The problem that the development of doctrine presents to the church is simple. On the one hand, Christianity is presented as containing the lasting and eternal truth of salvation and eternal life, and on the other hand, when the history of the church is studied, the details within which this truth is presented, have quite clearly changed. This problem is particularly exacerbated for those involved in ecumenical dialogue, and for theologians within the Roman Catholic church. For ecumenical dialogue, one must either try and hammer out those doctrines which are true and which aren't, an approach that won't get very far, or learn to live together despite having different doctrines, that is, to say that what the other side says is wrong, but that can be accepted. A third approach, tried by some within the movement, is to try and find some reason why both sides of the debate can be right in some sense. For Roman Catholics the problems is exacerbated by their strong sense of authority of the church down the ages, and in particular the veracity of the official doctrines issued by the Popes and the Councils. If a Pope has held that Matthew's

The first theory, the cognitive-propositionalist theory, which treats doctrines as 'informative propositions or truth claims about objective realities,' is dismissed by Lindbeck as 'voluntarist, intellectualist and literalist', saying that those who 'perceive or experience religion in cognitivist fashion' are those who 'combine unusual insecurity with naivete'. The problem with his dismissal of these theories is that he appears, according to McGrath, not to treat these theologians with the thoroughness that perhaps they deserve. According to McGrath, 'for such theologians, doctrines are reliable, yet incomplete, descriptions of reality. Their power lies in what they represent, rather than what they are in themselves.'

The history of doctrine in the early nineteenth century was seen by catholic theologians as being one of pure, unsullied teaching that had been handed down by the church from the time of the Fathers to the present day. There may have been changes of language, but the concepts behind them remained immutable. The reformation scholars looked upon doctrine as having started off good and pure, but then being corrupted by the church. They sought a return to the principles and doctrines of the early church, and saw their own work as being reflective of the teaching of the apostles and early fathers.

Lindbeck's book suggested that there are three current trends in theories of doctrine. The first, cognitive-propositionalist, stresses the cognitive aspects of religion, emphasising the manner in which doctrines function as truth claims or informative propositions. In the experiential-expressive theory, doctrines are interpreted as non-cognitive symbols of inner human feelings or attitudes. Lindbeck's own personal preference is for the theory of the cultural-linguistic approach, which is associated with a rule, or regulative theory of doctrine.

Newman was the first British scholar to look at the development of doctrine, in the middle of the nineteenth century, and say that doctrine had changed since the early church. For him, it was important to see doctrine in its historical context, and to understand why it was developed and by whom. He ceased to see the Protestant church as being the modern day equivalent of the early church, or to see it as 'historical Christianity'. The problem that Newman faced was that the current doctrine of the time as propounded by Bossuet was that the church had had various doctrines down through the ages, and at each crisis, the church had merely restated, perhaps in different language, these same doctrines. This meant that when, for instance, a heretic had risen in the church, the church responded by reiterating its doctrines, doctrines that had been existent in the church at all

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