The Spiritual Senses in John Henry Newman

Abstract

The spiritual senses have been a theme of many spiritual writers who have sought to catalog the ways in which we perceive God and the non-tangible world. John Henry Newman never took up the theme of the spiritual senses in a systematic or explicit way. Nonetheless, in examining his corpus, one may derive an idea of how Newman viewed perception and consciousness of the divine, both in this world and in the next. This study delineates two broad areas in which Newman exhibits a role for the spiritual senses: the present life and the life beyond death. In the present life, the spiritual senses are developed but not consciously deployed. After death, the soul is fully present to itself and, depending on its state develops the perceptual apparatus for the world previously hidden from it.