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The Wonder of Newman's Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Gerard Loughlin
Gerard Loughlin*
Affiliation:
Department of Theology & Religion, Durham University, Abbey House, Palace Green, Durham, DH1 3RS
*
gerard.loughlin@durham.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article examines the place of wonder in Newman's account of university education. It pays particular attention to Newman's ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’ (1872) rather than to his better known The Idea of a University (1873). The article first introduces some ideas about wonders and wondering, as found in medieval thought and in Newman's writings, before proceeding to the wonder that was Newman's attempt to establish a university in Dublin, and that is his history (historia) of the university: a story (fabula) that is every bit as marvellous as any medieval tale. Newman's educational romance involves the islands of Britannia and Hibernia, and the cities of Athens, Rome and Dublin. The article also considers the place of personal encounter and the written word in Newman's idea and practice of education, before finally offering some brief reflections on the diversity of modern society and university education. The article closes by suggesting the necessity of wonder for the gaining of knowledge.

Keywords

John Henry Newmaneducationuniversitywondermiracles
Type
Original Articles
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 92 , Issue 1038 , March 2011 , pp. 224 - 242
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 The Author. New Blackfriars © 2011 The Dominican Society.

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References

1 Cornwall, John, Newman's Unquiet Grave: The Reluctant Saint (London: Continuum, 2010), p. 102Google Scholar.

2 Newman to Henry Wilberforce (17 September 1847) in The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, edited by Dessain, Charles Stephen et al, xxxii vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961–2008), vol. xii, pp. 121–122Google Scholar. Brackets in original.

3 See Bynum, Caroline Walker, ‘Wonder’ in Metamorphosis and Identity (New York: Zone Books, 2001), pp. 37–75Google Scholar. I am much indebted to this wonderful essay and book.

4 See Augustine, , The City of God against the Pagans, edited and translated by Dyson, R. W. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Book XXI (pp. 1044–1106), especially chapters 4 and 8 (pp. 1048–1052, 1060–1064).

5 Pseudo-Albert [the Great], Liber de mirabilibus mundi; cited in Bynum, ‘Wonder’, p. 50.

6 The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon, translated by Burke, R. B., 2 vols (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1928)Google Scholar, pt. 1, ch. 10 (vol. 1, p. 24); pt. 6, ch. 12 (vol. 2, pp. 630–631); cited in Bynum, ‘Wonder’, p. 50.

7 Newman, , ‘The Theory of Developments in Religious Doctrine’ (Sermon XV, 1843) in Fifteen Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford between A.D. 1826 and 1843, edited by Earnest, James David and Tracey, Gerard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006 [1872]), pp. 211–235CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an account of the occasion see Shairp, J. C., Studies in Poetry and Philosophy (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1868), pp. 278–279Google Scholar.

8 See further Chadwick, Owen, From Bossuet to Newman: The Idea of Doctrinal Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957)Google Scholar.

9 Newman, ‘The Theory of Developments in Religious Doctrine’, p. 211.

10 Newman, ‘The Theory of Developments in Religious Doctrine’, pp. 211–212.

11 Newman, , ‘Implicit and Explicit Reason’ (Sermon XIII, 1840) in Fifteen Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford between A.D. 1826 and 1843, edited by Earnest, James David and Tracey, Gerard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006 [1872]), 173–189 (p. 212)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Bynum, ‘Wonder’, pp. 40–41 and 74–75. ‘All men began to philosophize from wonder whether it is really so, as with spontaneous natural wonders, such as those of the changes of the sun or the incommensurability of the diameter (for everybody thinks that this is amazing, if something cannot be measured exactly).’ Aristotle, , The Metaphysics, translated by Lawson-Tancred, Hugh (London: Penguin Books, 1998), Book Alpha 2 (p. 10)Google Scholar.

