Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dei Filius III:On FaithGaven KerrThe First Vatican council offers a straightforward, traditional, some might say perfunctory account of faith in its short chapter dedicated to the issue. Were it not for the particular stage in the history of thought out of which the Council emerged, one would be tempted to say that the chapter on faith is an exercise in Scholastic theology, recognizable to those who are familiar with the treatment of the same in many of the Scholastic doctors, especially Aquinas. However, given the movement of thought in the nineteenth century, especially the emergence and predominance of certain philosophical views about human nature and the self, the chapter on faith not only (re)articulates a highly traditional account of the nature of faith but also envisages an account of man without which such an account of faith would be impossible.1In this essay, I propose to do two things. Firstly, I will set out Aquinas's account of faith and connect it with the Council's account of the same. Secondly, I will show that this account of faith is incompatible with modern accounts of man which present him as a disunified and disengaged self. Having done that I will conclude that in order to honor the Council's account of faith, we need to return to a pre-modern view of man in which he is seen in his engaged unity. [End Page 855]On FaithChapter 3 of Dei Filius is devoted to faith. Therein the Council document affirms a number of traditional tenets pertaining to faith that can be seen defended in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas; indeed, one might argue that the text on faith is an engagement with and refinement of Aquinas's thought on the same.2Aquinas holds that faith is a particular habit of mind by which we are disposed to believe the things of God because they are from God. As we shall see, this habit of mind has God for its object, in which case it cannot be developed in us by natural reason or practice, but comes as a gift, a grace from God. Thus, the one who has faith is already in a relationship with God, since, in accepting the gift of faith from God, the faithful is not resistant to God. Faith is the beginning of the spiritual life, whereby the truth about what is revealed is accepted by the faithful and offers a glimpse of the vision of God that will be enjoyed by the blessed.3For Thomas, the formal object of faith is the first truth—God in himself—whereas its material objects are those things which pertain to God.4 The reason why God, the first truth, is the object of faith, is because formally speaking faith assents to something only because it has been revealed by God. Hence, the divine truth is the object on which the assent of faith is based. The other things of faith come under its assent because they are related to God in some way.5 [End Page 856]As the object of faith, this first truth is not an object of vision, for we do not have a direct and immediate intuition of God. Rather, faith's object is unseen (Heb 11:1). As something assented to but unseen, the intellect is not compelled by the certainty of what is seen, as in normal epistemic circumstances. Hence, there is required an act of the will by which the assent is willed rather than drawn by the natural light of the intellect itself.6 The act of faith then is a willed assent to those things about God which are not seen by the natural light of human reason. This assent is accompanied by certainty given that it is the first truth which moves the will to command the intellect to assent.7 The certitude of faith then does not lie in the intellect's being compelled by the evidence, but in the will's attachment to God as the good itself.8On the basis of the foregoing, there are three different modes by which the object of faith can...