Articles
Revisiting St. John Henry Newman on the Humanity of the God-man
Donald Graham
Issue 3
Volume 1
pp. 656 - 691
https://doi.org/10.65172/VCHXFo8IBim7pIZH
Abstract
Donald Graham argues that St. John Henry Newman offers an original, though intermittently qualified, Christology that emphasizes the genuine humanity and affective life of the God-man. While acknowledging criticisms of Newman’s Alexandrian stress on Christ's divinity, Graham highlights Newman’s later adoption of neo-Chalcedonian principles to safeguard Christ’s human individuality. Through the lens of "sympathy" and friendship, Graham illustrates how Newman portrays Christ as a recognizable, feeling human being.
Citations
St. Athanasius, “Oration 3.57,” in The Orations of St. Athanasius Against the Arians, cited in “Special Characteristics of Our Lord’s Manhood,” in Selected Treatises of Saint Athanasius, 2:297–98
“The Mediator,” in John Henry Newman: Sermons 1824–1843, 1:254.
Roderick Strange, “Newman and the Mystery of Christ,” in Newman After a Hundred Years,” ed. Ian Ker and Alan G. Hill (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 323–36; citations at 323–24.
John Henry Newman, “Bodily Suffering” (May 3, 1835), in Parochial and Plain Sermons, 3:148, 150
John Henry Newman, “Affliction, A School of Comfort” (October 19, 1834) and “Tears at the Grave of Lazarus” (April 12, 1835), in Parochial and Plain Sermons, 8 vols. (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1966–68), 5:300–11, at 305; 3:128–38, at 129.
Selected Treatises of Saint Athanasius, 2:296, 293.
Selected Treatises of Saint Athanasius, 2:297
Thomas G. Weinandy, “Cyril and the Mystery of the Incarnation,” in The Theology of St. Cyril: A Critical Appreciation (Bloomsbury: T&T Clark, 2003), 23–54, esp., 30.
Avery Dulles, John Henry Newman (New York: Continuum, 2002), 16
Selected Treatises of Saint Athanasius, 2:162.
Donald Graham, From Eastertide to Ecclesia (Marquette, WI: Marquette University Press, 2011), 91–121.
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, qq. 9–13.
Benjamin King, Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers, 156.
The Cambridge Companion to John Henry Newman, ed. Ian Kerr and Terrence Merrigan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Receptions of Newman, ed. Frederick D. Aquino and Benjamin J. King (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
The Oxford Handbook of John Henry Newman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
John Henry Newman, “Christian Sympathy” (February 17, 1839), in Parochial and Plain Sermons, 5:118.
Gabriel Daly, review of Newman and the Gospel of Christ, by Roderick Strange, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 35, no. 2 (April 1984): 289–91.
Rowan Williams, introduction to The Arians of the Fourth Century, by John Henry Newman, 3rd ed. (Leominster, UK: Gracewing, 2001), xix–xlvii.
Benjamin King, Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers: Shaping Doctrine in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 127–80.
Newman, “Tears of Christ at the Grave of Lazarus,” in Parochial and Plain Sermons, 3:132–33.
Selected Treatises of Saint Athanasius, 2:298
Selected Treatises of Saint Athanasius, 2:299.
John Henry Newman, “Fasting a Source of Trial” (March 4, 1838), in Parochial and Plain Sermons, 6:1–14, at 7
John Henry Newman, “Transgressions and Infirmities” (March 25, 1838), in Parochial and Plain Sermons, 5:195–208, at 201.
John Henry Newman, “Mental Sufferings of Our Lord in His Passion,” in Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations [1849] (London: Longmans, Green, 1902), 329–31
John McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy; Its History, Theology, and Texts (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004), 192.
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Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers, 11, 89, 129n233, 241.
Selected Treatises of Saint Athanasius, 2:293
John Henry Newman, Essays: Critical and Historical, vol. 1 (London: Longmans, Green, 1919), 30–99.
Jacob Abbott, The Corner-Stone; or A Familiar Illustration of the Principles of Christian Truth (Boston: William Peirce, 1834).
Selected Treatises of Saint Athanasius, 2:297.
Selected Treatises of Saint Athanasius, 2:293–303, at 295.
The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Charles Stephen Dessain et al., 32 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press & Thomas Nelson, 1961–2008), 1:309.
John Henry Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua: Being a History of His Religious Opinion, edited with introduction and notes by Martin J. Svaglic (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967), 35.
Paul M. Blowers, Maximus the Confessor: Jesus Christ and the Transfiguration of the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 225–53, at 240.
Donald G. Graham, “Sympathy in the Spiritual Theology of John Henry Newman,” in Newman & Life in the Spirit: Theological Reflections on Spirituality for Today, ed. John R. Connolly and Brian W. Hughes (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2014), 75–96, at 87–90.
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Stephen Thomas, Newman and Heresy: The Anglican Years (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 65.
Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes, 2nd ed. (New York: Fordham University Press, 1979), 154, 155.
Roderick Strange, Newman and the Gospel of Christ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981).
Brian E. Daley, God Visible: Patristic Christology Reconsidered (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 200–31.
Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor (London: Routledge, 1996), 48–62, at 61.
John McGuckin, “Introduction to Cyril of Alexandria,” in On the Unity of Christ (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press), 45.
“The Incarnate Son of God, a Sufferer and a Sacrifice” (April 1, 1836), in Parochial and Plain Sermons, 6:74.
John Henry Newman, “The Human Nature of Jesus Christ” (1836), in John Henry Newman: Sermons 1824–1843, vol. 4, The Church and Miscellaneous Sermons at St Mary’s and Littlemore, ed. Francis J. McGrath (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 222.
