Sermon Blog
Human Responsibility, as Independent of Circumstances, Oxford Univ. Sermon, No. 8
January 12, 2025
Sermon 8. Human Responsibility, as Independent of Circumstances
“The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.” Gen. iii. 13.
In this his second sermon as select preacher at the University Church (1832), Newman preached on man’s responsibility with reference to Satan’s temptation. He addresses the question of moral agency when circumstances and popular opinion might seem to excuse the agent.
He begins, “Accordingly, it has been always the office of Religion to protest against the sophistry of Satan, and to preserve the memory of those truths which the unbelieving heart corrupts, both the freedom and the responsibility of man;—the sovereignty of the Creator, the supremacy of the law of conscience as His representative within us, and the irrelevancy of external circumstances in the judgment which is ultimately to be made upon our conduct and character.” Sophistry means “the use of fallacious arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving.” Newman is warning against the ways in which Satan might try to fool us.
Newman explains that both Nature and Revelation certify that we are accountable for what we do and what we are. “Nature conveys it to us in the feeling of guilt and remorse, which implies self-condemnation. In the Scriptures, on the other hand, it is the great prevailing principle throughout, in every age of the world, and through every Dispensation.”
Newman quotes passages from Genesis, the prophets and St. Paul about the warning for those who transgress God’s commandments.
In the Epistle to the Romans, “Though exalting the sovereign power and inscrutable purposes of God, and apparently referring man’s agency altogether to Him as the vessel of His good pleasure, still he forgets not, in the very opening of his exposition, to declare the real independence and responsibility of the human will. “He will render to every man according to his deeds; … tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doeth evil … but glory, honour, and peace, to every man that worketh good; … for there is no respect of persons with God” This view, Newman writes, is antithetical to Calvinist doctrine. This teaching regarding free will continues to the very last book of the New Testament, “My reward is with Me; to give every man according as his work shall be. Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life.”
Again quoting Scripture Newman teaches that God who is faithful does not tempt men. We are moral agents responsible for our actions. We should not try to rid ourselves of responsibility, transferring our guilt for wrong acts to other agents as Adam and Eve did.
Men attempt to deceive their consciences, finding fault and laying blame with their circumstances. “Circumstances are the very trial of obedience” yet we think we would be happier in other ones and convert them as an excuse for our sins. We even imagine that if we had lived in the age of miracles or in the visible presence of the Lord we would have been other men.
Men refer to finding convenient circumstances for converting. Out of false charity we can have an irrational indulgence for our own vices or those of the young. Exceptions to civil obedience are made by alluding to bigoted rulers.
Newman gives as an example Voltaire’s moral behavior that is forgiven by some biographers because of the habits of young men in his age, and the acquittal of his responsibility.
He next mentions various gross errors for the interior life
-”Fatalism is the refuge of a conscience-stricken mind, maddened at the sight of evils which it has brought upon itself, and cannot remove.” This is bad enough without making it worse by self-reproach. It is the belief that man is utterly powerless before the imperious passions. This is the condition, he writes, of the obdurate sinner.
-The Calvinist doctrine, which for Newman “miscalculates the power of the affections, as fatalism does that of the passions. Its practical error is that of supposing that certain motives and views, presented to the heart and conscience, produce certain effects as their necessary consequence, no room being left for the resistance of the will, or for self-discipline, as the medium by which faith and holiness are connected together.”
According to this belief, works spring from a true and lively faith, and “it follows that nothing remains to be done but to bring these sovereign principles before the mind, as a medicine which must work a cure, or as sights which suddenly enlighten and win the imagination.”
“To care for little duties, to set men right in the details of life, to instruct and refine their conscience, to tutor them in self-denial,—the Scripture methods of working onwards towards higher knowledge and obedience,—become superfluous, nay, despicable, while these master visions are withheld.” Newman explains that such a system is congenial to the hedonists, to the young and to the indolent who wish to excuse themselves of moral agency.
For Newman, the error underlying this system is the assumption that there are things external to the mind, whether doctrines or influences, that when presented to it, suspend its responsibility as if by a physical law. This is contrary to the Scriptures’ teaching that we will be judged by our good or evil doings.
We must be aware of the temptation to substitute the many voices of those around us for the voice of our own conscience. Newman admits, “And though a doctrine such as this may be perverted into a contempt of authority, a neglect of the Church, and an arrogant reliance on self, yet there is a sense in which it is true, as every part of Scripture teaches. ‘Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.’”
We must not be fooled by a false dichotomy of the opinion of the multitude and the teachings of Scripture, or a philosophy such as Hegel’s which espouses an inexorable progress of the world over long periods of time. According to this theory man must submit to a power which is greater than himself in which conscience does not have a say.
Newman asserts “that circumstances are but the subject-matter, and not the rule of our conduct, nor in any true sense the cause of it.” He offers an example from life at Trinity College where students were obliged to partake of the Lord’s Supper on certain occasions. He asks, should they act under their own responsibility as far as profanation of the Blessed Sacrament or should they be relieved by the circumstance of compulsory communion?
Newman closes, “Our worldly philosophy and our well-devised pleadings will profit nothing at a day when the heaven shall depart as a scroll is rolled together, and all who are not clad in the wedding-garment of faith and love will be speechless. Surely it is high time for us to wake out of sleep, to chase from us the shadows of the night, and to realize our individuality, and the coming of our Judge. “The night is far spent, the day is at hand,”—”let us be sober, and watch unto prayer.”” It is well therefore for each one to examine himself at night being sincere and paying attention to his conscience, and always keeping in mind the Gospel commandments and precepts.
