NOTES
Chapter One
A Historical Overview of Newman’s Theology of Faith
THE ANGLICAN YEARS, 1816-1845
Although Newman was a member of the Anglican Church during these years, the notion of faith that he developed during this time should not, strictly speaking, be called an Anglican notion of faith. During these years, he was investigating the response of faith at its most fundamental level, before it diversified into specific and concrete formulations. In 1864, when reflecting on his earlier statements on faith in the University Sermons, Newman wrote that he was investigating “the ultimate basis of religious faith, prior to the distinction into Creeds.”1 Consequently, it would be more accurate to view what is being presented in this chapter as an analysis of the notion of faith that Newman developed during his years as an Anglican.
The 1816 Conversion
One of the most significant influences on Newman’s understanding of Christian faith during these early years was his 1816 evangelical conversion experience. During the summer of 1816, he stayed in school at Ealing and, while there, became seriously ill. While convalescing from his illness, Newman experienced a conversion. The initial experience was sudden and instantaneous, but, as Newman himself recounted, the full conversion took place over a period of five months, from August 1 to December 21, 1816.2 There can be no doubt that, from his viewpoint, this conversion experience radically transformed him. Newman wrote, “I know perfectly well, and thankfully confess to Thee, O my God, that Thy wonderful grace turned me right round when I was more like a devil than a wicked boy, at the age of fifteen.”3 Reflecting on this conversion experience in a letter to Anne Mozley, dated February 19, 1885, he wrote, “I should say that it is difficult to realize or imagine the identity of the boy before and after 1816.”4
The conversion was evangelical in the sense that it brought about a personal transformation in Newman’s religious life. Indirectly, he refers to what was going on in his life at this time as the beginning of divine faith in him.5 Through this experience he dedicated himself, in a renewed way, to place himself and his life in the service of God. He discerned the wisdom and goodness of God in the troubles that had come upon him6 Sheridan Gilley, in his biography of Newman, describes Newman’s conversion as a transformation of the focus of Newman’s life from self to God. Gilley also suggests that this experience gave Newman’s religion “its profound individualist sense,” instilling in him the realization that the ultimate realities are God and self and that everything in the world dwindles by comparison.7 Consistent with this, Newman’s conversion was also heavily influenced by evangelical otherworldliness. 8
Yet there was also something different about Newman’s evangelical conversion. It did not possess all the elements that are typical of a classical evangelical conversion. His conversion had not been “violent” in the prescribed evangelical sense, and it did not possess “those special Evangelical experiences.” 9 The heavily emotional aspect of an evangelical conversion seemed to be lacking from Newman’s experience. He did not seem to undergo the full evangelical process of conversion with its “stages of sin, terror, despair, news of the full and free salvation, joy and peace, and so on to final perseverance.” 10 That his conversion was not evangelical in a full and complete sense is supported by Newman himself when he writes that, even though he owed much to evangelical teaching, he has never been a “genuine evangelical.”11
Newman’s conversion also had a distinctively Calvinistic tone. This was largely due to the influence of Walter Mayers, a devout evangelical and one of the masters at Ealing. There was a decidedly English flavor in the Calvinism Newman encountered, for it seems that Mayers had encouraged Newman to immerse himself in the works of English Calvinists rather than in Calvin himself.12 At this time, Newman accepted Calvin’s doctrine of final perseverance, which held that the elect would be given the grace to remain faithful to God throughout their lives, assuring their salvation. His understanding of the doctrines of the Trinity, Christology, atonement, and justification were influenced also by the theology of John Calvin.13
There is no doubt that this 1816 experience had a profound impact on Newman and brought about radical changes in him that were to remain with him for the rest of his life. Some of these changes are very important for understanding the direction that he will take in the development of his views on divine faith. One of the changes that took place at this time was that Newman himself experienced a personal transformation. He made a radical change from a focus on self to a focus on God. In his conversion experience, he came to realize that faith was a personal and transforming experience. His faith became a real conviction and commitment to the God revealed in Jesus Christ. He saw that faith was rooted in a basic stance and attitude toward God that is relational and highly personal.
Also as a result of this evangelical conversion, Newman made a lifelong commitment to dogma and the role that it plays in the experience of divine faith. In the Apologia, Newman writes that as a result of his conversion, a great change took place in him and that he “fell under the influences of a definite Creed, and received into my intellect impressions of dogma, which, through God’s mercy, have never been effaced or obscured.”14 Further on in the Apologia Newman states that, even though he has changed in many things, since the age of fifteen dogma has been the fundamental principle of his religion.15 The permanent nature of this commitment to dogma is illustrated in Newman’s ongoing battle against liberalism, which he defines as the “anti-dogmatic principle.”16
Newman’s desire to hold the personal element of faith and the dogmatic principle together is essential to understanding his notion of divine faith. For him the act of faith includes both a personal religious commitment as well as an intellectual acceptance of the dogmas of faith. Gilley says that Newman so mingles these elements that there can be no easy separation between the two. In fact, Gilley goes on to point out that the essence of the change that took place in Newman as a result of this conversion lay in the interconnection of these two elements. For Newman, “the intellect assented to the dogmas which found their echo in his heart.”17 What this shows is that, for Newman, the personal element of faith and the commitment to dogma are not opposed to one another but are interrelated and connected in the experience of divine faith.
Another attitude that Newman’s conversion instilled in him was the realization that change and growth are essential aspects of divine faith. One of the writers to whom Walter Mayers introduced Newman during the period of his conversion was Thomas Scott, an evangelical commentator on the Bible. Speaking of Scott’s influence on him, Newman writes that Scott was the writer “who made a deeper impression on my mind than any other, and to whom (humanly speaking) I almost owe my soul.”18 He summarized the influence Scott had on him in the following two statements: “Holiness rather than Peace” and “Growth the only evidence of life.”19 From this principle, Newman came to recognize the importance of growth in holiness after conversion. Sheridan Gilley states that Newman learned from the evangelical tradition the Catholic doctrine that faith means living a devout and holy life.20 Summing up this aspect of Newman’s conversion, Gilley writes, “The Calvinist experience of conversion was the beginning of Newman’s mature devotional life.”21
Newman’s acceptance of the principle of growth and change is one that endures throughout his entire religious life. This principle finds expression in his theory on the development of doctrine. In Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, Newman expresses the principle this way: “here below, to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”22 Gilley suggests that it was this principle, which Newman applied to his own life, that enabled him to accept “that Rome was the One True Church because she had within herself an inner power of development and growth, which is the only evidence of life.”23 In the Apologia, Newman wrote that for years he had “something of an habitual notion... of being on a journey.”24 This principle is also found in his major Catholic work on faith, the Grammar of Assent. Newman states that it is the capacity to change, to advance to the fullness of one’s destiny, “to be the creator of his own sufficiency; and to be emphatically self-made,”25 that distinguishes the human person from the animals.
