THE VIRTUES

The Virtue of Faith

by Peter A. Kwasniewski

I. Moral Certitude and Moral Integrity

The question of faith -- what state of soul is signified by the word, and how a person is to arrive at it -- is a momentous one. St. Paul tells us in no uncertain terms: "Without faith, it is impossible to please God" (Heb. 11:6). In order to speak well about it, we must take great care to say just what we mean by "faith."

Right away we should note that "faith" has at least two different senses: the content of the creed or teachings we embrace as believers, and the good habit or virtue whereby we adhere to the truth of this content.1 The former is revealed in phrases like "the Catholic Faith" or "the truths of the Faith"; the latter comes out in phrases like "she is a woman of great faith" or "Lord, strengthen my faith."

Here we shall focus specifically on faith as a habit of soul, that is, a reliable and steady disposition to believe in some proposition(s) on the word of another and by the motivation of our will. Thus our treatment will take up first the broad sense of the habit of "faith," which is suitably applied to human matters as well as divine, and afterwards, the special religious or theological sense most often used by Christians. Then we will look more carefully at how a person reaches faith in God and how morality enters into the search for faith.

St. Thomas Aquinas talks about a twofold dependence of the speculative intellect2 upon the will. The first dependence is the actual application of the mind to an object by means of the will commanding the intellect. For example, I cannot study geometry if I am not first willing to do so, so that in learning geometry, my mind depends on my will, but not in such a way that the intellect is determined to think what it thinks by the will; what the intellect thinks is determined simply by the object under consideration. The second dependence is when an object (let us say a proposition) is presented without evidence, which nevertheless seems good to hold. Then, not only does the act of thinking depend on the will, but which propositions the mind holds also depends on the will. This state, in which the act of assenting to propositions results from the command of the will rather than the natural resting of the intellect in evident truths, is essentially the state of faith.

Let us spell out these matters a little more. The human intellect (when it is thinking) is moved to hold what it does either by the object it is thinking about, say, a geometrical object and its properties, or by the will, as when we lack direct evidence but choose to believe in something on the word of another. The intellect is moved with more or less permanence either by its objects or by the will. One state in which the mind can be found is doubt, which occurs when the mind is caught, as it were, between two contradictory statements, and is not more disposed to hold one than the other. Another state is opinion, when the mind is led by partial evidence to one side of a contradiction, but with a fear that the other might be true. A third state is called science by the ancients and medievals, or in language more appropriate for us, demonstrative knowledge, which occurs when the mind holds one of the contradictory statements without any fear of the other's being true; seeing one to be absolutely necessary, it sees that the other must be false.

Finally, the intellect can be in the state of faith, where the will inclines the intellect to a proposition not because of manifest evidence but because it seems good and right that such a thing be true. In this case, we hold a thing to be definitely true because of some sign or evidence which is sufficient to move the will, but not enough to move the understanding itself. Hence in a state of faith the intellect is said to be "held captive by the will," illustrated by the saying of St. Paul: "bringing into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ" (2 Cor. 10:5).3 The Christian must not only bring his desires "into captivity" to the moral law as expressed in the Decalogue; he must also will to embrace revealed truths, such as the dogmas of the Trinity and the Incarnation. When a man embraces the Faith, as we say, his intellect is determined by his will to accept certain truths beyond the range of demonstrative evidence. The understanding is said to be "held captive" of these truths because it does not see them with the clarity of natural knowledge.4

When we have sufficient evidence to make an act of will assenting to some proposition beyond the scope of natural reason, the resulting state of soul is called "moral certitude." Moral certitude is an interior awareness of the overwhelming likelihood of the truth of a proposition or the trustworthiness of a person, on account of cumulative evidence assembled from innumerable bits of knowledge. This means, of course, that apart from a very general description, the threshold of moral certitude -- the moment when it becomes possible to believe something -- can vary tremendously in different situations.

With mathematical or rational certainty, there can be no degrees: a logical argument in geometry leads to the knowledge that a given conclusion (e.g., that the angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles) must follow from the premises laid down. The conclusion cannot be otherwise. When presented with a truth fully proportioned to its powers, the intellect is capable of seeing the absolute necessity of this truth; when the intellect sees the truth, assent immediately and spontaneously follows. If we turn to some examples of moral certitude-judgments based on character, trust in the senses, and the love existing between faithful spouses-we will understand how they differ from the foregoing mathematical example.

