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Newman and Victorian Doubt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Abstract

Of the two sorts of doubt, interdenominational doubt and fundamental religious doubt, Newman does not seem to have suffered from the latter and did not write a great deal about it. What he did write, especially about conscience, is not convincing for a later secular age. What is more fruitful is how Newman related to other doubters of his age: his younger brother Francis who finished a Unitarian, and Matthew Arnold and his younger brother Tom who (twice) became a Catholic. John Newman first shunned his brother but in the end maintained friendly but distant relations with unbelievers. But Victorian doubt was inherited and the real threat to what Newman stood for came from a later generation.

Type
Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 The Author. New Blackfriars © 2011 The Dominican Society.

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References

1 J. H. Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua, Part III, History of my Religious Opinions up to 1833.

2 Grammar of Assent, Ch. 5 1. Belief in One God.

3 University Sermon 10, Faith and Reason Contrasted as Habits of Mind.

4 Quoted by Brown, David, Newman: A Man for Our Time (London: SPCK 1990) p. 5Google Scholar.

5 University Sermon 10.

6 Ibid.

7 University Sermon 12, Love the Safeguard of Faith against Superstition.

8 Grammar of Assent, Ch. 6 2. Complex Assent.

9 Ibid.

10 Grammar of Assent, Ch. 5 1. Belief in God.