I. Conclusion
I. Conclusion
We have considered how Newman’s religious background led him from “a conventional, non-sacramental middle-class” experience of faith,665 to a Calvinistic variety of Evangelicalism (1816–27), through a brief flirtation with liberalism (1828), and eventually into the so-called Oxford Movement (1833–38). The high point of Newman’s via media came in 1841 when he composed his famous Tract 90, at which time his Tractarian balloon began to deflate until October 9, 1845, when he was received into the Catholic Church by Fr. Dominic Barberi of the Passionist Order.666 There were, as we have seen, a number of crucial points in this development of Newman’s religious thought between 1816 and 1838.
From Thomas Scott, Newman acquired a deep appreciation for the holiness of the Triune God and the utter depravity of human nature, values that remained with him to the end of his life. In 1823, when Newman became a fellow at Oriel College, the Calvinist orientation of his faith fell under siege. Edward Pusey pushed on Newman’s doctrine of imputation. Edward Hawkins challenged his bifurcation of humanity between “real” and “pseudo” Christians and instilled an appreciation for the church fathers. After months of such influence and study, particularly of the fourth-century fathers, Newman started to reconsider his position on the authority of tradition and the objectivity of the sacraments. He eventually abandoned the Evangelical doctrines of sola scriptura and sola fide in exchange for an affirmation of the authority of oral tradition and baptismal regeneration. Thanks to the doctrine of uncreated grace, which he imbibed from the Alexandrian fathers and Petavius, Newman regarded himself to be in subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles.
The year of 1833 was significant. According to Newman, Keble’s assize sermon, “National Apostasy,” marked the beginning of the Oxford Movement. From it developed the revival of the notion of Anglicanism as a via media between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Through various means, starting with his Lectures on the Prophetical Office (1837), Newman worked this position out in terms of the development of the church’s “prophetic tradition.” Realizing that he would eventually need to address his via media to the doctrine of justification—a central tenet of Evangelicalism—the conflict surrounding Alexander Knox was just the right occasion in which to articulate his position.
The first lecture on justification was delivered on April 13, 1837 and the final on June 1 of the same year. The general purpose of their composition was “to show how the Church of England understands the axiom ‘justification by faith only.’”667 His answer to this question is perhaps best summarized in the most frequently quoted sentence of his volume: “Justification comes through the Sacraments; is received by faith; consists in God’s inward presence; and lives in obedience.”668 The precise meaning of this statement will be the subject of our next chapter.
464. The most significant general biographies on Newman fall into three basic categories: those that are dedicated to his life, others that emphasize his thought, and those that do an adequate job of explicating both. The major works that fall into the first category include: Ward, Young Mr. Newman ; Ruggles, Journey into Faith; Bouyer, Newman: sa vie, sa spiritualité (Bouyer’s work was translated into English in 1958 and recently reprinted by Ignatius Press under the English title, Newman: His Life and Spirituality); Newsome, The Convert Cardinals; Chisnall, John Henry Cardinal Newman; Short, Newman and His Contemporaries. The second category, emphasizing Newman’s thought, include: Merrigan, “Numquam Minus Solus, Quam Cum Solus”; Harrold, John Henry Newman; Holloway, The Victorian Sage; Boekraad, The Personal Conquest of Truth; Dessain, John Henry Newman; Dulles, John Henry Newman; Ker and Merrigan, The Cambridge Companion to John Henry Newman; Sheridan, Newman on Justification. Biographies that sufficiently grapple with life and thought include: Bremond, Newman : Essai de biographie psychologique (translated into English under the title, The Mystery of Newman, trans. Corrance); Ward, The Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman; Middleton, Newman at Oxford; Trevor, Newman: The Pillar of the Cloud, vol. 1; Trevor, Newman: Light in Winter, vol. 2; Robbins, The Newman Brothers; Ker, John Henry Newman; Blehl, Pilgrim Journey; Turner, John Henry Newman. The centenary of Newman’s death produced a handful of valuable volumes including Brown, Newman: A Man for Our Time; Foister, Cardinal Newman 1801–90; Ker and Hill, Newman after a Hundred Years.
