ATR/S5A

The Sermon as Biblical Commentary: The Case of Newmans Parochial and Plain Sermons and Pauls First Letter to the Corinthians
EDWARD J. ENRIGHT*

The late Raymond E. Brown, S.S., is said to have advised that if you had only one Pauline letter to read, it should be 1 Corinthians rather than the more famous and theologically influential letter to the Romans. The point is that 1 Corinthians helps the modern reader to experience more sharply the problems that early Chris tians faced and the mistakes that they made, and to see at first hand Pauls genius in responding theologically to complex pas toral situations. So wrote Daniel J. Harrington in a review of First Corinthians, a com mentary by Raymond F. Collins in the Sacra Pagina series. As the in troduction to 1 Corinthians in The Catholic Study Bible so accurately puts it, "Pauls first letter to the church of Corinth provides us with a fuller insight into the life of an early Christian community of the first 2 generation than any other book of the New Testament." The men and women of Pauls Corinthian church addressed in his first letter to them, like Newman s parishioners at St. Mary the Virgin Church ad dressed in the Parochial and Plain Sermons, were Christians struggling to live out their baptismal calling in the circumstances of their time. Both of our authors wrote in their respective genres to deal with issues of the Christian life that they perceived to be in need of their insight. Paul had, of course, personally founded the church of Corinth in A.D. 51 during his second missionary journey, and continued to main* Edward J. Enright is assistant professor of theology and religious studies at Vil lanova University. 1 Amerca, Vol. 182, No. 8, March 11, 2000: 25. 2 The Catholic Study Bible, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, 251. Each of the Testaments has its own separate paging; the reference here is to the New Testament paging.

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tain contact with it through ambassadors and his letters. Newman, on the other hand, had become vicar of the Oxford University parish in 1825, and so he tended to the needs of his flock through the medium of sermons as well as his personal pastoral duties. Since this essay proposes that a sermon can be used as a commentary on the Bible, the procedure used here is to take 1 Corinthians one chapter at a time, seeing how Newman understood the verses and pericopes from this letter that he chose to include in his Parochial and Plain Sermons. Since this essay is a first foray into the hermeneutics of Scripture in Newman, the only texts from 1 Corinthians that will be considered here are those that Newman used two or more times over the course of his sermons. The essay will conclude with an assessment of Newman s approach to biblical interpretation by considering two modern exegetes of First Corinthians, Raymond F. Collins and Jerome Murphy-O'Connor. In two sermons, "The Intermediate State" and 'Waiting," Newman used the text "waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1:7b).3 In the first of these sermons, he is concerned to explicate another text from the book of Revelation: "And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also, and their brethren that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled" (6:11).4 The excerpt from 1 Corinthians is among several quotes from the Pauline corpus and the letter to the Hebrews that Newman uses to illustrate his contention that the stress in these letters is on the coming of Christ as "the object to which our hope must be directed" (PPS, p. 715), in contrast to what was apparently stressed among his parishioners as the great object of hope: death, not only as the end of our trials and tribulations spiritually as well as in other dimensions of life, but also as the conclusion of our preparation for the heavenly life: "it will be found, on the whole, that death is not the object put forward in Scripture for hope to rest upon, but the coming of Christ, as if the interval between death and His coming was by no means omitted in the process of our preparation for heaven" (PPS, p. 716). For

3 John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), 709-721 and 930-938, respectively. From here on, references to these sermons will be signified by PPS and the page number(s). 4 All biblical quotations are from the Authorized Version of the Bible, the version commonly used in public worship by the Church of England in Newman s time.

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Newman, it is "a mere human assumption" that Christ's second coming happens at the moment of death, for he believes that "the time of judgment, and not till then, is the time when Christ calls His servants and takes account" (PPS, p. 718). Consequently the intermediate state is also a time of preparation for that coming. In the second of these sermons, "Watching," where he is developing the verse from Mark 13:33: "Take ye heed, watch and pray; for ye know not when the time is," Newman again quotes 1 Corinthians 1:7b as one of several proof texts, but he specifically combines it with a verse from 2 Corinthians: "always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body" (4:10). In this way Newman makes the point that while we wait for the coming of Christ, we also remember his first coming, never losing "sight of His Crucifixion in His Resurrection," not forgetting while looking to the future what in the past a Christians "Saviour has purchased for him," and to do so by commemorating and renewing "in his own person Christ's Cross and Agony" (PPS, p. 933). The sermon on the intermediate state also uses part of 1 Corinthians 5:3: "absent in body, but present with them in spirit," combined with a passage from Colossians: "joying and beholding their order and the steadfastness of their faith in Christ," to communicate the importance of remembering the dead. He rhetorically queries: "Can the tyranny of earth hinder our holding a blessed and ever-enduring fellowship with those who are dead, by consulting their wishes, and dwelling upon their image, and trying to imitate them, and imagining their peaceful state, and sympathizing in their loud cry,' and hoping to meet them hereafter?" (PPS, pp. 718-719). "The tender-hearted, affectionate, and thoughtful" don't forget, Newman preached; it is only "the rude, cold, and scornful, the worldly-minded, the gay, and the careless, whose ordinary way it is, when a friend is removed, to put aside the thought of him, and blot it out from their memories" (PPS, p. 719). This same phrase from 1 Corinthians 5:3 is used in the sermon entitled "The Humiliation of the Son," in conjunction with an allusion to 1 Corinthians 4:19a: "But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord wills," and verses from 2 Kings 5:26 in which Elisha questions Gehazi, his master: 'Went not mine heart with thee?" and Acts 5:9 in which Peter warns Sapphira that "the feet of them which have buried thy husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out." One might ask, Where is Newman going with these biblical allusions in a sermon of such a

