Essay in Aid of A Grammar of Assent, An

John Henry Cardinal Newman

Description

This classic of Christian apologetics seeks to persuade the skeptic that there are good reasons to believe in God even though it is impossible to understand the deity fully. First written over a century ago, the Grammar of Assent speaks as powerfully to us today as it did to its first readers. Because of the informal, non-technical character of Newman's work, it still retains its immediacy as an invaluable guide to the nature of religious belief. A new introduction by Nicholas Lash reviews the background of the Grammar, highlights its principal themes, and evaluates its philosophical originality.

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie de la religion
• Religion
• Christianisme
• Denominations
• Religious
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• 19th century
• Denomination
• Theology
• Christianity
• Islam

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 31 octobre 1992
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268087661
• Langue: English

Extrait

AN ESSAY IN AID OF A GRAMMAR OF ASSENT
By John Henry Cardinal Newman
with an Introduction by Nicholas Lash

Non in dialectica complacuit Deo salvum facere populum suum.
Saint Ambrose
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS
NOTRE DAME
Copyright © 1979 by University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
E-ISBN 978-0-268-08766-1
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail] www.undpress.nd.edu --> Printed in the United States of America --> Second Printing 1982 --> Third Printing 1986 --> Fourth Printing 1992 --> Fifth Printing 1996 --> Sixth Printing 2001 --> Seventh Printing 2003 --> Eighth Printing 2005 --> Ninth Printing 2006 --> ISBN 0-268-00999-6 (cloth) --> ISBN 0-268-01000-5 (paper) --> ISBN-13: XXX-X-XXXX-XXXX-X (electronic: e-pub) --> ISBN-13: XXX-X-XXXX-XXXX-X (electronic: mobi) --> ∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper. -->
To
EDWARD BELLASIS ,
SERJEANT AT LAW ,

