The Critical Synthetic Realist Test of Doctrinal Development: A Formal Epistemological Framework for Distinguishing Authentic Development, Doctrinal Corruption, and the Progressive Understanding of Truth

Abstract

Januarius Asongu

Religious traditions frequently affirm the permanence of truth while revising the conceptual and institutional forms through which truth is articulated. The resulting difficulty is not simply to establish whether doctrines change, but to determine when change represents defensible intellectual development rather than contradiction, corruption, or accommodation to prevailing opinion. Building on Critical Synthetic Realism (CSR), this article develops the Critical Synthetic Realist Test of Doctrinal Development (CSRTDD) as a two-stage framework for examining that problem. Three necessary conditions—ontological coherence, epistemic accountability, and critical corrigibility—establish eligibility for comparative appraisal. Four weighted criteria—historical continuity, interdisciplinary integration, ethical consistency, and explanatory adequacy—then support an explicitly defeasible assessment of competing interpretations. The argument places Augustine, Aquinas, Vincent of Lérins, and Newman in conversation with Lonergan, Congar, Bhaskar, MacIntyre, Fricker, and contemporary philosophy of science. A worked analysis of Catholic teaching on religious freedom illustrates both the framework’s possibilities and its limitations. Quantum theory is discussed solely as a qualified analogy concerning the relation between reality and conceptual representation. The article argues that doctrinal development is best understood as critically accountable progress in understanding, not as mere chronological novelty, unqualified continuity, or numerical proof of theological truth.

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