N E W M A N S T U D I E S J O U R N A L EDITORIAL PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 ARTICLES Newman on the Tension between Religion and Science: Creationism, Evolution, and Intelligent Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Edward Jeremy Miller Probability and Economy in Newman's Theory of Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Dwight Lindley Une Source Cachée: Blaise Pascal's Influence upon John Henry Newman . . . . . . . . 29 Brian W. Hughes Newman, Perrone, and Möhler on Dogma and History: A Reappraisal of the Newman-Perrone Paper on Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 C. Michael Shea John Henry Newman's Anglican Views on Judaism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Steven D. Aguzzi SERMON STUDY Newman's Tehology of the Immanent Trinity in his Parochial and Plain Sermons: 1829–1834 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Vinh Bao Luu-Quang BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 NEWMAN CHRONOLOGY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 NINS UPDATE & ANNOUNCEMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 N E W M A N S T U D I E S J O U R N A L Volume 7, Number 1 Spring 2010 "EVER SINCE HIS FIRST 'CONVERSION GRACE'AT THE AGE OF FIFTEEN, NEWMAN WAS NEVER TO LOSE HIS SENSE OF GOD'S PRESENCE, HIS RESPECT FOR REVEALED TRUTH, AND HIS THIRST FOR HOLINESS OF LIFE. IN HIS OWN LIFETIME, THE EXAMPLE OF HIS SINGULAR PIETY AND INTEGRITY WAS WIDELY ESTEEMED THROUGHOUT ENGLAND BY BOTH CATHOLICS AND ANGLICANS ALIKE." John Paul II Spring 2010 Volum e 7, N um ber1 N E W M A N S T U D IE S JO U R N A L Article Submissions: Manuscripts should be submitted electronically in WORD or WordPerfect as either (1) an e-mail attachment to ninseditor@comcast.net or (2) a diskette mailed to Lisa Goetz, Managing Editor, Newman Studies Journal, 211 N. Dithridge St., Pittsburgh, PA 15213. In submitting a manuscript for consideration by Newman Studies Journal, an author vouches that the same manuscript has not been published elsewhere and is not currently under consideration by another publisher. Book reviews generally are assigned by the NSJ editors. A separate set of guidelines is available for authors of book reviews. Before submitting a manuscript, please visit the complete guidelines, revised May 2007, at www.newmanstudiesjournal.org or email ninseditor@comcast.net for a copy. In brief: NSJ follows the Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition (1993) or Kate L. 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In addition, NSJ requests that authors: • Double space all copy including titles, block quotations, endnotes. • Number all pages at top right. • Use endnotes, gender-inclusive language, and American spelling in your text, except in the case of quotations that have British spelling. • Italicize titles of books, journals, and foreign words, but not foreign expressions familiar in English, e.g., ibid., de iure, prima facie. • Use three double-spaced dots to replace omitted parts of citations; at the end of a sentence this ellipsis is followed by a period. • Avoid using bold type, headers/footers, and right-margin justification. • Provide a short one paragraph summary of the article (of approximately six lines; see a current issue for examples). • Provide a brief autobiographical description (of approximately three lines; see a current issue for examples). Citations of Newman's Works: Unless there is a cogent reason for using another edition (e.g., an article comparing the different editions of An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.), citations from and references to Newman's works should use the editions available at www.newmanreader.org. The complete URL reference to a specific work should be included in a footnote the first time a work is cited. Citations from and references to Newman's letters and diaries should ordinarily come from: The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman (London: Nelson; Oxford: Clarendon, 1961– ). Subscriptions: The NSJ is now available online as well as in print. All issues, from volume 1 (2004) to the present, are included with each electronic subscription. Annual individual subscriptions are priced as follows: Print--$30.00; Online (Single user license)--$48.00; Print and Online (Single user license)--$75.00. Annual institutional subscriptions are: Print--$58.00; Online (5 simultaneous access license)--$174.00; Print and Online (5 simultaneous access license)--$209.00. All issues, from volume 1 (2004) to the present, are included with each electronic subscription. Single print issues are $29 for institutions and $15 for individuals. All subscription requests, claims, and renewals should be sent to the Newman Studies Journal, c/o Philosophy Documentation Center, P.O. Box 7147, Charlottesville, VA 22906-7147, USA. Payment may also be made by credit card (Visa, MasterCard, Discover) online at https://secure.pdcnet.org/pdc/ bvdb.nsf/journal?openform&journal=pdc_nsj#asubscribe; by fax to 434-220-3301; or by phone at 434-220-3300. Subscribers in the US and Canada may call toll free at 800-444-2419. For more subscription information contact Philosophy Documentation Center at 800-444-2419; 434-220-3300, or by e-mail at order@pdcnet.org. Newman Studies Journal (ISSN 1547-9080) is owned and published in the spring and fall by The National Institute for Newman Studies®, a non-profit organization, 211 N. Dithridge St., Pittsburgh, PA, 15213. Send written requests for reproducing parts of the print or electronic version of NSJ to Lisa Goetz, Managing Editor, Newman Studies Journal, 211 N. Dithridge St., Pittsburgh, PA, 15213; phone 412-681-4375; fax 412-681-4376; e-mail ninseditor@comcast.net. For more information on the National Institute for Newman Studies® or the Newman Studies Journal, please visit: www.newmanstudiesinstitute.org and www.newmanstudiesjournal.org. Copyright © National Institute for Newman Studies®, 2010. N E W M A N S T U D I E S J O U R N A L Newman Studies Journal® (NSJ) is an English language journal that publishes articles relating to the Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman in the areas of education, history, literature, philosophy, spirituality, and theology. NSJ is published by The National Institute for Newman Studies® (NINS), a non-profit organization that provides resources for scholars dedicated to promoting the study and spreading the knowledge of Newman's life, influence, and work. In addition to publishing NSJ, the Institute maintains the Newman Research Library in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and sponsors the Newman Scholarship Program. NSJ is indexed in the Catholic Periodical Literature Index. Editor in Chief John T. Ford, C.S.C., The Catholic University of America Editors Gerard H. McCarren, Immaculate Conception Seminary, Seton Hall University M. Katherine Tillman, University of Notre Dame Associate Editors Drew Morgan, C.O., The Pittsburgh Oratory Catharine M. Ryan, The National Institute for Newman Studies Managing Editor Lisa M. Goetz, The National Institute for Newman Studies Editorial Consultants Frederick Aquino, Abilene Christian University Jerome Bertram, C.O., The Oxford Oratory Duane Bruce, Saint Anselm College Edward J. Enright, O.S.A., Villanova University Marvin R. O'Connell, University of Notre Dame Bernadette Waterman Ward, University of Dallas NSJ Board of Directors Catharine M. Ryan, Chair John T. Ford, C.S.C. Gerard H. McCarren Drew Morgan, C.O. Marvin R. O'Connell M. Katherine Tillman Cover Art ???????????????????????????????????. EDITORIAL PREFACE 3 "EVER SINCE HIS FIRST 'CONVERSION GRACE' AT THE AGE OF FIFTEEN, NEWMAN WAS NEVER TO LOSE HIS SENSE OF GOD'S PRESENCE, HIS RESPECT FOR REVEALED TRUTH, AND HIS THIRST FOR HOLINESS OF LIFE. IN HIS OWN LIFETIME, THE EXAMPLE OF HIS SINGULAR PIETY AND INTEGRITY WAS WIDELY ESTEEMED THROUGHOUT ENGLAND BY BOTH CATHOLICS AND ANGLICANS ALIKE." JOHN PAUL II On 27 April 1990, Pope John Paul II addressed the participants of a symposium,organized by "The Work" and The International Centre of Newman Friends, to commemorate the centennial of Newman's death. The symposium, whose theme was,"John Henry Newman-Lover of Truth", was held,April 26–28, in the Borromini hall of the Chiesa Nuova, the mother church of the Oratorians, the community,which Newman established in England. In his address, John Paul II highlighted"some of the many lessons which Newman holds out to the Church and to the world of culture": Ever since his first "conversion grace" at the age of fifteen, Newman was never to lose his sense of God's presence, his respect for revealed truth and his thirst for holiness of life. In his own lifetime, the example of his singular piety and integrity was widely esteemed throughout England by both Catholics and Anglicans alike. Two decades later,Newman's beatification is on the horizon-a fitting recognition of his life-long "respect for revealed truth and his thirst for holiness of life."1 In recognition of the fact that Newman's life was almost equally divided between his years as anAnglican (1801–1845) and his years as a Roman Catholic (1845–1890), the portrait on this issue's cover is one that was originally sketched in July 1844- nearly at the mid-point of his life. The portraitist, George Richmond (1809–1896), was well known for his head-and-shoulder drawings in chalk. The portrait was commissioned by Henry Wilberforce (1807–1873), one of Newman's former students, who became a Roman Catholic in 1850. After receiving the drawing for approval, Wilberforce, who was charged the then rather significant sum of £21, 1 The text of this speech from L'Osservatore Romano (English edition), 30 April 1990 (1138) is available at: http://www.newmanreader.org/canonization/popes/or30apr90.html. NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL4 commented to Newman: I cannot say how much I like and value it. I almost expect to hear your voice at times, and the same is the feeling of others. The likeness is no doubt diminished by not having your glasses, which seem to me almost a necessary part of you- still I think Richmond has judged rightly here. . . .2 The chalk portrait later served as a study for the more finished drawing that is exhibited in the Common Room at Oriel College, as well as for an anonymous engraving, with Newman wearing an Oratorian collar, that was published in 1856. The articles in this issue investigate aspects of Newman's life and thought both as an Anglican and as a Roman Catholic. The initial essay by Edward Jeremy Miller examines Newman's reflections on the relationship between Religion and Science in light of more recent debates on Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design. Next Dwight Lindley, considers the role of Probability and Economy in Newman's Theory of Knowledge, while Brian W. Hughes examines Blaise Pascal's Influence upon Newman. After C.Michael Shea provides a reappraisal of the Newman-Perrone Paper on Development, Steven D.Aguzzi considers Newman's Anglican Views on Judaism. Finally,Vinh Bao Luu-Quang, reflects on Newman's Theology of the Immanent Trinity as presented in his Parochial and Plain Sermons: 1829–1834. The bibliographical section mentions various resources that are available to Newman-scholars, lists books that have been received for review, and summarizes fourteen Newman-related articles that have appeared in other publications in various languages-surely an indication of the continued international interest in Newman. A chronology of Newman's life is included as a convenience for readers who wish to situate a particular event or writing within the broader context of Newman's life. The "fillers"-which utilize otherwise unused space at the end of articles-are poems that were published by Newman in Verses on Various Occasions. Last but not least, there is a report on the recent activities of the National Institute for Newman Studies. This issue begins the seventh year of Newman Studies Journal; accordingly, it seems appropriate to express appreciation both to previous contributors as well as to those who have contributed to the current issue. To all-authors and reviewers, editorial colleagues, consultants, and staff-sincerest appreciation! John T. Ford, c.s.c. The Catholic University of America 2 Quoted by Susan Foister, Cardinal Newman, 1801-1890: A Centenary Exhibition (London: National Portrait Gallery Publications, 1990), 45. 5NEWMAN ON THE TENSION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE: CREATIONISM, EVOLUTION AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN Edward Jeremy Miller, a professor of theology at Gwynedd-Mercy College (Gwynedd Valley,PA) published a prequel to this essay,"How Has Boethius's Appeal for Ratio Fared?" in The Saint Anselm Journal, 7/1 (Fall 2009). 1 Most Creationists are oblivious of the original Hebrew of Genesis and of the genres in which biblical stories are couched; Creationists are indentured both to an English translation that misses plays on words and to unnuanced ideas about the text (its poetry, etiology, etc.) The story of creation in the Book of Genesis has become the poster child for thecontemporary animosity between biblical faith and human reason. At least four perspectives on human and cosmic origins have been staked out. A literal understanding of the Genesis texts has come to be called Creationism. This perspective insists that reasoning, especially scientific reasoning, must give way to a revealed message that provides the details how the cosmos and human life on earth began. The Bible is a source of God's revelation and therefore of truth. Many other believers join Creationists in so valuing of the Bible, but Creationists part company with them by imposing a principle of interpretation on the Bible in order to know what God has revealed:"Just read the words."1 If the whole cosmos is described as being created in six days, then God achieved everything in 144 hours. The same holds for how the first humans came to be. A man came first and then God created a woman from one of the man's ribs. Sometimes a certain sophistication, called Concordism, is appended to the literal approach. Instead of six 24-hour days, God created the world within six geological epochs, but six and only six nonetheless. A second ideology has arisen that can be called Evolutionism. The "ism" is the important nuance because this viewpoint is not simply an embrace of evolution, that is, an acceptance of the fact that the cosmos has evolved over fourteen billion years and that life forms on earth have evolved over perhaps two billion years. Many Christians who revere the bible as revelation accept evolution in this sense. Evolutionism, however, perceives that there is no place for God's ongoing creative agency in this evolved and evolving cosmos. Most would claim that God has no role because there is no God. A minority among them might have a deistic view of God, After sketching four contemporary perspectives about the origin of the created world, this essay tests Newman's contention that conflicts between true religious doctrines and sound scientific discoveries are only apparent: one truth cannot contradict another. In resolving tensions between religion and science, Newman's advice about being patient with apparent incompatibility seems particularly appropriate in the contemporary debate between Creationism, evolutionary theory, and Intelligent Design. NEWMAN ON THE TENSION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE: CREATIONISM, EVOLUTION AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN EDWARD JEREMY MILLER an uninvolved God who is bracketed out, for all intents and purposes, when describing how the world and human life came about. There is no doubt that claims made by Creationists have fostered Evolutionism as its antagonistic counterpart, so that persons committed to scientific findings might well conclude:"If these claims about Genesis are the truths in which belief in God consists, I simply cannot be a believer; it's all too farfetched." Thus, Evolutionism, with stress on the ism, has an atheistic or at least an agnostic patina. The recent Creationists cannot simply be faulted for begetting unbelieving Evolutionists; the long range effects of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment on the bifurcation of authentic reasoning from that of religious assertions are surely at play, too. A third perspective has come into focus more recently: Intelligent Design, which is an ideology in the sense that it is an argued viewpoint whose adherents share certain first principles. One principle is a commitment to the fact of evolution.These adherents agree with the second ideology in accepting the overall shape of evolution over billions of years, and they agree with the first ideology in asserting that God's creative agency plays the crucial role in the evolutionary scheme. They put God back into the cosmic process. They will sound like the fourth position below, but they differ from it in an important respect. Intelligent Designers maintain that on scientific grounds and, by means of micro-evolutionary arguments, that is, arguments conducted at the level of minute scientific details, the designing hand of God can be perceived by reason alone. Such is the case when scientific observation discovers irreducible complexities in nature that point to God as their only explanation. The scientific evolutionary evidence, rightly sifted, proves God's necessary and ineluctable presence. God's designing hand is there to be detected and this on the basis of scientific reasoning. The fourth position has no name, yet it seems to be the mainstream position of Catholic theologians and exegetes and is reflected in the recent official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church.2 Nor would I exclude from this viewpoint the main figures in Protestant theology and exegesis, with the exception of most evangelicals. This position holds that evolution has occurred over billions of years, that the stories in Genesis teach important religious truths if properly interpreted, and that one of these teachings is that God's creative agency was, is now, and will be forever why things are at all and why human persons are meant to be. The"God question" is more of a why question than a scientific how question. The first chapters of Genesis are not teaching science or cosmic history. They are teaching matters of existential 2 The encyclical of Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis (1950), which was the first official discussion of evolution by the magisterium, taught (§ 36) that the human body could be the product of evolution and thus studied by science, but the human soul is caused by God alone and not by material causalities; the encyclical is available at: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_pxii_enc_12081950_humani-generis_en.html; hereafter cited: Humani Generis. Pope John Paul II, in a message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1996, observed that evolution has moved from mere hypothesis to commonly accepted theory (§ 4), but he reiterated the teaching of Pius XII that "the spiritual soul is created directly by God" (§ 5); the text is available at: http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP961022.HTM. Both popes, in accepting evolutionary advance toward human bodies (hominization), thereby rejected an earlier teaching of the Biblical Commission in 1909 that the first woman was made from the first man (Denzinger Schönmetzer 3514). NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL6 7 meaning, such as a human being's true nature, one's relationship with God both as an individual and as a social being, the gift of human freedom and the consequences of its misuse. The truths of Genesis are not of long ago and far away, as if beginnings are being described 5770 years ago-to echo the calendar date of Rosh Hashanah; rather, the truths of Genesis describe us today, and in this sense they are existential.3 The relationship between faith and reason in the fourth position is construed differently than it is by Intelligent Designers. In terms of how the world works, Aquinas spoke of God as a primary cause and the laws of nature as secondary causes. A primary cause enables a secondary cause to be and to unfold in its characteristic manner of causing. A musician playing a violin provides an analogy. The strains of music, the effect, are caused by the nature of the violin, leading someone to say:"the music is coming from a violin, not a cello." But the violin would not be causing its unique effect of violin-like sounds unless a person plays it. Furthermore, the sounds are not simply random sounds; they are, rather, sounds infused with an emotional feeling or with a player's or composer's ideas. The musician is the primary cause, the violin is the secondary cause, of the music. As soon as the musician stops playing, stops being a primary cause, the violin ceases being a cause, too. It is in this manner that God is said to be the primary cause of the world. God has, in the plan of being the world's creator, established secondary causes that make the world unfold in manners reflecting these secondary causes; thus, the world is the proper effect of natural causes and simultaneously an effect of God. God creates, not in the manner we humans create something and step back from it, but in the manner of enabling and sustaining the entire natural (i.e., secondary) causes of the world. Were the Creator to step back, all creation would immediately cease to be. Thus, the difference from Intelligent Design becomes immediately clear. Intelligent Design claims that one can see gaps, as it were, when one looks closely at evolutionary data and that these gaps (such as irreducible complexities) can only be explained by the presence and contribution from a divine hand. The fourth position maintains that the more deeply one looks into the cause/effect features of the natural world, the more one only perceives natural (secondary) causes if one is only casting a scientific vision on the phenomena. There is no scientific investigation that leads to a proof for God. Scientific investigation of natural phenomena leads to insights into the natural causes of these phenomena-secondary causes in Thomistic language-or it leads to puzzles awaiting solution by better and later scientific methods. Certain luminaries are associated with this fourth position and Aquinas is one of them. John Henry Newman is another and he has the following advantage over Aquinas: he wrote after the revolution in science had happened and after the minds of many had become intoxicated with and habituated to the value of scientific methodology. 3 Adding up the human generations in Genesis places human beginnings about 3700 BC,according to the orthodox rabbis who determined the Rosh Hashanah calendar: 19 September 2009 was the beginning of the Jewish year 5770. NEWMAN ON THE TENSION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE: CREATIONISM, EVOLUTION AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL8 4 Arius (250–336) was the first literalist and he would not budge off the text:"The Father is greater than I" (John. 14:28). Joachim of Fiore's (1132–1202) obsession with the "twelve hundred and sixty days" of Revelation 11:3 led to his problematic three ages of the world. Luther (1483–1546), the great champion of sola scriptura, was more exasperated by the literalism of the Anabaptists than by the faults of papal traditionalism. 5 The Anglican Archbishop of Armagh, James Ussher (1581–1656) published a biblical chronology that placed the beginning of creation on the night before 23 October 4004 BC. 6 "Yahweh"-the divine name revealed to Moses in Exodus 3:14-continued in the oral tradition for several hundred years until Israelites ceased to pronounce it out of respect. Circumlocutions such as"The Lord (Adonai),""The Holy One,""Jehovah,""the Name (Hashem)," etc. replaced "Yahweh" which appears about 7000 times in the Hebrew Bible. When the Hebrew Bible was translated into the Greek Septuagint, "Yahweh" was rendered kyrios [Lord], the characteristic word used later by Paul and others to describe the Risen Jesus in the Greek New Testament. 7 Translations of Enuma Elish are available at: http://www.mindspring.com/~mysticgryphon/ enuma.htm; a translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh is available at: http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/ mesopotamian/gilgamesh/. CREATIONISM: ANTAGONISTIC TO THE FAITH/ REASON RELATIONSHIP To approach the biblical text in a simply literal fashion has frequently invited heresy.4 The Book of Genesis seems to attract, as if by its own gravitational force, literal-minded readers. Such was not always the case; one thinks of the patristic heritage of allegorical interpretations of Genesis initiated by that great master exegete,Origen (±185–254). Today,however, literalism has returned to the reading of Genesis with a new found fervor. For the Creationists the contagion afoot is a Godless view of the world and human life. The antidote is a biblical text whose teaching is as pure and limpid as literal words can be. But is not human reason put in jeopardy? Here is a clear example of the rub: the story of Adam and Eve must come from them, it is claimed, for they alone experienced it. Either the oral transmission of the story was relatively short,perhaps for 2500 years until Moses,5 the putative author of the Torah, heard it and wrote it down or it was passed on from the first human beings who lived at least 250,000 years ago according to most commonly accepted evidence. The literal assertion-the Garden Story was handed down from the first two humans-is caught between two implausibilities: first, an oral tradition could not have maintained itself over multiple ice ages; second, it could endure over 2000 years, as have Akkadian traditions, but humans existed long before this time span. There is an alternative route around these two dead ends and it accords with both human reason and a reverence for the Bible. Both Genesis stories-the six-days of creation and the Garden of Eden-were constructed by Israelites after their covenant experience at Sinai (± 1250 BC). The stories were constructed against pagan creation myths that were undermining covenantal views of Yahweh.6 Two such creation stories-the Enuma Elish and the Epic of Gilgamesh of Babylonian culture-depicted a polytheistic heavenly realm.7 Creation ensued from gods fighting and killing each other. Human beings are slaves of the gods, and from humans the gods withhold immortality out of jealousy. Against these pagan views, and even using some of their story motifs-days of creation, a devious serpent, a wooden panacea causing immortality-the Israelites presented quite different views of creation (from one God who merely willed or spoke it), of human beings (made in God's image, having God's spirit), of material things (good in themselves and at the service of humans), of mortality (not due to God but to human rebelliousness). The 9 Israelites crafted the stories, using Hebrew words and certain plays on words only possible in Hebrew. The stories were meant to be repeated generation after generation and remembered whenever an Israelite woman cried out in giving birth.8 My descriptions of story making certainly stress the human elements behind the two creation stories. But how is this revelation? The name of the God of the Sinai Covenant, Yahweh, means "He who is in your midst as who He is" rather than the metaphysical "He who is" favored by medieval translators. Yahweh is a God who reveals, who communicates. Covenanted Israelites had an ongoing experience of who God is, of who they are, of what the world of matter is, due to the revealing impress of Yahweh within the covenant on their individual and collective consciousness. Their creation stories emerge from such covenantal experience, which is in fact a revelation from God expressed in their Semitic thought patterns and experiences, even vis-à-vis their experience of dangerous myths such as the Enuma Elish. One further example of literalist interpretation shows how human reason is needlessly put in jeopardy by an un-nuanced creationist approach. In Genesis 2:21 ff., God makes the first man sleep, takes one of his ribs and fashions it into a woman by clothing it with flesh. Wrongheaded ideas derive from this literal picture such as women appeared second on earth in the divine plan (hence, are inferior by God's will),women and men have a different number of ribs,9 Adam has God's breath (ruah in Hebrew) in him but women do not, and so forth. A little knowledge of Hebrew idioms preserves human reason and, significantly, preserves the religious meaning of the story. The Hebrew idiom "you are my bone and flesh" means that we are kin, we are related, or that we are equal. When Jacob returned to Mesopotamia to get a wife from among his mother's relatives, Jacob's uncle Laban addressed him "my bone and flesh indeed" (Genesis 29:14). After David replaced Saul and the pro-Saul-family rebellion against David's succession failed, the northern tribes came to David saying "we are your own flesh and bone," lest David take vengeance on their recent disloyalty (2 Samuel 5:1). So when Adam sees Eve, he says,"This one at last [i.e., not like the animals I surveyed before] is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh" (2:23). The woman is the equal of the man, not his inferior. In the other creation story, the man and woman are both made in God's image and both share the same dignity (1:27). There is only one way to give life to this idiom; put Adam asleep and grab a rib. Anatomy is not being taught nor is paleoanthropology. A religious anthropology is being taught,which answers the question:What is being revealed? The answers are as important as they are straightforward. Men and women are equal as human beings. Both have a material dimension (made from clay, adamah); but, unlike the animals made also from clay, humans carry God's spirit (ruah ) within. Both sexes image 8 In the Garden story there are consequences to human sin. Subjection of women to men is one consequence (3:16) but pain in childbearing is meant only to evoke memory of the story just as the rainbow in the Noah story does. Whenever an infant is born, it enters the conflicted "post-Fall" world; therefore, if epidurals preclude the pain of child birth, they do not undermine the religious teaching of Genesis. 9 Both men and women have twelve pairs of ribs. NEWMAN ON THE TENSION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE: CREATIONISM, EVOLUTION AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL10 10 For a number of issues concerning the Intelligent Design controversy and court case, I am indebted to James L. Heft,"Evolution and Catholicism:A Few Modest Proposals," Horizons 35/2 (Fall 2008), 203–227; hereafter cited: Heft. 11 As a high school text, the school board recommended P. Davis and D. Kenyon, Of Pandas and People, 2nd ed. (Dallas: Foundation for Thought and Ethics, 1993). More recently, as an explanation of Intelligent Design, the Foundation published W. Dembski and J. Wells, The Design of Life (Dallas: Foundation for Thought and Ethics, 2007). 12 Heft (204) quoted Behe's Darwin's Black Box (New York:The Free Press, 1996). divine reality. In this manner human reason comes to the defense of the biblical text, qua religious text. Creationist literalism undermines the text by exposing it to ridicule or irrelevance. For this reason it is antagonistic to a healthy relationship between faith and reason. INTELLIGENT DESIGN: MISPLACED STRATEGY IN THE FAITH/REASON RELATIONSHIP With Intelligent Design,scientific reasoning is not abrogated as with Creationism, but it is misdirected. It came to national attention in 2004 when the Dover, Pennsylvania, school board mandated the teaching of Intelligent Design alongside the theory of evolution in the ninth-grade biology curriculum.10 Eleven parents sued the school district in a non-jury trial in the U.S. Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. Arguing that Intelligent Design is a variant of biblical Creationism, thus violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, the plaintiffs prevailed. What is the argument advanced on behalf of Intelligent Design and what is the offered rebuttal?11 Scientists concur in recognizing that biological processes and biological organs themselves are exceedingly complex. A biologist inclined to Intelligent Design, such as Michael Behe, claims that certain complexities are irreducibly so, such that a Darwinian natural selection, with its inherent randomness, cannot explain transit through or beyond these complexities in an intellectually satisfying manner. Only the hand of a designer operating behind the complexity can explain how evolutionary advance in nature is attained. Behe concludes that molecular systems, such as the flagella of bacteria, appear designed because they really are designed.12 Whereas nature ought to display a web of cause-effect relationships (nature's so-called natural laws), areas of unbridgeable complexities bespeak a guiding hand in nature deeper and more profound than any natural law describing orderly process. Rebuttal to Intelligent Design has taken the form of other scientists providing a scientific solution to what had been proposed as beyond apparent solution. Intelligent Design is a more nuanced version of the older gap-in-nature argument for God's existence. The gaps in nature's organic togetherness, in its connective webbing as it were, are explained by a God-of-the-gaps who provides where nature's laws are lacking; for example, lunar or solar eclipses were explained centuries ago as divine interventions in the well-ordered and customary movements of heavenly bodies. It has always been a temptation for some people to make the case for God by arguing from a gap in our scientific knowledge that gets filled by a divine intervention that preserves order. Such arguments discredit the rightful relationship of faith to scientific reasoning because the arguments create a house of cards that 11 comes crashing down whenever a new scientific breakthrough explains the previous gap in knowledge. This appears to be the case with the illustrations of complexity offered by Intelligent Design; science eventually finds explanations.13 The problem with making the case for God's existence from gaps is the specter of that caustic phrase from the French astronomer, Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827), referring to God:"I have no need of that hypothesis." The intention behind the program of Intelligent Design is well placed, but its method for achieving it is misplaced. It is a bracing fact, notes James Heft, that "it is the materialists who tell Christians [and anyone caring to listen] the story of nature." Heft references the statistics of Intelligent Design biologist Michael Behe that ninety percent of the members of the elite National Academy of Scientists were materialists (that is, atheists). Behe warns that the deeper problem is a "socially contagious materialism, spread more by social pressure than by rational argument."14 In other words, the academy, especially the biology academy, seems inimical to being both a scientist and a theist, and this milieu perpetuates itself by a kind of agnostic expectation. Intelligent Design, on the other hand, wants to show the compatibility of faith and (scientific) reasoning. The intention is good. Its method attempts to make the case for God's existence or role in "the story of nature" from merely biological or other scientific considerations. But this is a misplaced attempt because a merely scientific argument within nature only terminates within nature; it never transcends nature. God is not one thing among other natural things out there to be observed no matter how immense one makes that thing. Nor is God placed alongside anything. Therefore the eyes which observe biological or natural things are not the eyes that "see" God in a kind of proof. To be fully clear about the matter, let me return to Aquinas, who maintained that the case for God's existence can be made from causes and their effects, but the case derives from a metaphysical insight into viewing unfolding phenomena that cannot have an infinite regress. Scientific insights view no deeper than the world's secondary causes, in Thomistic nomenclature. But metaphysical insights can infer the existence of the world's primary cause, God, although this is no easy reasoning task. THE FAITH AND REASON RELATIONSHIP Reasoning, as intended here, is scientific reason. It is also called scientific method. It is empirical, quantifiable, and measurable. It proceeds by postulates, hypotheses, achieved verifications and achieved falsifications. Science happens within a community of fellow scientists and therefore these achievements occur through corroboration of experiments and consensus. Second, the metaphor of seeing aids my construal of the relationship between faith and scientific reasoning. The Christian tradition has likened faith to having a special kind of sight and with 13 K. R. Miller,"Looking for God in all the Wrong Places:Answering the Religious Challenge to Evolution," in J. Cracraft and R. W. Bybee, eds., Evolutionary Science and Society: Educating a New Generation (Colorado Springs: Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, 2005), 13–21. Other recent publications of biologist Kenneth Miller oppose Intelligent Design and Michael Behe's interpretations. 14 See Heft, 212; Heft is unsympathetic to Intelligent Design. NEWMAN ON THE TENSION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE: CREATIONISM, EVOLUTION AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL12 15 Matthew 16:17; this scene likely reflects post-resurrectional apostolic insights into the nature of Jesus that are projected back into his ministry, in contrast to the scene in Mark 8:33 where Peter cannot "see" that Jesus' messiahship involves victory through suffering. Peter's confession, which became the church's confession about Jesus, represents "knowledge from above," which is what the gift of faith is for anyone. 16 Not to be confused with William and Hurrell's father, Robert Hurrell Froude (1770–1859), an Anglican clergyman. Richard Hurrell Froude's premature death in 1836 was a devastating blow to Newman. William's wife, Catherine Holdsworth, and most of his children became Roman Catholics under Newman's influence. 17 The lecture, "Christianity and Physical Science" (17 December 1855) is included in part two of Newman's The Idea of a University, Defined and Illustrated (1873);available at:http://www.newmanreader.org/ works/idea/index.html; page references are given in parentheses. good reason. With faith, one comes to see, that is, to accept something as true and therefore as real. "God is real." "I am really made in God's image." These are statements of faith; therefore, one can say that someone has come to see them as true beyond doubt. In the opposite direction, the Christian tradition likens sinning to blindness, and with good reason. With somewhat more precision,Thomas Aquinas writes about the light by which one can see. With natural light one's eyes see material stuff. But by the lumen fidei, the light of faith, which is a gift-one's soul, one's spirit, one's personhood-sees God and how God reigns in this world. When someone says,"there is a God, and God is benevolent, and my earthly life is under His providence," this is seeing with the eyes of faith. The metaphors of natural light and light of faith are rooted in language that Jesus used, the language of above and here below. When Peter confessed that Jesus is truly the Messiah, Jesus replied that "flesh and blood did not reveal this to you but my heavenly Father."15 In other words, there is knowledge from above, a gift of God, and there is a merely human way of sizing things up, called "flesh and blood" knowledge in Jesus' Semitic idiom. From the language of different kinds of light by which one works, it is a ready transition to the different kinds of objectives that obtain in the workings of theology and the workings of science. By making this transition, one can enter into the language of John Henry Newman who was concerned with how science works and how, in a quite different manner, theology works. The word theology is loosely used to mean, for Newman, the process of elucidating the Christian deposit of faith, and at times it is synonymous with the word religion. Whence and how does insight come? How does it differ from coming to scientific insight? Newman was concerned with why there was a propensity among scientific people to end up in agnosticism, if not atheism. The latter was more than a theoretical concern. William Froude, the younger brother of Newman's closest friend at Oxford, Richard Hurrell Froude,16 became an engineer and naval architect, close friend of Newman, and a life-long agnostic- Newman's many conversations and letters to him notwithstanding. In autumn term, 1855, Newman's second year as rector of the new Catholic university in Dublin,he addressed the students of the School of Medicine in what has become the locus classicus of his ideas on religion and science.17 The lecture has two broad aims: First Newman wanted to clarify how theology and science are distinctive in methodology. Then he looked at why they are thought to be antagonists. Apropos theology and science as ways of knowing, some truths are gained by the human mind engaging the material world; other truths are revealed by God. Because truth cannot contradict truth, theology and science ought not to collide (431). Science observes physical phenomena and seeks their governing laws, their efficient 13 causes; thus, its way of thinking is inductive and is bound within the world of matter (432, 436). Theology observes a revealed message that it seeks to elaborate, and because the message is for the sake of people living in this world, theology addresses final causes such as "what are we humans meant to be?" Working from revealed truths, theology's method is deductive since it concludes from givens (434, 441). With different manners of thinking,and with different objectives, religion and science are not inimical and purported collisions between them are resolvable (440). So why have they clashed and why do some feel they are meant to be mutually antagonistic? The inductive and deductive ways of thinking proper to each have not been content "to remain [each] on its own homestead," in Newman's memorable image, but have intruded onto each other's turf because "minds habituated to either of these two methods can hardly help extending it beyond its due limits" (441–42). Theology encroached, for example, when geocentrism was deduced from certain scriptural passages as binding on Christians, or that the world would end after Christianity has reigned a thousand years (443). An inductive method has intruded into scripture when it insists on clear specimens, as scientists tend to require, and if they are lacking, then a certain skepticism ensues. Newman did not mention the practice of infant baptism, which would be a good example of a true doctrine that does not rest on scripture testimony alone (451);18 but claiming that infant baptism is not contrary to the Bible would disconcert a scientific mind expecting of the Bible specimens of clear data. Furthermore, inductive method is unsuitable to the sources of Christian doctrine, such as scripture and church history, because it comes up short in its conclusions from them, attaining perhaps a partial insight and not the full truth (452). Scientific induction also brings a prejudice to matters of religion. It is used to laws, not to their suspension, and therefore it scoffs at the language of the miraculous (454). On the other hand, science can "subserve theological truth" if it acknowledges religion's proper role and works to show revelation's miraculous dimensions (455).19 Newman treated this concluding idea far too briefly in one paragraph, but he was obviously hoping that science will play for religion the handmaiden's role that medieval theology and church authority applied to philosophy. Newman's famous Medical School lecture rests on two thematic principles. The first is that religion and science cannot really conflict because truth cannot be contrary to truth. The second principle is the academic tendency to trespass. One discipline or way of thinking leaves its rightful perimeters and transgresses another discipline's subject matter. Religion's deductive method inserts itself in a scientific issue,and science's inductive method attempts to assess matters of transcendence. In 18 An example of the skepticism that ensues from an exclusively scientific approach to scripture is the publicity generated by the Jesus Seminar, founded in 1985 by Robert Funk. The Seminar maintains that so little can be known of the actual words of Jesus in the New Testament that people are left wondering if much of anything can be known about Jesus. For a critique of the Seminar, see Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 819 ff. 19 I would think that psychology and sociology could aptly describe the ongoing effects of Original Sin. Religion claims that there is something flawed about human nature, something not fully and not automatically aligned. Why does the term dysfunctionality apply to humans but not to other species? Behavioral science ought to supply corroborations to what religion asserts about the defects of human nature. NEWMAN ON THE TENSION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE: CREATIONISM, EVOLUTION AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL14 20 The textual history of Newman's Idea is complex: in May and June of 1852, Newman gave five public lectures in Dublin; he wrote five more lectures and published the ten in 1852 as Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University Education. In 1859, he published some of his essays from the university magazine and other lectures as Lectures and Essays on University Subjects, which was a companion volume to a reedited volume of the Discourses,which had been republished without the controversial fifth discourse. In 1873, Newman combined these two volumes into The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated; this edition had eight more editions, each with minor changes from Newman. For a list of the editions published during Newman's life, seeVincent Ferrer Blehl, John Henry Newman:A Bibliographical Catalogue of His Writings (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978). 