Sermon Blog
The Nature of Faith in Relation to Reason
November 2, 2024
On January 13, 1839 John Henry Newman preached his 11th sermon of his 15 Oxford University sermons, “The Nature of Faith in Relation to Reason”. Here he deals with the mode of arguing of faith.
What follows is a summary of the sermon
Newman writes that Faith is more than simply a moral nature which does not depend upon the ground of evidence beforehand. Rather the gospel comes from God and then faith embraces it. Scripture clearly imparts that faith does not depend on a process of mind previous to it. For instance, “The Word of Life is offered to a man and on its being offered he has Faith in it”. Newman tells us that we tend to believe in “The Word of Life” because the word is from a human messenger and that there is a likelihood of the message. Man feels that the message is probable because he has a love for it. “He has a keen sense of the intrinsic excellence of the message, of its desirableness, of its likeness to what it seems to him Divine Goodness would gift to him of the need of a Revelation and its probability”. Thus, Faith is the reasoning of a religious mind, or of what Scripture calls a right or renewed heart, which acts upon presumptions rather than evidence, which speculates and ventures on the future when it cannot make sure of it. Newman is reminding us that faith does not follow a calculated process of reasoning.
The Word of God “appeals to a conviction that is lodged within us”. This is an appeal to the “antecedent probability” of a Revelation. The novelty of the claim, its strangeness, the improbability that it is a mere invention, the personal bearing it had on the Apostles were enough for those that had love to incline their belief. Later in his life Newman in his Grammar of Assent defines this converging line of thought as the Illative Sense – which is a special branch of judgment, used by everyone. It brings us to a conclusion without the calculated process of reasoning. It is this line of thinking that Newman offers justifies that Faith is an act of Reason.
Newman then offers what he conceives to be the relation of Faith to Reason. Our sense of the beings independent of us is divided into the material and the immaterial. Of the material we have direct knowledge through the senses which introduce us to the external world. However, they reach us through a certain media. Newman writes that, “we must be near things to touch them; we must be interrupted by no simultaneous sounds to hear them; we must have light to see them; we can neither see, hear, nor touch things past or future”. Reason then is the faculty that reaches beyond the sense to arrive at knowledge of things external to us. Reason “is a faculty of proceeding from things that are perceived to things which are not”. It certifies to us of something assumed to be true. Its act us usually considered a process progressing from one idea to the next as an exercise of the mind. It is an analysis as it compares, discriminates, and judges. It searches for the grounds of an idea and assents upon those grounds. It gains knowledge upon the grounds given, rightly or wrongly. Faith then is also certainly an exercise of Reason. It is an acceptance of things as real upon certain previous grounds; it is an instrument of indirect knowledge concerning things external to us. Newman offers us many examples of why we assent to doctrines as true. For instance, “I have been taught it”, or, “because superiors tell me so;” or, “because good men think so;” or, “because very different men think so;” or, “because all men;” or, “most men;” or, “because it is established;” or, “because persons whom I trust say that it was once guaranteed by miracles;” or, “because one who is said to have wrought miracles,” or “who says he wrought them,” “has taught it;” or, “because I have seen one who saw the miracles;” or, “because I saw what I took to be a miracle;” or for all or some of these reasons together. This exercise of Reason is an act of Faith.
Faith then is not the reasoning of a weak mind rather it is the reasoning of a divinely enlightened mind. There is a diversity with which men reason, showing us that Faith is not the only exercise of Reason, which approves itself to some and not to others. Faith by its nature is but independent of and distinct from what are called philosophical inquiries, intellectual systems, courses of argument, and the like. Further regarding general Reason, no matter how producible our grounds may be, however systematic our method, however clear and tangible our evidence there must ever be something assumed ultimately which is incapable of proof without which our conclusion will be as illogical as Faith is apt to seem to men of the world. Even though our senses may and do deceive us we trust them. In like manner we trust the fidelity of testimony for a Revelation. Likewise, we trust our memory as an assumption for the truth of most of our opinions. Therefore, there is one thing inconsistent with the state in which we find ourselves by nature – we acquire knowledge generally in a state in which we must assume something to prove anything. We gain nothing without a venture.
Newman continues his description of general reason by stating that “a law of attainment of knowledge is that according to its desirableness, there is a subtlety of evidence on which it is received”. “If we insist upon being as sure as is conceivable, in every step of our course, we must be content to creep along the ground, and can never soar”. And “if we are intended for great ends, we are called to great hazards; and, whereas we are given absolute certainty in nothing, we must in all things choose between doubt and inactivity”. Then Newman marvelously speculates “that perchance by the defects of the evidence (God) is trying our love; and that perchance it is a law of His Providence to speak less loudly the more He promises”. Faith then “by which we get to know divine things, rests on the evidence of testimony, weak in proportion to the excellence of the blessing attested.” “Reason, with its great conclusions, is confessedly a higher instrument than Sense with its secure premises, so Faith rises above Reason, in its subject-matter, more than it falls below it in the obscurity of its process.
Convincingly Newman states that Faith is a process of the Reason since neither can exhibit the grounds of inference. We have confidence in both knowledge and Faith because “much lies in the character of the mind itself, in its general view of things, its estimate of the probable and the improbable.” The exercise of sagacity is similar to the faith of an unlearned person who savingly believes the Gospel because supernatural grace does for the uncultivated reason what genius does for the great statesman.
Faith has such a subtle kind of reasoning as exemplified by the instances of professed reasoning found in Scripture that Newman declares that “the peculiarity in the inspired text is the proper correlative of Faith” – that such a text is the proper matter for Faith to work upon.
Finally, Newman draws a comparison between moral actions and intellectual exercises. Attaining greatness in both requires extraordinary modes of action. Greatness by the world’s standard is “sought and attained by risks and adventures”. Newman famously writes that, “courage does not consist in calculation, but in fighting against chances”. The great ruler will stand his ground on instinctive perceptions of truths which “the many scoff at and which seem failing”. And so in all things, great objects exact a venture, and a sacrifice is the condition of honour. Newman brilliantly closes his discourse on the legitimacy of faith as an exercise of reason by equating the reasoning of the worldly ruler with the reasoning of the religious enthusiast; “and what is true in the world, why should it not be true also in the kingdom of God”? Newman continues, the faith of the believer and the wisdom of the worldly must both “launch out into the deep, and let down our nets for a draught;” (they) both must in the morning sow (their) seed, and in the evening withhold not (their hand), for they know not whether (they) shall prosper, either this or that. Greatness and holiness are gained by ventures.
