Newman's Challenge

Book excerpt: This study of John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890) confronts a variety of misperceptions of the famous English bishop, especially those that diminish Newman's deep appreciation of the supernatural. As Stanley Jaki writes, "Newman's chief challenge today, as in his times, aims at the defense of the supernatural". Jaki shows that such a defense was, for Newman, far more than a simple intellectual enterprise. For Newman, the supernatural was above all a spiritual challenge of the profoundest sort. In this volume Jaki begins with an overview of the challenge that Newman set for himself and for the church. Jaki then unfolds this challenge across a dozen key topics drawn from Newman's writings. Jaki shows that much as the topics of original sin, angels, miracles, Anglo-Catholicism, conversion, and papacy may differ from those of assent, science, evolution, and history, they all bespeak Newman's total engagement with the concretely given supernatural.