Justification

Newman’s Lectures on the Doctrine of Justification are seldom read, but there is perhaps no better place to see his theological reasoning at work. The goals and method of the argument parallel those of Tract 90, which explicitly incorporates the conclusions arrived at in the Lectures. Newman wrote them, initially, to rebut charges of unorthodoxy, as defined by Anglican doctrinal formularies. At issue was whether justification by faith can be reconciled with Tractarian teaching on baptism and obedience as intrinsic to justification. Newman’s endeavour to expound his Church’s official doctrine in a way that minimizes its Reformation origins involves remarkable logical and rhetorical manoeuvres; by the end he appears to have abandoned most of what justification has meant, in favour of a neo-patristic understanding of divine presence, conceived as something like deification.