Newman: Christianity as an Idea

One aspect of John Henry Newman's thought that often comes under scrutiny is his description of Christianity as an idea. The concept is not incidental to his thought, as it forms the centerpiece of his argument in An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (hereafter just Essay). In this article, I will explore what Newman means when he calls Christianity an "idea" and argue that this designation is perfectly fitting.

The Development in Ideas

In the Essay, Newman sought to explain how Christian thought could undergo authentic development while yet remaining true to its essential principles—in other words, how Christianity could "grow" without "changing." Newman ultimately argued that the development of doctrine should be understood as the gradual unfolding of an idea, whose conclusions can all be deduced from the initial datum that is communicated. 

In Newman's time, this arument was formulated as a rebuttal to the Protestant claim, exemplified by 17th century Anglican clergyman William Chillingworth (d. 1644), that Catholics could make no apolgetical appeal to history because the historical development of Catholic doctrine was a mess of contradictions. As Chillingworth had famously said, "There are popes against popes, councils against councils, some fathers against others, the same fathers against themselves, a consent of fathers in one age against a consent of fathers of another age, a Church of one age against the Church of another age." Chillingworth and those of his persuasion argued that there was no continuity in the development of Catholic thought—that the history of Catholic theology was essentially a free-for-all with no consistent path of development.

To answer this, Newman had to find a way to account for the legitimate diversification of thought within Catholic Christianity while demonstrating an overall thread of continuity that gave logical directon to that development in such a way that the modern edifice of Catholic theology was the "same" religion professed by primitive Christians. This prompted Newman to consider the question as a matter of epistemology: as dogmas are logical statements about how truths are understood in the mind, we can understand their development according to the way the intellect draws out the implications pregnant in any concept. For example, if given the input, "One side of a square is 4 inches," our minds can deduce additional data (e.g., that the permeter of the square is 16 inches, that its area is 16 square inches). We can also extrapolate hypothetical data: if this square were cubed it's volume would be 64 cubic inches, if it were stacked on top of another square of equal dimensions their combined height would be 8 inches, etc. None of this subsequent information is "new"; it is all implicit in the original input. The mind "develops" these successive statements by inferring them from the initial information. While Christian doctrine is admittedly different than the propositions of mathematics—Newman calls Christian doctrine a "living" idea that has the ability to "arrest and possess the mind" in a way mathematical principles never could (Essay, I.1:4)—the point remains: the human mind has a way of elucidating the fundamental implications implicit in concept. 

For sake of simplicity, Newman calls this process "development" but says it is more properly understood as "exhibition," in the sense that the mind is drawing out and displaying notions that are parts of a whole (I.2:10). This explains, for example, how the idea of penance is a development of the idea of baptism. If baptism remits all sins committed before its reception, how is sin remitted after baptism? This is where the sacrament of penance comes in, which is logically a development of the sacrament of baptism (I.2.9). This principle of development can apply to practices as well as doctrines. For example, traditional gestures of reverence and piety towards the Blessed Sacrament are deduced from the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Even if monstrances, genuflecting, and tabernacles did not exist in the apostolic era, the principle of the Real Presence was clearly acknowledged, and thus all the external signs of reverence that came later are but developments from the initial idea, all contained within it, as it were. 

The Subjectivization of Doctrine?

We can see, then, that Newman's argument is deeply epistemological and places considerable emphasis on understanding Christianity as an idea. But this is precisely what some people dislike about Newman's argument. They dislike Newman's emphasis on the human mind's role in "developing" an idea. By assigning such an important role to human cognition, is Newman not subjectivizing doctrine? Does Newman's theory throw a Kantian veil over Catholic dogma, where what we believe is not the objective datum of revelation but impressions of revelation filtered through fallible human cognition? Does it not turn Christianity into a psychological impression that arises from within—and, if so, how is this any different from the "religious sense" of the Modernists? For these criticsm, Newman is therefore not a defender of tradition, but a progenitor of Modernism.

In response to this, we may first say, that this concept is really nothing other than the fulfillment of what Christ foretold in the Gospel of John:

I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you (John 16:12-13).

