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The Contemplative Function of Theology within Liberal Education: Re-Reading Newman's Idea of a University
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 March 2013
Abstract
This essay partly responds to John Connolly's recent article on the significance of Newman's view of theology for the contemporary Catholic university. I agree with Connolly's argument but believe it does not do justice to the rich theological and philosophical implications of Newman's thought on this topic. Theology in the university serves a vital role in the philosophical formation of the intellect because it aids the intellect's trajectory toward a kind of transcendence. This specific transcendence is connected to the dynamics of reasoning operative within the philosophical habit of mind. The transcendence that Newman holds as constitutive of and ordered by university teaching concerns viewing theology as liberal knowledge and as a type of contemplation. As a subject matter, theology assists in the mind's enlargement by helping to bring out the metaphysical and aesthetic dimensions in knowing.
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1 Connolly, John R., “Theology in a Catholic University: Newman's Significance for Today,” Horizons 29/2 (2002):264–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; 271. Avery Cardinal Dulles notes the “value of contemplation” that Newman's Idea of the University proposes but does not link it to theology in his recent book, Newman (New York: Continuum, 2002), 144.
2 Connolly, 263.
3 Newman, John Henry, The Idea of a University, ed. Ker, I.T. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 65.Google Scholar Hereafter cited as Idea.
4 Of these teachings, Newman contends, “I am not throwing together discordant doctrines; I am not merging belief, opinion, persuasion, of whatever kind, into a shapeless aggregate, by the help of ambiguous words, and dignifying this medley by the name of Theology” (Idea, 69). It should be stressed, however, that Newman suspects systems while simultaneously arguing for them. The doctrines proper to natural theology do comprise a system, but are nevertheless foundationally incapable of being limited to them, since the doctrines are fundamentally mysteries (see Idea, 66).
5 For a provocative meditation upon the meaning of “natural theology” in relation to larger issues concerning Catholic universities and the church, but doing something quite different from what this article is attempting, see Pelikan, Jaroslav, “Ex corde Universitatis: Reflections on the Significance of Newman's ‘Insisting Solely on Natural Theology,’ in Langan, John P. S.J., ed. Catholic Universities in Church and Society: A Dialogue on Ex corde Ecclesiae (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1993), 196–209.Google Scholar
6 Idea, 65.
7 See Idea, 65–66.
8 Idea., 66–68. “[I]n the intellectual, moral, social and political world. Man, with his motives and works, his languages, his propagation, his diffusion is from Him. … All that is good, all that is true, all that is beautiful, all that is beneficent, be it great or small, be it perfect or fragmentary, natural as well as supernatural, moral as well as material, comes from Him.”
9 Again, this is consistent with the thrust of his argument's principles. Newman expounds explicitly—especially in “Christianity and Physical Science,”—on “Catholic theology” and there presumes revelation (Idea, 346); “Catholic Theology has nothing to fear from the progress of Physical Science, even independently of the divinity of its doctrines” (354).
10 Idea, 104–05.
11 Ibid., 114.
12 For more on Newman's understanding of “duty,” see Newman, John Henry, An Essay in Aid of A Grammar of Assent, ed. Ker, I.T. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 73–74Google Scholar; Newman, John Henry, Fifteen Sermons Preached Before The University Of Oxford, ed. Tillman, Mary Katherine (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), Sermon 8, 136–55.Google Scholar
13 Idea, 5.
14 See especially, “The Tamworth Reading Room,” in Newman, John Henry, Discussions and Arguments on Various Subjects (London: Longman, Green, 1911), 254–305.Google Scholar
15 Ibid., 304. Italics his.
16 Newman, John Henry, Rise and Progress of Universities in Historical Sketches, Vol. 3 (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1970), 228–29.Google Scholar See also Newman, 's sermon “Intellect, the Instrument of Religious Training,” Sermons Preached On Various Occasions (London: Burns, Oates, 1870), 1–14.Google Scholar Newman distinguishes the university proper and its object from that of the college but they certainly form part of the larger educational enterprise. For the Catholic University of Ireland, according to Colin Carr, Newman took Oxford's colleges as the model for student residential life, (Paul Cullen, John Henry Newman, and the Catholic University of Ireland, 1845–1865 [Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003], 146).
17 Newman holds that “intellect, too, I repeat has its beauty, and it has those who aim at it. To open the mind, to correct it, to refine it, to enable it to know, and to digest, master, rule, and use its knowledge, to give it power over its own faculties, application, flexibility, method, critical exactness, sagacity, resource, address, eloquent expression, is an object as intelligible … I say, an object as intelligible as the cultivation of virtue, while, at the same time, it is absolutely distinct from it” (Idea, 112; 135).
18 Idea, 96.
19 Ibid., 96.
20 Ibid., 97.
21 Examples Newman employs to illustrate an “enlargement of mind” show otherwise. See Idea, 118f.
22 “For instance, let a person, whose experience has hitherto been confined to the more calm and unpretending scenery of these islands, whether here or in England, go for the first time into parts where physical nature puts on her wilder and more awful forms, whether at home or abroad, as into mountainous districts; or let one, who has ever lived in a quiet village, go for the first time to a great metropolis,—then I suppose he will have the sensation which perhaps he never had before. He has a feeling not in addition or increase of former feelings, but of something different in its nature. He will perhaps be borne forward, and find for a time that he has lost his bearings. He has made a certain progress, and he has a consciousness of mental enlargement; he does not stand where he did, he has a new centre, and a range of thoughts to which he was before a stranger” (Idea, 118).
