Moral Imagination in Theological Method and Church Tradition : John Henry Newman Gerard Magill

J HENRY NEWMAN was one of the greatest English prose writers whose works spanned the nineteenth century. His penchant for figurative language revealed a literary talent that was rhetorically exciting and highly imaginative. In the wake of Romanticism he used the imagination in his theological method to portray the intellectual depth of religious belief. He understood the imagination as a mental instrument for reasonable discernment: that is a working definition that I expand upon. With the imagination he brought to theology a personal dynamism that provided insight into the disclosures of language, especially when inquiring into the meaning of religious doctrine. By integrating the imagination with his theological method and recovery of church tradition Newman maintained an even keel in a century of religious and political turmoil. One illustration of turning to the imagination for theological balance appears in his 1877 Preface to the Via Media, where he outlined his Catholic ecclesiology. In the earlier editions (1836,1837) Newman attempted to formulate a "via media" between what he perceived (as an Anglican) to be the excesses of Roman Catholicism and of popular Protestantism. His strategy was to recover the treasures of tradition by examining the doctrines of the early Church, as he did previously in his study on Arianism in 1833. By 1839 he realized that his search for a "via media" was implausible. Nonetheless, in his 1877 Preface he reiterated the basic insight that enabled him to develop his moderate Anglican views as a Roman Catholic. That insight was to strike a balance between apparent extremes by a nuanced mode of reasonable discernment. Metaphorically he described this approach as seeking "a possible road, lying between a mountain and a morass" (xxii), requiring an "appeal to the imagination" (xxi). I argue that the imagination inspired Newman's theological method and understanding of church tradition. I expand my definition of the imagination in his thought in a systematic account that analyzes some of his most important texts. In the first section I explain that his