John Henry Newman And The Development Of Doctrine

An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, reprinted from the 1878 edition, “is rightly regarded as one of the most seminal theological works ever to be written,” states Ian Ker in his foreword to this sixth edition. “It remains,” Ker continues, "the classic text for the theology of the development of doctrine, a branch of theology which has become especially important in the ecumenical era.” John Henry Cardinal Newman begins the Essay by defining how true developments in doctrine occur. He then delivers a sweeping consideration of the growth of doctrine in the Catholic Church from the time of the Apostles to his own era. He demonstrates that the basic “rule” under which Christianity proceeded through the centuries is to be found in the principle of development, and he emphasizes that throughout the entire life of the Church this principle has been in effect and safeguards the faith from any corruption.

Text is that of the revised edition of 1878.

“Considering the high gifts, and the strong claims of the Church of Rome and its dependencies on our admiration, reverence, love, and gratitude, how could we withstand it, as we do; how could we refrain from being melted into tenderness, and rushing into communion with it, but for the words of Truth itself, which bid us prefer it to the whole world? ‘He that loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me.’ How could we learn to be severe, and execute judgment, but for the warning of Moses against even a divinely-gifted teacher who should preach new gods, and the anathema of St. Paul even against Angels and Apostles who should bring in a new doctrine?” Aeterna Press

John Henry Newman and the Development of Doctrine provides an analysis of the attempts by John Henry Newman to account for the historical reality of doctrinal change within Christianity in the light of his lasting conviction that the idea of Christianity is fixed by reference to the dogmatic content of the deposit of faith. It argues that Newman proposed a series of hypotheses to account for the apparent contradiction between change and continuity, that this series begins much earlier than is generally recognized and that the final hypothesis he was to propose, contained in An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, provides a methodology of lasting theological value and contemporary relevance. Stephen Morgan establishes the centrality of the problem of change and continuity in theology, to Newman's theological work as an Anglican, its part in his conversion to Catholicism and its contemporary relevance to Catholic theology. It also surveys the major secondary literature relating to the question, with particular reference to those works published within the last fifty years. Additionally, Morgan considers the legacy of the Essay as a tool in Newman’s theology and in the work of later theologians, finally suggesting that it may offer a useful methodological contribution to the contemporary Catholic debate about hermeneutical approaches to the Second Vatican Council and post-conciliar developments in doctrine.

"Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts (which indeed does not seem quite the thing), I shall drink -- to the Pope, if you please -- still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards." --John Henry Cardinal Newman In the works collected here, including An Essay on the Development of Christian doctrine, A Letter Addressed to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk, and On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine, John Henry Cardinal Newman, the great nineteenth-century English theologian, debunks a few Catholic myths: Myth #1: The teaching of the Catholic Church on faith and morals has never changed and never will change. Not so, this brilliant scholar says. For just as each era has new ways of understanding, so, too, must the Catholic Church always change in its understanding of faith and morals. Myth #2: Catholics have to do whatever the Pope says. To the contrary, according to Newman's famous quip on after-dinner toasts, the ultimate obligation of Catholics is to conscience, not the Pope. Myth #3: It's the bishops who teach, the laity who follows. Newman turns this notion upside down: The laity, he says, are the source and final seal of the church's teaching; thus the bishops must listen to them. Never before collected in one volume, these classic works reveal Newman at his eloquent best as he speaks to the religious crises of our time.

John Henry Newman's decision to become a Roman Catholic was confirmed by his work on one of his major contributions to theology, Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. Ironically, the writings that brought him into the Catholic Church were viewed so suspiciously by Church officials that from his very first days as a Catholic he experienced distance, avoidance, distrust, and even cynicism in his relationship with the hierarchy. In hope of obtaining an honest and competent critique of his views on the development of doctrine, he conceived the idea of a presentation of his ideas, not in English, but in Latin, and in the style not of a historical essay, but of a Scholastic treatise. The result was De catholici dogmatis evolutione, here translated into the author's native tongue as On The Development of Catholic Dogma

The following pages were not in the first instance written to prove the divinity of the Catholic Religion, though ultimately they furnish a positive argument in its behalf, but to explain certain difficulties in its history, felt before now by the author himself, and commonly insisted on by Protestants in controversy, as serving to blunt the force of its primâ facie and general claims on our recognition. However beautiful and promising that Religion is in theory, its history, we are told, is its best refutation; the inconsistencies, found age after age in its teaching, being as patent as the simultaneous contrarieties of religious opinion manifest in the High, Low, and Broad branches of the Church of England. In reply to this specious objection, it is maintained in this Essay that, granting that some large variations of teaching in its long course of 1800 years exist, nevertheless, these, on examination, will be found to arise from the nature of the case, and to proceed on a law, and with a harmony and a definite drift, and with an analogy to Scripture revelations, which, instead of telling to their disadvantage, actually constitute an argument in their favour, as witnessing to a superintending Providence and a great Design in the mode and in the circumstances of their occurrence.