Divine Faith
Chapter XIV: Divine Faith
Article I: Catholic and Heterodox Ideas of Faith
I. The Catholic Notion of Faith and of an Act of Faith.
(A) The virtue of Faith is a supernatural virtue whereby we believe truths revealed by God, and believe them on the authority of God revealing. It is to this “evidence” that the Apostle alludes when he describes Faith as “the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not” (Heb. XI, 1). We believe, not because of the intrinsic truth of things seen by the natural light of reason, but because of the Divine authority which guarantees their truth.
(B) An Act of Faith is a supernatural assent of the intellect, most certain and free, whereby we believe a truth revealed by God on His Divine authority. Hence it is: (a) an intellectual assent under the dominion of the will, and therefore free; (b) supernatural, by reason of the illumination and inspiration of the Holy Spirit; (c) absolutely certain and irrevocable, resting on the authority of God — the assent is thus more certain than the antecedent judgment of credibility on which it is based; (d) an act requiring an antecedent judgment of credibility that God has indeed spoken; and (e) free even after the certain knowledge of the motives of credibility — this freedom being not merely that of believing or not believing (libertas exercitii) but also that of believing this or that particular content (libertas specificationis).
II. Heterodox Opinions Regarding Divine Faith.
(A) Pseudo-Supernaturalism.
- Early Protestants (Luther, Calvin) rejected the authority of the Church, and placed the basis of Faith in the immediate inspiration of the Holy Ghost; they believed also that by faith alone sins are remitted, and justification obtained without works. Luther, a Nominalist, did not believe in miracles, but only in the so-called intrinsic motives of credibility.
- Fideists — Bautain, Bonnetty, and the Traditionalists — held that reason cannot prove even the existence of God, so that a prior tradition is required.
(B) Naturalism and Semi-Naturalism.
- Kant’s theory of faith resulted from a speculative Agnosticism combined with an absolute autonomy of reason and will, yielding a “moral faith” whereby we believe the postulates of practical reason deduced from the Categorical Imperative — a faith subjectively sufficient, but objectively insufficient.
- The Liberal Protestant theory (Schleiermacher, Ritschl, Sabatier, Harnack) reduces faith to the religious sense; mysteries are credible only insofar as they conform to this sense.
- The Modernists likewise appeal to the religious sense; the credibility of mysteries is recommended, on their view, by the fact that there is some unknown element in the history of the Church, which responds to the exigency of religious experience.
- The Semi-Immanentists (Blondel, Laberthonnière) hold that truth is the equation of mind and life, and is on that account changeable; miracles have, for them, a merely symbolic, not an ontological, value. Faith is thus identified with religious experience. Semi-Rationalists — unlike Kant — do not deny the fact of revelation or the influx of grace, but do claim that there is in human nature a genuine exigency for the supernatural order (rather than a mere capacity and suitability for it).
Article II: Analysis of an Act of Faith from the Standpoints of Object and Subject
I. Faith and an Act of Faith from the Standpoint of Object.
The object which is believed is either material or formal. The material object is the totality of Revelation, divided into the object of Faith per se, which cannot be known without revelation, and the mere preambles of Faith. The object of Faith per se is either primary and formal (the intimate life of God) or secondary (the other truths of Revelation); the preambles of Faith are the truths of Natural Religion.
The formal object of Faith is the authority of God revealing, which implies both His truthfulness and His infallible knowledge. The assent of Faith is not discursive. Revelation itself, as the uncreated and free act of God, probably belongs to the formal motive of Faith; the testimony of the Church does not itself belong to that formal motive, but is only a condition of it.
II. Faith and an Act of Faith from the Standpoint of Subject.
1° Analysis of belief in general. Belief is an act of the intellect moved by the will to assent. An assent may be doubtful, probable, or certain: in doubt, the intellect is not more inclined to accept a statement than to accept its contradictory; in opinion, the intellect is inclined to accept a statement, but with some residual fear of error; certitude arises either from evidence of the object — whether immediate, as with first principles, or mediate, as with knowledge reached discursively — or from the will, when the object itself is not evident, but is accepted on the statement of a credible witness. Since the intellect, in this last case, believes at the command of the will, the act of belief is free, precisely because the object believed is not itself evident, and the will’s motive is only one which influences the intellect reasonably and firmly to assent.
