Faith

FAITH. - In the technical sense it is the adherence of the intellect, under the influence of Grace, to a Truth revealed by God, not by reason of intrinsic evidence, but by the authority of the one who reveals it.

I. THE THEOLOGY OF FAITH

I. PRENOTIONS

The word faith is here taken in the sense of a belief founded on a testimony, which presents sufficient certainty.

Thus one believes human testimony, when it appears evident that the witnesses know what they affirm and are truthful. It is then commonly said that they are worthy of faith and that their testimony produces faith, because it is evidently credible.

Faith founded on human testimony of this kind is inferior to vision and to knowledge, because it does not give the evidence of the thing, which is neither seen nor known, but only believed. This faith is nevertheless superior to opinion, because it does not give merely probability, but the moral certainty of what one believes. Thus one is certain of many historical facts that one does not know de visu, but only on the testimony of men worthy of faith (cf. Sum. Theol., 2ᵃ-2ᵃᵉ, q. 1, n. 4; q. 2, n. 1).

Here we are dealing with faith in the divine testimony of Revelation, but there is no discussion of the manner in which the existence of Revelation (v.) is confirmed by sure signs, such as miracles, fulfilled prophecies, the admirable life of the Church, the fruitfulness of its influence, the satisfaction of our highest aspirations through the practice of the perfect Christian life, because that argument is developed under the entries: APOLOGETICS; CREDIBILITY (v.).

II. CATHOLIC NOTION OF FAITH

The Church in its councils and particularly in the Vatican Council (Denz-U., 1811) defined faith as "a supernatural virtue, by which, prevented and aided by the grace of God, we believe to be true the things revealed to us by Him, not because of their intrinsic truth, perceived by the natural light of reason, but because of the authority of God who reveals them, who can neither be deceived nor deceive us." Faith, in fact, according to the Apostle, is "the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not" (Hebr. 11:1). Consequently, supernatural or infused faith is specifically different from the natural knowledge of God and of moral things. As St. Paul says (Eph. 2:8): "faith is a gift of God." Normally it is united to charity, or the love of God above all things, and is then called "living faith," but it also exists without charity in many Christians who are in a state of mortal sin; it remains as the principle of a salutary act, though not a meritorious one, by virtue of which, under the influence of actual grace, they freely believe what God has revealed (Denz-U., 1791, 1814).

As for the act of faith, the Church has declared that it is a supernatural assent of the intellect, free, but absolutely certain, by which we believe the truths revealed by God on the authority of God who reveals them. Such a supernatural act presupposes a rational judgment, at least morally certain, of the evident credibility of the mysteries of faith, which is based on the divine signs of Revelation, such as miracles, fulfilled prophecies, the admirable life of the Church (cf. Denz-U., 1791, 1794, 1637, 1814, 2025, 2106).

III. HETERODOX NOTIONS OF RELIGIOUS FAITH

The first Protestants rejected the infallible authority of the Church in proposing Revelation and replaced it in each believer with private inspiration, which then led to free examination. This doctrine has been called a pseudo-supernaturalism, because, according to the Church, it diminishes the gratuitous gifts of God and the powers of our nature, as can be found, to a lesser degree, in Baianism and in fideism (v.), in which insufficient account is taken of the natural powers and of reason for proving the existence of God and for knowing the certain signs of Revelation.

Kantian rationalism, through its agnosticism, is led to reduce religious faith to a moral faith, by means of which we believe the postulates of practical reason, deduced from the categorical imperative: the existence of free will, of the future life and of God. This moral faith, according to Kant, has a subjectively sufficient certainty, but one that is objectively insufficient, and its motive is no longer the authority of God revealing, but the demands of practical reason.

The influence of Kantianism appears in the theories of the liberal Protestants, who reduce faith to a religious sentiment of a natural order, existing in all religions, but in a superior manner in Christianity. Thus the Modernists, with their agnosticism and immanentism, are led to deny the value of the proofs of Revelation and to confuse faith with religious experience, which is found in all religions. For them Catholicism is reduced merely to a higher form of the natural evolution of religious sentiment (cf. Denz-U., 2072, 588).

According to the semi-rationalism of Günther and of Fröhschammer, all the mysteries of the Christian faith can be demonstrated by reason, at least after the Revelation that has been made to us, and are thus reduced to truths of a philosophical order, which the world accepts by faith. Hermes was led, by means of Kantian agnosticism, to another form of semi-rationalism: for him the motive of faith does not consist in the authority of God revealing, but in a certain demand of practical reason; by means of it philosophers can demonstrate the mysteries, but must nevertheless admit divine Revelation as necessary for the people, who could not understand their demonstrations.

IV. THEOLOGICAL EXPLANATION OF THE CATHOLIC NOTION OF F AND OF ITS ACT

1. The object of faith comprises everything that has been revealed by God, including even the natural and demonstrable truths concerning religion; but its proper object is the mysteries that are essentially supernatural and indemonstrable, concerning the intimate life of God in himself and in us: the mysteries of the Most Holy Trinity, of the Incarnation, of the Redemption, of Grace, of the Sacraments, of eternal life. The formal motive of faith is the authority of God revealing, that is, his omniscience and his veracity; and this is not merely God as author of nature, but God as author of Grace, the seed of eternal life. According to the Thomists, the uncreated act by which God reveals belongs already to the motive of faith, whereas the infallible formulation of the truths that the Church proposes is only a sine qua non condition of faith, since it does not formally influence our intellect and our will, but merely applies to us the Revelation that already exists.

2. On the part of the subject, the act of faith is an act of the intellect, moved by the will to give its assent (cf. Sum. Theol., 2a-2ae, q. 2, a. 1; De Veritate, q. 14, a. 1). An influence of the will is necessary, not only for the attention that is already required in the scientific act of demonstration, but also to determine the intellect to affirmation rather than to negation, since the object that must be believed is not seen, nor demonstrated, but remains still obscure. This object is therefore not sufficient to determine intellectual assent, but the will can and must intervene, since the obscure object proposed presents itself as revealed by God and it is presupposed that the signs of divine Revelation are certain, at least morally, for reason. We thus have the act of faith, not doubt, not merely opinion or probability, but certainty — not scientific certainty, but the certainty of belief, since it is reasonable and good for man to wish to adhere firmly to an object revealed by God, who can neither be deceived nor deceive us.

For this, however, natural good will is not enough; the Grace of faith is required (the infused virtue of faith and actual Grace), as the Church has defined against the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians (Denz-U, 178, 1791). The reason is that the object that must be believed, at least the principal object, is essentially supernatural; it comprises the mysteries of the intimate life of God, above the rational order, and the act itself of the infused virtue of faith is likewise essentially supernatural; natural good will is therefore not enough to will it and to produce it. The will, like the intellect of the believer, must be proportionate to the object in order to be able to adhere to it firmly. For this reason it was defined at the Council of Orange (Denz-U, 178) that the « initium fidei », that is, the « pius credulitatis affectus », comes not from nature, but from Grace.

The act of infused faith proceeds therefore from this supernatural virtue, under the influence of an actual Grace, which inclines the will to move the intellect so that it adheres firmly to the divine testimony and to its content, despite the obscurity of the revealed mysteries.

This act remains free because of the obscurity of the mysteries, all the more so since some of them may displease sensual and proud man; but the act of faith is firm both objectively, because of the authority of God revealing, and subjectively, because of the Grace that disposes the will and, consequently, the intellect to an adherence that is not merely probable, but certain.

V. THE FORMAL MOTIVE OF FAITH

According to some theologians the believer knows only in a natural way the formal motive of faith, that is, the authority of God revealing and the signs of Revelation. Thus held the Scotists, the Nominalists, L. Molina, G. Franzelin, L. Billot.

A difficulty then arises, because the majority of the faithful were not witnesses of the miracles, the signs of Revelation, and many have not been able to assure themselves of their supernatural origin, and therefore have naturally only a moral certainty of the fact of Revelation, that is, that certainty which comes from the human testimony of history. Therefore if the certainty of Christian faith were based formally on this moral certainty of the fact of Revelation confirmed by sufficient signs, it would be infallible only hypothetically, that is, supposing that it is truly God who has revealed the mysteries of the Trinity, of the Incarnation, of the infallibility of the Church, which proposes them, supposing therefore that the preaching of these mysteries does not come from the natural evolution of religious feeling in the subconscious of the prophets and of Christ, as the Modernists claimed. Hence the Thomists, and with them Suárez, have always maintained that the faithful adhere supernaturally and infallibly (with infused faith) to the formal motive of this virtue, that is, to the authority of God revealing. According to St. Thomas we believe in God (revealing) and in God (revealed) with one and the same supernatural and infallible act: « Uno et eodem actu credimus Deo (revelanti) et Deum (revelatum) » (Sum. Theol. 2a-2ae, q. 2, a. 2 ad 1). Just as in the natural order with a single act of sight we run over the light and the colors and at the same time the light manifests them. The formal motive of faith is believed together with the mysteries, « concreditur mysteriis ». All the Thomists say: « ipsa revelatio est id, quod creditur » (cf. Cajetan, In 2aa-2ae, q. 1, a. 1, u. 2; furthermore D. Báñez, John of St. Thomas; J. B. Gonet, C. R. Billuart). This act is not discursive, but simple, supernatural and infallible, far superior to the antecedent apologetic reasonings, by means of which the fact of Revelation turns out to be at least morally certain in the rational order. The reasons on which this doctrine rests are the following:

1) the fact of Revelation is proposed not only by the human history of the preaching of Jesus Christ and of his miracles, but by the Church which has infallibly defined that it was due to a Revelation properly so called, supernatural, and was therefore not merely the fruit of a natural evolution of religious feeling in the subconscious of the prophets and in that of Christ. Now what has been thus infallibly defined by the Church must be believed supernaturally by the faithful; that is, they must believe supernaturally in the divine Revelation together with the revealed mysteries. Hence St. Thomas says: « Uno et eodem actu credimus Deo (revelanti) et Deum (revelatum) » (Sum. Theol., 2a-2ae, q. 2, a. 2, ad 1; q. 4, a. 5, and 8). Otherwise the certainty of faith would no longer be absolutely infallible. Now St. Paul wrote: « You received from us the word of God, not as the word of men, but, as it truly is, the word of God » (I Thess. 2, 13).

