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S i d e b a r
If You Understood Him, It Would Not Be God
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This Rock
Volume 18, Number 10
 December 2007 
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A key Christian thinker regarding faith is Augustine, especially noteworthy here because he often wrote in a controversial context, providing a wealth of theological and philosophical insights into the nature of belief. As he acknowledged in his Confessions and elsewhere, faith is only as worthwhile and strong as its object and its source. For Augustine, of course, both the object and source of faith is God. There should not be any tension or conflict between reason and faith, especially since they both flow from the same source. Therefore, reason should and must play a central role in the spiritual life; it is by reason that we come to know and understand what faith and belief are. In Augustine’s intense quest for God he asked: Can the Triune God be understood by reason alone? The answer is a firm "No." "If you understood him," he insisted, "it would not be God" (Sermo 52, 6, 16: PL 38, 360; Sermo 117, 3, 5: PL 38, 663). The insufficiency of reason in the face of God and true doctrine is also addressed in the Confessions. Regarding an immature Christian who is ill-informed about doctrine, the Bishop of Hippo notes:
When I hear of a Christian brother, ignorant of these things, or in error concerning them, I can tolerate his uninformed opinion; and I do not see that any lack of knowledge as to the form or nature of this material creation can do him much harm, as long as he does not hold a belief in anything which is unworthy of thee, O Lord, the Creator of all. But if he thinks that his secular knowledge pertains to the essence of the doctrine of piety, or ventures to assert dogmatic opinions in matters in which he is ignorant—there lies the injury. (Confessions V:5)
Another example of Augustine’s high regard for reason and for its central place in his religious commitments can be seen in his experience with the teachings of Mani. As Augustine learned about the Manichaean view of the physical world, he became increasingly exasperated with the lack of logic and rational evidence in it. The breaking point came when he was ordered to believe teachings about the heavenly bodies which were in clear contradiction to logic and mathematics: "But still I was ordered to believe, even where the ideas did not correspond with—even when they contradicted—the rational theories established by mathematics and my own eyes, but were very different" (Confessions V:3). And so Augustine left Manichaeanism in search of a reasonable faith.
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