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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 January 2022
On what rational grounds can one say that Christianity is true? John Henry Newman's answer to this question lays great emphasis on the subjective, personal dimensions of knowledge, which he claims are no less reasonable than formal logical argumentation. Among these dimensions is conscience. The clearest proof for God's existence, Newman argues, is provided by the experience of God in one's conscience. In this article, I will argue that there is another similar element of Newman's thought: the immediate encounter between Christ and the mind through the impress of the image of Christ. What conscience is to the certainty of God's existence, this image of Christ is to the certainty of Christianity.
1 A ‘celebrated saying’ quoted by Newman, John Henry, Apologia pro Vita Sua, ed. Ker, Ian (New York: Penguin Books, 1994), 37Google Scholar.
2 For a different reading of Newman on this topic of the image, see Merrigan, Terrence, ‘The Image of the Word: Faith and Imagination in John Henry Newman and John Hick’, in Merrigan, Terrence and Ker, Ian (eds), Newman and the Word, Louvain Theological and Pastoral Monographs 27 (Stirling: Peeters Press, 2000), pp. 5–47Google Scholar. See also n. 31 below.
3 See Newman, Apologia, p. 61 and the ‘Note A on Liberalism’, ibid., pp. 252–62. John Crosby discusses the centrality of this principle of dogma – or put negatively, Newman's ‘anti-liberalism’ – within Newman's thought. See John F. Crosby, The Personalism of John Henry Newman (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), pp. 1–4.
4 For Schleiermacher, faith is substantially an experience; more specifically, it is a feeling of being absolutely dependent on God, who is apprehended in this way and not as an object of knowledge. See e.g. Friedrich Schleiermacher, Christian Faith, vol. 1, trans. Terrence N. Tice, et al., ed. Catherine L. Kelsey and Terrence N. Tice (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016), pp. 8–27, 102–115 (§§3–4, 14). Cf. Dulles, Avery, The Assurance of Things Hoped for: A Theology of Christian Faith (New York: OUP, 1997), pp. 78–9Google Scholar.
5 See Newman, John Henry, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), pp. 136–40Google Scholar. See also Norris, Thomas, ‘Faith’, in Ker, Ian and Merrigan, Terrence (eds), The Cambridge Companion to John Henry Newman (Cambridge: CUP, 2009), p. 87Google Scholar.
6 It is an interesting and telling observation that in the Grammar Newman never cites Aquinas nor does he refer to the metaphysics of Aristotle. When he does cite Aristotle, it is only from the Nicomachean Ethics in order to support his teaching on the necessary dispositions to know truth. See Jaki, Stanley L., ‘Newman's Assent to Reality, Natural and Supernatural’, in Jaki, Stanley L. (ed.), Newman Today: Papers Presented at a Conference on John Henry Cardinal Newman (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989), p. 197Google Scholar. This, as well as Newman's treatment of universals and natural theology in the Grammar, has led some scholars to be rather critical of this work. See Jaki, Stanley and Benard, Edmond Daril, A Preface to Newman's Theology (St Louis: B. Herder Book Co, 1946), pp. 171–2Google Scholar; Coulson, John, Religion and Imagination ‘in Aid of a Grammar of Assent’ (New York: OUP, 1981), p. 51Google Scholar.
7 Newman, Grammar, pp. 216, 222.
8 Ibid., p. 223.
9 In his Apologia (pp. 158–9) Newman writes, ‘And then I felt altogether the force of the maxim of St. Ambrose, “Non in dialectica complacuit Deo salvum facere populum suum;” – I had a great dislike of paper logic. For myself, it was not logic that carried me on; as well might one say that the quicksilver in the barometer changes the weather. It is the concrete being that reasons; pass a number of years, and I find my mind in a new place; how? the whole man moves; paper logic is but the record of it.’
10 Newman, Fifteen Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford (London: Rivingtons, 1890), pp. 229–30. As John Connolly explains, ‘It is unambiguously clear that, for Newman, formal inference cannot lead to certitude in concrete matters of truth.’ Connolly, John R., John Henry Newman: A View of Catholic Faith for the New Millennium (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), p. 66Google Scholar. William Abraham adds that Newman was pessimistic regarding natural theology ‘because the proofs were not sufficiently cogent, because most believers did not rely on them for their faith, and because the quest for objective evidence could badly damage the life of faith and love’. Abraham, William J., ‘Revelation’, in Aquino, Frederick D. and King, Benjamin J. (eds), The Oxford Handbook of John Henry Newman (New York: OUP, 2018), p. 306Google Scholar. See also Zeno, John Henry Newman, Our Way to Certitude: An Introduction to Newman's Psychological Discovery: The Illative Sense, and His Grammar of Assent (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1957), pp. 17, 183–90.
