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Chesterton, Lewis, and the shadow of Newman: a study in method

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

David Pickering Open the ORCID record for David Pickering [Opens in a new window]
David Pickering*
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South Central Theological Education Institution, Oxford
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d.a.a.pickering@gmail.com
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Abstract

In this essay I argue for a line of descent, in terms of methodology as an apologist, from J.H. Newman to G.K. Chesterton, and hence to C.S. Lewis. I analyse aspects of Chesterton's methodology as an apologist which strongly suggest the influence of Newman. I then argue that Newman may have exercised a greater influence on Lewis's methodology as an apologist, through Chesterton, than has previously been realised. This raises questions for future study concerning Newman's possible influence, not only on Lewis, but on the other Inklings and related thinkers such as Dorothy Sayers.

Keywords

ChestertonLewisNewmanMethodologyworldview

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Type
Original Articles
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 104 , Issue 1110 , March 2023 , pp. 142 - 160
Copyright
Copyright © 2023 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 For Newman's influence on Chesterton's epistemology, see Pickering, David, ‘Chesterton's Epistemology: A Study in the Development of Newman's Doctrines’, Journal of Inklings Studies 12, no. 1 (2022): pp. 91–109CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Ian Ker has done important work in this area. Among other things, Ker points out that Wilfrid Ward saw Chesterton as ‘the successor of Newman as an apologist for Christianity’, and that Chesterton read, and wrote appreciatively of, Ward's biography of Newman, published in 1912, which deals extensively with Newman's theology. Ker, I.T., G.K. Chesterton: a biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 277-78Google Scholar.

3 Deavel, David Paul, ‘An Odd Couple? A First Glance at Chesterton and Newman’, Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 10, no. 1 (2007): pp. 116-35CrossRefGoogle Scholar (especially pp. 126-28). See also Quinn, Dermot, ‘Newman, Chesterton and the Logic of Conversion’, The Chesterton Review 34x, no. 3/4 (2013): pp. 49-60CrossRefGoogle Scholar (especially p. 58). See further Gilley, Sheridan, ‘Newman and Chesterton’, The Chesterton Review 32x, no. 1/2 (2006): pp. 41-55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 In his introduction to this work, Nicholas Lash notes that, while ‘the Grammar of Assent is a seminal work in the philosophy of religion … if misunderstanding is to be avoided, it is necessary immediately to add that its primary purpose is apologetic’; hence its relevance to analysis of Newman's methods in apologetics. Newman, John Henry, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, ed. Lash, Nicholas (Notre Dame, Ind; London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), pp. 254, 233, 12Google Scholar.

5 For instance, in his letter to Charles A. Brady, 29 October 1944, in Lewis, C.S., Letters of C.S. Lewis, ed. Lewis, W.H. (New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 1966), p. 205Google Scholar. Here, Lewis, commenting on the influences on his own writing, cites Chesterton as ‘of course’ an influence, ‘but more I think on thought than on imagination’.

6 Newman, John Henry, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, ed. Ker, Ian (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), p. 34Google Scholar.

7 Newman, Grammar of Assent, 312, p. 303.

8 Chesterton, G.K., ‘The Return of the Angels’, The Chesterton Review 47, no. 3/4 (2021): pp. 291-96 (pp. 292-96)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 See Cutsinger, James S., ed., Reclaiming The Great Tradition: Evangelicals, Catholics and Orthodox in Dialogue (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

10 The Everlasting Man, in Chesterton, G.K., The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), II, p. 310Google Scholar.

11 Orthodoxy, in Chesterton, Collected Works, I, pp. 211, 215.

12 Daily News, in 1903, quoted in Barker, Dudley, G.K. Chesterton: a biography (London: Constable, 1973), p. 169Google Scholar.

13 Chesterton, G.K., What's Wrong with the World (London; New York: Cassell, 1910), p. 122Google Scholar.

14 Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World, pp. 23, 22.

15 See Pickering, David, ‘Natural Theology as a medium of communication: how the legacy of G.K. Chesterton can help philosophers and theologians to preserve the public square from secularization’, The Heythrop Journal LXI, no. 4 (2020): pp. 660-70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Newman, Essay on Development, p. 29, and passim.

17 ‘Milman's view of Christianity’, in Newman, John Henry, Essays Critical and Historical (2nd edition) (London: Basil Montagu Pickering, 1872), II, pp. 186-248 (pp. 188, 193)Google Scholar.

18 Ker, I.T., The Achievement of John Henry Newman (London: Collins, 1990), p. 117Google Scholar.

19 Newman, John Henry, The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978-2008), XXV. pp. 440-42Google Scholar.

20 See Chesterton, G.K., A Short History of England (Sevenoaks: Fisher Press, 1994), pp. 1-176Google Scholar (especially pp. 152-76).

21 ‘Is Humanism a Religion?’, in The Thing, in Chesterton, Collected Works, III, pp. 146-56 (p. 147).

22 The Everlasting Man, in Chesterton, Collected Works, II, p. 219.

23 ‘Is Humanism a Religion?’, in The Thing, in Chesterton, Collected Works, III, pp. 146-56 (p. 156).

24 Daily News, 1 August 1903, in Chesterton, G.K., The Man who was Orthodox, ed. Maycock, A. L. (London: D. Dobson, 1963), p. 117Google Scholar.

25 See, for example, Chesterton, G.K., The Man Who Was Thursday: a nightmare (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972)Google Scholar; Chesterton, G.K., Manalive (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1947)Google Scholar.

