Rev. Kenneth Brighenti - Catholicism For Dummies

Believing in the written and spoken word of God

Using reason to defend what you believe

You may think that having faith is similar to believing in fairy tales, UFOs, ghosts, abominable snowmen, the Loch Ness monster, or Bigfoot. But faith is something entirely different. Faith is not the enemy of reason — it is merely above reason. In this chapter, we tell you what faith really is and explain all the divine truths that Catholics believe in. We also sum up some proofs for God’s existence that will make your faith stronger.

St. Thomas Aquinas (theologian of the 13th century) said faith was the assent given by the mind (intellect) to what cannot be seen or proven but is taken on the word and authority of another. The ascertainment of faith is plain and simple: You have faith if you trust the word of someone else. When you take what someone says on faith, you believe in what the other person is telling you even though you haven’t personally witnessed it, may not understand it, or may find it difficult to believe. In other words, faith means agreeing with, believing in, trusting something — without cold, hard evidence — that you can’t know or comprehend on your own.

So far, faith doesn’t sound all that different from believing in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, but having faith is a bit more complicated. Having faith means being able to live with unanswered questions — sometimes, tough ones. For example, why does evil exist in the world? Why do people still go to war? And what about the existence of terrorism, disease, and crime? Faith doesn’t answer all these questions. (Some people think that the answer “It’s God’s will” suffices, but it doesn’t.) Faith, however, gives you the strength and ability to endure unanswerable questions. Instead of providing a set of solutions to painful and complicated enigmas, faith provides the means to persevere.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, a book defining the official teachings of the Catholic Church, has this to say about faith:

“Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed. ” (150)

“Faith is a personal act — the free response of the human person to the initiative of God who reveals himself. But faith isn’t an isolated act. No one can believe alone, just as no one can live alone.” (166)

To Catholics, faith is a supernatural virtue given to human beings from God. What we do or don’t do with that faith is totally up to us. God offers it freely to anyone and everyone, but it must be freely received as well. No one can be forced to have or accept faith. And when it’s presented, each individual responds differently — at different levels, at different times, and in different ways. Some reject it, some ignore it, and some treat it casually. Others cherish their faith deeply. As the adage goes: For those who believe, no explanation is necessary, and for those who do not believe, no explanation is possible.

Catholic faith involves more than just believing that God exists. It’s about believing in God as well as whatever God has revealed. Objectively, you can look at faith as the sum total of the truths God reveals, which form the basis for the doctrines of the Church and are often called the deposit of faith — the doctrines of the Church. Subjectively, you can consider faith as your personal response (assent) to those revealed truths.

We hear ya: “But what do you mean by revealed truths? And, for that matter, just what are God’s revealed truths?” By revealed truths, we mean revelations, God’s unveiling of supernatural truths necessary for human salvation. (The word revelation comes from the Latin revelare, meaning “to unveil.”) Some of these are truths that you could never know by science or philosophy; the human mind is incapable of knowing them without divine intervention, so God revealed them to mere mortals. For example, the revealed truth of the Holy Trinity is that there is only one God but three persons (not three gods, mind you). This truth is something that the human intellect could never discover on its own; God had to tell that one Himself.

Other revelations, such as the existence of God, can be known by using human reason alone (see the later section “ Backing Up Your Faith with Reason: Summa Theologica”), but God reveals these truths directly anyway because not everyone understands them at the same time and in the same way. The essence of these revelations can be — and is presumed to be — knowable to anyone with the use of reason; so, for example, someone can’t claim he didn’t know it was wrong to commit murder. But because of original sin (see Chapter 8), some of the applications and distinctions of these basic truths require more reasoning and thinking. To even out the playing field, God revealed some important truths so that even those people who aren’t intelligent or quick-minded won’t be caught off guard.

As for what God’s revealed truths are, the most concise answer is His word. The Word of God is the revelation of God to His people. What is the Word of God? Catholics believe that the Word of God comes in two forms:

The written word: Known also as Scripture or the Bible

The spoken word: Also called the unwritten word or Sacred Tradition

Both the spoken and the written word come from the same source and communicate the same message — the truth. The written word and the spoken word of God are not in competition with one another, nor do Catholics believe one at the expense of the other. Rather, the written word and the spoken word have a mutual partnership. Whenever and wherever the Bible is silent on an issue or its meaning is ambiguous or disputed, the spoken word (Sacred Tradition) steps in to clarify the matter. Catholics believe that God’s word reflects what’s in His mind, and because God is all truth and all good, His word conveys truth and goodness. Catholics have deep respect for and devotion to the Word of God.

Catholicism is a biblical religion. Like all Christian religions, it cherishes the Bible as the inspired, infallible, inerrant, and revealed Word of God. Having faith in the following aspects of the Bible is crucial to being Catholic:

The belief in the Bible as one of the two channels of revelation

The literal and figurative interpretation of the biblical text

The belief in the Catholic Bible as the most authoritative text

Catholic Christianity and Eastern Orthodox Christianity believe in one common source of divine revelation (God Himself), but they believe the revelation is transmitted to us through two equal and distinct modes: the written word (the Bible) and the spoken word (the unwritten word ). Protestant Christianity regards the Bible as the only source of divine revelation. Another way of looking at it is to think of some Christians as seeing only one channel of revelation — sola scriptura, which is Latin for “Scripture alone” — and Catholic Christians as seeing two channels of revelation — both the written word and the unwritten word of God. (Just divert thine eyes to the later section “ Faith in the spoken word: Sacred Tradition” for an explanation of what the unwritten word is.)