FAITH AND DOGMA

Faith and Dogma

            Surprisingly, it may seem, Faith is a divine act, which is why it is a supernatural virtue; it is not available in nature, not even human nature, though human nature is created with a specific potency to be open to divine action. God, freely desiring to connect with humanity activates this created potency (also known as “obediential” potency) in man, thereby raising it to the level of divine living, without, however, interfering with man’s capacity to freely consent to the divine action. Thus we understand the Blessed Virgin Mary’s positive “yes” to God who invited her to be the mother of the Messiah, the Son of God and Saviour.

            God and man are person (note the singular), and person is specified by the faculty of free choice. God and man cannot force themselves on each other. God offers himself to man with absolute freedom, and man accepts freely, it being understood that the capacity for acceptance is originally God-given by the very act of creation. (Ultimately, everything is from God, and nothing from man! God is pure giver and man pure receiver).

            This act of God’s self-giving is Faith in the principal sense. Man’s acceptance is Faith in the secondary sense. Remember Jesus telling his disciples: “You did not choose me, I chose you that you may go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.” Jesus would not have said that had he not faith in his disciples. The free acceptance of this choice would be the disciples’ act of faith. As it happened, the disciples would  not only accept to be chosen but also be prepared to be sent. This is apostleship that follows on discipleship. In this way, God’s action of self-giving faith is continued and expanded by the faith-act of his disciples-apostles. This is faith in action.

            The self-giving of God and reception is a profoundly transcendent experience that is communicated through the medium of fact and word. Man is a social being, and communication is an essential factor of his humanity. As it happens, this communication is rational and supernatural. The supernatural reality as gift slakes the thirst of the rational that specifies its nature as human. (Animals and the lower species lack this intentionality).

            The supernatural reality we are dealing with here is the life of the Holy Trinity for which God has destined humanity. Albert Einstein believed that all creatures dance, even the tiniest particles. “Human beings, vegetables and cosmic dust all dance to a mysterious tune intoned in the distance by an invisible player.” That invisible player is God. The early Church Fathers used the word “perichoresis” to describe the gracious movement of mutuality between the persons of the Blessed Trinity in each one’s soul: “God’s circle-dance of communion” (Richard Rohr).  That dancing Trinity is within us all, or, more metaphysically, each one, by the very fact of creation, is introduced to the movement, though they are free to decline -graciously or ungraciously.

            This mystery, beyond all telling, must be made as intelligible as man’s faculties will allow through the media and channels of word and action that we commonly describe as Revelation. Revelation is the inexhaustible fount of truth, values, and empowering action.  Certain human communities, such as the Catholic Church, assume the unending task of encapsulating and transmitting these inexhaustible realities in explanatory concepts and convenient capsules known as “dogmas.” This input and enlightenment operate in an atmosphere of trust and love.

            Since life is dynamic and progressive, one can expect to contemplate new and expanding horizons, almost invariably very challenging, calling for updated introspection and the relevant formulations of time-tested teaching. The Church as a whole must expect to confront the dialectic of the objective principles and the challenging situations. The “perichoresis” of the Trinity cannot be frozen in one particular dance form. The teachers and the taught must admit that their concepts, however well vindicated, are never exhaustive, definitive and complete, and that they need to be mentally supple and humble enough to keep searching in their desire to give the best answers in a given situation, while working towards better ones. Faith can never be frozen in dogma.

            It is imperative to be in touch with reality which includes the Grand Narrative of God’s salvation the values (read “dogmas”) which call for our assent (read “faith”) in order to discern progressively what is conducive to human freedom and development. The developmental evolution began with the “big bang” and will be accomplished in the consummate surrender of all creation to God in the Paschal Mystery of Christ. The point is that Christ’s Resurrection is the most crucial leap into a totally new dimension that there has ever been in the long history of life and its development: a leap into a completely new order – call it the order of the Holy Trinity.