2) The formal motive of infused faith is essentially supernatural: the authority of God revealing; it is therefore a question of God, the author of Grace, who cannot be known naturally. Now what is essentially supernatural can be known only supernaturally by means of faith. The essential supernaturalness of the mysteries and of invisible Grace far surpasses indeed the supernaturalness of miracles, which are sensible and naturally knowable; in the miracle of the resurrection of Lazarus, the life that is supernaturally restored to the corpse is natural life and not the supernatural life of Grace.

3) Faith is a gift of God (Eph. 2, 8), it is the « substance (that is, the germ) of the things that we hope for » (Hebr. 11, 1), it is an « essentially supernatural virtue » (Vatican Council, Denz-U, 1791). Now a supernatural virtue finds its specification in a formal object (or formal motive) of the same order, inaccessible to reason. Therefore the formal motive of faith can be attained only by this infused virtue, since if it could be attained without it, for that very reason it would no longer be necessary.

Lacordaire, in his 17th conference at Notre-Dame, brought out well the absolute and supernatural certainty of faith: « Here is a scholar, who studies Catholic doctrine and repeats without ceasing: you fortunate ones who have the faith, I too would like to have it as you do, but I cannot. And he speaks the truth... And then one day this wise man kneels down, feels the wretchedness of man, raises his hands to heaven and exclaims: from the abyss of my wretchedness, O God, I cry out to You! In that moment something happens in him, a scale falls from his eyes, a mystery is accomplished in him: he has conquered the truth ». This is theologically true: « a mystery is accomplished in him », namely the infusion of the Grace of faith which gives a supernatural certainty far superior, despite its obscurity, to rational or scientific certainty and to that of all the apologetic reasonings that preceded it.

Infused faith can thus be regarded as a spiritual sense, a higher musical sense that allows one to perceive the harmonies of Revelation and to attain infallibly, through the letter of the Gospel, the word of God, the verbum Dei. Faith thus is truly the « substance of the things that we hope for » and the germ of eternal life: « sic fides est in nobis quaedam inchoatio vitae aeternae » (St. Thomas, De veritate, q. 14, a. 2). Its supernatural certainty excludes every deliberate doubt, and when it is illumined by the enlightenments of the gifts of understanding and of wisdom, living faith becomes penetrating and savory and merits the name of contemplation of the revealed mysteries.

VI. THE NECESSITY OF F FOR SALVATION

We read in the Epistle to the Hebrews (11:16) that "without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him diligently." This is not merely about natural belief in God, as happens when considering the order of the universe, but about the faith that is a "gift of God" (Eph. 2:8), and by which we know God, the author of salvation and the supreme rewarder in the order of Grace.

The reason is that all men are called to a supernatural end, the immediate possession of God through the beatific vision, and they must tend toward this end not without knowing it, and since it is supernatural, they cannot know it except by faith in divine Revelation. Infused faith is therefore necessary for salvation (cf. the Councils of Trent and Vatican I, Denz-U, 801, 1793, and St. Thomas, Sum. Theol., 2a-2ae, q. 2, a. 3-8). Indeed, as the Council of Trent says (Denz-U, 801), "faith is the beginning of salvation, the foundation and the reason for justification," since, without it, one can have neither hope nor charity, which is inseparable from the state of Grace.

It is found as an infused virtue in the baptized child who cannot yet make an act of faith, which is necessary in adults for salvation (Council of Trent; Denz-U, 799); these must believe all the revealed truths that are sufficiently proposed to them. Those who have not yet learned the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation must at least explicitly believe these two "primordial" truths: that God exists and that he rewards those who seek him (Hebr. 11:6). To believe explicitly these two revealed truths is to believe implicitly the others, but one must be sincerely disposed to believe explicitly the others, when they will be sufficiently manifest.

God's testimony is not lacking to adults who follow the voice of conscience; as St. Thomas well said, and with him the theologians commonly: "If a pagan raised in the forests followed the direction of natural reason in the love of good and the flight from evil, certainly God through an interior inspiration would reveal to him the truths necessary to believe for salvation or would send him a preacher, as he sent Peter to the centurion Cornelius" (De Veritate, q. 14, a. 2, ad 7). See also on this subject the teaching of Pius IX (Denz-U, 1647, 1677) and the v. INFEDELI.

VII. SINS AGAINST FAITH

These are heresy (v.), apostasy (v.), infidelity (v.); with the first two, infused faith is lost.

Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange

# II. ETHICS OF FAITH.

What allows the act of f. to fall within the sphere of moral values is the psychological freedom connatural to it: in believing, man is not only passively moved by Grace, but is also actively self-moving; the act of f. is fundamentally a voluntary and free acceptance of the truth revealed by God and as such proposed by the Church, it is a free choice, an assent that man can freely give or refuse, should he find himself in the conditions required for this. Now, the act of f., if from the psychological point of view it is free, is not so, according to Catholic teaching, from the moral point of view: man, placed before revealed truth, "must" determine himself to accept it. The man who believes satisfies an obligation, fulfills a duty, makes himself worthy of praise and reward; the man who instead freely does not believe transgresses an obligation, commits a fault deserving of blame and punishment. In short: f. is a matter of conscience, a virtue.

I. THE OBLIGATION OF FAITH

1. Origin

The obligation of faith sinks its roots into the natural law, and precisely into that stratum of the natural law which comprises the primordial duties of man, insofar as they flow immediately from his essential relations with God, the principle and supreme end of man.

Man is man by reason of the spirit; and the first essential activity of the spirit is the intellectual knowledge of reality, the possession of truth. Now the ultimate term toward which the natural impulse of the human intellect strains is God, infinite reality and truth. St. John in the prologue of his Gospel conceives the life of man, insofar as he is spirit, as a participation in the divine Truth subsisting in the Word. Therefore the first fundamental duty of man is that of seeking and accepting God as Truth, under all the forms in which He manifests Himself to him. By force of this duty man is bound first of all to accept the natural manifestation of God, ascending with reason from effects to their ultimate cause; rational theodicy, whether in the spontaneous and elementary form of common sense or in the reflected and elaborated form of philosophical demonstration, is the first homage owed by the human intellect to the divine Truth. And it would also have been the one and only homage, had God circumscribed, as He was free to do, the manifestation of Himself to man within the limits of nature and of reason. But in fact God deigned, in His infinite wisdom and goodness, to manifest Himself to man in a direct and supernatural form, thus making him a participant in the intimate and exclusive knowledge that He has of Himself. This supernatural Revelation of God is brought about in two successive phases: in the first God reveals Himself to man by behaving as a teacher who asserts a truth but does not demonstrate it; as a friend who confides in him and asks for trust in his words. Faith is the acceptance of the supernatural Revelation of God in this its first phase of authoritative testimony. In the second phase God reveals Himself to man by showing him immediately His essence in the beatific vision. God's conduct in manifesting Himself supernaturally to man, in the form of faith first and of vision afterward, implies a most delicate regard for the personality of man. If in fact God had shown Himself to man with the immediacy of evidence, man would have been necessitated to recognize and accept Him as Truth; faith instead, even in the splendor of its proofs, remains a psychologically free assent, motivated as it is not by the intrinsic evidence of the revealed Truth, but by the authoritative word of the revealing God. With this, if we may say so, expedient, faith, which in itself is an act of intellectual cognition, a cold contact with the Truth, is subjected to the dominion of the will and becomes an impulse of love. It is indeed to love that one must ascend in order to find the ultimate genesis both of the supernatural Revelation of God and of the obligation to accept it with faith. The supernatural Revelation of God, in the sources of Revelation itself, is presented not so much as a lesson imparted by a teacher from the height of his chair, as instead as a confidential outpouring of friend to friend, of father to children, of spouse to spouse: «God so loved the world that he gave his only Son» (Jn 3:16); «I no longer call you servants, but friends, because the servant does not know the secrets of his master; but I have called you friends, because I have revealed to you everything I know of my Father» (Jn 15:15). As therefore Revelation is a free gift that God makes of Himself, as Truth, to man, so faith is perfect when it is an acceptance of God as Truth inspired by the love of friend, of son, of spouse toward God. The obligation of faith therefore also falls within the obligation of love, which always remains, as Jesus defined it, the first and greatest obligation, on which all the others depend. A faith not inspired by love is indeed true faith, but imperfect and dead. For the relations between faith and charity, what was said elsewhere concerning the relations between charity and the other virtues holds (v. CARITÀ). It need only be observed that in the hierarchy of the virtues, at the command and in the service of charity as sovereign empress, faith occupies the first place, by the very nature of things: the life of the spirit begins and unfolds first of all under the form of knowledge, and spiritual vitality, although it reaches its fullness in love, cannot surpass the degree of knowledge that initiates and frames it.

2. Gravity

From what has been said above it follows immediately that the obligation of faith is, by its nature, grave. In the language of moral theology those obligations are called grave which constitute the essence of the moral order, by observing or violating which man tends toward or substantially renounces his ultimate end, making himself guilty of mortal sin. Indeed, among grave obligations that of faith is, from the objective point of view, the gravest; so much so that, always from the objective point of view, the voluntary rejection of faith is a graver sin than sacrilege, homicide, adultery, theft, etc. In the teaching of Christ faith figures as the fundamental obligation that men must fulfill in order to be saved: «Whoever believes will be saved, whoever does not believe will be condemned» (Mk 16:16); faith is equivalent, according to Jesus Christ, to the resurrection from the spiritual death of sin: «Whoever believes in me, even if he is dead, returns to life, and whoever believes in me will not die eternally» (Jn 11:26; 5:24; 6 passim); in the eyes of Christ the sin par excellence is the voluntary rejection of faith (Jn 16:9) and men therefore become righteous and remain sinners according as they believe or do not believe (Jn 3:18; 8:24; cf. 1:34; 3:31).

