NEWMAN, JOHN HENRY

Apologist, theologian, cardinal; b. London, Feb. 21, 1801; d. Birmingham, England, Aug. 11, 1890.

Life

He was the eldest of the six children of John Newman, an unsuccessful London banker, and Jemima Four-drinier, the daughter of a well-to-do middle-class French Protestant paper manufacturer. The other children in order of birth were Charles Robert (1802), Harriet (1803), Francis (1805), Jemima (1807), and Mary Sophia (1809). Newman entered the private boarding school at Ealing in 1808. Although his life at home had been warm and happy, in 1816 the bank with which his father was associated failed, and from then on the family was in reduced circumstances. Newman's sisters were sent to their grandmother, but he continued at Ealing. This event profoundly affected the entire family; the father died in 1824.

As a Protestant. Newman's early religious orientation was toward Calvinism and Fundamentalism. In 1816, however, shortly after the failure of the bank and the subsequent catastrophe at home and apparently in connection with an illness that profoundly disturbed him, Newman went through a five-month period that he later referred to as conversion. At that time a friend introduced him to Thomas Scott's The Force of Truth and Milner's Church History. The first convinced him of the divinity of Christ, and the second introduced him to the Fathers of the Church of the 4th and 5th centuries. He concluded that God willed him to lead a life of celibacy. There was apparently a complete change in the vision he had of himself. The nature of this spiritual crisis is somewhat obscure, but he emerged from it as a different person. He considered the experience to have been a turning point in his career. He gained a profound awareness of the presence of God. The beginnings of an intellectual foundation for his moral convictions stem from this period. He emerged with a love for the Fathers of the Church and a fear and abhorrence of Rome and the papacy, which seem to have come from his reading of Newton's On the Prophecies. His new insights produced certain basic contradictions that would engage him for the next 30 years.

University Life. Newman matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford, in December 1816 and took up residence there the following June. While there, he made the acquaintance of John William Bowden, who was to be his close friend and frequent support until Bowden's death in 1844. He and Bowden undertook the publication of a literary magazine called The Undergraduate in 1819. Newman won a scholarship at the end of his first year and gained a reputation as a student. In the schools examination in November 1820, to the surprise of all, he failed to achieve honors in either the mathematical sciences or the classics. He retained his scholarship, however, and determined to stay on at Oxford until he would take Holy Orders.

Newman tried the schools examination at Oriel in 1822 and was elected a fellow at Oriel on April 12 of that year. It was there that he met Edward Bouverie pusey, Richard whatly, Edward Copelston, Edward Hawkins, and Thomas Arnold. He was ordained deacon on June 13, 1824. The following October his father died.

Newman accepted the curacy of St. Clement's, which he retained until his appointment as public tutor of Oriel in 1826. He was ordained as an Anglican priest May 29, 1825. He served as public examiner in classics in the B.A. degree for the university in 1827–28 and was given the vicarage of St. Mary's, the university church, in 1828. He served as the university select preacher (1831–32) and that same year relinquished his college tutorship.

When Richard Hurrell froude was elected to a fellowship at Oriel in March 1826, he and Newman became close friends. In 1832 Newman accompanied him on a Mediterranean cruise needed for Froude's health. Then, while traveling alone through Europe, Newman was beset by long and dangerous illness in Sicily. During his convalescence he made several trips to Catholic shrines and churches in Europe; it was on his return to England that he wrote his famous poem "Lead Kindly Light."

Oxford Movement. Shortly after his return (July 1833) to England the question of disestablishment of the Anglican Church was introduced before Parliament. Newman, Froude, John keble, and William palmer threw themselves into the task of writing tracts and dissents of the church. The following December the Tracts for the Times began to appear. Of these, there were eventually 90, of which 26 were written by Newman.

The Tractarian movement, with Newman at its head, evoked considerable criticism on the part of both the bishops and the priests of the Church of England. Hurrell Froude took as active a part in the movement as he was able, suffering as he was from tuberculosis, which forced him to live away from England. Froude died in the beginning of 1836, a serious loss to Newman, who depended on him for support in the oxford movement, as the Tractarian movement came to be called, as well as for his spiritual insights and warm friendship.

The next few years were a time of tremendous intellectual activity for Newman. He was engaged in writing the tracts as well as preparing the sermons he preached at St. Mary's, later published as the Parochial and Plain Sermons. In 1838 he became the editor of the British Critic, a magazine that was a platform for expression for those members of the Anglican Church who had Catholic sympathies. It was at this time too that Newman began his serious studies of the Fathers of the Church. Following his famous Tract 90, which was an attempt to interpret the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England in a Catholic sense, he was censured by the authorities of the University of Oxford as well as by 24 bishops of the Anglican communion. As a consequence, in 1841 Newman retired to Littlemore, part of the parish of St. Mary's. Having refurbished a small stable and several outhouses, in which he and several companions lived according to a daily rule of life, he began a life of prayer and fasting for the purpose of clarifying his opinions about the Church Catholic. In 1845 he wrote his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine and made the decision to become a member of the Roman Church. He was received into the Roman Catholic Church by Dominic barberi, an Italian Passionist, on Oct. 9, 1845, in the small private chapel at Littlemore. Many of the companions living with him in Littlemore became Catholics at the same time, but Keble, Pusey, and Newman's own family remained members of the Church of England.

As a Catholic. Newman and his convert companions left Littlemore in February 1846. They took up residence at the old Oscott College, renamed Maryvale by Newman. It was near the residence of Bp. Nicholas P. wiseman, who was then living at the new Oscott College not far from Maryvale. Wiseman took on the direction of the new community, and through his encouragement Newman decided to become a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. He and Ambrose St. John, one of his Littlemore companions, left England for the College of Propaganda in Rome in September 1846. There they had their first introduction to systematic Catholic theology, which lasted for about one year. Newman was ordained priest on Trinity Sunday 1847. He offered his first Mass on the Feast of Corpus Christi 1847.

Founding the Oratory. Before returning to England, with the encouragement of several of his Roman friends and of Pope Pius IX as well, Newman and his companions went to the Oratory of St. Philip Neri at Santa Croce to learn the rule and customs of the Oratory.

After returning to England on Christmas Eve 1847, Newman established the first Oratory in England at Birmingham the following February 2. His influence among the Catholics and recent Anglican converts was very great. He was joined in the Oratory by Frederick W. faber and other converts from the Church of England. After a falling out of no great consequence, Newman encouraged Faber to open an Oratory in London. This he did in May 1849, while Newman stayed behind to undertake the instruction of the factory workers of Birmingham.

Rome's restoration of the English hierarchy in 1850 gave rise to a wave of antipapal feeling among the members of the Church of England. The no-popery campaign was assisted indirectly by the return of Wiseman to England as the cardinal archbishop of Westminster, preceded by his famous but misunderstood pastoral letter From Out the Flaminian Gate. Newman wrote a number of letters of explanation to newspapers under the pen name Catholicus. The oratorians came under severe attack by the no-popery forces, perhaps because during this time a new house for the Birmingham Oratorians was under construction at Edgbaston. The Protestant Alliance fomented the antipopery campaign in England by providing a chapel for Giacinto Achilli, a married former Dominican priest, who came to London in 1850 after refusing to do penance for his scandalous behavior in the previous positions he occupied in Italy. He published a book, Dealings with the Inquisition, which was popular and widespread in the Anglican communion. In an article in the Dublin Review, Wiseman criticized Achilli and exposed a number of his previous sexual irregularities; he also encouraged Newman to make a more direct criticism in the sermons he was preaching in Birmingham (later gathered together as The Present Positions of Catholics in England ). With the support of the Protestant Alliance, Achilli brought a case of criminal libel against Newman. Convicted of libel in June 1852, Newman, through his lawyer, moved for a new trial. Although the move was not granted, the delay provided time for the public's temper to cool so that Newman was released after he paid a fine of £100 plus trial expenses amounting to approximately $60,000. The costs of the trial were borne by Newman's friends in England, Europe, and America. It was a moral victory for Newman.

An Irish University. Throughout this troublesome period Newman was developing his idea on the nature of education. He delivered a series of lectures on university education in London in 1852. They were delivered to fulfill a promise he had made in 1851 to Dr. P. cullen, Archbishop of Armagh, and later Cardinal Archbishop of Dublin, that he would accept the rectorship of a new Catholic university that Cullen was determined upon for Ireland. Disappointed over his failures to begin the new university in Ireland, he tendered his resignation to the Irish bishops. The university lectures that he had delivered in London six years earlier were amplified and completed during his stay in Ireland and were eventually published as his The Idea of a University.