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title? He starts out by reflecting on the mystery of the two natures of Christ, and in the process of doing so, challenges those who think the two natures a contradiction, not a mystery. Newman asks such people to reflect on how it is they know something, even when they cannot recollect it at a certain moment, yet they still know it. He then compares the mystery of the two natures with the mysterious event of an infant baptism. He exclaims: How strange is it, yet how transporting a sight, what a source of meditation is opened on us, while we look upon what seems so helpless, so reasonless, and know that at that moment it [the infant] has a soul so fully formed, as on the one hand, indeed, to be a child of wrath; and, on the other (blessed be God), to be capable of a new birth through the Spirit (PPS, p. 585)! The point Newman is trying to make is expressed when he goes on to ask a question first about such a baptism, and then another about ourselves individually: Who can say, if we had eyes to see, in what state that infant soul is? Who can say it has not its energies of reason and of will in some unknown sphere, quite consistently with the reality of its insensibility to the external world? Who can say that all of us, or at least all who are living in the faith of Christ, have not some strange but unconscious life in Gods presence all the while we are here, seeing what we do not know we see, impressed yet without power of reflection, and with an increase to us, not a diminution, of the practical reality of our earthly sojourn and probation (PPS, p. 585)? The relationship of the two natures in Christ is no more mysterious or less wonderful than that of any human person, whether infant or adult, who lives in two different worlds at the same time, the visible and the invisible, the earthly and the heavenly. The well-known verse 23 of chapter 1, "But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness," is used twice, the first time in a sermon entitled "The Self-Wise Inquirer," which is an extended reflection on 1 Corinthians 3:18-19: "Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He

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taketh the wise in their own craftiness," the latter a citation from Job 5:13. In this sermon, 1 Corinthians is quoted as a warning to those who would place such confidence in the powers of reason that they would disdain revelation and Scripture. When Newman quotes it again in his sermon on the occasion of the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, he uses it in a similar sense to apply to those "who despised religion and practical morality as common matters, unworthy the occupation of a refined and cultivated intellect" (PPS, p. 292). Leaving the first chapter of 1 Corinthians, and moving on to chapter 2, we find Newman using two verses from this chapter three times each. The first of these, "eye hath not seen . . . the things which God hath prepared for them that love him" (2:9), can be found in sermons on human responsibility (on the occasion of the feast of St. James the Apostle), the beatific vision, and Jesus' crucifixion. In the sermon on human responsibility, Newman is preaching on the text from Matthew: "To sit on My right hand and My left is not Mine to give; but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of My Father" (20:23). Having ruled out both Christ, who appears from the Matthew passage to eliminate himself as the judge of who will sit either at the right or the left of the Father, and also the Father himself, who prepares and confers the reward, as the ultimate judges of the human's eschatological goal, Newman then asks to whom this reward is given. His answer uses several passages from Scripture, including 1 Corinthians 2:9, and includes those who "come to be humble, charitable, diligent, and lovers of God" (PPS, p. 429). His conclusion, while not the whole picturehe clearly wants to preserve the grace of God in whatever ways that God activates itis that the human accepts or rejects the kingdom, when offered, by the way he/she lives life. In the sermon entitled the "Gift of the Spirit," Newman includes this verse (in its fullness) in a catena of Scripture passages to show that even now we possess what is, in fact, "that unspeakable Gospel privilege, which is an earnest and portion of heavenly glory, of the holiness and blessedness of Angelsa present entrance into the next world, opened upon our souls through participation of the Word Incarnate, ministered to us by the Holy Ghost" (PPS, pp. 643-644). The third use of 1 Corinthians 2:9 occurs in a sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Lent, "The Cross of Christ the Measure of the World," commenting on the text: "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me" (John 12:32). When he uses the verse from 1 Corinthians, he does so in conjunction with two other passages from

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the gospel of John (John 16:22; 14:27) as well as 1 Corinthians 2:14: "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."5 What Newman is doing is contrasting what makes the cross of Christ appear to be gloomy for the worldly with the joy of the Christian because of what results from the cross: Let no one go away with the impression that the Gospel makes us take a gloomy view of the world and of life. It hinders us indeed from taking a superficial view, andfindinga vain transitory joy in what we see; but it forbids our immediate enjoyment, only to grant enjoyment in truth and fulness afterwards. It only forbids us to begin with enjoyment. It only says, If you begin with pleasure, you will end with pain. It bids us begin with the Cross of Christ, and in that Cross we shall atfirstfindsorrow, but in a while peace and comfort willriseout ofthat sorrow. That Cross will lead us to mourning, repentance, humiliation, prayer, fasting; we shall sorrow for our sins, we shall sorrow with Christ s sufferings; but all this sorrow will only issue, nay, will be undergone in a happiness far greater than the enjoyment which the world gives (PPS, pp. 1233-1234). The final use of 1 Corinthians 2:14 occurs in an ecumenically sensitive passage in the sermon entitled "The New Works of the Gospel." Newman admits the presence of mystery and truth in religions prior to the gospel, even if those mysteries had not been discerned or truths understood by everyone. The coming of the gospel, "though it be light and liberty, has not materially altered things here." Christianity too, in other words, has its mysteries and truths which are not discerned or understood by all, but only "in proportion as men are humble and holy, and intellectually gifted, and blessed with leisure" (PPS, p. 1059). On the feast of the Most Holy Trinity, Newman preached a sermon on the gospel as a trust committed to human beings. In it, he at one point lays out the contents of the "Apostolic Rule of Faith," using three excerpts from 1 Corinthians as well as Romans (10:9) and 1 Timothy (2:5-7). Newman joins 1 Corinthians 3:11, "Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus, the Christ," with
This verse was also used in the previous sermon as one of the quotations in the catena of Scripture referred to.
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an even more explicit passage from the same letter, "I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified" (2:2), to draw out the first doctrine of the apostolic rule of faith, which is the crucifixion. With Romans he follows up with resurrection, and with 1 Timothy, mediation and atonement. Newman concludes by quoting 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, "I put into your hands, first of all, what had before been put into mine, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures," claiming rightfully so that this teaching was broadly apostolic and, in fact gives a primitive form of the creed (PPS, p. 391). In "Stedfastness in the Old Paths," Newman returned to 1 Corinthians 3:11, using it once again as the basis for his teaching that "in the Christian Church, we cannot add or take away, as regards the doctrines that are contained in the inspired volume, as regards the faith once delivered to the saints" (PPS, p. 1548). In an early sermon entitled "Self-denial the Test of Religious Earnestness," Newman uses two verses from the fourth chapter of 1 Corinthians to convey the message that we not be impatient to believe that there is any one test by which a person can know with certainty that he or she is saved. Then using Paul's own experience, one that came only near the end of his life, as proof of his point, he first quotes 1 Corinthians 4:4: "I know nothing by myself, yet am I not hereby justified," which Newman interprets to mean that Paul was himself "not conscious . . . of neglect of duty, yet am I not therefore confident of my acceptance?" Therefore, Newman exclaims, **Judge nothing before its time." The point is confirmed by 9:27, "I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway," exhorting thereby the need for self-denial to avoid the temptation to believe that, because their behavior is ordinarily good, and recognized as such by both God and fellow humans, therefore, they are justified (PPS, p. 45). 1 Corinthians 4:4 is used again in a sermon entitled "Subjection of the Reason and Feelings to the Revealed Word."6 Newman is teaching the lesson that "the Christian's character is formed by a rule higher than that of calculation and reason, consisting in a Divine principle or life, which transcends the anticipations