The University Sermons, 1839—1843
While the 1816 experience of conversion lays the foundation for his understanding of faith, the major written source for Newman’s theology of faith during his Anglican years is found in his work Fifteen Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford.26 Looking at these sermons as a whole, it is accurate to say that in them Newman presents a basically consistent notion of faith.27 Yet, it must be realized that these sermons were written during different periods of his life over a period of seventeen years. The first sermon was written in 1826 during his evangelical youth. Sermons II through IX were written during 1830—1833 and represent his intellectually formative, more rationalist period, his tutor days at Oriel College. The last six sermons were written between the years 1839 and 1843 during Newman’s later Anglo-Catholic period.28 As a result, it is not surprising that the sermons do reflect some development in his ideas on faith.29 John A. Elbert describes the University Sermons as progressive and evolutionary.30
It is also important for understanding the University Sermons to realize that they are initiated by Newman’s desire to respond to the rationalism of thinkers like Richard Whately. Whately was a professor at Oriel College who befriended Newman after Newman was elected a Fellow of Oriel in 1822. Newman was significantly influenced by the thought of Whately during this period. Speaking of Whately’s influence on him, Newman said that Whately taught him to think for himself.31 But, gradually Newman came to reject the rationalism of Whately, because it subjected the truths of faith to the proof of reason. Newman did not think that faith could be completely subjected to reason; to do so would reduce faith to a rational conclusion to a syllogism. In reacting to this type of rationalism, Newman’s purpose in the University Sermons was to find a way of explaining how the response of faith can be an act that is compatible with reason without being reduced to a purely rational act. These sermons represent his effort to delineate the distinction between faith and reason, while, at the same time, demonstrating their proper relationship to one another.
The exploratory nature of the University Sermons is evident from the beginning. Newman does not start by giving a definition of either faith or of reason. 32 He begins with the experience of the act of faith as he finds it within himself and others. In the first stage of his reflection on faith, he focuses on the distinction, or contrast, between faith and reason. He describes faith as a moral quality that is opposed to reason—more specifically, secular reason. At the same time, Newman does think that reason has a role to play in faith. However, the role of reason is restricted to the analysis of the evidences for faith. He elaborates on the contrast between faith and reason by delineating the role that evidence plays in each.
In the 1831 sermon “The Usurpations of Reason,” Newman begins by speaking of a form of reason that is opposed to faith. He calls this form of reason “secular reason,” which he defines as “the wisdom of the world,” reason exercising itself on secular principles in the matters of religion and morals.33 This type of reason, Newman states, presents all kinds of objections to the truths of revelation. However, its objections are ill founded, because the truths of revelation are not addressed to this form of reason. Revelation does not even claim that it can be received according to this form of reason. For Newman, this type of reason seems irrelevant in matters of revelation. It can neither prove nor disprove the truths of revelation.34
Assuming this definition of reason, Newman proceeds to distance faith from it. As he further elaborates on secular reason and its relation to faith, he describes faith and reason as opposed to one another. Reason is identified with our intellectual powers and is opposed to faith, which is classified as a moral quality.35 Describing the nature of this opposition Newman states, “there is no necessary connexion [sic] between the intellectual and moral principles of our nature.”36 He speaks of the history of revelation as a triumph of the moral powers over the intellectual.37 Reason is “unequal to the contemplation of a moral revelation.”38 Reason “does not necessarily lead us in the direction of our moral instincts, or confirm them.”39 This opposition between faith and reason can occur in two ways. Sometimes faith encroaches on reason, as is the case when Scripture is used to answer questions about the physical universe. But reason also encroaches on the province of faith, as is the case when reason attempts to judge the truths of revelation on the basis of the intellect alone without consideration of their moral nature.40
Even though we should not be surprised that secular reason is inadequate in evaluating matters of faith, this does not mean that reason has no role to play in faith. It would be extravagant, Newman states, to altogether deny the use of reason in matters of faith.41 For Newman, the real place for reason in matters of faith is found in the evidences of Christian faith. He says that “we can reason about Religion, and we frame its evidences.”42 While recognizing the validity of reason in evaluating the evidences for faith, he expresses some reservations about the value of this approach. He says that the evidences are better understood as answers to objections, rather than arguments for revelation.43 They are more like “splendid philosophical investigations” than “practical arguments.”44 He also wonders whether there really have been very many people who actually have come to faith as a result of the evidences. 45 Newman summarizes this role of reason in faith when he writes, “From considerations such as the forgoing, it appears that exercises of Reason are either external, or at least only ministrative, to religious inquiry and knowledge: accidental to them, not of their essence: useful in their place, but not necessary.”46
The evidence suggests that, in this sermon, Newman appears to be suspicious about the value of reason in matters of faith. His suspicion, however, is based on the incompatibility of faith with a particular form of reason—namely, secular reason. It is secular reason that he has in mind when he states that reason is an intellectual act and faith is a moral act. For Newman, there is no place for secular reason within the act of faith itself. The role of reason in this sense is relegated to the process of coming to faith and the external evidences for faith. Toward the end of the sermon, Newman states that reason (i.e., secular reason) can be employed in the service of faith, but it must be kept in its subordinate place.47
In the 1839 sermon “Faith and Reason, Contrasted as Habits of Mind,” Newman stresses that the point of this sermon is not to define reason or its relation to faith but merely to contrast the two.48 In contrasting the two, he elaborates on the role of reason in faith. Faith does not evolve from reason, but the truths of faith are compatible with reason and the act of faith is seen as a reasonable act. For Newman, faith cannot be said to be grounded in reason, nor can reason be considered to be the origin or source of faith.49 It is an error, Newman writes, to “teach that a process of Reason is the sine qua non for true religious faith.”50 Yet, faith does have a responsibility to reason. The doctrines of faith must be, as he puts it, “approvable by Reason.”51 Reason tests and verifies faith; it plays a critical, not a creative, role.52 Faith must be “cognizable, and its acts [must] be justified, by Reason, without therefore being, in matter of fact, dependent upon it.”53 Faith has its own domain and can operate independently of reason, yet it must be able to meet the legitimate claims of truth and rationality.
Faith and reason can also be contrasted on the basis of the nature of the evidence. Newman analyzes what he calls the popular way of contrasting faith and reason—“that Reason requires strong evidence before it assents, and Faith is content with weaker evidence.”54 Reason will not assent unless the evidence demands it. Faith, on the other hand, can assent even if the evidence is not logically conclusive. How can this be? How can faith require less evidence than reason and still claim to be rational and conformable to reason? He poses this question himself and offers an answer. The answer is that faith is influenced by antecedent considerations, and, because of this, it requires less evidence than reason. “Faith, then, as I have said, does not demand evidence so strong as is necessary for what is commonly considered a rational conviction, or belief on the ground of Reason; and why? For this reason, because it is mainly swayed by antecedent considerations.”55 Newman further describes these antecedent considerations as “previous notices,” prepossessions,” and (in a good sense of the word) “prejudices.”56 He also describes them as “previously-entertained principles, views, and wishes”57 and as “antecedent probabilities.”58
It is the influence of these antecedent considerations that enables faith to accept evidence that is weak and probable. This explains, for Newman, how faith is a moral principle. “It is created in the mind, not so much by facts, as by probabilities.”59 As a result, the disposition of the person becomes a determining factor in the response of faith. He writes, “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 consider to be but fancies.”60 On the one hand, the influence of antecedent considerations emphasizes his understanding of the personal nature of the act of faith. On the other hand, they raise some cautions about the danger of making the act of faith too subjective.
