Philosophy, magic and Scripture are not capable of leading men to the knowledge of truth. According to Pseudo-Clement, truth is revealed only by the True Prophet, because he alone possesses full knowledge of it. Anyone can recognise the True Prophet, provided that they are animated by a genuine desire to know the truth and that they meet a genuine witness. The witness does not prove the truth of the doctrine that he teaches, but he puts the hearers in the presence of the One from whom he has himself received the truth. Truth – though rationally arguable – is not conceptual knowledge, but evidence derived from the encounter, mediated by authentic witnesses, between the seeker and the Prophet.

The continuity of the Christian faith with classical philosophy is one of the common variables to Augustine’s three earliest dialogues. Augustine is particularly interested in the relation between faith and reason or, more precisely, the relation between Christian auctoritas and reason. This chapter contends that Augustine does not conceive of authority and reason as two diverse paths of ascent, but as distinct elements that comprise one integrated path of ascent. For Augustine, authority and reason are coordinate means of ascent to wisdom and happiness. The dialectal character of authority and reason operate in tandem to purify and enlighten the soul for the ascent to God. In the dialogues, it is the role of reason to offer an intellectus fidei, an intellectual account of the mysteries delivered by authority.

This chapter first offers an overview of key concepts in The Sickness unto Death, such as human nature, self, despair, and wholeheartedness. It then discusses the relation between Part One and Part Two of The Sickness unto Death, offering a comparison of different types of despair (or doublemindedness). In this connection, it discusses the relations between faith and reason, and philosophy and theology. It is argued that the relatively neglected Part Two of The Sickness unto Death, entitled “Despair is Sin,” reinterprets the problem of despair from Part One by introducing the Christian concept of sin. In Part Two, sin represents an unwillingness to be oneself before God that involves self-deception. Overcoming despair, on the other hand, requires an unconditional will to be oneself before God. However, the latter does not accept everything as it is but rather hopes against hope to reconcile ideals with reality. For Kierkegaard, this hope is interconnected with Christian faith, charity, and moral commitment. Indeed, overcoming despair by forming a wholehearted or coherent self represents a fundamental moral and religious task according to Kierkegaard.

Chapter 6, which is the last chapter, considers the importance and contemporary relevance of Thomas’s understanding of the virtues in light of what has been established in the previous chapters. The virtues are not basic to Thomas’s understanding of moral goodness in the way that they are in some contemporary versions of virtue ethics. Nevertheless, they are needed to organize and account for the various ways of living a full life. Contemporary sciences might add precision or material to Thomas’s account, but it is not clear that they require radical changes to it.

Thomas Aquinas, the most important theologian of the medieval Latin Church, receives ample treatment in this chapter. It covers his understanding of theology, God’s existence and God-talk, theology of the Trinity, the theological virtues and salvation.

After a brief survey of his life, this chapter examines the theology of St. Augustine, focusing on his views on faith and reason, theology of the Trinity and the psychological analogy, salvation, and spirituality (frui and uti).

The thought of Ockham represents a watershed in medieval theology. Ockham is often seen as the father of nominalism, and his epistemology, views on faith and reason, theology and philosophy, are duly examined.

By discussing different interpretations, Chapter 12 shows that Kierkegaard is a suprarationalist, who takes faith to be above reason, not against it. Specifically, he is neither an irrationalist, who takes faith to be irrational, nor an antirationalist, who claims that faith and reason oppose each other, without any logical contradiction or irrationality. Indeed, for Kierkegaard, faith seems capable of overcoming the hostility and antagonism between faith and reason that antirationalism emphasizes. Still, Kierkegaard’s nonreligious pseudonyms do contrast faith and reason in order to counteract theological views that are overly rationalistic and scientific. Indeed, Kierkegaard goes as far as criticizing the Augustinian idea of faith seeking understanding. But instead of promoting blind faith, he attacks rationalist and intellectualist accounts of faith that do not do justice to the mysteries of divine revelation and the incarnation. He therefore maintains that faith cannot be reduced to conceptual understanding, although it must nevertheless both involve and seek practical understanding.

Chapter 10 shows that Kierkegaard develops his views on faith and reason by using classical German philosophy from Leibniz to Kant. Specifically, he develops the much-discussed category of the leap by making creative use of Jacobi and Lessing. The result is an original account of the leap relevant to both philosophy of religion and more general debates concerning rationality, incommensurability, and noncommensurability. Specifically, the “leap” concerns both general transitions between different normative standards and religious conversions in particular. Even when different standards diverge and conflict, such leaps need not be blind or irrational, if one abandons standards that collapse internally, and the new standards hold up. This general approach allows Kierkegaard to sketch a Kantian reductio of religious nonbelief. However, he appears to follow Schelling in taking Kant’s critique of the ontological argument for God’s existence to show that being is not a predicate, and that thought and being, possibility and actuality, are therefore heterogeneous. Whether or not something exists is then a contingent matter that cannot be known a priori.

By examining little-known primary sources that are largely untranslated, Chapter 11 examines whether religious faith is absurd or irrational for Kierkegaard. It is shown that Kierkegaard was familiar with the irrationalist reading of his work as developed by his forgotten contemporary Magnús Eiríksson in the book Is Faith a Paradox and “By Virtue of the Absurd”? (1850). More importantly, Kierkegaard’s (drafted) reply to Eiríksson is clear that faith is only seemingly absurd and irrational, something that undermines the irrationalist reading of him considerably. Still, faith does seem absurd to nonbelievers since it provokes and scandalizes our understanding. Nevertheless, Kierkegaard argues that faith overcomes this absurdity and offense. Finally, his neglected reply to Eiríksson sheds light on his much-discussed use of pseudonyms and the relation between Fear and Trembling and Concluding Unscientific Postscript in particular.