In remembrance of a long, equable, sunny friendship; in gratitude for continual kindnesses shown to me, for an unwearied zeal in my behalf, for a trust in me which has never wavered, and a prompt, effectual succour and support in times of special trial, from his affectionate
J.H.N.
February 21, 1870.
CONTENTS
Introduction
PART I . Assent and Apprehension.
CHAPTER ONE: Modes of holding and apprehending Propositions
1. Modes of holding Propositions
2. Modes of apprehending Propositions
CHAPTER TWO: Assent considered as Apprehensive
CHAPTER THREE: The Apprehension of Propositions
CHAPTER FOUR: Notional and Real Assent
1. Notional Assents
2. Real Assents
3. Notional and Real Assents contrasted
CHAPTER FIVE: Apprehension and Assent in the matter of Religion
1. Belief in one God
2. Belief in the Holy Trinity
3. Belief in Dogmatic Theology
PART II . Assent and Inference.
CHAPTER SIX: Assent considered as Unconditional
1. Simple Assent
2. Complex Assent
CHAPTER SEVEN: Certitude
1. Assent and Certitude contrasted
2. Indefectibility of Certitude
CHAPTER EIGHT: Inference
1. Formal Inference
2. Informal Inference
3. Natural Inference
CHAPTER NINE: The Illative Sense
1. The Sanction of the Illative Sense
2. The Nature of the Illative Sense
3. The Range of the Illative Sense
CHAPTER TEN: Inference and Assent in the matter of Religion
1. Natural Religion
2. Revealed Religion
NOTES
1. On Hooker and Chillingworth
2. On the alternative intellectually between Atheism and Catholicity
3. On the punishment of the wicked having no termination Index of Proper Names 393 -->
Introduction
Nicholas Lash
On February 13, 1870, Newman wrote to Richard Hutton: “For twenty years I have begun and left off an inquiry again and again, which yesterday I finished. . . . I began it in my Oxford University Sermons; I tried it in 1850—and at several later dates, in 1859, in 1861 . . . but, though my fundamental ideas were ever the same, I could not carry them out. Now at last I have done all that I can do according to my measure.” 1 Five days later, writing to his old friend Maria Giberne: “I have done five constructive works in my life, and this is the hardest . . . my Prophetical Office, which has come to pieces—my Essay on Justification, which stands pretty well—and three Catholic—Development of doctrine—University Education, and the last which I have called an Essay in aid of a Grammar of Assent.” 2
The publication of Henry Mansel’s 1858 Bampton Lectures, The Limits of Religious Knowledge Examined , created quite a stir. They frightened and angered F. D. Maurice, and there were widespread mutterings of “atheism.” 3 Newman’s reaction was interesting. In January 1860 he wrote to Charles Meynell, who had been trying to persuade him to republish the University Sermons , that he derived “exceeding pleasure,” not only from Meynell’s interest in the sermons, but also from the fact that “you corroborate my own impression, that what Mr. Mansel has said, I have said before him.” 4 If, nevertheless, he hesitated about republishing the sermons, this was partly because a dear friend “wishes me to write a book , on what would really be the same subject expanded.” 5 The object of the book “would be to show that a given individual, high or low, has as much right (has as real rational grounds) to be certain, as a learned theologian who knows the scientific evidence.” 6 The friend was William Froude, a distinguished scientist and the younger brother of Hurrell Froude, Newman’s closest friend at Oxford. The book, ten years later, would be the Grammar of Assent . 7
The University Sermons remain the indispensable companion to the Grammar of Assent . From some points of view, the treatment of central questions concerning the epistemology of religious belief and, in particular, the rationality of personal faith, is more satisfactory in the Oxford sermons than in the later work. 8 In saying this, I have in mind the contrast between the treatiselike, sometimes excessively systematic mood of the Grammar , and what D. M. MacKinnon has called “the profoundly interrogative character of Newman’s explorations in [the] sermons.” 9 And yet, the contrast is perhaps misleading. If we read the Grammar with one eye on the notebooks in which, from 1858 onwards, Newman worked away at the problems, 10 we begin to appreciate that it is indeed “this note of interrogative subtlety” that is “the true characteristic of Newman’s method as a philosopher of religion.” 11
BACKGROUND: NEWMAN AND FROUDE
Perhaps the best way of introducing some of the principal themes in the Grammar is to turn to the correspondence with that “dear friend,” a correspondence which did much to shape and clarify Newman’s views and which ended only with Froude’s death in 1879. 12 Not the least of the advantages of taking this route into the Grammar is that we are thereby reminded that even this most theoretical and technical of Newman’s works was provoked and stimulated by personal considerations: by his love for a lifelong friend the fundamental currents of whose thinking had drifted ever further from his own, and whose seventeen-year-old son Newman (who was the boy’s godfather) had received into the Catholic Church on Christmas Eve 1859. On that day, Newman wrote to William: “I do not believe, and never will believe, that in the bottom of your mind you really hold what you think you hold.” 13
In his lengthy reply, Froude sought to explain how it was that, especially as a result of his experience as a natural scientist, his views had come increasingly to differ both from Newman’s and from those that his brother Hurrell had held. Making no attempt to understate the depth of their disagreement, he located its “source” in “the very principle of ‘thinking’ and of ‘concluding’ and in the very nature of ‘thoughts’ and of conclusions.” 14 Immediately putting his finger on what was to become the central issue in the Grammar , he went on: “More strongly than I believe anything else I believe this. That on no subject whatever . . . is my mind, (or as far as I can tell the mind of any human being,) capable of arriving at an absolutely certain conclusion. . . . Our ‘doubts’ in fact, appear to me as sacred, and I think deserve to be cherished as sacredly as our beliefs.” 15
There may be philosophers for whom the selection of an epistemological “strategy” appears to be a merely technical or theoretical affair. It is clear from the tone of this passage, however, that for Froude, as for Newman, such selection engages the deep springs of personal integrity. The difference between Froude and Newman is, in Van Harvey’s phrase, a difference between “two ethics of judgment.” 16 It may be, however, that the “ethic of judgment” appropriate in “scientific inquiry” is quite unsuited to that dimension of our quest for truth which finds expression in personal relations. What counts as becoming tentativeness and caution in scientific inquiry would be regarded as mistrustful boorishness in personal relations. Conversely, the trustfulness which leads to mutual understanding between persons would signal the abandonment of intellectual standards in academic research. Thus it is, for example, that replying to Froude on January 2, 1860, Newman foreshadows the distinction which he will draw, in the Grammar, between “religion” and “theology”: “Much lies in the meaning of the words certainty and doubt—much again in our duties to a person, as e.g. a friend—Religion is not merely a science, but a devotion.” 17
On January 15, Froude replied: “I do most heartily wish . . . that you would really and fully work out this question.” 18 One point, in particular, puzzled him. Newman had said that Froude’s view seemed to him “a sophism.” 19 Froude now wants to know whether “you meant that it is so in reference to the pursuit of truth generally or only in reference to the pursuit of Religious truth.” 20 Newman’s reply is to the effect that the scientific pursuit of truth in secular matters and (according to the theologians) the theological pursuit of religious truth proceed in the manner described by Froude, but that “the scientific proof of Christianity is not the popular, practical, personal evidence on which a given individual believes in it.” 21
Here we touch on a matter of fundamental importance for understanding Newman’s approach to problems of faith and reason. At one level, he is pressing his distinction between the “personal” and “scientific” forms of the quest for truth, a distinction which corresponds to that which he will draw, in Part One of the Grammar , between “real” and “notional” apprehension and assent. We are reminded of a famous passage in the University Sermons : “If children, if the poor, if the busy, can have true faith, yet cannot weigh evidence, evidence is not the simple foundation on which faith is built.” 22 And