II. The Distinction between Faith and Reason

A. Faith and Reason: Three Aspects
B. The Deliverances of Faith: Preambles and Mysteries of the Faith
C. What it is to Have Faith
D. The Certitude of Faith

III.  Four Natural Questions

IV.   Classical Philosophy and Augustine's Search for God

• Myth: A community-forming narrative (story), or compilation of stories, concerning some or all of the following "big questions" about being (metaphysics) and goodness (morality): the origins of the universe (cosmogony); the nature of the universe (cosmology) and of the entities contained therein; the origin and nature of human beings; the good for human beings and the ways to attain it; the meaning (if any) of suffering and death. Always involves a "liturgical calendar" of feasts and celebrations that mark cycles in nature and in the history of the community, and hence it always or often involves something like a "priesthood."
  
  
• Philosophy: A systematic inquiry, proceeding (i) by way of dialectic and, as it were, diagrammatic reasoning, from what is better known to what is less known concerning the "big questions", and then (ii) by way of descent from general principles to particular conclusions (wisdom). Does not by its nature involve liturgical practice, though this can be grafted on to it. It might nonetheless involve a "way of life" because of the systematic doctrinal and moral formation given to the adherents of particular philosophical communities. (Note: Systematicity implies, among other things, (i) an emphasis on internal consistency and overall coherence, (ii) careful ordering of premises and conclusions, proceeding from what is more evident to what is less evident, (iii) multiple conceptual distinctions, (iv) completeness, and (v) a careful account of the different types and degrees of epistemic warrant.)

• Natural Science: A systematic theoretical and experimental inquiry into the principles and operations of nature. It does not of itself involve a full "way of life," though it can, as a practice, be embedded in such a way of life. (Question: Does (or can) natural science address all the questions that myth and philosophy have sought to answer? If not, does this show the limitations of inquiry in the sciences, or does it instead show that human beings should refrain from asking certain questions, or what?)

• Progressive replacement theory (August Comte, the "father of positivism" and his modern-day successors, e.g., Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Lawrence Krauss, etc.)
• Noninteractive parallelism ("Two-truth" or "many truth" theories)
• Integrationism (some forms of reductionism; Plato; Catholic intellectual tradition)

• Cicero and Augustine (Confessions book 3, chap. 4, and Fides et Ratio, ##26-27))
  
  
• The search for wisdom and the search for Christ.
  
  
• The distinction between eloquence and truth.
  
  
• The "uses of philosophy": intellectual technique vs. intellectual virtue embedded in a morally and spiritually rectified inquiry whose goal is ultimate truth and goodness.
 

• Aristotle (Plato, too) and Aquinas (Metaphysics 1.1-2 and Summa Contra Gentiles book 1, chaps. 1-2)
  
  
• Experience, art, and knowledge: the progressively enhanced grasp of first principles building upon — rather than rejecting ala Descartes — our initial pre-reflective grasp of those principles from within various cognitive, moral, and spiritual practices. On this view, intellectual inquiry is responsible to the first principles of the community within which it takes place, and any radical critique of those principles will itself be from a perspective that could serve as the basis for a better (or, alas, worse) form of community.  (Recall the Republic and see Fides et Ratio # 33.)
  
  
• Unqualified wisdom = knowledge (scientia) of first causes, beginning from speculative and practical first principles and systematically articulating what flows from those principles. Its objects include (as St. Thomas puts it):
  
  
• God as He is in Himself (metaphysics of God)
• Creatures insofar as they come from God (metaphysics of origins and nature of creatures)
• Creatures insofar as they are ordered toward God (destiny of created universe and morality for rational creatures)
   
• The pursuit of wisdom as the most perfect, noble, useful, and joyful of human undertakings. 
  
