The Fire “Once Kindled on Moriah”: Wojtyła and Newman on the Conditions for the Proposal of Christ

Abstract

The Fire “Once Kindled on Moriah”: Wojtyła and Newman on the Conditions for the Proposal of Christ1 Stephen Morgan (bio) The turn to the subject makes demands upon the transmission of the Christian faith that prior, largely objectivist approaches do not meet. In the personalism encountered in the work of John Henry Newman (1801–1890) and Karol Wojtyła (1920–2005) a balance between objective truth and personal experience can be found, which answers present need. This article considers two short texts from these eminent thinkers that indicate their views of this balance; each man would work out and develop more fully these views in later works. In particular, this article identifies within these shorter works a basis for the church’s foundational task of evangelization. First, this article will briefly consider the effects of the subjective turn in Western thought to the task of proposing Jesus Christ in the present age, before suggesting that some of the difficulties this turn has presented can be resolved by looking at the work of John Henry Newman and Karol Wojtyła/Pope John Paul II. It will consider two shorter works, one by each theologian: first, John Henry Newman’s fifth Oxford University Sermon, “Personal Influence, the Means of Propagating the Faith,”2 and, secondly, Karol Wojytła’s final published essay before his election to the papacy as Pope John Paul II, “Subjectivity and the Irreducible in Man.”3 The limitations of dealing with these two works—and their suitability to [End Page 23] stand as representative of the more developed treatment given by both men as to the question in other works—will be addressed before moving on to a detailed consideration of approach proposed by each theologian in turn. Finally, in concluding remarks, this article will consider the extent to which what each proposes may be seen as complimentary to the perspectives of the other. I. MORIAH, CATHOLIC FAITH, AND THE TURN TO THE SUBJECT The biblical notion of Mount Moriah is one on which both Newman and Wojtyła reflected. The Old Testament text makes mention of Mount Moriah in two places: the location where Abraham is commanded to go to sacrifice Isaac (Gen. 22:2) and as the site where Solomon constructed his Temple (2 Chron. 3:1). Modern biblical scholars disagree not only about the location, but even about the etymology of the name.4 What is not in doubt, however, is the symbolic meaning attached to the use of the name by John Henry Newman in his fifth University Sermon.5 Newman, clearly referencing the account in Genesis, sees Mount Moriah as the location of the first act of faith in the history of salvation. That is, as the place where Abraham, having been prepared to sacrifice Isaac and having kindled a fire to complete that offering, is provided by God with the ram caught in the thicket of thorns as the sacrificial victim in place of Isaac. It is this ram that becomes the sacrifice that ratifies the Covenant of Abraham’s faith, and it is this faith—faith in the living God—that Newman sees as the object of propagation, for which he posits personal influence as the appropriate means of its transmission. It should be noted that the significance of Moriah clearly occurred to Wojtyła, who treats it in poetic form (though no less theologically nor convincingly), in his Roman Trip-tych: Meditations.6 In a powerful series of short sections of the poem, entitled “III. A Hill in the Land of Moriah,” he contemplated the significance of the episode in Genesis, ending the third sub-section, “A conversation between a father and son in the land of Moriah,” with the recognition that Abraham’s act of faith in that place anticipates and prophesies its own consummation in the Paschal Mystery: [End Page 24] Henceforth the hill in the land of Moriah will be expectation— for on its heights the mystery will find fulfillment.7 In the ages when Christianity flourished largely within the context of what came to be called Christendom, where the vast majority of the faithful were baptized as infants and brought up in societies...