Philip Sargent
Prof. Johnson
PHI 1301
14 September 2022
Short Response #1
Thomas Aquinas and Anselm each wrestle with the relationship between faith and reason
in the Summa Contra Gentiles and Proslogion, respectively. Aquinas defines faith as a habit
which produces belief, the object of which is truth. Reason is possessed by all men, and it can
lead men to certain truths about God, but one cannot fully know God without him specially
revealing himself. In that sense, these truths are fully possessed by faith, which is of divine
grace. Anselm’s view is similar, albeit expressed in a very different tone. In the Proslogion, he
proclaims to God that “this image [of God] is so eroded by my vices, so clouded by the smoke of
my sins, that it cannot do what it was created to do unless you renew and refashion it…for I do
not seek to understand in order to believe; I believe in order to understand, I also believe that
‘Unless I believe, l shall not understand.’” Anselm, like Aquinas, sees faith as a deeper
possession of truth that we cannot arrive to by pure reason. Thus, faith and reason are each a way
of discovering truth, with faith supplementing reason in such a way as to paint the entire truth.
In many evangelical circles today, faith is often regarded as nothing more than a blind
belief in things that you have little evidence for, and some would even say that reason must be
suspended in order to have faith. This is little more than an assent to a truth claim without critical
evaluation. Aquinas and Anselm, however, would disagree with this strongly, as their
understanding of these two things is not contrary, but rather complementary. One arrives at truth
not by starting at the truth claim, but rather by arriving there through reason, and fully ascending
to said claim by faith, which is of divine grace.