11 Michael Shea argues that Newman's study of scholastic theology as a seminarian in Rome represents a significant shift in his thinking. Before Rome, especially in his Oxford Sermons, Newman framed the discussion of faith and reason within the categories of implicit and explicit reason. The problem with this is that Newman is still working within the Lockean framework of assent given as the conclusion of a reasoning process, whether that process be intentional or unconscious. It is, arguably, in Rome that Newman began to clearly distinguish assent from discursive reasoning. This distinction will find its fullest elaboration in the Grammar in which Newman argues at length for a distinction between assent and inference. See Shea, Michael, ‘From Implicit and Explicit Reason to Inference and Assent: The Significance of John Henry Newman's Seminary Studies in Rome’, Journal of Theological Studies 67 (2016), 143–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 E.g. Dulles states, ‘These theses … do not represent an advance in Newman's thinking, but rather a defensive maneuver in which he clothed his thought with an ill-fitting suit of scholastic armor … These theses, fortunately, do not represent a real shift in Newman's own thinking, for in the Grammar of Assent he was to revert essentially to the approach taken in the Oxford Sermons.’ Avery Dulles, ‘From Images to Truth: Newman on Revelation and Faith’, Theological Studies 51 (1990), p. 264.
13 Newman, Apologia, p. 38 (emphasis original). See also Apologia, p. 183; Fifteen Sermons, pp. 15, 200.
14 Newman, Grammar, p. 271. For the development of Newman's use of ‘illative sense’ see Laurence Richardson, Newman's Approach to Knowledge (Leominster: Gracewing, 2007), pp. 132–3. For a defence of Newman's illative sense, see Zeno, John Henry Newman. For further treatments of the illative sense, see Avery Dulles, John Henry Newman (New York: Continuum, 2002), pp. 39–45; Jay Newman, The Mental Philosophy of John Henry Newman (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1986), pp. 164–93; Richardson, Newman's Approach, 121–48; Salvatore Bilotta, Sapienza e teologia: Tommaso d'Aquino e J. H. Newman a confronto (Assisi: Cittadella Editrice, 2016), pp. 279–301. Frederick Aquino has offered a rereading of Newman's illative sense seeking to account for informed judgements and belief on the societal level as opposed to the merely individual level. See Aquino, Communities of Informed Judgment: Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of Rationality (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2004).
15 Newman, Grammar, p. 271.
16 David Pailin and Jay Newman have criticised J. H. Newman for failing to distinguish consistently between objective ‘certainty’ and subjective ‘certitude’, or between ‘epistemological and phenomenological issues’. Because of this, they argue, there are ambiguities in Newman's thought regarding certainty. David A. Pailin, The Way to Faith: An Examination of Newman's Grammar of Assent as a Response to the Search for Certainty in Faith (London: Epworth Press, 1969), pp. 177–85; Jay Newman, Mental Philosophy, p. 27. Hugo Meynell admits to these issues in J. H. Newman's works, and argues that they do not affect the ‘central thrust of his argument’. Meynell also helpfully distinguishes six senses of ‘certitude’ in J. H. Newman. See Meynell, ‘Newman's Vindication of Faith in the Grammar of Assent’, in Ian Ker and Alan G. Hill (eds), Newman After a Hundred Years (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 258. For the purposes of this paper, however, it is sufficient merely to recognise the emphasis J. H. Newman places on the illative sense for arriving at certainty.
17 Newman, Grammar, p. 281. The passage concludes: ‘just as there is no sufficient test of poetical excellence, heroic action, or gentleman-like conduct, other than the particular mental sense, be it genius, taste, sense of propriety, or the moral sense, to which those subject-matters are severally committed. Our duty in each of these is to strengthen and perfect the special faculty which is its living rule, and in every case as it comes to do our best. And such also is our duty and our necessity, as regards the Illative Sense.’ See also p. 271.
18 Frederick D. Aquino, ‘Epistemology’, in Aquino and King, Oxford Handbook of Newman, p. 383. For a further treatment of the importance of the moral dimension in Newman's account of faith, see Ian Ker, The Achievement of John Henry Newman (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), pp. 42, 48–9.
