17. § 17. Faith.
§ 17. Faith.
. From the preceding investigation it has become clear to us, that the principium internum of the Christian religion and theology cannot be located in the intellect, the reason, or the heart of the psychical human being. Neither proofs nor reasonings nor even agreement with man's needs are able to convince us of the divinity of religious truth. In every domain, and thus also in religion, the principium internum ought to correspond to the principium externum; it must be of the same nature as it. Just as light can be perceived only by the eye, so divine truth can be acknowledged only by him who is akin to God and is his image. All the above-mentioned directions have, to a greater or lesser degree, realized this. Even they who wanted to prove the truth of the Christian religion intellectually, nevertheless judged that on man's side a certain moral disposition was necessary, in order to feel the force of those proofs. Pascal attempted in the first part of his apology to bring man to knowledge of his misery and to awaken in him the need for redemption and peace. Through and after Schleiermacher most theologians have come to the insight that religion is of
a nature of its own and therefore must also be known by a proper organ in man. The attempt to find that organ in reason, the conscience, the heart, feeling was already a step on the right path, and deserved far preference over the rationalistic striving to demonstrate religious truth for the sober intellect. But yet not enough had thereby been done. If there were no sin, man would possess in himself the capacity to distinguish truth from falsehood just as clearly as the eye distinguishes light from the [466] darkness. But no one can assert that this is the case. Sin has darkened man in the intellect and corrupted him in the will. The pure in heart cannot see
God. Therefore it is necessary that objectively the truth meet us in purity and that subjectively our eye for that truth be opened. Scripture proceeds from this. It does not submit itself to the judgment of the natural man; for only the spiritual man, the one born again, can distinguish the things of the Spirit of God and of the kingdom of heaven. Therefore Scripture itself reserves for itself the right and the power to bring man to acknowledgment of its truth. It does that in a spiritual way, not by proofs and reasonings but in the way of a spiritual experience, through the instruction of the H. Spirit.
There is therefore not only a revelation of God in Christ outside us, but also an illumination of the H. Spirit in us; after God has spoken to us through the Son, the H. Spirit has come to lead us into the truth. God not only gave a Scripture, which contains the objective revelation completely, but also founded a church, which understands the word of God and confesses it as truth. It is for that reason also in conflict with the essence of the Christian religion, to let its truth depend on the investigation and the pronouncement of sinful man. The dogmatician has to take his standpoint not before or outside, but in the midst of faith. The methodological doubt of Bacon and Cartesius is in its place neither in philosophy nor in theology. Doubt may at
most be an occasion to go and seek the truth, faith alone causes it to be found; faith is always the deepest ground of the labor of science, Snellen,
Bijblad v. d. Herv. 26 Febr. 1895 bl. 5. Voetius therefore rightly took the field against the theologia dubitans of Cartesius, Disp. Sel. III 825-870. A.
C. Duker, Schoolgezag en eigen onderzoek 1861 bl. 192 v. It is a wrong method, when the philosopher divests himself of his natural certainty and the dogmatician of his faith, before he makes a beginning with scientific labor. Such a method is not only impractical but also loads upon the man of science the appearance as if his conviction and his faith really rest on those grounds which his thinking causes him to find afterwards. Cartesius found a firm point of departure in the cogito ergo sum. But no one will think that he thereby named the last and deepest ground of faith in his own existence.
Even if the incorrectness of this thesis were demonstrated to him, he would nevertheless believe in his own existence just as firmly as before that time.
Just as little as philosophy may set aside natural certainty, can the dogmatician take his position outside the faith in which he has often already been brought up from youth on. Science does not have to create its object, but to explain it. Christian theology therefore has a subjective point of departure. It takes its standpoint in the congregation, which believes and confesses the truth of God. There is no other standpoint. Rome does indeed seek for it but cannot find it. The Reformation also abandoned the seeking for it; it proceeded from the believing subject. And when the theology of rationalism and supranaturalism had surrendered this standpoint, the more recent theology through and after Schleiermacher has in almost all its directions returned to this Reformation principle. The whole of theology has become ethical, in the sense that it has taken seriously the proposition that only the one born again sees the kingdom of God and that only he who
wants to do God's will can recognize whether Jesus' doctrine is from God.
