Marianne Servaas
marianne.servaas@theo.kuleuven.be
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Belgium
Doctoral researcher in systematic theology
Topic doctoral research: Imagination and the Mediation of Religious Truth
Member of the Research Group Christian Self-Understanding and Interreligious
Dialogue
Member of the GOAII Project The Normativity of History: Theological Truth and
Tradition in the Tension between Church History and Systematic Theology
Submission:
Committed to the Real
Flannery O’Connor and John Henry Newman on the Nature of Faith and
the Importance of the Concrete.
To be truly alive, or ‘full’, faith needs the combination of a well developed conscience, a
healthy imagination and careful intellectual reflection. This is a view John Henry Newman
and Flannery O’Connor share. Newman explained the process of coming to such a faith
conceptually in terms of a particular kind of reasoning, which he called (at least in some
instances) ‘concrete’. Flannery O’Connor, who not only read Newman but also spoke highly
of two authors deeply influenced by him (Friedrich Von Hügel and William Lynch) expresses
the same conviction in her stories. They are in every sense of the word revelatory: they stir
conscience, shock the imagination, and spark reflection, not in the least due to O’Connors
own profoundly catholic commitment to what is concrete. This paper will first seek to explain
Newman’s basic approach to the relationship between the concrete, faith and reason, before
relating this to O’Connors thoughts as expressed in some of her letters and essays, and, more
specifically, in two of her stories (The Enduring Chill and Parker’s Back). After this, a
reflection will be offered as to what this could mean for the relationship between faith, reason
and the arts.