Newman also thinks that the antecedent considerations help explain the role of grace. Grace is God’s inspiration through the Holy Spirit that assists a person in making the act of faith. God initiates revelation and influences the believer’s acceptance of revelation. Grace, therefore, refers to the supernatural element in the act of faith. It is grace that influences and inspires the believer to have those “feelings” that enable one to accept evidence that is probable. He describes some of these “feelings”—“love of the great Object of Faith,” “readiness to believe Him near,” “easiness to believe Him interposing in human affairs,” “fear of the risk of slighting or missing what may really come from Him.”61 If faith were simply a rational decision based on logically conclusive evidence, there would be no need for grace, the supernatural element in faith.
As his thought develops in the University Sermons, Newman begins to focus more on the relationship between faith and reason, rather than how they are different. He speaks of faith as a form of reason, an exercise of reason. As an act of reason, faith is described as autonomous and complete in itself. It does not depend on or flow from a prior act of reason. A week after the sermon contrasting faith and reason, Newman preached another sermon on faith and reason entitled “The Nature of Faith in Relation to Reason.” In this sermon, he begins by rejecting the view that holds that faith is a moral quality that follows directly from an act of reason.62 According to this view, reason demonstrates that the Gospel comes from God; then the act of faith comes in and accepts it. This understanding tends to make faith the second step of a two-stage process. Rejecting this view, Newman maintains that faith has an autonomy of its own; it is “sole and elementary, and complete in itself.”63
Therefore, faith is an autonomous and distinct act of reason in its own right. Faith is described as the “reasoning of a religious mind”64 and as “an exercise of reason.”65 Behind these statements is the claim that faith is analogous to a certain type of reason. Reason is defined as the faculty of the mind “by which knowledge of things external to us, of beings, facts, and events, is attained beyond the range of sense.”66 It is the faculty that enables one to proceed from things that are perceived to things that are not perceived. This understanding of reason is different from the notion of secular reason that, in the earlier sermon, “The Usurpations of Reason,” is described as opposed to faith. A believer exercises this form of reason in the act of faith when he or she accepts a doctrine of faith as true.67
This form of reason is a legitimate form of reason and is compatible with faith. In this sermon, Newman justifies the validity of faith as an exercise of reason and takes great pains to defend it against such charges as “illogical,” “a faulty exercise of reason,” and “the reasoning of a weak mind.”68 However, faith is an exercise of reason that is different from the formal logical process of reason that demonstrates conclusions solely on the basis of the evidence. Faith is a form of reason that is based more on presumption and less on evidence. 69 As an exercise of reason, faith is “distinct from what are called philosophical inquiries, intellectual systems, courses of argument and the like.”70 Here Newman is speaking about that informal mode of reasoning that is operative not only in faith but in many other areas of human knowledge. This form of reason is operative in decisions about political questions, economic policies, the choice of a religious party, tastes in literature, and judgments about the weather71 and in mathematics.72 All of these, including faith, are forms of reason in which “men advance forward on grounds which they do not, or cannot produce, or if they could, yet could not prove to be true, on latent or antecedent grounds which they had taken for granted.”73 It is in this sense that Newman affirms in this sermon that faith is analogous to a legitimate exercise of human reason and, therefore, can be described as a form of reason and not just a moral quality.
At this point in the University Sermons, Newman has developed his basic understanding of faith. Faith is an exercise of reason that, through the influence of antecedent considerations, enables the person to give an assent to the truths of revelation even though the evidence remains probable. As such, faith is an act that proceeds more on the basis of antecedent considerations than on evidence. Yet, an important question remains. According to Newman’s description of faith, different people can follow the same evidence and come to opposite conclusions, because their antecedent considerations are different. Does this mean that faith is merely a subjective opinion? Is there any way to distinguish between a true and false exercise of reason based on antecedent considerations?
This is the question that Newman addresses in his next sermon, “Love the Safeguard of Faith against Superstition,” which was preached on May 21, 1839. In this sermon, Newman admits that there are certain dangers and limitations in his view of faith. This view of faith, he writes, “may be made an excuse for all manner of prejudice and bigotry, and leads directly to credulity and superstition.”74 Antecedent considerations are equally available to support a true or a false revelation. In themselves, antecedent considerations do not provide a clear rule or criterion for determining what is true and what is not. As a result faith needs a safeguard, “some corrective principle which will secure it from running (as it were) to seed, and becoming superstition or fanaticism.”75
After considering the hypothesis that reason is the safeguard of faith, Newman rejects it, because, in his view, this position would destroy the autonomy of faith and make it an act that depends on a prior act of reason. No intellectual act is necessary for right faith besides faith itself.76 Describing his own position as commonplace and paradoxical, Newman says that it is love, a right state of heart, that is the true safeguard of faith.77 “We believe, because we love.”78 It is, however, important to understand what he means by love in this context. Love means trusting in Christ, believing on the testimony of God, believing in the power of God and on the basis of God’s regenerating and renewing influences.79 Newman describes love as the “eye of faith, the discriminating principle which keeps it from fastening on unworthy objects and degenerating into enthusiasm or superstition.”80 Right faith is an act of reason based on holy, devout, and enlightened presumptions. When these presumptions are lacking, faith degenerates and is perverted.81 A faith informed by love establishes the proper grounds for faith, which, for Newman, includes such experiences as the awareness “that a Revelation is very needful for man; that it is earnestly to be hoped for from a merciful God, that it is to be expected.” 82 Summarizing his view of love as the safeguard of faith Newman writes:
Faith working by Love—suggests, the honest mind may, under ordinary circumstances, be led, and practically is led, into an acceptable, enlightened, and saving apprehension of Divine Truth without that formal intimacy and satisfaction with the special evidence existing for the facts believed, which is commonly called Reasoning.83
By proposing that love is the safeguard of faith, Newman appears to be suggesting that it is really the grace of God, God’s motivating and inspiring love, that serves as the sanction for the truth of faith.
In the sermon entitled “Implicit and Explicit Reason,” preached on St. Peter’s Day in 1840, Newman returns to his thesis that faith is an exercise of reason. The distinction between implicit and explicit reason enables him to explain how faith can be an exercise of reason without depending on and following directly from a prior act of reason. Implicit reason is the reason within faith that provides faith with its own built-in rationality. Newman describes implicit reason as an unconscious form of reasoning.84 It refers to the more simple faculties and operations of the mind; we feel and think and reason. 85 He also calls it the original process of reasoning.86 On the other hand, explicit reason is defined as a conscious process of reasoning.87 Explicit reason is the process of analyzing, describing, and reflecting on the operations of the mind. We know that we feel, and think, and reason.88 It is the process of investigating our reasoning.89 Explicit reason is helpful in evaluating the evidences for faith, but it is not operative in the act of itself faith. Newman also uses terms such as science, method, analysis, criticism, proof, rules, and laws to refer to this form of reason.90
What becomes clear in this sermon is that, when Newman speaks of faith as an exercise of reason, he means that it is an act of implicit reason. As an act of implicit reason faith has its own autonomy and is reasonable in its own right. He states that the reasoning processes that are involved in the act of faith are latent and implicit and that the act of faith is complete without the reflective faculty.91 Therefore, the act of faith does not depend on explicit reason for its existence. Newman rejects the idea that faith can only exist if it is based on the evidence of explicit reason. Such a view would mean that every child, every peasant, must be a theologian.92
At the same time, Newman reluctantly admits that explicit reason does have a role to play in faith. For Newman, to separate faith completely from explicit reason would mean that the science of theology would have to be discarded. Explicit reason plays a necessary and important role in analyzing the evidences for faith. In reflecting on the reasons for faith, the mind can investigate the grounds for faith in order to defend it, recommend it, or teach it to others.93 By the evidences of faith Newman means “the systematic analysis of all the grounds on which we believe Christianity to be true.”94 Explicit reason evaluates the cogency of miracles and the external evidence from the history of Christianity as grounds for faith.
