, takes two forms. As fides qua creditur, it is a personal act of trust in God the Revealer. As fides quae creditur, it is a belief in the content of this revelation. The content of divine revelation lends itself to scientific, that is, systematic reflection guided by reason. This is where theology comes in.
For example, the New Testament refers to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, but does not explain their relationship. This sparked the question: Do Christians believe in one God or three? Here reason, motivated by love, strives to understand more deeply what has been revealed. Ultimately, this effort is an ecclesial exercise, and the teaching authority of the Church has elevated some of the results of theological reflection to the level of “doctrine” or “dogma.” These are truths about God that are considered “acquired” or established, so theologians cannot go back on them. However, they can try to explore them more deeply. Examples include the trinitarian and the christological dogmas, such as the Hypostatic Union.
The Kingdom of God is not ours to build. Though already present among us, it resembles a treasure hidden in a field or a mustard seed that grows by God’s own initiative. Nowhere does Scripture tell us to “build” the Kingdom.
Within this framework, one can discuss whether a proposed teaching is true or false—that is, whether it corresponds to or fails to correspond to what God has really revealed about himself. Questions of politics do not as such enter into the discussion, or, if they do, then only as an additional consideration. One could be convinced of a doctrine’s truth and still discuss the expediency of its formal definition. For example, St. John Henry Cardinal Newman argued against formally defining the doctrine of papal infallibility not because he thought it was false but because he did not think it was prudent to elevate it to the level of formal dogma at that time.[5]
From Nominalism to Positivism
How did we transition from “doctrine” to “doctrinal policy,” shifting the focus from divine truth to political expediency? I would argue that the root of the problem is a new understanding of truth. When in 1882 Friedrich Nietzsche declared the death of God, he had the entire realm of metaphysics in mind.[6] One might say that he diagnosed the endpoint of a process that had begun with the rise of nominalism in the late Middle Ages.[7] Nominalism is probably best understood as the result of events rather than the outcome of dialectical tensions inherent in the High Medieval synthesis. Events such as the Europeans’ discovery of the Americas, the proof of the material homogeneity of the universe, and the Protestant Reformation were each capable of shaking the worldview of medieval Christendom. Additionally, the deleterious effects of the bubonic plague pandemic that ravaged Europe in the mid-fourteenth century must be considered. This pandemic killed more than a third of the population and took a particular toll on the Church’s intelligentsia since her priests, as ministers to the sick, were disproportionately exposed to this lethal infection.[8]
According to nominalism, only individuals are real. There are no eternal forms in the Platonic realm of ideas, in the mind of God, or anywhere else. There are no natures and thus no rational standards for what is right or wrong. The commandments are what they are simply because God said so. There is no inherent reason why God, in his absolute power, could not command hatred, stealing, or committing adultery, which would then become meritorious.[9] Without forms, natures, or essences, there is nothing to understand because understanding involves mentally inserting a thing into a larger context, whose existence is now denied. Nominalism marks the beginning of the end of metaphysics, with repercussions for ethics, philosophy, and theology.
How can we say anything “true” about goodness, justice, existence, or God? The truth cannot be the conformity of our minds with these supersensual realities because reality is out of reach when it comes to these matters. So what can we still know? In the early to mid-eighteenth century, Giambattista Vico developed the idea that we can ultimately know only what we have produced ourselves: “verum et factum reciprocantur”—the true is convertible with what is made.[10] This is why he assigned a central role to the study of history. However, it was not long before reasonable doubts arose as to the extent to which humans are really the authors of their own history. Considering the unpredictability and randomness of historical events, as well as the fact that human agents, whether acting individually or collectively, rarely achieve their intended outcomes, it seems much more intelligent to look elsewhere for the truth we produce. Enter positivism and its principle of empirical verification. According to this principle, we can only know what can be inserted into an experiment, what is repeatable and quantifiable, or, in sum, what can be the object of the scientific method. Here, Vico’s principle is brought to a head. I know a thing if I know how it is made. The perfect experiment amounts to reproducing the object under study.
Positivism has become the dominant outlook in academia. As a result, theology and philosophy are denied scientific status. To the extent that theology presupposes the faith it seeks to understand, the scientific method of empirical verification is inapplicable to it. Therefore, strictly speaking, theology cannot be considered a science. However, there is a way to study faith “scientifically.” This does not mean trying to gain a deeper understanding of its inherent logic but rather examining the empirically verifiable effects of faith—mostly in terms of the fides qua—on individuals, cultures, and societies. For example, one could measure mass attendance and correlate it with other quantifiable phenomena, such as marital stability, family size, or voting patterns. Thus, we have religious studies, but not theology.
