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The Primacy of Faith and the Priority of Reason: a Justification for Public Recognition of Revealed Truth

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The Primacy of Faith and the Priority of Reason: a Justification for Public Recognition of Revealed Truth The Primacy of Faith and the Priority of Reason: A Justification for Public Recognition of Revealed Truth Fr. David Pignato St. John’s Seminary, Brighton, MA The Catholic tradition of the primacy of faith, as taught by both Augustine and Anselm, is not an endorsement of fideism, but rather a rule of respecting the supra-rational nature of divinely revealed truths that must be accepted by faith. The same tradition upholds the priority of unaided reason, which can confirm the truth of faith by examining the evidence of revelation, or the motives of credibility. This critical role of reason justifies the individual assent of faith and also offers a basis upon which a secular state, reliant on reason, could conceivably refer to revealed truths, to help it discover the objective moral principles that aid the state in its effort to promote human dignity and the common good. Credo ut intelligam “Credo ut intelligam.” Perhaps second only to “Cur Deus Homo,” no other words come to mind more quickly at the mention of St. Anselm than “credo ut intelligam”—“I believe so that I might understand.” We find these words in the first chapter of Anselm’s Proslogion, which was originally titled Fides Quarens Intellectum, “Faith Seeking Understanding.” Here, St. Anselm famously states, “I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but rather, I believe so that I may understand.”1 This celebrated line of Anselm was based on the saying of St. Augustine, “crede, ut intelligas” (“believe so that you may understand”), which is found in his Tractates on the Gospel of John.2 The primary influence on the mind of Anselm was St. Augustine.3 Credo ut intelligam—I believe so that I might understand. Anselm explains the meaning of these famous words when he says that he desires to understand the truth that his heart believes and loves;4 in other words, his faith seeks understanding (fides quarens intellectum). In the context of his lamentation on the plight of fallen man, who has “lost the blessedness for which he was made, and [has] found the misery for which he was not made,”5 Anselm states that he seeks a greater understanding of what he believes by faith—the faith that teaches him some truths which 1 See St. Anselm’s Proslogion, trans. M. J. Charlesworth (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1979), ch. 1: “Neque enim quaero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam.” Anselm cites Is 7:9: “Unless you believe, you shall not understand.” 2 Commenting on Jn 7:17 (“Whoever chooses to do his will shall know whether my teaching is from God or whether I speak on my own”), Augustine writes, “For understanding is the recompense of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand so that you may believe, but believe so that you may understand.” St. Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John, 29.6, in The Fathers of the Church, Vol. 88, trans. John W. Rettig (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1993), p. 18. Augustine explains that to do the will of God is to believe, by citing Jn 6:29: “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.” 3 See M. J. Charlesworth, “St. Anselm’s System,” in St. Anselm’s Proslogion, trans. M. J. Charlesworth (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1979), 23. 4 Proslogion, 1: “sed desidero aliquatenus intelligere veritatem tuam, quam credit et amat cor meum.” 5 Proslogion, 1. The Saint Anselm Journal 12.2 (Spring 2017) 52 are knowable by natural reason, but mostly divine truths that are not accessible to unaided reason, such as the ultimate purpose for which man was created. Thus, the famous motto clearly expresses the primacy of faith, by which man accepts and assents to what God reveals. Without faith, man would not know of God’s plan of salvation, which includes man’s destiny of eternal beatitude.6 The assent of faith is determinative, and thus primary, in order for man to know and understand the ultimate meaning and purpose of his life. But Anselm’s motto should never be taken as an endorsement of fideism, by which the assent of faith would be a blind act of the will, unfounded on any preliminary act of reason. Indeed, the words that immediately follow Anselm’s famous motto indicate that he does, in fact, recognize the need for reason to precede the act of faith. At the beginning of Chapter 2 of the Proslogion, Anselm writes, “Well, then, Lord, You who give understanding to faith, grant me that I may understand, as much as You see fit, that You exist as we believe You to exist, and that You are what we believe You to be.”7 What follows is his famous and controversial ontological argument for the existence of God as the Being-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought. Thus, Anselm seeks to know by reason alone what he also assents to by faith—that God exists as the Absolute Being. According to Anselm, the existence of God, which is the most fundamental preamble of faith, is knowable by reason alone. He, therefore, recognizes that the act of faith is not a blind movement of the mind or an unjustified act of the will. It is rather an intellectually responsible and free act of the person to believe what God reveals, after he can know by unaided reason that God exists.8 In spite of the evidence that Anselm was no fideist, he has been identified as one by certain prominent thinkers such as the Swiss Protestant theologian Karl Barth.9 Barth regarded the Proslogion not as a rational proof for the existence of God, but rather as the application of reason to a datum of revelation—the revealed truth that God exists.10 For Barth, Anselm was not concerned with defending the credibility of faith, but rather the autonomy of faith—that faith is possible without any prior rational preparation or justification.11 For Barth and others, the credo ut intelligam motto represents the principle of the primacy of faith, but in a fideist tradition. The fideism of the Reformers This reading of Anselm by Barth is guided by the Protestant theory of the effect of the Fall on human nature, and, in particular, on the human intellect. Primarily in the Lutheran tradition, the 6 See Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), n. 1703. 7 Proslogion, 2. 8 It should be noted that “Anselm himself was not concerned formally and explicitly to demarcate the realm of faith and theology from the realm of reason and philosophy, assigning to each its respective ‘formal object’ and distinguishing the proper method of each, in the manner of Aquinas and the thirteenth-century thinkers” (Charlesworth, 22). 9 A summary of Barth’s reading of Anselm is provided in Charlesworth, 23. 10 See Charlesworth, 41. 11 See Charlesworth, 40. The Saint Anselm Journal 12.2 (Spring 2017) 53 roots of fideism can be found.12 Luther emphasized that man’s entire nature, both intellect and will, was corrupted by the Fall.13 Luther held that the Fall caused man’s will to be impaired and his reason to be completely defective.14 Luther reaches this conclusion, in part, based on his interpretation of the Genesis account that, after the Fall, Adam and Eve foolishly thought they could avoid God by hiding among the trees, suggesting that they had lost even their common sense and that their intellects were completely depraved as a result of their rebellion against God.15 This theory of the postlapsarian condition of man means that, as a result of the Fall, man is no longer able to know or love God.16 Luther held that, although man can still know by his reason that God exists, it is not within the reach of his fallen, unaided reason to know who or which is the true God.17 Luther went further and held that the Fall caused the image of God in man to disappear entirely, along with the Paradise in which man lived.18 As a result, man’s fallen reason is poised to reject God’s revelation as “unrealistic nonsense.”19 This is why Luther referred to reason as “Frau Hulda,” the “Devil’s Whore.” For Luther, “Scripture is the one and only external, objective, source for any and all knowledge of God.”20 Even today, 500 years after the beginning of the Reformation, this Protestant theory of the effect of the Fall has major repercussions for the relationship between faith and reason and for the grounds upon which the contents of faith may be considered by the individual intellect, and by society at large. The response of the Church to Luther’s theory was that human nature is indeed impaired by the Fall, but that it is not totally corrupted as a result.21 This teaching has perhaps more pressing theological implications as it applies to the will, which, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, was affected more by original sin than was the intellect;22 but, the teaching also has major significance as it applies to the intellect, especially for the refutation of fideism. Man’s nature, the Church teaches, “is wounded in the natural powers proper to it,” but “has not been totally corrupted.”23 12 Although some authors, such as David Andersen, attempt to defend Luther from the charge of fideism, there are nevertheless many passages in Luther’s writings which emphasize man’s inability to know God through unaided reason and thus provide the seedbed for fideism.
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