Although he accepts the evidences of explicit reason, Newman stresses that the act of faith, as an exercise of implicit reason, does not absolutely depend on them. True faith admits, but does not require, the exercise of explicit reason. 95 In this sermon, he repeats the suspicion he expressed about the nature of external evidences in an earlier sermon, “The Usurpations of Reason,” by listing several of the limitations of this form of reason. Some of these follow here. The strength of these evidences is not found in the arguments themselves, but on the basis of the circumstances in which they are received.96 Often those who cite such evidences overstate and exaggerate their case by arguing as if they were in a court of law, whereas, in actuality, what they are doing is simply “analyzing, as far as possible, certain existing reasons why the Gospel is true.”97 Also, these forms of evidence do not work like mathematical proofs. Rather, they are hints and samples of true reasoning, and they demand “an active, ready, candid, and docile mind, which can throw itself into what is said, neglect verbal difficulties, and pursue and carry out principles.” 98 Finally, these types of evidences can only serve a critical, not a creative, function. They can raise objections that test and pull down faith, but they are not able to build up faith.99
Newman goes on to state that the evidences of explicit reason sometimes can interfere with faith and, therefore, they must be used with caution.100 Throughout this sermon the impression is given that he prefers a different approach to the evidences of faith. Although he does not fully develop the point, Newman suggests that implicit reason can also provide evidences for faith. Examples of such evidences include things such as antecedent considerations, presumptions, and analogies.101 Newman shows his preference for this approach to the evidences of faith when he states that these are “more truly the grounds on which religious men receive the Gospel.”102
Many of the elements that are present in Newman’s notion of faith in the University Sermons will endure and be incorporated into his mature Catholic notion of faith. These include his definition of faith as a form of reason and the distinctiveness and autonomy of the act of faith. He will continue to hold and stress the personal, implicit nature of the form of reason that is operative in faith. Also, antecedent considerations will remain a necessary and important element in the process of faith and will continue to highlight the personal nature of Newman’s understanding of faith. His recognition of and acceptance of the role of reason in analyzing the evidences of faith, as well as his suspicion of the external evidences of explicit reason and his preference for the evidences of implicit reason, will remain an enduring element in his understanding of faith. Finally, Newman’s insistence on the necessity of grace for the act of faith will also form an important element in his mature Catholic understanding of faith.
There are, however, some aspects of Newman’s notion of faith in the University Sermons that are not fully developed, and some of these will form the basis for his further reflections on faith during his Catholic years. One of these is his understanding of the relationship between the act of credibility and the act of faith itself. William Fey points out that in the University Sermons, Newman does not clearly distinguish between the process of reason involved in coming to faith, the judgment of credibility, and the process of reason involved in the act of faith itself. According to Fey, it is Newman’s encounter with Roman theology that will enable him to come to a clear distinction between the certitude of the motives of credibility and the certitude of the act of divine faith itself.103
Another area that will continue to occupy Newman is the question of the rational justification of the certitude of faith. Some of critics have pointed out that Newman, by basing faith on antecedent considerations and probable evidence, as he does in the University Sermons, is leaving faith open to the charge of being nothing more than an opinion.104 William Fey admits that the ambiguity in Newman’s language can lead one to make this charge, but he does not think that it is a valid one. Newman’s intention, Fey suggests, was not to deny the certitude of the act of faith but to stress the personal nature of the response of faith.105 Yet, even though the evidence suggests that Newman did not intend to reduce faith to an opinion, he does not adequately resolve this issue in the University Sermons. In the original version of the University Sermons, Newman never calls faith a certitude.106 The closest he comes is a statement in the 1841 sermon entitled “Wisdom, as Contrasted with Faith and with Bigotry.” Faith, Newman writes, is “the absolute acceptance of a certain message or doctrine as divine; that is, it starts from probabilities, yet it ends in peremptory statements.... It believes an informant amid doubt, yet accepts his information without doubt.”107
Another element of Newman’s notion of faith in the University Sermons that is not satisfactorily developed is his thesis that love is the sanction of the act of faith. The question is, Can love adequately perform this function—that is, can it rationally justify a certain assent based on probable evidence? His own suspicions about the insufficiency and incompleteness of the theory of love as the safeguard of faith will lead Newman to continue to reflect on the process of the rational justification of the certitude of faith during his Catholic years. Finally, although Newman does acknowledge the necessity of the role of grace in the act of faith in the University Sermons, his encounter with the Catholic understanding of faith will require a deeper reflection on the role God’s grace plays in the response of faith.
NEWMAN’S CONVERSION TO ROMAN CATHOLICISM
On October 9, 1845, at Littlemore, Newman was received into the Catholic Church by Dominic Barberi, an Italian Passionist priest. The impact of this conversion cannot be overemphasized. It meant leaving the things he loved and losing lifelong friends in the Anglican Church. It even strained relationships with members of his family. As a leader of the Oxford movement, Newman was an important and significant figure in the Anglican Church of his day. With the failure of the Oxford movement, he found himself in a very precarious situation within the Anglican Church. Although there are practical, and even political, reasons for Newman’s move to the Catholic Church, the primary theological reason for his conversion is rooted in his understanding of the church.108 He converted to Roman Catholicism when his mind and heart became convinced that the Roman Catholic Church of his day, and not the Anglican Church, was the authentic continuation of the primitive apostolic and Catholic Church.109
It was a cornerstone of Newman’s ecclesiology that the true church of Christ on earth must be a visible continuation of the primitive apostolic and Catholic Church. As long as the Anglican Church met this criterion in Newman’s mind, he could and did remain an Anglican. But when his doubts about the adequacy of the Anglican Church to meet this criterion won out, he was eventually led to Rome. It was in 1839 that Newman experienced what he refers to as his “first doubt” about the “tenableness of Anglicanism.”110 From studying the Monophysite controversy, he came to the realization that the present Church of Rome was more in line with the primitive church than either the Anglican or the Protestant churches of his day.111 “I saw my face in that mirror, and I was a Monophysite. The Church of the Via Media [the Anglican Church] was in the position of the Oriental Communion, Rome was where she now is; and the Protestants were the Eutychians.”112
It must be stressed that Newman was presenting an analogy here. The Monophysites rejected the view that there are two natures united in one person in Jesus and, instead, held that there was only one nature in Jesus. There were two forms, one a moderate view like that of Serverus of Antioch, which Newman refers to here as the view of the Monophysites, and a second more radical view like that of the Eutychians, who held that after the union the human nature of Jesus was absorbed into the divine nature. The present-day Anglicans were the Monophysites, and the Protestants were the Eutychians. Both groups found themselves in a struggle against Rome, which was, both then and now, the defender of the primitive and true doctrine, as it was eventually defined at Council of Chalcedon. Through the image provided in this analogy, Newman came to see that his support of the Anglican Church as the true church placed him on the side of those who opposed the ancient and apostolic church. In a letter to Mrs. William Froude on April 3, 1844, Newman wrote that he realized that the Anglican “theory was unproved or disproved by Antiquity.”113
Newman’s experience of his “first doubt” was crystallized by his reading of an article by Nicholas Wiseman entitled “Anglican Claim to Apostolical Succession” in August 1839. In this article, he was struck by the words of St. Augustine, “Securus judicat orbis terrarum.” The full English translation of the quote reads, “Untroubled the world passes its judgement, that those men [and women] cannot be good who, in any part of the world, cut themselves off from the rest of the world.”114 Augustine had used this principle to demonstrate that the Donatists were in schism. Named after Donatus, a fourth-century bishop of Cartharge, the Donatists taught that the value of the sacraments depended on the ecclesial position of the minister. As a result, they held that heretics and schismatics must be rebaptized if they returned to the church. Yet, since the apostolic church rejected their view, they actually had separated themselves from the unity of the Catholic Church. Newman extended his previous analogy. The Donatists were in the same place as the Monophysites, who were in the same place as the Anglican Church. Consequently, the Anglican Church, like the Donatists, was in schism and cut off from the unity of the Catholic Church. Now the catholicity of the Anglican Church was in doubt. As Sheridan Gilley points out, this experience left Newman deeply unsettled.115 “I had seen the shadow of a hand upon the wall. ... He who has seen a ghost, cannot be as if he had never seen it.... The thought for the moment had been, ‘The Church of Rome will be found right after all.’”116 The seeds of doubt had been permanently sown.