465. The project started in 1884 before Mozley’s first draft was presented to Newman in 1887.
466. Mozley, ed., Letters and Correspondence of John Henry Newman [to 1845], 2 vols.
467. Francis William Newman, Contributions Chiefly to the Early History.
468. Robbins, The Newman Brothers, vii.
469. Newman, Jfc, 340. The following citations from Newman’s Lectures are from his third edition, unless indicated otherwise.
470. McGrath, “Newman on Justification,” 94.
471. McGrath, ID, 295–307.
472. Sheridan, “Newman and Luther on Justification,” 217. In the précis of his article, Sheridan concludes, “Newman wrongly attributed to Luther the idea that justification is by mere extrinsic imputation, and, while he correctly attributed Luther’s insistence upon ‘justification by faith alone’ to the latter’s rejection of any kind of human merit, he wrongly accused him of antinomianism” (217).
473. John F. Perry, “Newman’s Treatment of Luther in the Lectures on Justification,” 303–17.
474. Neuhaus, “Newman, Luther, and the Unity of Christians,” 277–88.
475. Murray, “Luther in Newman’s Lectures on Justification,” 156–78.
476. O’Leary, “Impeded Witness,” 153–93.
477. This was based on his doctoral thesis from the Institut Catholique de Paris, “Newman and Justification: A Study in the Development of a Theology” (1965).
478. Toon, Evangelical Theology, 1833–1856.
479. Toon, “A Critical Review,” 335–44.
480. Turner, John Henry Newman, 266–75.
481. Ian Ker, John Henry Newman: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 149–57.
482. Sheridan, “Justification.”
483. Dulles, John Henry Newman, 16–25.
484. Ker, Newman on Being a Christian, 52–58.
485. Chadwick, “The Lectures on Justification,” 287–308.
486. Dessain, “Cardinal Newman and the Doctrine of Uncreated Grace,” 207–29, 269–88.
487. Ibid., 285.
488. Morales, “Newman and the Problems of Justification,” 143–64.
489. In the next chapter, we examine this argument and conclude that Morales is mostly correct.
490. Newman, Jfc, 9.
491. Morales, “Newman Today,” 157. The particular sermon is “Righteousness, not of us, but in us,” in Newman, PMI, 1041–49.
492. Holtzen, “Union with God and the Holy Spirit: A New Paradigm of Justification.”
493. Ibid., “Newman’s ‘Via Media’ Theology of Justification,” 64–74.
494. Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, 3.
495. Newman, Apo, 2.
496. Gilley, “Life and Writings,” 1.
497. Newman, Apo, 3.
498. Newman, AW, 29. For Newman the term “Calvinist” had few of the precise doctrinal elements that are common to continental Calvinism. The meaning for Newman comes into sharper focus by looking at the teaching of Evangelicals such as Thomas Scott, namely, the severity of sin, authority of Scripture, sufficiency of the cross, centrality of the new birth, power of the preached word, and necessity of holiness. Sheridan, Newman on Justification, 16.
499. Newman, Apo, 4.
500. Jay, The Evangelical and Oxford Movements, 1–19.
501. Ibid., 3.
502. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 1–19.
503. Newsome, The Parting of Friends, 1–16.
504. Gilley, Newman and His Age, 47–53.
505. Bebbington has summarized Evangelical religion in terms of his so called “quadrilateral”: conversionism, activism, biblicism, and crucicentrism. Newsome and Gilley identify common Evangelical traits such as denominational secessions, biblical literalism, chiliasm, and social justice. Newsome, The Parting of Friends; Gilley, Newman and his Age. Jay distinguishes between “essential” and “non-essential” features in her work, The Religion of the Heart, 51–105.
506. Latourette, A History of Christianity, rev. ed., vol. II, 1164.
507. Altholz, “The Mind and Art of Victorian Orthodoxy,” 187.
508. Ker, John Henry Newman, 92.
509. Newton and Cecil, Out of the Depths.
510. Also a hymn writer, William Cowper is perhaps most noted for the poem “Light Shining out of Darkness” (from which the English language gets the idiom “God moves in a mysterious way”) and the enormously popular hymn of that day, “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood.” Harland, William Cowper.
