Did Newman Accidentally Refute Roman Catholicism?
Rev. Brandon Warr | 12 Sept. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMQIVtvw7yo
0:19 Will all Catholic bloviators please stand up?
Raising my hand ....
4:26 Clarified in your usage is, for all I know about that essay from 1845, Newman's "developed" ...
- Rev. Brandon Warr
- @RevBrandonWarr
- It doesn't track with how Newman used it. He tried to backpedal on it, but we are not postmodernists. Ultimately, if any tradition can use Newman's points to justify its own continuity, then Newman is wrong about Rome.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- @hglundahl
- @RevBrandonWarr I have nothing but your word for that.
Especially not my vague memories of his text.
Meanwhile, I'm taking a pause after 10:58 to tomorrow, it's 11:20 PM here, and I left comments between 4:26 and 10:58. If they came into your spam folder, please "unspam" so each point of mine can be debated. Not just a conveniently small number of them. I see two of my fourteen points only.
- My answer
- was taken away. I'll post this, with comments up to 10:58, Second half may be another time.
5:35 Quotemining. Could the quote in context have referred to change in verbal expression?
Here*, apart from going from St. Augustine's Latin, via his translator's English to French, I have actually changed the wording, adding a consideration which was not explicitly there:
Dans une note en bas de page, Vigouroux cite St. Augustine dans le latin pour le nombre d'hommes quand Caïn fonde la cité de Hénoch. Cité de Dieu, livre XV, chapitre 8. Pour le propos dans le titre, allons plutôt à l'argument du chapitre 16.
Je le résume ainsi, avec observations supplémentaires : — 1° l'inceste (entre frère et sœur) est abhorré comme posant une coalescence entre relations qui diminue le nombre de personnes avec qui on est dans une relation amicale. (Il ne parle même pas de toute un autre problème encore plus grave entre parent et progéniture, puisque ce n'est pas du tout dans le texte, Genèse 4 et 5 n'ai rién de la tragédie de Thèbes). Idéalement, donc, deux fonctions de relations doivent vous unir à deux personnes différentes. — 2° Mais la génération après Adam et Ève, il y avait juste deux fonctions qui coïncidèrent : père et beau-père, la relation d'Adam à Caïn et à sa femme (mère et belle-mère pour Ève) et à l'inverse fils et beau-fils pour Caïn, fille et belle-fille pour sa femme. Et ce n'était pas évitable. — 3° Par contre, la génération prochaine, c'était déjà évitable, on pouvait épouser une cousine germaine, et la coïncidence aurait été de trois relations : Caïn aurait été à la fois père et beau-père de Hénoch et encore l'oncle maternel aussi, si Hénoch avait épousé sa sœur; donc, si Hénoch a épousé une cousine, Caïn n'était que juste père et oncle, mais pas encore beau-père au-dessus du marché. — 4° Dès la génération d'Irad, c'était possible d'avoir Hénoch uniquement comme père, quelqu'un d'autre comme beaupère et quelqu'un d'autre comme oncle maternel. Depuis, on ne fait même pas coïncider deux relations. C'est à dire, licitement. — 5° Avant de répondre que l'affaire entre un frère et une sœur de nos jours ferait juste coïncider deux relations, puisque leur père et mère ne sont pas frère et sœur comme Adam et Ève ne l'étaient pas, les relations licitent doive se pouvoir répéter sans trop d'inconvénient, et là on aurait dans la génération suivante une coïncidance entre trois relations. Et ce qui est dit de Caïn, Hénoch, Irad doit s'entendre aussi de Seth, Énos, Caïnan.
Did I substantiallly change the position of St. Augustine on why brother-sister marriages are normally wrong, but weren't the first generation after Adam and Eve? Or have I just clarified?
I think the latter, and nevertheless, the wording is very different from the locus in City of God, XV:16.
5:44 In 1845, Newman was not speaking for the Catholic Church, so it was not the Church admitting, it was Newman presuming a change over time.
Note, he wrote the book before actually converting, and before actually even getting Catholic instruction before converting.
Why, you may ask ...?
Well, given the celebrity of Newman, Church authorities already such could figure out that people would attribute his defection from Anglicanism and adherence to Catholicism in terms of Ulterior motives (and not Ulsterior ones, but much more material than that!) ... the solution was to make him write a book which written when it was, showed his motives to convert as motives from within his previous Anglican position.
It's not the Catholic saying why he was right to convert, it's the Anglican saying why he was going to be right to convert.
I'd be very happy if Prevost (though I hold him to be anti-pope, pending evidence to the contrary, given his three predecessors) clarified that his canonisation of Newman's doctrine extends to works after 1845. In
Idea of a Catholic University, in the section defining six meanings of history, he actually talks like a Fundie. And by then, he actually is a spokesman of the Catholic Church.
5:50 Supposing by developments he means what you call clarifications, I see nothing objectionable in the quote.
5:58 By the way, he does not say "profitable" but "probable" according to the text you have on the screen.
6:18 You are referring to a dictionary definition of "development" which is very summary, which presumably doesn't even cover the much more related concept of development section in a sonata, while Newman could easily have given the word a different meaning from you, closer to "development of an argument" or "development section of a sonata" ...
