2. St. Anselm And St. Augustine
INTRODU C T I O N
and Lanfranc, the 'dialecticians' were represented by such an inept thinker as Berengar seems to have been. Berengar had insisted that we should 'have recourse to dialectic in all things', for, as he continued, 'recourse to dialectic is recourse to reason, and he who does not avail himself of reason abandons his chief honour, since by virtue of reason he was made in the image of God'.1 However, in this eulogy of reason, Berengar was simply exaggerating in a one-sided way a perfectly orthodox idea which had its origin in St. Augustine's dictum that God cannot
despise reason since it is reason that makes man superior to everything else. 2 Later on, St. Anselm was to use exactly the same idea in the Monologion : 'since it is by the rational mind that man is most like God, it is by the mind that man knows
God'.3
In the quarrel between 'dialecticians' and 'anti-dialecticians', then, St. Anselm was very much on the side of the former (de spite Berengar), and it is important to remember this if we are to have a right view of St. Anselm's thought.4
2. St. Anselm and St. Augustine "\Ve must now return to a more specific examination of St.
Anselm's position on faith and reason in relation to that of St. Augustine. As we have already remarked, everyone acknow ledges St. Anselm's dependence upon St. Augustine in this matter, but it is not always recognized that St. Augustine's own position on faith and reason is a very complex and even ambiguous one.
First of all, it is clear that for Augustine reason has a value of its own, independently of its help to faith, for by implanting reason in man God has made him superior to the rest of creation. In fact, we could not believe unless we had rational souls. And again, reason can persuade the mind to rise to faith.
This function of reason is anterior to faith and is contrasted with another function of reason, posterior to the act of religious belief, seeking to understand what is believed by faith. As
' Cited by A. J. Macdonald, Authority and Reason in the Early Middle Ages, London,
1933, p. 87.
2 Epist. 1 20 ; P.L. xxiii. 453. See also Sermo 126; P.L. xxxviii. 699.
3 Monot. !xvi; Schmitt, i. 77.
• For a general survey of the 'dialectical' tradition see J. de Ghellinck, 'Dia lectique et dogme aux X•-Xlle siecles', in Festgabe Clemens Baeumker, Munster, 1913.
ST. ANSELM AND ST. AUGU S TI N E
Augustine puts it : 'So, therefore, i f i t i s rational that faith precedes reason in the case of certain great matters which cannot be grasped, there cannot be the least doubt that reason
which persuades us on this precept-that faith precedes
reason-itself precedes faith.'1 Again, St. Augustine concludes one of his sermons with the following words : 'Believe in Him whom you do not see, because of the things which you do see.
And do not imagine that it is I alone who exhort you thus.
Listen to what the Apostle says to you : "The invisible things of
God, from the creation of the world are made visible by the works He has made" ' (Rom. i. 20) .2
On the other hand, St. Augustine also uses frequently the celebrated formula from Isaiah, 'nisi credideritis non intelli getis'. So, for example, he remarks at the end of another sermon :
'Understand my word in order to believe it ; but believe the
word of God in order to understand it.'J Here Augustine seems to distinguish between the 'word' of human reason approaching
God independently of faith (where 'crede ut intelligas' does not apply) , and the 'word' of God revealing truths about
Himself not accessible to human reason (and here 'crede ut
intelligas' does apply) . Understood in this way 'crede ut in telligas' is restricted to the sphere of revealed truth and does
not apply to the 'preambles' of faith (the existence and attri butes of God) , nor, a fortiori, to other truths available to human reason.4
It is also possible to interpret the Augustinian 'crede ut
intelligas' in a wider sense. Thus it has been pointed out that
for Augustine faith is not just a theoretical assent to revealed
truths but rather 'a total and concrete adhesion of the soul' . 5
From this point of view we might say that, for Augustine, while
1 Epist. r 20 ; P.L. xxxiii. 453.
• Sermo r 26 ; P.L. xxxviii. 699, '. . . God made you a rational animal . . . and formed you in His own image . . . . Therefore lift up your mind, use your eyes like a man, look at heaven and earth, look at the things that are made and look for the Maker ; look at the things you sec, and look for Him whom you do not see.'
3 'Ergo intellige, ut credas : crede, ut intelligas . . . . Intellige ut credas verbum meum ; crede ut intelligas verbum Dei': Sermo 43 ; P.L. xxxviii. 257-8. See also
A. A. Cayre, La Contemplation augustinienne, Paris, 1954, ch. viii.
4 It was, as we shall see later, in this way that the Augustinian formula was interpreted by twelfth-century thinkers later than St. Anselm-Gilbert de la
Porrce and Simon of Tournai, for example.
s Cayre, La Contemplation augustinienne, p. 223.