Papal Authority. During his stay in Dublin there was also anxiety at home because of several differences of opinion that arose between the Oratories of London and Birmingham. Newman was accused of trying to dominate the London Oratory and thereby reduce its autonomy; his reputation suffered because of the disputes between himself and Faber. Faber became more and more identified with the ultramontane movement among English Catholics. Because of his criticism of Faber's handling of the London Oratory and of his peculiar, perhaps saccharine, attitude toward spirituality, Newman not only was accused of disapproving ultramontanism but was held suspect of disloyalty toward the prerogatives of the pope himself.

Partly as a theological conviction and partly by way of reaction to the antipopery movements in England, a number of Catholic intellectuals expressed the belief that the temporal power of the pope was essential to the constitution of the Church. There had been an increasing centralization of authority in both disciplinary and doctrinal matters in the person of the pope during the 19th century. In the 1850s there was a growing movement in favor of a strong formal declaration of papal infallibility. Although Newman did not publicize his grave reservations about the direction of this movement, he did refuse to participate in the demonstrations that were organized to support it.

Upon his return from Ireland in 1858 he was asked by the English hierarchy to take over the editorship of a Catholic periodical entitled The Rambler. Shortly after he assumed its editorship, he prepared an essay of his own entitled On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine. This essay was delated to Rome, and subsequently Newman had to resign from the editorship of the magazine. The matter was not finally cleared up, nor was Newman finally exonerated, until 1867.

In 1864 Charles Kingsley attacked the Roman clergy in general and Newman in particular, alleging that both held the view that truth has no value. Newman felt the attack totally unjustified and undertook a defense of himself and the Roman clergy. Writing in weekly installments for publication in a newspaper, Newman defended his own conversion in a series of essays later published together as the Apologia pro vita sua. It caught the public interest and reestablished Newman's significance and importance in the religious life of England. The entire work was completed in two months.

After his plans to found a Catholic center at Oxford failed, Newman set his mind to preparing a statement on the relationship between faith and reason to be valid not only for the intellectuals but for the common man as well. His thoughts on this crucial topic were finally published as The Grammar of Assent (1870). It was designed to justify the faith of the ordinary man who was often unable to formulate his faith for himself.

The year that the work appeared in print vatican council i was holding its sessions. There was a growing eagerness on the part of H. E. manning and W. G. ward, together with the ultramontane faction in England, to see the doctrine of papal infallibility defined in the strongest possible terms. Newman's position on papal infallibility was that, before being defined, such a doctrine should be given more time to mature. He asserted that he belived in papal infallibility from the day he became a Catholic and was never opposed to the definition of the doctrine as such, but felt the definition to be inopportune. He asserted, however, that should the Council adopt a definition, he would be the first to conform.

Newman was personally invited by pius ix to attend the sessions of the Council, but he asked to be excused. His request to be excused was misunderstood, but it was based on his desire to remain in the Oratory and to avoid the pomp necessary to such large ecclesiastical gatherings.

The result of the Council was a definition of infallibility in precisely the way that Newman had always believed it, and far less rigoristic than was desired by Manning and Ward. Subsequent to the definition there was enormous political criticism raised by conspicuous lay members of the Anglican church. William Ewart gladstone launched an aggressive attack against the dogma of infallibility as well as against the Catholic Church as a whole. It was felt that his criticism voiced the opinion of many members of the Church of England. Since Manning's defense of the dogma was unconvincing, Newman wrote one of his own, his famous Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, which was warmly received by both the Church of England and the Roman Church, and won the approval of Manning and Ward. A faulty translation was forwarded to Rome, however, and was misunderstood by Cardinal A. Franchi, who asked Manning to have Newman make some corrections. But Manning wrote Franchi a heated defense of Newman, which brought the two men together in friendship. After Manning's vote of confidence, Newman's prestige in Rome increased considerably.

Cardinalate. After suffering one of the most severe trials of his later years in the death of Ambrose St. John in 1875, Newman experienced one of his greatest vindications in 1879, when Bp. W. B. ullathorne informed him that the new pope, Leo XIII, wished to bestow on him the dignity of cardinal and would permit him to continue to live in his Oratory. Though Newman was then 78 and in precarious health, he made the trip to Rome to receive the honor. The previous year, 1878, his old college, Trinity of Oxford, had made him its first honorary fellow. He paid another visit to Oxford as a cardinal and preached in St. Aloysius Church there.

Newman continued to live at the Oratory in the simple manner to which he had become accustomed. He suffered an illness in 1888 and was weakened by several falls. He offered his last Mass on Christmas Day 1889. Until then he was alert and shared the community life with the other fathers of the Oratory. He presided over the close of the school term of 1890. Shortly thereafter he died quietly. The words engraved on his memorial stone were of his own choosing: Ex Umbris Et Imaginibus In Veritatem.

Doctrine

It is not easy to characterize any one of the principal doctrines that go to form the Newman corpus. The principal contribution of Newman to religious thought is his extraordinary ability to gather insights and express them in so complete a way that no aspect of them is left untouched. His thought is developmental. He was not schooled in the traditional scholastic method, nor was he attached to pure speculative reason, which, he often feared, had a tendency to outstrip the facts on which it exercised itself. His principal orientation from his earliest days was formed mainly by his daily reading of Sacred Scripture. Later in his career, especially in the Oxford days, he developed an intense interest in the Fathers of the Church. His doctrine reflects the scattered notices of doctrine that are characteristic of both Scripture and the Fathers. Whatever systematization they enjoy in his writings is due largely to the necessity of polemics or in rare cases to his truly unified and well-articulated theory of the development of doctrine. The doctrines discussed below have been selected as perhaps more characteristic of his thought than others upon which he has made observations, but which seem to be less central to his principal religious thought.

Scripture. Apart from Tract 85 (Holy Scripture in its Relation to the Catholic Creed ) and certain articles published in 1884, Newman's thoughts on Scripture are scattered throughout all his works. Two problems seemed to form the basis of his doctrine on Scripture: the inspiration of Scripture and its interpretation. Against the rejection of inspiration and inerrancy that characterized Anglican Scripture study after the time of A. P. Stanley and B. Jowett (1855) and the difficulties raised by the rapidly advancing positive sciences, Newman taught (at least in 1861–63) that the Scriptures were all inspired, as were their authors. In his writings at that time (collected by J. Seynaeve from the Birmingham Oratory archives and published in 1953 as Newman 1861–1863 Inspiration Papers ), he examined the documents of the magisterium, the internal scriptural evidence, and the testimony of the Fathers and theologians on scriptural inspiration and concluded (before Vatican Council I) that the books of Scripture are directly inspired but that there was no formal definition by the Church making their inspiration a dogma of faith. Subsequently he said that one is bound to believe in the inspiration of the sacred authors (Trent) and of the books themselves (Vatican I). For him, the Church's magisterium is the unique and infallible interpreter of the Bible. As a matter of fact, the gift of inspiration requires as its complement the gift of infallibility. Inspiration, however, pertained only to those sections dealing with faith and morals. There are some grounds for believing that there was a direct but implicit condemnation of Newman's view on this in Providentissimus Deus, but that Leo XIII refrained from mentioning his name out of respect for him.

Newman felt that the whole of Scripture, in all its parts (Vatican I), is inspired, but not all the elements in each of these parts (totaliter sed non tota ). Possibly obiter dicta were included in the books by the human author; these may not be inspired, according to Newman. The final interpretation of Scripture and its sense, however, must be left to the Church's magisterium. Two principles seem to dominate Newman's method of exegesis: the first is the conviction that Scripture is essentially a work of religion, not of science or history; the second is his "sacramental principle" based on the belief that all the works of God are one and that less important elements of these works (the visible world) are shadows, figures, types, signs, and promises of the more important elements (the invisible world). It may be in terms of this latter principle, as a matter of fact, that he interpreted the theory of instrumental causality in the exploration of his theory of inspiration, rather than in terms of the developed scholastic notion, which he may never have fully accepted or, perhaps, understood.