4:4 is linked with the previous verse, plus 2:15.

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and criticism of ordinary men" (PPS, p. 1342). All sorts of human experiences should tell the believer something quite different from what this higher principle teaches, but the Christian
goes by a law which others know not; not his own wisdom or judgment, but by Christ s wisdom and the judgment of the Spirit, which is imparted to him,by that inward incommunicable perception of truth and duty, which is the rule of his reason, affections, wishes, tastes, and all that is in him, and which is the result of persevering obedience (PPS, p. 1342).

And thus, the Christian is judged by the Lord alone. Preaching on "The Invisible World," and later in his Anglican career on "The Praise of Men," Newman quotes 1 Corinthians 4:9, "We are made a spectacle unto the world, and to Angels, and to men," to the effect that God's kingdom is already among us as the guiding factor in the Christian life, that the invisible world is, as he says in the latter of these two sermons, "surveying our conduct" (PPS, pp. 857, 1439). The fifth chapter of 1 Corinthians is short, with only 13 verses, two of which Newman uses: 5:3 and 5:11. The first of these has already been dealt with. In a sermon entitled "Profession without Ostentation," the second of these verses, "if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat," Newman uses to pose the lesson that, while Christians do not want to be ostentatious about their religion in public, nevertheless they need to be able to "openly . . . express . . . opinion on religious subjects and matters," and even more urgently cannot countenance sins such as those quoted in the passage from Paul; on these they need to speak up (PPS, p. 101). The same verse is used again to the same effect, but even more poignantly, when Newman preaches a sermon entitled "Christian Zeal" on the occasion of the feast of St. Simon and St. Jude. Inveighing against the idea that zeal is often viewed in his society as a form of intolerance, he makes it very clear, using this verse, as well as others, that such behavior is intolerable, and that the apostles were correct in being intolerant thereof (PPS, p. 467). First Corinthians 6:9-10, "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of them-

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selves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God," which had been linked with 5:11 in the previous sermon, is also used in a sermon entitled "Transgressions and Infirmities." Newman here contrasts the forfeiture of the kingdom of God with baptism, by which we inherited the kingdom of God (6:11), knowing full well that if we engage in such sins that inheritance is lost (PPS, p. 1076). "And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." So wrote Paul in 6:11 just alluded to, but used also in four other sermons. In the "Glory of the Christian Church," on Epiphany, baptism is associated with the image of Christ in that, analogously, the individual Christian, like the church as a whole, is the image of Christ, and becomes so through justification in baptism (PPS, p. 284). In the "Gift of the Spirit," Newman asks with regard to this gift, whether it is moral or miraculous, and answers no, and using 1 Corinthians 6:11, is saying that justification is the gift of the Spirit (PPS, p. 641). In "Righteousness Not of Us, but in Us," using a catena of verses including 6:11, he pronounces justification as an inward gift (PPS, p. 1039), that is, we are made righteous, in contradistinction to the Lutheran view that righteousness is alien, that is, we are declared righteous, but there is no inward transformation. Finally, in "The Law of the Spirit," Newman, again using 6:11 in a catena of verses, unabashedly declares the inward transformation of the sinner; we are made righteous (PPS, p. 1048). In all four instances, the common denominator is the Holy Spirit. Justification or righteousness is the work of the Holy Spirit. First Corinthians 6:19, "Your body is the Temple of the Holy Ghost," continues Newman's thought on the identity and role of the Spirit. The second time it is used is in the previously mentioned sermon "The Gift of the Spirit," where it is claimed as testimony to the body's immortality (PPS, p. 641), certainly not a common construction, but again responding to whether such immortality is moral or miraculous; for Newman, it is simply a gift of the Holy Spirit. The first use of this verse is found in the sermon "The Indwelling Spirit," in which Newman proposes it first as a claim that Christ continues to live within both the church and the individual Christian by reason of the presence of the Spirit therein, bringing about something new that was not present before Christ came: "He is still with us, not in mere gifts, but by the substitution of His Spirit for Himself" (PPS, p. 365).

