The Catechism of the Catholic Church says some very succint things about baptism, but with regard to faith I can't seem to resolve this point. If I were to summarize, I'd say infants at the time of baptism neither have faith nor receive faith, exactly. Instead, they are cleansed from original sin and will develop faith when they are older and when they live in a Christian companionship: faith itself being a communal virtue and the individual participating in the faith of the Church.
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In both of the above cases, faith is a supernatural gift: rooted in either an interior revelation or in an objective act of the Church.
The poet Charles Péguy says that faith is simple, that one would have to blind oneself not to have faith. Giussani says that faith is a basic dimension of human personality and that it's essential for society to exist. He also says that faith is acknowledging a presence. I seem to recall Thomas Aquinas saying that the value of faith is determined by its object. If so, this would mean that humans have a natural faith (best seen in the trust of an infant for its mother), but that when Jesus Christ is encountered in the face of the Church a new possibility arises for faith in the human person. It's not faith that changes, but the object. When Christ is encountered, faith in the person of Jesus Christ becomes possible. And this faith must grow through the person following Christ through the trials of life.
What do you think?
11 comments:
Fred,
I am not sure why you think faith is natural. Can you explain?
I know that for Giussani, he does equivocate on faith as trusting another person and faith as acknowledging an exceptional presence in a person.
I wonder why Giussani equivocates... It's not a case of grace building on nature?
or maybe faith is totally a supernatural gift that is given to everybody (a form of universalism)?
The question stands: what is faith? what relationship does it have to trust? Is faith something in which everybody needs to have special revelation in order to have it? Or that some receive and others don't, not being predestined to receive it?
Perhaps it is faith that is "natural" but sin that is not. The "faith of a little child" is a simple, unstudied, God-glorifying reality. It takes time for the infant to become self-conscious enough to STOP trusting in the one who feeds it and START shouting words like "mine!"
One could argue that the little child has faith in the same way the Hebrew patriarchs did. Abraham believed God, and it was counted as righteousness. Most evangelicals assume that all the Old Testament heroes were saved, and were saved by their faith in Christ, who was revealed to them in the "types" of animal sacrifice and the promise of a Messiah. They believed what God chose to reveal, and that was enough.
It is unorthodox--but probably not heretical--to wonder whether infants might be in a state of grace by means of a child's unthinking trust in a parent's love. According to this hypothesis, parents might be serve as a type of God the Father, just as the sacrificial lamb was a type of Christ our redeemer.
If a child's trust in her mother's love operated just like King David's faith in the Old Testament promises, then in Heaven we could expect to see King David and the infant son of Bathsheba. Both would be there because of their faith in the God who reveals Himself, whether He reveals himself through Nathan's words, Bathsheba's love, Christ's touch, or the Church's devotion.
I suppose you can speak of natural faith as analogous to the supernatural Faith of Christian Life. So, if persons have a natural virtue of faith in that they can trust and follow another person, such as their mother, then then this is analogous to Faith in Christ in that its a following of Christ, a trust in Christ. We wold also need to inquire into the attraction to God, to Christ, that is built into our nature as persons.
The catechism says the theological virtues are "infused by God into the souls of the faithful." I have always understood this infusion as Baptism when we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. After baptism we receive the theological virtue of Faith in and with the Holy Spirit. But its more than just a correspondence to the needs that make us most human, more than an awareness of Christ's presence in the Church or a following of Christ and his Church, it issues from grace, from the participation in the presence as one in the Body of Christ.
The distinction seems more nuanced than appears at first. Its not common to speak of Faith in a natural way.
As you may guess, the title should be "Is" not "If." Ahem. Won't change it now cause it will put the grazers off their feeds.
Scott (AFM) - thank you for continuing the discussion - I was provoked in a good way by your question below about baptized infants having faith. I appreciate your common sense approach in the comment above (while not sharing your heterodox conclusion!).
Michael — welcome. In the book on hope (Is It Possible to Live this Way? vol 2), Giussani says that his meditation is "a recovery of the fundamental words of our faith." He also says: "There's an understanding of faith that belongs only to theologians, to those who study, and that doesn't matter; no, it does matter! It matters, but it doesn't matter: what matters is what anyone can understand; and, in explaining faith, we have re-evoked what anyone can understand" (anyone can understand, but for us intellectuals it's a bit more of a challenge!).