In the summer of 1841, Newman experienced three more blows that he says eventually broke him.117 The first blow came as a result of his renewed reading and writing on the history of Arianism. Arianism, a fourth-century heresy named after its leader Arius, taught that Jesus did not have a divine nature and therefore was not God. The Council of Nicaea, 325, which condemned Arius, taught that Jesus had the same nature as God. This is the view accepted by Rome. A compromise group known as the semi-Arians taught that Jesus had a nature that was similar to the divined nature but was not exactly the same. The ghost of the Monophysite analogy returned again, this time in the form of Arianism. As Newman expresses it, “I saw clearly, that in the history of Arianism, the pure Arians were the Protestants, the semi-Arians were the Anglicans, and that Rome was now what it was then.”118 Once again, the Roman Catholic Church appeared to be more in line with the primitive apostolic and Catholic Church than did the present-day Church of England. His doubts about the apostolicity of the Anglican Church had returned with renewed force.
The next two blows were more political than theological in nature, but they both made it more difficult for Newman to hold onto his view that the present Anglican Church was the continuation of the apostolic and Catholic Church of antiquity. The second blow was the series of condemnations of Tract 90 by a number of Anglican bishops that began at this time.119 By condemning Tract 90, the Anglican bishops made Newman’s Catholic interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles untenable for an Anglican. As a result, an overwhelming obstacle was placed in the way of those who wanted to see the Anglican Church as a continuation of the primitive apostolic and Catholic Church. In fact, these condemnations of Tract 90 had the ironic effect of leading many Anglo-Catholics into the Roman Catholic Church.120
The third blow, the establishment of the Jerusalem bishopric in October 1841,121 placed but another obstacle in the way of Newman’s vision of returning the Anglican Church to its primitive and Catholic roots. Since the Anglican bishop in Jerusalem would have many Protestants under his jurisdiction, Newman saw this act as another attempt to protestantize the Anglican Church and move it farther away from its Catholic roots. For those who had doubts about the Catholic nature of the Church of England, Newman wrote, “every act... such as this of coalescing with heretics weakens the proof, and in some case it may be the last straw that breaks the horse’s back.”122 In the Apologia, he says that the establishment of the Jerusalem bishopric raised questions about the legitimacy of the Church of England as a branch of the Catholic Church.123 Although the event does not seem to have been that momentous in the history of the Church of England,124 Newman says that it had a devastating effect on him. “It brought me to the beginning of the end.”125 “I was on my death-bed, as regards my membership with the Anglican Church.”126 From this point on it seems clear that Newman’s theological justification of the Anglican Church as a continuation of the true apostolic and Catholic Church was no longer viable.
Still, he remained in the Anglican Church. As Gilley states, “It took four years to move him to submit to Rome on the double certitude that Rome was exclusively the Church of Christ and that the Church of England was no part of it.”127 During those four years, Newman was “prey to every shade of doubt.”128 The one remaining theological issue that needed to be resolved was the Roman additions to the Creed, which he still viewed as corruptions of the primitive apostolic and Catholic faith. He found the theological solution to this question in his theory of the development of doctrine. According to Gilley, one of the reasons Newman delayed his own move to Roman Catholicism was his desire to finish the Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, which would provide a “reasoned apology” for his conversion.129 Newman himself wrote, “So, at the end of 1844, I came to the resolution of writing an Essay on Doctrinal Development; and then, if, at the end of it, my conviction in favour of the Roman Church were not weaken, of taking the necessary steps for admission into the fold.”130
The theory of development answers the charge that Rome had corrupted early Christianity by adding new doctrines. It also explains the difference between the New Testament expressions of faith and the early christological and trinitarian dogmas.131 Through his reflections on the theory of doctrinal development, Newman came to the position that the Roman Catholic additions were not corruptions but were authentic developments of the apostolic and Catholic faith. The conclusion of the Development of Doctrine is that the Roman Catholic Church is substantially identical with the apostolic church.132 In the Apologia, Newman writes, “The fact of the operation from first to last of the principle of development in the truths of Revelation, is an argument in favour of the identity of Roman and Primitive Christianity.”133 So successful was the work on the theory of development in resolving his final obstacle to Rome, that he decided to become a Roman Catholic before the work was finished.
I had begun my Essay on the Development of Doctrine in the beginning of 1845, and I was still hard at it all through the year till October. As I advanced, my difficulties so cleared away that I ceased to speak of “the Roman Catholics,” and boldly called them Catholics. Before I got to the end, I resolved to be received and the book remains in the state in which it was then, unfinished.134
His ecclesiological quest for the apostolic and Catholic Church on earth had led him to the Roman Catholic Church. It is interesting to note that Newman became a Roman Catholic not only because it had remained faithful to the apostolic and Catholic faith but also because it was the church that had been able to change throughout history without losing the essentials of the Gospel. As Gilley expresses it, the theory of development “converted the stock objection to Rome, that Rome had changed, into a presumptive argument in her favour.”135 The significance of this realization for contemporary Catholic theology should not escape us. Newman was led to the Catholic Church not only because it had been faithful to the teachings of the apostolic church but also because it was open to change and development. For Newman, his conversion to Roman Catholicism meant the end of one chapter of his life and the beginning of a new one.
EARLY CATHOLIC YEARS
The Roman Reaction to Newman’s University Sermons
After his reception into the Catholic Church, Newman was faced with the prospect of finding a place for himself in his new community of faith. On February 22, 1846, he left Littlemore for the last time and went to Oscott College, also known as Maryvale, where he spent his first several months as a Catholic. In October 1846, Newman went to Rome to study Catholic theology at the College of Propaganda. He remained in Rome until December 1847, when he returned to Oscott College. In reflecting on his future role in the Catholic Church during these early years, he thought that he and his followers might establish a school of theology at Oscott College.