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He then proposes it a second time in the same sermon as confirmation of a new and wonderful presence of Christ within: He is able to search into all our thoughts, and penetrate into every motive of the heart. Therefore, He pervades us . . . as light pervades a building, or as a sweet perfume the folds of some honourable robe; so that, in Scripture language, we are said to be in Him, and He in us. It is plain that such an inhabitation brings the Christian into a state altogether new and marvelous, far above the possession of mere gifts, exalts him inconceivably in the scale of beings, and gives him a place and an office which he had not before (PPS, p. 366). The final verse from chapter 6 of 1 Corinthians is verse 20: "For ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's." This verse is used three times in different sermons; however, it is used in conjunction with 6:19 in "The Indwelling Spirit" and "The Gift of the Spirit." The first time it is used is in Newman's sermon "The Resurrection of the Body," where, by implication, he connects it with previous ideas on the importance of Christian moral living so as not to defile the body that has been bought at a price, and in which the body of Christ in the eucharist is received. The human body should be reverenced as a holy place would be (PPS, p. 177). The overlapping theme of the Christian becoming a new creation is adumbrated in the sermon entitled "The New Works of the Gospel." There, among other verses from both the Old and New Testaments, Newman quotes 1 Corinthians 7:19: "circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God." The Christian's new creation is, in other words, reflected in a lifestyle in conformity with God's commandments. The same verse is quoted again in one of Newman's late Parochial and Plain Sermons, "Obedience to God the Way to Faith in Christ," where it is used with a plethora of other texts to prove that: The Gospel leaves us just where it found us, as regards the necessity of our obedience to God; that Christ has not obeyed instead of us, but that obedience is quite as imperative as if Christ had never come; nay, is pressed upon us with additional sanctions; the difference being, not that he relaxes the strict rule of keeping His commandments, but that he gives us spiritual aids, which we have

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not except through Him, to enable us to keep them (PPS, p. 1671).

In his sermon on the feast of St. Philip and St. James, "The Gospel Witness," Newman offers 1 Corinthians 7:35, "And this I speak for your own profit; not that I may cast a snare upon you, but for that which is comely, and that ye may attend upon the Lord without distraction," along with verse 32: "But I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord," to advocate the special place of virginity within the Christian dispensation as freeing such people from a specific distraction that would prevent total dedication to the things of the Lord (PPS, p. 353). "Danger of Riches," the sermon he preached on the feast of St. Matthew, links 7:35 with 7:29-31, to again embrace the idea, not of virginity specifically, but any thing worldly that would distract a person from doing the Lord's work unhampered (PPS, p. 449). In the previously mentioned sermon preached on Trinity Sunday, Newman also used, but in passing, 1 Corinthians 8:6: "To us there is one God the Father . . . and one Lord Jesus Christ." I say, "in passing" because he then proceeds to say that he wants to use only those texts "in which the doctrines specified are expressly introduced as portions of a Formulary or Confession, committed or accepted, whether on the part of Ministers of the Church at Ordination, or of each member of it when he was baptized" (PPS, p. 393). When this passage is used again in another sermon on the same feast, "The Mystery of the Holy Trinity," the emphasis is on the oneness of God. Newman is at his rhetorically philosophical best in this passage from the sermon:
God is one in the simplest and strictest sense, as all Scripture shows; this is true, whatever else is true; not in any nominal or secondary sense; but one, as being individual; as truly one as any individual soul or spirit is one; nay, infinitely more truly so, because all creatures are imperfect, and He has all perfection. In Him there are no parts or passions, nothing inchoate or incomplete, nothing by communication, nothing of quality, nothing which admits of increase, nothing common to others. He is separate from all things, and whole, and perfect, and simple, and like Himself and none else; and one, not in name, or by figure, or by accommodation, or by abstraction, but one in Himself, or as the Creed speaks, one in

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In his sermon "The Strictness of the Law of Christ," Newman quotes among other passages, particularly from Paul, the phrase within parentheses from 1 Corinthians 9:21: "To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law" (PPS, p. 729), to the effect that, having redeemed us from slavery to sin, we have now become slaves of a new master, Jesus Christ, a slavery that is paradoxically freeing. He insists on this issue of our new slavery to Christ, in order to counter the idea among some that Christian liberty means living without accountability to any law: "We cannot be without a master, such is the law of our nature; yet a number of persons . . . overlook it, and think that their Christian liberty lies in being free from all law, even from the law of God" (PPS, p. 728). In this sermon, he had also noted that these same people were saying that faith now substituted for obedience (PPS, p. 728). When Newman quotes the same passage in his sermon "The State of Grace," he contradicts this view by enthroning the perfectibility of obedience, contrasting it with our sinfulness, which makes the law seem so onerous: It is our great sinfulness, not any inherent defect in the law, which makes it a bondage; and the message of the Gospel is glorious, not because it releases us from the law, but because it enables us to fulfil it,fulfil it (I do not say wholly and perfectly), but with a continual approximation to perfect obedience, with an obedience running on into perfection, and which in the next world will rise into and result in perfection (PPS, p. 816). The very next verse in the same chapter of 1 Corinthians is used in the sermon entitled "The Visible Church for the Sake of the Elect." When he quotes "I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some," Newman was trying to communicate his belief that the sufferings Paul endured in order to preach Christ crucified and risen was for the sake of the elect: He sowed in abundance that he might reap in measure; he spoke to the many that he might gain the few; he mixed with the world that he might build up the Church; he "endured all things," not for the sake of all men, but "for the elect s sake," that he might be the means of bringing them to glory (PPS, p. 821).

