Accounts of doctrinal development gained prominence in the nineteenth century, shaped by the rise of historical consciousness, which emphasized the historically conditioned nature of doctrinal claims, and by the adoption of new critical historiographical and philological methods that highlighted discontinuities within doctrinal history. The twined questions—"what is different?" and "what is the same?"—became central to debates about the normative status of doctrine and prompted efforts to identify its 'essence', 'germ', or 'seed' in order to secure continuity between contemporary doctrinal claims and authoritative sources (Scripture, creeds, dogma, etc.). By the mid-twentieth century, this genre of doctrinal development—often framed as histories of ideas—had given way to more focused and discrete reception histories, which adopted a less teleological and more contextually attuned approach to tracing the transmission of doctrine. The Ressourcement movement and subsequent 'retrieval' projects, both varieties of reception, have themselves become integral to systematic theology, rather than serving merely as historical prolegomena to systematics. Yet, the relationship between 'reception' and 'doctrinal development' remains insufficiently clarified. This paper explores how, and to what extent, reception histories—including the influential work of Ressourcement theologians—engage in the work of doctrinal development. Drawing on Ernst Troeltsch's account of continuity and change in Social Teachings, I propose to reframe the question posed by reception histories as one concerning the normative status of context-specific 'pastoral' teachings. To what extent do these projects normalize change in doctrinal development in ways that exceed Newman's account? And how, if at all, do they also create space to acknowledge the failures and inadequacies of past teachings? At the root is an elusive relationship between 'historical' and 'systematic' theology in contemporary theology.