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 FAITH

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FAITH

vestigation confirm the Bible's claim? We will take but one point: the Old Testament looks forward, as we have already seen, to One AYho is to come and Who is God; the New Testament shows us One \\'ho claimed to be the fulfilment of the prophecies and to be God; this claim He confirmed by His life, death, and resurrection, by His teaching, miracles, and prophecies. He further claimed to have founded a Church which should enshrine His revelation and should be the infallible guide for all who wished to carry out His wUl and save their souls. Which of the numerous existing Churches is His? It must have certain definite characteristics or "notes". It must be One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic ; it must claim infallible teaching power. None but the Holy, Ro- man, Catholic, and Apostolic Church can claim these characteristics, and her history is an irrefragable proof of her Divine mission. If, then, she be the true Church, her teaching must be infallible and must be accepted.

(b) Now what is the state of the inquirer who has come thus far? He has proceeded by pure reason, and, if on the grounds stated he makes his submission to the authority of the Catholic Church and believes her doctrines, he has only human, reasonable, fallible, faith. Later on he may see reason to question the various steps in his line of argimient, he may hesitate at some truth taught by the Church, anil he may with- draw the assent he has given to her teaching authority. In other words, he has not Divine faith at all. For Di\Tne faith is supernatural both m the principle which elicits the acts and in the objects or truths upon which it falls. The principle which elicits as.sent to a truth which is beyond the grasp of the hiunan mind must be that same mind illumined by a light superior to the light of reason, viz. the light of faith ; and since, even with this light of faith, the intellect remains human, and the truth to be believed remains still ob- scure, the final assent of the intellect must come from the will assisted by Divine grace, as seen above. But both this Divine light and this Divine grace are pure gifts of God, and are consequently only bestowed at His good pleasure. It is here that the heroism of faith comes in; our reason will lead us to the door of faith, but there it leaves us; and God asks of us that earnest wish to believe for the sake of the reward — " I am thy reward exceeding great" — which will allow us to re- press the misgivings of the intellect and say, " I be- lieve. Lord, help Thou my unbelief". .\s St. Augus- tine expresses it, "L^bi defecit ratio, ibi est fidei iedi- ficatio" (Sermo ccxlvii, P. L., V, 1157 — " Where reason fails there faith builds up").

(c) When this act of submission has been made, the light of faith floods the soul and Ls even reflected back upon those very motives which had to be so labori- ously studied in our search after the truth; and even those preliminary truths which precede all investiga- tion, e. g. the very existence of God, become now the object of our faith.

IX. Faith in Relation to Works. — (a) Faith and no works may be described as the Lutheran view. "Esto peccator, pecca fort iter sed fortius fide" was the heresiarch's axiom, and the Diet of Worms, in 1527, condemned the doctrine that good works are necessarj' for salvation.

(b) Works and no faith may be described as the modern view, for the modern world strives to make the worship of humanity take the place of the worship of the Deity ("Do we believe?" as issued by the Rationalist Press, 1904, ch.x: "Creed and Conduct" and ch. xv: " Rationali-sm and Morality". Cf. also "Christianity and Rationalism on Trial", published by the same press, 1904).

(c) Faith shown by works has ever been the doc- trine of the Catholic Church and is explicitly taught by St. James, ii, 17: "Faith, if it have not works, is dead." The Council of Trent (Sess. VI, canons xix, xx,

xxiv, and xxW) condemned the various aspects of the Lutheran doctrine, and from what has been said above on the necessity of charity for "living" faith, it will be evident that faith does not exclude, but demands, good works, for charity or love of God is not real unless it induces us to keep the Commandments; "He that keepeth his word, in him in very deed the charity of God is perfected" (I John, ii, 5). St. Augustine sums up the whole question by saying " Laudo fruc- tum boni operis, sed in fide agnosco radicem" — i. e. " I praise the fruit of good works, but their root I dis- cern in faith" (Enarr. in Ps. xxxi, P. L., IV, 259).

X. Loss OF Faith. — From what has been said touch- ing the absolutely supernatural character of the gift of faith, it is easy to understand what is meant by the loss of faith. God's gift is simply withdrawn. And this withdrawal must needs be punitive, " Non enim deseret opus suum, si ab opere suo non deseratur" (St. Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. cxlv — "He will not desert HLs own work, if He be not deserted by His own work"). And when the light of faith is with- drawn, there inevitably follows a darkening of the mind regarding even the very motives of credibility which before seemed so convincing. This may per- haps explain why those who have had the misfortune to apostatize from the faith are often the most viru- lent in their attacks upon the grounds of faith ; " Vie homini illi", says St. Augustine, "nisi et ipsius fidem Dominus protegat", i. e. " Woe be to a man unless the Lord safeguard his faith" (Enarr. in Ps. cxx, 2, P. L., IV, 1614).

XL Faith is Reasonable. — (a) If we are to believe present-day Rationalists and Agnostics, faith, as we define it, is unreasonable. An Agnostic declines to accept it because he considers that the things proposed for his acceptance are preposterous, and because he regards the motives assigned for our belief as wholly inadequate. "Present me with a rea.sonable faith based on reliable evidence, and I will joyfully embrace it. Until that time I have no choice but to remain an Agnostic" ("Medicus" in the "Do we Believe?" Controversy, p. 214). Similarly, Francis Newman says: "Paul was satisfied with a kind of evidence for the resurrection of Jesus which fell exceedingly short of the demands of modern logic ; it is absurd in us to believe, barely because they believed" ("Phases of Faith", p. 186). Yet the supernatural truths of faith, however they may transcend our reason, cannot be opposed to it, for truth cannot be opposed to truth, and the same Deity Who bestowed on us the light of reason by which we assent to first principles is Himself the cause of those principles, which are but a reflection of His own Divine truth. When He chooses to mani- fest to us further truths concernmg Himself, the fact that these latter are beyond the grasp of the natural light which He has bestowed upon us will not prove them to be contrary to our reason. Even so pro- nounced a rationalist as Sir Oliver Lodge .says: "I maintain that it is hopelessly unscientific to imagine it possible that man is the highest intelligent existence" (Hibbert Journal, July, 1906, p. 727).

Agnostics, again, take refuge in the unknowableness of truths beyond reason, but their argument is falla- cious, for surely knowledge has its degrees. I may not fully comprehend a truth in all its bearings, but I can know a great deal about it; I may not have demonstrative knowledge of it, but that is no reason why I should reject that knowledge which comes from faith. To listen to many Agno.stics one would imag- ine that appeal to authority as a criterion was un- scientific, though perhaps nowhere is authority ap- pealed to so unscientifically as by modern scientists and modern critics. But, as St. Augustine says, "If God's providence govern human affairs we must not despair or doubt but that He hath ordained some cer- tain authority, upon which staying ourselves as upon a certain ground or step, we may be lifted up to God"