As Augustine saw it, philosophy is ultimately reductionist because it tries to explain with the mind things that go beyond the mind’s competence. Christian faith, on the other hand, embraces the mind but leads the believer to appreciate a truth that is higher. Personal knowledge is more immediate and more flexible than rational deduction, because it can handle the paradox of knowing and not knowing at the same time. An idea is an end in itself—you either understand it or you do not. But a person is a mystery that you have to keep penetrating more deeply and that, like God, can ultimately be known only by love. The beauty and wonder of the Bible is that it is not a philosophical system but a personal revelation from God. It makes sense in the way that all personal relationships do. At one level it compels us to enter into the experience of which it speaks, but at another level it contains mysteries whose depths we can never hope to plumb. In other words, it is just like another person—real and yet impenetrable at the same time.
- Gerald Bray, in Augustine on the Christian Life, p. 96
Image ~ The Story Book, 1877
William-Adolphe Bouguereau
public domain via Wikimedia Commons
