A Link

On something annoying

Recently The Church Life Journal at Notre Dame published an excerpt from Matthew Levering’s recent book on John Henry Newman (which, incidentally, rather oversimplifies Newman, but that is another issue). In the excerpt, Levering skims slightingly over the surface of my book Tradition and Apocalypse, characterizing it in ways that could scarcely be more off the point. I have to confess, I am a little annoyed. Most readers of that book, with the notable but almost burlesque exception of a reviewer at First Things (predictably enough), have had little trouble following its argument; unlike That All Shall Be Saved (which is unique in this regard), even its adverse critics have tended to get the point. It is a somewhat complex—maybe needlessly complex—text on an exceedingly and notoriously difficult issue; but it is not so complex that its argument should be so widely missed by a putatively responsible scholar. (And, amusingly enough, I have only recently realized the degree to which the governing argument of Tradition and Apocalypse was inspired by Newman’s On Consulting the Faithful and by his account of the “illative sense.”)

Whether I really should be annoyed…ah, well, you know how it is. Sooner or later the dam breaks.

I am dashing off a few remarks on the matter to release sometime soon; but I have just received the latest post from Jesse Hake’s Substack publication Copious Flowers (which may be among the best publication names on the platform), and it says a great deal of what I was planning to say, but in more laudatory terms than I would be allowed to direct at myself. So, in order to bask in the praise but also in order to help correct the record, I provide this link to Hake’s remarks. My own remarks will appear anon.