511. Scott, The Works of the Late Rev. Thomas Scott.
512. Newman, Apo, 5.
513. For a history on each of these publications, see Toon, Evangelical Theology, 6–9.
514. Neill, A History of Christian Missions, 213–16.
515. Overton, The Evangelical Revival in the Eighteenth Century; Ryle, Knots untied; Moule, The Evangelical School in the Church of England; Mathieson, England in Transition; Mathieson, English Church Reform 1815–1840; Smyth, Simeon & Church Order; Reynolds, The Evangelicals at Oxford, 1735–1871; Toon, Evangelical Theology; Jay, The Evangelical and Oxford Movements.; Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain.
516. Ryle, Knots Untied, 3.
517. Ryle does not identify these individuals by name. Despite the “low church” origins of the movement, with its emphasis on Scripture only, the priesthood of believers, and a general chilliness toward religious “tradition,” it was indebted, according to Ryle, to “the Thirty-nine Articles, the Prayer-book fairly interpreted, the works of the Reformers, [and] the writings of the pre-Caroline divines” (v).
518. Ryle, Knots untied, 4–9.
519. Russell, The household of faith, 240.
520. Ibid.
521. This was the first of three serious illnesses which were accompanied by a profound spiritual crisis. Newman writes, “The first keen, terrible one, when I was a boy of 15, and it made me a Christian—with experiences before and after, awful and known only to God.” Newman, AW, 150.
522. Newman, Apo, 5.
523. Ibid.
524. Ibid.
525. An especially distilled treatment of Scott’s Trinitarian position is found in “The Personality and Deity of the Holy Spirit,” in Scott, Essays on the most important subjects in religion, 4th ed., 243–60.
526. Sheridan, Newman on Justification, 28.
527. Newman, Jfc, 115.
528. Scott, Remarks on the Refutation of Calvinism, 2nd ed., 1–51.
529. Newton, Dissertations on the Prophecies.
530. Milner, The History of the Church of Christ, 7. Milner’s work presents a Calvinistic view in which the world is divided between the elect who are conscious of their justification by faith and the rest who are not.
531. Beveridge, Private Thoughts upon Religion.
532. The denial of baptismal regeneration was a touchstone of Evangelical orthodoxy, especially after the publication of Richard Mant’s Appeal to the Gospel in 1812, in which he repudiated the Evangelicals’ missionary push for conversion in favor of an ecclesiology based upon baptismal regeneration.
533. Newman, AW, 152.
534. Sheridan, Newman on Justification, 38–42. According to Sheridan, the letter is found in the Archives of the Birmingham Oratory, Miscellaneous Letters (1816–24), no. 2.
535. Ibid., 40.
536. Ibid., 42.
537. Newman seemed to have anticipated this when he explains his reticence as “the result of his Calvinistic beliefs.” Newman, AW, 65–66.
538. Newman, Apo, 11.
539. Ibid., 4.
540. Newman, AW, 190.
541. Ibid., 190–91.
542. Ibid., 75.
543. Ibid., 203.
544. Newsome, The Parting of Friends, 46.
545. Newman, AW, 77.
546. Ibid., 65.
547. Newman studied the work of Sumner, who was the Evangelical Bishop of Chester, early in his life before delving into his Apostolical Preaching. Later, after the writing of Tract 90, it was Sumner who was first to denounce the tract from the Episcopal bench for its deviation from justification by faith alone. Turner, John Henry Newman, 390–91.
548. About this experience, Newman writes (about himself in the third person): “It was during these years of parochial duty that Mr. Newman underwent a great change in his religious opinions.” Newman, AW, 73. Later, in his memoir, he explains that “the religion which he had received from John Newton and Thomas Scott would not work in a parish; that it is unreal; that this he had actually found as a fact, as Mr. Hawkins had told him beforehand; that Calvinism was not a key to the phenomena of human nature, as they occur in the world” (79).
549. Ibid., 203.
550. Ibid.
551. Years later, Newman would refer to this as “the quasi-Catholic doctrine of Tradition.” Ibid., 78.
552. Growing out of his study of the post-Nicene fathers, Newman grew uncertain about whether Anglicanism could be properly called “Catholic.” These doubts took root in 1839, when he read an article by Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman in the Dublin Review, in which Anglicans were compared to African Donatists during the time of Augustine. Reflecting on this question over time, Newman began to correlate the Church of England with the heretical Arians of the fourth century. In Newman’s mind, Anglicanism failed the Catholic test. Newman tells this story in his Apo, 127–237.
