F. The Making of Newman’s Via Media
F. The Making of Newman’s Via Media
By 1833, Newman had acquired the intellectual and spiritual raw materials with which he would construct his via media, including theological convictions he retained from his earliest years of piety, namely a commitment to the holiness of the Triune God and recognition of human depravity.569 These convictions, which he originally imbibed from his Evangelical teachers such as Thomas Scott and Walter Mayers, would continue with Newman for the remainder of his life. You might say that the pursuit of holiness functioned as the engine that drove Newman’s faith, and the doctrine of depravity was the governor that subdued his expectations for human achievement.
With the couplet of holiness and depravity in view, it is now time to examine the theological substance of Newman’s via media. It essentially consists of three elements; the first two we have mentioned several times already—namely, regeneration understood in the context of sacramental objectivity and the authority of the church institution. Before getting to the third element, let us be sure we are clear on how Newman arrived at the first two conclusions.
Newman’s view of regeneration and tradition were heavily influenced by his study of the fourth-century church fathers. With regard to regeneration, Newman consciously moved away from the Evangelical distinction that understood it to be a subjective experience accessed by faith alone and displayed in virtuous fruit among “real” Christians. Instead, he embraced the objectivity of the sacraments, through which one encounters the “real” presence of Christ in baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Then, with a new appreciation for ecclesial authority, he moved away from the doctrine of Scripture alone to a combination of Scripture and tradition under the aegis of an authoritative church institution. In this way, he sought to safeguard the doctrinal fidelity of the contemporary Church of England (against doctrinal innovators and undue subjectivity) by appropriating the beliefs and practices of the ancient church vis-à-vis oral tradition and the efficacy of sacramental mediation.570
This development reflects a logic that inevitably led to the third element of Newman’s refined position and to his via media on the doctrine of justification, namely, “uncreated grace” (gratia increata). Here is how it happened. By jettisoning the Evangelical distinction between “real” and “nominal” faith based on one’s membership in the invisible church (step one), by embracing the sacrament of baptism as the necessary instrument by which one is regenerated (step two), and by insisting that the visible church is coterminous with the body of Christ (step three), Newman came to recognize the instrumental cause of justification in a way that was more consistent with the Roman Catholic position. If, at this time, Newman had converted to Catholicism, his course of action would have been simple—leave imputation and sola fide behind with Protestantism.571 As long as Newman remained an Anglican (obligated to the Thirty-Nine Articles), however, such an abandonment was not an option. The eleventh article, which specifically defines justification by “Faith only,” would not permit it. He therefore faced a conundrum, or at least he would have faced one, if not for a lesson that Newman had learned from his study of the fourth-century fathers—the doctrine of gratia increata.
The idea of grounding salvation in a form of gratia increata is the crowning development of Newman’s soteriological reflection, and the one that enabled him to finally develop his doctrine into a via media on justification. In keeping with the questions and concerns of the Alexandrian fathers, especially Clement, Athanasius, and Cyril, whose writings he devoured,572 and also the French patristic scholar, Dionysius Petavius, SJ (1583–1652, or Denis Pétau),573 Newman increasingly emphasized the inadequacy of human reason in grasping the divine presence (contra liberalism and Evangelicalism) in favor of sacramental mediation. At the center of this mediation was a mystical union with Christ,574 in which, as Newman states, “true religion is in part altogether above reason, as in its Mysteries.”575
Newman came to recognize that, by virtue of the church’s sacramental union with Christ, believers possess the gift of the Holy Spirit, a gift which “pervades us (if it may be so said) as light pervades a building, or as a sweet perfume the folds of some honourable robe; so that, in Scriptural language, we are said to be in Him, and He in us.”576 The implication of this union shaped Newman’s thinking about justification, as he continues to expound. “It is plain that such an inhabitation brings the Christian into a state altogether new and marvelous, far above the possession of mere gifts.”577 This fit naturally with Newman’s growing regard for the sacrament of baptism, whereupon “each individual member receives the gift of the Holy Ghost as a preliminary step, a condition, or means of his being incorporated into the Church; or, in our Savior’s words, that no one can enter, except he be regenerated in order to enter it.”578
With the Alexandrian fathers, Newman recognized the divine presence to include the Father and the Son, along with the Spirit.579 Joel Elowsky, quoting Cyril of Alexandria’s explanation of this concept, illustrates the continuity of Newman’s position with the fourth-century fathers, “When we thus receive the Spirit, we are ‘proved sharers and partakers in the Divine Nature and we admit the Father himself into our hearts, through the Son and in the Son.’”580 In such an economy, the Father declares sinful man to be righteous, upon the merits and saving grace of Christ, by means of the inhabitation of the Holy Spirit.581
Michael Gorman, in his book Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology, offers some insight into the distinctive features of eastern theology that would have attracted Newman. In the opening pages, Gorman provides a Trinitarian definition of theosis with which Newman would have been most comfortable. “Theosis is transformative participation in the kenotic, cruciform character of God through the Spirit-enabled conformity to the incarnate, crucified, and resurrected/glorified Christ.”582 As our next chapter will examine, the reason for Newman’s approval of this definition is largely indebted to his view of “Spirit-enabled conformity,” in which justification is conceived of as a participatory and transformative experience closely tied to sanctification and holiness. In the words of his role model, Thomas Scott, many of whose ideas Newman retained for the remainder of his life, “Holiness rather than peace.”583
The main contribution of Dionysius Petavius to Newman’s doctrine was the concept of the Spirit’s substantial indwelling in the regenerate soul, a notion that Petavius helped to reintroduce among Catholic scholars in the seventeenth century.584 With a Trinitarian synthesis similar to Newman’s, Petavius promoted the role of the Holy Spirit as the gratia increata of justification, that is, the formal cause upon which one is declared (and also made) to be righteous.585 Expressing his approval in the advertisement to the third edition of his Lectures on the Doctrine of Justification (1874), Newman explains that “Petavius speaks of another, or fifth [form of justification], viz. the substantial Presence of the Holy Ghost in the soul.”586
Our next chapter will examine more specifically how Newman constructed his doctrine with the resources of eastern thought. The main idea to grasp at this point is the influence of such ideas upon Newman’s theological reflection. In keeping with the bent of his character, Dessain points out, “[Newman] could never have been satisfied with thinking of grace merely as a quality in the soul or a strengthening force or a refreshing water.”587 And as this was personally true for Newman, it also applied to the Oxford Movement in general, as Ralph Townsend comments, “The core idea of Tractarian spirituality is that we may become by grace what Christ is by nature; we are transfigured by the divine indwelling.”588