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When he quotes 1 Corinthians 9:22 late in his Anglican career in a sermon entitled "Sudden Conversions," he is commending Paul's own conversion, a sudden one, as being neither "fickle" nor "the change of a proud and disappointed mind, quitting with disgust what he once loved too well," but a conversion that time has proved to be genuine because he was willing, as the verse says, to be made "all things to all men, that I might by all means save some" (PPS, p. 1682). First Corinthians 10:11, 'Whatsoever things were written aforetime, were written for our teaching," was quoted along with others from New Testament letters in a sermon entitled "Jeroboam," to point out the need for Christians to learn from the past. Jeroboam had been a leader of the rebellion against Solomon which eventually resulted in the schism dividing Israel into two kingdoms, with worship no longer centered for all in Jerusalem. This example Newman uses to warn Christians about the deeds that have been perpetrated within the church that have caused Christianity so much pain. Newman queries with an air of outrage: If the deeds of Israel and Jeroboam may be taken as types of what has been acted under the Gospel for centuries past, can we doubt that schism, innovation in doctrine, a counterfeit priesthood, sacrilege, and violence, are sins so heinous and crying, that there is no judgment too great for them, no woe which we may not expect will ultimately fall on the systems which have been born in them, and the lineage of their perpetrators (PPS, p. 528)? The need to learn from the past is again the lesson being taught in "Jewish Zeal a Pattern to Christians," when Newman reuses the same verse. This time, however, the lesson is not only positive, but teaches the importance to Christians of the Old Testament, especially the many commandments, that too many Christians of his day brushed aside as unnecessary to their lives. He shares his belief that the Old Testament was "written for our admonition and our learning," a phrase in which he combines our verse with Romans 15:4, the latter drawing out the view of Scripture as tradition (PPS, p. 590). In an early sermon entitled "God's Commandments Not Grievous," Newman seems to be evoking an examination of conscience, but more for the effect of gratitude than self-condemnation because of our sins. Granting that the latter is a starting point, he then has his listeners recall "How considerate He has been to us! How did He shield us from temptation! How did He open His will gradually upon

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us, as we might be able to bear it!" (PPS, p. 72) It is this last phrase that is taken from 1 Corinthians 10:13, which portrays God as faithful, "who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it." In a late sermon entitled "Curiosity a Temptation to Sin," Newman makes the same point, noting that our comfort in the temptations Satan makes available in our daily lives, is that God is ever present with the means to overcome such temptations (PPS, p. 1596). In the sermon "Mental Prayer," Newman tells that the meaning of 1 Corinthians 10:31, "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God," is to have the habit of prayer, or to pray always . . . so placing God s presence and will before us, and so consistently acting with a reference to Him, that all we do becomes one body and course of obedience, witnessing without ceasing to Him who made us, and whose servants we are; and in its separate parts promoting more or less directly His glory, according as each particular thing we happen to be doing admits more or less of a religious character (PPS, p. 1525). The second time this verse appears is as the text on which Newman bases his sermon "Doing Glory to God in Pursuits of the World." Needless to say, the whole sermon cannot be dealt with in detail. But in effect, what Newman is extolling here is the importance of understanding that "the employments of this world, though not themselves heavenly, are, after all, the way to heaventhough not the fruit, are the seed of immortalityand are valuable, though not in themselves, yet for that to which they lead" (PPS, p. 1643). Newman's concern in this sermon is with Christians who spend so much time contemplating the next world that they forget this one. "For by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit" (1 Cor. 12:13). This verse is used by Newman in three different sermons, "Regenerating Baptism," "The Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Church," and "The Unity of the Church." The first of these is an extended commentary on the phrase "by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body." He is proposing against the main stream "not only that the Holy Ghost is in the Church, and that Baptism admits into it," which all would grant, "but

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that the Holy Ghost admits by means of Baptism, that the Holy Ghost baptizes; in other words, that each individual receives the gift of the Holy Ghost as a preliminary step, a condition, or means of his being incorporated into the Church; or, in our Savior's words, that no one can enter, except that he be regenerated in order to enter it" (PPS, p. 649). The idea that the Holy Spirit is given to each individual at baptism was not widely accepted, Newman acknowledges, but he will insist upon this point not only here but also in other writings, such as the Lectures on Justification. In the second of these sermons, Newman's thoughts are rich with the conviction that the Holy Spirit is the means by which Christ continues to live among us and within us. The Holy Spirit "comes that Christ may come in His coming. Through the Holy Ghost we have communion with Father and Son" (PPS, p. 1255), as Newman puts it so familially. In the last of these, "The Unity of the Church," Newman makes the point that if it is "by the one Spirit we are baptized into one body," then "if every one who wishes to become a Christ must come to an existing visible body for the gift, as these words [of Paul] imply, it is plain," Newman insists, "that no number of men can ever, consistently with Christ's intention, set up a Church for themselves." Therefore, baptism must come from the baptized, who have received it from the baptized, and so forth, all the way back to the apostles. "So that the very Sacrament of Baptism," he preaches, "as prescribed by our Lord and His Apostles, implies the existence of one visible association of Christians, and only one; and that permanent, carried on by the succession of Christians from the time of the Apostles to the very end of the world" (PPS, p. 1541). The well-known passage in 1 Corinthians that lays out the basic kerygma and the list of witnesses to the resurrection ending with Paul himself (15:3-8) is quoted by Newman in the sermon on the feast of St. Philip and St. James, entitled "The Gospel Witnesses." Verses 3 and 4, the basic kerygma, come up again in the Trinity Sunday sermon, "The Gospel, a Trust Committed to Us," and verse 8, "And last of all was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time," in two other sermons. On the feast of St. Philip and St. James, Newman is concerned to advertise the historical reality of the facts of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection; and does so by quoting several passages, including, most prominently, 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 (PPS, pp. 347-348). On Trinity Sunday, he is concerned to make it clear that Paul's "gospel" is consistent with the teachings of the other apostles, that he is not preaching something new (PPS, p. 391). In a Christmas ser-

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mon, "Remembrance of Past Mercies," Newman cites 1 Corinthians 15:8, in order to include Paul, along with David and Jacob, as "the three great patterns of thankfulness, which are set before us in Scripture." They were, according to Newman: The creation of God s grace, and whose very life and breath it was humbly and adoringly to meditate upon the contrast between what, in different ways, they had been, and what they were . . . each had been chosen, at Gods inscrutable pleasure, to fulfil a great purpose, and each, while he did his utmost to fulfil it, kept praising God that he was made His instrument (PPS, p. 999). And,finally,in his Easter sermon "The Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Church," Newman cites this verse once again, to contrast Paul's experience of Christ on the road to Damascus at the time of his conversion with later experiences that Paul had of Christ. The original experience, Newman claims, is a matter of Paul being "favoured with a sight of Christ in as real, true, and literal a sense, as that in which the other Apostles had seen Him" (PPS, p. 1258). The other experiences, however, were not a matter of sight, but of vision, that is, according to Newman, "impressions divinely made, shadows cast upon the mind" (PPS, p. 1257). On the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle, Newman gave a sermon entitled "St. Paul's Conversion Viewed in Reference to His Office," the text of which is based on 1 Corinthians 15:9-10: "I am the least of the Apostles, that am not meet to be called an Apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am: and His grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me." It was one of Newman's shortest sermons and makes four brief points about Paul's conversion with regard to his office. First, Paul's conversion was "a triumph over the enemy." Secondly, it was "a suitable introduction to the office he was called to execute in God's providence." Thirdly, Paul's previous career, "his intellectual endowments and acquirements," but also, "his awful rashness and blindness, his self-confident, headstrong, cruel rage against the worshippers of the Messiah, then his strange conversion, then the length of time that elapsed before his solemn ordination, during which he was left to meditate in private on all that had happened, and to anticipate the future," is used by God to achieve his