Almost all theologians now take their standpoint in believing consciousness, in regeneration, in religious experience. There is in all this a remarkable agreement. The accusation of subjectivism against this standpoint is wholly misplaced. There is nowhere, in no single science, another point of departure. Light presupposes the eye, sound is perceptible only for the ear. All the objective exists for us only through mediation of subjective consciousness. Without consciousness the whole world is dead for me. To desire an objectivity that would not be subjectively mediated is an impossible demand. Between the being of things and our own being perception always remains in between. The subjective point of departure thus is shared by theology with all science, indeed with all relations that exist between man and world. The accusation of subjectivism then only truly comes into existence, when the subjective organ, which is indispensable for perception of the objectively existing, is elevated to principium of knowledge. The eye may be an indispensable organ for the perception of light, but it is nevertheless not its source. It is precisely the error of [468] idealistic rationalism, that it identifies the organ with the source of knowledge, above bl. 149. Thinking is not the source of the thought, the representation not the cause of the thing, the I not the creator of the not-I; and so also faith, regeneration, experience cannot be the source of our religious knowledge and not the principle of our theology. However rightly the more recent theology therefore takes its standpoint in the subject, it errs, when it therefore under the influence of idealistic philosophy changes theology into anthropology, ecclesiology, science of religion.
Insofar Ritschl has rightly called back the consciousness-theology, which
had generally arisen after Schleiermacher, to the objective, historical revelation in Christ.
2. For the most part in Scripture, at least in the N. Testament, this principium internum is indicated by the name of faith. Regeneration too, purity of heart, love for God's will, the Spirit of God are presented in Scripture as principium internum, Mt. 5:8; Joh. 3:3, 5, 7:17; 1 Cor. 2:12 etc.
Yet the name of faith deserves preference for the designation of this principium. Not only because faith in Scripture most comes to the fore as such. But especially also because the concept faith places us on the terrain of consciousness and in doing so preserves the connection with the way in which we come to knowledge in another domain. Earlier we saw that human reason never and nowhere is a source of knowledge. There are no innate concepts. Man is physically and likewise intellectually wholly dependent on the world outside him. All knowledge comes from outside.
But all that knowledge is, on man's side, mediated through his consciousness. Not feeling or the heart, but the head, consciousness in its whole extent (sensation, awareness, perception, understanding, reason, conscience) is the subjective organ of truth. If Scripture now calls faith the principium internum, then it thereby upholds the same view, and acknowledges that also the revelation of God can come to our knowledge only through consciousness. Not as if regeneration, love, purity of heart, would not be of the greatest significance in that respect; the contrary will later appear. But the proper organ through which the revelation of God is known is an act of consciousness, namely faith. The revelation [469] of God is a system of words and deeds of God, which exist outside and independently of us. How could these ever come to our knowledge other than through consciousness? The revelation of God is gospel, is promise,
promise of forgiveness and salvation; but to a promise nothing on our side can correspond except faith. Only through faith does a promise become our possession. Faith is therefore the principium internum cognoscendi of revelation, and thus also of religion and theology, Hartmann,
Religionsphilos. II 65 f.
But also for yet another reason it deserves preference to designate the principium internum by the name of faith. For thereby the coherence of religious knowing with all other knowing of man is preserved. There is certainly distinction, but first of all attention must nevertheless be paid to the agreement. We arrive in religion and theology at knowledge in no other way than in the other sciences. Faith is not a new organ that is implanted in man, no sixth sense, no donum superadditum. However much it may conflict with the "natural" man, it is nevertheless completely natural, normal, human. Revelation connects, objectively and subjectively, with nature; re-creation connects with creation. Believing in general is a very common way to arrive at knowledge and certainty. We begin in every domain with believing. Our natural inclination is to believe. Only acquired knowledge and experience teach us unbelief, Hoekstra, Bronnen en grondslagen van het godsd. geloof 1864 bl. 383. Faith is the foundation of society and the fundament of science. All certainty rests in the end in faith.
To be sure, the word to believe is also used in a weaker meaning, when we do not know something with certainty but nevertheless hold it to be probable on grounds sufficient for ourselves. Believing then forms an opposition to knowing and is akin to supposing. Thus it occurs in the expression: I do not know it, but I do believe it. But in this meaning the use of the word by no means applies. Already the etymology indicates that in faith yet another deeper meaning is hidden. The word geloof is, with loven,
verloven, beloven, veroorloven, oorlof, lof, gelofte, derived from the same stem; it is related to lieven, and expresses a trusting upon with one's whole person, a loving [470] surrender and devotion to someone, Kahnis, Luth.
