Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/839

 FAITH

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FAITH

VII. The Habit of Faith and the Life of Faith. — (a) We have defined the act of faith as the assent of the intellect to a truth which is beyond its comprehen- sion, but which it accepts under the influence of the will moved by grace; and from the analysis we are now in a position to define the virtue of faith as a su- pernatural habit by which we firmly believe those things to be true which God has revealed. Now everj' ^■irtue is the perfection of some faculty, but faith re- sults from the combined action of two faculties, viz., the intellect which elicits the act, and the will which moves the intellect to do so; consequently, the per- fection of faith will depend upon the perfection with which each of these faculties performs its allotted task; the intellect must assent unhesitatingly, the will must promptly and readily move it to do so.

(b) The unhesitating assent of the intellect cannot be due to intellectual conviction of the reasonableness of faith, whether we regard the grounds on which it rests or the actual truths we believe, for "faith is the evidence of things that appear not"; it must, then, be referred to the fact that these truths come to us on Di\Tne infallible testimony. And though faith is so essentially of "the unseen" it may be that the pecu- liar function of the light of faith, which we have seen to be so necessarj', is in some sort to afford us, not in- deed \Tsion, but an instinctive appreciation of the truths which are declared to be revealed. St. Thomas seems to hint at this when he says: " As by other vir- tuous habits a man sees what accords with those hab- its, so by the habit of faith a man's mind is inclined to assent to tho.se things which belong to the true faith and not to other things" (II-II, Q. iv, 4, ad 3°°). In everj' act of faith this unhesitating assent of the in- tellect is due to the motion of the will as its efficient cause, and the same must be said of the theological virtue of faith when we consider it as a habit or as a moral virtue, for, as St. Thomas insists (I-II, Q. hi, 3), there is no virtue, properly so called, in the intel- lect except in so far as it is subject to the will. Thus the habitual promptitude of the wiU in mo\Tng the intellect to assent to the truths of faith is not only the efficient cause of the intellect's assent, but is precisely what gives to this assent its virtuous, and conse- quently meritorious, character. Lastly, this nrompti- tude of the will can only come from its unswerving tendency to the Supreme Good. And at the risk of repetition we must again draw attention to the dis- tinction between faith as a purely intellectual habit, which as such is dry and barren, and faith resident, indeed, in the intellect, but motived by charity or love of God, Who is our beginning, our ultimate end, and our supernatural reward. " Everj- true motion of the will", says St. .\ugustine, "proceeds from true love" (de Civ. Dei, XIV, ix), and, as he elsewhere beauti- fully expresses it, "Quid est ergo credere in Eum? Creclendo amare, credendo diligere, credendo in Eum ire, et Ejus membris incorporari. Ipsa est ergo fides quam de nobis Deus exigit ; et non mvenit quod exi- gat, nisi donaverit quod invenerit." (Tract, xxix, in Joannem, 6. — " ^\"hat, then, is to beliei-e in God ?— It is to love Him by believing, to go to Him by belie\Tng, and to be incorporated in His mP.nibers. This, then, is the faith which God demands of us; and He finds not what He may demantl except where He has given what He may find.") This then is what is meant by "living" faith, or as theologians term iX, fides formata, viz., ''informed" by charity, or love of God. If we regard faith precisely as an assent elicited by the intel- lect, then this bare faith is the same habit numerically as when the informing principle of charity is added to it, but it has not the true character of a moral \Trtue and is not a source of merit. If, then, charity be dead — if, in other words, a man be in mortal sm and so without the habitual sanctifying grace of God, which alone gives to his will that due tendency to God as his supernatural end which is requisite for super-

natural and meritorious acts — it is e^ndent that there is no longer in the will that power by which it can, from supernatural motives, move the intellect to as- sent to supernatural truths. The intellectual and Divinely infused habit of faith remains, however, and when charity returns this habit acquires anew the character of "li\-ing" and meritorious faith.

(c) Again, faith being a virtue, it follows that a man's promptitude in believing will make hun love the truths he believes, and he will therefore study them, not indeed in the spirit of doubting inquirj^ but in order the better to grasp them as far as human rea- son will allow. Such inquirj' will be meritorious and will render his faith more robust, because, at the same time that he is brought face to face with the intellectual difficulties which are involved, he will necessarily exer- cise his faith and repeatedly " bring his intellect into submission". Thus St. .\ugustine says, "What can be the reward of faith, what can its verj' name mean, if you wish to see now what you believe? You ought not to see in order to believe, you ought to believe in order to see ; you ought to believe so long as you do not see, lest when you do see you may be put to the blush" (Sermo. xxxviii, 2, P. L'., V, 236). .\nd it is in this sense we must understand his oft-repeated words: "Crede ut intelligas" (Believe that you may under- stand). Thus, commenting on the Septuagint ve-^sion of Isaias, vii, 9, which reads: "nisi credideritis non intelligetis", he says: " Proficit ergo noster intellectus ad intelligenda quse credat, et fides proficit ad cre- denda quse intelligat; et eadem ipsa ut magis mag- isque intelligantur, in ipso intellectu proficit mens. Sed hoc non fit propriis tanquam naturalibus viribus, sed Deo donante atque adjuvante" (Enarr. in Ps. cxviii, Sermo xviii, 3, " Our intellect therefore is of use to understand whatever things it believes, and faith is of use to believe whatever it understands; and in order that these same things may be more and more understood, the thinking faculty {mens] is of use in the intellect. But this is not brought about as by our own natural powers, but bv the gift and the aid of God." Cf. Sermo xhii. 3. iii Is.. \i\, 9; P. L., V, 255).

(d) Further, the habit of faith may be stronger in one person than in another, " whether because of the greater certitude and firmness in the faith which one has more than another, or because of his greater promptitude in assenting, or because of his greater devotion to the truths of faith, or because of his greater confidence" (II-II, Q. v, a. 4).

(e) We are sometimes asked whether we are really certain of the things we believe, and we rightly an- swer in the affirmative; but strictly speaking, certi- tude can be looked at from two standpoints: if we look at its cause, we have in faith the highest form of certitude, for its cause is the Essential Truth; but if we look at the certitude which arises from the extent to which the intellect grasps a truth, then in faith we have not such perfect certitude as we have of demon- strable truths, since the truths believed are beyond the intellect's comprehension (II-II, Q. iv, 8; de Ver., xiv, and i, ad 7°").

VIII. The Genesis of Faith in the Individual SoCL. — (a) Man}' receive their faith in their infancy, to others it comes later in life, and its genesis is often misunderstood. Without encroaching upon the arti- cle Revelation, we may describe the genesis of faith in the adult mind somewhat as follows: Man being endowed with reason, reasonable investigation must precede faith; now we can prove by reason the exist- ence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the ori- gin and destiny of man; but from these facts there follows the necessity of religion, and true religion must be the true worship of the true God not accord- ing to our ideas, but according to what He Himself has revealed. But can God reveal Himself to us? .A.nd, granting that He can, where is this revelation to be found? The Bible is said to contain it; does in-