  Note here a tension. In other places, St. Thomas distinguishes between being wise by cognition (per cognitionem) from being wise by inclination (per inclinationem). The latter comes from that gift of the Holy Spirit called 'wisdom' and is nurtured by charity (supernatural love of God) rather than by study and intellectual inquiry. Hence, Psalm 19:8 says, "The law of the LORD is perfect, refreshing the soul; The decree of the LORD is trustworthy, giving wisdom to the simple." At the end of Fides et Ratio Pope John Paul exhorts Catholic teachers and intellectuals to "philosophize in Mary," the Seat of Wisdom. This sort of wisdom is a knowledge of God borne of love and friendship, and St. Thomas sees it as the deepest fulfillment of what the philosophers — along with Catholic theologians — have always desired.)
  
  

IC. Two Senses of Philosophy or Wisdom

• Philosophy in the broad sense: Philosophy as the love of wisdom free to draw upon every source of truth available to us, including divine revelation. For a Christian, this is metaphysical and moral theology, which is the fulfillment—because of both its completeness and its certitude—of the classical search for systematic wisdom. (See Fides et Ratio, ## 75-79.)
  
  
• Philosophy in the narrow sense: Philosophy as the pursuit of wisdom appealing only to the deliverances of reason and without direct appeal to divine revelation. This is "philosophical" metaphysics and moral theory, which presuppose the ancillary philosophical disciplines such as logic, philosophy of nature, philosophy of mind, etc.

Question: Why does St. Thomas make this distinction? Answer: Because of his respect (and that of many Fathers of the Church) for the intellectual achievements of certain key predecessors among the philosophers.  Notice the distinct projects of the Summa Theologiae (articulating the metaphysical and moral dimensions of Christian wisdom, including its central Christological element) and the Summa Contra Gentiles (showing that Christian wisdom is a plausible candidate for philosophical wisdom by the very same criteria — certitude and completeness — employed by the classical philosophers).  The Summa Contra Gentiles is a work addressed as a whole to a Christian audience, but what the audience gets to see is the conversation of St. Thomas (and his Christian friends) with the intellectually and morally well-disposed non-Christian philosophers, both classical and medieval.  Think of St. Thomas as visiting the first circle of Dante's Inferno (Limbo), where Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Cicero, Seneca, Thales, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus, Heraclitus, Averroes, Avicenna and others are milling around. In fact, one way to think of the main problem of faith and reason for the early intellectually sophisticated Christians and their medieval university counterparts is this:  In what sense are we the successors of the classical philosophers and the philosophical traditions they established?  St. Thomas's view is that the best classical philosophers can be led to see, by their own standards of successful intellectual inquiry, that Christian doctrine is a plausible candidate for the wisdom they are seeking.

ID. Conflicting Conceptions of the Roles of Reason and Affection within Philosophical Inquiry

• Modernist (Enlightenment): Philosophical inquiry is, ideally, an act of "pure" or "cool" reason alone, and the inquirer, qua inquirer, should strive to make inquiry as free from tradition, authority, and any affective commitments as possible. Historically, this conception of philosophical inquiry is initially accompanied by an excessive optimism about the reliability of reason and its ability to lead us to true wisdom on its own [Manicheans, Averroes, Descartes in the Discourse on Method, Locke in his Essay, Mill in On Liberty, the character of Cleanthes in Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion]; but it can easily be turned to a despairing skepticism—or even a pragmatic indifference—with regard to the search for wisdom when this optimism proves unwarranted [the character of Philo in Hume's Dialogues, at least in his more cheerful and superficial moments].
  
  
• Post-modernist (or Post-Enlightenment):  It is a delusion to think of the search for wisdom as anything but a movement of will or instinct, with reason serving only to rationalize what one already accepts without "reasonable" grounds. Every appeal to intellectual authority is thus simply an attempt to exercise power over others.  Here the presumed "authority of reason" is put on a par with any other claim to epistemic authority. This view can very easily lead to nihilism. Characterized by both (i) a seriousness with regard to ultimate metaphysical and moral questions (vs. pragmatism) and (ii) a suspicion regarding any claim to "absolute" truth or to intellectual authority, including the [sneer stage left] authority of reason [Nietzsche, Philo in his darker and more profound moments].
  
