¹ For Newman's view on assent and apprehension see his An Essay in the Aid of a Grammar of Assent (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1903)Google Scholar: available online at http://www.newmanreader.org/works/grammar/index.html; hereafter cited as GA. All Newman's works quoted in this article are available online at www.newmanreader.org, a website maintained by the National Institute of Newman Studies.

² ‘I ask, then, as concerns the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, such as I have drawn it out to be, is it capable of being apprehended otherwise than notionally? Is it a theory, undeniable indeed, but addressed to the student, and to no one else? Is it the elaborate, subtle, triumphant exhibition of a truth, completely developed, and happily adjusted, and accurately balanced on its centre, and impregnable on every side, as a scientific view, “totus, teres, atque rotundus,” challenging all assailants, or, on the other hand, does it come to the unlearned, the young, the busy, and the afflicted, as a fact which is to arrest them, penetrate them, and to support and animate them in their passage through life? That is, does it admit of being held in the imagination, and being embraced with a real assent? I maintain it does, and that it is the normal faith which every Christian has, on which he is stayed, which is his spiritual life, there being nothing in the exposition of the dogma, as I have given it above, which does not address the imagination, as well as the intellect.’ GA, 126–7.

³ ‘There are then no terms in the foregoing exposition which do not admit of a plain sense, and they are there used in that sense; and, moreover, that sense is what I have called real, for the words in their ordinary use stand for things. The words, Father, Son, Spirit, He, One, and the rest, are not abstract terms, but concrete, and adapted to excite images. And these words thus simple and clear, are embodied in simple, clear, brief, categorical propositions. There is nothing abstruse either in the terms themselves, or in their setting. It is otherwise of course with formal theological treatises on the subject of the dogma. There we find such words as substance, essence, existence, form, subsistence, notion, circumincession; and, though these are far easier to understand than might at first sight be thought, still they are doubtless addressed to the intellect, and can only command a notional assent.’ GA, 127–8.

⁴ Newman, ‘Sermon 16: The Christian Mysteries,’ Parochial and Plain Sermons I: 203–14, at 205; preached 14 June 1829; hereafter cited as PPS, sermon number, page number. For background on this sermon see Poynor, Thomas, ‘“How Can These Things Be?” Newman's Anglican Sermon on “The Christian Mysteries”,’ Newman Studies Journal 5/1 (Spring 2008): 51–62Google Scholar.

⁵ Newman, ‘Sermon 2: Reverence, A Belief in God's Presence,’ PPS 5: 13–28, at 25; preached 4 November 1838.

⁶ PPS 5: 25.

⁷ Newman, ‘Sermon 2: Reverence, A Belief in God's Presence,’ PPS 5: 26. On the subject of mystery and apparent contradictions, see, James Anderson, ‘In Defence of Mystery: A Reply to Dale Tuggy,’ Religious Studies 41 (2005): 145–63; See Boyer, Steven D., ‘The Logic of Mystery,’ Religious Studies 43 (2007): 89–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ I offer Karl Rahner as a contrasting figure. Rahner had a positive view of mystery in the sense that the human subject and the transcendent ground of being we call God are genuine mysteries. The mystery of the human person and of God were not simply hermeneutical ambiguities, but referred to actual incomprehensibility. Rahner viewed God as an incomprehensible mystery. The holy mystery that is God, in Rahner, is not God as a mysterious being, but God who in his being is understood as mystery. See Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. William V. Dych (New York: Crossroads, 1998) 1–89. Rahner is concerned that we do not objectify God, who is absolute holy mystery, or achieve mastery of God through knowledge. Newman, on the other hand, does not see acquisition of knowledge about God or clarity in expression about God as a threat to God because God has chosen to reveal himself.

⁹ Newman, GA, 226. ‘This is the very aspect, in which God, as revealed in Scripture, is distinguished from that exhibition of His glory, which nature gives us: power, wisdom, love, long suffering—these attributes, though far more fully and clearly displayed in scripture than in nature, still are in their degree seen on the face of their visible creation; but self-denial, if it may be said, this incomprehensible attribute of Divine Providence, is disclosed to us only in Scripture.’ Newman, ‘Sermon 7: The Duty of Self-Denial,’ PPS 7: 91. ‘First, let it be assumed as agreeable both to reason and revelation, that there are Attributes and Operations, or by whatever more suitable term we designate them, peculiar to the Deity; for instance, creative and preserving power, absolute prescience, moral sovereignty, and the like. These are ever included in our notion of the incommunicable nature of God;’ John Henry Newman, The Arians of the Fourth Century (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1908) 152; hereafter cited, Arians.

¹⁰ ‘Mysteries in religion are measured by the proud according to their own comprehension, by the humble, according to the power of God; the humble glorify God, the proud exalt themselves against them,’ Newman, ‘Sermon 19: The Mysteriousness of Our Present Being,’ PPS 4: 283.

¹¹ Another example of the problem of the articulation of mystery in the Christian life is the co-habitation of joy and fear or reverence in a believer. ‘How joy and fear can be reconciled, words cannot show. Act and deed alone can show how. Let a man try both to fear and to rejoice, as Christ and His Apostles tell him, and in time he will learn how; but when he has learned he will be as little able to explain how it is he does both, as he was before. He will seem inconsistent, and may easily be proved to be so, to the satisfaction of irreligious men, as Scripture is called inconsistent. He becomes the paradox which Scripture enjoins. This is variously fulfilled in the case of men of advanced holiness. They are accused of the most opposite faults; of being proud, and of being mean; of being over-simple, and being crafty; of having too strict, and, at the same time, too lax a conscience; of being unsocial, and yet being worldly; of being too literal in explaining Scripture, and yet of adding to Scripture, and superseding Scripture. Men of the world, or men of inferior religiousness, cannot understand them, and are fond of criticizing those who, in seeming to be inconsistent, are but like Scripture teaching.’ ‘Sermon 5: Equanimity,’ PPS 5: 66–7; was preached 22 December 1839Google Scholar.

