Preview: Newman and the Greek Fathers: Indwelling of the Spirit, Part II

On Monday, September 30, we'll conclude our discussion of Newman's discovery of the Greek Fathers's teaching on the Indwelling of the Spirit on the Son Rise Morning Show. Please tune in at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central DST/7:50 a.m. Eastern DST here or catch the podcast later.

Reading the last paragraphs of Father Ker's discussion of how the Greek Fathers led Newman to the doctrine of the Indwelling of the Spirit reminded me of a July 2017 Eighth Day Institute event timed to coincide with the 500th anniversary of what is regarded as the beginning of the Protestant Reformation (Martin Luther's posting of his 95 Theses). 

The topic was "The Patristic View of Salvation: Justification by Faith Alone?" A Protestant (Lutheran) scholar, a Catholic scholar, and an Orthodox Christian scholar each presented and then responded to each other's academic papers on this subject, and other related papers were offered.

The odd thing was that we never really discussed, nor did anyone cogently defend, Martin Luther's doctrine of "Justification by Faith Alone"--in fact, we hardly mentioned it. That was because the representative speakers were reflecting on the "patristic view of salvation" so they spoke about Deification, not "Justification". The Director of Eighth Day Institute commented to members/attendees after the conference:

[The plenary speakers] all found the same emphasis of participation in Christ, or deification, as the Orthodox put it. . . . So while it was remarkable to see the united understanding of salvation as participation in Christ, that emphasis distracted us from the question of justification. I think there are two ways to look at this failure. On the one hand, it’s really not such a failure. The speakers heeded the admonition to return to the Fathers. And they just didn’t find much on the issue of justification. Instead, they found participation, union, and deification. And I mostly agree with all three speakers who indicated that this pre-Reformation emphasis on participation might be the way to get past the dividing issue of justification. . . .

Father Ker concurs that Newman found something similar when he studied the Greek Fathers. Newman had already changed his mind about the Calvinist doctrine of double predestination; moreover, Ker states that Newman "disagrees with Evangelicals who consider [the justification of the sinner] as a state, not of holiness or righteousness, but merely or mainly of acceptance with God'." (p. 36)

In addition to quoting several sermons ("The Law of the Spirit", "The State of Salvation", "The New Works of the Gospel", etc) Father Ker cites Newman's 1838 Lectures on Justification (reissued with an advertisement and corrective notes in 1874).

In a 1985 article for Christendom College, Richard Penaskovic called them a "forgotten classic" arguing that not only did Newman outline a Via Media for Tractarians between the Evangelical view and what he thought of as the "Romanist" view of Justification but he also offered a "powerful new synthesis of St. Paul and the Greek Fathers, especially St. Athanasius" to speak "of grace in highly personal categories" as it is present in the Christian heart and soul. Saint Augustine of Hippo, one of the four great Western Fathers, through his interpretations of Saint Paul's letters, was also an important influence on Newman.

Quoting these lectures, Father Ker sums up Newman's view on the indwelling of the Spirit as the source of the sanctification of the Christian, noting that he had rediscovered the "central New Testament doctrine of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, a doctrine that was second nature to the Eastern Fathers who knew nothing of the modern problem of justification":

"The presence of the Holy Ghost shed abroad in our hearts, the Author both of faith and renewal, this is really that which makes us righteous, and . . . our righteousness is the possession of that presence." Justification, then "is wrought by the power of the Spirit, or rather by His presence within us" while "faith and renewal are both present also, but as fruits of it" (Justification, pp. 137-138) . . . justification and renewal are "both included in that one great gift of God, the  indwelling of Christ" through the Holy Spirit "in the Christian soul" which constitutes "our justification and sanctification, as its necessary results" (ibid, p. 112) (Selected Sermons, p. 37)

What Newman learned from the Fathers of the Church about the Indwelling of the Spirit and deification he poured into his sermons and his pastoral care as both an Anglican minister and a Catholic priest, urging his congregations to be aware of this indwelling and be willing to cooperate with its Grace and inspiration for the faith, hope, and charity it imparted.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Preview: Newman and the Greek Fathers: Indwelling of the Spirit, part I

On Monday, September 23, we'll continue our Son Rise Morning Show series on Newman and the Fathers of the Church. In this episode, we'll take a look at another of the lessons Newman learned by reading the Greek Fathers of the Church 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.

The late Father Ian Ker edited Selected Sermons by Newman for the Paulist Press "Classics of Western Spirituality" series. In the section of his Introduction titled "The Influence of the Greek Fathers", Father Ker highlights the impact they had on Newman's thought as demonstrated by excerpts from the Parochial and Plain Sermons and other works. 

The first two areas we looked at were 1. The Incarnation and 2. The Resurrection and Pentecost.

