John Henry Newman's Tract 90

The Patriarch of Rome, Benedict XVI, is visiting England this week and will be officially declaring John Henry Newman to be "Blessed." Before he was Cardinal Newman, he was The Rev. Newman, leading Anglican theologian of the Oxford (Catholic) Movement, in the The Church of England in the mid 1800's. He was essentially booted from the Church for his infamous Tract 90, a tract defending the 39 Articles as compatible with the Council of Trent. Newman's opinions on the Eucharist got him in some of the biggest trouble. Here is my humble defense of Newman's thoughts on Article XXVIII:

John Henry Newmans’ Tract XC

In 1841, John Henry Newman issued Tract XC, a commentary on certain parts of the XXXIX Articles of Religion that caused such a great controversy it effectively ended his career in the Church of England. In this tract, Newman discussed 12 of the articles and explained how they could be interpreted in a way that does not contradict catholic theology. Newman’s Tract XC was deemed radical and over the top, and dangerously close in theology to a Roman Catholic document.

The following focuses on Newman’s commentary on Article XXVIII (Of The Lord’s Supper), which also included references to Article XXIX (Of the Wicked, which eat not the Body of Christ in the use of the Lord's Supper). I beleive that Newman’s interpretation of Article XXVIII was not nearly as radical or as incompatible with traditional Anglican doctrine as it was said to be by Neman’s contemporaries. By comparing Newman’s Tract XC with Bishop Edward Browne’s An Exposition of The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion , published in two volumes between 1850 and 1853[1] and Charles Hardwick’s A History of the Articles of Religion, which was published in 1851. I will endeavor to show that Newman’s assertions do not conflict with non-Tractarian commentaries of the same time period on the same article.

John Henry Newman was a member of a group of scholars at Oxford University in England who began issuing tracts, entitled Tracts For The Times. The tracts, and the general theology of the group of scholars, sought to emphasize the pre-reformation catholic roots of the Church of England, and the powers and duties of the church that were due to the church owing to its maintained Apostolic Succession and Episcopal structure. They pursued this theology to defend the church from what they saw as an overly secular and liberal leaning church and society in general in England. Due to the tracts they published, they earned the name of “Tractarians”[2]

The last of the tracts to be issued was Tract XC. Newman and his fellow Oxford scholars had come under the increasing scrutiny by the leaders of The Church of England since the first tract had been published in 1833.[3] By the time Tract XC was released, the criticism against Newman and the other authors of the Tracts had reached a fever pitch. Although Tract XC was published anonymously, it was no secret that Newman was the author. C. Brad Faught, in his book “The Oxford Movement,” states that “The theological opinion that Newman took in the tract was hardly radical, however…But the timing of Newman’s tract was all wrong.”[4] In the aftermath of the storm that arose around Tract XC, Newman eventually withdrew from public and eventually left the Church of England for the Roman Catholic Church.

If we look past the hysterics that surrounded the tract, we can see that indeed it was not all that radical, and the opinions and not all that dissimilar from other commentaries on the articles published in the same time period.

In the beginning of Tract XC’s chapter 8, Newman begins his commentary by defining what he believes is being rejected by the term “transubstantiation.” Newman writes “What is here opposed as “Transubstantiation” is the shocking doctrine that “the body of CHRIST,” as the Article goes on to express it is not “given, taken, and eaten after an heavenly and spiritual manner, but is carnally pressed with the teeth;” that it is a body or substance of a certain figure and disposition of parts, whereas we hold the only substance such, is the bread which we see.”[5]

Newman goes on to say that Article XXIX proves that this is the doctrine being refuted. Newman states that as both St. Augustine and the article speak of “the wicked a “carnally and visibly pressing with their teeth the sacrament of the body and blood of CHRIST,” not the real substance.”[6]

In Bishop Browne’s An Exposition of The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion and Charles Hardwick’s A History of the Articles of Religion, he also begins his commentary on the article by defining Eucharistic theology. Browne defines transubstantiation as “the doctrine of the Church of Rome…that in the Eucharist, after the words of consecration, the whole substance of the bread is converted into the substance of the Body of Christ, and that the substance of the wine into the substance of His Blood….the change is a real and miraculous conversion of the bread and the wine into the very Body of Christ, which was born of the blessed Virgin and crucified on Calvary.”[7]

Charles Hardwick’s A History of the Articles of Religion states that the purpose of the article is to refute the Zwinglians and the “opposite dogma of some physical transubstantiation in the Eucharistic elements….”[8]

Newman and Browne are in agreement that “Transubstantiation” that is rejected by the article is the idea that consecrated elements are Christ’s actual substantive Body and Blood.

