After establishing this basic outline of the epistemology of religious belief, Newman looks to consider various debates, questions, and fields of study within Christianity. For our present study we look specifically at how Newman’s grammar of assent works within the field of natural religion, and what resolutions, if any, he offers to Hume’s Dialogues. Natural religion serves as an integral aspect of religious belief because, as Newman asserts, it is the foundation of all other religious belief. Scripture has its place and significance as well as other forms of revealed religion, yet every aspect in the process of religious maturation and understanding requires the firm foundation that natural religion creates, remarking, “we get our facts from the witness, first of nature, then of revelation, and our doctrines, in which they issue, through the exercise of abstraction and inference.
Newman writes, “all men possess an intellect and imagination and likewise all religious men are theologians in some manner.”21 Whereas traditional Aristotelianism, taught that a person required extensive training and education to engage in philosophical and theological thought, Newman suggests that by man’s own inherent powers he is capable of theological studies. He believes that theology cannot exist without the initiative and “abiding presence” of religion. This inquiry is one necessary for all men and serves as the foundations for religious faith. Newman defines Christianity as a:
definite message from God to man distinctly conveyed by His chosen
instruments, and to be received as such a message; and therefore to be
positively acknowledged, embraced, and maintained as true, on the ground
of its being divine, not as true on intrinsic grounds, not as probably true,
or partially true, but as absolutely certain knowledge, certain in a sense in
which nothing else can be certain, because it comes from Him who neither
can deceive nor be deceived.
In response to Hume and Romans 1:20, Newman views Christianity as an addition to nature. He believes that the two do not contradict each other but rather depend and enhance. In other words Christianity is the completion of “Natural Religion.” In Dialogues the characters debate how Creation speaks of the Creator. How does God manifest his attributes through nature? Perhaps more difficult to answer, how does man utilize nature to derive those indivisible qualities of the Supreme Being?
Newman answers that nature uses three main channels to enhance man’s knowledge of God: the human mind, the voice of mankind, and the course of the world, or in other words common human life and affairs. Of these qualities the most authoritative is the human mind. Whereas Hume seems to limit natural theology and Creation to the natural, physical world, Newman fights this Platonic dichotomy incorporating all things created by God. This scope and view of nature extends beyond the physical universe to include the human intellect and experience. Newman seems to support Cleanthes view that by the power and reason of the human intellect, man can draw analogy from the natural world to assent to God’s attributes and perfections.
Newman illustrates that the intellect, or conscience, is man’s great internal teacher. It teaches him, “not only that God is, but what He is; it provides for the mind a real image of Him, as a medium of worship.” The conscience provides an inherent code of right and wrong and moral duties, which are God’s laws. Most significantly of what man’s intellect perceives and assents to know of God is that He is man’s ‘Judge.’ In addition to the many self-evident truths, Newman demonstrates, that reveal this truth, history illustrates that all cultures demonstrate this belief and all other notions of God stem from this acknowledgement.
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