Fundamental Articles (theology) - Bossuet and Jurieu

Bossuet and Jurieu

The most famous of the controversies on this subject was that between Bossuet and the Calvinist Jurieu. Jurieu's book, "Le Vray Système de l'Eglise" (1686), marks a distinct stage in the development of Protestant theology; while the work in which Bossuet replied to him was effective. "Le Vray Systeme" was an attempt to demonstrate the right of the French Protestants to rank as members of the Church Universal. With this aim Jurieu propounded an entirely novel theory regarding the Church's essential constitution. According to him all sects without exception are members of Body of Christ. For this nothing is necessary but "to belong to a general confederation, to confess Jesus Christ as Son of God, as Saviour of the world, and as Messias; and to receive the Old and New Testaments as the rule and Law of Christians", (Système, p. 53).

Yet among the various portions of the Church we must, he tells us, distinguish four classes:

1. Sects that have retained all the truths taught in the Scriptures
2. Sects that, while retaining the more important truths, have mingled with them superstitions and errors
3. Sects that have retained the fundamental truths, but have added doctrines incompatible with them
4. Sects that have set the fundamental verities aside altogether

This last class are dead members of the mystical body (ibid., p. 52). Those who have retained the fundamental articles of the faith are, one and all, living parts of the Church. When he comes to define precisely which in doctrines are, and which are not, fundamental, Jurieu bids us fall back on the rule of Vincent of Lérins: Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus. Wherever all bodies of Christians still exist and possess some importance in the world, and agree in accepting a dogma, we have, in that agreement, a criterion that may be considered infallible. Among truths so guaranteed are the doctrine of the Trinity, the Divinity of Jesus Christ, the Redemption, the satisfaction, original sin, creation, grace, the immortality of the soul, the eternity of punishment (ibid, 236-237). This work was followed, on 1688, by another entitled "Traité de l'unité de l'Eglise et des articles fondamentaux", written in reply to Nicole's criticisms. In the same year appeared Bossuet's "Histoire des Variations des Eglises protestantes". The Bishop of Meaux pointed out that this was the third different theory of the Church advanced by Protestant theologians to defend their position. The first reformers had accepted the Scriptural doctrine of an indefectible visible Church. When it was demonstrated that this doctrine was totally incompatible with their denunciation of pre-reformation Christianity, their successors took refuge in the theory of an invisible Church. It had been made patent that this was contrary to the express words of Scripture; and their controversialists had, in consequence, been compelled to look for a new' position. This Jurieu had provided in his theory of a Church founded upon fundamental articles.

Jurieu replied; he argued against the main thesis of the "variations" by contending that changes of dogma had been characteristic of the Christian Church from its earliest days. Bossuet, in his "Avertissement aux Protestants sur les lettres de M. Jurieu", said that if this were true, then the principle, Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus - according to Jurieu the criterion of a fundamental article - had ceased to possess the smallest value. (Avertissement, I, n. 22.)

In regard to the relation of the fundamental doctrines to salvation, Jurieu is in agreement with the English divines already quoted. "By fundamental points", he says, "we understand certain general principles of the Christian religion, a distinct faith and belief in which are necessary to salvation" (Traité, p. 495). Precisely the same view is expressed by John Locke in his "Reasonableness of Christianity". After enumerating what he regards as the fundamental articles of faith, he says: "An explicit belief of these is absolutely required of all those to whom the Gospel of Jesus Christ is preached, and salvation through his name proposed" (Works, ed., 1740, I, 583).