St. Anselm coins the phrase "faith seeking understanding." In order to begin thinking about his text, how do you answer these questions: Is there a relationship between faith and understanding? If so, how do you understand this relationship? If not, why not?
I believe that without understanding we would not have faith. Therefore, my answer to the the above question is yes. I believe that in order to have faith in something we must first understand what we are putting our faith into. In order to, believe in the Catholic Church we must first learn what the Catholic Church is all about. Once we get an understanding of the Catholic Church we must make the decision to believe or have faith in this religion. Once we choose our religion we must continue to learn and understand the religion more deeply. Faith is understanding your beliefs. In order to believe in God we must first get an understanding of God.
ReplyDelete-Lindsey Ritter
It seems to me that St. Anselm summarizes the relationship between faith and understanding when he says, 'For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe, that unless I believed, I should not understand.'
ReplyDeleteBy this he seems to mean that belief is a conscious choice that has to be undertaken in the process of seeking after understanding - a sort of prerequisite.
That's my take on it at least. ( :
Throughout the entire chapter it seems as though he poses all these unanswered questions (where is God, what does God look like, why do humans suffer?), yet he continues to say he believes in God or calls him "my Lord". I agree with what Anselm says about how the "believer does not seek to understand, that he may believe, but he believes that he may understand". I feel that humans will never fully understand who, what or where God is because it's beyond our capacity to understand 100%. It seems that although we will never fully understand, we as humans continue to believe that there is some deity, or some creator above us. We may not understand fully (we may have ideas or basic facts), but our faith can still be incredibly strong. Therefore, faith and understand may not always go hand in hand...
ReplyDelete-katie
I believe that there is a relationship between faith and understanding. Like Anselm, I believe that faith must come before understanding. If we tried to first understand God, in order to believe in Him, it would be impossible. We cannot understand God deeply enough, or in a way that would make us believe in Him. However, if we have belief first, we are able to come to some understanding of God.
ReplyDelete-Tom May
I truly believe that there is a relationship between faith and understanding.In order to be faithful you have to believe and also have a strong grasp of any belief to reconcile with any obstacles in life. for example when Anselm says 'O Lord, do you forget us; how long do you turn your face from us? When will you look upon us, and hear us? When will you enlighten our eyes, and show us your face? " which means that a person will truly have to understand that God is not merely a person granting wishes in the sky but he is a spirit that lies in all of us and he will show himself in you when you least exspect it, but you have to know and believe that God is by your side regardless of the troubles you may encounter.It is difficult to maintain your faith if you do not know the foundation/ or principles of what you are believeing in.
ReplyDeleteI believe that faith and understanding go hand in hand. Without understanding something, how can a person believe in it or have faith in it? I am sad to say that there are some cases where the previous statement is a reality for certain people. I see faith and understanding in a metaphorical relationship. For example, faith and understanding, to me, are like the sun and the moon... two completely different things, yet two very important things that help us through life (the sun helps us see and I believe the moon helps us to reflect). Faith and understanding, in my opinion, are important not only because they aid a person to "discover who they are," but they provide hope for those who say there is none. Like jewelalli stated, "God is not merely a person granting wishes in the sky but he is a spirit that lies in all of us and he will show himself in you when you least exspect it, but you have to know and believe that God is by your side regardless of the troubles you may encounter." My theory on faith and understanding is that a person must WANT to understand their faith and God will aid the rest of the process. As long as a person walks within faith and understanding, one can be content and know that they are being guided by God and the Angels and the Saints.
ReplyDelete** I have very strong opinions when it comes to religion. I have been lead all my life being told to believe in something that I myself am not sure of. Please, if my comments offend you, PLEASE tell me. Thank you***
~Ekaterina Kursileva (Salsano)
Yes, there is a relationship between faith and understanding. If you do not have faith in something, you will be unable to understand the logic behind it. For example, in the case of a belief in God, trying to explain to someone the concept of God is difficult when the individual does not believe in a supreme being. When St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Contra Gentiles tried to use logic in the form of proofs to prove the existence of God, those proofs were based on the assumption that the individual already believed. From there, Aquinas logically explained the belief; in a sense, he rationalized it. However, if someone who was reading Aquinas’ proofs did not believe in the existence of a higher power, they would not be able to understand his arguments or his faith, since the person who does not believe will not accept Aquinas’ initial premise. Therefore, when St. Anselm says that he believes “in order to understand,” he is saying that there is a clear relationship between an initial belief and the ability to logically understand that belief.
ReplyDeleteYes, there must be a relationship between faith and understanding. St. Anselm states that faith must come before understanding, but in my opinion it is all based on the individual. Faith will lead us to a better understanding of occurrences in our daily lives, and even lead us to a better understanding of who we really and a better understanding of our faith. We must have faith in God, if there truly is a God, in order to believe in Him and understand Him.
