Most clergy, Christian educators, and parents are aware of the challenges facing evangelization and catechesis in our world today. The rise of secularism has left many Christians with an inadequate understanding of who God is and how God relates to us. Scientism and materialism have limited the scope of our worldview to exclude the divine, and therefore the anthropology for many in today’s world does not account for the God-human relationship.
Over the years, John Henry Newman’s famous book on the nature of a university, referred to simply as Idea, has invited observations from many writers, as indeed it did even during his lifetime. This essay identifies and locates in it those well-phrased remarks he makes, some of which having acquired wide familiarity.
Newman scholars interested in philosophy should take note of Daniel J. Pratt Morris-Chapman’s recent book, Newman in the Story of Philosophy: The Philosophical Legacy of Saint John Henry Newman. While standard histories of philosophy tend to make no mention of Newman as a philosopher, Pratt Morris-Chapman thinks this is a mistake. This is not only because he takes Newman to have a body of philosophical work that is worthy of our attention, but because he takes Newman’s thought to have played an important role in the development and progress of philosophy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Pope Francis speaks about our “increasing difficult[y]” in “discern[ing] what is proper to humans and what is proper to technology.” In this moment, the Holy Father stresses our need for “serious reflection on the very value of the human person” especially, “the concept of personal consciousness as relational experience,” and he exhorts us to draw upon our “shared human experiences” by studying them “from various perspectives, employing trans-disciplinary dialogue and cooperation.” Inspired by the Holy Father, I take a step in that direction by reflecting upon St. John Henry Newman’s view of the manifold aspects of the mystery of the human person.
This essay seeks to clarify the nature of science. It examines popular approaches to science, these approaches’ potential effects, and the perspective that theology can provide to our potential misunderstandings of science.
