# Cardinal Newman Said, “To Be Deep in History Is to Cease to Be Protestant.”



## JM (May 8, 2020)

Any thoughts on Newman's statement?

When I read the writings of the fathers I do not find them to be Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. Not really. I find it a confused muddle of believers striving for orthodoxy, often citing scripture, especially in the 4th century when tradition(s) were getting out of hand. I see a State interfering in church business and directing Bishops and clergy on what they should believe and how they should act. 

Yours in the Lord, 

jm


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## py3ak (May 8, 2020)

Ironically enough, it's an unhistorical statement. It is one thing to be aware of history; it is another thing to let a selective history determine what is right and proper.

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## Taylor (May 8, 2020)

Anybody who can read Calvin's "Prefatory Address to King Francis I of France" in his _Institutes_ and seriously think he was not "deep in history" is worse than a fool.

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## JM (May 8, 2020)

Taylor Sexton said:


> Anybody who can read Calvin's "Prefatory Address to King Francis I of France" in his _Institutes_ and seriously think he was not "deep in history" is worse than a fool.


I agree. Calvin's ample use of the fathers is a great testimony to Reformed catholicity.


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## C. M. Sheffield (May 9, 2020)

Church history is a task that cannot be abstracted from theology, philosophy, and polemics. Insinuating otherwise is naive.

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## W.C. Dean (May 9, 2020)

Is Newman claiming only Romans can utilize history? That's ludicrous. I personally believe even the small, minute details of church history should be recorded. I'm very thankful for careful historians like Rev. John Keddie. I also love works like Between the Times by D.G. Hart as sometimes I found the book almost boring. Yes I'm citing as a positive because even the spenditures of the committees are recorded, and I think it's important to document such things. Anyway, Protestants I've read have almost always been very well educated and connected to history. I pray I can serve Christ's church by documenting her history.


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## deleteduser99 (May 9, 2020)

Going through Robert Godfrey on church history I'm amazed how many RCC doctrines developed as late as they did. Transubstantiation was not a dogma until the second millennium, and even then there was hot internal debate over it.

I don't remember the author, but a classic work called _Sic et Non_ (roughly translated "Yes and No") was a compilation of quotes from the prior church fathers showing that they were not all so uniform on some dogmas as previously believed, oftentimes believing opposites from one another.

My personal favorite is knowing that at one time there were three popes.

I could go on.


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## RamistThomist (May 9, 2020)

He's cheating, since his see/growth theory of development proves that none of Rome's stuff is historical (which is why hard core Catholics correctly call him a liberal).

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## Alan D. Strange (May 9, 2020)

RPEphesian said:


> I don't remember the author, but a classic work called _Sic et Non_ (roughly translated "Yes and No") was a compilation of quotes from the prior church fathers showing that they were not all so uniform on some dogmas as previously believed, oftentimes believing opposites from one another.
> 
> My personal favorite is knowing that at one time there were three popes.



Earning my pay as a historian here: the author of _Sic et Non_ is Peter Abelard (d. mid-12th c.), who sparred with Bernard of Clairvaux, and was a "liberal" of sorts (moral influence theory of atonement against Anselm's satisfaction view). He's a fascinating fellow (relationship with Heloise). And the three popes were between the Councils of Pisa (1409) and Constance (1415, which handed over Hus for burning, among other outrages), as the tail end of the Avignon papacy and the rise of the conciliar movement. If some of this is unclear, the history is there for anyone to study!

Now for the Newman quote in the OP: typical Newman twaddle and self-justification. Remember this is a man, as part of the Oxford movement, who went from the Anglican church to the RCC. Much of what he did thereafter was self-justification. The sentiment that he expresses is common among RCC apologists. To assert something, however, is not to prove it. It is the case that a church, as is true for the RCC, that reads Scripture through the lens of tradition (Tradition II or III, per Oberman) is going to idolize "history" in a way that thinking Protestants never should.

We understand "history" as the field in which God's providential outworking has manifested itself, particularly God the Father bringing His people to salvation by his appointment, Christ achieving and the Spirit applying that appointed salvation. And the church has, by that same Spirit that gave the Word, in the main, rightly interpreted it (being brought back to it in times of reformation). We are a people for whom history matters immensely because the Incarnation occurred in time and space and our faith, unlike Eastern religions, understands how much history matters.

But history is description, not prescription, which resides solely in the Word. We don't ignore history in interpreting Scripture (this is why we do all the commentary work that we do, listening to the many who've gone before and grappled with the Word). At the end of the day, however, it is Scripture alone (not Scripture and Tradition) that we regard as authoritative and regulative. We are always concerned with how this has been understood and played itself out in the life of the church, but we are never bound to history (tradition) in the way that we are to Scripture.

