Introduction

In Saint Augustine the search for truth ceases to be a purely intellectual activity and becomes a restlessness of the whole being. The formula that opens the Confessions condenses that transformation and has marked the subsequent tradition.

1. The restless heart

«fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te» (Confessions I.1,1).

“You made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

Three features of this formula matter. First, the search is here a restlessness (inquietum cor) and not a mere cognitive activity. Second, that restlessness is constitutive: man has been made “for” God, so that the search is not accidental but essential. Third, the restlessness has a term: rest (requiescat) in God. The natural desire to know thus becomes an existential orientation that is only fulfilled in its ultimate object.

2. Immutable truth and subsistent Truth

In De libero arbitrio (“On Free Will”) II Saint Augustine argues that there are truths that neither change nor depend on the mind: mathematical truths and the norms of the good. From the existence of those immutable truths he infers an eternal truth that grounds them; and that eternal truth, for Saint Augustine, is God.

In the Soliloquies (II,5,8) he defines truth in the ontological register: “verum est id quod est” — “true is that which is”. And in the De vera religione (“On True Religion”) he identifies it with God.

This step is the one that will weigh upon all scholasticism: immutable ontological truth demands a subsistent Truth. The search for truth does not then end in a set of propositions, but in a personal reality.

3. Believing in order to understand

The relation between faith and search is condensed in the principle “credo ut intelligam” — believing in order to understand. Faith does not replace the search, but orients it: understanding presupposes a first trust that opens the way, and understanding in turn deepens what is believed.

In the De Trinitate (“On the Trinity”) the search becomes interior: the soul gathers itself into itself (interior intimo meo) and finds in its own trinitarian structure — memory, understanding, will — a way toward the Truth.

4. What Saint Augustine contributes to the notion of seeking

Saint Augustine brings to the search for truth three elements that the previous tradition had not united with such force. He adds, first, the existential dimension: the search is a restlessness of being, not only of the intellect. He fixes, second, the personal term: the truth sought is ultimately a Person — God —, not a proposition. And he establishes, third, the bond between faith and understanding: believing does not close the search; it makes it possible.

It is advisable, however, to distinguish carefully. That the search has in Saint Augustine a theological culmination does not mean that every search for truth is religious. Saint Augustine describes a possible — and for him real — culmination; not a necessary implication of the concept.

Conclusion

It can be safely asserted that Saint Augustine described the search for truth as a constitutive restlessness that rests in God and that he grounded immutable truth in a subsistent Truth. It should not be asserted that it follows from this that every search is religious. The biblical side of the relation between truth and freedom is studied in Truth and freedom (John 8:31–32); the scholastic conception of truth, in What is truth?.

References

Primary sources

  • Saint Augustine, Confessiones I.1,1; Soliloquia II,5,8; De libero arbitrio II; De vera religione; De Trinitate (PL/CCL ed.).

Secondary sources

  • Gilson, É., Introduction à l’étude de saint Augustin.