Cardinal Newman: The Via Media and a Link to Postmodernism

G.K. Chesterton once reminded us that when one believes in everything one really believes in nothing. Modern Anglican struggles about truth and its place in dogma are seriously affected by the Via Media approach to truth. Extremes are bad and so the mean is defined by the masses which determine what the signifiers in language signify that really only lead to other signifiers thus meaning that truth is never static or concrete. If that didn't make sense, welcome to postmodernism. To believe in objective truth lands one in the category of extremism. So what we do is defer and postpone coming to a conclusion of any real meaning. Just in case this sounds familiar, the struggles surrounding the Anglican communion appear to fall into this category. Within postmodern thinking there is no unified whole in which we can call 'reality' and the result is that people come to give up on looking for a universal truth; for at the end of the day there is nothing more than two people holding a host of conflicting interpretations created by the postmodern linguistic world. Therefore, this means there is no final criterion by which to evaluate reality and behaviour because all interpretations are equally valid.

What Newman seemed to come to terms with is what I have come to see as I considered the question of authority in my journey of being received into full communion with See of St. Peter. What is interesting for my understanding was my coming to see that in actuality the absence of the objective truth of the church backed by a principled authority loses the centre the Via Media claims to want to hold. The Catholic faith is the grand narrative of God's activity in human history. But, what Newman also came to realise was that universal truth is not discovered by reason alone. All interpretations are not equally valid. What does one do? Newman is helping in showing the problem here.

And now you will ask me, what it is I saw in the history of primitive controversies and Councils which was so fatal to the pretensions of the Anglican Church? I saw that the general theory and position of Anglicanism was no novelty in ancient history, but had a distinct place in it, and a series of prototypes, and that these prototypes had ever been heretics or the patrons of heresy. The very badge of Anglicanism, as a system, is that it is a Via Media; this is its life; it is this, or it is nothing; deny this, and it forthwith dissolves into Catholicism or Protestantism. This constitutes its only claim to be recognized as a distinct form of Christianity; it is its recommendation to the world at large, and its simple measuring-line for the whole field of theology. The Via Media appeals to the good sense of mankind; it says that the human mind is naturally prone to excess, and that theological combatants in particular are certain to run into extremes. Truth, as virtue, lies in a mean; whatever, then, is true, whatever is not true, {375} extremes certainly are false. And, whereas truth is in a mean, for that very reason it is very moderate and liberal; it can tolerate either extreme with great patience because it views neither with that keenness of contrariety with which one extreme regards the other. For the same reason, it is comprehensive; because, being in a certain sense in the centre of all errors, though having no part in any of them, it may be said to rule and to temper them, to bring them together, and to make them, as it were, converge and conspire together in one under its own meek and gracious sway. Dispassionateness, forbearance, indulgence, toleration, and comprehension are thus all of them attributes of the Via Media. It is obvious, moreover, that a doctrine like this will find especial acceptance with the civil magistrate. Religion he needs as an instrument of government; yet in religious opinion he sees nothing else but the fertile cause of discord and confusion. Joyfully then does he welcome a form of theology, whose very mission it is to temper the violence of polemics, to soften and to accommodate differences, and to direct the energies of churchmen to the attainment of tangible good instead of the discussion of mysteries...

At the same time, though it may be unwilling to allow it, it is, from the nature of the case, but a particular form of Protestantism. I do not say that in secondary principles it may not agree with the Catholic Church; but, its essential idea being that she has gone into error, whereas the essential idea of Catholicism is the Church's infallibility, the Via Media is really nothing else than Protestant. Not to submit to the Church is to oppose her, and to side with the heretical party; for medium there is none. The Via Media assumes that Protestantism is right in its protest against Catholic doctrine, only that that protest needs correcting, limiting, perfecting. This surely is but a matter of fact; for the Via Media has adopted all the great Protestant doctrines, as its most strenuous upholder and the highest of Anglo-Catholics will be obliged to allow; the mutilated canon, the defective Rule of Faith, justification by faith only, putative righteousness, the infection of nature in the regenerate, the denial of the five Sacraments, the relation of faith to the Sacramental Presence, and the like; its aim being nothing else than to moderate, with Melancthon, the extreme statements of Luther, to keep them from shocking the feelings of human nature, to protect them from the criticism of common sense, and from the {378} pressure and urgency of controversial attack. Thus we have three parties on the historical stage; the See and Communion of Rome; the original pure Protestant, violent, daring, offensive, fanatical in his doctrines; and a cautious middle party, quite as heretical in principle and in doctrinal elements as Protestantism itself, but having an eye to the necessities of controversy, sensible in its ideas, sober in its tastes, safe in its statements, conservative in its aims, and practical in its measures.

What I would hope to see is a good theological discussion of this issue that to me is nicely articulated by Cardinal Newman. A critique such as this is not at all to say that I have not cherished my time as an Anglican because I have; for without Anglicanism I would have never been on the journey that led to the deep mystery of the Catholic faith. The teaching of Holy Scripture and tradition reflected upon and deepened by our use of reason, backed up by the authority of the Church is the real centre from which all truth flows.