21 See the lecture of Pope Benedict XVI at the University of Regensburg, 12 September 2006, available at: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_benxvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg_en.html. 22 The muscle analogy is my own; see Idea, 76 ff; see Miller,"Newman's Idea of a University: Is It Viable Today?" in Discourse and Context:An Interdisciplinary Study of John Henry Newman,Gerard Magill, ed., (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993), 115. 23 Newman's most famous treatment, a trenchant study of prejudice, is Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England; available at: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/england/index.html. the lecture, Newman was somewhat irenic in suggesting why trespassing happens. The practitioner of a particular method is habituated to its manner of working and has experienced the wonderful achievements that the discipline's method has wrought. Proven success invites practitioners to tackle other types of questions outside their field of expertise. Not nearly as irenic was Newman's treatment of academic trespassing in those earlier Dublin lectures justifying a Catholic university precisely as Catholic-lectures that came to form the first half of The Idea of a University.20 Then he was contending against an academic mentality that reckoned theology a spurious part of a university curriculum. Pope Benedict XVI, when he was a theology professor at Bonn, met the same mentality and told the story of a fellow professor, a religious skeptic, who used to point to the theology faculty building and say, there stands a facility "devoted to something that did not exist."21 No more can someone study the cosmos without reference to its Creator, argued Newman, than one can study a muscle and call it an explanation of motion without considering free will.22 And if an academic discipline is unfairly excluded from the curriculum, then other disciplines will encroach on its material and pontificate. The psychologist will play the ethicist; the physicist will play the theologian of nature. An animus against religion, or at least against its academic legitimacy, lay behind the wish to exclude it from university studies. Such animus elicited a less irenic reply from Newman because of its hostility. It was always Newman's strategy, however, to understand why there was an animus against religion and against Catholicism in particular.23 In terms of the animus that the science of his day bore toward religion, Newman very sagely placed its cause in the influence of the human imagination on how someone evaluates. His core idea is captured by one of those phrases that circulates among writers today who attribute it to him but never source the text, which seems to float about like an unmoored aphorism: "It is not reason that is against us but imagination." The sentence comes from a letter that Newman, already past eighty, wrote in 1882. His letter dealt directly with the antagonism between science and religion. William Samuel Lilly (1840–1919), a convert and admirer, who had earlier published a popular anthology of Newman's writings, sent for Newman's perusal the draft of an 15 article.24 Newman replied on 7 December 1882: I have read your proof with the greatest pleasure, and with entire assent. Certainly there is no opposition in the respective truths of science and theology, nor do I think that an apparent opposition can be maintained, or is, by the sceptics of the day. It is presumptuous in me to speak on a question of fact, considering I live out of the world, but I will say what strikes me. First, we must grant-and it is difficult to determine how far we must go in granting-that both the Mosaic and Christian dispensations took the existing state of thought as it was, and only partially innovated on and corrected it. The instance of Divorce makes this plain as regards the Old Testament; as to the New, the first instance that occurs to me is St. Paul's simple recognition of married life in Bishops. On a far larger scale is the absence of meddling with the social and secular world. God speaks "for the elect's sake." He leaves the popular astronomy as it was. Heaven is still above, and the powers of evil below. The sun rises and sets, and at His word stops or goes back, and the firmament opens. And so with social and political science. Nothing is told us of economical laws, etc., etc. So from the first there has been a progress with laws of progress, to which theology has contributed little, and which now has a form and substance, powerful in itself, and independent of and far surpassing Christianity in its social aspect; for Christianity (socially considered) has a previous and more elementary office, being the binding principle of society. This primary and special office of religion men of the world do not see, and they see only its poverty as a principle of secular progress, and, as disciples and upholders and servants of that great scientific progress, they look on religion and despise it. As the scientific parasite says in the play,"Ego illum contempsi prae me."25 I consider then that it is not reason that is against us, but imagination. The mind, after having, to the utter neglect of the Gospels, lived in science, experiences on coming back to Scripture an utter strangeness in what it reads, which seems to it a better argument against Revelation than any formal proof from definite facts or logical statements. "Christianity is behind the age." I have been unable to bring out my meaning as I should like, and am very dissatisfied with myself, but I feel what I have been insisting on very strongly.26 Within this context Newman's phrase is luminous. Newman wrote about the experience of culture, mainly the social experience of culture, which then mediates an individual's experience of culture or Weltanschauung. Note his illustrations of the cultural presuppositions adopted into the Bible: the sun moves in orbit, not the earth. 24 Lilly's article eventually appeared as "The Religious Future of the World, Part I," Contemporary Review (January 1883): 100–121; this was one of many essays on religion that Lilly published. Characteristics from the Writings of John Henry Newman (London: Henry King, 1876) was his anthology that had Newman's approval. After leaving Cambridge, Lilly went into the Madras civil service, then was called to the bar in 1873; from 1874 until 1912, Lilly was Secretary to the Catholic Union of Great Britain. 25 "Him before me I held in contempt" (Terence, Eunuchus, II, ii, 8). 26 JHN to W. S. Lilly (7 December 1882), The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman 30:159–160; bold face added; hereafter cited: LD. NEWMAN ON THE TENSION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE: CREATIONISM, EVOLUTION AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL16 27 To W. S. Lilly (12 December 1882), LD, 30:162. This is corroborated by Newman's "The heart is commonly reached, not through the reason, but through the imagination, by means of direct impressions, by the testimony of facts and events, by history, by description" Discussions and Arguments, 293; available at: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/arguments/index.html; the sentence is reprinted in Grammar of Assent, 92; available at: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/grammar/index.html. Newman's affinity to St. Augustine, in terms of the imagination's role in assent (belief), is seen in Augustine's commentary on Psalm 126: Ipse [Deus] aedificat, ipse monet, ipse terret, ipse intellectum aperit, ipse ad fidem applicat sensum vestrum [God is the one who builds, admonishes, instills fear, opens the mind, and bends the perceptions to the act of belief] CCL, 40:1858. 28 The word dogma is not used in its technical theological sense as "a solemnly defined teaching about revelation," but as a description of those Catholic doctrines that, without solemn proposals, are settled matters in Catholic faith. For example, "each human being is created in God's image" is a doctrine true beyond doubt but has never been the subject of a solemn definition. The term evolution does not include, of course, those neo-Darwinian theories that are intentionally agnostic or atheistic. Of post-biblical features, like forms of government and rules of economic commerce, these cultural expressions developed independently of scriptural injunctions. Later, empirical science entered into the cultural experience of daily life and its progress in terms of discoveries and inventions, especially in the century preceding Newman, was explosive. Such visions of culture-and here lies Newman's point-live in the imagination. Culture inhabits one's images of how life is meant to be lived. If the Bible's message is absent from this Weltanschauung or is reckoned old fashioned, then a reasoned case had not been made for religion's irrelevance but simply a dismissive case. "What has religion to say to us moderns?" is the mantra. Lilly responded two days later in appreciation and Newman wrote his final observations on December 13: "I wrote as I did in my last letter because, though it is of first importance of course to show that there is no contradiction between scientific and religious truth, yet it was not there, I fancied, that the shoe pinched."27 I wish to conclude with the topic Newman described as "of first importance," which is the compatibility between religion and science. His principle was that truth cannot contradict truth. If we take as a truth of religion what Catholicism calls a dogma, then Newman's point is that a true scientific discovery will never overturn a dogma. Do the data of cosmic and human evolution countermand the biblical doctrine of creation? I have shown that a proper understanding of Genesis- what Catholics might term its doctrines28-is not jeopardized by the theory of evolution's being true. A TEST CASE FOR NEWMAN'S ADVICE: HUMAN ORIGINS AND ORIGINAL SIN What about monogenism? Does every human being descend from an individual first couple, no matter how long ago these two people lived? We can call them Adam and Eve for convenience. There is an immediate awkwardness with monogenism. Adam and Eve produced the second generation of humans. But the third generation is produced by the siblings. We call this incest. On the other hand, if it does not begin with a first couple, how does one maintain the dogma of Original Sin that seems to rely on the biblical story of two humans who misused their freedom and sinned? Compounding this conundrum is the growing scientific consensus that homo sapiens originated within polygenism. Human origins are either within a single breeding group (monophyletic polygenism) or from multiple and dispersed breeding groups 17 (polyphyletic polygenism). While agreed on polygenism for human beings, scientists debate the pervasiveness of the breeding group. Furthermore, scientists agree that all phyla, however and whenever they break into existence, continue evolving. Apropos humans, science studies the species (the phyletic group); it cannot study the geneology leading to or from an original individual, such as a single Adam. Newman had some sober advice, not so much for debating scientists as for the teachers and professors of religious doctrines: If he [the true university person] has one cardinal maxim in his philosophy, it is, that truth cannot be contrary to truth; if he has a second, it is, that truth often seems contrary to truth; and, if a third, it is the practical conclusion, that we must be patient with such appearances, and not be hasty to pronounce them to be really of a more formidable character.29 With monogenism versus polygenism, we are at Newman's third stage of advice. There is no doubt that the long Christian tradition has assumed an individual Adam and Eve at the origin of human life. Paul in Romans-when he described our solidarity with Christ, assuredly an individual person-assumed an individual Adam who sinned. As every human is affected by the sin of Adam, so is everyone affected by the death and resurrection of Christ.30 Elsewhere Paul spoke of the first Adam and the second Adam, and our image is of two individuals contrasted. The biblical focus as well as the focus from subsequent church teachings is on the doctrine of Original Sin, however, and not on Adam and Eve, as couple, per se.31 Monogenism is the assumed historical backdrop for the doctrine of Original Sin, but it is not the doctrine's focus. Thus, the councils of Carthage (AD 418) and Orange (AD 529) decreed against the naturalistic optimism of Pelagianism. The Council of Trent, in its fifth session in 1546, decreed against the excessive pessimism of Luther and Calvin.32 The first church teaching focusing on monogenism as such is the encyclical, Humani Generis, of Pope Pius XII (12 August 1950). Referring to polygenism, the pope said: "it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled [cum nequaquam appareat quomodo huiusmodi sentential componi queat] with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own."33 Although the language 29 Idea, 461. 30 Romans 5:12 The Vulgate text used by Trent overcommited Paul's Greek. The quo of "in quo omnes peccaverunt" [in whom all sinned] pictures inherited guilt from an individual Adam [quo]. The Greek !"' # $%&'() '*+,-'.& could read "concerning the fact that all sinned." The Bible de Jerusalem captures the Greek: "du fait que tous ont péché." The Greek fathers interpreted Romans 5:12 as later people sinning. Chrysostom (PG, 60:473) and Damascene (PG, 95:47) even interpreted hemarton to mean "[all people] became mortal." 31 An excellent reference on the scriptures is still A. M. Dubarle, Le Péché Originel dans l'Écriture (Paris: Cerf, 1958); excellent on church tradition are the nine appendices of T. C. O'Brien in his translation of Aquinas's tract on Original Sin (ST I-II, qq. 81–85) in Summa Theologiae, vol. 26 (London: Blackfriars and McGraw-Hill, 1965). 32 Luther's pessimism about fallen nature was in reaction to the optimism about natural ethics of his nominalist teachers, especially Gabriel Biel († 1495), who followed the teaching of Occam († 1349). Catholicism had its excessive pessimists in the teachings of Louvain professors, Baius († 1589) and Jansenius († 1638), whom Rome condemned. 33 Humani Generis, § 37. NEWMAN ON THE TENSION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE: CREATIONISM, EVOLUTION AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL18 34 Schriften zur Theologie (Einsiedeln: Benzinger, 1961) 1:262: "ein sachlicher Zusammenhang zwischen der Erbsündenlehre des Konzils und dem Monogenismus besteht derart, dass man objektiv implizit das erste leugnet, wenn man das zweite bestreitet." Schriften zur Theologie 1:253–322 reprints Rahner's original article, "Theologisches zum Monogenismus," Zeitschrift für Katholische Theologie 76 (1954), 1–18, 171–184; English translation by Cornelius Ernst in Theological Investigations (Helicon: Baltimore, 1961), 1:238. 35 "Erbsünde und Evolution," Concilium 3:459–465; this article never appeared in Schriften zur Theologie, but is found in Karl-Rahner: Sämliche Werke, Band 15 (Freiburg: Herder, 2002); an English translation is available in The Evolving World and Theology, J. B. Metz, ed., Concilium 26 (New York: Paulist, 1967), 61–73. 36 The development of Rahner's though can be followed in Theologisches Jahrgang 34, Nr. 4/5 (April/ Mai 2004): 232–242; a later important essay is "Die Sünde Adams," Schriften zur Theologie, Band 9 (Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1970), 259 ff. The issue of monogenism is succinctly captured by Kevin McMahon in "Monogenism and Polygenism," New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. (New York: Thomson Gale, 2003) 9:813–814. of outright condemnation is lacking, it seems to close the door for Catholics to hold polygenism and this is how it was understood in the 1950s. Karl Rahner (1904–1984), considered the most renowned Catholic theologian of the twentieth century, exemplified, in the change his thinking underwent, Newman's advice that one must be patient with the appearance of conflict between doctrines and scientific findings. In the immediate aftermath of Humani Generis, Rahner maintained "that an objective connection holds between monogenism and the Council's [Trent] teaching on original sin, in such wise that to contest the former is implicitly to deny the latter."34 While monogenism is not obliging de fide at the level of dogma, he judged that monogenism deserved the qualification theologically certain, meaning that Trent's dogma on Original Sin cannot be maintained without the presupposition of monogenism as its historical underpinning. Thirteen years later Rahner's view had changed, and so also had the thinking of anthropologists. In a 1967 essay,35 Rahner argued that the dogma of Original Sin was not wedded to monogenism. It could readily be maintained in a polygenistic view of evolution, provided the emergence of homo sapiens from hominids maintained a line of unity between the preexisting biotype and the first human biotype. It is left to science to determine where and when and how phyletically wide was the breakthrough to human beings. To theology is left an understanding of Original Sin, and two scenarios are equally compatible with maintaining the dogma of Trent: an individual within this biologically and historically related group could have sinned, with implications for the group, or the word Adam stands for a collective human guilt coming from the social contagion of sin. Since Rahner's theological development is only presented as an illustration of an important point made by Newman, readers are directed to specific studies on polygenism.36 Sufficient for present purposes is Newman's point in relationship to the tension between religion and science. Prior to the twentieth century, the doctrine of Original Sin seemed incompatible with hominization; the dogma seemed to demand that the first two humans appeared on earth without evolutionary backdrop. Later, the church allowed that the human body itself could be the product of evolution, but the church held its ground that all humans descended only from two individuals. Thus, the doctrine of Original Sin seemed incompatible with polygenism. But scientific opinion has now coalesced around polygenism. Newman's advice was to be patient with the appearance of incompatibility. Do not be hasty to pronounce the discoveries of science inimical to the faith unless one 19NEWMAN ON THE TENSION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE: CREATIONISM, EVOLUTION AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN stands on surest grounds. Newman was against haste in so many matters. To overcommit oneself, or to commit oneself to a position that later and only with embarrassment, must be renounced is unbecoming to the teaching of religion, whether done at high levels of church magisterium or in the pulpit. Religion supplies genuine truths, Newman maintained, and it ought not to invite perceptions that it is obstructionist or outmoded in unnecessary skirmishes with science. "And when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks, and laid them on the fire, there came a viper out of the heat." SECURE in his prophetic strength, The water peril o'er, The many-gifted man at length Stepp'd on the promised shore. He trod the shore; but not to rest, Nor wait till Angels came; Lo! humblest pains the Saint attest, The firebrands and the flame. But, when he felt the viper's smart, Then instant aid was given; Christian! hence learn to do thy part, And leave the rest to Heaven. Messina. February 8, 1833. Available at: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/verses/verse70.html JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 000. "????" Verses on Various Occasions, 000. NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL20 Dwight A. Lindley III, a doctoral candidate in Literature at the University of Dallas, is working on a dissertation on Newman's Aristotelian ethical and rhetorical thought. 1 "Implicit and Explicit Reason," the thirteenth sermon in Fifteen Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford, Between A.D. 1826 and 1843, 251–277, at 256; available at: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/oxford/sermon13.html; hereafter cited: OUS. 2 OUS, 257. 3 OUS, 274. 4 OUS, 275 5 E.g., Jay Newman, The Mental Philosophy of John Henry Newman (Waterloo, CA: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1986). 6 Among the many, see: Edward Sillem, "General Introduction to the Study of Newman's Philosophy," in the first volume of The Philosophical Notebook of John Henry Newman, 2 vols. (Louvain, Belgium: Nauwelaerts, 1969); David Whalen's Thomistic View in The Consolation of Rhetoric: The Realism of Personalist Thought in John Henry Newman (San Francisco: Catholic Scholars, 1994); these critical studies should be compared with Bernard Lonergan, Insight, 5th edition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992); Lonergan purportedly read The Grammar of Assent five times before writing this book in the spirit of Newmanian epistemology. 7 E.g., Laurence Richardson, Newman's Approach to Knowledge (London: Gracewing, 2007); John Crosby, "Newman on the Personal," First Things, 125 (August/September 2002): 43–45. For John Henry Newman, "reason is the faculty of gaining knowledge withoutdirect perception, or of ascertaining one thing by means of another."1 Rather than proceeding directly, as we might imagine, "the mind ranges to and fro, and spreads out, and advances forward with a quickness which has become a proverb, and a subtlety and versatility which baffle investigation. It passes on from point to point," collecting various kinds of data by manifold processes of the mind.2 In fact, in the case of everything we know, our way of knowing, our epistemological process, covers far more ground than we will ever be able to express explicitly, made up as it is of "a number of very minute circumstances together, which the mind is quite unable to count up and methodize in an argumentative form."3 At best, our explicit accounts "do but approximate to a representation of the general character of the proof which the writer wishes to convey to another's mind."4 Every spoken view is de facto partial, then, and as such cannot get to the bottom, properly speaking, of its object. As it is with our knowledge generally, so also it is with our knowledge of Newman: since his own days of ascendency in the University of Oxford, readers have ranged to and fro through his words, trying to get a view of the man and his mind. Many accounts have been rendered, many books written. In accounting for his epistemological thought alone, many a bottle of ink has been spilt: indeed, Newman's conception of human thought has invited the views of analytical philosophers,5 Thomist metaphysicians,6 post-Husserlian phenomenologists,7 postmodern This essay considers Newman's basic epistemology in terms of two of his most important, and often overlooked, sources: Aristotle and the Church Fathers. In particular, Newman's reliance upon Aristotle's ethical and rhetorical thought on the one hand, and upon the patristic concept of oikonomia on the other, guided him in crafting the well-known account of faith and reason in his thirteenth University Sermon. PROBABILITY AND ECONOMY IN NEWMAN'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE DWIGHT A. LINDLEY III 21 rhetoricians,8 disgruntled chemists,9 repentant Marxists,10 and Cardinals of the Catholic Church.11 All this, and we have yet to pin the man down. The fullness and multi-dimensional complexity of Newman's epistemology eludes any facile presentation: many have offered accounts of his mind on this subject, but much yet remains to be said. What follows is an effort at presenting Newman's thought on knowledge, by centering on two of Newman's chief influences, Aristotle and the Eastern Church Fathers-particularly Aristotelian ethical thought and the patristic concept of oikonomia. Different as they seem at first, these two streams of influence run together quite pleasantly in Newman's epistemological thought. NEWMAN AND ARISTOTLE Newman's philosophy of knowledge seems essentially based in Aristotle's ethical teaching, especially as it hinges upon probability. In his "human works," the Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, and Poetics, Aristotle discussed the ethical sphere of life, the sphere in which everyday human character, or êthos, is foundational for our understanding. It is, as Aristotle explained in the Ethics, a part of life within which there can be "great disagreement and inconsistency" over choices, for when we speak of the true, the good, or the beautiful in ethics or politics, we speak necessarily of "things that are so for the most part."12 Indeed, the verities of the ethical world are always "for the most part," always "likely" or "probable," because men and women do not live their lives according to fixed rules but according to habits that have over time become part of their character-a kind of second nature. This second nature is the foundation of human character, what Aristotle calls an "active condition of the soul that determines choice,"13 and because we live according to this second nature, this active condition, we become individuals of probable character-individuals who would likely act in such-and-such a way in such-and-such a situation. The virtuous person will have developed good habits, and thus a good active condition that inclines him or her toward good choices; many other persons, of course, develop mediocre, or even bad, habits-habits that lead to corresponding types of character. All this is important to the person with phronêsis or practical reason. This person is "able to deliberate beautifully about things that are good and advantageous to himself . . . the sort of things that are conducive to living well as a whole," and such persons are able to make good judgments with regard to their 8 See Walter Jost, Rhetorical Thought in John Henry Newman (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989). 9 Newman's Grammar stands in the background of the epistemological thought of Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 2nd edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). For a discussion of the connection, historical and intellectual, see Martin X. Moleski, The Theological Epistemologies of John Henry Newman and Michael Polanyi (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000). Avery Dulles offers evidence of Polanyi's particular reading of the Grammar, in John Henry Newman (New York: Continuum, 2005), 47, footnote 44; hereafter cited: Dulles. 10 Alasdair MacIntyre recognizes Newman as a chief influence upon his view of the epistemology of tradition in After Virtue, 3rd edition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), xii. 11 See Dulles, 34–63. 12 Nicomachean Ethics, translated by Joe Sachs (Newburyport, MA: Focus, 2002), 1094b12–22; hereafter cited: Ethics. 13 Ethics, 1139a22–23. PROBABILITY AND ECONOMY IN NEWMAN'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL22 14 Ethics, 1140a25–28 15 Toward the beginning of the Rhetoric, Aristotle makes clear that "rhetoric is like some offshoot of dialectic and ethical studies (which is rightly called politics)" (On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, 2nd edition, translated by George A. Kennedy (New York: Oxford, 2007), 1356a25–27; hereafter cited as Rhetoric), and he makes the same point in Ethics (1094a28–b3). 16 Rhetoric, 1357a4–5. 17 Rhetoric, 1358a37–1358b2. 18 Rhetoric, 1354a15. 19 See Rhetoric, 1357a22–33. habitual desires.14 In addition to their own character and tendencies, virtuous persons must also be able to grasp the character of others, weighing the probabilities in each case so that they may find what is best to do with regard to all these people. The person with phronêsis knows what is probable for each person involved in the situation, and so is able to judge accurately what the probable result of this or that action would be, weighing the options in order to make the best possible choice. Just as important for Newman, this is also the world inhabited by the Aristotelian rhetor, the speaker trained according to the principles of Aristotle's Rhetoric.15 Of rhetoric's three genres, the judicial, the epideictic, and the deliberative, the last is most important, and Aristotle made clear early on that when we deliberate-when we debate-"we debate about things that seem capable of admitting two possibilities," for what use is it going back and forth over settled questions?16 The public or private speaker, then, must know how to think and talk through ethical questions, questions that admit of more than one type of answer, questions that depend upon a knowledge of probability, or what is most likely to be the case. For Aristotle, a speech consists not only of words, but of "a speaker and a subject on which he speaks . . . someone addressed, and the objective [telos] of the speech," all of which must be weighed according to the probabilities.17 What is likely for the audience given the subject in question, and what means are likely to get them to the desired telos of the speech? How, in Newman's case, are a group of Oxford parishioners likely to respond to an argument against sola scriptura? How might they most probably be brought around to accept that argument? It is obvious that this Aristotelian rhetor needs a well developed phronêsis, but it is also clear that he needs a finely tuned means of persuasion, and this means must be, for Aristotle, the enthymeme. As syllogism is the essential vehicle of dialectic, bringing the interlocutors stepwise down a logical path, so enthymeme is "the body of persuasion," bearing along the speaker, subject, audience, means, and end all at once.18 It works thus according to the probabilities of all the humans involved-according to their character, their êthos-carefully stating the right premises and leaving the rest unsaid in order to streamline the proposition into the shape most conducive to its acceptance.19 Newman, for instance, knew exactly what to say and what not to say from St. Mary's pulpit in the matter of sola scriptura, and the audience responded well, assenting to his desired end. In doing so, any Aristotelian speaker leads his audience toward the telos in a way that feels entirely natural to them, for it is in accord with their second nature. Their habits have made a certain path probable for them, and the rhetor has found a way to usher them down this path. This is the complex dance of rhetoric, a situation of give and take based on what is likely to persuade-given the probabilities of all involved. 23 Newman did not only appropriate Aristotle's ethical thought in the pulpit: Newman's way of thinking in general, and especially his view of epistemology, conforms to Aristotle's understanding of probability.20 In his thirteenth university sermon, Newman presented a view of reason that is decidedly Aristotelian in the ways that have been discussed: in his presentation, there are "two processes, distinct from each other," in the motion of human thought-"the original process of reasoning, and next, the process of investigating our reasonings."21 The former proceeds according to the variegated process seen above-roving to and fro around a subject, perceiving the truth about it by a thousand different sensations, inferences, associations, hunches, and the like; the latter tries to account for that quickly, mysteriously gathered truth. The former is "implicit reason," the latter "explicit."22 In his presentation of the former, implicit apprehension, Newman can be seen thinking in terms of Aristotelian probability, terms he took up with greater precision in the Grammar of Assent: after all, it is by means of a faculty akin to phronêsis-a faculty Newman dubbed "the Illative Sense"-that one culls all the myriad information gathered through the senses, memory, and imagination.23 As present sensations flood our perception, the Illative Sense arranges them according to our memory of previous sensations, which have in turn been arranged rationally into patterns-this person has generally acted that way in such and such a situation; that person has often responded in this way given such and such a circumstance. This is the stuff of what Newman called "antecedent probability"-the complex set of generalized memories and past judgments according to which our Illative Sense decides what is right and true given the phenomena before us now. Following Aristotle's prescription for ethical action and rhetoric, Newman thought of the entire process of intellectual apprehension in terms of probability. What is more, he thought of this process enthymematically. That is, Aristotle's description of the essential unit of rhetoric-the enthymeme, or rhetorical syllogism-forms the model upon which Newman bases his own description of reason in the University Sermons. All speakers, according to Aristotle, communicate via enthymeme,24 leaving some or many of the premises out of each logical segment of their arguments.25 This means that rhetoric is de facto presumptive, taking many details of every situation for granted as tacit premises as it moves forward to draw subsequent conclusions. In Newman's epistemology, these unspoken premises come to stand for all the countless data of implicit reason, the antecedent probabilities for the persons, places, and ideas involved in the present situation. The complex network of implicit reason is, for Newman, the great tacit premise of all the enthymemes of our lives, undergirding every attempt we make at communication. Our explicit reason is in every case enthymematic, seeking to carry in "the body of rhetoric" all the fullness of 20 For a review of Newman's historical and philosophical relation to Aristotle, see Sillem, "General Introduction," 50–63. 21 OUS, 258. 22 OUS, 259. 23 An Essay in Aid of A Grammar of Assent, 353–359, available at http://www.newmanreader.org/ works/grammar/chapter9.html#section2. 24 Rhetoric, 1356b6–8. 25 Rhetoric, 1357a17–18. PROBABILITY AND ECONOMY IN NEWMAN'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL24 26 Newman served as a sort of sounding board for Richard Whately (1787–1863), then a colleague at Oriel College, by helping him craft his neo-Aristotelian treatise on Logic for the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana; see Newman, Autobiographical Writings, edited by Henry Tristram (London: Sheed & Ward, 1957), 67. 27 There are many other ramifications from Newman's Aristotelianism, but an account of these must be saved for another essay. 28 John Reumann, Stewardship and the Economy of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 11–15. 29 E.g. Polybius, The Histories, 6 vols., translated by W.R. Paton, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard, 1922–27), 1:4.1–2. our experience of reality. Thinking thus, we begin to get a sense of the extent of Newman's debt to Arisotle's ethical and rhetorical thought. Indeed, it seems to have underlain his philosophical thought from an early age, for he began studying Aristotle in earnest as an undergraduate at Oxford, and had occasion to work seriously through his logical thought as a youthful tutor.26 As he proceeded through the course of the University Sermons between 1826 and 1843, his grasp of the Aristotelian principles only grew firmer and more comprehensive, leading naturally into his later thought in the Essay on Development, The Idea of a University, and The Grammar of Assent- each of which presumes the Aristotelian epistemology laid down in the University Sermons.27 NEWMAN AND THE FATHERS A second major aspect of Newman's epistemological project is one that complements his Aristotelianism inasmuch as theology complements philosophy. As a fellow and tutor of Oriel College, Newman began a lifelong study of the early Christian Fathers, who became over time his greatest theological influences. Through his reading of the Greek Fathers especially, he developed a keen understanding of what they called the Divine Economy, or oikonomia, a concept he thoroughly assimilated into his own thought about the basic human process of knowing. In developing their unique understanding of oikonomia, the Fathers followed the lead of both the classical tradition on the one hand, and the Christian New Testament on the other. Derived from the Greek oikos and nomos, the term oikonomia means literally "household law," though it spread out to cover "household management" or "stewardship" as well, and anything under the sun that required stewardship-namely, almost everything. So, in ancient usage, oikonomia referred not only to money or household goods, but also to words (in rhetoric), musical notes (in composition), and conduct (in ethical life).28 More expansively, some even spoke of the oikonomia of history, in which a god guided human events toward a desired end.29 The New Testament, and especially Paul, brought the term into the Christian era, speaking of the apostles as "stewards of the mysteries of God," Paul's own "stewardship to preach," and the "oikonomia of God"-the divine plan, of which Paul was a minister (1 Cor 4:1–2; 9:17; Col 1:25). Thus from both scripture and cultural tradition, the Fathers of the Church received the idea of an oikonomia that could be construed very narrowly-an economy of words-or very broadly-an economy of God's plan, of the work of Providence through history. But what, practically, did it mean to steward words? To steward history? Newman provided some idea in an appendix to his translation of Athanasius: 25 By "Economical," I mean language relating to matters beyond the direct apprehension of those to whom it is addressed, and which, in order to have a chance of conveying to them any idea, however faint, of the fact, must be more or less of an analogous or figurative character, as viewed relatively to the truths which it professes to report, instead of a direct and literal statement of the things which have to be conveyed.30 In the matter of words, then, stewardship-or economy-means crafting one's account of reality according to the capacity of the audience; in the matter of history, by extension, oikonomia means the design of God, over time, for presenting the divine nature, as well as the plan of Providence, according to our capacity for receiving it. The Fathers' use of the term often signified a prudent governance of both words and history, as in their understanding of the unfolding revelations of the Old and New Testaments: the words of the Law and the succeeding prophets were given to the people of Israel, and by extension to the world, in a stepwise process that revealed the truth about God and God's people over the course of centuries. According to Athanasius (in Newman's translation), these successive words were fulfilled in the coming of Jesus, the Divine Word, who at the Father's bidding came from the heavens for the abolition of sin, and was born of the Virgin Mary, and conversed with the disciples, and fulfilled all the economy according to the Father's will, and was crucified, and died and descended into the parts beneath the earth, and directed the economy of things there, whom the gate-keepers of hell saw and shuddered; and that He rose from the dead the third day, and conversed with the disciples, and fulfilled the economy, and, when the forty days were full, ascended into the heavens, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father.31 Athanasius thus makes history an economy of God's words, a progressive revelation toward a certain end: Christ's first coming ended the revelatory period of the Jewish scriptures; Christ's second coming would end the revelatory period of the Church's age. This second period was also frequently described in terms of oikonomia, as seen most clearly in Newman's Arians of the Fourth Century. There, he described the catechetical, proselytistic, and controversial functions of the ancient church of Alexandria, all of which he portrayed as engaged in a kind of "economy" of truth.32 His reasoning was that neither believing neophytes, nor disbelieving, old-world pagans, were ready for the fullness of the mysteries of God-the cross, the Incarnation, the Trinity-and so they were led gradually toward fullness, beginning with parables, allegories, appeals to nature, questions of general morality, and proceeding thence toward deeper and more concrete presentations of orthodox dogma: ultimately, the hearer would be ready for full initiation, sometimes years later. The point of all this 30 Select Treatises of Athanasius, in Controversy with the Arians, 2 vols., edited and translated by John Henry Newman (London: Longmans, Green, 1895), 2:91; hereafter cited: Athanasius. 31 Athanasius, 1:71–72; emphasis added. 32 The Arians of the Fourth Century, 41–79, available at http://www.newmanreader.org/works/arians/ chapter1–3.html. PROBABILITY AND ECONOMY IN NEWMAN'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL26 33 Though Newman had read a few historical surveys of early Christianity as a young man, he began reading the Fathers seriously a few years into his fellowship at Oriel: "in the Long Vacation of 1828 I set about to read them chronologically beginning with St. Ignatius and St. Justin" (Apologia pro vita sua, Being a History of his ReligiOUS Opinions, 25; available at http://www.newmanreader.org/works/apologia65/ chapter1.html). By this time, he had been reading and teaching Aristotle for several years. 34 OUS, 262. 35 OUS, 263. was twofold: on the one hand, to avoid throwing pearls before swine, handing out the gospel to those who would not appreciate it; on the other, to present the wonders of the faith to each at his or her own pace. The idea of this early Church practice opened up new vistas for Newman. He had already begun some years before to think of reality ethically and rhetorically after the manner of Aristotle. Next, as he began to read through the Fathers,33 he came to see that his rhetorical philosophy could fit in naturally with a kind of rhetorical theology, the patristic notion of God's economy of word and deed. Indeed, putting the two together, one may begin to get a picture of how Newman came to his ingenious conceptions of assent and development. This strand of economical thought can be seen in one of Newman's most important epistemological writings, his thirteenth Oxford University sermon. OXFORD UNIVERSITY SERMONS Newman's thirteenth Oxford University sermon lays out a uniquely rhetorical view of the way reason works in an individual soul: implicit reason gains an understanding of reality by a thousand different means, and explicit reason makes enthymematic accounts of this understanding. The other crucial element in the thirteenth sermon, however, is faith, inasmuch as it interacts with reason implicitly: this relationship, I think, comes into particular focus in light of the patristic theory of oikonomia. In Newman's presentation of the believer's rational process, faith works hand-inhand with implicit reason, for it is, after all, a way of ascertaining the truth of something one has not proven. Also, like implicit reason, faith proceeds along its way entirely aside from explicit rational accounts: for "faith, though in all cases a reasonable process, is not necessarily founded on investigation, argument, or proof; these processes being but the explicit form which the reasoning takes in the case of particular minds."34 Explicit inquiry and argument, it is true, can do much in behalf of faith by developing "the Evidences, Biblical Exposition, and Dogmatic Theology," but these are the overt premises in the enthymeme of Christianity; faith is rather about the countless elements of data, conjecture, personal trust, and antecedent probability-in short, the missing premises that support the ultimate conclusion. It has much more to do with "an exercise of implicit reason, which is in its degree common to all men."35 This laid down, it becomes clear that all explicit, rational accounts of religious life, like all rational accounts, are de facto flawed or partial, inasmuch as they look like the whole of a piece of knowledge, but are not. Indeed, Newman took the claim even as far as Scripture, for Inspiration [also] is defective, not in itself, but in consequence of the medium it 27 uses and the beings it addresses. It uses human language, and it addresses man; and neither can man compass, nor can his hundred tongues utter, the mysteries of the spiritual world, and God's appointments in this. This vast and intricate scene of things cannot be generalized or represented through or to the mind of man; and inspiration, in undertaking to do so, necessarily lowers what is divine to raise what is human.36 This account bears the marks of patristic oikonomia, and it does so insofar as it depicts reason as an economy of faith, or, more properly, explicit reason as an economy of faith and implicit understanding. For Newman, the interior life of a person's soul, relative to that person's everyday speech, is analogous to the Spirit-guided Faith of the Church, relative to the Church's outward pronouncements. The upshot is that, just as God stewarded the divine mysteries by means of Alexandrian allegories, bringing the truth into the world very carefully, so God stewards the faith of every person, allowing it to come out into words only as it is prudent. That is to say, Newman interpreted our incapacity for enunciating the truth as designed by God, an economy that both recognizes our limitations, and makes us-like the Alexandrian catechumens-want to transcend them. In his fifteenth University Sermon, Newman exemplified this incapacity of our explicit reason by pointing to the majesty and mystery of a piece of music, a familiar case in which the whole is somehow much, much greater than the parts. We cannot explain Mozart. "But what," asks Newman, carrying the point further, if the whole series of impressions, made on us through the senses, be, as I have already hinted, but a Divine economy suited to our need, and the token of realities distinct from themselves, and such as might be revealed to us, nay, more perfectly, by other senses, different from our existing ones as they from each other?37 Here one finally hits upon the role of God's economy in our daily lives: the disjunction between perception and our ability to express it, Newman seems to be saying, is a message from God, telling us that we have been made for a better place. PROBABILITY AND ECONOMY Such is the nature of the case here below. But such also implies the need for an authority here below, a trustworthy interpreter of the economy of Christian life. That is to say, prima facie the Church's doctrine-its explicit account of Christ and Christianity-seems to have changed in significant ways over the years, and there are many points of view on why this is: has the Catholic Church been corrupted? Has the original meaning been lost? Was there ever any truth to begin with? Down this path of questions, the idea of oikonomia carries Newman into the Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. Indeed, it seems that Newman's theological doctrine of oikonomia, in addition to his philosophical Aristotelianism, set out his work for him in general, for he was 36 OUS, 268. 