This volume of essays is part of the Cambridge Companion to Religions series. All its contributors are theologians or scholars of religion. None is a professional historian. The essays are clearly designed for readers who are somewhat familiar with Newman and who come to his life and thought primarily with concerns for his standing and continuing influence within the Roman Catholic communion. The topics covered include the church Fathers, revelation, faith, justification, development of doctrine, the Church as communion, infallibility, authority in the Church, conscience, theology in the university and preaching. As with too many of the Cambridge Companions the essays are uneven in quality and insight. Taken as a whole the volume portrays Newman pretty much as scholars would have portrayed him forty years ago. Looking at the footnotes and bibliographic references, the reader will discover very few citations of works published during the past decade. One must welcome a succinct presentation of Thomas L. Sheridan's excellent interpretation of Newman on justification while still recognising that his important work on the subject was published in 1967. Francis A. Sullivan presents a reasonably unflinching survey of Newman's understanding of the infallibility of the Church and the papacy and his powerfully minimalist acceptance of the decrees of the First Vatican Council. The two strongest essays are an extensive, probing discussion of Newman on the important subject of conscience by Gerard J. Hughes and a typically thoughtful consideration of Newman's views of ecclesiastical authority by the late Cardinal Avery Dulles, the most sensible commentator on Newman of the past two decades. The most troubling feature of the collection is the absence of a sustained critical historical sense in the treatment of Newman's life, religious journey and intellectual development. Sadly Sheridan Gilley's brief biographical essay fails to capture any of the powerfully problematical behaviour that Newman displayed from the commencement of the publication of Tracts for the times in 1833 through to his reception into the Roman Catholic Church in 1845. It equally downplays Newman's difficult and controversial position in the Roman Catholic communion. Few of the essayists recognise the deeply polemical character of both the Anglican and Roman Catholic writings. The essayists seem unaware that while frequently using the term ‘Liberalism’, they are not able to define what they mean by it, and their definitions are internally inconsistent. A generally teleological outlook, of Newman inevitably moving toward conversion, informs all the essays with most of them displaying very modest knowledge or understanding of Newman's Anglican writings and the powerful anti-evangelical impulse informing so much of that work. Ironically a volume concerning the great modern theology of doctrinal development pays little careful attention to the development of its own protagonist. Cardinal Dulles's wise statement bears quoting:

It is because of that remarkable complexity of thought and experience that Newman's life and mind invite a critical historical analysis missing from this collection.