Preview: Newman to Pusey on Mary and the Fathers of the Church

On Monday, August 26, we'll continue our Son Rise Morning Show series on Newman and the Fathers of the Church. We'll take a break from the series on Labor Day, Monday, September 2 and resume the next Monday, September 9.

This Monday's topic is a look at how Saint John Henry Newman reached out to his Oxford Movement friend, E. B. Pusey to remind him of what the Fathers of the Church, whom Newman, Pusey, and their good friend John Keble had studied, said about the Mother of God as the Second Eve. 

I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central DST/7:50 a.m. Eastern DST. Please listen live here or on the podcast later.

One of the projects of the Oxford Movement Newman, Pusey, and Keble collaborated on was the publication of volumes of the works of the Fathers of the Church. They wanted Church of England pastors to read them to demonstrate that the Church of England's Via Media was closer in the interpretation of the Scriptures and the teachings of the Church than either the Catholic Church or the Protestant dissenters (or Lutherans or Calvinists). This project, A Library of the Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church, was published in separate volumes from 1838 to 1881, sold by subscription. Pusey and Keble completed the project after Newman converted in 1845.

So when Pope Pius IX proclaimed the doctrine of Mary's Immaculate Conception in 1854, stating: "We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful", Pusey wrote a public letter to John Keble about how the Church of England should react to the proclamation, especially how it might hinder hopes for Christian unity. Pusey mentioned their colleague in their former effort to revive the Apostolic authority of the bishops in the Anglican Church, namely, Newman. 

Because of that former shared interest in the Fathers of the Church, one of Newman's main ways of addressing Pusey's comments was to highlight the Father's witness and authority, focusing on the image of Mary as the Second Eve, as Jesus is comparable (per St. Paul) to Adam. (1 Corinthians 15:45-49).

In the third chapter of his Letter to Pusey, Newman reminds his correspondent of "the great rudimental teaching" of the ancient Church, expressed by the Fathers:

What is the great rudimental teaching of Antiquity from its earliest date concerning her? By "rudimental teaching," I mean the primâ facie view of her person and office, the broad outline laid down of her, the aspect under which she comes to us, in the writings of the Fathers. She is the Second Eve [Note 1]. Now let us consider what this implies. Eve had a definite, essential position in the First Covenant. The fate of the human race lay with Adam; he it was who represented us. It was in Adam that we fell; though Eve had fallen, still, if Adam had stood, we should not have lost those supernatural privileges which were bestowed upon him as our first father. Yet though Eve was not the head of the race, still, even as regards the race, she had a place of her own; for Adam, to whom was divinely committed the naming of all things, named her "the Mother of all the living," a name surely expressive, not of a fact only, but of a dignity; but further, as she thus had her own general relation to the human race, so again had she her own special {32} place, as regards its trial and its fall in Adam. In those primeval events, Eve had an integral share. "The woman, being seduced, was in the transgression." She listened to the Evil Angel; she offered the fruit to her husband, and he ate of it. She co-operated, not as an irresponsible instrument, but intimately and personally in the sin: she brought it about. As the history stands, she was a sine-qua-non, a positive, active, cause of it. And she had her share in its punishment; in the sentence pronounced on her, she was recognized as a real agent in the temptation and its issue, and she suffered accordingly. In that awful transaction there were three parties concerned,—the serpent, the woman, and the man; and at the time of their sentence, an event was announced for a distant future, in which the three same parties were to meet again, the serpent, the woman, and the man; but it was to be a second Adam and a second Eve, and the new Eve was to be the mother of the new Adam. "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed." The Seed of the woman is the Word Incarnate, and the Woman, whose seed or son He is, is His mother Mary. This interpretation, and the parallelism it involves, seem to me undeniable; but at all events (and this is my point) the parallelism is the doctrine of the Fathers, from the earliest times; and, this being established, we are able, by the position and office of Eve in our fall, to determine the position and office of Mary in our restoration.

