Development of Christian Doctrine, Saint John Newman, Item 17
Saint John Newman
Development of Christian Doctrine
One of Newman’s lifelong convictions was belief in the unbroken continuity of authentic Christianity from the time of the Apostles till the present day. Early in his Anglican career he adopted as a litmus test the words of St Vincent of Lérins - the true faith was what had been believed ‘everywhere, always, and by all’. Any belief or practice not found in the early centuries – such as the centrality of the Papacy or prayer to the Virgin Mary – must therefore be a “corruption”. But this was an essentially static formulation, and deep study of the Fathers of the Church convinced him that even more central Christian beliefs – like the doctrine of the Trinity – seemed to be only obscurely present in those early centuries. This dilemma became more acute as he himself was increasingly drawn to Catholicism. How could one reconcile the apparently simple Christianity of the New Testament with the elaborated beliefs and rituals of the nineteenth-century Catholic Church?
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Date Authored 1878
Pages 626