553. Newman, Apo, 9.
554. Butler, The analogy of religion.
555. Newman, AW, 78.
556. Ibid. This step occurred shortly after his ordination to the priesthood on May 29, 1825.
557. Newman, Apo, 14. See also, Blehl, Pilgrim Journey, 77.
558. Newman, Apo, 18. The second principle that Newman learned from Butler is “probability [in the service of faith and love] as the guide of life” (19).
559. Ibid., 18.
560. Ibid., 49. Newman’s sermon, “Holiness Necessary for Future Blessedness” (preached in 1826) makes explicit his repudiation of the Evangelical doctrine of sudden conversion: “It follows at once, even though Scripture did not plainly tell us so that no one is able to prepare himself for heaven, that is, make himself holy in a short time . . . there are others who suppose they may be saved all at once by a sudden and easily acquired faith.” Newman, PPS, 10.
561. For an assessment of Newman’s work, see Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition, 3–6, 147, 158.
562. It also introduced Newman to a third issue that would become important for his doctrine of justification—the Eastern notion of uncreated grace, which we will consider in due course. For a helpful explanation of how the fourth-century fathers, particularly Athanasius, applied the idea of uncreated grace to the doctrine of salvation, see Popov, “The Idea of Deification in the Early Eastern Church,” 42–48.
563. Ker, John Henry Newman, 52.
564. Newman, Apo, 32.
565. In the background of this legislation was the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829, which reduced many of the restrictions on Catholics. Newman and his contemporaries perceived this as a threat to the privileges of the Church of England.
566. Newman, AW, 127.
567. Newman, Apo, 35.
568. Keble’s sermon underscored the struggle for Church identity in the face of government intervention, a theme that would remain central to the Tractarian movement. Rowell, The Vision Glorious, 4.
569. Michael Testa writes, “I have indicated that some Calvinistic tendencies remain with Newman throughout his life. One example is his profound sense of the sinfulness of humanity.” Testa, “The Theological Anthropology of John Henry Newman.”
570. Frederick H. Borsch explains how such an approach infused Tractarian spirituality with a measure of mysticism, often leading to an emphasis on the Eucharist. Borsch, “Ye Shall Be Holy,” 356.
571. This is of course precisely what Newman did in 1845, when was received into the Catholic Church by Fr. Dominic Barberi of the Passionist Order.
572. Daley, “The Church Fathers,” 31–41.
573. Dessain, “Uncreated Grace,” 215.
574. Dessain, “Cardinal Newman and the Eastern Tradition,” 95.
575. Newman, PPS, 242. This sermon was first published in 1835.
576. Ibid., 368. This sermon was first published in 1835.
577. Ibid.
578. Ibid., 655. This sermon was first published in 1836.
579. For a development of Newman’s appreciation and usage of the Alexandrian fathers, see King, Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers.
580. Elowsky, “Bridging the Gap,” 153.
581. Newman, Jfc., 147 [163–64].
582. Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God, 7.
583. Newman, Apo, 5.
584. Rondet, The Grace of Christ, 366–73.
585. Ibid., 367; Holtzen, “Union with God,” 35. For an explantion of how Petavius used the eastern fathers, see King, Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers, 119–21.
586. Newman, Jfc, xii. Mark Medley examines the relevance of theosis for contemporary reflection on the doctrine of justification in his essay, “Participation in God.” Medley provides an assessment of several modern Baptist theologians who, by applying the category of uncreated grace, have challenged concepts on justification that appear to reduce the doctrine to a legal-forensic activity. Theosis: Deification in Christian Theology, ed. Kharlamov, 207.
587. Dessain, “Uncreated Grace,” 215.
588. Townsend, “The Catholic Revival in the Church of England,” 465.
589. Newman, Apo, 36.
590. The Irish Church Temporalities Bill 1833 was the immediate occasion for Newman’s reaction. Herein lies a fascinating irony: the Oxford Movement’s defense of a defiantly Protestant established Church of Ireland against Catholic adversaries who sought to reduce its power, eventually resulted in much of the movement crossing the Tiber into Catholicism.
591. Helpful works on the Oxford Movement include: Brilioth, The Anglican Revival; Chadwick, The Mind of the Oxford Movement; Chadwick, The Spirit of the Oxford Movement; Church, The Oxford Movement; Cox, Recollections of Oxford; Dawson, The Spirit of the Oxford Movement; Edgecombe, Two Poets of the Oxford Movement; Faber, Oxford Apostles; Mozley, Reminiscences; Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context.
