The Cause of the Canonisation of John Henry Cardinal Newman

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A Meditation for the Fifteenth Sunday of the Year: God’s Revelation to Man

Categorised as Featured and published Saturday, July 11th, 2009
Newman on the Communion of Saints
A Meditation for the Sixteenth Sunday of the Year: Christian conversion

Sacrifice of Isaac, stained glass in Melkite Catholic cathedral, Roslindale, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

The principle under consideration is this: that, whereas God is one, and His will one, and His purpose one, and His work one; whereas all He is and does is absolutely perfect and complete, independent of time and place, and sovereign over creation, whether inanimate or living, yet that in His actual dealings with this world that is, in all in which we see His Providence (in that man is imperfect, and has a will of his own, and lives in time, and is moved by circumstances), He seems to work by a process, by means and ends, by steps, by victories hardly gained, and failures repaired, and sacrifices ventured. Thus it is only when we view His dispensations at a distance, as the Angels do, that we see their harmony and their unity; whereas Scripture, anticipating the end from the beginning, places at their very head and first point of origination all that belongs to them respectively in their fulness.

We find some exemplification of this principle in the call of Abraham. In every age of the world it has held good that the just shall live by faith; yet it was determined in the deep counsels of God, that for a while this truth should be partially obscured, as far as His revelations went; that man should live by sight, miracles and worldly ordinances taking the place of silent providences and spiritual services. In the latter times of the Jewish Law the original doctrine was brought to light, and when the Divine Object of faith was born into the world, it was authoritatively set forth by His Apostles as the basis of all acceptable worship. But observe, it had been already anticipated in the instance of Abraham; the evangelical covenant, which was not to be preached till near two thousand years afterwards, was revealed and transacted in his person. “Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.” [Romans 4: 3] “Abraham rejoiced to see My day; and he saw it, and was glad.”  [John 8: 56] Nay, in the commanded sacrifice of his beloved son, was shadowed out the true Lamb which God had provided for a burnt offering. Thus in the call of the Patriarch, in whose Seed all nations of the earth should be blessed, the great outlines of the Gospel were anticipated … that he was justified by faith, that he trusted in God’s power to raise the dead, that he looked forward to the day of Christ, and that he was vouchsafed a vision of the Atoning Sacrifice on Calvary.

From ‘The Glory of the Christian Church’ (1834)

(Picture: John Stephen Dwyer, license)