John Henry Newman himself offered strict criteria for distinguishing a valid doctrinal development from a corruption, stipulating that developments “which do but contradict and reverse the course of doctrine which has been developed before them, and out of which they spring, are certainly corrupt; for a corruption is a development in that very stage in which it ceases to illustrate, and begins to disturb, the acquisitions gained in its previous history.”82 In light of the early church’s clear opposition to icon veneration, the word “disturb” is a mild one for the relation of Nicaea II to prior
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