Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman insisted, in letter after letter, “I am not a theologian.” He was right in the strict academic sense — and very nearly the opposite of right in every other. In his correspondence, Newman became a catechist and an apologist, writing on a popular, non-technical level that scholars rarely match.
Dave Armstrong’s third Newman volume harvests that correspondence and arranges it as a near-systematic theology — by question. 17 sections cover apologetics, philosophy of religion, Church history, development of doctrine, Anglicanism, conversion, the Bible and tradition, ecclesiology, the papacy and infallibility, soteriology, Christology, Mary, the sacraments, the last things, and more. Each subsection is a question (“Is the Catholic Church Infallible in Her Dogmas?” / “Should One Convert Quickly?”); every answer is Newman, verbatim, cited.
The dedication is to the Newman Reader website. The intended reader is the would-be convert or the cradle Catholic with a faith gone tentative. The reading experience is unlike any other Newman compilation — because the questions come first.
Inside this book
- 17 topical sections — from apologetics and Church history to ecclesiology, the papacy, soteriology, Mariology, and the last things
- Hundreds of questions, each answered in Newman’s own verbatim words with full citations
- Especially heavy on conversion — Newman’s own, and his counsel to others (jitters, qualms, timing, last-minute doubts)
- A long section on the papacy and infallibility (limits, “bad popes,” Honorius, Liberius, Vatican I)
- Dedicated to the Newman Reader website; built for converts and for Catholics reviving a tentative faith
