Toward a First Article of Assent

It's 7:15 AM on Sunday and I have just completed morning prayer. Sunday morning feels like the right time for me to think in a sustained way about my passage through the Nicene Gauntlet, because the Nicene Creed is recited at every Sunday Mass in the Catholic tradition, except on Easter, when the renewal of baptismal promises replaces the Creed (cf. Is the Nicene Creed Required at Sunday Mass?)

I begin this morning's deliberations with a review of the first article of the Nicene Creed:

I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.

Next, I consider the first article in the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations' Statement of Faith:

There is one God, who has revealed Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Every divine action in the world is accomplished by the Father working through the Son and in the power of the Spirit. This God has revealed Himself in creation and in the history of Israel as transmitted in Scripture. (Gen. 1:1; I Cor. 8:6; Eph. 4:4-6)

Then I reflect on the first article of belief in the Creation Care Church: 

We believe exclusively and wholeheartedly in the God of the Bible. (Mark 12:30)

Fourth and finally this week, I consider the opening mindfulness training from the Order of Interbeing: 

Aware of the suffering created by fanaticism and intolerance, we are determined not to be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology, even Buddhist [or Abrahamic] ones. We are committed to seeing the Buddhist [and Abrahamic] teachings as a guiding means that help us learn to look deeply and develop our understanding and compassion. They are not doctrines to fight, kill, or die for. We understand that fanaticism in its many forms is the result of perceiving things in a dualistic or discriminative manner. We will train ourselves to look at everything with openness and the insight of interbeing in order to transform dogmatism and violence in ourselves and the world.

There are different problems that I encounter in giving my full assent to the above propositions. But what does it mean to give my full assent to any proposition? To help me better understand this process, I will now turn to an excerpt from An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent by John Henry Newman. Cardinal Newman writes:

And in fact, these three modes of entertaining propositions - doubting them, inferring them, assenting to them, are so distinct in their action, that, when they are severally carried out into the intellectual habits of the individual, they become the principles and notes of three distinct states or characters of mind. For instance, in the case of Revealed Religion, according as one or the other of these is paramount within him, a man is a sceptic as regards it; or a philosopher, thinking it more or less probable considered as a conclusion of reason; or he has an unhesitating faith in it, and is recognized as a believer. If he simply disbelieves, or dissents, then he is assenting to the contradictory of the thesis, viz. to the proposition that there is no Revelation.

Many minds of course there are, which are not under the predominant influence of any one of the three. Thus men are to be found of irreflective, impulsive, unsettled, or again of acute minds, who do not know what they believe and what they do not, and who may be by turns sceptics, inquirers, or believers; who doubt, assent, infer, and doubt again, according to the circumstances of the season (p. 6).

This seems to me a very helpful way to assess the present state of my character. Am I by temperament and intellectual habit more of a doubting sceptic, a philosophical inquirer, or a faithful believer? Am I none of these three exclusively, but more of an unsettled type?  

Let me come back for a moment to the first article of the Nicene Creed by way of illustration: "I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible."   

Set aside for now whether I think God is male, or whether I think God is the maker of all things visible and invisible, rather than only some things visible and invisible. Do I believe in one God? Well, honestly, it depends on what we mean by "believe," "one" and "God"!

This bent of reasoning, this habit of mind, would seem to put me squarely in the seat of the philosopher. My psychiatric disability, on the other hand, makes me something of an unsettled character type.

If I don't feel comfortable asserting that I believe in one God, what do I feel comfortable asserting? Here is a tentative step toward a first article of assent:

I am on a serious philosophical journey to know, feel, and live the truth about the God of the Tanakh, the New Testament, and the Quran - whether this God is real, and one; whether Moses, Jesus, and Muhammed are this God's prophets; and why the Incarnation of Jesus, a Jew crucified almost two thousand years ago by the Roman Empire, now defines the Gregorian Epoch of our Common Era - is this more likely to be an accident of culture, or is this more likely to be the God of Israel speaking to us through world history?