Saint Augustine, The Advantage of Believing (De utilitate credendi), translated by Ray Kearney, no. 25-26. In The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, vol. I/8: On Christian Belief. Ed. Boniface Ramsey (Hyde Park/New York: New City Press, 2005), at 136-138.
In the human mind . . . there are three very closely related things that it is very important to distinguish: understanding, believing, and being opinionated. Considered in themselves, the first is always good; the second is sometimes wrong, and the third is never without fault. To understand things that are important and good, or even divine, is the greatest blessing.'' To understand inessential things does no harm, although learning about them could be harmful by taking up the time needed for essential things. To understand things that are bad for us is no misfortune, but to do them or endure them is. If someone understands how to kill an enemy without risk, the actual understanding does not have the guilt of the desire to do it. If that is not there, what could be more innocent? Believing, however, is at fault on those occasions when something unfitting is believed about God or too easily believed about another person. In other matters there is nothing wrong with believing, provided one understands it is something one does not know. I believe that criminal conspirators were once executed through the influence of Cicero, but not only do I not know that, but I know for certain that there is no way I can know it. To be opinionated, however, is bad for two reasons. Those who are already convinced they know something are not able to learn about it, if learning about it becomes possible, and being hasty is in itself a sign of an ill-adjusted mind. If anyone thinks that he has knowledge about the subject I mentioned concerning Cicero, this is no hindrance at all to his acquiring knowledge of it, since it is not a matter about which it is possible to have knowledge. Nevertheless they do not understand that it matters a great deal whether something is ascertained by the secure mental reasoning that we call understanding, or whether for good reasons it is entrusted to oral tradition and writing for the belief of future generations. In this they are certainly making a mistake, and there is no mistake that does not have something bad about it.
Therefore, we must hold what we understand as coming from reason, what we believe as coming from authority, and what we are opinionated about as coming from error. Anyone who understands also believes, and anyone who is opinionated also believes, but someone who believes does not always understand, and someone who is opinionated never understands.
We can relate these three things to those five types of persons that we mentioned previously, namely, the two commendable ones that we mentioned first, and the other three that are reprehensible. We find that the first kind of person, the blessed, believes the truth itself, whereas the second, the keen lover of truth, believes authority; and in both these cases believing is commendable. With the first ofthe reprehensible ones, those who think they know what they do not know, there is certainly the fault of credulity. The other two reprehensible ones, those who seek the truth with no hope that they will find it and those who do not seek it at all, do not believe anything. This moreover is in matters where there exists appropriate teaching. In other aspects of life I do not know how it is possible at all for someone not to believe anything. Even those who say they act according to probabilities want to be seen as not able to know anything rather than as not believing anything. Does anyone test something without a belief about it? And how is the course he follows probable if it is not tested? Hence enemies of the truth can be of two kinds. There are those who only attack knowledge but do not attack belief; and there are those who condemn both. Whether people like this are actually to be found in human life once again I do not know.
I have said these things so that we might appreciate that in maintaining our belief in those things that we do not yet understand we are exonerated from the rashness of being opinionated. Anyone who says we should believe nothing that we do not know is only warning against what is called “being opinionated,” and this admittedly is a miserable defect. If, however, he considers carefully the great difference there is between thinking one knows something and believing on authority something one is aware that one does not know, then he will surely avoid mistakes and escape the charge of being proud and lacking in humanity.
If it is wrong to believe something we do not know, I should like to know how children can obey their parents and return their love and respect without believing they are their parents. There is no way this can be known by reason. We have a belief about our father based on the word of our mother. For our belief about our mother herself we usually depend not on our mother but on midwives, nurses and servants. Is it not possible for a mother to have her child stolen and another substituted for it and so, being deceived herself, to cause others to be deceived? We do believe, however, and believe without any hesitation, things that we admit we cannot know. Can anyone fail to see that, if this were not so, filial love, humanity’s most sacred bond, would be the victim of criminal arrogance? Is there anyone even so insane as to blame those who carried out all the usual duties towards those they believed to be their parents, although they were not? Is there anyone on the other hand who would not condemn, as not fit to live, persons who failed to love their true parents for fear of loving impostors? There are many examples we could give to show that absolutely nothing in human society would be safe if we decided not to believe anything that we cannot hold as evident.
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Return to Lesson 14: Harmony of Faith and Reason: Seven Principles