Newman's assertion here, I would argue, is a departure from the position of the ancient church, which viewed tradition as the church's understanding of Scripture (forming the _regula fide_i as expressed in the ecumenical creeds), not the lens through which Scripture is to be read. We read history through the lens of Scripture, not Scripture through the lens of history, Newman has got it all wrong, and this continues to be one of the main problems afflicting the RCC (and leading them to many others!).

Peace,
Alan

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## a mere housewife (May 9, 2020)

I think a search through DTK's quotes from the Fathers here would show how possible it is to be deep in history and remain a Protestant.

{edit: I figured out how to do that sort of search -- yay -- and wanted to add the link: https://puritanboard.com/forums/quotes-forum.35/?starter_id=10708 }

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## Phil D. (May 9, 2020)

Alan D. Strange said:


> Councils of Pisa (1409) and Basil (1415, which handed over Hus for burning...)


Very slight historical nit-pick: I believe Hus was condemned by the Council of Constance (1415).


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## RamistThomist (May 9, 2020)

Two different errors. One is to go with Newman and think Jesus offered the Roman Mass on the Last Supper (okay, exaggeration). The other is to think your average Nicene church would have looked like Mississippi Valley Presbytery. It wouldn't have. While they might have said words like "grace" and "Scripture," they also venerated Mary and began to invoke saints, so there's that.


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## Minh (May 9, 2020)

Adding to the OP concerns, I wish to state that I have troubles believing in justification by faith alone as historical and well-known doctrine prior the Reformation. I believe the doctrine is explicitly taught in the Scripture. But at some points, I am still unsettled on the question of whether all Christian believers before the great Reformation knows that he earn salvation through trusting in the merits of Christ. This doesn't mean the Reformers invented novelty. Any help?

Edit: _Please do not misunderstand this as stirring the pot to raise controversies and conflicts, but for edification._


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## RamistThomist (May 9, 2020)

Minh said:


> Adding to the OP concerns, I wish to state that I have troubles believing in justification by faith alone as historical and well-known doctrine prior the Reformation. I believe the doctrine is explicitly taught in the Scripture. But at some points, I am still unsettled on the question of whether all Christian believers before the great Reformation knows that he earn salvation through trusting in the merits of Christ. This doesn't mean the Reformers invented novelty. Any help?
> 
> Edit: _Please do not misunderstand this as stirring the pot to raise controversies and conflicts, but for edification._



That's legit. Early Christians were synergists in part because they reacted against a strong fatalism. Some of our heroes also venerated Mary. Others used incense. The church is still growing to full maturity.

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## py3ak (May 9, 2020)

Minh said:


> Adding to the OP concerns, I wish to state that I have troubles believing in justification by faith alone as historical and well-known doctrine prior the Reformation.



If it were clearly understood and well-known prior to the Reformation, it wouldn't have been revolutionary. Were there people who trusted Christ for their salvation, gave a partial or poor explanation of how that worked, and sometimes behaved inconsistently? To be sure. Some explained it better than others, but the clarity and consistency that Farel, Luther, Zwingli and then Calvin brought to the description of saving faith and its role in salvation was a genuine advance.

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## JM (May 9, 2020)

BayouHuguenot said:


> That's legit. Early Christians were synergists in part because they reacted against a strong fatalism. Some of our heroes also venerated Mary. Others used incense. The church is still growing to full maturity.


That reminds me - I need to read Prosper of Aquitaine.

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## ZackF (May 9, 2020)

BayouHuguenot said:


> He's cheating, since his see/growth theory of development proves that none of Rome's stuff is historical (which is why hard core Catholics correctly call him a liberal).


I think that was Manning's charge back in the day.

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## Reformed Covenanter (May 9, 2020)

What Cardinal Newman really meant was "To worship church history is to cease to be a Protestant." Hence, the idolatrous fox ceased to be a Protestant.

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## RamistThomist (May 10, 2020)

Here is the rule for reading EO literature: if they are a convert, don't read it. If they don't have a Greek or Russian last name, don't read it. While I generally deplore Ancient Faith Radio, I think it was Kevin Allen on there who had a fascinating number of interviews explaining the "Greek decline" in America. It's actually quite brilliant. I'll see if I can find it. 

After WWII a number of Greeks came to America because there was a real fear that Greece would go Marxist (Marxist agents even had Gulags built, for that is the essence of socialism, to imprison patriots). A generation later, with that fear not materializing, you didn't have as many Greeks coming to America. And with many Americanized Greek children not as intense about the "Greekness" of the faith, the church numbers started to take a hit.