ReplyDeleteI believe that there is a relationship between faith and understanding. I agree with St. Anslem who says that faith must come before understanding. It is important to have faith first and then try to grasp a concept of understanding of what you are believing. If you tried to understand God before having faith in him it would be too difficult, because he is so much more than our minds can handle. If we have faith and understanding in our lives, it will improve our attitudes towards life and our everyday situations.
ReplyDelete-Katelyn Bockin
I agree, there is a definite connection between faith and understanding. In order to fully believe in a faith, you need to understand it. Understanding the beliefs of a faith is what allows a person to choose whether or not they follow it. Not understanding the beliefs would make it difficult to stand by them and live your life by them. Also, sometimes it is the new understanding of life situations and ideas that lead us to a faith in the first place. In these ways it seems difficult to separate the two words.
ReplyDelete-Tori McAllister
In my opinion, obviously there must be a connection between faith and understanding. St. Anselm's priority in the first chapter is to gain a deeper knowledge of God. I agree with his statement that man can only earn this greater understanding with the help of God. "Man cannot seek God, unless God himself teaches him." I do believe that in order to achieve this understanding, one must have faith. In order to know God fully, I must first have some sort of relationship in Him, known as faith. I agree with his thought that only through faith can one gain true understanding of God.
ReplyDeleteI say yes to the question posed above. The reason for this is that a person must have an understanding of faith in order to truly believe in all that this faith entails. If they did not understand the faith, then they couldn't believe in all that it stands for. Anselm states that in order for a person to understand, they have to believe completely in their faith. I think that the question is similar to "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" One can not fully believe if they do not understand the faith and one cannot understand without fully believing.
ReplyDeleteI believe that there is a relationship. Humans, unlike any other creature, have self-awareness and thus are insecure beings. We need confirmation, and that is what understanding gives us. We don't just want to believe on our own whim--no, we don't trust ourselves--we want to understand why we believe what we beleive so that we can judge whether we really want to believe it or not. Half of this chapter is questions, showing Anselm's insecurity in his relationship with God, and, more specifically, in his faith.
ReplyDeleteI believe that there is some sort of relationship between faith and understanding. Often people believe that there is no understanding certain beliefs and faiths because there is no concert proof or evidence of their existence. I think that faith is needed in order to find the understanding many seek. Faith is the only proof that will be provided to us in our lives. If you have faith, you are able to reach a more clear understanding about who you are and what you value.
ReplyDeleteSt. Anselm draws a large connection between faith and understanding. He writes about how we were created to know, love, and serve God and lived on level of angels with a greater understanding of God. However we fell from grace and in our sorrow we questioned where God is and when He would come to save us. This questioning is a way of seeking the understanding we once held. Faith comes into play when St. Anselm writes "I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand." He knows that there is knowledge beyond our comprehension but he has faith that at sometime God will allow us to come into that understanding and embrace it fully.
ReplyDeleteIt is also important to note that St. Anselm believes that this cannot happen without God's help, we cannot take this action on our own. This is also seen in Augustine's Confessions. Augustine talks about how our free will is bound in chains, thus we cannot always make the right actions. Thus we require God's help and intervention to break the chains that bind our free will, allowing us to choose the life of Christ fully and freely. St. Anselm and Augustine both call for an intervention from God to bring us back into the light. St. Anselm says that faith is necessary in order for us to possess understanding, but in the end it will be God that leads us to that understanding.
~Nicholas Shields
St. Anselm seems very emotional in his writing and in my opinion perhaps a but exaggerated. I don't know if he was intentionally using hyperbole or if he really felt that desperate, but I think he is overreacting. We can certainly understand a great deal about God, whence comes Theology, the study of God. I don't think we're as much in the dark as St. Anselm portrays, for through prayer and the teachings of the Church realities about God are made known. It is a necessity that nothing can be understood about God without faith, but faith has no dependence on understanding. We must always have faith, and that is all we need. If our minds make us so disposed as to seek to understand God more, we can certainly do that as well.
ReplyDelete-Nathaniel Hlavin
I believe that, like St. Anselm, faith helps the understanding aspect of our faith. There are always going to be concepts and ideas beyond our human comprehension in the Catholic faith; it is a key element of the religion. It seems natural that we should first profess a faith in what we cannot comprehend and then wait for the Holy Spirit to guide us to the right understanding.
ReplyDeleteI also believe that understanding can also increase a person's faith. It's a nice reassurance to have...at least that's what I think.
-Sophia Pileggi
I believe that there is a direct relationship between faith and understanding, and that both are necessary in having a close relationship with God. Faith is needed first, in order to establish a relationship with God. Once faith is established, it is the the desire to understand what be believe that brings us closer to God and strenghtenes our faith.
