Newman and the Modernists Compared

Last time in this series on St. John Henry Newman, I talked about Newman's phrasing of Christianity as an idea whose development can be explained in terms of the way the human mind unfolds the implications inherent in any cognitive notion, guided by the Holy Spirit to unfold in precisely the manner willed by God.

In this essay, we will compare Newman's development of doctrine with the theory proposed by George Tyrrell (1861-1909), the Anglo-Irish priest and infamous Modernist. Tyrrell provides a suitable comparison to Newman, as he wrote extensively on the devlopment of Christian doctrine and even commented on Newman's ideas.

One word before we begin—This article presumes the reader is already familiar with the particulars of Newman's theory of the development of doctrine. If you are not, I recently did an interview with Murray Rundus of Catholic Family News where we reviewed Newman's theory in detail. I recommend viewing it if you need a basic idea of what Newman's theory entails.

Newman and the Modernists

Newman's death in 1890 overlapped with the rise of the Modernist movement of the 1890s and 1900s. Enamored with the principles of Darwinism, immanentism, cultural anthropology, and naturalism, the Modernists similarly argued that Christian dogma had undergone development, but in an entirely different manner than what Newman had proposed. Nevertheless, a superficial understanding of the principles of both Newman and the Modernists led to a confusion of their respective theories.

It is beyond the scope of this article to provide a comprehensive study of Newman in relation to the Modernists. I shall therefore restrict myself to a few salient points.

It is well-known that Modernists considered religion to be ultimately a matter of sentiment. They did not deny the existence or value of doctrine or ritual, but they did subordinate each to religious sentiment as expressed through anthropological development within cultures. A peoples' religion was essentially the representation of their cultural spirit, which emerged from internal movements within the person himself. Newman explictly rejected religion as "mere sentiment," adhering to the dogmatic formulations of historic Christianity. In his Apologia pro vita sua, Newman wrote:

From the age of fifteen dogma was to be the fundamental principle of my religion: I know of no other religion; I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion; religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery. As well can there be filial love without the fact of a father as devotion without the fact of a Supreme Being (Apologia pro vita sua, Svalgic edition, 54)

While Newman understood that the divine object of dogmatics would always be greater than the dogmas themselves, he absolutely insisted on the necessity of dogma as an authentic and objective explanation of the divine reality to which it pointed:

But dogmas should not be confused for the ideas themselves. Neither are they additions to the idea. Truth is not identical to the language in which it is embedded. Dogmas unfold potentialities already within an idea. They are artuculations of a revealed idea. Doctrine develops "out of certain original and fixed dogmatic truths, which were held inviolate from first to last." (Essays Critical and Historical, 5th ed., London: Longmans, Green, 1885, pg. 288, note appended to 1871 edition.)

In his famous Biglietto Speech of 1879 upon the occasion of his elevation to the cardinalate by Leo XIII, Newman forcefully condemned the liberal latitudinarian view of religion:

Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion, as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion. Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous; and it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy.

In the same speech, Newman defines liberals as those who "fraternise together in spiritual thoughts and feelings, without having any views at all of doctrine in common, or seeing the need of them."

Newman was certainly no liberal, and it is easy enough to demonstrate that he detested the trends of liberalism he saw emerging within the Catholic Church. 

Could it not be, however, that Newman was a Modernist in spite of himself? That, despite his protestations to the contrary, Newman's thought on development of doctrine contained within itself seeds of the very Modernism he claimed to despise? Did Newman set the stage for 20th century Modernism despite his sincere belief he was defending orthodoxy? After all, thinkers often set out to prove one thing and accomplish the opposite; Rene Descartes thought he was saving philosophy from subjectivism, and Karl Marx believed he was creating a system that would guarantee security and prosperity for all. We must, therefore, go beyond Newman's own self-assessment.

The only way to consider this question is to compare Newman's thought to the Modernists. While that would be a monumental undertaking, we can get an idea of the distinctions between the two by examining the writings of George Tyrrell (1861-1909), the infamous Anglo-Irish priest and Modernist. Tyrrell would be expelled from the Jesuits in 1906 for refusing to abjure his Modernism, was subsequently excommunicated, and died outside the Church in 1909. Along with Alfred Loisy, he is considered one of the principal exponents of Modenrist thought in the early 20th century.