19 For an account of the development of Newman's thought on conscience, see Geertjan Zuijdwegt and Terrence Merrigan, ‘Conscience’, in Aquino and King, Oxford Handbook of Newman, pp. 434–53. While this paper will focus on Newman's treatment of conscience in the Grammar, another significant locus for Newman's thought on this topic is his Letter Addressed to his Grace the Duke of Norfolk. For a thorough treatment focused on the Letter, see Vincent Gallois, Église et conscience chez J. H. Newman: Commentaire de la Lettre au Duc de Norfolk (Paris: Éditions Artège, 2010); Reinhard Hütter, John Henry Newman on Truth and Its Counterfeits: A Guide for Our Times (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2020), pp. 20–89. For a general treatment of conscience in Newman see Charles Morerod, ‘Conscience According to John Henry Newman’, Nova et Vetera (English edition) 11/4 (2013), pp. 1057–79. John Crosby uses Rudolf Otto's phenomenology of religious experience in order to interpret Newman's thought on conscience. See Crosby, Personalism, pp. 195–200.
20 Newman, Grammar, p. 304.
21 Newman, Apologia, p. 216. Cf. Tadeusz Grzesik, ‘Faith and Conscience – The Surest of Arguments for the Existence of God’, Forum Philosophicum 17/2 (2012), pp. 247–8.
22 Newman, Grammar, pp. 96–7. ‘In the same movement, most often two things are discovered by conscience: the awareness of a fault and a culpability, as well as the existence of a Person who has authority to command and to judge. In this manner, conscience offers at the same time both a knowledge and a relation.’ Gallois, Église et conscience, p. 54. See also Pierre Gauthier, ‘L'imagination, faculté du réel, selon John Henry Newman’, Recherches philosophiques 1 (2005), pp. 67–9; Gerard Hughes, ‘Conscience’, in Ker and Merrigan, Cambridge Companion to Newman, pp. 210–11.
23 ‘Faith is thereby called the act of conscience. It is because conscience is given to man for him to know God. From this knowledge, man is able to enter into a relationship of obedience, love and fear.’ Gallois, Église et conscience, p. 59. For an ‘argument’ for God from conscience see Newman, Callista: A Tale of the Third Century (New York: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1901), pp. 314–15.
24 In his University Sermons, Newman writes of conscience: ‘Conscience implies a relation between the soul and a something exterior, and that, moreover, superior to itself; a relation to an excellence which it does not possess, and to a tribunal over which it has no power.’ In natural theology, conscience leads to a knowledge of God, of judgement and future life, and of moral wisdom. Fifteen Sermons, p. 18.
25 Regarding the necessity of grace, Reinhard Hütter observes: ‘Conviction is not divine faith. This is absolutely crucial.’ Grace is needed to ‘transition from private judgment to divine faith’. Hütter, John Henry Newman, pp. 106, 107. Dulles adds that the illative sense itself is dependent upon grace: ‘Grace makes it possible for the “illative sense” to function properly in matters of religion.’ Dulles, Newman, p. 43. Connolly explains the helpful distinction in Newman – even if Newman was ambiguous at times – between ‘human faith’ and ‘divine faith’. See Connolly, John Henry Newman, pp. 40–52.
26 First Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith Dei filius (24 Apr. 1870) cap. 3, at The Holy See www.vatican.va (my translation).
27 See Newman, Grammar, pp. 335–79.
28 John Henry Newman, Sermons Preached on Various Occasions (New York: Longmans, Green, & Co, 1900), pp. 63–7. Newman then contrasts these with the state of mind of those who do not care about religion. See ibid., pp. 68–9. See also John Henry Newman, Sermons Bearing on Subjects of the Day (New York: Longmans, Green, & Co, 1898), p. 342.
29 John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997), p. 1631.
30 Newman, Sermons Preached on Various Occasions, p. 74.
31 I will be arguing for an understanding of the image-mind experience as supernatural and miraculous. Terrance Merrigan, however, groups the image of Christ theme together with Newman's general treatment of ‘ideas’. This is how I see our readings as compatible and mutually helpful. While Merrigan elucidates the role of the religious imagination within Newman's broader project, I believe my reading of the imprinting of the image of Christ in particular helps highlight the place for the miraculous within Newman's religious epistemology. The ‘idea of Christianity’ or the ‘idea of God’ or even the ‘idea of Christ’ generated by the imagination on a natural level can provide one with a mediated and less direct experience of Christ. Merrigan speaks of this natural experience when he states: ‘According to Newman, the imagination provides believers with “real” access to the object of their faith, Emmanuel, God with us. Fed by the biblical narrative and the church's teaching, and strengthened by the practice of devotion, the imagination serves as a medium for the encounter with the living Christ, the image of the invisible God … That image, in turn, serves as the vivifying and controlling focus for Christian devotion, discipleship and discourse.’ Merrigan, ‘The Image of the Word’, pp. 45–6. While agreeing with Merrigan, I think Newman also speaks of a miraculous imprinting of the image of Christ on the mind which serves as a uniquely direct experience. Nevertheless, both readings of Newman – as speaking of a miraculous imprinting or as speaking of a natural imagination-generated idea – highlight the importance of a mental encounter of some sort with Christ on a subjective level which then serves as an aid to faith.