37 OUS, 347. PROBABILITY AND ECONOMY IN NEWMAN'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL28 38 "Preface to the Third Edition," The Via Media of the Anglican Church, Illustrated in Lectures, Letters, and Tracts, Written between 1830 and 1841, 2 vols., 1:lix, available at: http://www.newmanreader.org/ works/viamedia/volume1/preface3.html. everywhere interested in explaining how we know what we know. He was forever talking about the means we have at our disposal for understanding what appears from one point of view to be a Divine economy, from another, the probabilities of life. Thus, his Apologia finds him explaining his own way of seeing through to the truth and acknowledging his need of the Church as a guide; his Idea of a University features an examination of the process of public reason, the act of proceeding together round the imaginative whole of knowledge as represented by the different university disciplines; his Grammar of Assent, finally, crowns the epistemological investigations of Newman's life, firmly establishing the place of probability and divine economy in our everyday life of knowing. This is where Newman's philosophy and theology meet-where all of Newman's intellectual labors meet, really-in the everyday. In this sense, he was a model of Aristotle's rhetor, who must, from the nature of the case, find his or her cue in the situation of the hour. Thus, though his heart continually reached up to Heaven, Newman's words, and his everyday rationality, were deeply rooted in the sublunary world, the world where all our knowledge is of necessity partial. As is clear throughout his writing, he saw the hand of God in our limitations, and was pleased to wait upon Providence for their eventual winnowing away. "From the time that the Creator clothed Adam," he recognized, "concealment is in some sense the necessity of our fall,"38 and there is no fear in necessity or concealment, if only they are established by God. With Adam, Newman waited to be clothed again in light. 29 It is commonly agreed that among Newman's intellectual influences stand Aristotle,Augustine, Richard Whately, Bishop Butler, Ignatius of Antioch, Athanasius, and Alexandrian Christianity. However, the intellectual influence of Blaise Pascal is much more difficult to establish. Dating back to the early twentieth century, scholarship writes an alternating history of affirmation, denial, and hesitancy whether and to what degree Pascal influenced Newman. Newman's distinguished biographer and friend, Wilfrid Ward, not only judged Newman at times to be strengthening and deepening Pascal's thought but also held that "the substance of the thought is in many points almost identical."1 Less than a decade later, Erich Przywara assessed the relationship negatively; he argued that though the "problem of a non-mathematical way of knowing reality was also the problem giving rise to Newman's 'implicit reasoning,' and 'natural inference," Newman did not share Pascal's "radical rejection of all natural proofs of God and knowledge of God. . . ." Przywara concluded that the tradition of religious intuition of God illustrated by Pascal "finds no place with him [Newman]."2 Over a decade later, Przywara's judgment did not deter John Cronin from holding-with Ward-the "striking similarity of views between himself [Newman] and Pascal." In a chapter entitled, "The Background and Sources of Newman's Theory of Knowledge," Cronin wrote: There are many passages in the Pensées which are echoed in a striking way in the Oxford University Sermons. Pascal's remark about the tendency to atheism found in exuberant minds; the dwelling on the greatness and littleness of man; the refusal to identify reason with logic; the vindication of belief possessed by the simple and uneducated; the noting of the difference in the same ideas possessed by different minds; the aphorisms: "it is not barbara and baralipton which constitute reasoning: and "there are two extremes, to exclude reasoning, and to Brian W. Hughes is Associate Professor of Theology at the University of Saint Mary, Leavenworth, Kansas. 1 Wilfrid Ward, Last Lectures by Wilfrid Ward (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1918) 22, 30. 2 Erich Przywara, Religionsbegrundung: Max Scheler-J.H. Newman (Freiburg: Herder, 1923): 268–269, at 282; an abbreviated version appeared as "Unmittlebare Intuition: Augustine-Pascal-Newman," Stimmen der Zeit 105 (1923): 121–131. UNE SOURCE CACHÉE: BLAISE PASCAL'S INFLUENCE UPON JOHN HENRY NEWMAN This essay breaks new ground by showing that Blaise Pascal exerted a greater influence upon John Henry Newman than scholars have previously acknowledged. Drawing upon recently discovered unpublished information, this essay traces connections between Pascal's intuitive mind and Newman's view of implicit reasoning and suggests overlaps between these two thinkers on such topics as the way implicit reasoning operates, the role of evidences in faith, and the need for ethics to guide good reasoning. UNE SOURCE CACHÉE: BLAISE PASCAL'S INFLUENCE UPON JOHN HENRY NEWMAN BRIAN W. HUGHES NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL30 3 John Francis Cronin, Cardinal Newman: His Theory of Knowledge (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America, 1935) 19–20. 4 Pierre Frieden, "Pascal et Newman Le Drame De L'Homme Libre," Newman Studien, volume 3, edited by Heinrich Fries and W. Becker (Nurnberg: Glock und Lutz, 1957): 170–202, at 170: "Un parallèle entre Pascal et Newman peut paraître artificiel ou téméraire. Ils ne sont pas seulement éloignés dans le temps et l'espace, mais il ne subsiste aucune trace d'une tentative de rapprochement de l'un à l'autre. D'ailleurs leur bibliographie ne contient que de vague allusion ou de brèves indications sur un parallélisme ou une parenté de leur pensée" (translation mine). 5 Frieden, 184. 6 J. M. Cameron, "Newman and the Empiricist Tradition," in The Rediscovery of Newman: An Oxford Symposium, edited by John Coulson and A. M. Allchin (London and Melbourne: Sheed and Ward, 1967), 76–96; 87–89. 7 Mary Katherine Tillman, "The Two-Fold Logos of Newman and Pascal: L'Esprit géometrique," Louvain Studies 15/2–3 (1990): 233–255, at 238. 8 Ibid. 9 See Laurence Richardson, Newman's Approach To Knowledge (Herefordshire: Gracewing, 2007); John R. Connolly, John Henry Newman: A View of Catholic Faith for the New Millennium (Lanham, MD: Sheed & Ward, 2005); Frederick D. Aquino, Communities of Informed Judgment: Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of Rationality (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America, 2004); Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., John Henry Newman (New York: Continuum, 2002); Terrence Merrigan, Clear Heads and Holy Hearts: The Religious And Theological Ideal of John Henry Newman (Louvain: Peeters, 1991); Stanley L. Jaki, Newman's Challenge (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000). 10 As for the remaining unpublished papers, it is yet unknown whether Pascal would emerge as a strong source. 11 There is an important but singular citation of Pascal in Newman's An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, edited by I.T. Ker (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985) that will be discussed later; hereafter cited GA. admit nothing but reasoning," are all in the spirit of Newman.3 Subsequent to Cronin's study, scholars attempted cautious comparisons between the two thinkers, but few argued for a direct influence of Pascal upon Newman. In 1957, Pierre Frieden specified the problem. A parallel between Pascal and Newman can seem artificial or audacious. They are not only separated in time and space, but no trace of an effort exists to bring one closer to the other. Moreover, their bibliography only contains vague allusions or brief indications on a parallelism or a relationship of their thought.4 Despite his caution, Frieden proceeded to claim that Pascal's understanding of scientific reason and its limitations not only anticipated Newman's, but stated: "Their positions are identical."5 Ten years later, in 1967, James Cameron seemed to agree with Frieden in holding that Newman's intellectual debt to Pascal remains "uncertain." Nevertheless, Cameron-like Frieden-supplied yet more evocative links between the two.6 The most recent and sustained inquiry into the relationship between Pascal and Newman came from Mary Katherine Tillman in 1990. Tillman focused on the mathematical and explicit aspects of Newman's view of reason alongside the minor works of Pascal, especially De l'Esprit Géometrie (On the Geometric Mind) and "their common indebtedness" to the Port-Royal Logic.7 Tillman reiterated Frieden and Cameron's reserve. She did not argue for "a direct influence of Pascal upon Newman," but felt that the probability of direct influence is there but "must be left open."8 Recent books that treat Newman's view of reason and the illative sense omit any references to Pascal.9 Why? First, Newman never unambiguously listed Pascal as a source of his intellectual formation in any of his published works, letters or diaries.10 Second, extended citations of Pascal in Newman's published works are rare.11 Third, references to Pascal are scattered in Newman's works and sometimes Pascal is simply 31 mentioned as an important figure.12 Fourth, Newman criticized Pascal for being associated with heresy; referring implicitly to the Provincial Letters, he demurred that Pascal "does not approve himself to a Catholic judgment."13 Fifth, the theological influence of Augustine looms large over Pascal and Newman such that it is difficult to disentangle Pascal from Augustine in Newman.14 Still, there are good reasons to hold that Pascal exerted a stronger influence upon Newman than has been acknowledged. First, Newman owned a copy of the Pensées and quoted it.15 Second, Newman referenced Pascal in many writings and never criticized the Pensées.16 Newman would surely have rejected any Jansenist view of grace, but aside from that, Pascal is not a subject of criticism. Third, Tillman persuasively traced the connection of the Port Royal Logic through Hume, Locke, and Butler to Newman's view of mathematical reason and logic.17 Fourth, there is evidence of Pascal upon Newman's personal life: in a letter to an unknown correspondent, Newman recommended Pascal's Thoughts to a mutual friend to deepen her spiritual progress.18 In his Apologia, Newman recorded a period of suffering after the Kingsley affair; he emotionally recalled this time by misquoting Pascal's phrase 'on mourra seul' as "Je mourrai seul."19 The strongest warrant for a Pascalian influence upon Newman comes from previously unpublished information that James Earnest and Gerard Tracey's supply in 12 See, for example, The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman 7: 198; Newman to R. F. Wilson (14 October 1832) 3: 101; cited hereafter as LD; Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 1989) , 102. 13 Newman, Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching, Vol. I (London: Longmans, Green, and Co, 1901) 322; Newman, The Idea of a University, ed. I.T. Ker (Oxford: Oxford University, 1976) 260; 637; also, JHN to J. D. Dalgairns, LD, 12: 6. 14 Newman mentioned that St. Augustine's phrase Securus judicat orbis terrarum"absolutely pulverized" the Via Media and became instrumental in his conversion to Rome; Ian Ker, John Henry Newman: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University, 1988) 183; hereafter cited: Newman: A Biography. For the influence of Augustine on Pascal, see Marvin R. O'Connell, Blaise Pascal: Reasons of the Heart (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997): 30–52. For the relationship between Augustine and Pascal, see Philippe Sellier, Pascal Et Saint Augustin (Paris: Armand Colin, 1970). Though situated within an "Augustinian" tradition, Pascal transformed Augustine's thought and diverged from it; see Bernard Wills, "Reason, Intuition, and Choice: Pascal's Augustinian Voluntarism," International Philosophical Quarterly 46/1 (March 2006): 43–58. 15 "Newman acquired Isaac Taylor's translation of the Pensées, published as Thoughts on Religion and Philosophy (1838)"; see Newman, Fifteen Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford, edited by James David Earnest and Gerard Tracey (Oxford: Oxford University, 2006), 295; hereafter cited: OUS. Newman listed his copy in The Theological Papers of John Henry Newman on Faith and Certainty, edited by Hugo M. de Achaval, S.J. and J. Derek Holmes (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976) 158; hereafter cited: Theological Papers. Newman cited Pascal in GA, 199–202. 16 Newman, Discussions and Arguments on Various Subjects, introduction and notes by Gerard Tracey and James Tolhurst (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), 265–266; JHN to E.B. Pusey (5 December 1832 ), LD, 3: 127; JHN to R.F. Wilson (14 October 1832), LD, 3: 101; JHN to Henry James Coleridge (5 February 1871), LD 25: 280; letter to an unknown correspondent in Letters and Correspondence of John Henry Newman (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1898), edited by Anne Mozely, 2: 274; Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, edited by Ian Ker (London: Penguin, 1994), 197–198; Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1997), 893; Newman, The Idea of a University, edited by I.T. Ker (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976), 260; Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 102; Newman, Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching (London: Longmans, Green, &Co, 1901), 1:302; Newman, Essay Critical and Historical (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1907) 2:134, 149, 181; GA, 199–202. 17 Tillman, "The Two-Fold Logos of Newman and Pascal: L'Esprit géometrique," Louvain Studies 15/2–3 (1990): 233–255. 18 Letters and Correspondence of John Henry Newman, edited by Mozely, 274. 19 Thomas Vargish, Newman: The Contemplation of Mind (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970) 177; Apologia, 197–198. UNE SOURCE CACHÉE: BLAISE PASCAL'S INFLUENCE UPON JOHN HENRY NEWMAN NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL32 20 OUS, 294–295. 21 Ibid., 294–295; Richard Hurrell Froude approved of Pascal in the contexts of worship and holiness of life; see Remains Of The Late Reverend Richard Hurrell Froude, 4 vols. (London: J.G.& F. Rivington, 1838–1839), 1:391, 395. 22 Blaise Pascal, Pensées. Translated by A. J. Krailsheimer (London: Penguin, 1966) #132–139, 66–72: "Original sin is folly in the eyes of men, but it is put forward as such . . . For without it, what are we to say man is? His whole state depends on this imperceptible point" (#695 246). On the complexity of original sin, see David Wetsel, Pascal and Disbelief: Catechesis and Conversion in the Pensées (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America, 1994) 2f. There are various orderings of the Pensées according to the manuscripts selected and the scholar who produced the arrangement. Krailsheimer's edition follows the order according to M. Louis Lafuma. I will be citing the paragraph numbers of Lafuma along with page numbers from the Krailsheimer edition. A table of concordance to other editions can be found in Pascal, OEuvres complètes, 2 volumes, édition présentée, établie et annotée par Michel Le Guern (Éditions Gallimard, 1998) II, 1670–1681. 23 Pascal adopted the term "heart" in his theological anthropology. "Heart"-which has a layered and rich meaning in biblical and theological anthropology-is used more than eight hundred times in the Hebrew Bible to describe human states and actions; see Marjorie O'Rourke Boyle, "The Law of the Heart: Death of a Fool (1 Samuel 25)," Journal of Biblical Literature 120/3 (2001): 401–427; 1. The question of Pascal's source for this term is fascinating, but for present purposes, it is more important to see how Pascal used the term with his own meaning than to trace its origin. For its lineage and connection to Augustine, see Philippe Sellier, Pascal Et Augustin (Paris: Armand Colin, 1970), 117–139. the "Editor's Notes" to the new critical edition of the university sermons.20 In their commentary on sermon four, "The Usurpations of Reason," the editors reprinted Newman's penciled gloss on the title page of the unpublished manuscript "On the socalled 'march of the intellect' at the present day'." It is undated but clearly related to the sermon from 1831. One of the glosses reads: "qu[ery] Whether 'simple Appr[hension?] Jud.[gment] and Disc.[ipline]' do not make up the idea of reason. vid Pascal." Earnest and Tracey conjectured whether Newman was thinking about a passage by Pascal that Pusey quoted. They also mention how Froude was "greatly attracted by Pascal's thought."21 Aside from whatever Pascalian ideas touched Newman through his friendship with Froude and Pusey, Newman himself was thinking about a relationship of key notions regarding reason that relate to Pascal. In the past, scholars have noticed similarities between Pascal and Newman, but the difficulty has been finding a clear, convincing way to connect Pascal's ideas to Newman's. Newman's gloss about apprehension, judgment, and discipline provides the best justification yet for a serious re-examination of Pascal ideas in relation to Newman's. In this essay, I intend to supply a comparative analysis of what Pascal calls l'esprit de finesse and Newman's notion of implicit reason. There are certain topics within Pascal's thought that strikingly correlate with Newman's: the role of the heart or the intuitive mind, the role of evidences in faith, and the relationship between moral virtue for correct reasoning. PASCAL: "HEART" OR INTUITIVE MIND Though Pascal worked within the accepted theological categories of "natural" and "supernatural" (as did Newman), Pascal did not offer a philosophical anthropology separate from theological premises. One cannot truly grasp his insightful commentary on human diversions, for example, if one is unaware of his view that original sin and concupiscence deeply mark the human condition.22 So the following comments about le coeur or the heart apply generally for Pascal across more philosophical and more religious passages.23 In a basic overview, the heart, for 33 24 Pensées, #424, 154. 25 Pensées, #97, 54. 26 Pensées, #423, 154. 27 Blaise Pascal, The Art of Persuasion, Pensées and Other Writings, translated by Honor Levi (New York: Oxford University, 1995): 193–204; 194–195. 28 "I am only, therefore, talking about truths within our grasp; and about those I say that the mind and the heart are like gateways through which they are received by the soul, but that very few enter through the mind; instead they are prompted in great numbers by the headstrong whims of the will without the counsel of reasoning." Blaise Pascal, Pensées and Other Writings, translated by Honor Levi (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 193–204, at 194. Bernard Wills ("Reason, Intuition, and Choice: Pascal's Augustinian Voluntarism," 52f.) has argued that "heart" for Pascal corresponds to the scholastic intellectus. 29 Pierre Force, "Pascal and philosophical method," in The Cambridge Companion to Pascal, edited by Nicholas Hammond (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2003): 216–234, at 221; hereafter cited: Cambridge Companion to Pascal. 30 Sellier, Pascal Et Augustin 128. 31 Jean Khalfa, "Pascal's Theory of Knowledge," in Cambridge Companion to Pascal, 122–143, at: 134. UNE SOURCE CACHÉE: BLAISE PASCAL'S INFLUENCE UPON JOHN HENRY NEWMAN Pascal, is the organ of faith, the key to wisdom, holiness, and the interior of the human person: "It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason."24 The heart is the point of contact between the human and the divine. The state of the heart is the measure of intimacy or distance with God and with all things that incline to God. The heart is not in opposition to formal reason per se, but due to original sin, the heart does not harmonize perfectly with other core aspects of the human person such as imagination or passion. One senses this dissonance when Pascal generalizes about human nature absent God's grace. For example, he stated in Augustinian and Jansenist fashion: "Concupiscence and force are the source of all our actions. Concupiscence causes voluntary, force involuntary actions."25 In other words, disordered self-love and external causes determine human life. With God's grace, the heart can, as Pascal puts it, "love the universal being, or itself, according to its allegiance, and it hardens itself against either as it chooses."26 To say that the heart chooses something raises an important issue. Love and commitment and dedication come from the heart, not from the mind. Freedom is presupposed here and given temporal and ontological priority. It is the heart that desires, loves, possesses.27 So, is the heart another term for the will? In Pascal's lesserknown work, The Art of Persuasion, the terms appear interchangeable.28 However, according to Pierre Force, we should not take the term "will" in the modern sense. It is not the capacity for self-determination but the inclinations and the desire for something.29 If Force is correct, the will for Pascal is a more ordinary and universal characteristic of the human person. The heart, on the other hand, defines a person by what he or she loves. Philippe Sellier has maintained that the heart has aspects of the will but it is not identical with the will. There is a kind of knowledge the heart provides, a "particular type of discovery of truth."30 Thus, there is something deeper to Pascal's view of the heart than choosing between this or that in everyday experiences. Another reason to think that heart and will are different, according to Jean Khalfa, comes from a key term often used synonymously with heart, namely, instinct.31 "Instinct" seems an odd term to pair so closely with heart, a word so noble and esteemed in the western theological and philosophical tradition. Pascal used "instinct" to indicate a basic feature of animals, but it has a more sophisticated NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL34 meaning when predicated of human beings.32 Speaking of the ways human beings divert themselves from serious self-scrutiny, Pascal wrote: They have a secret instinct driving them to seek external diversion and occupation, and this is the result of their constant sense of wretchedness. They have another secret instinct, left over from the greatness of our original nature, telling them that the only true happiness lies in rest and not in excitement. These two contrary instincts give rise to a confused plan buried out of sight in the depths of their soul, which leads them to seek rest by way of activity and always to imagine that the satisfaction they miss will come to them once they overcome certain obvious difficulties and can open the door to welcome rest.33 Pascal's debt to Augustine (and Pauline theology) pulses through this passage. It is also interesting that he affirmed two opposing instincts, similar to the rabbinic doctrine of the two yetzers or impulses, one for good and the other for evil, which God implanted within human beings. There is an indication here of spontaneous, noncognitive drives that human beings must manage throughout life. Certainly, "instinct" suggests distance from the term "will" because it connotes an innate inclination different from deliberation and decision. Pascal seems to have suggested as much. Within his treatment of greatness, he wrote: "Instinct and reason: signs of two natures."34 Instinct seems to be an innate ability or power that works without discursive reasoning. Whatever finer distinctions might be drawn, it is clear for Pascal that instinct is central to human nature: "Two things teach man about his whole nature: instinct and experience."35 Instinct reveals important moral and practical knowledge of the self. ACTIVITIES OF THE HEART After this brief sketch of the heart's structure, the next point concerns the activities of the heart. In a religious context, Pascal called this the "order" of the heart or the "order of charity."36 In a more philosophical way, Pascal described this activity as l'esprit de finesse or the intuitive mind. He called the heart a "gateway" in which truths are received into the soul.37 What the heart does, how it operates in terms of its own reasoning, is best understood in contrast to mathematical reason or what he defined as l'esprit géometrié. A famous passage illustrates the difference. We know the truth not only through our reason but also through our heart. It is through the latter that we know first principles, and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to refute them. The sceptics have no other object than that, and they work at it to no purpose. We know that we are not dreaming, but, however unable we may be to prove it rationally, our inability proves nothing but the weakness of our reason, and not the uncertainty of all our knowledge, as they maintain. For knowledge of first principles, like space, time, motion, number, is as 32 Cf., Pensées, #105, 56–57. 33 Pensées, #136, 69. 34 Pensées, #112,59. 35 Pensées, #128, 62. 36 Pensées, #298, 122; see also Pascal, The Art of Persuasion, 193–194. 37 Pascal, The Art of Persuasion, 194. 35 solid as any derived through reason, and it is on such knowledge, coming from the heart and instinct, that reason has to depend and base all its argument. The heart feels that there are three spatial dimensions and that there is an infinite series of numbers, and reason goes on to demonstrate that there are no two square numbers of which one is double the other. Principles are felt, propositions proved, and both with certainty through by different means. It is just as pointless and absurd for reason to demand proof of first principles from the heart before agreeing to accept them as it would be absurd for the heart to demand an intuition of all the propositions demonstrated by reason before agreeing to accept them.38 One notices the link between the heart, instinct and feeling. Instinct and feeling are interchangeable terms that designate the heart's ways of knowing. Instinct and feeling are also carriers for religious and practical knowledge. Indeed, the heart feels time, movement, number -there is an existential confidence and belief in their concrete reality. This non-linear perception is why such things as principles, for Pascal, are sensed rather than proved. There is a deeper kind of contact with categorical realities beyond but not opposed to language, logic, or even sense knowledge.39 Feeling or intuition-and I believe these terms can be interchanged- ground basic beliefs that are not always conscious.40 Indeed, there is a kind of certainty attached to this reasoning of the heart that Pascal contrasts with the mathematical mind or l'esprit géometrié.41 The mathematical mind prefers obvious, clear principles that follow a sequential, careful process of logical deduction. Consequently, for Pascal, the content of instinct and feeling sustains belief in an intelligible universe and grounds human activities. Instinct and feeling, furthermore, possess their own form of rationality. This form of rationality differs from deductive and logical reasoning common to propositional demonstrations. The principles of demonstrative knowledge, according to Pierre Force, unlike for Aristotle, are given to everyone by nature, e.g., the principle of noncontradiction, the whole is larger than a part, even numbers are divisible by two.42 For Pascal, rational demonstrations involve a clear definition of terms before proceeding, and then subsequently move from premise to premise with terms and truths already known and understood. The idea is to avoid moving from a known proposition to an unknown one in the chain of reasoning. In short, as he put it, advancement comes "in defining every term and in proving every proposition."43 Pascal associated this rational method with the mathematical mind and with the method proper to geometry.44 UNE SOURCE CACHÉE: BLAISE PASCAL'S INFLUENCE UPON JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 38 Pensées, #110, 58. 39 Pascal contrasted faith with the senses (Pensées, #185, 85); see also, Jean Khalfa, "Pascal's Theory of Knowledge," 127–128. 40 In one pensée (#179, 84), Pascal employed the phrase un sentiment de coeur that Krailsheimer translated as "intuition of the heart"; Honor Levi translated the same phrase as "feeling of the heart" (Pensées and Other Writings, #210, 61). "Sentiment" can mean feeling or perception. 41 See Pensées, #512, 210. 42 Force, "Pascal and philosophical method," 219–220. 43 Pascal, Of the Geometrical Spirit, edited by Charles W. Eliot, Blaise Pascal: Thoughts, Letters, Minor Works (New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1910; reprint 1965), 422. 44 See Pensées, #512 in conjunction with Pascal's praise of geometry in Of the Geometrical Spirit, 423–428. NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL36 45 Pensées, #512, 210–211. 46 The Art of Persuasion, 194. 47 Pensées, #512, 212. In contrast, Pascal described the intuitive mind as one that does not follow formal or sequential reasoning to understand natural truths. This perception differs from the way one measures the angles of a particular isosceles triangle, knowing before one begins that all angles total 180 degrees. To cite Pascal's description at length: But, with the intuitive mind, the principles are in ordinary usage and there for all to see. There is no need to turn our heads, or strain ourselves: it is only a question of good sight, but it must be good; for the principles are so intricate and numerous that it is almost impossible not to miss some. Now the omission of one principle can lead to error, and soon one needs very clear sight to see all the principles as well as an accurate mind to avoid drawing false conclusions from known principles. . . . These principles can hardly be seen, they are perceived instinctively rather than seen, and it is with endless difficulty that they can be communicated to those who do not perceive them for themselves. These things are so delicate and numerous that it takes a sense of great delicacy and precision to perceive them and judge correctly and accurately from this perception: most often it is not possible to set it out logically as in mathematics, because the necessary principles are not ready to hand, and it would be an endless task to undertake. The thing must be seen all at once, at a glance, and not as the result of progressive reasoning, at least up to a point. Thus it is rare for mathematicians to be intuitive or the intuitive to be mathematicians, because mathematicians try to treat these intuitive matters mathematically, and make themselves ridiculous, by trying to begin with definitions followed by principles, which is not to proceed in this kind of reasoning. It is not that the mind does not do this, but it does so tacitly, naturally and artlessly, for it is beyond any man to express it and given to very few even to apprehend it. Intuitive minds, on the contrary, being thus accustomed to judge at a glance, are taken aback when presented with propositions of which they understand nothing (and of which the necessary preliminaries are definitions and principles so barren that they are not used to looking at them in such detail), and consequently feel repelled and disgusted.45 This passage provides key insights. The heart or l'esprit de finesse engages in a form of instinctual reasoning, no less real and no less important than the mathematical. Again, the principles that the intuitive mind perceives-not demonstrates or proves beyond doubt-encompass time, motion, space, number, the consciousness of wakefulness, "the whole is greater than its parts," etc.46 These principles are not visually seen or worked out through calculation, but perceived or, as Pascal sometimes remarked, they are "felt." Therefore, one does not require other evidence or corroboration for their validity beyond the perception. In a certain sense, one cannot argue to them because they must be personally experienced. Moreover, Pascal contended that few people could actually explain definitions of the principles they perceive, for example, time and space.47 The experience is not the same as the skill of articulating it. The intuitive mind also engages in judgment and commitment. Judgment proper 37 to the l'esprit de finesse is not that of a deductive or logical conclusion issuing in a necessary assent. It is an immediate action or as Pascal said, it happens spontaneously, immediately: Those who are accustomed to judge by feeling have no understanding of matters involving reasoning. For they want to go right to the bottom of things at a glance, and are not accustomed to look for principles.48 Indeed, this type of reasoning is tacit, natural, and artless. Human beings are not necessarily conscious of intuitive reasoning nor does one learn it from formal education, where the mathematical mind learns discipline. It is this type of judgment through feeling or instinct that is the assent of religious faith: Those whom we see to be Christians without knowledge of the prophecies and proofs are no less sound judges than those who possess such knowledge. They judge with their hearts as others judge with their minds. It is God himself who inclines them to believe and thus they are most effectively convinced.49 THE LIMITS AND SUBMISSION OF REASON Pascal is neither a fideist nor a rationalist searching for unshakable epistemological foundations of knowledge and truth. His thought discloses what Jean Khalfa has called a "negative epistemology." Pascal "constantly tells us what knowledge cannot be, and in particular stresses the vanity of efforts towards a comprehensive knowledge of nature."50 Throughout the Pensées, Pascal reminded readers how noble, important, and dignified thought and reason are.51 Reason is a principle of truth capable of reaching natural laws. What Pascal argued for throughout the Pensées is a balanced view of reason's scope and limitations: "There are two excesses: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason."52 The problem stems from the corruption of reason by original sin, making it an all too vulnerable victim of the passions, the senses, and the imagination.53 Without the aid of God's grace, which orders human desire and love, reason cannot conquer the power of imagination, which, Pascal once called its "enemy."54 In addition, the passions are always at war, influencing beliefs and knowledge based on reason. Civil war in man between reason and passions. If there were only reason without passions. If there were only passions without reason. But since he has both he cannot be free from war, for he can only be at peace with the one if he is at war with the other. Thus he is always torn by inner divisions and contradictions.55 48 Pensées, #751, 257; cf. #512, 211. 49 Pensées, #382, 138. 50 Jean Khalfa, "Pascal's Theory of Knowledge," 124. 51 "Man is obviously made for thinking" (Pensées, #620, 235; cf. #756, 258; #759, 258). 52 Pensées, #183, 85. In theological perspective, this point reads: "If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous" (Pensées, #173, 83). 53 Pensées, #45, 42; #60, 46; #44, 38. 54 Pensées, #44, 39. One might question whether intuitive faculties could be corrupted as well. If one holds that Pascal is consistent in his view of human being's having a double-nature, it would follow that such intuitive faculties cannot escape the tension between human greatness and wretchedness. The human being is essentially a paradox (Pensées, #131). On this point, I agree with Martin Price ("The Three Orders: Flesh, Spirit, Charity," in Blaise Pascal, edited by Harold Bloom [New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1989] 86). who holds that for Pascal all human "powers and actions have an ambiguity he can scarcely control." 55 Pensées, #621, 235. UNE SOURCE CACHÉE: BLAISE PASCAL'S INFLUENCE UPON JOHN HENRY NEWMAN NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL38 56 Pensées, #820, 273. 57 Pensées, #200. 58 Thomas Hibbs, "Habits of the Heart: Pascal and the Ethics of Thought," International Philosophical Quarterly 45/2 (June 2005): 203–220. 59 Ibid., 204. 60 Pensées, #814, 272. 61 Cf., The Art of Persuasion, 193–194; Pensées, #131, 64, #179, 84. 62 Pensées, 174, 84. 63 Pensées, #167, 83. Thus, due to the ongoing power of concupiscence, raising up different desires, inflaming passions, and rousing the imagination and senses into a confusing frenzy, Pascal proclaimed: "reason can be bent in any direction."56 Dislike of reliable sources of knowledge or malevolent suspicion can suspend one's belief in an otherwise trustworthy rational demonstration or person. Therefore, for Pascal, even natural reason's ability to communicate and sustain natural truths depend upon the order of charity, that is, moral discipline: "Let us strive to think well, that is the basic principle of morality."57 There is, as Thomas Hibbs has rightly noted, an "ethics of thought" for Pascal.58 Hibbs observed that "thinking well has much to do with the re-orientation of our passions in light of a rationally discerned conception of the good, however dimly and fleetingly that good might be conceived."59 Moral discipline, moreover, becomes even more important for religious truths. Disordered desires for and attachments to immoral objects, for Pascal, inhibit religious faith and stifle the activity of the heart. We pervert our feelings just as we pervert our minds. Our minds and feelings are trained by the company we keep, and perverted by the company we keep. Thus good or bad company trains or perverts respectively. It is therefore very important to be able to make the right choice so that we train rather than pervert. And we cannot make this choice unless it is already trained, and not perverted. This is thus a vicious circle from which anyone is lucky to escape.60 The relationship between moral habits and the mind is a recurring theme for Pascal as it was for Augustine. Moral virtue and habitual stability in virtue are necessary conditions for proper reasoning about and within religious belief.61 What people habitually find pleasure in and love affects what they think. There is a priority even here according to feeling and instinct as the controlling motive of reason. This is precisely why, for Pascal, when the passions subside, reason can also disengage from disordered self-love. When egocentrism gives way to humility, the possibility emerges for a genuine understanding of natural reason's scope and religious experience. Pascal credited this insight to: "St. Augustine. Reason would never submit unless it judged that there are occasions when it ought to submit. It is right, then, that reason should submit when it judges that it ought to submit."62 Pascal then extended reason's range as a key principle of religious faith. Pascal put it succinctly: "Submission and use of reason: this is what makes true Christianity."63 There is a kind of submission activated by the wonder that the researches of reason can explore. Pascal discussed the material of this submission at length in speaking about the "two infinities." When we know better, we understand that, since nature has engraved her own image and that of her author on all things, they almost all share her double 39 infinity. Thus we see that all the sciences are infinite in the range of their researches, for who can doubt that mathematics, for instance, has an infinity of infinities of propositions to expound? They are infinite also in the multiplicity and subtlety of their principles, for anyone can see that those which are supposed to be ultimate do not stand by themselves, but depend on others, which depend on others again, and thus never allow of any finality.64 When reason understands itself as a midpoint between the infinitely vast and the infinitely small, there is a humbling affect. The only way one can be brought to this point in scientific investigation is through a genuine desire for truth which, when graced, allows for reason to recognize its limits. So if this principle of submission holds for natural realities, it should also hold for divine.65 "Reason's last step," maintained Pascal, "is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it. It is merely feeble if it does not go as far as to realize that. If natural things are beyond it, what are we to say about supernatural things?"66 There is a certain rationality to faith, then, since natural reason works from assumptions between unknown infinities. If this is true, why should the realities of faith be different? This is precisely why Pascal attacked so-called evidences of religion. They overlook the moral dimension to reason and the knowledge of the heart. Arguments from design and nature do not really convince due to the existential situation of the human heart and the susceptibility of reason to the passions. Evidences from nature confirm a believer's faith-they do not give faith to the unbeliever.67 It is striking that in this famous Christian apologetical work, Pascal found the attempt to argue people into belief not simply from nature but also from theological categories as "useless and sterile." Indeed, he noted that one may appreciate or grasp the argument, but that misses the point of religious commitment: "I should not consider that he had made much progress towards his salvation."68 Theological doctrine and argument without personal intuition and judgment becomes an academic exercise lacking spiritual value. NEWMAN In a penciled gloss, Newman mentioned apprehension, judgment, and discipline as possibly comprising the idea of reason; he then added: "see Pascal." The following is a brief description of each of these three aspects that suggests the likelihood of a closer relationship between Newman and Pascal. Apprehension In Newman, a developed understanding of apprehension and judgment is found in his view of implicit (or 'instinctual') reasoning and the illative sense.69 These two dimensions of reason share important commonalities with Pascal's notion of the heart, the intuitive mind. First, Newman located instinct, intuition-similar to what 64 Pensées, #199, 91. 65 Pensées, #188, 95. 66 Pensées, #188, 95. 67 Pensées, #781, 263–264. 68 Pensées, #449, 169. UNE SOURCE CACHÉE: BLAISE PASCAL'S INFLUENCE UPON JOHN HENRY NEWMAN NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL40 69 Newman did not always maintain clear boundaries between informal and natural inference and the illative sense; I am persuaded that informal and natural inference are genetically similar and support the more general connection to Pascal's heart. I agree with Terrence Merrigan (Clear Heads and Holy Hearts, 209). who has written: "Whereas in natural inference the mind's transition from the known to the unknown is effectively unconscious, in informal inference the antecedents are more or less explicitly prominent in the mind, though not in all details. This difference, however is neither great nor important, because with both natural and informal inference the mental process goes on spontaneously and, with both, on looks at things per modum unius, disregarding the details." After reviewing Newman's use of terms, I am convinced that natural inference is a type of implicit reasoning which sometimes means the illative sense as well; Newman even mentioned the 'illative sense' twice in the context of natural inference, blurring the lines further. See GA, 213–215. 