I NTROD U CT I O N
reason enables us to give 'notional assent' (to use Newman's term) to certain truths about God, it is only through faith that we come to have a 'real assent' to those truths. 'Believe that you may understand' may then be paraphrased as : 'By believing and living, in the life of Christian faith, certain truths which can in themselves be known notionally by human reason, one comes to know them in a deeper and more vital or more real sense.' 1
No doubt we must not force St. Augustine's ideas too much.
For Augustine himself does not distinguish formally and ex plicitly between the different functions of 'understanding' in relation to faith. But we can at least say that, while he is anxious to safeguard the autonomy of faith by means of the 'crede ut intelligas' formula, he is equally anxious to affirm the possibility of rational speculation about God prior to and independently of faith in God. In his own theological practice
St. Augustine does in fact devote a great deal of attention to what were later to be called the 'preambles' of faith, the possi
bility of knowing God as the ground of rational certitude, the nature of the soul, freedom of the will. There is, indeed, a strong 'rationalistic' strand in St. Augustine's thought; one has only to remember the labyrinthine discussion on the subject of time in the Confessions, and again, the Augustinian theory of 'illumination' can also be interpreted in a 'rationalistic' way, for according to the theory God is the source of illumination that makes possible knowledge equally of necessary rational truths and of truths of faith.2 However, as we have already remarked, Augustine did not want to be a 'rationalist' denying the proper autonomy of faith, any more than he wanted to be a naive fideist denying the autonomy of reason, and the strain represented by 'crede ut intelligas' and that by 'intellige ut credas' exist together in his thought in an unresolved or ambi valent state.3
1 Cayre, ibid., p. 233.
2 Cf. J. J. O'i\1eara, 'Augustine and neo-Platonism', in Recherches augusliniennes, vol. i, Paris, 1958, p. 102. 'Augustine considered in 386 that it was possible by reason alone to arrive at the truths revealed by authority, since God was the source of illumination for both co-ordinated though independent sources of knowledge.'
3 See F. Copleston, A History of Philosophy, London, 1950, ii. 48 : 'It is not that Augustine failed to recognise, still less that he denied, the intellect's power of attain ing truth without revelation; it is rather that he regarded Christian wisdom as one whole, that he tried to penetrate by his understanding the Christian faith and to
S T. ANSELM AND S T. AUGU STINE
This same ambiguity is reflected also in the later Augustinian tradition. Thus, for example, Gregory the Great in his Aforalia
(written between 578 and 585) , a work which strongly in fluenced St. Anselm, insists very firmly on the one hand upon the limited and negative character of our rational knowledge of God, and upon the need for revelation to enable us to know
God in any positive way. At the same time, however, he can speak of 'reason' in the following terms : 'Holy Church in her teaching makes no demand on the ground of authority, but persuades by reason. So she says plainly that she is not believed
because of authority, but her assertions are weighed by reason in order to discover whether they are true. Even when she makes an assertion which cannot be comprehended by reason, yet the advice given by her-namely that human reason ought not to pry into divine things-is rational advice.'1
Similarly with Erigena, although Erigena's Augustinianism is of a very hybrid kind, we find very much the same ambivalent view of faith and reason. We have already seen that in his
De Praedestinatione Erigena writes as follows : 'Is the study of philosophy concerned with aught else save the exposition of the principles of true religion, which adores humbly and searches by reason for God, the supreme cause and source of all beings?
It follows that true philosophy is true religion and, inversely, that true religion is true philosophy.'2
After St. Anselm, in the late twelfth century, these Augus tinian ideas on faith and reason will be interpreted in a much more definite way, although the later interpretations do not represent a clean break with the older Augustinian tradition so much as a development of its implicit intentions or virtualities.
Thus, for example, a younger contemporary of Anselm, Gilbert de la Porree ( 1076-1 1 54) , distinguishes the realm of theology,
see the world and human life in the light of Christian wisdom. He knew quite well that rational arguments can be adduced for God's existence, for example, but it was not so much the mere intellectual assent to God's existence that interested him as the real assent, the positive adhesion of the will to God, and he knew that in the concrete such an adhesion requires divine grace.'
1 Moralia, viii. 3. See the introduction to Gregoire le Grand, 'Morales sur Job', ed.
Robert Gillet, in the series Sources chretiennes, Paris, 1950. J. de Ghellinck, art.
'Bibliotheques', in Dictionnaire de spiritualite, i. 1604, remarks that Gregory's writings 'formed, together with those of St. Augustine, the mentality of the Middle
Ages, both inside and outside the cloister'.
2 Cited M. Cappuyns, Jean Scot Erigene, p. 302.