Truth and Responsibility: A Personalist Reading of Newman

Front matter

Truth and Respons ility t Reading

A Personalis of Newman

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Contents

Abbreviations of John Henry Newman’s Texts VII Introduction 1 PART 1 The Main Components of Newman’s Personalist System of Cognition Introduction to Parti 9 1 Probability as the Guide of Life 19 2 Realand Unreal Words 69 3 Egotism Is True Modesty 88 4 Certitude or “I Know That I Know” 117 5 The Guidance of Conscience 125 PART 2 Historical Studies Introduction to Part2 141 6 The Church of England and the Church of Rome 142 7 The Church Fathers 146 8 Tract xc andthe Articles 202 9 TheLogicofDogmas 21

10 The Individual Journey Has Reached Its Destination—1845 and Thereafter 219

VI

Conclusion

Bibliography Index 230

CONTENTS

Abbreviations of John Henry Newmans Texts

Apo.

DA Ess.

PPS GA Diff.

US SD Dev.

Apologia pro Vita Sua

Discussions and Arguments

Essays Critical and Historical

Parochial and Plain Sermons

An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent

Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching Considered in Twelve Lectures addressed in 1850 to the Party of the Religious Movement of 1833

Fifteen Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford

Sermons Bearing on Subjects of the Day

An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine

Introduction

At present we are in a world of shadows.

What we see is not substantial.

J. H. NEWMAN

Truth is stranger than fiction.

W. A. CLEBSCH eee

For I have lit on a great truth: to wit, that all men dwell, and life’s meaning changes for them with the meaning of the home.

A. DE SAINT-EXUPERY

John Henry Newman wrote one of his perhaps best known and most recognized works, Apologia pro Vita Sua, in 1864. Why did he write it? Why did its author see the need to write a “defence of his own life”? This question is especially intriguing, for the title might suggest that the author of the Apologia came to the conclusion that his life was in need of defence, or else sought to compare his life with someone else’s, an idea that he himself would particularly oppose as being absurd. It must be noted that by this time, he had already learnt to trust rather the call of duties from without than from within his own self, a mode of action which was an important trait of his modification of modern epistemology. Man is safer, both in moral and religious respect, when assuming the arduous task of defending the truth or, to be precise, realizing it rather than when giving in to the temptation to stand up in defence of his wounded self-image. For in the case of a spirited defence, he is guided by his duty, even if cumbersome, not by the doubtful satisfaction of retribution. And even when he is called to defend it, he must be on his guard not to get too caught up in this task, because the truth is not his property or his invention. The task to write

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“the history of himself” Newman understood as his “great trial”! And it was a trial worth undertaking, for it is always worth understanding oneself.

When were his life decisions challenged? It was the time of Lent in that memorable year when Newman fell ill and was filled with a foreboding feeling of approaching death. He then noted in his diary: “I write in the direct view of death as in prospect. [...] I die in the faith of the One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church. [...] I hope to die in that Church which our Lord founded on Peter, and which will continue till His second coming.”” In these words he sought to stress that, if, indeed, it was the moment of his departure, he would not like to be taken as a defeated man, that he still persisted in the decision to which he had grown and had ultimately made in 1845, at the moment when he joined the fellowship of the Roman Catholic Church.

Charles Kingsley’s pamphlet,? which was the main reason why Newman embarked on writing the Apologia, reached the future Cardinal on Palm Sunday, at the heart of Lent. It is from this text that the British convert learned that he was a liar — such was Kingsley’s conviction — and that by joining the institution which persisted in error he was no longer a man of trust, for his decision could not have been disinterested. The pamphlet was clearly accusatory in tone towards the Roman Catholic Church. It enlivened the ancient Anglican resentments. Newman found in the text the charges he already knew, namely that the Church of Rome had been always hatching plots, in the grounds that the goal justifies the means; she tended to gain and increase her power rather than preach the truth. The pamphlet combined prejudices towards Newman, allegedly a tool in the hand of “imperialistic” Rome, with prejudices towards the Church.

