Feel free to fact check me here--this was written back in 2013:
I teach a course on human nature and once used a work by Leslie Stevenson and David Haberman entitled Ten Theories of Human Nature. It's now up to twelve theories, but here is one thing I've noted about the book (among others) which I hope the editors/authors change one day.
I have found a small technical error in Stevenson and Haberman's book. On page 130, Augustine of Hippo is quoted as saying, "I believe in order to understand" (The Latin is credo ut intelligam); yet that evidently is not what the bishop wrote. The expression credo ut intelligam was uttered or written by Anselm of Canterbury (the so-called father of Medieval theology). Augustine actually said or wrote the words "Crede, ut intelligas" (Believe, in order to understand). One form is indicative whereas the other is imperatival.
See Augustine's Sermon 43.7, 9 and the Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology, pages 85-86.
Maybe one day this change will be made in Stevenson/Haberman.
It may sound like I'm picking nits, but Augustine died in 430 CE; conversely, Anselm is a 11-12th century figure. While he certainly derived his saying from Augustine, technically, one speech act is indicative while the other is a command. Nevertheless, I would concede that the point remains the same.
Sporadic theological and historical musings by Edgar Foster (Ph.D. in Theology and Religious Studies and one of Jehovah's Witnesses).
I think this is an important point to make, and I think some people might mistake what is being said for being credulous. I think the point is almost like an abductive argument, i.e. if you take an account to be provisionally true you can then make sense of what you see around you, and if you can make more sense of what you see around you than you could given a different account (say one you took forgranted) then your new understanding (given the truth of what you have taken, provisionally, to be true) can be a reason to take what you took to be provisionally true to be actually true.
ReplyDeleteBut in the case of a whole worldview, like Christianity, you kind of have to really go all in.