Belief on the authority of God, specifically, is an assent of the intellect to truths revealed by God, commanded by the will.
2° Divine Faith, including both its act and its very beginning, must be intrinsically supernatural. (A) The Virtue of Faith must itself be supernatural and infused. Since the primary object to be believed — God in His intimate life — is essentially supernatural, the intellect of the believer must be proportioned to this object by a power that is itself essentially supernatural: belief must be infused by God, not acquired by man, and this holds true not only for the Faith of one in a state of grace, but for the Faith of one in sin as well. The “faith” of demons, by contrast, is natural and acquired, reaching supernatural truths only materially — that is, so far as the natural sense of the words themselves goes — just as a listener without a musical ear hears only materially a symphony of Beethoven. (B) For an act of Faith, actual grace is likewise required, since there must be a genuine proportion between the act and its motive.
Thomists and Suárez hold: “Man cannot accept supernatural truths based on the formally supernatural motive of Divine Revelation without a special internal grace affecting both intellect and will.” They allow, however, that a man can, without such special grace, know and accept supernatural truths with an imperfect assent, based on some merely human motive — as heretics may be said to believe. Scotists, Nominalists, and Molina, by contrast, hold that the assent of Faith, arising from the motive of Divine Revelation, is essentially natural, and supernatural only as regards its manner; grace, on their view, would be necessary only for the acceptance of supernatural mysteries with the pious adherence salvation requires — so that the necessity of grace would depend on the extrinsic end of an act of Faith, rather than Faith being intrinsically supernatural in itself.
3° The compatibility of freedom with the certitude of an Act of Faith.
(A) Difficulty of the question. On the one hand, an act of belief is said to be free not only as regards assenting or not assenting (quoad exercitium), but also as regards assenting to this content or to that (quoad specificationem) — cf. Acts XVII, 32. The Vatican Council declares that liberty of assent or dissent remains even after the certain knowledge of the motives of credibility (Hermes, by contrast, admitted the possibility only of assent or non-assent, not of genuine dissent). On the other hand, the assent of Faith is defined to be most certain — that is, infallible on the ground of its motive, the authority of God — and most firm from the standpoint of an adhesion moved by the will under the illumination and inspiration of the Holy Ghost. Hence a twofold difficulty arises: (1) presuming rational certitude of Divine Revelation, how does liberty of dissent remain possible at all? and (2) if an act of Faith is genuinely free, and not necessitated, how can it be, at the same time, most certain?
(B) The solution of St. Thomas. An act receives its specification from its object. Liberty of assent or dissent remains possible because of the inevidence of the object to be believed. The assent of Faith is, in itself, more certain than any natural assent (even a necessary one), because it has a more certain cause — the Divine authority; but from the standpoint of the human intellect that receives it, it is, in a certain sense, less certain, since the necessarily obscure knowledge associated with Divine Faith is less proportioned to that intellect. Hence doubt is possible, not from the standpoint of the cause of Faith (the Divine Authority), but from the standpoint of the intellect that must assent to it. Exclusion of deliberate fear of error belongs to every kind of certitude, and Divine Faith is firmer than natural certitude by reason of its formal motive; but indeliberate fear of error is more thoroughly excluded by an assent naturally certain through evidence (as an assent to a self-evident principle) than by the assent of Faith. Similarly, metaphysical certitude is in itself firmer than physical certitude, and yet the latter, resting on the objects of sense, makes a stronger appeal to many minds. Is Faith, then, only theoretically more certain, but really less certain, than natural knowledge? No: Faith, once accepted, is more certain both in itself and in us, by reason of its formal motive and of the illumination and inspiration of the Holy Ghost; at the same time, truth based on ordinary evidence is more natural, more proportioned to our intellect, and thus more naturally excludes any movement of hesitation and doubt.
