With two, going on three, years of living with Covid, we’ve all become accustomed to certain dangers and also protective measures—and testing procedures and kits.
Besides concern for physical health and well-being, how about spiritual? Is there any way we can test ourselves about our religious belief and practice? Is it good? Is it right? Is it Orthodox? Is it in accordance with the will of God?
Especially with the kind of polarization that seems to afflict modern thought, including politics and religion, it gets harder and harder to get things right.
Is there a simple, easy, and reliable test we can use?
Believe it or not, St. Vincent of Lérins, a Gallic monk, who lived about 1,800 years ago in what we now call France, proposed a simple and easy test for healthy faith:
Believe that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.
In other words, test for universality, antiquity, and consent. He identified this as being truly and properly “Catholic” (meaning “universal”).
He explained, “We shall follow
-universality if we acknowledge that one Faith to be true which the whole Church throughout the world confesses;
-antiquity if we in no way depart from those interpretations which it is clear that our ancestors and fathers proclaimed;
-consent, if in antiquity itself we keep following the definitions and opinions of all, or certainly nearly all, bishops and doctors alike.
Is this an iron-clad, absolutely effective, always faultless test? Of course not! No human devising ever can be—but it’s pretty accurate and a useful tool for self-examination.
Remember, St. Vincent of Lérins also wrote strikingly about the difference between development and alteration:
Is there to be no development of religion in the Church of Christ? Certainly, there is to be development and on the largest scale.
Development means that each thing expands to be itself, while alteration means that a thing is changed from one thing into another.
The understanding, knowledge, and wisdom of one and all, of individuals as well as of the whole Church, ought then to make great and vigorous progress with the passing of the ages and the centuries, but only along its own line of development, that is, with the same doctrine, the same meaning, and the same impact.
Vincent compared this kind of development with that of the body: Though bodies develop and unfold their component parts with the passing of the years, they always remain what they were.
If you sometimes feel uncomfortable with certain changes and developments in the Church, which you may consider to be too “newfangled” to be trusted, it may be of some consolation to realize that change and development have always been part of the life of the church—and part of the growth of the church.
St. Vincent was trying his best to assure his monastic brothers and others who read his writings that all is well.
Growth, development, and new insights and understandings can be very valuable, healthy, progressive—and vice-versa! Sorting out the differences is a pretty tricky business.
It’s reassuring to realize that this is not a new or exclusively recent phenomenon. St. Vincent was trying to clarify a similar situation centuries ago. His test is still good!
13 November 2022