In the nineteenth century, tensions were acutely felt in religious controversies, such as the Protestant emphasis on sola scriptura, which often privileged individual interpretation over ecclesial tradition, and emerging Catholic debates over historical-critical methods, as exemplified by figures like Alfred Loisy and the Modernist Crisis. John Henry Newman navigated similar turbulent waters as an Anglican convert to Catholicism, developed an implicit pneumatological hermeneutics that positioned the Holy Spirit as the vital guide for both personal and communal engagement with the biblical text.
Matthew Levering’sNewman on Doctrinal Corruption navigates St. John Henry Newman’s responses to five separate challenges directed against the Catholic Church.
Earlier this year, NINS got the chance to sit down with Grant Kaplan and discuss the release of his new book Faith and Reason through Christian History -- Dr. Kaplan provides some helpful insights into the genesis and implications of his book.
While the unravelling of Mivart’s reputation among the Catholic leadership primarily occurred after Newman’s death in 1890, a correspondence between Newman and Mivart is housed in the NINS Digital Collections.
In this lecture, Dr. Levering shows that Newman's work on doctrinal development arose from his Anglican concerns about doctrinal corruption, which at that time he identified in the Church of Rome. Why, however, did doctrinal corruption worry Newman so much?
