Q 63: Near the beginning of Book Two of On Free Choice of the Will Augustine tells Evodius that “no one becomes ready to find God unless he first believes what he will afterwards know.” In what specific ways does the dialectic of Book Two of On Free Choice of the Will seek to facilitate the transition from belief to knowledge?

68. Near the beginning of Book Two of On Free Choice of the Will Augustine tells Evodius that “no one becomes ready to find God unless he first believes what he will afterwards know.” In what specific ways does the dialectic of Book Two of On Free Choice of the Will seek to facilitate the transition from belief to knowledge?

[AT note: Mostly from Tweedt 2010, but I included some info from Parker 2009 and reworked the arguments for the answers to Q2 and Q3.  And there’s a superfluous secondary source thing at the end.]

1.       Belief and knowledge

a.     Belief and knowledge are mutually exclusive.

b.     Basis:

                                               i.     Belief: based on testimony

                                             ii.     Knowledge: based on seeing or intellectual illumination

c.     Examples

                                               i.     I believe Memphis, Egypt, exists since I’ve never seen it but have only heard about it.  (In contrast, I know that Memphis, TN exists since I’ve been there and seen it.)

                                             ii.     I know 2+2=4, but I merely believe the solution to a complex equation if a mathematician tells it to me.

2.      Augustine’s Pedagogy:

a.     First believe, then understand

                                               i.     Isa. 7:9—“Unless you believe, you will not understand.”

                                             ii.     If I do not believe moral truths, I will not be in a position to understand why they’re true. [See Williams’ excerpt below.]

b.     Goal of teaching

                                               i.     Belief is incomplete and unstable until it becomes knowledge.

                                             ii.     Goal of teaching is to turn belief into knowledge

3.      How it plays out in Bk II:

a.     In the beginning of book II, Evodius asks “why God gave human beings free choice of the will, since if we had not received it, we would not have been able to sin.”

b.     Augustine responds that the question can be answered if 1) God exists, 2) God gives all good things, and 3) free will is one of the good things that He gives. [c.f. II.2 pp. 30-31]

c.     Evodius believes (1)-(3), but he doesn’t know them.

d.     Augustine acknowledges this and affirms it’s good for Evodius to want to know what he believes.

e.     Facilitating the transition (Augustine’s proofs, leading Evodius from belief to knowledge)

                                               i.     Q. 1: Does God exist? (ch. 3-14)

                                             ii.     Yes. Here’s the proof:

1.   If there exists something X higher than reason, then that thing is God or there is something more excellent than X.

2.   Truth itself is higher than reason.

a.     If X is common to Y and Y conforms to X, then X is better than Y. 

b.     Numbers and wisdom are common to reasoners, and reason conforms to them.

c.     Truth is common to numbers and wisdom, and numbers and wisdom conform to truth.

d.     So, truth is higher than reason.

3.   So, God is truth, or there is something more excellent than truth.

4.   There’s nothing more excellent than truth.

5.   Truth is required for making us happy. (p. 59)

6.   So, God is truth.

7.   Truth exists. (assumed, probably from the commonality sub-argument above)

8.   So, God exists.

                                            iii.     Q. 2. Do all things, insofar as they are good, come from God? (ch. 15-17)

1.   Everything that exists has some form.

a.     Having form is necessary for existing.

2.   Things are good insofar as they have form.

3.   Things have form insofar as they got the form from God.

a.     If something has a form, it gets it from something else.  It can’t give it to itself, because a thing can’t give what it doesn’t have.  God is an unchangeable, complete, perfect form.

4.   Therefore, all things, insofar as they are good, come from God.

                                            iv.     Q. 3. Is FW one of those good things? (ch. 18-20)

1.   We don’t have to think that FW is bad just because people use it wrongly.  Argument by analogy: just as there are good things in the body that can be used wrongly (hands and feet: undoubtedly good, but they can be used wrongly), there can be good things in the soul that can be used wrongly.  Just as we praise the giver of the one who gave us hands (i.e. God) and disregard those who use them wrongly, we praise can praise God for the good things in the soul, even if they can be used wrongly.  FW is a good thing in the soul; without it, no one can live rightly.

2.   Since FW is good, it comes from God.

[AT note: Here is an excerpt from Williams’ intro to On Free Choice of the Will.  I found it helpful, but the above outline should suffice.]

Augustine is convinced that “Unless you believe, you will not understand.”  Unless you have already come to have certain moral beliefs on the basis of what you have heard from your parents or teachers, you will never be in a position to see for yourself that these beliefs are true, and thus to attain moral knowledge.  This may sound like arguing in a circle or at least like a kind of prooftexting (“Here’s what I believe; now I’ll try to prove that I’m right”), but in fact it is a very plausible position.

[Physicist example: If you’re brought up thinking that physicists are deceitful tools of a conspiracy, you will be unlikely to ever bother studying physics and see that physics tells us a lot of true and interesting things.  If a physicist ever tries to defend a point to you, you will say, “You only say that because you’re a physicist.”]

Moral truths are no different.  Belief is required for understanding.  If you are brought up among people who think that morality is just a matter of opinion, it is highly improbably that you will ever be able to see that moralists teach us a lot of true and interesting things about the intelligible world.  If someone ever tries to demonstrate to you that some moral belief is true, you will respond by saying “You only say that because you are a moralist.”  And yet the moralist will still be right, and your disbelief is utterly irrelevant to that.  The law against murder is not abrogated simply because you are a relativist; even if every human being repudiated belief in objective moral standards, murder would not cease to be wrong.  So belief is necessary for the attainment of knowledge, but belief is incomplete and unstable until it is replaced by knowledge.  All of Augustine’s philosophical writing may be seen as an attempt first to awaken belief and then raise it to the level of knowledge.

(Williams, xvi-xvii)