For Aquinas, faith is a form of knowledge;
for Kierkegaard they're opposed, and the difference
amounts to a different appreciation of the natural
world. Regarding the last, consider Nabokov’s answer:
when asked whether he believed in God, he responded,
I know more than I can express in words,
and the little I can express would not have been expressed,
had I not known more, leaving the reader to wonder
what else he knew. It may well have something to do
with his experience in the zoological museum,
studying butterflies. Now imagine the man on a mountain,
running with his net, chasing a nymphet: the realization
of beauty is pinned to our understanding of mortality;
our understanding of mortality to something else besides.