(C) Cardinal de Lugo’s solution. According to the Cardinal, the proposition “Revelation exists” is certain, inasmuch as it excludes prudent doubt, but it is not itself evident, since it does not exclude imprudent doubt. Since Revelation is not evident, though the Divine Authority behind it is evident, there is no evidence, strictly speaking, of the truth of the object revealed; and so long as this inevidence remains, there is nothing that necessitates the intellect’s assent.
Critique. From this last opinion it would follow that the liberty of Faith would be destroyed if human reason, even without imprudent doubt, could somehow know the bare fact of Revelation. But reason can be certain of the fact of Revelation without any fear of error, and yet the Supernatural Mysteries themselves remain obscure — hence the necessity, still, of a genuine intervention of human liberty, itself operating under God’s grace.
(D) Solution of Suárez. Suárez holds that the same truth, looked at under the same aspect, cannot be both seen and believed by the same individual — the Authority of God revealing cannot be known evidently and believed, in one and the same respect, by the same person; but it may be known evidently in one respect (as Author of nature) and believed in another (as Author of grace). Suárez, however, does not consistently maintain this precise distinction throughout his own system, and his position is difficult to reconcile fully with his views on simultaneous concursus and “active obediential faculty.”
Article III: Revelation as the Formal Motive of Faith
I. Difficulty of the Question. Is a natural knowledge of the authority of God revealing sufficient, or is a supernatural knowledge of this authority required as the formal motive of Faith? Cousin wrote: “In the final analysis, the certitude of Faith consists in the rational evidence of credibility; consequently philosophic reasoning is superior to Faith” (Introduction à l’Histoire de la Philosophie, 1st lecture). Does the soul, without the internal light of grace, remain wholly blind concerning the formal motive of Faith, or does the soul see this motive already in some confused way, so that grace is necessary only to know it more firmly, and to believe with the pious affection of soul salvation requires?
Thomists answer: Natural knowledge can indeed be obtained of truths concerning God as Author of nature, and of the fact of Revelation as something modally supernatural — that is, as something exteriorly manifested and confirmed by miracles. But Revelation substantially supernatural, proceeding as it does from God as Author of grace, is attained by Faith alone, and constitutes the formal motive of Faith, inasmuch as it is both that which is believed and that by which belief itself is attained.
(A) What the Church has actually defined. The Church has not formally defined that the formal motive of infused Faith, owing to its supernatural character, is entirely inaccessible to our reason without infused light. The Church has defined that the faithful must accept the fact of Revelation most firmly, as it is infallibly proposed by the Church herself under the assistance of the Holy Spirit; that this Revelation is strictly supernatural; and that it has been confirmed by genuine miracles, of which the Church judges finally with a certitude higher than natural certitude. According to St. Thomas, it is not impossible to accept the fact of Revelation from historically certain signs — miracles — and to believe it further because of the infallible testimony of the Church.
(B) Views of theologians. Thomists and Suárez hold that Revelation, as the formal motive of infused Faith, exceeds the powers of unaided reason, and must be known in a supernatural way — Revelation is both that which is believed and that by which belief is attained; otherwise, Divine Faith would be neither essentially supernatural nor more infallible or certain than any ordinary natural knowledge, but would simply be resolved into natural certitude. Scotists, Nominalists, Molina, and certain modern theologians, on the other hand, hold that the formal motive of infused Faith does not exceed the natural powers of reason, and that it is sufficient to know naturally the infallibility and truthfulness of God and the fact of Revelation; this knowledge, on their view, is essentially natural, merely confirmed by the declarations of the Church and by the infused light of Faith. On this latter view, the rational character of Faith is well safeguarded — but is its supernatural character and certitude equally secured?
