Liberalism and Newman:
The Anglican Vision and Response
A Doctoral Dissertation by Father John McCloskey
Chapter 5: Verba
A. The Arians
Having now examined the response of Liberalism in the actions of Newman, I now will proceed to show how he responded in his writings to what was, in fact, a challenge. Newman was a man of many moods, from genial affability to an icy sternness, light playfulness to heated anger. He was never one to encourage controversy yet he did not hesitate to take one up if he believed the cause just. The encroachments of Liberalism upon the British Church and State were precisely the challenge that Newman was to take up as an Anglican and not give up until cut down by extreme old age. His response in his writings, as an Anglican, are worthy of examination.
He begins with the encouragement of a goal that was so dear to him, personal holiness. Through the many volumes of the Pastoral and Plain Sermons he points out quite clearly that his primary goal as a preacher was the sanctification of his congregation individually. Thus society would be transformed and the hydra-headed liberal ideology could be fended off. However the response in writings surfaces in many distinct forms: historical works, essays, newspaper articles, theological tracts, etc. In this section I will trace the development of this response in writing throughout Newman's life. Newman's later battles as a Catholic in literary form are a direct development from his earlier years with the crucial difference that as a Catholic he operated from a firmer position and with much greater global perspective, spending considerable time in Rome and continental Europe and through his voluminous correspondence.
As we have seen earlier, by 1830 Newman had already rejected his slight flirtation with Liberalism as manifested in his mentor and friend Richard Whately. He had already commenced on his study of the Fathers that was to have so much impact on his later conversion. Thus with the writing of his first book, the historical-theological work, The Arians of the Fourth Century, we have one of the first examples of Newman's response to the Liberalism of the day. As in all of Newman's works, the reader is invited to learn and develop along side with the author; there is always a combination of unexpected discovery and logical conclusion in his work. He viewed the nineteenth century and the centuries to come in comparison with the early Ages of Christianity rather than with the Middle Ages or Renaissance. The question here was the need to rechristianize the huge masses of people that in fact were living as pagans, perhaps somewhat more refined than the ancient Romans, but heathens nonetheless. He points out acutely the connection between the moral life and doctrinal belief, "And it need scarcely be said, that coldness in faith is the sure consequence of relaxation in morals." 63 He would agree wholeheartedly that the problems of faith often lie in the heart rather than in the mind. This fits in well with the key part of the Newman apologetic regarding the nature of belief, that the motives for credibility or an act of faith are more often, not the Protestant "evidences," but rather a consequence of the convergence in the human heart of antecedent occurrences that speak warmly to the whole man, rather than coldly to the intellect. Thus that inner hunger for God of which St. Augustine speaks often moves more than miracles, and the true friendship of a fellow man convinces more than the simple doctrinal truth.
He goes further and points out that heresy, the variation from the revealed truth, also often springs up precisely in those areas where the moral life has weakened, "When the spirits and morals of a people are materially debased, varieties of doctrinal errors spring up as if self-sown and are rapidly propagated." 64 Therefore Liberalism in religion, that "God-denying apostasy" was in good part successful due in good part to the lack of England. When the bourgeois existence became the ideal, as in nineteenth century Victorian England, it is little surprise that the number of believers gradually diminished through the decades to its current low state.
I would point out a corollary: the more ascetic and demanding a life that a man leads (in the spiritual sense), the stronger his faith. They are mutually reinforcing. Newman, in part, attempted through this first book to give a lesson to the readers regarding the doctrinal weaknesses that go hand in hand with a dissolution of the moral life of a nation.
As he portrays the character of the times in which the Arians heresy springs up, he stresses the importance of a proper balanced education in order to provide the foundation for correct doctrinal belief and moral behaviour. In later life he was to write the classic statement on Christian liberal education, The Idea of a University.
As logic and rhetoric made them expert in proof and refutation, so there was much in other sciences which formed a liberal education, in geometry and arithmetic to confine the mind to the contemplation of material objects, as if these could supply suitable tests and standards for examining those of a moral and spiritual nature whereby there are truths foreign to the powers of the vast exercised intellect, some of the peculiar discoveries of the improved moral sense (or what the Scripture terms the "Spirit") and others still less on a level with reason, and received on the sole authority of Revelation. 65
He underlines precisely the fact that education is often pointed towards a merely utilitarian end, ignoring the spirit. Consequently, we see a generation of young people who can give a speech, solve a calculus problem, or write an essay yet are not at all sensitive to the natural law written on their hearts or do not experience any thirst for spiritual life. They have been educated as rational animals and not as men with souls.
The germ of what would later become the Christian ideal of liberal education as lived and practiced in the Middle Ages, combining study of theology and philosophy with the fine arts, is inherent in Newman's observation on the fourth century.
