Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers: Shaping Doctine in Nineteenth-Century England

 

Benjamin John King

Oxford University Press, 2009-07-15 - 289 pages

 

John Henry (later Cardinal) Newman is widely known to have been devoted to reading the Church Fathers. By exploring which Fathers interested Newman most and when, using both published and archive material, Benjamin J. King demonstrates the influence of the various Alexandrian theologians indifferent periods of Newman's life. In each of these periods, King draws a causal connection between the patristic theology Newman was reading and his own developing theology; revealing how key events in these periods changed the theologian's interpretation of the Fathers. King argues that ultimately Newman tailored his reading of the Church Fathers to fit his own needs. Seemingly 'trying on' the ideas of different Fathers in turn, Newman began with those who predated the Council of Nicaea in the late 1820s, moving on to the post-Nicenes during his research intoChristological controversies in the mid-1830s, and finding Athanasius the best fit in the 1840s. By the 1870s, the Athanasius he tried on was tailored to Catholic tastes and, measuring Origen up with the interpretations made by Aquinas and Suarez, Newman found him a better fit than he had in the1840s. A careful comparison of Newman's translations of Athanasius from 1842-44 and 1881, not previously undertaken, demonstrates that in 1881 it is not so much Aquinas as the neo-Thomism of the teachers of Leo XIII whom he read back into Athanasius.

 

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