It was natural that Jesus Christ's teaching on this point should occupy a place of first importance in the apostolic catechesis; indeed, one may say that the first act of solemn magisterium of the Church, gathered in council at Jerusalem under the presidency of Peter, had as its object the primacy of the obligation of faith over all other obligations (Acts 15:7 ff.; cf. 10:34-43). St. John also declares it expressly: "This is the law that God imposes on us: to believe in his Son" (1 Jn 3:23); faith is the victory over the world (ibid., 5:4 ff.). But the strongest assertion of the absolute necessity of faith for salvation and of its justifying value is in St. Paul; his preaching was a struggle to the finish against Pharisaic formalism, which had infiltrated even the nascent Christianity and which claimed to hold conscience still enslaved under the burden of a thousand external norms; and it is no wonder that, clashing against a widespread and ingrained mentality, on which the whole religious life of Judaism rested, he drew upon himself the hatred and persecution of his countrymen, including the Judaizing Christians. In the Letter to the Romans St. Paul, in the uncircumcised Abraham, found righteous before God solely through the faith that worked in his word, points out the prototype and forefather of all believers, to whatever race they belong, and concludes that it is not the practice of external works that makes a man righteous, but rather the submission of his spirit to God, substantiated in faith in his word. He returns to the same theme with polemical accents in the Letter to the Galatians, and then again at length in the Letter to the Hebrews, in which are found the well-known Pauline affirmations on faith: "The man who wants to go to God must believe in his existence and in his sanctioning providence"; "without faith it is impossible to please God" (Heb 11:6). As faithful guardian and interpreter of this teaching, the Church has defined faith as the beginning, root and foundation of Christian righteousness (Denz-U, 790). The total collapse of the moral conscience of an individual and of a people is reached only when faith disappears: "Peccatum infidelitatis est maior omnibus peccatis quae contingunt in perversitate morum" (Sum. Theol., 2a-2ae, q. 10, a. 3). Every zeal for the Christian reform of morals is blind, vain and ruinous if it does not constantly aim to safeguard or rebuild faith, which by its nature has precedence over all the virtues (ibid., q. 4, a. 7).

3. Extension

a) From the point of view of the believing subject. - The Catholic doctrine set out above concerning the absolute necessity of faith for salvation implies the objective obligatoriness of faith for men of all times and all places. But this objective obligatoriness becomes subjective only if men are given the possibility of having faith.

One does not see, for example, how unbaptized infants can subjectively have faith, whether as a virtue or as an act; thus arises the problem of their salvation, with which we do not deal here. For adults capable of reasoning, the opinions of patristic and theological thought are discordant: some Fathers and theologians, starting from the principle that saving faith means adherence to a supernatural Revelation of God, and from the fact that this Revelation is found only in the Judeo-Catholic Christian religion, have denied to all men who are involuntarily ignorant of the Christian Revelation the possibility and therefore the subjective obligatoriness of faith; other theologians, among them St. Thomas, grant to all adult men the possibility of attaining faith, even outside actual contact with the Christian Revelation; in contemporary theology this latter opinion is widely accepted. In this case too, however, faith would be an implicit and virtual adherence to the Truth revealed by God and proposed by the Church. It is in any case certain that, with the Incarnation of the Son of God and with the institution of the Church, all men are objectively subject to the obligation of embracing the Catholic faith.

b) From the point of view of the object. - The Catholic Christian must believe everything that is revealed by God. Faith is an indivisible virtue, since it is absurd to accept the same authority of God on one point and reject it on another. It is not necessary, however, that the truths revealed by God be all and each explicitly known and believed by each believer. Theologians declare absolutely necessary and therefore obligatory for all explicit faith in the existence of God as rewarder; they are not equally agreed on the absolute necessity and obligatoriness of explicit faith in the mystery of the Trinity and of the Incarnation. The duty of making faith explicit rests on all believers, but its fulfillment is conditioned by their subjective possibilities, by their degree of education, by the responsibilities of their position within society and the Church; it is clear, for example, that the pastor of souls must explicitly know the content of the faith to a far greater extent than the simple faithful (cf. Sum. Theol., 2a-2ae, q. 2, a. 6). According to moralists the adult believer is, as a general rule, gravely obliged to know explicitly the substantial content of the Apostles' Creed and of the Decalogue, the Sacraments that are most necessary, and the prayer of the Pater Noster. Innocent XI condemned the following assertions: "A Christian is capable of sacramental absolution, whatever his ignorance of the content of the faith, and even if he ignorantly neglects, culpably, the mysteries of the Most Holy Trinity and of the Incarnation" (Denz-U, 1214).

The obligation of faith is not restricted solely to the truths revealed by God, but extends also to all those truths which, while not being in themselves revealed, are nevertheless connected in some way with the revealed datum, such as, for example, truths of the natural religious order and the so-called dogmatic facts (v. PATTO DOGMATICO). Proposition 22 of the Syllabus (ibid., 1722) and the 5th of the decree Lamentabili (ibid., 2005), as well as the Vatican Council (ibid., 1798), reaffirm the extension of the obligation of faith beyond the directly revealed datum.

c) From the point of view of the proximate norm of faith. - The Catholic Christian faith is, by positive divine institution, social and hierarchical; the faith of the individual believer is nothing but participation in the official faith of the teaching Church. It is for the latter to determine and propose the content of the faith, whether it be a matter of truths revealed or connected with the revealed. The private certainty that a given truth is revealed or necessarily connected with the revealed datum obliges to faith only the individual conscience, but not that of all the other faithful; and it is not infallible certainty. Only the public certainty of the teaching Church represents the obligatory and infallible norm of faith for all the faithful. Where and how does the public certainty of the Church manifest itself with regard to the content of the faith? To what extent does the public certainty of the Church bind the conscience of individual believers to faith? These questions, which have come before the Catholic conscience in recent times, under the influence of rationalism and modernism, have received precise answers from theology and the ecclesiastical magisterium. The CIC (can. 1323), repeating verbatim the Vatican Council (Denz-U, 1792), establishes that, as regards the truths revealed by God, whether in writing or orally, the norm of faith is the solemn and ordinary magisterium of the Church.

The first is embodied in papal and conciliar dogmatic definitions, the second consists in the unanimous teaching of the episcopate united with the pope. A dogmatic definition, in order to bind faith as such, must be certain and manifest; a doubtful definition is practically a null definition. A recent papal doctrinal pronouncement of doubtful definitional value is found in the encyclical Casti connubii, concerning the intrinsic grave malice of anti-fertility practices (cf. A. Vermeersch, Catechismo del matrimonio cristiano, 3rd ed., Turin 1944, pp. 134-136). If the definitional character of a papal and conciliar teaching is not always evidently certain, all the more can it be doubtful, in certain cases, that a given point of doctrine is the object of the ordinary magisterium of the Church. Already St. Irenaeus noted the difficulty of ascertaining the unanimous consent of the bishops on this or that doctrinal point, and therefore pointed to the teaching of the Church of Rome as an easy and sure norm of faith (St. Irenaeus, Adv. Haeres., III, ch. 3: PG 7, 848-49). Not always, indeed in relatively rare cases, does the teaching Church express its doctrinal judgment by committing its entire authority in a definitive manner; many times the ecclesiastical magisterium approves or disapproves a doctrine, yet without pronouncing definitively on its absolute truth or falsity. These acts of the magisterium are also issued, with the approval of the pontiff, by the Roman Congregations and the pontifical Commissions in the form of decrees or constitutions. To these acts of the ecclesiastical magisterium as well the Catholic believer must in conscience give an assent not only externally feigned, but also internally sincere. The duty of sincere submission to such acts of the ecclesiastical magisterium was reaffirmed by Clement XI against the Jansenists (Denz-U, 1350), by Pius IX against certain semi-rationalist currents of German theology (ibid., 1679), by Pius X against the modernists (ibid., 2008, 2113) and in the CIC (can. 1324).

The obligation to render an internal assent also to these acts of the ecclesiastical magisterium is founded on the already mentioned principle that not the private judgment of individual believers, but the authoritative judgment of the teaching Church is the proximate norm of certainty in matters of faith; therefore the duty of faith includes the obligation to adhere to all the judgments of the ecclesiastical magisterium. It is clear that the assent due to the judgments of the teaching Church will correspond to their merit: if they are certain and definitive judgments, the assent will be most firm and unconditional; if instead they are non-definitive judgments, the assent will be less firm and conditioned. At this point it is logical to ask: is it rational that the ecclesiastical magisterium should approve or condemn a doctrine without pronouncing definitively on its truth or falsity? is it rational that the believer must render an internal assent to these acts of the ecclesiastical magisterium? One must not forget that the mind

The infallibility and indefectibility assured by Christ to his Church make impossible the occurrence of a total and constant discrepancy between the teaching Church and the learning Church; therefore the unanimous certainties of the learning Church in matters of faith have the value of public and social certainties of the whole Church, that is, they are at the same time certainties of the ecclesiastical magisterium; hence these certainties too are a norm of faith. They are embodied in the unanimous consent of the Fathers, the theologians and the faithful.

II. THE OBLIGATION TO PROFESS THE FAITH

To profess the faith means, in general, to manifest externally in some way the intimate adherence of one's soul to the truths revealed by God, and submission to the teaching authority of Holy Church which proposes them. The external manifestation of the faith is obligatory, as a general rule, for all believers. The obligation is fundamentally one of natural law, reconfirmed by positive divine law and regulated, in certain cases, by ecclesiastical law.

From the standpoint of natural law the profession of the faith is required for individual and social reasons. The substantial dualism of the human being, spirit-matter, is necessarily reflected in his operations; therefore a faith that never and in no way translates itself into external signs is practically to be considered nonexistent.

