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The image of Christ in John Henry Newman's religious epistemology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2022

Mark Heffley
Mark Heffley*
Affiliation:
Ave Maria University, Ave Maria, FL, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: markheffley1@gmail.com
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Abstract

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.

Keywords

consciencegrammar of assentimage of ChristJohn Henry Newmanreligious epistemology

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Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 74 , Issue 4 , November 2021 , pp. 359 - 371
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

‘O God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul!’Footnote 1 This humorous yet pithy prayer gets to the heart of the rather thorny and hotly debated question: what is the rational justification of Christian faith? In other words, on what grounds can one say ‘I know that Christianity is true’? Few thinkers have devoted so much of their time and efforts to these questions as John Henry Newman. And few thinkers have had quite the universal appeal and the abundance of knowledgeable commentators. It is, consequently, with a little hesitation that I propose an interpretation regarding his religious epistemology. My thesis is the following. Newman places the onus of rational justification of Christian faith on three subjective elements. While two of these elements, namely conscience and the illative sense, have been the focus of much scholarly attention, there is another element which is equally significant to Newman's thought: the immediate encounter between Christ and the mind through the impress of the image of Christ.Footnote 2

The article will begin with questions of natural theology. What can reason alone, without faith, know about God? How much certainty is there in this knowledge, if any? While many apologists argue that one can know that God exists by logic and external evidence, Newman argues that the greatest knowledge of God is gained by looking within to one's conscience, and by a sound judgement of probabilities. We will then proceed to the question of Christian revelation in particular. If we grant, along with Newman, that we can know God exists, can we have any certain knowledge that Christianity, among the multitude of religions, is true? The heart of this article lies in Newman's answer to this question. Parallel to probabilities that obtain with respect to natural theology, I will argue that Newman offers a unique principle, so to speak: the encounter between Christ and the mind. What the experience-of-God-in-conscience is for natural theology, this experience of Christ is for revealed religion.

Whenever one ventures to write the words ‘subjective’ and immediate or direct ‘experience’ in an article about religious epistemology, diverse interpretations are bound to result. Some of these would likely lead to misunderstandings with regard to Newman, so it may be worthwhile to offer some clarifications. In this context, ‘subjective’ is to be understood as internal to the thinking-experiencing subject, denoting those reasoning processes and modes of experience which are, by their nature, largely incommunicable. Subjective should not be misunderstood as implying that religious truth is non-objective, merely a matter of opinion or personal preference. This would be a tenant of the very ‘Liberalism’ from which Newman adamantly distanced himself and in contradistinction to which he defended his ‘principle of dogma’.Footnote 3

As to ‘experience’, a positive description may be gleaned from what was said above. What is meant is a mode of perceiving reality which is internal to the subject. There is still an objective reality acting as the stimulus of this experience, which is therefore not to be understood as a mere fabrication of the subject's mind. However, the reality is to be found within, and the experiencing subject cannot therefore direct others to some external object. All one can do is describe the experience. For example, as we will see, Newman conceives of conscience as a subjective experience of the objective reality of God; yet, this experience is by its nature incommunicable to others, since it occurs within. The qualifiers ‘immediate’ and ‘direct’ simply signify that, by experiencing conscience or the image of Christ, one is experiencing God rather than merely a sign of God's more remote presence or activity. Finally, it should be noted that within Newman's thought this emphasis on experience does not come at the expense of reason and the claim that God is a genuine object of knowledge, as it does for thinkers such as Schleiermacher.Footnote 4 This will be made clearer in the course of this article.

