To a greater degree than many people realize, some extremely
serious conflicts throughout history have resulted from an error that most
people not only fail to recognize as an error, they do not see any difference
between the error and what is correct.
Seemingly so esoteric that it appears to have absolutely no relation to
anything in real life, it is the question whether the natural law is based on
what can be observed about human nature or is based on someone’s interpretation
of something accepted as God’s Will . . . or whatever is put in God’s place.
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| Aristotle: Primacy of the Intellect |
How serious is this apparently arcane question? Very serious.
If the natural law is based on what can be observed about human nature,
then — as the Catholic Church has consistently taught, in common with Aristotle
and other philosophers — knowledge of God’s existence and of the natural law is
attainable by human reason. That being
the case, the natural law applies to every human being, and all human beings
have the same natural rights as all other human beings.
If, on the other hand, the natural law is based on
someone’s personal idea of God’s Will, then right and wrong depend only on what
some are able to force others into accepting.
There are no objective standards of right and wrong. Might makes right.
As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, then, John
Henry Newman’s sermons from the pulpit of Saint Mary’s, the Oxford University
church, were not the usual type of sermon church attendees were likely to hear,
even from the standpoint of entertainment or the lack thereof. Instead, as virtually everyone noted — even
those who were opposed to the Oxford Movement — Newman focused on delivering
the basics of the Christian faith as traditionally understood in a calm,
rational, and above all understandable manner.
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| John Henry Newman: captivating sermons. |
Unfortunately, a number of things interfered with the
acceptance of common sense on a widespread scale. For one thing, European type liberalism and
socialism were making great inroads into the Church of England at this time, as
they were in organized religion on the continent and even in America. This can be accounted for primarily by the
fact that non-American liberalism and socialism — two aspects of the same
thing, really — are not based on reason, but on faith.
European type liberalism manifests as a concept of the
natural law that assumes the human creation of the collective is greater than
the divine creation of the human person.
Newman’s calm reasoning, while it was effective as a logical argument,
did not change the minds of diehard European type liberals and socialists, and
only touched a relatively small number of English type liberals and
capitalists.
For another thing, logic and common sense rarely have any
lasting impact on emotional, faith-based positions. A number of people who became the bitterest
opponents of Newman after he converted to Catholicism were among those who had
been most entranced by the delivery of his sermons, often without regard to
anything Newman actually said. By
allowing themselves to fall victim to form over substance, they subsequently
accused Newman of doing the deceiving, not the self-delusion engendered by
their own immature or undeveloped intellects.
Then there was the problem of the narrowness of the Oxford
Movement itself. Although it is one of
the characteristics of social justice that nothing is done in a vacuum and everything
has an effect outside the particular milieu within which it takes place, the
people in the Movement only looked within the Movement itself to gauge its
effectiveness. They considered whatever
was outside the Movement only in terms of how it affected the Movement, not vice versa. They did not really look beyond their own “High
Church” circle at Oxford and did not take into consideration the fact that the
Evangelical Anglicans and other parties were also in the Church of
England. And that created a problem. . .
.
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| Renn Dickson Hampden |
The first big shakeup — what might be called the beginning
of the end — had its roots in something that happened the year before the
Oxford Movement was launched. In 1832
the Reverend Renn Dickson Hampden (1793-1868) had delivered the prestigious
Bampton Lectures. As Hampden was an
excessively dull lecturer and the lectures themselves were more than a little
obscure, not to say long-winded and tedious, virtually no notice was taken of
them. As Maisie Ward put it, “They were
just that year’s Bampton Lectures. They
were printed. They were forgotten.” (Ward, Young
Mr. Newman, op. cit., 287.)
Unfortunately, Hampden, while politically sound in the
liberal sense, was philosophically and theologically unsound in the academic and
religious sense. He was “broad” —
liberal — in his religious views to an advanced degree, to the point where some
would later question whether Hampden’s theories were Christian in any
meaningful sense. He was also the most
learned Aristotelian among the faculty.
The problem there was Hampden was as heterodox an Aristotelian
as he was a Christian. He was something
on the order of what Thomas Aquinas faced in the thirteenth century in his
debate with Siger of Brabant. Siger
claimed Aristotle’s support against the basic principles of Aristotelian
philosophy so that something could both “be” and “not be” at the same time
under the same conditions.
