Saint Augustine: Philosophy of Faith and Reason

Saint Augustine: Faith, Reason, and the Search for Truth

Born on November 13, 354, in Tagaste and died in 430, Saint Augustine believed that the full truth resides in Christianity. However, he acknowledged that before the rise of Christianity, philosophers also possessed some truths inspired by God. Saint Augustine, therefore, utilized some Greek concepts. In his thought, there is a significant influence of Platonism and Neoplatonism.

The Search for Truth

For Saint Augustine, there is no conflict between faith and reason; he considered them complementary. He criticized skepticism by asserting the necessary certainty of one's existence, stating that even if all our opinions were always wrong, we still exist. This implies that we also know because we understand our existence.

Having established the possibility of knowledge, he distinguished two types: sensible and rational. Sensible knowledge, acquired through the senses, is mutable, changeable, and unreliable. Rational knowledge, residing in the soul, encompasses eternal truths, universal and unchanging, such as faith or mathematics. He considered ideas and thoughts to be eternal and inseparable from God, the source of all knowledge. One can learn through a special light that God grants to the soul.

Illumination is a power that God grants by grace, not by nature. This conception of knowledge is inspired by Plato's simile between the Sun and the Good: The idea of the Good illuminates all others, making them intelligible and the source of being and knowledge. With the doctrine of illumination, Saint Augustine replaced Plato's theory of reminiscence; it is not necessary that the soul has contemplated eternal truths in a previous life. What is necessary is that God opens our minds to access them.

Saint Augustine's view of the human being, influenced by Plato, is that of a creature composed of body and soul. However, as a Christian, he did not consider the body a burden but rather an integral part of human essence.

Truth and the Ascent to God

The truth does not reside on the outside, in sensible knowledge, but on the inside, in the experience that man has of his own inner life. This emphasis on internalization resonates with Platonic thought. Internalization is the starting point of an ascending process that leads man beyond himself. This process is one of self-transcendence, by which the soul, having found itself, feels and understands that it must rise above itself.

The first step in this process is when man realizes that nature is mutable, yet he finds within himself immutable truths. These are ideas that the human being finds within himself and which are superior to him. Like Plato, he recognized that ideas are immutable and necessary and cannot be grounded in the human soul. Following the development of Platonism, he placed the foundation and the locus of ideas in God, the immutable and absolute truth and reality. This is the second step in the process of self-transcendence.

Self-transcendence unfolds in both knowledge and love, in the pursuit of self-fulfillment and happiness. The human being is compelled to self-transcend because only something greater than himself can make him truly happy, and that is God. Happiness lies in the love of God.

Philosophy of History

Three years before his death, Saint Augustine published a book called *De Civitate Dei* (The City of God). In it, he defended Christians against those who criticized the fall of the Roman Empire. He consoled Christians by asserting that history has meaning, that God continues to sustain history, and that even the fall of Rome has a purpose, and eventually, good will prevail.