newman's development

When I first read Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, I was impressed by his exposition of development and his extensive knowledge of Church history. Now, having read more of Newman's writings, I am even more impressed.

Newman's essay on development is not only an impressive synthesis of his vast historical reading, but also, when seen in the context of his other works, an example of its topic. For Newman did not only come to understand doctrinal development by studying the history of the Christian Church. He also learned the nature of development by attending to the growth of his own thought as well as deliberately developing his thoughts on development. He says in his thirteenth Oxford sermon, Implicit and Explicit Reason:

We are not only to "sanctify the Lord God in our hearts," not only to prepare a shrine within us in which our Saviour Christ may dwell, and where we may worship Him; but we are so to understand what we do, so to master our thoughts and feelings, so to recognize what we believe, and how we believe, so to trace out our ideas and impressions, and to contemplate the issue of them, that we may be "ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh us an account of the hope that is in us." (2)

He traced his ideas and impressions of church history best in his essay on development, but he had already had the idea two years before he wrote that book. In his fifteenth Oxford sermon, The Theory of Development in Religious Doctrine, he says:

What a remarkable sight it is, as almost all unprejudiced persons will admit, to trace the course of the controversy, from its first disorders to its exact and determinate issue. Full of deep interest, to see how the great idea takes hold of a thousand minds by its living force, and will not be ruled or stinted, but is "like a burning fire," as the Prophet speaks, "shut up" within them, till they are "weary of forbearing, and cannot stay," and grows in them, and at length is {317} born through them, perhaps in a long course of years, and even successive generations; so that the doctrine may rather be said to use the minds of Christians, than to be used by them. Wonderful it is, to see with what effort, hesitation, suspense, interruption,—with how many swayings to the right and to the left—with how many reverses, yet with what certainty of advance, with what precision in its march, and with what ultimate completeness, it has been evolved; till the whole truth "self-balanced on its centre hung," part answering to part, one, absolute, integral, indissoluble, while the world lasts! Wonderful, to see how heresy has but thrown that idea into fresh forms, and drawn out from it farther developments, with an exuberance which exceeded all questioning, and a harmony which baffled all criticism, like Him, its Divine Author, who, when put on trial by the Evil One, was but fortified by the assault, and is ever justified in His sayings, and overcomes when He is judged. (6)

I only wish I could immerse myself as deeply into history as he did.