592. Dulles, John Henry Newman, 5. Newman narrates his role in the movement up to his eventual disenchantment with the via media in his Apo, 101–46.
593. Newman, Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, Vol. 4, 304.
594. Unlike other expressions of Anglo-Catholicism, which borrowed wholesale from the Roman Catholic Church, the Tractarians were more cautious in such identification. Pickering, Anglo-Catholicism, 41.
595. In December 1876, Newman organized this work into a two-volume set entitled, The Via Media. The first volume consisted of the third edition of the Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church. The second volume comprised eleven more occasional pieces including his tracts on the Church Missionary Society of 1830, documentation of Tract 90, and his retraction of anti-Catholic statements in 1841. Newman wrote a new preface, which serves as his last word on the concept of an Anglican via media. Newman, The Via Media of the Anglican Church.
596. Newman, Lectures on the prophetical office, 304–13. In Newman’s thought, these generally corresponded to the lex credendi (the episcopal tradition’s dogmatic formulations) and the lex orandi (the prophetical tradition’s development of doctrine).
597. Ibid., 317–18.
598. Newman’s infamous opposition to the construction of the Martyr’s Memorial, the broad contours of which are helpfully outhned by Ker, bears eloquent testimony to this fact. Ker, John Henry Newman, 172–73.
599. Sheridan, Newman on Justification, 214.
600. The Tracts defined their positions in contrast to non-conformist churches (which Tractarians categorically rejected since they lacked bishops and were therefore considered to be illegitimate) and the Erastian elements of the established Church (which were thought to undermine the supernatural character of Christ’s body). With the accession of Edward Pusey in late 1833, the Tracts acquired a greater degree of thoroughness.
601. Edited by Newman and John Keble in two volumes two years after Richard Hurrell Froude’s untimely death on February 28, 1836, this work revealed the Tractarians’ hostility toward Evangelicalism and the Protestant heritage from which they drew inspiration. Froude, Remains of the late Reverend Richard Hurrell Froude, ed. Newman and Keble.
602. Turner, John Henry Newman, 313–14.
603. The legendary status of Newman’s pulpit was memorably captured by Matthew Arnold’s retrospective evocation of “the charm of that spiritual apparition, gliding in the dim afternoon light through the aisles of St. Mary’s, rising into the pulpit, and then, in the most entrancing of voices, breaking the silence with words and thoughts which were a religious music,—subtle, sweet, mournful.” Ker, John Henry Newman, 90. For a concise review of the six volumes that comprise Newman’s PPS, see Chadwick, Newman, 18–23.
604. Particularly the Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church (delivered in the spring of 1836) and Lectures on the Doctrine of Justification (the first of which was delivered on April 13 and the final on June 1, 1837).
605. Sheridan, Newman on Justification, 206.
606. Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition, 5.
607. Turner, John Henry Newman, 9.
608. Most of Turner’s case turns on evidence that supports the intensity of Newman’s opposition to Evangelicalism during the 1830s and 1840s. For example, he cites the Unitarian theologian, James Martineau, who recalled Newman having “assailed the Evangelical party with every weapon of antipathy which could be drawn from the armory of imagination or logic, Scripture or history.” Ibid. Turner also offers a rhetorical analysis of Newman’s appendix, added to the Apologia in 1865, in which he redefines the meaning of “Liberalism.” Ibid., 10–11.
609. It is noteworthy that among the thirteen essays in The Cambridge Companion to John Henry Newman, which was published seven years after Turner’s work, there is not a single mention of Turner.
610. Ker’s research supports this connection. In the context of describing Newman’s opposition to the inroads of Rationalism, he writes, “The result was that ‘idea of Mystery’ was ‘discarded’, and religion took on a subjective rather than objective character. The blame is laid squarely on Evangelical Christianity, which directs ‘its attention to the heart itself, not to anything external to us.” Ker, John Henry Newman, 122. Ker makes the same point later in his volume when he described John Henry’s frustration with the Evangelical faith of his younger brother, Francis Newman (199).
611. Newman, Lectures on the prophetical office, 25.
612. “Socinianism,” in the context of nineteenth-century inter-denominational rhetoric, had more to do with “minimally dogmatic Christianity based on reason and toleration” than adherence to a particular set of doctrinal tenets. Turner, John Henry Newman, 14.
