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Faith

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2024

Victor White O.P.
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Faith is the subjective counterpart to objective Revelation: the human response to God’s Self-showing; man’s humble, worshipful assent to and acceptance of the words and the Word of God, itself a gift of God. To understand the nature and the necessity of Faith we must therefore recall and amplify what has already been said regarding Revelation.

Revelation means that God has spoken—has spoken to all men and so to me—through His appointed spokesmen, the prophets, and through His Son. He has told me things I could never have discovered for myself—things of the most vital and supreme importance to me for this life and hereafter. Revelation is essentially concerned with Mystery, with that which of its very nature is unknowable by man’s unaided efforts. It is not enough for me to know that God exists, that there is an Infinite, an Absolute, an Ultimate Explanation, a First Cause, a Supreme Intelligence, a perfect Beauty, a final Value, an Object of all yearning, striving and desire. These truths which thought and philosophy can tell me are, in themselves, of relatively little practical importance if God is to remain the unattainable Infinite, remote, impersonal.

Type
Research Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 18 , Issue 202 , January 1937 , pp. 34 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © 1937 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 The truth expressed in this paragraph must not be given the sense attributed to it by some Protestant and Modernist writers who would restrict truths of divine faith to those which directly express the economy of salvation. But all revealed truths, according to St. Thoanas, following St. Augustine and followed by the Councils of Trent, and Vatican, have some connexion with our salvation, and it is for our salvation that they are revealed. Even those revealed truths which would seem at first to ibe purely speculative (e.g. regarding the Trinity of Persons) have very considerable practical implications. (Cf. R. Schultes, O.P., Introductio in Hist. Dogmatum, PP'.14–15.]

2 It is true that St. Thomas in the Prima Secundae of the Summa appears to regard motivation by the will as of the essence of faith in general (cf. Garrigou-Lagrange. O.P., De Revelatione, I, p. 433 sqq.). thus giving “faith” and “belief” a. more restricted sense than that which we have here given it in accordance with present usage.

3 Emil Brunner, God and Man. (S.C.M. Press)