  
• Classical: At its best, philosophical inquiry is (i) an act of reason, (ii) presupposing moral rectitude fostered within a community which inquiry serves and to which it is responsible, (iii) by which we are able to discover—within severe limitations—metaphysical and moral truth. [Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Stoics]
  
  
• Christian-Classical: At its best, philosophical inquiry is an act of reason enlightened by a voluntary act of faith in divine revelation as a source of truth and informed by supernatural moral rectitude (charity) fostered within a community (the Church); beyond this there are disagreements among (i) the pessimists, sometimes called fideists or antisecularists, who hold that reason in its fallen state is at best very unreliable with respect to metaphysical and moral truth and who lean in the direction of post-modernism as defined above [Demea in Hume's Dialogues]; (ii) the guarded optimists, who hold that reason, even in the state of fallen nature, still retains its own relative autonomy and its ability to discover some metaphysical and moral truth [Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas and Pope John Paul II in Fides et Ratio (see # 16)]; and (iii)  the accommodationists, who tend to play down the distinctiveness of faith as a context for intellectual inquiry and who lean in the direction of modernism as defined above (liberal Christians).

IE. Anti-Secularism and Accommodationism: Two Temptations for Christian Thinkers

• Antisecularism (aka Fideism): "What has Jerusalem to do with Athens?"
  
  
• Emphasis on the fallenness of human reason, with a deep-seated pessimism with regard to absolute truth claims outside of those found in the sources of divine revelation.
  
  
• Secular philosophy as no more and no less than a competitor of Christian wisdom. (Cf. Confessions book 5, chap. 4)
  
  
• Disdain for — or at least suspicion with respect to — one or both of (i) natural theology (i.e., the study of God prescinding from Christian revelation) and (ii) the use of secular philosophy in the articulation of Christian theology.
  
  
• Possibility of a genuine, all-things-considered conflict between faith and reason. That is, even if we use reason as well and carefully as we can, we can still end up with certitude about falsehoods that we cannot in principle expose as falsehoods by the light of natural reason (ala William of Ockham).
  
  
• Some representatives of this general attitude (though in each case various qualifications must be made):  Tertullian, Ockham, Luther, Karl Barth.
  
 

• Accommodationism: "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?"
  
  
• There is no properly Christian philosophy. (On this point, see, once again, Fides et Ratio, ## 75-79.)
  
  
• The agendas of Christian philosophers should be set by prevailing agendas among non-Christian philosophers, and Christian philosophers should always work within problematics set by the best non-Christian philosophers.  (The same holds for all the arts and sciences.)
  
  
• Standards of evaluation used by Christian philosophers should conform wholly to those set by non-Christian philosophers, independently of which conception of philosophical inquiry the latter are presupposing.
  
  
• The main modern representative of this approach is to be found in the various currents of 19th and 20th century Protestant "liberal theology," along with its Catholic counterpart in the late 20th century. This is also the attitude of those Catholics who have managed, with a high degree of success, to secularize the study and practice of philosophy in the larger and older Catholic colleges and universities. (Note: Here liberal theology, which is on the wane these days, is to be distinguished from more radical approaches which are inspired by post-modernism and which come in both orthodox and unorthodox brands, e.g., various strains of feminist philosophy and theology and the "Radical Orthodoxy" movement centered at Cambridge University.)
  
  

• Augustine:
  
  
• Both antisecularism and accommodationism are to be avoided
  
  
• Christian intellectuals should be versed in the best of secular thought
  
  
• Christian intellectuals should distinguish as clearly as possible what is essential to the faith from what is not. (Confessions book 5, chap. 5)

 
• Aquinas:
  
  
• There can be no genuine conflicts between the deliverances of faith and the deliverances of reason.
  
  
• Apparent conflicts are in principle resolvable by us, either by showing that the philosophical or scientific arguments against the faith are not sound or that the faith does not entail the thesis under attack by those arguments.  Reason and faith thus serve equally as checks on one another.
  
