Newman and Heresy The Anglican Years

This study provides the first systematic account of John Henry Newman's treatment of heresy and heretics in the early Church, and thus sheds light on an area hitherto unexplored in books about Newman.

This 1991 book describes the close relationship between the historical researches and the teeming world of early nineteenth-century controversy. The setting is Oxford between the 1820s and the 1840s, when Newman made his ambitious and doomed attempt to re-invent the 'catholicity' of the Church of England. The author shows that in Newman's battle against the Protestant wing of the Church of England, and the (to him) even more sinister 'liberals', he saw parallels with the struggle of the early Church against heresy. Newman's 'rediscovery' of ancient Patristic writers and heretics was thus part of a strategy to revive Catholicism within the Anglican Church. Dr Thomas shows how Newman's eventual conversion to Rome in 1845 may be understood as a change in his perception of heresy, and a realisation of the applicability of his own polemic to his Anglican self.

Introduction; Part I. Defence - Arianism and the Church-State Crisis: 1. Heresy and orthodoxy in the evangelical period; 2. The Arians of the fourth century and its background; 3. Newman's Tractarian rhetoric 1833–7; 4. Conclusion: rhetoric and politics; Part II. Attack - Sebellianism and Appolinarianism: Liberalism Unmasked: 5. New directions: the mid-1830s; 6. Patristic research: the edition of Dionysius of Alexandria; 7. The Hampden controversy; 8. Blanco White; 9. Apollinarianism; 10. Tract 73: on the introduction of rationalist principles into revealed religion; 11. The Elucidations on Hampden; 12. Apollinarianism revisited; 13. Sabellianism revisited; 14. Heresy, typology and the encodement of experience; Part III. Retreat and Realignment - Monophysitism and the Collapse of the Via Media: 15. Construction; 16. Collapse; 17. Rhetoric refurbished; Conclusion; References; Bibliography.

This 1991 study links Newman's historical researches to the religious controversies of the time. Dr Thomas shows how Newman's eventual conversion to Catholicism in 1845 may be understood as a change in his perception of heresy, and a realisation of the applicability of his own polemic to his Anglican self.