Newman taught the unity of the two Testaments and the progressive fulfillment of the Old through additional revelation finally to be completed by the New, resulting in a unity founded on Christ. He preferred the mystical or allegorical interpretation of the Alexandrian Fathers to the literal interpretation of Antioch, but later in his life he found it necessary more frequently to use criticoliterary methods. For him, Scripture may contain several senses, but the identification of them may not be left to the personal taste or intellectual disposition of the interpreter. He rejected polysemia, or metasemia, i.e., the theory that there may be a multiplicity of literal senses in a single text. Two scriptural senses are distinguishable in Newman's theory: the literal sense and the mystical sense. The latter, in turn, contains two other senses: the typical sense founded on the facts, events, and persons described, and the sensus plenior that belongs to the words themselves. Newman did not regard Scripture as a teaching instrument but rather as a standard of orthodoxy against which the catechesis of the teacher is compared and to which the apologist appeals for the proof of his doctrinal formulations.

Tradition. Newman's doctrine on tradition is developed within the theological context of the continuity of churches that he sees to exist between the pagan, Jewish, and Christian dispensations. There have been "revelations," at times to pagan poets as well as to Jewish Prophets, which are finally summed up in Christ. The initial revelations God made to mankind gradually became part of the deposit of faith and may be found within the structure of the Church Catholic. The Church is not always fully conscious of all the elements of its deposit of faith but is always under its influence by way of what might be called vacant vision. It is the vision the Church has of those aspects of its doctrine that are not completely formulated but yet exist within its life. The Christian revelation that found its summation in Christ is somewhat the same as but somewhat different from the general revelation that was given to mankind under both pagan and Jewish dispensations. Even amid the varieties of Christian traditions that now exist, it is possible to perceive the true tradition that was in existence at the beginning and still exists. The basic link that exists between the Christian and Jewish dispensation is the link of prophecy. Prophecy is uttered in the Old Testament and fulfilled in the New. The continuity between the Jewish dispensation and the Christian is so close that the one can be said to have become the other. Within the dispensations is a continuity of tradition.

Tradition is a variety of uniform custom. For Newman it is something silent but living. It is similar to a river before the rocks intercept it. There seems to be no definite shape or form given to the waters until the stream is intercepted by obstacles, at which time it comes to life. Tradition is a habit of opinion in the Church. It is something the Church reflects upon, masters, and expresses, depending on the emergency it faces. It is something that is necessarily unwritten. It is too much alive and too much part of the Church's very nature to be able to be committed entirely to writing. Tradition would seem, then, to be identified almost with the life of the church itself.

Types of Tradition. In the early Church it was unnecessary and even undesirable to formulate the elements of tradition into doctrines. As the ages of the Church followed each other, as the distance from apostolic times increased, and as the fervor and devotion of later times began to wane, there was need for a gradual and ever more sophisticated formulation of the belief of Christians. With the rise of heresies and attacks on the Church from both friends and enemies, an additional reason for the formulation of doctrine arose. It soon became necessary to develop a means of testing whether a given formulation of doctrine being spread among the Christian people was in fact part of the apostolic tradition. The test that applies to determine whether or not a given aspect of tradition is apostolic is the following: "Whatever doctrine the primitive ages unanimously attest, whether by consent of Fathers, or by Councils, or by the events of history, or by controversies, or in whatever way, whatever may fairly and reasonably be considered to be the universal belief of those ages, it is to be received as coming from the Apostles" (Via Media 1:50). For Newman there are two kinds of tradition: episcopal tradition and prophetical tradition. Episcopal tradition is the definite set of beliefs that have been passed on from bishop to bishop and have been called to the attention of each Christian. It is surrounded by a body of explanations of its meaning. On the other hand, prophetical tradition cannot be contained in a code or a treatise, but is rather a body of truth that pervades the entire Church like the atmosphere. Sometimes it is the same as episcopal tradition; other times it develops into legend or fable. It is partly written and partly unwritten, partly the interpretation and partly the supplement of Scripture (ibid. 1:249). The obligation to believe the content of the creed and tradition is wider than the development of the creed and tradition itself. The Christian's duty of obedience to the creed is far wider than the extension that can be given to the meaning of the creed.

True tradition is to be perceived not by purely historical methodology, since historical evidence reaches only part way in the determination of what the Church's doctrine is. It is not history that makes a person a Catholic, but rather the Church's dogmatic use of history in which the Catholic believes. The dogmatic use of history involves the use of Scripture, tradition, and the ecclesiastical sense. No doctrine can be disproved by history, but by the same token no doctrine can be proved simply by history. There is a standard of Catholic doctrine and it is to be found in the early Fathers of the Church. The ultimate test of whether or not a doctrine is apostolic is whether the early Fathers believed that it was part of the tradition of the Church in their own age. True tradition can be recognized if there is an unbroken line of testimony in its behalf from Father to Father. True tradition will be ancient tradition. The Church's use of history will show with regard to a true tradition that whenever the past ages have spoken at all they have spoken in witness to it. Tradition is not wholly identified with the creed or with Scripture but is the system of faith and ordinances each generation receives from the preceding one.

With regard to the existence of a body of doctrine separate and independent from the Scripture, i.e., the question of constitutive tradition, Newman's final belief was that there is a formulated creed that existed from the beginning apart from Scripture and that Scripture itself is part of a wider concept, which he finally came to call tradition. Scripture takes for granted certain sanctions, doctrines, and messages necessary for salvation that, if not found in Scripture, must be sought outside of it. Scripture by its structure and its own teaching presumes the existence of a tradition outside itself. Newman did not enter into the question of whether the truths that are contained outside Scripture are substantive additions or whether they are simply developments that come from the early Church's commenting on Scripture. He left open the question whether there are matters of faith contained in the extrascriptural deposit or simply matters of conduct or discipline. However, it does seem from the notes added to his published works, in the editing he did toward the end of his life, that throughout the major part of his writing career he had the belief that all revealed doctrine is contained in Scripture. It is clear from the autobiographical writings that Newman had read St. Robert bellarmine and had a clear notion of what theologians today call constitutive tradition. His final stance on the question of constitutive tradition was that there is a body of doctrine not contained in Scripture, not indeed opposed to it, but independent of it and separate from it.

Both the Church and tradition are considered by Newman to be interpreters of Scripture. Both tradition and Scripture, in turn, are interpreted by the infallible magisterium of the Church. Tradition, however, is not limited by Scripture or by the creed. It is wider than either, is developmental in nature, and requires an assent of faith that is coextensive with its entire developmental capacity.

There was at the beginning a definite lack of formulation of doctrine in the ante-Nicene Church. This is in no way an indication that the doctrines later formulated did not exist in the first four centuries, nor does it indicate that such doctrines were not part of the tradition or were not recognized as part of it. An explicable silence with regard to doctrine in the early Church is not an evidence either for or against the doctrine. Especially because of devices such as the Disciplina Arcani and the three modes of the Economy identified by Newman it is reasonable to expect that there would be a lack of formulation of doctrine in the early Church. The modes of the Economy according to Newman are as follows: (1) in some cases, concealing the truth when it could be done without deceit; (2) in some cases, stating the truth only partially; and (3) in some cases, representing it under the nearest form possible when an inquirer could not possibly understand it exactly. The Disciplina Arcani is an example of the first mode of the Economy; the answer that Christians believe in only one God to the question "Do Christians believe in the Trinity" would be an example of the second mode; and the representation of angels with wings would be an instance of the third Economical mode, designed to fit the context of the knowledge of a people to whom Christianity was preached for the first time.

Newman takes notice of certain cautions to be employed in interpreting the Fathers as sources of tradition. Complexity, with the attendant possibility of misunderstanding, follows from the very nature of the Church as king, prophet, and priest. Its simultaneous exercise of this threefold function is often confusing to the uninitiated. In addition to this, one should be aware that the Fathers often speak the truth in a context of their own age and culture; one should avoid the danger of confusing actual mistakes on the part of the Fathers in interpreting Scripture with their true traditionary teaching. Newman stresses the danger of oversystematizing tradition to the point where reason exceeds the positive evidence. Finally, he cautions against the danger of reading the words and thoughts of the expositors of tradition within the context of a later age.

Sources of Apostolic Tradition. According to Newman the several sources of apostolic tradition may be divided into negative and positive sources. As negative sources, Newman singles out heresies and the influence they have had on the formulation of doctrine. He points out that an attack on an aspect of the Church's life usually results in the formulation of a doctrinal statement to display the orthodox attitude. Silence is another negative source. It is the peculiar reticence of certain past times with regard to important doctrines. The reticence must be explained, often by a later formulation.