The third area he identifies is Newman's emphasis on the Indwelling of the Spirit. 

We'll treat this topic in two episodes: the first focused on what Newman learned from the Greek Fathers about the Indwelling of the Spirit and the second (on September 30) on what this meant for his understanding of the doctrine of Justification.

Father Ker states:

Newman had discovered for himself in the New Testament and the Fathers the great forgotten doctrine of the indwelling in the soul of the Holy Spirit, and through the Spirit of the Father and the Son as well . . . (p. 34)

and cites PPS "The Communion of Saints":

{168}IT was the great promise of the Gospel, that the Lord of all, who had hitherto manifested himself externally to His servants, should take up His abode in their hearts. This, as you must recollect, is frequently the language of the Prophets; and it was the language of our Saviour when He came on earth: "I will love him," He says, speaking of those who love and obey Him, "and will manifest Myself to him ... We will come unto him, and make our abode with him." [John xiv. 21, 23.] Though He had come in our flesh, so as to be seen and handled, even this was not enough. Still He was external and separate; but after His ascension He descended again by and in His Spirit, and then at length the promise was fulfilled.

There must indeed be a union between all creatures and their Almighty Creator even for their very existence; for it is said, "In Him we live, and move, and {169} have our being;" and in one of the Psalms, "When Thou lettest Thy breath go forth, they shall be made." [Psalm civ. 30.] But far higher, more intimate, and more sacred is the indwelling of God in the hearts of His elect people;—so intimate, that compared with it, He may well be said not to inhabit other men at all; His presence being specified as the characteristic privilege of His own redeemed servants.

In one of Newman's Sermons on Subjects of the Day (another Anglican collection) on "Christian Nobleness" he describes again the effects of the Ascension and Pentecost on the Church as Jesus has returned

to His redeemed in the power of the Spirit, with a Presence more pervading because more intimate, and more real because more hidden. And as the manner of His coming was new, so was His gift. It was peace, but a new peace, "not as the world giveth;" not the exultation of the young, light-hearted, and simple, easily created, easily lost: but a serious, sober, lasting comfort, full of reverence, deep in contemplation.

Ker comments that Newman considers the true sign of a Christian is her awareness of this Presence, as it "should be at the heart of [her] moral and spiritual life". Without this Presence, "human life in its fullness is impossible . . ." (p 35), for without Christ in the shrine of our hearts we have "a self where God is not":

a home within [us] which is not a temple, a chamber which is not a confessional, a tribunal without a judge, a throne without a king;—that self may be king and judge; and that the Creator may rather be dealt with and approached as though a second party, instead of His being that true and better self of which self itself should be but an instrument and minister. ("Sincerity and Hypocrisy" p. 226)

Before mentioning tribunal and judge, Newman already spoke of the indwelling of the Spirit in the Christian's "innermost heart, or in his conscience"--which tempts me to discussing the connections between this theme and Newman's excellent statements about the formation, authority, and centrality of Conscience--but I have resisted that temptation (almost)! 

Nevertheless, mention of the heart recalls Newman's motto as Cardinal, "Cor ad Cor Loquitor" (Heart Speaks to Heart), and Ker concludes this part of his discussion of the "Indwelling of the Spirit" in the Christian heart with an excerpt from what he calls a "remarkable sermon", "The Thought of God, the Stay of the Soul" as Newman "makes the heart the focal point of human life and argues that only a personal God can fulfil its longings" and warns that "Human affection and love can only center the heart on what is 'perishable'" because:

Life passes, riches fly away, popularity is fickle, the senses decay, the world changes, friends die. One alone is constant; One alone is true to us; One alone can be true; One alone can be all things to us; One alone can supply our needs; One alone can train us up to our full perfection; One alone can give a meaning to our complex and intricate nature; One alone can give us tune and harmony; One alone can form and possess us.*

Quoting yet another PPS, "The Law of the Spirit", Ker states that Newman insists we were completely redeemed "only when the 'dreadful reality' of original sin was overtaken by a 'new righteousness,' a 'real righteousness' which 'comes from the Holy and Divine Spirit,' so that our 'works, done in the Spirit of Christ'", done out of obedience are hallowed and made holy. (p. 36)

Then Father Ker turns to how this doctrine of the Indwelling of the Spirit helped Newman as an Anglican see the contrast between an Evangelical theory of Justification and the Catholic Christian view of Deification or Divinisation as taught by the Greek or Eastern Fathers of the Church. That's argument we'll trace on the last Monday in September.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

*See Gaudium et Spes, paragraph 22:

22. The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come,(20) namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear.

Preview: Newman and the Greek Fathers on the Resurrection and Pentecost

On Monday, September 16, we'll continue our Son Rise Morning Show series on Newman and the Fathers of the Church. In this episode, we'll take a look at another of the lessons Newman learned by reading the Fathers of the Church 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.

