The Newman Rambler

The Philosophy of John Henry Newman

20 April 2021 ‖ Sergio Sánchez-Migallón

Sergio Sánchez-Migallón is associate professor of ethics at the University of Navarra. He holds an ecclesiastical doctorate in philosophy, on the ethics of Franz Brentano, and a civil doctorate in letters on the ethical personalism of Dietrich von Hildebrand, both completed under the supervision of the notable Spanish philosopher Alejandro Llano Cifuentes, member of the Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Sánchez-Migallón has served as dean of the ecclesiastical faculty of philosophy at the University of Navarra. He is the author of numerous academic articles and books, most notably La ética de Franz Brentano (1996), El personalismo ético de Dietrich von Hildebrand (2003), La persona humana y su formación en Max Scheler (2006), Ética filosófica. Un curso introductorio (2008), De la Neurociencia a la Neuroética. Narrativa científica y reflexión filosófica (2010). He is also the co-author of La ética de Edmund Husserl (2011), Diagnóstico de la Universidad en Alasdair MacIntyre. Génesis y desarrollo de un  proyecto antropológico (2011) and Introducción a la Filosofía (2018).

John Henry Newman is, without any doubt, a sui generis figure. He cannot be qualified exactly as a philosopher or as a theologian. Nor is he only a writer or a thinker, nor only an apologist or a man of action. The name John Henry Newman evokes the life of a person in search of truth. A quest that at times flowed serenely in backwaters and at other times had to make its way through tough obstacles. And, fortunately, Newman left a written record of both his vicissitudes and his discoveries.

The truth that Newman sought was not limited by adjectives: it was at once natural and supernatural, philosophical and religious. A breadth that is connatural to one who, like Newman, was a true lover of wisdom: a philosopher. In this author the religious perspective did not distort his rational search for truth, but rather stimulated it in the most committed way. That is why Newman should also be studied as a philosopher. It is precisely here that his reflections on strictly rational, philosophical themes and methods are highlighted, which also possess an approach that makes them extraordinarily fruitful also for those who cultivate theology.

Life and Works

The life of John Henry Newman (London, 1801 – Birmingham, 1890) is closely linked to his thought, so it is worth describing it in some detail. He initially studied at a private school in Ealing, on the outskirts of London. There, at the age of 15, he had a “first conversion”, which firmly established in him the Christian dogmas – for the moment in their Anglican version, influenced also by Calvinism – and the decision to live the Christian faith and morals in a committed way. The following year, in 1817, he moved to study at Oxford (Trinity College), with serious economic difficulties, until 1822, when he was elected Fellow of Oriel College.

In 1825 Newman was ordained a priest of the Church of England. In the following years several relevant articles began to appear and his powerful sermons, which would be published later, began to be heard. In 1826 he returned to the Oriel as a tutor. Overwork, family financial difficulties and the sudden death of his younger sister caused him a psychological and nervous breakdown. However, Newman saw this illness as providential, because he took advantage of his rest to begin to read carefully the Fathers of the Church, which had been attracting his attention for years.

In 1828, after this health crisis and with renewed energy, he was appointed vicar of St. Mary’s Church (the university parish of Oxford). At that time he preached his best known sermons: the Parochial Sermons and – also elaborated as essays – the [Oxford] University Sermons. In addition, Newman would consider this period as the germ of what would later be called the “Oxford Movement”. Such a movement, which spontaneously and over time would gather a small and varied group of people, tried to show that the Anglican Church was the legitimate and direct descendant of the apostolic Church, as opposed to the deviations that, on the other hand, the Church of Rome would have suffered; at the same time, [the “Oxford Movement”] intended to raise the ascetic and spiritual level of the Anglican faithful, in view of the danger of sliding towards Protestant subjectivism. However, this position soon began to cause [Newman] difficulties, attracting upon him the accusation of “Anglo-Catholic”.

At the end of 1832 [Newman] undertook a long voyage in the Mediterranean. A few months later, however, he contracted a serious illness in Sicily, which Newman again saw as providential when he clearly understood a call to work for God even more, in England. So, upon his return, in July 1833, he began a fruitful activity of preaching, study and publication, formally initiating the “Oxford Movement”. The Tracts for the Times (a kind of pamphlet as an organ of expression of the Movement, written by the different members of the same) began to appear, at the same time that he continued with the sermons in Santa Maria. In 1833 he wrote his first great work, fruit of his conscientious study of the Fathers of the Church, The Arians of the Fourth Century.

