1801 – 1890

John Henry Newman

Worth knowing

An Oxford clergyman and leader of the Oxford Movement in the Church of England. He became a Roman Catholic in 1845 and was made a cardinal in 1879.
His Grammar of Assent (1870) asks how ordinary people come to be rightly certain of things they cannot strictly prove, by many pieces of evidence converging on one conclusion.
The game uses his account of how belief works and does not follow him to Rome.

In Scholar’s Dream, John Henry Newman has one book

Grammar of AssentJohn Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (1870)RationalityFaith

John Henry Newman’s quotes in the game

Every quotation from John Henry Newman that a player meets in Scholar’s Dream, attached to the move that says it. Or see them as a plain list →

In Scholar’s Dream, books argue with each other, and each thing a book can do in a debate is called a move. Every quote below is spoken by one of those moves. Open “How it works in the game” under a quote to see the move, which books learn it, and which arguments it answers best.

“Life is for action. If we insist on proofs for every thing, we shall never come to action: to act you must assume, and that assumption is faith.”
John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (1870), public domain.public domain

How it works in the game: the move Life Is for Action

RationalityArgument · power 92 · 100% accurate

In the gameNewman grants that certainty is rare and then asks what anybody actually does about it. Nobody waits for proof before marrying, sailing, or trusting a friend; everyone assumes far past the evidence every day, and calls it ordinary. Demand proof for everything and you do not get caution — you get paralysis.

Learned byGrammar of Assent (Lv 1)

Strong against

×3The Ethics of Beliefan argument · why?

The essay assumes a man can always suspend judgement and wait. Newman asks when — nobody has ever waited for proof before trusting a friend, and the rule would stop every life it touched!

×2The Analogy of Religiona book · why?

Newman builds the Grammar of Assent on ground Butler cleared, and he quotes the Analogy on the weight of probability.

“We are in a world of facts, and we use them; for there is nothing else to use. We do not quarrel with them, but we take them as they are, and avail ourselves of what they can do for us.”
John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (1870), Part II ch. 9 §1 (public domain).public domain

How it works in the game: the move The Illative Sense

FaithArgument · power 86 · 100% accurate

In the gameNewman’s name for the judgement that weighs many small things at once and reaches a certainty no single one of them carries. It is how a doctor reads a patient and how anybody knows a friend is lying. Not a syllogism, and not a feeling either.

Learned byGrammar of Assent (Lv 50)

Strong against

×2The Analogy of Religiona book · why?

Newman reasons from many small probabilities, and he calls Butler the great master of that kind of reasoning.

×2The Ethics of Beliefan argument · why?

“Sufficient evidence” is doing all the work and is never defined. Real certainty is reached by weighing many small things at once, which is not a sum and never was!

Words John Henry Newman’s books borrow from others

Moves these books can learn whose quotation comes from somebody else. The citation on each one names who actually said it.

“For in him we live, and move, and have our being. As some of your own poets have said.”
Acts 17:28 (WEB) — Paul at the Areopagus, quoting the Athenians’ own poets back to them.

How it works in the game: the move Affirm

Status

In the gamePick the part of the opponent’s case that is true and affirm it. That point can no longer be used against you, and the opponent’s Defend falls sharply. It deals no damage. Affirm something false and you have only agreed with an error.

Learned byGrammar of Assent (Lv 1)

“He who pleads his cause first seems right; until another comes and questions him.”
Proverbs 18:17 (WEB).

How it works in the game: the move Question the Premise

RationalityType shift

In the gameChallenge the foundation of an argument before it can be pressed. Lowers the foe’s Contend.

Learned byGrammar of Assent (Lv 54)

“…is not a happy life what all will, and no one altogether wills it not?… And this is the happy life, to rejoice to Thee, of Thee, for Thee; this is it, and there is no other.”
Augustine, Confessions 10.20–23 (trans. E. B. Pusey, 1838, public domain).public domain

“the desire of the true good is naturally implanted in the minds of men; only error leads them aside out of the way in pursuit of the false.”
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy III.2 (trans. H. R. James, 1897, public domain).public domain

How it works in the game: the move Argument from Desire

Natural TheologyArgument · power 74 · 100% accurate

In the gameNobody has to be taught to want to be happy, and nothing on offer finishes the wanting. Augustine and Boethius, a century apart, both take the permanent hunger as evidence of where the food is.

Learned byGrammar of Assent (Lv 56)

Strong against

×4The Absurdan argument · why?

Camus grants the hunger and the silence, and calls their collision the absurd. Augustine and Lewis take the same hunger the other way. A hunger for something the world cannot supply is one of the ordinary signs that something else supplies it. Camus wrote his university thesis on Augustine.

×4Totem and Tabooan argument · why?

Freud explains where the longing came from. He never asks the other question — whether a longing this specific, appearing in every culture, is evidence that it has an object.

×2.5Platoa book · why?

Diotima’s ladder in the Symposium climbs from one beautiful body to all of them to beauty itself, because no particular thing ever finishes the wanting. Augustine makes that argument nearly eight centuries later and grants Plato every rung of it. What a Form cannot do is come looking for you.

×2Grace as Examplean argument · why?

Augustine found that nothing he chose could satisfy him until God changed what he loved. Grace did not only teach him. It changed his heart.

×2Penséesa book · why?

Pascal said that his account of man, wretched and great together, came from Augustine.

×2The Ethics of Beliefan argument · why?

A duty to believe only on proof is itself believed without proof — the rule cannot pass its own test!

Who else was alive

John Henry Newman against everyone else in the game.

A.D. 450A.D. 700A.D. 950A.D. 1200A.D. 1450A.D. 1700A.D. 1950

Boethius Boniface John of Damascus Daniel of Winchester Timothy I Alcuin of York Pope Leo III Eulogius of Córdoba Paul Alvaro of Córdoba Rimbert Humbert of Silva Candida Michael Cerularius Peter III of Antioch Anselm of Canterbury Ari Thorgilsson Ebo and Herbord Thomas Aquinas John Wyclif Lorenzo Valla Girolamo Savonarola Pope Paul III Martin Luther Miles Coverdale William Tyndale Emperor Charles V John Calvin Teresa of Ávila John Jewel The Council of Trent The English exiles at Geneva Hugo Grotius René Descartes John Owen Blaise Pascal John Bunyan Louis XIV of France Pierre Bayle Joseph Butler Jonathan Edwards Thomas Reid George Campbell William Paley John Henry Newman J. C. Ryle Friedrich Nietzsche James Orr B. B. Warfield Herman Bavinck W. R. Sorley James Denney J. Gresham Machen

Solid bar = firm dates · faded = approximate51 authors sit outside this window