From the perspective of cognitive linguistics, metaphor is a way of thinking and understanding rather than an ornamental device used for aesthetic purposes.Conceptual metaphor constitutes a natural device for comprehending those areas of reality that exceed what is describable by literal terms, including especially the sphere of religious experiences. The purpose of this essay is to analyze the conceptual metaphors employed by John Henry Newman in the first volume of his Parochial and Plain Sermons (1834) as a way of explaining the transcendental character of the concept of Christian life.

Newman often argued like this in debate: “you do not accept this claim of mine because you think that it is exposed to certain objections; but this is unreasonable of you, because you make this other claim which is also, if you think it through, equally exposed to the same kind of objections; therefore, you should either withdraw your objections against me, or else give up that claim that you have been making.” Some contemporaries of Newman thought that he unwittingly lent support to unbelief by defending his views with this “kill-or-cure” argument, as he called it. This essay defends Newman’s argument against his critics in such a way as to contribute to an understanding of Newman’s rhetoric.

This essay examines the theological method employed by Newman in An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine by considering its objective content and subjective methodology. The objective content concerns the principles of authentic development of doctrine that culminated in his identification of Roman Catholicism as the true Apostolic Church. The subjective methodology consists of his heuristic application of the notes that guided him to the attainment of certitude. Newman’s Essay on Development thus resulted in his conviction in the overpowering vision of truth in the Roman claim in which ecclesial faith is experienced as simultaneously wholly objective and wholly personal.

After reflecting on his own undergraduate education, when the study of Newman’s The Idea of a University led to a transformation of his view of education and even life itself, Michael Krom discusses—in the contemplative spirit that Newman contended to be the purpose of education—how Newman’s Idea can be taught in a way so that today’s students are enlivened with the universal call to Truth and Holiness.

The first of John Henry Newman’s Oxford University Sermons is often neglected as an integral part of this collection. Yet Newman considered these individual sermons as a unit. There is an important theme that runs unchanged from the first to the last of these Sermons: the primacy of faith over human reason. The main burden of his first Sermon is the need for its hearers to return to their “early, religious training.” Although the worth of human reason is much amplified in his last Sermon, even there faith remains paramount. Newman depicted faith in his fifteenth Sermon as the chief form of human knowledge, as the bedrock and the guarantor of every other form of human knowledge: the one thing necessary is the childlike “obedience of Faith.”

Newman sought a via media—a middle ground—between “evidentialists,” who considered reason supreme and so disparaged faith, and “existentialists,” who wanted to create a fortress of faith impenetrable to reason. Examining the way people actually think, Newman identified three types of inference that lead people to make decisions. This inferential process, which is operative in the decisions of every day life, serves as a paradigm for understanding how the human mind—particularly the illative sense—operates in religious matters; accordingly, Newman presents faith as a personal and reasonable inference.

Both John Henry Newman and Vincent Gasser offered influential interpretations of the First Vatican Council’s teaching on infallibility. In contrast to many of theircontemporaries, Gasser and Newman placed papal infallibility alongside episcopal infallibility and the infallibility of the Catholic faithful. After exploring the views of Gasser and Newman, this essay compares their views to the Second Vatican Council’s teaching on infallibility in Lumen Gentium and concludes that even though Lumen Gentium cited Gasser, its theology is closer to Newman’s.