Since then, Newman was assailed, more and more, by the suspicion that the alleged deviations of the Roman Church are not so essential; and that, above all, the Catholic Church is more in continuity with the apostolic Church than the Church of England. In spite of this, in those years he tried to open a middle way between Protestantism and the Roman doctrine, expressed in his writing Via Media.

But his doubts and inclination towards the Catholic Church were accentuated. Newman’s social life then became more difficult, as these doubts were reflected in his writings and sermons, causing him numerous suspicions; and in his spirit boiled with all intensity the problems that made Newman famous: obedience to his own conscience in the search for truth and how to adhere to it with as much certainty as possible. The desire to retire to resolve his doubts had been growing, reaching a climax in 1841, when Newman wrote Tract 90, which was officially criticized by the Anglican hierarchy, prompting the end of these publications. So in 1842 he retired to Littlemore (a small church that depended on St. Mary’s, Oxford) with a small group of followers. There he wrote the Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, in part in response to the problems posed by the Via Media (so while it certainly addresses philosophically relevant issues, it moves towards a distinctly theological context, which is not addressed here).

In 1845 [Newman] converted to Catholicism and was received into the Catholic Church, receiving priestly ordination two years later and joining the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, a congregation that he would spread in England. In 1854, at the request of the Irish bishops, he traveled frequently to Dublin to found the Catholic University of Ireland (today University College Dublin), combining this task with his work as Superior of the Birmingham Oratory. However, due to various difficulties – especially differences of opinion with the Archbishop of Dublin – he left his post as rector, and ended the trips to Dublin, in 1858. The fruit of these years are his valuable lectures collected in the book The Idea of the University. During the following years he wrote important works motivated by controversies or answering accusations (undoubtedly in the style of St. Augustine), especially Apologia pro vita sua (1865) and Letter to the Duke of Norfolk (1875). On the other hand, he wrote – more distanced from concrete polemics, although with an apologetic context and intention –, in a long elaborated text, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (1870), where he explains his vision of certainty and the possible ways it can present.

After 23 years he returned to Oxford to receive the appointment of honorary fellow of Trinity College. In 1879 Pope Leo XIII elevated Newman to the cardinalate. Newman died in 1890. In 2010 he was beatified by Benedict XVI in Birmingham (UK) and on 13 October 2019, Pope Francis proclaimed Newman a saint in Rome.

Knowledge and its Certainty

Newman’s own intellectual and religious experience required him to reflect long and seriously on knowledge and the degree of certainty with which it could be possessed. His An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent is his most philosophical and patiently wrought work. After clarifying that there are interrogative propositions (to which the act or mental state of doubt corresponds), conclusions (arrived at by inference as their condition) and assertions (which are the expression of assents), Newman decides to focus on the latter and thus on the assents involved.[1] Now, every assent to a proposition involves an apprehension of its meaning, and apprehensions can be of two fundamental types: notional apprehension and real apprehension.[2] This distinction is one of the key and most original elements of Newman’s gnoseological doctrine [philosophy of knowledge and cognition].

Notional apprehension resembles inference or syllogism, since it refers to abstract ideas or concepts, to notions; to it corresponds notional assent (which has five levels: profession, belief, opinion, assumption, and speculation).[3] In contrast, real apprehension usually entails real assent, or assent proper-although it is fair to warn that Newman does not always write with the philosophical rigor characteristic of an academic study.

So that notional assent is the acceptance of a proposition apprehended or grasped notionally, that is, abstractly: what is thus contemplated “he is attenuated into an aspect, or relegated to his place in a classification; thus his appellation is made to suggest, not the real being which he is in this or that specimen of himself, but a definition”.[4] The objects of apprehension and assent thus considered are contemplated reduced to their definition, and are affirmed as a result of the requirement of deductive logic; they are seen, as it were, from the outside, as a neutral object before a mere cognizing subject. The knowledge thus gained has a greater risk of error, since abstraction runs the risk of not noticing relevant individual peculiarities (both of the object and of the subject). Moreover, its very abstract character makes it difficult for such assent to move to action.