There are several positive sources of evidence mentioned in Newman's writings: the testimony of individuals, of theologians, and of the schools, the literary expression of an age, and the testimony of the Fathers, of the bishops of the Church, of the magisterium, and finally of the popes.

The diversity of sources of information concerning tradition led Newman, in his structured thinking on tradition, to formulate what he took to be the basis of the proof from tradition. The basis of any proof from tradition, however, must be that the early Church thought that such a thing was correct, and the early Church must have known (Discussions and Arguments 149). The certitude possible from a study of tradition is nonhistorical certitude. One must not expect irrefragable proof for all the points of doctrine now existing in the Church, since many of these were formulated only gradually.

In the attempt to implement such a proof, Newman formulated the argument from convergence of evidence. This argument is based partly on Butler's theory of analogy. There is a significant original contribution made by Newman based in part on Butler and in part on the rule of Vincent of Lérins: Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum est. Although it is impossible in practice to apply the rule of Vincent of Lérins absolutely, it is possible to observe a center toward which a number of independent pieces of information gravitate. It is inconceivable that this center to which they converge could be error; it must be truth. There is a metaphysical element in the argument from convergence of evidence that transcends the elements of the argument itself. Whereas the final certitude that may be arrived at from an array of testimony is moral-historical, the convergence of independent testimonies introduces a metaphysical element into the proof. Whereas moral certitude may be gained from the facts of the case, the convergence of the facts must be explained on a metaphysical basis that is wider than the historical evidence alone.

Nature of Belief. Newman's doctrine on how Christians give reasonable belief to the doctrines of Scripture and tradition is to be found partly in the Oxford University Sermons and fully developed in The Grammar of Assent. The context within which his theory of belief was articulated was the problem raised for the large numbers of uneducated Christians, who give their assent to the doctrines of Christianity, by the theory enunciated by John Locke that the real lover of truth will not admit any proposition with greater assurance than will be warranted by the logical proofs on which it is built. Newman recognized that in practice the vast majority of Christians do not base their assurance of faith on a well-reasoned body of logical propositions or proofs. The question he asked was how the assent of faith that characterizes these Christians is a rational and therefore reasonable act of faith.

Newman gathered the factors involved in the solution to this question from a close analysis of the mental acts involved in holding propositions of any kind, including religious. He described these acts as three: doubt, which is interrogative in form and asks a question; inference, which is conclusionary in form and conditional since it rests on premises; and assent, which is assertive in form and is categorical, since it implies the absence of conditional premises. He further distinguished between notional and real assent. Notional assent is given to propositions that are abstract and general and contain terms that refer to things that do not exist as such. Real assent, on the other hand, is given to propositions that are made up of singular nouns and of terms that stand for things that are external to man. Real assent is more vivid and forceful than notional. Notional assent is given to propositions of profession, credence, opinion, presumption, or speculation. Notional assent contemplates its own creations instead of really existing extramental realities. With regard to giving assent to dogmas, a real assent given to them results in an act of religion; a notional assent given to them results in a theological act. Every religious man is to a certain extent a theologian, and no theology can exist without the presence of religion.

The key to the understanding of Newman's theory of belief is the distinction he made between the acts of assent and of inference. Inference is conditional and is based on conditional verification. Assent, on the other hand, is to some degree independent of inference. The strength or validity of the act of assent does not depend directly on the strength or validity of the conditional inferences that precede it. This distinction establishes the possibility of a strict assent to a proposition that is not inferentially verified by correspondingly strong inferences. Assent is either simple, when it is exercised unconsciously, or complex, when it is made conscious and arrived at deliberately. Both forms, however, are to some degree independent of the inferences that precede them.

Inference deals always with comparisons of propositions so that the conclusions drawn are abstract and can be applied to concrete matters only with probability, not with certain proof. Assent, however, is unconditional and is applied unconditionally to concrete reality. The question arises how it is possible to pass from inference to assent. In this Newman depended heavily on Bp. J. butler's theory of analogy. From it he established an argument that is somewhat different from Butler's and transcends iṭ the argument from the accumulation of probabilities that are each independent of the other and perhaps too tenuous to lead to assent separately or perhaps too subtle and circuitous to be able to be converted into syllogisms or too numerous and various for such a conversion even though it is possible to convert them. It is the unconscious working together of the various parts of a mosaic gradually taking form before one's mental eye, rather than the strict Aristotelian logical deduction characteristic of other epistemological approaches to the problem of assent. Drawing conclusions from such probabilities and giving the assent of belief to the pervading conclusion contained within them, but never consciously formulated, requires the operation of a special sense that Newman called the illative sense. It is by means of this illative sense that the ordinary uneducated man can have a real certitude of the fundamental truths of religion without demonstrative proofs. To prove that the doctrines to which Christians give assent are part of the authentic tradition of the apostolic age, it must be shown that current Christian doctrines have developed from the apostolic age in such a way that they are identical even though they have undergone change.

During his Anglican years Newman was eager to establish the identity between the Anglican communion and the Church of the first four centuries. To do this he undertook a serious historical study of the Fathers. At the time of his conversion in 1845, he was in the final page proofs of An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. It was an attempt to explain both the fact of change in the Church and its direction as well, with the result that the Anglican Church could be identified with the ante-Nicene Church. It led Newman to quite an opposite conclusion, however: that the Anglican Church was not the same as the Church of the first four centuries, but that the Roman Church was. The Essay is divided into two parts, the first having to do with doctrinal developments in themselves, and the second with doctrinal developments relative to doctrinal corruptions. Newman's theory of the development of doctrine is based on his belief that it is characteristic of an important and vital idea to live in the mind that has received it and to become an active principle that leads to a number of self-reflections and applications of the idea to other ideas as they develop. He listed five kinds of developmenṭ political, logical, historical, ethical, and metaphysical. A Christian idea is no less an idea because it is Christian. There is, accordingly, an antecedent argument in favor of the development of Christian ideas and therefore of Christian doctrine. There is need for an infallible guide to determine the direction of the development, but development there must be.

The essential characteristics of true development of a doctrine within Christianity are the following: preservation of type, continuity of principles, power of assimilation, logical sequence, anticipation of its final configuration, conservative action on its past, and lasting vigor.

The significance of Newman's doctrine of development cannot be overemphasized in modern theology. Attempts at formulating theories of development of doctrine in the 20th century draw heavily on Newman's original insights. His theories on tradition and the nature of belief underlie much modern speculation in fundamental dogmatic theology. The religious insights of Newman have never been exploited fully. In the 20th century it has become possible, because of the availability of his published writings and the 20,000 or more letters he wrote during his life, to come to a better understanding of his religious genius and the meaning it has for the present time.

Bibliography: Collected Works, 25 v. (New York 1890–1927); The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. c. s. dessain (New York 1961–); Autobiographical Writings, ed. h. tristram (New York 1957). g. biemer, Überlieferung und Offenbarung: Die Lehre von der Tradition nach J. H. Newman (Freiburg 1961). a. j. boekraad and h. tristram, The Argument from Conscience to the Existence of God according to J. H. Newman (Louvain 1961). l. bouyer, Newman, His Life and Spirituality, tr. j. l. may (New York 1958). o. chadwick, From Bossuet to Newman: The Idea of Doctrinal Development (Cambridge, Eng. 1957). c. dawson, The Spirit of the Oxford Movement (New York 1933). r. a. dibble, John Henry Newman: The Concept of Infallible Doctrinal Authority (Washington 1955). h. fries, Die Religionsphilosophie Newmans (Stuttgart 1948). j. guitton, La Philosophie de Newman (Paris 1933). f. kaiser, The Concept of Conscience according to J. H. Newman (Washington 1958). m. nÉdoncelle, La Philosophie religieuse de J. H. Newman (Strasbourg 1946). j. seynaeve, Cardinal Newman's Doctrine on Holy Scripture (Louvain 1953); Dictionnaire de la Bible, ed. l. pirot, et al. (Paris 1928–) 6:427–474. m. trevor, Newman: The Pillar of the Cloud (Garden City, N.Y. 1962); Newman: Light in Winter (Garden City, N.Y. 1963). j. h. walgrave, Newman the Theologian, tr. a. v. littledale (New York 1960). w. p. ward, The Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman (New York 1912). t. merrigan, Clear Heads and Holy Hearts: The Religious and Theological Ideal of John Henry Newman (Louvain 1991). e. sullivan, Things Old and New: An Ecumenical Reflection on the Theology of John Henry Newman (Boston 1993). g. magill, Discourse and Context : An Interdisciplinary Study of John Henry Newman (Carbondale, IL 1993). i. t. ker, Healing the Wound of Humanity: The Spirituality of John Henry Newman (London 1993). j. r. griffin, A Historical Commentary on the Major Catholic Works of Cardinal Newman (New York 1993). j. r. page, What Will Dr Newman Do: John Henry Newman and Papal Infallibility, 1865–1875 (Collegeville, Minn. 1994). f. mcgrath, John Henry Newman : Universal Revelation (Macon, Ga. 1997). i. t. ker, ed. Newman and Conversion (Notre Dame, Ind. 1997). s. l. jaki, Newman's Challenge (Grand Rapids, Mich. 2000).

