Folia Theologica et Canonica 10. 32/24 (2021)

Ius canonicum

SYNODALITY AS A FORM OF THEOCRACY IN THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH 67

breathing body of Christ, a comprehensive unity, is the bearer of true doctrine and graces. A similar idea appears in another work by St Augustine, where the concept of consistent teaching of Scripture is emphasized30. The consensus ecclesiae is one of the hallmarks of true faith in ecclesiastical jargon31.

This theological perception has already been profoundly rooted in ancient philosophy. In Roman law, consensus meant consenting to the content of a contract32. Cicero translates several Greek expressions with the word consensus, such as symfonia, syncatathesis and homonoia33. For Cicero, consensus ominum populorum, that is, the agreement of all peoples on something, is a characteristic of truth34. This idea of Cicero belongs to a line of tradition that runs from the idea popular in Greek philosophy that ‘all men cannot be wrong’, through Aristotle and the Stoics, as far as to the American pragmatists35. Let us consider, for example, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, where he writes: ‘what appears to all to be real is said to be real. Anyone who wants to reject this belief will hardly be able to say something more convincing’36. And for the Stoics the most important inherent attribute of truth is precisely that it is a common view held by all men37. The particular connotation of consensus is harmony as a political program. Later, at the end of the Middle Ages, Nicolaus Cusanus preferred instead to denote it by the word concordantia. This interpretation of the phrase can be traced back mainly to the concept of koinonia and harmony in the Platonic ideal of the state38.

On the institutional operation of the theological reality of the consensus totius ecclesiae the following is written in the CIC:

A person must believe with divine and Catholic faith all those things contained in the word of God, written or handed on, that is, in the one deposit of faith entrusted to the Church, and at the same time proposed as divinely revealed either by the solemn magisterium of the Church or by its ordinary and universal magisterium which is manifested by the common adherence of the Christian faithful under the leadership of the sacred magisterium; therefore all are bound to avoid any doctrines whatsoever contrary to them. (Canon 750 §1).

30 Augustinus, De consesu evangelistamm, ed. PL XXXIV. 1042-1230.

31 A well-known formulation of this can be found in Vincentius Lirinensis, Commonitorium primum 2; ed. PL L. 640: „Id teneamus, quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est. Hoc est enim vere proprieque catholicum”.

32 Dig. 2.14.1.1. 1-2 (Ulpianus).

33 Cf. Suhr, M., Consensus omnium, consensus gentium, in Ritter, J. (Hrsg.), Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, I. Basel 1971. 1031.

34 Cf. Div. 1,11; Tsc. I, 36.

35 Suhr, M., Consensus omnium, 1031.

36 Eth. Nie. 1173a.

37 Cf. Chrysippus, in Arnim, J. (ed.), Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, I-IV, Leipzig 1903-1924. II. 154, 29.

38 Suhr, M., Consensus omnium, 1032. Erdő, P. Az egyházi jog filozófiai megalapozása Nicolaus Cusanus müveiben, Budapest 1976 (doctoral dissertation), 55.