26 Newman, Grammar of Assent, pp. 276, 281.

27 Newman, Grammar of Assent, p. 94.

28 Newman, Grammar of Assent, pp. 254, 233.

29 Wilfrid Ward, ‘Mr Chesterton among the Prophets’, in Ward, Wilfrid, Men and Matters (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1914), pp. 105-44 (p. 123)Google Scholar.

30 For example, Oddie, William, Chesterton and the romance of Orthodoxy: the making of G.K.C., 1874-1908 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 362Google Scholar. Ker, Chesterton, pp. 277-78.

31 Orthodoxy, in Chesterton, Collected Works, I, pp. 287, 354, 348. For further discussion of the role of the Illative sense in Chesterton's epistemology, see Pickering, ‘Chesterton's Epistemology’, pp. 91-109.

32 See Lewis, C.S., Surprised by joy (London: Collins, 2012), pp. 220-22, 260Google Scholar.

33 Quoted in Vanauken, Sheldon, A Severe Mercy (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1979), pp. 92, 90Google Scholar.

34 See Benson's list of Lewis's copious notes on and references to Chesterton: Benson, Iain, ‘The Influence of the Writings of G.K. Chesterton on C.S. Lewis. The Textual Part’, The Chesterton Review XVII, no. 3/4 (1991): pp. 357-67CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the other essays in that issue of The Chesterton Review, which focused on links between Chesterton and Lewis.

35 Rhone, Zachary A., The Great Tower of Elfland: The Mythopoeic Worldview of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, and George MacDonald (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2017)Google Scholar, See especially pp. 12-13, 102-08, 117-55.

36 See Lewis, C.S., The Abolition of Man (London: HarperCollins, 2001)Google Scholar, For example, opening epigraph, also pp. 15-18.

37 The Everlasting Man, in Chesterton, Collected Works, II, pp. 308-11, 226.

38 Orthodoxy, in Chesterton, Collected Works, I, pp. 335, 217.

39 Lewis, C.S., Mere Christianity (London: Collins, 2012), p. 6Google Scholar.

40 Lewis, Abolition of Man, Epigraph, pp. 15-18, 83-101.

41 Newman, Grammar of Assent, p. 324.

42 Newman, John Henry, The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978-2008), pp. xxviii, 257Google Scholar.

43 See Ward, Michael, After Humanity: A Guide to C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man (Park Ridge, IL: Word on Fire Academic, 2021), pp. 187-89Google Scholar. Ward interprets Lewis as arguing that ‘there is only one ethical system and we already stand within it’, a position which relates closely to Newman's concepts of ‘a primeval tradition which is universal’ and of ‘the universal testimony of mankind’.

44 Newman, Grammar of Assent, 270, pp. 312-13.

45 McGrath, Alister E., Richard Dawkins, C.S. Lewis and the meaning of life (London: SPCK, 2019), pp. 17-18Google Scholar.

46 Newman, Grammar of Assent, pp. 312, 303.

47 The Oxford English Dictionary notes that the English term is derived from the German Weltanschauung. The term Weltanschauung came into use, untranslated, in English-language works in the late nineteenth century. The English term worldview, however, did not come into common use until after this time; although the first use recorded by the OED is in 1848, the German version was still widely used in the last years of the century. See Naugle, David K., Worldview: The History of a Concept (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2002), pp. 6-13, 55-107Google Scholar.

48 Orthodoxy, in Chesterton, Collected Works, I, p. 231.

49 Lewis, C. S., ‘Is Theology Poetry?’ in Lewis, C.S., The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), p. 140Google Scholar.

50 Zachary Rhone has noted this resemblance. Rhone, Great Tower of Elfland, p. 152.

51 The ancestry of this imagery, of course, goes back to the biblical assertion that Jesus Christ is ‘the true light, which enlightens everyone’ and his own description of himself as ‘the light of the world’. John 1: 9, 8: 12. The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version, Anglicized ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

52 Lewis, C. S., C.S. Lewis: essay collection and other short pieces, ed. Walmsley, Lesley (London: HarperCollins, 2000), pp. 10-21, 71-92, 411-20, 526-28, 611-16Google Scholar.

53 Newman, John Henry, Apologia pro vita sua, ed. Oddie, William (London: Dent, 1993 (orig. pub. 1864)), p. 106Google Scholar.

54 For example, Lewis, Abolition of Man, pp. 15-18, 21-22, 39.

55 The Everlasting Man, in Chesterton, Collected Works, II, pp. 306-17.

56 C.S. Lewis, ‘Myth became Fact’, in C. S. Lewis, C.S. Lewis: essay collection and other short pieces, pp. 138-42.

57 See Pickering, ‘Chesterton's Epistemology’, pp. 91-109.

58 Newman, Grammar of Assent, pp. 49-50.

59 Newman, John Henry, Second University Sermon, ‘The Influence of Natural and Revealed Religion Respectively’, in Newman, John Henry, Newman's University Sermons: fifteen sermons preached before the University of Oxford 1826-43, ed. MacKinnon, Donald M. & Holmes, J. Derek (London: SPCK, 1970), pp. 16-36Google Scholar (18, 21, 31, 34).

60 Newman, Grammar of Assent, pp. 302, 303, 323.

61 Lewis, Mere Christianity, p. 6.

62 Newman, Grammar of Assent, p. 97.

63 Fletcher, Patrick J., ‘Newman and Natural Theology’, Newman Studies Journal 5, no. 2 (2008): pp. 26-42Google Scholar.

64 Newman, Grammar of Assent, pp. 254, 233, see also 329-30.

65 Vanauken, A Severe Mercy, p. 92.

66 Gilley, Sheridan, Newman and his Age (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2003), p. 58Google Scholar.