Acting In the Face of Uncertainty

"We are so constituted, that if we insist upon being as sure as is conceivable, in every step of our course, we must be content to creep along the ground, and can never soar. If we are intended for great ends, we are called to great hazards; and, whereas we are given absolute certainty in nothing, we must in all things choose between doubt and inactivity, and the conviction that we are under the eye of One who, for whatever reason, exercises us with the less evidence when He might give us the greater." 
 -- John Henry Newman, Oxford University Sermon XI

This semester, I'm taking a class called "Faith and Reason," in which we are examining the nature of faith.  The first half of the semester we are reading John Henry Newman (1801-1890), and the second half we will be reading Aquinas.  I have not read Newman prior to this semester, and I have been happily surprised to find that I resonate with his thought, which seems to me careful, generous, wise, and deeply Christian.

The quote with which I began this post is from one of Newman's Oxford University Sermons, as they are known.  More discourses than sermons, they are, as the full title makes clear, Fifteen Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford Between A.D. 1826 and 1843, at the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin. 

I share this particular quote, because Newman's words spoke into the uncertainty that has characterized my life in recent months.  That is, I have been faced with difficult decisions regarding whether to take on additional debt to finance my seminary education; regarding my place in the convoluted terrain of Anglicanism in North America; and regarding whether I have a vocation to holy orders.  I know I am taking Newman's words slightly out of context, but I was encouraged by his insistence that we can never be absolutely certain about any decision, so that choosing a particular course of action (even though doubts remain) and inaction are the only real alternatives.  As Newman puts it later in the same sermon, "Courage does not consist in calculation, but in fighting against chances."  I have chosen to take on a significant amount of student loans in order to continue at Duke, and while I remain uncertain of the wisdom of this choice, Newman's words give me hope that my choice may be, in God's providence, one of "fighting against chances."