The late Father Ian Ker edited Selected Sermons by Newman for the Paulist Press "Classics of Western Spirituality" series. In the section of his Introduction titled "The Influence of the Greek Fathers", Father Ker highlights the impact they had on Newman's thought as demonstrated by excerpts from the Parochial and Plain Sermons and other works. The second area he identifies is Newman's emphasis on the Resurrection (the Ascension?) and Pentecost.

As he did when considering the "high Christology" Newman learned from the Greek Fathers, Ker notes that Newman was doing something different:

It was not until the second half of the twentieth century that Western theology began to regard the resurrection as more than simply the proof that Christ was divine and through his crucifixion he had conquered sin and death. . . . (p. 30)

Father Ker contends that in Newman's time the focus was on the crucifixion and that both Catholic and Protestant theologians in the nineteenth century thought "the resurrection not so much essential to redemption. as a kind of happy conclusion to the real drama that took place on the cross." (p. 30) Reading the Greek Fathers made Newman see that Our Lord's Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost are "one single divine act unfolding in several closely connected stages", a view commonly accepted by modern theologians. (p.31)

Ker quotes Newman's essay "The Theology of St. Ignatius [of Antioch]" (the second century Apostolic Father and martyr) from 1839 to show what Newman learned:

It would seem then to be certain, that Ignatius considers our life and salvation to lie, not in the Atonement by itself, but in the Incarnation; but neither in the Incarnation nor Atonement as past events, but, as present facts, in an existing mode, in which our Saviour comes to us; or, to speak more plainly, in our Saviour Himself who is God in our flesh, and not only so, but in flesh which has been offered up on the Cross in sacrifice, which has died and has risen. The being made man, the being crucified in atonement, the being raised again, are the three past events to which the Eternal Son has vouchsafed to become to us what He is, a Saviour; and those who omit the Resurrection in their view of the divine economy, are as really defective in faith as if they omitted the Crucifixion. On the Cross He paid the debt of the world, but as He could not have been crucified without first taking flesh, so again He could not, as it would seem, apply His atonement without first rising again. Accordingly, St. Ignatius speaks of our being saved and living not simply in the Atonement, but . . . in the {248} flesh and blood of the risen Lord, first sacrificed for us, then communicated to us.

In the same way, Father Ker notes that Newman, influenced by Greek Fathers (like Saint Basil the Great and Saint John Chrysostom for example), saw that after the Resurrection and the Ascension, the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was a necessary part of our salvation, and, quoting a passage from PPS "Righteousness not of us, but in us", says "Newman's theology of the work of the Holy Spirit in Christ's redemption is eloquently comprehensive" (p. 32):

But there is another ground for saying that Christ did not finish His gracious economy by His death; viz. because the Holy Spirit came in order to finish it. When He ascended, He did not leave us to ourselves, so far the work was not done. He sent His Spirit. Were all finished as regards individuals, why should the Holy Ghost have condescended to come? But the Spirit came to finish in us, what Christ had finished in Himself, but left unfinished as regards us. To Him it is committed to apply to us severally all that Christ had done for us. As then His mission proves on the one hand that salvation is not from ourselves, so does it on the other that it must be wrought in us. For if all gifts of grace are with the Spirit, and the presence of the Spirit is within us, it follows that these gifts are to be manifested and wrought in us. If Christ is our sole hope, and Christ is given to us by the Spirit, and the Spirit be an inward presence, our sole hope is in an inward change. As a light placed in a room pours out its rays on all sides, so the presence of the Holy Ghost imbues us with life, strength, holiness, love, acceptableness, righteousness. God looks on us in mercy, because He sees in us "the mind of the Spirit," for whoso has this mind has holiness and righteousness within him. Henceforth all his thoughts, words, and works as done in the Spirit, are acceptable, pleasing, just before God; and whatever remaining infirmity there be in him, that the presence of the Spirit hides. That divine influence, which has the fulness of Christ's grace to purify us, has also the power of Christ's blood to justify. {138}

 Newman further describes how through the Holy Spirit

Christ Himself vouchsafes to repeat in each of us in figure and mystery all that He did and suffered in the flesh. He is formed in us, born in us, suffers in us, rises again in us, lives in us; and this not by a succession of events, but all at once: for He comes to us as a Spirit, all dying, all rising again, all living. We are ever receiving our birth, our justification, our renewal, ever dying to sin, ever rising to righteousness. His whole economy in all its parts is ever in us all at once; and this divine presence constitutes the title of each of us to {140} heaven; this is what He will acknowledge and accept at the last day. He will acknowledge Himself,—His image in us,—as though we reflected Him, and He, on looking round about, discerned at once who were His; those, namely, who gave back to Him His image. . . . .

