A problem throughout the history of philosophy is the relationship between reason and faith. This epistemological puzzle revolves around whether one should rely on their reasoning or trust the reasoning of another. In early modernity, some thinkers claimed that having the courage to rely on one’s own reasoning was the enlightened ideal. In Kant’s words: “enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another.”[1] However, many pre-modern thinkers would have acknowledged their dependence on assumptions from some external authority. Given this issue, I attempt to clarify the relationship between reason and faith via Augustine’s thought.
I will first argue that faith depends on reason as well as the will because while there are rational grounds for religious beliefs, these grounds are insufficient and require that one will the leap of faith. I then argue that faith is what purifies the will and, through this, allows reason to function. Taken together, I, therefore, argue that faith and reason are interdependent: on the one hand, there are reasonable grounds for faith, yet one must nevertheless will the leap of faith too; on the other hand, faith, by purifying the will, fosters a functional reason.
To unpack this claim, I start by explaining the sufficient conditions for faith by drawing off passages that led to Augustine’s cognitive certainty in God and then emphasize the volitional element that fostered his stability in God. Afterwards, I reverse the relation and explain the purifying effects of faith. After justifying the interdependence between faith and reason, I entertain the objection that faith is irrational because the evidence is insufficient, which is why the leap of faith is required and attempt to refute this claim. But before I explain my rationale, the odds of achieving the intended destination the above map outlines will increase if I clarify the key terms this account hinges on.
This discussion primarily focuses on “mental activities.”[2] Differentiating these mental activities into specific sorts helps to see the relationships that I am attempting to explain. Within this class, one frequently hears expressions such as I know, I believe, or in my opinion. First of all, to know requires, for Augustine in De Utilitate Credendi, the ability to demonstrate through explicit reasoning why the claim is plausibly or certainly true.[3] In demonstrating, one provides a causal account that ties down the claim with reasons. For example, if I can prove Pythagoras’ theorem, I am justified in claiming I know it; more concretely, if I can show you a jazz chord progression, I am licensed to claim I know.
The second mental activity he distinguishes is believing. To believe is to assent to some claim while acknowledging that it is outside their capacity to demonstrate. Crucially, belief is assenting by appealing to the testimony of another. To give a couple of examples: one can believe that politician X will win, or one can believe in the good intentions of their partner. And when asked, why do you believe if you lack sufficient proof to compel assent? Augustine would answer that he believes on the testimony of source Y. Y here would be some qualified political pundit or one’s partner, respectively. For our purposes, religious beliefs – or what many take as faith – that concern God, the Soul, and the Cosmos are similar to the above examples because these beliefs, at least initially, are also taken on testimony, namely the authority of some religious institution.
Now, to further clarify belief, Augustine introduces opinion. An opinion is defined as an error in that one claims to know what one does not know without acknowledging their ignorance.[4] An example of an opinion is any prejudiced conclusion. Such an individual prejudges or merely assumes the nature or worth of some object while thinking their judgment is well-grounded prima facie.
Augustine’s taxonomy of mental activities then diverges from the Platonic account because it introduces a tripartite division, whereas Plato bifurcates. For Plato, if something is not knowledge, it is mere doxa, whereas differentiating opinion from belief buttresses the rationality of believing. This move allows one to endorse claims that they cannot demonstrate, but being held on the basis of testimony are not irrational. In conclusion, he writes, “our knowledge, therefore, we owe to reason; our beliefs to authority; and our opinions to error.”[5] Generally, these mental activities relate to truth.
The class of cognitions aside, the final key term is the will, which is not a species of cognition, but rather a volition. The will can be taken as desire or intention for some object. For instance, I can will to pick up some physical object. In another case, I can will a mental object by intending some future goal or even to know God. Importantly, what is willed is valuable to some degree, and so the will, in this sense, can be understood as a guiding value. Generally, the will relates to what one loves.