Newman then begins to offer translations from the Fathers of the Church (and he includes the original language text in a note), starting with the earliest Fathers:

First, then, St. Justin Martyr (A.D. 120-165), St. Irenæus (120-200), and Tertullian (160-240). Of these Tertullian represents Africa and Rome; St. Justin represents Palestine; and St. Irenæus Asia Minor and Gaul;—or rather he represents St. John the Evangelist, for he had been taught by the Martyr St. Polycarp, who was the intimate associate of St. John, as also of other Apostles. . . .

So those are the ante-Nicene Fathers (before First Council of Nicaea); Newman continues with examples through the post-Nicene Fathers. Throughout this listing, he highlights how each Father represents a part of the Christian world. He's demonstrating Saint Vincent of Lerins's general rule for holding to the Truth of the Catholic Faith: "Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all."

You'll have to read the passages for yourself at the link at newmanreader.org, but Newman wants to remind Pusey (and Keble) what they had agreed upon when working together on the Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church as cited above:

Having then adduced these Three Fathers of the second century, I have at least got so far as this: viz., that no one, who acknowledges the force of early testimony in determining Christian truth, can wonder, no {39} one can complain, can object, that we Catholics should hold a very high doctrine concerning the Blessed Virgin, unless indeed stronger statements can be brought for a contrary conception of her, either of as early, or at least of a later date. But, as far as I know, no statements can be brought from the ante-Nicene literature, to invalidate the testimony of the Three Fathers concerning her; and little can be brought against it from the fourth century, while in that fourth century the current of testimony in her behalf is as strong as in the second; and, as to the fifth, it is far stronger than in any former time, both in its fulness and its authority. That such is the concordant verdict of "the undivided Church" will to some extent be seen as I proceed. . . .

I'll stop with the citations from Newman there. I think this episode answers part of Anna Mitchell's question about how the Fathers of the Church influenced Saint John Henry Newman: they guided him--informing his great quest for Catholic Truth--to a community of faith and authority in "the one true fold of Christ" by their witness. As Joseph Carola, S.J. notes in Engaging the Church Fathers in Nineteenth Century Catholicism: The Patristic Legacy of the Scuola Romana (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2023):

The Oratorian Cardinal began his lifelong journey with the Church Fathers when he was fifteen years old. They remained his constant companions. The more than Newman probed the Fathers, the more clearly he perceived the truth that Christ had revealed. The ancient Fathers led Newman from a Bible-reading, Anglican Christianity through creedal Tractarianism into full Communion with the Catholic Church. . . . (p. 147)

This example of Newman writing to his old "creedal Tractarianism" friends demonstrates how Newman had found, beyond the study of the ancient Church, the need for what Carola calls "a theory of doctrinal development capable of distinguishing between genuine developments and perfidious corruptions. . . . For while the Fathers remain normative--they were after all Newman's first and final love--they are not an absolute rule in and of themselves. . . . (pp. 147-148)  

He found a sure rule in the living Magisterium of the Catholic Church.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Newman Replies to Pusey's Eirenicon: Mary's Immaculate Conception

One of Father John Henry Newman's first efforts on behalf of the Catholic Church in England after his conversion was to call those Tractarians who remained in the Church of England to join him in the "one, true fold of Christ". He gave a series of lectures to help those Anglicans with any doctrinal or devotional difficulties they had with Catholic doctrine (which he had worked through himself) known by the short title Anglican Difficulties, available in the Stanley L. Jaki edition from Eighth Day Books:

In 1850, John Henry Newman delivered a series of 'Twelve Lectures on Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Submitting to the Catholic Church,' which address his concern that Anglicanism, self-satisfied, was abandoning its 'image as a via media between Protestantism and Romanism.' Newman said of these lectures in his characteristically sardonic tone, 'I am perplexed-either some of them will be most impressively dull, or they will be too much on the other track.' This book (the lectures in manuscript) is anything but dull. On the contrary, it 'may emerge as the prophetic book penned by Newman,' in which he addresses ecumenical concerns that have only become more pressing in our century. In his introduction, Stanley Jaki points to a 'most painful logic at work in ecumenism' which Newman spoke out against. Lectures 1-7 consider the 'full measure of the non-Catholicity of the Anglican Church.' Lectures 8-12 consider problems with Rome, proposing that there are 'no real barriers on the road to it as the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.' Whatever the reader's attitude toward Newman, here is a rare mine of original source material-a window into Newman's spiritual and intellectual pilgrimage-with which to wrestle or embrace.

