Inspired and Blessed by Bob Acebedo
Inspired & Blessed

Believing In Order To Understand? Or Understanding In Order To Believe?

Apr 17, 2021, 3:10 AM
Bob Acebedo

Bob Acebedo

Columnist

Curiously, which comes first – knowledge or faith? Do we have to know or understand first before we have to believe? Or do we have to take first the leap of faith and thus be capable of understanding?

My former mentor in the college seminary, Fr. Gil Canete, once wrote on his FB post: “Prophet Isaiah exhorts: ‘If you do not believe, you will not understand’ (Is. 7:9). The same prophet assures us that God is not man. His thoughts are not our thoughts, His ways not our ways. Yet, we continue to judge God, to view Him with our puny human implement, which is inescapably the intellect. But intellect, according to philosopher Edith Stein who later became a Carmelite, extends only to natural knowledge. She offers the example of a blind man who accepts color even if he has not seen it or cannot know of something similar to compare it. Faith to the soul is like that. It informs us of things we have never seen or heard or know anything about that might be similar to them. That’s why theologians call faith an ‘obscure but sure’ habit of the soul.”

Indicatively, from Fr. Canete’s view, three points come to the fore: 1) that believing (or faith) is preeminent and takes precedence over understanding; 2) that human intellect cannot be equated with God’s thought or divine knowledge; and 3) that faith, yet obscure, is a “sure’ habit of the soul.

Moving on thus, our discussion leads us to posit that both faith and knowledge, believing and understanding, are essential or indispensable human abilities. You cannot have one and simply ignore the other. Likely enough, having knowledge without faith, or having understanding without believing, smacks of haughtiness or over-dependence on human reason, which after all is subject to human finiteness. On a similar vein, simply believing without the natural aid of understanding or rationality seems like plain passivity or “blind faith”.

But, as our title suggests, which comes first – understanding or believing?

St. Thomas Aquinas philosophized that understanding or reason precedes faith. Knowing your spouse-to-be is a must before believing and loving him or her, much more so before marrying him or her. The more you know about God, the more you believe in Him. But for Aquinas, it cannot be said that since we cannot fully know God, it is unreasonable to believe in Him. Rather, as he pointed out, “What is of faith (that is, belief in God) is not necessarily unreasonable but is only incomprehensible or beyond human explanation.

On the other hand, St. Augustine of Hippo postulated, “Credo ut intelligam” or “I believe in order that I may understand.” For Augustine, a “leap of faith” or belief paves the way for a clearer understanding of the object of your belief.

Alas, whichever comes first, it doesn’t matter – so long as you strive to attain these two profound faculties of believing and understanding. After all, God, being God, and as “His thoughts are not our thoughts, His ways not our ways” – knows best.


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