John
Henry Newman
The nineteenth
century brought many challenges to both Christianity and Christian Higher Education.
There was a growing secularization in both America and Europe because of the
lasting effects of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. It was an
age of many new isms: liberalism, rationalism, secularism, utilitarianism, and
others. These ideologies impacted both the Church and Higher Education.
Opposing these forces was a Christian scholar whom Jacques Barzun calls “the
greatest theorist of university life,” and whose major work on education, The Idea of a University, Jaroslav
Pelikan calls “the most important treatise on the idea of the university ever
written in any language.”[i]
In
the middle of the nineteenth century, the Catholic leadership in Ireland wanted
to establish a Catholic University. “In 1851 Newman was approached about
becoming the rector of this new Catholic institution. He served for seven
years, the first three before the school actually began, during which time he
delivered several of the lectures which were to comprise The Idea of a University.”[ii]
Because of many different problems, Newman resigned in 1858. The school was not
a success, but what was a great success was the “discourses and educational
philosophy and lectures on university subjects that make up The Idea of a University. There he
argues both for liberal learning (as opposed to Utilitarian education) and for
the necessity of including theology rather than secularizing learning. That, of
course would require a different relationship of faith and reason than what was
characteristic of Enlightenment science.”[iii]
First,
Newman argues that liberal arts education is intrinsically valuable. It has
many practical benefits, but that is not its aim. The knowledge acquired
through liberal learning is its end. Newman summarizes his position: “We attain
to heaven by using this world well, though it is to pass away; we, perfect our
nature, not by undoing it, but by adding to it what is more than nature, and directing
it towards aims higher than its own.”[iv]
Second,
Newman’s idea of education is that it is a life-long project. The person who is
formed through a liberal arts education is to continue to learn and grow after
graduation. He acquires through his undergraduate education a “habit of mind …
which lasts through life.” Graduation is not the end of the education journey,
but only the beginning. It takes a whole lifetime to become educated. “The
ideal of lifelong learning,” observes Benson, “is a natural entailment of
Newman’s conviction that liberal arts education is intrinsically valuable.
Detached from the special purposes of career education and other utilitarian
aims, there is no reason why education should be seen as a project to be
pursued only in one’s youth.”[v]
Newman
argues that the focus on career education is misdirected, and not “true
education.” He would say that “such training and skill development and
activities have value, but they should not be confused with the cultivation of
the intellect and nurturing the educated person.” [vi]
Further, he would say that a liberal arts education “provides a far more
substantial preparation for success in the diverse career areas.”[vii]
Third,
Newman believes that truth was one; there is a unity to truth. He argues that a
place for theology, both natural truth and revealed truth, must be made in the
liberal arts curriculum. Newman believed that truth itself is compromised if
theology is left out of the curriculum. He thought theology involved the search
for “divine truth” as known through “revelation and reason.” Newman thought the
discipline was as valid an academic field as any other discipline.[viii]
Although
Newman argues that a place must be made in the curriculum for theology, he does
not think that liberal learning is to be pursued for the sake of theology. He
does not think the disciplines are hierarchically ordered. Instead, he thinks a
more accurate description of the disciplines is a “circle of the sciences”
which speaks more of their mutual influence. Newman thinks that the secular
disciplines need theology and theology needs the secular disciplines. This
would be similar to his view on the relationship between faith and reason.
Reason needs faith and faith needs reason. It is a complementary relationship.[ix]
Newman
thinks the Church must take an interest in the sciences and humanities “because
they are essential elements of a liberal education.” The Church should want its
members to receive a liberal arts education so they may be equipped for their
vocations as citizens of the kingdom of heaven and earth because an educated
mind is equipped with “the faculty of entering with comparative ease into any
subject of thought, and of taking up with aptitude any science or profession.”[x]
A
liberal arts education will also make the Christian better able to understand
and defend the faith. Newman says it does this by “enlarging the mind of the
student, enabling him to think more clearly and consistently and to express his
own views in a manner that is persuasive …”[xi] “According
to Newman, the uneducated Christian fails in some sense to realize the truths
which he holds because he lacks a consistency of view: he fails to fully grasp
the principles he holds and the conclusions that follow from these principles.
The development of the mind that results from a university education, then,
indirectly aids one’s understanding of the faith as well as any other subject
to which one applies the mind.”[xii]
[i]
Holmes, Building the Christian Academy, 83.
[ii]
Ibid., 87.
[iii]
Ibid., 88.
[iv]
Thomas L. Benson, “Far From Home: Newman and the Contemporary Liberal Arts
College,” Christian Higher Education 2
(2003): 307
[v]
Ibid., 311-312.
[vi]
Ibid., 308.
[vii]
Ibid.
[viii]
Ibid., 315.
[ix]
John Goyette, “Augustine versus Newman on the relation between secular and
sacred science,” in Faith, Scholarship,
and Culture in the 21st Century, eds. Alice Ramos and Marie I.
George (Mishawaka,Ind.: American Maritain Association, 2002), 211-212.
[x]
Ibid., 213-214.
[xi]
Ibid.
[xii]
Ibid., 214.
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