The profession of the faith, besides being the natural complement of the faith itself, preserves and invigorates it, in conformity with the general psychological law of the mutual genetic interdependence between internal sentiments and external acts. Even more evident and urgent is the obligation of professing the faith from the social standpoint. Faith as a purely individual affair is a mere abstract hypothesis, unacceptable, perhaps, even as a hypothesis. In fact, God has ordained that supernatural Revelation should be a public and social good; and therefore it should not be surprising if the profession of the faith is considered by Christ and by the Apostles to be just as necessary and obligatory as the faith itself. Christ conceives his mission as a public attestation, made in the presence of all men, of the Truth received from the Father (Is. 12, 40; 18, 4-8; 18, 37); the Church founded by him is in his eyes this same testimony of his prolonged through the centuries and extended to the whole human race, a perennial public and social profession of the faith in him and in the Father; the apostolic mission consists essentially in the charge to testify publicly to the faith in Jesus Christ (Lk. 24, 48; Jn. 15, 27; Acts 1, 8; 5, 32); his disciples, in order to be saved, will have to profess their faith in him before men (Mt. 10, 32), entrusting their persecuting hatred (Jn. 15, 18-21). St. Paul too links the apostolic mission to the public testimony rendered to the truth by Jesus Christ before the tribunal of Pilate (1 Tim. 6, 12-14), and, expressly distinguishing the internal assent of faith from the external profession, declares both the one and the other necessary for salvation (Rom. 10, 8-10). Aggregation to the Church through Baptism demands and implies an act of profession of faith, and Confirmation, by making the Christian a soldier of Christ, obliges and enables him in a specific way to the courageous public profession of the faith. However important, the profession of the faith is nevertheless not an absolute moral value; that is, it is a means for the attainment of the ultimate end of the whole moral order, which consists in the love of God and of neighbor. It follows that the believer is bound to profess the faith not at any moment and circumstance of life but only in those cases in which, if he were still to temporize, his manner of acting would amount to a denial of the faith, contempt for religion, insult to God and moral harm to neighbor "(CIC, can. 1325 § 1). In other cases, on the contrary, the love of God and of neighbor may counsel or impose the admission of the profession of the faith; it is the task of casuistry to consider the individual concrete cases in which it is or is not obligatory to profess the faith. When, for example, the legitimate civil authority, adhering to legal procedure, demands an account of one's religious faith, the profession of the faith is not only advisable, but as a general rule obligatory; this follows from the condemnation of the contrary assertion by Innocent XI (Denz-U, 1168). It is not praiseworthy, on the other hand, asserts St. Thomas, to profess the faith publicly when by this one gives offense to the unbeliever, without any advantage to the faith and to the believer (Sum. Theol., 2a-2bc, q. 3, a. 2, ad 3). Ecclesiastical law requires the profession of faith, according to established forms, from determined persons in special circumstances (v. PROFESSIONE DI F.).

III. SINS AGAINST FAITH

Sins against faith are of different form and gravity. They can be distinguished into three categories: 1) sins against the obligation to believe; 2) sins against the obligation to profess the faith; 3) sins against the obligation to cultivate the faith and to preserve it from dangers. The brief analysis of sins against faith keeps to an objective and general point of view. The analysis of sins against faith from the subjective point of view involves the evaluation of the degree of responsibility; an evaluation that is difficult and complex, varying from case to case. One limits oneself to recalling that the subjective malice of any sin against faith depends on voluntariness; this in turn depends on awareness and free consent. Ignorance, passion, fear, violence can suppress or limit the subjective culpability of sins against faith no less than that of all other sins.

1. Sins against the obligation to believe

a) Infidelity. - This term designates the state of one who has never had and does not have faith. Even today, unbaptized men are called "infidels," whatever their religion. In the present order of providence, the lack of faith is a most grave moral deficiency, which constitutes a fault only and to the extent that it is voluntary. From the point of view of voluntariness, moralists usually distinguish a threefold infidelity: purely "negative," that is, exempt from all voluntariness and therefore from all subjective culpability; "privative," that is, indirectly voluntary, insofar as it is due to a conscious and voluntary negligence of the means suited to attaining faith; "contrary," that is, directly voluntary, insofar as it is a conscious and voluntary rejection of revelation sufficiently proposed. It is not always easy to decide to which of these three species the infidelity of this or that individual, or group of individuals, reduces. The assertion of Baius: "the purely negative infidelity of those to whom Christ has never been preached is a sin" was condemned by Pius V (Denz-U, 1068).

Even the lack of faith of many baptized persons in the great cities, who have grown up from infancy in an environment ignorant of or hostile to the faith, can be considered, at least in many cases, as negative infidelity, and at most privative. On the other hand, certain attitudes of bitter aversion to the faith and to the supernatural in general on the part of modern rationalism, especially immanentist rationalism, have every appearance of contrary infidelity. For a more exact evaluation of subjective responsibility in the lack of faith, it is helpful to recall that the assent of faith is subjectively obligatory only if preceded by rational certainty of the divine supernatural origin of the Christian religion, that is, by the so-called certain judgment of credibility; doubt and probability that the Christian religion is truly revealed will oblige one to further inquiry, but not yet to faith (Denz-U, 1170, 1625-26, 1637). Since the judgment of faith and the judgment of credibility are essentially distinct in their object and in their motive, it is possible that a man, even while having certainty that the Christian religion is revealed, may refuse it his assent. But this case is very rare; usually the lack of faith is accompanied by the lack of the judgment of credibility; the man does not believe because faith seems to him irrational, puerile, unfounded. It is therefore necessary to examine to what extent the lack of the judgment of credibility is voluntary, in order to decide how voluntary and culpable the consequent lack of faith is. This exploratory probing into the often complicated psychology of unbelief is very difficult; faith engages what is most intimate in man, and God alone, who searches the depths of the human heart, knows with precision how responsible a man is for his lack of faith.

Here more than ever applies the evangelical prohibition against judging and condemning one's brother. If it is true on the one hand that there exist numerous, splendid and most certain objective proofs, suited in themselves to convince the mind of any man of the divine origin of the Christian faith, it is equally true on the other hand that ignorance, prejudices, environmental influences, passions of every kind can diminish or totally suppress the voluntariness of the lack of faith, as of any other moral disorder.

b) The loss of faith. - The assent of Catholic faith is by its nature irrevocable, since the believer can never find objectively sufficient motives for calling into doubt or for retracting the assent once given. Therefore the loss of faith is an objective moral disorder, which can have degrees of depth that differ, but all of them grave by their nature. The first form of the loss of faith is heresy. It takes place when a baptized person who already believes doubts or denies any truth revealed by God and as such proposed in a solemn or ordinary manner by the Church; in this case the unbeliever still in principle retains his adherence to Revelation and to the magisterial authority of the Church, but rebels against it insofar as it is applied to this or that point of doctrine (v. ERESIA).

From heresy the step to schism and apostasy is logical (v.). In fact heresy contains in implicit and virtual form the rebellion against the very principle of submission to the magisterial authority of the Church; the heretic incoherently substitutes his private judgment for the judgment of the Church in a particular point, as, for example, Luther did at the beginning with his new theory on faith and justification. To escape from this incoherent attitude, heresy has only two possibilities: either to retract itself, submitting to the judgment of the magisterial authority of the Church, or to reject in principle this same authority. At this point the heretic becomes properly a schismatic. The latter still accepts Revelation, but refuses the mediation of the power of magisterium instituted by God to interpret and propose it. The rebellion against the authority of the teaching Church contains the germ of apostasy, that is, of the expressed and formal rejection of divine Revelation itself, a rejection that can be pushed even to the very possibility of Revelation. In fact the patrimony of revealed truths, abandoned to the fallible judgment of private examination, ends sooner or later by being completely squandered.

The descending parabola of the loss of faith, traced here in the schematic logical succession of its phases, is a sad historical reality, which runs from the heresy of Luther to the apostasy of rationalism. The disintegrating process of faith is subtly analyzed with a metaphysical mentality by St. Thomas (Sum. Theol., 2ᵃ-2ᵃᵉ, q. 11, a. 1-2; q. 12, a. 1); he, however, reduces it to two phases: heresy, apostasy, skipping the schismatic phase, which he considered as essentially contrary to the law of unity (Sum. Theol., 2ᵃ-2ᵃᵉ, q. 30) in charity and in the regime of the Church; in fact no fracture of the unity of the Church up to the times of St. Thomas presented the character of a direct and formal negation of the magisterial authority of the Church, as Protestantism later had. The CIC too (can. 1325 § 2) distinguishes heresy from apostasy in the sense indicated above and considers a schismatic to be one who refuses to submit to the authority of the Church, sovereignly residing in the Supreme Pontiff; which can very well be understood also of formal rebellion against the teaching authority of the Supreme Pontiff.

If it is easy to determine in its different degrees the objective malice of the loss of faith, it is not equally easy to judge subjective culpability. The problem of the subjective responsibility of one who loses the faith is among the most studied and debated of modern theology, which, unlike medieval theology, loves to analyze the phenomenon of faith and unbelief from the subjective and concrete psychological point of view, as well as from the objective and metaphysical point of view.

In the canonical forum only one who denies the faith or doubts it in a "pertinacious" manner, that is, in bad faith, is a heretic; this holds all the more in the internal forum in the eyes of God. Now the height of bad faith is found in one who revokes the faith of his Baptism with full awareness of trampling upon revealed truth, the divine authority and that of the Church, in a word, out of direct and formal hatred of the truth. The theologians of the Vatican Council regarded such a monstrous defection from the faith as barely possible (Coll. Lac., t. VII, col. 531, a).

Usually the guilt of one who loses the faith is only indirect, and consists in a more or less voluntary carelessness in evaluating the motives for which the believer abandons himself to real doubt and passes to the denial of his faith. "Nemo mendax, nisi probetur", "Praesumptio stat pro veritate"; this fundamental norm of natural law forbids not only the Catholic but the believer of any religion to cast the shadow of doubt upon or to renounce his religious convictions without the support of motives diligently and dispassionately weighed. The violation of this norm depends in turn in many cases on culpable ignorance and on perversions of judgment, caused by culpable yielding to aberrant passionate impulses. It is known to all how much the culpable passion of Henry VIII contributed to determining his separation from the Roman Church.

