Editing John Henry Newman (section)

==Theologian==
Newman defined theology as "the Science of God, or the truths we know about God, put into a system, just as we have a science of the stars and call it astronomy, or of the crust of the earth and call it geology".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Magill |first1=Gerard |title=Religious Morality in John Henry Newman Hermeneutics of the Imagination |date=2014 |publisher=Springer International Publishing |page=91}}</ref>

Around 1830, Newman developed a distinction between [[natural religion]] and [[revealed religion]]. Revealed religion is the Christian revelation which finds its fulfilment in [[Jesus Christ]]. Natural religion refers to the knowledge of God and divine things that has been acquired outside the Christian revelation. For Newman, this knowledge of God is not the result of unaided reason but of reason aided by [[divine grace|grace]], and so he speaks of natural religion as containing a revelation, even though it is an incomplete revelation.<ref>Connolly, p. 48.</ref>

Newman's view of natural religion gives rise to passages in his writings in which he appears to sympathise with a broader theology. Both as an Anglican and as a Catholic, he put forward the notion of a universal revelation. As an Anglican, Newman subscribed to this notion in various works, among them the 1830 University Sermon entitled "The Influence of Natural and Revealed Religion Respectively", the 1833 poem "Heathenism",<ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.newmanreader.org/works/verses/verse76.html | title = Heathenism | publisher = Newmanreader.org | access-date = 31 August 2013 | archive-date = 14 June 2013 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130614202750/http://www.newmanreader.org/works/verses/verse76.html | url-status = live }}</ref> and the book ''The Arians of the Fourth Century'', also 1833, where he admits that there was "something true and divinely revealed in every religion".<ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.newmanreader.org/works/arians/chapter1-3.html | title = The Arians of the Fourth Century: Chapter I, Section 3 | publisher = Newmanreader.org | access-date = 31 August 2013 | archive-date = 25 April 2001 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20010425140029/http://www.newmanreader.org/works/arians/chapter1-3.html | url-status = live }}</ref> As a Catholic, he included the idea in ''A Grammar of Assent'': "As far as we know, there never was a time when ... revelation was not a revelation continuous and systematic, with distinct representatives and an orderly succession."<ref>Connolly, pp. 140–41.</ref>

Newman held that "freedom from symbols and articles is abstractedly the highest state of Christian communion", but was "the peculiar privilege of the primitive Church".{{sfn|Hutton|1911|p=519}}<ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.newmanreader.org/works/arians/chapter1-2.html#return24 | title = The Arians of the Fourth Century: Chapter I, Section 2 | publisher = Newmanreader.org | access-date = 31 August 2013 | archive-date = 14 June 2013 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130614193043/http://www.newmanreader.org/works/arians/chapter1-2.html#return24 | url-status = live }}</ref> In 1877 he allowed that "in a religion that embraces large and separate classes of adherents there always is of necessity to a certain extent an exoteric and an esoteric doctrine".{{sfn|Hutton|1911|p=519}}<ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.newmanreader.org/works/viamedia/volume1/preface3.html | title = Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church: Preface to the Third Edition | publisher = Newmanreader.org | access-date = 31 August 2013 | archive-date = 14 November 2012 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20121114053614/http://www.newmanreader.org/works/viamedia/volume1/preface3.html | url-status = live }}</ref>

Newman was worried about the new dogma of papal infallibility advocated by an "aggressive and insolent faction",<ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.newmanreader.org/biography/ward/volume2/chapter29.html | title = Newman Reader – Ward's Life of Cardinal Newman – Chapter 29 | website = www.newmanreader.org | access-date = 19 September 2018 | archive-date = 10 October 2020 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20201010065535/http://www.newmanreader.org/biography/ward/volume2/chapter29.html | url-status = live }}</ref> fearing that the definition might be expressed in over-broad terms open to misunderstanding and would pit religious authority against physical science. He was relieved about the moderate tone of the eventual definition, which "affirmed the pope's infallibility only within a strictly limited province: the doctrine of faith and morals initially given to the apostolic Church and handed down in Scripture and tradition."<ref name=Dulles>{{cite web | url = http://www.ts.mu.edu/content/51/51.3/51.3.3.pdf | title = Theological Studies – A journal of academic theology | website = Ts.mu.edu | date = 30 November 2016 | access-date = 22 December 2016 | archive-date = 3 March 2011 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110303174908/http://www.ts.mu.edu/content/51/51.3/51.3.3.pdf | url-status = live }}</ref>