By contrast, real assent derives from a real apprehension, which is “an experience or information about the concrete”[5], whether present or past (thanks to memory and imagination)[6]. It is the direct contact of the concrete person with the concrete reality, no longer of any subject with any abstract object. This knowledge contains the individual features of both the object and the subject. That is, it is an experience of something concrete (with all its details and nuances) by someone who is also concrete (with his history of past experiences, with his affections and possible effects that what he has experienced evokes, etc.)[7]. That is why real assent – assent in the most proper sense – is richer, livelier and stronger than notional assent; moreover, the concreteness of its object is not limited to the sensible or material, but also reaches any kind of psychic, spiritual and even religious experience. And as for possible subsequent action, it is not that real assent pushes directly to action, but that it stimulates more the affections and these can indeed move more immediately to action.[8]

Therefore, Newman sees the need to emphasize, together with notional assent – so much attended to by logic and necessary for abstract and theoretical knowledge of laws –, real assent. The latter is of a peculiar nature, and altogether necessary for concrete and everyday life, to move to action and to experience things not only true but also valuable (including, therefore, moral and religious truths).[9] And, therefore, “it leads the way to actions of every kind, to the establishment of principles, and the formation of character, and is thus again intimately connected with what is individual and personal”.[10]

The Illative Sense

Of course, for Newman the experience of what he describes as real assent is undeniable. But the challenge he faces is to show that such a “real” acceptance of a truth (remember, material or spiritual) can exhibit the same certainty as a notional assent. His thesis is that notional assent achieves certainty only through rational syllogisms; whereas real assent achieves certainty of identical strength, or more, on the basis of probability and through what he calls “illative sense”. This idea, which might seem obvious to common sense, clashed with the then commonly admitted logic, especially in the Anglo-Saxon milieu, of empiricist tradition. (Recall that An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent has as its horizon an apologetic context and intention, as we will detail later on). According to the latter, all certainty is based either inductively on sensible experience or deductively on the syllogisms or inferences of reason. These were the only two modes of knowledge – and the only two fields of objects – objectively cognizable and with certainty – whose combination perfectly explained the success of the experimental sciences. In the first case, we achieved certainty of data only from material objects; in the second, only from abstract ideas. In this way, the objects of faith and morality – evidently not sensible – would be reduced to merely rational objects, incapable of arousing emotions and moving to action; and access to them would only be possible by means of demonstrative reasoning. But this last interpretation contradicts, according to Newman, all authentic moral and religious experience.

For Newman, then, it is clear that there must be a way of assenting and adhering with absolute certainty, as this experience exhibits, to the suprasensible contents contained in it. A way that is neither empirical inductive (which certainly does not reach any necessity), nor rational deductive (which remains in the abstract without reaching the living concreteness of the moral and the spiritual). Such a mode pointed out by Newman is based on a peculiar way of understanding probability and on what he calls “illative sense”. In describing such certain knowledge, but neither deductive nor properly inductive, Newman was anticipating the great later British intuitionists (especially in the field of morality, but not only: Harold Arthur Prichard, George Edward Moore or William David Ross), avoiding the extremes of abstract rationalism and nominalist emotivism.

Newman’s strategy is to warn that there are several kinds of inference: formal, informal and natural.[11] Formal inference is the usual syllogism of logic and of all scientific reasoning. Informal inference goes from concrete propositions to a concrete conclusion, typical of deliberation and decision-making. And natural inference – the most natural way of thinking – does not make use of propositions, but goes directly and unconsciously from some concrete things to other concrete things; it is a spontaneous perception of reality. Thus, formal inference moves on the plane of the abstract, while the informal and the natural reach the concrete. The first has the advantage of universality; the other two, the capacity to reach the concrete real and to move to action.