70 GA, 189–190. 71 Ker, Newman: A Biography, 631. 72 JHN to Charles Meynell, The Oratory (25 July 1869) LD 24: 294. 73 OUS, "Sermon XI: The Nature of Faith in Relation to Reason," 148. 74 Ibid., 150. 75 Ibid., 150–151. Pascal meant by "feeling"-at the core of concrete personal reasoning.70 A few illustrations might suffice. While writing the Grammar of Assent, Newman corresponded with Charles Meynell, professor of philosophy at Oscott College.71 In a letter in 1869, Newman described apprehension and conscience as instincts: Next that the dictate of conscience, which is natural and the voice of God, is a moral instinct, and its own evidence - as the belief in an external world is an instinct on the apprehension of sensible phenomena. That to deny those instincts is an absurdity, because they are the voice of nature. That it is a duty to trust, or rather to use our nature - and not do so is absurdity. That to recognize our nature is really to recognize God. Hence those instincts come from God - and as the moral law is an inference or generalization from those instincts, the moral law is ultimately taught us from God, whose nature it is.72 Instinct conveys the non-discursive knowing or intuition that connects to the divine. Unlike Pascal, Newman developed conscience as a privileged place for the felt experience of God within the human person. Aside from conscience, instinct appears in other contexts of reasoning. Newman held that in practical matters of reasoning, people reason fairly well. He mentioned an "instinctive sense" as deeply connected to good practical reasoning.73 Moreover, he used the phrase "secret instinct" to indicate an antecedent probability that allows people to trust their senses though they "deceive us."74 In his eleventh University Sermon, Newman observed: Were it not for these instincts, it cannot be doubted but our experience of the deceivableness of Senses, Memory, and Reason, would perplex us much as to our practical reliance on them in matters of this world. And so, regards the matters of another, they who have not that instinctive apprehension of the Omnipresence of God and His unwearied and minute Providence which holiness and love create within us, must not be surprised to find that the evidence of Christianity does not perform an office which was never intended for it,-viz. that of recommending itself as well as Revelation. Nothing, then, which Scripture says about Faith, however startling it may be at first sight, is inconsistent with the state in which we find ourselves by nature with reference to the acquisition of knowledge generally,-a state in which we must assume something to prove anything, and can gain nothing without a venture.75 41 In his twelfth University Sermon, Newman even attached instinct to what Pascal called the "order of charity." Newman affirmed: It is the new life, and not the natural reason, which leads the soul to Christ. Does a child trust his parents because he has proved to himself that they are such, and that they are able and desirous to do him good, or from the instinct of affection? We believe, because we love, How plain a truth!76 Despite the finer points of semantics, the language of instinct in contrast with natural reason is deeply Pascalian. Although on some occasions there seems to be some distinction between what Newman called "instinct" and "intuition,"77 I agree with Artz, Casey, and Merrigan that Newman employed the terms "intuition" and "instinct" interchangeably.78 Spontaneity and Judgment Newman's implicit reason and Pascal's intuitive mind share two other commonalities: spontaneity and judgment. The notion of being caught up in a living experience is shared by Pascal and Newman in speaking about faith. Newman held that "Reasoning, then, or the exercise of Reason, is a living spontaneous energy within us, not an art."79 He contrasted the act of faith as a spontaneous exercise of reason, unconscious, unargumentative, and therefore distinct from the more reflective virtue of wisdom.80 Indeed, "Men do not choose light or darkness without Reason, but by an instinctive Reason, which is prior to argument and proof."81 This important distinction also reveals the activity of judgment in such an instinctive, implicit operation of reason in the act of faith. As Newman stated in his twelfth University Sermon: To maintain that Faith is a judgment about facts in matters of conduct, such as to be formed, not so much from the impression legitimately made upon the mind by those facts, as from the reaching forward of the mind itself towards them,- that it is a presumption, not a proving,-may sound paradoxical, yet surely is borne out by the actual state of things as they come before us every day. Can it, indeed, be doubted that the great majority of those who have sincerely and deliberately given themselves to religion, who take it for their portion, and stake their happiness upon it, have done so, not on an examination of evidence, but from a spontaneous movement of their hearts towards it? They go out of themselves to meet Him who is unseen, and they discern Him in such symbols of Him as they find ready provided for them.82 The same point about judgment appeared in Newman's treatment of the illative 76 OUS XII "Love the Safeguard of Faith Against Superstition," 163. 77 In a letter to Charles Meynell (17 August 1869, LD 24: 309), Newman searched for the right vocabulary and seemed to make a distinction between instinct and intuition; Newman's later writings do not evidence this distinction. 78 J. Artz, "Newman and Intuition," Philosophy Today 1. (1957): 10–16 as cited in Gerard Casey, Natural Reason: A Study of the Notions of Inference, Assent, Intuition, and First Principles, in the Philosophy of John Henry Cardinal Newman (New York: Peter Lang, 1984) 148, n.53; Terrence Merrigan, Clear Heads and Holy Hearts, 45. 79 OUS, "Sermon XIII: "Implicit and Explicit Reason," 177. 80 Cf., OUS, "Sermon V: Personal Influence, The Means of Propagating the Truth," 67–68. 81 OUS, "Sermon XIV: Wisdom, As Contrasted with Faith and With Bigotry," 190–191. 82 OUS, "Sermon XII: Love the Safeguard of Faith Against Superstition," 156–157; italics mine. UNE SOURCE CACHÉE: BLAISE PASCAL'S INFLUENCE UPON JOHN HENRY NEWMAN NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL42 83 GA, 227–228. 84 Cf. Pensées, #513; 212: "Mathematics. Intuition. True eloquence has not time for eloquence, true morality has not time for morality. In other words the morality of judgment has no time for the random morality of mind. For judgment is what goes with instinct, just as knowledge goes with mind. Intuition falls to the lot of judgment, mathematics to that of the mind. To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher." 85 Newman, Theological Papers, 83–84. 86 GA, 200–201. 87 GA, 201. 88 A case can be made for a moral temper as enhancing one's formal and scientific reasoning; in OUS, "Sermon I: The Philosophical Temper, First Enjoined By The Gospel," 18–19, Newman pointed to moral virtues and character as related to excellence and the perfection of human nature. 89 GA, 214. sense. The momentum and force of the accumulation of probabilities lead to judgments and decisions borne out into the realities of life. This process is not a reasoned, linear sequence but implicit reasonings which issue in judgments due to antecedent probabilities about prior desires, longings, hopes, and loves. "This power of judging and concluding, when in its perfection, I call the Illative sense . . . ."83 This is precisely what the intuitive mind also does for Pascal.84 In addition, one can point out commonalities that Pascal and Newman shared regarding the evidences of religion. Pascal and Newman both rejected the efficacy of external argument or proofs of religion as grounds for faith. For Pascal, faith comes from grace, feeling, and the tacit reasonings of the heart. Indeed, Newman explicitly referred to Pascal's list of thirteen "Marks of the True Religion" in working out the priority of the implicit and the subjective dimensions of faith over extrinsic proofs.85 Pascal provided precisely a list of probable reasons for faith knowing that something more is needed for the human person to believe in the various grounds given. In the Grammar of Assent, Newman used passages from the Pensées as an illustration of this very point. Newman related that Pascal offered many probable reasons for the validity of Christianity but noted that Pascal is not giving a syllogism with a necessary conclusion. The criterion of conviction or assent comes precisely from the prior character of the person and "the implicit processes of the reasoning faculty, not by any manufacture of arguments forcing their way to an irrefragable conclusion."86 This is why for both Pascal and Newman arguments from design or nature are spiritually ineffective. There must be a prior openness, a willingness to believe that, for Newman, "will vary according to the respective dispositions, opinions, and experiences, of those to whom the argument is addressed."87 Discussion of personal dispositions is a good way to introduce the final connection between the two thinkers on moral discipline. Discipline What did Newman mean by "discipline" in relation to reason? I believe he meant moral dispositions, virtue, and good habits in reasoning connected to faith.88 Both Pascal and Newman held that intellectual excellence, particularly of mathematical or formal reasoning, does not make a person moral. Natural inference or the ordinary ways human beings reason can be distorted, as Newman said, "by prejudice, passion and self-interest."89 A description of liberalism in his Philosophical Notebooks made a more specific link: Liberalism consists in looking at all conclusions (in religion) as strong only in 43 proportion to the strength of their premises (Vid. Locke) or resolving all beliefs into opinions. For this purpose it denies that a moral (certain ethical) state of mind is necessary out of which the perception of first principles and methods of reasoning comes to life and exercise.90 Pascal, due to his more pessimistic anthropology, went further than Newman by holding that reason can ultimately be reduced to passion and habit. Nevertheless, Newman clearly held that moral dispositions are important to implicit and presumptive reasoning in matters of faith: "the intellectual principles on which the conclusions are drawn, to which Faith assents, are the consequents of a certain ethical temper, as their sine quâ non condition." Such moral discipline, naturally, affects personal judgment: A good and a bad man will think very different things probable. In the judgment of a rightly disposed mind, objects are desirable and attainable which irreligious men will consider to be but fancies. Such a correct moral judgment and view of things is the very medium in which the argument for Christianity has its constraining influence . . . .91 As he remarked in his twelfth University Sermon, "right Faith is the faith of a right mind. Faith is an intellectual act; right Faith is an intellectual act, done in a certain moral disposition."92 Newman believed that his Essay on Development also made this point. Writing to Henry Coleridge, Newman stated: My book is to show that a right moral state of mind germinates or even generates good intellectual principles. This proposition rejoices the Quarterly, as if it was a true principle - it shocks the Edinburgh - as if Pascal and others were much more philosophical in saying that religion or religiousness is not ultimately based on reason.93 This passage reveals that Newman was thinking about-and referencing-Pascal while working out the relationship between discipline and reasoning. Authentic religiosity stems from the state of one's heart, not from what Pascal called the mathematical mind or what Newman described as explicit reason. CONCLUSION There are then substantial reasons to think Pascal exerted a greater influence on Newman than previously thought. Without further analysis, I am not prepared to say Pascal's influence equaled that of Butler or Locke. Nevertheless, when the topic is faith and reason, Newman did think about Pascal, especially in his University Sermons. Later, Newman engaged Pascal more explicitly and at greater length in the Grammar of Assent. There are clear instances of direct overlap regarding the heart and implicit reason, the role of evidences in belief, and right reasoning in faith requiring virtue. It is probable that some of these ideas derive from Newman's 90 The Philosophical Notebooks of John Henry Newman, edited by E. A. Sillem, 2 volumes. (Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1969–1970), 2:170. 91 OUS, "Sermon X: Faith and Reason, Contrasted as Habits of Mind," 136. 92 OUS, "Sermon XII: Love the Safeguard of Faith Against Superstition," 166. 93 JHN to Henry James Coleridge (5 February 1871) LD 25: 280. UNE SOURCE CACHÉE: BLAISE PASCAL'S INFLUENCE UPON JOHN HENRY NEWMAN NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL44 94 OUS, "The Theory of Developments in Religious Doctrine," 216–217. reading of Pascal-especially in Newman's thinking about reason in terms of apprehension, judgment, and discipline. Nonetheless, there is still the possibility that Newman's ideas derive from Augustine rather than Pascal. Still, the absence of an explicit credit by Newman to Pascal does not negate the probability he borrowed and transformed ideas from him. On this point, one might recall Newman's wise reflection in his fifteenth University Sermon: It is not proof that persons are not possessed, because they are not conscious, of an idea. Nothing is of more frequent occurrence, whether in things sensible or intellectual, than the existence of such unperceived impressions. What do we mean when we say, that certain persons do not know themselves, but that they are ruled by views, feelings, prejudices, objects, which they do not recognize?. . . What is memory itself, but a vast magazine of such dormant, but present and excitable ideas? Or consider, when persons would trace the history of their own opinions in past years, how baffled they are in the attempt to fix the date of this or that conviction, their system of thought having been all the while in continual, tranquil expansion; so that it were as easy to follow the growth of the fruit of the earth, 'first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear,' as to chronicle changes, which involved no abrupt revolution, or reaction, or fickleness of mind, but have been the birth of an idea, the development, in explicit form, of what was already latent within it.94 Though more work needs to be done on the intellectual relationship between Pascal and Newman, one can now maintain with greater confidence that for Newman, Pascal was not simply a distant authority but an influential one. 45 The publication of Newman's An Essay on the Development of ChristianDoctrine (1845) did much to raise awareness of the problems presented to theology by the study of history. Less obvious and receiving far less attention, however, was the impact and transformation of the idea of development among Roman Catholic theologians in the years immediately following the publication of the Essay.1 During this early period, Newman's notion of development seemingly challenged important churchmen who would have a profound and lasting impact on Catholic thought. Newman's early influence upon Roman Catholic theology contrasts with the typical narrative regarding his supposed influence. This narrative might be characterized as follows: first, his writings were largely ignored outside of the Anglophone world until the early twentieth century, when he was associated with modernism; then his writings slowly impacted mainstream Catholic thought through the work of scholars such as Yves Congar and Erich Przywara; finally, Newman's writings were vindicated definitively at Vatican II.2 Even if roughly accurate, such a narrative ignores the subtle and indirect, though no less important, influences that his Essay on Development had on Roman Catholic theological thought in the nineteenth century. For a better account of the influence of his Essay, it is necessary to take a fresh look at the steps Newman took in Rome shortly after his entrance into the Roman Catholic Church. Especially crucial in this regard were Newman's interactions with the Roman theologian, Fr. Giovanni Perrone (1794–1876). An historical analysis of their co-written document on doctrinal development indicates that Perrone took C. Michael Shea, a Presidential Fellow and doctoral student in historical theology at Saint Louis University (Missouri), presented a version of this essay at the annual conference of the Venerable John Henry Newman Association at The University of Dallas (Texas) in August 2008. 1 This essay developed out of my earlier study, "Newman's Theory of Development and the Definition of Papal Infallibility," in Authority, Dogma and History: The Role of Oxford Movement Converts and the Infallibility Debates of the Nineteenth Century, 1835–1875, edited by K. Parker, and M. Pahls (Bethesda, MD: Academica, 2009), 77–93. NEWMAN, PERRONE, AND MÖHLER ON DOGMA AND HISTORY: A REAPPRAISAL OF THE "NEWMAN-PERRONE PAPER ON DEVELOPMENT" This essay, an analysis of the "Newman-Perrone Paper on Development" (1847), argues that previous studies have inflated the differences between the two thinkers with the result that the significant influence of Newman's theory of development on Perrone's theology and, subsequently, on the definition of the Immaculate Conception has been overlooked. NEWMAN, PERRONE, AND MÖHLER ON DOGMA AND HISTORY: A REAPPRAISAL OF THE "NEWMAN-PERRONE PAPER ON DEVELOPMENT" C. MICHAEL SHEA NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL46 Newman's theory of development more seriously than has previously been acknowledged and then played an important role in spreading its influence. This transmission occurred in an oblique way, however, since, in some respects, the shift in Perrone's thinking that took place during the period of the "Newman-Perrone Paper" represents as much a retrieval of another theologian, Johann Adam Möhler,3 as it does a reaction to and acceptance of Newman. Some ambiguity in the reception of Newman's idea of development was to be expected. When the Essay on Development was first published, it was controversial among Catholics and Protestants alike. Although Newman's Essay favored Roman Catholic teaching, it also assumed certain peripheral standpoints that were suspect in Rome because of recent controversies about the nature of faith and moral certainty.4 Newman, in fact, went to no small trouble to guard himself from possible censure during his early years as a Roman Catholic. In addition to arranging a new introduction for the French edition of his university sermons, Newman sought to adjust some of his language in the French edition of his Essay on Development.5 And early in 1847, he drafted a series of theses on faith in order to clarify his thoughts and to defend his views if and when scrutinized.6 No less important than these literary labors is what Newman accomplished on the person-to-person level to safeguard his ideas about development from condemnation. The most important action that Newman took involved "scraping 2 Aidan Nichols, From Newman to Congar: The Idea of Doctrinal Development from the Victorians to the Second Vatican Council (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1990), offers the most comprehensive history in English of the idea of development from Newman's time on; though Nichols' study tells a more nuanced tale than can be fairly summarized here, it largely continues the conventional reception history of the Essay on Development. Johannes Artz, "Entstehung und Auswirkung von Newmans Theorie der Dogmenentwicklung," Theologische Quartalschrift 148 (1968): 167–198, does fine work tracing the history of Newman's reception in the twentieth century; most of the nineteenth century, however, is consigned to illustration; Artz's earlier study, "Kardinal Newmans Stellungnahme zum ersten und Wegweisung zum zweiten Vaticanum," Theologie und Glaube 55 (1965): 430–452, adequately covered the twentieth century, yet restricted its treatment of the nineteenth century to Newman's actions concerning the First Vatican Council and did not include the significant influence of Newman's earlier writtings. Stephen Dessain's "The Reception Among Catholics of Newman's Doctrine of Development: Newman's Own Impressions," Newman Studien 4 (1964): 179–191, maintained a similar focus, restricted to Newman's not always so objective point of view. To my knowledge, the only study suggesting that Newman's view of development had a noteworthy impact in the nineteenth century is Bernard Dupuy's "l'Influence de Newman sur la théologie Catholique du developpement dogmatique," Newman Studien 6 (1964): 143–165; however, the evidence that Dupuy mustered in support of his position is largely conjectural. This is similarly the case with Dupuy's "Newman's Influence in France," in The Rediscovery of Newman: An Oxford Symposium, edited by J. Coulson, and A. Allchin, (London: Sheen and Ward, 1967), 147–173; two other contributors to this volume maintained a similarly limited emphasis upon the twentieth century: Werner Becker, "Newman's Influence in Germany" (174–189), and Adrian Boekraad, "Newman's Influence in the Low Countries" (190–194). While Günter Biemer's "Leben als das Kennzeichenen der wahren Kirche Jesu Christi: Zur Ekklesiologie von Johann Adam Möhler und John Henry Newman," in Johann Adam Möhler: Kirchenvater der Moderne, H. Wagner, ed. (Paderborn: Bonifatius, 1996), 71–97, provided some overlooked evidence that Newman's views on history impacted Giovanni Perrone (79), the issue was left unexplored. In some respects, my essay picks up where Biemer and Dupuy left off. 3 Johann Adam Möhler (1796–1838), a professor of theology at the University of Tübingen, is best known for his Die Einheit in der Kirche and Symbolik. 4 For background to these controversies, see Edgar Hocedez, Histoire de la théologie au XIXe siècle, 3 vols. (Paris: Édition Universelle, 1952), 2:93–94, 2:354–355. 5 John Henry Newman (hereafter: JHN) to John Dalgairns (Collegio di Propaganda, 15 November 1846), The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, 11:274; hereafter cited: LD. 6 H. Tristam, editor, "Cardinal Newman's Theses de Fide and his Proposed Introduction to the French Translation of the University Sermons," Gregorianum 18 (1937): 219–260. 47 acquaintance" with Perrone, the Chair of Dogmatic Theology in the Roman College.7 Although Perrone is only occasionally mentioned by scholars today, he was, without question, the most influential Roman Catholic theologian living during the middle decades of the nineteenth century and it is hard to overstate his impact upon the early acceptance of the idea of development. One of the authors of Migne's Encyclopédie théologique, a contemporary of Perrone, referred to him as "Le prince des théologiens contemporains."8 During the period between the publication of Newman's Essay (1845) and the First Vatican Council (1869–1870),9 Perrone worked for many of the most influential congregations in the Roman Curia, often in the capacity of formulating correct doctrine and assuring condemnations of suspect views.10 Aside from Perrone's immediate influence on Roman theology and curial business, his theological textbooks were read in many seminaries. His masterwork, Praelectiones theologicae, went through thirty-four printings and his Compendium, forty-seven.11 Both works were common textbooks throughout the middle decades of the nineteenth century and were standard reading in Rome. Newman and Perrone eventually met at the end of February 1847, and at least twice more that spring.12 It appears that the two became good friends.13 Sometime in the spring or summer of 1847, Newman wrote a Latin exposition of his theory of development, entitled De catholici dogmatis evolutione, which has often been called the "Newman-Perrone Paper" since its publication in 1935.14 The "Paper" consisted of twelve short, hand-written theses with room in the margins for Perrone's comments. It represented Newman's attempt to translate his ideas about development into scholastic language that was, in general terms, more abstract and ecclesiological than his original Essay. In some ways, the "Newman-Perrone Paper" represents an extension of Newman's Theses de fide, composed earlier that spring.15 His Theses de fide illustrate his preoccupation with the possibility of censure; the Theses drew heavily from the scholastics in vogue at that time in Rome and enabled Newman to find common ground with Roman theologians, while maintaining his long-held antagonism toward 7 JHN to Dalgairns (Rome, 24 February 1847), LD, 12:55; these efforts likely trace back to at least November of the previous year, when Newman noted in his daybook of having met with Fr. Mazio (chair of canon law in the Roman College) about some issue concerning Perrone (LD, 11:282). 8 Abbé Pierrot; cited in Adolpho Peltier's preface to the French Edition of Perrone's Le Protestantisme et le regle de foi, Tome Premiere (Paris: Louis Vivès, 1854), vii. 9 Christoph Weber, Kardinäle und Prälaten in den letzten Jahrzehnten des Kirchenstaats, Päpste und Papsttum 13.1 (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersmann, 1978), 256, 335. 10 For information on Perrone's involvement in the Roman School and theological controversies, see Roger Aubert, Le pontificat de Pie IX (1846–1878), Histoire de l'église depuis les origins jusqu'à nos jours 21 (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1952), 192–195. 11 Dictionaire de théologie catholique 12:1255–1256. See also: Hermann Joseph Pottmeyer, Unfehlbarkeit und Souveränität: die Päpstliche Unfehlbarkeit im System der Ultramontanen Ekklesiologie des 19. Jahrhunderts (Mainz: Mattias Grünwald, 1975), 280, 283–297. 12 See Newman's daybook (LD, 12:75–76). 13 Ambrose St. John (1815–1875), Newman's fellow student in Rome, reported that "Newman and Perrone have struck up a great friendship-they embrace each other" (Wilfred Ward. The Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman, 184, available at: http://www.newmanreader.org/biography/ward/volume1/ chapter6.html). 14 T. Lynch, editor, "The Newman-Perrone Paper on Development," Gregorianum XVI (1935): 402–447; hereafter cited: "Newman-Perrone Paper." NEWMAN, PERRONE, AND MÖHLER ON DOGMA AND HISTORY: A REAPPRAISAL OF THE "NEWMAN-PERRONE PAPER ON DEVELOPMENT" NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL48 15 No previous study of the "Newman-Perrone Paper" has accounted for Newman's Theses de fide. This has had the effect of the document's being characterized more as a polemical exchange or doctrinal inquiry, when this was not the case. Newman began his work by addressing Perrone with the Augustinian adage: errare possum, haereticus esse nolo ("I can err, but I do not want to be a heretic"); yet this phrase is so ubiquitous among theological literature during Newman's time that it should be understood primarily in terms of decorum. As regards Newman's orthodoxy, it seems to have been a settled matter. Franz Michel Willam in "John Henry Newman und P. Perrone," Newman Studien 2 (1954): 120–145, has offered the most detailed contextual study of the "Newman-Perrone Paper"; although Willam overlooked the Theses de fide, he still provided an enlightening overview of the immediate context of the document and described the exchange between Newman and Perrone as friendly: "somit mit zwei Wanderern zu vergleichen, die sich, aus entgegengesetzter Richtung kommend, auf dem gleichen Joch treffen" (132). 16 In a letter written in Rome to Dalgairns on 24 February 1847, Newman said: "I am trying to scrape acquaintance with Perrone-whether anything will come of it or not, I don't know-but if I have an opening, I shall put before him as clearly as I can my opinions about faith and reason" (LD, 12:55). 17 Hocedez, Histoire de la théologie au XIXe siècle, 2:72. Even Newman's editor, Dalgairns, thought there was agreement between Newman and Bautain (JHN to Dalgairns [Collegio di Propaganda, 14 February 1847] LD, 12:33–4). 18 JHN to Dalgairns (Rome, 24 February 1847), LD, 12:55; John Dobrée Dalgairns (1818–1876), a scholar of Exeter College (Oxford) and a resident at Littlemore (1842–1845), was received as a Roman Catholic by Fr. Dominic Barberi in September 1845; subsequently, Dalgairns made his Oratorian novitiate with Newman in Rome and was stationed at the Birmingham Oratory until 1849, when he went to the London Oratory; he returned to Birmingham, 1853–1856, but went back to the London Oratory, where he succeeded Fr. Frederick Faber as superior (LD, 11:338). 19 The following passage illustrates the freedom with which Newman was able to speak about the subject: "What the intellect discovers as it turns and sifts matters in this way does not necessarily require any syllogistic equipment by which to establish premises and draw safe conclusions. It is a freer mode of thought and a subtler procedure that the mind moves forward investigating and determining, often with little consciousness of how it is occupied and what it is learning. It is more like turning a light to illuminate some region that lies ahead, than fashioning and constructing something that, before one set to work, had not been there at all. §8) Not that the methods of logicians will not be put to use in treating a matter with others. For them it is not a matter of the mind's growing in knowledge peacefully, quietly and spontaneously. It is rather a deliberate stirring up of the matter, questioning and counter-questioning, and defending what is arrived at." To this Perrone simply replied: "This would be called scientific method whereby reasoning from the principles of faith brings to light their latent implications" (James Gaffney, trans., Roman Catholic Writings on Doctrinal Development by John Henry Newman, [Kansas City, MO: Sheen and Ward, 1997], 16; cf. original Latin in "Newman-Perrone Paper," 411). 20 "Newman-Perrone Paper," 418, 420. 21 This is especially evident in the section, De Verbo Dei subjectivo (Ibid., 407–413). an overly rational approach to the act of faith. In preparing the Theses, Newman specifically had an eye toward satisfying Perrone's sensibilities on the question of faith, which were rooted in the scholastic writings and emphasized the deductive character of knowing in contrast to Newman's preference for intuition.16 It was Perrone, in fact, who oversaw the censure of Louis Bautain (1796–1867), whose views on the related issue of moral certainty bore close resemblance to language in Newman's Essay on Development.17 Although there is no evidence that Newman offered his Theses to Perrone for direct approval, Newman's comments in a letter to John Dobrée Dalgairns suggests that he intended to broach the subject in conversation.18 Whatever the case, it is virtually certain that the Theses de fide effectively ended dispute on the controversial topic of faith and moral certainty in the reception of his Essay on Development.19 "NEWMAN-PERRONE PAPER" The "Newman-Perrone Paper" makes evident that its two authors differed on important points, particularly, the precise nature and significance of doctrinal change in history,20 as well as the role of human subjectivity and the Church in this process.21 However, the "Paper" also reveals the two authors' affinities on important points. Specifically, Perrone never attempted to argue that all doctrines were always explicit 49 in the tradition. Moreover, both Newman and Perrone understood doctrine as associated with the devotional lives of believers-as residing in tacit sensibilities of the faithful, only coming to fuller expression when need for clarification presented itself.22 This was an idea present in Johann Adam Möhler's thinking in the 1820s and then applied explicitly to tradition in his celebrated Symbolik, first published in 1832. Perrone read this work and its influence is evident in the "Newman-Perrone Paper," where Perrone cited Symbolik as brilliantly explicating the Christian's subjective appropriation of the deposit of faith.23 The appropriation of doctrine, for Möhler, is not primarily understood as something that develops historically and makes itself explicit amid controversy. Rather, Möhler emphasized the divine principle in the Church as the permanent bearer of the deposit of faith. Although Möhler did, in fact, acknowledged the historical development of doctrine,24 the concept never appeared explicitly in Symbolik or its predecessor, Die Einheit in der Kirche.25 Nor did the idea of the historical development of doctrine appear in Perrone's work before his interactions with Newman. In Perrone's Praelectiones theologicae, his treatment of tradition is largely restricted to its importance as the Church's safeguard against innovative and heretical interpretations of Scripture.26 This emphasis is highlighted by the fact that Perrone devoted an entire section to history as a source for tradition, granting it an illustrative rather than normative function and nowhere identifying it as potentially gainsaying the unchanging character of the depositum fidei.27 This variance in approach made Perrone uneasy when Newman spoke of the growth of doctrine or teachings being added to the apostolic deposit of faith.28 Since Newman's starting point for development was primarily philosophical-reflecting on the data of history-his thinking on the subject emphasized change. Perrone on the other hand, following Möhler, began theologically with God's action in the Church. This led him to stress the sempiternal character of Christian doctrine. In light of these differences, it is significant that Newman and Perrone agreed that history alone cannot provide theologians with a uniform expression of Christian teaching.29 Both writers held that what the contemporary Church professed was essentially the same as what had been entrusted to the Apostles.30 It is thus distorting simply to contrast these two men in reading the "Newman-Perrone Paper" as some scholars have. Allen Brent's articles, for example, have gone particularly far in separating the two thinkers.31 Brent drew from Perrone's earlier work, Praelectiones 22 "Newman-Perrone Paper," 405, 411. 23 Ibid., 405. 24 "The necessity of development is just as evident as the fact of development is unavoidable" (Cited in, Gustav Voss, "Johann Adam Möhler and the Development of Dogma," Theological Studies 4.3 [1943]: 420–444, at 429). 25 Ibid., 427–429. 26 Giovanni Perrone. Praelectiones theologicae (Louvain: Vanlinthout et Vandenzande, 1843) 11:230–243. 27 Ibid., 11:306–310. 28 "Newman-Perrone Paper," 414, 420, 429. 29 Ibid., 430. 30 Ibid., 430. 31 See Brent's "Newman and Perrone: Unreconcilable Theses on Development," Downside Review 102 (1984): 276–289, and "The Hermesian Dimension to the Newman Perrone Dialogue," Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 61 (1985): 73–99. NEWMAN, PERRONE, AND MÖHLER ON DOGMA AND HISTORY: A REAPPRAISAL OF THE "NEWMAN-PERRONE PAPER ON DEVELOPMENT" NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL50 32 Brent explicitly made the Praelectiones theologicae the primary reference point in his study, "Newman and Perrone: Unreconcilable Theses on Development," 288, n. 2. 33 "The Hermesian Dimension to the Newman-Perrone Dialogue," 73. 34 Nichols (From Newman to Congar, 59–62) explicitly followed Brent's work. 35 Ibid., 61. 36 Ibid., 62. 37 Giovanni Perrone, article "XI," Annali delle scienze religiose 5 (1837): 383–410, at 383. 38 "Qui il Moehler spiega una teoria tutta sua che diresti dare nel misticismo, qualora non fosse ben intesa, ma che però rettificata, non ha cosa veruna che urti od offenda, e che anzi non serva meravigliosamente all'intento dell'A[utore]. Egli adunque reguarda la Chiesa di Gesù Christo, come una specie d'incarnazione permanente del divin Verbo, in cui, salve le proprietà delle due nature, il divino e l'umano si penetrano a vicenda" (Ibid., 397, my translation). theologicae, to fill in the theological gaps of the somewhat patchy "Newman-Perrone Paper."32 Brent overemphasized the objectivistic character of Perrone's ecclesiocentric starting point and, in addition, by failing to account for the document's 1847 context, made some specious inferences. He stated for instance that, "the differences between Newman and Perrone on doctrinal development and faith were not purely verbal but rather about quite substantive issues so that Rome's failure to censure Newman at this time had a purely diplomatic motivation."33 Aiden Nichols followed Brent along these lines, yet avoided his overdrawn conclusions:34 On Perrone's account, once the bishops of the Church have gathered together the disjecta membra of the apostolic deposit, they will have, in effect, the premises of a theological conclusion. Thus if they gather together on the one hand belief in the unity of God, and on the other belief in the divinity of the Son, then they have before them the premises of a theological deduction, namely that the Son is homoousion with the Father. In other words, once the bishops have brought together the geographically scattered pieces of the mosaic, what they do with them, fundamentally, is carry out a logical procedure.35 From an historical point of view, such a depiction of Perrone's standpoint in the "Newman-Perrone Paper" is not so much inaccurate as it is incomplete. To be fair to Nichols, he acknowledged that Perrone viewed devotion as a necessary component of tradition, but characterized this devotion as "behavioral" in juxtaposition to Newman's preference for intuition.36 This downplays, however, the extent to which Perrone had appreciated Möhler's thought on the subject and was prepared to put his ideas into the service of interacting with Newman and answering his challenges. In 1837, a lecture given by Perrone in Rome on the translation of Möhler's Symbolik into French suggests some of the theoretical convictions that Perrone would presumably have brought to his interactions with Newman and the extent to which he would have been well disposed to Newman's more dynamic view of faith. After introducing the Symbolik as "ingenious,"37 Perrone claimed: Here Möhler expounds a theory completely his own, which would speak from the point of view of mysticism, though not well understood, but indeed rectified, without anything which obstructs or offends, nothing, in fact, which does not marvelously serve the intentions of the author. In this way he sees the Church of Jesus Christ as a kind of permanent incarnation of the divine Word, in which, while maintaining the characteristic of the two natures, the divine and the human penetrate one another.38 51 The theoretical space that Möhler afforded Perrone with respect to Newman's position on the creativity of faith and the possibility of doctrinal development needs to be kept in mind when reading the "Newman-Perrone Paper"; given the positions taken in Perrone's earlier work, there is no clear way to account for his generosity toward Newman in regard to development. A short exchange in the "Newman-Perrone Paper" will suffice to show that Möhler's influence still loomed over the interaction. Here is what Newman said about the reception of the revealed Word on the part of the faithful: That simple, absolute, immutable character, which is most truly found in the revealed word, belongs to it, however, only as considered in itself, or objectively, or in the form of dogma. It is quite other when we consider it as a subject for human minds. For then it is a kind of epinoia of the one who receives it, involving parts, or aspects. There may be more to it or less. It has an initial phase. It grows. It improves.39 Perrone responded to this passage by turning Newman's attention to what Möhler "splendidly wrote" in his Symbolik.40 No page reference to Möhler's work was given in the "Newman-Perrone Paper," though Perrone did provide an extended quotation from the French translation of Symbolik on this topic in the book he published a few months later: The Spirit of God, who governs and vivifies the Church, gives birth within man, in unifying Himself to man, an instinct, an eminently tangible Christian sense, which leads man toward all true doctrine. The principle communicated from on high, the perpetual alliance with the apostolate, the education and life in the Church develop a profoundly interior sense, a proper sentiment for the interpretation of the written word. . . . This common sentiment, this consciousness of the Church is tradition in the subjective sense of the word.41 The above statements concerning Möhler's influence on the "Newman-Perrone Paper" suggest that there was an openness in Perrone's thought on the issue of faith and subjectivity as it relates to the Church and history. This openness is an important factor in grappling with the transitional context of the "Newman-Perrone Paper" and its overall meaning. Newman was in the early stages of his specifically Roman Catholic education when the "Paper" was written and was attempting to develop and make explicit his views in a scholastic idiom that was unnatural to him. Perrone, for his part, was in the process of forming his own 39 "Simplex autem illud et absolutum et immutabile, quod in verbo revelato verissime cernitur, tum solum illius proprium est, quando in se, vel objective, vel in forma dogmatis, consideratur. Nam, cum de illo ipso loquimur ut menti humanae subjectivo, alia prorsus res est; tum enim ($/&.0, quaedam est recipientis; sub partium seu aspectuum rationem cadit; majus minusve esse potest; inchoatur crescit perficitur." (Roman Catholic Writings on Doctrinal Development by John Henry Newman, J. Gaffney, trans., 11; cf. Lynch, 405). 40 "De hoc sensu subjectivo praeclare scripsit Moehler in sua Symbolica. Dicitur subjectivum prout in subjecto recipitur et fit nostrum" ("Newman-Perrone Paper," 405). 41 L'Esprit de Dieu, qui governe et vivifie l'Eglise, enfante dans l'homme, en s'unissant à lui, une instint, un tact éminemment chrétien, qui le conduit à tout vraie doctrine. Le principe communiqué d'en haut, l'alliance avec l'apostolat perpétuel, l'education et la vie dans l'Eglise developpent un sens profondément interieur, un sentiment propre de l'interprétation de la parole écrite...Ce sentiment commun, cette conscience de l'Eglise est la tradition dans le sens subjectif du mot." It is significant that emphasis on the Church (italics) appeared in Perrone's work but not in the original French translation of Symbolik (Cited in, Giovanni Perrone. De Immaculato B. V. Mariae conceptu an dogmatico decreto definiri possit. [Rome: Ioannes Baptista Marini and Bernardus Morini, 1847], 142, n. 2 [my translation]). NEWMAN, PERRONE, AND MÖHLER ON DOGMA AND HISTORY: A REAPPRAISAL OF THE "NEWMAN-PERRONE PAPER ON DEVELOPMENT" NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL52 42 Although the precise date of its publication is unclear, Perrone's book was certainly not released until after the composition of the "Newman-Perrone Paper," in the fall of 1847. René Laurentin, "The Role of the Papal Magisterium in the Development of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception," in The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, History and Significance, edited by E. O'Connor, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1958), 309, stated that Pius IX congratulated Perrone for this book on 8 October; the earliest review of the work which I have found was printed on 2 November and noted that Perrone's work appeared "tout récemment" (l'Ami de la religion: Journal ecclésiastique, politique, et littéraire, 35:261). Franz Michel Willam, "John Henry Newman und P. Perrone," Newman Studien 2 (1954):120–145, at 139, assumed a chronology parallel to my own. 43 "Newman-Perrone Paper," 424–426 44 For more information on Suárez's influence on Perrone, see Kasper, Die Lehre von der Tradition der Römische Schule (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1962), 45; and on Roman theology in general, see Chadwick, From Bossuet to Newman, 21. 