FAITH
The Human Dimension
Faith is believing. We often believe in something or, more painfully, in somebody who might turn out to be quite different from what we believed him to be. Faith is often credulous: we are taken in by our wishes, by our fantasies, above all, by our yearnings, by our longing for something or someone who will satisfy us to the very depths. The law courts and especially the divorce courts tell the tale too often. We are often let down, and the more often it happens, the faster our faith disappears. The person who has let us down has lost his credibility with us, as we say. Faith means acceptance: acceptance of someone’s words, for instance, and behind the words, the person we accept. Faith also means that other people can accept our words and us. It leaves us vulnerable. It leaves us open to the possibility of betrayal.
Yet, without faith, it is impossible to live. Every time, for example, we accept a cheque we include the possibility that it will turn out to be a dud that will bounce. And yet our whole financial system depends on faith or trust. When we marry we do so in the firm belief that our spouse is faithful. We don’t expect scientific proof for such ordinary and highly-esteemed beliefs in life. A chemist does not demand that his dinner be laboratory-tested for poison before he eats it. The detective does not consider his wife’s fidelity an open question until she has been placed under round-the-clock surveillance. The traveller does not wonder where his plane is going until he has mastered the techniques of navigation and scrutinised the data of the pilot. In these and a thousand more important matters daily life proceeds by a faith the rejection of which is considered nothing short of insanity.
At the deepest level we put our trust in life itself. We believe that life is fundamentally good. Our faith discovers goodness at the heart of things. The result, though, in many cases, is cynicism, the attitude that is summed up in the adage, “Blessed is he who expects nothing for he shall not be disappointed.” For despite our disappointments we go on believing. Why? Because, basically, in order to survive at all we must have an almost animal love of life. It is a basic commitment to life, to survival, to the sheer insistence on going on. It is a belief that the basic hunger, the huge yearning inside all of us be satisfied.
Faith in Jesus Christ
The Christian can build on this because the Resurrection of Jesus Christ supports his basic faith in life. Christ’s Resurrection is our own recurring resurrection. The Resurrection of Jesus can tell us something when life gets us down. Jesus was killed by cruel men but he was raised by a loving God. The Resurrection tells us that when the worst happens the best happens as well. It tells us that our basic belief in life is quite right. Our deepest instincts are pushing us in the right direction, pushing us into the ever-open future: not a pie in the sky, but eternal life now. That is what all the simplicity and subtlety of the Christian creed is about. We don’t just recite it; we surrender ourselves to it.
Thus, for the Christian, faith is centred on Jesus Christ. Faith involves a special kind of perception which discovers a special kind of meaning in certain experiences. The meaning of these experiences entails awareness and some understanding of God. The experiences may be of different types: intellectual, emotional, vivid, cumulative, social, solitary, delightful, terrifying, contrived and spontaneous. However, religious experience is not itself faith. But faith is a response to religious experience, that accepts as valid the awareness and understanding of God that the experience engenders. It is God who provides what is religiously experienced and who enables human beings to experience it religiously. He makes it possible to find meaning in religious experience and to assent to that meaning as true. But the assent itself is an act of human freedom, though enabled by God.
The essential act of specifically Christian faith is an assent to the discovery of divine meaning in Jesus Christ, i.e. Jesus Christ as the personalised venue of divine salvific purpose, present and acting in us. For the average Christian believer, the experience of Jesus Christ, at least initially, appears to be a second hand perception: the perception of Jesus about whom one is told by others. Christian revelation, after all, is transmitted by tradition. The written Bible is the outstanding and normative example of tradition, though not exclusively. By virtue of his experience of Jesus Christ, the Christian by faith assents to the Gospel. That is, the good news that in Jesus Christ God is revealed as invincibly loving and as rescuing human beings from every kind of evil that they do or suffer in order to lead them into perfect union with a goodness that is absolute and eternal. To be drawn towards Christianity is to suspect that this is true. To begin to be a Christian is to believe that this is the most important of all truths. And to live as a Christian is to make the supreme value of this truth the ultimate standard of human freedom.
The Essence of Faith
As a concept, Faith is the assent to truths revealed in Scripture and proposed by the Church for our belief. Beyond the truths this assent is the personal encounter with the Revealer.
a) Personal encounter with God consists of (i) God’s own self-disclosure as the ground of existence and salvation, explicitly made in Jesus Christ. This explains why Faith is a supernatural virtue, being primarily an act of God.