23 Idea, 97–98.
24 Idea, 6.
25 Ibid., 98.
26 Pieper, Josef, Leisure, the Basis of Culture (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 1998), 3–4.Google Scholar
27 Idea, 129–30. Here there is, in some way, a striking parallel between what Newman proposes as a possibility and Augustine attempted in practice: a group of people living together for contemplative leisure. Though Augustine's project failed, his remarks strikingly parallel Newman's. “Among our group of friends we had had animated discussions of a project: talking with one another we expressed detestation for the storms and troubles of human life, and had almost decided on withdrawing from the crowds and living a life of contemplation. This contemplative leisure we proposed to organize in the following way …” (Confessions, trans. Chadwick, Henry [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992], VI. xiv, 108Google Scholar).
28 See, Idea, 149.
29 Ibid., 128.
30 Ibid., 400.
31 Ibid., 127. The parallel here with Nietzsche is striking. Nietzsche similarly disparaged the deleterious excess of historical knowledge upon life, German culture, and especially its youth. “The education of German youth, however, proceeds precisely from this false and unfruitful concept of culture: its aim, quite purely and loftily conceived, is not at all the liberally educated man but the scholar, the scientific man, namely, the scientific man who will be useful as soon as possible, who takes a position outside of life in order to know it quite clearly; its result, viewed in a mean empirical way, is the historico-aesthetic cultural Philistine, the precocious newly wise chatter box on matters of state, church and art, the sensorium of thousands of sensations, the insatiable stomach which yet does not know what honest hunger and thirst are” (On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life, trans. Preuss, Peter [Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Co, 1980], 59–60Google Scholar).
32 See Idea, 115–16.
33 Ibid., 118.
34 Ibid., 96.
35 Ibid., 120. Italics mine.
36 Ibid., 104.
37 “[K]nowledge,” states Newman, “is something more than a sort of passive reception of scraps and details; it is a something, and it does a something” (ibid., 131).
38 Ibid., 105.
40 Ibid., 146.
41 Ibid., 145.
42 For two fine studies on this notion, see Culler, A. Dwight, The Imperial Intellect: A Study of Newman's Educational Ideal (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955)Google Scholar and Vargish, Thomas, Newman: The Contemplation of Mind (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970).Google Scholar
43 See Lemaitre, J., “Contemplation,” Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique, Vol. 2, ed. Viller, Marcel et al. (Paris: Beauchesne, 1953), cols. 1643–2193Google Scholar; Aumann, J., “Contemplation,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 4 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), 258–63Google Scholar; see also, McGinn, Bernard, The Foundations of Mysticism (New York: Crossroad, 1991)Google Scholar and Jones, C., Wainwright, G., and Yarnold, E. S.J., The Study of Spirituality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).Google Scholar
44 Idea, 102. Italics his. Also, see 219. The basic distinction between use and enjoyment in terms of knowledge was a theme treated by Augustine. “So, then, there are some things which are meant to be enjoyed, others which are meant to be used, yet other which do both the enjoying and the using. Things that are to be enjoyed make us happy; things which are to be used help us on our way to happiness, providing us, so to say, with crutches and props for reaching the things that will make us happy, and enabling us to keep them” (Teaching Christianity, trans. Hill, Edmund O.P., [Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1996], 107Google Scholar).
45 Nichomachean Ethics, 1176b; 1177a1–20; 1098a14. The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Barnes, Jonathan, vol. 2 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1991).Google Scholar
46 Ibid., 1095b15–19.
47 Ibid., 1177a20–1178a1.
48 Ibid., 1178b20–23; It is also true because, for Aristotle, God's self-contemplation or a “thinking on thinking” is “the most excellent of things” (Metaphysics, Λ, 1074b30–35).
49 See especially, McGinn, , The Foundations of Mysticism, ch. 2Google Scholar, “The Greek Contemplative Ideal.”
50 Nichomachean Ethics, 1103a1–10. For extended treatment, see book 6.
51 Newman's concern and argument regards more the higher levels of mind, reason, “intellectual illumination,” than simply knowledge as a techné or skill, a means to some further end: “Surely it is very intelligible to say, and that is what I say here, that Liberal Education, viewed in itself, is simply the cultivation of the intellect, as such, and its object is nothing more or less than intellectual excellence” (Idea, 111; 115).
52 For the different meanings of “transcendence,” see The Oxford English Dictionary.
53 For a concrete example of this in terms of “worship,” see Idea, 423–25.
54 Idea, 114. The pliant language of The Idea of a University frustrates efforts to secure meaning and define terms consistently. Newman frequently employs words without consistent definitions. This explains his varied use of the term “contemplation.”
55 Ibid., 123.
56 Ibid., 101.
57 The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain, Charles Stephen et al. Vol. 15 (London: Nelson, 1964), 131–32; 136–37.Google Scholar
58 See Idea, 52f.
59 Idea, 68.
60 ST I, q. 5, a. 1 (trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province [New York: Benziger, 1948]).
61 ST, I, q. 5, a. 4 ad. 1.
62 Idea, 185.
63 Jacques Maritain maintains that such natural contemplation “can, nevertheless, be joined to a natural love of the object contemplated and to a heartfelt complacency in it” (The Degrees of Knowledge, trans. Phelan, Gerald B. [Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995] 285).Google Scholar
64 ST I. q. 6 a. 1.ad. 1.
65 Idea, 101.
66 For a penetrating criticism of the university specialty field, see Farley, Edward, The Fragility of Knowledge: Theological Education in the Church & the University (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), 29–55.Google Scholar