Character Judgments, Sense Experience

Now, let us say a student has fallen ill before math class and could not attend. The next day, he seeks out his teacher, a man well-reputed for accurate knowledge of mathematics, and asks him "what was concluded to yesterday in class?" Not having sufficient time to demonstrate the proposition, the teacher simply asserts the conclusion. At this point, although the student has no proof, it is reasonable for him to accept his teacher's assertion, i.e., to repose his trust in the teacher's judgment as though it were acting for him. The student is inclined to accept the assertion out of a moral certitude that his teacher has no reason to deceive him, has numerous reasons to give him the right answer, and is a master of his subject. This is something of a "character judgment" rather than a "scientific" one. When a student begins to study, he implicitly trusts his teacher as a person of mature deliberation and thoughtfulness. Before he could have done so, he must have discerned some reason for accepting his guidance; we do not allow a notorious liar to tell us about history or current affairs.5 A student who knows something (e.g., that virtue is a mean between two extremes), and knows in addition what he does not know (what kind of thing virtue is: habit, harmony, convention), is in a position to base his judgments on the mind of another, when that other has given sufficient testimony of his ability and his love of truth. On some level, however, we end up with an act of trust, which turns out to be a very reasonable thing. How could anything be learned at all, how could learning be possible, without trust at a fundamental level? Deception and error are always possible; that is undeniable. But is there any other path for us to follow, save trusting those who show themselves worthy of our faith?

In like manner throughout our daily life, we make judgments, not by immediately and perceptibly verifiable evidence (such evidence is usually unavailable for what we commonly hold-for instance, that England is an island, that Samuel Johnson lived in the eighteenth century, that Einstein discovered E=mc2), but by a more or less reasonable belief in another's word. We believe that England is an island even if we have neither been there nor flown above it, because many authorities, or people we trust, concur in their testimonies. Our lives would be sheer misery -- would be, in fact, unlivable -- if we could not accept "on faith" a tremendous amount about the world we live in and the people we live among.

We unquestioningly accept our ordinary sense experience because we believe it to be the most solid, trustworthy, and reliable knowledge. If a man tells me that the ground is liquid, or the ocean solid, I tell him he is mad. We implicitly put our most unwavering confidence in the testimony of our senses; even modern philosophers who make a spectacle of themselves by claiming to doubt their senses cannot do so in day-to-day life, when they step out of bed, walk downstairs, and eat breakfast. Yet when all is said and done, do we know, that is, have reasoned-out certainty, that the senses deserve to be trusted? Of course not. The senses by their nature precede reason and their witness must be taken for granted. To talk about the senses, we must use them; to critique the senses, we must find a measure that is in no way tied to sensation-and what would this measure be? We have an overpowering feeling that this physical contact with the world, out of all things in our conscious life, cannot be repudiated.

Faith is the only way of learning to live in the dimension of that which cannot be demonstrated or even directly seen, but which we feel must be right because it forms the basis of everything else we do or think. The manner in which we put faith "in our senses" has to some extent this character of self-abandonment lacking a demonstrated necessity, yet possessed of a certainty greater than argument can furnish.

"Faith" in this context signifies not only that which is beyond proof because we cannot see or touch it, but also anything which is beyond reason because of its "pre-intellectual" nearness. We put faith in our senses not because we can ever really doubt them, but because they give us knowledge that is irreplaceable and foundational. Color cannot be reasoned to, nor tone, nor softness; the fact of motion, the fact of shapes, etc., are likewise unprovable and need no proof. We see colors, we hear tones, we perceive motion and the sizes and shapes of things. These objects of sensation are believed in because the human mind cannot do otherwise; it cannot even conceive of denying their evidence. (In the process of denying the evidence of the senses, one should have to use spoken or mentally conceived words, which are themselves externally or internally sensible.)