Is it possible to lose the faith without any subjective guilt, whether direct or indirect? For modern Catholic theology this problem is predominantly exegetical; that is, since the Vatican Council defined that "the Catholic believer can never have a just cause for abandoning the faith or for doubting it" (Denz-U, 1794, 1815), the question has arisen whether the affirmation of the Vatican Council refers to a cause "just" from the objective point of view alone, or also from the subjective. The answers diverge: according to some, the Vatican Council intended to define that the Catholic believer can never have a just cause, not even subjectively, for doubting or repudiating his faith, and therefore the loss of faith is always, directly and indirectly, culpable; according to others, the Vatican Council had in view only the objective point of view; according to still others, finally, the mind of the Vatican would indeed also include the subjective point of view, but would adhere to a general principle that is not exclusive of exceptional cases and would moreover leave suspended the question whether the subjective guilt of one who loses the faith is always grave. Vermeersch, for example, holds that the defection from the Catholic faith and the adherence to the pioneers of the Reformation on the part of the popular masses was exempt from "grave" subjective guilt, if not indeed from all guilt (Theol. mor., II, 1st ed., p. 27). The solution of this intricate problem will depend in good part on a thorough analysis, under the guidance of theological principles, of the concrete psychological processes culminating in the loss of faith. The canonical sanctions against heresy and apostasy (can. 2314 § 1) presuppose pertinacity and external manifestation.

c) Disobedience to the magisterial authority of the Church. - According to cann. 1323, 1 and 1325 § 2, only one who pertinaciously calls into doubt or denies a revealed truth proposed as such by the solemn or ordinary magisterium of the Church is a heretic. Therefore every other dissent from the magisterial authority of the Church, while being a grave sin against the faith, is not in itself the loss of faith. The ecclesiastical magisterium can infallibly define what is not revealed, or issue doctrinal decrees that are not definitional and therefore not infallible. To dissent even only internally from infallible doctrinal decrees in a non-revealed matter is always gravely unlawful and is a sin of disobedience to the Church; if moreover the dissent is publicly manifested, the aggravating circumstance of scandal is added. The same holds for internal and external dissent from non-infallible doctrinal decrees, except in the rare case of one who, being competent and prudent, internally suspends his assent to such decrees in expectation of a definitional sentence.

2. Sins against the obligation to profess the faith

a) The external denial of the faith. - It is always unlawful to say words, perform gestures, use a costume, etc., which by their nature or in the concrete circumstances of the moment certainly manifest the internal defection from the faith, even if this defection does not take place. Among the cases of external denial of the faith, moralists recall the use of distinctive badges or uniforms characteristic and proper to openly anti-Catholic and anti-religious societies and sects, and above all active and formal participation in non-Catholic cults. Ignorance, fear or violence can diminish or completely remove subjective guilt.

b) The concealment of the faith. - It can be lawful or unlawful according to the circumstances. It is unlawful when concretely it is equivalent to the external denial of the faith; otherwise it can be lawful, indeed commendable, as, for example, eluding the search of the persecutor.

The most frequent cause that induces external denial or unlawful concealment of the faith is human respect. Already among the first disciples of Christ there are found external deniers (Peter) and timid concealers of the faith (Joseph of Arimathea: Io. 19, 38; many of the Jewish ruling class: Io. 12, 42), victims of human respect.

3. Sins against the obligation to cultivate and guard the faith

The general duty of believers to develop the faith is contained in the writings of the New Testament and is derived from the vital nature of the faith itself. The consolidation of the inner man ardently invoked by St. Paul for the new Christians in his prayers (Eph. 3, 14-16; Col. 1, 6 ff.) is, in the very words of the Apostle, a development of the faith: St. Peter imposes it in categorical form: "Crescite in gratia et cognitione Domini nostri I. Christi" (II Pt. 3, 18). One of the essential means for maintaining and developing the faith is religious instruction. The obligation of religious instruction is general and, as a rule, grave; the measure and the modalities of its application vary according to the circumstances of person, time and place. It is difficult to determine in individual cases the gravity of culpable negligence of religious instruction.

The loss of the faith is very often the more or less direct result of imprudent and rash steps. Therefore natural law forbids the believer to put his faith in danger. Now the greatest and most immediate danger for the faith is contact with the opposing error. In the New Testament there recurs insistently the warning to be vigilant against the snares set for the faith by the enemies of truth (Rom. 16, 17; II Cor. 11, 3; Eph. 5, 6-11; Col. 2, 6-8; I Tim. 1, 3 ff.; Hebr. 13, 9; II Pt. 3, 17; II Io. 7-11). The Church, in strict adherence to natural law and to the spirit of the apostolic norms, has provided for the protection of the faith with special laws concerning the press and the reading of books on religious and moral subjects (v. CENSURA; INDICE), the relations of the faithful with the heterodox (v. COMUNICAZIONE con infedeli e acattolici) and public discussions or conferences with them on matters of faith (CIC, can. 1325 § 3). The contravention of these norms of ecclesiastical law is unlawful, save for legitimate dispensation or a proportionate excuse compatible with the principles of natural law, even when the danger to the faith is absent for particular reasons.

IV. RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF REASON WITH REGARD TO FAITH

Against fideism the Church has affirmed the right and the duty of reason to procure for itself purely rational certainty of the fact of Revelation and to penetrate its content as far as is possible (Denz-U, 1171, 1623-27, 1656-37, 1795-97). At the basis of the entire apologetic, philosophical-historical apparatus of Catholic theology and of the extreme prudence with which the Church proceeds in ascertaining any supernatural manifestation of God, stands the principle: « Factum supernaturale non praesumitur, sed probandum est ». To contravene this principle is to sin against faith by excess, and it means opening the door to all superstitions. The right and the duty to demonstrate rationally the fact of Revelation and the revealed truths themselves, within the boundaries of the possible, falls not only on one who is setting out toward faith, but also on one who already possesses it; the only difference between the two is that the former, while he is in the phase of rational inquiry, is not bound to believe, that is, as is technically said, he is permitted "systematic" doubt regarding faith; the latter, on the other hand, before and during the rational justification of faith, cannot really suspend his assent of faith; his doubt can only be "methodical." The duty to "reason" about one's own faith becomes operative in individuals when their judgment of credibility threatens to crumble under the pressure of intellectual difficulties.

Against rationalism the Church has declared the obligation of reason to acknowledge its own natural limitedness, aggravated by the original fall, and the consequent duty to accept the divine revelation sufficiently proposed, giving faith to its content, even if it is mysterious in an absolute sense (Denz-U, 1785, 1795, 1807-1808-10-16). The right of absolute autonomy, claimed by rationalism on behalf of reason, is an absurd pretension, ultimately harmful to reason itself; nor can there ever be a real conflict between the duties and rights of reason and those of faith.

Gaetano Corti

III. FAITH AND REASON

I. THE PROBLEM

The relationship between faith and reason corresponds to that between Grace and nature, of which it expresses the first moment and the fundamental actualization, inasmuch as it is through the acceptance of faith that man enters the supernatural order, and inasmuch as faith itself is the first Grace that effectively brings man near to God. The act of faith therefore springs directly from the motion of Grace, so that the relationship between faith and reason has an intrinsically dialectical meaning: on the one hand, that is, it represents and operates as a condition or preparation for the acceptance of faith; on the other, it operates as a consequence of the acceptance of faith itself, which is the absolute truth that saves. In both situations faith presupposes a precise attitude toward reason, that is, toward philosophy insofar as this expresses reason arrived at the maturity of reflection. In the first moment, that of the preparation of the act of faith, the pivot of the relationship is faith itself: it must stand firm in itself for anyone who intends to be a Christian, because faith is God's truth to man. Philosophy, on the other hand, is human reflection or invention, in the face of which two situations are possible (and the history of theology confirms this): either one sees in the multiplicity and diversity of philosophical systems philosophy's incapacity to lead to absolute truth, or else in that never-interrupted energy of reflection of the human race to reach absolute truth one considers man's essential tendency to resolve the problem of truth within the limits of his possibilities and in the historical situation in which he lives. In the history of Christianity both directions have been encountered: the one, pessimistic, condemns every philosophy wholesale and therefore conceives the relationship between faith and reason in a predominantly negative way (irrationalism, fideism, traditionalism, etc.); the other, more optimistic, admits the possibility of a positive intervention of reason (and of philosophy) within the sphere of faith. This positive relationship between faith and reason has first of all a historical meaning, inasmuch as it recognizes in pre-Christian philosophy itself more or less veiled and complete grasps of truth; it also has a theoretical meaning, inasmuch as it takes up the concepts of philosophy in order to reflect on the formulas of faith and to expand them into their fullness of truth for consciousness, whence theology is born.

II. OUTLINE OF HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

The negative tendency often appeals to St. Paul's condemnation of the philosophers (Rom. 1:18 ff.) and of philosophy (1 Cor. 3:9; Col. 2:8) and insists on the corruption of human nature after sin; the positive tendency appeals to the fact of the presence of specifically philosophical elements in Sacred Scripture itself, both of the Old Testament (Job, Wisdom, Ecclesiastes, Maccabees) and of the New (the Gospel of St. John, St. Paul's own Letters, and the Acts of the Apostles), where the more or less direct reflection of the philosophy of the milieu is beyond doubt. Moreover, when they are scrutinized in depth, the two tendencies must not be opposed: the errors of the philosophers which the first condemns are also rejected by the second, but this one goes further and, with a livelier sense of the differences, grades the various systems differently according to a greater or lesser incompatibility (in principles, in method and in conclusions) with the cornerstones of the faith, in order to show, if need be, that the erroneousness of the conclusions, or even of the method, is not always bound up with the principles, so that the former may be abandoned and the latter retained. In both attitudes there can be tendencies admitting every gradation, and it is the task of the history of dogmas to identify the particular physiognomy of each in the historical and doctrinal milieu in which it made its appearance.