And the most important thing is that in the three modes of inference one arrives, although in different ways, at assertions that are equally rational (or reasonable) and fully true. Then, if for the formal one the criterion are the formal laws of the syllogism, for the other two we will have to point out an equivalent criterion: such criterion is -particularly for the natural inference, which remains in the concrete – the illative sense.[12] “This power of judging and concluding, when in its perfection, I call the Illative Sense”[13]. This sense is thus a capacity to judge about the truth of concrete things, and it is founded not on universal truths but on concurrent and convergent probabilities of concrete facts. Such a probability does not attain to the logical evidence of the universal, but to an equivalent certainty (particularly valid for moral and religious truths, which are Newman’s primary interest).

“The best illustration of what I hold is that of a wire consisting of a large number of distinct separate strands, each weak in itself, but together as hard as a bar of steel. A steel bar represents mathematical or strict demonstration; a wire represents moral demonstration, which is an assemblage of probabilities, insufficient for certainty if separate, but together indestructible. A man who says ‘I cannot trust a wire, I must have a steel bar’ would be, in certain cases, irrational and unreasonable: so is a man who says he must have a rigid, non-moral demonstration of religious truth.”[14]

Such a capacity depends, therefore, to a large extent on a person’s willingness to let himself be reasonably led from probabilities to certainty; to let himself be persuaded that in certain matters formal inference is insufficient and that he must then give way to other kinds of reasoning. So the criterion is, in the end, the intellectual and moral character of the person. He sees within himself, with a subjective but real and rational certainty, truths essential to life (moral truths, discernment of vocation or profession, aesthetic appreciation, etc.). The illative sense resembles – as Newman himself points out – Aristotelian prudence with respect to moral questions.

Truth and Conscience

Truth is seen, then, in one’s own conscience; and particularly in the case of moral and religious truths, in the moral conscience of each person. Newman’s intellectual and life biography explains very well why he devoted great attention to this capacity to know what is good and what is bad, or what is true and what is false in the ethical and religious sphere. He himself had to travel a long and tortuous path practically alone, with the only guide of his conscience. This experience led him to characterize conscience, according to Morales’ accurate description, which will serve here as the guiding thread of the analysis, as

“an original and innate principle in man; a quality or power of the human spirit; a witness of divine existence and law; an inner sense of transcendent character; an irreducible and determining element of the personality; an imperative that demands doing good and avoiding evil.”[15]

From the outset, moral conscience is recognized as an objective and original mode of knowledge that is unusual in the history of thought. Faced with theological-fideistic interpretations (on the part of fideism itself, defending it; or on the part of the Enlightenment, criticizing it) or sentimentalist interpretations (which lead to arbitrary or sociological relativism), acts of conscience can be analyzed and studied, in their nature and content, like other acts; objective contents can be discovered in them.

“I assume, then, that Conscience has a legitimate place among our mental acts; as really so, as the action of memory, of reasoning, of imagination, or as the sense of the beautiful.”[16]

It is true, however, that it is a peculiar spiritual capacity. And that peculiarity is seen by Newman in the “always emotional”[17] character of conscience, of moral knowledge. Evidently, not in the emotivist sense that gives no genuine knowledge (as interpreted by David Hume and, in the aestheticist mode, by the Earl of Shaftesbury), but precisely by opening the way to notice a particular kind of feeling on the plane of the spirit and that uncovers authentic truths.

Certainly, Newman seems to be aware of the danger of an emotivist interpretation that dilutes the objectivity and binding force of moral conscience as moral. And to this end he introduces the role of judgment and makes it clear that he does not speak of emotion in any sense. In the first place, moral conscience always contains a judgment: it possesses “is twofold: —it is a moral sense, and a sense of duty; a judgment of the reason and a magisterial dictate.”[18] And secondly, he warns that the term “feeling” is often improperly used:

“improperly, because feeling comes and goes, and, having no root in our nature, speaks with no divine authority; but the moral perception, though varying in the mass of men, is fixed in each individual, and is an original element within us.”[19]

These misunderstandings avoided, Newman sketches a description of the sentimental nature of the act of conscience as it is experienced: conscience discovers moral truth originally, without demonstration or reasoning, it is not a judgment deduced from others[20]; moral knowledge is intuitive, previous to any rational analysis.[21] That is, it is not a pure judgment, nor is it a mere affective echo of a previous judgment. Rather, it is a kind of lucid feeling-no blind or arbitrary emotion-that grasps goodness or badness of certain actions and persons. A sentimental grasp by virtue of a capacity so deep-rooted and original in us that Newman calls it an “instinct” already clearly manifested in childhood[22]; hence, an “irreducible and determining element of personality”. In other words, it is precisely the knowledge attained by the illative sense, closer to concrete reality than mere universal judgments, but just as certain as that provided by them. At the same time, here the analogy made earlier of the illative sense with Aristotelian prudence is quite illuminating, for it always ends in the morality of the concrete, where the particular judgment is already immediate and ineffable contact with the real insofar as good and, therefore, susceptible of affecting the sensibility of each person.

