profounder truth than he knew. He half sees that at the origin of thought itself, as of will, there is an unconscious act of Faith.1 Clement was not a great philosopher, and does not altogether escape the inconsistencies which beset the eclectic thinker; but he makes out a good case for his main thesis, which he thus sums up: πlσTỳ TOívvv γνῶσις, γνωστὴ δὲ ἡ πίστις. In fact I know no other author, ancient or modern, who has written so well upon our subject. Of the obscurantism of Tertullian I have already spoken. For him Faith is a sacred deposit, to be accepted and handed on intact. Faith is practically identified with the regula fidei. I need not give you any quotations to illustrate this familiar attitude, except the characteristic ‘adversus regulam nil scire omnia scire est.' The famous credo quia absurdum' (not an exact quotation) does Tertullian and his disciples injustice. They do not believe a thing because it is absurd; but its absurdity is no reason, to them, for not believing it. Authority for them is a primary principle of Faith. It is accountable to no other tribunal; it reigns supreme and alone. Such was the immediate result of translating Tíσrs into Latin. The language of the Roman people,' says Heine, 'can never belie its origin. It is a language of command for generals; a language of decree for administrators; an attorney language for usurers; a lapidary speech for the stone-hard Roman people. Though Christianity with a true Christian patience tormented itself for more than a thousand years with the attempt to spiritualise this tongue, its efforts remained fruitless; and when Tauler sought to fathom the awful abysses of thought, and his heart overflowed with religious emotion, he was compelled to speak German.' 2 My object in this lecture is to illustrate the meanings of 1 De Faye, Clément d'Alexandrie, p. 198. • Quoted by Allen, Continuity of Christian Thought, p. 249. Faith, as a theological concept, in the Church. I need not, I think, quote at length from other Fathers, with whom the meaning and scope of Faith is a less prominent part of their teaching than it was with Clement. Tertullian's conception grew in favour. We hear more and more of the regula fidei, though it is admitted that grace, which is only the divine side of Faith, is fettered by no rules. St. Augustine's writings contain some noteworthy sayings about Faith. Faith is not only knowledge in the intellect but also assurance (fiducia) in the will.' He recognises three elements in Faith-notitia, assensus, fiducia (Confessions, iii. 183). There are three classes of things credible: those which are always believed and never understood, sicut est omnis historia, temporalia et humana gesta percurrens: those which are understood as they are believed, sicut sunt omnes rationes humanæ : and those which are first believed and afterwards understood, such as those about divine matters, which cannot be understood except by the pure in heart; and this condition comes from keeping the moral law' (De Div. Quæst., lxxxiii. qu. 48). 'Fides quærit, intellectus invenit' (De Trin., xv. 2). Anselm's famous credo ut intelligam' was changed by Abelard into intelligo ut credam; and henceforth Faith and knowledge appear, in the Schoolmen, as principles which may not always work together harmoniously.1 A very brief summary of the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas about Faith must suffice, as a specimen of the doctrine of the Schoolmen. Divine truth, he says, is divided, not in itself, but in its relation to our knowledge. Part of it can be known by human reason, part only by revelation.2 Revelation is necessary for some truths 1 Bernard's most characteristic utterance about Faith is rhetorical and anti-rationalist: Fides attingit inaccessa, deprehendit ignota, comprehendit immensa, apprehendit novissima, ipsam denique aeternitatem suo illo sinu vastissimo quodam modo circumcludit. Beatam trinitatem quam non intelligo credo, et fide teneo quam non capio mente.'-Serm. in Cant., Contra Gentiles, i. 3. 76. which entirely transcend human knowledge, but it is not confined to what is essentially beyond our faculties. There are truths, such as the existence of God, which are capable of demonstration, but only by a course of reason which few have brains enough to follow; and therefore God has revealed them. The distinction between reason and revelation corresponds to the distinction between knowledge and Faith. Faith comes between opinion and knowledge; it involves an act of the will. The intellect,' he says, assents to a thing in two ways, in one way because it is moved to assent by the object itself, which is known by itself, or by something else; in the other way the intellect assents to a thing, not because it is sufficiently moved to assent by the object itself, but by a certain choice, by which it voluntarily inclines to one side rather than the other. If this choice is made from doubt and fear of the alternative, it is opinion; if with certainty and without fear, it is Faith.' 