II. The Teaching of Scripture and of Early Tradition
(A) Sacred Scripture. Faith is “the substance of things to be hoped for” (Heb. XI, 1), that is, the very beginning of eternal life, and therefore essentially supernatural. The formal motive of Faith is referred to repeatedly in the New Testament as the voice of the Father, or of the Son, or as the testimony of the Holy Ghost: “You have not heard His voice at any time” (John V, 37); “My sheep hear my voice” (John X, 27); “Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones” (Matt. XI, 25); “Everyone that hath heard of the Father, and hath learned, cometh to me” (John VI, 45); “No man can say the Lord Jesus, but by the Holy Ghost” (1 Cor. XII, 3). From these texts it is clear that those who resist the grace of Faith cannot recognise the voice of the Father, even though they see miracles wrought before them, and hear the very words of the Gospel preached.
(B) Early Tradition. St. Basil: “No one can think of the Son, unless he has been enlightened by the Holy Spirit.” St. John Chrysostom: “How can unbelievers sin if they have not been enlightened? Because they have not shown themselves worthy to receive that illumination.” St. Cyril of Alexandria: “Since it does not belong to common human wisdom to acknowledge God in human form, Christ says that no one can come to Him who has not received light from God the Father.” St. Augustine draws a striking comparison between a blind man and a Pharisee: “The sun will shine upon the face of the Pharisee and upon the blind man; both are shone upon in the flesh, but the eyesight of both does not receive the light, because the blind man is deprived of the very faculty of sight. So too heavenly light shines upon the intelligence of believer and non-believer alike; reason in both cases is shone upon, by the evidence of miracles — but in the one case the eye of the soul is not illuminated, because the unbelieving man has not had ‘the eyes of his heart enlightened’ (Eph. I, 17–18) by the inspiration of Divine grace. Internal grace is necessary to recognise the light” (on the Gospel of St. John, tract VIII, 14 — see also c. VIII generally). The Council of Orange defined, against the Semi-Pelagians, that it is not possible to accept the Gospel message at all without the illumination and inspiration of the Holy Ghost.
III. The Teaching of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
Abelard (d. 1142) held that the formal motive of Faith is not the authority of God, but rational proof — so that Faith becomes, on his account, only a reasonable opinion. Hugh of St. Victor (d. 1141) stressed the need of internal illumination alongside the extrinsic motive of miracles. St. Bernard (d. 1153): Faith is supported by certain and firm truth, and recommended by the manifestation of miraculous power. William of Auxerre (d. 1231): supernatural Faith comes by illumination — once Faith is present, a man cannot believe merely for the reasons he previously entertained, since those reasons do not, by themselves, beget Faith in him, but only confirm and augment this gratuitous gift. William of Auvergne (d. 1249): the certitude of Faith is founded on the testimony of God. Alexander of Hales (d. 1245): rational grounds dispose the soul for the reception of light, whereby a man assents to the first truth for its own sake and above all things. St. Albert the Great (d. 1280): Faith is resolved into a simple light, similar to the first truth, which gives simple knowledge of credible truths; no man assents to Divine Authority except by Divine illumination.
IV. The Teaching of St. Thomas
Commentary on the Sentences (c. 1253): “The formal motive of Faith is the uncreated first truth, not seen but believed.” “Faith does not assent to any truth unless on the testimony of the uncreated first truth, not seen but believed.” De Veritate, q. 14 (c. 1261): “The formal motive of Faith is the uncreated first truth existing in the Divine Knowledge.” “Divine Revelation is, at the same time, that by which belief is reached and that which is believed, just as light is that which is seen and that by which sight itself is accomplished.” St. Thomas does not say that a believer has a direct perception or intuition of this uncreated first truth, but rather that he assents to it by his intellect and will together. His Commentary on Boethius’s De Trinitate observes: just as the intuition of first principles follows upon sensitive knowledge, notwithstanding that the light by which first principles are known is itself innate, so Faith comes from hearing, and yet the habit of Faith is, at the same time, infused.
