(4)-(7)

(4) A picture emerges that looks something like this: "faith" is a set of commitments that have been given to one, and one then sets out to understand them--that is, to think about what they mean and the reasons one could give for them.

(5) On this picture, "faith" is concerned primarily with the propositionally contentful. This is justified if understood as making-explicit that which is implicit in the life of faith; the idea here would be to render the current state of one's faith judgeable, thereby to contribute to one's faithfulness. Inasmuch, then, as (a) the life of faith seeks ever-greater faithfulness, and (b) the making-explicit of that which is implicit in one's would-be faithfulness plays a part in this seeking, it follows (c) that faith-seeking-understanding arises from faith itself.

(6) There is still something misleading about this picture, however. It seems as if there are two separate moments--"faith" and "understanding"--and that the former necessarily precedes the latter. Contrary to this, note, first, that that which is implicit in the life of faith can be made explicit precisely by trying to understand it. (This happens in other ways, too, though--as when one's putative faithfulness collides with that of another whom one takes to be faithful.) Second, that which counts as "faith"--and that which counts as "understanding"--is ever-shifting, depending on where one directs one's attention. That which I am trying to understand today under the name of "faith" can tomorrow contribute to my understanding of something else.

(7) On this picture, the procedure goes roughly like this: (a) a commitment implicit in the life of faith "shows up," whether because I have set out to examine that life or because something goes wrong. (Heidegger: The hammer breaks.) That which is implicit is now a candidate for understanding, criticism, etc. (b) To understand the meaning of this commitment is to see it as carrying on the trajectory of a series of precedents, with particular respect to their inferential articulation (that is, their circumstances and consequences). More on this later. (c) To understand its rationality is to be able to reason one's way back to it--paradigmatically by exhibiting it as the conclusion of a sound argument.