  
• Philosophical (in the narrow sense) or 'scientific' arguments against a deliverance of faith can be answered on their own terms, i.e., without recourse to revelation, and, depending on the dialectical context, should be so answered.
  
  
• Reason in its fallen state is still capable of reaching objective truth, but it needs the guidance of faith in order to do its best and, in many cases, in order not to go astray. On a more positive note, the faith can suggest theses and lines of thought which, though they can in principle be attained by reason without revelation, in all likelihood would not be attained if it were not for revelation. (On this last point, see Fides et Ratio, #76.)
  
  

IG. Christian Apologetics

• The role of philosophy in the narrow sense: Even though, as we will see below, it is not the case that the faith of any given individual depends on proofs of the preambles of the Faith, it is nonetheless true that one indication of the reliability of the Christian claim to revelation is the ability of Christian intellectuals to carry out the project of the Summa Contra Gentiles, i.e., to show that some revealed truths can be established by natural reason and that none of them is contrary to the deliverances of reason.
  
  
• Respect for philosophical adversaries vs. muddleheaded condescension (= "All philosophies [or religions] say the same thing or are equally true and therefore do not, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary and despite the protestations of their practioners, contradict one another.")
  
  
• The limitations of reason: How far can reason take us?  Is it reasonable to look for some self-revelation on God's part?

• Faith and reason as powers, acts, and habits which are distinct sources of cognition, where reason includes every "natural" source of cognition.
  
  
• "The (supernatural) light of faith"
• "The (natural) light of reason"
 
• Faith and reason as contents yielded by these powers, acts, and habits — it remains an open question at this point whether these contents overlap.
  
  
• "The deliverances of the Faith" — revealed truths about God and God's relationship to us.
  
• "The deliverances of natural reason"
  
 
• Faith and reason as norms or standards for evaluating cognitive claims
  
  
• "Consonant with the Faith" vs. "contrary to the Faith"
  
• "Consonant with reason" vs. "contrary to reason"

IIB. The Deliverances of Faith: Preambles and Mysteries of the Faith

• The Christian drama as revealed in Sacred Scripture and the Teachings of the Church (think of these in connection with Kant's three questions: "What can we know? What should we do? What can we hope for?"). And if you're into heavy-duty metaphysics, there's always the Athanasian Creed (Quicumque vult):
  
  
• The existence and trinitarian nature of God
• God's creation of the world ex nihilo
• Original sin and its consequences
• The promise of redemption enacted by God's covenant with the Jewish people
• The incarnation of the Son of God and the atonement wrought by his passion, death, and resurrection
• The continuation of Christ's redemptive work through the Church and the sacraments
• The last things: resurrection, judgment, heaven/hell
• Divine moral law
• The ultimate end for human beings: intimate filial friendship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
  
  

• A distinction among the deliverances of the faith
  
  
• Preambles of the faith: those revealed truths (if any) that natural reason can in principle come to knowledge (scientia) of without the aid of divine revelation.
  
  
• Mysteries of the faith: those revealed truths that natural reason cannot even in principle come to knowledge of without the aid of divine revelation and hence must be accepted, if at all, by faith.
  
  
This distinction prompts the four "natural" questions to be noted below.  

Note that the Fathers of the Church, along with other intellectually sophisticated Christian writers of the first few centures A.D., generally sided with the ancient philosophical enlightenment in opposition to Greek and Roman paganism.  (Remember Plato's opposition to the poets in the Republic.)  So even though Christianity brought along its own story, the early Christians were insistent that this story was true in a sense that opened it up to philosophical scrutiny.  Thus it was natural for the Christians to define the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation by making use of metaphysical notions borrowed from the Greeks.
 

• Three operations of the intellect
  
  
• Abstraction: The formation of "quidditative" concepts, i.e., concepts of the species and properties of things that allow us to grasp things well enough to begin scientific inquiry.  [Aristotle's Categories]
  
  
• Composition and Division: The formation of affirmative and negative propositions capable of being true or false. [Aristotle's On Intrepretation]
  
  
• Discursive reasoning (sometimes called cogitation by St. Thomas): The formation of chains of inference.  [Aristotle's Prior Analytics and Posterior Analytics]
  
  Note: Christian faith is an act or habit of the intellect having God as its primary object and what is revealed by God as its propositional objects.
  
