A Parallel Between Newman and Thomism

Extract

Though some writers have tried to prove that Newman was at heart a scholastic, perhaps even a Thomist, the tendency of Newman critics at one time was to go to the opposite extreme and put him forward as the founder of a new philosophy which might even supplant the traditional philosophy of the Church. This idea was behind some of the attempts of Modernists to put Newman forward as the prophet of modern Christian thought and apologetics. Neither of these contentions is justified. Newman was not a Thomist. He had on his shelves the Summa Contra Gentiles, but it is doubtful whether he studied St. Thomas, except in the quotations of modern scholastic writers. When he did read the scholastics, his mind was already formed, and Newman was not the man to take up a fundamentally new position in late life. But it was even more true that Newman was not a propounder of a philosophical system in opposition to any other philosophy, either ancient or modern. Though one does find a certain amount of even deep metaphysical thought, particularly in some of his many unpublished opuscula, yet metaphysics was at no time Newman’s principal interest. In his early days, he does from time to time hint at a sympathy with idealistic metaphysics. But he never commits himself to a single definite statement in its favour, still less an argument. He admits in a very early work a sympathy for the platonism of the Alexandrian Fathers; but he makes it quite clear that it is the Alexandrian Fathers which interest him much more than their platonism.