[j. p. whalen]

Literary Influence

Newman exercised a profound influence on the literature of the English-speaking world and on the whole Western literary community. His works not only survive; they are also actively studied. The collected edition has been reprinted often. Important single works, such as The Idea of a University, Apologia pro vita sua, and The Grammar of Assent, are available in numerous editions in many languages. New collections of his letters, memorabilia, diaries, and notes continue to appear regularly. Learned articles, monographs, and full-length studies of Newman's views on theology, philosophy, church history, education, and literature testify also to the quality of enduring vitality found in his writings.

Newman has been classified chiefly as a didactic or apologetic writer, and his specifically literary achievement is often described as the fashioning of a style perfectly suited to his rhetorical intentions. Recently, however, literary scholars have studied the aesthetic elements of the structure and style of his books and of individual sermons, essays, and poems. Thus, in the symposium Newman's Apologia: A Classic Reconsidered (New York 1964), it was pointed out that the Apologia is more than an objective history of Newman's religious opinions and a reasoned argument supporting the validity of his doctrinal claims. It is also, and just as importantly, a spiritual autobiography marked by aesthetic distance, dramatic structure, a delicate handling of perspective and tone. In short, in his Apologia Newman also creates an image of a soul working out its eternal destiny. Similar studies of The Idea of a University and of individual sermons such as "The Second Spring" emphasize the point that Newman's art is, in Dwight Culler's phrase, "a mediatorial form," that is, one that infuses imagination and intuition into the world of fact and reason.

Poetry and the Novel. Newman's reputation as a writer of expository prose has overshadowed his valuable contributions to poetry, the novel, and literary theory. Despite their Victorian accent, his verses and hymns, particularly "Lead Kindly Light," still appeal to the meditative reader. His long poem, The Dream of Gerontius (1866), is greatly admired for its fervor and sonority as well as for the accuracy with which it expresses the Christian theology of death. Newman's novels were closely related to the experiences of his own conversion. In Loss and Gain (1848) Charles Reding, in part at least the alter ego of the author, is shown in his pilgrimage toward the Catholic Church. Here, Newman's sensitive rendering of the Oxonian atmosphere, his unerringly accurate psychological observation, his power of dramatizing religious argument, have earned for him the distinction "of being the only eminent Victorian who could write a confessional novel of spiritual autobiography in high spirits as well as high seriousness" (Margaret Maison, The Victorian Vision, 1961). Callista (1856), a historical fiction set in 3rd-century North Africa, also explores the psychology of conversion, but with special attention to the pagan milieu. Alfred Duggan characterized Callista as "unique, like the mind that composed iṭ unique, astringent, remorseless, unforgettable," a view that sums up the book's 20th-century reputation. In both novels aspects of Newman's religious experiences that were later to be revealed more directly in the Apologia are encountered.

Theory of Literature. Newman's writings on literature, most of them delivered as lectures contained in The Idea of a University (3rd edition), offer pregnant theories about literary style and literary history in the plan of a liberal education. "Thought and speech are inseparable from each other," he wrote. "Matter and expression are parts of one: style is a thinking out into language….The style really cannot be abstracted from the sense… ." He regarded literature as the book of man, just as science was the book of nature, and theology the book of God. Thus for Newman the study of literature was a study of natural man in his historical processes. In making this point Newman redirected Catholic higher education toward a humanistic rather than utilitarian path.

Newman's greatest influence, however, is the action of his own personality on readers and, particularly, on writers. H. Belloc and G. K. Chesterton, Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh, Ronald Knox and Christopher Dawson, each according to his temperament, has experienced the shock of Newman's commitments and reflected the light of his intuitions.

Bibliography: r. a. colby, "The Poetical Structure of Newman's Apologia pro vita sua, " Journal of Religion 33 (1953) 47–57. c. f. harrold, John Henry Newman: An Expository and Critical Study of His Mind, Thought and Art (London 1945) 440–452. j. j. reilly, Newman as a Man of Letters (New York 1925). a. s. ryan, "Newman's Conception of Literature" in Critical Studies in Arnold, Emerson and Newman (U. of Iowa Humanistic Studies VI, No. 1; Iowa City 1942). f. tardivel, La Personalité littéraire de Newman (Paris 1937). f. kerr and d. nicholls, eds., John Henry Newman: Reason, Rhetoric and Romanticism (Carbondale, IL 1991) t. r. wright, "Newman on Literature: 'Thinking out into Language'," Literature and Theology 5 (1991) 181–197. e. block, ed. Critical Essays on John Henry Newman (Victoria, British Columbia 1992). m. sundermeier and r. churchill, eds., The Literary and Educational Effects of the Thought of John Henry Newman (Lewiston, NY 1995).

[f. x. connolly]

NEWMAN, JOHN HENRY

NEWMAN, JOHN HENRY (1801–1890), Anglican and Roman Catholic controversialist and cardinal.

Life and Works

Newman was born in London. He was raised an Anglican, but in 1816, under evangelical influence, he underwent a profound religious experience that transformed his understanding of his faith. The same year he entered Trinity College, Oxford, and in 1822 was elected a fellow of Oriel College. There, formative contacts with the so-called Noetics Edward Hawkins and Richard Whately, who freely applied logic to traditional Christian doctrines, introduced him to rationalist analysis of religious concerns. After 1828 illness, bereavement, and personal friendships with Richard Hurrell Froude, John Keble, and Edward Bouverie Pusey drew him toward the high church tradition. At this time he began to read the documents of the patristic church; this interest led to the publication of The Arians of the Fourth Century, Their Doctrine, Temper and Conduct as Exhibited in the Councils of the Church (1833) and The Church of the Fathers (1833–1836).

Newman was ordained an Anglican priest in 1825 and was appointed vicar of the university church Saint Mary the Virgin, where he gained fame as a preacher. His sermons there were collected in Parochial and Plain Sermons (8 vols., 1834–1843), Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford on Faith and Reason, 1826–1843 (1843), and Sermons Bearing on Subjects of the Day (1843).

In 1833 Newman traveled to the Mediterranean. He fell ill in Sicily, and there experienced a special vocation, which he expressed in the words "I have a work to do in England."

In September 1833, with publication of the first Tract for the Times, Newman launched the Oxford Movement, a high church movement within Anglicanism that emphasized Catholic elements in the Church of England and continuity with the early church. Editor of the series, he contributed twenty-nine tracts. During this period, he also wrote two important works: Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church Viewed Relatively to Romanism and Popular Protestantism (1837), which argued for the via media, or foundational position, of the Church of England as true representative of the unbroken tradition of the Fathers; and a theological masterpiece, Lectures on Justification (1838). In 1841 his Tract 90, in which he tried to give a Catholic interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles, touched off national alarm and was censured by the university and condemned by twenty-four Anglican bishops.

Research in patristics, together with his philosophy of development, at last led Newman to conclude that his via media existed only on paper and that the Anglican church was in fact schismatic. In 1841 he retired to Littlemore, near Oxford; he resigned the care of Saint Mary's in 1843 and his Oriel fellowship in 1845. That year he confirmed his position in An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. In the same year he converted to Roman Catholicism. After study at the College of Propaganda Fide in Rome, Newman was ordained a Catholic priest and entered the Congregation of the Oratory. Upon his return to England he founded an oratory at London and another at Birmingham, which in 1852 was transferred to nearby Edgbaston. There Newman remained until his death.

