SOURCE: “The Fullness of Christianity,” in Newman and the Fullness of Christianity, T&T Clark, 1993, pp. 123-45.

In the following excerpt, Ker considers Newman's contribution to Catholic theology and the applicability of his theories to a critique of the modern Catholic Church.

By 1843 Newman saw that not only was the principle of doctrinal development a persuasive hypothesis to account for the facts of Christian history, but also ‘a remarkable philosophical phenomenon, giving a character to the whole course of Christian thought’, particularly of course to Catholic thought, lending it ‘a unity and individuality’ such that ‘modern Rome was in truth ancient Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople, just as a mathematical curve has its own law and expression’. However, there was another consideration, and that was the application of the principle of development to the personal religious development of the individual, that is to say, ‘the concatenation of argument by...