The Certainty of Faith

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Faith is Certain

There is the false idea that real knowledge comes from science and belief is not knowledge, it is an uncertain opinion, like when someone asks, “Will it rain today?” and we respond, “I don’t know, but I believe so.”

We need to correct this false idea.

Belief is this: someone tells you something you could not know on your own and we make the choice to believe them and act on that information.

We do this all the time.

We believe the pharmacist who tells us what this medication does; we believe the person who lives in a foreign city where to find a good meal; we believe the author who tells us Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo in 1815.

The theological virtue of Faith is when you hold something to be true based on what God has told you through Jesus and His Body, the Church.

With this theological virtue, God tells us something we couldn’t know on our own and we make the choice to accept what God says as true and we act upon that information.

So faith adds knowledge from God to our human knowledge.

By accepting what God has said we can know things God knows. And this knowledge radically changes our life.

Of all the knowledge we have, faith is the most certain. All our other knowledge comes from fallible, human sources that can all make mistakes. But faith is trusting the knowledge that comes from God, who can neither lie nor be mistaken. The knowledge that He gives His children is consequently the most reliable, most certain knowledge there is.

Recall that Faith is not believing something you can’t really know…Faith is to trust God, that what He tells us is true, and if it’s true we should act on it. Otherwise we didn’t believe him in the first place

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Credibility of the Witness

There’s a basic principle, which we all live by, which says that the certainty of belief is in proportion to the credibility of the witness.

If a witness is shown to be truthful and accurate, we feel justified in placing a high degree of confidence in what they say.

If, on the other hand, a witness is a known liar or just an opinionated windbag, we won’t put any confidence in what they say.

That’s why in court cases, lawyers try so hard to attack the credibility of the opposing witnesses, because they know that if they disprove the credibility of the witness, they can dismiss everything the witness says.

Again, that’s all just to show that the certainty of our belief is proportional to the credibility of the witness: Which means that a Supremely credible witness, God, who is Truth Himself, implies that we should be supremely certain in our faith, totally confident in what God tells us.

People make mistakes and tell lies but God doesn’t. So our faith in what He has revealed should be absolutely certain.

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Knowing that something is true vs. knowing how it’s true

So we can be absolutely certain in our faith but that doesn’t mean we understand it completely, in all its details

Of course, we should always be trying to understand our faith better, but with faith we are talking about knowledge about God and all the complexity of human life and salvation. There will always be more than we could ever know perfectly. It’s an ocean we can never drink dry.

That shouldn’t bother us, though. There are plenty of things where we know that they’re true, without knowing every detail how they’re true.

We know that the airplane stays up in the air, in fact, we’re willing to bet our lives on it, but most of us don’t know exactly how the airplane, that huge, heavy piece of metal with hundreds of passengers, stays up in the air. So we can accept with a fully confident faith that God is Three Persons in One Nature, or that God’s providential plan will triumph over all evil and injustice, notwithstanding all the awful things that happen in the world, even if we don’t know exactly how these things are true.

After all, we get on the plane, despite our ignorance, because we have trust in the knowledge of the pilot and the engineers who designed the airplane and the maintenance people who keep it in good order. We have trust in their knowledge, despite our own lack of understanding of what flying or designing or maintaining an airplane involves.

So why would we not show the same respect for God? Why should we not trust in His knowledge, even if every aspect of the faith isn’t always all clear to us?

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It is Not wrong to prefer the testimony of those who know over your knowledge

It’s important to remember that only a very prideful, very ignorant person always puts their own knowledge above what more knowledgeable people tell him.

For instance, if a teacher corrects a child’s answer on a math problem, it would be ridiculous for the child to say, “No! I stand by my answer to the problem! I refuse to accept any authority other than the results of my own reason!”

The kid should just admit that his teacher probably knows more math than he does, and he should go back to his problem and try to figure out where his reason went wrong.

Or if that same kid was in science class, and the teacher told him that the earth is both rotating and revolving, it would also be absurd for the child to say, “No! My experience of the world tells me that the world is still! I don’t experience any movement of earth in my personal life, and therefore I reject your teaching!”

His rejection just says that he hasn’t understood the science, and if he wants to understand the science, he should be more docile, more receptive.

So too, it may appear that certain aspects of our faith are hard, at least at first, to reconcile with our reason and our experience. But if we trust God then we should be docile and receptive and work at understanding that teaching better.

If we do, we’ll learn how true our faith is and how, far from contradicting reason and experience, the Catholic faith turns out to be the most reasonable and relatable of all worldviews. Because it’s the truth.

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Faith as immune to scandal

As a final point, remember that if faith is certain because it’s knowledge that comes from God Himself, then we should never suffer the temptation to lose our faith by scandal.

Yes it’s sad when a Catholic, especially a parent, or a priest, or a bishop, loses the faith or acts reprehensibly. But remember, our faith was never based on them in the first place, or if it was, it was misplaced.

Faith is based on God’s testimony, and our confidence in God comes from a prayerful relationship with Him.

Trust in everyone else, including in every other Catholic, is always provisional and incomplete, because those people, like us, are always imperfect.

Faith based on God remains certain and unshakeable, and that’s the faith we’re called to have.