The Personalism of John Henry Newman by John F. Crosby (review)

Personalism as a philosophical category is difficult to define. Jacques Maritain noted in 1947 that there are at least "a dozen personalist doctrines, which at times have nothing more in common than the word 'person.'"¹ Since the designation of "personalism" as a philosophical category was largely a product of the first half of the twentieth century, one wonders how a monograph on Newman's (1801–1890) personalism is possible without falling victim to anachronism. It is true, as John Crosby demonstrates in the introduction to his The Personalism of John Henry Newman, that the theological and philosophical foundation for what would later be deemed "personalism" was laid by nineteenth-century thinkers, such as John Henry Newman, even if Newman and his contemporaries did not use the term to describe their theological schema.

Crosby is careful not to argue for a direct connection between Newman and any known personalist philosophers. To this end, Crosby writes, "I do not mean to say that Newman knew the early personalists and was directly influenced by them, or that he called himself a 'personalist'" (xxii). Nor does Crosby argue that Newman provides a comprehensive "philosophical account of these ideas, or that each of them can be found in him" (xxii). Crosby's central thesis is that Newman "was a pioneer, 'the pioneer of a new philosophy of the individual Person and the Personal Life'" (xxii). Likewise, Crosby sets out to "show that his pioneering personalism coheres entirely with and in fact stands in the service of his radically theocentric religion" (xxii).

Crosby reads Newman through what he deems Newman's "ethos," namely that he "seems to understand human things through understanding his own human heart; he knows human beings through the medium of what he himself is" (xxiii). Newman's "ethos," Crosby argues, is expressed succinctly in his cardinal's motto, cor ad cor loquitur, translated as "heart speaks to heart." Thus, what concerns Crosby in this book is "the richness, the fruitfulness of his [Newman's] personalism and of the unity that it forms with his theocentric religious existence" (xxv).

Crosby's analysis of Newman's personalism progresses in seven chapters. Chapter 1, "Theocentric Religion," begins with an explanation of the relationship between Newman's dogmatic principle² and what Crosby calls the "radical theocentric spirit," or the notion that, "the doctrine of the Trinity concerns not only the economy of our salvation, but also, and first of all, God as He exists in Himself" (3). In this chapter, Crosby articulates how Newman avoids the dangers of an overly subjective understanding of our relationship with the Triune God.

Chapter 2, "Imagination and Intellect," explains the distinction that Newman makes "between the notional and real apprehension of propositions, and . . . notional and real assent to propositions" (35). Crosby compares Newman's notion of God as "outside of me" with Kierkegaard: "both thinkers are referring to a truth that is outside of me, at a distance from me, truth that leaves me cold even when acknowledged" (49). Crosby explains that it is Newman's real assent, which is akin to Kierkegaard's existential truth, that "closes this distance" between God and our human heart, "giving me an experiential immediacy to the truth apprehended and enabling the truth to engage me as a whole person" (49).

Chapter 3, "Heart Speaks to Heart," and chapter 4, "Personal Influence," investigate the way in which God is present in our human relationships. Crosby writes that "it is important for understanding Newman's personalism that the abundance of affective life coheres entirely with that spirit of adoration that lies at the center of religious experience" (70). To this end Crosby demonstrates that Newman holds together the importance of the affective aspects of our human existence and relationship with God and the eternal truth described in his dogmatic principle: "He [Newman] knows that theocentric religion engages not only the intellect and the will, but also the heart" (74). Similarly, in...