Liberalism and Newman:
The Anglican Vision and Response
A Doctoral Dissertation by Father John McCloskey
Chapter 5: Verba (continued)
D. University Sermons
The greatest and first attempt at constructing this apologetic were his University Sermons which we have examined thoroughly in the first part in relation with Newman's vision of Liberalism. However, generally they were positive and exhortatory in their being addressed to the faculty and student body of one of the oldest and most important universities of Europe, in an academic atmosphere that was increasingly susceptible to the Liberal ideology.
Newman's sermons, whether they be the weekly Pastoral and Plain Sermons or the infrequent University Sermons caused a terrific impact in the university life through their combination of eloquence, profundity, and simplicity, all reflected through the personal sanctity of Newman. His preaching was the living example that personal holiness was the only true root solution to combat Liberalism.
It was when Newman read the Scriptures from the lectern in St. Mary's Church at Oxford that one felt more than ever that his words were those of a seer who saw God and the things of God. Many men were impressive readers, but they did not reach the soul. They played on the senses and imaginations, they were good actors, they did not forget themselves, and one did not forget them. But Newman had the power of so impressing the soul as to efface himself; you thought only of the majestic soul that saw God. It was God speaking to you as He speaks through creation; but in a deeper way by the articulate voice of man. 94
He effectively moved people to action, both in their interior life most importantly, and also to exterior action in everyday activities. His sermons combined sound theological reasoning with a direct appeal to the heart cor ad cor loquitur.
One cannot read any sermons of Newman for the mere pleasure of the thing. That sort of detached attitude is simply out of the question for anyone hearing or reading them. Whether we will or not, we must needs regards them as things addressed directly to ourselves. They put us on our trial, they arraign us, they challenge us in a way that precludes all possibility of slipping away on some side issue, aesthetic or other. As someone said, you could not come away from St. Mary's without feeling the need of giving up something, of making some sort of sacrifice, of shaking off the benumbing influence of habit, and of ceasing to settle down contentedly with one's own mediocrity. 95
Even Newman's physical influence was a factor in the effect upon his congregation. In the words of Matthew Arnold, the famous critic and author of nineteenth century Britain who witnessed many of the sermons of Newman in Oxford: "Who could resist 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 are a religious music?... Happy the man who in that susceptible season of youth hears such voices!." 96 The effect was cumulative and gradual as Newman preached for many years at St. Mary's and his following, a source of embarrassment to him, became numerous. Many who never entered the Catholic Church still pointed to Newman as the person who had helped them to take religion seriously.
In early 1841 Newman preached a sermon in the second series of University Sermons. He was at this point on the verge of publishing the most controversial of his tracts, unbeknownst to him, which was to be the last. The tract was to deal with the Anglo-Catholic attitude towards the swearing of the Thirty-Nine Articles required for the taking of the degree by all Oxford undergraduates. The sermon is entitled "Wisdom as contrasted with Faith and Bigotry." In the sermon he emphasizes the importance of the supernatural act of faith showing that the simple reason cannot be used as a substitute, no matter how powerful and acute. "Faith sets out with putting reasoning aside as out of place, and proposes instead simple obedience to a revealed command." 97 As Newman drew closer to his withdrawal from the Anglican Church as minister and then layman, he became even more forward in his proclamation of Catholic truth. Nothing could have seemed stranger to Protestant ears accustomed to talk of private judgment and the powers of the human reason than the outright rejection by Newman of these schemes. This was the England of Bentham and Mill, not of Beckett and More.
Later Newman foreshadows the aggiornamento of Vatican II one hundred and twenty years before its time. He also unknowingly gives answer to those who have misunderstood the concept of changing the Church to fit the times, "As the world around varies, so varies also, not the principles of doctrine of Christ, but the outward shape and colour which they assume." 98 Newman repeatedly stresses the divine origin of these first principles of Christianity, precisely those which were under such violent attack. A hint is also given of the book to be completed many years later on the development of dogma. In a time in which history appeared to be accelerating due to the Industrial Revolution and concomitant social upheaval, Newman views the doctrines of Christ not only never changing but always in vigor.
He wanted "to show that Faith, distinct as it is from argument, discussion, investigation, philosophy, nay from Reason altogether in the popular sense of the word, is at the same time perfectly distinct also from narrowness of mind in all its shapes." 99 While at the same time he held the line sternly against innovations in doctrine, he wanted to show that the faith adds to and complements the understanding of the world around us, from the viewpoint of physical science or purer intellectual knowledge. He who believes by faith is the most intellectually free of all because he has a foundation of truth that is divinely assured. This was a telling point rarely used by the apologist of his day and one absolutely essential when religion was under savage attack as an enslaving superstition rather than an elevating truth. Newman himself as he lived a life that extended through the nineteenth century became a living proof of his statement, acknowledged as one of the greatest minds of his century while at the time an orthodox Roman Catholic. Few men in the last several centuries can claim to be philosopher, poet, historian, novelist, and in addition a theologian. However Newman valued most highly "simple obedience to a revealed command."
E. The Doctrine Developed
In his last University Sermon preached on the feast of the Purification in 1843 with the title of "Theory of Development in Religious Doctrine," Newman gives a synthesis of his ideas, which will soon develop into his last Anglican work and his most important theological treatise on the development of dogma. He comments that "the overthrow of the wisdom of the world was one of the earliest, as well as the noblest of the triumphs of the Church." 100 The wisdom of the world was exactly what was penetrating into the core of the Anglican Church, a desacralization of dogma and morals. Newman's deep studies in the early centuries of the Church helped him to see that in Christian society false philosophies must inevitable genuflect before the altar of high Truth. Of course, the religious sects of the first centuries after Christ were largely an exotic gathering of Gnostic eastern mysticism whose glaring immorality could not help but repel true seekers of religion. In the early nineteenth century the liberal rationalism was much more insidious as its gradual taking hold of society was not immediately accompanied by the lowering of moral standards that were to come.
