Leaps and Circles: Kierkegaard and Newman on Faith and Reason

1994 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Jamie Ferreira
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Soren Kierkegaard ◽  
John Henry Newman ◽  
Faith And Reason

Søren Kierkegaard (in the Climacus writings) and John Henry Newman have starkly opposed formulations of the relation between faith and reason. In this essay I focus on a possible convergence in their respective understandings of the transition to religious belief or faith, as embodied in metaphors they use for a qualitative transition. I explore the ways in which attention to the legitimate dimension of discontinuity highlighted by the Climacan metaphor of the ‘leap’ can illuminate Newman's use of the metaphor of a ‘polygon inscribed in a circle’, as well as the ways in which Newman's metaphor can illuminate the dimension of continuity operative in the Climacan appreciation of qualitative transition.

John Henry Newman

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cyril O'Regan
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
John Henry Newman ◽  
Religious Epistemology ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
Oxford University

The nature of faith and reason and their proper relation was a preoccupation of John Henry Newman throughout his long writing career, beginning with his Oxford University Sermons and carrying on long after the publication of An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. In both classic sites of his religious epistemology, Newman wrote out of the British naturalist tradition, which gave sanction to the normal workings of the human mind in religious as well as non-religious affairs against the universalistic tendencies of Lockean epistemology. In so doing, Newman defended religious belief as a form of knowing. Accordingly, this chapter will not only present Newman’s religious epistemology from these important texts but will also show the influence of Newman’s thought on later epistemology as well as the problems, arising from Newman’s writings, that require further epistemological attention.

Richard Whately

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geertjan Zuijdwegt
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Academic Support ◽  
Orthodox Christianity ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
Richard Whately ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Intellectual Independence

Richard Whately (1787-1863) is an intriguing figure in John Henry Newman’s development. Through his mentoring and academic support, he taught the gifted young Newman to think for himself. But intellectual independence came at a price. After a close relationship in the mid-1820s, Newman began to steer a course of his own. In the tumultuous early 1830s, their friendship foundered, as they clashed over key theological issues: the authority of the church, the doctrine of the Trinity, the nature of revelation, and the reasonableness of religious belief. Newman had come to think that Whately's theology endangered orthodox Christianity. This conviction shaped his later opposition to other Oriel Noetics, who thought like Whately. Despite their conflicts, Newman drew on Whately's work in logic and rhetoric to formulate his own theory of the relation between faith and reason.

scholarly journals Faith and Reason

2017 ◽  
Vol 81 ◽  
pp. 101-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Pritchard
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Rational Belief ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
On Certainty ◽  
Rational Evaluation

AbstractA novel account of the rationality of religious belief is offered, called quasi-fideism. According to this proposal, we are neither to think of religious belief as completely immune to rational evaluation nor are we to deny that it involves fundamental commitments which are arational. Moreover, a parity argument is presented to the effect that religious belief is no different from ordinary rational belief in presupposing such fundamental arational commitments. This proposal is shown to be rooted in Wittgenstein's remarks on hinge commitments in On Certainty, remarks which it is claimed were in turn influenced by John Henry Newman's treatment of the rationality of religious belief in An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent.

Newman, John Henry (1801–90)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Ker
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
John Henry Newman ◽  
The Church ◽  
Life Work

John Henry Newman was the principal architect of the Catholic revival (the Oxford or Tractarian movement) within the Church of England in the 1830s, and went on to become probably the most seminal of modern Roman Catholic thinkers. Although primarily a theologian, Newman regarded his defence of religious belief in terms of a philosophical justification of non-demonstrable certainty as his most important life work.

4. Divine hiddenness and the nature of faith

2018 ◽  
pp. 52-63
Author(s):  
Tim Bayne
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Soren Kierkegaard ◽  
William James ◽  
Divine Hiddenness ◽  
Belief In God

Assuming—as theists invariably do—that God wants to be recognized and worshipped, why does God not make Godself manifest? Perhaps God is ‘silent’ because God doesn’t exist. ‘Divine hiddenness and the nature of faith’ considers both the hiddenness objection and the benefits of divine hiddenness: that divine hiddenness is a precondition for moral agency; that if God’s existence were evident to us then any relationship that we might have with God would be inauthentic; and that belief in God is more virtuous when it is based on faith. It also discusses the thoughts of W.K. Clifford, William James, and Søren Kierkegaard on religious belief.

