What does a 19th-century cardinal have to say about the rise of Artificial Intelligence? As it turns out, a great deal. This May, St Mary’s College, Oscott, hosted a deeply intellectual but contemporarily relevant symposium titled...
What does a 19th-century cardinal have to say about the rise of Artificial Intelligence? As it turns out, a great deal. This May, St Mary’s College, Oscott, hosted a deeply intellectual but contemporarily relevant symposium titled Newman: Theology and the Imagination. The gathering brought together seminarians, Maryvale students, and diaconal students to celebrate St John Henry Newman’s theological legacy. The discussions after the lectures proved to be a vibrant exploration of how Newman’s thought addresses the modern crisis of truth, education, and human authenticity.
The weekend opened with a keynote address by Father Guy Nicholls, who set the tone by exploring Newman’s profound approach to education. Newman reminds us that education is never about pedagogical techniques but moral, human, and spiritual formation. A teacher must be a living witness to holiness and human values. In a world where AI can effortlessly simulate educational content and generate lesson plans, the symposium offered a timely warning: while AI can deliver content, it can never provide person-to-person witness. To truly educate, one must be "alive by the ideas" they teach, helping students form real ascent through life experiences, art, music, and personal encounters.
A central theme of the Symposium was Newman’s resistance to 19th-century rationalism, which demanded strict logical proofs for religious belief. However, Dr Mary McCaughey unpacked Newman’s crucial distinction between notional assent (intellectual agreement with an abstract idea) and real assent (a deep conviction that engages a person’s whole being including conscience and imagination). Newman observed that early Christian thinkers relied on symbolic, poetic imagery rather than rigid logical inference and this teaches us something about theological method today. True faith, or real assent, Newman argued, can be captured through the imagination and symbolic representation, not just raw logic. However Professor Andrew Meszaros, the Newman Chair at the Angelicum in Rome, explained that Newman sought to enrich and complement scholastic methods, not substitute them.
Father Michael Glover beautifully demonstrated this methodology through Newman’s novel Callista. The title character perfectly embodies the imaginative journey into faith. Callista’s life changes radically when she reads the Gospel of St Luke and encounters an image of Christ that completely surpasses her ideals of perfection. For Callista, the imagination becomes the vehicle through which she perceives a loving Creator, drawing her into the Church.
The symposium including the paper by Dr Chris Wojtulewicz, also highlighted Newman's unique ability to hold objective truth and subjective experience in perfect tension; he famously balanced unchanging realities with individual uniqueness. By balancing permanent dogmatic truth with the historical and subjective dimension of human life, Newman effectively bridged the gap between pre-Vatican II and post-Vatican II theology.
The coffee breaks and lunchtime also gave attendees a chance to unpack and apply some of Newman’s theological ideas and visit the historical exhibition to gain a deeper appreciation of the life and works of this inspirational and holy man.
Reflecting on the theme of faith and the imagination and the discussions that ensued, Dr Mary McCaughey, who organised and presented at the symposium, saw the potential for future conferences to explore more deeply the role of art and beauty in evangelisation. In a postmodern culture that is deeply resistant to absolute truth claims, beauty remains an accessible, unthreatening entry point to the mysteries of faith, the centrality of God’s love and the person of Christ.