Newman on natural theology

The philosophical currents in Newman's day, much the same as today, were marked by rationalism on one side and fideism on the other. Newman is primarily concerned with refuting the rationalism of Locke. In this philosophy, the justification for a position or belief was only as strong as the evidence supporting it. It follows from this that one may never have certainty – since one must always be open to the possibility that new evidence will support a different position – and that it would be irrational for someone to hold a belief without personally knowing the evidence supporting it.Footnote 5

Newman holds that the truth about God can be known with certainty. The way in which he arrives at this conclusion, however, may have raised some eyebrows among more scholastic-leaning thinkers of his day. This is because he is rather critical of logical demonstration, which is a staple of the natural theology of Thomas and his followers.Footnote 6 In his Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent Newman argues that reasoning from one proposition to another will only lead to probabilities rather than certainties. Newman offers two main reasons why this is the case: first, this sort of reasoning always relies on premises which are assumed and not proved. Secondly, the conclusions are abstract rather than concrete because the words and premises stand for universals rather than individuals.Footnote 7 This means that one can only reach certainty about universals, not about particulars. ‘Science [logic], working by itself, reaches truth in the abstract, and probability in the concrete; but what we aim at is truth in the concrete.’Footnote 8

Newman disparages such abstract logic, or ‘formal inference’, in his other writings as well, such as his Apologia and his Oxford University Sermons.Footnote 9 In one of these sermons, he argues that the use of this kind of logic, with its over-emphasis on evidence in apologetics, reduces everything to a common level of language and understanding:

Nothing can be urged, or made to tell, but what all feel, all comprehend, all can put into words; current language becomes the measure of thought; only such conclusions may be drawn as can produce their reasons; only such reasons are in point as can be exhibited in simple propositions; the multiform and intricate assemblage of considerations, which really lead to judgment and action, must be attenuated or mutilated into a major and a minor premiss.Footnote 10

However, this does not necessarily mean that Newman rejected logic and scholasticism wholesale. To the contrary, it has been argued that Newman, specifically with regard to his thinking on faith and reason, was positively influenced by scholasticism. The greatest expression of this may be found in the scholastic-inspired Theses de Fide which he composed during his seminary studies in Rome.Footnote 11 Others, however, would disagree and would see the Theses – and scholasticism – as inconsequential to Newman's thought, a side-project which Newman soon abandons.Footnote 12 Regardless of the extent of Newman's affection towards scholasticism, however, it is at least agreed that logic takes a back seat in his writings.

Converging probabilities and the illative sense

Even though we cannot arrive at certainty by way of logic, according to Newman, this does not mean that our use of reason is an exercise in futility. Newman wants to avoid a Lockean evidentialism, so he does not want to say that certainty rests on the amount or strength of evidence. Instead, he argues that certainty is found in converging probabilities. This was a central theme throughout Newman's writings on faith and reason. For example, in his Apologia he writes that the ‘absolute certitude which we were able to possess, whether as to the truths of natural theology, or as to the fact of a revelation, was the result of an assemblage of concurring and converging probabilities …’Footnote 13

These converging probabilities are judged by the reasoning faculty; the perfection of this faculty is what Newman refers to as the ‘Illative Sense’.Footnote 14 To put it another way, certainty is not found in the particular conclusions of a logical argument, nor in particular pieces of evidence. Logic and evidence do not lead to a certain conclusion, as though a knowledge of these would automatically produce the same conviction in any person. All they can do is point us in a direction. The illative sense is what makes a judgement of this direction – a judgment of the conclusion to which the evidence and logical arguments are pointing. It is in this judgement, Newman argues, that we can have certainty regarding the conclusion, i.e. the truth of a proposition.Footnote 15

What distinguishes this from Lockean evidentialism? Newman places the onus of certainty not on the strength or quantity of evidence, but on the perfection of the reasoning faculty.Footnote 16 In the end, then, the only real and firm support one can have – by way of reason – for belief in God's existence is the reliability of one's reasoning faculty. This is not unique to natural theology. Newman argues that, ‘in no class of concrete reasonings, whether in experimental science, historical research, or theology, is there any ultimate test of truth and error in our inferences besides the trustworthiness of the Illative Sense that gives them its sanction’.Footnote 17 This imposes the obligation to form one's reasoning faculty, and it leaves one with no reasonable alternative except to trust that one's judgement is correct. Hence Frederick Aquino explains that ‘Newman envisions the perfection of the illative sense as the fulfilment of a sacred epistemic duty’.Footnote 18

The illative sense, then, is the first of three subjective elements which form the basis of Newman's religious epistemology. We see that, while external evidence and even logical reasoning is significant, Newman shifts the focus to the interior life of the individual.