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purposes for the Gentiles. The fourth point is the caution against any misconception Newman may have given in the last point; he wants to make the point that Paul's, and by extrapolation his own and others' brokenness, can be used by God to achieve a particular purpose (PPS, pp. 287, 288, 290). Verse 10 of this pericope is used late in Newman's sermons as the basis for another study of "sudden Conversions," Paul, of course, being the chief example, in which Newman wants to teach the lesson that God's ways are not our ways; that the Spirit blows where she wills, and any number of other clichs that communicate the idea that God will do what God has to do according to God's purpose (PPS, p. 1678). Newman uses a very poignant verse from 1 Corinthians (15:19): "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable," in his sermon entitled "The Ventures of Faith." The sermon itself is an extended commentary on Matthew 20:22: When asked by the Mother of James and John that her sons might sit with Jesus in the coming kingdom, Jesus replies, "Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" James and John answerand this is in fact the part of the verse Newman is commenting on"We are able." The point Newman wants to make, and for which he uses the text from 1 Corinthians 15:19, is "no cross, no crown." He is saying that Jesus responds to the brothers with a reality check: what are you willing to "venture" for such a privilege? "Success and reward everlasting they will have, who persevere unto the end" (PPS, p. 914). Newman uses the same verse again in a late sermon entitled "The Season of Epiphany," preaching that the misery referred to in the verse is precisely what Jesus was forewarning the sons of Zebedee that they would need to endure if they believe and hope in him: They like himself "should be persecuted for righteousness' sake, and be afflicted and delivered up, and hated and killed" (PPS, p. 1455). First Corinthians 15:47: "The first man was of the earth, earthy; the second man was the Lord from heaven," illustrates the lesson Newman wants to make on an Easter Sunday when he gives the sermon "Christ, a Quickening Spirit." That lesson is the intimate connection between Christmas and Easter, between Incarnation and Redemption. He does it, however, in an interesting manner by conveying how those who came to arrest and later question him experienced the divine in the human at the preparation for God's redeeming act on the cross:

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When the Pharisees sent to seize Him, all the officers, on his merely acknowledging Himself to be Him whom they sought, fell backwards from His presence to the ground. They were scared as brutes are said to be by the voice of man. Thus, being created in Gods image, He was the second Adam; and much more than Adam in his secret nature, which beamed through His tabernacle of flesh with awful purity and brightness even in the days of His humiliation (PPS, p. 316). In the same sermon, h e uses the same verse in combination with 1 Corinthians 15:22 and 15:45 to convey the connection between the two liturgical seasons more clearly. "Adam spreads poison; Christ dif fuses life eternal. Christ communicates life to us, one by one, by means of that holy and incorrupt nature which H e assumed for our redemption; how, we know not; still, though by an unseen, surely by a real communication of Himself" (PPS, p. 318). In a Lenten sermon entitled "The Incarnate Son, a Sufferer and Sacrifice," Newman uses verse 22 again: " F o r as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." In emphasizing the opening phrase of this verse, New man is setting up Christ's cross and passion as "our reconciliation to God, the expiation of our sins, and our new creation in holiness." His description of our death in Adam is brutally portrayed: So that every one of us is born into this world in a state death; such is our natural life from our very first breath; we are children of wrath; conceived in sin; shapen in iniquity. We are under the bondage of an inborn element of evil, which thwarts and stifles whatever principles remain of truth and goodness in us, directly we attempt to act according to them (PPS, pp. 1224,1225). The final verse to be considered is 1 Corinthians 16:13: "Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong." It is used three times. The first is on the feast of St. Luke in a sermon entitled "Danger of Accomplishments." At the end of the sermon, Newman combined this verse with 2 Timothy 4:2-4: Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, re buke, exhort, with all long-suffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears. And they shall turn away their ears from the Truth, and shall be turned unto fables.

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With these two verses he brings to a conclusion a lesson on putting one's accomplishments in proper perspective, to use the gifts one has been given to further the teaching of Christ. The main thrust of the argument is with regard to literary, artistic, and musical accomplishments; not to be overly jealous, or proud, and most of all not to be perverted by them. Though not evil in themselves, because they are gifts of God, they can be abused, even perverted (PPS, pp. 457-458). The second instance in which 1 Corinthians 16:13 is used is in the sermon "Watching," which we have encountered previously in another context. Here the obvious meaning of the verse is brought out, namely, to be strong and on guard with regard to the temptations of the world, that can draw us into behaviors contrary to the teachings of our Lord (PPS, p. 930). And finally, this verse is used in a late sermon entitled "Jeremiah, a Lesson for the Disappointed," in which Newman evokes the deep connectedness between the "saviour's lifelong affliction and disappointment," and our own, though ours is often warranted: "Let us prepare for suffering and disappointment, which befit us as sinners, and which are necessary for as saints. Let us not turn away from trial when God brings it on us, or play the coward in the fight of faith." Whereas in chapter 1 Paul is envisioning Christians in eager expectation of the parousia,7 Newman's use of 1:7 in the sermon on the intermediate state reads back into a period of "waiting," what appears to be the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory, which one does not find in Paul. Furthermore, according to Murphy-O'Connor (p. 800), Paul is responding to the Corinthians' overemphasis on the present by encouraging a healthy future perspective, whereas Newman is trying to correct his parishioners' belief that death is what one looks forward to as being the immediate gateway into paradise. Of course, Newman should not have been surprised at this, since purgatory was not part of Anglican belief; perhaps Newman was beginning to show his Roman Catholic side. When the same verse is used in the sermon 'Waiting," Newman appeals to the memory of Jesus' passion and death while his parishioners are waiting, uniting their earthy sufferings with Christ's, but Paul, for whom 1:7 is part of a thanksgiving
7

Raymond F. Collins, First Corinthians (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1999), 63-64, hereafter Collins; Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, "1 Corinthians," New Jerome Biblical Commentary (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1990), 800, hereafter Murphy-O'Connor.

