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John Henry Newman's Grammar of Assent

By: Br. Silas Henderson OSB

            John Henry Newman was born in England and was the son of an Anglican father and Evangelical mother.  He received a strong education in Latin and the classics, earning a Bachelor of Arts from Trinity College.  He later studied at Oriel College (both of Oxford University) where he met and was shaped by the men who were to lay the foundation for the Tractarian or Oxford Movement.  The Tractarians were a group of men opposed to Catholic and Evangelical influence on the Church of England following Parliaments repeal of the anti-Catholic laws implemented in the 17^th century.  They were interested in maintaining a certain independence from political and (what they considered) liberal influences[1].  It was Newman’s involvement with the Oxford Movement and his own examination of the theological controversies of the day that led to his eventual conversion to Catholicism in 1845. 

Newman came to believe that Catholic doctrines had not changed in substance since the time of the early Church but had rather increased in clarity through the centuries.  In his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, Newman wrote that “the Church received revelation at once and wholly in the life, death, and ascension of Christ, but God decreed that the full meaning and extent of this revelation should only be arrived at in the fullness of time, so that the members of the Church might be able to understand the particulars of doctrine.”[2]

            The nature of religious belief and assent to faith was a point of constant reflection for Newman who first began to present his unique Epistemology in five sermons delivered at Oxford between 1839-1841.  In these well-known University Sermons, he challenged Locke’s understanding of reason and insisted “that the restriction of reason to rationalism and empiricism is not necessary.”[3]  Newman argued that religious belief is an example of a reasonable conviction reached in an informal way not by relying on specific arguments and experiences but pre-existing assumptions and expectations.[4]

            Newman’s great epistemological work, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, was begun at the time of his Oxford Sermons.  After a false start he began again in 1850 and the work was finally published in 1870.[5]  In fact, Newman’s journal entry for October 30, 1870, lists no less than nineteen “beginnings” for the work between 1846 and 1866.[6]

            Newman’s objective in his University Sermons and in A Grammar of Assent is to offer a responce to the rationalism of the post-Enlightenment era.  Newman believed that if there were a way to find religious truths, it lay in doing one’s duty, following the dictates of conscience, and in observing the moral law.[7]  He believed so strongly in the necessity of a strong moral disposition that he later explained that the Grammar was written to illustrate that a right moral state of mind “germinates or even generates good intellectual principles”.[8]  He also believed that those engaged in inquiry must be as serious about the questions of religion as they are of temporal affairs, open to being convinced, on real evidence, of the existence of God and to recognize themselves as accountable creatures of a moral nature.[9] 

The question of how one ought to speak of knowing and believing, of reason and faith was Newman’s concern throughout his life.  ““How—and how far—is Christian faith to be justified intellectually?”  In the Grammar of Assent… Newman faced what he regarded as a major problem: how is one justified in believing what one cannot prove?”[10]  In writing the Grammar, Newman offers an reflection on his own experience of conversion.  The method followed is phenomenological and is concerned with “the life and structure of our cognitional and ethical nature as it unfolds in its own operations.  Newman will search for this recurring pattern in his own consciousness.”[11]  All of this makes the Grammar of Assent a seminal work of natural theology.  Its primary purpose is apologetic and it is written from a personal standpoint.[12]

            Newman begins the Grammar with the assertion that there are three forms that propositions may take: categorical, conditional, or interrogative.[13]  Interrogative propositions ask a question to which one may answer either yes or no. Conditional propositions express a conclusion that relies on other propositions. Categorical propositions make a statement without implying other propositions, that is, they are statements that stand on their own.[14]  In keeping with the practice of the times, Newman tended to speak of revelation in terms of a “series of propositional statements.  At the same time, however, his understanding of the nature of the Christian idea was informed by a far more profound and far more holistic vision of the divine self-communication than the merely propositional.[15]  For Newman, a proposition is a grammatical construct consisting of “(i) a logical subject about which something is said (affirmed or negated), (ii) a predicate which is said about the subject and (iii) the copula which determines the connection between subject and predicate.”[16]  In short, the terms of a proposition, the subject and predicate, “stand for” an apprehensible object.  These external acts of speech are for Newman analogous to the internal acts of doubting, inferring, and assenting.