613. Ibid., 262.
614. So Newman writes in his Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, “Scripture is not so clear—in God’s providential arrangement, to which we submit—as to hinder ordinary persons, who read it for themselves, from being Sabellians, or Independents, or Weslyans” (180). This appears in “Lecture Six” titled “On the Abuse of Private Judgment,” (175–204).
615. Newman, PPS, 987.
616. It is sometimes overlooked that many Evangelicals recognized a degree of kinship with Tractarians in the early phase of the Oxford Movement. Newsome, “Justification and Sanctification,” 33–34.
617. Turner, John Henry Newman, 173.
618. Pusey’s three tracts, numbered 67, 68, and 69, were entitled, “Scriptural Views of Holy Baptism as Established by the Consent of the Ancient Church and Contrasted with the Systems of Modern Schools.” The Christian Observer leveled a personal attack upon Pusey, concluding with the question, “Will any approver of the Oxford Tracts answer in Print?” Perry, “Newman’s Treatment of Luther,” 308.
619. Toon, Evangelical Theology, 141.
620. The first, dated January 11, 1837, argued for baptism as a gift particular to the Second Testament. The second letter, dated March 3 of the same year, clarified that Pusey had not written all that the Observer had accused him of. Newman then demanded to know what in Pusey’s tract had violated the Thirty-Nine Articles. Perry, “Newman’s Treatment of Luther,” 308–9.
621. Chadwick, “The Lectures on Justification,” 288.
622. Toon, Evangelical Theology, 141.
623. Toon, Evangelical Theology, 142.
624. Ker calls Knox “the Irish forerunner of the Tractarians” in his John Henry Newman, 115.
625. McGrath, ID, 296.
626. Murray, “Luther in Newman’s Lectures,” 155.
627. Chadwick, “The Lectures on Justification,” 287.
628. Ker, John Henry Newman, 157.
629. Chadwick, “The Lectures on Justification,” 289.
630. Brilioth, The Anglican Revival, 282.
631. Ward, The Life of John Henry, 432.
632. Hutton, Cardinal Newman, 2nd ed., 83.
633. Toon, Evangelical Theology, 141–70.
634. Newsome, “Justification and Sanctification,” 33. Many of these messages were published in the first three volumes of the PPS (originally published in 1834, 1835, and 1836, respectively).
635. Chadwick, “The Lectures on Justification,” 289.
636. Newman dedicated his Lectures to Richard Bagot, Bishop of Oxford, hoping to receive an endorsement, and was heartbroken when Bagot had reservations. Gilley, Newman and His Age, 176–77.
637. Sheridan, Newman on Justification, 247. Newman writes as much himself in his Apologia, “I wrote my Essay on Justification in 1837; it was aimed at the Lutheran dictum that justification by faith only was the cardinal doctrine of Christianity.” Newman, Apo, 72.
638. Newman, Jfc, 2.
639. Ibid.
640. Ker, John Henry Newman, 149–50.
641. It should be remembered that Newman was simultaneously editing Froude’s Remains when he was getting his Lectures on Justification ready for publication. Ker, John Henry Newman, 147–49. Froude’s infamous animosity for Protestantism, coupled with Newman’s intense emotional attachment to his recently deceased friend, may have further sharpened the edge of Newman’s polemic.
642. Sheridan, Newman on Justification, 239.
643. Newman, Jfc, ix.
644. Ibid., 333.
645. We are reminded of Scott’s influence on Newman, which instilled a robust commitment to holiness and an antipathy for lawless faith. Sheridan, Newman on Justification, 26–29.
646. Newman, Jfc, 2. Newman’s reading of Catholic authors was equally facile. Bellarmine and Vásquez receive only a passing quotation. Newman evidently believed the Catholic Church to teach that believers are justified on account of their renewal. Newman, Jfc., 154. It is precisely this assumption that Newman clarifies in the third edition of his Lectures (1874), Jfc., ix–xiv.
647. Ibid., 3. The “Caroline” divines (from Carolus, the Latin name for Charles) are the primary Anglican theologians and devotional writers during the reigns of Charles I (1625–49) and Charles II (1660–85). For an introduction to the general theological contributions of the Caroline Divines see Guyer, The Beauty of Holiness: The Caroline Divines. For a closer look at what these divines taught on the doctrine of justification, particularly John Davenant, William Forbes, Henry Hammond, Jeremy Taylor and George Bull, see Bryant, “Bishop George Bull’s Doctrine of Justification.”
