The Ideas of Newman: Christianity and Human Religiosity by Lee H. Yearley

Abstract

820 BOOK REVIEWS text, although I would hope that he will correct the numerous inaccuracies in the chapter on " Eastern Religion." Creighton Univer~ity Omaha, Nebr~ka RANDOLPH M. FEEZELL The Ideas of Newman: Christianity and Human Religiosity. By LEE H. YEARLEY. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1978. Pp. xii + 188. $rn.5o. Interpreting Newman is no easy task. He is such an original and personal thinker that commentators all too frequently find themselves with inadequate categories for analysis. His fate at the hands of the late 19th- and early 20th-century scholastic writers is well documented. The sectarian nature of his conversion from Anglo- to Roman Catholicism often puts many critics in clearly opposing camps. Finally, the very power of his rhetoric and the clarity and candor of his spirit beg some kind of engagement that often enough clouds scholarly objectivity. By setting his study of Newman in the larger context of comparative religious studies, and by applying the methodologies of that discipline, Lee Yearley provides a fresh and provocative reading of one of the most important thinkers in the history of Christianity. At first blush, the title, " The Ideas of Newman," might seem either naive or presumptuous. Quite the contrary. The author's purpose and focus are sharply set. He addresses himself to an understanding of Newman's life-long foe: religious liberalism. By moving away from traditional theological methods and applying those drawn from the comparative study of religion, Yearley is able to sort out Newman's key ideas, to eliminate or explain apparent contradictions in his thought, and to pull together under the name" Liberal Religion " many of his disparate statements on liberalism. Most importantly , this study highlights Newman's stunning relevance to the religious predicament of our own time. This is one of the most valuable studies of Newman to appear during the past twenty years. In Chapter 1, "Natural Religion," Yearley examines what he calls "human religiosity," the basic human potential for religion. Key to all of Newman's thought is his belief that human nature is naturally religious. This approach clarifies what might seem a contradiction in Newman's use of the term " natural." Sometimes he opposes " natural " to supernatural. At other times " natural " refers to that which is characteristic of human nature. Thus when he writes of Natural Religion in the Grammar of Assent he speaks of our natural capacity for fulfillment through a religious experience of God. At other times he insists that this natural capacity BOOK REVIEWS is merely nature, i. e., impotent without supernatural grace. The characteristics of this religious type (Natural Religion) are: providence, prayer, revelation, sacrifice, and the mediatorial power of a holy person. In showing how Newman formulates these characteristics Yearley suggests how closely he anticipates the thought of writers like Eliade and Van der Leeuw. The chapter is an admirable summary of all Newman says on religion in general and contains a superb study of his tenet that conscience is central to the religious experience. Chapters ~ and 3 examine Christianity according to two further types of religious ideas one finds in Newman: the fulfillment model and the authority model. These are both types of revealed religion as opposed to natural religion {needing the supernatural) . The fulfillment model is more irenic and stresses the continuity of religious growth. The authority model is more divisive and stresses or at least implies the discontinuity inasmuch as revelation "intrudes" into the human process. Here Newman develops his idea of the economic communication of revelation and the process of "assimilation" which is one of the characteristics of true doctrinal development . Yearley finds one major difficulty in Newman's use of the fulfillment model: his unawareness, not to say ignorance, of other world religions than Judaism and the classical Graeco-Roman religions. He thus feels that, if Newman had made a distinction between phenomenological and historical preparation for the fulfillment of human religious potential by Christianity, he would have been on safer and more consistent ground in facing the problems posed by the claims to truth by other religions and by the difficulty of tracing the historical connections in the gradual " economic " unfolding of revelation to mankind through the ages. In using...