  

• The possible (or passive or potential) intellect
  
  
Aristotle: In intellective cognition the intellect becomes like the thing cognized by being configured by an intelligible likeness of the thing known.

St. Thomas restatement: Sensible matter : sensible form :: passive intellect : intelligible likeness (intelligible species).

That is, just as the union of this form (aardvarkiness) with primary matter results in Andy the aardvark, so the union of this intelligible likeness (aardvarkiness*) with the intellect-as-passive (or potential intellect) results in this act of understanding (or act of intellective cognition) of aardvarks.

Note: In composition and division the passive intellect is of itself neutral with respect to accepting or rejecting a proposition. So if the intellect does accept a proposition it must be moved either (i) involuntarily by the very content of the proposition as seen by "the natural light of reason" or (ii) voluntarily by the will.

• The distinction between acceptance and assent
  
  
• To accept p = to think p true
  
  
• To assent to p = to accept p and to adhere strongly to p
  
  Note: Contemporary philosophers often use the term 'belief' for what St. Thomas calls acceptance, whereas many translators of St. Thomas use 'belief' for what St. Thomas calls having faith (in the generic sense). This can lead to confusion, and so in what follows I will avoid the term 'belief'.
  
  

• Taxonomy of cognitive acts or "propositional attitudes" (based partly on De Veritate, ques. 14, art.1  and partly on Summa Theologiae 2-2, ques. 1, art. 4)
  
  
• Different modes in which the intellect is moved (if at all) solely by the the evidential status of the content of the proposition p that serves as its object:
  
  
• Dubitatio (doubt in the sense of hesitation): The intellect hesitates or wavers between p and not-p without accepting either of them. (This can happen either (i) because there is no evidence one way or the other or (ii) because the evidence for one side balances the evidence for the other.)
  
  
• Suspicio (suspecting, as in "I suspect that Joanna is a better person than we give her credit for"): The intellect accepts (or leans toward) p, but very tentatively. (Here p is slightly more evident than not-p, but neither one is compellingly evident.)
  
  
• Intellectus (grasp of the self-evident or the per se compellingly evident): The intellect assents to p immediately upon understanding p. (There is an obvious extension of this act of intellect to what is "evident to the senses".)
  
  
• Scientia (scientific knowledge): The intellect assents to p immediately upon seeing, via discursive reasoning or cogitation, p's necessary connection to propositions that are self-evident—even though p itself is not self-evident.
  
  

• Different modes in which the intellect is moved freely by the will rather than by the content of p:
  
  
• Opinio (opinion):  p does not compel immediate assent, but the intellect is moved by the will to accept p, though not firmly and with a "wariness" of not-p; so the intellect does not assent to p. (What's the difference betwen opinio and suspicio? The evidence might be the same or nearly the same, but the involvement of will and affection suggests that opinio concerns something we care about a lot or else need to decide about.)
  
  
• Fides (faith—or 'belief' in most translations): p does not compel immediate assent, but the intellect is moved by the will to assent to p because (i) the intellect perceives p as being proposed as true by a trustworthy authority and (ii) the person who assents desires some good promised by assent to p.
  
  Specifically Christian faith:  God must move us by His actual grace in order for us to assent to the mysteries of the Faith. St. Thomas distinguishes three aspects of the theological virtue of faith: credere Deo (to turst in God as a truthteller), credere Deum (to assent to the propositions that God reveals), credere Deum (to will to assent to the revealed propositions on God's say-so). Also, faith exists as a virtue only to the extent that it is informed by the theological virtue of charity; it is possible to have the habit of faith without charity, as happens in the case of the demons (see James 2:19) and baptized Christians who are not in the state of grace and who have not committed a mortal sin that is directly opposed to the virtue of faith.)
  
