Fr. Ignacio Llorente, a priest of the Saint John’s Society (a society of apostolic life with St. John Henry Newman as their intellectual father) discusses Newman’s Oxford University sermon “Wisdom, Contrasted with Faith and with Bigotry.”  This sermon is one of the last three sermons (of the 15-sermon series) which together are a preparation for Newman’s classic, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. Newman establishes that faith has an implicit and spontaneous aspect where wisdom is a more mature development of thought. Faith like reason is an active, spontaneous energy within us where wisdom is a maturity and ultimately the perfection of the intellect. Gaining wisdom, according to Newman, is a perfection involving an enlargement of mind dependent on the capacity to expand your mind through the connection of new knowledge with existing knowledge forming comprehensive knowledge. Ultimate Truth is gained only through the operation of this mature reasoning under the influence of grace. While we expand our minds when we study natural sciences, history, philosophy, travel or even discourse with un-believers our main source of expansion mind is religion. Religion gives us a sense of the totality of reality; both the visible and the invisible worlds. Fr Ignacio points out that without this complete vision of reality we are left with a reductionist view. Believing in things that once were “unreal,” like the existence of God or the Eucharist, is very expansive, adventurous and exciting. Application of new circumstances to timeless principles is the process for this enlargement. This enlarged exercise of wisdom is how we unfold eternal truths. On the other hand, gaining knowledge without this integration leads to skepticism and bigotry.  A sceptic is unable to integrate thought due to a failure to engage essentials. On the other hand, as we enlarge our mind and view of the world, we approach true wisdom and begin to see the world as God does. Next, Newman distinguishes faith, wisdom and bigotry. Faith and wisdom give us a calm, humble view of reality. Bigotry, on the other hand with its limited set of principles in judging reality, leads to intolerance. The intolerant bigot regularly cancels ideas that don’t match their own limited way of thinking. Those striving for true expansion of mind possess a faith that seeks wisdom. They realize that they don’t know everything (unlike the bigot) and search for more breadth and depth to their faith and knowledge. This unification of faith and reason moves towards the wisdom of Christ. Similarly, all of scripture is a unified whole pointing to the Incarnation. It is wrong to read any Bible passage in an isolated manner. Rather we need to connect each passage to the whole of scripture. The goal of enlargement of mind is receiving the mind of Christ and growing into the fullness of the maturity of Christ. Enlargement is much more than an intellectual endeavor. We learn through life, circumstances, and people. We enlarge our vision of reality as we go through life striving for the fullness found in the wisdom of Christ. 

To approach Newman's majestic thought it is highly recommended to download the formatted sermon at www.newmanontap.com. Comments and suggestions are appreciated on the same site.