Pondering over the text of his adversary, Newman wrote: “He asks what I mean; not about my words, not about my arguments, not about my actions, [...] but about that living intelligence, by which I write, and argue, and act. [...] I must, I said, give the true key to my whole life; I must show what I am that it may be seen what I am not [...]. I wish to be known as a living man, and not as a scarecrow which is dressed up in my clothes.”* The author of these words seems to be asking: how can an outside observer recount and comprehend

2 M. Trevor, Newman: Light in Winter, London: Macmillan & Co Ltd, 1962, 331.

3 It was entitled What Then Does Dr. Newman Mean? Kingsley was a graduate of Cambridge University, a member of the Anglican Church, a professor of literature, a writer, and advocate of Christian socialism. He was very much in favour of Darwin's theory of evolution, and severely criticised the Roman Catholic Church.

4 M.Trevor, Newman: Light in Winter, 332-333.

every incident and reflect every mood of another person, so that he can justifiably pass such a condemnatory and disparaging judgment? For him, as for any outside observer, a single biography is a story seamless in its tracings; he has no access to the internal struggle of the person in question. But for the insider it is replete with hesitations, second thoughts, inspections and retrospections. Let us also note that the word “scarecrow” expresses Newman's indignation at being taken for granted on the one hand and, on the other, at the total disregard for the unique character of a person’s individual history in which there are moments of hesitation, vacillation, and misinterpretation; life is a dynamic personal process unfolding in history with all its respective trials. Thus, Kingsley’s text shows a complete disregard for the dynamic character of individual human life.

The above reflection is essential and will make the principal point of reference for this work. Facing such charges, Newman seems to argue as follows: “this sounds as if someone bore me a grudge that I am not someone else than I am.’ I interpret the Apologia both as a defence of individual life, for it is only this particular life for which a person can take responsibility, and also as a message which has a more universal value. In this manner, I understand the whole text by Newman as a text which perfectly fits the nineteenth-century revisions of the Enlightenment. Therefore, I agree with the Polish historian of philosophy, Andrzej Walicki, who claims that Newman's personalism is “recognised as an excellent indication of individualist and, at the same time, universal philosophy of Catholicism,” a conclusion which succinctly recapitulates Newman's position and his valuable contribution to the understanding of our times. Today, we seem to be torn between two extremes: individualism and collectivism, or, in the political sense, loose individualism and the overweening State which has this tendency to form people into a mass. Both dichotomies are wrong. As such, they reduce the wealth of human nature. When we turn to individualism, we neglect the communal part of human life; when we turn to collectivism, we belittle the importance of individual impact.

Newman indeed defines his Apologia as a defence of himself, but not in the sense that his life is better than others’ lives. As he admits himself: “my whole work has been a defence of myself.”® But this defence was aimed primarily, as has been stressed many times here, at the defence of the individual life that runs its course of changes, failures and successes, not at gainsaying that something did not take place if it did take place, or that he wished to have been

5 A. Walicki, Stanistaw Brzozowski - drogi myśli [Stanistaw Brzozowski — the Paths of Thought], Kraków: UNIVERSITAS, 2011, 311. 6 Apo., 188.

someone else, or that he regretted he was not a different person. Newman’s aim was to fend off accusations of hypocrisy both about his past and his current decision to move to the Roman Catholic Church.

What right does one person have to charge another person with falsehood and hypocrisy? He would have to contemplate in his mind, as a point of reference, either his own life or some universal model; such a model, if that were available, would be an abstraction elicited from different (how many?) biographies. We might call it, tentatively, an approximation of what an ideal life could be like. He should also possess complete knowledge about the concrete circumstances of this other person, under which this person made such decisions and not others. Such a task would indeed be Herculean, for it would not only necessitate the external observance of the person under investigation, but to actually enter his mind. The other person cannot deny what he, in good faith, had assented to at the moment of his assent, and what kind of knowledge he had at his disposal. Obviously, he could have made a mistake, but at the same time he cannot renounce or deny himself, even though he might recall the past time with pain and regret, for it was he who was its hero and main author. It must also be noted that both pain and regret are justifiable on condition that such a person can recall the intentional aspects of his decisions. Now, if his intentions were good, what kind of pain or regret can he feel?