  
Note 1: In dubitatio, opinio, suspicio, and faith the proposition in question is not intellectually evident to any significant degree.

Note 2: It is possible for faith in this generic sense to be misguided, as when a person is gullible or deceiving himself or engaging in wishful thinking. On the other hand, it is also possible for a person to reject what is proposed for faith when he ought not to, and this through intellectual arrogance or through a pathological distrust of others, both of which lead to a lack of docility.  (See Augustine on reason and authority below.)

• The distinctiveness of faith
  
  
• vs. dubitatio: faith involves accepting p
  
  
• vs. opinio and suspicio: faith involves assenting to p
  
  
• vs. intellectus: faith involves cogitation, i.e., discursive reasoning
  
  
• vs. scientia: in faith cogitation does not cause assent by rendering p intellectually evident. Rather, cogitation leads one to see faith as a trustworthy means to attaining a desired end. (In the case of Christian faith, this end is ultimate human flourishing, viz., 'eternal life', which is seen to consist in union with the Holy Trinity.) Thus, faith does not completely satisfy the intellect, but instead leaves it 'restless'.
  
  

St. Thomas distinguishes two types of certitude:


• Firmness of adherence because of the trustworthiness of the source of cognition (or certitude from the cause of cognition): Christian faith is more certain in this sense than either scientia or intellectus, because the supernatural sunlight of faith, which is caused by the first truth (= the divine intellect), is a more trustworthy source of truth than is the sixty-watt natural light of reason. (Think of the faith of the martyrs and of the fanatical love of God demonstrated by saints like Francis of Assisi, aka Saint Nutcase, or Mother "Let me clean up the puke" Theresa.)
  
  
• Evidentness to reason of the object of assent (or certitude from the evidentness of the object of cognition): Christian faith is less certain in this sense than either scientia or intellectus.  It does not put the mind to rest, as it were.

REPLY: "That there are certain truths about God that totally surpass man's ability appears with greatest evidence":


• 1. Argument from our incapacity to grasp the divine substance (i.e., nature): We cannot in principle comprehend the divine nature, where comprehension includes knowledge of a substance in itself and knowledge of all its possibilities. For all our knowledge begins with that which falls under the senses. But our cognition of God's sensible effects is a cognition of effects which are not "equal to" their cause. So even though what we know of God's sensible effects might be able to lead us to knowledge in the strict sense of some truths about God, we have no reason to believe that God's nature is exhausted by whatever it takes to create our world. (For instance, on the basis of what we know about the created universe, we have no reason to believe that there are three persons in God — just as, on the basis of what I know about my car, I have no knowledge whatsoever about the personal lives of those who designed and manufactured the car.)
  
  
• 2. Argument from the gradation of intellects: It is reasonable for a less intelligent person to believe that there are truths grasped by a more intelligent person which he cannot grasp. But the intellect of an angel surpasses any human intellect by a greater distance than that by which any human intellect surpasses any other. (For an angel has cognition of God through a much more perfect effect, viz., his own angelic nature, than any effect through which we have cognition of God.) And the divine intellect exceeds an angelic intellect by a greater distance than that by which an angelic intellect exceeds a human intellect. But even an angel cannot by nature grasp all of the things about God which God himself grasps: "So just as it would be the height of folly for a simple person to assert that what a philosopher proposes is false on the ground that he himself cannot understand it, so (and even more so) it is the acme of stupidity for a man to suspect as false what is divinely revealed through the ministry of the angels simply because it cannot be investigated by reason."
  
  
• 3. Argument from our failure to grasp even those things which we can in principle investigate and grasp: Even with respect to sensible things we realize that we are in ignorance to a great extent, and in most cases we are not able to discover fully the natures of those things. (This argument is just as telling today despite the fact that natural science has advanced far beyond what it was in the days of St. Thomas.) So it is hardly surprising that our intellect is not equipped to comprehend God.

