Geertjan ZUIJDWEGT. An Evangelical Adrift, The Making of John Henry Newman’s Theology. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2022. pp. 365. $75.00. ISBN 978-0813235585. Reviewed by Marial CORONA, The Lumen Christi Institute, Chicago, IL 60637.

Geertjan Zuijdwegt’s An Evangelical Adrift, The Making of John Henry Newman’s Theology offers a meticulous description of Newman’s “most formative years”, which Zuijdwegt identifies as the decade and a half between Newman’s first religious conversion at age 15 (1816) and the dawn of the Oxford Movement (1832). With painstaking detail and a close examination of unpublished primary sources, Zuijdwegt accounts for the evolution of Newman’s theological principles, from his adoption of an evangelical theology, through his drift towards liberalism, to his adscription to High Church theology, which ultimately led him to Roman Catholicism in 1845, thirteen years after Zuijdwegt’s account concludes.

An Evangelical Adrift is organized in ten chapters that detail chronologically the influences that shaped Newman’s thought. Its central thesis is that Newman’s theological evolution “had a coherent rationale. It was the product of careful and consistent reasoning and reflection shaped, but not determined, by contingent factors: people met, events experienced, conflicts fought, books read, assignments taken” (p. 7). 

The first chapter recounts Newman’s first conversion and argues that, at the time, he authentically embraced evangelicalism. Building upon Newman’s six-moth correspondence with his brother Charles in 1825, the second chapter offers a view into his earliest apologetics. The third chapter investigates one of the most controversial periods in Newman’s life: his “drift towards liberalism”. In the fourth chapter, Zuijdwegt argues that the transformation of Newman’s evangelicalism into High Church theology during his time at St. Clement’s was a coherent process.

The fifth chapter follows the theme of conscience. In the sixth chapter, Zuidwegt details Newman’s transformation into "an Evangelical adrift," through his repudiation of the central tenets of evangelical theology. The seventh chapter focuses on Newman’s new theological views as he moved away from evangelicalism and the eighth and ninth chapters shift the focus to his critique of liberalism. The tenth and last chapter connects Newman’s development up to this point to the genesis of the Oxford Movement. Zuijdwegt concludes this last chapter by stating: “In the preceding pages, I have traced the transformation of Newman’s religious thought in the two decades after his adolescent conversion. In some ways, I have barely gotten beyond the beginning. My tale finishes where most others start, but I hope to have shown that the prologue, as often happens, gives away much of the later story” (p. 337).
Zuijdwegt’s “tale” is underpinned by over nineteen hundred footnotes, most of which point to Newman’s unpublished manuscripts. When he refers to his published works, he cites the first available version, seeking to reveal what Newman thought at a given time. In contrast to other scholars, Zuijdwegt gives center stage to Newman’s own words, holding that “what Newman says about his own history deserves serious attention, if only because it comes from someone with unique—though far from infallible—access to the subject under consideration: himself” (p 5). His engagement with secondary literature is thorough and honest, decidedly correcting judgements made from lack of context or pious hagiography.

When I realized that this 365-page book dealt with only sixteen years of Newman’s life, and within that timeframe, only with the evolution of his theological views, I feared that the amount of detail would obscure the flow of the argument. However, Zuijdwegt’s pristine writing style and how he organizes each chapter (each is divided into several short sections and includes a couple of introductory paragraphs and a conclusion) enable the reader to easily follow his argument.

An additional aid to comprehension is given by the more casual than formally academic tone through which he delivers his outstanding research. If I had to choose one word to describe this work, it would be “pedagogical” in the sense that it walks the reader along the author’s hypothesis by providing thorough evidence. By carefully detailing the complexity and evolution of Newman’s thought, Zuijdwegt attempts (and, in my opinion, succeeds) to overcome the scholarly divisions that have sprung in Newman studies, clearing the field for more constructive scholarship.

Considering that Newman’s intellectual and religious life covered seven decades and was characterized by a perennial vitality and fruitfulness, I question Zuijdwegt’s choice of calling this period Newman’s “most formative years”. They are, in the sense that they provided the groundwork for his contributions to the Oxford Movement, his conversion, and his engagements in the Catholic Church. However, it is hard for me to see the successive decades and events as less formative. Perhaps a key to Newman’s genius is that he never stopped growing, as is clearly evidenced in this foundational work.