February 2026 Reading on St. Augustine
“Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asks you a reason of the hope that is in you.” (1 Peter 3:15)
The Greek version of Isaiah 7:9 reads: “If you do not believe, you will not understand.” This text had an enormous influence on St. Augustine and so, for example, we find in one of his homilies on St. John’s Gospel, “Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand that you might believe, but believe that you may understand.” (29.6)
This is an essential Christian dynamic, but there has been some confusion about it for the past three hundred years, and especially for the past 25 years. Our belief is based on witness. The first Christians accepted the testimony of the Apostles and disciples. This may seem “irrational” and is often dismissed as such by scoffers. However, this approach to knowledge is in fact eminently reasonable and is, in fact, how human beings naturally think. Understanding always begins with faith.
In his Grammar of Assent, Newman tells the story of a seven-year-old child pointing to a clover and asking his mother what the technical name is. She tells him it is Trifolium. He accepts his mother’s testimony on trust (faith). Why does he trust her? He can’t reason to this conclusion on his own. Rather, he accepts his mother’s word because he has “reasoned” without words (what Newman calls “Implicit Reason) to the conclusion that his mother is trustworthy. He has experienced her love and he has not known her to lie to him in the past. Newman’s insight into human reasoning has been upheld by later philosophers such as Hans-Georg Gadamer and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Few people, as Chesterton tells us, have circumnavigated Britain but most people know that it is an island because they have been told it, or have seen maps that have authority. We learn by witnesses or authority. This is belief. The three thousand authors of a scientific paper trust that the other scientists have done their work well and that their results are credible (i.e., believable). Without this trust, research or growth in scientific understanding would be impossible.
We read a translation of Virgil (who died before Christ) and trust the translator. Then we learn Latin and can read Virgil for ourselves. An expert might look at the manuscripts which are the basis of the printed Latin text our students read. But our earliest Latin manuscript of Virgil is from four hundred years after he wrote. At the foundation we trust that the copy of the original manuscript is close to the original. Each of these stages moves from faith “this translation is faithful to the original” to understanding- I can read Virgil in Latin, even in the manuscripts.
There is a similar dynamic in faith. We first trust witnesses - our parents, friends, the priest - because we reason that they are trustworthy (and we don’t usually have words to articulate the rational, unspoken process by which we come to those conclusions). As we develop, experience Christ for ourselves in the Sacraments and in Scripture, and study theology, we begin to understand our belief. In our theology classes at St. Augustine’s, we take the faith of the Church and try to understand it, to think through it, and to use our reason both to come to an understanding of the faith and to present it to others in a coherent fashion. It is a wonderful gift to lead your children down this path of “faith seeking understanding.” (St. Anselm, 1033- 1109)
