Semper, ubique, ab omnibus?

Thomas Guarino (Vincent of Lerins) outlines Newman’s arguments against the Vincentian canon (orthodoxy is what is taught always, everywhere, by everyone). In his Essay on Development, Newman provides historical examples “to demonstrate that the first rule is, at beast, a leaky and dubious criterion. As Newman boldly says . . . ‘I do not see in what sense it can be said that there is a consensus of primitive divines in its [the doctrine of the Trinity’s] favor” (54). 

There is as much consensus for Roman Catholic positions that Anglicans reject, so Anglicans cannot consistently hold to this first rule. And, as Guarino says, while Newman affirms the Trinity, he insists that “one cannot warrant the Trinity on the basis of the consensus of the most primitive divines” (54). Specifically, “the status of the Holy Spirit as a distinct divine person within the Godhead, while today taken for granted as bedrock Christian orthodoxy, was contested even in the late fourth century, and so it hardly constitutes a teaching that meets the Vincentian criteria of always, everywhere, and by everyone” (55).

Guarino concedes that Newman is right, if Vincent’s canon is understood in a “strict and unyielding” way, which, he also admits, was the way the canon was understood by Newman’s contemporaries. But Guarino doesn’t think this is a fair reading of Vincent himself. For one thing, Vincent combined his canon (his “first rule”) with a theory about the development of doctrine, so he can hardly have believed that everything came fully formed to the earliest fathers. Besides, Vincent doesn’t present the canon “as a bald criterion that stands on its own. The canon, or first rule, is always instantiated in determinate ecclesial structures [such as ecumenical councils]. This is simply to say that the canon only lives and breathes, only comes to life, in and through Sacred Scripture and, particularly on disputed points, Scripture as interpreted by the church” (61). This means that the fact of dispute over the Trinity doesn’t falsify the canon, since Nicaea is the “theological place” where the canon is instantiated (62).

This is an improvement, but I still have doubts. How was one to apply Vincent’s canon in the fourth century when, despite Nicaea, all the world had become Arian? How was one to know in the middle of the conflicts that Nicaea would emerge as the consensus of the church, rather than a misstep? How can one apply Vincent’s canon to, for instance, the dogmatic statements of Vatican II? 

To say that the canon is instantiated in this place is inevitably a retrospective conclusion. If one were cynical, one might say that it is the canon of the victors. But before the victory is won, how does it help identify the outcome?