648. Newman, Jfc, 275–76. In affirmation of Bull, Newman asserts, “By faith, according to Bishop Bull, is meant fides formata charitate et operibus, or the obedience which is of faith,” (358). Newman looked chiefly to George Bull’s Harmonia Apostolica, an Anglican attempt to reconcile Paul and James by stating that we are justified by faith and works.
649. Passing references to these men are found in Newman, Jfc. vii, 13, 16, 159, 358.
650. For an explanation of how Anglican theology moved from its “Classical” form (i.e., Hooker, Davenant, and Ussher) to the anti-Calvinist, “Caroline” variety (i.e., Taylor, Bull, and Barrow), see Allison, The Rise of Moralism. For an account of how this history unfolded before it is appropriated by Newman, see McGrath, ID, 277–83.
651. Most of these references are found in Newman’s Appendix. He pits Davenant against Calvin, for instance, to argue with Davenant that Christ’s righteousness is not a personal possession of the believer. Newman, Jfc., 362. Hooker appears with more frequency. Ibid., 125, 375, 378, 382–84, 400–404.
652. McGrath explains how Newman was at variance with some of the pre-Commonwealth divines and therefore concludes his Lectures with reference to three Anglican luminaries, Hooker, Taylor, and Barrow. In Newman’s words, “I will appeal in conclusion to the three who have sometimes been considered the special lights of our later Church, Hooker, Taylor, and Barrow; of whom two will be found to sanction me, and the third, though apparently pronouncing the other way, to withdraw his judgment while he gives it.” Newman, Jfc., 400. McGrath explains why this claim is fallacious, ID, 282–84.
653. McGrath, ID, 299.
654. We all have lenses, and there is no such thing as a view from nowhere. In Newman’s case, however, the issues of his day exercised an excessive degree of control over his interpretation. This was true, for instance, of Newman’s works on The Arians of the Fourth Century, where Newman portrays Antiochene devotion, on account of its literal interpretation of Scripture, as inferior to the spirituality of the Alexandrian tradition. The correlation to Evangelical literalism of his own day is thinly veiled. Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition, 4–5, 158.
655. Chadwick, “The Lectures on Justification,” 294. In footnote 19 Chadwick suggests, “Much of what Newman knew is likely to have come through J. Milner’s History of the Church of Christ . . . where Luther dominates the account of the Reformation and is given a pietist face.”
656. Johann Gerhard (1582–1637), a scholastic scholar and Lutheran pastor, was the most popular Lutheran theologian in England during the nineteenth century. Guyer, The Beauty of Holiness, 22. Newman concentrates on volume 3 of Gerhard’s Loci Theologici, De Justificatione Per Fidem.
657. Newman, Jfc, 331–33. McGrath examines the most grievous example of misquotation in which Newman cites Luther to prove that justification is in some sense based on works, when, in fact, the omitted section asserts that justification is by faith alone. McGrath, ID, 305–6.
658. McGrath, ID, 306–7.
659. Newman, Jfc, xiv.
660. Newman’s appendix originated in his first edition (1838). A few additional comments, however, indicated in brackets, appear in the third edition (1874). These appear on pages 31, 73, 96, 101, 154, 186, 187, 190, 198, 201, 226, 236, 260, 343, 348-349, and 353. Newman provides a helpful introduction to such changes when he writes, “The purpose of this Appendix is to show that the cardinal question to be considered by Catholics and Protestants in their controversy about Justification is, What is the formal cause? When this is properly examined, it will be found that there is little or no difference of view between the disputants, except when the Protestant party adheres to the pardox of Luther:—‘Sola fides, non fides formata charitate, justificat: fides justificat sine et ante charitatem,’ and refuses to assign a formal cause,” 343 [391].
661. Newman, Jfc, xiv.
662. Ibid., 323–26.
663. Ibid., ix.
664. Newman, Apo, 49.
665. Gilley, “Life and Writings,” 1.
666. Ker, John Henry Newman, 316–21.
667. Sheridan, Newman on Justification, 247; Newman, Apo, 72.
668. Newman, Jfc, 278.