As a Catholic preacher and controversialist Newman wrote a novel, Loss and Gain, the Story of a Convert (1848); two collections of talks, Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations (1848) and Lectures on Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Submitting to the Catholic Church (1850); and a masterpiece of defensive controversy, Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England (1851), which occasioned the Achilli trial in which Newman was prosecuted for libel. In 1851 he accepted the rectorship of the Catholic University of Dublin, but he resigned in 1859, believing that he had been unsuccessful in attaining his goals. His university publications, however, are among the best achievements of English prose: Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University Education (1852) and Lectures and Essays on University Subjects (1859), later published as Idea of a University and Office and Work of Universities. Callista, a Sketch of the Third Century (1855) reflects his own path from conscience to steadfast Christian faith.

In 1859 Newman founded the Oratory School and accepted the editorship of The Rambler, a magazine opposed by the Catholic bishops, in which Catholic laity and converts independently judged ecclesiastical affairs. Newman, who sympathized with the cause of lay emancipation and education, contributed to the magazine his famous article "On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine." This article was delated to Rome and, at the request of his bishop, Newman resigned the editorship in October 1859. He lived under the cloud of suspicion until his Apologia pro vita sua (1864), written in response to attacks by Charles Kingsley, at once won over public opinion. Henceforth Newman actually became the main authority in Catholic public affairs. Roman mistrust, manipulated by Cardinal Henry Manning, defeated his last attempt to found a Catholic college at Oxford in 1865, but Ambrose St. John, an Oratorian and his dearest friend, in 1867 cleared him of suspicion in Rome. Newman answered E. B. Pusey's criticism of the Roman Catholic cult of Mary in his Letter to Rev. E. B. Pusey on his Recent Eirenicon (1866).

Although invited, Newman refused to assist at the First Vatican Council. He believed in the pope's infallibility but strongly opposed its definition as unripe and inopportune. But when former prime minister William Gladstone attacked Catholics for being unable to remain loyal British subjects, Newman countered by giving, on solid theological grounds, the now generally accepted minimizing interpretation of papal infallibility in his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk on Occasion of Mr. Gladstone's Recent Expostulation (1875).

Newman revealed his deepest Catholic feelings in his longest poem, The Dream of Gerontius (1865), and presented his basic philosophical ideas on the working of the human mind in his Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (1870). His last important publication was the "Preface to the Via Media" (1877), the introduction to a new edition of his main Anglican controversial writings. In 1877 he was elected the first honorary fellow of Trinity College. Pope Leo XIII created him cardinal deacon of San Giorgio in Velabro in 1879. He died on August 11, 1890, and was buried at Rednal.

Thought

Newman's thought reflects the nature and development of his individual personality. An introverted and self-conscious man, he engaged in constant self-analysis, assimilating scholarship and personal experience to germinate the religious and philosophical insights that characterize his work. Hence his writings manifest those opposing forces and tendencies that made his mind "from opposition grow"—reason versus imagination, love of detail versus comprehensiveness, doubt versus certitude, faith versus sight, reserve versus frankness, emotionalism versus self-control, strategy versus honesty. These conflicting tendencies gave rise to a false image of Newman as sentimental, resentful, paradoxical, mysterious, and even deceitful, but in their integration they yield a thinker of greater complexity and genius, whose worldview combines the consistency of a logical system with the organic wholeness and beauty proper to a work of poetic imagination. This view was grounded in two basic religious experiences: that of conscience as the inner witness of God, and that of the material world's merely relative reality, which directs the soul to communication with an invisible world.

Conscience

For Newman, conscience is an original and irreducible "moral sense"; by it, without logical medium, people instinctively discriminate the morally good and bad in concrete situations. Its essential characteristic, through which it differs from all other inner spiritual senses (such as the sense of beauty), is an adjoined yet distinct "sense of duty" grasping the unconditional demand of doing the good and avoiding the evil. As such, conscience bears witness to the inner presence of an omniscient and almighty master. But it must develop from an implicit and confused feeling to an explicit and distinct apprehension and assent. Conscience may be silenced, although never extinguished, through infidelity and thoughtlessness. It grows in clarity and scope through faithfulness and attention, so that the inner voice of nature becomes recognized beyond doubt as an echo of the voice of God.

Sacramentality

At first doubting the reality of the exterior material world, Newman came to recognize its genuine reality as an instrumental one. The material world is the medium of communication between the soul and the invisible world of God and his heavenly court. Hence, Newman believed that God revealed himself in and through the visible historical world and that people communicate with him through sacramental actions.

First principles

Three principles derive from the experience of conscience and of world as sacramental medium. These ruled Newman's thought and judgment in all matters.

The principle of providence

All things and events—visible and invisible, natural and historical—are part of an almighty creator's universal providence. All are directed to one end: the manifestation of the creator's justice (reflected in the painful experiences of a bad conscience) and of his goodness (reflected in the joyful experiences of a good conscience). Newman's concept of God, stressing providence, has as counterpart his concept of the universe as a process of constant development. To be, to live, is to develop.

The principle of nature

God governs all things in conformity with their nature. Hence the supreme universal rule and method in the attempts to know the truth and to act rightly and adequately is to consider "the nature of the things" and to submit to what is required by "the nature of the case."

The principle of analogy

The universe as governed by God is a unity of extreme diversity. Unity implies conformity of part to part; diversity implies degrees of similarity. Hence Newman generally justifies a judicious use of argument from analogy and fittingness.

Epistemology

In accordance with the principle of nature, Newman's epistemology rests on a descriptive analysis of the nature of the mind and its actual operational patterns. The logic of the human mind cannot be established a priori ; rather, mind must be scrutinized in all its complexity; one must ask how the mind generally proceeds in its quest for truth, and how it actually attains to certitude. The mind is spontaneously, instinctively, aware of an objective world of particular things, persons, and events. It apprehends the meaning of propositions about them and assents to these propositions if it feels them to rest upon convincing grounds. Inference is this movement of mind from premise to con-clusion.

Assent is real (termed also "imaginative") when the meaning grasped strikes the imagination as a concrete reality, rousing the individual's powers of affection and action. Assent is notional when the meaning grasped conveys to the intellect alone combinations of general concepts. These two aspects may and should go together, giving the mind depth and holding power combined with breadth and clarity of view. Inference differs from assent in that inference is by its nature conditional and admits of degrees, whereas assent is by its nature unconditional and does not admit of degrees.

Inference is either formal or informal. Formal inference is deduction from general principles and can neither prove its first principles nor reach conclusions regarding concrete states of affairs. This gap must be bridged by informal inference, at its most spontaneous and implicit termed "natural" inference. An individual mind, at the convergence of independent probabilities, indications, and clues—often too numerous and too subtle to be exhaustively analyzable—grasps the concrete pattern of evidence and its conclusion per modum unius, by an act of intuitive comprehensive imagination. Newman calls this mental power the "illative sense." It is a power of judgment, in part a gift of nature, in part the result of experience and exercise. As a power of concrete, and not merely notional, judgment, it may depend upon mastery in a specific field of endeavor.

Newman's account of inference stresses its status as mental attitude; it is an attitude toward the conclusion as following from its premises. Likewise, Newman contrasts certitude with certainty. Certainty pertains to propositions in their formal interrelation; certitude pertains to the living mind in exercise of the illative sense.

Theology and the sciences

Reality is one, but complex. The conceptual knowledge of reality is one in its ultimate aim, but by virtue of its abstractive nature, knowledge necessarily divides into an increasing number of sciences treating various parts and aspects of the whole. The intellect can neither take in the whole nor adequately reconstruct it by addition and composition of all the available sciences. Each science has its own principles and methods imposed by the nature of the subject matter. Hence a certain amount of disagreement between scientific views is inevitable. The clash between the exact sciences and theological science may be expected. Scientists will easily imagine that their conclusions are irreconcilable with faith, for the experiences with which theology starts are rather elusive, whereas the data of the exact sciences are clearer and more compelling; moreover, the prevailing methods of the exact sciences are inductive, whereas those of theology are deductive.

As truth is one, the very evolution of scientific investigation may be expected to solve the difficulties that it raises. Hence, total freedom, tolerance, dialogue, mutual esteem, and understanding should govern the relationship between all the sciences in their living coexistence.

Faith

For Newman, faith is both objective and subjective. As objective, faith is a doctrinal system of revealed truths, articulated in plain human language, inadequate yet true. This is the principle of dogma, which Newman sternly opposed to all forms of religious or theological liberalism. It is contained in scripture, gradually clarified in the life of the church under the guidance of divine providence (the Holy Spirit), in the course of history confirmed, at least in its essentials, by its magisterium, and proposed as a condition of ecclesiastical membership by its present authority. In the end, Newman saw this Catholic position as being in the nature of a church called to survive substantially in the flux of historical experience.

