Newman Belongs to the Great Teachers of the Church
Joseph Ratzinger - John H. Newman has written about his own experience of a never-ending conversion and has interpreted for us not only the path of Christian doctrine, but also that of Christian life. The characteristic of every great Doctor of the Church, it seems to me, is that he teaches not only through his thought and his words, but also through his life, because within him, thought and life merge and define each other. If this is so, then Newman belongs to the great teachers of the Church, because he touches our hearts and at the same time enlightens our thinking.
I do not feel competent to speak about Newman's figure or work, but perhaps it makes sense to say something about my own journey towards Newman, which certainly reflects something of the presence of this great English theologian in the intellectual and spiritual struggles of our time.
In January 1946, when I began studying theology at the seminary in Freising, which had finally reopened its doors after the turmoil of the war, a student older than me was appointed prefect of our group. This student had begun work on a dissertation on Newman's theology of conscience even before the war began. Throughout his years of military service, he had never lost touch with this subject, to which he now returned with renewed enthusiasm and energy.
We soon became captivated by a personal friendship, totally focused on the great problems of philosophy and theology. Of course, Newman was always present. Alfred Läpple—as the prefect I just mentioned was called—published his dissertation in 1952 with this title: Der Einzelne in der Kirche (The Individual in the Church).
For us at that time, Newman's teaching on conscience became an important basis for theological personalism, whose design was presented to us in a balanced way. Our image of the human being, like our image of the Church, was permeated by this starting point. We had experienced the pretensions of a totalitarian party that understood itself as the fulfillment of history and denied the conscience of the individual. One of its leaders had said, “I have no conscience. My conscience is Adolf Hitler.” The overwhelming devastation of humanity that followed was before our eyes. Therefore, it was liberating and essential for us to know that the “we” of the Church does not rest on a liquidation of conscience, but, on the contrary, can only develop from conscience. Precisely because Newman interpreted human existence based on conscience, that is, the relationship between God and the soul, it was clear that this personalism is not individualism, and that being bound by conscience does not mean being free to make random choices, but rather the opposite. From Newman we learned to understand the primacy of the Pope. Freedom of conscience, Newman told us, does not mean having the right “to disregard conscience, to ignore the Lawgiver and Judge, to be independent of invisible obligations.” Therefore, conscience in its true sense is the cornerstone of papal authority; its power comes from a revelation that completes natural conscience, which is imperfectly enlightened, and “the defense of moral law and conscience is its raison d'être.”
I need not explicitly mention that this teaching on conscience has become increasingly important to me in the ongoing development of the Church and the world. I see more and more clearly how it is at the forefront of the cardinal's biography, which must be understood solely in connection with the drama of his century, so that it can speak to us in this way. Newman came to conversion as a man of conscience; it was his conscience that led him out of old bonds and securities, leading him into the world of Catholicism, which was so difficult and strange to him. But this path of conscience is anything but a path of self-sufficient subjectivity: it is a path of obedience to objective truth. The second step in Newman's long journey toward conversion was the overcoming of the subjective evangelical position in favor of an understanding of Christianity based on the objectivity of dogma. In this connection, I find a formulation, taken from one of his early sermons, that may be especially significant today:
True Christianity appears (...) in obedience and not through a state of conscience. Therefore, the whole obligation and all the work of a Christian is composed of these two parts: faith and obedience; looking to Jesus (Heb 2:9) (...) and acting according to his will (...). I think we are in danger these days of not insisting on all this as we should, considering any true and careful appreciation of the object of faith as sterile orthodoxy, technical subtlety (...), and (...) making it a test of our religiousness whether we have what is usually called a spiritual state of heart.
In this context, I find some statements taken from The Arians of the Fourth Century important, which may sound rather surprising at first:
(...) to detect and approve the principle that (...) peace is based on Scripture; to submit to the dictates of truth as such as the principal authority in matters of political and private conduct; to understand (...) that enthusiasm takes precedence over benevolence in the succession of Christian graces.
I always find it fascinating to see and consider the extent to which, on this path and only on this path, through commitment to the truth, to God, conscience receives its rank, its dignity, and its strength. In this context, I would like to add just one statement taken from the Apologia, which shows the realism in this idea of the person and of the Church: “Living movements do not arise from committees.”
I would like to return very briefly to the autobiographical thread. When I continued my studies in Munich in 1947, I encountered a good reader and enthusiastic follower of Newman in the Fundamental Theologian Gottlieb Söhngen, who was my true teacher of theology. He introduced us to Grammar of Assent and, in doing so, to a special form or manner of certainty in religious knowledge. Even more profound for me was the contribution published by Heinrich Fries on the occasion of the Chalcedon jubilee. There I found access to Newman's teaching on the development of doctrine, which I regard, together with his doctrine on conscience, as his most decisive contribution to the renewal of theology. With this, he placed in our hands the key to constructing historical thinking within theology, or even more: he taught us to think historically in theology, and thus to recognize the identity of faith in all developments. At this point, I must stop delving deeper into these ideas. It seems to me that Newman's starting point, even in modern theology, has not yet been fully appreciated.
Hidden within it are possibilities full of future promise that await further development. I would now like to refer back to the biographical assumptions of this concept. It is well known how Newman's in-depth reflection on the ideas of development influenced his path to Catholicism. But it is not simply a question of ideas being discovered. Newman's own life plays a role in the concept of development. I think this became clear to me in his well-known words: “To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”
Throughout his life, Newman was a person in a permanent state of conversion, a person in a permanent state of transformation, and that is why he always remained and became more and more himself. At this point, the figure of St. Augustine, to whom Newman was so attached, comes to mind. When Augustine was converted in the garden of Cassiciacum, he understood his conversion in accordance with the system of the respected teacher Plotinus and the Neoplatonic philosophers. He thought that his past sinful life would now be definitively settled; from now on, something completely new and different would happen in the convert, and his subsequent journey would be a steady climb toward ever purer heights of closeness to God. It was something similar to what Gregory of Nyssa described in his Ascent of Moses:
Just as bodies, after receiving a first push downward, fall effortlessly into the depths at ever-increasing speed, so, on the contrary, the soul that has detached itself from earthly passions rises in a rapid upward movement (...) constantly surpassing itself in a steady flight toward the heights.
Augustine's actual experience was different. He had to learn that being a Christian is always a difficult journey full of highs and lows. The image of the ascensus is replaced by that of the iter, whose heavy weariness is illuminated and strengthened by moments of light that we can receive now and then. Conversion is the iter, that is, the journey of a lifetime. And faith is always “development,” and precisely in this way, it is the maturity of the soul in truth, in God, who is more intimate to us than we are to ourselves.
In the idea of “development,” Newman has written his own experience of a never-ending conversion, and has interpreted for us not only the path of Christian doctrine but also that of Christian life. The characteristic of every great Doctor of the Church, it seems to me, is that he teaches not only through his thought and his words, but also through his life, because within him, thought and life merge and define each other. If this is so, then Newman belongs to the great teachers of the Church, because he touches our hearts and at the same time enlightens our thinking.
Rome, April 28, 1990
Notes
[*] Presentation given by the author—then Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—on the occasion of the first centenary of the death of Cardinal John Henry Newman.