Faith and Reason in the Oxford University Sermons

2018 ◽  
Vol 92 (3) ◽  
pp. 483-497
Author(s):  
Joe Milburn ◽  
Keyword(s):  
John Henry Newman ◽  
Moral Significance ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The University ◽  
Christian Message

I argue that we can understand John Henry Newman as defending the Principle of Faith throughout the University Sermons. According to the Principle of Faith, belief in the Christian message is in itself a good act of the mind, and it has moral significance. I argue that Newman’s developed account of faith and its relation to reason in Sermons 10 through 12 are designed to defend the Principle of Faith. Finally, I argue that we can understand Newman’s defense of the Principle of Faith as a reaction against criticisms dating back to the English Deists.

Rationality and Religious Belief

1979 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis P. Pojman
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
Reason And Faith ◽  
Articles Of Faith

In debate on faith and reason two opposing positions have dominated the field. The first position asserts that faith and reason are commensurable and the second position denies that assertion. Those holding to the first position differ among themselves as to the extent of the compatibility between faith and reason, most adherents relegating the compatibility to the ‘preambles of faith’ (e.g. the existence of God and his nature) over against the ‘articles of faith’ (e.g. the doctrine of the incarnation). Few have maintained complete harmony between reason and faith, i.e. a religious belief within the realm of reason alone. The second position divides into two sub-positions: (1) that which asserts that faith is opposed to reason (which includes such unlikely bedfellows as Hume and Kierkegaard), placing faith in the area of irrationality; and (2) that which asserts that faith is higher than reason, is transrational. Calvin and Barth assert that a natural theology is inappropriate because it seeks to meet unbelief on its own ground (ordinary human reason). Revelation, however, is ‘self-authenticating’, ‘carrying with it its own evidence’.1 We may call this position the ‘transrationalist’ view of faith. Faith is not so much against reason as above it and beyond its proper domain. Actually, Kierkegaard shows that the two sub-positions are compatible. He holds both that faith is above reason (superior to it) and against reason (because reason has been affected by sin). The irrationalist and transrationalist positions are sometimes hard to separate in the incommensurabilist's arguments. At least, it seems that faith gets such a high value that reason comes off looking not simply inadequate but culpable. To use reason where faith claims the field is not only inappropriate but irreverent or faithless.

Quasi-Fideism and Religious Conviction

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 51-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Pritchard
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Religious Commitment ◽  
Rational Belief ◽  
John Henry Newman ◽  
Religious Conviction ◽  
Religious Convictions ◽  
Important Sense ◽  
Reformed Epistemology ◽  
Epistemic Standing

It is argued that standard accounts of the epistemology of religious commitmentfail to be properly sensitive to certain important features of the nature of religious conviction. Once one takes these features of religious conviction seriously, then it becomes clear that we are not to conceive of the epistemology of religious conviction along completely rational lines.But the moral to extract from this is not fideism, or even a more moderate proposal (such as reformed epistemology) that casts the epistemic standing of basic religious beliefs along nonrational lines. Rather, one needs to recognise that in an important sense religious convictions are not beliefs at all, but that this is compatible with the idea that many other religious commitments are beliefs. This picture of the nature of religious commitment is shown to fit snugly with the Wittgensteinian account of hinge commitments, such that all rational belief essentially presupposes certain basic arational hinge commitments, along lines originally suggested by John Henry Newman. We are thus able to marshal a parity-style argument in defence of religious commitment. Although religious belief presupposes basic arational religious convictions, it is not on this score epistemically amiss since all belief presupposes basic arational convictions, or hinge commitments. The resulting view of the epistemology of religious commitment is a position I call quasi-fideism.

The Hamann–Hume Connection

1987 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Redmond
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Soren Kierkegaard ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Isaiah Berlin

It is well known that the eighteenth century Scottish philosopher and sceptic David Hume was a severe critic of religious belief, but what may not be so familiar, and has been brought to our attention in recent years by Isaiah Berlin, is that some religious believers have found in Hume's sceptical arguments a source of nurture for their religious faith. In particular, Berlin singles out the example of Hume's contemporary, Johann Georg Hamann (17388), a devout but unconventional believer as well as one of the leaders of the German Counter-Enlightenment. Hamann's primary claim to fame, however, rests upon his influence upon the Danish theologian, Soren Kierkegaard. Although Kierkegaard never met Hamann, he was familiar with his writings, and calls Hamann ‘his only teacher.’ Kierkegaard's vast influence on modern Christianity, especially Protestantism, is, of course, a commonplace. What, though, is often overlooked, and Berlin calls our attention to, is that this man who influenced Kierkegaard was himself deeply influenced by Hume. The student of religion, as well as the philosopher, cannot help but be struck by this historical connection between Hume and believers such as Johann Hamann and thus, ultimately, between David Hume and modern Protestantism.

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