Back to Basics: What is Faith?

If you’ve ever been in a conversation with an atheist, perhaps you’ve heard something like this:  “Faith is believing in something in the absence of any evidence.”  And certainly, on the face of it, that does make faith sound silly.  Why believe something with no evidence?  But is that what we mean by “faith?”  What is the Catholic understanding of faith?

The Church actually teaches that God can be known with certainty by human reason alone.  There are “proofs” for the existence of God which begin by reflecting on the created world and on the human person.  We can look upon these proofs as “converging and convincing arguments.”  Like evidence accumulating in a court of law, these arguments lead us to the knowledge of God beyond a reasonable doubt.

Our human reason, however, only leads us so far.  Of ourselves, we can know nothing of the inner life of God as Trinity or about His loving plan of salvation for us.  For that we need God’s self-communication to us, which we call revelation.  God’s revelation is an invitation that we might know Him and be received into His own inner life of love.  If revelation is an invitation, our response is faith.  So what then is faith?  Faith is both a gift of God and a human act by which the believer gives personal adherence to God and freely assents to the whole truth that God has revealed.

Faith is a gift of God; we can also say faith is a grace.  Humans do not have the capacity to have faith on our own.  Faith is what we call a “supernatural virtue, infused by God” (CCC 143).  It is supernatural since it is above our natural abilities, and we say it is “infused” by God to signify the action of God upon a human soul. 

Faith is also “a human act.”  Through faith, our human abilities cooperate with God’s gift.  The intellect, (which knows truth), and the will (which chooses the good), are both involved.  God’s grace does not override our human abilities, but builds upon them.  So, in the act of faith, we freely respond, without coercion, but along with the aid of God. 

Faith is an act by which we “give personal adherence to God.”  Faith is a personal commitment of one’s whole self freely to God.  Faith in God is different from any other human belief or “faith” in any other person.  Only God deserves such an unreserved response by which we give ourselves wholly and trust absolutely. 

Faith is also our assent, or our yes, to all that God has revealed.  Faith believes something because God has revealed it to be so, not because I deem it to be so.  To pick and choose what one believes as a Catholic is ultimately making one’s self the supreme object of faith, rather than God, and this is not faith at all: “What moves us to believe is not the fact that revealed truths appear as true and intelligible….we believe because of the authority of God himself who reveals them” (CCC 156). 

Faith is certain. In common speech, we may use “faith” to mean something precisely we’re not certain of.  We distinguish between “knowing” something and “having faith” in something.  Not so.  Faith “is more certain that all human knowledge because it is founded on the very word of God who cannot lie” (CCC 157).  To be sure, some truths of the faith are hard to understand or seem obscure.  But that does not mean they are any less certain.  Faith is not based on our ability to understand something; faith is based upon God’s testimony, his revelation. 

It is helpful here to distinguish between a doubt and a difficulty.  A doubt is a withholding of our assent, or our “yes,” to what God has revealed.  A difficulty is not seeing how a truth can be so, or how a set of truths fit together.  For instance, God has revealed that He is a Trinity:  God is One; God is Three.  That certainly can present difficulties; it may be difficult to see how those truths go together.  But that is not the same as doubting it.  One can give assent (their “yes”) despite difficulties, because faith is grounded on God who reveals, not on our comprehending.  As Blessed John Henry Newman put it, “Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.” 

How can we increase our faith?  Since faith is a gift, a grace, we can ask God in prayer to increase that gift in us.  We can also regularly make an act of faith in prayer:  “O my God, I firmly believe that you are one God in three divine persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I believe that your divine Son became man and died for our sins, and that he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe these and all the truths which the holy Catholic Church teaches, because in revealing them you can neither deceive nor be deceived.  Amen.”

Have a question about our Catholic faith? Email mikebrummond@gmail.com