If you go back to the first post in this series on Father Ker's commentary on Newman and the influence of the Greek Fathers, you can see how these themes are related: from the Incarnation to the Crucifixion; from the Crucifixion to the Resurrection; from the Resurrection (and Ascension) to Pentecost. 

Next week's topic, the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit, certainly builds upon this one.

Saint Ignatius of Antioch, pray for us!

Saint Basil the Great, pray for us!

Saint John Chrysostom, pray for us!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Preview: Father Ian Ker on what Newman Learned from the Church Fathers

On Monday, September 9, we'll continue our Son Rise Morning Show series on Newman and the Fathers of the Church. In this episode, we'll take a look at one of the lessons Newman learned by reading the Fathers of the Church 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.

The late Father Ian Ker edited Selected Sermons by Newman for the Paulist Press "Classics of Western Spirituality" series. In the section of his Introduction titled "The Influence of the Greek Fathers", Father Ker highlights the impact they had on Newman's thought as demonstrated by excerpts from the Parochial and Plain Sermons. 

The five areas he identifies are:

1). The Incarnation

2). The Resurrection and Pentecost

3). The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit

4). The Sacraments

5). Mystery

He declares:

It was the thought of the Greek Fathers that shaped and guided Newman's reading of Scripture, out of which emerged that great corpus of sermons, the Parochial and Plain Sermons, one of the enduring classics of Christian spirituality. (p. 28)

We'll start with the first area of emphasis: The Incarnation. One thing Father Ker does not do in discussing these influences is to identify which Greek Father or Fathers influenced Newman to certain doctrinal and theological views. I think it's easy to identify at least one of the Fathers that influenced Newman to emphasize the Incarnation. It's Saint Athanasius of Alexandria. 

As noted before, Newman had studied the Arian crisis in the fourth century and Saint Athanasius was one of the great defenders of the Church's teaching about the Incarnation against the Arian heresy. Joseph Carola, S.J. points out in Engaging the Church Fathers in Nineteenth Century Catholicism: The Patristic Legacy of the Scuola Romana (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2023), Newman began his book publishing career with a book featuring Saint Athanasius (The Arians of the Fourth Century) in 1832 and ended it with another book about him in 1877, the final edition of his translation of Select Treatises of Saint Athanasius, first published in the  Library of the Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church in 1844. (p. 91)

Ker emphasizes that Newman gave priority to the Incarnation at a time when the doctrine of the Atonement received more emphasis because it "sets him apart from what was then at least the predominant tradition of Western Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, and is to be traced to the profound influence exerted on him by the Greek Fathers." (p. 29) As Father Ker states, Newman's "high Christology" matches the Christology of those Greek Fathers. As an example, he quotes Newman's 1834 sermon ("The Incarnation") on Christmas Day, as he reminds his congregation of "the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation":

Thus the Son of God became the Son of Man; mortal, but not a sinner; heir of our infirmities, not of our guiltiness; the offspring of the old race, yet {32} "the beginning of the" new "creation of God." . . . Thus He came, selecting and setting apart for Himself the elements of body and soul; then, uniting them, to Himself from their first origin of existence, pervading them, hallowing them by His own Divinity, spiritualizing them, and filling them with light and purity, the while they continued to be human, and for a time mortal and exposed to infirmity. . . .Great is our Lord, and great is His power, Jesus the Son of God and Son of man. Ten thousand times more dazzling bright than the highest Archangel, is our Lord and Christ. By birth the Only-begotten and Express image of God; and in taking our flesh, not sullied thereby, but raising human nature with Him, as He rose from the lowly manger to the right hand of power,—raising human nature, for Man has redeemed us, Man is set above all creatures, as one with the Creator, Man shall judge man at the last day. So honoured is this earth, that no stranger {40} shall judge us, but He who is our fellow, who will sustain our interests, and has full sympathy in all our imperfections.

For readers of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, this "high Christology" of Newman's is no surprise. As paragraph #460 declares, quoting St. Athanasius among other sources:

The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature":⁷⁸ "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God."⁷⁹ "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God."⁸⁰ "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods."⁸¹

78 2 Pt 1:4.
79 St. Irenaeus, Adv. haeres. 3, 19, 1: PG 7/1, 939.
80 St. Athanasius, De inc. 54, 3: PG 25, 192B.
81 St. Thomas Aquinas, Opusc. 57, 1-4.

And as we'll see next week on September 16, Newman's emphasis on the Resurrection of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost demonstrates that Newman saw the whole of Christ's Incarnate life as "one single divine act unfolding in several closely connected stages." (p. 31)

Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, pray for us!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

 

Image Source (Public Domain): Saint Athanasius. By Francesco Bartolozzi after Domenichino.