9. Augustine's Definition of Faith and Three Aspects of Belief

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Lecture Notes

Main Topics #

Augustine’s Definition: Credere est cum Assentione Cogitare #

• Faith is firm assent to one part of a contradiction while still thinking about it
• Distinguishes faith from other acts of the intellect:
  • Knowledge/Understanding (intelligentia): firm assent WITHOUT continued thinking; direct vision of truth; once you demonstrate something (e.g., Euclid’s theorem), you stop thinking and simply know
  • Doubt: thinking about something WITHOUT firm assent; unable to determine which side of a contradiction is true
  • Suspicion/Opinion (suspicio): weak assent with thinking; inclines to one part but “with fear of the other part”
  • Guessing (aestimatio): thinking without sufficient certitude for firm assent

Three Senses of Cogitare (Thinking) #

1. Most common sense: Any actual consideration whatsoever that the understanding makes (Augustine, De Trinitate XIV)
2. Proper sense: Consideration of the understanding with investigation (inquisitio) before arriving at certitude of vision—a kind of motion or process of the soul not yet perfected by full vision of truth
3. Third sense: Applies to either universal thoughts (pertaining to the intellective part) or particular thoughts (pertaining to the sensitive/cogitative power)

The Three Aspects of the Act of Faith #

Thomas distinguishes not three different acts, but three aspects of the same act according to the object of faith:

1. Credere Deo (Believing God as the reason why)

• Formal object of faith
• God as the first truth (prima veritas) that moves assent
• God cannot deceive and cannot be deceived—provides the absolute ground of certitude
• On the side of the intellect being moved by reason

2. Credere Deum (Believing things pertaining to God)

• Material object of faith
• The content of what is believed
• Nothing is proposed to be believed except insofar as it pertains to God (as theology’s subject)
• Includes things God has revealed (Trinity, Incarnation, etc.)
• On the side of the intellect itself

3. Credere in Deum (Believing toward/in God)

• Involves the will as moving the intellect to assent
• The end toward which belief tends
• The preposition “in” implies motion toward God as the ultimate end
• This is why the Creed says “Credo in unum Deum”
• Shows that faith is not a purely intellectual act but involves the will commanding the intellect

Etymology and Language Precision #

• Latin intelligere (to understand) relates to standing firm or at rest under truth (from stare—to stand)
• Greek epistēmē (science/knowledge) comes from “coming to a halt or stop”
• English “standing” contains this root: “under-standing” = standing under something firmly
• Latin credere lacks this etymological clarity compared to Greek philosophical terms
• Translation challenges: “credere Deo” in Latin means “to believe God (as the reason)”; English “to believe God” can be ambiguous and may confuse the three senses

Key Arguments #

Why Faith Requires Thinking (Respects Reason’s Nature) #

• If we assented to something without thinking about it, this would constitute tyranny against reason
• Reason naturally desires to understand what it accepts
• Faith respects this nature by involving thinking (cogitatio) even in the absence of complete vision
• This explains why theology naturally arises from faith: “fides quaerens intellectum” (faith seeking understanding)
• Example: We firmly believe there are three Persons in God but don’t fully understand how this is so—this natural desire to understand drives theological inquiry

The Relationship Between Faith and Knowledge #

• Knowledge requires firm assent achieved through direct vision or demonstration; thinking stops once you arrive at certitude
• Faith maintains firm assent while continued thinking persists because full vision is not present
• In Euclidean geometry: you think about a theorem, arrive at the demonstration, see why it must be so, and cease thinking
• In faith: you firmly believe (e.g., in the Trinity) but continue to think about it precisely because you lack direct vision, yet have firm assent through the light of faith

Faith Distinguished from Heresy #

• Those who do not have faith do not truly “believe God” even if they assent to propositions about God
• True belief requires assenting to God under the conditions which faith determines (i.e., moved by the light of faith)
• Faithless persons may intellectually accept propositions but lack the divinely infused light that characterizes genuine faith
• Reference to Aristotle’s principle (Metaphysics IX): in simple things, defect of knowledge consists in not attaining them entirely; God being entirely simple, one either knows Him as faith determines or one misses the point entirely

