Sermon Blog
Oxford University Sermon, n. 15. The Theory of Developments in Religious Doctrine
March 1, 2025
Fra Angelico, The Annunciation
Things change; this is a fact. Man changes from the moment of his birth until his death. Likewise peoples’ ideas and beliefs change. In his study of early Church History, John Henry Newman grappled for years with the question of change in Christian doctrine and practice. On the Feast of the Presentation in 1843, he delivered a very important address on this subject at St. Mary, the Virgin. It was his last University Sermon.
In this sermon Newman highlights the role of reason for the believer and puts forth some arguments for a theory on development of doctrine. It is a sermon about religious truths as they are expressed in dogmas, and how these dogmas develop. He later devoted an entire book to this subject, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845). This book has influenced numbers of Christians in their quest for understanding and has helped many in their conversion to Catholicism. We will look at this sermon in a number of posts.
The sermon begins by presenting the Virgin Mary as a model of faith and the relationship between faith and reason. He writes:
LITTLE is told us in Scripture concerning the Blessed Virgin, but there is one grace of which the Evangelists make her the pattern, in a few simple sentences—of Faith. Zacharias questioned the Angel’s message, but “Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.
Newman indicates that as St. Luke tells us, at the Nativity and later when Jesus stayed behind at the temple, Mary pondered all these things in her heart.
With this consideration Newman puts forth some elements about the development of doctrine:
Thus St. Mary is our pattern of Faith, both in the reception and in the study of Divine Truth. She does not think it enough to accept, she dwells upon it; not enough to possess, she uses it; not enough to assent, she developes it; not enough to submit the Reason, she reasons upon it; not indeed reasoning first, and believing afterwards, with Zacharias, yet first believing without reasoning, next from love and reverence, reasoning after believing.
In this rich paragraph Newman asserts that a believer not only assents to revealed truths, he reasons upon them, but he does so first by believing in what is revealed and by the exercise of love for God who reveals.
In doing so, Mary symbolizes the faith, not only of uneducated persons, but of doctors of the Church:
…who have to investigate, and weigh, and define, as well as to profess the Gospel; to draw the line between truth and heresy; to anticipate or remedy the various aberrations of wrong reason; to combat pride and recklessness with their own arms; and thus to triumph over the sophist and the innovator.
Newman continues by looking at how reason investigates doctrines of faith.
Christians have worked very hard throughout the ages to change culture and overthrow the world’s wisdom; the cathedrals are a symbol of the victory of faith.
At the same time the saints have toiled to establish safeguards for the great work in progress:
At length a large fabric of divinity was reared, irregular in its structure, and diverse in its style, as beseemed the slow growth of centuries; nay, anomalous in its details, from the peculiarities of individuals, or the interference of strangers, but still, on the whole, the development of an idea, “with how many reverses, yet with what certainty of advance, with what precision in its march, and with what ultimate completeness, it has been evolved.
Catholic dogma, Newman explains, begins with controversy which needs to be resolved. Over time it issues forth in exact and defined terms in which the truth hangs in a self-balanced manner. He comments: “Wonderful, to see how heresy has but thrown that idea into fresh forms, and drawn out from it farther developments.”
For Newman, the words of simple fishermen – the Apostles – lead to the expansion of thought. The gospel with “Its half sentences, its overflowings of language, admit of development; they have a life in them which shows itself in progress.” Heresies, in contrast, are unfruitful and lead to arguments and polemics.
Newman notes how some persons consider that the development of ideas and the formation of dogmas is a mere abuse of Reason. An immediate consequence is that there is “no necessary or proper connexion between inward religious belief and scientific expositions; and that charity, as well as good sense, is best consulted by reducing creeds to the number of private opinions.”
The rest of the sermon is the attempt to show the connection between Faith and Dogmatic confession, and the office or role of reason.
In summary, and more recently St. John Paul II, “faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth (Fides et ratio).
