John Henry Newman embarked on a retrospective analysis of his life when he was challenged to do so by a critical pamphlet. We may assume that he would not have done this had he not been provoked. Such would be his natural reaction, i.e. not to explain the motives of his rightful actions. The main goal that he set for his work was to be as sincere as possible in rendering his own history. Newman’s opponent charged him with hypocrisy and insincerity as regards his decision to join the Roman Catholic Church. This accusation triggered one of the most beautiful and powerful responses, with regard to its form and content. My thesis here is that, although the author of Apologia pro Vita Sua is writing about his own life, it is in fact a defence of individual life, and an excellent exposition of a person’s pursuit of truth and responsibility. I have therefore approached the Apologia as our guide to how persons can reach their destination, despite changing contexts and circumstances.
Newman begins with his juvenile religious experience. Then he leads his reader through the meanderings of his first reading list, his Italian trip, the Oxford Movement, his historical studies, up to the moment of his critical decision. We witness this magnificent journey in which Newman constructs his life into a system, into one integral whole. The main pillars of this construction are as follows: personal result, method of personation, real assent, realization, certitude, conscience, obedience, real words, probability as the guide of life, and action. These all constitute elements of his personalist epistemology. The elements of this system can again be included in his epistemology which, contrary to the modern model, consists of explicit and implicit elements. Newman confronts modern certainty with his personalist certitude, reinforced by the central thesis that despite probabilities, man can achieve certitude. He does not have to wait for clear and distinct ideas, for certitude can be approached through a well-informed conscience. The implicit elements, ruled out in modernity, now regain their due place. Under the guidance of faith they drive the individual towards certitude. And certitude, unlike certainty, is personally confirmed and manifests itself in inner peace and fulfilment.
This is what Newman experienced at the moment of the vital decision he made in 1845; to be more precise, he was brought to this decision. The human intellect, starting with its functional disarrangement, can be formed and made capable of apprehending the truth that surpasses its understanding.
In Newman’s example, we could see how personal experiences coalesced with historical studies and brought forth an entirely new quality. His task was indeed very complicated. First, he had to grapple with the heritage of
In his Apologia pro Vita Sua, Newman gives us to understand that a detailed picture of individual life is much more complex than it may seem at first glance. He holds it as an integral process in which intellectual and affective elements are combined, in which the conscious and extra-conscious factors count. The importance he attached to the conscious (explicit) factors shows that he was not an anti-intellectual; the respect he showed for the extra-conscious (implicit) factors proves that he adopted a profound personalistic attitude. The human person is not an isolated system liable to be studied by the sciences, but—as Newman wrote—a living intelligence. Newman’s life and his rendition of his own life place enormous significance on any individual life. Each life has a chance to be fulfilled. It is not on account that man was born good, but that the human being was created in the image and after the likeness of God. This is the source of a person’s non-negotiable dignity.
Newman praises the glory of magnitude and the seriousness of individual life. Each man has received respective faculties to go his own way to turn his life into a meaningful system, which is his personal result. Only an individual life, understood as a commitment, has a value, for only such a life may be the important and proper response to a human being. Newman unfolded the mystery of his life by standing on two foundations: the personalist theory of cognition, and historical studies. The personalist theory of cognition helped him ward off the dangers hidden in modern thinking, and to modify the enlightened paradigm which reduced human beings to the intellectual capacities and technical management of the world. Historical studies helped him learn the true identity of the Church of Rome and find repose in her.
Newman’s lesson is a lesson in humility towards one’s own and someone else’s life. Each person marches in his own way, each with his own difficulties known only to him. It is at the same time a very encouraging lesson, for each can reach this goal, each can perform the task given by God. We have seen how Newman’s personalist approach combined with his historical studies to bring about his vital decisions. The Apologia is a testimony to his individual life in which he struggled to attain the truth, or, to be more precise, to be found by it, through ups and downs, errors and corrections, but hiding nothing; in like manner, it becomes a corroboration of his honesty in personal decisions.
Newman opposed mainstream modern philosophy with its ambition to build a predictable world based on deistic and Newtonian laws, a world freed from human randomness, a claim that culminated in Kantian transcendentalism. Newman, on the contrary, sought to stake his claim on the person’s capacity to achieve certitude, even if much of what is hidden in the secret interior of the human being cannot be revealed (secretum mihi), that is, made explicit. A person can be a strong fortress not only when fortified by the formalisms of predictable laws, but when guided by a well-informed conscience. Such a person does not need the certainty of propositions for his or her choice, since his or her certitude can feed on probabilities and yet be complete and integral.