I posted this topic elsewhere, and would like to continue to get some feedback and response to it.
Does dogma develop? Does it develop either a) as merely a clarification or b) as discovery of new truth?
Or is dogma a deposit of faith which we guard? We "fence" dogma to guard it from heretics, but it does not develop.
From what I understand, all of the truth was given at the beginning, but our own personal understanding (and even an entire generation's undestanding) will sometimes need to be restated so that it is undestandable to that person/generation. Thus we clarify things as we go along, though we do not add anything to the tradition/revelation that Christ gave to the Apostles, who gave it to the Church. The dispute over Arianism is a good point of reference: everyone agreed that Christ was "God," but what did that mean? Was he God like the Father, or only made a god (like Moses, Ex. 7:1, only more holy)? The first and second ecumenical councils clarified this for those in the Church (who were many) who didn't quite understand the tradition that had been handed down to them. The tradition had been there from the beginning (Jesus is God and the Son of God), it's just that later generations asked questions about this meaning that required clarification. Whatdya think?
The faith has never been developed since doing so would also mean Orthodoxy is based on philosophical thought, like the Latin system.
Therefore "developed as in clarified" is completly false. It is true enough that the Orthodox "clarified" for the heretics and those weak in the faith that which was always believed, but to suggest that the Orthodox clarified, as in "believed something new", philosophized, or rationalized, that is wrong.
The Orthodox have never added to the faith, nor have they taken away. Everything we don't know is a Mystery, we do not "clarify" Mysteries like the Latins.
Paradosis,
Yes, I was initially drawn to that myself and would have selected it if it didn't have the word "develop" in front of it.
You can look at it from different angles and dpending on your train of thought, plug it into different definitions. I answered like I did because I thought it was important to understand that by "clarify", we actually do mean "guard" - it is a dangerous play on words.
We both said the same thing, but took the poll options to mean different things.
OOD,
Yes, I see what you mean, and I can see how it would lead down the wrong path to use the word develop (at the very least, it would be confusing). I must admit that I am also uncomfortable with other language as I usually associate it with the Western view of tradition, but in this I overreact I think. I normally do not like the word "deposit," for instance; yet today I came across this while I was looking for something else:
"Besides all this and before all, keep I pray you the good deposit, by which I live and work, and which I desire to have as the companion of my departure; with which I endure all that is so distressful, and despise all delights; the confession of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost." - Gregory the Theologian, Oration 40:41
Perhaps part of what plays into this discussion is whether we should make a sharp distinction between "big T" Traditions and "little t" traditions. I personally think this is a bad (=misleading) dinstinction to make, and almost always seems to lead to bad results. A distinction between custom and tradition is one thing, and saying that certain parts or the tradition can sometimes be not applicable to the letter (e.g., while the canons dealing with slavery are as relevant as ever in there spirit, the letter isn't directly applicable to us), but I think the big T/little t thing leads in the wrong direction.
