Out of Shadows

It is perhaps Teutonic to wonder about the sources and pedigree of a great mind but, at least in moderation, such curiosity is a pardonable fault, if not a virtue. In the case of Cardinal Newman, the Thomist is bound to ask what knowledge the great cardinal had of the paradigmatic theologian of the Catholic Church.

On the face of it, given Newman's prolonged quest for undiluted Christian doctrine, his fondness for the Fathers, we might expect that after if not before his conversion he would have been interested in the writings of Thomas Aquinas. An early sign of this interest is surely to be seen in the translation made of the Catena Aurea of Aquinas, a running commentary on the Four Gospels culled from the writings of the Fathers by St. Thomas. Biographers have had a way of dismissing any substantive link with the thought of Aquinas on the part of Newman, and editions of such works as the Grammar of Assent stress the differences. And not without reason. Still...

An indispensable source in this matter is Edward J. Sillem's publication of The Philosophical Notebook in two volumes, the first a general introduction to Newman's philosophy, the second the notebook itself. Father Sillem's chapter on the sources of Newman's philosophy is lengthy and suggestive. It begins with Aristotle and ends with "scholastic sources" but in between are the Oriel Noetics, Butler's The Analogy of Religion, Newton and Bacon, Locke, Hume Ñ and here is one of the surprises Ñ Abraham Tucker, an associationist psychologist. No student of the Grammar can be unaware of the influence on Newman's mind of modern British philosophy. Aristotle too is frequently in the picture, largely through his Nicomachean Ethics, a work Newman studied from his youth. What of Thomas?

Newman, Father Sillem tells us, owned even at Oriel the complete 28 volume set of Thomas' works in the 1781 Venice edition. He studied closely Thomas' two questions on conscience in the Disputed Question on Truth, parts of the treatise on faith in the Summa theologiae and Book One of the Summa contra gentiles. And more besides. He also had Cardinal Cajetan's commentary on the Summa and the Irish Jesuit Fathers gave him a two volume edition of the Summa contra gentiles which he used. Sillem is guided by the marginalia he finds in these works and adds, "The chances are that Newman has read more of St. Thomas than we can prove."

But what would this prove? It would be a feat of counterfactual legerdemain to turn John Henry Newman into a Thomist. On the other hand, it would be willful to ignore the facts that Sillem brings to our attention. And one is told that, after his conversion, in Rome, Newman asked where he might study Thomas. At the time you could have shot a cannon through the eternal city without hitting a Thomist, but the Thomistic revival lay in the very near future, to be urged on the Universal Church by the Pope who created Newman cardinal, Leo XIII. In Naples, in Perugia, Newman could have met some living breathing Thomists but not apparently in Rome.

Such questions will seem trivial to those who think there is a radical plurality of philosophies, indeed of theologies. But it is seldom the mark of a great mind to characterize its thoughts as a personal quirk, mine as opposed to yours. Each one must possess his own thoughts, of course, as each must learn to speak a common language, but communication is possible because there is more than the personal or private at work. Two points of convergence in the thinking of Newman and Aquinas have to do with the origin of ideas and the source of the rightness of a practical decision. On the first, Newman is far more a British empiricist than an Aristotelian, but on the latter he is guided by Aristotle's remarks about "practical truth" in the Ethics. Aristotle provides a kind of lingua franca between Thomas and Newman.

Perhaps the question should rather be, "What can the Thomist learn from Newman?" rather than "What did Newman learn from Thomas?" The styles of the two men, the genres in which they wrote, are widely different. The university sermon is one clear point of contact, certainly, and here, differences of style and era apart, one is indeed struck by the same drive to clarify and instruct as well as inspire. Praedicare, to preach, along with lecturing and disputation, summed up the task of the master for Aquinas. Disputation is another obvious point of contact; both men were tireless in addressing questions put to them and correcting skewed accounts of the faith. Lecturing? But such comparisons are superficial.

Newman's university sermons and the Grammar as well as the Apologia are treasures for the Catholic philosopher. Thomistic themes are sometimes enriched and deepened by Newman's writings and one begins to suspect a deep complementarity between the two minds. The differences are there, no doubt about it, and any account would have to develop them and show how they came about. But the deep affinity between the two minds is captured by the motto: ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem. From shadows and images into the truth.
Newman's fascination with Bishop Butler's Analogy of Religion, his lifelong quest for the relation between reason and faith, point to our need to move from the images and experience and talk of the world around us to any talk of the divine. The linkage is established by God, through Revelation, preeminently in the Incarnation, but inevitably the question arises as to what intimations of God the mind might achieve independently of the faith. This is a question which, oddly perhaps, fascinates believers and it explains the interest of some of them in pagan philosophy or in contemporary thinking that is hostile or at least inhospitable to the faith.

One of Newman's great contributions lies in his teaching on the differences between changing one's mind and changing one's life. This is a recurring question in philosophy. What good is ethical doctrine if it can leave us morally unaffected? What good are proofs of God's existence if they neither change our lives nor produce faith? Newman brings to such questions a subtlety and sureness that casts light in darkness. What he has to say complements and illumines what we find in Thomas.

Was Newman a Thomist? Well, was Thomas a Thomist? The answer to both is No. What both men sought was the truth and insofar as they succeeded they contribute to what was once called the philosophia perennis, the common ongoing effort of the human mind to arrive at truth. Thomists link Thomas to the notion of the philosophia perennis, but this is not to identify him with it. The very variety and differences among minds can be best appreciated by seeing where they touch and agree. Then the specific contributions to the fundamentally common enterprise are more fully seen and irreducible differences as well. If one saint fully represented holiness, one is all that would be needed. But there will be billions and each will represent in his own way the Way, the Truth and the Life. It is somewhat the same, salva reverentia and toutes proportions gardes with philosophy. Out of similar shadows and analogous images all seek the same truth.