Sorgfalt des Denkens, Wege des Glaubens im Spiegel von Bildung und Wissenschaft: Ein Gespräch mit John Henry Newman. Internationale Cardinal-Newman-Studien XIX ed. by Roman A. Siebenrock and Wilhelm Tolksdorff

Abstract

91 Sorgfalt des Denkens, Wege des Glaubens im Spiegel von Bildung und Wissenschaft: Ein Gespräch mit John Henry Newman. Internationale CardinalNewman -Studien XIX. Edited by Roman A. Siebenrock and Wilhelm Tolksdorff. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2006. Pp. 442. $76.95. ISBN 978–3–631–51130–5. This volume of the Newman Studien series, which has now reached number nineteen, opens with a quotation from then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger:“In Newman we learn what the ‘Spirit of Vatican II’ really means.” Pope John Paul II’s discourse on the 200th anniversary of Newman’s birth follows. The volume’s general themes are belief and doubt, liberalism and the dogmatic principle, science and theology. The volume closes with forty-four pages of recent publications in Newman studies (1998–2002); this section alone makes the volume invaluable. The first section of Studien XIX contains ten essays. There is one in English: Günter Biemer’s“Newman’s View of Liberalism in Religion,An historical Introduction to a relevant Problem.” Biemer has a remarkable gift of synthesis and in this essay readers will find that gift rendering a narrative of Newman’s own development toward and then away from liberalism in religion. Besides synthesis, Biemer also briefly but deftly analyses the complexities of Newman’s position which is often misjudged as a flight into authoritarianism. The Bishop of Regensburg, Gerhard Ludwig Müller, has a good essay placing Newman’s thought in an English philosophical context of the struggle between doubt and faith. Tolksdorf’s essay compares and contrasts Newman with Hansjürgen Verweyens;students of fundamental theology and contemporary philosophy will find this essay important and the footnotes a goldmine for modern discussions of faith and evidence. Hermann Pius Seller considers Newman’s rendition of providence, free will, and sin; the place of providence, so central to Newman’s own sense of God, could open a study of how the question impacts academic theology written outside, “scientifically,” the events of the theologian’s life. In the essay cited above, Biemer quotes Newman as saying that two events in his own life steered him away from liberalism. These theological essays are followed by three pastoral considerations on higher education.Biemer does two of them:the first on theology in a Catholic University,the second on the conditions of practicing theology. Bishop Müller writes on teaching theology in a pluralistic university. There is a delightful collection of personal essays: Newman as received by the likes of Roman Guardini,Wilhelm Koch, and Maria Knopfler written by Alfons Knoll; a personal essay by the late Vincent Blehl (1921–2001) on how he came to study Newman, and then an appreciation of Blehl by Biemer.Vincent Blehl was a thinker and a believer who knew what Newman meant when he took as a motto,Cor ad Cor Loquitur. This was a most humane way to end a useful volume of essays on the thinking of that most humane intellectual, John Henry Newman. Halbert Weidner, C.O. Holy Trinity Church, Honolulu, HI BOOK REVIEW ...