Newman Studies Journal

Volume 9, Issue 2, Fall 2012

Joseph Redfield Palmisano
Pages 65-78

John Henry Newman’s Methodology for Theological Inquiry

This essay proposes that Newman’s developmental methodology, as presented in his Fifteenth Oxford University Sermon, has a contemporary relevance for advancing insights into revelation by encouraging believers to engage with the theo-Logos. Since the word of God is embodied in doctrine and understood through symbol and ritual, doctrinal propositions should be considered “living ideas” which become embodied in the believer and so deepen the believer’s relationship with Christ and the community of believers through a liturgical symbolic order.