Saving human knowledge: John Henry Newman's epistemology of theology

Since Schleiermacher, debates about how to conceive of the discipline of theology, of where to begin, and of how to proceed in the task of theological inquiry have focused on matters of theory and method. These issues have been treated together under the heading of prolegomena, and have come to dominate theology in modern times without significant, lasting results, and with an increasing tendency to bring theology into focus through external interests.;Alternatively, William J Abraham has proposed that theology would be better served by replacing prolegomena with a sub-discipline called the epistemology of theology. On the analogy of an epistemology of science, the principle is one of particularism: that each intellectual endeavor, while ideally sharing the same general epistemology, is likely to have particular features, conditions, and demands that need to be developed with attention to that endeavor's first principles, goals, and specific data. It is these particularities that receive emphasis in a domain-specific epistemology.;Proceeding then with the epistemological tools of analytic philosophy, I have explored John Henry Newman's contributions to constructing to this proposed sub-discipline. He was deeply concerned with the rational status of Christian belief, the Church's office in teaching Christian belief, and the process by which the individual comes to have true beliefs that are rationally justified. As a figure in the tradition of British empiricism with these concerns, Newman is naturally well-disposed to contribute to an analytic epistemology of theology.;In the course of pursuing Newman's contributions to a nascent epistemology of theology, certain issues rise to prominence: the reliability and relevance of various modes of human cognition in conditions of uncertainty, the probable nature of human knowledge in concrete, personal circumstances, and the seeming need for absolute certitude of mind or certainty of knowledge in matters of ultimate concern such as the existence of God and the salvation of souls.;This project targets the ongoing dilemma between how the mind comes to know and the nature of Christian theological knowledge in Newman's proposal. However, his thought contains the philosophical resources for a critical appropriation that make possible a Newmanian epistemology of theology that coherently combines a reliable rational belief-forming process and the ontic nature of Christian belief.