In his own day when prophets (albeit false ones) were appearing or soon to appear, Bentham, Mill, Comte, and Darwin, Newman finds again an eerie parallel between the fourth and nineteenth centuries. He quotes the words of Alexander, an orthodox Catholic against the heretic Arius, "they put themselves above the ancients, and the teachers of our youth, and the prelates of the day, considering themselves alone to be wise and to have discovered truths which have been revealed to man before them." 66 Newman warns us to be aware of those that seek to pervert the faith that we have learned from our forefathers through the catechism. There is no blanket condemnation of novelty but only a recognition that Revelation ended with the death of the last apostle and that truth is one and taught infallibly by the coetus to which Christ entrusted it, the Roman Church. Newman here rather encourages a struggle against these new false prophets using all the licit means. There may be progress in our understanding of the dogma but no new doctrine unless put forth by the Church assisted by the Holy Spirit.
Although Newman was only thirty years old when he began to write this book, the Evangelical and Protestant antecedents were rapidly being effaced. He rejected out of hand the Protestant notion of "the Bible and the Bible only." His ever-deeper readings of the Fathers and the ecclesiastical history of the first centuries revealed to him clearly the fallaciousness of that particular dictum. "The insufficiency of the mere private study of Holy Scripture for arriving at the exact and entire truth which Scripture really contains is shown by the fact that creeds and teachers have been divinely provided and by the discordance of opinions which exist when these aids are thrown aside." 67 Consequently for Newman, a strict adherence and loyalty to the divinely appointed teacher, whoever he may be, is the sure way to correct interpretation of the Sacred Scripture. Earlier, 68 he shows that the early Church was not eager to impose Creeds but that they arose from the concrete need of symbols to protect against the vagaries of the heretics. Thus the attack that he anticipated against the Sacred Scripture by exegetical scholars should not harm or shake the belief of those faithful whose belief rests firmly on the apostolic and conciliar creeds. He would be able to point to the sixteenth as well as the fourth century as examples of the dangers of mere "private study" of the Scriptures. Above all in an age like our own with the moral level on a par with paganism one could hardly expect the corrupted individual intellect to be capable of an interpretation of the Bible that would lead infallibly to God and eternal salvation.
Newman continues his analysis of the Arian period by revealing a completely Catholic notion of a "true believer:" "The Word and the Sacraments are the characteristics of the elect people of God: but all men more or less have guidance of tradition in addition to those internal notions of right or wrong which the Spirit has put into the heart of each individual." 69 Already the young Newman shows his almost complete separation from traditional Protestant doctrine. Aside from the use of the word "elect," a left-over from his Evangelical days, we see that no Lutheran or Calvinist theologian could agree with his emphasis on the Sacraments or traditions. The sole reliance on the Bible and the doctrine, badly understood of predestination, were already looked upon by Mr. Newman as dangerous and detestable doctrines. Here also he gives us a glimpse of his later apologetical works of fundamental theology by mentioning the principle of synderisis, as divinely implanted in the conscience. It was precisely this principle that Newman would later use as one of the antecedent probabilities of the proof of God.
The comparisons between the Arian heresy and the encroachments of Liberalism in Newman's own day become increasingly clear. The denial of the divinity of Jesus Christ making him but a mere creature of God was as true of the Liberals as of the Arians. Newman foresaw that the consequences would be no less deleterious, "What was in substance what in these times would be called Neologism, a heresy which, even more than others, has shown itself desirous and able to conceal itself under the garb of sound religion and to keep the form while it destroys the spirit of Christianity." 70 Newman saw as his God-given duty and vocation the task of uncovering the similarities of these heresies and all heresies and to awaken the clergy and laity of the Anglican Church to the strangulating philosophy which gradually was transforming the truths of Christianity into a mere footstool for the positivism of the physical sciences. He did not succeed due to the natural condition of the Anglican Church and its future breakdown would serve as a warning to the Catholic Church as the invidious waves of modernism began to break upon its shores. According to Riviere, "Liberal Protestantism gives, above all, the image of what would have happened in the Church, if Modernism had found a home in it." 71
Even at this early stage of his career Newman wastes no time in fighting the enemy with his writings.
Who does not recognize in this old philosophy the chief that features of recent school of Liberalism and false illumination, political and moral, which is now Satan's instrument in deluding the nations, but which is worse and more earthly than it, inasmuch as his former artifices affecting a religious ceremonial, could not leave so much of substantial truth mixed in the system as to impress its disciples with somewhat of a lofty and serious character utterly foreign to the cold scoffing spirit of modern rationalism. 72
He believes that the forces of moderate Rationalism are much more dangerous than even the Arians because they eviscerate the truth, not leaving even the weakest of foundations upon which to rebuild. Quite clearly this battle is not of merely human proportions. Newman views it rather as a type of spiritual Armageddon with the reduced forces of religious orthodoxy arraigned against the Satanic forces of an increasingly atheistic Liberalism. In this book some twelve years before the founding of the Oxford Movement, he is already acting to warn the faithful to prepare themselves for a battle in which no quarter will be given.
