This essay first considers the Benedictine monastic schools and their educational philosophy in relation to the writings of John Henry Newman on education and then provides a comparison with the curriculum at the Torrey Honors Institute of Biola University with particular emphasis on their respective views of Scripture and its use in academic and formational contexts.

This essay—originally a presentation at the annual meeting of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, September 28, 2007, in Washington DC—uses the concept of a “power of assimilation” from Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine toshow how the Christian intellectual exercises this power in encountering the surrounding non-Christian culture.

This essay examines the theological and rhetorical concerns animating John Henry Newman’s evaluation of efforts to prove the existence of God and/or the truth of Christianity with philosophical arguments about the design of nature. Newman’s complex position on arguments from design ought to be interpreted in light of his broader theological understanding of the challenges posed to the practice of Christian faith in his nineteenth century context. These challenges required that apologetics first and foremost defend the truth of Christianity as a religion of holiness, not as a religion of reasonableness.

This essay examines some aspects of the conceptions of reason in the thought of Luigi Giussani and John Henry Newman. Although the two writers have different approaches and emphases, their notions of reason display striking complementarities, especially in regard to the complex relationship of the reason and the will, converging probabilities, and the operation of reason in relation to faith (informal inference).

This essay examines Newman’s attention to the theological schools and the great weight he gave to theology as the regulating principle of the entire Church system. The first section examines Newman’s adherence to the Caroline Divines and their influenceupon his Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church.The second section considers Newman’s “Preface to the Third Edition of the Via Media” (1877), which presented his expanded vision of the Schola Theologorum, which led to his Christological ecclesiology.A brief conclusion reflects on the contemporary relevance of Newman’s final vision of the Church.

This essay traces Newman’s rich legacy in modern American literature in the writings of three prominent American writers of the last century: F. Scott Fitzgerald, who plays off of Newman’s definition of a gentleman in his The Beautiful and Damned (1922); Sinclair Lewis, who connects the figure of Carlyle Vesper to Newman in Gideon Planish (1943); and Flannery O’Connor, who mentioned Newman in four published letters, and whose artistic vision was shaped appreciably by Newman’s Apologia and his Grammar of Assent.

Beginning with an overview of the knowledge claims proposed by John Locke and David Hume, this essay first explores the respective responses of Newman and W. G. Ward and then updates the discussion by bringing Newman into dialogue with the thoughtof Alasdair MacIntyre.

John Henry Newman had a fascination with the angels, as evidenced by three of his published poems, a passage devoted to angels in his Apologia pro Vita Sua, as well as sermons on the angels. Surprisingly, Newman’s interest in angels has not attracted much scholarly attention. After examining some of Newman’s writings that touch upon angels, this essay suggests that Newman’s Romantic and Evangelical background prepared him for his reading of the Fathers in 1828, which in turn influenced his consideration of the significance of angels in the spiritual life.