1 He also says that the objective ground of Faith is authority, of knowledge, reason. And since the authority is divine truth, it may be said that Faith has a greater certainty than knowledge, which relies on human reason.2 Since, however, the objects of Faith are less fully apprehended, being above the intellect of man, knowledge from another point of view is more certain than Faith. The certainty of Faith, on one side, comes from the will, which is guided by 'veritas prima sive Deus.' Faith, however, is not an act of arbitrary choice; it presupposes some knowledge: 'cognitio fidei præsupponit cognitionem naturalem sicut et natura gratiam.3 Faith cannot demonstrate what it believes; else it would be knowledge and not Faith; but it does investigate the grounds by which a man is led to believe-e.g. that the words were spoken by God.* 1 De Veritate, Quaest. xiv., art. 1. It is plain from these passages that Faith, for St. Thomas Aquinas, necessarily involves both an intellectual and a moral act; and also, I think, that he has shrunk from subjecting the basis of Church authority to a searching scrutiny. The practical question which we all have to face is whether we ought to allow the will to believe' to influence us in our choice of authorities-e.g. whether we may choose to follow the authority of the Church in preference to that of a naturalist or metaphysician. St. Thomas Aquinas says that the will is guided by 'the primary Truth, which is God.' If so, Faith would seem to be only the human side of divine grace, immanent in the human mind; and it must be ultimately independent of and superior to all external authority, even that of the Church. The authority of the Church can only be accepted as final on the further assumption that the donum veritatis belongs to one institution and one only. With the Reformation, controversy about the meaning of Faith became, for the second time in the history of the Church, acute. Every one knows that 'Justification by Faith' was the corner-stone of Luther's doctrinal system. His own account of the process by which he found the light is as follows. When he first read the words of the Epistle to the Romans, iustitia Dei in eo revelatur, he said to himself, 'Is it not enough that wretched sinners, already damned for original sin, should be overwhelmed by so many calamities by the decrees of the Ten Commandments, but God must threaten us, even in His Gospel, with His justice and anger?' But at last, he says, 'I perceived that the justice of God is that whereby, with God's blessing, man lives, namely, Faith. Thereupon I felt as if born again, and it seemed to me that the gates of heaven stood wide open.' It is not easy to see how the justice, or righteousness, of God can be identified with Faith, if Faith has a human side at all; but Luther found ineffable peace in the thought that those who, through C Faith in Christ as the revelation of God's righteousness, have accepted Him, are clothed with a righteousness not their own-with the righteousness of Christ imputed to them. The form of this doctrine is derived chiefly from the Epistle to the Romans, studied in Latin with St. Augustine's commentary. In the sixteenth century, however, it was a crucial question, What is the proper instrument of justification? This 'justification' (to justify means to pronounce righteous,1 by judicial decree, but with no suggestion of a legal fiction) was regarded as the application of the merits of Christ to the individual, which application, it was agreed on all hands, must be through an instrument divinely appointed. An important passage, often appealed to, in Clement of Rome,2 says: 'We also are not justified by ourselves, neither by our own wisdom or knowledge or piety or any works which we did in holiness of heart, but by that Faith in which God Almighty has justified all men from the beginning.' Both sides were also agreed that Faith justifies. But the Catholics distinguished between fides informis, inert opinion, and fides formata, which is perfected by the love and good works which spring from it. Among the propositions anathematised by the Council of Trent were: that a man may be justified without grace that man is justified only by the imputation of the justice of Christ, or only by the remission of sins, without inherent grace, or charity: that justifying Faith is nothing but confidence in the mercy of God, who forgives sins for the sake of Christ: that man is absolved and justified because he firmly believes that he is absolved and justified. On the other hand, the Reformers held that Faith is the one principle which God's grace uses for restoring us to His favour. We need a radical change, which change is 1 As in Chrysostom's comment: 'When a just judge's sentence pronounces us just (dikalovs åπopalvei) what signifies the accuser?'-Hom. in Ep. ad Rom. 15. 2 Clem. i. 32. |