Faith enters in, to be sure, where there is a question of truth exceeding the mind's innate capacities, as is the case with divine revelation. But faith also enters in when there is truth that reason presupposes without proof, because the very activity of proving depends upon the unassailable truth of this former condition. One need not fear putting faith in the senses as though we could end up being deceived, or as though such faith were an option. It is impossible to think about oneself or about reality without the precondition of immediate sense contact with the world.6

Spousal Love and Friendship

The final example is, of course, much closer to the nature of religious faith: genuine love between a man and a woman. Of the absolute trust, the unerring confidence, the immovable loyalty demanded of lover and beloved towards each other, no more words need be said than the heart of any faithful spouse will abundantly supply. It is important to see that matrimony, as an unbreakable covenant or sacrament, has the character of resolution (re-solutio, putting back together: "what God has joined together, let no man put asunder"), indissolubility, exclusivity, self-renunciation. Marriage, the earthly union of lover and beloved, presupposes and demands the constant exercise of faith. Love can never thrive without a surrender of self. Faith in God is identical, and that is why the Old Testament calls Israel the bride and God the bridegroom, while the New Testament calls the Church the bride and Christ the bridegroom. If in religious faith the will holds the intellect captive -- "I believe in one God, the Almighty Father" -- it does so in the way that "I do" holds the self captive to one's spouse, regardless of difficulty or struggle. "For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer": these words are noble and profound. On their wedding day, the future husband and wife ought to repeat them with fear and trembling, as they are tantamount to a creed and a baptism immersing the soul in waters deeper and greater than itself. Religion itself is, in a very real sense, a marriage to God. We make manifest in our words and deeds that we desire to love Him. He courts us with His grace, proposes to be united to our souls, and invites us to the wedding feast. In the end, we must decide to love Him "for better or for worse. . ." in this vale of tears, till death brings us face to face with the Bridegroom whose love and real presence we believed in throughout our lives, though we saw Him not.

. . . It is obvious that our will has a great deal to do with our attainment of religious certitude. This does not mean that our convictions lack objective intellectual bases but that the nature of the evidence allows for a free, unforced response. In a similar manner our interpersonal responses on a human level are free and unforced. I can have completely adequate evidence that someone loves me, and yet I remain free to reject the love or to refuse to admit that it exists. We do not reach certitude by a mere choice or an arbitrary decision. . . Religious commitment, therefore, is not a blind jump. Nor does the will operate in the dark. The intellectual evidence is there, but frightfully limited and prone to compromise as we are, we need actively willed commitment to truth, if we are to maintain intellectual integrity. Assent to evidence is a duty, and we need our will to assure that we shall act reasonably.7

The dogmas of our religion may sometimes escape our reason, and we do not know how to approach the infinite all-perfect God "who dwells in unapproachable light" (1 Tim. 6:16). But mystery is not absurdity; and what is beyond reason is not unreasonable. Love, like religion, is a mystery -- indeed love is the mystery of life -- but love is not absurd. It is greater than we are; it encompasses us and transforms us. If man were the ultimate measure of all things, love would be absurd, because true love cannot be measured by man. But who that has fallen in love, who that has tasted real and abiding love, can think that man is the ultimate measure of all things? Love itself governs the life of the lover; and this love is none other than God, who is at work wherever true love exists. The husband trusts his wife, and she for her part trusts her husband. They believe in each other's words of love. There is no question of a "science" of love. There is a religion of love, a prayer of love, a sacrifice of love, "a peace that surpasseth all understanding" (Phil. 4:7), but there cannot be intellectual comprehension. Love surpasses, one might even say overleaps, comprehension.

One may raise the following objection. In human love we see and hear the other person, but the situation is entirely different when it comes to religious faith, where we do not see, or in any way come into contact with, the object of our belief. Yet let us ask, What is it a man truly sees in his beloved? Does he see her belovedness? Does he even see the person? When contemplating a friend or spouse or child, we see a familiar animal shaped like a human being, we hear him using a conventional language in an attempt to express its hidden thoughts. That is what we really encounter. The beloved, the love, the meaning of words and gestures, lies far beneath the surface of the shapes, colors, sounds, etc. "Truth is in the depths," said the philosopher Democritus. We perceive only signs of realities (or, in scholastic terminology, accidents of substances); the realities themselves are forever beyond touch, sight, smell, taste, and hearing, accessible only to the spiritual part of man, his immortal soul, his divinely-crafted mind. Human love is beyond the realm of a simple problem which the intellect could set itself to "solve" like an equation in physics. Nothing but faith, loyalty, purity, devotion can get at the heart of reality, the heart of love, the meaning of love, the boundaries of the person created unto God's image and likeness. He knows little of love who thinks that it is nothing other than its signs and tokens.8

The Marriage of God and the Soul

Faith is knowledge in promise, "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not" (Heb. 11:1), just as the faith plighted by a bride and bridegroom is in promise of a lifetime of knowledge. When Adam knew Eve in a communion of flesh (Gen. 4:1), he physically knew a part of her, the body, but symbolically he knew the whole of her, her future life and inner destiny. Marriage is the promise to share one's entire life and destiny with another, to make one life and destiny out of two. Faith in God follows a similar pattern. The believer plights his faith in God, promising firm fidelity to commands which he is nonetheless free to break, just as the husband or wife may violate the nuptial bed by committing adultery. The believer makes the life of Christ his own, as the wife makes the husband's life her own; Christ lays down His life to save those who believe in Him, as the husband sacrifices his life for his wife's sake (cf. Eph. 5:21-32).