45 "Atque haec est illa dogmatum catholicorum explicationis ac veluti progressionis ratio, qua aliqua articulis fidei, non in se quidem spectatis, sed quoad nos facta est" (De Immaculato B. V. Mariae, 133; emphasis in the original). thoughts on the topic of doctrinal change while preparing his book on the definability of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which was released only a few months after the "Newman-Perrone Paper" was written.42 For these reasons, plus the fact that the document was never intended for publication, the "Newman-Perrone Paper" should not be read as a text representing the hard-held views of either author, but rather as a friendly exchange of theological opinion, which helped both thinkers to hone their ideas for the future. SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPACT Because of this transitional character, the "Newman-Perrone Paper" represents an important junction in the early impact of Newman's ideas about development. It suggests that the idea of development both pressed Perrone and was filtered through him in a transformed way. In particular, the reflections found in the "Newman-Perrone Paper" significantly impacted the book Perrone was writing at the time. A few textual parallels help to demonstrate this. In thesis two of the "NewmanPerrone Paper,"43 Newman used a Suárezian distinction between propositional revelation (in propositionibus) and what is implied therein to explain that certain elements of the deposit of faith were implicit, until controversy provoked reflection upon a question and a subsequent definition of the Church.44 Newman then referred to the controversy over the re-baptism of heretics in the third century and argued that the Church's subsequent decision on the matter ran against the teachings of Cyprian and other bishops, and thus constituted a true development of magisterial doctrine. The same historical example appeared again in Perrone's disquisitio on the Immaculate Conception. Here Perrone's objections in the "Newman-Perrone Paper" and elements of his own position adapting Möhler are also apparent. Perrone distinguished between the deposit of faith implicite and explicite. And, though he was careful to avoid speaking of change within history as growth or development in re, he conceded to Newman by acknowledging its "progression" (veluti progressionis). Perrone schematized the process in averring that change in the historical record is not something occurring within the deposit of faith itself (in se), but is rather a function of our subjective point of view (quoad nos).45 These textual parallels highlight the deeper impressions that Newman made 53 upon Perrone's work. After the exchange with Newman, Perrone's position regarding doctrinal development and faith was no longer bound to a model of logical deduction. Rather, Perrone placed the concept of sensus fidelium into service in a way that he had never before done.46 Perrone claimed that doctrine was carried forth in the Church through the activity of both pastors and faithful alike: "The Magisterium, practice or custom of the Church itself is therefore sufficient for the purpose of knowing the ever flourishing doctrine received in the Church, which is affirmed by the documents of history (monumentis fermetur) and the sensus common to pastors and faithful."47 Although, in some respects, Perrone's view of doctrinal development better represented an adaptation of Möhler's thought than Newman's, Perrone's new stance effectively granted more weight to sources such as history than ever before. Perrone still maintained the ecclesiological starting point in his reflection as in the "NewmanPerrone Paper," but via his adaptation of Möhler to the issue of subjectivity, he was able to concede doctrinal change in history, even though he differed from Newman as to its exact meaning and dynamism. Providing a nice coda to this evidence is a copy of Perrone's book in Newman's library with a personal dedication-"To the most learned Newman: affectionately, the Author."48 All of this suggests something that has been neglected in the literature on the "Newman-Perrone Paper"49 and the reception history of Newman's Essay on Development: namely, that despite Perrone's varying outlook after the exchange, Newman had an influence on Perrone's thinking, which in turn impacted the Church at large at a much earlier date than has normally been acknowledged.50 Of course, with respect to the broader claim of Newman's influencing the Church at large, much of what can be said must be qualified by the fact that his view of development was adopted in a transformed way. Nonetheless, there are a few points that merit attention with respect to the reverberations of the idea of doctrinal development after the Newman-Perrone exchange. 46 Though not linking it to Newman, Walter Kaspar makes this point about the shift in Perrone's thought in Die Lehre von Tradition in der Römische Schule, 94–95. 47 "Satis igitur est ad cognoscendam traditam doctrinam in Ecclesia vigentem iuge eiusdem Ecclesiae magisterium, praxis seu consuetudo, quae monumentis fermetur, et communis ipse pastorum ac fidelium sensus" (De Immaculato B. V. Mariae, 143; my translation). 48 "Doctissimo Newman piissime auctor," cited by Günther Biemer, "Leben als das Kennzeichenen der wahren Kirche Jesu Christi: Zur Ekklesiologie von Johann Adam Möhler und John Henry Newman," in, Johann Adam Möhler, 71–97, at 79. 49 The best "systematic" study of the "Newman-Perrone Paper" is in Walter Kasper, Die Lehre von der Tradition in der Römischen Schule, 119–130. Franz Michel Willam, in "John Henry Newman und P. Perrone," 120–145, read the "Newman-Perrone Paper" within its contemporary context and emphasized discrepancies between the authors on issues of moral certainty. Concise studies can be found in Gilly, Roman Catholic Writings on Development, 1–8, and in Ferdinand Cavalliera, "Le document NewmanPerrone et le développement du dogme," Bulletin de literature ecclesiastique 47 (1937):132–142. Owen Chadwick, From Bossuet to Newman, 2nd ed. (London: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 181–184, concisely showed that the difference between the two thinkers had much to do with the relationship between an individual's faith and the faith of the Church, with Perrone stressing a "top down" approach, and Newman the reverse. Although Allen Brent's articles (notes 31–32) may be helpful in drawing connections between Perrone's thinking in the "Newman-Perrone Paper" and his earlier works, they represent a perspective that is otherwise distorting and seemingly hostile to the Roman School. 50 In the essay "On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine" (1859), Newman recognized the shift in Perrone's thinking in his 1847 book and underscored his similarities with him. Newman said nothing about influencing Perrone; however, given the fact that Newman was invoking Perrone to support a suspect view, he would have had reason not to do so; "On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine" is available at: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/rambler/consulting.html. NEWMAN, PERRONE, AND MÖHLER ON DOGMA AND HISTORY: A REAPPRAISAL OF THE "NEWMAN-PERRONE PAPER ON DEVELOPMENT" NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL54 51 Giulio da Nembro, La definibilità dell'Immacolata Concezione negli scritti e nell'attività di Giovanni Perrone, S. J. (Milan: Centro Studi Cappuccini Lombardi, 1961), 71–72; hereafter cited: La definibilità dell'Immacolata Concezione. 52 Although not as well known as Perrone, Mazio enjoyed a similarly high stature; he had been the Chair of Canon Law at the Roman College and also one of the censors of the Roman journal, Annali delle scienze religiose (From Bossuet to Newman, 167–168). Presumably, Mazio and Perrone were at least close acquaintances, as evidenced by their scholarly interaction (see, Carlos Sommervogel, Bibliothèque de la compagnie de Jésus [Paris: Alphonse Picard, 1894], 5:831) and the fact that the two accompanied one another on visits to Newman (see LD, 12:76, 106). In addition, Mazio likely knew English better and seems to have been a keen observer of English affairs (Bibliothèque de la compagnie de Jésus, 5:831). 53"The Reception Among Catholics of Newman's Doctrine of Development, Newman's own Impressions," 183. 54 La definibilità dell'Immacolata Concezione, 77–82. 55 As James Hennesey, "A Prelude to Vatican I: American Bishops and the Definition of the Immaculate Conception, Theological Studies 25 (1964):409–419, pointed out, the final text of Ineffabilis was elaborated by the pope and bishops in synod. 56 V. Sardi, editor, La solenne definizione del Dogma dell'Immacolato Concepimento di Maria Santissima: Atti e documenti (Rome: Tipografia Vaticana, 1905), 2:22–38; hereafter cited: Atti e documenti. 57 Ibid, 2:39–46. 58 Ibid, 2:210–211. 59 Kaspar has drawn attention to this in Die Lehre von der Tradition in der Römischen Schule, 232. First, Perrone's views on the subject of doctrinal change in history were widely disseminated through his book on the definability of the Immaculate Conception. This book, which went through eleven editions between fall of 1847 and the definition of the dogma in 1854, was translated into French, Italian and German.51 Perrone's standpoint, furthermore, would have been likely associated with Newman's views on development. The fact that a friend and colleague of Perrone's at the Collegium Romanum, Fr. Giacomo Mazio,52 felt free to conflate the two positions in 1849 certainly suggests this. In remarks about Orestes Brownson's attacks on Newman's view of development, Mazio claimed that Newman had been correct and that Brownson ought to read Perrone's book on the definability of the Immaculate Conception in order to "clarify his ideas."53 If an insider drew such a connection, how much more so with others outside of Perrone's circle? A more direct indication of the persuasive force and impact of Perrone's book can also be observed in the bishops' responses to the pope's 1849 inquiry, Ubi primum, which sought to sound the universal Church's opinion about the definability of the Immaculate Conception. In the bishops' responses, several referenced Perrone's work explicitly-including some of most influential theologians responsible for the decree, such as Dom Prosper Guéranger (1805–1875) and Cardinal Luigi Lambruschini (1776–1854).54 In part, no doubt, because of the expertise exhibited in his book, Perrone was selected to compose the first draft of the bull, Ineffabilis, the dogmatic definition proclaimed in synod by Pius IX in 1854.55 In his draft, Perrone maintained the same standpoints regarding history that he had held since his exchange with Newman.56 During the discussion of the draft, several synod participants were apparently uncomfortable with any notion of doctrinal development.57 There were also participants who saw the importance of accounting for history when warranted.58 It appears that the issue was a debated point that loomed over the drafting process, since language conceding the notion may be found not only in Perrone's schema, but also in schemata III and IV.59 Bishop Michael O'Connor of Pittsburgh (1810–1872) mentioned the theory of development explicitly; however, his interjection met with a rebuttal by Bishop Thomas Grant of Southwark (1816–1870), who said that 55 O'Connor's remarks came from Newman and that talk of "evolution diminish[ed] the power of Tradition."60 In any case, the definition was silent about the question of doctrinal development in history. Yet significantly, a term that would have virtually implied an exclusion of such change (constans doctrina) was omitted as well.61 Though it cannot be said that the magisterium adopted Newman's view of doctrinal development in 1854, it was clearly an important factor in the theological climate in the middle of the nineteenth century. Newman's influence upon the synod that drafted the bull decreeing the Immaculate Conception has been previously overlooked, in part because the subtlety of Newman's earlier influence has likewise not been recognized. For the most part, scholars have considered the NewmanPerrone exchange an anomaly, or, due to Perrone's differing viewpoint, even an indication of the Church's tacit disapproval of the idea of doctrinal development. Such a reading fails to take into consideration the context of the Newman-Perrone exchange, as well as Perrone's openness to and adoption of Möhler's thought on the issue of development. For these reasons, the conventional history of the impact of Newman's idea of development normally begins in the twentieth century rather than the nineteenth. A closer look at the historical context of the "Newman-Perrone Paper" suggests that the impact of Newman's Essay on Development really began much earlier. 60 Atti e documenti, 2:210–211. 61 Kaspar, Die Lehre von der Tradition in der Römischen Schule, 252–254. Also see Kenneth Parker's "Francis Kenrick and Papal Infallibility: How Pastoral Experience in the American Missions Transformed a Roman Ultramontanist," in Tradition and Pluralism: Essays in Honor of William M. Shea. Studies in Religion and Social Order, edited by K. Parker, P. Huff, and M. Pahls, (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2009), 181–195, at 189–191. NEWMAN, PERRONE, AND MÖHLER ON DOGMA AND HISTORY: A REAPPRAISAL OF THE "NEWMAN-PERRONE PAPER ON DEVELOPMENT" NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL56 The scant scholarship associated with Newman's Anglican views about Judaism has focused on his negative rhetoric against Judaism and portrayed him as anti-Semitic. His Anglican writings, however, applied terms associated with Judaism in a typological sense to the political and religious realities of his day, primarily to support his apologetic agenda and to highlight threats to the Church of England. Simultaneously, he stressed the positive characteristics of Judaism, illustrated the continuity between Judaism and Christianity, and pointed out that the religious system of Judaism was divinely inspired and contained worthy examples for Christian living. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN'S ANGLICAN VIEWS ON JUDAISM STEVEN D. AGUZZI Contemporary scholarship concerning Newman's views on Judaism, thoughscarce,1 is typically focused on his early work, Arians of the Fourth Century.2 Such scholarship portrays Newman as an employer of hate speech, utilizing rhetoric designed to replicate an anti-Semitic worldview.3 Though Newman's language betrays the prejudices of his day, such scholarship pegging Newman as anti-Semitic tends to be anachronistic and one-sided, and considers only a narrow and limited amount of his writing. The disproportionate focus is on Newman's views of Judaism in his Arians, typified in his description of the infiltration of "judaizing practice" into the Antiochene church: I will not say that the Arian doctrine is the direct result of a judaizing practice; but it deserves consideration whether a tendency to derogate from the honour due to Christ, was not created by an observance of the Jewish rites, and much Steven D. Aguzzi, an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church and a doctoral student in systematic theology at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA, would like to thank Fr. Drew Morgan, Daniel Lattier, and Damon McGraw for their helpful discussion during the composition of this essay. 1 Little scholarship exists on Newman and Judaism in general, with the exception of a recent study on Newman's alleged Jewish decent; such "allegations" arising in biographical documentation are replete with anti-Jewish commentary. See Patrick Killough's interesting exploration of the links between Newman, Leonard Edward Feeney, and Newman's purported Jewish ancestry, available at http://www.patrickkillough.com/religion/newman_feeney.html. 2 John Henry Newman (hereafter cited JHN), Arians of the Fourth Century, is available at: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/arians/index.html; hereafter cited: Arians. The work was commissioned in 1831 by Hugh James Rose, as an historical account of the early Church councils that was to be a preliminary foundation for a study on the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion. Newman claimed to use "original sources" for his work and insisted that Arianism be considered before any attempt was made at writing an ecclesiastical conciliar history. See Rowan Williams, "Newman's Arians and the Question of Method in Doctrinal History," in Newman after a Hundred Years, edited by Ian Ker and Allen G. Hill (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 264–265; hereafter cited: "Newman's Arians." 3 Virginia Burrus has claimed that Newman borrowed hate speech passed on from Athanasius and other early proponents of Trinitarian discourse. Utilizing the philosophy of Judith Butler and the postcolonial linguistic theory of Homi K. Bhabha, Burrus sought to give voice to the Jewish "insurrectionary counterspeech" latent within Newman's polemical discourse. See Virginia Burrus, "Hailing Zenobia: anti-Judaism, trinitarianism, and John Henry Newman," Culture and Religion 3/2 (November 2002):163–177, at 163; hereafter cited: "Hailing Zenobia." According to Rowan Williams, Newman's claim that "Antioch . . . [as] . . . the home of 'Judaizing' Christianity . . . means compromise and spiritual failure . . . [exposes Newman's] . . . virulent anti-Semitic prejudices . . . ." (Rowan Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2002], 251; hereafter cited: Arius: Heresy and Tradition). 57 more, by that carnal, self-indulgent religion, which seems at that time to have prevailed in the rejected nation.4 Any approach in determining what is meant in this passage must begin by questioning the definition of the terms "judaizing" and "Jewish," and by investigating the theological and historical method Newman employed while writing.5 According to Viriginia Burrus, the anti-Jewish rhetoric of Athanasius was "broken out of its original context and re-performed in Newman's monograph," opening new venues for the hate speech which is so powerful in its adaptability and capacity to excite linguistically.6 Certainly Newman was saying something directly about Jews in the Arians, as much as he borrowed from typical prejudices against Jews in nineteenth century England.7 The question of Newman's intentions in the use of this polemical terminology arises when one delves into the typology of the terms themselves, and their application to Newman's contemporary theological and historical situation. Newman did not view himself as utilizing rhetoric to "break out of the original context" associated with the Arian controversy, but believed that the original theological context of fourth century Antioch-heresy-had broken into nineteenth century England, requiring a response similar to that of Athanasius and the other Fathers.8 Newman's direct thoughts on Judaism,9 particularly of the Judaism of his own day, are quite difficult to determine, considering that the bulk of his writings 4 Arians, 18; Burrus ("Hailing Zenobia," 168) quoted this and Newman's entire section on the Jewish influence on Antiochian doctrine at length. 5 Newman, footnoting the Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus, stated that " . . . Judaizers are described as men labouring under an irrational fascination, fallen from grace, and self-excluded from the Christian privileges . . . ." (Arians, 20). This description of the judaizers places them along the perimeter of the Christian community, external to it only by choice. In Tract 47, Newman placed Protestant dissenters in this kind of religious limbo: "So far from its being a strange thing that Protestant sects are not 'in Christ,' in the same fullness that we are, it is more accordant to the scheme of the world that they should lie between us and heathenism" (Members of the University of Oxford, Tracts for the Times [New York: Charles Henry, 1839], 335). 6 "Hailing Zenobia," 164. 7 David Katz has described the influence of Archbishop William Howley of Canterbury and his opposition in the House of Lords to the 1830 bill "for the relief of His Majesty's Subjects professing the Jewish Religion"-a bill designed to spare the Jews of England from a mandated oath of Christian faith. Though the political, social, and religious oppression of Jews was evident in Newman's day, reform was on the horizon, with the University of London (unlike Oxford) admitting students from various religious backgrounds in 1837. It is significant to note the level to which Jewish people were stigmatized in nineteenth century England and this phenomenon's influence on Newman and his thought. Newman's proximity to Howley likewise illustrates the degree to which anti-Jewish ideology was imbedded in the Church of England and English culture as a whole. See David S. Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850 (New York: Clarendon, 1994), 384. 8 Newman used typological language frequently, particularly to support his apologetic agenda; in his explication of history, he consistently drew parallels between groups in antiquity and the religious parties of his own time: "I saw clearly, that in the history of Arianism, the pure Arians were the Protestants, the semiArians were the Anglicans, and that Rome now was what it was then . . . ." (Apologia Pro Vita Sua: the two versions of 1864 & 1865, 235; available at: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/apologia/part5.html). As Newman's interest in debunking liberalism grew, so did his interest in the Fathers; see Thomas J. Norris, Newman and His Theological Method: A Guide for the Theologian Today (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1977), 50. 9 In his personal writings, Newman rarely used the terms "Judaism" or "Jewish" and often employed the thoughts of the Fathers in his assessments. In a letter to Elizabeth Bowden, Newman spoke of a "Mr. Goldsmid," who at the age of sixteen converted from Judaism to Christianity. Newman claimed that "one must attribute a great deal that people do not like, to his early years-and trust Apostolical principles will mould his mind into more perfect symmetry" (JHN to Elizabeth Bowden [Oriel College, 23 July 1837], The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman 6: 260); hereafter cited: LD. Even in his personal assessment of Jewish people, Newman appears to have employed an apologetic principle, consistently pointing to the benefits of conversion and the spiritual fulfillment offered in the Christian life. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN'S ANGLICAN VIEWS ON JUDAISM NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL58 10 In regard to Newman's statement that he was not a theologian, see JHN to Miss M.R. Giberne (The Oratory, 10 February 1869), LD, 24: 212–213. 11 "Church" in this essay refers primarily to Newman's defense of his church at the time, the Church of England. In the material that follows, it becomes obvious that Newman's ecclesiology shifted markedly throughout his development as a theologian and apologist. In his 1877 preface to The Prophetical Office (Via Media, volume 1), Newman included among the offices of the church, the role of prophet, taken on in the contemporary world by theologians. It is precisely this prophetical vocation that Newman employed in his typological apologetic in his Anglican writings-Newman was speaking to the church, warning it of error and showing a way out of heresy. 12 "Hailing Zenobia," 164. 13 See JHN, "The Christian Church a Continuation of the Jewish," in Sermons on Subjects of the Day, 180–198, at 195–196, available at http://www.newmanreader.org/works/subjects/sermon14.html; hereafter cited: "The Christian Church," SSD. 14 Newman's distinction between Judaism proper and the Judaism espoused by the Pharisees was apparently derived from the Gospels. Newman frequently cited Jesus' dealings with the Jews and his rebuttal of their spiritual ignorance; for example, see Newman's insights on the Gospel of John in "The Eucharistic Presence," Parochial and Plain Sermons, 6:136–152, at 149, available at http://www.newmanreader.org/works/parochial/volume6/sermon11.html; hereafter cited PPS. 15 "The Christian Church," SSD, at 197, emphasis mine. utilize the subject of Judaism predominantly typologically and in connection with issues that arose in the Christian community of his day, both positive and negative. Is it true that Newman used anti-Jewish principles derived from English culture in his writings? The answer is affirmative, but the ways in which Newman employed such rhetoric is complex and not merely "hate speech" nor intended as such. Considering Newman's self-described vocation was not that of a theologian10 but that of an apologist, it logically follows that his ideas concerning Judaism would apply to his apologetic defense of the church11 during the Tractarian movement, more than any direct attack on the Jews living in or near Oxford. Burrus brings up a significant point when she states that Athanasius's discourse seems "practically irrelevant . . . because his anti-Judaism itself, in the context of his anti-Arian polemic, does not appear to be directed against Jews. The same might be said of Newman's anti-Jewish rhetoric."12 The phrase "does not appear to be directed against Jews" is the foundation of Burrus's argument; thus, the question must be asked whether Newman was in fact directing his words against the Jews at all, as the term is applied to modern Jewry, or more to an audience comprised of a group to which Newman himself belonged-the church and to those in the process of leaving it. For Burrus, the harm in Newman's rhetoric is that it does not appear that he is directing his words against Jews, when in fact he is. Though this is Burrus's take on the situation, the reality remains that Newman rarely mentioned the Jews as a group separate from their relation to the Christian communion, consistently drawing a contrast between the remnant of Israel which was true Judaism, still alive in the church,13 and "Pharisaic" or "judaizing" elements, also alive in heretical groups infiltrating the church.14 Newman's insistence on the continuity between Judaism and Christianity was evident in his sermons, raising the question as to whether Newman's polemic against "Jews" was not an intra-communal one: "what has taken place in the Christian Church is of course no fulfillment at all of the promises made to the Jewish, unless in some very true sense they may be called one Church."15 Pharisaic Judaism, by contrast, seeks to embrace elements of Old Testament religion apart from the Lordship of 59 Christ, holding on to what I would call a "pure seed"16-a theological anchor that is good in itself, but when used as an idol in opposition to Christ creates further doctrinal error.17 The continuation of the one church of Judaism into and through the one church of Christ points to the fact that the term "Judaism" was used by Newman in more than one way. One use made reference to the true Old Testament religion that was made manifest by God in the first dispensation, continuing in the second.18 Another use pointed out the ways in which certain Jews rejected their God, raising the need for prophets and ultimately the repudiation of the Pharisees by Christ. How did Newman use the terms "Judaism" and "judaizer"? What were his ideas on Judaism in the Arians? This essay hopes to shed light on these expressions by comparing and contrasting their meaning with Newman's understanding of Judaism in his other Anglican writings. This essay suggests that Newman uses the terms in a typological manner in the Arians and that his Anglican sermons illustrate a complex understanding of the typological uses of the terms and also stress an overall continuity between Judaism and Christianity-in spite of Newman's acknowledged embrace of supersessionism.19 Newman often utilized the term "Judaism" in a positive manner and his association of Judaism with negative elements threatening Christianity may be explained as polemical tropes directed against his adversaries. NEWMAN'S ARIANS AND THE JEWISH CONNECTION Throughout the entire Tractarian movement, Newman was consistently confronted with what he believed to be two powerful and pervasive threats to the 16 The term "pure seed" here refers specifically to the nineteenth century Evangelical impulse to return to a "direct" or "pure" interpretation of the Word of God, free from the "impurities" imposed by years of church tradition. The correlation between this and Pharisaic logic is that both seek a direct and literal "handle" on which to anchor one's spiritual allegiance. 17 Newman, "The Principle of Continuity between the Jewish and Christian Churches," SSD, 15:199–217, at 203; hereafter cited: "The Principle," SSD, delivered on 20 November 1842, argued in support of ceremony and ritual–based ordinances in the church: "St. Paul does not speak against ordinances in themselves, but ordinances which are done beside or against Christ's grace and will. Such were those of the Pharisees . . . such were those of the Galatians. . . ." 18 Newman ("The Principle," SSD, 15:199–217, at 210) considered it important to stress the validity of Judaism in order to illustrate its continuity in the Christian dispensation: "A true religion is a religion based on truth, and a false religion is a religion based on falsehood; but they would not be called by the same name, unless there were a substantial agreement between them. And if true and false religions are like each other . . . much more are Judaism and Christianity alike, which are both from God. . . ." 19 Supersessionism maintains that the Jewish people have been superseded by the church, which acts as the fulfillment of God's promises to the Jews. The form of supersessionism Newman espoused was more in line with the Fathers than with the "modern version" of Kant or Schleiermacher. R. Kendall Soulen (The God of Israel and Christian Theology [Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1996], 58) has described the distinction between Classical supersessionism and the modern sense of the term; for the Classical theologian, " . . . God's way with Israel was indecisive in fact but not yet inessential in principle. By contrast, early modern theologians regarded the Israelite dimension of Christian faith as essentially superfluous to the nature of Christian theology . . . [and expelled] . . . the Jewish dimension of Christian faith altogether." Newman spoke of the fulfillment of Old Testament promises as follows: " . . . I would say that the prophecies in question have in their substance been fulfilled literally, and in their present Dispensation . . . not that there may not be both a figurative and a future accomplishment besides, but these will be over and above, if they take place, and do not interfere with the direct meaning of the sacred text and its literal fulfillment" ("The Christian Church," SSD, 181; emphasis mine). If this possible "future accomplishment" refers to an eschatological consummation of the Jewish people, Newman's version of supersessionism was seemingly quite different from Modern replacement theology. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN'S ANGLICAN VIEWS ON JUDAISM NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL60 20 Newman, though recognizing the complexity of Liberalism as a phenomenon, described it as " . . . the mistake of subjecting to human judgment those revealed doctrines which are in their nature beyond and independent of it . . . ." (Note A. "Liberalism," Apologia pro Vita Sua, 285–297, at 288; available at http://www.newmanreader.org/works/apologia65/notea.html). This inclination to draw conclusions, relying on human reason, independent of an external authority (i.e., the Church) was consistently rebuked by Newman, especially in direct reference to ancient heretics and their influences. 21 For an example of such a conception, see the famous sermon by John Keble, "National Apostasy: Considered in a Sermon Preached in St. Mary's, Oxford, Before His Majesty's Judges of Assize on Sunday, July 14th, 1833," available at http://anglicanhistory.org/keble/keble1.html. Much of the Oxford movement's reactionary posture was in direct response to the reduction of bishops in the Church of Ireland that was mandated by the 1832 Reform Act. 22 Maurice Wiles, Archetypal Heresy: Arianism through the Centuries (New York: Oxford University, 2001), 168; hereafter cited: Archetypal Heresy. 23 Alexander of Alexandria in his epistle to Alexander of Constantinople of 324 A.D. mentioned that Arius studied under the Antiochene Lucian, a staunch supporter of biblical literalism. See Theodoretus, Ecclesiastical History: A History of the Church in Five Books from A.D. 322 to the Death of Theodore of Mopsuestia A.D. 427 (London: J. Werthheimer, 1843), 16. 24 The Arians of the Fourth Century (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), edited by James Tolhurst, XXXVII; emphasis mine. 25 Newman's view that Antioch was a hotbed of heresy is not completely unsupported by modern scholarship; naming specific geographical localities in ascribing heretical developments was an apologetic tactic employed early and often. According to Young Kim, Antioch was viewed by Epiphanius as a significant center for the flourishing of heretics and it "received special attention and frequent mention in the Panarion . . . [and that] . . . the act of naming and referencing the city diminished its status as orthodox" ("Epiphanius of Cyprus and the Geography of Heresy," in H. A Drake, Violence in Late Antiquity: Perceptions and Practices [Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006], 244). 26 Newman defined Latitudinarianism as the doctrine in which: "...every man's view of Revealed Religion is acceptable to God, if he acts up to it; that no one view is in itself better than another, or at least that we cannot tell which is the better. All that we have to do then is to act consistently with what we hold, and to value others if they act consistently with what they hold; that to be consistent constitutes sincerity . . . ." (Discussions and Arguments on Various Subjects, 129, available at; http://www.newmanreader.org/ works/arguments/scripture/lecture2.html). church: the rise of liberalism20 evidenced by the secularization of the Church of England,21 and the popularity of Evangelicalism, expressed through various forms of biblical literalism. According to Maurice Wiles, Newman "saw the faces of his liberal opponents in the persons of the early Arians...,"22 a connection that he could have justified by both the latter and the former's tendencies to appeal to figurative means of biblical interpretation, and their ignorance of the sense of Scripture as read holistically. After all, a realistic assessment of Arius, presbyter of Alexandria, would have revealed serious tendencies toward the strong Platonic influence so prevalent at that time, along with the allegorical Scriptural reading that it entailed.23 Yet it is precisely this depiction of Arius that Newman rejected, seeking to draw a continuity of heretical teaching between Arius, Paulus of Samosata, bishop of Antioch, and Lucian of Antioch, conflating their relations and drawing strong parallels between the Antiochene church and early Jewish influence. For Newman, Antioch "was fatally compromised with Judaism, constantly liable to read the Bible in a literalist fashion which weakened the witness to Christ of the allegorical or mystical interpretation... ."24 Thus, for Newman, the Arian heretics, themselves influenced by the Jews, influenced the church in Syria.25 These thematic units, "Arian heretics" and "the Jews," served as types for both the liberal Latitudinarians26 and the dissenting Evangelicals of Newman's day; in addition, both parties had a decisively political character. Oscillating between the two applications of the typology, Liberalism and Evangelicalism, Newman found an adequate defense against the threats to the Church of England and a reasonable approach in illustrating the High Church's orthodox and 61 apostolic roots in contrast to what he viewed as heresies resurfacing in the nineteenth century. Modern liberals, like the Arians before them, had a "readiness to compromise when political expediency required it...[revealing]...their underlying indifferentist attitude to doctrinal truth."27 Both groups likewise turned to rationalist argumentation instead of the Traditions of the church: the Arians utilizing their Sophistic influence on the Antiochene church and the modern liberals through their adherence to Baconian methodology as a rationalizing agent for their doctrines and behaviors, or lack thereof. Through this parallelism, the liberal mantra of private judgment was pinned against the wall of ecclesiastical history by Newman's "consistently held conviction that the act of faith allows no room at all for dissent or doubt."28 On the opposite side of the same liberal coin appeared the Evangelical dissenters, a group, which like the proponents of "natural religion," Newman compared with the Arian heretics of antiquity.29 These modern dissenters were starkly contrasted with the Tractarians, much in the same way that Newman drew a disparity between the Antiochene heretics and the bastion of orthodoxy exemplified in Alexandria. The Evangelical propensity for biblical literalism, simplistic notions as opposed to truly spiritual and mysterious elements of the Christian life, syllogistic logic, easy solutions to complex problems, making religion easier and more palatable to the unconverted masses, and the repetition of a spiritual "deposit" utilizing Pharisaical logic30-all made them an easy target for Newman's polemics. Newman, in speaking of Paulus and Lucian, stated that "our present heretics have drunk up the dregs of the impiety of these men, and are their secret offspring. . . ."31 Here, Newman was no doubt referring to the various forms of Protestant dissent threatening his church at the time. Of particular annoyance to Newman was the Evangelical proclivity to ignore the disciplina arcani, to summon to repentance the unbeliever through utilization of emotional appeal,32 and to attempt to simplify the Gospel to one "pure seed."33 27 Archetypal Heresy, 170. 28 Edward T. Oakes, "Newman's Liberal Problem" (a review of Frank M. Turner's John Henry Newman: The Challenge to Evangelical Religion), First Things 142 (April 2003): 43–50, at 47. 29 Frank M. Turner, John Henry Newman: The Challenge to Evangelical Religion (New Haven: Yale University, 2002), at 145; hereafter cited: JHN: Challenge. 30 Traditionally in Christian thought, the Pharisee was viewed as one who sought to protect a "spiritual deposit," typically the law and tradition. In reference to this, Newman stressed the importance of a distinction between divine and human traditions: "Our Saviour had made the same distinction in His own ministry. He had found fault with the Pharisees for their traditions; but why? Because they were traditions of men, and as such obscured and resisted the tradition of God" ("The Principle," SSD, 15: 199–217, at 202). Apparently for Newman, Pharisaic Judaism was related to the "spiritual deposit" so prevalent in nineteenth century Evangelicalism, namely the stress on atonement theory and the "bible alone." The Protestant emphasis on private judgment was also linked by Newman to the self-righteous indignation of the Pharisees. 31 Arians, 24. 32 Rowan Williams, "Newman's Arians and the Question of Method in Doctrinal History," in Newman after a Hundred Years, 267. 33 In the Arians, in his section on the Alexandrian Church, Newman, contrasting the esoteric and exoteric catechetical schools, stated that "at the present day, there are very many sincere Christians, who consider that the evangelical doctrines are the appointed instruments of conversion . . . they appeal, not to Scripture, but to the stirring effects of this (so-called) Gospel preaching . . . " (Arians, 46). Newman went on to say that " . . . no one sanction can be adduced thence, whether of precept of example, in behalf of the practice stimulating the affections, such as gratitude or remorse, by means of the doctrine of Atonement, in order to the conversion of the hearers . . ." (Arians, 45, emphasis mine). JOHN HENRY NEWMAN'S ANGLICAN VIEWS ON JUDAISM NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL62 Such doctrinal and practical errors exhibit the correlation, indeed the lineage, passed down from the Arians to the modern dissenters, connecting the three sources of Arianism, Judaism, and pagan philosophy, to the modern Evangelical use of Pharisaic dogmatism and the liberal application of empirical reasoning to religious epistemology.34 In many ways, the parallels drawn between the heresies of the fourth century and Newman's dislike of Evangelical religion followed logically from his connecting all factions displaying dissenting tendencies toward the Church of England-from Evangelicals to rationalists to Unitarians-with the underlying predisposition toward liberalism in English culture.35 His Arians was in fact an immediate precursor to the Oxford Movement which would define the boundaries of Newman's thought on Protestantism.36 Newman's reading of the history of the Arians revealed for him striking similarities between St. Paul's warnings against "judaizing" tendencies in Galatians, and the doctrines and liturgical patterns of the fourth century heretics in Antioch. Newman's typological interpretation of the Arian heresy in terms of the sects of his own time was likewise connected to a force popularly viewed as a negative influence on early Christianity-from the Gospels through the Epistles and the Fathers-Pharisaic Judaism. NEWMAN'S "JEWISH THREAT" If the term "Arian" was given such strong parallels with the difficulties facing the Church of England, certainly the "judaizers"37 and "the Jews" who influenced the spread of Arian doctrine in Antioch also served as a powerful type for Newman's thought. As will be seen, when Newman referred to "Jews" and "judaizers" in his Arians, he had in mind both the adherents to Evangelical religion and the various other dissenting groups. Newman, for example, mentioned the influence of Judaism on the Antiochenes in his description of Paul of Samosata, who was connected with the Syrian queen, Zenobia.38 Paul exhibited and was subsequently condemned for his "rapacity, an arrogance, a vulgar ostentation and desire of popularity, an extraordinary profaneness, and a profligacy, which cannot but reflect seriously upon the church and clergy which elected, and so long endured him."39 In reference to Paul's dogmatic 34 Thomas Ferguson, "The Enthralling Power: History and Heresy in John Henry Newman," Anglican Theological Review 85/4 (Fall 2003): 641–662, at 646, hereafter cited, "Enthralling Power." 35 Ian Ker, John Henry Newman: A Biography (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), 37; hereafter cited: JHN: A Biography. 36 Ibid., 96. 37"The judaizers," for Newman, appear to be those who were once members of the Christian community and who would "diminish their reverence towards the true Savior of man, in proportion as they trusted to the media of worship provided for a time by the Mosaic ritual" (Arians, 19). Newman explained that this kind of practice is precisely what St. Paul combated in the Epistle to the Galatians, a fear confirmed in the practices of the fourth century Antiochene church. Newman likewise connected these "judaizing tendencies" to Ebion and referred to Tertullian's claim that Ebion was in fact the object of St. Paul's censure in the letter. 38 Newman referred to Zenobia as "a Jewess by birth or creed," an identification corroborated by Athanasius who affirmed both her lineage and support of Paul of Samosata. Three more sources point to a connection between the Palmyran Queen and the Archbishop of Antioch; John Chrysostom, Filastrius, and Theodoret. Richard Stoneman (Palmyra and Its Empire: Zenobia's Revolt Against Rome [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1992], 150) stated that "the link of Paul and Zenobia has received considerable support from the recent identification of two passages from Paul's 'Writings to Zenobia' preserved in the Questions of Pamphilus. . . ." 39 Arians, 4. 63 views, Newman mentioned that "ancient writers inform us that his heresy was a kind of Judaism in doctrine, adopted to please his Jewish patroness . . . it was not likely to be very systematic or profound."40 Newman then stated that Paul's "supercilious spirit, which the Synodal letter describes as leading him to express contempt for the divines who preceded him at Antioch, would naturally occasion incaution in his theories, and a carelessness about guarding them from inconsistencies, even where he perceived them."41 After the description of Paulus and a brief section on Lucian, Newman directed attention to "the particular form which the Antiochene corruptions seem to have assumed, viz., that of Judaism . . ."42 and cited in a footnote the literal interpretation of Scripture as "the characteristic of the school of Antioch, to the example of the Jews."43 Refocusing his critique from individuals to the churches in Asia minor, Newman characterized the adoption of the Quartodeciman44 calendar for Easter, as a Jewish ritual holdover and described the Quartodecimans as ruled by "the love of singularity, the spirit of insubordination and separatism, and the gloomy spiritual pride which their history evidences...."45 Referencing the Epistle to the Galatians, Newman attributed the conduct of these adherents to Jewish custom to the fact that they "aspired to some higher and more availing system than the Apostle preached to them. . . ."46 He consistently tied their arrogance and assent to false doctrine to the "judaizing" principles that prompted them in the first place, while simultaneously illustrating the judaizing of Antioch itself. Newman's description of the "judaizing principle" that was responsible for seducing the Christians of Antioch away from orthodoxy and toward heresy shows striking similarities to the religious groups that Newman found repugnant in his own day: the dissenters, the liberals, and the Evangelicals. Their arrogance, desire for popularity, self-affirming speculation, carelessness and inconsistency in theology, contempt for the divines who preceded them, proclivity to appease the State, use of literalist biblical hermeneutics, and lack of systematic and profound doctrine-all square with Newman's descriptions of his nineteenth century rivals. Many of these descriptors were employed by Newman in describing the Jewish influence on Antiochian Christianity and the development of Arian heresy. For Newman, it was not the Bible taken as the sole deposit of faith, but "it was the Church which was 'the legitimate enforcement of Christian truth.'"47 Disregard 40 Ibid, 5. Newman's footnote points the reader to three authors who support the claim: Athanasius, Theodoret, and Chrysostom. Newman also pointed out that Philastrius makes the claim in the Diversarum Hereseon Liber that "Paulus docuit Zenobiam judaizare." 