Newman goes on to suggest that while this substantive change of the actual bread and wine was the official rejected notion, the framers of the article were actually seeking to counter medieval superstitions that had developed around the Eucharist. Newman gives several examples of the superstition by quoting the works of Bishop Taylor. One of these quotes listed several disturbing images: “Sometimes CHRIST hath appeared in His own shape, and blood and flesh hath been pulled out of the mouths of communicants: and Plegilus, the priest, saw an angel, showing CHRIST to him in the form of a child upon the altar, whom he first took in his arms and kissed, but did eat him up presently in his other shape, in the shape of a wafer.”[9] Newman goes on to quote others to show just how many superstitions arose in the church around what was actually happening at the Eucharist.

Neither Browne nor Hardwick spend much time explaining how out of control superstitious beliefs had become at the time of the writing of the Articles of Religion. If one were looking to find a text to prove what misguided beliefs a doctrine of Transubstantiation could lead do, the Tractarian commentary has more to say on the subject than the “Protestant” commentaries of Browne and Hardwick.

What Newman has provided us with in the first parts of chapter 8 are an unequivocal rejection of the notion of Transubstantiation that was in wide held belief at the time of the Article first appearance in 1553.[10] The fact that Newman’s condemnatation was so strong yet garnered so much outrage shows that Newman’s writing were probably being read with a suspicion that wasn’t attached to work of on non-Tractarians. A key difference in the handling of Transubstantiation between Newman and Browne, is that Browne assign this belief specifically to the Roman Catholic Church as an official position, while Newman simply shows it to be a wide spread idea that had been held by Christians of the time. Newman never assigns the doctrine as an official position to the Roman Catholic Church, because in his mind the Roman Catholic Church had yet to adopt the classic doctrine of Transubstantiation.

Newman argues that because the articles were first published in 1553, had had taken years to formulate, they could not be written against the official doctrine of Transubstantiation because that doctrine was officially formulated by The Council of Trent, which did not end until 1563, ten years after the first publication of this Article XVIII.[11]

This logic must have seemed suspicious to the Tractarianism opposition, especially when they already considered Newman’s theology Roman Catholic. However, when Newman’s denunciation of Transubstantiation is read against Browne’s, it seems that Newman has not actually said anything that conflicts with the Protestant interpretation of Article XVIII of the time period. One is left wondering if Newman’s opposition simply saw the word “Transubstantiation” and went after Newman without thoroughly reading and considering it.

In Tract XC, after Newman has described what the article is arguing against, he begins to describe what it is not arguing against, namely, a “Real Presence” in the Eucharist. In a church were communion services had gone from a daily activity to a service that was relegated to a few times a year, any lengthy discussion of what was going on during the services was bound to raise ire. Yet once again, when we put Newman’s arguments for a “Real Presence” up against the commentary of Browne and this historical description of the article’s composition contained in Hardwick’s, we are hard pressed to find an assertion in Newman’s work that isn’t balanced by similar ideas in the other two works.

Newman makes that transition between his arguments with: “We see then, that, by transubstantiation, our Article does not confine itself to any abstract theory, nor aim at any definition of the word substance, nor in rejecting it, rejects a word, nor in denying a “mutation panis et vini,” is denying every kind of change….”[12]

Newman then goes on to explain in Tract XC what the sacrament that is referred to in Articles XXVIII and XXIX is, if is not the actual Body and Blood of Christ. By the end of the Tract, Newman argues for “a real super-local presence in the Holy Sacrament,”[13] but refutes imagined arguments against a theory of a real presence before he concludes that it is the natural conclusion of the Articles and 1662 The Book of Common Prayer, to which the Articles must not contradict.

