The Apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians, “we speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.” Man’s intellect is the source of all knowledge and where man assents to God’s wisdom and glory. As Newman demonstrates, however, in order to assent and have genuine belief in God’s revealed truth, man must apprehend the predicate of the proposition being made. It is not necessary that he understand, but simply apprehend them.
However, as numerous philosophers over the millennia have demonstrated, and Philo and Demean argue, the human intellect is simply too limited to even perceive notions of the Divine Intellect. Paul concurs writing, “For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.” However, Paul offers resolution stating, “We have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us…we have the mind of Christ.”
For Newman, therefore, the issue becomes by what process the Spirit of God makes divine wisdom known. In accordance with Romans 1:20, Newman, the empiricist, believes that many of God’s basic truths are manifested in nature. In other words, the Spirit of God works through Creation to make the Creator known. Experience enables man to understand his moral constitution, and thereby to signify his future from his present. His conscience, participating in the world around him, reminds him constantly that he is not sufficient for his own happiness but “dependent upon the sensible objects which surround him, and that these he cannot take with him when he leaves the world.” In the confusion of common life and mans’ own failures, nature serves to remind man that God is good and provides. Creation is ultimately the forum and stage where God demonstrates the universal rule of “good to the good, evil to the evil.” The religion of nature is not a deduction of reason but a tradition between mankind and Heaven.
To have the mind of Christ, therefore, man must be rooted in nature, seeking truth, as St. Augustine would suggest, wherever it is found. Natural theology, as both Hume and Newman would agree, serves as only the foundation and beginning to true philosophical theological inquiry. As Newman discusses at length in Grammar of Assent, Scripture and revealed religion/theology is a fundamental part of faith. For both philosophers, however, the quest begins, again as Augustine writes, how one can call upon God. The journey and process of that inquiry, however, is extremely important and pivotal to arriving at the intended destination. Paul concludes,
Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher
of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since
in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know Him,
God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save
those who believe…It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus, who
has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness,
holiness, and redemption.
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