G.K. Chesterton once wrote that “Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors.” It is a thought applicable to the art of apologetics, for there are numerous and valuable lessons to be learned from those who have gone before us in defending the Faith.
John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890) is rightly considered to have been both a literary and religious giant of the nineteenth century and his story is one of intense intellectual drama. A highly respected Anglican priest, Newman was a leader in the Oxford Movement during the 1830s and 40s. The Oxford Movement sought to prove, from study of the early Church Fathers, the historical and apostolic claims of the Anglican Church and to return to the pristine orthodoxy of the first centuries of Christianity. Newman and others in the Movement were convinced that the Catholic Church had corrupted and added to the early Church’s doctrines and had therefore lost any rightful claim to “the one Church.”
The similarities between this view and that of many present-day groups is quite evident, and so Newman’s story and writings have an abiding contemporary relevance for those seeking to defend the Catholic Church and her claims to have been directly founded by Jesus Christ.
Newman set out to write a definitive work which would cement the Anglican claims and demonstrate the falsehood of Rome’s claims. But his careful studies instead revealed the unthinkable: the Catholic Church was the one, true Church of Christ. In 1845, having resigned his position in the Anglican Church, Newman began writing The Development of Christian Doctrine, a masterful study of the doctrine of the early Church and its development during the first few centuries of Christianity. In 1847 he was ordained a priest in the Catholic Church. His conversion caused a significant sensation throughout England, a country still deeply anti-Catholic at the time. He was viciously attacked by many former friends and by the anti-Catholic press. In particular, a certain anti-Catholic writer, Charles Kingsley, began to unfairly malign Newman. In 1864 Newman responded to Kingsley’s attack by writing Apologia Pro Vita Sua, a towering apologetic of his conversion and of the Catholic Faith.
In The Development of Christian Doctrine, Newman wrote a brilliant work of patristic scholarship, historical theology, and ecclesiology which demonstrated the organic and necessary development of Catholic doctrine from the time of the early Church up until his own day. This development was not change, but rather the natural and supernatural growth of the mustard seed into the large plant (Matt. 13:31-32; Mark 4:31-32). As part of his study, Newman applied a number of tests to both the Church of England and the Catholic Church, seeking to find which one best met the claim of being the sole true Church founded by Christ.
The former Lutheran pastor and Catholic theologian Louis Bouyer, in his book on Newman’s life and work, wrote that it was careful analysis that revealed to Newman the undeniable truth, that “the Roman Church, and she alone, could show that, through all her developments, she had preserved unbroken her continuity with the Primitive Church, the Church set up by Christ, and founded on the Twelve.” (Bouyer, Newman [Meridian, 1960] 226).
Crucial to this realization was Newman’s study of history and the early Church Fathers. The future Cardinal explained that the study of history, however complicated and demanding, is imperative for the Christian, especially the Catholic, who wishes to comprehend the scope and riches of the Faith:
“History is not a creed or catechism, it gives lessons rather than rules; still no one can mistake its general teaching in this matter, whether he accept it or stumble at it. Bold outlines and broad masses of colour rise out of the records of the past. They may be dim, they may be incomplete; but they are definite. And this one thing at least is certain; whatever history teaches, whatever it omits, whatever it exaggerates or extenuates, whatever it says and unsays, at least the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this. And Protestantism has ever felt it so. . . . This is shown in the determination already referred to of dispensing with historical Christianity altogether, and of forming a Christianity from the Bible alone: men never would have put it aside, unless they had despaired of it. . . . Our popular religion scarcely recognizes the fact of the twelve long ages which lie between the Councils of Nicaea and Trent, except as offering one or two passages to illustrate its wild interpretations of certain prophecies of St. Paul and St. John. . . . To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.” (The Development of Christian Doctrine [New York: Longmans, Green and Co., Inc., 1949] 7).
History, as difficult and complex as it can be, is the Catholic’s friend. The Catholic apologist need never fear the facts of history or the writings of the early Church Fathers, the medieval mystics, or of the Scholastic saints. These writings and lives need to be embraced and studied, for they are our heritage and ancestry. They are like drops of water continually dripping into a vast reservoir, available to those who take the time to drink from them, quenching their thirst for truth. It was a lesson learned by a great apologist like Newman over a century ago and it is a lesson still worth learning today.
(This article was originally published in a different form in the November/December 1999 This Rock, a publication of Catholic Answers www.catholic.com.)