Years later (in 1866), one of the remaining leaders of the Oxford Movement, the Reverend Doctor E.B. Pusey, partially answered Newman's lectures by writing a letter to the other great survivor of Newman's "defection", John Keble: An Eirenicon, focusing on the recently proclaimed doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary (declared by Pope Pius IX in 1854: "We declare, pronounce and define that the doctrine which holds that the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the first instant of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace of the Omnipotent God, in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind, was preserved immaculate from all stain of original sin, has been revealed by God, and therefore should firmly and constantly be believed by all the faithful.")

Newman then answered Pusey with A Letter Addressed to the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D. on Occasion of his Eirenicon, in which he defended the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, starting with the commonly held doctrine that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were without Original Sin, filled with supernatural grace. Mary, the Mother of God is the Second Eve: her obedience and cooperation with God undoes Eve's disobedience:

She holds, as the Fathers teach us, that office in our restoration which Eve held in our fall:—now, in the first place, what were Eve's endowments to enable her to enter upon her trial? She could not have stood against the wiles of the devil, though she was innocent and sinless, without the grant of a large grace. And this she had;—a heavenly gift, which was over and above and additional to that nature of hers, which she received from Adam, a gift which had been given to Adam also before her, at the very time (as it is commonly held) of his original formation. This is Anglican doctrine, as well as Catholic; it is the doctrine of Bishop Bull. He has written a dissertation on the point. He speaks of the doctrine which "many of the Schoolmen affirm, that Adam was created in grace, that is, received a principle of grace and divine life from his very creation, or in the moment of the infusion of his soul; of which," he says, "for my own part I have little doubt." Again, he says, "It is abundantly manifest from the many testimonies alleged, that the ancient doctors of the Church did, with a general consent, acknowledge, that our first parents in the state of integrity, had in them something more than nature, that is, were endowed with the divine principle of the Spirit, in order to a supernatural felicity."

Now, taking this for granted, because I know that you and those who agree with you maintain it as well as we do, I ask you, have you any intention to deny that Mary was as fully endowed as Eve? is it any violent inference, that she, who was to co-operate in the redemption of the world, at least was not less endowed with power from on high, than she who, given as a help-mate to her husband, did in the event but cooperate with him for its ruin? If Eve was raised above human nature by that indwelling moral gift which we call grace, is it rash to say that Mary had even a greater grace? And this consideration gives significance to the Angel's salutation of her as "full of grace,"—an interpretation of the original word which is undoubtedly the right one, as soon as we resist the common Protestant assumption that grace is a mere external approbation or acceptance, answering to the word "favour," whereas it is, as the Fathers teach, a real inward condition or superadded quality of soul. And if Eve had this supernatural inward gift given her from the first moment of her personal existence, is it possible to deny that Mary too had this gift from the very first moment of her personal existence? I do not know how to resist this inference:—well, this is simply and literally the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. I say the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is in its substance this, and nothing more or less than this (putting aside the question of degrees of grace); and it really does seem to me bound up in the doctrine of the Fathers, that Mary is the second Eve.