Given these terms, I will now shift gears to my proof. Understanding the first part of my thesis requires a closer look at the role of reason in coming to faith or religious beliefs, as well as the role of the will. The reasons that support religious belief are readily apparent through examining Augustine’s conversion as it shows that it was not an immediate event but the result of his journey through Manicheanism, Neo-Platonism, and ultimately encountering Ambrose, who taught the importance of allegorical exegesis.[6]
Manichean materialism played a pivotal role in his developing certainty in the Absolute because it, along with Cicero’s injunction to study philosophy,[7] called him on to pursue the Truth.[8] However, he was disillusioned with Manicheanism because the famous Faustus, the sect’s greatest teacher, held doctrines that diverged from the Truth. [9] Not finding answers to the questions he was keen to understand led him to skepticism, which was short lived given the desolate state of his soul as he suspended judgement.[10]
Neo-Platonism, by and large, had its most lasting impact on his cognitive certainty in the divine because it allowed him to conceive of an immaterial substance. Through Platonic Ideas, he broke free from the materialism of Manicheanism. Immutable Truth became accessible by the Platonic Ideas as immaterial forms. These insights fostered growing rational certainty in the religious belief of God. The influence of Neo-Platonism on his thinking is clear when he writes, “by the Platonic books I was admonished to return into myself … I entered and with my soul’s eye, such as it was, saw above that same eye of my soul the immutable light higher than my mind … it was superior because it made me, and I was inferior because I was made by it.”[11] In addition to this, his mystical vision, which describes moving through the three hypostases of the soul, the intellect, and the One, to “discover the light by which he was flooded,” provided more grounds for the divine.[12] While Neo-Platonism exercised its influence and helped to promote cognitive conviction, it was still insufficient.
The additional key was his encounter with Ambrose because Augustine learned the importance of interpreting scripture allegorically.[13] The testimony of the Church gained authority through coming to see the legitimacy of scripture, which moved him away from dependence on reason exclusively that the Platonists advised. Therefore, the Bible and the Church also further grounded his growing faith.
This brief chronology shows that faith has rational grounds; however, he still lacked stability in God. As he writes, “my desire was not to be more certain of you, but to be more stable in you.”[14] Augustine’s solution to this problem shows the other necessary condition in coming to faith, namely the will. This point is apparent in Augustine’s rhetoric in Book 8. Interpretations here diverge as while he claims that it was through God’s grace that he came to whole-hearted faith – “the effect of your converting me to yourself”[15] – it is clear that there is a leap of faith too. Observe his rhetoric, “cast yourself upon him, do not be afraid. He will not withdraw himself so that you fall. Make the leap without anxiety; he will catch you and heal you.”[16] The volitional language is also shown in “I hesitated to detach myself, to be rid of [the worldly will], to make the leap to where I was being called.”[17] As these statements show, there is a volitional element that cannot be ignored. Given that the evidence for these religious ideas did not bring stability, he had to leap.
And Augustine’s motto fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding, is rhetoric that helps prove this point further. Through their will, one must leap to faith, to belief, for there to be an understanding of the Ultimate Truth the religious authority claims exists. Augustine’s motto intimates that through the leap of faith, there later comes understanding which perhaps provides immediate subjective evidence that further supports their faith. This evidence implies that religious claims are revealed by inward recognition, thereby providing sufficient subjective evidence. Such recognition might be described as “accordingly, my God, I would have no being, I would not have any existence, unless you were in me.”[18] Or, “when I first came to know you, you raised me up to make me see that what I saw is Being, and that I who saw am not yet Being.”[19]
Now, examining the reversed relationship, that is, reason functions if the will is purified of its innate disorder by faith, shows the second reason why faith and reason are interdependent. Understanding this requires first understanding the problem Augustine faced, namely his incoherent, disordered will, which by the above definition, means a volition oriented at many distinct ends. This is displayed when he writes, “so my two wills, one old, the other new, one carnal, the other spiritual, were in conflict with one another, and their discord robbed my soul of all concentration.”[20] In Augustine’s case, his soul lusted for fleshy goods, for “superfluous knowledge,”[21] as well as the ascent up the career ladder;[22] yet simultaneously, he was called to God and spiritual ascent.[23] The problem of the divided self that marked his condition, and the human condition in general, is a derivation of humanity’s fall from the garden. Since Adam and Eve, all humans, qua Augustine, are marked by sin, which is this disorderly will, because of the original sin.
