Reinhard Hutter's book on John Henry Newman was on the top of my wish list for 2020 new releases and I finally purchased my copy from Eighth Day Books on the Monday of Holy Week and read it before the Paschal Triduum began. It was worth the wait and I highly recommend it both to those who've studied Newman and those who are new to Newman and interested in certain religious controversies.
In my review here, I'm interspersing my comments throughout the table of contents. At the end of the review (in a second post), I'll state my overall conclusion about the book.
Subtitle: A Guide for Our Times
Contents:
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Prologue: Newman and Us
*Newman's Sojourn "from Shadows and Images into Truth"
*Structure, Scope, and Objective
Hutter establishes a cogent reason for writing this book proposing Newman as "A Guide for Our Times" noting that Newman saw three problems in his own century that would continue to develop and deepen unless the Catholic Church raised up champions against them: (1) the Spirit of Liberalism in religion; (2) the usurpation of religion and faith by rationalism; and (3) the unfettered rule of the principle of private judgment in religion. Hutter cites Newman's 1873 sermon "The Infidelity of the Future" as a prescient forecast of our situation now.
After providing an appropriately detailed biography of Newman, Hutter establishes the Structure, Scope, and Objective of the book: each chapter deals with a counterfeit of the true meaning of its term (conscience, faith, Newman's idea of the development of doctrine, and the university) and describes how Newman provides a defense of the truth. As Hutter notes, the main issue in each chapter is Newman's opposition to the principle of "private judgment" and the idea of a "sovereign subject", a person who, as Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in 1991 (Planned Parenthood v. Casey) can determine his or her own reality, which must be accepted by even those who know that reality is not true.
Hutter cites other indications of Newman's regard for Aquinas, including evidence that he had read Aquinas while at Oriel College (thus as an Anglican); that he had Aquinas' complete works in his library and several other volumes by Aquinas; that there are annotations on different volumes, and that in 1878, after Pope Leo XIII issued his encyclical Aeternus Patris, re-establishing Aquinas as the Common Doctor of Catholic philosophy and theology, Newman was confident that he would not be found to be in conflict with Aquinas in his Grammar of Assent. Hutter also notes that Newman had been disappointed to learn that Aristotle and Aquinas were not in style in Rome while he studied for the Catholic priesthood after his conversion.
Hutter offers an excellent explanation for how the different methods of Newman and Aquinas complement each other. Newman's theological genius is psychological, phenomenological and controversial--he practices theology in a "context of discovery", defending Catholic teaching "not just in its notions but its reality"; Aquinas, the Common Doctor, best represents theology in the "context of justification", explaining Catholic teaching systematically, doctrinally, and speculatively. Newman and Aquinas have the same philosophical master: Aristotle.
Hutter then sets out to demonstrate how Newman addresses "today's most pressing issues from a Catholic perspective," starting with Conscience and Its Counterfeit.
Chapter 1. Conscience and Its Counterfeit
*John Henry Newman on Conscience and Its Counterfeit
*Aquinas on Synderesis and Conscientia
*Synderesis
*Conscience and Prudence
*The Erroneous Conscience
*Invincible Ignorance
*The Erroneous Conscience and the Counterfeit of Conscience
*Aquinas and Newman--Complementary Accounts of Conscience?
*Conscience and the Magisterium
*Freedom of Conscience as Freedom in the Truth
*Seven (7) Appendices on various aspects of Conscience, including notes on Luther, Calvin, Melancthon, Kant, and Fichte on definitions of Conscience
Because I've studied and even presented on Newman's defense of the true idea of Conscience against its Counterfeit of "self-will" none of what Hutter said about Newman's great contribution here was new to me, except for his discussion of how Aquinas' systematic explanation of synderesis as an innate habit and of conscience as an act, and how those terms, which Newman does not precisely use, back up Newman's explanation of conscience and how important that defense is to our true understanding of our moral choices, our freedom, and our obedience to Christ and His Church. The counterfeit of conscience, self-will, is a manifestation both of private judgment and liberalism in religious matters, making the individual the center of both the habit of choosing the good and the action of conscience deciding what is good. The individual determines what is good for herself--regardless of its objective value as revealed by God and His Church--and decides which action/choice will be good for herself and consistent with what she wants.
