BASC70152 - John Henry Newman on Faith and Reason
Course Description
This course will look at John Henry Newman’s four magisterial works and selections from others. Newman’s corpus contains the most profound 19th c. treatment of enduring religious, philosophical, and social concerns.
Matthew Arnold once said that the operative philosophy in Oxford in the 1830’s was “Credo in Newmanum” (“I believe in Newman”). Oxford at that time was riven by theological and philosophical debate: Kantianism, evangelicalism, Humean skepticism, high-church Anglicanism, Benthamite utilitarianism, Lockean empiricism, and proto-Catholic antiquarianism all battled for supremacy. But among the chatter of voices, John Henry Newman stood out as the foremost intellect. As the leader of the Oxford Movement, his Oxford University Sermons were taken to be the definitive statement on faith and reason. Newman was one of the most influential men in England. But when he converted from the Church of England to the Roman Catholic Church in 1845, Newman withdrew from public life (since the public took his conversion to be a betrayal). Appointed to lead the Catholic University of Ireland in the 1850’s, his contemporaneous lectures became the famous Idea of a University. Newman returned to public life in the 1860’s, when in order to rebut the public and calumnious charges of dishonesty by the Protestant professor Charles Kingsley, he penned the spiritual autobiography Apologia Pro Vita Sua. And in the 1870’s, he released the work of a lifetime, the Grammar of Assent, in which he attempted to defend the “faith of factory girls” as an act of the intellect.
This course will look at these four magisterial works as well as selections from other sermons and lesser-known treatises.
Course Outline
Course SyllabusNotes
Online registration deadline: Thursday, June 16 at 5 pm CT
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