Faith moves in the present, between wherefore and therefore.

“Wherefore…?”: Hermeneutic presequence is an implicit question upstream of belief

“Therefore…?”: Pragmatic consequence is a field of implicit action downstream from belief.

Each belief is engendered by an implicit wherefore before unfolding into explicit therefores.

Belief precedes speech and action, and is the fruit of faith. It is the rustling between whither and whence.

I originally formulated this idea using the model of the pragmatic maxim:

To fully understand the meaning of any idea, first, conceive it as the response to a question or problem that engendered it, then develop the practical consequences that follow from it.

Thanks to C. S. Peirce for the pragmatic maxim:

In order to ascertain the meaning of an intellectual conception one should consider what practical consequences might conceivably result by necessity from the truth of that conception; and the sum of these consequences will constitute the entire meaning of the conception.

Thanks to M. Tismisesky for bludgeoning Peirce’s verbosity into a two-word provocation:

And therefore…?

Thanks to H.-G. Gadamer for his “hermeneutic priority of the question”.

To understand a question means to ask it. To understand meaning is to understand it as the answer to a question.