I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart,
I will tell of all thy wondrous deeds - Psalm 9:1
What Is Faith?
What does it mean to ‘believe’ or ‘have faith’?
Firstly, what it is not.
Faith for a Catholic is not the same as saying “I think Collingwood is the best football club ever”. It is not an opinion, even a well-founded opinion. Nor is it knowledge of the sort “I believe the world is round” or “all matter is made of atoms”. That is human faith in which we accept the testimony of men.
Faith in the Catholic context is a supernatural act of a person towards God.
Faith is a personal adherence of the whole man to God who reveals Himself. It involves an assent of the intellect and will to the self-revelation God has made through his deeds and words. - CCC 176
We must believe in no one but God: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Faith is a supernatural gift from God. In order to believe, man needs the interior helps of the Holy Spirit.
Faith is necessary for salvation.
So to ‘believe’ for a Catholic is not mere human opinion about religious truth that a non-religious observer might think it is.
For a Catholic responding to God’s gift of faith, the content of revelation is absolutely true because it is revealed by Truth itself which cannot deceive or be deceived. Faith therefore is actually more certain than any normal human knowledge and involves a person’s full voluntary assent - assent to ALL revelation, not just part of it.
If we select parts of the faith that appeal to us but distance ourselves from other parts, we don’t have the divine gift of faith. We have human faith … and it is the divine gift of faith that is necessary for salvation.
What We Believe
We believe what God has revealed.
We believe all “that which is contained in the word of God, written or handed down, and which the Church proposes for belief as divinely revealed”. - CCC182
Summaries of what we believe are called ‘creeds’, from the latin ‘credo’ meaning ‘I believe’.
Two of the most important creeds are The Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed.
Longer explanations of the faith are called catechisms. We share a simple one called the Penny Catechism that was used in schools last century - when I was in primary school :) - but the most detailed summary of revelation is contained in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Divine revelation of the truths necessary for salvation ceased at the death of the last apostle, John. However, the content of revelation becomes clearer over time as the Church reflects on what she has received.
What a pope might declare as dogma today is something that has always been believed but perhaps only implicitly at earlier times. For example, Mary’s immaculate conception was only declared a dogma in the 1800s but has always been part of the Church’s tradition.
Faith is believing with our whole heart what God has revealed.
Faith is God’s gift to us on the way to our eternal salvation.
Dogmas About Jesus » A Summary Of Beliefs » Is the Soul Eternal? »