As subjective, faith is acceptance of dogma combined with a personal surrender to the realities signified by dogma, that is, real apprehension and assent. It is a gift of God's "illuminating grace," yet justified by reason.

Influence

During his years in the Anglican church, Newman was the most influential leader of the Oxford Movement, defining the position of Anglo-Catholicism in the Church of England and deepening the life of devotion through his sermons. In the Roman Catholic church his controversial writings, especially his Apologia, fostered among the British people a better knowledge of and higher esteem for his religion and his coreligionists. Moreover, his minimizing theological attitude in matters of faith and his critical open-mindedness with regard to difficulties and disagreements prepared that spirit of dialogue and conciliation in the Roman Catholic church that characterizes so much of contemporary theological thought and is believed to have strongly influenced the spirit of the Second Vatican Council.

Perhaps Newman's most important influence is that which his ideas increasingly exercise on contemporary thought, especially through his pioneering investigations into the nature and workings of the human mind in the individual (Grammar of Assent ) and in society (Development of Christian Doctrine ). Further, his Idea of a University has become a classic in intellectual education and the philosophy of the sciences. In this last regard it is widely known that Newman influenced Alfred North Whitehead.

Bibliography

A complete bibliography of works by Newman and concerning him is available in Newman-Studien, a serial publication of the Internationales Cardinal-Newman-Kuratorium (Nuremberg, 1948–). For works on Newman, see Vincent F. Blehl's John Henry Newman: A Bibliographical Catalogue of His Writings (Charlottesville, Va., 1978). John R. Griffin's Newman: A Bibliography of Secondary Studies (Fort Royal, Va., 1980) is an almost complete list of publications on Newman, comprising more than 2,500 entries. The main posthumous documents are John Henry Newman: Autobiographical Writings, edited by Henry Tristam (New York, 1957); The Philosophical Notebook of John Henry Newman, 2 vols., edited by Edward J. Sillem (New York, 1970); The Theological Papers of John Henry Newman: On Faith and Certainty, edited by Hugo M. de Achaval and J. Derek Holmes (Oxford, 1976); and The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, 26 vols., edited by Thomas Gornall (London, 1973–). The best comprehensive study is Henry Tristam and F. Bacchus's "Newman," in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique (Paris, 1903–1950). The most complete biography, though lacking quotations of sources, is Meriol Trevor's Newman: Light in Winter, 2 vols. (New York, 1962).

J. H. Walgrave (1987)

John Henry Newman

The English cardinal and theologian John Henry Newman (1801-1890) was a leading figure in the Oxford movement. After his conversion to Rome, his qualities of mind and literary style won him a position of respect among English intellectuals and theologians.

John Henry Newman was born in London on Feb. 21, 1801. His father was a banker of Evangelical religious beliefs. At the age of 15 Newman experienced a religious "conversion" that was the foundation of his lifelong intense faith in God. In 1816 he matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford, from which he graduated in 1821. Having determined upon taking Holy Orders, he applied for a fellowship at Oriel College, to which he was elected in 1822. There Newman came under the influence of Richard Whately and the "Oriel Noetics," who taught a strict logical approach to religious faith. To them he was indebted for his skill in analysis and argument. In 1824 he was ordained and became curate of St. Clement's, Oxford. In 1826 Newman was appointed public tutor of Oriel and 2 years later became vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford. During this time he had separated from the Noetics in matters of doctrine and had come under the Anglo-Catholic influence of Hurrell Froude and John Keble. He had also begun his studies in the history and doctrine of the early Church. In 1832 Newman resigned his office and went on a tour of the Mediterranean with Froude. During the trip he wrote most of the Lyra apostolica and the hymn "Lead, Kindly Light."

Oxford Movement

Newman returned to England in July 1833. On July 14 Keble preached at Oxford his famous sermon "National Apostasy" against the Whigs who were seeking to dis-establish the Church. This sermon is regarded as the inauguration of the Oxford movement. Its organization dates from a meeting later that month of Froude and others at the Hadleigh vicarage of H.J. Rose, editor of the British Magazine. They determined to initiate a fight for the doctrine of apostolic succession and for the integrity of the Prayer Book. Several weeks later Newman independently began to publish his Tracts for the Times, which gave to the movement the alternate name of tractarianism.

The aims of the Oxford movement were to combat the influence of the state over the Church and to establish a foundation of doctrine for the Church of England by teaching its descent from the early Church and its Catholic traditions. Newman complemented the tracts with his celebrated Sunday afternoon sermons delivered in St. Mary's, which attracted many followers and admirers.

Newman's influence was at its height by the end of the 1830s, though opposition was gathering to the "Romish" tendencies of the movement. However, he himself was at first firmly committed to the notion of the Anglican Church as a via media—in the positive sense of keeping a path of truth between erroneous extremes. But, gradually, by 1839 he had begun to doubt the strength of the Anglican position, noting a resemblance between Anglicanism and certain heresies of the early Church. Newman's Tract XC, published in 1841, showed the tide of his feelings. In order to "test the tenability of all Catholic doctrine within the Church of England," he examined the Thirty-nine Articles to show that they had been directed not against the Roman Catholic position but only against popular errors and exaggeration. The tract aroused a storm of controversy and the bishop of Oxford ordered the series suspended.

Conversion to Rome

In 1842 Newman retired to his dependent chapel at Littlemore and spent the following 3 years in prayer and study. During this time he wrote his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, which expounded the principle by which he reconciled himself to later accretions in the Roman creed. In 1843 he formally recanted all his criticism of the Roman Catholic Church and resigned the living of St. Mary's. Two years later he was received into the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1846 Newman went to Rome and was ordained a priest. He joined the Oratorian order, and he returned to England to found the Oratory at Edgbaston near Birmingham, and later the London Oratory. The next years were difficult for him as he could find no secure position, being distrusted by English Protestants and Roman Catholics alike. He delivered a brilliant series of lectures, The Idea of a University, setting forth his humane ideas of education.

The "Apologia"

In 1864 Newman's opportunity for self-justification arrived. His veracity had been incidentally slighted in an article by Charles Kingsley in Macmillan's Magazine. In reply Newman wrote the Apologia pro vita sua, an autobiographical account of his religious development and opinions. The directness and honesty of the work vindicated the author's integrity and restored him to public favor. In 1870 he published The Grammar of Assent, in which he argued the psychological validity of faith against the rational approach to religious truth. In 1878 Newman was made an honorary fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, and the following year he was created a cardinal. He died, much loved and revered, on Aug. 11, 1890.

Further Reading

The standard biographical works are Anne Mozely, ed., Letters and Correspondence of John Henry Newman during His Life in the English Church, with a Brief Autobiography (2 vols., 1891), and Wilfrid Ward, The Life of John Henry, Cardinal Newman (2 vols., 1912). To these may be added Meriol Trevor, Newman: Light in Winter (1962) and Newman: The Pillar of the Cloud (1962). The best introduction to Newman's work as a whole is Charles F. Harrold, John Henry Newman: An Expository and Critical Study of His Mind, Thought, and Art (1945). An excellent introduction to Newman's theory of education is A. Dwight Culler, The Imperial Intellect (1955).

On the Oxford movement the standard account is R. W. Church, The Oxford Movement: Twelve Years, 1833-1845 (1891). Another helpful study is Geoffrey Faber, Oxford Apostles (1933; repr. 1954). For the period's intellectual background see Walter Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind 1830-1870 (1957; repr. 1963), and Basil Willey, Nineteenth Century Studies (1949; repr. 1964).

Additional Sources

Dessain, Charles Stephen., John Henry Newman, Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.

Elwood, J. Murray., Kindly light: the spiritual vision of John Henry Newman, Notre Dame, Ind.: Ave Maria Press, 1979.

Giese, Vincent J., John Henry Newman: heart to heart, New Rochelle, NY: New City Press, 1993.

Gilley, Sheridan., Newman and his age, Westminster, Md.: Christian Classics, 1991.

Henderson, Heather, The Victorian self: autobiography and Biblical narrative, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989.

Hutton, Richard Holt, Cardinal Newman, New York: AMS Press, 1977.