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid, 9. 43 Ibid. In his editorial notes on this section of the Arians, Rowan William has written: "the relation between Jewish exegesis and the supposed 'Antiochene' tradition as reconstructed here has little to do with the realities of Jewish hermeneutical practice at this period . . ." (The Arians of the Fourth Century [Notre Dame: Gracewing, 2001], 477). This may in fact be the case, but the literalist reading of Scripture had quite a bit to do with the evangelical influences on the Church of England in Newman's day, which is precisely why Newman drew the correlation. 44 The "Quartodecimans" were a group of Asian Christians who maintained that Easter ought to be observed on the fourteenth day of Nisan, the first lunar month, in accordance with Jewish tradition. This second century dispute was addressed by Eusebius and again in the fourth century after the Council of Nicaea. 45 Arians, 16. 46 Ibid. 47 JHN to Simeon Lloyd Pope (Oriel College, 15 August 1830), LD, 2: 264–265. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN'S ANGLICAN VIEWS ON JUDAISM NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL64 48 In Arians, this connection is exemplified by the political dependence of Paulus on Zenobia for protection and his subsequent advancement in the political realm due to her guardianship. 49 Gauri Viswanathan (Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998], 49) has noted in reference to Newman's Grammar of Assent, that "in salvaging belief from the eroded authority of the church, dissent acquired an aggressively separatist character that aimed to preserve religious difference in the face of homogenization." I believe the seeds to this kind of religious difference is evident in Newman's attribution of heretical propensity with churches that operated too closely with the State, and thus the homogenization of secular and sacred culture. In this sense, Newman would ultimately advocate dissent from Anglicanism and assent to Catholicism. 50 JHN to E. B. Pusey (Rome, 19 March 1833), LD, 3:101. 51 Newman's desire to protect the Church from Erastianism is a common theme in his work: "can Protestantism, can the National Church, teach me? No, is the answer of common sense, for this simple reason, because of the variations and discordances in teaching of both the one and the other. The National Church is no guide into the truth, because no one knows what it holds, and what it commands: one party says this, and a second party says that, and a third party says neither this nor that. I must seek the truth then elsewhere . . .," (Characteristics from the Writings of John Henry Newman: Being Selections Personal, Historical, Philosophical, and Religious from his Various Writings, compiled by William Samuel Lilly, 304, available at http://www.newmanreader.org/works/characteristics/part4-1.html). 52 JHN, Essays Critical and Historical, 2: 341; available at: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/ essays/volume2/private.html. for apostolic witness-which came before and served as the foundation for the church's authority-was rejected by the judaizers as much as it was by the Evangelicals and liberals. The connection of church leadership with the State48 in Newman's description of fourth century Antioch highlighted the struggles within the Church of England-whose very authority and identity were at stake.49 As he stated in a letter to E. B. Pusey, Newman saw "no reason to call Constantine's establishment of the Church a happy event . . . he was the patron of Arianism, and Constantius after him–thus the gospel was set up in heresy, and a secular spirit went with it,– as the history shows."50 Newman's aversion to governmental influence in the church became even more evident in his writings after the failures of the Tractarian movement.51 Accusations of the intermingling of Christian sects and the State, as it was influenced by Judaism during the development of the Arian heresy (whether historically accurate or not) illustrate Newman's correlation between Arianism and the "Erastianism" of his own day-doctrinal impurity and political intrusion went hand in hand. Part of Newman's problem with the liberal and Evangelical mode of operation in the nineteenth century was the reconstituted "self–affirming speculation" found in the judaizing influences of early heresy, reborn in a disastrous interpretation of the concept of private judgment. Newman described the phenomenon as boiling down to those having glossed and corrupted the true sense of it by a miserably faulty reading, and hold, not the right of private judgment, but the private right of judgment; in other words, their own private right, and no one's else. To us it seems as clear as day, that they consider that they themselves, indeed, individually can and do act on reason, and on nothing but reason; that they have the gift of advancing, without bias or unsteadiness, throughout their search, from premiss to conclusion, from text to doctrine; that they have sought aright, and no one else, who does not agree with them. . . .52 It is precisely this self-affirmation, rejection of the true value of revealed religion, and lack of respect for the doctrine and Tradition that had come before that made the influences of antiquity, what Newman called "Judaism," and the modern influences of 65 liberalism and Evangelicalism, so similar. The problem was not so much that Judaism had neglected tradition, as much as it was that the kind of tradition passed down by Pharisaic Judaism, which influenced the church in Syria, was invalid. The common link apparent in both the early heretical sects, influenced by Judaism, and their resurgence in modern Protestant dissent, was disrespect for orthodoxy and the tradition that safeguarded revealed truth. Thus, contemporary dissenters were viewed both as members of an heretical sect, like the adherents of early Arianism, and as the promoters of a negative influence on English Christian society-an influence that was a kind of Judaism. Rampant theological individualism was yet another proof that the fourth century heretics had popped up again in the guise of the popular religion of the nineteenth century. Newman, commenting on the three main forms of private judgment, stated that nothing has been found in Scripture to justify the cases of private judgment which are exemplified in the popular religious biographies of the day. These generally contain instances of conversions made on the judgment, definite, deliberate, independent, isolated, of the parties converted.53 This isolation and independence from authority was the root and foundation of schism, whether that of the Arians, the Latitudinarians, or the Evangelicals. Of all the parallels made, perhaps the most telling is the Pharisaic attitude- which Newman treated as influential on both the judaized Antiochene leadership of the third century and the evangelical predilection in nineteenth century England. In this sense, "Jew" and "judaizer" act as types for the same Pharisaic behavior- prohibited by Christ in the Gospels, and evident in the ways of Paulus, Lucian, and the modern dissenters-behavior marked by human instead of divine discernment. In his Lectures on Justification, originally published in 1838, Newman claimed that what the Jews felt concerning their Law, is exactly what many upholders of the tenet of "faith only," feel concerning what they consider faith; that they substitute faith for Christ; that they so regard it, that instead of being the way to Him, it is in the way; that they make it a something to rest in [sic]; nay that they alter the meaning of the word, as the Jews altered the meaning of the word Law; in short, that, under the pretence of light and liberty, they have brought unto the Gospel the narrow, minute, technical, nay, I will say carnal and hollow system of the Pharisees.54 It is this "pure seed" and the search for a stationary deposit of religion as the primary object in place of Christ, that Newman rejected, and it is this aspect of religious expression that is "carnal and self-indulgent." For the Evangelicals of Newman's day, sola fide was the overarching principle for salvation, but the deposit of true religion was adherence to a penal and substitutionary model of atonement,55 made known solely through the reading of Scripture and its preaching. For Newman, this doctrinal simplification was a threat to 53 Ibid., 349. 54 JHN, "On Preaching the Gospel," in Lectures on the Doctrine of Justification, lecture 13.5.2 at 324, available at http://www.newmanreader.org/works/justification/lecture13.html. 55 Turner, JHN: Challenge, 29. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN'S ANGLICAN VIEWS ON JUDAISM NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL66 56 Newman made reference to Mosheim in tracing the origin of the sect known as the "Nazarenes." Epiphanius described this group as Jews who have "no different ideas, but confess everything exactly as the Law proclaims it and in the Jewish fashion-except for their belief in Christ . . ." (Panarion, 29). Though historical evidence suggests that the term "Nazarene" was used for both Jewish and Gentile converts to Christianity, the importance of this topic for Newman was in pointing out the development and influence of such Messianic adherents to the law and to frame a direct connection between them and the "judaizers" of fourth century Antioch. 57 Arians, 21, note 48. 58 Arius: Heresy and Tradition, 4. 59 Though Newman's sense of obedience to the traditions of the church was sound, his obedience to the Anglican hierarchy was not always evident. Following on the heels of complex argumentation over various theological principles, Newman often was caught against his own convictions and those of his appointed authorities. See Turner, JHN: Challenge, 372–373. 60 Turner, JHN: Challenge, 142. 61 "Enthralling Power," 653. the apostolic essence of the church that includes a wide range of doctrines and practices-not the least of which is adherence to sacramental ordinances-at the heart of the true Christian life. The parallel between the judaized Arius and the Evangelicals' zealousness for law and ritual, combined with fervent or fanatical adherence to the principle of "faith alone," was a connection made by Newman on various occasions. In a footnote on the association between the Nazarenes56 and the latent Jewish principles inherent in the formation of heresy, Newman stated that "these Judaizers, from an over-attachment to the forms, proceeded in course of time, to imbibe the spirit of the degenerate system; and ended in doctrinal views not far short of modern Socinianism."57 For Newman, the low Christology and the rejection of Jesus as divine in Unitarian sects in England were traceable to the judaizers of antiquity. As Rowan Williams has stated, for Newman, "'Jewish ritualism' is unable to see outward observance as the type of deeper truth, and so encourages the fallen mind's unwillingness to see more than what presents itself to the senses: thus it nurtures a low view of Christ, and a disputatious, rationalist temper, typical of the mind untutored by the heart."58 Whether it was adherence to Jewish ritual practices in antiquity that resulted in the denial of Christ and the rejection of the church as the primary deposit of the faith, or the emphasis on sola fide and the uniform systemization of, and overemphasis on, atonement, the result was consistently the same: disunity and heresy. Obedience to legitimate authority and surrender of private judgment were of utmost importance to Newman, for whom the "judaizing" tendencies of the fourth and nineteenth centuries were simply different manifestations of illegitimate dissent.59 These tendencies, in addition to corruptions resulting from too close a relationship with the State and secular society, made Newman view both natural theologians and Evangelicals as people who "espoused the values and embraced the vehicles of commercial society in pursuit of religious agendas [sic] that self–consciously manifested themselves in the public sphere, as opposed to the private sphere of conscience."60 The same "judaizing tendencies" of the early Antiochene church made modern religion popular in the Church of England and thus the Arians acted as a precursor to the Oxford Movement that sought to thwart these effects of "popular religion."61 Those who rejected the Tractarian movement-the liberals and Evangelicals-were precisely those who put the Church of England at risk of succumbing to the domination of secular society. 67 "JUDAISM OF THE PRESENT DAY" In Newman's sermon, "Judaism of the Present Day" (21 February 1841), the connection between the weaknesses of the Judaism of the past and the crisis of the spiritual state of the Church of England are evident. His words clearly refer to those dissenting sects which had rejected the efficacy of sacraments and held the doctrine of sola fide: "now, after these remarks on the state of the Jews, let me ask you to turn to the present state of this country, and to say whether numbers are not, by their own confession, in that same Jewish state. . . .62 Newman stated with utmost clarity that those good men who, from involuntary ignorance are in dissent, or in other grievous ecclesiastical error, do they not, I say, stand exactly in the state of the Jews? Certainly; for the Jews had faith, yet had not yet received the promise of the Spirit, which is Christian justification. Well then, I repeat, if this be so, we should expect that their opinions and lives would actually show that they were in a Jewish state. This is what I am now insisting on. I have said what the state of the Jews was, moral and spiritual, and now I am going to show that just in that state, and in no other, according to their own confession, are Christians now, who neglect the justifying ordinances of the Church.63 Williams has suggested that the connections between judaizers and the church at Antioch, and the church at Antioch and the Arian heresy, are historically questionable.64 However, this is beside the point that Newman was trying to convey.65 Newman was less concerned with the historiography of the development of the Arian controversy than he was with its historical type in modern church controversies.66 Later in this sermon, Newman critiqued those evangelicals who, by emphasizing personal experience and emotional response to a watered–down Gospel, sought to retain a "core deposit" of faith. By their ignorance of the precepts of Christ and the church-whether by devotion to Scripture alone or to faith alone-they exchanged the truth of the Gospel for a lie. Newman critiqued the Evangelicals' rejection of the value of inward justification, their denial of sacramental efficacy, and their overemphasis on faith as the sole mediator of justification. Newman, referencing Romans, chapter 7, stated that the dissenters say that if a man does not find his own experience bear witness to the truth of the Apostle's statement in that chapter, he cannot possess that state of mind which they consider essential to all believers. . . . They make the test of a true Christian to be, not spiritual perfection, but confession of sin. . . . They are in bondage; they are carnal, sold under sin; they confess it; they are like the Jews, and they call this a spiritual mind, and say that none are true Christians but those 62 JHN, "Judaism of the Present Day," PPS, 6:174–189, at 182; hereafter cited: "Judaism," PPS. 63 Ibid., 183, emphasis mine. 64 Arius: Heresy and Tradition, 4–5. 65 Robert Pattison (The Great Dissent: John Henry Newman and the Liberal Heresy [New York: Oxford University, 1991], 103) has stated that "Newman's account of the Arian controversy in the Arians of the Fourth Century is not so much history as polemic." 66 According to Rowan Williams ("Newman's Arians," 266), Newman was trying to define and execute a theological Church history in his endeavors surrounding the formulation of Arians; this is correct only insofar as this theological church history is connected to Newman's apologetic framework. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN'S ANGLICAN VIEWS ON JUDAISM NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL68 67 "Judaism," PPS, 6:186. 68 Frank Turner (JHN: Challenge, 183) has mentioned the work of John Bowden in Tracts 29 and 30. Bowden, a friend of Newman, presented a dialogue between an Anglican clergyman and John Evans, a member of the Church of England who states that he "responds better to the Dissenting worship service." Evans asked what sin would be committed if a person left the Church of England and joined an Evangelical sect and received the following response: "That sin . . . is called schism and constitutes a person exercising 'a disregard of Church authority, and a notion that so long as his doctrine is pure, he may join what sect he pleases, or even set up one for himself'." 69 "Judaism," PPS, 6: 185. 70 Ker, JHN: A Biography, 36. 71 Newman's description of Chrysostom is indicative of his polemical rhetoric: "A bright, cheerful, gentle soul; a sensitive heart, a temperament open to emotion and impulse; and all this elevated, refined, transformed by the touch of heaven,-such was St. John Chrysostom; winning followers, riveting affections, by his sweetness, frankness, and neglect of self" ("St. Chrysostom," in Historical Sketches, 2: 234), available at http://www.newmanreader.org/works/historical/volume2/saints/chrysostom/chapter2.html. who are in a similar state.67 As previously mentioned, the appeal to personal experience as bearing witness to the truth was one of the crucial mistakes of the judaized Paul of Samosata. Paul's resignation to the ways of the world and concession to influences outside the authority of his church created the same "carnal" and "sinful" circumstances as those which surfaced among Protestant dissenters in England. For both the dissenter in the nineteenth century and the judaizer of the fourth century, a "single attribute of spirituality," which in itself was harmless, was capable of leading countless members of the church away from Christ and toward heresy. For the Antiochenes, this was participation in the rituals of the Jewish Temple cult; for the modern Englishman it was participation in the worship of dissenting communities.68 Newman traced this error to a telling source: They lay an especial stress upon faith for salvation, and comparatively neglect love; they put faith before love. Now, is not this in so many words to assent to us when we place them with the Jews?69 Newman's disposition toward High Church Anglicanism, his respect for and promotion of church authority, and his aversion to the reactionary language of the Evangelicals influenced his response to dissenters within the Church of England- exemplified by his withdrawal from membership in the Oxford branch of the Evangelical-leaning Church Missionary Society in 1829,70 as well as his typological comparisons in his Arians and his Anglican sermons. NEWMAN AND CHRYSOSTOM: FIGHTING THREATS TO THE CHURCH If Newman made an explicit typological connection between the Judaism of antiquity and the "heresies" of his day-both in his Arians and his sermons-why did Newman use such terms "Jew" and "judaizer?" Why these terms and not others? Why did Newman borrow John Chrysostom's language concerning Judaism, which falls brutally and disturbingly upon modern ears? Apparently for Newman, if the heretical influences of the fourth century were cyclically recurring in the liberalism and Evangelical dissent of his day, as forceful a polemic was required as was adopted in the fourth century. Newman's admiration of the Fathers in general and Chrysostom71 in particular suggests why it was both natural and convenient for him to adopt this Patristic style. Newman's polemical use of these 69 typologies enabled him to draw connections between what he perceived as the early Jewish influence on the easily swayed Antiochenes, and the comparable threats to his own church. A brief glance at Chrysostom's historical circumstances, and the early Father's engagement in rhetorical strategies against Jewish influence on the church -typically in the form of attacks or insults-sheds light on Newman's allegedly "antiJewish" language.72 Chrysostom's homilies criticizing "Jews" and "judaizers" were written as explicit warnings for those who were in the Christian community. In fourth century Antioch, " . . . Christians and Jews were competitors for power and influence in the new society . . .";73 at one point, both religious communities were manipulated and exploited by the Emperor Julian, who pitted the two groups against each other. The specific issue pertinent to the Christian church at the time was the threat, through outside pressure as well as various modes of "infiltration," that Judaism would subsume the unique identity manifest in the early church's authority. A similar issue was at stake for Newman and the Tractarians in England. The language of popularity and State appeasement in Newman's Arians takes on new meaning when enhanced by Chrysostom's geographical and historical context. Though different in their historical setting, the issues were similar in kind. As Wayne Meeks and Robert Wilken have stated: . . . Chrysostom's aim in . . . [his] . . . homilies is not an attack on the Jews as such, but the deterrence of Christians from participating in Jewish rites. Far from representing a popular hostility toward Judaism among Christians in Antioch, Chrysostom's imprecations reveal the exact opposite: a wide-spread Christian infatuation with Judaism.74 The primary polemical thrust of Chrysostom's homilies was to insist that ". . . Christians should restrain their own and their brothers' strange attraction . . . "75 to Jewish festivals and fasts that were utterly seductive. Christian literature in Antioch frequently attacked Judaism, Jewish influence, and judaizing tendencies in the fourth century: "those very attacks were occasioned by the attraction which Judaism continued to exert on Christians, in one way on ordinary church folk, in another way on their theologians, even those who attacked 'Judaizing' most vehemently."76 Newman's description of this Christian infatuation with the seductive Jewish rituals in Antioch sounds strikingly similar to Chrysostom's: Manifesting a rancorous malevolence towards the zealous champions of the Church, they courted the Christian populous by arts adapted to captivate and corrupt the unstable and worldly-minded . . . their noisy spectacles attracted the curiosity of the idle, who weakened their faith, while they disgraced their profession, by attending the worship of the Synagogue. Accordingly there was 72 See Robert L. Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late 4th Century, Transformation of the Classical Heritage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 116; hereafter cited: John Chrysostom). 73 Wayne A. Meeks and Robert L. Wilken, Jews and Christians in Antioch in the First Four Centuries of the Common Era, SBL Sources for Biblical Study 13, ed. Wayne A. Meeks, 13 (Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press for the Society of Biblical Literature, 1978), 27; hereafter cited: Jews and Christians. 74 Jews and Christians, 31. 75 Ibid., 33. 76 Ibid., 2. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN'S ANGLICAN VIEWS ON JUDAISM NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL70 77 Arians, 11. 78 Apparently the meetings at Mow Cop (31 May 1807) and at Norton-in-the-Moors (23 August, 1807), thematically borrowed from Lorenzo Dow and brought back to England by Hugh Bourne, featured emotional preaching, times for conversion and prayer, and "love feasts" which ended the festivities. These gatherings grew in number and popularity in England through the early 1830's (G. Kitson Clark, The Making of Victorian England [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962], 182). Frank Turner (JHN: Challenge, 45) has stated that "the most important Methodist device appropriated by Dissenters was the itinerant ministry. So extensive had such ministries become that in 1811 Lord Sidmouth attempted unsuccessfully to curtail them." 79 Turner, JHN: Challenge, 264. 80 Chrysostom mentioned that in 387 A.D. the attraction to Judaism was so great among the early Christians that it was best he refrain from explicitly stating the number of Christians attending the Synagogue, "lest the public reputation of the church suffer" (Jews and Christians, 33). 81 Though Newman never used the term "Christ-killer," one noteworthy exception occurs in his sermon, "Profession without Ostentation" (6 November 1831), where he blamed Christ's death on the Jews; yet his primary point there is to illustrate the dichotomy between worldly praise and true religious devotion: "Men admire religion, while they can gaze on it as a picture. They think it lovely in books: and as long as they can look upon Christians at a distance, they speak well of them. The Jews in Christ's time built the sepulchers of the prophets whom their fathers killed; then they themselves killed the Just One. They 'reverenced' the Son of God before He came, but when their passions and interests were stirred by His coming, then they said, 'This is the Heir; come, let us kill Him, and the inheritance shall be ours.' [Mark xii. 7]." (PPS, 1:152–164, at 162). 82 Jews and Christians, 31. formed around the Church a mixed multitude, who without relinquishing their dependence on Christianity for the next world, sought in Judaism the promise of temporal blessings, a more accommodating rule of life than the gospel revealed.77 Is it possible that the "noisy spectacles" of the Jewish people at the time of Chrysostom, "magical" displays that captured the mind, imagination, and allegiance of the church population, had a distinct parallel with the emotive, Evangelical camp meetings that became so popular in the early 1800s in England?78 Certainly the "present heretics" that Newman referred to as the "secret offspring" of the ancient judaizers in his Arians would have been numbered among those influenced by the itinerant preacher, Hugh Bourne, considering that Protestant Dissent had "captured and misguided the Church Catholic of England . . . "79 much in the same way as the Jewish influence on Antioch.80 Though the differences between Chrysostom's and Newman's historical situations are obvious-specifically, fourth century Christianity was in its formative years and reflected a situation of deep political and social unrest in the midst of a religiously diverse setting under the oppression of a hostile government-the parallels are brought to the fore by Newman's apologetic. If, as Meeks and Wilken have mentioned, Chrysostom's primary goal in his rhetoric against the Jews was less an attack on Judaism per se and more a deterrent for Christians who complacently engaged in Jewish rites and practices, could the same be true of Newman? It appears that Newman borrowed the typological language-the terms "Judaism" and "judaizer" both in his Arians and in his sermons- less to make a statement about Judaism itself, but more to deter modern dissent within the Church of England. Though Newman frequently utilized a rhetorical style, he rarely went as far in his attacks on "Judaism" as did Chrysostom, who used terminology such as "Christ-killers,"81 described the souls of Jewish people as haunts of demons, and even advocated the use of force against his Jewish enemies.82 In spite of this harsh language, Chrysostom's "hearers knew the synagogues of the Jews were neither dens of immorality, nor gathering places for thieves, nor the dwellings of 71 demons . . . ."83 As Wilken has observed: "...if John [the Chrysostom] was to try to win back some of the backsliders and to restore some semblance of unity to the Church, the most effective means was to vilify the Jews in the hope of intimidating his hearers and frightening them with the consequences of attending the synagogue . . . ."84 Much in the same manner, Newman's vilification of Judaism and judaizers in his Arians and his sermon on "Judaism of the Present Day" sought to draw connections between ancient and modern practices. Newman's purpose was to protect the unity of the Church of England from the dissenting sects that challenged its authority and stability. NEWMAN'S FAVORABLE REMARKS CONCERNING JUDAISM Perhaps the most convincing evidence against the caricature of Newman as an anti-Semitic employer of "hate speech" is his own writing. Curiously missing from Burrus's assessment are citations of Newman's writings where he speaks favorably of Judaism. Aside from the continuity between Judaism and Christianity, Newman saw the importance of defending Judaism as a religion from the liberal thinkers who were enemies of both ancient faiths. Newman indicated the "darkness of Judaism" that is mentioned in the New Testament and warned the adherents of liberal Christianity not to confuse this with an intellectual ignorance connected with a lack of "rational religion."85 The role of mystery in both Judaism and Christianity is important in illustrating how each religious tradition arose as a result of God's revelation, not by purely rational assent. Newman's defense of Judaism continued-this time directed against Christians who follow a Marcionite heresy. Preaching about how the zeal of the Jews serves as a pattern for devout Christians, Newman spoke of modern Marcionites who "are willing to rid themselves of the Old Testament, and they say that Christians are not concerned with it, and that the Jews were almost barbarians, whereas St. Paul tells us, that the Jewish history is 'written for our admonition and out learning.'"86 It appears strange that on the one hand, Newman would describe Judaism as a "carnal, self-indulgent religion," while on the other, defend Judaism against accusations of barbarism. This is especially curious when one considers that Newman's Arians and sermon on Jewish Zeal were written within a year of each other-unless he was using the terminology associated with Judaism in a more typological fashion in the Arians. Mentioning the importance of ceremonial obedience, Newman stated that the Old Testament laws and rituals "must have wrought in the Jews a certain temper of mind, pleasing to God, and therefore necessary for us also to possess . . . else the Old Testament would be but a shadow of a revelation or law to the Christian."87 For such a "carnal religion," consumed by darkness and possessed of the ability to influence the church in the ways of error, Newman's description seems to give Judaism a godly disposition and a divinely appointed destiny-one constitutive of true religion itself, 83 John Chrysostom, 124. 84 Ibid. 85 JHN, "The Christian Mysteries," PPS, 1: 203–215, at 205. 86 JHN, "Jewish Zeal: A Pattern to Christians," PPS, 3: 173–189, at 177, emphasis mine. 87 Ibid., 181. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN'S ANGLICAN VIEWS ON JUDAISM NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL72 88 Ibid., 179. 89 JHN, "The Christian Church," SSD, 180–198, at 193. 90 JHN to Lady Heywood (The Oratory, 8 March 1876), LD, 28:37–39. which includes "a self-mastering fearless obedience [that] was part of this same religious temper enjoined on the Jews. . . ."88 In his sermon, "The Christian Church a Continuation of the Jewish" (1842), Newman reminded his listeners that . . . Christ and His Apostles were all Jews; the first converts were Jews; the centres of conversion throughout the Roman empire were composed of Jews. In one place, we are even told, that 'a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.'89 At one point during his Roman Catholic years, speaking on the subject of a marriage between a Jew and a Christian, Newman said that ". . . Judaism came from God directly, and Anglicanism does not. . . ."90 Consistent with his apologetic tendencies, Newman insisted that conversion and subsequent reception of baptism and the Eucharist, must not be withheld from a Jewish woman who is married to a Christian-indeed it should be encouraged. Nevertheless, Newman's statement about the authority of Judaism by virtue of its direct, divine establishment is significant and hardly the language of a Jew-hater. In sum, this essay has examined current scholarship that considers Newman's views on Judaism during his Anglican years and has raised new questions concerning his use of terminology associated with Judaism. In particular, Newman's negative use of the terms "Judaism" and "judaizer" was typological-connected to threats that Newman perceived as directed against the Church of England. There is a line of apologetic logic in Newman's Arians of the Fourth Century, between the Jewishinfluenced heretics in the church of Antioch in the fourth century, and the Evangelical and liberal dissenters of nineteenth century England. Newman's respect for and utilization of the Church Fathers sheds light on his typological rhetoric, but his Anglican writings as a whole illustrate a theology of continuity between Judaism and Christianity. Last but not least, Newman had a rather congenial view of Judaism, as evidenced by his respectful language and positive portrayal of Judaism as a religious system sanctioned by and in many ways pleasing to God. Not only did Newman depict Judaism as useful for modern Christians, but also theologically indispensable-a view that logically coincided with his thoughts on history, tradition, and ritual. Newman's views of Judaism were as extensive as his theological and apologetic reflections concerning other topics; both his positive and negative portrayal of the Jewish religion and its adherents was highly influential in his consideration of the church of his own day. 73 One cannot read John Henry Newman's Parochial and Plain Sermons for longwithout realizing that the mystery of the Holy Trinity pervades the whole of his theology. For Newman, the mystery of the Trinity is not simply a theological doctrine but the heart of the Christian faith. The Christian faith is not built upon a generic belief in God, but in the God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The core of Christian faith is not Christ alone, but the Christ, who is the Only-begotten Son and Eternal Word of the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit. For Newman, there is no Christ the Son without the Father and his Spirit. Newman described Christ as being in an undivided and inseparable relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit. The interrelationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is the perspective within which Newman viewed the mystery of both God's immanent life and God's self-revelation as Trinity in the history of salvation. For Newman, the years 1829 to 1834 were a time when his theology turned in a new direction. In 1829, "came the formal break" with Dr. Whately;1 while 1833 was the year that marked the birth of the Oxford Movement.2 Since the purpose of the Oxford Movement was to "withstand the Liberalism of the day,"3 Newman's first principle in that battle was dogma-the defense of "fundamental doctrines"- particularly the doctrine of the Trinity.4 These five years were a time when Newman effectively turned the pulpit of St. Mary's Church in Oxford into a podium where he taught the orthodox teachings of the ancient Catholic Church. At the heart of orthodox teaching is the mystery of the Trinity; as Eugene D. Genovese has commented: The victory of Trinitarianism constituted the victory of the faithful's orthodoxy Vinh Bao Luu-Quang, a visiting scholar at the National Institute for Newman Studies during the summer of 2009, is a doctoral candidate in systematic theology at The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC. 1 John Henry Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua (London: Longman, Green, 1864), 72. 2 Walter Walsh, The History of the Romeward Movement in the Church of England 1833–1864 (London: James Nisbet, 1900), 18. 3 Newman, Apologia, 195. 4 Ibid., 120. NEWMAN'S THEOLOGY OF THE IMMANENT TRINITY IN HIS PAROCHIAL AND PLAIN SERMONS: 1829–1834 This study of two of Newman's Anglican sermons-"The Christian Mysteries" (1829) and "The Mystery of the Holy Trinity" (1831)-shows that he considered the doctrine of the Trinity to be the foundation of Christian faith. Simultaneously, this study highlights the biblical and patristic underpinnings of Newman's Trinitarian theology, while showing that he was defending Trinitarian orthodoxy from both "classical heresies" and contemporary Liberalism and Rationalism. NEWMAN'S THEOLOGY OF THE IMMANENT TRINITY IN HIS PAROCHIAL AND PLAIN SERMONS: 1829–1834 VINH BAO LUU-QUANG NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL74 5 Eugene D. Genovese, The Mind of the Master Class (London: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 786. 6 John Henry Newman (hereafter JHN), "The Christian Mysteries," Parochial and Plain Sermons 1:203–214, at 203: hereafter cited: PPS; available at: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/parochial/ volume1/sermon16.html. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid., 204. 9 Ibid., 205. 10 Augustine, De Trinitate, VIII, 5, 8, Philip Schaff, ed., A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. III (Buffalo: The Christian Literature, 1887), 119. 11 Anselm, Proslogium; Monologium: An Appendix, In Behalf of the Fool, by Gaunilon; and Cur Deus Homo, Sidney Norton Deane, trans. (Chicago: The Opencourt Publishing, 1903), 3. 12 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 32, a. I, ad 2. Michael Dauphinais, Barry David, and Matthew Levering, Aquinas the Augustinian (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America, 2007), 18. over the speculations of the theologians. At the Council of Nicea (325 A.D.) the Church decreed as dogma that which had become embodied in Church tradition in the wake of vigorous debated among the common people, not merely the elite.5 Newman's Anglican sermons reminded people of the importance of the Trinity for their lives as Christians. 1829 TO 1831: THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY AND KNOWLEDGE THROUGH GRACE For Newman, the mystery of the Trinity is not merely a matter for theological disputations. It is the mystery of faith that Christian believers can only perceive through the grace of the Holy Spirit. Newman began his sermon, "The Christian Mysteries," preached on Trinity Sunday in 1829, by highlighting the connection of the feast of the Trinity and the feast of Pentecost: There is much instruction conveyed in the circumstance, that the Feast of the Holy Trinity immediately succeeds that of Whit Sunday [Pentecost]. On the latter Festival we commemorate the coming of the Spirit of God, who is promised to us as the source of all spiritual knowledge and discernment.6 Newman made this connection for two reasons: first, a person cannot understand the mystery of the Trinity without the grace of the Holy Spirit. God has promised us grace "not that we may know more but that we may do better"; the gift of the Holy Spirit is to "influence, guide and strengthen us" in living our duty towards God and human beings; this gift is given to everyone not "mere reasoners, disputers or philosophical inquirers."7 Second, the mystery of the Trinity is "not a light accorded to the reason"; therefore, the celebration of Trinity Sunday should warn us that the enlightenment given us is not an understanding of "all mysteries and all knowledge," but that love or charity which is "the fulfilling of the Law."8 Newman's sermon was also an apparent rejection of rationalism. He strongly opposed "rational religion"-which claimed that "no doctrine which was mysterious, i.e. too deep for human reason, or inconsistent with their self-devised notions, could be contained in Scripture."9 Newman did not deny the significant role of reason in religion, but he wanted to prioritize faith in accord with Augustine's dictum: "We must believe before we can understand,"10 as well as seconding Anselm: "The believer does not seek to understand, that he may believe, but he believes that he may understand."11 In parallel with Aquinas, who firmly rejected rationalism and proposed "fitting arguments" that show the coherence and intelligibility of faith,12 Newman 75 stated in his sermon, "Faith without Sight" (1834): The true religion is in part altogether above reason, as in its Mysteries; and so again, it might have been introduced into the world without that array of Evidences, as they are called, which our reason is able, and delights to draw out; yet it would not on that account have been less true. As far as it is above reason, as far as it has extended into any countries without sufficient proof of its divinity, so far it cannot be called rational. Indeed, that it is at all level to the reason, is rather a privilege granted by Almighty God, than a point which may be insisted on by man; and unless received as an unmerited boon, may become hurtful to us.13 For Newman, faith could not be reduced to a rational conclusion. This was a key point in his alienation from Richard Whately, who had a great influence on Newman, when he was a new fellow of Oriel College. Gradually, however, Newman came to reject Whately's rationalism, insofar as it subjected the truths of faith to the proofs of reason. Instead of treating the truths of faith with great reverence, a rationalist asks questions which "are out of place, refusing to believe certain things unless they can be accounted for; like Nicodemus, the typical rationalist asks, "How can these things be?"14 In contrast, Newman's sermon presented Nicodemus-not as a "typical rationalist" but as a "true follower of Christ"; although Nicodemus felt temptation, he "overcame it."15 For Newman, the Trinity is the mystery of faith-which can only be perceived by grace. His sermon, "The Christian Mysteries," pointed out that is by grace, the gift of Holy Spirit, that we are able to understand the mystery of the Trinity; and it is by Christ that we are really taken into the very center of this mystery. The mystery of Christ leads us to the mystery of the Trinity; and the grace of the Holy Spirit opens our hearts, minds and souls to receive God himself. Thus, without the Grace of the Holy Spirit, "the source of all spiritual knowledge and discernment,"16 and without Christ, the Divine Word, the Son of God-who is the full Manifestation of the inner Trinitarian life and the external love and mercy of the Triune God-it is impossible for human beings to perceive the mystery of the Triune God. Although Newman insisted that the mystery of the Trinity is not "a light accorded to the reason," he observed that "this doctrine of the Trinity is not proposed in Scripture as a mystery."17 This observation highlights two significant points. First, the doctrine of the Trinity is revealed in Scripture by Christ himself-this was Newman's answer to those Dissenters, who considered the Trinity as an "inexplicable mystery" and "chief stumbling block":18 if there be an eternal mystery in the Godhead, such as we aver, then, from the nature of the case, there could not but be a difficulty in the words in which He [Christ] revealed it. Christ, in that case, makes no mystery for the occasion; He 13 JHN, "Faith without Sight," PPS, 2:13–25, at 24. 14 John Hunt, Religious Thought in England in the Nineteenth Century (London: Gibbings & Co, 1896), 123. 15 PPS, 1:205. 16 Ibid., 203. 17 PPS, 1:210. 18 J. C. D. Clark, The Language of Liberty, 1660–1832: Political Discourse and Social Dynamics in the Anglo-American World (London: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 322–323. NEWMAN'S THEOLOGY OF THE IMMANENT TRINITY IN HIS PAROCHIAL AND PLAIN SERMONS: 1829–1834 NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL76 uses the plainest and most exact form of speech which human language admits of.19 Newman went further and claimed that even in the Creed, the words are only common words used in their common sense, as "Lord" and God," "eternal" and "almighty," "one" and "three;" nor again are the statements difficult. There is no difficulty, except such as is in the nature of things, in the Adorable Mystery spoken of, which no wording can remove or explain.20 Newman sought a new way of perceiving the mystery of the Trinity by drawing out a "remarkable principle," that is "religious light is intellectual darkness."21 In other words, Trinitarian knowledge is knowledge through grace. Only through grace can we receive "religious light."22 Only through grace are we brought into "the Sun of Truth."23 This knowledge through grace is none other than the knowledge of faith, "which receives with reverence and love whatever God gives, when convinced it is His gift."24 Insofar as we may perceive the doctrine of the Trinity by the knowledge of faith, the Holy Trinity "is not proposed in Scripture as a mystery." THE IMMANENT LIFE OF THE HOLY TRINITY The starting point of Newman's Trinitarian theology is biblical: "In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 28: 19). With these the words, Jesus revealed the Trinity to his disciples. These words provided the basis for Newman's theological framework for understanding each divine person in their relationship to the others. Within this framework, Newman interpreted both the oneness of God in three persons and the work of the Trinity in the economy of salvation. In other words, the relationship of the divine persons within the Trinity- the "Immanent Trinity"-must be correlated with the "Economic Trinity"-the Triune God working in the history of salvation. In his sermon "The Mystery of the Holy Trinity," preached on Trinity Sunday, 1831, Newman posed the question, "What can be meant by saying, in the Name, not of God, but of Three?"25 For Newman, the Trinitarian names-Father, Son and Holy Spirit- which are revealed in Scripture are "correlatives" that have "a meaning relatively to each other."26 The first is designated as fatherhood, the second as sonship, and the third as procession. Christians do not profess "God and the Son," or "God and Christ," or "in the Name of God, Jesus Christ, and the Comforter,"27 What was significant for Newman is that the name of each divine person indicates a relationship: "One implies the other, they look from the one to the other."28 Newman, like Athanasius and the Cappadocians, realized that God is a relational being.29 "Father" indicates a relationship-it signifies the existence of the Son and 19 JHN, "The Mystery of the Holy Trinity," PPS, 6:346. 