George Tyrrell's Theory of Development

Tyrrell's theory of dogmatic development is complex and includes several ancillary arguments drawn from anthropology, psychology, and history. It is explained at length in his 1907 book Through Scylla and Charybdis: The Old Theology and the New, as well as in his posthumously published Essays on Faith and Immortality (1914). 

Tyrrell begins his discussion of dogmatic development with the premise that Catholic theology has developed in a haphazard, slapdash sort of manner, subject to the unpredictable vicissitudes of history:

As a fact, the greater part of Catholic dogma has been shaped by rhe results of theological curiosity, by the controversies of the philosophers and schoolmen; by anything rather than by the pure interests of inward religion. (George Tyrrell, "Essays on Faith and Immortality," in Roman Catholic Modernism, ed. Bernard G. Reardon, Adam & Charles Black: London, 1970, p. 145).

In Through Scylla and Charbydis, he says something similar:

Catholicism is characterized by a certain irrationality, incoherence, and irregularity—a certain irreducibleness to exact and systematic expression. ("Through Scylla and Charybdis," Ibid., 153).

That Tyrrell actually considers this "incoherence" to be an argument in Catholicism's favor is beside the point; the argument he is making is that there is no systematic development in Catholic theology that one can point to. This is assumed prima facie; no appeal to history is offered. Religious instincts prompt development in a non-linear manner, subject to forces that are not logically deductive. Tyrrell follows with a discussion of whether such development could possibly be "revelatory"—that is, does development of dogma serve to clarify, explain, or deepen the existing body of truths from which it developed? His answer is decidedly negative:

A [religious] sentiment or instinct is not directly creative or "revelatory" of the truth by which it is explained or justified, but is only selective of materials that are offered to it, choosing this or that somewhat blindly, according as it is felt to be more congenial, more appropriate to the required truth, more satisfying to the soul's desire of what the world should prove to be...Though not itself inventive, yet the religious sentiment puts our inventive imagination and reason into play, with a success conditioned by the purity and intensity of the sentiment, on the one side, and, on the other, by the native vigor and cultivation of the said faculties of invention and hypothesis. (Ibid)

Like all Modernists, Tyrrell is infuriatingly wordy, so let us distill his argument down thus far: the development of Catholic dogma has not followed any logical trajectory; the causes and directions of its development are legion. Henceforth, its development cannot be explanatory of any underlying principles—there is no dogmatic clarity that comes with time. Developments have not endured because they followed logically from their antecedents, but because they conformed to what people wanted to be true in a given time and place in history. The "inventive imagination" of a people concocts dogmatic developments based on what they feel, and these developments will be more or less enduring to the degree relative to the intensity of the sentiment that gives rise to them. So, according to Tyrrell's hypothesis, we might say that Mariology did not develop logically out of the Church's Christology. Rather, Catholics wanted to adore a mother figure, Mariology was concocted to answer this need, and imaginative explanations were fabricated to shoehorn it retroactively into the existing body of dogma. Tyrrell continues:

Such invention...consists in a re-arrangement of the world in accordance with desire; and yet in such a way as not to conflict with established and accepted trutg, but simply to interpret doubts and uncertainties in a manner favorable to our hopes and longings (Ibid., 146).

If doctrinal developments seem to accord with pre-existing teaching, it is not because they are logically consistent, but because theologians have found inventive ways to re-arrange the dogmatic landscape to accommodate the development. Whereas Newman would say that any sense of dogmatic rupture is only apparent, Tyrrell says the opposite. It is continuity that is merely apparent!

Where does this leave God? Tyrrell admits that God directs this development, at least of the major dogmas, but of other developments He is passive:

That the leading ideas of Catholic dogma, the ground-plan of its construction of the supernatural world, have been more or less consciosuly divined by the inventive faculty, inspired by the Spirit of Christian Love [Tyrrell's unique phraseology for the Holy Spirit], must be allowed. But there are other contributions...which have been supplied by non-religious interests, good, bad, and indifferent. Not to speak of that purely intellectual, theological curiosity and inquiry, which is often most active in the least reverent, which kindles a contorversial ardour that is so falsely confounded with zeal for the truth, and which we may call the scholastic spirit...There are, alas! Beliefs that have been suggested and fostered by unworthy motives, by the desire of temporal gain, or of spiritual ascendancy, or by superstitious fear, or selfishnesss—beliefs that represent the spiritual weakness or deadness of the numerical majority...for there is no inherent connection between the religious interest and those by which they have been dictated. Their origin has nothing to do with their truth. (Ibid)

An analogy is helpful here. Imagine the body of Catholic dogma like a garden. There are some dogmas that are directly inspired by the Holy Spirit. These are like plants that are deliberately planted and cultivated because they are positively willed by the gardener. But there are other developments which are like weeds that spring up in the garden, which may or may not be tolerated by the divine gardener for His own purposes. Of course, Tyrrell does not tell us which dogmas belong in which category, but he assures us that the beliefs not positively willed by God have developed from "unworthy motives" and represent "spiritual weakness or deadness" and that "their origin has nothing to do with their truth."

