Apologia Pro Vita Sua

Summary

Apologia Pro Vita Sua is John Henry Newman's defence of his honesty, written in 1864 in reply to the novelist and clergyman Charles Kingsley, who had written in Macmillan's Magazine that truth for its own sake had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy and that Father Newman taught it need not be. After an exchange of letters and a pamphlet by Kingsley, Newman decided that the only adequate answer was a history of his own mind. Parts I and II, kept in the library text, examine Kingsley's method of argument and explain why Newman will answer by narrative rather than by rebuttal. Part III traces his religious opinions to 1833: a London boyhood of Bible reading and imaginative fancies, an evangelical conversion at fifteen in 1816 that left him resting in the thought of two self-evident beings, himself and his Creator, and the influence at Oriel College of Richard Whately, Edward Hawkins, John Keble, the Christian Year and Joseph Butler's Analogy, along with his close friendship with Richard Hurrell Froude. He travels in the Mediterranean in 1832-33, nearly dies of fever in Sicily, tells his servant that he has a work to do in England, and writes Lead, Kindly Light while becalmed in the Straits of Bonifacio. Part IV covers 1833 to 1839, when Keble's sermon on National Apostasy starts the Oxford Movement and Newman writes Tracts for the Times defending dogma, a visible Church and the apostolical succession, and develops the theory of the Anglican via media between Rome and popular Protestantism. Part V, 1839 to 1841, describes his study of the Monophysite controversy, the shock of reading Augustine's phrase securus judicat orbis terrarum in an article by Nicholas Wiseman, and the storm over Tract 90, in which he argued that the Thirty-Nine Articles could bear a Catholic interpretation and which the bishops censured. Part VI, 1841 to 1845, recounts the Jerusalem bishopric scheme, his retirement to Littlemore with a few friends, his resignation of St. Mary's in 1843, his retraction of earlier attacks on Rome, his work on the development of doctrine, and his reception into the Catholic Church by the Passionist Father Dominic Barberi on 9 October 1845, followed by his departure from Oxford in February 1846. Part VII, a general answer to Kingsley, describes the perfect peace he has felt since, explains how difficulties differ from doubts, and sets out his view of the Church's infallibility as a power given to withstand the wild living intellect of man. An appendix answers Kingsley's charges one by one, and the volume closes with a dedication to the fathers of the Birmingham Oratory, especially Ambrose St. John, and a letter of support from Bishop William Ullathorne. The work appeared in weekly parts from April to June 1864 and was revised in 1865 as History of My Religious Opinions.

Top Lessons

• Answering a charge with a whole life

  Accused of indifference to truth, Newman decides that only the full history of his opinions will show what he is. He sets aside point-by-point rebuttal in favour of narrative, on the conviction that a reader who sees the whole person can judge his sincerity. The Apologia is thus a model of answering an attack on character with candour rather than counter-attack.

• Difficulty is not doubt

  In Part VII Newman says that he feels the intellectual difficulties of the Creed as keenly as anyone, but that ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt. A person can be unable to solve a problem without doubting that it has an answer. The distinction gives students a way to hold faith honestly while facing hard questions.

• Following conscience at great cost

  Newman's conversion cost him his Oxford fellowship, his pulpit at St. Mary's, many friendships and his standing in English public life. He describes leaving Littlemore and never seeing Oxford again except its spires from the railway. The book shows a man acting on conviction slowly and carefully, while his Anglican friends Keble and Pusey, acting on their own convictions, stayed where they were.

• The Church and the meaning of tradition

  Newman's via media held that the Church of England kept the faith of the early Church between Rome and popular Protestantism. Studying the Monophysites and Augustine's judgement on the Donatists, he came to believe that the whole Church's settled judgement decides disputes. Anglican readers continued to defend the via media as a coherent position; the Apologia lets students follow the argument as Newman lived it.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The Apologia is a history of opinions, and its medical content is incidental. In Part III Newman describes falling dangerously ill with fever at Leonforte in Sicily in 1833, being nursed by his servant, who thought he would die, and sobbing on his recovery with the conviction that he had a work to do; the illness is usually identified by biographers as typhoid or a related fever, which the book itself does not name. He was again laid up from exhaustion at Lyons on the way home. Part VII refers to the fever that swept Irish emigrants in England, and Bishop Ullathorne's closing letter recalls Newman and Ambrose St. John nursing cholera victims at Bilston, an example of nineteenth-century clergy serving in epidemics. The narrative of 1841-1845 also records the strain and sorrow of prolonged religious uncertainty and the loss of friends, described as spiritual trial rather than illness.

• Part III

  Fever at Leonforte in Sicily in 1833, his servant's nursing, and his recovery with a sense of mission.

• Part III

  Exhaustion on the journey home and several days laid up at Lyons.

• Part VII

  Mention of the Irish fever that cut off emigrants between Liverpool and Leeds, in a passage on Catholic clergy.

• Ullathorne letter (end of volume)

  Newman and Ambrose St. John go to Bilston to minister during a cholera outbreak in place of other priests.