The Content of Faith
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What Do You Believe?
Although faith demands placing one’s trust in God, that isn’t all there is to it. There’s an actual content of belief, actual propositions we must hold as true. For example, imagine a wife telling her husband she was pregnant. Imagine he responded by saying, “Dear, I totally believe you, but I don’t think we’re having a baby. You’re either lying or mistaken and what you’ve said is untrue. But again, I totally believe you.” That kind of response would be pure nonsense. His wife would exclaim, “How can you pretend to believe me while disbelieving what I’m saying?!”
She’d be quite right. If you really trust the speaker, then you accept what the speaker says as true. This is equally required for the theological virtue of faith. Many people say they have faith, meaning they feel that God exists. Such a feeling is irrelevant and meaningless. Faith means we believe God has revealed very important knowledge and we live according to those truths.
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The question is, where do we find this content of faith, the information or truths which must be believed?
One of the best places to find the truths of faith is the Nicene Creed, which we Catholics say at every Sunday mass. It is called “Our Profession of Faith.” In the Creed we declare our belief in the Trinity, in God’s becoming man at the Incarnation, Christ’s Redemption of humanity through His Death and Resurrection, the Catholic Church, the Sacraments, and life everlasting. This is a good general outline of what God has told us and what we are to hold as true on His authority. The best synthesis of everything God has revealed to us is found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. If you’re looking for the specifics of what we believe, that’s a great place to go.
Now, we believe these propositions are true, we have certain knowledge that these propositions are true, but we can’t prove that they’re true. Because we didn’t experience these things first-hand - we didn’t see Christ rising from the dead, and we haven’t yet come face-to-face with the Trinity. And, more to the point, we can’t invent an argument that will logically prove these facts.
However, although we can’t prove our faith, we can still demonstrate its credibility, we can show how reasonable it is, how beautiful, and even how probable. Further, we can defend our faith from attack, we can show that it isn’t unreasonable or absurd.
In a way, the virtue of faith in God’s supernatural revelation is somewhat like belief in historical events like the American Revolution. Both make sense, both do a good job of explaining the facts we can see, both are eminently believable, both have a great many documents which bear witness to their truth, and yet we don’t have direct experience of either of them, nor can we prove them through deductive reasoning.
This means that if you’re dealing with someone who demands a perfect logical argument for the acceptance of the truths of faith, you’ll never be able to convince him. Instead, the best thing is to encourage them to pray. You could say something like, “Please just pray to God to reveal Himself and His truth to you fully. Open yourself up to what He’s trying to say to you. I can’t show you the truth of the Faith; He’s got to do it. So come and see. But you have to be open.”
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Do we have to believe everything the Church teaches?
What if I believe ninety-nine percent of what the Church teaches, or even ninety-five percent? What if I just reject a few of the Church’s teachings?
As Fulton Sheen says, a better example for selectivity in faith is a guy who gets pulled over for speeding and says to the Cop, “Now listen, Officer, I believe and follow 95% of the laws.”
A person who breaks just one law has put himself outside the legal boundaries, and a person who rejects just one article of faith is effectively saying, “God, I accept some of what You say, but not all of it. On these points, I think You’re wrong.”
When a person says that he makes himself the ultimate authority rather than God.
It’s outrageous for us to act as though our knowledge is greater than God’s. Now, there is nothing wrong with wrestling with and trying to understand difficult doctrines better, but we should never make our own personal level of comprehension the measure of truth. That prerogative is reserved to the Divine Truth Himself.
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Also, it’s critical to remember that God’s truth comes to us through His supernaturally instituted Church.
Divine revelation, the truths of the faith as contained in Sacred Scripture, and Sacred Tradition, has been entrusted to the teaching authority of the Church. What that really means is that Jesus continues to teach through His Body, which is the Church.
Jesus said to Peter, and the Apostles, and it holds true for their successors, the Pope and the Bishops in union with him, “He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me” (Luke 10:16). Thus we have a guarantee that Christ’s truth can be found in the official pronouncements of the pope and the bishops in union with the pope. Indeed, after two thousand years of Catholic doctrine, no two Church teachings on principles of faith or morals have ever contradicted one another, proof of the supernatural safeguard over official Church teaching.
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Belief in Action
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. If what we hold to be true doesn’t somehow change how we behave, then it has no ultimate worth. St. James famously declared that faith without works is dead (James 2:17).
Abraham, the Father of Faith, proved his faith by his action. Abraham actively lived out his faith by showing his willingness to obey the divine command to sacrifice what was most dear in his life. This is our call as well: to believe God, to believe what He says in His revelation to us, and then to courageously act on that information, regardless of the cost.
Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “It is not those who say to me, "Lord, Lord", who will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the person who does the will of my Father in heaven.”