Nestorius was a heretic. We have no magical sword for cutting these
knots, and no miraculous guide to tell us that authority A is to be
believed implicitly, while the possibility of authority B being right is
not to be entertained even in thought. Newman as usual supplies us with
the best weapons against himself. It startles us to find, even in 1852,
such a sentence as this: 'Revealed religion furnishes facts to other
sciences, which those sciences, left to themselves, would never reach.
Thus, in the science of history, the preservation of our race in Noah's
ark is an historical fact, which history never would arrive at without
revelation.' The transition from belief on the purely internal ground of
personal assent to belief on the purely external ground of Church
authority is certainly abrupt and hard to explain; but Newman makes it
habitually, without any consciousness of a _salto mortale_. In the
'Apologia' he even says that the argument from personality is 'one form
of the argument from authority.' The argument seems to be--'There is no
third alternative besides Catholicism or Rationalism. But "personality"
will not accept the dictation of reason; therefore it must accept the
authority of the Church.' It is a strange argument. All through his life
he enormously exaggerated the moral and intellectual weight which should
be attached to Church tradition. 'Securus judicat orbis terrarum' were
the words which rang in his ears at the supreme moment of his great
decision. His 'orbis terrarum' was the Latin empire. And when even in
those countries the authority of the Pope is rejected, he condemns
modern civilisation as an aberration. This however is a complete
abandonment of his own test. He first says 'The judgment of the great
world is final'; and then 'If the world decides against Rome, so much
the worse for the world.' After all, Newman had no right to complain if
his opponents found his reasoning disingenuous. To make up our minds
first, and to argue in favour of the decision afterwards, is in truth to
make the reason a hewer of wood and drawer of water to the irrational
part of our nature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account