Theology

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In the scholarly literature, John Locke (1632–1704) features as a formative influence on Newman’s philosophical thought. What usually gets highlighted, for example in the Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, are Newman’s criticism of Locke’s notion of degreed assent and his call for a broader and more nuanced account of the rationality of religious belief. However, some have argued that the Grammar largely focuses on the psychological conditions of religious belief.

Despite their differences, and although Newman and Browning never met, they shared similar life experiences, and literary techniques, and both were concerned with the justification of Christianity, as well as the struggle between faith and doubt.

An important theological theme in the Christian tradition is that of the divine ideas or <em>logoi</em> in the mind or Word of God by which God knows and loves in himself eternally all the ways that creatures can or do participate in a living likeness of him.

Pusey’s appraisal of Mariology—a polemic containing a mixture of historical, theological and anecdotal evidence—was, on the whole, untrue and mostly a caricature; yet as Newman would be forced to admit in his formal published reply to Pusey in 1866, the <em>Letter to Pusey</em>, there was partial veracity to his claim that at times Mariology, in some of its devotional outpourings, has obscured devotion to God, especially God’s loving mediation brought to humanity through the Incarnation.

Newman’s influence is not relegated to the English-speaking world only; rather, it can be seen in the Spanish-speaking world as well. 

The cumulative effect of the theological debates at Oxford, together with his pastoral experience and personal reflections, gradually led Newman to a more high church ecclesiological approach, especially on visibility, invisibility, and apostolicity of the church.