Theology and Power
From the perspective of a post-metaphysical age, what meaning could one see in the endeavors of those who still claim to practice theology today? One can take Vico’s verum quia factum beyond positivism. At its core, positivism, with its scientific method of verifying or falsifying hypotheses through experiments, shares a common conviction with pragmatism: “true” is what works. Now pragmatism can also be applied to the political realm. In this sense, for Richard Rorty truth ultimately amounts to solidarity.[11] The Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo identifies truth with charity, advocating a so-called “weak reason” that stays clear of metaphysical commitments.[12] When stating that truth is charity, he intends to provide a formal definition of truth, while understanding charity solely as love of neighbor. If a doctrine, conviction, or teaching promotes neighborly love, then it is true. Doctrine becomes a matter of desirable goals. If a doctrine’s content genuinely promotes these goals, then it is “true.” At this point, doctrine becomes doctrinal policy and thus an instrument of power.
From this perspective, Faggioli’s approach to doctrine makes sense. For example, at one point he discusses some magisterial interventions regarding ecclesiology, such as the CDF’s 1992 Instruction Communionis Notio on the Church understood as communion or John Paul II’s 1998 Apostolic Constitution Apostolos Suos on the theological and juridical nature of episcopal conferences. According to Faggioli, the Holy See at that time promoted these teachings as a “doctrinal policy” to strengthen the power of the central Vatican agencies over individual bishops and bishops’ conferences.[13] However, following this logic, one can take things further than Faggioli does. Within this conceptual framework, the definitions of early councils, such as those of Nicaea (325 AD) and Chalcedon (451 AD), can be interpreted in terms of whose power they promoted. For example, the doctrines that Christ is consubstantial with the Father, or that he is true God and true man—one divine person having a human and a divine nature—are then “true” inasmuch as they further particular political goals.
If doctrine amounts to doctrinal policy set forth by ecclesial authority, what is the role of theology? In a post-metaphysical context, the “truths of faith” cannot refer to a relationship between the human mind and the reality of the things of God, which is why the goal of theology cannot be a rational understanding of these “truths.” After all, we cannot know anything about such matters. In this context, Christian doctrine and theological engagement with it can at most regard goals concerning human life at the individual and collective levels, as well as the means to achieve them. We should strive for the Kingdom of God, where justice and equality prevail, and neighborly love is the means to this state. Therefore, any doctrine that is perceived as cementing structures of inequality would then be wrong by definition, given that “true” is what promotes equality. It is easy to see why teachings such as the hierarchical constitution of the Church, rooted in the sacrament of orders, would look increasingly suspect.
As doctrines are instruments of power, so is theology, which reflects on them or even produces them. It can then be divided into two fundamental categories. Reactionary theology tends to look backward, offering reasons for doctrines that protect the status quo and ensure that those in power remain there. Progressive theology, on the other hand, provides reasons for doctrines that challenge the status quo and promote a more even distribution of power. In either case, theological argumentation revolves around questions of power, serving doctrinal policies that either promote the status quo or foster change.
Without divine truths in the classical, metaphysical sense—as the mind’s correspondence (if only as “in a mirror, dimly”) with supersensual realities that cannot be empirically verified or produced by human hands—theology as faith and love seeking understanding cannot exist. Theology will then become pragmatistic: its “truth” will come to reside in the right praxis it produces, so that its full realization will be in liberation theology. What does God want from us if not to build the Kingdom on earth? How can we build the Kingdom of Heaven except by destroying every unjust yoke and breaking every chain? Building the Kingdom means giving a voice to the poor and creating a society of peace and equality, where the lion lies down with the lamb. Under these premises, true theology then invests its intellectual vigor in devising and promoting (doctrinal) policies that liberate the poor and dispossess the rich. Anything it says about the Trinity, Christ, the Church, or the sacraments is only “true” to the extent that it leads to these objectives.
One of the fundamental fallacies of liberation theology—and indeed of any form of pragmatistic theology—is what Eric Voegelin calls the “immanentization of the eschaton.”[14] The Kingdom of God is not ours to build. Though already present among us, it resembles a treasure hidden in a field or a mustard seed that grows by God’s own initiative. Nowhere does Scripture tell us to “build” the Kingdom. Seeking to bring about through our own efforts what is, in fact, the gratuitous promise of a future reality—to render the eschaton immanent—is, according to Voegelin, the central error of what he calls “Gnosticism.” This approach has never succeeded, nor can it ever succeed, for the simple reason that God is greater than we are.
