Fides quaerens intellectum

The phrase Anselm first wanted as the title of the Proslogion sums up the method of medieval thought. The order runs: faith first, then understanding. You do not doubt your way toward belief (that will be Descartes' move six centuries later); you already believe, and you ask reason to show why what you believe is true and reasonable. The root of the idea is Augustine's "believe in order to understand" (crede ut intelligas). Anselm turned it into a whole craft: to take up the deepest doctrines, from the existence of God to the Incarnation itself, and show that a reason already rooted in faith can find order there. All of scholasticism grows out of this one line.