What is the virtue of faith?

The following text is the transcript of our Youtube video What is the virtue of faith?.

This video is part of a series on “The Sources of Faith”. You can find all the videos in the series here.

If I had closed my eyes and someone had put an object into my hands which was wrapped in wrapping paper and I was feeling it and trying to figure out what it was and they said to me, “It’s a book,” I wouldn’t be able to know with certainty that it was a book. Without me looking at it, unwrapping the wrapping paper, and looking at the object in my hand, there’s no way for me to know that it’s a book.

Welcome to Catholic Hub. I’m David and I’m here to talk to you about Catholicism and what it means to be a Catholic in the modern world today. In this video, we’re going to talk about the virtue of faith.

Faith is the virtue by which we firmly believe the truths that God has revealed, on the word of God revealing them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived.

Baltimore Catechism No. 3, q.122

Let’s take a moment to break down what faith itself is, before we talk about the virtue of faith. What does it mean to believe?

To believe is to assent to a truth on the word of another.

This is in opposition to “knowing” or “understanding” something, which is to assent to a truth that is evident either directly through our senses or indirectly through the use of our reason.

In the case of human faith, a person says something to us which is not evident. We cannot see it in front of our eyes; it is not obvious, but we believe it because it is reasonable and on the authority of the person who has said it to us. You probably trust the person who has said this to you because you know that they are knowledgeable, that they are learned, that they have discovered many things. So you believe this on a human faith even though it is not entirely evident.

Let’s contrast this with seeing something that is evident. For example, looking at this object before me, I can say this thing that I’m holding has a certain weight, it’s made of a certain material, paper, and it has words which I can read. So all of these facts about this thing make me say that this looks and feels like a book. If I had closed my eyes and someone had put an object into my hands which was wrapped in wrapping paper and I was feeling it and trying to figure out what it was and they said to me, “It’s a book,” I wouldn’t be able to know with certainty that it was a book. I would have to believe them. But without me looking at it, unwrapping the wrapping paper, and looking at the object in my hand, there’s no way for me to know that it’s a book.

Faith has a different type of certainty than, let’s say, the knowledge of apprehension, of seeing something that is evident. When we believe something by faith, the belief or the act of assenting to the truth which we are presented with is as strong as the motives of credibility that we talked about and the authority (trustworthiness) of the person who said it to us.

When God reveals something to us - God, who is perfect and who cannot deceive us because He is infinitely good and trustworthy - we believe this on the authority of God. And so when we believe something by divine faith, we believe it because it has been revealed to us or said to us by God, who is infinitely good, infinitely trustworthy, and therefore it’s impossible that we could be mistaken by trusting in Him.

Divine faith is to assent to a truth because it is God that has revealed it to us, and so the certainty which we have in a truth revealed by God is absolute.

But why is it that we need faith? He who wishes to attain to a definite end must, above all things, know that end and the means to reach it. Now our last end, as we have seen, is the possession of God in heaven. But this end is supernatural and so are the means to possess it. We can know neither the one, i.e., the end itself, nor the other, the means to attain that end, by our natural powers of reasoning alone. The only way we can know them is by supernatural enlightenment, which is by believing what God has told us. So that is why faith is absolutely necessary to attain our ultimate end.

He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be condemned.

Mark 16:16

Man acquires knowledge gradually and by degrees; therefore, he is obliged to believe in order to have this knowledge securely. I’ll explain more. First of all, there is a certain knowledge of God that we can obtain purely by our reason. So surely we don’t need faith in order to attain this knowledge of God? In fact, we do, and there’s three reasons why.

First of all, in order that man may arrive more quickly at this knowledge, because the knowledge of God requires many other sciences which are difficult to obtain. In order to arrive more quickly at the knowledge of God, faith is required. The knowledge of God is more easily obtained through faith than through reason. There is a great difference between Christian philosophy and human wisdom. The latter, guided solely by the light of nature, advances slowly by reasoning on sensible objects and effects, and only after long and laborious investigation is it able at length to contemplate with difficulty the invisible things of God.

Also, so that this knowledge can be accessible to all, faith is required - because many cannot progress in the study of science, either through lack of natural ability or other occupations and pursuits that occupy their time or because of laziness. The mind cannot rise to the contemplation of the deity unless it be entirely disengaged from the senses, and of this, in the present life, we are naturally incapable.

The third reason is because of the level of certitude that faith gives us. Human reason is very deficient in things concerning God. Even at the level of human sciences, it’s easy to make mistakes in our reasoning. How much more should we be afraid of making mistakes when it comes to the knowledge of God? In order to have knowledge that is absolutely free from uncertainty and doubt, the only way we can obtain this is by God’s authority himself.

That concludes this video on the virtue of faith. There’s a lot more that could be said, but I’m going to leave that for a future video. For now, please remember to like this video and subscribe to the channel. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you in the next one.