But Newman does not delve further into such a characterization of conscience, but rather focuses on the second aspect: the sense of duty, the magisterial dictate. And this both because of his preference for the practical and vital, and because he observes that it is the most common sense in which moral conscience is understood.[23] Well, this sense of duty distinguishes the moral sentimental sanction from the aesthetic sentimental sanction (which Shaftesbury and Hume identified in different ways). But what is more interesting is the reason Newman finds for this difference. While the aesthetic sentiment is directed or referred to external objects, the moral sentiment or sense refers to persons individually (and to acts insofar as they are proper to specific persons). According to Newman, the personal character-as spiritual and individual-gives reason and guarantees the evident objectivity and normativity of the pronouncements of the moral conscience.

And it is then that Newman manages to go further; he discovers in moral conscience a trait that is not only personal, but also interpersonal. That is to say, he notices that every moral duty requires two persons: the person who feels obligated and another person before whom one feels obligated. Without another person there would never appear the typically moral sentiments (nor the judgments that express them and are derived from them); and furthermore such sentiments demand precisely not a human or finite person, but the divine absolute Person. She, God, lends to the moral conscience its unquestionable and at the same time most personal authority for the one who has the duty in question.

Conscience and its Transcendence

Therefore, the moral conscience is also a witness of the divine existence and law; an interior sense of transcendent character. That is to say, conscience contains an immediate reference to something, to someone, distinct from us. Only a reference to another person explains that before the pronouncements of conscience we experience responsibility, fear, shame or repentance; and that these feelings have the authority and unconditionally that characterize them as moral claims that this person is the Person of God: “If, as is the case, we feel responsibility, are ashamed, are frightened, at transgressing the voice of conscience, this implies that there is One to whom we are responsible, before whom we are ashamed, whose claims upon us we fear… These feelings in us are such as require for their exciting cause an intelligent being.”[24] If according to the cases we feel responsibility, shame, fear for the transgression of the voice of conscience, it implies that there is One before whom we are responsible, before whom we feel ashamed, whose demands on us we fear.

Therefore, in the commands that the conscience emanates, God appears first of all, through the illative sense, as Judge and Lawgiver: “in this special feeling, which follows on the commission of what we call right or wrong, lie the materials for the real apprehension of a Divine Sovereign and Judge.”[25] Such commands are presented as – already with the last element of the aforementioned characterization – imperative that demands doing good and avoiding evil in an unconditioned way, that is, as coming from an absolute authority. “And hence it is that we are accustomed to speak of conscience as a voice.”[26] A voice that does not speak from itself, but from God, as an intimate guide, a true inner teacher. Conscience is, then, the voice of God in one’s own intimacy, and therefore absolutely personal, intimate, irreplaceable:

“Conscience is a personal guide, and I use it because I must use myself; I am as little able to think by {390} any mind but my own as to breathe with another's lungs. Conscience is nearer to me than any other means of knowledge.”[27]

Thus, one’s own moral conscience enjoys absolute authority, albeit vicarious: “Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ,” he says in his famous Letter to the Duke of Norfolk.[28] And in that same text – as we know, intended to clarify the obedience that Catholics owe to the Pope – he wrote his famous phrase:

“Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts, (which indeed does not seem quite the thing) I shall drink—to the Pope, if you please, —still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.”[29]

It is evident from the context of that letter, and from the whole of Newman’s doctrine, that he is not proposing here an opposition of distinct sources of truth, but a hierarchy of spokesmen (who must go in unison) of a single truth. In fact, Newman notes the undeniable fact that conscience, like any cognitive and affective faculty, can be mistaken or not be experienced with clarity: either because of a poor natural disposition, or, above all, because of not having cultivated or cared for moral sensitivity. And such a limitation or insufficiency justifies, and even demands, the existence of other “magisterial” aids or sources for the knowledge of good and evil.[30]