            By our apprehension of propositions I mean our imposition of a sense on the terms of which they are composed.  Now what do the terms of a proposition stand for?  Sometimes they stand for certain ideas existing in our own minds, and for nothing outside of them; sometimes for things simply external to us, brought home to us through the experiences and informations we have of them.  All things in the exterior world are unit and individual, and are nothing else; but the mind not only contemplates those unit realities, as they exist, but has the gift, by an act of creation, of bringing before it abstractions and generalizations, which have no existence, no counterpart, out of it.[17]

            Of propositions, Newman writes that just as there are three ways of enunciating them, so too are there three ways of holding them: Doubt, Inference, and Assent.[18]  These three acts are, with reference to one and the same proposition, distinct one from the others.  “Indeed, it is very evident, that, so far forth as we infer, we do not doubt, and that, when we assent, we are not inferring, and, when we doubt, we cannot assent.”[19]  There is a certain co-existence of these three acts, which are all natural, in the mind.  Errors in any of these are not of nature, but rather belong properly to the individual.  “We do but fulfill our nature in doubting, inferring, and assenting; and our duty is, not to abstain from the exercise of any function of our nature, but to do what is in itself right rightly.”[20]

            Having laid this foundation, Newman proceeds to focus the first part of the Grammar of Assent on assent.  Our apprehensions of propositions may be either notional or real.  Propositions may submit to both of these at once, “having a notional sense as used by one man, and a real as used by another.”[21]  To say that “Rome is a beautiful city,” may only be apprehended in a notional way by someone who has never been to Rome but who has some idea of “city” and “beauty”.  However, this proposition can be apprehended in a real way by one who is well-acquainted with Rome.[22]  Newman identifies inferences, which are conditional acts, “especially cognate [inferences] to notional apprehension,” and assents, which are unconditional acts, to real apprehensions.[23] 

            In Chapter 2 of the Grammar of Assent, Newman explains the necessity of apprehension of the terms of a proposition for assent.  He writes,

By apprehension to a proposition, I mean, as I have already said, the interpretation given to the terms of which it is composed… We can assert without assenting; assent is more than assertion just by this much, that it is accomplished by some apprehension of the matter asserted.  This is plain; and the only question is, what measure of apprehension is sufficient.[24]

He goes on to answer that the apprehension of the predicate of the proposition is sufficient for assent.  “In a proposition one term is predicated of another; the subject is referred to the predicate, and the predicate gives us information about the subject.”[25]  To assent is to apprehend the proposition and to acquiesce in it as true.  Therefore, we apprehend a proposition when we apprehend its predicate.

Newman continues by exploring the nature of apprehension which, he notes, can also be either notional or real.  Real apprehension is "in the first instance an experience or information about the concrete [thing as it is]," including memories which are "the reflections of things in a mental mirror."[26]  Real apprehensions are analogous to images provided they are not dependent on other propositions. Notional apprehension relates to those propositions that are themselves not the thing referred to but some mental construct related to it.[27]  An apprehension is notional when it is comparative or reflective. Notional apprehension leads to breadth of knowledge whereas real apprehension leads to a certain depth in the intellectual notion.

Apprehensions do not in any way affect the nature of assent itself, which is absolute and unconditional.  They do however give it an external character corresponding “respectively” to their own.  Just as notions come from abstractions, images come from experience, and “the more fully the mind is occupied by an experience, the keener will be its assent to it.”[28]  A scale of assent is possible in both the individual mind and in many minds focusing on the same subject, “varying from an assent which looks like mere inference up to belief both intense and practical,- from the acceptance which we accord to some incidental news of the day to the supernatural dogmatic faith of the Christians.”[29]

While Newman devotes a considerable section of the Grammar of Assent to notional assent, for our purpose of understanding religious belief in the context of this empistemological system, it will be more worthwhile to focus on his presentation of real assent. 