By the rubrics of the Solemnization of Matrimony in the Book of Common Prayer, the man is instructed to say to the woman as he places the ring upon her finger: "With this Ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow: In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen." They give of themselves because they belong to each other. Their mutual homage and lifelong union is a ratification of the covenant written that day upon their hearts, written with the word of the entire person and the absolute weight of past, present, and future as a testimony to the immortality of the human soul and the divine origin of its love. The nuptial vow is an imitation of the Virgin Mary's faith: "Be it done to me according to thy word" (Lk. 1:38). This one timeless utterance, said by Eve to Adam, Sarah to Abraham, Rebecca to Isaac, Rachel to Jacob, Mary to Joseph, Christ to His Father, the Church to Christ, is the solemn attestation of undying love, the triumph of love over death.9

Think of the devotion of the Virgin Mary to her Son. He asked everything of her, and she was not found wanting to His request. When a man or woman plights faith with God, it is done in promise of future beatitude which we do not presently enjoy. The grandeur of faith consists in this free and unconditional surrender to a lover whom we do not see, but whose solemn word we trust. Imagine the betrothed of a young man gone off to war. She knows she may never see him again, she knows that nothing can give her certainty of his faithfulness overseas. But if she loves him, she will bind herself to him in expectation of reunion. Scripture says of Jacob, that he "served seven years for Rachel: and they seemed but a few days, because of the greatness of his love" (Gen. 30:20). Although in human love death and betrayal may intervene, the will to love is stronger than either because it springs up from the deepest spiritual core of man's heart. Evidence and proof mean little on this level; we do not believe in a lover because he has furnished arguments or data to confirm the sincerity of his word or the straightness of his paths. We have reasons to believe in him-but, as Pascal said, "The heart has reasons, of which reason knows nothing."10

In the case of our divine Lover, He longs to make Himself known to us: He has not left us orphans. Why the Incarnation? Why the parables and Passion of Jesus Christ? Why miracles? Why saints and scholars? Are these not the bouquets, the sweetmeats, the love-letters of God to man? Furthermore, if God creates the universe in a fecunditive overflow of His perfect goodness, will He make it impossible for us to find Him, and when He is found, impossible for us to keep Him? Unlike the ephemeral dreams and tragic fractures of human love, which by its very nature remains subject to change, the love of God remains everlastingly: He is faithful, He will not betray His children. They are His, and He would have them return to Him, as the father wants the prodigal son back in his arms, under his roof. Our entire life is a wandering away from the place whence we came and a pilgrimage to find our way back to the origin. The Father waits for us with a feast, and for our sake, He has allowed the killing, not of a fatted calf, but of His very own Son, that we might return to Him with confidence and rest our weary head on His bosom, like the poor beggar Lazarus reposing in the bosom of Abraham. Here on earth, we can but search and follow the star: we must follow whatever light is visible to us with the unwavering faith of the Magi.

Thomas Valpy French, Ronald Knox's grandfather, wrote these words about his religious struggles: "I own I have been much perplexed. . .I can but come to this, that when full light is not given one must accept the best light one has, and move slowly forward with some hesitancy but still more trust."11 The light we receive is "the evidence of things that appear not" (Heb. 11:1). The baby in the manger seemed to be no more than an ordinary human child, yet the wise men, full of faith, adored Him as God. The light we seek in our life is the will of God, the work of God within us, the word of God that He desires us to know: His Son, Who is Eternal Life.

