What is Faith
What, then, is faith? Divine faith is man's response to God's revelation of Himself and His will for the human race. When we talk about what God revealed, let us make sure we know that the revelation is both Himself and His will. Revelation is not only for the mind of man, to know who God is; revelation is also for the will of man, what God wants. God's purpose in giving us His revelation is to enable us to reach Heaven, because we need supernatural means to reach a supernatural destiny; revelation is that means.
All these resources of knowledge which we need to reach Heaven are summed up in the person of Jesus Christ. Instead of asking, "What is revelation?" we might change the question to, "Who is revelation?" The answer is Christ. Saint Paul tells us, "After God had spoken in many ways through the prophets, now at last in these days He has spoken to us in His Son." God, then, sent His Son, the Eternal Word who enlightens all men, so that He might dwell among men and tell them of the inmost being of God.
What makes this Christian revelation unique is that Christ is the physical incarnation of the divinity. To see Him, as He said, is to see the Father. To hear Him is to hear the Father. Jesus speaks as man to men; but being God in human form, though He speaks with human lips, He speaks the Word of God. This divine revelation is synthesized or capsulized or best of all, incarnated, in the person of Jesus Christ. If we accept Him, we believe. Our assent to God's self-disclosure in Jesus is faith.
What bears emphasis is that this faith of ours is sovereignly free. We are free to believe and free to disbelieve; we may wish to assent or, if we wish to, we can dissent. Of course this does not mean we are morally free to disbelieve or dissent, but we are physically free. We can, if we want to, humbly submit our minds to the authority of God's revelation as taught us by His Church. Or we can find a thousand reasons for not believing; and yet, that is all we can find: reasons. How cheap for either not believing or choosing only some among the articles of faith to believe! No one, not even God Himself, will force us to believe against our wills.
As the Catholic Church understands the meaning of faith, it is not a blind impulse that wells up from the depths of a person's psyche that some people have and others lack, some who are the believing kind and others who are the unbelieving kind. No. It is an assent of the mind to God's revelation made possible through our free cooperation with divine grace. We believe with the mind, but only because of the will. It is, this faith of ours, a gift twice over: once on the part of God, whose grace enables us to believe, and once on the part of us because we give our minds in sacrifice to the infinite mind of God. If you wish, it's our grace to God even as the first was His grace to us. He does not have to give us the gift of faith and we don't have to give Him the gift of believing. So much, very summarily, about what this faith of ours really is.
All these resources of knowledge which we need to reach Heaven are summed up in the person of Jesus Christ. Instead of asking, "What is revelation?" we might change the question to, "Who is revelation?" The answer is Christ. Saint Paul tells us, "After God had spoken in many ways through the prophets, now at last in these days He has spoken to us in His Son." God, then, sent His Son, the Eternal Word who enlightens all men, so that He might dwell among men and tell them of the inmost being of God.
What makes this Christian revelation unique is that Christ is the physical incarnation of the divinity. To see Him, as He said, is to see the Father. To hear Him is to hear the Father. Jesus speaks as man to men; but being God in human form, though He speaks with human lips, He speaks the Word of God. This divine revelation is synthesized or capsulized or best of all, incarnated, in the person of Jesus Christ. If we accept Him, we believe. Our assent to God's self-disclosure in Jesus is faith.
What bears emphasis is that this faith of ours is sovereignly free. We are free to believe and free to disbelieve; we may wish to assent or, if we wish to, we can dissent. Of course this does not mean we are morally free to disbelieve or dissent, but we are physically free. We can, if we want to, humbly submit our minds to the authority of God's revelation as taught us by His Church. Or we can find a thousand reasons for not believing; and yet, that is all we can find: reasons. How cheap for either not believing or choosing only some among the articles of faith to believe! No one, not even God Himself, will force us to believe against our wills.
As the Catholic Church understands the meaning of faith, it is not a blind impulse that wells up from the depths of a person's psyche that some people have and others lack, some who are the believing kind and others who are the unbelieving kind. No. It is an assent of the mind to God's revelation made possible through our free cooperation with divine grace. We believe with the mind, but only because of the will. It is, this faith of ours, a gift twice over: once on the part of God, whose grace enables us to believe, and once on the part of us because we give our minds in sacrifice to the infinite mind of God. If you wish, it's our grace to God even as the first was His grace to us. He does not have to give us the gift of faith and we don't have to give Him the gift of believing. So much, very summarily, about what this faith of ours really is.