V. The History of the Problem After St. Thomas
(A) Before the Council of Trent. Scotus (d. 1308) maintained views summed up in three propositions: (1) natural and supernatural acts may share the same formal object; (2) infused Faith is not necessary simply because of the supernaturality of its object — the formal object of theological Faith does not, in his view, exceed that of merely acquired faith. Theologians before St. Thomas, and contemporary with him, generally taught that the formal motive of Faith is “the first truth known by supernatural light.” Melchior Cano (d. 1560): “If the assent of Catholic Faith depended on merely acquired faith, the assent would not be absolutely firm” — since the necessary truths of mathematics, though ultimately seen by their own light, presuppose certain prior conditions, such as sensitive knowledge or the explanation of a teacher (de Locis Theologicis, Bk. II, c. 8). Bañez (d. 1604): “The ultimate resolution of Faith, and of the act of Faith, is to the Holy Ghost revealing” (IIa IIae, q. 1, a. 1, dub. 4). Suárez (d. 1617) is broadly in agreement with the Thomistic teaching, though it is difficult, as noted, to reconcile his position fully with certain other of his views. St. Bonaventure (d. 1274), Cajetan (d. 1534), and Ferrariensis (d. 1528) all defend the doctrine of St. Thomas.
(B) After the Council of Trent. The Council of Trent teaches that the supernaturality of infused Faith is of the same order as the supernaturality of sanctifying grace itself; the mere fact of Revelation, however, insofar as it is only modally supernatural, and confirmed by miracles, can be naturally known — just as the existence of God, Author of nature, is naturally knowable.
VI. The Teaching of St. Thomas Is Proved
1° Proof drawn from the objective infallibility of Faith. The Church has defined that Divine Revelation is, in the strict sense, supernatural. Therefore the faithful must believe supernaturally the very fact of Divine Revelation, since otherwise they would not possess a certitude that is objectively infallible, and superior to all merely natural certitude. St. Thomas points out that it is possible to know the fact of Revelation naturally and morally from historical testimony, and separately, that Faith reaches Revelation supernaturally — inasmuch as Revelation, as the formal motive of Faith, is itself essentially supernatural, whereas the mere act of knowing that Revelation has occurred, so far as it is reached by reason, remains natural.
An objection is raised: since the same object, under the same aspect, cannot be at once known and believed by the same person, and since knowledge of miracles does not give intrinsic evidence of the truths they confirm, does it not follow that Faith regarding the same object is both known and believed at the same time — as, for instance, the historical testimony of Christ’s Resurrection and belief in it as a Mystery of Faith?
Answer. The authority of God revealing may be considered under a twofold aspect: as applying to natural truths, in which it can be proved and known by reason (as Author of nature); and as applying to supernatural mysteries, where it cannot itself be proved, but under this higher aspect is precisely the formal motive of Faith. Under a lower, extrinsic aspect, it is confirmed by miracles, which are the very “seal” of God, Author of nature. That no one can tell with absolute natural certainty whether a given occurrence is truly supernatural or not is no argument against the essentially supernatural character of the formal motive of Faith itself, since a supernatural act is always, in this life, necessarily accompanied by certain natural elements, and it is genuinely difficult to distinguish perfectly between the two. But according to the settled teaching of the Church: no one can believe, with a belief effective for salvation, unless aided by the illumination and inspiration of the Holy Ghost.
2° Proof drawn from the essential supernaturality required in this knowledge. Revelation, as the formal motive of Faith, should itself be essentially supernatural. But what is essentially supernatural can be known only supernaturally, by supernatural Faith. Therefore Revelation, as the formal motive of Faith, is both that by which belief is reached and that which is believed.
