Faith

Thomas a Kempis, in one of his less misanthropic moments, wrote:

What good does it to speak learnedly about the Trinity if, lacking humility, you displease the Trinity? Indeed it is not learning that makes a man holy and just, but a virtuious life makes him pleasing to God. I would rather feel contrition than know how to define it. For what would it profit us to know the whole Bible by heart and the principles of all the philosophers if we live without grace and the love of God? ... all is vanity, except to love God and serve Him alone.

Plato defined the beginning of wisdom as wonder, Descartes doubt. It's clear we've taken the latter extreme too seriously in molding our quest to know anything in life. If wisdom begins in wonder, what one discovers has a certain playfulness about it. We can philosophize as a way of clarifying misconceptions, but we are still capable of holding that the greatest things in life can be taken for what they are before reason is on the scene. Learning about the world, which can be the broadest definition of the philosophical mind, functions as a sort of aesthetic: we intend to learn as a way of discovering the goodness of the universe, which we presuppose from the beginning. If wisdom begins in doubt, however, then everything we aim to know functions as a life jacket to save us from the anxiety of knowing nothing. This attitude presupposes the necessity of insight to lead us how to live.

Kempis proves that the mind is secondary, and this point provides all the resources for the invisible selves in society who have no time or inclination for "learned" things. Life is more than thinking about life. We must first properly exist before the mind can likewise have its proper standing in relation to the self. But this is impossible without the mind ascertaining something that the heart, as it were, already knows. Perhaps this is why all great truths carry the ring of epiphany, and all epiphany the feeling that comes when one recognizes (replaces in cognition) something one knew before but had forgotten along life's way. As Pascal has said, "the heart has its reasons its own mind knows not." The task of initially learning how to live means convincing the mind what the heart (or something very deep in the self) already knows.

What is the point of preaching? To point out what we as sophisticated adults once knew as charming children. It isn't properly insight or understanding that we need, unless we have fooled ourselves through our reason and thus need a proper rational counterbalance which undoes the damage already done. This is most certainly the case more and more often with a society whose more intellectually prone members are continually blooming towards rationalism and consequently away from intuition. To realize that God exists and that in a paradoxical sense all is right despite the immediate madness that surrounds us isn't grasped solely through the mind, although the mind is involved in the process. The mystique of faith is precisely that God has implanted a conviction in human beings that is very much a power in their lives -- a power that is both impervious to doubt and incapable of proving itself. We have too often understood faith as relating to cognition, to correct belief, rather than something beyond (or before) this; and once again, basic beliefs come with the deal, but are not defined by it. The act of coming to faith isn't specifically a reception of information, but rather analogous to a man who hears an old song he had been somehow missing for years, and upon hearing he says "that's it! I knew it went something like that."

It's important to keep the order that Anselm has presented intact: faith seeks understanding. Understanding can never seek faith. Reason only invites an infinite number of reasons, and this is the nature of the reasoning mind. Understanding can, however, clear away misunderstandings about faith, and this is the task for the philosopher, the theologian, the apologist. But faith essentially remains ineffable, a given that precedes comprehension and reason. Indeed, it is part of the wonder of wisdom for the heart set correctly to the rhythm of the universe.