Religious Certainty and the Imagination: An Interpretation of J. H. Newman

RELIGIOUS CERTAINTY AND THE IMAGINATION: AN INTERPRETATION OF J. H. NEWMAN HROUGHOUT HIS unpublished writings on certainy , Newman makes a number of tantalizing observations n the role of the imagination in belief; in fact, in a paper dated July ~O, 1895, he comes to the conclusion thart ceTtainty ' does not come under the reasoning faculty; but under the imagination.' 1 However, in his Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, which is his major work on the problem of certainty, Newman does little to explain the relationship between certainty and the imagination. The first part of that work is devoted to his distinction between notional and real (or what in earlier versions he called. imaginative) assent; the second, to his discussion of the relation of evidence and certainty. The division seems to be so clear that many commentators have claimed that the work is really two-that each pa.rt is philosophically independent of the other. To be sure, Newman does not draw the connections between certainty and imagination that we might expect in the Grammar of Assent; indeed, there are a number of places where he virtually denies that there should be any connection. Even so, there is enough, particularly in his examples, to suggest the view that he might have been working toward. It is this that I should like to explore. I To begin, let me distinguish two different dimensions of the problem of certainty, the epistemological and the psychologi1 The Theologiaal Papers of John Henry Newman on Faith and Oertainty, Archaval and Holmes, eds. (Oxford, 1976), p. 126. 395 396 ROBERT HOLYER cal, which correspond roughly to Newman's use of 'certainty' and ' certitude '. Like many distinctions, it is not exact, and in the final analysis I would agree with those philosophers who insist that much of what is psychological is epistemologically significant. Still, for all this, the distinction is useful. Epistemologically, 'certainty' describes a relationship that exists between a proposition and the eYidence that supports it. In this sense the problem of certainty is to determine how much or what kind of evidence one must have to be entitled to claim that he is certain. Psychologically, 'certainty' (or what Newman calls certitude) describes a specific attitude to a proposition-perhaps the feelings and behavior constitutive of feeling sure about it. In this sense, the problems of certainty are these: can we describe this state of mind more exactly? And how is it won, or lost or sustained? On the view that Newman is arguing against, roughly that of Locke, these two dimensions are brought into the closest correlation: one's cognitive attitude to a proposition is to be neither more nor less than the available evidence warrants. So insistent is Locke about this that he argues that certainty as well as assent admits of degrees.2 Accordingly, the highest degree of certainty is that which we should have about intuitive or self-evident propositions; a slightly lesser degree about beliefs that are the conclusions of demonstrative arguments; and a somewhat lesser degree about beliefs sustained by immediate sense experience. In addition, Locke talks about a kind of practical certainty that is appropriate for beliefs that are very highly probable. These claims about assent and certainty are made in some contexts as psychological generalizations: the human mind, or at least the epistemically well-disciplined human mind, naturally reaches a state of conviction proportioned to the available evidence. At the same time, they are asserted more strongly as fundamental principles of the ethics of belief. On those occasions when our passions incline us to ~Douglas Odegaard, 'Locke on Certainty and Probability', Locke News 11 (Autumn, 1980), pp. 77-88. RELIGIOUS CERTAINTY AND THE IMAGINATION 897 believe more or less than the evidence warrants, we must exercise epistemic self-control. Locke's view of the passions, then, is largely that they induce us to believe what we ought not to. Assent, he argues, ' can receive no evidence from our Passions or Interests; so it should receive no Tincture from them '.8 Thus, though strong passions ma.y impel us to certitude, the only legitimate means of reaching that state is by an examination of the evidence. Though...