Time to Delay No Longer is, as its subtitle suggests, a true search for faith. In this work, the late Bill Evans (1933–2017) endeavors to recount his conversion to the Catholic faith. His account of conversion centers around a profound systematic analysis of the Catholic Church and its claim towards religious authority.
“The LORD is with me to the end. LORD, your mercy endures forever. Never forsake the work of your hands! – Psalm 138:8 -- The above verse is one of importance to John Henry Newman. He chose Psalm 138 as the epithet for his younger brother, Charles’s, headstone. Newman’s biographer, Sheridan Gilley, refers to Charles as “the black sheep of the family.”
It was all the more remarkable when I discovered a collection of “Newman detractors” on the premises, a collection indicating the conflict between Newman, the champion of Roman Catholicism in England, and mainly evangelical Free Church academics around the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century.
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.
Newman’s influence is not relegated to the English-speaking world only; rather, it can be seen in the Spanish-speaking world as well.
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