The first discussion about the prospect of such a school appears in a letter that Newman wrote to Dalgairns on July 6, 1846. In this letter, he suggests that Nicholas Wiseman, the vicar apostolic of England, ought to make Maryvale a seminary and divinity school. Allowing his imagination free expression, Newman wonders if Maryvale might not become a school of theology for the whole of England.136 His support for and excitement about establishing a school of theology at Maryvale is evident in this letter. He writes, “Then you see, I see nothing except that the notion of a theological school is a great idea.”137 Eventually, Wiseman himself becomes interested in the plan and expresses his support in a letter to Newman on January 27, 1847: “What you mention about Maryvale becoming a College and Seminary of the District accords most perfectly with many thoughts and many wishes that I had had.”138
In spite of Newman’s enthusiasm, he was not quite sure if his plan for a school of theology would win the approval of Rome. Before going to Rome, he wondered if he would be able to get the “authority and sanction at Rome” for a school of theology. Then, he adds, “But what would the Jesuits say to it [school of theology], with whom I should be so much thrown at Propaganda?” 139 When Newman arrived in Rome, his suspicions were confirmed. His book on the Development of Doctrine and his University Sermons both came under the sharp criticism of the Roman theologians. We shall focus on the reaction to the University Sermons.
In a letter written to W. G. Penny on December 13, 1846, Newman mentions that the Roman theologians had some problems with the University Sermons. He points out that the Roman theologians seemed to misunderstand his notion of antecedent probability. Some of the Roman theologians were interpreting his statement “that we could not get beyond a probable conclusion” as being a denial of the certitude of faith. Newman says they misunderstand him because he uses “probable as opposed to demonstrative, not to certainty.” 140
The plan to publish a French translation of the University Sermons also raised some concerns in Newman’s mind about Rome’s acceptance of his views on faith and reason. On January 12, 1847, he reflects on the difficulty of getting the book published in Rome, because of the delay that will be caused by the book being reviewed by three censors, one of whom is a Dominican who, Newman says, “may be severe with it.”141 By February 8, 1847, his concern about the reception of his book by Rome becomes so severe that he writes, “I am terribly frightened lest the book, like Rosmini’s and others, should be brought before the Index.”142
This initial Roman reaction to his theology seems to have left Newman disappointed and, perhaps, even a little resentful. He wanted to make a contribution to Catholic theology. In the February 8,1847, letter to Dalgairns, when commenting on his Latin translations of Athanasius, Newman writes, “So it is you see I am determined to make a noise, if I can. It shan’t be my fault, if people think small beer of me. Is not this ambitious?”143 In the same letter, when discussing the University Sermons, he writes that sometimes he has the feeling “that I have not yet been done justice to.”144 He adds, “It seems hard, since nations now converse by printing not in the schools, that an English Catholic cannot investigate truth with one in France or Rome, without having the Inquisition upon him.”145 Newman wanted what did not seem possible at the time: an open dialogue with Roman theology so that he could find his place in Catholic theology. Again, in the same 1847 letter to Dalgairns, Newman writes, “What I say is, I am not maintaining what I say is all true, but I wish to assist in investigating and bringing to light great principles necessary for the day—and the only way to bring them out is freely to investigate.”146 To Newman, the Roman theologians appeared to be closed and not open to dialogue. They didn’t seem to want to discuss; they wanted conformity.
Eventually, Newman accepted the inevitable. As long as Rome remained suspicious of his theology, it would not be feasible to establish a school of theology at Maryvale. In a letter written to Dalgairns on November 23, 1846, he writes, “From what I hear today I fear theology as such must for a time be laid on the shelf, at Maryvale, and we must take to printing practical sermons.” 147 Writing to Wiseman on February 14, 1847, he underscores the burden that the Roman opposition to his theology is placing on his efforts to find his place in the Catholic Church. “I can do nothing without Rome on my side—there is so much discord, so much jealousy in England, that I cannot get on without this support to carry me on.”148 This letter to Wiseman appears to represent a critical moment in Newman’s decision. He goes on to write, “Now the conviction has more and more come on me that it is very inexpedient for a person like me, a convert, and a writer (and so pledged in a way to certain opinions), to be a theological professor or the like.”149 He sums up his situation in the following words: “I come to Rome, and find no support if I undertake theology. I am not blaming this—it is impossible that I should suddenly have support under my circumstances.... I cannot expect any support in taking up theology—there must be a suspicion against me.”150 The decision to give up the school of theology meant that Newman would now pursue the alternate plan that was being discussed at this time—that is, to become an Oratorian and establish an Oratory in England.
Newman’s decision to become an Oratorian was finally worked out between February 14 and March 7, 1847.151 As a religious community, founded by St. Philip Neri in the sixteenth century, the Oratorians follow a rule, but they do not take vows and are not formally a religious order. As such, it offered Newman a middle way between a religious order and the diocesan priesthood. The suggestion that Newman and his followers become Oratorians was originally made by Wiseman.152 It was also the plan preferred by Rome.153 In a papal brief, Newman was appointed the superior of the English Oratory and given permission to establish the first Oratory in England.154 On February 1, 1848, the English Congregation of the Oratory was formally set up by Newman.155 He began with nine members—five priests, one novice, and three lay brothers. Newman had found a place in the Catholic Church, but the suspicions about his theology presented him with the challenge to demonstrate that his theology was compatible with the faith of the Catholic Church.
Newman’s Early Catholic Writings on Faith
From this initial encounter with Roman theology up to approximately 1854, Newman’s writings on faith primarily were motivated by the desire to show that his understanding of faith was compatible with the traditional Catholic view represented by the nineteenth-century Roman theology.156 A list of his early writings on faith can be found in Theological Papers on Faith and Certainty. 157 Some of the unpublished works, which can be found in the Birmingham Oratory Archives, include “The Assent of Faith,” June 17, 1846;158 “On the Nature of Faith,” 1847;159 “Preface to the French Edition of the University Sermons,” 1847;160 “On the Certainty of Faith,” 1848;161 “Lectures on Faith,” May 17-June 18, 1851;162 and “On Faith,” January 17, 1854.163
One of the most important writings for understanding his theology of faith during these early Catholic years is entitled the “Papers of 1853 on the Certainty of Faith.”164 Another important source for his early Catholic view of faith is found in the Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations, published in 1849.165 This work is a collection of Catholic sermons, the first of which, “The Salvation of the Hearer the Motive of the Preacher,” was preached at the opening of the Birmingham Oratory on February 2, 1849. Two sermons in this work that are particularly significant for Newman’s understanding of faith are “Faith and Private Judgement”166 and “Faith and Doubt.”167
In these early Catholic writings, Newman attempted to explain how his own view of faith was compatible with the reigning Catholic theology, the nineteenth-century Roman theology. This theology defined faith as an intellectual assent to divinely revealed truths as taught by the Roman Catholic Church. Faith was described as a supernatural act based on the motive of the authority of God, and, as such, it possessed a certitude that went beyond all human acts of certitude. As a supernatural act, grace was understood as giving a new inner structure to the faith-knowledge of the believer. At the same time, faith was held to be a reasonable act based on rational evidence. Reasoning to a judgment of credibility was a necessary condition for the reasonableness of faith. Roman theology spoke of faith in terms of material and formal objects and made clear distinctions between human reason, natural theology, motives of credibility (speculative and practical), divine revelation, and the act of divine faith.168 In his efforts to demonstrate that his theology of faith was compatible with Roman theology, Newman incorporated some of the categories of Roman theology into his own writings.
