CREDENZA. — In its most general and broadest sense, *credere* (to believe) means admitting a proposition, a fact, or a doctrine not on account of its intrinsic evidence, but by virtue of the authority of a text or the force of motives of an affective and sentimental nature. Thus, belief (*c.*) is, formally, an intellectual assent, but in it there converge other psychological factors, since the intrinsic motive that determines it—namely, trust in the text—is not merely a mode of knowledge but also an affective-volitional disposition. For this reason, belief is ordinarily a complex psychological situation in which the predominant element is intellectual, but in which the will, often the sentiment, practical interest, and sometimes—such as in the case of religious faith—the entire personality are also engaged.
The opposition, now fairly common, between belief and the certainty of evidence is legitimate insofar as it concerns a formal distinction and the different motives for intellectual assent; yet it is not necessary if it refers to the conviction of this assent, which can also be most firm in faith when the motives of credibility are certain and evident (cf. St. Thomas, *De verit.*, 14, 1, ad 7).
In some modern philosophical currents, belief is presented as the universal condition and motive of certainty. Even before E. Kant, D. Hume had attributed to a purely psychological persuasion a fundamental metaphysical value, above all to causality, while T. Reid appealed universally to a trust in common sense. Kant, after denying pure reason the possibility of metaphysical knowledge, sought from faith (a faith still conscious, founded upon the demands of morality and of the *wherefore*) the certainty of supreme religious and moral truths. Subsequently, F. E. Jacobi placed knowledge of the true, the beautiful, and the good in an intimate spiritual sentiment to which we give credence, and T. Jouffroy proclaimed that “believing is a universal necessity,” and that, in the final analysis, “an act of blind but irresistible faith is the foundation of every conviction.” The neo-criticism of C. Renouvier asserts that objective evidence alone is never sufficient to generate certainty, but that at the base of every affirmation there are postulates which sentiment and the will surpass through an act of faith. Similar views have been held by G. Hamilton, Goblot, and E. Lotze. A comparable stance has been taken more recently by M. A. Balfour, who urges us to take as our norm the deep and impulsive instincts of our soul and to believe in authority, in morality, in free will, and in God; and by F. Brunetière, who appeals to Christianity, as the architect of world civilization, as a sure norm of our faith.
All these forms—and others even more recent—of dogmatism, fideism, and mysticism serve to confirm the importance and the broad place that belief and faith undoubtedly occupy in human knowledge. Yet the claim to make belief the “primum philosophicum” and to reduce all human knowledge to its denominator is entirely unjustified both in fact and in principle. There are not a few truths, both of common order and of philosophical order, which determine thought solely by virtue of their objective necessity, which opens itself to the light of the intelligence. To speak of a faith or trust in the value of our faculties—an ultimate reliance we must place in them—is justified with regard to the senses, which are inferior forms of knowledge and predominantly passive functions incapable of mediating and controlling themselves; but it does not hold for the intelligence, which finds itself in the light of its self-conscious spirituality, and, recognizing itself, can also discern in the immutable values of truth the objective conditions that determine it in its functions and acts.
V. FEDE.
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