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| G. K. Chesterton |
Specifically, Hampden held that certain teachings of the
Church of England could be both true and false at the same time, depending on
who was interpreting them. As Chesterton
described this belief in the thought of Siger of Brabant, possibly with Hampden
in mind,
Siger of Brabant said this: the Church must be right
theologically, but she can be wrong scientifically. There are two truths; the truth of the
supernatural world, and the truth of the natural world, which contradicts the
supernatural world. While we are being
naturalists, we can suppose that Christianity is all nonsense; but the, when we
remember that we are Christians, we must admit that Christianity in true even
if it is nonsense. In other words, Siger
of Brabant split the human head in two, like the blow in an old legend of
battle; and declared that a man has two minds, with one of which he must
entirely believe and with the other may utterly disbelieve. To many this would at least seem like a
parody of Thomism. As a fact, it was the
assassination of Thomism. It was not two
ways of finding the same truth; it was an untruthful way of pretending that
there are two truths. (G.K. Chesterton, Saint
Thomas Aquinas: The “Dumb Ox”. New
York: Image Books, 1956, 92-93.)
This, obviously, is an ideal philosophy for an
established, political church whose doctrines must be broad enough and wide
enough to embrace even significant contradictions if deemed necessary or
expedient by the political powers-that-be.
It is not, however — as Newman and others realized immediately — a
philosophy that would permit the Church of England to return to its fundamental
principles and maintain some semblance of orthodox Christian beliefs.
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| Joseph Blanco White |
Somewhat ironically, what the members of the Oxford
Movement found objectionable in the lectures may not even have originated with
Hampden. The theories had most probably
been inserted by the Spanish theologian and poet, Joseph Blanco White (José
María Blanco y Crespo, 1775-1841).
White had drifted through various Christian sects, starting with
Catholicism, until finally ending up a Unitarian.
Nevertheless, all of this would have been forgotten had it
not been for the fact that in March of 1834, on the strength of having
delivered the Bampton lectures, Hampden obtained the Oxford Moral Philosophy
Professorship. This was a position for
which Newman had also been considered, but Hampden controlled two more votes than
Newman.
Coincidentally, in that same month, sixty-three members of
the Cambridge University Senate petitioned parliament for the abolition of the
requirement to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles or any other religious
test in order to take a degree at the university. A bill was introduced and passed the House of
Commons by a large majority, whereupon it went to the House of Lords.
Briefly, the “Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion” are the
“constitution” of the Church of England.
A part of the Book of Common
Prayer (the official
instructions for worship services of the Anglican Communion), the Thirty-Nine
Articles present the specific doctrines and certain disciplines (applications
of doctrine) that define the Church of England as a Christian church.
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| Elizabeth I Tudor |
Deliberately
vague and in some parts contradictory in order to allow as many people as
possible to agree to them, the Articles were originally intended to form the
basis for a non-papal Catholicism, i.e.,
a schismatic rather than heretical church.
After half a dozen or so iterations, the final form was adopted in 1571
following the excommunication of Elizabeth I Tudor in part to force Catholics
either to leave the country or the Catholic Church, preferably the latter.
Opponents of the bill began organizing, and even from
Cambridge, more liberal than Oxford, protests were strong. Nevertheless, at Oxford, in support of the initiative
to abolish the subscription requirement, Hampden published Observations on Religious Dissent.
This was a pamphlet he evidently hoped would counter the success of the
more orthodox Tracts and help turn popular opinion in the direction of
abolition of the subscription requirement.
Hampden’s pamphlet explained in greater detail some of the
more confusing parts of his Bampton Lectures.
Where the lectures had largely been ignored, however, the pamphlet
enjoyed a relatively wide circulation.
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| John Frederick Denison Maurice |
In a surprising move, John Frederick Denison Maurice
(1805-1872) wrote a pamphlet under the pseudonym “Rusticus” in which he
defended subscription, albeit on somewhat unusual grounds. Paradoxically taking a very broad view,
Maurice argued that the Thirty-Nine Articles did not really present actual
doctrines, but “conditions of thought.” It was by this means those who signed
indicated not assent to anything specific, but their willingness to learn or
teach at the university, as the case might be.