20 Ibid., 347. 21 PPS, 1:211. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 PPS, 6:345. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 John D. Zizioulas, Communion & Otherness, ed. Paul McPartlan (New York: T & T Clark, 2006), 35. 77 "Son" points to the Father, while "Holy Spirit" calls attention to both Father and Son. Moreover, the names-"Father," "Son," "Holy Spirit"-are human language taken from human relationships. Unlike fragile human relationships, which can be broken at any time, Newman emphasized that these names could not be understood as "any temporal dispensation."30 "Father, Son and Holy Spirit" is an inseparable, indivisible and unbreakable relationship: The God of all, who is revealed in the Old Testament, is the Father of a Son from everlasting, called also His Word and Image, of His substance and partaker of all His perfections, and equal to Himself, yet without being separate from Him, but one with Him; and that from the Father and the Son proceeds eternally the Holy Spirit, who also is of one substance, Divinity, and majesty with Father and Son. Moreover we learn that the Son or Word is a Person,-that is, is to be spoken of as "He," not "it," and can be addressed; and that the Holy Ghost also is a Person. Thus God subsists in Three Persons, from everlasting to everlasting; first, God is the Father, next God is the Son, next God is the Holy Ghost; and the Father is not the Son, nor the Son the Holy Ghost, nor the Holy Ghost the Father. And God is Each of these Three, and nothing else; that is, He is either the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Ghost. Moreover, God is as wholly and entirely God in the Person of the Father, as though there were no Son and Spirit; as entirely in that of the Son, as though there were no Spirit and Father; as entirely in that of the Spirit, as though there were no Father and Son. And the Father is God, the Son God, and the Holy Ghost God, while there is but one God; and that without any inequality, because there is but One God, and He is without parts or degrees; though how it is that that same Adorable Essence, indivisible, and numerically One, should subsist perfectly and wholly in Each of Three Persons, no words of man can explain, nor earthly illustration typify.31 Newman was then describing each divine person as wholly God, yet not three gods, but only one God, who is "the Father of a Son from everlasting, and that from the Father and the Son proceeds eternally the Holy Spirit." Newman used very simple language to depict the relations of the divine persons to each other in the immanent life of the Trinity-a relationship which unbreakably and inseparably ties each divine person to the other but simultaneously distinguishes each person from the other: the Father is a "Person," the Son is a "Person," and the Holy Spirit is a "Person." Within the Trinity, there is both relationship and "otherness." In this sermon, however, Newman did not explain what he meant by the term "person." Since Newman had been studying the Fathers of the Church since 1828, perhaps "person" should be taken in the sense of the hypostasis of the Cappadocians, who began their Trinitarian theology not with ousia ("substance") but with hypostases. In the Cappadocian view, the three hypostases are united in the Holy Trinity, which consists of three equally and entirely divine hypostases.32 Newman, however, did not define the term "person," though he did relate "substance" to "person," especially to the Person of the Father. For the Cappadocians, "substance" never exists 30 PPS, 6:345. 31 Ibid., 357–358; italics added. 32 Sergius Bulgakov, The Comforter (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 31; hereafter cited Bulgakov, Comforter. NEWMAN'S THEOLOGY OF THE IMMANENT TRINITY IN HIS PAROCHIAL AND PLAIN SERMONS: 1829–1834 NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL78 33 John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2002), 41. 34 See PPS, 6:348. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid., 349; italics added. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, 1, 42, in Phillip Schaff, ed., A Select Library of Nicene and PostNicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2nd series, vol. 5 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1954): 99. 42 Augustine, "Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament," Sermon II (52) in Philip Schaff, ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1st Series, vol. VI, St. Augustine: Sermon on the Mount, Harmony of the Gospels, Homilies on the Gospels (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2007), 263. in an independent state-i.e., without hypostasis, without "a mode of existence."33 Newman, however, did not explain this connection, but asserted that the Son is of the substance of the Father. Newman highlighted the person of the Father; he did not separate ousia from the hypostasis of the Father. Newman gave the Father priority as the ground of the Trinity; he spoke of the one substance of God the Father with reference to the Son and the Holy Spirit. Newman insisted that the Son shares the one substance of the Father and is "partaker of all His perfections, and equal to Himself, . . . one with Him;" and "the Holy Spirit, who also is of one substance, Divinity, and majesty with the Father." Here and elsewhere in his sermons, Newman identified the "one God" with the Father. Citing many biblical passages,34 Newman indicated that God the Father is the Cause of the Oneness of God: the statement "God is one" should be understood "in the simplest and strictest sense, as all Scripture shows; this is true, whatever else is true: not in any nominal or secondary sense."35 God is one "not in name, or by figure, or by accommodation, or by abstraction, but one in Himself, or, as the Creed speaks, one in substance or essence."36 What does "one in Himself" mean? Newman answered: "All that He is, is Himself, and nothing short of Himself; His attributes are He."37 Has God wisdom? He is wisdom. Has He love? He is love. Has he omnipresence? He is omnipresent. All his divine attributes are "all one and the self-same He." Human beings are incapable of "conceiving of Him as He is."38 What we have of God are not more than glimpses and partial views. When we call God by "different names, as if He had attributes;" we use "human, sensible, and material terms" to speak of God "as if He could be angry, who is not touched by evil; or could repent, in whom is no variableness; or had eyes, or arms, or breath, who is a Spirit; whereas He is at once and absolutely all perfection."39 Newman insisted: "Whatever is He, is all He is, and He is Himself always and altogether."40 God is always "One" and "Being." He is He, for His Name is I AM. The oneness of God, thus, cannot be understood in number or figure or any human expression or imagination. Newman's Trinitarian view is very close to Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine and Aquinas. For example, Gregory stated that God is "incapable of being grasped by any term, or any idea, or any other device of our apprehension."41 Similarly, Augustine said: "If thou hast been able to comprehend what thou wouldest say, it is not God; if thou hast been able to comprehend it, thou hast comprehended something else instead of God."42 Likewise, Aquinas asserted: "The realities of the faith are proposed to the understanding of believers not in themselves but through certain words which do 79 not suffice to express them and through certain similitudes which do not suffice to present them; that is why it is said that one knows them through a mirror in an enigma."43 In comparable terms, Newman recognized the limitations of human language in speaking about the Trinity: This we cannot avoid; nor need we be perplexed about them, nor shrink from declaring any one of them. That simple accuracy of statement which would harmonize all of them is beyond us, because the power of contemplating the Eternal, as He is, is beyond us. We must be content with what we can see, and use it for our practical guidance, without caring for the apparent contradiction of terms involved in our profession of it.44 Newman acknowledged that there is an insurmoutnable difficulty in stating that "while God is in His essence most simply and absolutely one, yet there is a real sense in which He is not one."45 What we have in contemplating "Almighty God" are only earthly things, which "are partial reflexions of Him." Thus, there is a danger that "when they fail us, we are lost."46 Accordingly, Newman concluded: "We must be content to take it on faith, without comprehending how it is, or having any clear understanding of our own words."47 Although human expressions and language are very limited in themselves, the Scriptures used them to assert the Truth that "there is only one God," and "God is one." The word "one God" in Scriptures, for Newman, is attached to the Father; i.e., the oneness of the Trinity is placed in the person of the Father.48 In this sermon, Newman used the Scriptures to highlight the unbreakable and inseparable communion of the Father and the Son. Using Johannine and Pauline phrases such as "has all the attributes of the Father,"49 Newman clearly pointed out the immanent life of God, which is revealed in Scripture. Newman insisted that the Son is a "distinct Person, in a real sense," who "has taken on Him our nature, and become man, though the Father has not."50 Newman also pointed to the "otherness" in God. On the one hand, Newman insisted that the person of the Son is distinct from that of the Father. On the other hand, Newman firmly linked the Son with the Father in an unbreakable relationship. Newman understood "Person," "in a real sense," namely as distinct but simultaneously relational. A person cannot stand alone; a person calls for relationship. A person is only a person when another person exists: "I" only finds its identity as long as "You" exists. The Son is only recognized as Son in relationship with the Father and vice versa. "Otherness" in God absolutely exists. Thus, the Father cannot be understood without the Son and the Holy Spirit; the same is true of the Son and the Holy Spirit in their relationships with the Father and with each other. 43 III Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, dist. 24, q. I, a. 2, qla 3, sol, in Aquinas the Augustinian, 20 44 PPS, 6:351. 45 Ibid., 356. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48 In this sermon (1831), Newman did not used the terms "arche" or "monarchia" for the Father, he did point out that the Father is He out of whom and toward whom the Son and the Holy Spirit are reckoned, and by the communication of His substance, The Father makes the unity of the Trinity. The Father is the one, who causes the other two divine persons to be "distinct Person." 49 Ibid., 358–359 gives this phrase and others: Other phrases "In the bosom of the Father," "are One," "with God," "the express 'Image' of God," "in the form of God," "equal with God," "hath seen Him, hath seen the Father," "in the Father and the Father in him," "knoweth the Father," "the Father knoweth the Son." 50 Ibid., 359. NEWMAN'S THEOLOGY OF THE IMMANENT TRINITY IN HIS PAROCHIAL AND PLAIN SERMONS: 1829–1834 NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL80 51 PPS, 6:358. 52 Ibid., 359. 53 Bulgakov, Comforter, 38. 54 PPS, 6:359. 55 Ibid. 56 PPS, 6:357; Newman did not say the Holy Spirit proceeded from the "substance" of the Father, but simply "from the Father"; presumably Newman, as an Anglican, did not have any problem with filioque. 57 Richard Whately, The Errors of Romanism Traced to Their Origin in Human Nature (London: B. Fellowes, 1830), 85. 58 Elizabeth Jane Whately, Life and Correspondence of Richard Whately, D.D., Late Archbishop or Dublin (London: Longmans, Green, 1866), 206. 59 Richard Whately, Sermons on Various Subjects, 2nd edition (London: John W. Parker, 1849), 200. Each of the divine persons, however, is so unique in their respective personal properties as if "God is as wholly and entirely God in the Person of the Father, as though there were no Son and Spirit; as entirely in that of the Son, as though there were no Spirit and Father; as entirely in that of the Spirit, as though there were no Father and Son."51 "Otherness" in the Trinity, therefore, is absolute. The Father, the Son and the Spirit are distinguished hypostatically. One is not subject to confusion with the other two. However, each divine person is different not by substance but by way of being who that person is. Accordingly, Newman emphasized both the personhood of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and their unbreakable and inseparable relationships revealed in the Scriptures. In his sermon on "The Mystery of the Holy Trinity" (1831), Newman emphasized the special role of the Holy Spirit. Newman wanted his audience not only to believe that the Son is God, but to believe the same about the Holy Spirit, for "He is God."52 Newman was in agreement with Basil who, in his tract On the Holy Spirit, maintained the divinity of the Holy Spirit against the Pneumatomachi, who considered the Holy Spirit only a creature.53 Newman's sermon, listed a series of biblical passages to show that the Holy Spirit is consubstantial with the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is not only God in the same sense as the Father and the Son, but also "has Personality of His own."54 The Holy Spirit has proper titles and functions, which are distinct from those of the Father and the Son: "the Comforter, Ruler, and Guide of the Church," "the Spirit of Truth," "the Giver of all gifts" etc. Moreover, "He is the Spirit of God;" "He is in God."55 While insisting that the Holy Spirit "proceedeth from the Father," Newman did not mention "and the Son." The omission of filioque is seemingly intentional, for in speaking about the Father, Newman said: "From the Father and the Son proceeds eternally the Holy Spirit."56 Newman, in treating the immanent life of the Trinity, emphasized the term "Person" and "otherness" in God which may have been his response to Whately, whose book, entitled The Errors of Romanism Traced to Their Origin in Human Nature (1830), spoke of "God's threefold manifestation of Himself."57 In addition, Whately in "Fragment of a Letter to a Friend on Certain Religious Difficulties" (1833) distinguished two distinct doctrines, each called the doctrine of the Trinity, but "often confused together": The one speculative, concerning the distinctions in the Divine essence; the other practical, concerning the manifestations of God to man. They are as different as a certain opinion respecting the sun, from an opinion respecting the sunshine.58 Then in his sermon "God's Abode with His People," Whately preached that Scripture helped to guard against the notion of three Gods, "but what the relations to each 81 other of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, it leaves unexplained; dwelling strongly on their relations to us, as constituting a threefold manifestation to mankind of the one God."59 Later in a letter to a friend (April 23,1835), Whately confessed: "Without saying in direct terms that I am a Sabellian, it is yet so implied."60 Newman considered Whately a Sabellian, because of his misunderstanding of the term "Person."61 Whately, in his book Elements of Logic (1826) explained that the term "Person," in the case of the Trinity, meant not an individual but a "character" or "capacity:"62 There is another notion of the word Person, and in common use too, wherein the same man may be said to sustain divers persons, and those persons to be the same man: that is, the same man as sustaining divers capacities. As was said but now of Tully, Tres Personas Unus sustineo; meam, adversarii, judicis. And then it will seem no more harsh to say, The Three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, are one God, than to say, God the Creator, God the Redeemer, and God the Sanctifier, are one God . . . it is much the same thing whether of the forms we use.63 Cognizant of Whately's Sabellianism, Newman asserted "the Son or Word is a Person"; and "the Holy Ghost also is a Person."64 Newman also insisted that the Son or the Spirit be spoken of as "He," not "it"65-lest "Person" be understood as "character" or "capacity." Newman emphasized that the three divine Persons with their own titles, personalities, properties were completely distinct yet in an inseparable relation in communion; thus it is appropriate to speak of "Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity." Although Newman began his treatment of the Trinity by analyzing the personhood and relationship of the divine Persons to each other, he emphasized that biblically we must begin by laying down the great Truth that there is One God in a simple and strict sense, and then go on to speak of Three, which is the way in which the mystery was progressively revealed in Scripture. In the Old Testament we read of the Unity; in the New, we are enlightened in the knowledge of the Trinity.66 This very basic assertion of the Catholic faith is what Athanasius asserted in his Trinitarian theology. And the Creed that Newman used for his analysis in this sermon was the Athanasian Creed.67 Athanasius, however, had left the term "person" an open question, for he was not satisfied with proposon and hypostasis, nor had he distinguished between ousia and hypostasis. In this sermon (1831), Newman did not define the term "person," however, he distinctively characterized each of the three divine Persons by their own titles, personalities, properties-completely distinct yet 60 Elizabeth Jane Whately, Life and Correspondence of Richard Whately, 277. 61 JHN to Henry Willberforce (23 March 1835), The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, 5:50–51, at 51; hereafter cited: LD. 62 Stephen Thomas, Newman and Heresy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 277. 63 Richard Whately, Elements of Logic, 9th edition (London: Longmans, Green, 1913), 214. 64 PPS, 6:357. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid., 349–350. 67 Four decades later, Newman based his discussion of "Belief in the Holy Trinity" in Chapter Five of his Grammar of Assent on the Athanasian Creed; this section of the Grammar (122–153) is available at: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/grammar/chapter5-2.html. NEWMAN'S THEOLOGY OF THE IMMANENT TRINITY IN HIS PAROCHIAL AND PLAIN SERMONS: 1829–1834 NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL82 inseparable in their relation: "otherness" yet in communion; "none is afore or after other [sic], none is greater or less than another; but the whole Three Persons are coeternal together and co-equal."68 The core of Newman's Trinitarian theology can well be summarized in terms of the Athanasian formula: "Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity."69 The Eternal Three are worshipped by the Catholic Church as distinct, yet One;- the Most High God being wholly the Father, and wholly the Son, and wholly the Holy Ghost; yet the Three Persons being distinct from each other, not merely in name, or by human abstraction, but in very truth, as truly as a fountain is distinct from the stream which flows from it, or the root of a tree from its branches.70 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE LIFE AND WORK OF THE TRINITY In 1833, Newman did not give any sermons on the Trinity;71 however, that year saw the publication of his first his book, The Arians of the Fourth Century, in which he discussed the mystery of the Trinity in depth.72 The following year, in a sermon on Trinity Sunday on "The Gospel, a Trust Committed to Us," Newman raised the question: "Why the doctrine of the Trinity itself should be essential; and if it is essential nevertheless, why should not any other?"73 For Newman, other doctrines such as the Incarnation, Resurrection, Ascension, are "in the series of doctrines from that of the Trinity in Unity, which is the foundation of the whole Dispensation."74 The doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation of all the doctrines of Christianity: "This doctrine . . . is necessary to be believed by every one in order to salvation."75 The Trinity is a "Gospel doctrine," which is "delivered down to us from the first ages, together with the original baptismal or Apostles' Creed itself."76 Newman pointed out that Christians believe the doctrine of the Trinity is found in the two main sources of revelation: Scripture and Tradition. Christians believe in the mystery of the Trinity, not only on the basis of Scripture, but also from the witnesses of "the tradition of Saints" and "the original baptismal or Apostles' Creed." The doctrine of the Trinity is not the result of human reason, deduction and arguments, but comes from the very revelation of God in the Scriptures and Tradition of the Church: "It is put into our hands." Accordingly, Newman insisted, "We have but to commit it to our hearts, to preserve it inviolate, and to deliver it over to our posterity."77 Newman began his 1834-sermon on "The Indwelling Spirit" by insisting that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit sanctifies and transforms the believer so that he becomes "partaker of the Divine Nature," having "power" or authority "to become the 68 PPS, 6:360. 69 Ibid., 360. 70 Ibid., 352. 71 See Placid Murray, ed., John Henry Newman Sermons 1824–1843, vol. I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 365–366. 72 Newman's Arians will be discussed later in relation to his sermons. 73 JHN, "The Gospel, a Trust Committed to Us," PPS, 2:255–273, at 272. 74 PPS, 2:271; italics added. 75 Ibid. 76 Ibid., 257: "As all nations confess to the existence of a God, so all branches of the Church confess to the Gospel doctrine; as the tradition of men witnesses to a Moral Governor and Judge, so the tradition of Saints witnesses to the Father Almighty, and His only Son, and the Holy Ghost." 77 Ibid. 83 son of God,"78 to become "a new creation."79 In virtue of the indwelling, the believer's "rank is new; his parentage and service new"; he is "of God," and "is not his own."80 By the coming of the Holy Spirit, "all guilt and pollution are burned away as by fire, the devil is driven forth, sin, original and actual, is forgiven, and the whole man is consecrated to God."81 For Newman, the Holy Spirit is "the earnest" that Christ has died for us; He is our "seal unto the day of redemption."82 Newman's description of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit echoes the teachings of Basil,83 and Athanasius.84 Along with Basil, Newman saw the role of the Holy Spirit as Sanctifier, as fire burning away pollution of sin, as light pervading a building, as a sunbeam falling on bright and transparent bodies. With Athanasius, he called the Holy Spirit the unction and seal of salvation, through whom we become "partakers of divine nature." Newman summarized the activity of the Holy Spirit as follows:85 The Holy Ghost by whom we are new-born, reveals to us the God of mercies, and bids us recognise and adore Him as our Father with a true heart. He impresses on us our Heavenly Father's image, which we lost when Adam fell, and disposes us to seek His presence by the very instinct of our new nature. He gives us back a portion of that freedom in willing and doing, of that uprightness and innocence, in which Adam was created. He unites us to all holy beings, as before we had relationship with evil. He restores for us that broken bond, which, proceeding from above, connects together into one blessed family all that is anywhere holy and eternal, and separates it off from the rebel world which comes to nought. Being then the sons of God, and one with Him, our souls mount up and cry to Him continually . . . 'Abba, Father'."86 Newman used various names to express the work of the Holy Spirit in the economy of salvation: "The life-giving Spirit," "the Soul of universal nature," "the Strength of man and beast," "the Guide of faith," "the Witness against sin," "the inward Light of patriarchs and prophets," "the Grace abiding in the Christian soul," and "the Lord and Ruler of the Church."87 After mentioning these different titles of the Holy Spirit, Newman insisted: Therefore let us ever praise the Father Almighty, who is the First Source of all perfection, in and together with His Co-equal Son and Spirit, through whose 78 JHN, "The Indwelling Spirit," PPS, 2:217–231, at 222. 79 Ibid. 80 Ibid., 223. 81 Ibid. 82 Ibid. 83 Basil, On the Holy Spirit IX, 23, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd Series, vol. 8 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1978), 16: "Through His [Holy Spirit] aid hearts are lifted up, the weak are held by the hand, and they who are advancing are brought to perfection . . . . Just as when a sunbeam falls on bright and transparent bodies, they themselves become brilliant too, and shed forth fresh brightness from themselves, so souls wherein the Spirit dwells, illuminated by the Spirit, themselves become spiritual, and send forth their grace to others." 84 Athanasius, Letter to Serapion I, 23–24, in The Letters of St. Athanasius Concerning the Holy Spirit, C. R. B. Shapland, trans. (London: Epworth Press, 1951), 125, 127: The Spirit is called unction and he is seal . . . the creatures are by him sealed and anointed and instructed in all things. . . . It is through the Spirit that we are all said to be partakers of God . . . by participation in the Spirit, we are made "sharers in the divine nature.". . . If he makes men divine, it is not to be doubted that his nature is of God." 85 Ibid., 223. For Newman, the activity of the Holy Spirit could be summarized in one word: "Regeneration." 86 PPS, 2:224–225; italics added. 87 Ibid., 218. NEWMAN'S THEOLOGY OF THE IMMANENT TRINITY IN HIS PAROCHIAL AND PLAIN SERMONS: 1829–1834 NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL84 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid., 224. 90 Ibid., 217. 91 Ibid., 229. 92 Gregory of Nyssa, On "Not Three Gods," in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd Series, vol. 5:334: "In the case of the Divine nature we do not similarly learn that the Father does anything by Himself in which the Son does not work conjointly, or again that the Son has any special operation apart from the Holy Spirit; but every operation which extends from God to the Creation, and is named according to our variable conceptions of it, has its origin from the Father, and proceeds through the Son, and is perfected in the Holy Spirit." 93 PPS, 2:224. 94 Ibid., 228. 95 Ibid.; italics added. 96 Ibid., 217. 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid., 218. 99 Ibid., 220; italics added. gracious ministrations we have been given to see "what manner of love" it is wherewith the Father has loved us.88 Nonetheless, Newman did not consider the activities of the Holy Spirit a separate work of a divine person, but as a work of the Trinity, where the Almighty Father is "the First Source of all perfection." Newman reserved the term "Almighty" for the Father; he did not use this term in speaking of the Son or the Holy Spirit. "Almighty" emphasizes the priority of the Father as "Cause," "Source," "Fountain," "Divine Author of salvation."89 Newman characterized the Holy Spirit as "the Infinite Love"90 and "the Eternal Love whereby the Father and the Son have dwelt in each other."91 For Newman, salvation is a Trinitarian work where the Father is the First Source of all perfection, operating in and together with the Son and the Holy Spirit-a view that reflects the theology of Gregory of Nyssa.92 Although Newman asserted that the Father is the "Divine Author of our salvation,"93 he did not explain how salvation "proceeds through the Son," but pointed out that salvation "is perfected in the Holy Spirit." For Newman, "By His [Holy Spirit] wonder-working grace all things tend to perfection."94 This Spirit-given perfection is the basis of Newman's Christological Pneumatology: Every faculty of the mind, every design, pursuit, subject of thought, is hallowed in its degree by the abiding vision of Christ, as Lord, Saviour, and Judge. All solemn, reverent, thankful, and devoted feelings, all that is noble, all that is choice in the regenerate soul, all that is self-denying in conduct, and zealous in action, is drawn forth and offered up by the Spirit as a living sacrifice to the Son of God.95 The Holy Spirit leads Christians to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, "the Living and Eternal Law of Truth and Perfection."96 It is the Holy Spirit, who orients every human act to concentrate only in Jesus Christ. "By the Spirit . . . to the Son of God" is a patristic expression that Jesus Christ is the "focus point" of all the work of the Holy Spirit. Newman envisaged "God, the Son," as revealing "the Father to His creatures from without; God the Holy Ghost, by inward communications."97 Just as the Father sent the Son, the Holy Spirit is sent by the Father; nonetheless, "The condescension of the Blessed Spirit is as incomprehensible as that of the Son."98 One might say then that Newman viewed Pneumatology in the light of Christology: "The heavenly Gift is not simply called the Holy Ghost, or the Spirit of God, but the Spirit of Christ, that we might clearly understand, that He comes to us from and instead of Christ."99 85 Newman described the work of the Holy Spirit under four headings: The Comforter who has come instead of Christ, must have vouchsafed to come in the same sense in which Christ came; I mean, that He has come, not merely in the way of gifts, or of influences, or of operations, as He came to the Prophets, for then Christ's going away would be a loss, and not a gain, and the Spirit's presence would be a mere pledge, not an earnest; but He comes to us as Christ came, by a real and personal visitation. . . . We are able to see that the Saviour, when once He entered into this world, never so departed as to suffer things to be as before He came; for He still is with us, not in mere gifts, but by the substitution of His Spirit for Himself, and that, both in the Church and in the souls of individual Christians.100 Describing the Holy Spirit as "the Spirit of God but the Spirit of Christ" echoes what Augustine said in On the Trinity: "According to the Sacred Scriptures, this Holy Spirit is neither the Spirit of the Father alone, nor of the Son alone, but the Spirit of both, and therefore, He insinuates to us the common love by which the Father and the Son mutually love each other."101 The one Holy Spirit, who is of the Father and of the Son, accordingly plays the role of communio of the Father and the Son: "He Himself perchance in His mysterious nature, is the Eternal Love whereby the Father and the Son have dwelt in each other."102 In his very "mysterious nature," the Holy Spirit is the "Eternal Love" of the Father and the Son. It is because of the Spirit and in his very Person, the Father and the Son are one in unity. As Joseph Ratzinger has said, the Holy Spirit is "the communio of the Father and the Son . . . . The Spirit is Person as unity, unity as Person."103 Newman did not develop this theme of the Holy Spirit as the bond of love between the Father and the Son. This theme, however, was emphasized by Augustine, for whom the Holy Spirit is the key to understanding "the ineffable communion of the Father and the Son"104 and by Aquinas, who stated that in the person of the Holy Spirit as Love, the relation of the Father and the Son is considered as that of Lover and Beloved.105 More recently, Congar stated: The Father and the Son are for each other, they are relative to each other. The Spirit is the one in whom they are united, in whom they receive each other, in whom they communicate with one another, and in whom they rest.106 Second, the Holy Spirit came "in the same sense in which Christ came." In saying that the Holy Spirit, like the Son, came from the one Source, the Father, Newman echoed Athanasius: "If the Son, because he is of the Father, is proper to his essence, it must be that the Spirit, who is said to be from God, is in essence proper to the Son."107 While insisting that the divinity of the Holy Spirit is also that of the Son, Newman 100 Ibid., 220–221; italics added. 101 Augustine, On the Trinity 15:27, The Fathers of the Church, vol. 45 (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1963), 491. 102 PPS, 2:229. 103 Joseph Ratzinger, "The Holy Spirit as Communio: Concerning the Relationship of Pneumatology and Spirituality in Augustine," Communio 25 (Summer 1998): 326. 104 Augustine, On the Trinity 5.12, The Fathers of the Church, 45, 190. 105 Matthew Levering, Scripture and Metaphysics: Aquinas and the Renewal of Trinitarian Theology (New York: Blackwell, 2004), 194. 106 Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, vol. III (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2001), 148. 107 Athanasius, Letter to Serapion I, 25, The Letters of St. Athanasius, Shapland, trans., 133. NEWMAN'S THEOLOGY OF THE IMMANENT TRINITY IN HIS PAROCHIAL AND PLAIN SERMONS: 1829–1834 NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL86 described the role of the Holy Spirit in the work of creation: He [the Holy Spirit] has ever been the secret Presence of God within the Creation: a source of life amid the chaos, bringing out into form and order what was at first shapeless and void, and the voice of Truth in the hearts of all rational beings, tuning them into harmony with the intimations of God's Law, which were externally made to them.108 Third, the Holy Spirit came "by a real and personal visitation." As Newman said in 1831: "The Holy Spirit is a Person." In the language of the Cappadocians, "person 'causes' God to be."109 The coming of the Holy Spirit is not simply his gift or grace but real and personal. Believers receive "not the mere gifts of the Spirit, but His very presence, Himself, by a real not a figurative indwelling."110 Newman's emphasis on the terms "real" and "personal" was a response to the Socinians of his time, who denied the Holy Spirit as person, and identified him with the person of the Father. For Socinians: the Holy Spirit is the "Power" and "Divine Agent" of God the Father; the Holy Spirit and God the Father are "merely as different names for the One Almighty Being";111 the Holy Spirit is the "personification of God's actions";112 the Holy Spirit is a "person" only in the sense of the person of the Father, for "God is Spirit."113 Rejecting these Socinian views, Newman insisted that the Holy Spirit is a Divine Person distinct from the Father and the Son and has an important role in the economy of salvation. The Spirit's work, however, is not separated from that of the Son, for he "comes to us from and instead of Christ," that is the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit is the ongoing work of Christ.114 Fourth, the work of the Holy Spirit is within the Church, where the Holy Spirit has "inspired" and "directed" the Evangelists "to record the life of Christ" and illuminate "the birth, the life, the death and resurrection of Christ"; it is the Holy Spirit who "has made history to be doctrine."115 In addition, the Spirit "continued His formation of the Church, superintending and overruling its human instruments, and bringing out our Saviour's words and works, and the Apostles' illustrations of them, into acts of obedience and permanent Ordinances."116 In addition, the Holy Spirit joins the Church's "triumphant hymns in honour of Christ, and listens wistfully to her voice in inspired Scripture, the voice of the Bride calling upon and blest in the Beloved."117 For Newman, the Holy Spirit is the life of the Church and working in the Church in order to form her as the Church of Christ, the Bride of Christ waiting for the coming of the Bridegroom. Newman's view of the Holy Spirit as "Gift," "Heavenly Gift," "Gift of grace" echoes 108 PPS, 2:218. 109 Zizioulas, Communion & Otherness, 192. 110 PPS, 2:220; italics added. 111 Joseph Cottle, Essays on Socinianism (London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1850), 192. 112 Philip Dixon, 'Nice and Hot Disputes'–The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Seventeenth Century (London: T & T Clark, 2005), 41. 113 Skepticism Credulity: Socinianism Irreconcilable with Reason, and the Simplicity of the Gospel (Birmingham: W. Suffield, Bull-Street, 1814), 153; this book does not indicate the identity of its author. 114 PPS, 2:227. 115 Ibid., 227–228. 116 Ibid., 228. 117 Ibid. 87 Augustine:118 "The Gift of the Holy Spirit is nothing else than the Holy Spirit . . . for He is so given as the Gift of God that He also gives Himself as God."119 Similarly, Newman emphasized that the Holy Spirit "manifested Himself as the source of various gifts"120 and in giving gifts the Spirit gives "His very presence, Himself."121 The Spirit "can be personally present at once with every Christian"; this personal presence manifests "the divinity of the Holy Spirit," for only "God himself" can do this.122 In presenting the Holy Spirit as God's self-giving to the whole of humanity, Newman characterized the Holy Spirit as the source of power and energy of the mystery of the Incarnation within the history of salvation. INCARNATION – AND THE ECONOMIC TRINITY For Newman, the "Incarnation of the Eternal Word"123 is the starting point, the key and the center of the whole economy of salvation. Without the Incarnation, the mystery of the Trinity would never have been revealed to us. Newman's presentation of the Incarnation highlighted the two terms-"Word" and "Only-begotten Son of God"124-which describe two aspects of the Second Divine Person. In his Arians of the Fourth Century (1833), Newman explained that "the title of the Son marks His derivation and distinction from the Father, that of the Word (i.e. Reason) denotes His inseparable inherence in the Divine Unity."125 In addition, "Onlybegotten," refers to the "heavenly nature" of the Son, and it "relates to something higher than any event occurring in time."126 Newman also noted that the term generation signifies "the fact of the Son's full participation in the divinity of Him who is His Father."127 To highlight the relationship of the Father and the Son, Newman used images such as "the sun and its radiance, the fountain and the stream, the root and its shoots, a body and its exhalation, fire and the fire kindled from it."128 Newman described the generation of the Son from the Father as a light is kindled from another, the original light remains entire and undiminished, though you borrow from it many like itself; so That which proceeds from God, is called at once God, and the Son of God, and Both are One.129 Newman used the term generation in an economic sense, which "is also applied to certain events in our Lord's mediatorial history: to His resurrection from the dead ["You are my son; this day I have begotten you" Act 13:33]; and . . . to His original mission in the beginning of all things to create the world; and to His manifestation in NEWMAN'S THEOLOGY OF THE IMMANENT TRINITY IN HIS PAROCHIAL AND PLAIN SERMONS: 1829–1834 118 Augustine, On the Trinity 15:29; 33, The Fathers of the Church, 45:493–494; 498. See Joseph Ratzinger, Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The Church as Communion (New York: Ignatius Press, 2005), 47; John Joseph O'Donnell, The Mystery of the Triune God (New York: Continuum, 1988), 77. 119 Augustine, On the Trinity 15:36, 502. 120 PPS, 2:219. 121 Ibid., 220. 122 Ibid., 222. 123 JHN, "The Incarnation," PPS 2:26. 124 PPS, 2:29–30; italics added. 125 JHN, Arians of the Fourth Century, 157; hereafter cited: Arians; available at http://www.newmanreader.org/ works/arians/index.html. 126 Arians, 158–159. 127 Ibid., 162. 128 Ibid. 129 Ibid., italics added. NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL88 the flesh."130 Newman concluded that the generation of the Son is a "reiteration of the One Infinite Nature of God, a communicated divinity, in the Person of our Lord."131 The term "communicated divinity" indicates communication in the Triune God: the divinity of God is not something passive, but active and alive as the sun, or fountain, or fire, which always gives and generates but remains fully itself; "communicated divinity" indicates that the Son is always in communication with the Father. For Newman, the titles Son and Word together "witness to the mystery, that He [the Son] is at once from, and yet in, the Immaterial, Incomprehensible God."132 In speaking about the mystery of the Incarnation, Newman began with "The Incarnation of the Eternal Word." The title "the Word" not only "denotes His inseparable inherence in the Divine Unity," but signifies the role of the Second Divine Person in the relationship of God the Creator and his creation. Newman understood the Word of God in two ways: "First, to denote His essential presence in the Father, in as full a sense as the attribute of wisdom is essential to Him; secondly, His mediatorship, as the Interpreter or Word between God and His creatures."133 It is the role of "bringing into being, fashioning, giving laws, imparting reason and conscience, revealing God, and finally becoming flesh and redeeming the humans from a state of sin."134 In order to reject the Sabellian view which "inferred that the Divine Word was but the temporary manifestation of God's glory in the man Christ,"135 Newman pointed out that when the Fathers of the Church spoke of the Word, they "speak of Him as the Word in an hypostasis, the permanent, real, and living Word."136 Newman's sermon on the "Mystery of the Holy Trinity" (1831) stated that the "Son is a Person" but did not mention the term hypostasis. Two years latter in his Arians of the Fourth Century, Newman went a step further by insisting that the Word is an hypostasis- the Greek term that the Fathers used in discussing the divine persons of the Trinity. In 1831, Newman used the word person without any specific definition; in 1833, Newman noted that "the word Person requires the rejection of various popular senses, and a careful definition":137 The word Person, used in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, would on first hearing suggest Tritheism to one who made the word synonymous with individual; and Unitarianism to another, who accepted it in the classical sense of a mask or character.138 Newman wanted to avoid both these errors in his Trinitarian theology:139 speaking of 130 Ibid., 158–159. 131 Ibid., 163. 132 Ibid., 157. 133 Ibid., 169. 134 PPS, 2:30. 135 Arians, 171. 136 Ibid. 137 Ibid., 432. 138 Ibid., 433. 139 Newman explained the term: "This . . . is what I conceive that he [Athanasius] means by sometimes speaking of one, sometimes of three hypostases. The word hypostasis stands neither for Person nor for Essence exclusively; but it means the one Personal God of natural theology, the notion of whom the Catholic corrects and completes as often as he views him as a Trinity; of which correction Nazianzen's language (Orat. xxviii. 9) contrasted with his usual formula (vid. Orat. xx. 6) of the Three Hypostases, is an illustration. The specification of three hypostases does not substantially alter the sense of the word itself, but is a sort of catachresis by which this Catholic doctrine is forcibly brought out (as it would be by the phrase "three monads"), viz. that each of the Divine Persons is simply the Unus et Singularis Deus." Arians, 440–441. 