This hostile pamphlet, paradoxically, brought recovery to Newman who had only recently thought about his imminent death and, strangely enough, it is thanks to this pamphlet that we have received one of the most beautiful descriptions (it could even be called a eulogy) of the development of an individual person, composed in accordance with the best rules of English prose. Let us state this clearly: it is an apology of struggles, errors, triumphs and failures, through which a person is led by his or her right conscience amidst the complicated dynamisms of events, in search of the certitude which brings peace. Newman felt aggrieved that his life had been so lightly dismissed.

I note here an interesting parallel with a previous event in the life of our author. In 1833, when Newman sojourned in Sicily,” he also fell seriously ill. He thought about his imminent death as well, and it was then as well that he had this profound belief that he still had a special task to fulfil in his homeland.

7 Meriol Trevor rightly suggests that the Sicilian expedition inside the crater was for Newman a figure of man’s journey to his own interior, a journey which the British tourist made himself (see M. Trevor, Newman: The Pillar of the Cloud, London: Macmillan & Co Ltd, 1962, 123-124). The darkness of the crater certainly instigated the thought about the functional disarrangement of the mind that must be integrated. The cognitive faculties are only potentially ready to their role.

Indeed, he recovered and returned home. At that inauspicious time his best known poem “Lead, Kindly Light” was composed (difficulties lend inspiration to poetry). Thereafter the movement for the renewal of the Anglican Church, the Oxford Movement (1833-1845),® started, and the poem became the hymn of that same movement. In 1864, we have a similar premonition about death, and a new task to perform.

This work is an attempt to show the mystery of individual life as a solitary drama in coming to know the truth in which the person has not only a theoretical recognition of the truth, but has realized that he possesses (or, rather, is possessed by) it and can say: I know that I know. Simultaneously, he has a profound sense of certitude that he does not need to go anywhere else; this does not mean that he has no problems to tackle, for such a state would be utopian and unreal, but that he is in the right place. In this way, each must make a solitary effort at integrating one’s own internal life; in other words, to paraphrase Newman, placing thoughts, words, and feelings under one roof, i.e. reconciling the intellectual with the moral parts of our being. There are no shortcuts to take and no alien paths to be adopted. Therefore, I would like to retell Newman’s story, taking into consideration facts from his biography; if we are to evaluate someone's life, we must consider this individual history as it successively unfolds. Our author would always stress that in our journey to truth and certitude, i.e. to our personal fulfilment, we have to use ourselves,

8 After the Reform Act of 1832, a new ecclesiastical fervour emerged within the Anglican Communion, known as the Oxford or Oriel movement because it originated in Oxford and especially at Oriel College, or as Tractarianism because it found its literary expression in a series of publications called Tracts for the Times. In the public eye, its most prominent figure was Pusey. Essentially, it was a return to the divine authority of the Catholic Church, a Church whose priesthood had been handed down in unbroken continuity over the centuries through the rite of ordination. This authority could not be overturned by the state, nor could any secular jurisdiction be recognised. The sanction for its doctrines and ritual was to be found in the decisions of the universal councils of the Church, in the teaching of the early Fathers and in the practice of the universal Church. On this basis, doctrines and practices that had previously been condemned as papist were revived. The movement brought a new intensity of spiritual life to the Church, and at the same time challenged the fundamental doctrine of Protestantism, claiming not only that the Church was independent of the state, but that the priesthood was the authoritative mediator of divine grace. The state refused to recognise the claims of the new school and continued to maintain its own authority; but the Tractarians did not accept the solution of disengaging from the establishment and relinquishing their endowments in the name of spiritual independence.