ReplyDeleteYes, I believe there is an unremitting relationship between faith and understanding, and that each encourages the other to grow. I also believe that, in order for the faith to be genuine, it must come first. If one submits him or herself to the incomprehensible truths of faith only after understanding is reached, it may be halfhearted and forgotten. For once one knows fully the secrets behind divine mysteries, there would be little incentive to continue searching for answers. But when faith comes before understanding, it is able to flourish and strengthen with it. The gained understanding affirms the faith and encourages the believer to seek answers to further questions. At the same time, a lack of understanding for some things humbles the follower when they accept and take awe in their God.
ReplyDeleteAnselm expresses that the belief in an object or idea is the driving force behind wanting to truly understand it. In other words, one cannot hope to understand a thing in which he places no faith. What Anselm does not directly address in these opening pages is the question of how a belief first develops. Must there exist a fraction of understanding before faith surfaces? Or can a belief form out of nothing, merely because we have the capacity to imagine? The existence of a relationship between faith and understanding is apparent, though it remains difficult to determine just how one affects the other.
ReplyDeleteKara McMahon
There is a relationship that exists between Faith and Understanding. My thoughts regarding this relationship are that Faith brings us to reflect, question and seek understanding. People of Faith want to understand what they believe more fully. It is our Faith that prompts us to raise questions and search for a deeper understanding of God. This occurs when times are joyful and especially in times of crisis and loss. Faith deepens as our understanding grows.
ReplyDelete--Carolyn Spero
I believe their is a strong relationship between faith and understanding, in so that faith cannot truly be accomplished or sought after without a deep understanding or knowledge. When one relys on or desires faith, they are aware of what they are believing; an understanding of their relationship religiously to God and how to approach life through faith. To progress in one's faith and love towards God, one needs to aquire the understanding to express and experience their faith in all circumstances. With a personal understanding and true acknowledgment, faith serves a greater purpose.
ReplyDeleteI do believe there is a relationship between faith and understanding. In order to know about our faith and to become better at practicing it and living it we need to understand it. By understanding our faith we become more knowledgeable about it and can comprehend what it entails. You wouldn’t want to have faith in something that you do not know anything about. You cannot practice something without understanding what you are practicing. The same goes for your faith. You can’t say that you are a practicing catholic and never attend mass or have no knowledge of the faith. If that were the case, you would not be able to call yourself a true catholic.
ReplyDelete-Nick Darin
Understanding and faith are related; each is a way of knowing. Faith is knowing through belief. We often employ faith to "know" those things that we do not understand or to "know" those things which cannot be understood. By definition, understanding encompasses only those things which we can comprehend/can be comprehended. So, beyond the fact that both faith and understanding are ways of knowing, they are quite different from each other. However, this does not mean that they are opposed. Faith can even help promote reason. For instance, undergraduate biology students must have faith in their professor's knowledge, for they themselves do not yet have the means to fully understand exactly how proteins are synthesized. Likewise, in theology, faith is a necessary part of knowing, since many religious beliefs transcend the rationality and perception of humans.
ReplyDeleteI believe that there is a relationship between faith and understanding; however, I believe that one should have faith in something before one can effectively understand the subject. For example, if an individual studying mathematics did not believe in the general fundamentals of the subject, he would find it difficult to understand the the subject due to his own lack of certainty in mathematics. If he,however, did believe in the the fundamentals of mathematics to be true, he would be able to grasp a deeper understanding of the subject. St. Anslem ends Chapter One by stating, "that unless I believed, I should not understand." Because of this statement, I feel that he also believes that both faith and understanding go hand in hand, but faith must come first in order to understand difficult ideas, such as the concept of God.
ReplyDelete-Jay Garrick
There is a direct and fundamentally neccesary relationship between faith and understanding. Without understanding one's faith, it would not be true faith. On the reverse, it is difficult to fully understand an issue without some basic faith in the matter. According to St Anselm, his relationship with God is affected by faith and understanding. "For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe, --that unless I believed, I should not understand." So does faith develop within a person first, or does the understanding? Are children who brought up in their families' religions endowed with faith and understanding as soon as they are baptised or recognized in the the congregation of the faithful? Or rather must the child grow, develop, mature, and learn what faith and understanding God really means in their own lives?
