When I began my scholarly transition in the late 1980s from early modern English religious history to nineteenth-century Catholic studies, with a special interest in John Henry Newman, I quickly discovered that “landmines” were buried beneath the field of Newman studies. Though trained both as a theologian and a historian, I struggled to effectively integrate these two disciplines in my study of Newman. Sharp divisions in Newman scholarship complicated my efforts. Professor Owen Chadwick proved a masterful guide through that strife-ridden landscape. Though in the sunset of his professional life, Chadwick's works on Newman, the Oxford Movement, and Victorian England modeled the importance of understanding the historical context within which theologians matured and their ideas emerged. As my studies progressed, three biographies—first by Ian Ker (1988), then by Sheridan Gilley (1990), and later by Frank Turner (2002)—complicated my efforts to understand Newman's life story and how his theological vision developed. Ian Ker sought to tell Newman's life through his letters, diaries, and published works, and while a useful digest of Newman writing, it proved a flawed and agenda laden project. Gilley, though broader in his source material and more sophisticated in his historical analysis, clearly admired Newman's journey, and in the years that followed became a Roman Catholic himself. Frank Turner's biography was self-consciously iconoclastic, and challenged the “metanarrative” Newman had established in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua. The Cambridge Companion to John Henry Newman, edited by Ian Ker and Terrence Merrigan, illustrates that these tensions remain as fierce and fervent as ever, though it is gratifying to report that Benjamin J. King's Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers: Shaping Doctrine in Nineteenth-Century England offers a model of careful historical theological scholarship and charts a promising path beyond the partisan divide.

Simon Skinner has sharply criticized The Cambridge Companion to John Henry Newman for its lack of historical perspective (“History versus Hagiography: The Reception of Turner's Newman,” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 61, no. 4 [Oct. 2010]: 764–81). He noted that the thirteen essayists failed to acknowledge the existence of Frank Turner's magisterial—albeit controversial—work, John Henry Newman: The Challenge to Evangelical Religion (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 2002) (Skinner, 778–89). Skinner concluded that this collection, to which only Roman Catholics scholars contributed (ten of them clerics), is the latest iteration of generations of Newman scholarship dominated by sympathetic Roman Catholic clergy, who lack the will or the ability to contextualize historically Newman's life and work (Skinner, 778). While this judgment may be unduly harsh in the case of Professor Sheridan Gilley's essay, “Life and Writings” (1–28), or Professor Brian Daley's “The Church Fathers” (29–46), as a whole the collection fails the most fundamental test of scholarship—to carry forward learned discourse and engage the work of leading researchers in the field. The exclusion—in an introductory reader—of any reference to Frank Turner's critical biographical and literary studies is a flaw that seriously mars this Cambridge Companion.

Professor Eamon Duffy has taken exception to Skinner's critique, implying that his assessment “carries him dangerously close to conspiracy theory,” (“The Reception of Turner's Newman: A Reply to Simon Skinner,” in The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 63.3 [July 2012]: 535). Duffy also suggests that Turner (and Dr. Skinner) manifest a latent mistrust of the Roman Catholic Newman and generations of co-religionists who study him. As a lay Roman Catholic scholar, who has observed the dismissive exclusion of Turner's scholarship first hand—at academic conferences and elsewhere—I am sad to confirm that this is no conspiracy theory, but an undeniable fact. Yet I would not describe what has been done in this collection as “hagiography”—as Simon Skinner did—but rather to varying degrees a malformed understanding of the historical theological project as foundational to systematic treatments of any theologian's life and works.

The bulk of these essays focus on broad themes in Christian and Roman Catholic systematic theology. Terrence Merrigan wrote on “Revelation” (47–72), Thomas Norris addressed “Faith” (73–97), and Thomas Sheridan authored a piece on “Justification” (98–117). Gerard McCarren considered “Development of Doctrine” (118–36), Ian Ker examined “The Church as communion” (137–55), Francis Sullivan explored “Infallibility” (156–69), Avery Dulles treated “Authority in the Church” (170–88), and Gerard Hughes reflected on “Conscience” (189-220). Two essays focused on praxis: Gerard Loughlin's “Theology in the university” (221–40) and Denis Robinson's “Preaching” (241–54). David Burrell concluded the collection with an essay entitled “Newman in retrospect” (255–74). These titles are so broad and amorphous, they could invite contributors to read present theological and ecclesial concerns back into the life and work of John Henry Newman. Without careful historical contextualization, authors might run the risk of flattening the arch of Newman's personal theological development. Sadly for those seeking an introduction to John Henry Newman, this Cambridge Companion fell victim to both tendencies.

Fr. Ian Ker, one of the editors of this collection, observed in his 784-page biography of Newman that he “referred only sparingly to specific secondary sources, [except] when I have a specific debt or disagreement to record” (John Henry Newman: A Biography [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988], ix). More than twenty years later, Fr. Ker continues this pattern in his essay, “The Church as Communion” (137–55). This collage of quotes and paraphrases “traces” the theme of communion ecclesiology in Newman from his life as an Anglican to his late Catholic years, with minimal differentiation of context or historical circumstance. His purpose is to align Newman with a particular approach to interpreting the documents of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). He focuses much attention on who Newman understood the “faithful” to be. Fr. Ker creatively shifts the emphasis of Newman's “On Consulting the Faithful” (1859), downplaying Newman's focus on the laity, and reorienting it toward clergy and religious, suggesting that Newman's sacramental understanding of the Church emphasized the “baptized,” which includes those in ordained and vowed life. Alarms go off when I read “Newman anticipated the teaching of the Second Vatican Council.” For Ker, this means defining the Church as the “community of the baptized,” which by the end of his essay is more about clergy and religious than the laity (140–41, 153).

