Newman and Heresy

TENSIONS IN THE CLASSICAL CONCEPT OF ORTHODOXY

In the period leading to his conversion, Newman underwent a revolution in his understanding of the nature of orthodoxy. The Apologia (1864) presents this revolution as the collapse and replacement of a paradigm. Its account of 1839–43 describes, in language full of violent and painful images, his anguish as his ‘stronghold’ was demolished: the 1839 brush with Wiseman which ‘pulverised’ the ‘Via Media’ then in 1841 the ‘three blows which broke me’ – the Athanasius translation, Tract go's condemnation, and the farce of the Jerusalem archbishopric, and finally his Anglican ‘deathbed’. By December, 1841, the collapse was complete: the ‘Via Media’ had fallen to pieces ‘and a Theory, made expressly for the occasion, took its place’.

In his autobiographical narrative of the ‘Via Media's’ collapse (1839–43), Newman brings the analogy of ancient heresy (1831–41) to bear upon his own concept of orthodoxy. The former corrodes and, finally, dissolves the latter, itself surviving and, indeed, flourishing in the Essay on Development (1845) and Difficulties of Anglicans (1850) as a means of describing the very position to which he had formerly adhered. This analogical method was compulsive: he never abandoned it.

This revolution in Newman's concept of orthodoxy suggests that, beneath the confident surface of his Tractarian rhetoric, unresolved problems were lurking. This is not surprising if we regard him as having inherited a classical concept of orthodoxy which was already riddled with tensions. It has been described as ‘static’. It is rooted in the anti-sectarian polemic of the seventeenth century, which saw the true faith as immutable.