Conscience

The second way in which we come to certain knowledge of God is even more interior by nature than the illative sense. And, Newman argues, this second way provides more certainty because it involves a direct experience of God: conscience.Footnote 19

Our great internal teacher of religion is, as I have said in an earlier part of this Essay, our Conscience … Conscience is nearer to me than any other means of knowledge … Conscience, too, teaches us, not only that God is, but what He is; it provides for the mind a real image of Him, as a medium of worship …Footnote 20

Newman also wrote in his Apologia, ‘The being of God … is as certain to me as the certainty of my own existence’, but it is not reasoned arguments that give this certainty, for ‘were it not for this voice, speaking so clearly in my conscience and my heart, I should be an atheist, or a pantheist, or a polytheist when I looked into the world’.Footnote 21

We know of God from conscience, Newman argues, in a way analogous to how we know physical things from the senses. The physical phenomena associated with the thing present themselves to our senses. We then, by a certain instinct, connect the phenomena to the external thing in our mental representation of it. Thus, we can say we know the physical thing. Something similar happens with conscience. We instinctively connect the phenomena of conscience with the notion and image of a ‘Supreme Ruler and Judge’.Footnote 22

Note that Newman characterises conscience as a direct encounter between the individual and God. It is this direct encounter which provides the most certain justification for Newman's belief in God.Footnote 23 This is not to be seen as contradicting what was said above about the illative sense. Newman does not thrust reason to the side, to the exclusion of an experiential knowledge. However, it is significant that such experiential knowledge holds a pivotal place in his thought.Footnote 24

Conscience, then, is the second subjective element in Newman's religious epistemology. While the illative sense is the reasoned judgement of evidence, arguments and the like, conscience is the direct experience of that on which all the evidence and arguments converge without quite touching.

Newman on the Christian religion

Newman published An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent in 1870. That same year, Vatican I promulgated its document on faith and reason, Dei filius. There are many points of agreement between Newman and Dei filius, such as the distinction between faith and reason, the necessity of grace and the supra-rationality of revelation.Footnote 25 Yet there are also important differences in emphasis. Vatican I lays greater stress on the church and miracles as visible signs of the authenticity of the Christian religion:

Nevertheless, that the obedience of our faith might be agreeable with reason, God willed that internal aids of the Holy Spirit be joined to the external proofs of His revelation, namely, the divine works, especially miracles and prophecies which brilliantly display the omnipotence and infinite knowledge of God and thus are most certain signs, suitable to every mind, of divine revelation.Footnote 26

Newman is less enthusiastic about such outward signs. He would not deny that they are real and that they are evidence for Christianity. In fact, at the end of the Grammar, Newman devotes a significant amount of time laying out external, visible evidence for Christianity such as prophecy and the growth and marks of the church.Footnote 27 Newman lays greater emphasis, however, on the interior life of the person, requisite dispositions as well as the internal and personal witness of Christ.

It was noted with regard to the illative sense that the degree to which it is perfected in an individual will determine whether one will recognise truth. Similarly, Newman speaks of the dispositions necessary for faith. In one of his sermons from his Catholic period, he lays out two main dispositions: 1) a good will characterised by following conscience, and 2) the desire for revelation which conscience inspires.Footnote 28 In another sermon from his earlier, Anglican days, he argues that meekness, humility, docility, as well as other virtues, are necessary for faith.Footnote 29 These are also treated by Newman in his University Sermons, in which requisite dispositions is a recurring theme.

In addition to subjective dispositions, Newman differs from Vatican I in his emphasis on subjective experience over and above external signs.

