To consider an approach to God by way of reason alone may seem at best debatable, given the consensus 1 that Augustine was concerned not at all with distinguishing his philosophy from his theology, but always in using the former to serve the latter, by taking his point of departure from within the faith. This is most assuredly generally the case; it is based on his attempt to help others to avoid the labyrinthine paths which his own mind had pursued among the schools of philosophy, without ever having found the Wisdom which was the object of his quest, until he had taken refuge at last in the authority of the Scriptures and of the Church.
But to recognize only this aspect of the dynamism of his thought is to ignore the part that Augustine himself had assigned to reason, for in his ascent to God, reason plays a two-fold role. In the first place it prepares for faith, and in this sense reason precedes faith; so Augustine writes:
For who cannot see that thinking is prior to believing ? For no one believes anything, unless he has first thought it is to be believed. For however suddenly, however rapidly, some thoughts fly before the will to believe.., it is yet necessary t Despite this more or less generalized consensus, a few scholars have left open a place for the treatment of reason independent of faith in Augustine's thought, e.g. Frederick Copleston although placing primary emphasis on the priority of the synthesis of faith and reason, concurs in the opinion that there are some exceptional cases amongAugustines' works which may rightly be classified as "purely philosophical". A History of Philosophy, Vol. II, Medieval Philosophy from Augustine to Scotus, (Westminster, Md., I965), p. 42. On the validity of disengaging the purely philosophical concepts from the totality of Augustine's thought, vide ibid., p. 49. E. Przywara has also taken the same methodological step in organizing Augustinian texts according to the approach from reason to faith, as distinguished from faith to understanding, in Augustine Synthesis, (New York, I958 ) .
Likewise, Eugene Te Salle has devoted an entire section of his study to "Reason",