As a great admirer of Fr. Francis Sullivan's work, from whom I have learned a great deal about the concept of magisterial teaching in the Catholic Church, I was disheartened to read his essay entitled “Infallibility,” and observe the way in which Sullivan used texts in the first portion of his essay, with little consideration of the life context in which they were produced. The first section is devoted to Newman's Anglican understanding of the infallibility of the Church, constructing his account from the uniform edition of Newman's Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church (originally produced in 1837, but reedited and published in 1877) and his Apologia Pro Vita Sua. The first two pages of Sullivan's essay reproduce in tone and content the Apologia's narrative of inevitability to Newman's conversion in 1845, despite the much-debated difficulties of using Newman's autobiographical account of his Anglican years. Ignoring the anti-Roman polemic of the Lectures as a whole, Fr. Sullivan stressed instead one lecture that served the purpose of his essay (156–57). While there is much to applaud in the latter pages of Sullivan's essay, this tendency to focus on ideas and neglect the contexts from which they emerge is a problem. Indeed it is a problem that pervades all the essays in this collection.

Perhaps the fundamental challenge, and deficiency, of this Cambridge Companion is that the thematic character of the essays forced the authors to think in systematic theological categories, and refashion Newman's writings into a shape and focus that reflects early twenty-first-century ecclesial and theological concerns. A more responsible approach would have been to contextualize historically problems that Newman faced before drawing lessons from his example. While the historical-theological approach is not the “only” way of exploring Newman's life and writings, I am convinced that it is an essential foundation for any systematic application of his work.

Dr. Benjamin J. King has offered a helpful and instructive antidote. His unassuming title, Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers: Shaping Doctrine in Nineteenth-Century England, might suggest yet another recycling of ideas and assumptions generations of scholars have employed to frame their accounts of Newman's use of patristic sources. Instead he blazes new trails that not only aid our understanding of Newman in his historical context, but also presses us to consider how his influence into the present may need to be carefully reconsidered and curbed. Within the first five pages the reader not only has a grasp of the book's intent, but a lucid overview of why this study demands careful consideration. His footnotes throughout this 289-page text reveal that he is not only fluent in the publications, letters, and diaries of Newman, but also Newman's creative interaction with his contemporaries and their publications. The ebb and flow of trends in Newman scholarship over generations are traced out in the text and footnotes, guiding novices in Newman studies through a rich scholarly discourse that spans almost 120 years.

Dr. King argues, and convincingly demonstrates, four points that should alter the shape of Newman studies for years to come. First, King establishes that over the decades Newman's loyalties to certain Alexandrian fathers shifted. This is a striking analysis with significant implications for the study of Newman's life and work. Second, he explores how Newman passed through a major shift in what he understood orthodox doctrine to be. This is often an issue that some Newman scholars flatten out, and fail to historically contextualize. Third, King redefines the “periodization” of Newman's life. Rather than the binary Anglican/Catholic divide that most have borrowed from Newman's Apologia, King finds three periods in Newman's theological development (the 1830s, the 1840s and 1850s, and the 1860s and 1870s). The biographies of Ker, Gilley, and Turner, which perpetuate this Anglican/Catholic division, must now be read with King's insights in mind. Fourth and finally, he critically reflects on the impact Newman has had on our historiographical assumptions about early Christianity. He finds these problematic, and having historically contextualized Newman's life and work, he then makes a compelling case for reappraising Newman's contribution to that field of study.

As a serious student of both the Anglican and Catholic Newman—I confess to having been drawn into Newman's self-defining metanarrative—King taught me to think in very different ways about Newman's life and thought. His work requires a rethinking of the narratives Ker, Gilley, and Turner have created in recent decades. King has given us a fresh look. Perhaps the greatest compliment that can be paid to King is that once I read this book—like a gestalt image—I understand Newman's legacy differently. “Anomalous” elements that have long bothered me—but had no place in received accounts—fit this new paradigm and enable me to articulate more clearly why he matters in the twenty-first century.

Dr. King has reminded us all of the value of well crafted historical theology, which seriously considers theologians and their ideas in historical context, in order to better understand how and why they impact the theological discourse of our times. This is not the “presentism” of Whig history that Herbert Butterfield condemned (The Whig Interpretation of History [New York: W.W. Norton, 1965], 11), and that the essayists of the Cambridge Companion display to a greater or lesser degree. This is a careful, responsible reconstruction of a slice of our Christian past, which may be instructive as we chart the future of our ecclesial communities. It may be no accident that, like Owen Chadwick, Benjamin King functions as a priest within the Anglican Communion. His contribution not only enriches The Episcopal Church, but serves as a model that a new generation of Roman Catholic scholars would do well to emulate. Newman may be an estranged son of the Anglican Communion, but Dr. King reminds us that he remains beloved and respected. Roman Catholics who seek to claim him for any particular Roman Catholic cause should beware of the dangers that come with recasting him in their own image. He was unpredictable, and his example may take them down paths they do not yet clearly see or understand.