The following table illustrates the genesis, motive, and object of, respectively, an essentially supernatural act (Faith), a modally supernatural act (prophecy), an act of rational cognition, and an act of sensitive perception:
| Medium (or Habit) | Objective Motive | Object | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Faith | Habit of Faith | Revelation, essentially supernatural | A mystery, essentially supernatural |
| 2. Prophecy | Mind of the prophet | Revelation, modally supernatural | A future contingent event |
| 3. Reason | Rational act | Principles of reason | A conclusion |
| 4. Sense | Sensation | Sensible light | Colour |
3° Proof drawn from the subjective firmness necessary in an Act of Faith. Objection: the Divine origin of the Christian Religion may be known naturally through miracles confirming the preaching of the Gospel; but this message may itself be known merely by the exercise of natural faculties. Therefore the authority of God revealing, applied to grace, may be known and believed by the same person under the same aspect, without any need of a distinctly supernatural certitude of Faith. Answer: the reader of the Gospel will know supernatural mysteries, but only materially, not formally — just as a student may know a metaphysical proposition only materially, without ever grasping its inner necessity and universality; or just as one who lacks a musical ear hears a Beethoven symphony only materially, but misses the very soul of the symphony.
The assent of Faith may accordingly be resolved into two elements: (1) a formal, intrinsic, supernatural certitude, based on Divine Revelation itself, infallibly and supernaturally believed as the formal motive of Faith; and (2) a material, extrinsic, modally supernatural certitude, based on the evidence of credibility, as a necessary condition on the part of the believing subject. There is a second, further necessary condition on the part of the object itself, namely the infallible proposition of the revealed truths through the Church — though this proposition is not itself the formal motive of Faith, but only a further condition of it.
A further objection: moral certitude of credibility does not suffice, since per accidens it can concern something false — as when a witness, invincibly in error, reports false miracles as true. Answer: moral certitude is nonetheless sufficient here, just as in the case of any ordinary miracle historically known. There may indeed be, per accidens, an illegitimate persuasion closely resembling moral certitude but not really constituting it, and this can be shown to have lacked adequate foundation — which never happens in the case of real certitude. Material heretics, for instance, hold certain false beliefs by mere human opinion, even while they genuinely assent, by Supernatural Faith, to certain other Divine truths.
V. Moral certitude of credibility can be attained by all men, at least with the help of grace, although grace is not, strictly, absolutely necessary for this particular judgment; grace does not supply the external proposition of credibility, but does supply an internal disposition of the hearer to receive the motives of credibility, and the needful ones which correspond to the particular teaching of the hearer’s own circumstances — as St. Augustine says, “Fides est aliquid nutritum in te,” “Faith is something nurtured within you.”
Article IV: The Function of the Judgment of Credibility in the Genesis of an Act of Faith
I. The acts which lead to an Act of Faith. An Act of Faith is a fully human act — deliberate, elicited by the will under the illumination and inspiration of the Holy Ghost. Before enumerating the specific acts leading to it, it is useful to recall the ordinary succession of acts that concur in the deliberation and execution of any human purpose. Acts of intellect and will regarding the attainment of some end proceed, in order of intention: (1) the judgment that this end is desirable; (2) an inefficacious desire for it; (3) the judgment that this end can and must be obtained; (4) an efficacious intention to attain it. In order of choice, regarding the means to this end: (5) deliberation as to which means seem apt; (6) consent to these means; (7) practical judgment regarding the best method; (8) choice of this best method. In order of execution: (9) active use of the will moving the faculties; (10) command that the chosen means be applied; (11) actual attainment of the end desired; (12) fruition of the will in that attainment.
The genesis of an Act of Faith follows a strikingly parallel course. In order of intention: (1) judgment that salvation, one’s last end, is at least implicitly desirable; (2) desire of salvation; (3) judgment that this end is attainable, and of necessity to be attained; (4) sincere intention to attain one’s last end, one’s salvation. Here logically, if not always historically, enters the auditus fidei — the hearing of the Divine message, confirmed by miracles. In order of choice, regarding the means: (5) deliberation whether these particular means (the Christian religion) seem apt for the end; (6) consent to credibility (not yet efficacious) — a speculative judgment, “this is credible,” remotely practical; (7) a speculative-practical judgment of “credentity,” “this must be believed,” followed by the properly practico-practical judgment of credentity, “this must be believed by me, here and now”; (8) the supernatural choice of the act of belief itself. In order of execution: (9) the will, in the character of an efficient cause, applies the intellect to act in a definite way — “the judgment, in the character of an extrinsic formal cause, directs the will so that it may choose in a definite way” (Salmanticenses, De Angelis, disp. X, dub. 3); (10) command; (11) the Act of Faith itself: “I believe”; (12) fruition arising from the attainment of Faith.
