“To be Deep in History”: The Role of History in the Conversions of John Henry Newman and Erik Peterson

Dedicated to the Memory of Michael J. G. Pahls, Ph.D. ²

Through suffering I have become incapable of dealing with abstract questions, so I love Newman. Newman is a realist, not because he is English, but because he is a sufferer. Everything is very slow for me. Perhaps I will also become Catholic someday. This will never happen through arguments, but rather because I simply am “Catholic.”

— Erik Peterson, Letter to Theodore Haecker, 18 June 1921³

Conversion narratives are central to Christianity. They often illuminate the spirit and the questions of a particular moment in history. The conversion of Paul is recounted three times in the book of Acts, not only because of his importance in Christianity’s early history, but also because his conversion underscored the central theological question of the first generation of Christians, the relationship between the Jewish people and the followers of the Way of Jesus. Justin Martyr’s discovery of Christianity as the true philosophy illustrated the developing intellectual harmony between ancient Greek wisdom and Christian proclamation in the second century. Anthony’s abandoning of his possessions to flee into the desert to follow Christ was a response to Christianity’s increasing cultural import and concomitant accommodation of worldliness. Augustine’s conversion a century later, which, after Paul, is the most influential conversion in Christian history, highlights the challenge of Christian faithfulness in a culture that is shallow and morally compromised.

In recent centuries, the conversion of Anglican priest John Henry Newman to the Roman Catholic Church in 1845 has been seen as illustrative of a particular moment in modern religious consciousness. In this article I examine the role that historical reasoning played in Newman’s decision to convert, and I juxtapose his approach with that of another Catholic convert who made the journey eighty-five years after Newman, the German theologian Erik Peterson (1890–1960). The analysis of the conversions of these men reveals not only the unique, and perhaps even divergent, ways they appealed to history for theological ends, but also illumines the broader contexts in which they journeyed to the Roman Catholic Church. The response of both Catholic and Protestant theology to the rise of historical consciousness has been complex. Some have seen historical reasoning as a great threat to Christian truth, while others have seen in it the promise of the vindication of revelation. The juxtaposition of the conversions of Newman and Peterson provides a particularly helpful way to consider such developing responses to the rise of historical consciousness in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Like Newman, Peterson was a well-known young theologian and scholar who agonized over his ecclesial identity for a long period of time before resolving to join the Roman Catholic Church. Like Newman, Peterson’s conversion was first a de-conversion from Protestant Christianity before the subsequent step of conversion to the Roman Catholic Church. Like Newman, Peterson used historical reasoning to justify his position and to undermine the position of those who would challenge his decision. And, like Newman, the historical reasoning that influenced his decision to enter the Roman Catholic Church was viewed by many in that communion as suspicious. In Newman’s case, his theory of the development of doctrine was viewed by many (though by no means all)⁴ in his new communion as problematic. In Peterson’s case, his continued utilization of his training as an historian of the History of Religion School (religionsgeschichtliche Schule), as well as his lay status, meant that it was difficult for him to find an audience in Catholic theology. Despite the great prize a scholar the caliber of Peterson was to Catholic intellectuals, his ideas were given a fairly cool reception after his conversion. For decades he struggled without a full academic post, not achieving the rank of Ordinary Professor until 1956, just four years before his death. The support he received from influential friends such as Anselm Stolz and Jean Daniélou did little to assuage the skepticism that some Catholic...