The “illative sense” is a sort of holistic approach to God that transcends the purely rational approach. It is the approach that Pascal took when he said the “heart has reasons reason cannot know.”
I’m not sure I would phrase it this way.
For Newman the Illative Sense
is a purely rational approach: it is just
not an approach based purely on formal logic. It is a form of implicit reasoning vs explicit reasoning (
Oxford University Sermons =
OUS], #13). He is nowhere near as romantic about it as Paschal; but it is a process that takes into account the whole man.
It’s much more akin to this. King Alonso, in
The Tempest by Shakespeare, is agonizing over a difficult concrete decision. Several men are buzzing around him throwing out arguments that often conflict with him. Finally he blurts out, “You cram these words into mine ears against the stomach of my sense.” (act 2, sc. 1, lines 111-112) There were some men at Oxford in the nineteenth century who denied that one could both say that and be rational. Newman spent his life affirming that both can go together. He affirmed that one could hold salvific faith with the stomach of his sense knowing nothing of sophisticated logical argumentation, and that that would yet be a rational act.
Technically . . .
Newman attacked the liberals in the Oriel Common Room for their abuse of logic and reason in relation to faith in a three-fold way. (1) He observed that for accurate and correct reasoning one need not consciously employ logic. (2) He notes that the act of faith is not the only use of reason that may seem discursively inadequate. (3) Reasoning in everyday life largely concerns concrete matters and very often lacks the abstract concepts needed for formal logic. (
OUS, 5:12; 11:24)
Newman asks: “How is an exercise of the mind [formal logic], which is for the most part occupied with notions, not things, competent to deal with things, except partially and indirectly.” (
Grammar of Assent, 8,1,2)
He then goes on: “The conclusion in a real or concrete question is foreseen or predicted rather than actually attained; foreseen in the number and direction of accumulated premises, which all converge to it, and as a result of their combination, approach it more nearly than any assignable difference, yet do not touch it logically (though only not touching it,) on account of the nature of its subject matter, and the delicate and implicit character of at least part of the reasonings on which it depends. It is by the strength, variety, and multiplicity of premises, which are only probable, not by invincible syllogisms,–by objections overcome, by adverse theories neutralized, by difficulties gradually clearing up, by exceptions proving the rule, by unlooked-for correlations found with received truths, by suspense and delay in the process issuing in triumphant reactions,–by all these ways, and many others, it is that the practiced and experienced mind is able to make a sure divination that a conclusion is inevitable, or which his lines of reasoning do not actually put him in possession.” (
Grammar of Assent, 8, 2, 3)
