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Dealing With Development: The Protestant Reviews of John Henry Newman’s An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 1845–7

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Erik Sidenvall
Erik Sidenvall*
Affiliation:
Lund University
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Extract

The greatness of John Henry Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine has been acknowledged many times since it was first published in 1845. Its international repute was secured by the beginning of the twentieth century; for example, the future Archbishop of Uppsala, Nathan Söderblom, writing on the modernist movement, described it and its author in 1910 as ‘the most significant theological work, written by England’s foremost theologian, and together with Leo XIII, the most important man in the Roman Catholic Church during the last century’. This estimation is confirmed by the impact Newman’s book has had on twentieth-century theology. One recent observer has judged that it is ‘significant, less for its positive arguments … [than] for its method of approach to the whole problem of Christian doctrine in its relation to the New Testament’. In other words, Newman’s book touches on a central topic of modern theology.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 38: The Church and the Book , 2004 , pp. 357 - 364
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2004

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References

1 Söderblom, Nathan, Rcligionsproblemct inom Katolicismen (Stockholm, 1910), 35 Google Scholar: ‘den teologiskt viktigaste alstringen av Englands förnämste teolog och katoilicisniens, ȧtminstonc jämtc Leo XIII, mest betydande pcrsonlighet under det gȧngna seklet’.

2 See for example Aidan Nichols, From Newman to Cougar: The Idea of Doctrinal Development from the Victorians to the Second Vatican Council (Edinburgh, 1990).

3 Rcardon, Bernard M.G., From Coleridge to Core: A Century of Religious Thought in Britain (1971), 146 Google Scholar.

4 See Brown, C.L., ‘Newman’s minor critics’, Downside Review, 89 (1971), 13–21 Google Scholar; Chadwick, Owen, From Bossuet to Newman: the Idea of Doctrinal Development (Cambridge, 1957), 164–84 Google Scholar, 236n; Maurice Nédoncelle, ‘Lo Développement de la doctrine chrétienne: J.B. Mozley, critique anglican de Newman’, Oecumenica (1971-2), 156–74; David Nicholls, ‘Newman’s Anglican critics’, Anglican Theological Review, 47 (1965), 377–95.

5 Liddon, H.P., The Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey, 4 vols (London, 1894-8), 2:444 Google Scholar. See also the Wesleyan Watchman (2 July 1845).

6 I have treated these reactions in Erik Sidcnvall, ‘Meanings in John Henry Newman’s conversion: a study of the Church of England press, 1845–1846’ (University of Lund, Licentiate’s thesis, 1999).

7 See for example the Standard (13 Oct. 1845).

8 Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country, 33 (March 1846), 256.

9 Barter, Willam, A Postscript to the English Church not in Schism: Containing a Few Words on Mr. Newman’s Essay on Development (1846), 13 Google Scholar.

10 English Review, 4 (Dec. 1845), 399. Even the ‘moderate Evangelical’ George Stanley Fabcr argued in a similar way; see his letters in the Christian’s Monthly Magazine, and Church of England Review, 5 (1846) 233–48, 353–75.

11 For the importance of patristic authority in the High Church tradition, see Nockles, Peter Benedict, The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship, 1760–1857, pbk edn (Cambridge, 1997), 104–45 Google Scholar.

12 English Churchman (4 Dec. 1845). See also the Surplice (6 Dec. 1845).

13 Quarterly Review, 77 (1846), 415. See also Christian’s Monthly Magazine, and Church of England Review, 5 (1846), 17–37, 272–85; Edinburgh Review, 84 (1846), 219–21 (article written by Baden Powell); ibid., 86 (1847), 397.

14 Ibid., 221.

15 Churchman’s Monthly Review (Jan. 1846), 68–83; Baptist Magazine, 48 (1846), 153–7, 224–31.

16 Churchman’s Monthly Review (Jan. 1846), 70.

17 Quarterly Review, 77 (1846), 406.

18 Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country, 33 (1846), 256. David Friedrich Strauss (1808-74), German theologian and disciple of Hegel, provoked fury all over Europe with his Das Lehenjesu (2 vols, Tubingen, 1836). In these volumes Strauss treated the biblical narrative of Jesus as a ‘myth’, an embodiment of the ‘idea of humanity’. To orthodox English Protestants, Strauss became the epitome of German rationalistic theology.

19 The most eloquent exposition of this view is found in William Palmer [of Worcester], The Doctrine of Development and Conscience Considered in Relation to the Evidences of Christianity and of the Catholic System (1846), 88–9, 128–33. See also, for example, Charles James Blomficld, A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of London, at the Visitation in October MDCCCXLVI (1846); Wilberforce, Samuel, A Charge, Delivered to the Candidates for Ordination; and a Sermon, Preached at the General Ordination, in the Cathedral Church of Christ, Oxford, December 21, 1845 (Oxford, 1845 Google Scholar).

20 See Gilley, Sheridan, ‘The Church of England in the nineteenth century’, in Gilley, Sheridan and Sheils, W.J., eds, A History of Religion in Britain: Practice and Belief from the Pre-Roman Times to the Present (Oxford, 1094), 302 Google Scholar.

21 Christian Reformer, 2 (1846), 357–9 (signed H.P.), 462–72 (signed H.H.P.).

22 Ibid., 359.

23 Oxford and Cambridge Review, 2 (Feb. 1846), 135.

24 Nockles, Oxford Movement in Context, 104–9.

25 Wolffe, John, The Protestant Crusade in Great Britain 1829–1860 (Oxford, 1991), 109–10 Google Scholar.

26 Oliver, W.H., Prophets and Miliennialists: the Use of Biblical Prophecy in England from the IT aos to the 1840s (Auckland, 1978), 58 Google Scholar; Sack, James J., From Jacobite to Conservative: Reaction and Orthodoxy in Britain, c.1760-1842 (Cambridge, 1993), 244–5 Google Scholar.

27 See also Wordsworth, Christopher, Letters to M. Condon (1847), 9–10 Google Scholar.

28 Priest, An Anglican, A Few Words Addressed to the Author of ‘An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine’ (1846), 8–9 Google Scholar. This example shows that the ‘cither – or’ argument was already used in the reception of Newman’s Essay. Compare Altholz, Josef L., ‘The mind of Victorian orthodoxy: Anglican responses to Essays and Reviews, 1860–1864’, Church History, 57 (1982), 196 Google Scholar.

29 McLeod, Hugh, Secularisation in Western Europe, 1848–1914 (2000)Google Scholar, ch.6.