I always pondered about the virtue of Faith.

Many people these days say they have Faith, but don’t believe what the Church teaches. I had a friend at work who told me he was Catholic but didn’t agree with the Church on abortion. So said to him, “…So you’re a Catholic-pro-abortionist?”. He said, “Yes”. I told him that he shouldn’t really call himself Catholic because he’s misrepresenting the Catholic Faith in a scandalous way. In a certain way, that’s like being a Nazi who loves the Jews. Or an atheist who believes in God.

So that raises the question, what is exactly is faith? Is it an experience? Is it an orientation of life? Is it a disposition? Is it a feeling?

No – not really.

Faith is one of the theological virtues which is infused into us supernaturally at Baptism.

According the St Paul, faith is the “…the substance of the things hoped for, and the evidence of things that appear not..” (Heb 11:1)

The substance, as St Thomas Aquinas points out, is the knowledge of God acquired through faith. God, the object of Faith, then can be Hoped for and Loved. (Faith, Hope, Charity)

According to the doctors of the Church, the virtue of Faith primarily exists in the intellect; it is the habit which perfects man’s mind. It is an intellectual habit, through which the mind continually assents to the Revealed Truths of Revelation.

God has revealed through Revelation certain truths that are beyond the mind of man, hence the requirement of the theological virtue of Faith. St Thomas says, “Faith is a habit in the mind that it is the beginning of eternal life in us.”

It gives man (a) knowledge of God as He is in Himself and (b) knowledge of God’s actions in the world for man’s good.

But how does the mind assent to this truth, this knowledge, if it is beyond it?

The intellect assents by colluding with the will. The will moves the intellect to submit to the Revealed Truths contained in Revelation under the promptings of grace, not on the basis of clear evidence, but on the basis that it is God who reveals it.

This is what gives Faith its certainty – that God has revealed it through Christ. 

There is no clear logical proof that God can give to man to show He is Trinity, or that Jesus is True God and True Man – these are mysteries beyond us. However, Faith seeking understanding (theology), using our reason, can give us penetration into them, by grace.

There can be supporting evidence to give credibility to these truths – i.e., the resurrection of Christ, healings, miracles, – to which the intellect can say, “…it adds weight…”,…i.e., they are motives for credibility.

BUT only grace, prompting the will to move the intellect to accept these truths on the authority of God, can give Faith.

Since Faith means the acceptance of truths which man cannot fully understand, faith is a test of man’s good will. Hence the act of faith can be meritorious. When man’s will under the influence of grace and love of God, moves man’s reason to accept God’s revelation in faith, the act of belief is meritorious in God’s sight.

But because we are accepting (knowing) these truths through Faith, there is a certain type of obscurity in the intellect (not uncertainty) – we can’t understand them fully in our limited capacity.

St Thomas teaches that every man (and woman) is offered enough actual grace in their life to convert, and come to the truth, i.e., come to Faith - the Scriptures also teach this.

What about baptised babies who don’t have the use of reason yet? Well, they recieve the virtue of Faith, in seedling form, supernaturally infused in baptism, on the God-given authority of their parents. Then at a certain point the child’s reason and intellect must make a personal assent to the revealed truth, or the virtue will cease to grow and die.

But this is made all the more easier if their life has been embued with Catholic liturgy, piety, prayer, and practise, through which the other virtues have been growing in them, and through which the intellect can call on these other holy experiences to validate internally the truths of the Faith, i.e., the truths of the Faith correspond to reality.

This is another reason why infant baptism in so important. How many people come back to the Church due to infant baptism!

It is also why authentic Catholic catechesis is so important for children – so that their mind is filled with Divine Truth from an early age, so that the virtue of Faith can grow properly in them. In recent times such catechesis has been lost, or poisoned by modernism.

What if somebody refuses one part of the Revelation? (e.g., the Church, or the Real Presense of Christ in the Eucharist, or the perpetual virginity of Mary…). Well, then they aren’t accepting the revelation on the authority of God, but on their own authority (picking and choosing), and the virtue of Faith is not alive in them, or is dead, or dying.

If a person refuses to acknowlege one Article of Faith of the Church – then they don’t have the Faith.

At baptism, the person asking for baptism asks for Faith from the Church. The Church is indispensible for the Virtue of Faith. It is the instrument through which the Revelation is made known to us.

So, in that sense, Faith is not a feeling, nor an experience….we may have feelings and experiences in our life of Faith that can be very good - but these experiences or feelings are not the sublime virtue of Faith itself.

Final comment:

St Jerome’s famous comment: “Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ…” lends weight to this argument about Faith and knowledge. We must persue diligent study of our Faith for the virtue to grow well in us. This doesn’t mean being a boffin or theologian, but just reading the Scriptures, Catechism, and good spirtual books, with authenticity and a true desire to know God, so that also, we can Hope to attain God, and love God (Charity), and that these may also grow in us.

Next week we’ll look at one of the sins against Faith – heresy…[and if we find a heretic we could gather for a burning - that's a joke ;) ]