So, I would correct your final sentence in this way: "For theologians, it's not common to speak of Faith in a natural way." I think I'll do a brief survey of what Google News shows in terms of stories that contain the word, faith, and how faith is used by journalists.
Apolonio - are you able to take up this challenge, this problem, with us? If you can help us understand this issue better, go ahead and make a new post and we'll join you up there!
Ratzinger said faith is acknowledging the ground on which we stand, as compared to the mere knowledge of the accidents of natural existence via practical reason, see quote under comments from Dan at 1:11 pm at
http://amywelborn.wordpress.com/2008/09/25/introducing-christianity/
"...it is certainly true that belief or faith is not knowledge in the sense of practical knowledge and its particular kind of calculability. It can never become that, and in the last analysis it can only make itself ridiculous if it tries to adopt its methods. But the reverse is true too: calculable practical knowledge is limited by its very nature to the apparent, to what functions, and does not represent the way in which to find truth itself, which by its very method it has renounced. The tool with which man is equipped to deal with the truth of being is not knowledge but understanding: understanding the meaning to which he has entrusted to himself. And we must certainly add that “understanding” only reveals itself in ’standing’, not apart from it. One cannot occur without the other, for understanding means seizing and grasping as meaning the meaning which man has received as ground. I think this is the precise significance of what we mean by understanding: that we learn to grasp the ground on which we have taken our stand as meaning and truth; that we learn to perceive that ground represents meaning.
If this is so, understanding not only implies no contradiction with belief but represents its most intrinsic property. For knowledge of the functional aspect of the world, as procured for us so splendidly by present-day technical and scientific thinking, brings with it no understanding of the world and of being. Understanding grows only out of belief. That is why theology as the understanding, logos-like ( = rational, understanding-through-reason) discussion of God is a fundamental task of Christian faith."
The anglo-saxon etymology helps:
knowing = kennen or wissen
understanding = verstehen, a transitive verb based on the intransitive "stehen", to stand, the "ver" expressing an action carried from the subject to the object; requiring a direct object to complete *meaning*.
Knowing the historical Jesus does not imply faith. To have faith is transitive, the believer (the subject) must actively place himself in real time in a relationship (ver-/under) of "standing" to the knowledge he has (object). The crux? His potency is intransitive, he cannot move himself. The relationship is "received" as grace from He who is omnipotent!
Faith is a gift. Like kids on Christmas Eve unbelievers can wish for it earnestedly, sitting close to the tree skirt, waiting expectantly (in other words, align their intellectual crosshairs on the fixed horizon of the stabat mater, Mother Church, be diligent in pursuit of the truth and open to the movement of the Spirit!). AMDG
Fred,
We just read that quote from Giussani and as usual he makes it more real and less esoteric... Not! Anyway, I think Giussani makes some good points and manages to link the theological virtue with some common use of the term, and I'm not separating the theological virtue from common life and usage.
However, I beg that there is a distinction to be made that Giussani, I imigane, did not have as the focus of his reflections that made it into that book. So, I would change that last quote back from theologians to something else. Perhaps, people of faith tend to use faith less in secular venues because it carries a richer connotation. As by your example, faith in stocks and the economy is about trust in something not personable and is an odd usage for the term, especially for someone of faith! It is somewhat common for someone to say they have faith in Obama or Bush but in the long run the word still does not seem to stick for such relationships.
Fred,
I'm thinking about it! The community in Rutgers always made fun of me because when they asked for my judgment, I never gave them the answer until the next week or year!
Our first event was titled "Is Beauty Rational?" and afterwards they asked me what I thought and I always said, "I'm still processing it." It wasn't until a year later that I told them what I thought about it. Your question might be like that one! I need to carry it.
OK, that's fair enough, Apolonio - but we are talking about faith here, and the first question Fr. Giussani faced in the classroom was whether faith and reason have anything to do with each other. You carry it and after you process it you will probably blow me away.
Michael, I don't want to belabor the point but it still seems to me that 'people of faith' and journalists have a similar idea of faith being totally supernatural, with the distinction that the journalists don't believe in the supernatural. For both, faith is something parallel or disconnected from reality...
Fred,
I see your point. However, I'd disagree with the "disconnected from reality" part of your assessment when it comes to people of faith...
That last comment was mine.
Michael
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