¹ Address of Benedict XVI at the Prayer Vigil on the Eve of the Beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman, 18 September 2010. Available at <www.vatican.va.>

² Presentation by His Eminence Card. Joseph Ratzinger on the Occasion of the First Centenary of the Death of Card. John Henry Newman, 28 April 1990. Available at <www.vatican.va.>

³ Ibid.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Tracey Rowland argues that near the heart of Ratzinger's theological project is “coming to an understanding of the mediation of history within the realm of ontology,” which he deemed the “fundamental crisis of our age.” See Benedict XVI: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: T&T Clark International, 2010), 8, 93Google Scholar; quotation at 93.

⁶ See Ratzinger, Joseph, “Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation:” [hereafter “Constitution”], Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, Vol. 3, ed. Vorgrimler, Herbert, trans. Glen-Doepel, William (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 156Google Scholar; and Ratzinger, Joseph, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics: New Endeavors in Ecclesiology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), 91-92Google Scholar.

⁷ Ratzinger, Joseph, Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977, trans. Leiva-Merikakis, Erasmo (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), 108-109Google Scholar.

⁸ Biemer, Günter, Newman on Tradition, trans. Smyth, Kevin (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), 51Google Scholar.

⁹ Ibid., 51-52.

¹⁰ Ratzinger, “Constitution,” 175.

¹¹ Ibid., 187-188. Thomas G. Guarino argues that Ratzinger, along with Yves Congar and other theologians of the conciliar period, has mischaracterized Vincent's canon, for they have failed to see that “[t]radition, for Vincent, is a dynamic, organic process, deeply rooted in Scripture, while allowing for a harmonious, architectonic unfolding.” See Vincent of Lérins and the Development of Christian Doctrine (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2013), 2-3, 81-82; quotation at 81. Guarino also offers a detailed analysis of Newman's career long encounter with Lérins, including how Newman's understanding of Lérins's canon developed as Newman moved from the Anglican Church to the Catholic Church. See Chapter 2. For the advantages of Newman's approach to doctrinal development over that of Lérins, see Biemer, Newman on Tradition, 131-134.

¹² Biemer, Newman on Tradition, 52. Biemer precedes this comment by noting that, contrary to the opinion of Owen Chadwick, this new turn in Newman's thought did have roots in his earlier work. See pages 48-51.

¹³ Ibid., 52. For Yves Congar's similar gloss on this passage in Newman's sermon, see Tradition and Traditions (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966), 253-254Google Scholar.

¹⁴ In addition to the Fifteenth Oxford Sermon, this thinking is echoed in Newman's note on the “logical sequence” of an idea's development in An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 189-195.

¹⁵ Quoted in Newman on Tradition, 115; the citation is from Newman's Parochial Sermons, IV.

¹⁶ Newman, John Henry, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine [hereafter Essay] (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 86Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Newman, John Henry, Roman Catholic Writings on Doctrinal Development, ed. and trans. Gaffney, James (Kansas City, Missouri: Sheed & Ward, 1997), 11Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Newman, Essay, 86. Biemer asserts that, by virtue of Newman's illative sense, “the act of tradition may be described as the functioning of the conscience of the Church.” Newman on Tradition, 147.

¹⁹ Newman, Roman Catholic Writings on Doctrinal Development, 12.

²⁰ Biemer, Newman on Tradition, 131.

²¹ Newman, Roman Catholic Writings on Doctrinal Development, 11. Newman adds that “the word of God cannot be regarded otherwise than as present in some intellect, in a way that does not detract from its integrity and fullness, nor inject any alien taint into the natural luster of divine realities.” Ibid., 11.

²² Ibid., 15. Cf. Newman, John Henry, Fifteen Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford between A.D. 1826 and 1843 [hereafter Oxford Sermons] (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 333Google Scholar.

²³ Newman, Roman Catholic Writings on Doctrinal Development, 14.

²⁴ Biemer, Newman on Tradition, 126-129.

²⁵ Ibid., 140.

²⁶ Newman, John Henry, The Via Media of the Anglican Church. Illustrated in Lectures, Letters, and Tracts written between 1830-1841, Vol. 1 (London: Gilbert and Rivington, 1877), 249-251Google Scholar. Biemer summarizes the two terms in Newman on Tradition, 46-47. For a more recent account see McDade, John S.J., “Episcopal and Prophetic Traditions in the Church,” New Blackfriars 92, no. 1038 (2011): 176-188CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The summary that follows is my own.

²⁷ Ibid., 249.

²⁸ Ibid.

²⁹ Biemer, Newman on Tradition, 95: “Newman often treats the Creed in a wide sense as the equivalent of the deposit.”

³⁰ Newman, Via Media, 250.

³¹ Biemer, Newman on Tradition, 47.