One of the main topics that occupied Newman’s attention during this period was the relationship between the role of reason in the process of coming to faith (the evidences) and the role of reason in the act of faith itself. He addresses this issue in his discussions of human faith, divine faith, and the relationship between the two. The process by which Newman comes to clearly distinguish among human faith, the rational attempt to arrive at the credibility of the fact of revelation, and divine faith, the personal acceptance of God’s revelation, will be treated in the next chapter.
NEWMAN’S MATURE CATHOLIC NOTION OF FAITH
The Grammar of Assent
The major source for Newman’s mature understanding of Catholic faith is found in the Grammar of Assent, published in 1870. In this work, he is no longer concerned with demonstrating the compatibility of his view of faith with Roman theology. He seems to think that he has accomplished this task in the December 16, 1853, paper “On the Certainty of Faith.169 In the Grammar of Assent, his focus is placed on the certitude of the act of faith and the demonstration of its rationality.
Part of Newman’s inspiration for writing the Grammar of Assent came from his correspondence with William Froude. Froude, a friend of Newman’s, was a scientist and an agnostic. He was the brother of Hurrell Froude, one of Newman’s dearest friends from the Oxford days, who died prematurely. William’s wife and children had converted to Catholicism largely through the influence of Newman. William Froude insisted that real certitude, in any realm of thought, was an invalid process of the mind and an immoral use of one’s faculties. As a scientist, Froude held that scientific demonstration was the only principle of verification of the truth of a proposition. One’s assent to a proposition was directly proportionate to the evidence available.170 Since Froude maintained that all evidence, even that which seemed most convincing and conclusive, was wanting, it was invalid for the mind to give an unconditional assent of certitude to any proposition, whether in human matters or in the matter of divine faith.171
Newman realized that his earlier attempts to explain the rationality of the certitude of faith were inadequate. It has already been pointed out how he was not completely satisfied with the attempt he made in the University Sermons. Ian Ker has pointed out that Newman’s attempts to work out the justification of the certitude of faith in his theological papers during the first half of 1860 came to nothing because he was simply too “overworked.”172 The correspondence with William Froude made Newman even more conscious of the inadequacy of his explanation of the certitude of faith. He clearly saw that Froude’s position was erroneous, but, he admits, he really did not know how to answer it.173 Newman never worked out a satisfactory justification of the certitude of faith in his correspondence with Froude. However, it was his desire to develop a satisfactory justification of certitude, in matters of both concrete human truths and Catholic faith, that served as his inspiration for writing the Grammar of Assent.
Newman’s primary purpose in the Grammar of Assent is to show that the certitude of faith of ordinary Catholics is rational, even though it is not directly based on scientific demonstration.174 He wanted to show that ordinary believers do rightly give unconditional assent to realities that they do not see and cannot fully prove.175 However, Newman did not intend to isolate Catholic faith from the ordinary processes of human reason. He saw the certitude of Catholic faith and the process by which it was obtained as analogous to the process by which the mind arrives at certitude in matters of concrete human truths. As a result, in the Grammar of Assent, the justification of the certitude of Catholic Divine Faith merges into a more general justification of the ordinary processes of the human mind that lead to certitude in concrete matters of truth.
Before further developing Newman’s mature notion of Catholic faith, it is necessary to examine more fully his early Catholic writings on faith. In these works, he attempts to demonstrate that the view of faith presented in the University Sermons is compatible with nineteenth-century Roman Catholic theology. The next chapter will describe these efforts by focusing on Newman’s understanding of the relationship between human faith and divine faith.
NOTES
1
Newman, Apo., 87.
2
John Henry Newman, John Henry Newman: Autobiographical Writings, ed. Henry Tristram (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1956), 181. (Hereafter abbreviated AW.)
3
AW, 250.
4
John Henry Newman, The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman vol. XXXI, ed. by Charles Stephen Dessain (London: Nelson, 1961-1977), 31. (Hereafter abbreviated LD.)
5
Apo., 24. Speaking of this conversion, Newman refers to Walter Mayers as the human means of this “beginning of divine faith in me.”
6
Ian Ker, John Henry Newman: A Biography (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), 4. For an extensive review of Ker’s biography of Newman, see Edward Jeremy Miller’s review in The Thomist 55, no. 2 (April 1991): 337—41.
7
Gilley, Newman and His Age, 23.
8
Gilley, Newman and His Age, 16—17.
9
Ker, Newman: A Biography, 5.
10
Ker, Newman: A Biography, 5.
11
AW, 79.
12
Gilley, Newman and His Age, 18.
13
Gilley, Newman and His Age, 22—23.
14
Apo., 24.
15
Apo., 66.
16
Apo., 66.
17
Gilley, Newman and His Age, 18.
18
Apo., 25.
19
Apo., 26.
20
Gilley, Newman and His Age, 22.
21
Gilley, Newman and His Age, 24.
22
John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, foreword by Ian Ker (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 40. (Hereafter abbreviated Dev.)
23
Gilley, Newman and His Age, 230.
24
Apo., 125—26.
25
John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, ed. Ian T. Ker (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 349. (Page numbers follow the 1889 edition; hereafter abbreviated GA.)
26
John Henry Newman, Fifteen Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford between A.D. 1826 and 1843, introduction by Mary Katherine Tillman (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997). (Hereafter abbreviated US.)
27
Mary Katherine Tillman, “An Introduction,” in US, viii.
28
Tillman, “An Introduction,” vii.
29
Ian Ker, “Editor’s Introduction,” in GA. Ker speaks of a gradual development in the sermons that becomes more accurate and precise; see xxiii.
30
John A. Elbert, Newman’s Conception of Faith prior to 1845: A Genetic Presentation and Synthesis (Philadelphia: Dolphin, 1933), 38. Elbert sees this progression as a gradual lessening or decrease in Newman’s opposition to reason. While it is true that Newman does emphasize the moral aspect of faith in the earlier sermons, he never separates faith completely from reason.
31
AW, 69—71.
32
Elbert, Newman’s Conception of Faith, 37.
33
US, 54.
34
US, 55.
35
US, 58; Newman states that reason is defined as “synonymous with the intellectual powers, and as opposed as such to the moral qualities, and to Faith.”
36
US, 55.
37
US, 57.
38
US, 61.
39
US, 61.
40
US, 59.
41
US, 63.
42
US, 63.
43
US, 65.
44
US, 65.
45
US, 66.
46
US, 67.
47
US, 73.
48
US, 200. Newman adds that his only intention is to ascertain the “sense in which the words Faith and Reason are used by Christian and Catholic writers.”
49
US, 183.
50
US, 184.
51
US, 182.
52
US, 183.
53
US, 183.
54
US, 185.
55
US, 187.
56
US, 187.
57
US, 188.
58
US, 189.
59
US, 191.
60
US, 191.
61
US, 193.
62
US, 202 and 204.
63
US, 202.
64
US, 203.
65
US, 207.
66
US, 206.
67
US, 207—8.
68
US, 208.
69
US, 204.
70
US, 212.
71
US, 209.
72
US, 217.
73
US, 212—13.
74
US, 232.
75
US, 232-33.
76
US, 234.
77
US, 234.
78
US, 236.
79
US, 236—37.
80
US, 238.
81
US, 239.
82
US, 239.
83
US, 240.
84
US, 259.
85
US, 256.