God Is the Source of Theological Virtues

"Faith cometh by hearing," says St. Paul, "and hearing by the preaching of Christ" (Rom. 10:17). We learn about the Gospel of Our Lord through its ministers and defenders, our parents and godparents, our priests and bishops. Many of us learn about the Faith only when we are older and have been introduced to it by those bishops, priests, religious, and laity who preach the truth in season and out of season. In whatever way the truths of the Gospel reach us and penetrate our hearts, it is necessary for our well-being as Christians that we receive sound religious instruction together with sacramental initiation. This dual source of Christian maturity-moral and intellectual catechesis coupled with participation in divine life through the sacraments-is beautifully illustrated by the conversation of Christ with Nicodemus (Jn. 3:1-21), where Our Lord is at once catechizing Nicodemus about the meaning of redemption and leading him to see the necessity of baptism. Whenever teachers of Catholic truth spread word of the salvation wrought by Christ, they are imitating their Master in His aspect of Light to the Gentiles. "Faith cometh by hearing": it is through the preaching and teaching of the Catholic Faith that the theological virtue of faith, which embraces the sublime mysteries of God, is first planted in the hearts of nonbelievers and further strengthened in those who already believe. Nevertheless, we must keep in mind the all-important fact that God alone gives the habit of supernatural faith. It is solely by His grace, not by human instruction or initiation, that we believe "unto salvation," that we are enabled to confess the Creed with an upright heart. Christians attain to supernatural truth by means of the grace of faith infused into their souls ("with meekness receive the ingrafted word, which is able to save your souls" (Jas. 1:21), not by arguments or persuasions in the mouths of men.

The fully-formed Christian receives three fundamental graces, called by the tradition "theological virtues," which permeate his entire spiritual life: faith, hope, and charity (love of God for His own sake and love of neighbor for God's sake). The grace of faith is, in a manner of speaking, the foundation of the others, since it is impossible to have hope in God's mercy or charity towards God and neighbor without holding firmly to the articles of our religion, while it is possible, as Thomas Aquinas argues, to have "formless" faith even though one lacks hope and charity. For example, the soul in a state of mortal sin is at enmity with God and feels despondency because of this separation, but still believes that the Gospel is true, that Jesus Christ is his Redeemer, that repentance is possible, etc.; and "no one can say 'The Lord Jesus' but by the Holy Ghost" (1 Cor. 12:3).12

For the Christian whose soul harbors the intimate presence of God, the grace of faith, bearing the soul aloft to invisible realities, is paralleled both by the grace of hope, impelling us to yearn for our fulfillment in the beatific vision of God, and by the grace of charity, which enables the soul to live the life of Christ and thus to enjoy divine friendship. The grace of charity is the crown of the theological virtues for at least three reasons: it is the basis of the spiritual friendship to which we have been elevated by the mercy of God; it enables us to perform works and suffer hardships in a manner pleasing to Him; and it alone remains in its full splendor in heaven, where faith gives way to vision and hope to possession (cf. 1 Cor. 13:8-13).

God alone, it should be stressed, is the author of these supernatural virtues. Neither by our own sincere efforts nor by receiving the instruction of others can man earn or obtain the theological virtues. God chooses (we must speak as though God were making choices in time, when in reality He abides eternally unchanged) to give growth to the seeds that others have planted and watered. "I have planted, Apollo watered, but God gave the increase. Therefore, neither he that planteth is anything, nor he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase" (1 Cor. 3:6-7). It is our responsibility to yearn for growth and beg the Gardener to give it to us. However much work we put into strengthening and purifying it, faith must be, first and last, a gift from the merciful Lord.13 To have faith merely in another human being, he must give you some reason or cause for believing in him, for reposing your trust in him, for confiding your heart to his safe-keeping. If he asks you to do something beyond your strength, he must also give you the power to do it. How much more so with God, whose visitation we cannot command, whose grace we cannot merit! As the wise virgins await the bridegroom's arrival in the parable, or the beloved longs for her lover in the Song of Songs, so we must pray and plead-waiting, but always searching, for the Almighty.

On my bed, at night, I sought him whom my heart loves.

I sought but did not find him.

So I will rise and go through the City;

In the streets and squares I will seek him whom my heart loves (Cant. 3:1-2).

As an aside in many of his books, Søren Kierkegaard insists on reminding the reader that "We're in no hurry." Neither is the man in search of God. It is right to hope for light, to expect it humbly, to yearn for its dawning-but it should be remembered that by our own efforts we cannot hasten the sunrise. We can travel on foot, in the cold of night, towards the horizon where light will appear, and in this sense make ourselves open to the light, able to be enlightened, willing to be converted by God's grace. We may seem to be hastening the rising of the sun, when really we are simply getting closer to where it first rises, that we may behold it at an earlier hour. "I love them that love me, and they that in the morning early watch for me, shall find me" (Prov. 8:17).

