While the Anglican Newman’s volumes of Sermons ewere avidly read, they were not discussed. Though not always an easy reading, the Lectures on Justification were much disputed and mostly opposed by Anglicans. The reason for this difference is simple. In the Lectures Newman argued in a rigorous way, though he also exhorted. In the Sermons he exhorted without arguing much. Into the Sermons any sincere and devout Anglican could read his deepest aspirations, but on reading the Lectures he had to reconsider at almost every step the notion Anglicanism inherited from Luther about merit as belonging solely to Christ. But since Newman argued, and always with an eye on Luther, on behalf of real sanctification through grace and sacraments, it was not difficult to see that the Lectures were an unwitting plea in support of Rome’s stance on the subject. In other words Newman’s relentless pursuit in theory and practice of the supernatural lead him inevitably to Rome, which at least a few suspected when the Lectures were published in April 1838. For a long time neglected, the Lectures drifted again into Catholic and Protestant theological focus in recent decades, though time and again at the price of misconstructing what Newman argued. So much for the timeliness of this book.

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 978-0-9790577-4-8  •  viii + 286 pages  •  softcover