Real assents involve the apprehension of real things rather than mere creations of the mind as in notional assent.[30]  "To the devout and spiritual, the Divine Word speaks of things, not merely of notions."[31]  Therefore, real assent is assent to propositions that are experienced as real by the person giving assent.  This object of real assent is held in the mind (more properly Newman uses the term “imagination”), as a whole object and not as a notion.

They [real assents] are sometimes called beliefs, convictions, certitudes; and, as given to moral objects, they are perhaps as rare as they are powerful.  Till we have them, in spite of a full apprehension and assent in the field of notions, we have no intellectual moorings, and are at the mercy of impulses, fancies, and wandering lights, whether as regards personal conduct, social and political action, or religion…. They create, as the case may be, heroes and saints, great leaders, statesmen, preachers, and reformers…[32]

            In Newman’s mind, beliefs, as a mode of assent, are therefore concerned with concrete, not abstract, things, “which variously excite the mind from their moral and imaginative properties, [the mind] has for its objects, not only directly what is true, but inclusively what is beautiful, useful, admirable, heroic… it leads the way to actions of every kind, to the establishment of principles, and the formation of character, and is thus again intimately connected with what is individual and personal.”[33]

            Newman continues his exploration of Assent by considering belief in One God, belief in the Trinity, and belief in dogmatic theology.  He believes that to assent to what the Church teaches as dogma is both a real and a notional assent.  Not only is this possible but it is imperative.[34]  However, the depth of one’s commitment to a particular proposition, is no indicator of the validity of that commitment; assent is an intellectual, not an emotional act.  The mind/imagination presents the intellect with its object.  “This simple epistemological proposition will be seen… to affect Newman’s whole understanding of the Church’s internal dynamic, that is to say, of theology’s regulative role in ecclesiastical life.”[35]  He argues that real assent is a response of the will to a concrete God, rather than an assent to propositions.  Religious belief asks real assent from believers, which is a matter of “a life lived in faith, the product of grace, not argument.  That is why the essentials of faith can be possessed by the most uneducated person.”[36]  Faith is held as dogma, that is, “a proposition standing for a notion or for a thing, and to believe it is to give the assent of the mind to it, as it stands for the one or for the other.”[37]  This is “not against reason, but as that within which reason operates, as that embodied complex of doctrinally ruled stories, symbols and rites, which give rise to faith and its expressions.”[38] 

            Newman declares that if we believe in revelation, we believe what is revealed, in all that is revealed, however it may come to us.  In the case of the Supreme Being, our facts come first from nature, then from revelation (while our doctrines come from abstraction and inference).  We believe the Almighty witnesses to Himself in revelation, but one may question the evidence. 

In seeking to combat the prevailing Rationalism of the age, Newman devotes the next section of the Grammar of Assent to Locke’s assertion that the strength given to assent varies with the relative strength of any evidence by pointing out that Locke is inconsistent on the issue.[39]  Newman makes the case that one may assent to or believe what one does not fully understand (although it must be apprehended).[40]  We may know from experience that assent does not necessarily depend on inference or probability and assent is not necessarily given or removed relative to evidence. 

We know from experience that assents may endure without the presence of the inferential acts upon which they were originally elicited… Again, sometimes assent fails, while the reasons for it and the inferential act which is the recognition of those reasons, are still present, and in force.  Our reasons may seem to us as strong as ever, yet they do not secure our assent.[41]

When assent is given, it is given unconditionally.

This discussion of unconditional assent flows easily into an exploration of certitude.  Newman claims that certitude is a “natural and normal state of mind.[42]  While assents are given unconditionally, they may and do change.[43]  Therefore educated people have a duty to investigate their assents.  This is the way to certitude, “the perception of a truth with the perception that it is a truth, or the consciousness of knowing, as expressed in the phrase, “I know that I know.”[44]  It is noted that this requires that the propositions to which one assents are objectively true.  However, when this criteria is fulfilled, “when there is a complex assent to objectively true propositions, one may, according to Newman, speak of certitude.”[45]

 Religion demands more than an assent to the truth; it demands a certitude which is directed to the truth.[46]  In Newman’s mind mistakes do not disprove certitude, since it is a fault of reasoning, but insists that we must reason carefully[47] and, as noted, certitude itself arises from an assent which is itself complex and reflexive.[48]

