Preview: An Easter Octave Sermon: "Saving Knowledge"

On Monday, May 6, which is the Monday of Bright Week for our Orthodox brothers and sisters as they celebrated the three holiest days of Holy Week and Easter Sunday from May 2 through 5, we'll continue our series on the Son Rise Morning Show with another of St. John Henry Newman's Easter Season Sermons from his Anglican years. He preached--according to the footnote in the second volume of his Parochial and Plain Sermons--"Saving Knowledge" on the Monday of Easter Week. The text he chose for this sermon is "Hereby do we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments." 1 John 2:3

So I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern. Please listen live here and/or catch the podcast later (and sometimes the show does repeat these segments later in the week during the first national hour).

{151} [Note] TO know God and Christ, in Scripture language, seems to mean to live under the conviction of His presence, who is to our bodily eyes unseen. It is, in fact, to have faith, according to St. Paul's account of faith, as the substance and evidence of what is invisible. It is faith, but not faith such as a Heathen might have, but Gospel faith; for only in the Gospel has God so revealed Himself, as to allow of that kind of faith which may be called, in a special manner, knowledge. The faith of Heathens was blind; it was more or less a moving forward in the darkness, with hand and foot;—therefore the Apostle says, "if haply they might feel after Him." [Acts xvii. 27.] But the Gospel is a manifestation, and therefore addressed to the eyes of our mind. Faith is {152} the same principle as before, but with the opportunity of acting through a more certain and satisfactory sense. We recognise objects by the eye at once; but not by the touch. We know them when we see them, but scarcely till then. Hence it is, that the New Testament says so much on the subject of spiritual knowledge. For instance, St. Paul prays that the Ephesians may receive "the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ, the eyes of their understanding being enlightened;" and he says, that the Colossians had "put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge, after the image of Him that created him." St. Peter, in like manner, addresses his brethren with the salutation of "Grace and peace, through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord;" according to the declaration of our Lord Himself, "This is life eternal, to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." [Eph. i. 17, 18. Col. iii. 10. 2 Pet. i. 2. John xviii. 3.] 

Newman then goes to to explain how we have received this knowledge, handed down to us:

It is plain what is the object of spiritual sight which is vouchsafed us in the Gospel,—"God manifest in the Flesh." He who was before unseen has shown Himself in Christ; not merely displayed His glory, as (for instance) in what is called a providence, or visitation, or in miracles, or in the actions and character of inspired men, but really He Himself has come upon earth, and has been seen of men in human form. In the same {153} kind of sense, in which we should say we saw a servant of His, Apostle or Prophet, though we could not see his soul, so man has seen the Invisible God; and we have the history of His sojourn among His creatures in the Gospels.

And then, he turns to the practical effects of the fact that we have this knowledge and what it means to us:

To know God is life eternal, and to believe in the Gospel manifestation of Him is to know Him; but how are we to "know that we know Him?" How are we to be sure that we are not mistaking some dream of our own for the true and clear Vision? How can we tell we are not like gazers upon a distant prospect through a misty atmosphere, who mistake one object for another? The text answers us clearly and intelligibly . . . St. John says, "Hereby do we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments." Obedience is the test of Faith.

Thus the whole duty and work of a Christian is made up of these two parts, Faith and Obedience; "looking unto Jesus," the Divine Object as well as Author of our faith, and acting according to His will. Not as if a certain frame of mind, certain notions, affections, feelings, and tempers, were not a necessary condition of a saving state; but, so it is, the Apostle does not insist upon it, as if it were sure to follow, if our hearts do but grow into these two chief objects, the view of God in Christ and the diligent aim to obey Him in our conduct. {154}

Newman is concerned that we try either to ignore or to choose between these two parts of our duty:

I conceive that we are in danger, in this day, of insisting on neither of these as we ought; regarding all true and careful consideration of the Object of faith, as barren orthodoxy, technical subtlety, and the like, and all due earnestness about good works as a mere cold and formal morality; and, instead, making religion, or rather (for this is the point) making the test of our being religious, to consist in our having what is called a spiritual state of heart, to the comparative neglect of the Object from which it must arise, and the works in which it should issue. At this season, when we are especially engaged in considering the full triumph and manifestation of our Lord and Saviour, when He was "declared to be the Son of God with power, by the resurrection from the dead," it may be appropriate to make some remarks on an error which goes far to deprive us of the benefit of His condescension.

There's a beautiful line in the next paragraph in which Newman speaks of the Gospels as "our principal treasures" and then highlights St. John the Evangelist as also being a Prophet because he both reports and comments of "the Ministry of his Lord", who is "the chief Prophet of the Church" as His Apostles "explain His words and actions":

The like service is ministered to Him by the Creeds and doctrinal expositions of the early Church, which we retain in our Services. They speak of no ideal being, such as the imagination alone contemplates, but of the very Son of God, whose life is recorded in the Gospels. Thus every part of the Dispensation tends to the manifestation of Him who is its centre.

Thus, Newman reminds us, we've been given "a short rule":

"If ye love Me, keep My commandments." [link to Thomas Tallis's great English anthem!] "He that saith he abideth in Him, ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked." "If ye then be risen {156} with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God." [John xiv. 15. 1 John ii. 6. Col. iii. 1.] This is all that is put upon us, difficult indeed to perform, but easy to understand; all that is put upon us,—and for this plain reason, because Christ has done everything else. He has freely chosen us, died for us, regenerated us, and now ever liveth for us; what remains? Simply that we should do as He has done to us, showing forth His glory by good works. Thus a correct (or as we commonly call it), an orthodox faith and an obedient life, is the whole duty of man. 

Not just the Gospels and the Epistles exhort us to follow this "short rule", but the Tradition and history of the Church:

And so, most surely, it has ever been accounted. Look into the records of the early Church, or into the writings of our own revered bishops and teachers, and see whether this is not the sum total of religion, according to the symbols of it in which children are catechized, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments.

Then he enters into discussion --which we will certainly not have time for Monday morning--of objections to this simple rule. At the end of that give and take debate within the sermon, he concludes with an example for us to imagine as a model:

Suppose a religious man, for instance, in the society of strangers; he takes things as they come, discourses naturally, gives his opinion soberly, and does good according to each opportunity of good. His heart is in his work, and his thoughts rest without effort on his God and Saviour. This is the way of a Christian; he leaves it to the ill-instructed to endeavour after a (so-called) spiritual frame of mind amid the bustle of life, which has no existence except in attempt and profession. True spiritual-mindedness is unseen by man, like the soul itself, of which it is a quality; and as the soul is known by its operations, so it is known by its fruits. . . .

Then Newman offers the opposite example, the one to avoid:

To conclude. The essence of Faith is to look out of ourselves; now, consider what manner of a believer he is who imprisons himself in his own thoughts, and rests on the workings of his own mind, and thinks of {162} his Saviour as an idea of his imagination, instead of putting self aside, and living upon Him who speaks in the Gospels.

So much then, by way of suggestion [!], upon the view of Religious Faith, which has ever been received in the Church Catholic, and which, doubtless, is saving. . . .

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Image Credit (Public Domain): Saint John the Evangelist in meditation by Simone Cantarini (1612–1648), Bologna