Faith and Reason

As a deeply religious man and as a pastor of souls, Newman reflected throughout his life on faith: its true content and its sincere exercise. He laid the foundations of this reflection in his [Oxford] University Sermons, preached at St. Mary’s Church in Oxford, and would eventually develop them in his An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. Newman tried to defend the authenticity of faith in the face of two opposing positions within the Anglican Church: the rationalist position of the “noetics” (or of the Evidential School) that subjected faith to strict logical verification (what Newman calls “liberalism”), and the Calvinist-evangelical position that, on the other hand, practically eliminated the use of reason in the act of faith. Both doctrines ended up dissolving faith, converting it either into pure natural reasoning (and Newman thus distanced himself from a type of apologetics that he saw as sterile and even harmful) or into mere irrational sentiment incapable of objectivity (emotivism leading to religious relativism).

Thus, Newman insists that faith is a supernatural gift, but that at the same time it is neither alien nor opposed to reason. He warns that most of the certainties with which we deal in concrete life are reasonable, and yet they are not the conclusions of demonstrative syllogisms. That is, we become certain of important truths for our life in a different way than deductive reasoning. That way is – as we saw before – the illative sense, which starts from probabilities or immediately from individual facts. Well, Newman says that in this same way, rational but without circumscribing its object within the limits of our reason, we can assent with certainty to suprarational contents, of faith properly speaking, based on experience, especially moral experience.[31] Moreover, the contents of professed and lived faith are expressed in words that refer to concrete realities (Christ God and Man, the Persons of the Blessed Trinity, the Communion of the Church and the fact of Revelation), and therefore allow a real assent, stronger and more intimate than the notional – more proper, says Newman, to theological reflection on those same contents –.

Therefore, the rational conditions for the act of faith are not impeccable and supposedly sufficient formal deductions, but rather an openness to that peculiar rational capacity for inference that is the illative sense. And this openness is not only rational, but also moral. That is to say, just as for the illusory sense in general it was necessary to be willing to let oneself be led from probabilities to certainty, or from certain facts to certain facts, in faith it is especially important to be open to admitting as certain contents that go beyond the limits of strict human logic. Faith – but also natural moral conscience – has a great deal to do with reasonable trust and obedience.[32] Thus, “a good and a bad man will think very different things probable”; and, vice versa, what is believed (and reasoned) “is a touchstone of a person's moral character.”[33] Therefore, the act of faith is always an intellectual act with a certain moral disposition. A disposition that is ultimately love; and, specifically for faith, a love that leads one to expect God's revelation, to regard it as plausible and clear, and to maintain a special sensitivity to understand – prior to any explicit reasoning – the grandeur of the goal of faith, the importance of its message, the dignity of its means, and the timeliness of the circumstances of revelation.[34]

Just as Newman recalled Aristotelian prudence with respect to the illative sense, he recalls here the equally Aristotelian idea that each object should be treated with the rigor and method that its nature permits. The merely rational objects, that is, those defined with exactitude and founded on premises, can be rationally demonstrated; those of faith, that is, those that exceed our apprehensive capacity or are not founded on previous judgments, can be rationally affirmed by means of the illative (plus the help of divine aid, which empowers the human capacity to trust). Both can be affirmed rationally and with full, though diverse, certainty. In this way, Newman overcomes all that rationalistic apologetics that falls into the trap from which he wanted to escape, namely, to reduce faith to a merely rational content, without abandoning himself to an irrational and sentimental fideism. At the same time, it vindicates once again concrete and operative reality as the immediate source, and at the same time destiny, of authentic rational truths. In reference to faith, this means: the life of faith is above all that, life, whole life, not purely theoretical ideas and inferences.

Knowledge in the University

The same idea that different objects correspond to different, but equally rational, methods can be extended from truths of different kinds to different sciences or branches of knowledge. This leads to the recognition of diverse forms of discursive or scientific rationality; forms that, being similarly rational, must be able to understand each other and dialogue in reasonable harmony. That is to say, if faith was as reasonable as logical conclusions, theology must also be reasonable with respect to the other sciences. “Truth cannot be contrary to truth,” was one of Newman’s most repeated phrases in this context.