Newman by no means rejects the proper use of reason, he only wants to put it in its rightful place in the hierarchy of the intellect as subservient to revealed truth. "Reason has not only submitted, it has ministered to Faith." 101 He could reflect upon centuries of important philosophy done by Christians precisely with the intention of serving the truth. Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, and St. Thomas were names synonymous with philosophy during a millennium. It is interesting to note that many of the thinkers of the Enlightenment, the spawning ground of liberalism, were for the most part unfamiliar with the richness of Catholic philosophy apart from the decadent scholasticism of the late Middle Ages as exemplified in William of Ockham.
Recalling the words of Christ in Sacred Scripture hastens to add that "Here too, is the badge of heresy, its dogmas are unfruitful." 102 History bears him out with the most notable example being the rupture of the unity of Christendom by the Reformation. However wherever heresy has raised its head, social unrest has accompanied it, be the Donatism of the fifth century, the Albigensianism of the thirteenth, or the heresies of the Protestants in the sixteenth. One can see a more or less progressive corruption in society with the present century perhaps being the culmination of a widespread denial not only of Christianity, but of God.
He then moves on to explain in more detail the role of Scripture and tradition in Catholic truth. "Scripture, I say, begins a series of developments which it does not finish: that is to say, in other words, it is a mistake to look for every separate proposition of the Catholic doctrine in Scripture." 103
Undoubtedly to Protestants accustomed to regard Sacred Scripture as the only source of revelation the statement would sound strange. However, as noted in the first part of this thesis, Newman, as a result of his relationship with Edward Hawkins, foresaw the advent of the destructive Biblical criticism and although he made clear that the Sacred Scripture contains all the truths of Christian doctrine properly understood yet it needs the help of tradition in order to better understand and expound them and is thus a twin source of Revelation. He thus leaves room for the necessity of some authority to interpret these twin sources, that being the Catholic Church to which he was to submit in two years.
Newman comes to the conclusion that the essential element remains the grace of God, which infuses the supernatural virtue of the faith. "One thing alone has to be impressed on us by the Scripture, the Catholic ideas and in it they are all included. To the narrow minded and bigoted, the history of the Church for eighteen centuries is unintelligible and useless: but where there is faith, it is full of sacred principles, ever the same in substance, every varying in accidentals, and is a continual lesson of the manifold wisdom of God." 104 Newman passes to the attack by insinuating that the true "narrow and bigoted" are the Liberals. The Catholic idea of the Scripture when assisted by divine grace enable the believer to embrace the whole of the Catholic system in its unity, catholicity, sanctity, and apostolicity. He makes it clear that it is the divine will to save all men but man must with correspond loving assent or he will not receive the divine gift of faith.
As the union between Church and State gradually crumbled or rather as the Church became a weak appendage to the State, Newman saw the necessity of building a historical apologetic of continuity of the Church. "On what are we to rest our authority when the State deserts us?" The answer given is "apostolic descent." 105 For this reason Newman undertook this work on The Development of Christian Doctrine to justify the Church from the viewpoint of doctrinal history thus answering the Protestant critics of the Reformation and the liberal critics of his own day. It might be added that he also, at least subconsciously was seeking to give foundation to the claims of the Roman Church. He wanted to refute those who thought "that Christianity does not fall within the province of history - that it is to each man what each man thinks it to be, and nothing else." 106 This was the subjectivist error of his day that is still easily recognizable today. It has produced widespread unbelief and produced fragmentation where there was unity. Early on as we have repeated elsewhere Newman said that "to be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant." 107 Thus the book can be identified as a Christian apologetic for Newman was communicating to the Protestant world what he had learned through his long years of study with the Church Fathers and in ecclesiastical history.
Newman continues the historical argument carefully and early on comes to the conclusion that "From the necessity then, of the case, from the history of all sects, and parties in religion, and from the analogy and example of Scripture, we may fairly conclude that Christian doctrine admits of formal legitimate, and true developments, that is, of development contemplated by its Divine Author." 108 He thus fully admits the authority of the ecumenical councils, of whatever age of the Church, including the bête noire of the Protestants, the Council of Trent. The Protestants put the emphasis solely on Scripture and so-called Antiquity, thus obviating any possibility of dogmatic declarations after the early centuries of Christianity.
Of course, Newman does not here admit a change in dogmatic truth but only clarification of definition by the Church when the need was seen fit in order to help the faithful draw nearer the divine mysteries. He makes it clear that these developments are willed by God and not merely human invention.
But who can make such a judgment? The Protestants respond the individual guided by the light of the Holy Spirit. The Liberal would reply that it really doesn't make any difference as we cannot assure that there is objective truth. For Newman, this judgment has to be made by an authoritative religious authority.
Reason shall be given in this section for concluding that, in proportion to the probability of true development of doctrine and practice in the Divine scheme, so is the probability also of the appointment in that scheme of an external authority to decide upon them, thereby separating them from the mass of mere human speculation, extravagance, corruption and error, in and out of which they grow. This is the doctrine of the infallibility of the Church; for by infallibility, I suppose is meant the power of deciding whether, this, that and a third, and any number of theological or ethical statements are true. 109