According to the Thomist school, the practico-practical judgment of credentity, and the supernatural choice of the act of belief, are intrinsically supernatural. An Act of Faith is thus not merely the conclusion of an apologetic syllogism — a syllogism of the form, “Whatever God reveals is rationally credible; but God has revealed Christian teaching, as is clear from the miracles by which it is confirmed; therefore Christian teaching is rationally credible” terminates only at the natural judgment of credibility, not at the supernatural act of Faith itself. In the well-known image drawn from Ovid: “Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor” becomes, adapted to this context, a speculative judgment (“I see the better”), a speculative-practical judgment (“and approve it”), and finally a practico-practical judgment which, unlike the pagan poet’s despairing conclusion, is here graced rather than thwarted. The speculative judgment of credibility, and the speculative-practical judgment of credentity, are found not only in those who reach Faith, but even in those who, with full advertence, commit the sin of infidelity by refusing it; the practico-practical judgment of credentity, by contrast, is found only in those who actually attain to Faith — hence this judgment per se requires some real help of grace.
A further difficulty has been raised, formulated thus: unless the fact of Revelation be merely probable, the obscurity, freedom, and supernaturality of Faith cannot properly be maintained. Answer: (1) the mere probability of the fact of Revelation does not, in fact, suffice for rational belief in a matter of such grave consequence (cf. Pascal, Pensées, art. X); nor (2), if it be alleged that ignorant men and children rely only on the merely probable testimony of pastor or parent, is this a genuine difficulty, since the testimony of pastor or parent is, in such cases, only the condition which makes known to them the deeper, universal testimony of the Church.
Article V: Summary of Catholic Teaching on Divine Faith
1° An Act of Faith. An Act of Faith is believing something because God has revealed it, and believing it precisely and concretely because God has said it. Suppose God should appear to me, and tell me that there are Three Divine Persons, and that the Second of these became Incarnate of our Blessed Lady and died on the Cross for my salvation; knowing that God who tells me these things is truthful and trustworthy, I believe what He has said. My act of believing is Faith. The truths I thus believe are the Articles of Faith (obiectum materiale), and the reason or motive on which I have believed them is God’s own veracity (obiectum formale).
2° The equality of Faith. It is clear that in such a case I believe, not upon intrinsic evidence — as when I perceive directly the identity of subject and predicate, as in “2 + 2 = 4,” or “the three angles of a plane triangle equal two right angles” — but upon what is called extrinsic evidence, namely, the authority and infallibility of the Teacher. This is what constitutes the essential equality of Faith. For if a hundred persons were with me when God appeared and told me these truths, and they, like me, believed what He said simply because He said it, their act of belief would be Faith precisely as mine is, no matter what difference of education or intellectual capacity divided them: ten might be experts in theology or exegesis, ten others highly versed in secular learning, ten fairly educated, and the rest stupid or illiterate — yet all would be equally capable of knowing that God had spoken, of knowing what He had said, and of knowing that He could not deceive; and the Act of Faith in every one of them is essentially the same. It is thus that in the Catholic Church there is no difference of Faith, as far as Faith itself is concerned, between the most learned theologian and the most illiterate layman, between the Pope and the simplest child or the poorest peasant.
3° The reasonableness of Faith. This Act of Faith, common to all and made by all, by God’s grace, upon the same reason and the same footing, so far from being “blind belief” or an “abdication of our reason,” rests upon the surest and highest of all reasons, and is, in truth, the noblest use of reason, the truest form of our “reasonable service” — since nothing can be more reasonable than to believe the God of reason Himself, and thus to share, however obscurely, in the very light of the Divine Reason. Faith is, in this sense, the union of the mind of man with the mind of God, which explains the peace and joy that its infusion brings.