Moral Integrity Precedes Religious Certitude

How can a man know that he sincerely loves, or desires to possess, the truth? In his very fine work Faith and Certitude, Fr. Thomas Dubay addresses this question directly.

The intellect cannot force one to turn to God and to the Church as a blaze of lightning forces one to the realization that a storm is in progress. God wants this turning to himself to be an act of freedom, a willed choice. It is to be a decision for which one is personally responsible. The good person sees the truth because truth and goodness are connatural to him. Those who really want ultimate truth will find it. Those who love goodness and beauty will find God. They know that the teaching of Jesus is true from the sheer goodness of him and it. Since doctrinal truth and moral goodness are both obediences to the one God, when the latter is lacking over a period of time, the former weakens and perhaps disappears ...

Only that man or woman, therefore, is likely to find God and his Church who can answer affirmatively the question, "Would I obey whatever I find God has revealed and what he wants me to do?" If his answer is negative, he is not in harmony with the ways of God. The disobedience prevents the intellectual sight. He cannot see what is there because the moral tenor of his overall makeup as a person blocks it out of view. If the answer is affirmative, he can see what is before him. As Jesus himself put it, the man who is prepared to do the Father's will is sure to know that Jesus' teaching is from God (Jn 7:16-17). His intellectual sight is not covered over by volitional desires. Our cognitive grasp of reality is inseparable from the integrity of our manner of life.14

It is always healthy (and sobering) to pause for a moment and meditate on the kind of sacrifice demanded by a search for God's Will. At the start of the road stands the saying of St. Paul: "You are not your own; you are bought with a great price" (1 Cor. 6:19-20), namely, the blood of Christ (cf. Acts 20:28); at the end of the road, "with Christ I am nailed to the cross, and I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:19-20). Unless we are prepared to surrender entirely to the Truth, without rejecting any of its claims upon our lives, we cannot justly hope to find "the narrow road" spoken of by Jesus (Mt. 7:14). "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will," the angels sang on Christmas Eve (Lk. 2:14). Too often, we can unconsciously turn the search for God's will into an intellectual exercise -- a traumatic exercise, no doubt, and urgent, but still predominantly regarded as a matter of working out some problems and hearing a good explanation. Faith is impossible, needless to say, without knowledge of what to believe; and we can only learn what we ought to believe, if we investigate the claims brought forward by those who call themselves disciples of the Master.15 But knowledge is not the same thing as faith. By faith we confess a creed, we make a decision to adhere to a knowledge beyond our ability to demonstrate. Faith has an intellectual content, but results from an act of the will. Faith is itself a work. Thomas Aquinas, commenting on 1 Thessalonians 1:3 ("Being mindful of the work of your faith and labor and charity"), says that St. Paul

mentions faith because it is an essential condition for obtaining the things to be hoped for, a means of revelation not based on appearances: "For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him" (Heb. 11:6). This, however, is not sufficient unless the person practices good works and makes an effort; so Paul says, your work of faith and labor. "Faith apart from works is dead" (Jas. 2:26). The person who gives up while laboring for Christ is worth nothing: "They believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away" (Lk. 8:13). Paul uses the words work and labor, implying that he is mindful of their active and struggling faith.16

"Faith without works" is the same thing as dead faith, for a living confession of God involves conversion of the heart, worship and prayer, charity and penance, love of neighbor and love of self. When St. James preaches the centrality of works and St. Paul the centrality of faith, they are ultimately preaching one and the same doctrine; for faith becomes personalized, identified with myself as a believer, from an act of the will (a "work"), yet the ability to believe in God is itself a gift, the gift of faith.17 Thus the Catholic philosopher Miguel de Unamuno writes:

In the field of medicine, my doctor's knowledge can cure me, even if I do not know the whereabouts of my liver; but in the field of religion, my confessor's faith can scarcely save me. In the life of the soul only my truth saves me, and my truth is not the truth I do not know, though this be the truth of others. . . You describe the Church as the depository of the truths of your faith. The truths that are not deposited in your own soul are not truths of your faith, and are of no use to you at all.18