³² Newman, John Henry, Lectures on the Present Difficulties of Catholics in England (London: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1896), 326Google Scholar. Cf. Congar, Tradition and Traditions, 369: “Tradition as coextensive and fundamentally identified with the Christian life as handed on in the Church since the time of the apostles is the proper milieu of faith.”

³³ Ibid., 328.

³⁴ In the Essay Newman compares the central idea of a philosophy or belief to a stream, which, contrary to popular belief, is not clearer near the spring; rather the idea “is more equable, and purer, and stronger, when its bed has become deep, and broad, and full.” Essay, 40. It follows according to Newman's theory of the development of doctrine that the truths of revelation become better known after they have been meditated upon, or even challenged, and then formulated into dogma.

³⁵ Ibid., 53.

³⁶ Newman, Essay, 88-89. Cf. “The gift of inspiration requires as its complement the gift of infallibility,” Newman, John Henry, On the Inspiration of Scripture (Washington, D.C.: Corpus Books, 1967), 111 (§ 15)Google Scholar.

³⁷ Ibid., 91. For a summary of Newman's position on the Church as infallible interpreter of revelation, see Coulson, John, Newman and the Common Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 74-82Google Scholar.

³⁸ Biemer, Newman on Tradition, 153.

³⁹ Ibid., 160.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 36.

⁴¹ Although Newman mixes the terms “tradition” and “Tradition” with a capital “T” in the Essay, with both he essentially means, in the words of James Gaffney, “what Christians had always, at least implicitly, believed.” James Gaffney, Preface to Roman Catholic Writings on Doctrinal Development, xv.

⁴² See Newman, Oxford Sermons, 335.

⁴³ Newman, Roman Catholic Writings on Doctrinal Development, 19.

⁴⁴ Ibid.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 23.

⁴⁶ Originally published as Joseph Ratzinger and Karl Rahner, Revelation and Tradition, trans. W.J. O'Hara (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966). Ratzinger's essay has been reissued with a new translation and a new title. See Ratzinger, Joseph, “The Question of the Concept of Tradition: A Provisional Response,” God's Word: Scripture, Tradition, Office, ed. Hünermann, Peter and Söding, Thomas, trans. Taylor, Henry (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), 41-89Google Scholar. All citations in the following account are from the latter text.

⁴⁷ Ratzinger, “Constitution,” 155.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 155-156.

⁴⁹ Biemer, Newman on Tradition, 36-42. Newman, , in his Apologia pro Vita Sua (New York: Penguin Books, 1994)Google Scholar, credits Joseph Butler's Analogy of Religion for exposing him to “the historical character of Revelation” (30).

⁵⁰ See Newman on Tradition, 52. McCool, Gerald, Nineteenth Century Scholasticism: The Search for a Unitary Method (New York: Fordham University Press, 1999), 67-75Google Scholar; the reference to Newman, the only one in the book, is at 67. Although it is beyond the present scope, it is noteworthy that McCool's summary of Johann Sebestian von Drey's (founder of the Tübingen School in 1817) theory of a “formative idea” that develops in Christianity is remarkably similar to Newman's account of the development of ideas in the Essay, similar enough that one may allow for the possibility of Newman's acquaintance with the German idealists. McCool's summary is at 71. However, Philip C. Rule insists that Newman did not read German and therefore was cut off from Germany's philosophical and theological happenings. See Coleridge and Newman: The Centrality of Conscience (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004), 26-27. Aidan Nichols states that interest in development emerged independently in England, Germany, and Rome. See From Newman to Congar: The Idea of Doctrinal Development from the Victorians to the Second Vatican Council (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990), 5.

⁵¹ Congar, Tradition and Traditions, 211. Congar notes that Newman and Johann Adam Möhler (1796-1838) were the first Catholics to work out a theory of development (217-218). One could add, based on the above discussion, that the two did so roughly contemporaneously and likely without a great familiarity with the other's work.

⁵² Ibid., 210.

⁵³ Fischer, Mark F., Catholic Hermeneutics: The Theology of Tradition and the Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer, (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1983), 304Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Ibid., 196-197. Franzelin's flagship work on the topic, Tractatus de divina traditione et scriptura, was published in 1870.

⁵⁵ Ratzinger, Joseph, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics: New Endeavors in Ecclesiology, trans. Miller, Michael J. et al. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), 16-17Google Scholar. This passage is identified by Rowland, Tracey in Benedict XVI: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: T&T Clark International, 2010), 69CrossRefGoogle Scholar, but in a slightly different context.