How do such beliefs fit into divine providence? Tyrrell allows that the Spirit tolerates the development of such deviations for "selective" reasons, akin to God's permissive will wherein certain evils are tolerated by Him though not positively willed. But in time, as human society progresses, these deviations must be dealt with. Customs or beliefs that were tolerated in earlier ages become unsuitable as mankind progresses. If later generations start to wrestle with certain beliefs (as, say, for example, moderns do when they bristle at the Church's sexual ethics)

...it is because the community is sick and disordered in consequence of past irregularities, and must now go back upon the past, critically, till it find the point of deviation; must destroy and reconstruct just so much and no more as is needful for its perfect recuperation (ibid., 148).

In the development of Christian doctrine, the Church truly does make "wrong turns" which must subsequently be corrected by later generations. Tyrrell tries to retain a divine agency over the entire mishmash by suggesting that even the "past irregularities" are within God's providence, specifically so that the Church can mature in later generations by growing out of its previous errors. But the important point to note is that, doctrinally, this is not a logical process. If anything, it is a Hegelian collision of opposites which somehow results in intellectual homeostasis through the leveling actio of the inexorable march of time: In Through Scylla and Charybdis, Tyrrell explains:

Catholicism is full of compromises. In all the opposing elements of its syncretism there is a part-truth to which the religious spirit clings in spite of logic, and wisely. For a syncretism, a more or less violent forcing together of incompatibles, is the preliminary stage of an harmonious synthesis which can never be finally and fully realized just because new elements are ever coming in. Ground one against the other the fragments lose their angles in time, and approximate to coherence and continuity. Art can compel a premature and poorer unification by throwing out this or that recalcitrant member of the various antitheses; but God in Nature works slowly and surely thoigh the unimpeded struggle of opposites. ("Through Scylla and Charybdis," ibid., 154)

If you have a solid Catholic sense, your head should be hurting by this point. But let us see if we can sum it up: Tyrrell essentially argues that doctrine develops in an almost Darwinian manner, through the struggle of competing intellectual forces. These forces arise from all manner of motives (most non-religious and some positively base), and while God ensures the proper development of the more important dogmas, vast swaths of Catholic theology should be considered transitory, perhaps suitable for one age but worhty of uprooting in a more refined epoch when it no longer suits the mood of the people. This dialectic is the process by which God expands the Church's consciousness of itself and reality. It is admittedly chaotic in nature—as chaotic as a volcanic eruption whose violence forms a new island—and we need not pretend that this process is "revelatory" of demonstrates any sort of linear development. It doesn't, and we need to realize that any semblance of logical continuity is due to the "inventive imagination" of the Church, and is more apparent than real. Such is the theory of the Modernist George Tyrrell.

Tyrrell and Newman

Accusations that Newman was a Modernist are not new; Newman was already being accused of such things well over a hundred years ago. Commenting on the controversy, Cardinal Avery Dulles observed:

The Modernists at the turn of the century reinforced this suspicion. 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. (Avery Dulles, "From Images to Truth: Newman on Revelation and Faith," Theological Studies 51, 1990, pg. 266)

As much as I respect Dulles' writing on Newman, with whom he was intimately familiar, I think the late cardinal is mistaken in his assessment of the Modernists—or at least Tyrrell, for Tyrrell did not appeal to Newman to justify his theory. Tyrrell was actually critical of Newman, as he believed Newman's theory to be fundamentally flawed.