In ancient Christian literature the negative tendency seems to prevail. Hippolytus makes Greek philosophy responsible for all heresies: the heretics have done nothing but plunder at will now one philosopher, now another (τούτων γὰρ μάλιστα γεγέννητα κλεφίλογοι οἱ τῶν αἱρέσεων πρωτοστατήσαντες; Hyppol. Ref. omn. her., I, 11; ed. P. Wendland, Leipzig 1916, p. 4, 7; Dox. Graeci, ed. H. Diels, 2nd ed., Berlin 1929, p. 554, 41). Immersed in the contemplation of nature, the philosophers lowered the idea to it: ἕτερος ἕτερον μέρος τῆς κτίσεως προκρίναντες. τὸν δὲ θεὸν τούτων καὶ δημιουργὸν μὴ ἐπίγνωντες (Hyppol., op. cit., I, 26; ed. cit., p. 31, 19; Dox. Graeci, ed. cit., p. 576, 2). Hermias, in his "mockery of the pagan philosophers," after citing the Pauline text 1 Cor. 3:9 "Sapientia huius mundi stultitia est apud Deum," sees the origin of philosophy in the first apostasy of the angels, from which derives the disagreement of the philosophers among themselves: διτὴν αἰτίαν οὔτε σήμερον οὔτε ὁμόλογο οἱ φιλόσοφοι πρὸς ἀλλήλους λέγοντες ἐκτιδέεται τὰ δόγματα (Herm., Irris. gentil. philos., 1; Dox. Graeci, ed. cit., 651, 6). The most resolute in this negation of classical thought was Tertullian. In the De praescriptione haereticorum, having condemned philosophy as "materia sapientiae saecularis," he affirms that "ipsae haereses a philosophia subornantur," and immediately gives examples: Valentinus was a Platonist, Marcion a Stoic, Epicurus a materialist, Zeno a Stoic who taught the fire-god of Heraclitus (ch. 7: ed. J. Martin, Bonn 1930, Flor Patr., IV, p. 11, 11 ff.; cf. p. 12, 9 ff.: "Miserum Aristotelem qui illis dialecticam instituit..."). His condemnation of philosophy knows no discrimination whatsoever: "Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis? quid Academiae et Ecclesiae? quid haereticis et Christianis? Nostra institutio de porticu Salomonis est (...) Viderint qui Stoicum et Platonicum et Dialecticum Christum protulerunt. Nobis curiositate opus non est post Christum Iesum, nec inquisitione post Evangelium. Cum credimus, nihil desideramus ultra credere. Hoc enim prius credimus, non esse quod ultra credere debeamus" (ch. 8: ed. cit., p. 13, 1 ff.). The dialectic of the act of faith is resolved entirely within faith itself: "Igitur quaerendum est quod Christus instituit, utique quandiu non invenis, utique donec invenias. Invenisti autem cum credidisti, nam non credidisses, si non invenisses, sicut nec quaesisses nisi ut invenires" (ch. 10: ed. cit. 15, 6 ff.). This declared ostracism of Greek philosophy did not, however, prevent Tertullian from accepting from Stoicism the materialist conception of being, which he extends to the soul, to the Angels and to God himself (cf. W. Karpp, Sorans eier Bücher περὶ ψυχῆς und Tertullians Schrift "De Anima," in Zeitschr. f. neut. Wiss., 1934, pp. 31-47).

But older, more continuous and more extensive is the conviction that reason and philosophy have a positive function with respect to faith, both because the philosophers, in seeking the absolute, fought idolatry and the state religion, and because to combat heresies the instrument of theoretical logos is indispensable. This tendency is worthily opened by St. Justin, who, addressing the First Apology to the emperors Antoninus Pius and Lucius Verus, praising them as those who alone truly honor the truth in a pious and philosophical manner (I Apol., c. I, 5; ed. G. Rauschen, 2nd ed., Bonn 1911, p. 8). While acknowledging that they often erred, he regards the philosophers as "organs of the divine Logos" present in all men, from whom they drew the truth of their thoughts: through the innate reason that exists in every man (Apol., II, c. 7, p. 124). Socrates, Heraclitus and also the comic poet Menander are cited in the place of honor, being called Christians before the letter even though they were considered atheists by the common people: and those who lived with reason are Christians, even if they were thought atheists; such as among the Greeks Socrates and Heraclitus and those like them (Apol., II, c. 46, p. 80). The belief, widespread also in the Middle Ages, that Plato had read the Holy Scripture in Egypt goes back to St. Justin (cf. I Apol., cc. 59-60, p. 94 ff.). The same holds for the positive assistance that philosophy can lend to the exposition and defense of the faith. Already St. Irenaeus declared: "Quaecumque illi cum labore comparant, his nos, in fide cum simus, sine labore utimur" (Adv. Haer., IV, 50, 1). A little further on, the same Irenaeus, like St. Cyprian and with them many other Fathers and the early Scholasticism, sees in the despoiling of the Egyptians' treasures by the Hebrews (Ex. 11, 7) a "typus et imago... profectionis Ecclesiae quae erat futura in gentibus" (op. cit., IV, 30, 4; PG 7, 1067). The classic in this part is Clement of Alexandria, who devotes the whole of Book I of the Stromata to showing the necessity of human science and Greek philosophy for the understanding of the Holy Scripture: he protests against those who reject philosophy and want only and naked faith: faith alone and bare (Strom., I, 9, 43; ed. O. Stählin, II, Leipzig 1939, p. 28, 19). For one cannot gather the grapes without cultivating the vine, and how then should one not philosophize if one wishes to attain the meaning of the divine power: is it not necessary for one who longs to lay hold of the power of God to philosophize about the night (loc. cit., p. 29, 24)? Overbeck, a friend of Nietzsche, accused Clement of Alexandria of having intellectualized the faith, distorting its nature (Fr. Overbeck, Über die Christlichkeit der unseren heutigen Theologie, 2nd ed., Leipzig 1903, p. 27 ff.). But the accusation does not hold, first because faith is the foundation of gnosis and not vice versa; and then because what gives gnosis its final completion is not abstract speculation but charity, and the perfect gnostic is he who has completely conformed himself to Christ and confesses him in all his life: he will bear witness by night, he will bear witness by day in word, in life, in manner he will bear witness; dwelling with the Lord... carrying about the cross of the Savior (op. cit., II, 20; t. II, 170, 10). This forms in particular the subject of Stromata, LVII, cc. 1-14, while Book VIII treats explicitly of the necessity of philosophy and of the philosophical procedure (cf. ch. 3 devoted to inquiry) in order to unmask the sophisms of the heretics and to propose the object of faith in exact terms, thus providing the first propaedeutic to theology. And it is precisely Clement who points out the reversal that the term πίστις undergoes in Christianity; inasmuch as, while in pagan philosophy it indicates the knowledge of contingent sensible things, in Christianity it indicates knowledge superior to science itself and as its measure: faith is more authoritative than science and is its criterion (Strom., II, 4; t. II, p. 120, 26), anticipating, in the essential moment, the very position of St. Thomas. The theology of the Greek Fathers remained faithful to this line of sound balance, where one may admit that optimism prevails, unlike, for example, the orientation of St. Augustine, which is more aware of the wounds that sin has inflicted also on human intelligence. Nevertheless he too admits that the philosophers have to a large extent known the truth and thereby have also worked for the City of God: "Quidquid philosophi quidam inter falsa, quae opinati sunt, verum videre potuerunt, et laboriosis disputationibus persuadere molti sunt, quod mundum istum fecerit Deus, cumque ipse providentissimus doministrei, de honestate virtutum, de amore patriae, de fide amicitiae, de bonis operibus atque omnibus ad mores probos pertinentibus rebus, quamvis nescientes ad quem finem, et quoniam modo essent ista omnia referenda, propheticia, hoc est divina vocibus, quamvis per homines, in illa Civitate populo commendant sunt" (De Civ. Dei, l. XVII, c. 41, n. 3; CSEL 40, p. 11). And for this their work in the service of providence, Augustine judges the philosophers worthy of those divine honors which were instead paid to idols: "Vreamtamen si philosophi aliquid inventant quod agendae bonae vitae beataeque adipiscendae satis esse possit: quanto iustius talibus divini honores decernentur?" (op. cit., l. II, c. 7; CSEL 40, pp. 1, 67). The attitude of the Fathers therefore with respect to reason is by no means negative but critical; for them there are two revelations of the divine Word, one in the variety of nature and in the unfolding of human culture, the other in the communication of the faith and of the mysteries of Grace for eternal life, so that to reject the first on principle would be equivalent to depriving oneself of the first manifestation of the Word itself. It is in this line also St. Peter Damian, at the dawn of the Middle Ages, who, despite his marked mystical tendency, takes up the principle of St. Irenaeus: "Thesaurum quippe tollit Aegyptiis, unde Deo tabernaculum construat, qui poetas et philosophos legit, quibus ad penetranda mysteria coelestis eloquium subtilis convalesat" (PL 145, 560).

The most energetic and influential opponent of the application of philosophy to theology in the late Middle Ages is Bernard, as his struggle against Abelard demonstrates: "Petrus Abelardus Christianae fidei meritum evacuare nititur, dum totum quod Deus est, humana ratione arbitratur se posse comprehendere" (Epist., CXC, PL 182, 257 B). His anti-philosophism became a domestic tradition in the ancient Cistercian school, and his formula may be contrasted with the fides quaerens intellectum of St. Anselm. Before Abelard (whose orthodoxy is today almost completely vindicated), Berengar of Tours and Roscelin, on the other hand, accept the collaboration of reason, straying into the rationalism in which Scotus Eriugena also remains. Under the influence of Abelard and Eriugena, Thierry of Chartres and William of Conches tend toward rationalism, while fideism appears in Gilbert de la Porrée. A step forward is taken with the Victorines, who distinguish natural theology, the work of reason, from sacred theology dependent on faith, but who nevertheless do not disdain the aid of reason. In a text that had decisive importance for the development of theology down to St. Thomas, Hugh of St. Victor distinguishes three classes of objects: "Alia enim sunt ex ratione, alia secundum rationem, alia supra rationem" — and a fourth which does not count — "et præter hæc quae sunt contra rationem." And here is the differing value of each: "Ex ratione sunt necessari, secundum rationem sunt probabilia, supra rationem mirabilia, contra rationem incredibilia." The two extremes fall outside faith: "Quae enim sunt ex ratione omnino nota sunt et credi non possunt, quoniam scuntur. Quae vero contra rationem sunt, nulla similiter ratione credi possunt, non suscipiunt ullam rationem nec acquiescit his ratio aliquando." Faith, on the other hand, is involved in the two intermediate sectors, but differently: "Ergo quae secundum rationem sunt et quae sunt supra rationem tantummodo suscipiunt fidem. Et (a) in primo quidem genere fides ratione adivatur et ratio fide perficitur quoniam secundum rationem sunt quae creduntur. Quorum veritatem si ratio non comprehendit, fidei tamen illorum non contradicit." (b) "In his quae supra rationem sunt non adivatur fides ratione ulla; quoniam non capit ea ratio quae fides credit, et tamen est aliquid quo ratio admonetur venerari fidem quam non comprehendit" (De Sacram., I. III, 301 PL 179, 232).