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## JM (May 10, 2020)

BayouHuguenot said:


> Here is the rule for reading EO literature: if they are a convert, don't read it. If they don't have a Greek or Russian last name, don't read it. While I generally deplore Ancient Faith Radio, I think it was Kevin Allen on there who had a fascinating number of interviews explaining the "Greek decline" in America. It's actually quite brilliant. I'll see if I can find it.
> 
> After WWII a number of Greeks came to America because there was a real fear that Greece would go Marxist (Marxist agents even had Gulags built, for that is the essence of socialism, to imprison patriots). A generation later, with that fear not materializing, you didn't have as many Greeks coming to America. And with many Americanized Greek children not as intense about the "Greekness" of the faith, the church numbers started to take a hit.


I use to attend a Greek Orthodox Parish when I was a new believer and trying to find a home. The parish had a tithing box at the back as well as membership fees. They celebrated Greek national holidays and really focused on their cultural of which their religion was just a part of it. The basement hall was used more than the parish sanctuary.

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## Poimen (May 10, 2020)

"_Antiquity_ is a venerable word, but ill used, when made a cloak for error. Truth must needs be elder than error; as the rule must necessarily be, before the aberration from it. The grey hairs of opinions are then only beauty, and a crown, when found in the way of righteousness. _Copper_ (saith learned Du Moulin) will never become gold by age. A lie will be a lie, let it be never so ancient. We dispute not by years, but by reasons drawn from scripture. That which is now called an ancient opinion, if it be not a true opinion, was once but a new error. When you can tell us how many years are required to turn an error into truth, then we will give more heed to antiquity, when pressed into the service of error than we now think due to it."
-John Flavel, The Causes and Cure of Mental Errors

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## RamistThomist (May 10, 2020)

If you want antiquity, go be a Hindu.

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## Alan D. Strange (May 10, 2020)

Phil D. said:


> Very slight historical nit-pick: I believe Hus was condemned by the Council of Constance (1415).



Quite right. An odd historical slip. As you can see, I had the date correct for Constance (1415) but just leapfrogged to the next Council after Constance: Basel, where over the course of some time the Conciliar movement effectively expired. Pisa (1409), of course, is not counted by the RCC among the General Councils, since three popes emerged from it. I've corrected it. 

Peace,
Alan


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## Minh (May 11, 2020)

Hi JM,

I actually forgot that I made a similar post on this topic.





Newman’s conversion


While I agree that contemporary “Reformed” and “Evangelical” converts to RCC do not have a solid understanding of the biblical faith, I’m confounded by the conversion of J.H.Newman to Rome. On one hand, he was very well raised in a Anglican background with heavy Reformed influences and he...




www.puritanboard.com

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## DTK (May 12, 2020)

ZackF said:


> I think that was Manning's charge back in the day.


Now there's the kind of Romanist with whom you would prefer to dispute, given his explicit bias expressed upfront! Unlike Newman, who was his contemporary, he didn't give a rip about history - no idols there for him . . .

*Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Henry Edward Manning (1808-1892):* It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. *But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy.* It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at _this hour_, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine. How can we know what antiquity was except through the Church? No individual, no number of individuals can go back through eighteen hundred years to reach the doctrines of antiquity. We may say with the woman of Samaria, ‘Sir, the well is deep, and thou hast nothing to draw with.’ No individual mind now has contact with the revelation of the Pentecost, except through the Church. Historical evidence and biblical criticism are human after all, and amount to no more than opinion, probability, human judgment, human tradition.
It is not enough that the fountain of our faith be Divine. It is necessary that the channel be divinely constituted and preserved. But in the second chapter we have seen that the Church contains the fountain of faith in itself, and is not only the channel divinely created and sustained, but the very presence of the spring-head of the water of life, ever fresh and ever flowing in all ages of the world. I may say in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity. It rests upon its own supernatural and perpetual consciousness. Its past is present with it, for both are one to a mind which is immutable. Primitive and modern are predicates, not of truth, but of ourselves. The Church is always primitive and always modern at one and the same time; and alone can expound its own mind, as an individual can declare his own thoughts. ‘For what man knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of a man that is in him? So the things also that are of God no man knoweth, but the Spirit of God.’ _*The only Divine evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the Church at*_* this hour. *Henry Edward Manning, _The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation_ (New York: J.P. Kenedy & Sons, originally written 1865, reprinted with no date), pp. 227-228.

Now there is _sola Roma _with a vengeance!

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