13 Newman, ‘The Theory of Developments in Religious Doctrine’, pp. 220–21.

14 Newman insisted that something like faith was at the base of all knowledge. ‘[A]lmost all we do, every day of our lives, is on trust, i.e. faith.’ John Henry Newman, ‘Religious Faith Rational’ in Parochial and Plain Sermons, 8 vols (London: Longman, Green & Co., 1891), vol. 1, 190–202 (p. 193). See further Loughlin, Gerard, ‘“To Live and Die Upon a Dogma”: Newman and Post/modern Faith’ in Newman and Faith, edited by Ker, Ian and Merrigan, Terrence (Louvain: Peeters, 2004), 25–52 (pp. 33–34, 50–52)Google Scholar.

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17 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 163.

18 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 47.

19 Cornwall, Newman's Unquiet Grave, p. 125.

20 Stanley Fish, Save the World on Your Own Time (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 177. For a comparison of Newman and Derrida on the university see Loughlin, Gerard, ‘The University without Question: John Henry Newman and Jacques Derrida on Faith in the University’ in The Idea of a Christian University: Essays on Theology and Higher Education, edited by Astley, Jeff, Francis, Leslie, Sullivan, John and Walker, Andrew (Milton Keynes: Paternoster Press, 2004), pp. 113–131Google Scholar.

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23 Quoted in Ward, The Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman, vol. 1, p. 348.

24 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 3.

25 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 4.

26 The decision to set these up was made in 1845, with the degree awarding body — the Queen's University of Ireland — established in 1850.

27 Newman quoted in Ward, The Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman, vol. 1, p. 383.

28 For a not entirely appreciative account of Newman as romantic — as the gothic hero of his own life — see Pitt, Valerie, ‘Demythologising Newman’ in John Henry Newman: Reason, Rhetoric and Romanticism, edited by Nicholls, David and Kerr, Fergus OP (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991), pp. 13–27Google Scholar.

29 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 110.

30 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 109.

31 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 124.

32 MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, second edition (London: Duckworth, 1985 [1981]), p. 263Google Scholar.

33 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 128.

34 MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 263.

35 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 123.

36 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 135.

37 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 148.

38 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 148.

39 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 147.

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42 Newman quoted in Ward, The Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman, vol. 1, p. 388.

43 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 6.

44 As early as the 1830s some women attended lectures at the University of London, but examinations were not opened to women until 1878. Women began to attend Oxford University in the last decades of the nineteenth-century, when halls of residence were established for them, but they had to wait until 1920 to become full members of the University.

45 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 10. The Idea of a University lays greater stress than ‘The Rise and Progress of Universities’ on the learned ability of gentlemen to discern truth from falsehood; the virtue of discrimination necessary for withstanding sophistry, as much needed now as in Newman's day.

46 Newman to Thomas Allies (30 November 1864), Letters and Diaries, vol. xxi, p. 327.

47 For a discussion of Newman on theology in the university see Loughlin, Gerard, ‘Theology in the University’ in The Cambridge Companion to John Henry Newman, edited by Ker, Ian and Merrigan, Terrence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 221–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 51.

49 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 32.

50 Otto of Bavaria (1815–1867) became Otho, King of Greece, in 1832, under the Convention of London drawn up by the ‘great powers’: Britain, France and Russia. It was Otho who made Athens the capital of Greece, where the University of Athens was established in 1837.

51 Faber, Geoffrey, Oxford Apostles: A Character Study of the Oxford Movement (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934), p. 283Google Scholar.

52 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 2.

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54 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 39. For Newman's more extended views on Turkey and the Turks see his ‘Lectures on the History of the Turks, in their Relation to Europe’ in Historical Sketches, vol. 2, pp. 1–238. The lectures were originally delivered in 1854 at the Catholic Institute in Liverpool. Hostile to ‘Mohammedanism’ and dismissive of Orthodoxy — with Newman opposing British foreign policy and supporting Russia against Turkey — the lectures may throw interesting light on the views of Pope Benedict XVI (Newman's beatifier) on Turkey in relation to Europe. On the lectures see further Ker, Ian, John Henry Newman: A Biography, second edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009 [1988]), pp. 402–404CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 38.

