Liberalism and Newman:
The Anglican Vision and Response
A Doctoral Dissertation by Father John McCloskey
Chapter 1: First Impressions (continued)
At this point I will skip over some of his university years that, although not uneventful, shed little light on his opinions of the development of unbelief in his day. It is only with his decisions to take Holy Orders, the reception of the B.A. degree, and finally election to Oriel that he is placed firmly in the environment where he will spend the rest of his Anglican life, gradually being encircled by the new religion of latitudinarianism.
The first public writing that we have record of is a letter to the editor of the British Critic, a periodical of the time, that he writes at the age of twenty-one. The letter is directed to the subject of the analogical difficulties in mathematics and religion. It contains his first attack on liberal opinions in the matter of theology. He points out that "a true religion that has no mysteries is absurd." 15 He points out that the principles upon which mathematics and religion are built are quite distinct, one supernatural and the other material. The letter reflects the young Newman's current interest in mathematics and even more his constant search for certainty or, what he would later call in his Catholic writing, "real assent." A little before writing to the Editor he had written to a close friend that "my current interest and principal amusement at present is the contemplation of that branch of knowledge which is founded in necessary matter." 16
Upon his election to Oriel in the following year Newman first came into contact with two men who were to influence him greatly during the rest of the decade of the 1830's. They were Richard Whately, the future Archbishop of Dublin, and Edward Hawkins, future Provost of Oriel. Newman's friendship with these gentlemen gradually waned as their philosophic and religious differences became apparent. Newman continued to have affection for them both and always refrained from personal attacks although not hesitating to vilify their ideas. On the other hand, both Hawkins and, above all, Whately did not miss many opportunities in later years to give their rather strong opinion on both Newman and his ideas. While Newman grew increasingly conservative in his own unique fashion, both Whately and Hawkins flowed with the liberalizing trend in the Anglican Church. Regarding Hawkins, Newman tells us:
There is one principle which I gained from Dr. Hawkins, more directly bearing upon Catholicism than any I have mentioned and that is the doctrine of tradition, viz. That the sacred text was never intended to teach doctrine, we must have recourse to the formularies of the Church, for instance to the Catechism, and the Creeds. 17
Therefore Newman learned the reasoning behind one of the essential arguments for the Anglican Church, that of antiquity, from a man who was to be a future opponent. This quote bears out the veracity of Newman's self-description in the person of the fictional Charles Reding, that he was easily led by others. Perhaps it is a measure of the powerful influence of religious Liberalism that even a man as firmly rooted in the necessity of doctrine as Hawkins could succumb to some of its tenets.
In the same passage Hawkins recognizes some of the dangers that were already appearing on the horizon for Sacred Scripture: "It was Dr. Hawkins who taught me to anticipate that, before many years were over, there would be an attack made upon the books and canons of Scripture." 18 Newman thus went forewarned into the fray with strong Catholic notions of the importance of both the Teaching Authority of the Church and Sacred Scripture. It is quite significant that Hawkins along with Newman could foresee the attack by the liberals on the reliability of Sacred Scripture, knowing that such an attack in a Protestant world could demolish the foundation for credibility. They anticipate by many years the Biblical criticism of Strauss, Renan and Harnack and, perhaps even more importantly, foreshadow the Modernism that was to afflict the Catholic Church at the end of the nineteenth century.
However, it was from Richard Whately, under whom he was later to serve as Vice-Principal of St. Alban's Hall, that he obtained that which would nearly complete his theological foundations: the notion of the Church. "What he (Whately) did for me in point of religious opinion was first to teach me the existence of the Church as a substantive body or corporation." 19 He was already shedding his Evangelical feathers although his memberships in the Missionary and Bible Societies were still active.
He was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1825. He was still learning rapidly but already one begins to catch a glimpse of the powerful intellect that was developing its own peculiar stance against the Oriel Noetics. Up to this point he had lived very well the last words of advice that his father gave him before he died in December of 1824: "Do not show ultraism in anything." 20 He thus commenced on his long career as an Anglican clergyman, renowned both for his intellect and personal holiness, which was to last up to 1843 with the resignation of the living of St. Mary's. Some of the more positive elements of Evangelical thought still remained. In regard to his pastoral ministry, he says, "those who make comfort the great subject of their preaching seem to mistake the end of their ministry. Holiness is the great end. There must be a struggle and a trial here. Comfort is a cordial, but no one drinks cordials from morning to night." 21
He continued his philosophical and religious reading by deepening his familiarity with the great Anglican writers of the eighteenth century. "Besides Summer, Butler's celebrated work, which he studied about the year 1825 had, as was rational, an important indirect effect upon him in the same direction as placing his doctrinal views on a broad philosophical basis, with which an emotional religion could have little sympathy." 22
Butler's great work on analogy greatly influenced his University Sermons, which he began to preach at this time and continued until his taking leave of St. Mary's. Many years later his reading of Butler was to influence the other great work on the relationship between faith and reason, The Grammar of Assent.