Be sure, my Brethren, that the best argument, better than all the books in the world, better than all that astronomy, and geology, and physiology, and all other sciences can supply, – an argument intelligible to those who cannot read as well as to those who can, – an argument which is ‘within us,’ – an argument intellectually conclusive, and practically pursuasive, whether for proving the Being of a God, or for laying the ground for Christianity, – is that which arises out of a careful attention to the teachings of our heart, and a comparison between the claims of conscience and the announcements of the Gospel.Footnote 30

For the greatest certainty, therefore, of God's existence and of the truth of Christianity, one need only look to the witness of one's own heart and conscience.

The ‘image’ of Christ and the God–soul encounter

There are, again, three notably subjective elements in the Grammar. The first is the illative sense. Above, we saw that Newman founds the whole rational enterprise of gathering and evaluating external evidence upon the personal and subjective operation of one's reasoning faculty. The second subjective element is the conscience, which Newman proposed is the greatest ‘evidence’ for God because, through the conscience, one encounters God in a uniquely direct way. The third subjective element is only discussed over the space of a little more than two pages of the Grammar: the imprinting of the image of Christ on individual minds.Footnote 31 And though it is easy to pass over, this element of Newman's thought could be as significant as conscience or the illative sense.

Image of Christ in Newman's writings

In the final chapter of the Grammar, Newman presents his argument for the Christian religion by pointing to prophecies, the nature of the church's growth and how Christianity fulfils the desires of conscience. In the middle of this, he compares the absence of Christ to the absence of a temporal ruler. In the latter case, the ruler's subjects do not personally know the ruler but rather only know of his power and will through intermediary administrators. This is not the case with the absence of Christ. Though he has departed, Christ

is found, through his preachers, to have imprinted the Image or idea of Himself in the minds of His subjects individually; and that Image, apprehended and worshipped in individual minds, becomes a principle of association, a real bond of those subjects one with another, who are thus united to the body by being united to that Image; and moreover that Image, which is their moral life, when they have already converted, is also the original instrument of their conversion.Footnote 32

Newman goes on to say:

Now a mental vision such as this, perhaps will be called cloudy, fanciful, unintelligible; that is, in other words, miraculous. I think it is so. How, without the Hand of God, could a new idea, one and the same, enter at once into myriads of men, women, and children of all ranks, especially the lower, and have power to wean them from their indulgences and sins, and to nerve them against the most cruel tortures, and to last in vigour as a sustaining influence for seven or eight generations …Footnote 33

It is this image of Christ, Newman argues, which is the principal driving force behind the spread of Christianity. This spread of Christianity is made even more conspicuous by noting that it was among the lower classes with no power or influence – and even facing torture and death as a result of their faith – that it had its most success.Footnote 34 After discussing various witnesses to this phenomenon from the early centuries, Newman remarks that all those Christians who suffered in the persecutions ‘triumphed by virtue of the inward Vision of their Divine Lord’.Footnote 35 There seems to be, then, some kind of vision or experience of Christ which comes with the imprinted image. This encounter between the mind and the image is subjective and personal, a direct encounter between the mind and God. Yet precisely because of this, the mind is directed outside of itself to the objective reality of Christ and the Christian religion.

It may reasonably be objected at this point that too much is being made of such a brief passage from the Grammar. Nevertheless, this same idea of an immediate encounter between Christ and the mind appears in other writings of Newman as well. For example, earlier in his life, Newman preached a sermon titled ‘The Invisible Presence of Christ’.Footnote 36 The subject of this sermon is the kingdom of Christ and how it is present within the believer. The kingdom of Christ, Newman says, did not come in a visible way like a worldly kingdom but rather in an invisible way that is experienced by the individual.Footnote 37 Specifically, it ‘came by an inward and secret presence; by outward instruments, indeed, but with effects far higher than those instruments, and really by God's own agency’.Footnote 38 Newman goes on to discuss how at different times God touched many hearts at once. ‘For God had come down among them, and was everywhere; He was diffusing His Presence, and multiplying His Image’.Footnote 39 This is true of every time and place, so much so that it is upon these experiences of the inward presence and activity of Christ that one may ‘rest his faith … so as to be sure, and certain, and convinced’, that the church is right.Footnote 40