Newman also finds evidence of this in Christ's parable of the mustard seed, in which faith begins as the least of all seeds, but grows become an expansive tree. Newman also points to the parable of the growing plant where our Lord says:

The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed upon the ground, and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he knows not how (Mark 4:26-27)

Newman points to these passages as evidence that the Church's development possesses "an internal element of life" that is "observable [in] the spontaneous, as well as the gradual character of the growth intimated" (II.1.16). The initial "mustard seed" of the Gospel is in need of development to bring out its inner richness. The biblical text, Newman says, is "addressed principally to the affections, and is of a religious, not a philosophical character." It does not satisfy the intellect's "clamorous demand for a formal statement concerning the Object of our worship." (Arians of the Fourth Century, 147) In other words, the Bible is not a manual of dogmatic theology.  The intial revelation thus stands in need of development through the formulation of creeds and dogma, which unfolds as saints, mystics, and theologians contemplate the Gospel over the centuries and make explicit what was initially only implicit.

But human inference, however insightful, is capable of error. Newman does not envision development of doctrine as a merely human extrapolation on a primitive, inchoate revelation. Rather, he sees it as the instrumental cause through which the Holy Spirit guides the growth of the Church over time. This is why Sacred Tradition is considered inspired, as its growth and preservation has occured under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Newman affirms this plainly. "We may fairly conclude," he says, "that Christian doctrine admits of formal, legitimate, and true developments, that is, of developments contemplated by its Divine Author...who, in designing the work, designed its legitimate results" (II.1.16-17). The Holy Spirit is like the frame one attaches to a tomato plant to ensure that its natural growth follows a determinate trajectory. The growth is at once determined and organic.

We should thus not conceive of Newman's "idea" of Christianity as something ethereal or elusive. Here some philosophical background is helpful. John Henry Newman is generally considered a Christian Platonist, and while the exact relation between Newman and the school of English Christian Platonism is a matter of debate, there seems to be a consensus that his philosophical outlook demonstrates  a Platonic influence. For Newman, an "idea" is like an impression in wax created by an object upon the mind. There is a direct correspondence between the object and its idea, which is impressed upon the intellect. An impression is created by immediate datum, and is much more forceful than a reflection or some mere product of human ratiocination. Sense impressions correspond to material objects that cause them, and impression comforms to the object it represents. Divine revelation is the object, Christianity the impression or "idea" faithfully imprinted by that object. For Newman, then, the "idea" of Christianity is not subjective; it is firmly tethered to the Divine Revelation in Christ which is its object:

"Faith and love are directed towards an Object; in the vision of that Object they live; it is that Object, received in faith and love, which renders it reasonable to take probability as sufficient for internal conviction" (Apologia pro vita sua, Chap 1).

Newman has no thought of calling into question the objective reality which lies at the heart of the Christian revelation. Newman is deeply interested in the relationship between the doctrinal formulation of truth and the truths these formulae point to, however. Newman never forgets that God is greater than the words we use to represent Him; reality is always vastly richer and more multifaceted than human speech, just as an object is incredibly more complex than its shadow—even if the shadow is nevertheless an authentic representation:

Holy Church in her sacraments and her hierarchical appointments, will remain, even to the end of the world, [which is] after all but a symbol of those heavenly facts which fill eternity. Her mysteries are but the expressions in human language of truths to which the human mind is unequal. (ibid)

In his Essays and Sketches, Newman explains that all things of the visible world point beyond themselves to the eternal Object upon which they are patterned:

It is not too much to say that this is the one great rule on which the Divine Dispensations with mankind have been and are conducted, that the visible world is the instrument, yet the veil, of the world invisible,—the veil, yet still partially the symbol and index: so that all that exists or happens visibly, conceals and yet suggests, and above all subserves, a system of persons, facts, and events beyond itself. (John Henry Newman, “Milman’s View of Christianity,” in Essays and Sketches, New York: Longmans, 1948, 2:223).