Between the early influence of Whately and Hawkins, the reading of Butler, and his first concrete taste of "real" life as encountered in the rounds of his pastoral duty, his religion views were rapidly taking shape. Again, a description of Charles Reding: "The theory of dogmatic truth, as latitudinarianism during the course of his first years, gradually began to energize the mind."
Already he was entering into controversy over the validity of Christianity with his brother Charles in letters that lasted many pages. Charles quite probably was insane and certainly eccentric and proved to be a constant source of worry for his brother John, both spiritually and monetarily. However these letters afford us a great insight into the early apologetic of Newman against unbelief. In a letter to Charles he states "the point I have maintained throughout, has been, that it is unfair to judge the genuineness of a revelation by the thing revealed - that the credentials are no more contained in the message itself which it purports to bring from heaven, than an ambassadors instruction from his sovereign are his credentials." 23 Again the emphasis on infallible authority, which can be believed on its own credentials rather than "evidences."
In 1826 he commenced the first of his University Sermons, regularly scheduled rotating sermons preached in front of the university. He used the pulpit as a means to undertake a strong stance against the beginnings of unbelief then current by insisting on the compatibility of faith and reason, again foreshadowing a theme that would be taken up by the Catholic Church pre-eminently in the First Vatican Council. Consequently these sermons differ both in style and content from his regular Sunday sermons published as the Parochial and Plain Sermons. Those sermons are directed much more to the conscience than to the intellect. Upon the publication of the University Sermons the mature Newman was to proclaim them the best work he had ever done although not the most perfectly wrought. They are central for an understanding of Newman's developing perception of the Liberalism of the day.
In the first of these sermons 24 , Newman takes up the charge that revealed religion is hostile to the advance of philosophy and science. In order to realize the importance of the sermon, one has to realize that this is a twenty five year old recently ordained Anglican clergyman who many years before the appearance of Darwin, Huxley and the scientific revolution is already addressing himself to one of the main questions of the future day. At the beginning he points out quite succinctly "the philosopher might speculate but the theologian must submit to learn." 25 He thus makes clear that the mysteries offered as dogmatic truth must be assented to on the authority of God who reveals through the Church. Reason may be applied to their explanation but only to clarify and not to challenge. He attacked openly what he perceived as a hidden wish among the intelligentsia, that is the desire to see Christianity fail through incompatibility with modern man and civilization.
It is to be lamented that many even of the present respectable advocates of improvement in the condition of society, and patrons of general knowledge, seem to consider the interests of the human race quite irreconcilable with those of the Christian Church and though they think it indecorous or unfeeling to attack religion openly, yet appear confidently to expect that the progress of discovery and the general cultivation of the human mind must terminate in the fall of Christianity. 26
In the case of the Anglican Church and English society, these individuals were not far wrong in their analyses of the possible failure of Christian influence in their society. Certainly no one today would point to Great Britain as the model of a Christian state. During the remainder of Newman's life well into the Victorian era, the opponents of Christianity became increasingly bold in their interventions in society. Acknowledged atheists, agnostics and skeptics were none too common in 1826; they became all too common by 1889.
This, his first university sermon, already gives a hint of the line of thought that he will pursue in his Catholic period, above all in his Idea of a University. He points out that "to feel and appear timid on witnessing the enlargement of scientific knowledge is almost to acknowledge that there may be some contrariety between it and Revelation." 27 He was already resolving the dichotomy so often witnessed in the present day of supposed conflict between the idea of scientific progress and religion. His deep religious faith leads him to conclude and rightly so that there cannot be any real disagreement between truths, and if there appears to be one, then more research is needed on the scientific question.
Newman already recognizes the divisions that were inherent in the widening distance between the theology and philosophy of the day. He realized that unless philosophy was recognized as subordinate to theology the result would be catastrophic for modern thought and morals. He comments, "There is much despair lest the philosophical school should be found to separate from the Christian Church and at length disown the parents to whom it has been so greatly indebted. And this evil in a measure has befallen us, that it does not increase we must look that early religious training to which there can be no doubt all persons - those in the higher as well as in the poorer classes should be submitted." 28 To Newman, what we today would call "catechetics," the religious education of the young, was of paramount importance in assuring a healthy society, both intellectually and morally. Newman in fact spent numerous hours teaching Catechism to the young children of his parish, first at St. Clements and later at St. Mary's.
