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Cardinal Newman's Phenomenology of Religious Belief

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Jay Newman
Jay Newman
Affiliation:
Department of Philosphy, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada
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Extract

While one of John Henry Newman's principal aims in the Grammar of Assent is to explain how men can give a ‘real assent’ to the existence of God, the major part of the actual phenomenology of religious belief in the work is concentrated in the fifth of its ten chapters. Unfortunately, this section of the essay has been overshadowed by the preliminary distinction between real and notional apprehension and by the later invocation of the illative sense; but perhaps the time is now ripe for a closer examination of this central part of Newman's philosophy of religion, which is in many ways the key to the successes and failures of Newman's new method in philosophical theology.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , June 1974 , pp. 129 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

page 129 note 1 At certain places in the Grammar, Newman uses the term ‘belief’ to designate assent in general rather than just real assent.

page 129 note 2 Newman, John Henry, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (New York: Longmans, Green, 1947), chapter 4, part 3, p. 68.Google Scholar Numbers in the text refer to the chapter and part numbers and the page numbers for this edition (e.g., 4.3; 68).

page 130 note 1 D'Arcy, M. C. S.J., The Nature of Belief (London: Sheed & Ward, 1937), P. 148.Google Scholar

page 133 note 1 At 8.1 (p. 218), Newman actually states that, ‘Inference, considered in the sense of verbal argumentation, determines neither our principles, nor our ultimate judgments’, and that it ‘is neither the test of truth, nor the adequate basis of assent’.

page 136 note 1 Boekraad, Adrian J., The Argument from Conscience to the Existence of God According to John Henry Newman (Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1961), p. 103.Google Scholar

page 139 note 1 Copleston, Frederick, A History of Philosophy, Vol. VIII, Part II: Modern Philosophy: Bentham to Russell (New York: Doubleday, 1967), pp. 282–3.Google Scholar

page 139 note 2 Cf. Price, H. H., Belief (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1969), PP. 345–8.Google Scholar

page 140 note 1 D'Arcy, , pp. 148–9.Google Scholar Cf. Boekraad, A. J., The Personal Conquest of Truth (Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1955), PP 143–4, n. 70.Google Scholar