Newman was not alone in suggesting that Article XXVIII suggests a real presence in the Sacrament. In A History of the Articles of Religion, Hardwick explains that the original version of what we now know as Article XXVIII originally contained an additional section condemning the notion of any presence in the Sacrament. The fact that the paragraph was proves that there is a history in the Church of England of not asserting there is no presence in the Sacrament.

Newman begins by analyzing the explanation appended to the Communion service in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The explanation instructs the communicants to kneeling while receiving, rejects the notion of a corporal presence in the elements and concludes that “For the sacramental bread and wine remain still in their very natural substances….and the natural body and blood of our SAVIOUR CHRIST are in heaven, and not here, it being against the truth of CHRIST’S natural body to be at one time in more places than one.”[14] Newman argues that Homilies, which are enjoined to the Church by the Articles, speak of a presence in the Sacrament. In order for the Articles, Homilies, and The Book of Common Prayer to not contradict themselves, Newman is left to now answer the question: “How can there be a presence, yet not a local one?”[15]

Hardwick also came up with the same question. While disusing the dropped clause of Article XXVIII that had rejected any presence, Hardwick states: “The ejected clause had also opened an ulterior question…whether the humanity of our Lord, as now glorified, is so absolutely and inseparably associated with His Divinity, that we are justified in speaking of His Body as present in many places at one and the same time.”[16]

Newman goes on to explain what meaning of presence is. He believes that this they key to understanding how “He is really here, yet not locally”[17] in the Sacrament. Newman explains that the Article isn’t speaking of material presence, but Spiritual presence. Newman argues that spiritual presence is different from a local or physical presence, and is not bound by the same rules of distance. Newman explains that Divine Grace and spiritual presence are akin, and we never speak of distance when speaking of the reach of Divine Grace.

If we are not speaking of a corporal presence in the Sacrament, but a spiritual sprence, it make no matter that Christ’s natural body is at the right hand of the Father, for His spiritual presence isn’t hedged by the same restriction so distance. Newman argues that once the problems of our ability to phrase what we mean is overcome, we can now see that “CHRIST’S Body and Blood are locally present at God’s right hand, yet really present here,- present here, but not here in place,- because they are spirit.”[18] With this understanding, there is no longer any conflict between the explanation appended to the Communion service and a doctrine of a real presence.

Newman concludes by insisting that while he has come to the conclusion that a real presence is suggested, it is not the only one possible. Newman states: “Let it be carefully observed, that I am not proving or determining any thing; I am only showing how it is that certain propositions which at first sight seem contradictions in terms, are not so – I am but pointing out one way of reconciling them…It seems at first sight a mere idle use of words to say that CHRIST is really and literally, yet not locally, present in the Sacrament; that He is there given to us, not in figure but in truth, yet is still only on the right hand of God. I have wished to remove this seeming impossibility.”[19]

Newman seemed so cautious to assert the possibility that there could a notion of the real presence could be sustained by Article XXVIII the named and argued the objections to his conclusion before he had even really stated it. Yet as radical as the claim may seem by the way Newman presents it, other scholars where ready to unequivocally state that the Church of England supports the doctrine of a real presence.

In Browne’s commentary on Article XXVIII he states that “The doctrine of a real, spiritual presence is the doctrine of the English Church, and was the doctrine of Calvin and of many reformers.”[20] With this sentence, Browne links the conclusion that Newman has stated in Tract XC with the doctrine of Calvin. This is starling connection when one considers that that accusation against Newman and the other Tractarians was that they were theologically as far from Calvin’s Geneva as they could get, yet here Newman and Calvin are shown to hold a common doctrine on the Eucharist!

