Today the Church celebrates the life & teaching of St. Anselm of Canterbury, an italian monk whose work took him to France and eventually England, where he became the archbishop of Canterbury.
You can read more about him online here, but for the purposes of this post I’d like to highlight the importance of his definition of theology, which is the title of this post: faith seeking understanding.
Too often, many Christians — including many Catholics — have the idea that we are supposed to “check our brains” at the door of the church; in other words, to be Christian means to not-think.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Does being Christian require faith? Yes. But then, so does being human, if we’re going to do anything in life. After all, how many of us have personally verified each and every fact that we were taught in our K-12 education, let alone anything after that? I’m fairly confident in suspecting that the answer is, “none of us.”
So, nothing wrong with trusting — believing that what they say is true — someone who is trustworthy, as a principle. And who is more trustworthy than God?
Next: once we have faith, we are invited to understand it more deeply. Or, as our saint of the day put it, we are to seek understanding of our faith. We’ve accepted God’s revelation as true; now we seek to connect the dots, to enhance our grasp, etc.
In this sense, we are all invited to do theology, to become theologians… we are all invited to deepen our understanding of what God has already told us is true.
St. Anselm, pray for us!