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leading to a later discussion of the church as the body of Christ, seems to be saying that the Corinthians should see their expectation in the context of the communion they have together with Christ (Murphy-O'Connor, p. 800). While both Collins and Murphy-O'Connor agree that when Paul writes that he is present within the Corinthian community in spirit (5:3) as they adjudicate an egregious act of sexual misconduct, he is wanting the Corinthian community, which he founded, to believe that, although he is physically absent, he is to be understood as present with them in their judgment on the offending person, as if he were in fact physically present.8 Newman, on the other hand, takes the idea of "physically absent, but spiritually present," to mean that the Christian has one foot in this world and one foot in the next, as it were, in the sermon on the intermediate state as a way of reminding the congregants of the deceased, and in the sermon on the humiliation of Christ by using the analogies of the two natures of Christ and the double status of the baptized infant, "a child of wrath," but "capable of a new birth through the Spirit" (PPS, p. 585). Newman s use of 1:23, that the crucified Christ is an obstacle for both Jews and Gentiles, to warn his flock away from placing too much confidence in the powers of reason to the denigration of faith and revelation, is certainly within the realm of reasonable interpretation of Paul's meaning. In Paul's world, God's wisdom, exemplified in the crucified Christ, was clearly not in the realm of possibility for either Jewish messianic expectation or Gentile reason and, therefore, closed both groups off from receiving Paul's proclamation of what God had planned as the means of human salvation.9 Both Paul and Newman would agree in their use of both 2:9 and 2:14, that a person who is too earth-bound and insufficiently in tune with God and God's plan for salvation, is unable to discern the meaning of the mysteries revealed by God, especially the mystery of the cross (Collins, pp. 132, 135-136), which results, according to Newman, in a malaise of gloom for such people (PPS, p. 1052). Paul's presentation does not explicitly suggest this latter part of the interpretation.
8 Collins, 207, 211; Murphy-O'Connor, 803. Collins nuances his point by posing the idea that Paul himself has already made the judgment on the offending person, and his effective presence among the Corinthians is in the form of this letter. 9 Refer to Collins, 107-108, and Murphy-O'Connor, 801.

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In Newman's use of 1 Corinthians 3:11, whether in combination with 2:2 or 15:3-4, or with a passage from a totally different letter,10 he is in harmony with Paul, who understands Jesus Christ and the preaching of Jesus Christ to be the foundation of the church and its unity, his major concern in 1 Corinthians.11 Newman specifies the foundation in his sermons to be the crucified Christ; Paul, as is well known, would have no disagreement with Newman on this score. Since for both Paul and Newman, in their use of 1 Corinthians 4:4,4:9, and 9:27, the Lordwhether God, or Jesus more specifically, cannot be determined in Paulis our ultimate judge, and conversion can be interrupted at any time by sin, self-discipline is always required, no matter how much a person's conduct may seem to be of a type that would be approved by others and, perhaps even in one's own mind, by God.12 Whereas Paul's interest in 5:11, where he lists a number of egregious sins, is the internal life of the community, that is, that such sins are not to be tolerated in and of themselves, as well as for witness to the larger Corinthian community,13 Newman's interest is in the need for a Christian to stand up and be counted against society, when it tolerates such immoral behavior; his presumption being that the individual Christian, as well as the Christian community as a whole, is intolerant of such behavior within the Christian community. Newman uses 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, which gives a similar list of sins, to point outand Paul would certainly agree with Newman that anyone who engages in such sins forfeits the kingdom of God.14 In using 1 Corinthians 6:11 (and he does so, as noted, in four sermons dealing with the role of the Holy Spirit in baptism) in contrast to these sins, Newman as well as Paul is teaching that the baptized person is different because of the work of the Holy Spirit, who through the sacrament has entered into human life to transform the recipient. Newman is also saying here that Paul agrees with him that justification does include an interior transformation, and not simply a declaration of righteousness that has no internal effect.15
Refer to Romans 10:9 and 1 Timothy 2:5-7. Refer to Murphy-O'Connor, 800 and 802 on 1:10-12 and 3:11, and Collins, 156. 12 Refer to Murphy-O'Connor, 803 and 809, and Collins, 173, 188, and 362-363. 13 Refer to Murphy-O'Connor, p. 803, and Collins, 222-223. 14 Refer to Murphy-O'Connor, 803-804, and Collins, 235-236. 15 Collins is clearer on this last point than Murphy-O'Connor: refer to 236-238 for the former and 804 for the latter.
11 10

