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Newman, the Church of England and the Catholic Church

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Geoffrey Rowell
Geoffrey Rowell*
Affiliation:
Keble College, Oxford, Bishop's Lodge, Church Road, Worth, Crawley, West Sussex, RH10 7RT
*
Email: bishop@diocesesineurope.org.uk
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Abstract

Newman was formed in the Church of England and all his major theological concerns were developed in an Anglican context. The rebuttal of utilitarian scepticism in the University Sermons; the ecclesial context of Christian faith and life in The Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church; the strong sense of mystery in Newman's epistemology and apologetic; the sacramental character of Christian truth are all significantly part of the Anglican inheritance that he took to the Roman Catholic Church. Furthermore Newman's early formation was ‘pre-Victorian’– he was engaged when writing his Essay on Scriptural Miracles with earlier debates with the Deists, as well as sharing in the rediscovery of the imagination that characterised Coleridge and the Romantic Movement. This paper explores these and other issues to show an important part of Newman's enduring Anglican inheritance.

Keywords

NewmanChurch of EnglandCatholicecumenicalmystery
Type
Original Articles
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 92 , Issue 1038 , March 2011 , pp. 130 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 The Author. New Blackfriars © 2011 The Dominican Society.

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References

1 J. H. Newman, Letters and Diaries, VI, pp. 86, 259 (28.6.1838) ‘Manning came in. (Coronation Day). Walked about with Manning.’

2 Liddon, H. P., Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey, II (1836–1846), 1893 (2nd edn.), London, 1893, p. 461Google Scholar.

3 Ibid.

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8 John Coulson, ‘Newman on the Church – His Final View, its Origin and Influence’ in Coulson, John & Allchin, A. M. (eds), The Rediscovery of Newman; an Oxford Symposium, London, 1967, pp. 121–143Google Scholar.

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10 J. H. Newman, The Via Media of the Anglican Church illustrated in Lectures, Letters and Tracts written between 1830 and 1841,I, 1891, p. xl, and in the critical edition of H. D. Weidner, Oxford, 1990, p. 25.

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14 Ibid., p. 26 (February 9, 1835).

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30 Quotation in Coulson, John, Religion and Imagination: ‘in Aid of a Grammar of Assent’, Oxford, 1981, p. 64Google Scholar from an unpublished theological paper of Newman at the Birmingham Oratory.

31 Newman to Sir James Stephen, 15 March, 1835, quotation in David Newsome, the Parting of Friends: a study of the Wilberforces and Henry Manning, London, 1966, pp. 185–6 (see pp. 179–188 for the wider context of this correspondence and Samuel Wilberforce's comments on Newman's position). Newman, J. H., L&D, V, Oxford, 1981, p. 46.Google Scholar

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40 Cited in Coulson & Allchin, p. 59.

41 Cf, Rowell, Geoffrey, ‘Making the Church of England Poetical: Ephraim and the Oxford Movement’, Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies, 2.1., January, 1999Google Scholar.

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47 William Palmer, A Treatise on the Church of Christ, 3rd ed. London. I, p. 381. Cf Geoffrey Rowell, ‘Newman and the Anglican Tradition: Reflections on Tractarianism and the Seventeenth-Century Anglican Divines’ in Terence Merrigan (ed,), John Henry Cardinal Newman, 1801–1890, Louvain Studies 15.2–3, 1990.