Free thought; Modernism (Christian theology) -- Catholic Church; Religion and science; Teaching, Freedom of
Hence faith is a product of the will also, and may become part and
parcel of the sentimental life. Firmly believed, revealed truths
engender in man love and gratitude, fear and hope. And being
beautiful and comforting, they are embraced fervently by the
heart, and become objects of desire, sources of comfort and
happiness. Nevertheless they are in themselves, and remain,
rational judgments, based upon insight and knowledge; just as the
fond recollections of home are and remain acts of cognition,
though our affections are twined round those reminiscences like
wreaths of evergreen.
What has just been said illustrates also another point,—the
_relation of faith to grace_. The Vatican Council says: “Faith is
a supernatural virtue by which, through the inspiration and
co-operation of the grace of God, we believe to be true what He
has revealed.” Faith is called a gift of God, a work of grace. But
this must not mislead us to think that it is a mystical process,
taking place in the human mind, indeed, but not moving along the
natural course of human cognition, but along quite a different
course: perhaps an immediate mystical grasp of the revealed truth,
while natural intelligence stands aside, not understanding it.
This would be returning to our starting point,—making faith
anything but a judgment of the reason. It is a common doctrine of
theology that the process of faith differs nothing in kind from
the natural process of human intellect in its apprehension of the
truth. It is belief on grounds recognized as sufficient motives
for assent.
What then does grace do? Two things. First, it elevates the act of
the soul in the process of believing to a higher sphere. Just as
sanctifying grace elevates the soul itself to a supernatural
sphere, permitting it to partake of the nature of God, so does the
grace of faith raise the acts of the soul to the supernatural
order. The _kind_ of cognition, however, remains the same: just as
a ring does not alter its form by being golden instead of silver.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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