This is substantially different from the teaching of the Modernists, who held that faith arose from a religious sentiment originating within man himself, directed towards a naturalistic God who was fundamentally immanent to the world, and ultimately a product of human culture and evolution. There can be no objective revelation for the Modernist. But for Newman, "the Incarnation [is] the central aspect of Christianity" (Essay, I.1.3). He certainly does not consider revelation to be an inner experience.

The late Avery Cardinal Dulles observed that Newman's concept of Christianity as a "real" idea is firmly grounded in an objective revelation of God:

Christian revelation is a real idea. As a Christian Platonist in the Alexandrian tradition, Newman rebelled against the conception that ideas are simply products of the mind. For him, the idea pre-exists. "The mind," he writes, "is below truth." Through the appearances of nature and the symbols of Scripture, liturgy, and dogma, God communicates mysterious and heavenly truth to which the human mind is receptive but nevertheless unequal. The Christian idea is the living impression on the human mind made by the truth that, without change or alteration, communicates itself in various ways (Avery Dulles, "From Images to Truth: Newman on Revelation and Faith," Theological Studies 51, 1990, pg. 254).

The late Mark Allen McIntosh—an Episcopalian professor of theology at Loyola University who published a host of papers and essays on Newman's theology—also strenuously denied that Newman's conception of Christianity as an idea implied any subjectivization of revelation:

Newman opposed any reading of reality that exhausts its truth apart from its relation to God. Nothing could have been further from his mind than to deny the real, objective reality of all things; rather would he have one realize the beautiful truth of all things precisely as ideas flowing into finite existence from the mind of God—that from this awareness of the true significance of creatures ("Newman and Christian Platonism in Britain", The Journal of Religion, Vol. 91, No. 3, July 2011, 362).

Christianity as an Idea

Obviously Christianity takes its origin as an act of divine revelation from God to man, the ultimate commuication being the sending of His son, for, "Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son" (Heb. 1:1). But as much as we rightfully insist on the objective, immutable nature of the revelation, we cannot understand the history of Christian dogma without consideration of we to whom this revelation was made—the profession of a creed implies the existence of a credentis, a believer who professes what is believed. While it would certainly be erroneous to subjectivize faith by placing its origin entirely within the believer, the ecclesia credens nevertheless plays an essential role in the development of Sacred Tradition, as it is through the Church's contemplation of revealed truth that the Holy Spirit grows the mustard seed into "the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches" (Matthew 13:32, Douay).

Once delivered to the Church, revelation responds to the inquiry of Christians along the same lines as would any other idea or concept, subject to the same principles of inference and intellectual development, with the important exception that the organic continuity of the process is guarnteed by the Holy Spirit. While Newman believes that this revelation does leave an "impression" on the heart—"Did not our hearts burn within us?" (Luke 24:32)—this impression does not arise from our own interiority. It is thus vastly different from the Modernist "religious impulse." Cardinal Dulles says:

This charge, however, would overlook [Newman's] equally emphatic assertion that God continues to speak His word today and that the revealed idea in the mind of any believer is an "inward manifestation," an "inward impression." The impression, however, comes from outside. It is not a pure datum of consciousness. Since we have no faculties for immediately perceiving what is revealed, the object must be mediated to us by language, on the testimony of inspired witnesses, themselves the recipients of an extraordinary grace. (Dulles, 260)

Whether the Modernists claimed Newman in support of their ideas is of little consequence, as Newman's thought was fundamentally distinct.  Again, Dulles:

Alfred Loisy, George Tyrrell, Henri Bremond, and Ernest Dimnet, among others, attempted to justify their own subjectivism by appealing to Newman's observations on the personal dispositions required for faith. But in their zeal to find an ally in Newman, they overlooked his concern for the supremacy of the revealed object, the intellectual character of faith, and the inviolability of dogma...Revelation always has a definite content that can be, to some extent, expressed in dogmatic statements." (Dulles, 266)

This is a good point of departure for this article. In my next essay, I will spend more time exploring Newman's relationship to the Modernists, especially George Tyrell, who addressed many of the same points as John Henry Newman.