Clergymen feared that atheistic reform would be unleashed. The movement was initiated with John Keble’s Oxford sermon (On National Apostasy) in which the preacher declared a clerical resistance founded on the apostolic traditions of the Church of England. It was a conservative and intellectual appeal to Anglican tradition.

our faculties, overcome our failures, and moderate our successes. To know the truth and to realize it—that is our fundamental responsibility. And such was the principal reason why Newman set out on his quest. He did not feel safe and at home in his milieu. In other words, he felt, in a sense, incomplete and could not be satisfied with the advantages his academic and religious position gave him.

Let us follow then the stages of Newman’s biography as he delineated them in his Apologia. We are going to look at them with a view to seeing how they mould the person’s development and help one attain fulfilment. It is indeed fascinating to watch how Newman realized that the place to which he was born was not his home, how he sought certitude and, for that purpose, decided to analyze human cognition anew, since he had to refute certain essential elements of the hitherto philosophy of modernity; how he delved into the processes of human cognition and came up with a new insight. His life is a meaningful lesson for personal growth and the proposal of personalism. Therefore we are going to consider the stages of his life from the point of view of his important contribution to the understanding of the human being introduced in his other works.

The main purpose of this work is to garner, sift and systematize Newman's insights he strewed so profusely through the pages of his numerous texts in order to gain a picture of the person, the person he understood not as an isolated being endowed with intellectual capacities, but as a historical creature plunged into his time and place. This does not mean in the least that Newman advocated relativism or subjectivism, but emphasized that, depending on our personal circumstances, we face different obstacles on the way to the truth. Since the thinking of a historical creature is related to his time and place, as we are not pure res cogitans, we need to recognize our obstacles and overcome them in the quest for truth and certitude. Newman's confessions from his Apologia pro Vita Sua are supplemented with references to the theoretical attainments from his other texts. In like manner, I hope to provide a possibly complete picture of the thinker.

Let us also emphasise that this is a study of Newman from outside the familiar Anglo-Saxon context, which seeks to illustrate his relevance in the wider context of nineteenth-century European thought, and to demonstrate his current cognitive value to readers from different backgrounds and schools across Europe. The reader will find here, for instance, Newman’s notion of the primacy of the person, an element so characteristic of the personalist philosophy of St John Paul 11 and Poland’s Lublin school.

Introduction to Part1

John Henry Newman was an intriguing figure in his country, both as a scholar, writer, and preacher. He electrified his listeners with his sermons, completely free of any oratorical effects. He would read them from his pulpit in a monotonous voice, but filled with the power of the spirit, as if he wanted to say that the most important thing was not the preacher but his message, the sincerity of his intention. (The way he presented his sermons would probably not make headline news in our visually dominated communication). His voice was not powerful, he took long pauses, but nevertheless “he kept his congregation spellbound.”! His sermons were characterized by “a continuous tone of earnestness.”2 What electrified the people then was the truth emanating from the words, or, better still, from the speaker of these words. Let us present one more extraordinary fact, namely, that this power of attraction is retained both in the sermons from his Anglican period, as well as in those from his Roman Catholic period. That is a unique feature of Newman’s texts in general, and an obvious conclusion arises here. One may be, on the whole, in error as regards his assessment of the other party, but still remain true to oneself.

How does one person recognize another person? As human beings, we recognize other persons ultimately not only on the grounds of a number of certain well-known traits. We recognize and accept them despite the fact that the set of traits is always incomplete, for we are confronted with many implicit elements; and even in the case of the explicit elements, more often than not we realize that we have been taken aback by yet another trait we have not noticed before. A further point is that the implicit ingredients will always remain so. The main failure of Kingsley’s argument against Newman was that the author of the pamphlet took it for granted that he knew all the past, or even, perhaps, future decisions (and the attendant social states) of a given person; that there are certain obvious interpretations of what is unknown at the moment. Now, given all the states I know (obviously judging, in retrospect), I confront them with an arbitrary pattern; moreover, let us note that when a critic thinks “he knows,’ he is simply imposing his own interpretation, and, naturally, has no access to all of the hidden motives. His reasoning amounts to usurpation because (1) we do not have access to someone’s past and future states, and (2) we do not have at our disposal one universal pattern of conduct, a sort of