These important programmatic declarations had no immediate follow-up for lack of an adequate conceptual instrument; indeed they suffer a setback with the repeated prohibitions by ecclesiastical authority against studying the works of natural philosophy, metaphysics and morals of Aristotle which, toward the end of the 12th century, translated from Arabic and also from the original Greek, were beginning to infiltrate student circles. The letter that Gregory IX addressed from Perugia on 17 July 1228 to the professors of theology of the University of Paris is — in its picturesque style of biblical allusions — an entire diatribe against the use of philosophy in theology: "Et quidem theologicus intellectus quasi vir habet praesse cuilibet facultati, et quasi spiritus in carnem exercere, ac eam in viam dirigere rectitudinis ne aberret. Denique qui verba caelestis oraculi adulterina philosophorum doctrinae commixtione a sui sensus molitur infatus et nihil sciens puritate divertere inclinans eadem ad philosophicum intellectum et quasi de corde suo profanans vire adultero adhaerere cum muliese Samaritana videtur ... (Charl. Univ. Paris., ed. Denille-Chatelain, I. Paris 1880, n. 59, p. 114 ff.). The conservative tendency made the most of these prescriptions in order to apply, in the most drastic sense to philosophy and to reason in general, the principle "Philosophia ancilla theologiae": it would enjoy a special favor in the Franciscan school. St. Bonaventure not only wrote the De reductione artium ad theologiam but warned that "in descensu ad philosophiam est maximum periculum," and after recalling that St. Jerome through the reading of Cicero lost his taste for Sacred Scripture, he adds: "Ideo magistri et doctores Scripturae non tantum appreciare debent scripta philosophorum, ut discipuli exemplo eorum dimittant ogus Siloe, in quibus est summa perfectio, et vadant ad philosophiam, in qua est periculosa deceptio" (Collat. in Hexaem., Visio III, coll. VII, 12; ed. P. Delorme, in Bibl. Franc. Schol. M. Aesi., VIII, Quaracchi 1934, p. 216 ff.). Scotus and Ockham are still in the wake, not only spiritual but also doctrinal, of St. Bonaventure, insofar as they deny, together with their schools, that theology can be called a science in the rigorous sense, in direct opposition to St. Thomas who — while also admitting that the other sciences are "ancillae huius" (Sum. Theol., I, q. 1, a. 5, sed contra and ad 2), that is, of theology — clearly distinguishes the two orders of religion and of faith. Ockham, pushing to the limit the doctrine of intuitive (effective) knowledge of his Order, admits a complex of truths of faith accessible also to reason, including the very mystery of the Holy Trinity: nevertheless it must be maintained that only Sacred Scripture and tradition can manifest its existence, so that theological discourse by means of the middle term supposes and clarifies it but does not constitute it, or in any case enters within the ambit of faith itself. In this sense Ockham was reacting against the rationalism of Scotus's "distinctio formalis" in defense of the transcendence of faith: "Et ideo non debet poni (distinctio formalis) nisi ubi evidenter sequitur ex traditis in Scriptura sacra vel determinatione ecclesiae propter cuius auctoritatem debet omnis ratio captivari. Et ideo cum omnia tradita in Scriptura sacra et determinatione Ecclesiae possunt salvari non ponendo eam inter sapientiam et essentiam (divinam), ideo simpliciter nego talem distinctionem ibi possibiam (sicut inter essentiam et relationem) et eam universaliter nego in creatura" (In I Sent., dist. II, q. 1, ed. Lyon 1495, f. F. 1, 10 ff.).

St. Thomas's point of view on the relations between faith and reason is that of his entire theology, namely that "Gratia non tollit sed perficit naturam," developed in the commentary In Boeth. de Trinitate, q. II, a. 3: "Utrum in scientia fidei, quae est de Deo, liceat rationibus physica uti." Here are the principal points: a) both the "lumen fidei" and the "lumen rationis" derive from God, and therefore "impossibile est quod ea quae per fidem nobis traduntur divinitus sint contraria his quae per naturam nobis sunt indita... : oporteret enim alterum esse falsum : et cum utrumque sit nobis a Deo, Deus esset nobis auctor falsitatis, quod est impossibile" — b) Since created things are a certain "imitation" of the divine essence, they can well have and suggest a likeness to the mysteries of faith: "Unde impossibile est quod ea quae sunt philosophiae, sint contraria his quae sunt fidei, sed deficiunt ab eis; continent tamen quasdam similitudines eorum, et quasdam ad ea præcambula, sicut natura preambula est ad Gratiam" — c) If then some philosopher has opposed the faith, "hoc non est philosophiae, sed magis philosophiae abusus ex defectu rationis," which the theologian can reject as not cogent against the faith — d) Theology moreover can use rectly of philosophy in three ways: 1) to demonstrate
the "praeambula fidei" (existence and attributes of God, creation
of the world, immortality of the soul...) "quae fides suppo-nit". 2) To clarify in some way the truth of the faith
with analogies, similitudes taken from nature and from reason "sicut Augustinus in libris De Trinitate utitur
multis similitudinibus et doctrinis philosophicis sumptis
ad manifestandum Trinitatem". 3) To defend the faith
from the attacks of false philosophy "sive ostendendo (ea)
esse falsa, sive ostendendo non esse necessaria". Finally
the Angelic Doctor points out two dangers or errors in the use of
philosophy in theology: "Uno modo utendo his quae sunt
contra fidem, quae non sunt philosophiae, sed potius
error vel abusus eius". In another way, so that the things that are of faith
are included under the bounds of philosophy; as if someone wished to
believe nothing except what can be had through philosophy;
whereas on the contrary philosophy is to be reduced to the bounds of faith,
according to that saying of the Apostle: II Cor. 10, 5. (Opuscula, ed.
De Maria, Città di Castello 1886, p. 302 ff.). The result
of the collaboration between faith and reason is theology which in the
Thomist conception has a true character of science, indeed is
created wisdom par excellence (Sum. Theol., I, q. 1a,
ff. 2-6). St. Thomas energetically combated the Averroist thesis of the "double truth" according to which a philosophical truth could as such find itself in right in contrast
with the faith, so that the believer had to reject the conclusion of philosophy solely by virtue of the faith. According to Averroism the necessary conclusions of philosophy are the eternity of the world, providence only general, the unity
of the human intellect in all individuals... but the believer has the faith which surpasses reason. Therefore Siger of
Brabant protests: "Hoc dicimus sensisse Philosophum
de unione animae intellectivae ad corpus; sententiam
tamen sanctae fidei catholicae, si contraria huic sit sententiae Philosophi, praeferre volentes sicut et in aliis
quibuscumque... In tali dubio fidei adhaerendum est,
quae omnem rationem superat" (QQ. de anima intellectiva,
ed. Mandonnet in Siger de Brabant, II, 2nd ed., Louvain
1911, pp. 157, 169). More moderate is the style in the Comm.
on the Metaphysics (cf. ed. by C. A. Graiff, Louvain 1948,
especially pp. 140, 153). More resolute is John of Jandun:
"Quamvis haec opinio sit Commentatoris et Aristotelis
et quamvis etiam haec opinio non possit removeri rationibus demonstrativis, tamen ego dico alter... Hoc autem
non probo ratione aliqua demonstrativa, quia hoc non
scio esse possibile, et si quis hoc sciat, gaudet. Istam
autem conclusionem (individual multiplicity of human intellects) assero simpliciter esse veram et indubitanter
teneo sola fide" (QQ. super libros Aristotelis de Anima,
l. III, q. VII, Venetian ed. 1565, col. 282). Recent studies
on the precise position of Averroes, conducted by L. Gauthier
on original works hitherto unpublished of the Commentator, have
shown that — beneath the caution of form — Averroes
affirms the absolute superiority of philosophy over religion, of whose dogmas it expounds the ultimate and necessary sense because it is "only speculation that leads us
to the true knowledge of God" (Trait décisif sur l'accord de la
religion et de la philosophie, ed. L. Gauthier, 3rd ed., Algiers
1947, p. 6). This attitude of Averroes forms the
central theme of his polemic with the theologian-mystic Al-gazel, to whom, author of a Destruction philosophorum,
he opposes his Destruction destructionum translated and published
in the sixteenth-century edition of the works of Averroes
(IX, Venice 1562).

