I found the following comment as something that has reflected my own sentiments from the study of church history. There are only three doctrines that have received any definitive "ecumenical" expression in the history of the church as dogma, and the third one mentioned was left without the precision of the previous two. Now I'm not saying that the third has not been properly treated by Reformed theology, but only that it has not received the treatment of "ecumenical" precision.
James E. Bradley and Richard A. Muller: The "œhistory of dogma" is the history of those particular doctrinal themes that have received normative definition from the church. There are barely three theological topics that have received this kind of definition. The Councils of Nicea and Constantinople moved toward a full dogmatic definition of the Trinity, while the Council of Chalcedon offered the church its orthodox definition of Christology. Formulated in a basic form in the patristic period, these dogmas were further elaborated in the subsequent history of Christian doctrine without any intentional alteration of the basic conciliar decisions. The other topic is the doctrine of grace. On this subject, the patristic era failed to offer a final formulation, but it did determine that salvation cannot occur apart from grace. It is orthodox to define salvation of the mutual interrelationships of grace and will. But it is also within the bounds of ecumenical orthodoxy to define salvation as occurring by grace alone prior to any acts of the will. What falls outside of these bounds is the "œPelagian" assumption that salvation can arise by acts of human will apart from grace. There is, to this day, no final definition of the doctrine of grace except in the broad sense of a legitimate spectrum for the language of theological formulation. James E. Bradley and Richard A. Muller, Church History: An Introduction to Research, Reference Works, and Methods (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1995), pp. 7-8.
Blessings,
DTK
James E. Bradley and Richard A. Muller: The "œhistory of dogma" is the history of those particular doctrinal themes that have received normative definition from the church. There are barely three theological topics that have received this kind of definition. The Councils of Nicea and Constantinople moved toward a full dogmatic definition of the Trinity, while the Council of Chalcedon offered the church its orthodox definition of Christology. Formulated in a basic form in the patristic period, these dogmas were further elaborated in the subsequent history of Christian doctrine without any intentional alteration of the basic conciliar decisions. The other topic is the doctrine of grace. On this subject, the patristic era failed to offer a final formulation, but it did determine that salvation cannot occur apart from grace. It is orthodox to define salvation of the mutual interrelationships of grace and will. But it is also within the bounds of ecumenical orthodoxy to define salvation as occurring by grace alone prior to any acts of the will. What falls outside of these bounds is the "œPelagian" assumption that salvation can arise by acts of human will apart from grace. There is, to this day, no final definition of the doctrine of grace except in the broad sense of a legitimate spectrum for the language of theological formulation. James E. Bradley and Richard A. Muller, Church History: An Introduction to Research, Reference Works, and Methods (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1995), pp. 7-8.
Blessings,
DTK
