Customer Reviews

An Essay in Aid of A Grammar of Assent

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This "essay" is a tour d'force of the force of the power of inferential versus deductive reasoning. This is an unique aposteriori argument for the existence of God, but unfolds an argument in a manner wholly different from the past, such as Aquinas, for example. Newman is a very persuasive author, who uses his evidence judiciously and validly. People of faith will find this exposition worth the perspective.

But, this book can stand on its own as a superlative example of brilliant exposition, using Newman's usually elegant style, and enjoying a journey that seems unlikely from its impetus. The first chapter is particularly difficult, but after that, the reading is engaging and remarkable.

Cardinal Newman's An Essay In Aid of a Grammar of Assent is a classic of Christian epistemology, and deserves to be more widely read than it is. Unfortunately, the present reprint will not aid in the promotion of that goal. The book is printed on rather large paper, but the text itself has been reproduced photographically in such a way that it is virtually impossible to read it without a magnifying glass. Indeed, it is somewhat strange to open up such a large volume, only to find a tiny text surrounded by two- to three-inch margins of blank space all around. The waste of paper is enormous enough in its own right, but the waste of the buyer's money is unforgivable.

Prior to purchasing this item, I tried to examine it using the "Look Inside" feature available through Amazon.com. Sadly, Amazon rather unhelpfully shows you, not the text of THIS edition, but the text as drawn from a different edition, which appears to be of normal size. So there is no way to know, prior to purchase, exactly what one is getting.

I returned my copy for a full refund. It is possible to get the full text of Newman's classic in electronic form on the internet as a PDF file--FOR FREE.

"A Grammar of Assent" by J. H. Newman is without doubt the most elegant, eloquent, and persuasive argument yet for the belief in God by any Christian philosopher. Despite its 19th-century origins, it remains one of the most modern of Christian philosophies yet. Gone are all references to Aristotle and Aquinas and their antediluvian methodologies of a priori logic to "prove" the existence of God and why it is supposedly "rational" to believe in such a God.

In its stead, Newman uses the Humean methodology of a posteriori inferences that lead one to believe that the "uneasiness" one feels (another Humean concept) about certain disturbances of the mind/soul that are attributable to the indwelling, or natural inclination, of the "conscience." From this natural inclination (again Hume) and by rational inference (Hume again), Newman posits step by step, and from different angles, that it is only a natural logical inference to assent to the belief in God. But it is the a posteriori experience of "conscience," not some a priori "proof," that leads the way.

Don't be put off by the rigorous prelude of the first-two chapters; they give considerable detail to the methodology Newman intends to use, which again is empirically oriented, not a priori logically deduced. The reading after that is a breeze, containing absolute wonderment at the level of perspicuity, rhetorical advantage, and logical nuances that infer God's existence from natural inclinations. It was, and remains, a revolutionary approach, and is a worthy work to include in any Christian's library.

Is it "Fides quaerens intellectum" or "Intellectum quaerens fidem"? "Newman explores what leads up to the "leap of faith". Not nearly as dry as you think.

Gerald R. Schmidt, author of The Strange Life of Walenty Karnowski: The Rabbi's Illegitimate Grandson