56 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 85.

57 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 77.

58 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 87.

59 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 128.

60 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 86.

61 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 87.

62 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 88.

63 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 86. Athens, in Newman's text, is feminine, and this might tempt one to see a gendered contrast between influence and discipline. But Rome — discipline — is also gendered as feminine (‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 87), so one cannot simply align Athens/Ireland/Oratorians/freedom/voluptuousness with the feminine.

64 As a result Newman resigned his curacy of St Clement's Church, Oxford, which he had taken up in May 1824. Newman had been appointed to an Oriel Fellowship in 1822, ordained as deacon in June 1824 and priested in May 1825.

65 ‘I can say with a full heart that I love him, and have never ceased to love him; and I thus preface what otherwise might sound rude, that in the course of the many years in which we were together afterwards, he provoked me very much from time to time, though I am perfectly certain that I have provoked him a great deal more.’ Newman, Apologia, p. 28.

66 Newman in a private memorandum (7 May 1826); quoted in Culler, A. Dwight, The Imperial Intellect: A Study of Newman's Educational Ideal (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955), p. 52Google Scholar.

67 Earl of Malmesbury, Memoirs of an Ex-Minister: An Autobiography, 2 vols (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1884), vol. I, p. 18Google Scholar; quoted in Culler, The Imperial Intellect, p. 55.

68 Preaching, as Denis Robinson notes, was for Newman a theological undertaking, ‘a kind of performative theology worked out in the midst of the people.’ Robinson, Denis, ‘Preaching’ in The Cambridge Companion to John Henry Newman, edited by Ker, Ian and Merrigan, Terrence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 241–254 (p. 243)Google Scholar.

69 Froude, J. A., Short Studies on Great Subjects (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1867), p. 286Google Scholar; quoted in Cornwall, Newman's Unquiet Grave, p. 13.

70 Arnold, Thomas Jr, Passages in a Wandering Life (London: Edward Arnold, 1900), p. 57Google Scholar; quoted in Cornwall, Newman's Unquiet Grave, p. 13. Thomas's account contrasts with that of his brother, Mathew Arnold, who famously recalled Newman ‘rising into the pulpit, and then, in the most entrancing of voices, breaking the silence with words and thoughts which were a religious music,—subtle, sweet, mournful.’ Arnold, Matthew, Discourses in America (London: Macmillan & Co., 1885), pp. 139–140Google Scholar.

71 Murray in Maxwell, Herbert Sir, The Honourable Sir Charles Murray KCB: A Memoir (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood & Sons, 1898), pp. 56Google Scholar; quoted in Culler, The Imperial Intellect, p. 54.

72 Cornwall, Newman's Unquiet Grave, p. 48.

73 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, pp. 48–49.

74 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 7.

75 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 9; ‘[I]f we wish to become exact and fully furnished in any branch of knowledge which is diversified and complicated, we must consult the living man and listen to his living voice’ (p. 8).

76 Newman, “Rise and Progress of Universities”, p. 12.

77 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 13.

78 Newman, ‘Rise and Progress of Universities’, p. 14.

79 See Bynum, ‘Wonder’, pp. 43, 50.

80 For a less distraught view of the modern situation see Stout, Jeffrey, Ethics After Babel: The Languages of Morals and Their Discontents (Cambridge; James Clarke & Co., 1990 [1988])Google Scholar.

81 MacIntyre, Alasdair, God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition (London: Continuum, 2009), p. 174Google Scholar.

82 Hawking, Stephen and Mlodinow, Leonard, The Grand Design (New York: Bantam Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

83 It makes the university more of a multiverse than someone like Hawking would relish, since he strives for a single theory of everything. Theologians relinquish such ambition when they commit to learning the unknowability of the universe; the wonder that there is.

84 MacIntyre, God, Philosophy, Universities, p. 179.

85 MacIntyre, God, Philosophy, Universities, p. 180.

86 I must thank Gavin D’Costa for suggestions that have improved this paper.