32 Newman, Grammar, p. 359 (emphasis added).
33 Ibid., pp. 359–60.
34 See ibid., pp. 360–75.
35 ‘It was fitting that those mixed and unlettered multitudes, who for three centuries had suffered and triumphed by virtue of the inward Vision of their Divine Lord, should be selected, as we know they were, in the fourth, to be the special champions of His Divinity and the victorious foes of it impugners, at a time when the civil power, which had found them too strong for its arms, attempted, by means of a portentous heresy in the high places of the Church, to rob them of that Truth which had all along been the principle of their strength.’ Newman, Grammar, p. 375 (emphasis added).
36 Newman, Sermons Bearing on Subjects of the Day, pp. 308–9. These were preached during Newman's Anglican period, around the same time as his University Sermons. If there is continuity between the University Sermons and the Grammar, it is reasonable also to assume a continuity between the latter and these sermons. However, it should be borne in mind that the issue of continuity within Newman's corpus is far from settled.
37 Christ came, Newman says, not by ‘subduing the outward man through the senses, but touching the secret heart’. Newman, Sermons Bearing on Subjects of the Day, p. 310.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid., p. 311 (emphasis added).
40 Ibid., p. 319.
41 Ibid., p. 330 (emphasis added).
42 Ibid., p. 325. See also his sermon ‘The Intermediate State’, in Parochial and Plain Sermons, p. 726: ‘What shall keep us calm and peaceful within, when accused of “troubling Israel,” and “prophesying evil?” What but the vision of all Saints of all ages, whose steps we follow? What but the image of Christ mystical stamped upon our hearts and memories?’ (emphasis added).
43 Newman, Fifteen Sermons, p. 176.
44 Ibid., pp. 194–5.
45 Dulles, ‘From Images to Truth’, pp. 253–4 (emphasis added). Regarding ‘idea’, Dulles states, ‘Christian revelation as an idea, for Newman, has three leading attributes: it is comprehensive, living, and real.’ Ibid., p. 254. Cf. Abraham, ‘Revelation’, p. 308.
46 Denis Robinson, ‘Preaching’, in Ker and Merrigan, Cambridge Companion to Newman, p. 248 (emphasis added). Robinson explains further: ‘In Newman's vocabulary, the verb “to realize” is almost a technical term denoting a personal grasp of the reality of a particular object or truth, a grasp so profound that it can move the believer to action.’ Ibid.
47 Newman, Fifteen Sermons, pp. 205–6 (emphasis added). Avery Dulles makes the following observation: ‘Newman, therefore, refrains from saying that revelation is a matter of experience or a state of consciousness. He makes his position clear when he depicts an imaginary interlocutor as protesting: “To see and touch the supernatural with the eye of my soul, with its own experience, this is what I want to do.” To this Newman retorts: “Yes, it is –– You wish to ‘walk not by faith, but by sight.’ If you had experience, how would it be faith?”’ Avery Dulles, ‘From Images to Truth’, p. 260, citing Newman's letter of 29 Apr. 1871, to William R. Brownlow, in The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. C. S. Dessain and T. Gornall (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973), 25, p. 324 (emphasis original). Abraham similarly observes that Newman ‘was deeply suspicious of any appeal to religious experience, understood as immediate, accurate perception of divine reality. Thus, he failed to see, for example, the significance of Methodism and revivalism, where divine impressions on the soul were critical in the epistemology deployed.’ Abraham, ‘Revelation’, p. 309.
48 See Dulles, Newman, pp. 44–5.
49 It may also be relevant to note the disproportionate time which Newman spent on the Grammar in comparison to his other works, as well as the absence of any immediate catalyst for his taking up the project. These observations point to a certain neutrality and a carefulness of thought which in turn suggest that Newman's thoughts on the image in the Grammar may be understood as definitive.