Browne goes on to describe this real, spiritual presence in a similar fashion to Newman’s explanation. Browne explains that the doctrine “teaches that Christ is really received by faithful communicants in the Lord’s Supper; but that there is no gross or carnal, but only spiritual and heavenly presence there, not the less real, however, for being spiritual….The result of which doctrine is this: its is bread, and it is Christ’s Body.”[21]

Browne later goes on to make a statement that that seems much more controversial than Newman’s, and opposes his Newman’s assertion that received notion of Transubstantiation in the 16^th century was a superstitious degradation of a real presence doctrine. Browne states: “Here is the question; and it must be carefully noted. If there were no alternative, but that the fathers must have been either Papists or Zuinglians, - must have held either a carnal presence, or none at all, than we must acknowledge that they believed in a carnal presence, and were transubstantialists.”[22] Browne goes on to explain that a version of the doctrine of the real presence might also have been possible of the early father, but he does not seem as convinced of that. Much of the English Reformation’s zeal was to return to the faith of the fathers, and here is Browne has attributed a belief to them that Newman did not dare to in his Tract.

Once compared against his contemporaries, Newman’s assertions in Tract XC do not to appear to be nearly as radical as they were thought to be at the time. It seems that some of Newman’s more Protestant contemporaries were actually making similar if not more emphatic statements that in the end, both Article XXVIII and XXIX logically lead to a doctrine of a real presence.

Wild assumptions where made about Newman and Tract XC when it was first published. Future Archbishop of Canterbury A. C, Tait feared that young men would read the tract and be persuaded to leave the Church of England for the Roman Catholic Church. Tait even accused Newman of raising “curious questions” that were not relevant.[23] If young men of the church were being persuaded to leave the Church of England, it certainly was not over Newman’s Eucharistic theology, as Neman’s theology has been shown to be consistent with Calvin’s according to Browne’s work.

In the end Newman’s work was banned by the board of Oxford University. Newman was also brought up on Episcopal Charges over the purported erroneous theology contained in Tract XC. After being harassed by Bishops and the leaders of the Church of England, Newman slipped out of the public eye into seclusion. A few years later, after ruminating on the evolution of his beliefs, and still dealing with the public mockery he had incurred, Newman left the Church of England to join the church he felt truly called to; the Roman Catholic Church.

It would seem that Newman was never judged fairly for his work. While other parts of Tract XC were more radical than the section on Article XXIX was, in its entirety, it wasn’t nearly the subversive nor the Roman Catholic document it was decried as being.

A comparison of Newman’s work with his contemporaries, at least on Article XXIX just do not support the accusations leveled against Newman. Tract XC was a victim of it it’s timing. Had it been published earlier in Newman’s career, it might not have gone down in history as the controversial document as it was. Chadwick writes that the fate of Tract XC was for it to spark a “declaration of war on the part of the Oxford authorities against the Tractarian party. The suspicion, alarms, antipathies, jealousies, which had long been smoldering among those in power had at last take shape in a definite act.”[24] When all this is removed, and nothing is left but the document itself, the declaration of war seems much less warranted.

[1] Dr. Robert Prichard

[2] Michael Chandler, An Introduction to the Oxford Movement (New York: Church Publishing Inc., 2003), 1-16.

[3] C. Brad Faught, The Oxford Movement (University Park, IL: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 15.

[4] Faught, The Oxford Movement, 93.

[5] John Henry Newman, Tract Number Ninety (1841; repr., New York: H.B. Durand, 1865), 77.

[6]Newman, 77.

[7]Edward Harold Browne, An Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles (1865; repr., N.p.: Classical Anglican Press, 1998), 683-684.

[8] Charles Hardwick, A History of the Articles of Religion (1851; repr.; London: George Bell & Sons, 1876), 103.

[9] Newman, Tract Ninety, 78.

[10] Hardwick, A History of the Articles of Religion, XV.

[11] Chandler, An Introduction to the Oxford, 56.

[12] Newman, Tract Ninety, 83.

[13] Newman, Tract Ninety, 95.

[14] Newman, Tract Ninety, 86.

[15] Newman, Tract Ninety, 86.

[16] Hardwick, 136-137.

[17] Newman, Tract Ninety, 88

[18] Newman, Tract Ninety, 91.

[19] Newman, Tract Ninety, 94.

[20] Browne, 684.

[21] Browne, 684.

[22] Browne, 685.

[23] Chandler, 57.

[24] Chadwick, 56.