We may also turn our attention to another sermon preached around the same time as the one above. The sermon, ‘Outward and Inward Notes of the Church’, is about two different types of ‘evidence’ for Christianity. On the one hand we have outward evidence such as miracles and the characteristics of the visible church. While these are certainly real and worth our attention, Newman contends, they are intended for beginners. In fact, St Paul did not even speak of them but rather focused on the inward signs. ‘You see it was their very gift, as Christians, to know the Lord personally, individually, inwardly’.Footnote 41 In this sermon, Newman describes Christianity as a ‘personal, private’ religion:

I mean that religion is a personal, private, and individual matter, that it consists in a communion between God and the soul, and that its true evidences belong to the soul that believes, are its property, and not something common to it and the whole world. God vouchsafes to speak to us one by one, to manifest Himself to us one by one, to lead us forward one by one; He gives us something to rely upon which others do not experience, which we cannot convey to others, which we can but use for ourselves.Footnote 42

This theme is present also, to a limited extent, in Newman's University Sermons. In one sermon he compares contemporary believers with those to whom Christ was first preached.

To them Christ was manifested as He is to us, and in the same way; not to the eyes of the flesh, but to the illuminated mind, to their Faith. As the manifestation of God accorded to the Jews was circumscribed, and addressed to their senses, so that which is vouchsafed to Christians is universal and spiritual.Footnote 43

In another university sermon, Newman addresses the question of why scientists draw different conclusions about God from their study of creation. Newman argues that for one to arrive at the truth about God, even before looking to creation for signs, he or she must have an ‘inward experience’ of God ‘existing in the mind’.Footnote 44 It is difficult to ascertain from the context, however, whether Newman is speaking of conscience or of a different kind of experience of God, such as the image–mind encounter.

Avery Dulles makes the following observation about ‘revelation’ in the thought of Newman: ‘Most characteristically, Newman speaks of revelation either as an “original impression” made on the mind by God or as an “idea” that God gives of himself.’ Dulles explains that Newman's use of ‘impression’ is influenced by David Hume and so in Newman the word means something like an

immediate datum of experience, more vivid and forceful than ideas generated in reflection … In applying this term to Christian revelation, Newman presumably wishes to indicate that as sense impressions correspond to material objects from which they arise, so the perception that God gives of Himself in revelation is original, divinely produced, and conformed to the object it represents.Footnote 45

Implications

The implications of this interpretation for Newman's pastoral theology, specifically his theology of preaching, are rather significant. For how is the encounter with the image of Christ effected except through preaching? Preaching becomes charged with a semi-sacramental quality. Through the human preaching of the gospel, the divine action on the hearer's mind is realised. An exploration of Newman's theology of preaching falls outside the scope of this paper, but perhaps this image–mind encounter coincides with an aspect of Newman's preaching noted by Denis Robinson. Newman's aim in preaching, Robinson explains, is to present the whole of Christ in order to ‘encourage his listeners to “realize” the central principle of Christianity, namely, the truth of the Word made Flesh’.Footnote 46 The ‘realisation’ of Christ from preaching would perhaps have more depth in Newman's framework than is currently thought.

Difficulties with this interpretation

This interpretation of Newman is not without its difficulties. There are two which seem to challenge it most directly. One of these difficulties is the conspicuous absence of any lengthy treatment by Newman of the impress of the image of Christ on the mind. If Newman was positing such a Christ–mind encounter as a significant component of his religious epistemology, why would he devote so little ink to explaining it?