Given the state of Augustine’s soul and the theological domain of discourse he is reasoning in, the solution he submits to this problem makes more sense. Namely, one can partly solve this problem by discarding the ends incompatible with the highest end – God. Moving from multiplicity to unity follows by discovering the highest end, which is a gratuitous gift one recognizes. This gift, by the above reasoning on subjective evidence, further bolsters one’s faith and helps one orient themselves to what is the most valuable. While Robert Cushman has argued it was only the Mediator, God’s intervention, that one’s ambivalent will was cured of its vanity and ordered towards love of God, which seems to imply that faith must resemble mere opinion,[24] this divine intervention or volitional illumination does not follow unless one first believes in authority so they can understand this immediately – the mystical experience or gratuitous gift, in other words, depends on believing the metaphysical system. Scholar Özden Özkaya Demirhan corroborates this when they write, “Augustine says that people should use reason as a tool to understand authority.”[25] By first believing, one can understand the transcendent metaphysics, which is necessary for immediate recognition, the gratuitous gift. The unfortunate implication now is we start going around and around the tree of fatalism or free will. To avoid this, I am going to bracket this eternal debate and assume, as most within contemporary society do, that the will is free, at least in part. For Augustine, too, as Demirhan notes, “although the will is largely connected with God, nevertheless Augustine insists that humans have free will.”[26] Given this assumption, the responsible solution is to deliberately discard those ends that pull one in incompatible directions to integrate and order their ends. The by-product of ordering the will – of ranking goods depending on their degree of significance – is clarity and concentration such that one can reason.[27] Therefore, the solution, while dependent on the gratuitous gift of recognition that orients the will to the highest end made possible by initial belief, is also dependent on freely relinquishing incompatible ends so that one is oriented at the highest end as in so doing one maintains the capacity to reason and this allows what is taken on authority to be understood further. As John Peter Kenney writes, for Augustine, “faith is, therefore, not an alternative to intellection; it is the source of its successful exercise.”[28]
To recap, faith and reason are interdependent because faith has rational grounds, as evidenced by his gradual journey to cognitive certainty; however, these grounds were insufficient and required the volitional leap of faith to come to stability. After examining the reverse relationship, reason also depends on faith because the problem of disordered willing that defines the human condition and inhibits clear-headed reasoning is resolved by faith, which for Augustine, purifies the will and orders the soul so that it can be rational.
Now, by the first premise, the willful leap of faith shows the irrationality of religious beliefs. The primary objection that would deal a fatal blow to my hypothesis is that faith does not depend on reason, but the will – the need to will the leap of faith demonstrates the non sequitur. To refute the objection that faith is irrational, I will focus on the fact that in any domain of discourse, reasoning depends first on faith or trust in some source because the human intellect cannot get off the ground unless there are some unjustified grounds, specifically first principles that are not known, but believed either on testimony or because they are so self-evident.
The weight of this objection is decreased by realizing that belief is the ground upon which reason operates. The point is that humans always initially believeandendorse on testimony and only later but not always come to know for themselves. “Every learner,” as Augustine reminds, “must first be a believer, in order to come to knowledge.”[29] Further, “unless we believed what we were told, we would do nothing at all in this life.”[30] To bring this full circle, Kant himself, while claiming that the enlightened ideal is to rely on one’s own reasoning, is therefore flawed. Being fully independent is an illusion because our initial beliefs follow our initial dependents – our communal starting points. Endorsing radical rationality is absurd as it stifles the ability to reason by attempting to find justified first principles. Kant eventually learned that he had to “deny knowledge in order to make room for faith” to close his system and keep an infinite regression at bay.[31]
Drawing things to a close, faith and reason are not contenders but counterparts. Augustine’s thought helps show their interdependent relationship that, when working together, fosters a positive feedback loop powered by love that takes one ever closer to the Truth.
[1] Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” in Berlinischen Monatsschrift (1784), 481.
[2] Augustine, “De Utilitate Credendi” in Augustine: Earlier Writings trans. J. H. S. Burleigh (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 312.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] John Peter Kenney, “Faith and Reason,” in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, ed. by David Vincent Meconi and Eleonore Stump, 2nd ed., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 276-281.
[7] Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 3.4
[8] Confessions, 3.6.
[9] De Utilitate Credendi, 307; Confessions 5.3.
[10] Confessions, 5.14.
[11] Confessions, 7.10.
[12] Confessions, 7.17.
[13] Confessions, 5.24; Confessions, 6.6.
[14] Confessions, 8.1.
[15] Confessions, 8.30.
[16] Confessions, 8.27., emphasis mine.
[17] Confessions, 8.26., emphasis mine.
[18] Confessions, 1.2., emphasis mine.
[19] Confessions, 7.10.
[20] Confessions, 8.5.
[21] Confessions 10.37.
[22] Confessions 3.8.
[23] Confessions 7.10, 9.10.
[24] Robert E. Cushman, “Reason and Faith in the Thought of St. Augustine,” in Church History 19, no. 4 (1950), 288.
[25] Özden Özkaya Demirhan, “The Relationship between Faith, Reason, and Will in Augustine,” in Entelekya Logico-Metaphysical Review 6, no. 2 (2022), 20.
[26] Ibid., 33.
[27] Confessions 8.5; Cushman, 285-289.
[28] Kenney, 284.
[29] De Utilitate Credendi, 283.
[30]Confessions, 6.5
[31] Immanuel Kant, “Preface to the Second Edition,” in Critique of Pure Reason, trans. & ed. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998), bxxx