Newman, Nicaea, and the Prerogatives of the Past

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

Cyril O’Regan

Published:

2025

Publisher:

Fordham University Press

The major aim of this essay is to show — following Jaroslav Pelikan — that notwithstanding long held objections to the notion of “development,” that Newman’s explicative-dialectic account of the movement from apostolic witness to explicit doctrinal formulation, especially in the case of the early Church, is of value not only to the Roman Catholic understanding of tradition, but any confessional understanding of tradition that regards the Nicene Creed as ineluctable. Of the non-Catholic confessions, I have particularly in mind Eastern Orthodoxy. There are two reasons that essentially account for my confidence that Newman continues to offer assistance to Eastern Orthodoxy in general, even if not in particular details. The first is Pelikan’s conviction that Newman continues to be of value when it comes to the formulation core doctrines such as Nicaea and Chalcedon. The second is how Newman can shore up a viable notion of tradition in Eastern Orthodoxy against the view of tradition advocated by the Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart in Tradition and Apocalypse (2022) wherein his apocalyptic construction of Christian origins and historiographic axioms regarding radical discontinuity in history destabilize the normativity of Nicaea and make the very notion of tradition notional.

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