In his Essays on Faith and Immortality, Tyrrell critiques Newman's theory of the development of doctrine for failing to distinguish between different categories of development:

It is important to remember Kierkegaard's insistence on the great difference between spirituak and physiological development, which Newman and his school are to little conscious of. The former is self-wrought, the latter passively undergone; the former creative, the latter merely explicative. The organism is potentially at the beginning what is is actually at the end; its "idea" is present from the first, and shapes it to a vehicle of self-expression. Not so the character of a man or a nation. No two minds or moralities are alike. Each is absolutely original; self-built, according to a series of self-chosen plans. I gather wildflowers as I go along, and arrange them each moment, according to what I have got in hand, in some sort of harmonious unity. I gather more, and forthwith I break up the unity in favour of another more inclusive arrangement, which takes in all the old materials in new relations. The final arrangement is not implied or exacted by the first. It is not a process of passive unfolding, but of active reconstruction. So it is with our gatehring experience, of which the later additions are no way involved in the earlier. Every moment we unmake our world and build it anew. And this holds of the collective as of the individual spirit life; of the Church as well as the Nation ("Essays on Faith and Immortality," ibid., 150).

Elsewhere in the same text, Tyrrell argues that Catholic development cannot follow any trajectory, as Newman suggests, but is more akin to the development of our character through free will decisions:

The "law" of spiritual development is a freely chosen path to good—one of many; that of organic development is a fixed path to a fixed form or determination of good; my bodily future is predictable, not my spiritual future. Who knows how a child will "turn out"? (ibid)

He criticizes Newman again in Through Scylla and Charybdis, lambasting Newman's insistence that Catholicism has developed according to a logical sequence. After using the examples of the Breviary and the liturgy of the Mass (unfairly, I might add), Tyrrell says that:

[Catholicism has been] guided in no two cases by quite the same ideas and principles, or by an adequate grasp of the exact meaning of preceding efforts. To criticize the result as guided by one steadfast aim and rule, to asl why this and why that, is to seek for a consistency that does not and could not exist in a product of spiritual development ("Through Scylla and Charybdis," ibid., 153).

Again, the consistency affirmed by Newman is only apparent to Tyrrell. Doctrine does not develop in according to any pattern but rather by "spontaneous expansion and variation in every direction" (ibid). Elsewhere, he will unironically use the analogy of the way weeds spread to explain how doctrine develops!

It should be evident that Newman's theory of development is fundamentally different from Tyrrells. As this article has already gone on too long, though, I shall summarize:

Tyrrell the Positivist  vs. Newman the Idealist

Tyrrell argues that doctrine develops in a Positivist sense, meaning in response to external conditions in the world, such as arguments between theologians, intra-ecclesial conflicts, political turmoil, social change, etc. Newman, on the other hand, is an Idealist, who believs doctrine develops as the implications implicit in a concept are gradually unfolded. For Tyrrell external circumstances positively cause change, whereas for Newman they are merely the occasion of it.

Tyrrell's Hegelianism vs. Newman's Deductivism

For Tyrrell, the development of doctrine occurs through a Hegelian dialectic in which opposing and even contrary ideas clash until the "inventive imagination" of theologians finds a way to meld them and allow a new synthesis to emerge. For Newman, the development is anything but Hegelian; it follows a logical evolution, step by step, in which each subsequent developent is deduced from the prior.

Tyrrell's Rupturism vs. Newman's Continuity

Tyrrell admits that latter developments may blantantly contradict earlier and that, if prior developments have proved to be hurtful, latter generations have an obligation to go back and do away with "past irregularities." Newman, however, affirms that all development happens in continuity and that subsequent developments depend upon earlier and are anticipated by them.

Tyrrell Spiritual Expansion vs. Newman's Organic Development

Tyrrell argues that the development of dogma occurs expansively in every direction with no directedness. He criticizes Newman heavily in this regard, as Newman says doctrine develops organically, like a living creature, where the end development can be anticipated from the beginning.

Tyrrell's Mute Development vs. Newman's Revelatory Development

For Tyrrell, doctrinal developments do not clarify, explain, or deepen our understanding of the preexisting body of truths from which they sprang. Newman, however, affirms that doctrinal developments are "revelatory," that is, they do indeed enable us to deepen our understanding of existing dogma.

In short, Tyrrell the Modernist criticizes John Henry Newman specifically because Newman's teaching does not allow for doctrine develop in such a way that the teaching actually changes, which is what Tyrrell is eager to affirm. Newman's explanation leaves doctrine far too constrained, too fixed to its historic foundations, too bound to a predeterminated trajectory. In other words, Tyrrell weighs Newman's theory in the balance and rejects it because it is not Modernist.