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Ex Umbris: Newman's New Evangelization
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
Newman wrote many works arguing for the truth of the Christian faith. At the same time, he wrote positively regarding non-Christian beliefs and practices. This article investigates Newman's arguments for Christianity in light of his acceptance of non-Christian religions. Drawing primarily on the Grammar of Assent and the Oxford University Sermons, as well as Newman's poetry, prayers, and other works, I argue that Newman's acceptance of other religions forms the foundation of his Christian apologetic. I first look at Newman's view of non-Christian religions, where he sees an ascending movement of humanity searching for God and a descending movement of God revealing himself to humanity. Second, I look to Newman's understanding of human reasoning, which works holistically and not according to the rules of strict logic alone. Third, I argue that, for Newman, religious conversion models other types of assent, so religious knowledge and practice outside of Christianity are what allow a believer to recognize the truth of the Christian message. Finally, I present Newman's reflections on scriptural examples of evangelization, in which he sees a model of evangelization based on the principles discussed in this article.
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- © 2011 The Author. New Blackfriars © 2011 The Dominican Council
References
1 Newman, John Henry, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2005), p. 358Google Scholar.
2 Newman, John Henry, Apologia pro Vita Sua (London: Oxford University Press, 1913), p. 172Google Scholar.
3 Tillman, Mary Katherine, “Introduction,” in Newman, John Henry, Fifteen Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford Between A.D. 1826 and 1843 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), pp. vii-xivGoogle Scholar.
4 Dulles, Avery, Newman (New York: Continuum, 2002), p. 60.
5 Newman, John Henry, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), p. 303Google Scholar.
6 Ibid., p. 201.
7 Newman, John Henry, Prayers, Verses and Devotions (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989), p. 573Google Scholar.
8 Newman, Grammar, p. 311.
9 “How far this initial religious knowledge comes from without, and how far from within, how much is natural, how much implies a special divine aid which is above nature, we have no means of determining” (Newman, Grammar, p. 105).
10 Newman, Prayers, pp. 440–442.
11 Newman, Apologia, p. 344.
12 Newman, Grammar, p. 313.
13 Newman, Prayers, p. 360.
14 Newman, Grammar, pp. 72–75.
15 Newman, Apologia, pp. 336, 337–8.
16 Newman, Grammar, p. 68.
17 Ibid., p. 101; cf. Apologia, pp. 333–4.
18 Newman, John Henry, Fifteen Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford Between A.D. 1826 and 1843 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), pp. 116, 117Google Scholar.
19 Cf., Grammar, pp. 304–8.
20 Newman, Fifteen, p. 173.
21 Ibid., pp. 242–243.
22 Ibid., p. 38.
23 Newman, Grammar, pp. 301–302.
24 Newman, Prayers, p. 555.
25 Current scholarship may be unsure whether the friends were pagan, but Newman took them to be such (Newman, Henry, John, Sermon Notes of John Henry Cardinal Newman 1849–1878 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), p. 328Google Scholar).
26 Newman, Apologia, p. 128.
27 Newman, Development, pp. 79–80.
28 “There are various revelations all over the earth which do not carry with them the evidence of their divinity. Such are the inward suggestions and secret illuminations granted to so many individuals; such are the traditionary doctrines which are found among the heathen, the ‘vague and unconnected family of religious truths, originally from God, but sojourning’”; the difference with Christianity is that “it is a revelation which comes to us as a revelation, as a whole, objectively, and with a profession of infallibility” (ibid., p. 79).
29 “Our supreme Master might have imparted to us truths which nature cannot teach us, without telling us that he had imparted them,—as is actually the case now as regards heathen countries…. But the very idea of Christianity in its profession and history, is something more than this; it is a ‘Revelatio revelata;’ it is a definite message from God to man distinctly conveyed by His chosen instruments, and to be received as such a message; and therefore to be positively acknowledged, embraced, and maintained as true, on the ground of its being divine” (Newman, Grammar, pp. 301–2).
30 Ibid., pp. 128–9.
31 Newman, Development, p. 368.
32 Newman, Grammar, p. 325.
33 Ibid., pp. 307–8.
34 Newman, Prayers, p. 550.
35 Newman, Development, pp. 371–3.
36 Newman, Grammar, p. 314.
37 Ibid., p. 317.
38 Newman, Fifteen, p. 63.
39 Newman uses the word reason in different ways in his various works. In the University Sermons he generally uses the word to mean the popular abuse of reason or the narrow view of reason as logic alone, discounting other ways of arriving at truth. At other times and particularly in the Grammar of Assent, the word generally refers to the entire reasoning faculty, including logic, antecedent probabilities, and the illative sense. Let the reader beware.