REPLY: If the preambles were not revealed, then three really bad consequences would ensue:

• 1. Only a few people would have knowledge of the preambles: (a) Many people do not have the sort of intelligence that would make them capable of coming to a natural knowledge of the preambles of the Faith. No amount of study and studious application would bring them to a knowledge of the preambles. (b) Most people have to tend to the necessities of life and hence do not have enough leisure time to pursue philosophical studies. (Within the Church, too, there are many other important roles to be filled.) (c) Many who have the innate intellectual prerequisites and the possibility of being freed from other duties are nonetheless too indolent (i.e., lazy) to undertake such studies. Much hard study is required and those who are willing to undergo such a regimen are few in number — even though God has implanted in human nature a natural desire for knowledge.
  
  
• 2. Those who did discover the preambles would do so only after a long time — which is bad because it is important for them to adhere to ultimate truth as soon as possible. This is in part because of the profundity of these truths and of the arguments leading one to knowledge of them, and in part because of the long preparation needed in order to approach these matters with even a modicum of confidence. In addition, the passions of youth get in the way of this long and necessary preparation, as does (ahem) old age. St. Thomas concludes: "Thus if reason were the only way to come to a knowledge of God, then the human race would remain in the darkest shadows of ignorance. For the cognition of God, which makes human beings especially perfect and good, would come only to a few and to them only after a long time."
  
  
• 3. The chances are great that the knowledge attained would be admixed with error and uncertainty, and this because of the weakness of our intellect. Many would fail to see the truth of those things which have been demonstrated, because they know that many who have been called "wise" have disagreed with one another and thus accepted falsehoods on important matters. On the other hand, many of the alleged demonstrations probably contain some falsehoods, and so are deserving only of tentative assent. Probably the best we can do is to have a well-grounded opinion that God exists and has certain attributes. At least this much is true: we won't get the adherence to the Faith characteristic of the martyrs just from philosophical studies. St. Thomas concludes: "And so it was necessary that a fixed certitude and pure truth with respect to divine matters be presented to human beings through the way of faith."

REPLY: There are several reasons why God might do this:

• 1. Faith in the mysteries is the beginning of eternal life, and this beginning is necessary if we are to tend with zeal to a form of happiness which exceeds what reason can aspire to here and now. These truths call us to something beyond our present state and so serve as an antidote to pessimism and despair. (Even the pagan philosophers felt impelled to call us to the pursuit of goods beyond those which are obvious to the senses.)
  
  
• 2. Faith in the mysteries makes our knowledge of God more correct, since it reinforces the idea that we do not comprehend God. For otherwise we might tend to forget that we know God truly only when we believe that he is beyond everything that it is possible for a human beings to think of on their own.
  
  
• 3. Faith in the mysteries curbs the presumption of reason and thus serves as an antidote to a rash optimism about our cognitive powers. As St. Thomas puts it: "For there are those who rely on their own abilities to such an extent that they think that they are able to measure the whole nature of things by their own intellects — so that they judge as true whatever seems true to them and as false whatever what does not seem true to them. So in order that the human mind, liberated from this presumption, might be able to attain to a modest investigation of the truth, it was necessary for God to propose to man things which completely exceed his intellect."
  
  
• 4. These truths give us the greatest delight and keep us from fixing our sights wholly on mortal things. We need this sort of delight in order to keep from falling back into 'forgetfulness'.

REPLY: First of all, it is right to worry about credulity as well as about pride and presumption. If the search for wisdom depends upon authority and there is no way to distinguish competing claims to authoritativeness, then it seems that the only alternative to skepticism will be a blind leap into any old dogma or creed. St. Thomas, however, warns us against credulity with the same sternness with which he warns us against presumption and intellectual arrogance. In the case of the mysteries, he tells us, we can see how they are fitting (conveniens) and how they illuminate our lives. But, in addition, we can show that it is reasonable to put our ttrust the authority that reveals them to us. That is, we can, at least retrospectively, discern many signs indicating that to accept the mysteries of Faith on this authority is not credulous or simpleminded.

