Response 1/28/2020

According to Wilken, faith is unavoidable because all knowledge requires faith. Considering faith and belief are essentially synonomous, knowledge of any sort requires belief, and therefore, faith. Wilken argues that “the knowledge of an event that happened in the past, as well as of an event that takes place in one’s own time at a place distance from oneself, is always indirect and dependent on someone else’s word” (169). This also suggests that knowledge, with faith and belief, is dependent on trusting the source of given information. In the time of Augustine, the word authority captured the connotation of one who guaranteed the validity of a legal document, or one who could ensure authenticity of information. This is why encouragement of accepting authority is prevalent in older texts, though the connotation of the word has changed today, causing some to rebel against “authority” as a restrictive entity.

In the same vain, faith is beneficial because a world without faith/belief in authority “not only severs the fragile bond of trust that binds people together, it makes learning impossible” (171). A world without faith descend relatively quickly into anarchy. Further, those who advocate for reason at the expense of faith overlook the important fact that all information for learning is passed from teacher to student, which requires the student’s faith in his or her teacher. Openness to learning through faith, not autonomous reason, is the way to establish a more encompassing knowledge, not just in a theological sense, but in a general sense as well.