(ii) Man’s personal self-surrender to God’s action of divine self-giving that provides the empowerment for man’s response. In other words, this self-surrender to God is prompted and made effective by the infusion of the divine grace of Faith. This is also known as “Faith as habit.” Abraham, “our father in faith”, is the model of faith, since he submitted himself even before any truths were revealed or before the making of the Covenant or the writing of the New Testament. Abraham’s faith was divine and salvific (cf. Gen 12, 1-4; 15, 1-6; Rom 4; Heb 11, 8-11, 17-19.). Abraham’s assent marked the beginning of the history of salvation, initiated by God, continued with his posterity, and fulfilled in Christ. Christian Faith is the entry into the history of salvation. Faith and communion with Christ belong closely together. Eph 2, 17: “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through Faith.”
b) Assent to revealed truth is also known as “Faith as act”. This is a firm act of the will, on the authority of God, to accept whatever he has revealed in Jesus Christ. To have faith in another person necessarily include having faith in his words and assertions. Thus St. Paul speaks about the “obedience in Faith” to the Word of God (Rom 1, 5; 16, 25).
(i) The object of assent is the positive, historical revelation, particularly the Holy Scriptures. This includes the knowledge of God’s salvific intervention in history, belief in Christ and his message, the mystery of his death and Resurrection, and the mystery of the Holy Trinity. This is the basic demand as expressed in the baptismal liturgy. The Church always insisted on the formulas of faith. (cf. Acts 8, 37; Rom 1, 2-4; 10, 2; Phil 2, 5-11; 1 Thes 4, 14; I Jn 4, 2-15)
(ii) Formal and Material objects of Faith: the formal object is Divine truth or God’s credibility. The material object, at least the principal ones, are the Unity and Trinity of God, Incarnation, death and resurrection of the Saviour, and God as rewarder of the good. One may perhaps include the Sacraments. The different degrees of material object, or principal and secondary truths, depend upon what is formally revealed and what is implied or connected with the formal revelation.
c) The motive of Faith is the authority, truthfulness and infallibility of God who himself works in us. One can accept the veracity of God by the very fact of knowing his nature. Since the rub is how to be assured that God is the author of the words and facts of positive revelation, the following are put forward as factors of this assurance:
(i) the consistency of the words and events without any substantial contradiction;
(ii) the central orientation of the saving will of God;
(iii) the unbroken community that has maintained the tradition and records;
(iv) the enabling grace of God.
d) Scripture on Motive: God creates a new heart and infuses a new spirit.
Jer 24, 7, “I will give them a heart with which to understand that I am their God.”
Cf. also Ezech 36, 26-28. In the New Testament we learn that the Spirit enlightens the heart of the believer with new knowledge and filial love of God. 1 Cor 2, 10ff, “…these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit.” Cf. also 12, 3; 2 Cor 4, 4-6; Gal 4, 6; Eph 1, 16-19. Preaching and miracles are not enough, for God draws man by inner revelation. Jn 6, 44-45, “No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me.” Cf. also Mt 11, 25-27.
e) Vatican II on Motive: DV5, “Before this faith can be exercised, man must have the grace of God to move and assist him; he must have the interior helps of the Holy Spirit, who moves the heart and converts it to God, who opens the eyes of the mind and makes it easy for all to accept and believe the truth.” Putting it briefly, God precedes Faith and completes it.
f) On the part of the recipient: Since Faith is a gift, it cannot be forced or demanded. Yet man remains free in his decision to receive it. This decision must be informed by humility, openness and a sincere desire for the truth, even if it entails renunciation and change of life pattern.
Knowledge of Faith necessary for Salvation
Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas maintained that the necessary notes of knowledge were the existence of God, retribution for evil, reward for the good, the mysteries of the Trinity, and the Incarnation. We now believe that since it is impossible for people who have not been evangelised to acknowledge the Trinity and Incarnation, all they need know is the existence of a personal God who rewards the good. Cf. Heb 11, 6, “And without faith, it is impossible to please God, for whoever would approach him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” Hence, implicit faith in God and in the final retribution is sufficient knowledge for salvation. From God’s side a line from Vatican II says it all, “God does not deny help necessary for salvation” (LG 16).
Man under the obedience of faith
In his very being man is confronted with the will of the Creator. There is an inescapable decision to be for or against God. For his own salvation and the good of his fellowmen man is bound to the obedience of faith; to care for and nourish his faith is a lifelong task. The Christian life is a symbiosis with the Lord (cf. Rom 6, 8; Col 2, 13), a progressive death to sin and a renewal of life (Col 2, 12; 2 Cor 4, 10-11). What a Christian has acquired once and for all he must develop and perfect (cf. Rom 6, 5-14). The “new man” (Eph 2, 15; 4, 24; 2 Cor 5, 17; Col 6, 15) is characterised by the loss of autonomy. He is no more the source of his own life, the author of his own actions. Gal 2, 20, “and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now lives in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Hence, the Christian’s moral life is an extension, prolongation and unfolding of the life of Christ. Christians are authentic children of God even here on earth, possessing by grace the same divine nature as their Father in heaven (cf. Eph 1, 5; Gal 4, 5). The Christian cannot and need not reproduce Christ’s deeds materially, but he must adopt Christ’s manner of thinking and judging (1 Cor 2, 16, “but we have the mind of Christ”), be inspired with his sentiments, copy his virtues, imitate his charity, and have the same filial piety towards the Father (cf. Rom 15, 5; Phil 2, 5).
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