Considering the indefectibility of certitude he writes, “on the whole there are three conditions of certitude; that it follows on investigation and proof, that it is accompanied by a specific sense of intellectual satisfaction and repose, and that it is irreversible."[49] 

Because the mind is made for truth, though its range be limited, certitude does exist and is indispensable in religious matters.  Even early in his Anglican career, Newman was concerned with the problem of the “logical cogency of faith” and this interest was intensified by scientific rationalism.[50]  The complex and implicit operations of the mind are their own justification and are self-authenticating.  The mind provides its own test of the truth. 

Here Newman begins a long discourse on inference, the main point of which is that inference is conditional acceptance of a proposition (similar to a theorem) whereas assent is unconditional, absolute, and directed at an object which is true.[51] Judgment in conditional matters is for Newman based on inference.   In contrast "Judgment in all concrete matter is the architectonic faculty; and what may be called the Illative Sense, or right judgment in ratiocination, is one branch of it.[52]"

The Illative Sense is the name Newman gives to his unique contribution to this process of assenting to and inferring propositions.  “It is the mind’s power to judge or conclude in the concrete, not in the abstract.”[53]  It is the internal subjective authority by which various influences may be judged valid and it is this sense that leads our sense of truth of propositions in all “concrete reasonings”.[54]  While Newman does speak of theology as, in some sense, a product of inference and the illative sense, he does not mean to deny that religion is anything but a real apprehension and something that is assented to rather than arrived at.  “The illative sense is just such an absolute verification, because it is able to establish the focal point of an otherwise inconclusive evidence, meeting a question in the spirit, though not in the letter, of rationality.”[55] 

While the illative sense is more than formal inference, it is by no means distinct from it.  The illative sense is “our natural judgment sharpened by experience, and no special faculty different from our reason itself, thinking along its own lines.  It is not an appendage to the reasoning process.”[56]  It is the reasoning of the whole person.  While we may reason our way through successive inferences and these, although logical and linguistic, are grasped by the illative sense and the truth to which they point is then realized. It is at this point that we may assent to it and in the case of religious (Catholic) assent we may be certain of our assent.[57]

It is in the tenth and final chapter of the Grammar of Assent that Newman addresses the question of inference and assent in religion specifically.  He observes that there are two sorts of true religion: natural and revealed (i.e. Christian) and that these neither contradict nor conflict with each other.[58]  Natural religion here refers to knowledge of God, His Will, and our duties towards him.  In Newman’s mind this speaks directly to the mind and is a system of real apprehensions to which we can assent and of which we can be certain.  The great internal teacher of this religion is our conscience which serves as a personal guide.[59]

My true informant, my burdened conscience, gives me at once the true answer to each of these antagonist questions—it pronounces without any misgivings that God exists:- and it pronounces quite as surely that I am alienated from him; that “His hand is not shortened, but that our iniquities have divided between us and our God.”  Thus it solves the world’s mystery, and sees in that mystery only a confirmation of its own original teaching.[60]

Natural religion acts as a preparation for revealed religion.  “It is through revealed religion that the particulars of Christianity are first inferred then taken up by the illative sense and finally assented to as true in certitude.”[61]

            For Newman, while the truths of religion and dogmatic belief themselves lack the logical and empirical evidence insisted upon by 18^th and 19^th century rationalists, they can be assented to and accepted by the person of faith.  By virtue of the actions of our conscience we receive the truths of God, His existence, and action in the world through our experiences of physical nature, our understanding of suffering, the testimony of others, and of the efficacy of prayer.[62]  Having this experience of the reality of God, who reveals Himself in our daily experience, we then proceed with the real assent of faith, belief in something concrete rather than an abstract notion, to an evaluation of these beliefs.  Organized religion offers us an opportunity to reflect on these beliefs.  Our assent becomes reflective and more complex, leading us to a certitude of belief.  As we encounter the abstract and notional teachings or religious doctrine, we use our illative sense, our whole sense, to evaluate and formulate a creed that is in conformity with our original natural religious certitudes.  It is here, when we begin to consider the truths of dogmatic religion, we encounter more concretely the dispensations of grace[63], which in the “religious imaginings of the world can take hold of mind and body, transforming us into the family of Jesus Christ.”[64]  That is, we are led to the revealed religion of Christianity.

