From Bossuet to Newman

Owen Chadwick (Author)

9780521336765, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 29 May 1987

288 pages
21.6 x 14.1 x 1.7 cm, 0.385 kg

The coming of modern historical research had religious consequences, especially in the more traditional churches to which history was very important and which themselves helped to create the historical sense. In this classic work, long unobtainable but now revised with a new introduction, Owen Chadwick traces the development of the notion that change in Christian doctrine was both possible and legitimate. Bossuet in the seventeenth century represented the opinion that Christian doctrine never or hardly changed: Newman in the second half of the nineteenth century saw that its expression necessarily changed in a changing society. This book shows how one opinion changed into the other, and explains the difficulties and tensions behind Newman's attempt to persuade an inherently conservative institution to face reality. In so doing it thus illuminates one vital aspect of the arrival into European thought of a distinct historical sensibility.

Abbreviations
Preface to the first edition
Introduction
1. 'Semper eadem'
2. Logical explanation
3. The Catholic critics
4. Progress in religion
5. Newman and the philosophy of evolution
6. Ward
7. Newman's theory
8. Newman and Rome
9. Epilogue
Index.

Subject Areas: History of religion [HRAX]