Daily Question 2/11

In “The Reasonableness of Faith,” Wilken discusses faith and reason and why faith is unavoidable. He cites Origen, a bold thinker of the church, who wrote that “a desire to know the truth of things has been implanted in our souls and is natural to human beings”(165). Wilken uses this to connect this desire for knowledge with our faith. He writes that “faith is the portal that leads to the knowledge of God.” If Origen is correct and our souls seek out knowledge, then by our natural instinct we are looking for faith. However, according to Augustine, this knowledge of God is dependent on someone else’s word. The knowledge of any historical event is “indirect and dependent on someone else’s word” (169). So in his treatise On the Usefulness of Believing, he replaces the term knowledge with belief. In this way, in order to know anything about the past, we must trust and believe in the testimony of the people that were witnesses to the events. In fact, Augustine writes that “without faith, that is, without confidence in the truthfulness of others… the sacred bond of the human race would be shattered” (171). Trust binds the human race together and therefore, it is unavoidable to truly be devoid of any form of faith.  

Faith is beneficial to us because it brings us closer to God. When we have faith, we are able to “see the Word and behold his glory” and, therefore, gain “genuine knowledge of God” (178). It is through believing in Christ, that He comes to us. We not only gain knowledge of him but we “are somehow united to him and made into a member of his body” (184). Faith allows us to truly love and trust God despite not being able to perceive him in the way that we perceive a book or a rock. As it says in Benedict XVI’s encyclical letter, believing in God is not simply a choice, but “an encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” By believing in God, we have something to center our lives upon and have the ability to grow in new, better ways.