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 FAITH

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FAITH

ily result in a body of dogmatic beliefs. " How and by what influence ", asks Harnack, " was the living faith transformed into the creed to be believed, the sur- render to Christ into a philosophical C'hristology?" (quoted in Hibbert Journal, loc. cit.)-

II. Faith may be considered both Objectively AND Subjectively. — Objectively, it stands for the sum of truths revealed by God in Scripture and tradition, and which the Church (see Faith, Rule of) presents to us in a brief form m her creeds; subjectively, faith stands for the habit or virtue by which we assent to those truths. It is with this subjective aspect of faith that we are here primarily concerned. Before we pro- ceed to analyse the term jailh, certain preliminary notions must be made clear.

(a) The twofold order of knowledge. — " The Catho- lic Church ", says the Vatican Council, III, iv, " has always held that there is a twofold order of knowledge, and that these two orders are distinguished from one another not only in their principle but in their object ; in one we know by natural reason, in the other by Divine faith ; the object of the one is truth attainable by natural reason, the object of the other is mysteries hidden in God, but which we have to believe and which can only be known to us by Divine revelation."

(b) Now intellectual knowledge may be defined in a general way as the miion between the intellect and an intelligible object. But a truth is intelligible to us only in so far as it is evident to us, and evidence is of different kinds; hence, according to the varying char- acter of the evidence, we shall have varying kinds of knowledge. Thus a truth may be self-evident — e. g., the whole is greater than its part — in which case we are said to have intuitive knowledge of it; or the truth may not be self-evident, but deducible from premises in which it is contained — such knowledge is termed reasoned knowledge ; or agai.i a truth may be neither self-evident nor deilucible from premises in which it is contained, yet the intellect may be obliged to assent to it because it would else have to reject some other universally accepted truth ; lastly, the intellect may be induced to assent to a truth for none of the foregoing reasons, but solely because, though not evi- dent in itself, this truth rests on grave authority — for example, we accept the statement that the sun is 90,000,000 miles distant from the earth because com- petent, veracious authorities vouch for the fact. This last kind of knowledge is termed faith, and is clearly necessary in daily life. If the authority upon which we base our assent is human and therefore fallible, we have human and fallible faith; if the authority is Divine, we have Divine and infallible faith. If to this be added the medium by which the Divine authority for certain statements is put before us, viz. the Catho- lic Church, we have Divine-Catholic Faith (see Faith, Rule of).

(c) Again, evidence, whatever its source, may be of various degrees and so cause greater or less firmness of adhesion on the part of the mind which assents to a truth. Thus arguments or authorities for and against a truth may be either wanting or evenly balanced; in this case the intellect does not give in its adherence to the truth, but remains in a state of doubt or absolute suspension of judgment ; or the arguments on one side may predominate; though not to the exclusion of those on the other side ; in this case we have not com- plete adhesion of the intellect to the truth in question, but only opinion. Lastly, the arguments or authori- ties brought forward may be so convincing that the mind gives its unqualified assent to the statement pro- posed and has no fear whatever lest it should not be true ; this state of mind is termed certitude, and is the perfection of knowledge. Divine faith, then, is that form of knowledge which Ls derived from Divine au- thority, and which consequently begets absolute cer- titude in the mind of the recipient.

(d) That such Divine faith is necessary, follows

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from the fact of Divine revelation. For revelation means that the Supreme Truth has spoken to man and revealed to him truths which are not in themselves evident to the human mind. We must, then, either reject revelation altogether, or accept it by faith ; that is, we must submit our intellect to truths which we cannot understand, but which come to us on Divine authority.

(e) We shall arrive at a better understanding of the habit or virtue of faith if we have previously analysed an act of faith ; and this analysis will be facilitated by examining an act of ocular vision and an act of rea- soned knowledge. In ocular vision we distinguish three things: the eye, or visual faculty, the coloured object, and the light which serves as the medium be- tween the eye and the object. It is usual to term colour the formal object (objeclum jormale quod) of vision, since it is that which precisely and alone makes a thing the object of vision ; the individual object seen may be termed the material object, e. g. this apple, that man, etc. Similarly, the light which serves as the medium between the eye and the object is termed the formal reason {objeclum formale quo) of our actual vision. In the same way, when we analyse an act of intellectual assent to any given truth, we must distin- guish the intellectual faculty which elicits the act, the intelligible object towards which the intellect is directed, and the evidence whether intrinsic to that object or extrinsic to it, which moves us to assent to it. None of these factors can be omitted, each co- operates in bringing about the act, whether of ocular vision or of intellectual assent.

(f) Hence, for an act of faith we shall need a faculty capable of eliciting the act, an object commensurate with that faculty, and evidence — not intrinsic but ex- trinsic to that object — which shall serve as the link between faculty and object. We will commence our analysis with the object: —

III. Analysis of the Object or Term in an Act OF Divine Faith. — (a) For a truth to be the object of an act of Divine faith, it must be itself Divine, and this not merely as coming from God, but as being itself concerned with God. Just as in ocular vision the formal object must necessarily be something col- oured, so in Divine faith the formal object must be something Divine — in theological language, the objec- lum formate quod of Divine faith is the First Truth in Being, Prima Verilas in essendo — we could not make an act of Divine faith in the existence of India.

(b) Again, the evidence upon which we assent to this Divine truth must also be itself Divine, and there must be as close a relation between that truth and the evidence upon which it comes to us as there is between the coloured object and the light; the former is a necessary condition for the exercise of our visual fac- ulty, the latter is the cause of our actual vision. But no one but God can reveal God ; in other words, God is His own evidence. Hence, just as the formal object of Divine faith is the First Truth Itself, so the evidence of that First Truth is the First Truth declaring Itself. To use scholastic language once more, the objeclum formale quod, or the motive, or the evidence, of Divine faith is the Prima Veritas in dicendo.

(c) There is a controversy whether the same truth can be an object both of faith and of knowledge. In other words, can we believe a thing both because we are told it on good authority and because we ourselves perceive it to be true? St. Thomas, Scotus, and others hold that once a thing is seen to be true, the adhesion of the mind is in no wise strengthened by the authority of one who states that it is so; but the majority of theologians maintain, with De Lugo, that there may be a knowledge which does not entirely satisfy the mind, and that authority may then find a place, to com- plete its satisfaction. — We may note here the absurd expression Credo gui'a impossibilc, which has provoked many sneers. It is not an axiom of the Scholastics, as waa