As in other matters, it was the circumstances of his life (in this case the call to found a Catholic university in Ireland) that led Newman to reflect on this point. But the ground was already prepared in his mind, both by his Oxonian experience and by his well-known passion-theoretical and practical-for truth. His thinking in this area came to fruition in his well-known work The Idea of the University. Again, Newman sought the right position between two extremes equally harmful to the university, and thus to the harmony and unity of truth: on the one hand, the exclusion of theology from the university faculties as a whole under the pretext of neutrality, which does nothing but curtail the human spirit; and, on the other hand, an excessive intrusion of theology that would manipulate or limit the development of natural knowledge (i.e., that would stifle the freedom of legitimate knowledge sought for its own sake, what Newman calls “liberal” education or philosophy).

In any case, Newman’s greatest and most decisive influence lay in his own life and in his personal contact with his many profound friends, students, disciples, parishioners, listeners all. The immediate proof of this was the enthusiastic and fruitful Oxford Movement-impossible without Newman’s personal impetus, advice, and encouragement-as well as the impact of the university sermons and the parish sermons (which many consider, especially the parish sermons, his best writings almost by any means). And the mediate proof, so to speak, is the experience of those who come close to his life and works. His cardinal’s motto, Cor ad cor loquitur (The heart speaks to the heart, which Newman took from St. Francis de Sales), reflects very well his conception of the human person and of the true apprehension and communication of the really important truths: all this goes beyond the intelligence, rather it is achieved from one's own heart to the heart of others.

Newman’s central idea is, in the first place, that theology corresponds to the natural reflective, rational attitude of the life of faith or religion; and that this is also natural (as well as supernatural) to the human spirit. The investigator of truth, the genuine university student, must then "extend his mind" to embrace the various spheres or fields of truth on which it is possible for man to reflect. Secondly, each of the sciences (theology among them) must therefore be respected in view of its diverse object and method. A respect that, in the third place, will lead to the understanding of the other sciences and to the recognition that this diversity of objects and methods is neither an equivocal variety nor a camouflaged identity: it is a matter of the harmony and analogy of the branches of knowledge. And, moreover, a hierarchical harmony and analogy. The sciences that deal with sectors of reality can perhaps be found on planes that partially overlap. But those that embrace the whole of reality must be situated at a broader and higher level (and within these there are also higher perspectives than others). Awareness of its own perspective and breadth will enable each science to be integrated into the respectful and collaborative dialogue of the community of knowledge (visibly embodied in universities).

Intellectual and Religious Influence

As can be deduced from the above, Newman’s influence cannot be divided into vital influence and doctrinal influence, nor into intellectual projection and spiritual – religious projection. What is certain is that, avoiding analytical description -as his biographers well know –, this Englishman on all four sides produced an echo in countless people that has not ceased to grow.

Newman is, above all, an extemporaneous man; that is to say, a man for whom the only important thing is to seek and live the truth, without allowing himself to be accommodated in any way to the worldly circumstances of the moment. It is curious that Newman was concerned about really important issues whose debate, however, did not seem relevant and would even have to wait a century and a half (such as freedom of conscience or religious tolerance), while some very lively debates in the ecclesiastical environment of his time (such as the question of the confessionality of the State or the Papal States themselves) he considered - although important - in a way secondary, as indeed it was later demonstrated. Such an unwavering - and therefore suffered - commitment to the truth led him to lead an attempt to purify the Anglican Church of the worldliness that stalked and even invaded it, and to convert to Catholicism after surrendering to the evidence that the Catholic Church is the Church founded by Christ, where the apostolic tradition is therefore truly alive. Certainly, the conversion of an Anglican minister to Catholicism produced at first the predictable majority rejection. But with the passage of time, seeing his evident intellectual and spiritual honesty, his fair play, Newman unintentionally won the sympathy, or at least the respect, of countless people (as was seen at the time of his death and to this day).