*                      *                      *                      *                      *

            John Henry Cardinal Newman died in 1890.  Nearly a century later, in 1984, the Canadian Jesuit and Transcendental Thomist[65], Bernard Lonergan died.  While these two lived nearly a century apart and had very different spiritual backgrounds and histories, we can find a certain complimentarity in their understanding of religious belief and understanding. 

            Both men were committed men of faith, Catholics, who were determined to establish in their respective epistemological systems a place for the reality and value of religious belief.  As with Newman (and the Catholic tradition), Lonergan believed that God could be known by reason alone.[66]  Here Lonergan seems to pause and ask what contributions philosophy might actually make to theology, to the development of a faith system.[67]  Ultimately Lonergan discerns three uses it will have for theology: “it will justify dogma as intellectual assent, while identifying pietists and modernists as appealing to sheer experience; it will cut short some disputed questions; and it will offer an in-depth study of that act of understanding which the First Vatican Council proposed as the goal of theology.”[68]

            Lonergan scholar Sister Carla Mae Streeter recognizes a relationship in the systems of Newman and Lonergan that are both strongly grounded in (Thomistic) philosophy and she begins by recognizing that Lonergan is working as an apologist.  “That purpose is to meet those who would dispense with faith and religious love on their own terms: the operations of the mind as it seeks the truth.”[69] 

            Lonergan begins with phenomena.  It is through our experiences that we receive the data that is to be understood.  For Lonergan this sense data depends largely on the belief of others.

Our mentality is in fact a symbiosis of direct knowledge and belief, so intricately interwoven that it could never be untangled; and, if we could untangle it, and reject everything we had not personally verified, we would be immeasurably poorer for it.  Human knowing, then, is a collaborative fund, to which each person contributes, from which each is able to draw.[70]

            Experience of God is compatible with Lonergan’s larger epistemological system.  This is identified with the experience of a desire to know (the dynamism of the intellect) as an implicit, indirect obscure experience of God.[71]  The attainment of knowledge is ultimately a knowledge of God.  While Lonergan does speak of belief as drawing on the common “fund of knowledge”, like Newman he acknowledges that certain single beliefs may be accepted by some and rejected by others.  The distinction created here between knowledge and belief is that knowledge depends on direct experience while belief is based on the testimony of others.  As such, it can be accepted or rejected.  It is at this point that we can begin to recognize Lonergan’s over-arching epistemological system of knowing as it is related to belief.

            In the foundation of belief, we begin with experience.  As noted this is not necessarily a direct experience of God but can rely on the testimony of others (e.g. an individual believer or the Church).  Each individual must reflect on the testimony, seeking to understand its meaning and reflecting on what is being offered.  In developing the concept, the fruit of understanding, we can see a reflection of Newman’s complex assent in which the object of experience (in his case an natural religious experience), through reflection, can be accepted or rejected. 

            Having established our concept (i.e. an object of religious belief), one explores the issue further, reflecting on the veracity of the statement, “Is it so?”.  In this reflective moment in which we gain insight into the abstract dimensions of the concept, we can see a comparison to Newman’s illative sense in which the abstract notions of religious belief are compared and synthesized with the sense data of our experience.  As for Newman, Lonergan believes that the fullness of knowing culminates in this act of judgment.  However, in judging Lonergan not only seeks to know whether the concept is true in reality, but “the third act… is a judgment on the value of deciding to believe with certitude or with probability that some proposition certainly or probably is true or false.”[72] 

            Within the systems of both men there exists a necessity of reflection and seeking a fuller understanding of the experiences and concepts in question.  For Newman this takes place in the movement from apprehensions to assents to certitudes in light of revelation while for Lonergan this happens in the materially, formally dynamic structure of experience, understanding, and judgment being guided by the testimony of others.    

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