Abstract
Faith is the practical perception of what cannot be seen, an emotive vision. Throughout his ministry and publications, John Henry Cardinal Newman remained attentive to the human faculties of reason, morality, the influence of the personal, and especially imagination. Bernard Dive’s premise is that the recognition of truth in concrete matters involves a personal judgment with imaginative apprehension. Christianity derives its ethical life from the image of Christ that generates faith. The chapters follow a chronological pattern through his ecclesial and epistemological concerns, so as to demonstrate the significance of imagination and image for Newman.
The volume first addresses the intricate connection of imagination, phronesis, and conscience for Newman. Aristotelian ethics were a primary feature in the Oxford curriculum and an emphasis of Newman’s mentor, Richard Whateley. Aristotle holds that the person of phronesis must envision the truth of how one should act in a certain situation. Hence, the ability to apprehend means, ends, and the desire for the good is closely correlated with the imagination. D. reminds us that for Newman the facility of phronesis corresponds with the relationship to Christ. “If the recognition of the ‘divine’ in Christ requires a recognition of his ‘human’ qualities, his virtuousness, then it would seem that these forms of phronesis—namely, ‘understanding,’ sunesis, and ‘judgement,’ gnome—are involved in the recognition of the ‘divine’ in Christ” (39). The full awareness of the goodness of Christ is contingent on the conscience. A Christian’s faith and obedience are “animated by a ‘looking on to God’” perceived as conferrer of all good (42).
Newman conceptualizes the doctrines of the church as verbalizations of ancient visions and imprints. Reflections upon such visions form propositions and ostensibly limitless progressions, as in the meditation on the cross. The recognition of the whole arrives through immersion in the life of the church, which itself expresses the images of the divine in Scripture. The author describes admirably that the unification of figures retrieves Aristotle’s notion of the poetical mind. For Newman, Catholics can contemplate doctrines with the “eye of the soul” and have “spiritual sight” of objects in this reality (242). Grace inscribes the truth of revelation, garnering later insights. Newman viewed the life of the sacraments as an atmosphere of divine presence, informing a person’s entire surroundings.
Chapter 7 looks particularly to the manner in which imagination informs civilization. D. highlights that Newman pondered in The Idea of a University how the intellect and faith could realize equal freedom in modern culture. In a rational era, Newman opined, the imagination is subtly abandoned due to the rigor of examining objects of the imagination by way of reason. “There arises an inclination to disregard such ‘objects of imagination’ altogether, as a ‘basis’ for thought” (304). D. observes that in Newman a civilization must take as its basis objects of “faith and devotion,” to raise civilization higher than “man as he is.” The university has the parallel obligation to convey a certain style of mind, a wisdom or philosophy. D. concludes that, in Newman’s system, the fulfillment of the individual intellect necessarily animates and elevates the life of society.
In the final section, the author makes a persuasive case that An Essay in Aid of the Grammar of Assent justifies and advances the religious imagination for the spiritual life. D. carefully presents that the Grammar focuses on “real apprehension” and “ratiocination” on concrete items within a concrete reality. A religious imagination proceeds to construct a theology that deciphers its surroundings “and thus it gains a more and more consistent and luminous vision of God from the most unpromising materials” (447). The intellect that governs the imagination thus receives the countless “partial aspects” of the image of God, engendering a whole realm of thought.
Dive’s interdisciplinary dialogue succeeds in presenting a cumulative picture of the English cardinal on the imagination. The work includes splendid vignettes on poetical vision such as The Dream of Gerontius on the doctrine of purgatory. While each section is richly informative, the book can be difficult to read due to extensive quotations and verbose paragraphs. Nevertheless, D. raises important questions for the contemporary discourse on the Catholic imagination, drawing attention to the practical import and the spirituality of image. While too advanced for new readers of Newman, the book would be a superb complement to graduate courses on religious epistemology and spirituality.