86
US, 258.
87
US, 259.
88
US, 256.
89
US, 258.
90
US, 259.
91
US, 277.
92
US, 253—54.
93
US, 253.
94
US, 264.
95
US, 255.
96
US, 273.
97
US, 275.
98
US, 275.
99
US, 276.
100
US, 277.
101
US, 277.
102
US, 277.
103
William R. Fey, Faith and Doubt: The Unfolding of Newman’s Thought on Certainty, preface by Charles Stephen Dessain (Shepherdstown, WV: Patmos, 1976), 38—41.
104
One such critic is John A. Elbert, Newman’s Conception of Faith, 81.
105
Fey, Faith and Doubt, 35.
106
US, xvi, n. 12. In the preface to the third edition of the University Sermons published in 1872, Newman does refer to faith as a certitude.
107
US, 297—98.
108
Edward Jeremy Miller, John Henry Newman on the Idea of Church (Shepherdstown, WV: Patmos, 1987), 42—51. Miller presents an extended argument that supports the position that the primary theological idea for Newman’s conversion to Catholicism is his understanding of the church. See also Terrence Merrigan, “Newman’s Progress towards Rome: A Psychological Consideration of His Conversion to Catholicism,” The Downside Review 104 (April 1986): 99. Merrigan states, “The development of Newman’s vision of the Church—his ecclesiology—is, it might be said, the history of his conversion to Catholicism.”
109
Ker, Newman: A Biography, 310. Ker writes that “it was the recognition of the essential identity of contemporary Catholicism and early Christianity which was the cause of Newman’s own conversion.”
110
Apo., 121.
111
Apo., 122—23.
112
Apo., 121.
113
Gordon Huntington Harper, Cardinal Newman and William Froude: A Correspondence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1933), 40.
114
Apo., 124.
115
Gilley, Newman and His Age, 184.
116
Apo., 125.
117
Apo., 142.
118
Apo., 143.
119
Apo., 142—43.
120
Miller, Newman on Church, 45. Newman himself writes in the Apologia, “There were no converts to Rome, till after the condemnations of No. 90” (144).
121
Apo., 144—49.
122
Anne Mozley, ed., Letters and Correspondence of John Henry Newman during His Life in the English Church with a Brief Autobiography, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, 1891), II:354. The letter to S. F. Wood is dated October 10, 1841.
123
Apo., 147—48.
124
Apo., 149. Newman states here that he had never heard of any good or harm that it has ever done.
125
Apo., 149.
126
Apo., 151.
127
Gilley, Newman and His Age, 209.
128
Gilley, Newman and His Age, 209.
129
Gilley, Newman and His Age, 229.
130
Apo., 217.
131
Gilley, Newman and His Age, 230.
132
Dev., 169, 321—22.
133
Apo., 193.
134
Apo., 222.
135
Gilley, Newman and His Age, 230.
136
LD, XI:195.
137
LD, XI:196.
138
LD, XI:41, n. 1. Actually, this expression of support is a little late in coming for, by this time, Newman seems to be leaning toward establishing an Oratory in England. Wiseman adds that Vincent Palloti had advised him that establishing a college for the propagation of the faith in England was the only way to be free from Propaganda in Rome.
139
LD, XI:196; letter to Dalgairns, July 6, 1846.
140
LD, XI:293.
141
LD, XII:8. Newman tells Dalgairns that it must be published by Dalgairns in France.
142
LD, XII:29; letter to Dalgairns, February 8, 1847.
143
LD, XII:32.
144
LD, XII:32.
145
LD, XII:29.
146
LD, XII:29.
147
LD, XI:280—81.
148
LD, XII:41—42. In this same letter, Newman cites some other reasons against setting up a school of theology at Maryvale. One problem, Newman writes, is that the Oratorian rule does not allow for forming a college. To form a college, Newman and his followers would have to become Jesuits or seculars, and Newman says that they do not plan on becoming either. Another problem is “the want of hands to work a College.” Another difficulty, which Newman mentions, is that it would not be easy to bring the other districts in England into harmony with the plan. In addition, Newman points out that establishing a college would require a long period of preparation and education and that all of this would take some time, whereas the Oratory plan could begin at once. See LD, XII:43—44.
149
LD, XII:42.
150
LD, XII:42.
151
After the February 14, 1847, letter to Wiseman, Newman’s attention focuses on the plan for his community to become Oratorians. In a letter to Mrs. Bowden on February 21, 1847, Newman writes that he is seeking permission from Rome to establish an Oratory in England. Newman seems pleased and resigned to the idea. At the end of the letter, he writes, “it is no secret we are to be Oratorians” (LD, XII:44—46). On February 23, 1847, Newman writes to James Hope informing him that the pope has approved the Oratory plan (LD, XII:49). In a letter to Wiseman on the same day, Newman explains the Oratory plan to him. On March 7, 1847, Newman writes to David Lewis, stating “that our destiny is quite fixed.... We are to be children of St. Philip Neri” (LD, XII:60).
152
Ker, Newman: A Biography, 328.
153
LD, XII:42—43.
154
Ker, Newman: A Biography, 331.
155
Ker, Newman: A Biography, 337.
156
John Henry Newman, The Theological Papers of John Henry Newman on Faith and Certainty, ed. Hugo M. de Achaval and J. Derek Holmes, introduction by Charles Stephen Dessain (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976), viii. In the introduction, Dessain writes that when Newman returned from Rome in 1847, he “lectured to the students at the Oratory and there are papers which show him describing his own views on faith and certainty in the language of traditional Catholic theology.”
157
Newman, Theological Papers, xi—xv. There is also a list of Newman’s unpublished early Catholic writings on faith in Fey, Faith and Doubt, 203—4.
158
Birmingham Oratory Archives, B 9.11. (Hereafter abbreviated as B.)
159
B 9.11.
160
B 7.5.
161
B 9.11.
162
B 7.4.
163
B 7.4.
164
Newman, Theological Papers, 3-38.
165
John Henry Newman, Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations (London: Longmans, Green, 1906). (Hereafter abbreviated as Mixed.) Ker points out that this was Newman’s first work published under his own name as a Catholic. Ker, Newman: A Biography, 342.
166
Mixed, 192–213.
167
Mixed, 214–37.
168
Fey, Faith and Doubt, 43–44.
169
Fey, Faith and Doubt, 53. Fey states that with this paper, Newman seems satisfied with his position.
170
In the Grammar of Assent, Newman comments on John Locke’s view precisely on this point. It is Newman’s disagreement with Locke on this matter that is the basis for Newman’s insistence that assent is unconditional. Newman, GA, 159–87.
171
Harper, Newman and Froude, 9.
172
Ker, Newman: A Biography, 619.
173
Harper, Newman and Froude, 127. “I think it is a fallacy—but I don’t think it is easy to show it to be so.” Also, in a letter dated January 2,1860, Newman quite candidly admits that he finds it difficult to answer Froude and that he is dissatisfied with everything he has written on the matter so far. Harper, Newman and Froude, 127–28.
174
Charles Stephen Dessain, John Henry Newman (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1971), 151–53.
175
Edward Jeremy Miller, “Newman’s Grammar of Assent Put to Pastoral Usage,” Josephinum Journal of Theology 9, no. 2 (Summer/Fall 2002): 230. Miller points out that the main thrust of the Grammar of Assent is pastoral.