Ker, I. T. (Ian Turnbull), John Henry Newman: a biography, Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Martin, Brian., John Henry Newman, his life and work, London: Chatto & Windus, 1982.

Sugg, Joyce., A saint for Birmingham?, London: Catholic Truth Society, 1978.

Trevor, Meriol., Newman's journey, Huntington, Ind.: Our Sunday Visitor, 1985.

John Henry, Cardinal Newman, Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1976. □

NEWMAN, JOHN HENRY

NEWMAN, JOHN HENRY (1801–1890), British theologian, Victorian prose writer, Roman Catholic convert, and cardinal.

Born in London into a conventional Church of England family, John Henry Newman entered Trinity College, Oxford, in 1817, shortly after a conversion to evangelicalism. This conviction was eventually undermined by the liberal, rationalist atmosphere he encountered at Oriel College, where he was elected fellow in April 1822.

Newman took holy orders in the Church of England and in 1824 was ordained deacon. In 1825 he became a priest and was appointed curate at St. Clements, in east Oxford. Newman's religiously liberal tendencies dissipated by 1828 as his admiration attached to the works of the early church fathers. He became vicar of the university church of St. Mary's in 1828.

On 9 September 1833, Newman anonymously penned an article on the doctrine of the apostolic succession for Tracts of the Times, a theologically reformist periodical that he edited. His article was known as Tract 1 (Ad clerum), the first of twenty-four tracts he would contribute. Tractarianism, also known as the Oxford Movement, originated in 1833 under Newman's organizational and intellectual leadership as an informal High Church movement that stressed the ancient, Catholic elements in the English religious tradition and sought to return the Church of England to its seventeenth-century ideals. Newman assailed religious liberalism, defended the dogmatic authority of the church, criticized state interference in church affairs, and encouraged reticence and humility in the face of the divine mystery.

In March 1834 the first volume of Newman's Parochial and Plain Sermons was published. These sermons were almost as important to the Oxford Movement as the controversial Tracts, which were themselves bestsellers.

In his Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church (1837), Newman presented the English church as "reformed" but also Catholic, occupying a via media (middle way) between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism that better resembled primitive Christianity. By 1839, however, Newman began to see the Anglican via media as inconsistent and unreal.

On 27 February 1841 he published Tract 90, which aroused immediate controversy for its suggestion that the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England could bear a Catholic interpretation. Richard Bagot, bishop of Oxford, requested an end to the Tracts. Newman complied, but the condemnations issued by Anglican bishops against Tract 90 alienated him further from the Anglican Church.

In the summer of 1841, while translating the Arian Controversy in the work of St. Athanasius, Newman decided that doctrinal truth historically lay with the with Roman papacy.

Newman sent parts of his uncompleted "Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine" to the printers in late September 1845. In it, he claimed Catholicism as the only form of Christianity with a continual development guaranteed by authority. Modern Catholicism, unlike Protestantism, constituted for him the historical continuation of early Christianity.

On 9 October he was received into the Roman Catholic Church. He was ordained a Catholic priest on 30 May 1847 and in 1848 he helped to set up the Birmingham Oratory, a community of secular priests who combined pastoral duties with intellectual work.

In November 1851, Newman was appointed the president of a new Catholic university to be created in Ireland. In 1852 he delivered five of the Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University Education, which became the first half of The Idea of a University (1873). In these lectures Newman defended the idea of a liberal education in a sectarian institution and denied any inherent tensions between theology and science.

Newman opened the university on 3 November 1854 to about twenty students, but eventually found it impossible to be both provost of the Birmingham Oratory and rector of the ill-attended university. He resigned from the latter in 1857.

In 1864, Newman was challenged to defend the authenticity of his life as an Anglican. He explained his conversion to Protestants with a stirring autobiography, Apologia pro vita sua (A defense of his life, 1864). Its last chapter argued for the church's infallibility but was partly directed at catholic ultramontanes (exponents of centralized papal power), against whom he urged a moderate theology. The book became a bestseller, won broad critical praise, and secured Newman's financial stability for the first time since his conversion.

In 1870 he published an influential book of theology, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, which argued that faith can possess certainty when it arises from evidence that is only probable.

In 1879 Newman was made a cardinal by Pope Leo XIII (r. 1878–1903). On 11 August 1890 he died at the Birmingham Oratory. He was buried in the grave of his friend Ambrose St. John at the Oratory country house at Rednal, outside Birmingham.

See alsoCatholicism; Manning, Henry.

bibliography

Chadwick, Owen. Newman. Oxford, U.K., 1983.

Ker, Ian T. John Henry Newman: A Biography. Oxford, U.K., 1988.

Martin, Brian. John Henry Newman: His Life and Work. London, 1982.

Newsome, David. Convert Cardinals: John Henry Newman and Henry Edward Manning. London, 1993.

Turner, Frank M. John Henry Newman: The Challenge to Evangelical Religion. New Haven, Conn., 2002.

Stephen Vella

John Henry Newman

1801-1890

Cardinal

Sources

Early Years. Born into an upper-middle-class family in London in 1801, John Henry Newman was “converted” into evangelical Christianity in 1816. At that time he considered the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church to be heretical. The following year he entered Trinity College, Oxford, from which he graduated with honors in 1820. Remaining at Oxford, he became a fellow at Oriel College in 1822 and was ordained an Anglican priest in 1825. After serving as curate of St. Clement’s Church, Oxford, Newman becme vicar of St. Mary’s, the university church, in 1828. By this time he had jettisoned his youthful evangelical, low-church views for high-church Anglicanism.

From Anglican to Catholic. In 1833 Newman was among the first Anglican clergyman to join with John Keble (1792-1866) in launching the Oxford Movement, a renewal effort to revitalize the Church of England by restoring the historical practices of the early Christian Church. For the next eight years Newman served as editor of Tracts for the Times, writing several tracts in this series, including the last and most controversial, “Tract 90.” In it Newma challenged Anglican orthodoxy by providing a Roman Catholic interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles, the official statement of the doctrines of the Church of England. Following the controversy surrounding this publication, Newman resigned as editor of the series and Tracts for the Times was terminated. Over the next four years Newman gradually came to the conviction that Roman Catholicism offered the truest expression of divine truth. In 1845, he left the Church of England and was received into the Roman Catholic Church. The next year, after deciding to become a Catholic priest, he left England for Rome, where he was ordained into the priesthood in May 1847.

Catholic Educator. Newman received a commission from Pope Pius IX (reigned 1846-1878) to introduce in England the institution of the Oratory, a religious community of secular priests who, in addition to performing pastoral duties such as celebrating mass and hearing confessions, are given enough free time to study, write, and teach (often at a school connected to the Oratory). After returning to England in late 1847, Newman founded an Oratory in Staffordshire, which was soon relocated to Egbaston, outside Birmingham, where he spent most of the remaining years of his life. In 1851 he was appointed rector of a new Catholic University of Ireland to be established in Dublin. Though a few students eventually enrolled, the school failed and Newman resigned as rector in 1858. Having already opened a branch of the Oratory in London, which like the Birmingham Oratory provided instruction similar to that received in English public schools, Newman proposed the establishment of an Oxford Oratory, a plan that failed after opposition by his former fellow Tractarians.

Catholic Writer. A bold and daring writer who seemed to relish controversy, Newman attempted to counter the English anti-Catholic propaganda of the period by writing letters to British newspapers under the pen name “Catholicus” and by publishing a series of apologetic sermons, Lectures on the Present Position of Roman Catholics (1851). In 1859 he became editor of a Catholic magazine, The Rambler, but two months later, after he wrote and published an essay that questioned the doctrine of papal infallibility, he was asked to resign. Later, after the Vaticat Council of 1869-1870, Newman accepted its definition of papalm infallibility and wrote a defense of that dogma in his Letter Addressed to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk (1875). Newman’s best-known work is his Apologia pro Via Sua (1864; Apology for His Life), a spiritual autobiography in which he argued that reason alone is an inadequate guide in matters of religious faith.

Cardinal Newman. In 1879 Pope Leo XIII (reigned 1878-1903) made Newman a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church. He continued his duties at the Birmingham Oratory until his health began to fail in 1886. Following his death on 11 August 1890, Cardinal Newman was praised by fellow Catholics for his unworldliness and humility. The Church declared him “Venerable” on 22 January 1991.

Sources

Walter Jost, Rhetorical Thought in John Henry Newman (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989.

Ian Turnbull Ker, John Henry Newman: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).