The source of dogma is God himself, who immediately and formally reveals truths to humankind, although properly speaking these truths do not become dogma until the Church proposes them to be believed as such. Thus the concept of dogma contains two elements: (i) an immediate divine revelation (revelatio immediate divina), which comes from the sources of revelation (scripture and tradition), and (ii) the promulgation of the dogma by the Church (propositio Ecclesiae), either in extraordinary (e.g., papal pronouncement) or ordinary (e.g., catechesis) fashion. Once such a promulgation is made, the dogma in question becomes central to faith in God and to communion with the Church.
Given its twin emphasis on the objective, immutable truth of divine revelation and on the necessity of the Church’s role in promulgating it, this traditional view of dogma runs counter to claims that scripture alone is the source of ecclesial teaching and, in turn, that biblical revelation, in and of itself, is a plain and sufficient basis for dogma. It is also opposed to the idea that dogma is revealed in and through a totality of subjective religious experience and, from that foundation, taken up by the Church as an object of faith. Broadly speaking, the former was the view of the Protestant reformers, the latter the view of Catholic “modernists” such as Alfred Loisy (1857-1940, pictured below).
