Notable Quote: Sacred Texts and Doctrine by St. John Henry Newman

At Catholic Thought Book Club at Goodreads, we’re reading St. John Henry Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua, his great autobiography on his evolution to Roman Catholicism.  If Apologia were a work of fiction, it would be considered a Bildungsroman, that is a story about the development of a young man to who he became in maturity.  Perhaps after St. Augustine’s Confessions, Apologia is the greatest autobiographical conversion story in history.  Of course I will be posting on it once our read is over, but for now I want to post what I think is a great observation and a memorable quote.  This quote comes from the very first chapter, which details his beliefs and works up to the age of thirty-two.  The context of the quote is while speaking of a particular mentor of his at Oxford, a Dr. Hawkins.  Most certainly an Anglican, Dr. Hawkins had a very High Church theology.  He impressed this understanding upon the young Newman.

 

 “The sacred text was never intended to teach doctrine, but only to prove it, and that, if we would learn doctrine, we must have recourse to the formularies of the Church.”

 

Now you can see how this understanding of scripture would be an undermining of Protestant rudiments.  Certainly with this understanding, the Bible could not stand alone, and obviously you would need a “Church” to instruct you on the doctrine. 

Newman places himself under Dr. Hawkins between the years 1822 to 1825, which would span his twenty-first to twenty-fourth years.  He would convert to Roman Catholicism in 1845 at the age of forty-four, some twenty years later.