A possible response to this difficulty is that this theme has to do with grace, and the role of grace seems to largely fall outside the purview of some of his writings, especially the Grammar. If this is the case, then the presence of this theme in the Grammar endows it with greater significance. While the theology of grace is underdeveloped, Newman devotes two pages to arguing that it was by the supernatural, miraculous imprinting of the image of Christ in individual minds that Christianity spread. Comparing the word-count, in other words, of this section on the image of Christ to the work as a whole would undoubtedly undermine my interpretation; however, comparing the former to the total treatment of grace or divine activity within the Grammar seems to support it. In addition, the impress of the image of Christ is a recurring motif in the pastoral context of his sermons, as was shown above.

Another difficulty is found in the contradictions – at least apparent contradictions – found in Newman's writings. In one of his University Sermons, Newman writes what may be the most explicit contradiction of the interpretation I am proposing:

As to immaterial beings, that we have faculties analogous to sense by which we have direct knowledge of their presence, does not appear, except indeed as regards our own soul and its acts. But so far is certain at least, that we are not conscious of possessing them; and we account it, and rightly, to be enthusiasm to profess such consciousness. At times, indeed, that consciousness has been imparted, as in some of the appearances of God to man contained in Scripture: but, in the ordinary course of things, whatever direct intercourse goes on between the soul and immaterial beings, whether we perceive them or not, and are influenced by them or not, certainly we have no consciousness of that perception or influence, such as our senses convey to us in the perception of things material.Footnote 47

Here Newman denies any perceptible experience regarding the soul's interactions with immaterial beings. This is difficult to resolve. After all, the proposed image–mind encounter involves precisely such an experience, a kind of sight of the supernatural with the eye of the soul. At first glance, it is hard to see how this interpretation may be reconciled with this passage. Nevertheless, experience of God appears in a fair amount of Newman's writings, to the point that it would be difficult to argue that Newman disparages any kind of experience. Consequently, it is reasonable to hold there to be a way of interpreting the above passages (and similar ones) which would not lead to contradicting the impress of the image of Christ as being a central node for our experience of divinity.

First, we need to clarify what Newman is objecting to in the quote above: the strict equation of the perception of material things through the senses with the spiritual perception of things divine. Experience of God cannot be related too closely to sense experience. However, by rejecting perception in this sense, Newman does not thereby reject any experience of God.

Additionally, we may consider Newman's concern throughout his writing and preaching career to walk a middle road between subjectivism on the one side and rationalism on the other.Footnote 48 Against the former, Newman is quick to stress reason and his dogmatic principle and to deny an exaggerated or exclusive reliance upon experience. On the other hand, against rationalism, Newman argues for the illative sense and the miraculous. It seems reasonable to assume that, while holding this middle ground, Newman at different times lays stress on reason over experience or experience over reason. This oscillation between emphases may have resulted in ambiguities and apparent contradictions in his writings. It seems to me that, given the recurrence of the theme of experience and of the image of Christ throughout Newman's corpus, such apparent contradictions should be resolved in favour of the image–mind encounter.Footnote 49

Conclusion

If my proposed interpretation is correct, the image–mind encounter is for Christian revelation what conscience is for natural theology. Again, at the heart of Newman's religious epistemology is the illative sense, the judgement of the thrust of converging probabilities. In the realm of natural theology, the illative sense can arrive at certainty regarding God's existence by judging correctly the converging probabilities offered by explicit reason – evidence, logic, etc. – as well as implicit reason. Nevertheless, the strongest certainty about God's existence arises from the immediate experience of God via conscience. In a similar way regarding Christian revelation, one can arrive at certainty by way of the illative sense. Miracles, the marks of the church and the remarkable way in which Christianity fulfils the desires of conscience expressed in natural religion – from these and other considerations (with grace) the illative sense may with certainty judge Christianity to be true. Nevertheless, the strongest certainty, the real cause of conversions and the spread of Christianity, is not found in the judgement of the illative sense. Rather, the strongest certainty regarding the truth of Christianity is gained by way of the miraculous, direct contact between the mind and the image of Christ.

References

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.