Preview: St. J.H. Newman's Marian "Development of Doctrine"

In our penultimate survey of Saint John Henry Newman's various opinions on Catholic Marian Doctrine and Devotion, Matt Swaim or Anna Mitchell and I will look briefly at what Newman wrote about what the Church believes about the Mother of God in An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine this coming Monday, August 22, on the Son Rise Morning Show.

I'll be on at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern. Please listen live here on EWTN Radio or on your local EWTN Affiliate.

Sr. Lutgart Govaert FSO, writing for the blog of the International Centre for Newman Friends, sums up Newman's efforts from late 1842 to 1844 when

 . . . Newman applied his mind to the principle of doctrinal development in the Christian Church. He was interested in whether a true development, a true growth, is possible and how to discern it from an innovation and corruption. This question was of crucial importance, since Newman still suspected the Church of Rome of having added new doctrines and practices to the original Creed.

In the Apologia pro Vita Sua, Newman suggested that there is a link between his new insight in Marian doctrine and devotion in the Roman Church and his study of doctrinal development. He wrote:

“The idea of the Blessed Virgin was as it were magnified in the Church of Rome, as time went on, – but so were all the Christian ideas; as that of the Blessed Eucharist. The whole scene of pale, faint, distant Apostolic Christianity is seen in Rome, as through a telescope or magnifier. The harmony of the whole, however, is of course what it was”[22]. . . 

In these same years, Newman translated some writings by St. Athanasius. He did not find there anything explicitly on Our Lady, but he discovered the theological principle of devotion to the Saints, as he explained in his An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, a work he wrote in 1845, while finding the answers to his last doubts concerning the Church of Rome, and which he left unfinished on being received into the Roman Catholic Church. . . 

In Chapter 4 of the Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, "Instances in Illustration": Newman highlights developments in Marian doctrine after the Nestorian controversy, in a section titled "Our Lord's Incarnation and the Dignity of His Blessed Mother and of All Saints":

10. I have said that there was in the first ages no public and ecclesiastical recognition of the place which St. Mary holds in the Economy of grace; this was reserved for the fifth century, as the definition of our Lord's proper Divinity had been the work of the fourth. There was a controversy contemporary with those already mentioned, I mean the Nestorian, which brought out the complement of the development, to which they had been subservient; and which, if I may so speak, supplied the subject of that august proposition of which Arianism had provided the predicate. In order to do honour to Christ, in order to defend the true doctrine of the Incarnation, in order to secure a right faith in the manhood of the Eternal Son, the Council of Ephesus determined the Blessed Virgin to be the Mother of God. Thus all heresies of that day, though opposite to each other, tended in a most wonderful way to her exaltation; and the School of Antioch, the fountain of primitive rationalism, led the Church to determine first the conceivable greatness of a creature, and then the incommunicable dignity of the Blessed Virgin.

Then he offers a survey of several of the great Fathers of the Church:

11. But the spontaneous or traditional feeling of Christians had in great measure anticipated the formal ecclesiastical decision. Thus the title Theotokos, or Mother of God, was familiar to Christians from primitive times, and had been used, among other writers, by Origen, Eusebius, St. Alexander, St. Athanasius, St. Ambrose, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Gregory Nyssen, and St. Nilus. She had been called {146} Ever-Virgin by others, as by St. Epiphanius, St. Jerome, and Didymus. By others, "the Mother of all living," as being the antitype of Eve; for, as St. Epiphanius observes, "in truth," not in shadow, "from Mary was Life itself brought into the world, that Mary might bear things living, and might become Mother of living things." [Note 24] St. Augustine says that all have sinned "except the Holy Virgin Mary, concerning whom, for the honour of the Lord, I wish no question to be raised at all, when we are treating of sins." "She was alone and wrought the world's salvation," says St. Ambrose, alluding to her conception of the Redeemer. She is signified by the Pillar of the cloud which guided the Israelites, according to the same Father; and she had "so great grace, as not only to have virginity herself, but to impart it to those to whom she came;"—"the Rod out of the stem of Jesse," says St. Jerome, and "the Eastern gate through which the High Priest alone goes in and out, yet is ever shut;"—the wise woman, says St. Nilus, who "hath clad all believers, from the fleece of the Lamb born of her, with the clothing of incorruption, and delivered them from their spiritual nakedness;"—"the Mother of Life, of beauty, of majesty, the Morning Star," according to Antiochus;—"the mystical new heavens," "the heavens carrying the Divinity," "the fruitful vine by whom we are translated from death unto life," according to St. Ephraim;—"the manna which is delicate, bright, sweet, and virgin, which, as though coming from heaven, has poured down on all the people of the Churches a food pleasanter than honey," according to St. Maximus.