• a. Miracles: St. Thomas mentions Christ's healings and raisings from the dead, but he is even more impressed by the spread of the early Church by idiotae and simplices filled with the Holy Spirit — and this without the force of arms or a promise of sensual pleasure. (By the way, if you have any worries about 20th century attacks on the reliability of the portrayal of Jesus in the Gospels, I highly recommend (in fact, I give the book my highest recommendation) Brant Pitre's recent fairly-easy-to-read book The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ.)
  
  
• b. The witness of the martyrs: The early Church spread among persecutions.
  
  
• c. The nature of the message: The Gospel does not play to our weaknesses: rather, things that surpass the human intellect are preached, the desires of the flesh are to be curbed (not so popular these days or at any time, for that matter) and the things of this world (wealth, glory, fame, power, etc.) are to be despised.
  
  
• d. The fulfillment of prophecy: That all this happened was no accident, but was instead the fulfillment of the Scriptures.
  
  
• e. The character of the founder: Note the contrast here with Mohammed, who according to St. Thomas, was a violent man who spread his religion by the force of arms.
  
  
• f. The marks of the church: One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic
  
  
• g. Respect for intellectual integrity

The discussion of Mohammedanism is very interesting. While St. Thomas is not claiming that other religions and worldviews are devoid of truth, he nonetheless believes that it's foolish to trust those who throw reason to the winds, or who cater to people's weaknesses, or who have an unjustifiable degree of faith in reason. Important here are the character of the founder, the nature of the message, etc. One intriguing criticism is that Mohammed's doctrine does not contain anything that could not be discovered by someone with modest intellectual endowment — i.e., nothing akin to the mysteries of the faith. Notice that St. Thomas does not deny that there are truths taught by Islam, but claims that these truths are mixed with falsehoods. And one who is a true seeker of wisdom will not be satisfied with falsehoods.

• Early academic career (books 1 and 2)
  
  
• Cicero's Hortensius (book 3)
  
  
• Manichean rationalism (books 3 and 4)
  
  
• Flirtation with skepticism (book 5)
  
  
• The role of authority in the search for wisdom (book 6)
  
  
• Platonism (book 7)
  
  
• The witness of others (book 8)
  
  
• "Tolle et lege"

•  The overriding fear of being gullible (See Fides et Ratio, #6).

• The spectre of rationalism, where rationalism entails that in order not to be foolish one must proportion one's assent strictly to the evidentness of what one assents to or the evidentness of the relevant claim to revelation (cf. John Locke). (So much for the 'foolish and fanatical' martyrs, it would seem, as well as St. Francis the Crazyman, etc.)
  
  
• The pervasiveness of faith in everyday human life
  
  
• For Augustine the question ultimately becomes not whether to trust in some authoritative teacher with respect to the big questions, but rather which authoritative teacher to trust in. For one thing that is evident is that our natural cognitive powers are unable to provide us with the sort of comprehensive and fixed vision of the world that we need (i) to fulfill our deep affective desire for meaning in our lives and (ii) to order our lives well in the midst of the vagaries of human existence in this world.  This is evident in part from the disagreements among the schools of philosophy and in part from the various sorts of intellectual pride—manifested both in dogmatism and skepticism—that seems endemic to philosophical inquiry after the Fall.
  
  
• What's more, even our natural cognitive abilities can reach their potential only with trust in and friendship (broadly speaking) with others. (See Fides et Ratio, #33)
  

IVC. Augustine and Platonism

Look at Confessions 7, chaps 9-21

IVD. Some Platonic Doctrines that Survive in Augustine

• One can understand the ordinary "life-world" aright only by seeing it in the light of higher realities
  
  
• The possibility of immaterial being (God, angels, the human soul)
  
  
• Evil as a privation of good (vs. cosmological dualism, which involves two ultimate principles, one good and one evil)
  
  
• The divine attributes (immateriality, incorruptibility, omnipresence, eternality, perfect goodness, immutability)
  
  
• Philosophy as purification (asceticism) and ascent
  
  
• The parts of the divided soul and internal conflict