‘ Amare Nesciri ’: John Henry Newman on the Hidden Self

Abstract This article brings into further view John Henry Newman’s idea of the self as that which is received from God and as that which remains, in various ways, hidden both from the world as well as from the self’s own view. It proceeds in the following stages. First, it posits that Newman’s emphasis on scriptural and sacramental accounts of the hidden highlights the providential revelation of the self as that which is received independently of the self, and as that which grows through self-forgetting attention to God and others. Second, it examines Newman’s idea of the saint – what we could call the sanctified or realized self – through his meditations on the life of his spiritual patron and guide, St Philip Neri. Third, it concludes by considering how Newman’s idea of the saint, of the sanctified self, rests in a personal, and often hidden, encounter with the holiness of God – an encounter which includes the ethical as a derivative of intimacy with the holy, with the personal, triune God.