“In the Beginning Was the Word”
We started by asking what might be meant by “doctrinal policies” and ended with the immanentization of the eschaton. At the center of this trajectory lies the crisis of reason, which began with nominalism and its denial of reason’s capacity to touch ultimate realities. Can we meaningfully raise the question of meaning itself? Or is our knowledge limited to what can be fashioned by human hands? Does human nature exist—and with it, a human destiny that we can either fulfill or fail to attain? Can reason say anything about these issues? Is God’s revelation on these matters real, or does it just come down to religious leaders trying to motivate us to be nice to one another?
The prologue of the Gospel of John takes a decisive stance on these fundamental questions. It expresses a core conviction of the Christian faith: “In the beginning was the Word” (Jn 1:1)—the Logos, Eternal Reason. As Joseph Ratzinger explains, the Evangelist teaches us that “the foundation of being is itself reason and that reason does not represent an accidental byproduct from the ocean of the irrational from which everything really came.”[15] If human reason were merely the result of “chance and necessity,” then it would ultimately dissolve into irrationality and negate itself.[16] On such a basis, not even a positivistic theology (=religious studies), focused on measurable expressions of faith, nor a pragmatistic theology (=liberation theology), aimed at effecting social change, could claim to be rational endeavors—regardless of how empirically verifiable or practically effective their outcomes might appear. Either reason is at the origin of all things, or it is an illusion. But if reason truly stands at the beginning—if it constitutes the foundation of being—then it is meaningful for faith to examine its own foundations and content. As Ratzinger puts it, theology properly begins when this reflection “takes place in an organized manner and under commonly recognized and well-founded rules that we describe as its method.”[17] Understood in this light, “Christian theology does not just interpret texts”—nor, we may add, is it simply a tool for social transformation. Rather “it asks about truth itself and it sees man (and woman) as capable of truth.”[18]
[1] Massimo Faggioli, A Council for the Global Church: Receiving Vatican II in History (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015). I first encountered Faggioli’s idea of “doctrinal policy” while reading Michael Hanby’s insightful article, “Synodality, Sociologism, and the Judgment of History,” in Communio 48 (2021), 686–726.
[2] See, for instance Faggioli, A Council for the Global Church, 1, 3, 6, 19, 21, 22, 28, 49, 79, 81, 88, 198, 225, 259.
[3] Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction Donum Veritatis. On the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian, May 24, 1990, n. 7.
[4] Joseph Ratzinger, “Theology and the Church’s Political Stance,” in Church, Ecumenism, and Politics (Slough, UK: St. Paul Publications, 1988), 152.
[5] See John Henry Newman, Letter to Bishop Ullathorne of January 28,1870, in Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, vol. XXV (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), 18–20.
[6] Friedrich Nietzsche, Gay Science (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 120 (aphorism 125).
[7] For an excellent account of how nominalism led to the demise of metaphysics, see: Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 2012).
[8] See, for instance, Philip Ziegler, The Black Death (Glasgow: William Collins Sons & Co., 1969), chapter 17: “The Effects on the Church and Man’s Mind.”
[9] See William of Ockham, Reportatio II, q. 15, n. 38; reproduced in English in: William of Ockham, Questions on Virtue, Goodness, and the Will (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 245.
[10] See Giambattista Vico, On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 45. See also the further development of this idea in Vico’s later work The New Science (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1948), 85, paragraph 331.
[11] Richard Rorty, “Solidarity or Objectivity?” in M. Krausz (ed.), Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 169.
[12] Gianni Vattimo and René Girard, Christianity, Truth, and Weakening Faith: A Dialogue (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 51.
[13] As he writes, “It seemed that power was being reclaimed by the Church’s head in Rome at the expense of the Church’s body throughout the world” (A Council for the Global Church, 22).
[14] See Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1952).
[15] Ratzinger, “Theology and the Church’s Political Stance,” 152.
[16] See ibid., 153–154. When speaking of “chance and necessity,” Ratzinger references Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity. An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology (New York: Knopf, 1971). The argument that a reason not rooted in the divine Logos is reduced to the irrational is a recurring theme in Ratzinger’s work. For example, it can also be found in: Joseph Ratzinger, “The Truth of Christianity?” in Truth and Tolerance (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 181.
[17] Ratzinger, “Theology and the Church’s Political Stance,” 154.
[18] Ibid.