⁵⁶ Rowland, Benedict XVI: A Guide for the Perplexed, 12n20. “Presentation by His Eminence Card. Joseph Ratzinger on the Occasion of the First Centenary of the Death of Card. John Henry Newman.” Fries, Heinrich, Die Religionsphilosophie Newmans (Stuttgart: Schwabenverlag, 1948)Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ Fries, Heinrich, “Die Dogmengeschichte des fünften Jahrhunderts im theologischen Werdegang von John Henry Newman,” Das Konzil von Chalkedon, ed. Grillmeier, Alois (Würzburg, 1954), III, 421-454Google Scholar; and Fries, Heinrich, “Henry Newmans Beitrag zum Verständnis der Tradition,” Vitae et Veritati: Festgabe für Karl Adam (Düsseldorf: Patmos-Verlag, 1956), 103-143Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Ratzinger, , The Theology of History in St. Bonaventure (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ This presentation has been published as one of two essays in Ratzinger, Joseph, On Conscience (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007): 11-41Google Scholar. Ratzinger does not seem to have given equivalent attention to Newman's theory on development or tradition in his long career of theological writing.

⁶⁰ Fries, “Henry Newmans Beitrag zum Verständnis der Tradition,” 135-136. “Wir haben darüber eine schriftliche Fixierung von Newman selbst mit kommentierenden Zusätzen des römischen Theologen…. Perrone präzisiert sie vor allem im Blick auf das Moment der Autorität der Kirche und der klaren Unterschiedung zwischen Zeugnis und Autorität.”

⁶¹ According to James Gaffney, Newman and Perrone's “positions appear to assume different slants while sharing the same foundation.” See Introduction to Roman Catholic Writings on Development, 8.

⁶² Rowland paraphrases Ratzinger's studies of Newman in Benedict XVI: A Guide for the Perplexed, 12-13. Ratzinger also mentions his studies of Newman on conscience in Milestones, 43.

⁶³ Geiselmann's own work on tradition is examined carefully by Ratzinger in both “Constitution” and “The Question of the Concept of Tradition.” For Geiselmann's role in advancing the prominence of the Tübingen School, see McCool, Nineteenth Century Scholasticism, 68.

⁶⁴ Ratzinger, “The Question of the Concept of Tradition,” 50.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 51. Emphasis in original.

⁶⁶ Cf. Ratzinger, Milestones, 108-109: “[I]f Bonaventure is right, then revelation precedes Scripture and becomes deposited in Scripture but is not simply identical with it. This in turn means that revelation is always something greater than what is merely written down.”

⁶⁷ Ratzinger, “The Question of the Concept of Tradition,” 52.

⁶⁸ Ibid., 53.

⁶⁹ See note 22, above.

⁷⁰ Canty, Aaron, “Bonaventurian Resonances in Benedict XVI's Theology of Revelation,” Nova et Vetera (English) 5, no. 2 (2007): 249-266Google Scholar. In Canty's summary of Bonaventure on the forms of revelation, “The subjective dimension of revelation, that is, what pertains to an individual's penetrating vision of the intelligible world, is bound up with prophecy and contemplation. The objective dimension of revelation, that is, what pertains to the content of revelation, is found in Scripture and the understanding of Scripture as articulated by the Fathers of the Church.” Quotation at 253.

⁷¹ Ratzinger, “The Question of the Concept of Tradition,” 56.

⁷² Ratzinger, “Constitution,” 175. Emphasis in original.

⁷³ Ibid., 179. Ratzinger reiterates the dialogical character of revelation throughout his commentary.

⁷⁴ Ratzinger, “The Question of the Concept of Tradition,” 57-58.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 58.

⁷⁶ Ibid. The authority to interpret comes from the presence of Christ's Spirit in his body, the Church. See Ibid., 63.

⁷⁷ Ibid., 63.

⁷⁸ Ibid., 63-64. Emphasis added.

⁷⁹ Ratzinger expresses this same idea with a pneumatological accent in “Constitution:” “[T]radition takes place essentially as the growing insight, mediated by the Holy Spirit, into revelation that has been given once and for all; it is the perfectio of faith which the Spirit brings about in the Church” (179).

⁸⁰ For Ratzinger's understanding of “Tradition” and “traditions” at Vatican II, see “Constitution,” 183-184.

⁸¹ Ratzinger, “The Question of the Concept of Tradition,” 58.

⁸² Joseph Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics: New Endeavors in Ecclesiology, 82.

⁸³ For more on the relationship between apostolic succession and tradition, see Ratzinger, Joseph, Principles of Catholic Theology, trans. McCarthy, Mary Frances (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), 244-247Google Scholar, and Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, 77-85.

⁸⁴ See note 39, above.

⁸⁵ Ratzinger, “Constitution,” 193.

⁸⁶ Ibid.

⁸⁷ Ibid., 185. Emphasis added. In a different context, Ratzinger makes the same point: “It is essential to have the most accurate knowledge possible of what the Bible says from a historical point of view. Progressive deepening of such knowledge can always serve to purify and enrich tradition.” Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, 86.

⁸⁸ According to Biemer, Newman's theology of tradition was solidified in the 1840s. See Newman on Tradition, 57, 64.

⁸⁹ See note 5, above.