The Cross as a Source of Knowledge and the Language of the Heart

Abstract

We have already defined the main purposes of Newman’s quest— to analyse how man thinks under concrete circumstances and how he assents to propositions (notional assent) or to reality (real assent), and, ultimately, whether he can arrive at certitude in the concrete. In Chapter 2 I sought to characterise Newman’s theory of knowledge in the concrete, i.e. how we come to assent in our daily experience and whether we can accomplish certitude. His principal position was that of “metaphysics in the singular,” in which selfhood rises to the point of being the main cognitive centre. Therefore, Newman uses such terms as personal result, cogitative method. This centre is, at the same time, very unsteady and unreliable, for it is the living centre of the human being that undergoes all the contingencies of the living entity, but at the same time the only one we have immediate access to. We have to use ourselves, however, all these shortcomings— hesitations, prejudices, uncertainties, weaknesses— notwithstanding. In one of his sermons, Newman characterises our existential situation. He writes that people willingly follow their inclinations, “they are guided by pleasure and pain, not by reason, principle, or conscience; and they do not attempt to interpret this world, to determine what it means, or to reduce what they see and feel to system. But when persons, either from thoughtfulness of mind, or from intellectual activity, begin to contemplate the visible state of things into