It is indeed to me a most strange phenomenon that so many learned and devout men stumble at this doctrine; and I can only account for it by supposing that in matter of fact they do not know what we mean by the Immaculate Conception; and your Volume (may I say it?) bears out my suspicion. It is a great consolation to have reason for thinking so,—reason for believing that in some sort the persons in question are in the position of those great Saints in former times, who are said to have hesitated about the doctrine, when they would not have hesitated at all, if the word "Conception" had been clearly explained in that sense in which now it is universally received. I do not see how any one who holds with Bull the Catholic doctrine of the supernatural endowments of our first parents, has fair reason for doubting our doctrine about the Blessed Virgin. It has no reference whatever to her parents, but simply to her own person; it does but affirm that, together with the nature which she inherited from her parents, that is, her own nature, she had a superadded fulness of grace, and that from the first moment of her existence. Suppose Eve had stood the trial, and not lost her first grace; and suppose she had eventually had children, those children from the first moment of their existence would, through divine bounty, have received the same privilege that she had ever had; that is, as she was taken from Adam's side, in a garment, so to say, of grace, so they in turn would have received what may be called an immaculate conception. They would have then been conceived in grace, as in fact they are conceived in sin. What is there difficult in this doctrine? What is there unnatural? Mary may be called, as it were, a daughter of Eve unfallen. You believe with us that St. John Baptist had grace given to him three months before his birth, at the time that the Blessed Virgin visited his mother. He accordingly was not immaculately conceived, because he was alive before grace came to him; but our Lady's case only differs from his in this respect, that to her the grace of God came, not three months merely before her birth, but from the first moment of her being, as it had been given to Eve.

But it may be said, How does this enable us to say that she was conceived without original sin? If Anglicans knew what we mean by original sin, they would not ask the question. Our doctrine of original sin is not the same as the Protestant doctrine. "Original sin," with us, cannot be called sin, in the mere ordinary sense of the word "sin;" it is a term denoting Adam's sin as transferred to us, or the state to which Adam's sin reduces his children; but by Protestants it seems to be understood as sin, in much the same sense as actual sin. We, with the Fathers, think of it as something negative, Protestants as something positive. Protestants hold that it is a disease, a radical change of nature, an active poison internally corrupting the soul, infecting its primary elements, and disorganizing it; and they fancy that we ascribe a different nature from ours to the Blessed Virgin, different from that of her parents, and from that of fallen Adam. We hold nothing of the kind; we consider that in Adam she died, as others; that she was included, together with the whole race, in Adam's sentence; that she incurred his debt, as we do; but that, for the sake of Him who was to redeem her and us upon the Cross, to her the debt was remitted by anticipation, on her the sentence was not carried out, except indeed as regards her natural death, for she died when her time came, as others [Note 5]. All this we teach, but we deny that she had original sin; for by original sin we mean, as I have already said, something negative, viz., this only, the deprivation of that supernatural unmerited grace which Adam and Eve had on their first formation,—deprivation and the consequences of deprivation. Mary could not merit, any more than they, the restoration of that grace; but it was restored to her by God's free bounty, from the very first moment of her existence, and thereby, in fact, she never came under the original curse, which consisted in the loss of it. And she had this special privilege, in order to fit her to become the Mother of her and our Redeemer, to fit her mentally, spiritually for it; so that, by the aid of the first grace, she might so grow in grace, that, when the Angel came and her Lord was at hand, she might be "full of grace," prepared as far as a creature could be prepared, to receive Him into her bosom.

Hymns and Music for the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady

This site has a great list of appropriate hymns and musical selection for today's feast, including this hymn by Father John Lingard:

Hail, Queen of heaven, the ocean star,
Guide of the wanderer here below,
Thrown on life's surge, we claim thy care,
Save us from peril and from woe.

Mother of Christ, Star of the sea
Pray for the wanderer, pray for me.

O gentle, chaste, and spotless Maid,
We sinners make our prayers through thee;
Remind thy Son that He has paid
The price of our iniquity.

Virgin most pure, Star of the sea,
Pray for the sinner, pray for me.

And while to Him Who reigns above
In Godhead one, in Persons three,
The Source of life, of grace, of love,
Homage we pay on bended knee:

Do thou, bright Queen, Star of the sea,
Pray for thy children, pray for me.

Father John Lingard (5 February 1771 – 17 July 1851), of course, was the Catholic priest who wrote the great eight-volume work The History of England that did so much to overturn the Whig view of English history. More on the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the English Reformation here.