1 Zeno, John Henry Newman and his Inner Life, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987, 56. 2 Ibid., 57.

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template of human behaviour. Therefore, our critical evaluation of someone's decisions is only subjective, for we fail to enter the concrete circumstances of the other person’s life. Such a situation is even more complicated. Assuming we have learnt, say, the “system” of another person, even then we shall never be able to render a complete picture because we can never, so to speak, enter the other person’s mind. Prudence should suggest at least a suspension of judgment.

This failure to understand another person, a failure that results not merely from our ontic structure, for we share this with other human beings, but from what is additionally superimposed by our personal development amidst cultural animosities and prejudices, may predispose us to adopting a positive or negative attitude to another person. This adds to the inadequacy of our knowledge. In the beginning, for instance, Newman inherited a hostile attitude to Roman Catholics, for such was his historical heritage and his partiality. The judgments he formulated were based on his incomplete knowledge about the Roman Catholic Church and her believers. His faulty reasoning, however, did not stand in the way of forming personally true judgments. If, as he often claimed, change is the essence of human life, such was his life throughout. Change is the essence of growth. We only need to be true to ourselves under the guardian eye of a well-informed conscience, and such is the most certain way out of ignorance.

The Apologia rises to the point of being a symbol of what crowned the whole of Newman’s writing, namely his efforts to show a person in all his or her concrete circumstances and historical development, and how such a being can accomplish fulfilment. As I wrote in the introduction, I find in this work two principal goals: the individual and the universal. The individual goal pertains to its author's resolution to critically examine his life not with the intention to evaluate it according to some objective pattern, let alone compare himself with others. In his Apologia, therefore, Newman does not defend his life because it has not satisfied someone’s expectations, as if he indeed wanted to be someone else and behave differently. He only defends himself against the charges of hypocrisy and pretence. We could define the method of the text as that of introspection, which in itself is an important factor of spiritual life, and a historical study, which, in turn, goes against the tide of the dominant model of modern ahistorical attitudes. Newman was constantly on his guard lest he succumb to reluctant sympathy, suspicious of any emotional agitation let loose from the control of reason.

The individual purpose of the work then consists in deciding whether, at times, its author was a double-faced man, that is, whether he made use of what he himself in other contexts calls unreal words, words foreign to the speaker,

INTRODUCTION TO PART 1 11 ie. discordant to his thought or intention. Looking at a person, Newman does not limit himself only to the era in which he lives, but aspires to show a much broader context, namely the philosophical context which made the culture of the nineteenth century be in such a state. We shall see this, above all, in his most philosophical work, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, although he frequently disclaimed any ambitions to be called a philosopher. Philosophy naturally strives to arrive at certain universal truths, but Newman often emphasizes that he wishes to speak only from and for himself, without evaluating others; at the same time, it is true that there are different philosophies. Some of them resemble testimonies and personal memoirs, and such was Newman's philosophy; it is also true that all genuine philosophy should bear witness to its holder’s quest for truth, and such was his philosophy too, i.e. a personal testimony. In the case of Newman, it was an especially personal endeavour. Not only did he wish to understand his own life, but he also yearned to understand in general the nature of the person’s cognition, and, above all, the importance of personal examples, which matter more than theoretical explanations, the role of conscience in the evaluation of moral duties, the relationship between knowledge and belief and, above all, the mystery of persons in their readiness to interpret the meaningful signs of the time.