Faith Is Therefore Also a Fruit of Human Preparation

How does one begin to believe, that is to say, what spiritual dispositions are necessary for making an act of faith? The beginnings of faith are threefold: seriousness of purpose, integrity of morals, and docility of mind (a willingness to be led and taught). Our power of will extends at least to making a profession of faith according to the letter of Sacred Scripture or of the Creed. If we show God that we are not insincere or half-hearted in our search, in His mercy He will give us fully-formed faith according to His Holy Spirit, when we least expect it-like a thief in the night. Man is trapped in the realm of the letter, of dead works, but the spirit moves over the letter like the Spirit of God over the primaeval waters and is ready to descend upon man to rescue him from bondage (cf. 2 Cor. 3). "For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:3-4). To receive this salvation and truth, a man must do what he can to render himself open to the influence of grace, or in simpler words, to keep his soul alert and attentive, free of false gods, ready to act upon whatever light God gives.

Facing the truth-question ... requires first of all that we face the ethical question. What do I really want in life? Not simply, what do I say I want. What is it I pursue in all the details of my everyday choices, noteworthy and unnoteworthy? Pleasure? Prestige? Egocentric autonomy? The answers to these questions have far more to do with whether or not I attain a soundly based certitude than most of us suspect. Most likely we prefer to shift the blame elsewhere (my birth, family, friends, luck), but in the long run it rests in our will. Inauthentic desires and decisions are like filters before the intellect. We see what they permit us to see. Our minds are not cool objective reflectors of reality. They are sharpened or dulled, polished or smudged according as our desires are noble or ignoble, lofty or degraded. What I seek has a tremendous influence on what I think.19

Faith is to the Christian soul what air is to the lungs. Without it, the Christian does not dwell in the supernatural world and loses his contact with the highest realities. If he does not know God, if he is thus severed from communication with divine things, he cannot love God -- and the love of God (in both senses) is the very reason for man's existence. How, then, are we to love God? To us sinners, weak creatures that we are, such love is unattainable by our own efforts. We must ask God to give it to us; we need to turn to Him, we need to relinquish the direction of our life to Him. That is the whole of prayer, however 'advanced' it may become: learning the will of God and following it as well as we know it.

On one occasion, Jesus asks a blind man, "What would you have me do for thee?" The man responds, "Rabboni, that I may see" (Mk. 10:51). On another occasion, after Jesus promises to visit his home the Roman centurion replies in ardent faith, "Lord, I am not worthy that you come beneath my roof, but only say the word and my servant shall be healed" (Mt. 8:8; Lk. 7:7). The people we read of in the Gospels are begging for light, light to see the truth, light by which to live. We are told to be as little children, to ask for whatever we need, to seek first the kingdom of God (Mt. 18:3; Mt. 21:22; Mt. 6:33). We need to do these things, keep on doing them, no matter how slow God seems to be in responding. For indeed He has responded even before we ask-our desire and ability to ask for what we need is His very gift. He often makes us wait to teach us the lesson we most need to learn-neverfailing trust in His providential love (cf. Lk. 12:6-7, 22-35)-and to impress upon us the solemn truth that our sanctification consists in doing and abiding by His will.

To a great extent, faith is in our own hands, it is a reaction we make to the claims of sanctity and history. Lest we fall into the fatal trap of Pelagianism, we are taught by Scripture and the Church that faith is a purely gratuitous divine gift which we cannot merit. Keeping that in mind, one should also ponder sacred teachings that display the active and antecedent character of faith: "As many as received Him, He gave them power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe in His Name, which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (Jn. 1:12-13). "Believing in Christ, you were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, who is the pledge of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession" (Eph. 1:13-14). In both places, "believing in" or "receiving" Christ is seen as the gateway to obtaining the grace of adoption or regeneration, viz., baptism, through which the Holy Spirit is poured forth into the heart of the believer.

In the second part of this article (to be published in the next issue of The Catholic Faith), we shall investigate the role played by reason in the search for, and discovery of, the true Faith.

Peter A. Kwasniewski is studying for a Doctorate in Philosophy at The Catholic University of America, concentrating on medieval philosophy.

End Notes

1 For a good introductory discussion of habit and virtue, see John A. Hardon, S.J., "Meaning of Virtue in St. Thomas Aquinas," The Catholic Faith, Sept.-Oct. 1995 (vol. 1, no. 1), pp. 29-33.

2 That is, the intellectual power that bears on the truth and falsehood of propositions, rather than on making or doing things.

