SOURCE: “Last Things: The Greatness of Newman,” in The Great Dissent: John Henry Newman and the Liberal Heresy, Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 188-217.

In the following essay, Pattison contrasts Newman's thought on the subjects of truth and belief with that of his fellow Victorians, and explores the thinker's attack on liberalism.

Is Newman still a great Victorian? His claim to be anything more than a religious curiosity must rest on his theory of belief and his dissent from liberalism. One is an abstruse series of philosophical speculations, the other a detailed indictment of the modern spirit. Do either of these arguments deserve our attention? Is either true? Is either useful?

Victorian Truths

Newman asserted the existence of divine truth and undertook to explain human life as the relation of belief to this truth. It is notoriously problematic to establish the truth of claims about truth. “This is the...