4° God’s external and internal teaching. When the truths of Faith are presented to the mind, the intellect perceives the reasonableness of believing what God has said and that He has indeed said it, and the will enjoins assent. In this perception by the intellect, and this impulse by the will, God, by His grace, acts upon the soul from the very outset, enlightening the one and moving the other, so that grace is prevenient, concomitant, and completive throughout the entire act of belief. In that act, we have God for our Teacher (Is. LIV, 13), and God’s method of teaching is surpassingly vital and perfect: for He not only teaches us by His voice from without, as a human teacher might, but at the same time, by His Holy Spirit, teaches us from within, disposing us internally to receive and believe what He teaches us externally. This explains why motives of credibility which might, taken alone, be relatively insufficient — as in the case of children who believe through confidence in their parents, or of simple people who believe through confidence in a missionary — become fully sufficient under the influence of grace, which is the infusion of the Divine Reason itself into ours, or, as theologians have expressed it, “ubi deficit ratio, sufficit gratia” — “where reason falls short, grace supplies.”
5° The work of the intellect, as distinct from Faith itself. When we, by God’s grace, believe the truths God teaches us simply because He teaches them, our Act of Faith is already all-sufficient and complete, and we can have no higher or surer ground of belief. Nevertheless, our intellect may then proceed to act further upon the body of truths thus received — to examine them, to look into them (for that is the very function of the intellect, intus legere), and thus to realise their beauty; to co-ordinate them and grasp their inner harmony; to note their agreement with other truths of the natural order; to look around for further supporting arguments, or for answers to objections urged against them — so that we may not only rejoice in our own assent, but, by adding to its clarity, help to win the assent of others as well. In all this, we bring the truths our Faith has given us under the further operation of our intellect, in order to make plain their meaning, their reasonableness, and their relation to other truths. This is Faith seeking understanding — what St. Anselm describes as “Fides quaerens intellectum,” to which he alludes also in his well-known sentence, “Credo ut intelligam” (“I believe in order that I may understand”). Herein lies the whole domain of Theology, as marked off from that of bare Faith — a domain belonging not only to the professional theologian, but to every intelligent Catholic who follows the counsel of St. Peter, and seeks to be ready to give “a reason for the hope that is in him” (1 Pet. III, 15). In this zealous exercise of intellect, the believer is helped further by the gift of Understanding given him by the Holy Ghost in Confirmation.
6° The inequality of this further work of intellect. Unlike the essential work of Faith itself, this further theological work is far from equal in all believers, depending, as it does, together with grace, upon the individual’s own intellectual capacity, education, and research.
7° No genuinely “dubitative examination” is possible here. The work of intellectual examination described above can never be dubitative of, or suspensive of, the assent of Faith itself, which rests securely on the very teaching of God. If God is pleased to teach me a doctrine, I cannot properly say to Him, “I must wait until I see whether You are telling me the truth or not.” Rather, we say: “I believe absolutely, once and for all, and forever, what You teach me, and I will hold it against all the reasons men may ever allege — for theirs is the word of man, but Yours is the Word of God; and now that I believe, I will use all the powers of my soul to realise the beauty, goodness, and truth of what You have taught me, and to see how it harmonises with all Your other work, bringing out of our Faith’s given treasure things both old and new.” Thus our Faith seeks understanding, and our understanding, in turn, serves to appreciate our Faith ever more fully.
8° Motives of Credibility antecedent to Faith. In the example above, God was supposed to appear directly and reveal the truths of Faith Himself. In actual fact, He speaks to us mediately: He becomes man, and teaches us through His Church. Hence, for the very fact of Revelation given by God through Christ, and for the infallibility of the Church which transmits it, we require distinct motives of Credibility — the prolegomena of Faith. This must be the work of reason, itself helped by grace: it is here “intellectus quaerens Fidem” rather than “Fides quaerens intellectum” — the intellect in search of Faith, rather than Faith in search of understanding. As already noted, the cogency of the motives of Credibility is relative in its sufficiency, and God accommodates His light to the soul, revealing to little ones what He has hidden “from the wise and the great,” for so it was pleasing in His sight.