¹² Newman, ‘Sermon 19: The Mysteriousness of Our Present Being,’ PPS 4: 286. Cf. ‘You will say, How can He be present to the Christian and in the Church, yet not be on earth but on the right hand of God? I answer, that the Christian Church is made up of faithful souls, and how can any of us say where the soul is, simply and really? The soul indeed acts through the body, and perceives through the body; but where is it? Or what has it to do with place?’ Newman, , ‘Sermon 10: The Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Church,’ PPS 6: 120–35, at 127; preached 6 May 1838Google Scholar.

¹³ Newman, , ‘Sermon 12: The Humiliation of the Eternal Son’ PPS 3: 156–72, at 166–7Google Scholar; preached 8 March 1835.

¹⁴ Newman, ‘Sermon 19: The Mysteriousness of Our Present Being,’ PPS 4: 286.

¹⁵ ‘It is certain, then, that experience outstrips reason in its capacity of knowledge, why then should reason circumscribe faith, when it cannot compass sight?’ Newman, , ‘Sermon 19: The Mysteriousness of Our Present Being,’ PPS 4: 285Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Newman, ‘Sermon 19: The Mysteriousness of Our Present Being,’ PPS 4: 291.

¹⁷ Newman, ‘Sermon 16: The Christian Mysteries,’ PPS 1: 210–1.

¹⁸ Newman, ‘Sermon 16: The Christian Mysteries,’ PPS 1: 205.

¹⁹ See also, Newman, ‘We are no longer then in the region of the shadows: we have the true Savior set before us, the true reward and the true means of spiritual renewal.’ Newman, , ‘Sermon 3: Unreal Words,’ PPS 5: 30; preached on 2 June 1839Google Scholar.

²⁰ Newman, ‘Sermon 16: The Christian Mysteries,’ PPS 1: 203.

²¹ Newman, ‘Sermon 13: Judaism of the Present Day,’ PPS 6: 174–189, at 186; preached on 28 February 1841.

²² Newman, ‘Sermon 17: The Testimony of Conscience,’ PPS 5: 239.

²³ Newman, ‘Sermon 21: Offerings for the Sanctuary,’ PPS 6: 295–312, at 303; preached on 23 September 1839.

²⁴ ‘On the other hand, a double mind, a pursuing other ends besides the truth, and in consequence an inconsistency in conduct, and a half-consciousness (to say the least) of inconsistency, and a feeling of the necessity of defending oneself to oneself, and to God, and to the world; in a word, hypocrisy; these are the signs of a merely professed Christian.’ Newman, ‘Sermon 16: Sincerity and Hypocrisy,’ PPS 5: 222–36, at 224; preached 16 December 1838.

²⁵ Newman, ‘Sermon 16: Warfare the Condition of Victory,’ PPS 6: 222–3.

²⁶ GA, 256.

²⁷ John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University (New York: Longmans, Green & Co. 1907) xviii.

²⁸ GA, 19–20.

²⁹ GA, 55.

³⁰ Real apprehension for Newman was a cognitional recognition of an individual thing as opposed to notional, universal or formal things. Ultimately formal or notional statements have their roots in the apprehension of individual things. ‘Now, there are propositions, in which one or both of the terms are common nouns, as standing for what is abstract, general, and non-existing, such as “Man is an animal …” These I shall call notional propositions, and the apprehension with which we infer or assent to them, notional. And there are other propositions, which are composed of singular nouns, and of which the terms stand for things external to us, unit and individual, as ‘Philip was the father of Alexander,’ ‘the earth goes round the sun,’ … these I shall call real propositions and their apprehension real.’ GA, 9–10.

³¹ Newman, ‘Sermon 18: Mysteries in Religion,’ PPS 2: 206–16, at 208–9; preached year end 1834.

³² ‘God does good to those who are good and true of heart; and He reveals His mysteries to the believing. The earnest heart is the good ground in which faith takes root, and the truths of the Gospel are the dew, the sunshine, and the soft rain, which make that heavenly seed to grow.’ Newman, , ‘Sermon 11: The Eucharistic Presence,’ PPS 6: 136–152, at 136; preached 13 May 1838Google Scholar.

³³ ‘Attempt to solve this prediction, according to the received theories of science, and you will discover their shallowness. They are unequal to the depth of the problem.’ Newman, , ‘Sermon 18: Mysteries in Religion,’ PPS 2: 210Google Scholar.

³⁴ Newman, , ‘Sermon 19: The Mysteriousness of Our Present Being,’ PPS 4: 282–94, at 282; preached 29 May 1836Google Scholar.

³⁵ ‘Above all, let us pray Him to draw us to Him, and to give us faith. When we feel that His mysteries are too severe for us, and occasion us to doubt, let us earnestly wait on Him for the gift of humility and love. Those who love and who are humble will apprehend them;—carnal minds do not seek them, and proud minds are offended at them;—but while love desires them, humility sustains them. Let us pray Him then to give us such a real and living insight into the blessed doctrine of the Incarnation … Blessed indeed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed. They have their reward in believing; they enjoy the contemplation of a mysterious blessing which does not even enter into the thoughts of other men; and while they are more blessed than others, in the gift vouchsafed to them, they have the additional privilege of knowing that they are vouchsafed it.’ Newman, , ‘Sermon 11: The Eucharistic Presence,’ PPS 6: 151–2Google Scholar.

³⁶ GA, 119.