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A similar interpretation Newman proposes for 1 Corinthians 6:19although the emphasis is on the new and continued presence of Christ through his Spirit within the personleads to his belief that precisely because the baptized is transformed in this life by baptism, such a change also points to immortality in the next life. Paul does not get into the latter, but instead emphasizes that the change brought about within the person must be exemplified in one s moral comportment.16 This same point continues in the next and final verse of Chapter 6, and Newman is in full agreement. This same theme occurs again in Newman s use of 1 Corinthians 7:19, in which circumcision or the lack thereof is of no consequence, but living as one called by God. This is exactly the point Paul is making here. 17 Newman uses 1 Corinthians 7:35 twice to advocate virginity as necessary to the total commitment to the work of Christ, or to note the importance of remaining undistracted from anything that would get in the way of total commitment to the work of Christ. MurphyO'Connor and Collins would seem to suggest that Paul is certainly concerned with the Christian remaining fully conscious of total commitment to Christ, but would probably not go so far as to insist, as Newman seems to be doing (at least with regard to virginity), in a way that would suggest a direct order or even a legalization.18 When appealing to 1 Corinthians 8:6 in a couple of sermons, Newman waxes eloquent in a philosophical mode on the oneness of God, something Paul does not do, yet the two men are clearly interested in opposing the one true God to other multiple gods of whatever kind that people have conjured for their various and sundry purposes. The difference between Newman and Paul would lie in their emphasis, the former on God within himself, and the latter on God in relationship to creation and redemption.19 The dynamism of the virtue of obedience to Christ is the subject of Newmans use of 1 Corinthians 9:21. He is trying to counter the position that faith substitutes for obedience; instead, faith is expressed in obedience to Christ. While Paul's concern is to contrast obedience to Jewish law with obedience to the "law" of Christ, which
16 17 18 19

Refer to Murphy-O'Connor, 804, and Collins, 249. Refer to Collins, 284; Murphy-O'Connor makes no comment on this point. Murphy-O'Connor, 805; Collins, 297. Refer to Murphy-O'Connor, 806, and Collins, 319-320.

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is living a life of love of the other, it would seem that he would not have any difficulty accepting the dynamism of such an obedience of love; love of the other would of its nature require growth and greater depth over time. When using the very next verse, to the effect that Paul lives totally for the other as Christ did, Newman is commending Paul to others, which would certainly appeal to Paul himself who at times commends his own example to others, not out of pride but as what is required by the disciple of Christ.21 Collins s full interpretation of 1 Corinthians 10:11, which is often combined with verse 6, would suggest that both Newman and Paul are in complete harmony with regard to the need to learn from the past, the past usually meaning the lessons taught by the Old Testament; there we can find admonitions by which to live (pp. 372-373, 369-370). Again, Newman and Paul concur on 6:13, that no matter the temptation thrust our way, God in his providence will make available the means to resist such a temptation; giving in is not inevitable.22 Although Paul's exhortation to eat and drink to the glory of God (10:13) is made explicitly in the context of Christians of strong faith eating meat sacrificed to idols and thereby scandalizing those of weaker faith, he is generally concerned about the Christian s overall behavior being directed to the salvation of others.23 Newmans use of this same verse in two different sermons, one on mental prayer and the other on daily living, suggests implicitly the same thing as Paul: the need to be conscious of the other s salvation. The necessity of baptism as a water ritual for incorporation into Christ himself and into the church as the body of Christ is clear in all three of Newmans sermons using 1 Corinthians 12:13, but also in Pauls own meaning, according to Collins.24 In two of the sermons, where Newman uses 1 Corinthians 15: 3-8, either as a whole or in part, he is concerned, as Paul was, with the continuity of Pauls teaching with the previous apostolic teachMurphy-O'Connor, 807, and Collins, 354-355, especially 355. Murphy-O'Connor, 807, and Collins, 355-356, would concur with this interpretation. 22 Murphy-O'Connor, 807, and Collins, 373-374. 23 Murphy-O'Connor, 808, and Collins, 388-389. 24 Collins, 462-463; Murphy-O'Connor is not helpful on this point. 25 Refer to Murphy-O'Connor, 812, and Collins, 534-537.
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ing, Newman giving his stamp of approval, so to speak. In the first and last sermons in which Newman comments on verses from this pericope, he deviates from Pauls concern, being more interested either in the facts of the apostolic preaching or in the manner of Pauls conversion. The latter is the subject of Newman s use of verses from 1 Corinthians 15:9-10, being concerned with the lessons one might learn from sudden conversions, the main lesson being that God s ways are not our ways, God in his providence making use of people whom humans might not imagine to be of such value. That what God is doing through Paul is due to God's will and grace, Paul makes very clear, according to Collins, especially.26 In both sermons in which he uses 1 Corinthians 15:19, Newman combines it with the request of the sons of Zebedee about sitting with Jesus in the coming kingdom, so that the lesson is less about belief in the Resurrection of Jesus as the foundation for Christian hope, 27 than that such hope is unattainable unless the disciple, like his master Jesus, is willing to suffer in this life for the cause of God s kingdom. Newman s use of 15:47, contrasting the first and second Adam, in several sermons, is to link the liturgical seasons of Christmas and Easter, that the purpose of the first celebration is fulfilled in the second celebration. Obviously, Paul would not have made such a link, at least liturgically, but Pauls overall Christology would have no problem. Lastly, Newman, like Paul and Jesus himself, exhorts the disciples to be on guard, to be watchful, to be prepared, to be self-disciplined, in order to be ready when the final call comes. His use of 16:13 is in complete conformity with Pauls meaning in this verse (Collins, p. 601). In closing, although there are times in Newmans preaching when a verse or pericope is taken out of context, whether of the larger text itself or the time and intent of the author, this is seldom the case, for Newman often remains true to the original. As a patristic scholar, he may have had the same hermeneutical understanding of God being the single author of the Scriptures as the fathers of the church had, which allows one to pick and choose verses from Scripture to make one s point, but even when he does this, more often than not his
Refer to 537-538; Murphy-O'Connor is less helpful on this point. Refer to Murphy-O'Connor, 812, and Collins, 545.

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interpretation is close to, if not in complete conformity with, Paul's. It goes without saying that Newman cannot be faulted for any deficiency in the understanding of Scripture that is now available in the twenty-first century, because we have tools unavailable to Newman at the time, although some of the tools were beginning to appear in his century. He was not a Scripture scholar, but in the Parochial and Plain Sermons, he, like Paul, was acting as a pastor with pastoral concerns, and makes good use of Pauls teaching to achieve his objectives.

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