Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 ‘Jewish Christianity’ in Antiquity: Meaningless Category or Heuristic Irritant?
- 2 ‘Sola Fide’: the Wrong Slogan?
- 3 Both Cromwellian and Augustinian: the Influence of Thomas Cromwell on Reform within the Early Modern English Austin Friars
- 4 Lex, Rex and Sex: The Bigamy of Philipp of Hesse and the Lutheran Recourse to Natural Law
- 5 The Authority of Scripture in Reformation Anglicanism: Then and Now
- 6 Orthodoxy and Heresy in the Post-Reformation
- 7 Profanity and Piety in the Church Porch: the Place of Transgression in Early Modern England
- 8 Writing on the Walls: Word and Image in the Post-Reformation English Church
- 9 The Myth of the Church of England
- 10 Mysticism, Orthodoxy and Reformed Identity before the English Revolution: the Case of John Everard
- 11 Sacrilege and the Sacred in England’s Second Reformation, 1640–1660
- 12 ‘I had not the patience to be quiet’: Arthur Bury and The Naked Gospel
- 13 ‘A soul-corrupting indifferentism’: the Intellectual Development of Benjamin Henry Latrobe
- 14 Newman, Dogma and Freedom in the Church
- 15 ‘Tommy, ’ow’s yer soul?’ Reconsidering Religion and the British Soldier
- 16 The King James Vulgate
- 17 The Myth of the Anglican Communion?
- Select bibliography of Diarmaid MacCulloch’s scholarly publications
- Bibliography
- Index
- Tabula Gratulatoria
- Studies in Modern British Religious History
14 - Newman, Dogma and Freedom in the Church
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 January 2024
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 ‘Jewish Christianity’ in Antiquity: Meaningless Category or Heuristic Irritant?
- 2 ‘Sola Fide’: the Wrong Slogan?
- 3 Both Cromwellian and Augustinian: the Influence of Thomas Cromwell on Reform within the Early Modern English Austin Friars
- 4 Lex, Rex and Sex: The Bigamy of Philipp of Hesse and the Lutheran Recourse to Natural Law
- 5 The Authority of Scripture in Reformation Anglicanism: Then and Now
- 6 Orthodoxy and Heresy in the Post-Reformation
- 7 Profanity and Piety in the Church Porch: the Place of Transgression in Early Modern England
- 8 Writing on the Walls: Word and Image in the Post-Reformation English Church
- 9 The Myth of the Church of England
- 10 Mysticism, Orthodoxy and Reformed Identity before the English Revolution: the Case of John Everard
- 11 Sacrilege and the Sacred in England’s Second Reformation, 1640–1660
- 12 ‘I had not the patience to be quiet’: Arthur Bury and The Naked Gospel
- 13 ‘A soul-corrupting indifferentism’: the Intellectual Development of Benjamin Henry Latrobe
- 14 Newman, Dogma and Freedom in the Church
- 15 ‘Tommy, ’ow’s yer soul?’ Reconsidering Religion and the British Soldier
- 16 The King James Vulgate
- 17 The Myth of the Anglican Communion?
- Select bibliography of Diarmaid MacCulloch’s scholarly publications
- Bibliography
- Index
- Tabula Gratulatoria
- Studies in Modern British Religious History
Summary
Orthodoxy is an ever-moving target, a fact that was famously recognised by John Henry Newman in his theory of the historical development of doctrine. As this essay reminds us, this was not an abstract matter for him. In his own conversion from Anglican to Roman Catholic, an apparently sharp disjunction masked a deeper spiritual and intellectual continuity. In his later career, a monopoly on the Catholic orthodoxy to which he was profoundly committed was claimed by forces within the church which sought to narrow and over-define it. This essay explores the tension between Newman’s commitment to dogma but opposition to dogmatism, and his understanding of orthodoxy as a corporate collaborative attempt to articulate the mystery of God in time, rather than a system of infallible propositions impervious to change, generated by and immediately available to ecclesiastical authority. Newman’s confidence both in the Church’s authority as “the oracle of God”, and in the legitimate role of spiritual intuition and intellectual exploration in the development and recognition of religious truth, led him to urge those unsettled by the ultra-orthodoxy of 19th century Ultramontanism to patience, and to trust that time, and the Spirit, would correct any imbalance and would “trim the boat”.
One of the more depressing consequences of the canonisation of John Henry Newman has been a rush by advocates of self-consciously ‘traditionalist’ versions of Catholicism to appropriate him as their mascot: ‘unbending Newman, so triumphistically unecumenical’. In September 2019 the American Catholic periodical First Things ran an article by the deputy editor of the Catholic Herald, citing Newman to ridicule the Amazonian Synod, while Archbishop Vigano recently invoked Newman’s famous toast to conscience before the pope in justification of his own attacks on the integrity and orthodoxy of Pope Francis. And there is apparent papal warrant for this alarming tendency to claim Newman as an icon of militant orthodoxy, a patron and exemplar of doctrinal impeccability.
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- Contesting Orthodoxies in the History of ChristianityEssays in Honour of Diarmaid MacCulloch, pp. 238 - 255Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021