F. Pneumatic, Resurrected Life
F. Pneumatic, Resurrected Life
Late in 1834, still in the early stages of the Tractarian Movement, Newman preached a sermon at St. Mary’s entitled, “The Indwelling Spirit.” It sheds light on the way he relates Christ to the Holy Spirit in justification.
This wonderful change from darkness to light, through the entrance of the Spirit into the soul, is called Regeneration, or the New Birth; a blessing which, before Christ’s coming, not even Prophets and righteous men possessed, but which is now conveyed to all men freely through the Sacrament of Baptism.774
When Newman speaks of Christ’s presence in the believer, he does so in terms of the Holy Spirit. This is potentially confusing since Newman is emphatic about the Trinitarian shape of divine indwelling, but, as he insists, the pneumatic and the Trinitarian Presence are entirely compatible.775
Here I would observe of this part of the wonderful Economy of Redemption, that God the Son and God the Holy Ghost have so acted together in their separate Persons, as to make it difficult for us creatures always to discriminate what belongs to each respectively.776
Because the divine indwelling of the Holy Spirit brings the saving merits of Christ to one’s soul, alien righteousness thereby resides in the believer, and thus serves as the fundamental ground of one’s justification.777 Simply put, to have the Spirit is to have Christ, which includes the forensic and operative movement of righteousness. The two are integrally linked, just as justification and sanctification are regarded by Newman as “substantially one and the same thing.”778
Even though Newman combines justification and sanctification, he nonetheless recognizes an epistemological sequence when he states that “in logical order, or exactness of idea, Almighty God justifies before He sanctifies.”779 This follows the traditional Protestant ordo salutis. A couple of sentences later, Newman specifies the causal relationship of these activities: “to ‘justify’ means in itself ‘counting righteous,’ but includes under its meaning ‘making righteous;’ in other words, the sense of the term is ‘counting righteous,’ and the nature of the thing denoted by it is making righteous.”780 This explanation allowed Newman to claim subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles while also following St. Augustine and the eastern fathers in their emphasis upon the internal work of the Spirit.781
One figure on whom Newman especially relied at this point was the French historian and patristic scholar of the mid-seventeenth century, Denis Pétau, SJ (1583–1652), more commonly known by his Latinized name, Dionysius Petavius, who articulated the Spirit’s substantial indwelling in the human soul.782 Thinking with eastern fathers, such as Cyril of Alexandria, Petavius promoted the notion of the Holy Spirit as the gratia increata.783 In the context of a Trinitarian synthesis similar to Newman’s, Petavius defined the work of the Holy Spirit in terms of a “substantial” indwelling and not a mere “accidental” indwelling.784 In other words, it is the mission of the Spirit, and not the Father or the Son, to establish himself in the believer. In this respect, Petavius defines indwelling more narrowly than Newman. And yet, in Petavius’s vision, the Spirit also in some sense mediates the life of the Trinity to one’s soul.785
An important implication of the Spirit’s inhabitation is the primacy of gratia increata over any form of gratia creata or habitualis.786 This is precisely where Petavius makes his contribution to Newman’s Lectures. In the advertisement to the third edition (1874), Newman writes, “Moreover, Petavius speaks of another, or fifth [form of justification], viz. the substantial Presence of the Holy Ghost in the soul.”787 This presence of the Spirit mediates Christ’s imputed righteousness, which is properly distinguished from one’s own inchoate righteousness.788 This distinction is not intended to denigrate personal virtue. Newman affirms that “the inherent righteousness of a true Christian, viewed as distinct from Christ’s inward presence, is something real, and doubtless far higher than that of a Jew.”789 However, he does sharply distinguish “‘Christ,’ our propitiation, ‘within us’” from one’s actual righteousness.790
When Newman describes the believer’s imperfect, inchoate righteousness he calls it “actual,” for it comes directly from the “divinely imparted principle of righteousness.”791 While affirming that justification effectively “renews” one’s soul,792 Newman is emphatic that such renewal is not derived from an infusion of inherent righteousness or the cultivation of habitus.793 Here he quotes Petavius, who “does not scruple to call the Holy Ghost the formal cause of the righteousness imparted to us.”794 The cause of justification is, in Newman’s terms, “adherent” righteousness, “depending wholly and absolutely on the Divine Indwelling.”795 Simply stated, “Justifying righteousness consists in the coming and presence of the Holy Ghost within us.”796
Given Newman’s stress on imputed righteousness (in the form of divine indwelling), not the production of a created habit, as the proper ground of justification, one might expect for him to have a doctrine of assurance. Of course, this is where Vermigli and Reformed theology go, with their emphasis on imputation. For Newman, however, there is no forward-looking assurance since he espouses an increasing development of justification. How can justification by divine indwelling be increased? Newman answers, “Righteousness then, considered as the state of being God’s temple, cannot be increased; but, considered as the divine glory which that state implies, it can be increased.”797 But how exactly does one’s righteous state relate to the operation of righteousness? For that crucial answer we must consider the formal cause of justification in Newman’s doctrine.