In the beginning of the Apologia he notes that he cares less “for disclosures,’ and the main text opens with the memorable words Secretum meum mihi (my mystery belongs to me), words we can find in the works of the prophet Isaiah, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Philip Neri, and St. Theresa Benedictine of the Cross (Edith Stein). In other words, there are things he cannot account for, so he would rather keep them secret. As regards the things he can explain, he has nothing to hide; he does not treat his life as exemplary, but as one among others; there are elements in each individual life that cannot be explained, for it is composed of numerous latent particles. The individual person is often not aware of them, nor is he able to notice the moment when they become part of him, let alone explain or define them. And, what is of utmost importance is the fact that, despite such complexities, each life has a chance to be fulfilled. Persons can attain their personal goals.

Now, the universal purpose I find in the Apologia is the fundamental message that refers to the dignity and great value of individual life lived in recognition of its singularity, uniqueness, and non-repeatability. It is, additionally, purposeless to turn it into a universal pattern, because, due to this singular and unique character, two different lives can hardly be compared, even though we examine them carefully, and even if we assume we receive reliable information. One individual history will never be repeated. Some, or perhaps many of its aspects, will resemble other biographies, but, as a whole, it is a closed book, belonging only to one author.

The Apologia shows the greatness and responsibility of human decisions not because it is a theoretical study on responsibility (this would be a particularly foreign idea to its author), but because it is an individual testimony to such decisions. If this man, who had just recently claimed that the Roman Catholic Church was the seat of the worst error, as it was held by the majority of Anglicans, now decided to join it, there must be some important reasons behind his decision. And if he himself seeks to understand it, he ought to adhere to the method of introspection and self-examination, carried out in all sincerity and responsibility. The ancient principle of “know thyself” is particularly suitable here. Let us also add that the universal character of Newman's decision does not consist only in the fact that he became a well-known convert from Anglicanism to Catholicism, but in the fact that he had recognized the primary role of the call in his conscience. Consequently, he was ready to sacrifice his social position, to accept the bitter reproaches from his own family, and to be abandoned or ostracized by his friends. He did all this not on the spur of the moment, but as a result of meticulous historical studies combined with various personal experiences. Let us note, then, that the individuality and singularity of a concrete life means that, if it can be an example for imitation, it is not in the sense of faithfully copying another person’s experience (such an action would have been particularly alien to Newman), but in the sense of being faithful to the judgments of a well-informed conscience and thoughtful analyses, for which opinion or criticism from others is of secondary importance. I have my doubts as to whether I should have written the word “imitation” here; I maybe should have written “observation” or “influence,” i.e. how an individual life can be a realization of the recognition of truth. The example of the British convert and the universal character of his message consist in his authentic experience and struggles, his faithfulness and uncompromising attitude towards the recognized truth.

As a child, Newman read Thomas Paine, David Hume, and Voltaire, works critical of the Christian tenets. Then, at the age of fifteen, he read Walter Mayers’ sermons. Mayers? (1790-1828) imbued the young reader with the divine faith of the Calvinistic flavour, and conveyed the impressions of dogma. It was then

3 The divine of Pembroke College.

INTRODUCTION TO PART 1 13 that he learned the doctrine of predestination, which he later called “detestable,’* the doctrine denied by the influential preacher and author Thomas Scott (1747-1821).° It is worth noting that Newman began his reading list with the luminaries of the Enlightenment, deists and ardent advocates of unrestrained individual freedom and the sovereignty of the human intellect; all of these elements evidently came to a clash with the truths of the revealed religion. Paine extolled individual freedom, Hume undermined the role of reason and doubted any providential intervention in the natural order (miracles), and Voltaire belonged to the group of libertarian philosophes who tended to absolutize civil liberties and satirize religious dogmas. We can say that, most probably, there was something tempting in them for the young mind without any ability of discernment at that time. Newman himself admitted that having copied out Voltaire’s verses, which denied the immortality of the soul, he said to himself: “How dreadful, but how plausible!” The fact that he testifies to this moment of dubious fascination simply underlines his sincere intentions to lay open all the turning points and inspirations in his life, even those outright controversial. Let us also note that by reading these authors Newman learned the wild force of the intellect let loose; he learned the destructive force of human reason deserted by religious faith.