3 Thus the Douai-Rheims. An alternate translation: "We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ" (RSV).

4 This paragraph and the preceding one are paraphrases of part of a lecture given by Ronald MacArthur at Thomas Aquinas College, May 29, 1990.

5 Not surprisingly, many people are deceived by those who promise truthfulness. The majority of Americans accept the media's word on everything, yet is it not more than evident to better-informed people that many in the media are liars, sensationalists, and simpletons, with no legitimate authority to speak on any subject, not even statistics?

6 Modern philosophers have trouble with admitting "pre-philosophical" truths because they have adopted a Euclidean or Newtonian methodology: "if I can't demonstrate something in the manner of a geometrical proof, then its acceptance must be a sheer act of blind will." They fail to make a distinction between non-discursive certainty and mere opinion. We have a certitude in the witness of our senses that cannot be doubted even in the non-intelligible act of doubting them. Galen, the Greek physicist, puts into words what the senses would say to a skeptical intellect: "Poor mind, do you take your evidence from us and then try to overthrow us? Our overthrow is your fall." The mind itself demands belief in the testimony of our body's contact with reality, and, at the cost of insanity, the mind cannot reject this demand.

7 Thomas Dubay, S.M., Faith and Certitude (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985), pp. 194-195.

8 Not until we reflect on the nature of friendship do we realize how crucial blind loyalty is in the formation and preservation of friendships. Naturally, I do not mean "blind" in the sense of refusing to see, but blind as being unable to see. It is the difference between people who are afraid to look at the screen during a horror film, and people blind from birth. As intellectual creatures we stare reality in the face; but the greater part of reality, in fact the best and greatest of it, will always escape our mortal gaze, however acute and probing. For spirit, soul, and God, other persons and their thoughts, not to mention first principles of knowledge and the certitude of our senses, can never be directly sensed or experienced as particulars at all.

9 By reflecting on these matters we shall understand why, for the Christian, divorce of a sacramental marriage is not merely cruel and wrong, but impossible and inconceivable. To make oneself, one's life and destiny, into a yes, and then to say no, is to erase the genuine freedom of the will and annihilate one's own human identity. Freedom can only survive in a climate of love, not a storm of chance or a desert of uncertainty. In marriage vows seriously intended, the man becomes the woman's, and the woman the man's-in St. Paul's words, "You are not your own" (1 Cor. 6:19). Man and wife are correlative, like father and son or mother and daughter (cf. ch. 7 of Aristotle's Categories, 6a37-8b24). If the father were never to exist, the son too would vanish, and vice versa. Divorcement of what is intrinsically united is no more possible than separating rationality from humanity. In this sense, the rejection of plighted love (divorce) is like the rejection of plighted religion (apostasy), which is itself an image of the rejection of reason (insanity).

10 Pensées, trans. A.J. Krailsheimer (London: Penguin Books, 1966), n. 423, p. 154.

11 Evelyn Waugh, Monsignor Ronald Knox (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1959), p. 23.

12 Consider also: "By this is the spirit of God known: every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God" (1 Jo. 4:2).

13 This is what the theologians mean when they speak of grace as threefold: prevenient, operational, and succeeding. God's grace is necessary not only for man to work well, but even to begin to work, and to bring the work to proper completion, and to persevere in good works over the course of one's life. Thus God's grace "goes before" our good works (gratia præveniens) to inspire us to their performance, remains with us as we work that we may not fail, and follows after our works to bring them, and therefore us, to fruition in everlasting life.

14 Dubay, op. cit.

15 The founders of Protestantism, e.g., Luther and Calvin, imagined the Church to be an invisible and ahistorical communion of individual hearts. Now it should be obvious that a communion of hearts is quite purposeless without a communion of heads, so to speak. Faith has a tough time figuring out what to do with itself when no objective creed, or no definitive explanation of this creed, is supplied for its guidance. The situation becomes farcical, the blind leading the blind.

16 St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Saint Paul's First Letter to the Thessalonians (Albany, NY: Magi Books, 1969), 1-1, p. 6.

17 For an excellent defense of the compatibility of the soteriology of St. Paul and St. James, see John Henry Newman, "The Gospel Witnesses," Parochial and Plain Sermons (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), pp. 341-355.

18 "What is Truth?" in The Agony of Christianity and Essays on Faith, trans. Anthony Kerrigan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974), Bollingen Series LXXXV vol. 5, pp. 182-3.

19 Dubay, op. cit.