Why Faith Necessarily Involves the Will #

• The will moves the intellect to assent to what reason alone cannot demonstrate
• This is not tyranny but proper ordering: will commands intellect toward its end (God)
• The act of belief is not purely intellectual but requires the will’s involvement, which is why “credere in Deum” (believing toward God) must be included in the definition
• The Creed’s formulation (“Credo in unum Deum”) captures this essential ordering of the will

Important Definitions #

• Cogitare: To think about something; investigation of the intellect before arriving at certitude; the motion of the soul not yet perfected by full vision of truth
• Intelligere (Understanding): To stand firm under truth; the intellect coming to a halt or rest in certitude; immediate vision or firm assent without further investigation
• Credere (To Believe): Firm adhesion (firmum assensum) to one part of a contradiction while thinking about it, moved by the will toward God as end
• Assentire (To Assent): To firmly adhere to something; the intellect’s firm determination to one side
• Inquisitio: Investigation or inquiry; the searching activity of the intellect before certitude is achieved

Examples & Illustrations #

Mathematical Knowledge vs. Faith #

• When studying Euclid’s Proposition 47 (the Pythagorean theorem): one thinks about it, works through the demonstration, arrives at certitude (“now I see it must be so”), and then stops thinking
• At this point, you no longer believe Euclid said it; you know it is so
• Faith differs: you continue thinking about what you believe while maintaining firm assent, because you lack the direct vision that would allow you to rest in pure understanding
• By the end of Book I of Euclid, the student has worked through the proofs and now knows; he no longer has mere opinion or belief about these theorems

The Soldier’s Dilemma #

• A soldier on the battlefield says “I can’t fight if I can’t see [the enemy]”
• Illustrates how the sensitive cogitative power (the third sense of cogitari) operates differently from universal understanding
• Shows the difference between intellective thinking about universals and sensitive deliberation about particulars

Language and Translation Issues #

• “To pray God” in some languages means “to beseech you” (as in Shakespeare’s “I pray you”); in modern English it sounds odd
• Similarly, “to believe God” (credere Deo) in English suggests believing that God exists, whereas in Latin it means “to believe because God is the reason” (formal object)
• “To believe in God” (credere in Deum) properly captures the motion toward God as end, but English speakers might not grasp this from context alone
• The ambiguity demonstrates why precision about the three senses of the act of faith is necessary for proper understanding

Questions Addressed #

Q: How does faith avoid being mere guessing or opinion? A: Faith has firm assent (like knowledge) but continues thinking (unlike knowledge). It differs from opinion/suspicion because it has the certitude of God as first truth, not just probability. Unlike guessing, it firmly adheres to one side. The light of faith provides the ground for this firm assent without demonstration.

Q: Why must the three aspects be distinguished if faith is one virtue? A: They are not three different acts but three aspects of the same act viewed according to different relations to the object of faith. Just as sight has one act, seeing, but the object can be viewed according to color, shape, distance, etc., faith has one act but can be analyzed according to its formal object (God as first truth), material object (things about God), and the end toward which it tends (toward God as ultimate good for the will).

Q: Don’t faithless people also assent to the existence of God? A: Not in the way faith determines. They may intellectually accept propositions about God, but they do not assent “under the conditions which faith determines”—namely, moved by the divinely infused light of faith. Since God is entirely simple, either one grasps Him as faith presents Him (as first truth determining all other truths) or one misses the essential point.

Q: How can the will move the intellect to assent if assent is an act of the intellect? A: The intellect performs the act of assent, but the will moves it toward that act. This is the proper relationship: the will cannot perform the intellect’s acts, but it can command them toward an end. Since the good and the end are the will’s proper objects, the will moves the intellect to assent to God as the supreme end. This is not tyranny but proper ordering according to the nature of the will and intellect.

Notable Quotes #

“Credere est cum assentione cogitare” — Augustine (defining faith as assenting with thinking)

“It is kind of beautiful, right? It has a beautiful etymology, right? That the Latin word [cogitare] doesn’t have. French, the Latin is imperfect compared to the Greek for philosophy.” — Berquist (on why epistēmē better captures the rest in understanding than Latin intelligentia)

“If you sent it without thinking about it, you’d seem to be going against the nature of reason, right?” — Berquist (on why faith’s definition respects reason’s nature)