In the second part of the Essay, Newman applied a series of tests to determine whether or not a doctrine was a corruption or a valid development:

1. Preservation of Type
2. Continuity of Principles
3. Power of Assimilation
4. Logical Sequence
5. Anticipation of Its Future
6. Conservative Action upon Its Past
7. Chronic Vigour

Newman tests the development of Marian doctrine in Chapter 10. "Application of the Fifth Note of a True Development—Anticipation of Its Future" in a section titled "Office of the Blessed Virgin":

The special prerogatives of St. Mary, the Virgo Virginum, are intimately involved in the doctrine of the Incarnation itself, with which these remarks began, and have already been dwelt upon above. As is well known, they were not fully recognised in the Catholic ritual till a late date, but they were not a new thing in the Church, or strange to her earlier teachers. St. Justin, St. Irenæus, and others, had distinctly laid it down, that she not only had an office, but bore a part, and was a voluntary agent, in the actual process of redemption, as Eve had been instrumental and responsible in Adam's fall. They taught that, as the first woman might have foiled the Tempter and did not, so, if Mary had been disobedient or unbelieving on Gabriel's message, the Divine Economy would have been frustrated. And certainly the parallel between "the Mother of all living" and the Mother of the Redeemer may be gathered from a comparison of the first chapters {416} of Scripture with the last. . . 

Here, however, we are not so much concerned to interpret Scripture as to examine the Fathers. Thus St. Justin says, "Eve, being a virgin and incorrupt, having conceived the word from the Serpent, bore disobedience and death; but Mary the Virgin, receiving faith and joy, when Gabriel the Angel evangelized her, answered, 'Be it unto me according to thy word.'" [Note 19] And Tertullian says that, whereas Eve believed the Serpent, and Mary believed Gabriel, "the fault of Eve in believing, Mary by believing hath blotted out." [Note 20] St. Irenæus speaks more {417} explicitly: "As Eve," he says ... "becoming disobedient, became the cause of death to herself and to all mankind, so Mary too, having the predestined Man, and yet a Virgin, being obedient, became cause of salvation both to herself and to all mankind." [Note 21] This becomes the received doctrine in the Post-nicene Church.

We'll see how Newman reminds his old friend Pusey of this Patristic view of Mary as the Second Eve in our last segment on Newman and Marian doctrine Monday, August 29.

Chapter 11, "Application of the Sixth Note of a True Development—Conservative Action on Its Past" examines the development of devotion to the Mother of God and here demonstrates what we've read before: he asserts that devotion to her depends on worship of her Son, Jesus Christ:

It has been anxiously asked, whether the honours paid to St. Mary, which have grown out of devotion to her Almighty Lord and Son, do not, in fact, tend to weaken that devotion; and whether, from the nature of the case, it is possible so to exalt a creature without withdrawing the heart from the Creator.

In addition to what has been said on this subject in foregoing Chapters, I would here observe that the question is one of fact, not of presumption or conjecture. The abstract lawfulness of the honours paid to St. Mary, and their distinction in theory from the incommunicable worship paid {426} to God, are points which have already been dwelt upon; but here the question turns upon their practicability or expedience, which must be determined by the fact whether they are practicable, and whether they have been found to be expedient.

Newman looks again at the history of the early Ecumenical Councils:

1. Here I observe, first, that, to those who admit the authority of the Fathers of Ephesus, the question is in no slight degree answered by their sanction of the [Theotokos] or "Mother of God," as a title of St. Mary, and as given in order to protect the doctrine of the Incarnation, and to preserve the faith of Catholics from a specious Humanitarianism. And if we take a survey at least of Europe, we shall find that it is not those religious communions which are characterized by devotion towards the Blessed Virgin that have ceased to adore her Eternal Son, but those very bodies, (when allowed by the law,) which have renounced devotion to her. The regard for His glory, which was professed in that keen jealousy of her exaltation, has not been supported by the event. They who were accused of worshipping a creature in His stead, still worship Him; their accusers, who hoped to worship Him so purely, they, wherever obstacles to the development of their principles have been removed, have ceased to worship Him altogether.

2. Next, it must be observed, that the tone of the devotion paid to the Blessed Mary is altogether distinct from that which is paid to her Eternal Son, and to the Holy Trinity, as we must certainly allow on inspection of the Catholic services. The supreme and true worship paid to the Almighty is severe, profound, awful, as well as tender, confiding, and dutiful. Christ is addressed as true God, {427} while He is true Man; as our Creator and Judge, while He is most loving, gentle, and gracious. On the other hand, towards St. Mary the language employed is affectionate and ardent, as towards a mere child of Adam; though subdued, as coming from her sinful kindred.

And after a survey of common Catholic devotionals to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Newman concludes  there's no idolatry in them at all, and: "Again, a special office is assigned to the Blessed Virgin, that is, special as compared with all other Saints; but it is marked off with the utmost precision from that assigned to our Lord. . . . Again, a distinct cultus is assigned to Mary, but the {436} reason of it is said to be the transcendent dignity of her Son."

Newman is consistent in asserting--from that 1832 sermon on "The Reverence Due to the Virgin Mary," to the 1849 sermons "The Glories of Mary for the Sake of her Son" and "On the Fitness of the Glories of Mary", through to the reasons for her Assumption in the "Meditations" on the Litany of Loreto he wrote for the boys of the Oratory School--the Catholic Church's Marian doctrines and devotions are based on the Catholic Church's Christological doctrine and worship. 

Newman may have not said it so succinctly, but his arguments demonstrate that "Catholics do not worship Mary!"

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Image credit (public domain) Virgin Salus Populi Romani, Rome (5th or 6th century)