This sounds dangerously close to strawmanning Newman's position these few months prior to his conversion. Can we expect similar straw-Manning with other converts?
7:28 "as Newman himself admits"
Admitted a few months before his conversion.
I would say the NT textual case for the three doctrine areas (Mariology, Papacy, Veneration of Saints) is far better than Newman had up to 1845 learnt from studying as an Anglican, consulting Anglicans, using (much if not all of the time) Anglican methodology as it was in 1840 ...
That Newman felt he had to defend them by "development of doctrine" shows the weakness of Catholicism within Newman's up to then Anglican context, not the weakness of Catholicism as such.
1) All of the OT is typological and as such about Christ or diverse relations to Him, see Luke 24:27 (I think it was) (yep)
2) Jael is a type of Mary by "blessed among women" and Satan is the only candidate for Our Lady's Sisera (and Our Lady was given the title of Jael but generalised
before being pregnant with Jesus).
3) Eliacim is a type of Peter, as per Matthew 16:19 echoing Isaias 22:22
4) Martyrs are a type of all who reign in Christ, during the Millennium, which you will concede is the Church Age, not after it, starting after AD 33, not after Armageddon, and Apoc. 6 shows us
how they reign. Namely by prayers for the Church militant or against Her enemies. OT saints are types of NT saints, both Elisaeus and St. Paul show miracles being worked by their relics.
8:09 To be deep in history is to get out of
Trail of Blood history.
Tondrakians and Paulicians are not early Protestants.
I'm reminded of the existence of red napkins being confirmations of all ravens being black, by being non-black non-ravens, and the objection "wouldn't the existence of non-red non-ravens prove all ravens are red" ... doesn't hold, since we already know from direct experience some ravens at least or even all we have knowledge of are black, none red.
In order to develop doctrine from a point in 1st C. AD to a point in 19th C. AD, you need to be actually around between 1st and 19th CC. AD. The "Baptist" Church of
Trail of Blood clearly wasn't. It's as bad history as claiming Columbus proved what Washington Irving said he proved, earth being round, in the face of a flat earth consensus, which obviously didn't exist.
8:27 A pretty banal example of a necessity of verbal change could be given this way, and Newman's points make perfect sense.
In the 1st C (according to a convert priest's theory) all priests were called "episkopoi" while bishops were variously called "apostoloi, euangelistai, aggeloi, presbuteroi" and perhaps even add "prophetai" ... after the 1st C (according to same theory), one kept the office of bishop common to all categories, but did not keep all the categories, so suddenly needed a common term, and found one in Acts one
et episcopatum ejus accipiat alter given the twelve were the original bishops, whereafter the term "presbuteros" was transferred to the lower degree, to simple priests.
Obviously I'm not sure whether this is the correct explanation, it's that priest's opinion, not dogma, but if it is, it would exemplify a necessity of verbal change within doctrinal continuity. And the doctrinal continuity would be perfect, there would just be an impoverishment in disciplinary categories.
8:42 Come on ... he was in a mental quandary after being taught for decades there is no explicit support for Mary's sinlessness in the NT, he did the best he could before he had Catholic instruction to enlighten him, and you treat his words as if they were the be all end all of Catholicism.
Plus you are still doing a straw-Manning of him, as presumably with Manning if you treat him (or perhaps not, perhaps Manning actually was less good doctrinally) by pitting "development" and "change" against "clarification" ...
9:55 It may have left the Roman magisterium at an awkward position in 1845, but very arguably in a less awkward one than the Protestantism of 1845.
And either of these entities as measured in Newman's then imperfectly enlightened mind.
10:37 That word doesn't mean what you think it means.**
And because from thy infancy thou hast known the holy scriptures, which can instruct thee to salvation, by the faith which is in Christ Jesus 16 All scripture, inspired of God, is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice 17 That the man of God may be perfect, furnished to every good work
[2 Timothy 3:15-17]
St. Tim was actually well trained, not a person approaching the texts for the first time, even so they only became this sufficient thing for him (or any other "man of God", terminus technicus not coextensive with "faithful") by a thing added to the texts in question, after he had been trained in them, namely "the faith which is in Christ Jesus" ...
You're strawmanning St. Paul as much as you are strawmanning Newman.
10:58 This contrasts with Trent Session IV, right?
- all 73 books
- as held in the past and present by the Church (if the definition had just hit the present, the Council Fathers could have opened a door to Reformation, in many Lutheran countries, Lutheranism was by then held by all clergy, since Catholic clergy had already been killed or exiled)
- and as held by Church Fathers in consensus
Now, how could you distinguish the Concord formula from this using Scripture and how would Scripture not favour Trent IV over Concord, esp. given Matthew 28:20?
*
Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: Certains ont une horreur de l'idée que Caïn et Seth aient épousé chacun une des sœurs
https://filolohika.blogspot.com/2025/09/certains-ont-une-horreur-de-lidee-que.html
** Can I, pretty please, make an Inigo Montoya reference in revenge for his Sandler skits, adding a perspective that simply isn't there in the words?
