I love thinking! Cardinal John Henry Newman 1801-1890 Newman begins his Essay on the Development with an epistemological assertion: “It is characteristic of our minds to be ever engaged in passing judgment on the things which come before us. No sooner do we apprehend than we judge: we allow nothing to stand by itself: we compare, contrast, abstract, generalize, connect, adjust, classify: and we view all our knowledge in the associations with which these processes have invested it.” And, he goes on to say, the more dimensions the idea brought before the human mind has, the more it will arrest and possess the minds of men, and the more “real” or “living” it can be said to be. The Incarnation, writes Newman, is one such living idea—it is, in fact, the living idea of Christianity. Because of the great mystery at its center, its aspects are numberless, and our limited human minds cannot see them all at once. This is why there must be a process of development: This process . . . by which the aspects of an idea are brought into consistency and form, I call its development, being the germination and maturation of some truth or apparent truth on a large mental field. On the other hand this process will not be a development, unless the assemblage of aspects, which constitute its ultimate shape, really belongs to the idea from which they start.
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 14:42:06 +0000
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