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The Rule of Our Warfare: John Henry Newman and the True Christian Life

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In the last selection from The Rule of Our Warfare, John Henry Newman begins, "[a]ll God's dealings with His creatures have two aspects, one external, one internal," and, in a postmodern world that all too often bids us to serve only the pleasures and politics of the former, this book provides a much needed account of the Christian's obligations to both. I come back regularly to certain pieces: "Living Faith," "Contintual Conversion," "Devotion and Intellect," "Fasting and Feasting," "The Defect of 'Cheerful' Religion," "Neglecting the One Thing Needful," "Self-Deceit and Self-Knowledge," "Putting Away Childish Things," "The Sternness of Scripture," "The Unseen," and "Divine Dispensations." Indeed, it seems that the "One Thing Needful," that is, self-examination and self-denial, is the one thing that atheist body-snatchers in the academy and American Catholics(Fr. McBrien, I am sorry to say) alike can agree to ignore as an instrument of the "Disciplines," as pre-Vatican II piety, as superstitious "Catholic guilt." It is unfortunate that such scholars, despite all their talk about liberation and apocalypse, are content with such a mediocre faith (post-structuralism, after all, is just another sacred scripture, isn't it?), and such a mediocre existence, that they truly fear the most common devotional gesture. Newman
writes, "[c]onscience is no longer recognized as an independent arbiter of actions,its authority is explained away [. . .] Austerity is an absurdity; even firmness is looked on with an unfriendly, suspicious eye," and the presence of such a
conscience is clear from the startled looks one gets--it's as though the person you're talking with has seen a ghost! Needless to say, "simplicity," a position that is beyond mere revolutionary or reactionary values, does not seem to be written about or get published as often as it should, and for this reason, at the least,The Rule of Our Warfare is very necessary. Indeed, in a culture admittedly confused by the material and uninterested in the immaterial, the revelatory value of John Hulsman's selections of Newman's prose are themselves a "Divine Dispensation."

This book does not reprint Newman's sermons/essays, but selections from them, each selection one to two pages long. These selections are provided under such headings as "Enduring the World's Ridicule,"True Christians and Professing Christians," and "The Paradox of Christian Knowledge." Accordingly, this book seems best for meditation and reflection. The selections are often thought-provoking, being from a great Christian mind, who is on the way to canonization. Personally I very much admire Newman's sermons/essays, and so I bought this book.