GOD of the universe that calls for explanation, but its coming into existence At a time when philosophers and scientists were happy to accept that the universe had existed forever, there was no question of looking for a cause of its origin, only of looking for an explanation of its nature But when it is proposed that the universe began at a point of time measurably distant in the past, then it seems perverse simply to shrug one’s shoulders and decline to seek any explanation In the case of an ordinary existent, we would be uneasy with a blithe announcement that there was simply no reason for its coming into existence Unless we accept a Kantian view of the limitations of reason, it seems irrational to abandon this attitude when the existing thing in question is all-pervasive, like the universe Newman’s Philosophy of Religion If one accepts that the origin of the universe needs some explanation outside itself, that is not of itself sufficient to amount to a belief in God as defined in the great monotheistic traditions Nor, even according to some believers, is it necessary So devout a philosopher as John Henry Newman could write, ‘It is indeed a great question whether Atheism is not as philosophically consistent with the phenomena of the physical world, taken by themselves, as the doctrine of a creative and governing power’ (US 186) For Newman, the justification of religious faith came from quite different sources, as he explained in The Grammar of Assent ‘Faith’, for Newman, has a quite precise sense Faith in God is more than just belief that there is a God: Aristotle believed in a prime mover unmoved but his belief was not faith Faith in God was not necessarily total commitment to God: Marlowe’s Faustus, on the verge of damnation, still believes in redemption Faith contrasted with reason and love; the special feature of a belief that makes it faith is that it is a belief in something as revealed by God, belief in a proposition on the word of God Such was Newman’s conception of faith It is a Catholic conception, different from the Lutheran one that we encountered in Kierkegaard Faith, understood as belief rather than commitment, is an operation of the intellect, not of the will or emotions But is it a reasonable operation of the intellect, or is it rash and irrational? Newman accepts that the testimony on which faith is based is in itself weak It can only convince 305