ReplyDelete~Risa Del Eskew
Well, of course there is a relationship between faith and understanding. However, I personally believe that humans can never fully understand God. Faith exists to bridge that gap of knowledge. Faith is not unique to just religion, I believe that everybody has their own version of faith to explain what they can not prove in the world around them. A perfect example of this is students in a classroom, they must have faith that supreme being in the class room(the teacher) understands the material that they are teaching. At the same time, the student has little proof of this. The same can be said of people who value science over religion. The majority of them can not prove these scientific theories and laws themselves but they have faith that the scientists know. In the end, we use faith explain phenomenon that we ourselves can not explain, over time as the individual's mind learns more faith can be either combined with understanding or replaced by it.
ReplyDeleteCharles Clunk
There is a relationship between faith and understanding. As St. Anselm says in Proslogium, "The believer does not seek to understand, that he may believe, but he believes that he may understand: for unless he believed he would not understand." When it comes to matters of God, one can never come to complete understanding while still on earth, due to God's great superiority to humans. If one seeks to understand before believing, he will never come to believe. Instead, belief must come before understanding because of the nature of Godly matters. The term faith is used to express this idea of belief preceding understanding.
ReplyDeleteSara K. Smith
I believe there is a relationship between faith and understanding because in order to have faith in anything you have to have some level of understanding in what you have faith in. You can not believe in any religion without knowing what that specific religion entails and what is practiced within it. Most, if not all people need to feel confident in the choices they make so it would be illogical for them to blindly believe in an idea or way of life without knowing what they are getting into.
ReplyDeleteAnother reason why there is a relationship between faith and understanding is that having a faith in a belief helps you understand life and why things happen the way you do. Human beings naturally search for answers to the eternal "Why?" question. Through faith in, for example, Christianity, many if not all these questions are answered. Being a Christian makes this chaotic world a lot more bearable once you understand seemingly unfair circumstances such as disease or evil people. Anselm illustrates this point when he says in his Prosologium that "I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand." Having a religious faith gives the understanding that many search for.
Emma Leary
There is a relationship between faith and understanding I feel. Though no one will ever truly understand faith, there will always be those around us whom spend their lives trying to get a better understanding for what little they do know and what they are trying to discover. St. Anselm is no different in chapter 1 of the Proslogium he says "Man cannot seek God, unless God him self teaches him; nor find him, unless he reveals him self ... The believer does not seek too understand, he may believe, but that he may understand: for unless he believed he would not understand." Faith is not something that one can just pick up if he thinks that he may believe in it, it is something one believes that eventually he may understand it, this is what I think he meant. I believe after reading Anselm that faith and understanding go hand and hand, you need one so that the other becomes clearer
ReplyDeleteJohn Girardi
St. Anselm is very passionate in the Proslogium about faith seeking understanding; however, I cannot fully commit to such a claim. Yes, there is a relationship between faith and understanding but I do not draw the same conclusion as St. Anselm by my defintions of 'faith' and 'understanding.'
ReplyDeleteI define 'faith' as believing in something that we cannot understand yet know to be true. 'Understanding' is the state of fully comprehending the topic under question. Therefore, I am left with 'faith is related to understanding' and if I use it as a predicate nominative case then 'understanding is related to faith.' And yet, if we use faith to seek understanding and are able to understand everything we have ever had faith in, then will we still have faith?
I believe that there is a relationship between faith and understanding. I think that to have faith in something you really need to understand what your faith is so you can defend your faith. For example, if you have faith in God you need to understand what that means so if someone ask you why you have faith you can explain it to them.
ReplyDelete-Courtney Geary
I believe there is a relationship between faith and understanding because one must understand their faith. I think people must know what their faith is about. If people do not understand their faith they will be misled in what they believe. You must take the time to understand your faith to grow in it.
ReplyDelete-Elise Ariens
I believe that there is a relationship between understanding and faith. To have faith you have to understand why you have faith. If people believe in something and don't understand it, its sort of not real. Just like if you just have faith to have faith, you have to understand the meaning of faith and why you have it.
ReplyDelete-mary vogt
I think that there is a relationship between faith and understanding. Although it is often thought that faith is blindly believing something without reason, I disagree. I truly think that to have faith in anything, you must at least vaguely understand it. Many people have faith in God, but he is not supposed to be fully understood. This is because humans don't have the mental capacity to do so.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that faith and understanding are related in the sense that they're opposites. To have faith in something means one believes in something even though he or she cannot neccessarily understand it fully or prove its existence. Part of faith includes trying to understand our beliefs on a deeper or more-informed level, but it we understood everything there was to know about something it would no longer be neccessary to have belief or faith in that thing--it would just be fact.
ReplyDelete--Kat Hermanson
I believe that at the core of Christian Faith is a simple understanding. We (Christians) must understand that some of the time we simply are not going to understand some things when it comes to our Religion. We must accept the fact that some things are beyond our understanding. These things, though, are the reasons that some people's faith's are so strong; because they put their faith's in something they do not completely understand.
ReplyDeleteTom Berry