Faith, the Precursor to knowledge?
Faith, says Augustine, is an essential ingredient of knowledge. Augustine does not restrict his notion of faith to what we typically refer to as religious faith. Faith also involves a provisional belief in things before we can validate them through demonstration. He adopted the famous motto Credo ut intelligam, “I believe in order to understand.”
In this sense faith is prior to reason. All knowledge begins in faith. As children we accept what we are taught by faith. We believe our parents and teachers until we can test what they say for ourselves. We may doubt our parents’ warning that the stove is hot, but we demonstrate its truth by touching the stove ourselves.
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