In this Maurice exhibited an early example of what was to
become a highly developed skill at fence-straddling and managing to take both
sides of opposing questions at the same time.
In common with similar tactics adopted later by the Fabian Society, this
enabled Maurice to become the leading philosopher of Christian socialism in
England.
Probably impressed by the fact of Maurice’s defense of the
Thirty-Nine Articles, Newman at first approved of Maurice’s thought. On closer examination, however, Newman
decided that Maurice’s thought was “hazy” and dismissed it.
Thus, in somewhat backhanded fashion, Hampden and Maurice
were arguing in favor of the case for liberalism in a similar way but from
different sides of the issue. Hampden
made the case that the Thirty-Nine Articles should be abolished because they
asserted specific doctrines the orthodox considered essential to be a Christian.
Since in Hampden’s opinion doctrine per se was of no religious significance, non-orthodox Christians
could not sign in good conscience as they would be agreeing to something they
thought was not essential to believe in order to be a Christian. For his part, Maurice argued that the
Articles should be retained because the doctrines they asserted were of no
importance, and anyone could sign in good conscience because they were in
effect agreeing to nothing.
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| Daniel O'Connell, the Great Emancipator |
The real issue was whether a liberal or an orthodox understanding
of Christianity should define the beliefs — the creed — of the Church of
England. Newman’s position, and that of
the other members of the Oxford Movement was ultimately that liberal
Christianity (and by extension socialism and modernism) was not even a real
religion, much less a Christian one.
It is easy for people in the twenty-first century to
deprecate, even condemn a religious test to attend a university or hold public
office. The opposition to emancipation
for Dissenters, Catholics, and Jews and resistance to the recognition of their
civil rights strikes people of today the same way. Nor are they wrong — there should never be
any religious test for anyone to participate in civil society, take a university
degree, practice a profession, or anything else non-religious.
To understand the Oxford Movement, however, it is
essential to realize that in the early nineteenth century the Church of England
faced two serious problems. One, the
Church of England was an established church with all the evils, civil,
religious, and domestic (education is, technically, under domestic society —
the Family — as parents are the primary teachers of their children), that
accompany that peculiar arrangement.
When a religion is established, anyone who is not a member
in good standing of the government religion is automatically a second class
citizen in that society. At the same
time, granting full rights of citizenship to people who are not members of that
religion means that people who are not adherents of a particular faith have the
power to vote on matters of religious doctrine on discipline of a faith that is
not even their own.
Two, changes in doctrine or discipline due to non-members
of a religion voting on them subjects what should be purely religious beliefs
and practices to political and other non-religious influences. A political move that calls traditional
religious teachings into question (such as the suppression of bishoprics) will
almost always override doctrine or discipline out of perceived expedience or
necessity.
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| Sir Robert Peel, Tory MP for Oxford University |
Thus, as was the case in the Oxford Movement, those who
stand by traditional beliefs and practices will tend to be conservative, even
reactionary in their politics. It was no
coincidence that Oxford was a Tory stronghold.
Adding to the problems associated with the paradox of an
established religion was the fact that in this case it was not merely political
expedience or necessity that was attempting to bring about change. There was that, of course, especially with
the issue of Catholic Emancipation, the politically, but not religiously right
thing to do.
With the rise of socialism and modernism, and the spread
of European type liberalism, however, the issue became at once more fundamental
and serious, even grave. At stake was
not only the definition of Christianity for the Church of England, but the
understanding of religion itself, Christian or otherwise.
This is a point that cannot be emphasized enough, as it
explains not merely the inspiration of the Oxford Movement, but the emotion it
evoked among its opponents, or (more accurately) opponents of Newman, who
epitomized the Movement in the eyes of many.
Members of the Movement fought against the “new things” of the modern
age the best they knew, using the doctrines and disciplines of the church in
which tenets they believed.
In this, members of the Movement appeared to be resisting
new religious doctrines that would make membership in the Church of England
much more attractive and in tune with the modern age. Even worse for an established religion, they
were opposing the will of the people.
They were thus pitting themselves against a government that (at least in
theory) represented all the people, not just members of the Church of England .
. . or — more accurately — whatever élite
claimed to speak in the name of the people and had the economic power to
enforce that claim.
#30#