It is this genuine Averroist position of the absorption of religion into philosophy, not that of Latin Averroism which, after the waverings of Humanism
and the open negations of rationalist Enlightenment, will be
taken up again and deepened by modern idealism and especially by Hegelian panlogism: in this process a) the
faith constitutes a sphere inferior to reason; b) it can
lay claim to truth only by subordinating itself to reason. It is Kant
who expressly proclaims "the universal human reason
(die Allgemeine Menschenvernunft) sovereign ruler
of natural religion" and wills at the same time that it be "recognized and honored as the sovereign and supreme principle
(das oberst gebietende Prinzip) in the doctrine of the
Christian faith" (Kant, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft, IV, part 1, sec. 2; ed. K. Vorländer,
Leipzig 1937, p. 102). For Hegel God is the Spirit, the absolute
idea or concept: the faith can appeal to the truth according as,
detaching itself from authority, it enters the sphere of the concept and is thus — the eternal substantial nature of the Spirit —.
Therefore every faith rests solely on reason itself
(jener Glaube beruht allein auf der Vernunft selbst), on the
spirit, that is, on a mediation that removes all mediation" (Philosophie der Religion, III: Die absolute Religion,
c. 5, sec. 3; S. W. ed. G. Lasson, Leipzig 1929, p. 190 ff.).
Hence the Hegelian reduction of the principal mysteries of
Christianity (Trinity, Incarnation...) to necessary stages
of the development of absolute human self-consciousness. To an
analogous conclusion, though by an opposite method, ar-rived the supporters of the "theory of faith as immediate
feeling" (Jacobi, Schleiermacher, Fries, and recently R. Otto with his school) insofar as faith is accomplished
always and solely in the sphere of self-consciousness as
"feeling of dependence" (Abhängigkeitsgefühl) so that
"the immediate inner manifestation of the simple feeling of dependence is the consciousness of God" (Gottesbewusstsein; Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube, ed. D.
Forster, Halle a. S. 2nd ed., part 1, c. 1, § 5 Zusatz, p. 27).
In this way the principle of Protestant subjectivism
touched its extreme summits in the absoluteness of reason
on the one hand and of feeling on the other, which had already been
proposed by Kant, in whose line there also remains modernism and — in its heterodox tendencies — the method of
immanence. In the very recent "philosophy of existence"
K. Jaspers advocates a philosophical faith that does not
harden into any system but embraces the historical development
of human reason in its perennial and never completed
attempt to grasp the Absolute. G. Marcel, on the other hand, develops a
conception of faith as "openness" to the sacred and as
freedom of fidelity to the absolute Other who is God. With more
precise theological sense Kierkegaard, referring expressly
to the formula of Hugh of St. Victor cited above, admits
in substance with traditional theology the independence of the two orders of faith and reason and the subordination that the latter obtains in Christianity with
the Incarnation of the Word, so that reason turned back
in Christianity becomes superior to itself (S. Kierkegaard,
Diario, Copenhagen 1850, X2, A 354; Ital. trans. by C. Fabro,
Brescia 1949, vol. II, p. 310. On the precise relations between faith and
reason, see the text: Speculazione e f., ibid. 1850, X2, A 434;
vol. II, ibid. 1950, p. 331, which clearly distinguishes the "judgment of credibility" from the "judgment of credentity" and admits expressly the propaedeutic work of reason
with regard to faith).

The preparation of reason for faith, while there remains
firm the absolute transcendence of faith over reason, is
required both by the unity of consciousness of man, who is the identical subject of reason and of faith, and by the identity of
certain terms in both fields (e.g., nature, person,
relation, substance, accidents, etc.) which will be able to have
their precise meaning within the sphere of faith only
when reason has determined what they have
in natural knowledge. An immediate passage to
faith can mean only a leap into the void and an abandonment to all the murky suggestions of subjectivism
and of pseudo-mysticism which the Church has always rejected.

III. CATHOLIC DOCTRINE

The extreme errors combated by the Church concerning the relations between faith and reason stem from rationalism on the one hand, which exalts reason to the detriment of faith, and from fideism (with the related systems of traditionalism, ontologism, agnosticism...) which rejects reason wholesale. Already the Fifth Lateran Council (sess. VIII, 19 Dec. 1513) declared: « Cumque verum vero minime contradict, omnem assertionem veritati illuminatae fidei contrariam omnino falsam esse definimus » (Danz-U, 738). The principle was developed and clarified in its principal points by the Vatican Council (sess. III, 21 Apr. 1870) in the dogmatic constitution « Dei Filius » at chapters 3 (De fide) to 4 (de fide et ratione). In particular, regarding the relations between reason and faith, the Council solemnly declared: 1. the existence of a twofold order of knowledge, the one deriving from natural reason, the other from divine Revelation (Denz-U, 1795 and 1816). 2. Natural reason can be of service to faith by showing the connection that the mysteries of faith have among themselves and the analogies with created truths, even though these remain inaccessible in their intimate nature (Denz-U, 1796). 3. A real opposition between faith and reason is therefore impossible, since both have God himself as their common principle (ibid., 1797-98 and 1817). 4. Indeed faith and reason can assist each other, reason preparing the adherence of faith, and faith preserving reason from error. 5. The genuine sense of the dogmas of faith is guarded by the magisterium of the Church and is not abandoned to the changing vicissitudes of reason and science (ibid., 1800-18). The same doctrine is now taught in the encyclical Humani generis of 12 Aug. 1950. In the condemnation of modernism (encyclical Pascendi, 8 Sept. 1907) it is declared that phenomenism leads to absolute agnosticism and therefore to the explicit denial of an objective rational knowledge of God, which becomes solely the object of subjective religious experience (Denz-U, 2072 ff.); there is condemned therefore the absolute separation made by the modernists between science and faith, inasmuch as the former would have as its object pure phenomena and the latter the unknowable, which is the object of religion and of Revelation (ibid., 2084 ff.; cf. also the Anti-Modernist Oath of the motu proprio Sacrorum Antistitum, 1 Sept. 1900, ibid., 2145).

IV. F AND SCIENCE

If one distinguishes science from philosophy in that science pursues knowledge of the laws of particular objects or spheres of objects, whether in the realm of nature or in that of the spirit (the Naturwissenschaftler and Geisteswissenschaftler of W. Dilthey), while philosophy seeks the truth and the universal principles of being as such: the relationship of science and faith is more indirect than direct. Positivist-oriented science of the second half of the nineteenth century had claimed to have the last word on the origin of the world and of man, on the nature of the human soul and of thought, defending the eternity of matter, the evolution of man from the anthropoids, the materiality of the soul, the absolute necessity of physical laws, and thereby denying the cornerstones of the Christian religion: the creation of the world and of man, the immortality and spirituality of the soul, human freedom, the possibility and reality of miracles, etc. Idealism believed it could refute positivism by denying all value to science. The reality is that positive science must limit itself to formulating its laws for the objects within its sphere, without claiming to pronounce on their ultimate being, which belongs to philosophy, and still less on the truths that are proper to faith. In a rigorous sense it must be said that science has no direct contact with faith but only with philosophy, and can at most, through the latter, sometimes reach the domain of faith: for example, the hypothesis of evolution requires that the nature of man be clarified on philosophical grounds before pronouncing on the manner of his first origin. The more recent orientation of science, moreover, has overturned the situation, in that today, with the advances of atomic physics and of knowledge of the processes of morphogenesis and biological heredity, the ultimate laws of phenomena have a probabilistic character (Planck's theory of the "quanta," Mendel's laws of heredity according to the developments of contemporary genetics, especially of the school of T. H. Morgan). This recalls the Thomist conception according to which the particular course of the phenomena of nature depends on the contingency that has its root in matter; likewise the course of the facts of history depends on the contingency of created freedom. And above nature and created freedom watches, as the first directive principle, divine Providence (Summ. Theol., I, q. 22, a. 3) v. also SCIENCE.

On the orientation of the earliest Christian tradition concerning the relations between faith and reason, v.: A. F. Festagière, L'idéal religieux des Grecs et l'Evangile, Paris 1932 (cf. pp. 221-263); B. Rousever, La philosophie chrétienne jusqu'à Descartes, 3 vols., ibid. 1935-37; Th. Dénan, Socrate et Jésus, 3, ibid. 1944, which collects the texts and the most recent literature. On Clement of Alexandria: P. Th. Carrelot, Les idées de Cl. D'Al. sur l'utilisation des sciences et de la littérature profane; Cl. d. Al., et l'utilisation de la philosophie grecque, in Recherches de Science religieuse, 21 (1931), pp. 36-66, 541-69; id., Foi et gnose. Introduction à l'étude de la connaissance mystique chez Cl. d'Al., Paris 1945 (on the bibliography, p. 19 ff.); E. Ivanka, Hellenisches und Christliches im Jähbyzentinischen Geistesleben, Vienna 1948. The relations of reason and faith are touched upon incidentally: R. Aubert, Le problème de l'acte de foi. Données traditionnelles et résultats de controverses récentes, Louvain 1945 (with ample bibliography in the notes).

For the Middle Ages, on the conflict between Averroës and Islamic theology, v.: L. Gauthier, Ibn Roché (Averroë), Paris 1948 (p. 17 ff., and especially p. 266 ff.). For Latin scholasticism: M. Grahmann, Geschichte der scholastischen Methode, I, Freiburg im Br. 1909, pp. 125-41; id., I divieti ecclesiastici di Aristotele sotto Innocenzo III e Gregorio IX, Rome 1941; Th. Heitz, Les rapports entre la philosophie et la foi de Béranger de Tours à si Thomas d'Aquin, Paris 1909; F. Sartieux, Foi et science au moyen âge, ibid. 1926; E. Gilson, Christianisme et philosophie, ibid. 1936; id., La Théologie mystique de Saint Bernard, ibid. 1947; R. Guellly, Philosophie et théologie chez Guillaume d'Orbain, Louvain-Paris 1947. Modern: heterodox conceptions: F. W. Hegel, Glaube und Wissen, in Erste Druckschriften, ed. G. Lasson, Leipzig 1928, pp. 221-246; D. Fr. Strauss, Der alte und der neue Glaube, in Ges. Schr., ed. E. Zeller, e. VI, Bonn 1877; A. Messer, Glaube und Wissen, Munich 1919; E. S. Brightman, A philosophique et religion, New York 1946, pp. 117, 178 ff., 422 ff. and passim; J. Boisset and others, Le problème de la philosophie chrétienne, Paris 1949; L. Charlier, Essai sur le problème théologique, Ransal-Thullès 1938 (denies the validity of theological conclusions. Contaminated by the Holy Office).

A complete exposition of the traditional principles is found in: M. J. Schoen, Die Mysterien des Christentums, new ed. by J. Hofer in Ges. Schr., e. II, Freiburg im Br. 1941, pp. 612-671 (with an accurate bibliographical update by J. Hofer. For the existentialist conception: G. Marcel, Foi et réalité, in Etre et Avoir, Paris 1938, p. 259 ff.; id., Homo viator, Paris 1944; K. Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube, Hamain 1946; C. Fabro, Foi et raison dans l'œuvre de Kierkegaard, in Rev. des Sciences philos. et théol., 32 (1948), pp. 169-200; B. Welle, Der philosophische Glaube bei Karl Jaspers und die Möglichkeit seiner Deutung durch die thematische Philosophie, in Symposium, II, Freiburg im Br. 1949, pp. 1-190.

Cornelio Fabro