89 the "Person of Christ," means including everything "which belong to the two natures which are predicated of Him."140 The "Person of Christ" was a significant theological issue during the first decade of the Oxford Movement (1833–1843). For example, in 1833, the same year that Newman published his Arians of the Fourth Century, George Hill and Alexander Hill published their Lectures in Divinity, which devoted a chapter to the "Person of Christ."141 Similarly, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in his Notebooks (for the years between January 1827 and his death in 1834), included a Unitarian presentation of the "Person of Christ" as a mere man although regarding him as Messiah.142 In 1834, there was a discussion on Unitarianism between John Scott and Daniel Bagot, in which the "Person of Christ" was the main point of their arguments.143 Newman's discussion of the Second Divine Person analyzed two details, which are important in his Trinitarian theology: first, "the Only-begotten Son of God" and, second, "in the bosom of the Eternal Father."144 The prepositions in and of play important roles in his Trinitarian theology. First, "in God" or "in the bosom of the Eternal Father" or "the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son," (John 14: 11) and the Holy Spirit "is in God as 'the spirit of a man that is in him,'"145-are expressions, for Newman, "in the language of theology, the doctrine of the coinherence."146 This doctrine was used in the early Church "on the authority of Scripture, as a safeguard and witness of the Divine Unity."147 In his sermon on "The Incarnation," Newman first insisted on the "the indwelling of the Father in the Son,"148 then he pointed out that the Son "dwelt in the inner-most love of the Everlasting Father, in the glory which He had with Him before the world was."149 Newman distinguished between the dwelling of God in the believer and that of the Father in the Son. God dwells in us as adopted sons and daughters, by the "grace of Christ," of his Incarnation, renewing "our carnal souls" and "repairing the effects of Adam's fall."150 In other words, it is in Christ the Son incarnate that we become "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). However, the indwelling of the Father in the Son "is infinitely above this, being quite different in kind," for the Son is "not merely of a divine nature, divine by participation of holiness and perfection, but Life and Holiness itself, such as the Father is."151 In his sermon, "The Mystery of the Holy Trinity" (1831), Newman emphasized the dwelling of each divine person in each other, but did not speak of "the doctrine of the coinherence." In 1833 and 1834, however, Newman stated: "This doctrine of the NEWMAN'S THEOLOGY OF THE IMMANENT TRINITY IN HIS PAROCHIAL AND PLAIN SERMONS: 1829–1834 140 Arians, 433. 141 George Hill and Alexander Hill, Lectures in Divinity (Edinburgh: Waugh and Innes, 1833), 447–461. 142 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Notes on the Notebooks 1827–1834," The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, eds. Kathleen Coburn and Anthony John Harding (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), entries 5472–6919: at 5480–5481. 143 John Scott Porter, Daniel Bagot, Authentic Report of the Discussion on the Unitarian Controversy Between the Rev. John Scott Porter and the Rev. Daniel Bagot M. A., Held on April 14, 1834 . . . (London: Simms & M'Intyre, 1834, Original from Oxford University). 144 PPS, 2:30; italics added. 145 PPS, 2:30; 6, 358–359; Arians, 173. 146 Arians, 173. 147 Ibid. 148 PPS, 2:35. 149 Ibid., 38–39. 150 Ibid., 34–35. 151 Ibid., 35. NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL90 coinherence, as protecting the Unity without intrenching on the perfections of the Son and Spirit, may even be called the characteristic of Catholic Trinitarianism as opposed to all counterfeits, whether philosophical, Arian, or Oriental."152 In support of this position, Newman quoted St. Basil: If any one truly receives the Son, he will find that He brings with him on one hand His Father, on the other the Holy Spirit. For neither can He from the Father be severed, who is of and ever in the Father; nor again from His own Spirit disunited, who in It operates all things. . . . For we must not conceive separation or division in any way; as if either the Son could be supposed without the Father, or the Spirit disunited from the Son. But there is discovered between them some ineffable and incomprehensible, both communion and distinction.153 "Communion" and "distinction" are the main characteristics of the coinherence, which is "the characteristic of Catholic Trinitarianism." Just as the patristic phrase "in God" led Newman to the "doctrine of the coinherence", the phrase "of God" led Newman to the "doctrine of the monarchia." The phrases -"The Only-begotten Son of God," "of the Eternal Father," "the Word of God," "God of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds, perfect God"154-appear repeatedly in "The Incarnation" and other sermons. For Newman, the preposition "of" plays a prominent role in the doctrine of monarchia: "one Principle or arche."155 Newman's sermons prioritize the Father by using titles such as "Everlasting Father,"156 "Father Almighty,"157 "Almighty God,"158 "Divine Author,"159 "Eternal Author,"160"the First Source."161 These titles signify that the Father alone "is the arche, or origin, and the Son and Spirit are not origins."162 The preposition "of" expresses the belonging of the Son and the Holy Spirit to the Father: They are of and from Him, the First and Only Source, the "Fount of Divinity."163 To highlight this point, Newman quoted Athanasius-"We do not teach three Origins . . . for we do not speak of three Suns, but of the Sun and its radiance"164-and Gregory Nazianzen-"there is One God, seeing that the Son and Spirit are referred to One Cause."165 Newman also pointed out that the Scriptures and the Creeds always give priority to the Father: In naming the Father, we imply the Son and Spirit, whether They be named or not. Without this key, the language of Scripture is perplexed in the extreme. Hence it is, that the Father is called "the only God," at a time when our Lord's name is also mentioned, John xvii. 3, 1 Tim. i. 16, 17, as if the Son was but the reiteration of His Person, who is the Self-Existent, and therefore not to be 152 Arians, 174. 153 Basil, Petav. iv. 16, § 9; Arians, 174. 154 PPS, 2:30, 37, 38. 155 Arians, 38. 156 PPS, 2:38. 157 JHN, "The Gospel, a Trust Committed to Us," PPS, 2:257. 158 JHN, "The Incarnation," PPS, 2:24. 159 JHN, "The Indwelling Spirit," PPS, 2:224. 160 JHN, "The Immorality of the Soul," PPS, 1:23. 161 Ibid., 2:218. 162 Arians, 182. 163 Ibid. 164 Ibid. 165 Ibid., 184. 91 contrasted with Him in the way of number.166 Similarly, in the Apostles' Creed, the title of God stands "in the opening against the Father's name, while the Son and Spirit are introduced as distinct forms or modes, (so to say,) of and in the One Eternal Being."167 Newman came to the conclusion: Accordingly it is impossible to worship One of the Divine Persons, without worshipping the Others also. In praying to the Father, we only arrive at His mysterious presence through His Son and Spirit; and in praying to the Son and Spirit, we are necessarily carried on beyond them to the source of Godhead from which They are derived. . . . as in the ordinary doxologies "to the Father through the Son and by the Spirit," or "to the Father and Son in the unity of the Holy Ghost."168 The doctrine of monarchia has a significant place in Newman's Trinitarian theology. The Father is the Cause of the unity of the Divine Persons. The unity of the Trinity is in the Person of the Father, who is the Source and Fount of Divinity; everything will return to its Source, "to the Father through the Son and by the Spirit" or "to the Father and Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit." Newman used the doxologies in order to synthesize his Trinitarian theology. He also highlighted the rule Lex orandi, lex credendi ("the law of praying [is] the law of believing"). His sermon on "The Mystery of the Trinity" (1831) highlighted the Person of the Father as the Origin and Cause of the Trinity, but did not developed the "doctrine of monarchia"- which emerged two years later apparently under the influence of Athanasius and the Cappadocians. This doctrine of monarchia is one that Orthodox theologians have attempted to develop as the "red point" in their Trinitarian theology. Orthodox theologians have claimed that the West has followed Augustine in basing the unity of the Trinity on the divine substance, in contrast to the Greek Fathers who based Trinitarian unity on the person of the Father.169 In 1833 and 1834, Newman developed the viewpoint of the Greek Fathers in his Trinitarian theology. Decades later in 1895, Samuel Cox in discussing the Incarnation and the Trinity quoted Newman's Arians of the Fourth Century to emphasize the doctrine of monarchia.170 In addition to the doctrines of coinherence and monarchia, Newman also clarified the term "First-born" or "First-begotten."171 For Athanasius, this term "means His [the Son's] coming to the creature, that is, His exalting the creature into a Divine sonship by a union with His own Sonship."172 For Newman, "First born" expresses the "creative office"173 of the Son. Newman clearly distinguished between "First-born" and "Only-begotten": Only-begotten because of His gennesis, First-born because of His condescension. ... NEWMAN'S THEOLOGY OF THE IMMANENT TRINITY IN HIS PAROCHIAL AND PLAIN SERMONS: 1829–1834 166 Ibid., 175–176. 167 Ibid. 168 Ibid., 177. 169 Zizioulas, Communion & Otherness, 33, and Being as Communion, 36–37. Bulgakov, Comforter, 40–41. 170 Samuel Cox, William Robertson Nicoll, James Moffatt, eds., The Expositor, vol. 2, series 5 (United Kingdom: Hodder and Stoughton, 1895), 84. 171 PPS, 2:26. 172 Arians, 419. 173 Ibid., 418. NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL92 "Only-begotten" is internal to the Divine Essence; "First-born" external to It: the one is a word of nature, the other, of office.174 As modern theologians would say, "Only-begotten" is immanent; "First-born" is economic.175 The term "First-born" always goes with "of creation"; this term indicates that "the Word applies His own Sonship to the creation, and makes Himself, who is the real Son, the first and the representative of a family of adopted sons."176 This term denotes the relationship of the Son "not towards God, but towards the creature."177 It is the term of the mystery of Incarnation, of condescension: With a wonderful condescension He came, not as before in power, but in weakness, in the form of a servant, in the likeness of that fallen creature whom He purposed to restore. So He humbled Himself; suffering all the infirmities of our nature in the likeness of sinful flesh, all but a sinner,-pure from all sin, yet subjected to all temptation,-and at length becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.178 For Newman, the purpose of the Incarnation is to "restore" fallen creation, to "repair the evil which sin had caused."179 The Word came "down again from His Father's bosom to do His will."180 The adverb again is a reminder of the first work of the Word at the beginning of creation when God with his Word and Holy Spirit created the world. The Word as the Mediator of the Father brought all creatures into being, "fashioning them, giving the world its laws, imparting reason and conscience to creatures of a higher order, and revealing to them in due season the knowledge of God's will."181 Because of his "unsearchable love" for creation, He came again, using "His own Sonship" with the Father to restore and bring fallen creation into a "Divine sonship" by union with him in the Incarnation. Newman, in describing the mystery of the "Word became flesh," utilized verbs such as "pervading," "hallowing," "spiritualizing," "filling," "exalting," "acting," "manifesting"182-terms that John of Damascus called "assuming": He [the Word became flesh] did not transform the nature of His divinity into the substance of His flesh, nor the substance of His flesh into the nature of His divinity, and neither did He effect one compound nature out of His divine nature and the human nature which He had assumed.183 The term "assuming" was used in the West by both Augustine-"For by assuming it [flesh], not by being consumed in it . . . that Word became flesh"184-and Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae.185 In the twentieth century, Karl Rahner, in treating "the Word became flesh" concluded that "God 'creates by assuming' and 'assumes by creating.'"186 174 Ibid., 420. 175 The Scriptures do not speak of the "First born of God." 176 Arians, 419–420. 177 Ibid., 420. 178 PPS, 2:30. 179 Ibid., 31. 180 Ibid. 181 Ibid., 30. 182 Ibid., 32. 183 John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 3:3, Roy Josheph Defferrari, ed., The Fathers of the Church, vol. 37 (Washington DC: CUA Press, 1958), 271; Although Newman did not use the term "assume," the terms that he did use express the idea of "assuming." 184 Augustine, On the Trinity 15:11, The Fathers of the Church, 477. 185 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae: 3a. 1–6 (London; Cambridge University Press, 1990), 143–148. 186 William V. Dych, Karl Rahner (New York: Continuum, 2000), 77. 93 In addition, Newman, in interpreting the "became flesh" of the Word, insisted on the unity between the Godhead and the manhood in Jesus Christ: There could be no real separation, no dissolution. Even when His body was dead, the Divine Nature was one with it; in like manner it was one with His soul in paradise. Soul and body were really one with the Eternal Word,-not one in name only,-one never to be divided. Therefore Scripture says that He rose again "according to the Spirit of holiness;" and "that it was not possible that He should be holden of death." [Rom. i. 4. Acts ii. 24.]187 Although Newman did not use the term "hypostatic union" to describe the union of the human and divine natures in Christ, his expressions of "no real separation, no dissolution" and "truly God and man, one Person" call to mind the Chalcedonian Creed, which confesses two natures in Jesus Christ: "Without confusion, without change, without division, without separation," "in one prosopon and one hypostasis."188 Moreover, Newman insisted that even after Christ's death, the divine nature still was one with his body. Soul and body were always one with the Eternal Word-an idea that Newman seemingly inherited from John of Damascus: Even though as man He [Jesus Christ] did die and His sacred soul was separated from His immaculate body, the divinity remained unseparated from both – the soul, I mean, and the body. Thus, the one Person [hypostasis] was not divided into two persons . . . . Hence, the one Person [hypostasis] of the Word existed as person both of the Word and of the soul and of the body, for neither the soul nor the body ever had any person of its own other than that of the Word, and the Person [hypostasis] of the Word was always one and never two.189 Similarly, Newman saw no reason why either Christ's body or his soul should be separated from the divine nature. Although Newman did not analyze the doctrine of hypostatic union, he presented his audience with the Church's teaching about the union of the divinity and humanity in Christ. CHRIST AND MARY In considering the flesh or manhood of the Word, Newman called the Word "the immaculate 'seed of the woman,'" for His manhood came "from the substance of the Virgin Mary."190 The term "immaculate" indicates that the Word came "by a new and living way," "selecting and purifying unto Himself a tabernacle out of that which existed."191 Therefore, Mary, His Mother "was set apart, "as a garden inclosed, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed," to yield "a created nature to Him who was her Creator."192 In 1844, J. C. Crosthwaite in the British Magazine started a series of essays NEWMAN'S THEOLOGY OF THE IMMANENT TRINITY IN HIS PAROCHIAL AND PLAIN SERMONS: 1829–1834 187 PPS, 2:34. 188 Bernhard Lohse, A Short History of Christian Doctrine: From the First Century to the Present (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978), 92. 189 John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 3:27, The Fathers of the Church, 37:332–333. 190 PPS, 2:31. 191 Ibid., italics added; Newman's term "immaculate seed" resonates with the term "immaculate body" of John of Damascus. 192 Ibid., 32; italics added. On the feast of the Annunciation, March 25, 1832, in a sermon on "The Reverence Due to the Virgin Mary," Newman raised some significant questions about the doctrine of Mary's immaculate conception ( PPS, 2:131–132). NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL94 entitled Modern Hagiology, which published many writings of the Tractarians. Discussing Newman's sermon on the feast of the Annunciation in 1832 in chapter XL, the author raised a question about "Mr. Newman's doctrine"-particularly, the language that Newman used for the Virgin Mary: What can Mr. Newman mean by such language as this? Does he mean to propagate the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception – and if not, what is the meaning or force of his argument?193 Crosthwaite considered the biblical phrases that Newman quoted-"that which is born of the flesh is flesh" and "none can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?"-as "a ground" for the "sanctity and perfection of the Virgin Mary"194: It is obvious, her nature could not have been such as he [Newman] supposes it necessary it should be, unless it had been kept free from original sin by an immaculate conception, as is commonly taught by Romanists.195 Crosthwaite then concluded: "Nor is it easy to believe that so shrewd a writer as Mr. Newman, could have penned such an argument without having perceived its force."196 Crosthwaite's article was published almost a decade before the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception on December 8, 1854 by Pope Pius IX. A dozen years later, in 1866, Newman, published A Letter to the Rev. E. B. Pusey that discussed the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.197 In 1869, Edward Bouverie Pusey published his First Letter to Newman in reply.198 In addition, in his Mediations and Devotions,199 Newman continued his reflections on the Immaculate Conception-a doctrine which Newman felt played a significant role in soteriology. Newman reasoned that "our nature was corrupt since Adam's fall." In order to redeem us, the Word of God had to come "by a new and living way," for what "is born of the flesh is flesh" [John 3: 6.].200 Christ inherited human nature and flesh from the Virgin Mary, who was preserved in "holiness and perfection," who was kept away from the stain of original sin. Thus the Son of God became the Son of Man; mortal, but not a sinner; heir of our infirmities, not of our guiltiness; the offspring of the old race, yet "the beginning of the" new "creation of God."201 193 John Clarke Crosthwaite, John Henry Newman, Edward Bouverie Pusey, Frederick Oakeley, Modern Hagiology: An Examination of the Nature and Tendency of Some Legendary and Devotional Works Lately Published Under the Sanction of the Rev. J. H. Newman, the Rev. Dr. Pusey, and the Rev. F. Oakley (London:J. W. Parker, 1846), 285. 194 Ibid. 195 Ibid. 196 Ibid. 197 JHN, A Letter to the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D., on His Recent Eirenicon (Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching, volume II), available at http://www.newmanreader.org/works/ anglicans/volume2/pusey/index.html#titlepage. 198 Edward Bouverie Pusey, First Letter to the Very Rev. J. H. Newman, D.D.: In Explanation Chiefly in Regard to the Reverential Love Due to the Ever-blessed Theotokos, and the Doctrine of Her Immaculate Conception; with an Analysis of Cardinal de Turrecremata's Work on the Immaculate Conception (London: J. Parker & Co., 1869). 199 See JHN, Meditations and Devotions of the Later Cardinal Newman, 8–26, available at http://www.newmanreader.org/works/meditations/meditations1.html#may3. 200 PPS, 2:31. 201 Ibid., 31–32. 95 NEWMAN'S TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY: 1829–1834 From 1829 to 1834, Newman's Trinitarian theology in his Parochial and Plain Sermons focused primarily on the immanent life of the Trinity. His analysis of the relationship of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit emphasized the personhood of each divine person as indicating the "otherness" in God-persons completely distinct from each other but fully in communion. Divine "otherness" is a constitutive relation, creating not division but unity and communion; hypostasis "is otherness in communion and communion in otherness."202 In treating the Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit, Newman assigned each divine hypostasis very distinct titles, functions, and personality, but simultaneously envisioned each divine person in an inseparable and unbreakable relationship with the others. Newman emphasized the Person of the Father as the Cause, Source and Fountain of the divinity and the unity of the Trinity. Newman's language for the Father is special-reserving specific terms such as "Almighty," "Source," "Fountain," "Cause." His sermons of 1829 through 1831 established the basic tenets of Trinitarian doctrine; however, with the sermons of 1833 and 1834, Newman considered specific doctrines such as coinherence and monarchia, and used the term hypostasis. At the end of 1834, with his two sermons on the Holy Spirit and the Incarnation, Newman's Trinitarian theology began to incorporate an economic perspective. In these sermons, Newman analyzed the Holy Spirit and the Son-Word of God in their relationship with the Father in the immanent life of the Trinity; then he opened this "immanent" relationship to the "economic" activities of the Trinity. Finally, Newman's Trinitarian theology was very patristic-influenced by such Fathers of the Church as Athanasius, the Cappadocians, John of Damascus and Augustine. In his Trinitarian theology, there was no apparent gap between the Greek Fathers and Augustine. In contrast, it is sometimes claimed that the Roman Catholic Church under the influence of Augustine has insisted more on the unity of the Trinity in the divine substance, while the Orthodox Church influenced by the Greek Fathers has emphasized the unity of the Trinity in the person of the Father. Newman's Trinitarian theology did not have this division. His theology is very Athanasian and Cappadocian, but simultaneously Augustinian. While Newman emphasized the person of the Father as the Cause of the unity of the Trinity, he did not lessen the significance of the divine substance or separate the person of God from his essence: the person of God is He; the essence of God is He; God's attributes are He. God is one in Himself: "His nature is solitary, peculiar to Himself, and one; so that whatever was accounted to be consubstantial or co-essential with Him, was necessarily included in His individuality."203 For Newman, "The word 'God' denotes nothing but the [ousia autou tou ontos], the being of Him who is."204 God is "one in Himself," "one in substance or essence."205 In sum, Newman's Trinitarian theology might well provided a directive for modern Trinitarian theology, which has sometimes tended to separate the Greek Fathers from the Latin. Newman's emphasis on patristic sources might not only be NEWMAN'S THEOLOGY OF THE IMMANENT TRINITY IN HIS PAROCHIAL AND PLAIN SERMONS: 1829–1834 202 Zizioulas, Communion & Otherness, 9. 203 Newman, Arians, 187. 204 Ibid., 188. 205 PPS, 6:349. NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL96 helpful to modern Trinitarian theology as such, but also ecumenically, insofar as the separation of the Greek and Latin Fathers has set up an obstacle between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. Newman's Trinitarian theology, which utilized both Greek and Latin Fathers, might help the Eastern and Western churches find commonality in that most fundamental of Christian mysteries-the Trinity. Softly and gently, dearly-ransom'd soul, In my most loving arms I now enfold thee, And, o'er the penal waters, as they roll, I poise thee, and I lower thee, and hold thee. And carefully I dip thee in the lake, And thou, without a sob or a resistance, Dost through the flood thy rapid passage take, Sinking deep, deeper, into the dim distance. Angels, to whom the willing task is given, Shall tend, and nurse, and lull thee, as thou liest; And masses on the earth, and prayers in heaven, Shall aid thee at the Throne of the Most Highest. Farewell, but not for ever! brother dear, Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow; Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here, And I will come and wake thee on the morrow. The Oratory. January, 1865. Available at: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/verses/gerontius.html JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 000. "????" Verses on Various Occasions, 000. 97 NEWMAN BIBLIOGRAPHY AND GENERAL RESOURCES "The Newman Reader" (www.newmanreader.org) provides the complete texts of most of Newman's published works, as well as biographical information and pictures of Newman; the texts that have already been scanned into the electronic Newman Research Library may be searched at: http://www.newmanreader.org/ newmanresearch/. Specific terms or phrases from Newman's writings can be found by accessing www.Google.com and entering: «Newman word/phrase» site:newmanreader.org». A useful resource for Nineteenth Century Anglicanism is www.anglicanhistory.org. "Project Canterbury" (http://justus.anglican.org/ resources/pc/index.html) provides information about persons associated with the Oxford Movement; including Henry Parry Liddon's Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey (http://justus.anglican.org/resources/pc/pusey/liddon) and The Autobiography of Isaac Williams (http://justus.anglican.org/resources/pc/williams/auto.pdf). A "timeline of the Oxford Movement" is available at: http://justus.anglican.org/ resources/timeline/12victoria.html#oxford. "Project Gutenberg" has several resources including: R. W. Church, The Oxford Movement (http://www.gutenberg.org/ dirs/1/2/0/9/12092/12092-8.txt), which is also available at: http://justus.anglican.org/ resources/pc/england/church/om/) and the second volume of Robert Ornsby, Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott (http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/7975). The website of the International Centre of Newman Friends includes bibliography on Newman from 1990 to the present: www.newmanfriendsinternational.org. Authors of articles on Newman that appear in other journals are requested to inform the Centre of their publications by e-mail: centro.newman@tiscali.it. BOOKS RECEIVED FOR REVIEW IN NSJ David Birnbaum, Summa Metaphysica I: God and Evil; Summa Metaphysica II: God and Good, New York: J Levine/MILLENNIUM, 2008. Pp. xix + 266; 367. ISBN: 978–0–9801710–0–6; 978–0–9801710–1–3. $25.00; $25.00. RECENT ARTICLES OF INTEREST Authors of articles related to Newman that appear in other periodicals are requested to e-mail an electronic copy of their publications to the Newman Studies Journal (nins.editor@comcast.net) for inclusion in its electronic library; a précis of selected articles will appear as a regular feature of this journal. Keith Beaumont, "Les ecclésiologies de Newman anglican," Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 85/1 (2009) 159–168. This detailed review of Alain Yvan Thomasset's L'ecclésiologie de John Henry Newman anglican (Leuven: Peeters, 2006) points out that during his Anglican years NEWMAN BIBLIOGRAPHY NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL98 Newman espoused seven ecclesiologies-reducible to three: "Calvinist," "AngloCatholic" and eventually "Roman." His early years (1816–1830) were a time of ecclesiological exploration, book-ended respectively by an evangelical understanding of the Church as a community of believers and a defense of the Church against both Erastianism and Liberalism. During his second period (1831–1845), Newman filled in the interstices in his ecclesiology by his "discovery" of the Church as the body of Christ and his search for "the identity of the true Church." Beaumont's well written review highlights four aspects of Newman's ecclesiological pilgrimage: (1) the importance of Newman's teen-age conversion for his later theological, as well as spiritual, life; (2) the ambiguity of his relationship with Evangelicalism, which eventually defined itself in opposition to the Oxford Movement; (3) his opposition to Liberalism's "anti-dogmatic principle" which found a double adversary in both philosophical agnosticism and doctrine-less Christianity; (4) Newman's continued relevance today, especially in regard to theological method, as well as to the relationship between ecclesiology and soteriology. Christopher Olaf Blum, "Newman's Collegiate Ideal," Pro Ecclesia 17/3 (2008): 310–325. After considering two neglected discourses in Newman's The Idea of a University-"Discipline of Mind" and "Elementary Studies"-this essay summarizes his conviction that education is essentially a "a discipline in accuracy of mind" and considers the way that he exercised "the pastoral office of the tutor" at Oriel College. Noting that Newman's "quenchless desire for wisdom" combined with friendships exemplified in his cardinalatial motto-Cor ad cor loquitur-contrasts with the contemporary "groves of the academy" that are "more productive of enmity than charity," the essay concludes by recommending that contemporary higher education regain Newman's "collegiate ideal" of the educational vocation as seeking the truth "with unreserved generosity and undivided love." Ono Ekeh, "John Henry Newman on the Mystery of the Trinity," Irish Theological Quarterly 74/2 (2009): 202–223. Newman, as an Anglican, preached frequently on the mystery of the Trinity. An avid reader of Patristic literature, he was well versed in both the theological disputes and doctrinal developments of the Early Church. This Patristic influence, coupled with his familiarity with scripture, resulted in a Trinitarian theology modeled on the Athanasian Creed. This essay, which synthesizes Newman's Trinitarian theology from his Anglican sermons and his Arians, as well as Roman Catholic works, such as his Grammar of Assent, emphasizes the divine commonality of the persons of the Trinity, while considering each of the persons-Father, Son, Holy Spirit-in turn. Robert H. Ellison, "The Tractarians' Political Rhetoric," Anglican and Episcopal History. 99 77/3 (September 2008): 221–256. This well researched essay surveys the political positions espoused by Keble, Newman and Pusey in their sermons and other writings. In their "civic sermons"- such as Keble's assize sermon (14 July 1833)-the three leaders of the Oxford Movement sometimes referred to political issues, but ordinarily, they refrained from preaching politics in the pulpit; rather they insisted that people had a duty to maintain the political status quo. In contrast, in their publications, Keble, Newman and Pusey, to varying degrees and in regard to particular issues, were willing to make political comments and to take political stances. John T. Ford, "John Henry Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua; An Ecumenical Autobiography?," Ecumenical Trends 38/8 (September 2009): 1–5, 15 [113–117, 127]. After discussing Newman's Apologia as an autobiographical record of his theological development, a panorama of his pastoral experiences, and a journal of his spiritual journey, this essay considers the Apologia's ecumenical effects: in tracing the history of his "religious opinions," Newman availed himself of the opportunity of expressing his indebtedness both to the spiritual heritage of the Church of England and to his Anglican colleagues, who had influenced and aided his spiritual development. Accordingly, Newman's Apologia should be considered not only as a work of "apologetics" explaining his pilgrimage to Roman Catholicism, but also a model of "ecumenics": "a Christian pilgrim whose commitment to the Church included respect and love for Christians of other churches." H. Geissler, "'Zehntausend Schwierigkeiten machen keinen Zweifel': Der Glaubensweg von John Henry Newman und sein Weg von der anglikanischen in die katholische Kirche," Die Tagespost, 22 (Samstag 21. Februar 2009), 13. This essay points out that Newman's observation that "ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt" was personified in his own life as a "Truth-searcher": both in his pastoral work and in his educational endeavors, he always attempted to follow the "kindly light" of divine guidance wherever it led him. Accordingly, Newman's life is an example for those seeking religious truth in the present secularized world, as well as a model for ecumenists seeking unity among Christians. John Griffin, "Cardinal Newman and the Origins of Victorian Skepticism," Heythrop Journal 49 (2008): 980–994. This essay not only points out that those critics who described Newman as a skeptic were skeptics themselves, it also provides important background to his Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864), which responded to the casual accusation of Charles Kingsley, Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, that "Truth, for its own sake, has never been a virtue with the roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the whole ought not to be . . .". Kingsley's remark occurred in a book review of James Anthony Froude's History of England; Froude was Kingsley's NEWMAN BIBLIOGRAPHY NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL100 brother-in-law and best friend and also the younger brother of Richard Hurrell Froude, Newman's close friend, whose writings Newman helped edit and publish posthumously. The Remains of Richard H. Froude (1838–1839) caused quite a reaction against the Oxford Movement; indeed, "James Froude may have been humiliated by the publication of his brother's papers." In addition, Kingsley and James Froude felt that the "Catholic Church, by way of its claim to infallibility, could dispense with fact and determine that which was false to be true." As an Anglican, Newman sought a revival of the dogmatic principle against the infidelity of the day and, as a Roman Catholic, viewed the Church of England as the only "breakwater" against the infidelity of the day and so was reluctant to attack it. Michael J. McClymond, "'Continual Self-Contemplation': John Henry Newman's Critique of Evangelicalism," The Downside Review 127 (no. 446, January 2009): 1–12; 127 (no. 447, April 2009): 79–102. Just as Newman's evangelical conversion extended over a period of time, so too did his disassociation from Evangelicalism: the high point of his evangelical commitment is marked by several of his sermons in the 1820s; his disaffection with Evangelicalism is marked by three anti-Evangelical sermons in 1835. What was the reason for Newman's break with Evangelicalism? This well written and well researched essay points to two quite different, but inter-related factors: first, Evangelicalism in the second quarter of the 19th century divided into moderate and radical groups; second, his brother Francis affiliated with one of these radical groups, the Plymouth Brethren. Thus, Newman's anti-Evangelicalism was both ecclesiological-rejection of a group that had disassociated itself from the Church of England-and personal-chagrin that his brother had joined a radical Evangelical group. Edward Jeremy Miller, "Newman and Manning: The Strained Relationship," Horizons 35/2 (2008): 228–252. The strained relationship between Newman and Manning dated back to their Anglican years, when Manning preached a "no popery" sermon at St. Mary's (Oxford) on Guy Fawkes' Day, 5 November 1843, at the time when Newman was retracting his anti-Roman statements. As Roman Catholics, their relationship was further strained by Manning's opposition to Roman Catholics attending Oxford, their different ideas about the role of the laity in the Church, and their divergent views about the nature of papal authority, especially their diifferent interpretations of the First Vatican Council's teaching on infallibility (1870). While noting both their psychological and experiential differences, this essay highlights the divergences in their respective ecclesiologies as a basic factor in their strained relationship. Peter Nockles, "Oriel and the Making of John Henry Newman-His Mission as College Tutor," Recusant History 29/3 (May 2009): 411–421. 101 This essay points out that the ethos that Newman acquired as a fellow of Oriel College influenced his work not only as a college tutor, but also as a leader of the Oxford Movement. Although some Oriel students remained immune to Newman's "charismatic influence," on the whole, he was successful with students-a success that may have caused jealousy. Moreover, it was "a supreme irony" that Edward Hawkins, whom Newman supported in the provost-election (1828), would eventually force him out of his tutorship-with the dual result that Oriel's academic reputation declined and that Newman had time to devote to the Oxford Movement. Alyssa Pitstick, "Development of Doctrine, or Denial? Balthasar's Holy Saturday and Newman's Essay." International Journal of Systematic Theology 11/2 (April 2009): 129–145. This essay is a rebuttal to an essay by Edward T. Oakes (IJST 9 [2007]: 184–199), which claimed Newman's support for Hans Urs von Balthasar's theology of Christ's descent into hell. Oakes generalized Newman's seven tests for doctrinal development into "internal logic" and "developmental consistency." Pitstick points out that these two criteria are not intramural to an author's own theology, but must be evaluated in light of Christian doctrine; judged by that norm, Balthasar's "Holy Saturday" theology lacks all of the seven norms that Newman proposed in his Essay on Development and so is a corruption rather than a legitimate doctrinal development. Marie B. Rowlands, "The English Catholic Laity in the Last Years of the Midland District 1803–1840," Recusant History 29/3 (May 2009): 381–109. This survey of nearly four decades of Roman Catholic life and practice during the tenure of Bishop John Milner as vicar apostolic (1803–1826) and his successor, Thomas Walsh (1826–1848), presents a large amount of data about the priestshortage, popular devotions and sacramental practice, anti-Catholicism and conversions, the building of churches and schools, and Irish immigration. In sum, this study provides a vignette of Roman Catholicism on the eve of Newman's conversion in the area where he later established the Birmingham Oratory. Frederic W. Schlatter, "Hopkins on the Art of Newman's Prose," The Hopkins Quarterly 35 (2008): 75–110. In contrast to the high regard in which most Victorians held Newman's literary style, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1849) expressed serious reservations about the quality of Newman's writings. This well researched essay examines Hopkins' consideration of Newman's prose in an undergraduate essay (1864) and in three letters (1868, 1873, 1887). On the one hand, "Newman's idea of style was a matter of integrity involving the core of religious beliefs"; on the other hand, "For Hopkins there was in Newman's prose too little of the integrity of the secular literary tradition" (104). NEWMAN BIBLIOGRAPHY NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL102 John R. White, "Doctrinal Development and the Philosophy of History: Cardinal Newman's Theory in Light of Eric Voegelin's Philosophy," American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 83/2 (2009): 201–218 Utilizing insights from Voegelin, this essay proposes that an important part of the originality of Newman's view of doctrinal development is its incorporation of a philosophy of history. In contrast to Neo-Scholasticism, whose emphasis on the metaphysical basis for Catholic doctrine left little room for historical variations and doctrinal dynamism, Newman understood revelation as not only being expressed in doctrinal propositions, but also as being experienced, received, and understood by the Church. Newman's view of development displaces three characteristics of a philosophy of history: first, he envisioned revelation as a historical event and a historical process that resulted in doctrinal propositions; second, his idea of revelation gives propositional form to the experience of transcendence; third, Newman understood doctrinal development as "a movement from compacted experience to differentiated propositional doctrine." Unlike those Neo-Scholastics who focused on doctrinal propositions in abstraction from history, Newman focused on the lived experiences of revelation within the Christian community. NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL 103 1801 February 21 Born, Old Broad Street, London; Baptized: April 9. 1808 May 1 Enrolled at Ealing School 1816 August–December First conversion December 14 Enrolled at Trinity College, Oxford 1820 December 5 Took B.A. degree "under the line" 1822 April 12 Elected Fellow of Oriel College 1824 June 13 Ordained deacon of the Church of England 1825 May 29 Ordained priest of the Church of England 1826 July 2 Delivered his first University Sermon 1828 January 5 "We lost my sister Mary suddenly'" March 14 "Instituted by the Bishop of Oxford to St Mary's" 1832 December 8 Beginning of Mediterranean voyage with Froudes 1833 June 16 Wrote "Lead Kindly Light" = "The Pillar of the Cloud" July 14 Keble's Assize sermon on "National Apostasy" 1834 March Published First volume of Parochial Sermons 1841 January 25 Published Tract XC June 1 Delivered his fourteenth University Sermon 1843 February 2 Delivered his fifteenth University Sermon 1843 September 25 Preached "The Parting of Friends" at Littlemore 1845 October 9 Received as Roman Catholic by Dominic Barberi 1847 May 30 Ordained a Roman Catholic priest in Rome 1848 February 1 Established the English Oratory 1851 November 5 Beginning of Achilli Trial 1852 May 10 Delivered first university lecture in Dublin July 13 Preached sermon: "The Second Spring" 1853 January 31 Fined £100 at conclusion of Achilli Trial 1854 March 22 Opening of the London Oratory at Brompton June 4 Installed as Rector of the Catholic University in Dublin 1855 Autumn Separation of London and Birmingham Oratories 1856 May 1 Dedication of University Church of Sts. Peter and Paul 1857 March Informed Irish bishops of his proposed resignation as rector August Invited by Wiseman to supervise new translation of the Bible 1859 March 21 Assumed editorship of Rambler May 2 Foundation of Oratory School 1864 April June Published Apologia pro vita sua in fascicles 1865 May June Published "The Dream of Gerontius" in The Month 1870 March 15 Published An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent 1875 January 14 Published A Letter to the Duke of Norfolk 1878 February 26–28 Visited Oxford; Honorary Fellow of Trinity College 1879 May 15 Received the "red hat" from Pope Leo XIII in public consistory 1890 August 11 Newman's Death; Burial at Rednal on August 19 1900 October 3 Premiere of Sir Edward Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius 1991 January 22 Declared "Venerable" by Pope John Paul II JOHN HENRY NEWMAN A Brief Chronology 104 NINS UPDATE NINS UPDATE New Website The National Institute for Newman Studies launched its new website in November 2009. The site is informative, attractive, and user-friendly. It provides comprehensive information about the Institute-its library, journal, and scholars program-as well as upcoming events. Links are also provided to the Newman Association of America, newmanreader.org, and the Pittsburgh Oratory. We invite you to visit: http://www.newmanstudiesinstitute.org. Conference Announcement NINS will host the annual conference of the Newman Association of America on August 5–7, 2010. The theme of the conference is "A Reflection on the Life, Thought, and Spirituality of John Henry Newman in Celebration of His Beatification." Keynote speakers will be Ian Ker, Terrence Merrigan, and Cyril O'Regan. Deacon Jack Sullivan, who experienced the healing miracle which led to Rome's decision to beatify Newman, will also speak at the opening Mass. Please mark your calendars and plan to attend. For further information about the conference, please contact Jan Grice, at (412) 681-4376 or newmanassociation@comcast.net. Newman Stud ies Journa l Online Subscriptions to NSJ online are now available. All issues, from volume 1 (2004) to the present, are included with each electronic subscription. Annual individual subscriptions are priced as follows: Print--$30.00; Online (Single user license)-- $48.00; Print and Online (Single user license)--$75.00. Annual institutional subscriptions are: Print--$58.00; Online (5 simultaneous access license)--$174.00; Print and Online (5 simultaneous access license)--$209.00. All issues, from volume 1 (2004) to the present, are included with each electronic subscription. Single print issues are $29 for institutions and $15 for individuals. All subscription requests, claims, and renewals should be sent to the Newman Studies Journal, c/o Philosophy Documentation Center, P.O. Box 7147, Charlottesville, VA 22906-7147, USA. Payment may also be made by credit card (Visa, MasterCard, Discover) online at https://secure.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/journal?openform&journal=pdc_nsj#asubscribe; by fax to 434-220-3301; or by phone at 434-220-3300. Subscribers in the US and Canada may call toll free at 800-444-2419. Philosophy Documentation Center at 800-444-2419; 434-220-3300, or by e-mail at order@pdcnet.org. 105NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL Softly and gently, dearly-ransom'd soul, In my most loving arms I now enfold thee, And, o'er the penal waters, as they roll, I poise thee, and I lower thee, and hold thee. And carefully I dip thee in the lake, And thou, without a sob or a resistance, Dost through the flood thy rapid passage take, Sinking deep, deeper, into the dim distance. Angels, to whom the willing task is given, Shall tend, and nurse, and lull thee, as thou liest; And masses on the earth, and prayers in heaven, Shall aid thee at the Throne of the Most Highest. Farewell, but not for ever! brother dear, Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow; Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here, And I will come and wake thee on the morrow. The Oratory. January, 1865. Available at: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/verses/gerontius.html JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 000. "????" Verses on Various Occasions, 000.