SOURCE: “A Personal God,” in Healing the Wound of Humanity: The Spirituality of John Henry Newman, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1993, pp. 10-22.

In the following essay, Ker probes Newman's philosophical and literary approach to the existence of God.

In a recent study of the arguments from human experience for the existence of God, Newman has been criticized by Aidan Nichols, OP ‘for concentrating his energies so exclusively on one aspect of our experience, our awareness of moral obligation’, for ‘a unilateral concentration on moral experience’, that is, ‘our experience of conscience’.¹

Presumably there could be no objection to Newman placing the major emphasis on conscience since in doing so he would only be reflecting the whole thrust of the Bible and the Christian tradition, summed up in the words of St Paul on the law of God that is engraved on the hearts of human beings enlightened by...