What is Dogma?
an overview, p.2
The Church was not established by Christ so that God would reveal through her new truths that he had not yet revealed. The Church is only supposed to guard the truths already revealed and infallibly instruct about them, so it is not true that God reveals a new truth through the definition of the Church.
Dogma is truth revealed by God and given as such for belief by the Church, either through the Church's solemn definition or through daily teaching. They are not dogmas of truth strictly connected with the revealed ones, such as dogmatic facts or theological conclusions.
Dogmatic facts and conclusions are not dogmas. Although they may be infallibly defined by the Church, they are not revealed by God. Other teachings proclaimed by the Church are not dogmas: religious teachings of popes in encyclicals, decisions of Roman congregations, etc.
Dogmas speak about God in imperfect human concepts, but what corresponds to them is actually in God, although in a far more perfect way than these concepts express. Dogmas are not symbols of any feelings, nor metaphors, nor guidelines for life, but they are objective truth about God.
Modernists claim that dogmas are not free from errors and contradictions. According to them, there are also visible scientific and historical errors in the holy books. Pope Pius X states that the above sentences are tantamount to attributing a lie to God himself.
After the death of the Apostles, there were and will be no new revelations. These truths, which the Church has declared as revealed, cannot undergo any significant change in content and meaning. New formulas or names may be created to better express revealed truths, but these formulas cannot change the meaning.
Christ, when sending the Apostles to teach the world, defined for them and his successors what they were to teach until the end of the world. Christ (personally and through the Holy Spirit) revealed to all the Apostles everything that God decided to reveal to people, so after their death there is no new revelation.
The apostles clearly order their successors to preach not their ideas, but the teaching deposited with them by the Holy Spirit. This is explained by St. Vincent: "What is a deposit? What has been entrusted, not what has been invented. What you received, not what you made up.”
The Church proclaims the immutability of dogmas, but allows their development. The stability and development of dogmas is explained by St. Vincent: “Let it be more clearly understood what was previously believed, although it was darker. Let posterity be glad that they have understood what ancient times worshiped.”
The new dogma does not differ in content from the previously proclaimed one. The same truth is presented in greater detail in the new one, emphasizing certain points. This is because throughout history new heresies attack again the same truth, but in a different way.
Often, truths are not revealed 'explicite', but 'implicite', and these truths need to be analyzed for them to come to light. This analysis was often left undone for a long time because they were not directly attacked by heretics, and the implicit belief in these truths was sufficient in a given era in the Church.
source: Outline of Catholic Dogmatics, fr. dr. M. Sieniatycki
#dogma
The law of nature in the philosophy of St. Augustine
St Augustine did not recognise the existence of natural law as a sui generis separate legal order, implicitly distinguishing only the lex aeterna and the lex temporalis. Eternal law is not possible for man to investigate on his own in its entirety given the frailty of human nature (and therefore of human reason) after the fall of Adam.
Only in part are all human beings able to decode the content of the divine law by means of their reason (thanks to illumination) and this part constitutes precisely the lex naturalis - a reflection of the lex aeterna, which does not escape the cognitive abilities of man. Moreover, it is an immanent part of rational man (whether Christian or pagan).
On the essence of the law of nature in St Augustine's philosophy, Victor Kornatowski writes as follows: "standing below and encompassing the eternal law, the law of nature consists of the principles of morality written by Providence in the rational soul. Man, coming into the world, brings these principles with him, and when he reaches rational age, he discovers and becomes aware of the law implanted by God, which is for him an inner light, and the completion of which is Christ".
Thus, God can present to man the lex aeterna (i.e. His will and the truth about the ideal order of the world; norms of an immutable nature) only by means of illumination, since man himself has deprived himself of the natural possibility of knowing it through original sin. The content of the law of nature, on the other hand, is reduced by St Augustine to religiously conceived morality.
In view of this, maintaining St Augustine's quasi-tribulation of law, it is divided, according to him, into: (1) divine law (the whole), (2) the part of divine law which, through illumination, man is able to know by reason, and (3) statute law.
If the law of nature were not contentually identical to the divine law, then one would have to condemn God's command to Abraham to kill his son Isaac, or the command to King Saul through the prophet Samuel to slaughter the Amalekites one of the indigenous peoples of the land of Canaan.
Finally, the prohibition to kill other people (in principle) is decoded - thanks to illumination - by means of reason from the divine law and recognised by people as a natural law (deriving from the general principle - "do not do unto others as you would have them do unto you"). However, given that God is absolutely just, a conclusion undermining His ontological absolute would be unwarranted.
Sources
E.L. Fortin, St Augustine, [in:] L. Strauss, J. Cropsey, History of Political Philosophy, Warsaw 2010,
s. 190-193.
W. Kornatowski, The social and political thought of St. Augustine, Warsaw1965, p. 213.
R. Regout, La doctrine de la guerre juste de Saint Augustin à nos jours d'après les théologiens et les
canonistes catholiques, Paris 1934, pp. 39-44, after: A. Wielomski, Augustinian theology of law [in:].
M. Cisek, Ł. Święcicki (eds.), Crime and punishment in political and economic thought, Warsaw 2018, p. 45.
#naturallaw
