The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, vol. 10, The Final Step, November 1843–October 1845 ed. by Birmingham Oratory (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 517 Nicholas of Cusa. Further, the key piece missing in Nicholas's doctrine of theosis from the Eastern point of view is the person and activity of the Holy Spirit. In the Eastern accounts (especially in Gregory and Maximus) the Holy Spirit is a crucial agent in theosis. Nicholas plainly accepts the Trinity, but the Holy Spirit is notably absent from his account of how Christ is the "Absolute Contracted Maximum" in whom we participate. Finally, it is inaccurate to characterize the Eastern approach as not concerned with sin as moral wrongdoing, or with the cross, or with Christ in history. Maximus for one explains his doctrine of theosis by constant reference to the moral wrongdoing of Adam and the renovation of our nature through the grace of Christ in redemption. Theosis in Maximus is grounded, not in creation as such, but in the new creation inaugurated in Christ. IfNicholas does indeed adopt and develop largely Eastern categories of thought and theology, it would appear that he leaves out (or at the least treats very thinly) crucial aspects of Eastern theology that are grounded solidly in a biblical narrative of salvation and a sacramental context for the life of grace. As Hudson herself observes, "a complete study" of Nicholas of Cusa's relationship to the theological tradition of the East is still needed (195). Until that study is accomplished, the issue of the adequacy of Nicholas's theology, at least gauged by his similarities to the East, remains an open question. Sacred Heart Major Seminary Detroit, Michigan DANIEL A. KEATING The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, vol. 10, The Final Step, November 1843-0ctober 1845. Edited at the Birmingham Oratory. Notes and introduction by FRANCIS J. MCGRATH, F.M.S. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. xlvi + 1010. $325.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-19-925459-0. The masterful effort begun in 1961 to publish Cardinal Newman's personal correspondence and diaries in thirty-one volumes has come full circle with the appearance of volume 10-almost. Fr. Charles Stephen Dessain (1908-76) of Newman's own Birmingham Oratory began with Newman's Catholic period (1845-90), and the ten volumes of the Anglican period conclude with the present volume. (See my reviews in The Thomist 61 [1997]: 325-28; 67 [2003]: 655-62; 71 [2007]: 147-53.) Dessain himself, at the end of volume 31, included 98 pages of Catholic-period letters that had surfaced by 1975. But many more letters have turned up subsequently, and Francis McGrath is producing a thirty-second volume for them, followed by a thirty-third volume that will function as a general index. So the circle, as I said, is almost completed. 518 BOOK REVIEWS On late Wednesday evening, 8 October 1845, Italian missioner Dominic Barberi arrived in a cold drenching rain at Littlemore, where Newman and a few friends had been living in quiet retreat three miles from Oxford. He was drying off by a fire when Newman came into the room, dropped to his knees, and began making his general confession. Newman continued his confession the following day, followed byhis profession offaith in the Roman Catholic Church. Volume 10 of The Letters and Diaries relates the complex unfolding that led to Newman's devout and straightforward action on 9 October. It fleshes out Newman's 1864 comment in his Apologia pro vita sua (Uniform Edition [London: Longmans, Green & Co.] p. 185) that his "last Sermon was in September, 1843; th,en I remained at Littlemore in quiet for two years. But it was made a subject of reproach to me at that time, and is at this day, that I did not leave the Anglican Church sooner." Were the editor's extensive footnotes, his nine appendices, the correspondence addressed to Newman, and the letters between other principal figures printed in the same normal font size as Newman's own letters, this volume would reach easily over 1500 pages. Given this wealth of material, a review must be selective, and I have selected three areas: the final stages of Newman's conversion process that display acutely its theological and psychological aspects; the writing of the famous Essay on...