Nonetheless in this supernatural battle the weapons must also be supernatural in order to be equal to the test. Newman uses the history of the first half of the fourth century, the Council of Nicea, and the consequent Arianization of the Church to point out valuable lessons for his own epoch. "The disease, which had called for the Council, instead of being expelled from the system, was thrown back upon the Church, and for a time afflicted it, nor was it cast out, except by persevering fasting and prayer, the labour and suffering of the oppressed believers." 73
Prayer, mortification, and at times, the blood of the martyrs are the only sure and effective weapons against wide-spread heresy according to Newman and they must be applied unstintingly for many years to take effect. The analysis of the Council of Nicea by Newman is perspicacious when we look at some of the questions brought up in our own day by the Second Vatican Council. Newman urges us not to lose heart but rather to intensify in the use of the supernatural weapons.
The lack of faith that, at times, is tried by heresy, and at other time causes it, also affects the various parts of the Church differently. In the case of the laity it leads to a moral relaxation and a disdain for the importance of dogma while in the hierarchy one sees a growing dissatisfaction in living the virtue of obedience as a result of unleashed pride. "That a low estimation of the evangelical blessing leads to unworthy conceptions of the Author of them. In the case of laymen it will show itself in a skeptical neglect of the subject of religion altogether, while ecclesiastics on whose mind religion is forced are tempted either to an undue exaltation of their order, or a creed dishonourable to their Lord." 74 Newman was witnessing this very scene in England at the time of the writing of the book, watching the development of incredulity and immorality among intellectuals and the beginnings of "dishonorable Creeds" by men such as Arnold and Whately and their successors in the following generations.
Little was left to the imagination by Newman in his description of the methods employed by the Arians in "their constant temporizing at times veiled and at times obedient to the legitimate authority of the Church." 75 Accordingly in their conduct of the argument they seemed to be aiming at nothing beyond "living from hand to mouth," as the saying is, availing themselves of some or other expedient, which would suffice to carry them through existing difficulties: admissions whether to satisfy the livid conscience of Constantius or to deceive the Western Church; or statements faintly and so decently ambiguous as to embrace the greatest number of opinions possible and to deprive religion, in consequence, of its austere and commanding respect." 76 Newman so clearly outlines the tactics of the Arians to better show their subversive nature and the intimate connection between the loss of morality and the disappearance of dogmatic truth. In his later controversies with the Liberals he was able to experience at first hand their evasiveness in argument and inexactness in opinion, which served to hide the malignity of their doctrines.
In meeting the Liberal challenge through his writings, Newman never gives in to a debilitating pessimism. Although he refused to lighten an increasingly dark picture he attempted to show through his study of history that the Church inevitably triumphs through the presence of the Holy Spirit, the guarantor of Truth, within it. He believed that "it is trying times alone that manifest the saints of God" 77 and that only individual sanctity produced through the Church could withstand the spread of heresy. "And may rest in the confidence that should the hand of Satan press us sore, our Athanasius and Basil will be given us in their distinct seasons, to break the bond of the oppressor and let the captives go free." 78 Thus we see near the end of the book Newman's confidence in the providence of God, that when the moment was opportune God would cut short the time of testing in the Anglican Church as he had with the Catholics of the fourth century. He was only incorrect in judging a Church Catholic, the English, which was not, due to the disobedience of Henry VIII. And this error he was to rectify with his conversion.
A foreshadowing of the later Catholic Newman can also be seen in his examination of the general tolerance propagated by Julian the Apostate with the idea of degrading the hitherto unique relationship of the Church with the State. "The impartial toleration of all religious persuasions, malicious as was the intent did but contribute to the ascendancy of the right faith; that faith, which is the only true aliment of the human mind, which can be held as a principle as well as an opinion, and which influences the heart to suffer and labor for its sake." 79 Although Newman at this point in time was still a firm defender of the union of Church and State he nonetheless did not hesitate to show that the Church, although shunned by the civil authorities, when contrasted with the innumerable false religions must in the long run always stand out for its clearly divine character.
Although far from holding a Hegelian view of Church history, Newman does place much importance on the role of the development as various ideas and forces collide, work together, and unite in a process guided over and watched by the Holy Trinity.
"This part of the history offers a striking illustration, not only of the gradual influence of truth over error, but of the remarkable manner in which Divine Providence makes use of error itself, as a preparation for truth, that is, employing the lighter forms of it in sweeping away those of a more offensive nature." 80 He thus encourages the reader to supernaturalize his outlook, not ceasing in the struggle, but acting with confidence for the eventual felicitous outcome of the battle "The domination of heresy, however prolonged, is but one stage in its existence: it ever hastens to an end, and that end is the triumph of truth." 81 Certainly Newman was thinking ahead to the day when he would see the triumph of the truth in his own Anglican Church even though at this point Liberalism was just beginning to fully have an impact upon the religious and intellectual circles of Anglican Oxford and England. Personal holiness remained the great end and Newman saw it as the most fundamental and effective way to combat heresy. For it was only the personal sanctity of men that would be able to spark the courageous actions necessary to combat heresy on the human level.