40 Newman, Fifteen, p. 90.
41 Newman, Grammar, p. 29.
42 Ibid., p. 229.
43 Ibid., pp. 240, 247, 239, 217.
44 One key passage of the University Sermons shows Newman's early, unformulated thought regarding what he would later call informal inference: “The mind ranges to and fro, and spreads out, and advances forward with a quickness which has become a proverb, and a subtlety and versatility which baffle investigation. It passes on from point to point, gaining one by some indication; another on a probability; then availing itself of an association; then falling back on some received law; next seizing on testimony; then committing itself to some popular impression, or some inward instinct, or some obscure memory; and thus it makes progress not unlike a clamberer on a steep cliff, who, by quick eye, prompt hand, and firm foot, ascends how he knows not himself; by personal endowments and by practice, rather than by rule, leaving no track behind him, and unable to teach another…. And such mainly is the way in which all men, gifted or not gifted, commonly reason,—not by rule, but by an inward faculty” (Newman, Fifteen, p. 257).
45 Newman, Grammar, p. 230.
46 Newman, qtd. in Tillman, “Introduction,” p. xi.
47 “In all matter of human life, presumption verified by instances, is our ordinary instrument of proof, and, if the antecedent probability is great, it almost supersedes instances. Of course, as is plain, we may err grievously in the antecedent view which we start with, and in that case, our conclusions may be wide of the truth; but that only shows that we had no right to assume a premiss [sic] which was untrustworthy, not that our reasoning was faulty” (Newman, Development, pp. 113–4).
48 Newman, Apologia, p. 82.
49 “Assent on reasonings not demonstrative is too widely recognized an act to be irrational, unless man's nature is irrational, too familiar to the prudent and clear-minded to be an infirmity or an extravagance. None of us can think or act without the acceptance of truths, not intuitive, not demonstrated, yet sovereign. If our nature has any constitution, any laws, one of them is this absolute reception of propositions as true, which lie outside the narrow range of conclusions to which logic, formal or virtual, is tethered” (Newman, Grammar, p. 150; cf. pp. 272–6 and Fifteen, pp. 187–90).
50 Newman, Fifteen, pp. 189–90.
51 Newman, Grammar, p. 276.
52 Ibid., pp. 260, 283.
53 Newman, Development, p. 101.
54 See, for example, Newman's critique of his former via media position, which he rejects as not “objective and real” but simply a “paper religion” (Apologia, p. 168). It does not matter to him how many learned treatises can be written on it if it is not being lived out. Newman's position illustrates the point even if it is not fair to the via media.
55 Newman, Grammar, p. 294.
56 Ibid., p. 189.
57 Newman, Fifteen, p. 118.
58 “Will any one say that a child or uneducated person may not savingly act on Faith, without being able to produce reasons why he so acts? What sufficient view has he of the Evidences of Christianity? What logical proof of its divinity? If he has none, Faith, viewed as an internal habit or act, does not depend upon inquiry and examination, but has its own special basis, whatever that is” (ibid., p. 184).
59 “The fact of revelation is in itself demonstrably true, but it is not therefore true irresistibly; else, how comes it to be resisted? There is a vast distance between what it is in itself, and what it is to us…. [T]here are those who do not recognize truth, from the fault, not of truth, but of themselves” (Newman, Grammar, p. 319).
60 “I do not want to be converted by a smart syllogism; if I am asked to convert others by it, I say plainly I do not wish to overcome their reason without touching their hearts…. [H]ow, after all, is a man better for Christianity, who has never felt the need of it or the desire?” (ibid., p. 330).
61 Comparing the assent of faith to other types of assent Newman argues that “Assent is ever assent” even if faith is superior because of its “supernatural origin.” Elsewhere he writes, “For me, it is more congenial to my own judgment to attempt to prove Christianity in the same informal way in which I can prove for certain that I have been born into this world, and that I shall die out of it…. I prefer to rely on… an accumulation of probabilities, …[because] from probabilities we may construct legitimate proof, sufficient for certitude” (ibid., pp. 155–6, 319–20).
62 Newman, Prayers, p. 264.
63 Newman, Fifteen, p. 249.
64 Ibid., p. 171. Newman makes similar points in the Grammar of Assent, calling Christianity “a religion in addition to the religion of nature…. Christianity is simply an addition to it; it does not supersede or contradict it; it recognizes and depends on it, and that of necessity: for how possibly can it prove its claims except by an appeal to what men have already? Be it ever so miraculous, it cannot dispense with nature; this would be to cut the ground from under it”; and saying “Revelation begins where Natural Religion fails. The Religion of Nature is a mere inchoation, and needs a complement,—it can have but one complement, and that very complement is Christianity” (Newman, Grammar, pp. 302–3, 375).
65 Newman, Development, pp. 178–85.
66 Newman, Grammar, pp. 198–200.
67 Newman, Development, p. 181.
68 Ibid., pp. 200–1.
69 Newman, Grammar, pp. 200–1.
70 Newman, Fifteen, p. 197.
71 Newman, Grammar, p. 323.
72 Newman, Fifteen, p. 198.
73 Ibid., 198.
74 Ibid., 193.
75 Newman, Apologia, p. 435.
76 Newman, Fifteen, pp. 196–7.
77 Ibid., pp. 247, 248–9.
78 Newman, Prayers, pp. 580, 586.
79 Newman, John Henry, Callista: A Tale of the Third Century (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), p. 347Google Scholar.