Question

THEOLOGY: Explain how Newman saw the sacramental system as a logical development of the Incarnation.

Answer 1

The doctrine of incarnation is the announcement of a divine gift rather than logical proofs and developments as the slow , spontaneous,and ethical growth or a derivation . Newman was particularly suspicious of a view of justification that stressed imputed righteousness rather than the imparted work of sanctification and grace . Consistency over time gives the heart a measure of assured faith and works as a buttress against doubt.

In Newman's view , faith and reason are not airtight categories of knowing separate from one another but two interdependent modes of understanding . In this sense , Newman held a version of the nature and grace hierarchy much catholic culture . Nature achieves certain things , but must have grace to go any further any ideabofithe humanist scholar whose faith informed and corrects learning.

According to the catechism of the catholic church , the sacraments are efficacious signs of grace , instituted by christ and entrusted to the church , by which divine life is dispensed to us. Newman's doctrine of incarnation is the announcement of a divine gift conveyed in a material and visible medium , it being thus that heaven and earth are in the incarnation initedu. That is , it establishes in the very idea of Christianity the sacramental principle as it's characteristics.

Another principle involved in the doctrine of the incarnation , viewed as taught or as dogmatic, is the necessary use of language , e.g, of the text of scripture , in a second or mystical sense.

Newman Apologetic Resource is that He took on flesh in the incarnation and he resurrected that flesh as well and so the sacraments in sum , contitute the very heart of the catholic faith.

So , sacrament is the term in antiquity designating oath . Now at first glance we might be tempted to say , to understand a sacrament or why the church was led by the spirit to accept the term sacrament to explain these divine mysteries.