Chapter 2. Faith and Its Counterfeits
*Newman on Faith and Private Judgment
*Faith [Divine Faith]
*Private Judgment
*Protestantism and Private Judgment
*Divine Faith Is a Matter of Grace
*Thomas Aquinas on Divine Faith
*The Formal and the Material Object of Faith
*On Abjuring the Formal Object of "by which" of Faith
*Conclusion: Divine Faith and Its Counterfeit
*Appendix 1 (Newman's Studies in Rome; notes on Catholic Theologians on Faith)
*Appendix 2 (Certitude and Truth)
This chapter best exemplified how St. Thomas Aquinas' systematic theology of Divine Faith as one of the theological virtues, infused in our souls through the grace of baptism with water in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit informs Newman's orthodox treatment of faith in a few Catholic sermons and other works. One of the main issues for Newman was that his conversion--becoming a Catholic years after he received the gift and grace of Divine Faith in baptism--was not a matter of private judgment and act of a "sovereign subject" deciding what was best for him, consistent with his own values, but was a response to truth. In his epilogue, Hutter cites an image Newman used of a man using a lantern to guide his way home in the dark--once inside his home, he doesn't need the lantern any more. This certainly conforms to Newman's statement in the Apologia pro Vita Sua that after becoming Catholic he did not need to form private judgments on the Church's doctrine because he had submitted to the living authority of God, "the oracle of God":
FROM the time that I became a Catholic, of course I have no further history of my religious opinions to narrate. In saying this, I do not mean to say that my mind has been idle, or that I have given up thinking on theological subjects; but that I have had no variations to record, and have had no anxiety of heart whatever. I have been in perfect peace and contentment; I never have had one doubt. I was not conscious to myself, on my conversion, of any change, intellectual or moral, wrought in my mind. I was not conscious of firmer faith in the fundamental truths of Revelation, or of more self-command; I had not more fervour; but it was like coming into port after a rough sea; and my happiness on that score remains to this day without interruption.
Nor had I any trouble about receiving those additional articles, which are not found in the Anglican Creed. Some of them I believed already, but not any one of them was a trial to me. I made a profession of them upon my reception with the greatest ease, and I have the same ease in believing them now. I am far of course from denying that every article of the Christian Creed, whether as held by Catholics or by Protestants, is beset with intellectual difficulties; and it is simple fact, that, for myself, I cannot answer those difficulties. Many persons are very sensitive of the difficulties of Religion; I am as sensitive of them as any one; but I have never been able to see a connexion between apprehending those difficulties, however keenly, and multiplying them to any extent, and on the other hand doubting the doctrines to which they are attached. Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt, as I understand the subject; difficulty and doubt are incommensurate. There of course may be difficulties in the evidence; but I am speaking of difficulties intrinsic to the doctrines themselves, or to their relations with each other. A man may be annoyed that he cannot work out a mathematical problem, of which the answer is or is not given to him, without doubting that it admits of an answer, or that a certain particular answer is the true one. Of all points of faith, the being of a God is, to my own apprehension, encompassed with most difficulty, and yet borne in upon our minds with most power.
People say that the doctrine of Transubstantiation is difficult to believe; I did not believe the doctrine till I was a Catholic. I had no difficulty in believing it, as soon as I believed that the Catholic Roman Church was the oracle of God, and that she had declared this doctrine to be part of the original revelation. . . . (Chapter 5. The Position of My Mind Since 1845)Here I'd like to highlight Hutter's use of the the appendices at the end of these chapters. He uses them, like his rather extensive footnotes, to explore related subjects (the seven appendices at the end of Chapter 1 outline the various definitions of conscience by Protestant reformers and the speculations of Catholic theologians like Karl Rahner, SJ, and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger). The first Appendix to this chapter shows Newman's development in understanding Divine Faith through his studies of and notes from Catholic theologians like Suarez, Bellarmine, Lugo, Tanner, and Perrone (Jesuit, post-Tridentine). Thus Newman, who as an Anglican had thought of faith as "a higher reason and a gifted inference, came to understand the "process of supernatural faith" or the "analysis fidei" by 1853. As Hutter notes, almost twenty years later (1870), Newman would write the Grammar of Assent including a "compelling description of divine faith in its full and authentic Catholic scope", quoting Chapter 5, section 3, pages 152-153. In the second Appendix to this chapter, Hutter explores the Grammar of Assent further by presenting Newman's arguments on the Indefectibility of Certitude, section 2 of Chapter 7.
Since this is becoming a very long post, I'll break off here. For my comments the next two chapters, Hutter's Epilogue, and my summary review, please see my post next Tuesday (my late mother's birthday!), April 21:
Chapter 3. The Development of Doctrine and Its Counterfeits
*Development of Doctrine: The Voice of the Magisterium
*How Is an Authentic Development of Doctrine to be Discerned?
*Newman's Seven Notes of an Authentic Development of Doctrine
*A Test Case of Authentic Development of Doctrine: "Dignitatis Humanae"
*Conclusion: Two Counterfeits of the Authentic Development of Doctrine
*Appendix: Francisco Marin-Sola's Thomist Reception of Newman
Chapter 4. The University and Its Counterfeit
*University Education and (Natural) Theology as a Science
*The Indispensability of (Natural) Theology for University Education
*Becoming a Master of the Twofold "Logos", Thought and Word
*A Pragmatic Postscript
*Appendix: Metaphysics and Natural Theology
Epilogue: A Newmanian Theological Journey into the Catholic Church
*Moral Theology
*Justification, Church, and Eucharist
*Magisterium
*Encountering Mother Church
*Clarity
Selected Bibliography
Index of Names
General Index
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