This rich influence can perhaps be described in two truly united ways: in terms of content and in terms of form. In terms of content, firstly, Newman's thought constitutes a decisive doctrinal contribution to the conception of dogma as a truth that allows for development or evolution, and of faith as a reasonable but not rationalistic attitude; secondly, his preaching reveals a rare psychological and spiritual insight into character, conscience and the motives of action (an insight comparable to the subtlety of his contemporary Nietzsche, though without the latter's sterile cynicism). And as for form, Newman has left us a wide range of writings of different genres: academic and homiletic, studies and sermons, autobiographical and novels; all of them exquisite and exemplary. Newman’s central idea is, in the first place, that theology corresponds to the natural reflective, rational attitude of the life of faith or religion; and that this is also natural (as well as supernatural) to the human spirit. The investigator of truth, the genuine university student, must then "extend his mind" to embrace the various spheres or fields of truth on which it is possible for man to reflect. Secondly, each of the sciences (theology among them) must therefore be respected in view of its diverse object and method. A respect that, in the third place, will lead to the understanding of the other sciences and to the recognition that this diversity of objects and methods is neither an equivocal variety nor a camouflaged identity: it is a matter of the harmony and analogy of the branches of knowledge. And, moreover, a hierarchical harmony and analogy. The sciences that deal with sectors of reality can perhaps be found on planes that partially overlap. But those that embrace the whole of reality must be situated at a broader and higher level (and within these there are also higher perspectives than others). Awareness of its own perspective and breadth will enable each science to be integrated into the respectful and collaborative dialogue of the knowledge community (visibly embodied in universities).

In short, it can be said that Newman’s influence was, and still is, spiritual, because of his supernatural interiority absent of all worldliness; intellectual, because of his sincere, radical and obedient openness to all truth; existential, because of his unity of life, holiness and science; and theological, because of his contribution to the development of the understanding and definition of the truths of faith, as well as his vision of the laity within the Church. In this last sense, and in the light of his entire thought, many consider Newman a pillar of the theological renewal of the 19th century and a clear precursor of the Second Vatican Council.

* This text was previously published in Spanish as Sergio Sánchez-Migallón, John Henry Newman, in Francisco Fernández Labastida and Juan Andrés Mercado (editors), Philosophica: Enciclopedia filosófica on line, DOI: 10.17421/2035_8326_2016_SSM_1-1 The text has been translated and republished in The Newman Rambler: Faith, Culture & the Academy with the gracious permission of the author and of the editors of Philosophica: Enciclopedia filosófica.

Bibliography

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Arians of the Fourth Century (1833)

Biglietto Speech (1879)

British Critic (1836-1842)

Callista (1855)

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Loss and Gain: The Story of a Convert (1848)

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Notes (pages taken from http://www.newmanreader.org)

[1] An Essay: 3-8.

[2] An Essay: 9.

[3] An Essay: 42-75.

[4] An Essay: 31.

[5] An Essay: 23.

[6] An Essay: 75.

[7] An Essay: 26, 82-84.

[8] An Essay: 12, 36, 82.

[9]  An Essay: 102-103.

[10] An Essay: 90-91.

[11] An Essay: 259-342.

[12] An Essay: 343-383.

[13] An Essay: 353.

[14] Letters and Diaries: XXI, 146.

[15] Morales, J., Una visión cristiana de la conciencia, «Persona y Derecho», 5 (1978), University of Navarre, Spain: 545.

[16] An Essay: 105.

[17] An Essay: 109.

[18] An Essay: 105.

[19] Oxford University Sermons: 60.

[20] Oxford University Sermons: 19, 66, 84, 108.

[21]  Oxford University Sermons: 183.

[22] An Essay: 111.

[23] An Essay: 107.

[24] An Essay: 109-110.

[25] An Essay: 105, 63, 104; Oxford University Sermons: 18-19.

[26] An Essay: 107; Letter: 247; Apologia: 241.

[27] An Essay: 389-390; Letter: 244, 253; Apologia: 150-151.

[28] Letter: 248.

[29] Letter: 261.

[30] Letter: 253-254.

[31] An Essay: 98-153, 384-492.

[32] Oxford University Sermons: 19, 215-216.

[33] Oxford University Sermons: 191, 229.

[34] Oxford University Sermons: 239-240.