John Henry Newman, “Christ’s Privations: A Meditation for Christians” (April 12, 1840), in Parochial and Plain Sermons, 6:39–52.
E. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, 6:63.
King, Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers at 173n9.
John Henry Newman, “The Mediator” (March 28, 1834 / March 24, 1837), in John Henry Newman Sermons 1824–1843, vol. 1, Sermons on the Liturgy and Sacraments and on Christ the Mediator, edited from previously unpublished manuscripts by Placid Murray (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 253.
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Gabriel Daly, “Modernism in Retrospect,” in Transcendence and Immanence: A Study in Catholic Modernism and Integralism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980), 218–31, particularly, 227–28.
Gabriel Daly, “Newman, Divine Revelation, and the Catholic Modernists,” in Newman and the Word, ed. Terrence Merrigan and Ian T. Ker (Louvain, BE: Peeters, 2000), 49–67.
Selected Treatises of Saint Athanasius, 2:299–302, esp. 301.
John Henry Newman, “Reverence, A Belief in God’s Presence” (November 4, 1838), in Parochial and Plain Sermons, 5:11–28, at 20.
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Selected Treatises of Saint Athanasius, 2:327.
Thomas Weinandy, The Word’s Becoming in the Incarnation (Still River, MA: St. Bede’s, 1985), 83–84.
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles 4.38.
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Anthony Giambone, “The Revenge of Alexandrian Exegesis: Toward an Ecclesial Hermeneutic,” in A Quest for the Historical Christ: ‘Scientia Christi’ and the Modern Study of Jesus (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2022), 160–86.
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Newman and the Gospel of Christ, 88–89 and 89n16.
Apologia, 114–15.
John H. Newman to T.W. Allies, Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, 11:12.
John Henry Newman, “St. Chrysostom,” in Church of the Fathers, vol. 2, Historical Sketches (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1970), 217–302, esp. 284 ff.
John Henry Newman, “Love of Friends and Relations” (December 27, 1831), in Parochial and Plain Sermons, 2:51–60.
Newman, “Christ’s Privations: A Meditation for Christians,” in Parochial and Plain Sermons, 6:39–52.
John Henry Newman to Henry Wilberice, March 10, 1846, in Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, 11:135.
Newman, “Tears of Christ at the Grave of Lazarus,” in Parochial and Plain Sermons, 3:128–38;
John Henry Newman, “Ignorance Assumed Economically by Our Lord,” in Select Treatises of St. Athanasius in Controversy with the Arians, freely translated by John Henry Newman, vol. 2, Being an Appendix of Illustrations [1881], 5th ed. (London: Longmans, Green, 1895), 162.
Blehl, John Henry Newman: A Bibliographic Catalogue of His Writings (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1978), 100, with reference to C3a, C14a, and C16a at 104.
John Henry Newman, “The Familiarity of Jesus,” in Meditations on Christian Doctrine, in Prayers, Verses and Devotions (1903; repr., San Francisco, Ignatius, 1989), 385–86.
Aidan Nichols, Byzantine Gospel: Maximus the Confessor in Modern Scholarship (Eugene, OR: Wipe & Stock, 1993), 85–89.
St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Letter to Cledonius the Priest Against Apollinarius (101), https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3103a.htm.
Martin Joseph Routh, Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1895), i.
John Henry Newman, The Via Media of the Anglican Church, vol. 1, new edition (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1895), i.
John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, 8 vols. under one cover (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1977).
Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 1, Nicaea to Lateran V, ed. Norman P. Tanner (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 323.
John Henry Newman, Apologia, 35.
John Henry Newman, Arians of the Fourth Century.
Ian Ker, John Henry Newman: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 279–80.
Letters and Correspondence of J.H. Newman During His Life in the English Church, 2:379.
Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, 11:11.
Wilfrid Ward, The Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman Based Upon His Private Journals and Correspondence, 2 vols. (Longmans, Green, 1913), 1:75.
Letters and Correspondence of J.H. Newman During His Life in the English Church, 2 vols., edited by Anne Mozley (London: Longmans, Green, 1903), 2:345–46.
Donald G. Graham, “Blessed Newman’s Sacred Heart Theology and the ‘Intercommunion of Hearts,’” The Downside Review 129 (Oct. 2011): 14–37, esp., 23–25.
John Henry Newman, Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, 26:371
John Henry Newman, Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, 26:378
Thomas Joseph White, The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2017), 470–86.
Roch Kereszty, “The Ontological and Psychological Notion of ‘Person’ in Trinitarian Theology and Christology,” Communio 44 (Summer 2017): 357–82.
Tracey Rowland, Catholic Theology (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017), 175–77.
Avery Cardinal Dulles, “Divine Providence and the Mystery of Human Suffering,” in Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering, ed. James F. Keating and Thomas Joseph White (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 324–335, at 327.
E. Bellasis to Rev. Upton Richards, October 1, 1843: “You would probably hear of Newman’s farewell sermon; it was very striking, and very affecting, and most masterly. There was not a dry eye in the church.” Memorials of Mr. Sergeant Bellasis (1800–1873) (London: Burns & Oates, 1893), 62–65; citation at footnote, 63–64.
John Henry Newman, “The Parting of Friends” (September 25, 1843), in Sermons Bearing on Subjects of the Day (London: Longmans and Green, 1902), 395–409.
Pope St. Gregory on Knowledge of Christ (against Agnoetes), “Letter Sicut aqua to Patriarch Eulogiuis of Alexandria (August 600),” in Heinrich Denzinger, Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, 43rd ed., ed. Robert L. Fastiggi and Anne Englund Nash (San Francisco CA: Ignatius, 2012), §§474–76, at §475.
Did the Saviour See the Father? Christ, Salvation and the Vision of God (London: T&T Clark, 2015), 63.
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