Dogm. 2e Ausg. I 106. Hoekstra, Wijsg. Godsd. I 82 v. cf. Woordenboek der Ned. Taal s. v. Also in other languages the word faith has this original meaning of devotion, trust, certainty, such as האמין, אמונה; πειθω, πιστις; fido, fides; foi; faith alongside belief etc. Believing is then also often employed for all such certain knowledge which does not rest on proofs but on immediate, direct insight. Plato distinguished ἐπιστημη, διανοια, πιστις and εἰκασια and understood by πιστις the certainty concerning the sensible world on the ground of observation, de Rep. VI p. 511, VII p. 534, cf.
Zeller, Philos. der Griechen, 4e Aufl. II 591, 593. Siebeck, Gesch. der Psych. S. 209. Therefore he says Tim. p. 29 c.: ὁ τι γαρ προς γενεσιν οὐσια, τουτο προς πιστιν ἀληθεια. Aristotle made a distinction between knowledge which was obtained by a demonstrative way, and knowledge of the principia, which was derived from the νους itself. Now he does indeed not call this latter by the name of faith, but nevertheless he says, Eth. Nicom. VI 3: ὁταν γαρ πως πιστευῃ και γνωριμοι αὐτῳ ὠσιν αἱ ἀρχαι, ἐπισταται.
When thereafter in Christianity the word faith received such a deep religious meaning, many church fathers pointed with preference to the important place which believing occupies in life and science. Clement of Alexandria understands by πιστις many times all immediate knowledge and certainty, and then says that there is no science without faith, that the first principia, among which e.g. also the existence of God, are not proved but believed, Strom. II n. 4, 6, cf. Denzinger, Vier Bücher von der relig. Erk. II 470. Strauss, Glaub. I 301 f. Above all Augustine has set this meaning of faith for society and science in the light. He who does not believe never
comes to know; nisi credideritis, non intelligetis, de trin. 15, 2 and passim.
Faith is foundation and bond of the whole human society. If the proposition held, quod non video, credere non debeo, all bonds of blood, of friendship and of love would be broken. Si ergo non credentibus nobis quae videre non possumus, ipsa humana societas, concordia pereunte, non stabit; quanto magis fides, quamvis quae non videntur, rebus est adhibenda divinis? de fide rerum invisibilium cap. 3, cf. de util. cred. c. 10 sq. Conf. 6, 5, cf.
Ritter, Gesch. der christl. [471] Philos. II 252 f. Gangauf Metaph. Psych. des Aug. 1852 S. 52 f. Since then these same thoughts return again and again among the Christian theologians, e.g. in more recent time with Dorner, Glaub. I 3. Lange, Dogm. I 342 f. Oosterzee, voor Kerk en Theol. I 94. Kuyper, Encycl. II 71 v. etc. The name of faith has then been given to the immediate knowledge of the principia; to the trust in ourselves, in our observation and our thinking; to the recognition of the objective existence of the external world; to the mutual trust on which the whole human society is built; to all that which is known and done by intuition. In such a faith
Schiller saw the guarantee of the existence of that new world which Columbus sought: Wär' sie noch nicht, sie stieg' jetzt aus den Fluthen empor.
No one who thinks things through will deny this profound significance of πιστις for life, art, and science. Over against those who think that nothing may be held to be true which cannot be sensibly perceived or mathematically proved, it stands above all doubt firmly established that by far the most and the most important of what we know does not rest on proofs, but on immediate certainty. The domain of this latter is much greater than that of demonstrative certainty. And this latter is always again built upon the former, and stands and falls with it. The way, therefore, to arrive at
knowledge and certainty in another manner than through mathematical and logical proofs is nothing foreign to human nature. Faith in a general, broad sense is an indispensable element in society, and a normal way to science. It has not first become necessary through sin; outside sin, intuitive knowledge and immediate certainty would have taken an even broader place in human life. Even now, to that extent man's originality is greater, the more he lives not out of reflection but out of intuition. As analogies of religious faith, therefore, all the above-mentioned examples can render excellent service.
They have this in common with religious faith, that the knowledge is obtained immediately, not by reflection, and that in certainty it in no way falls short of that which rests on proofs. Moreover, they maintain the connection that exists between the ordinary way in which we human beings come to knowledge, and the way of faith, which on religious terrain leads to certainty. [472] They show that believing in itself is so little in conflict with human nature and with the demand of science, that without it there can be no question of a normal human being and a normal science.
3. But because of this agreement the difference must nevertheless not be overlooked, which exists between faith as immediate certainty and faith in the religious sense. In religion, specifically in the Christian, πιστις acquires a value of its own. The Greeks also used the word in a religious sense, of faith in the gods, Cremer, Wörterbuch der neut. Gräcität s. v.; but even then it nevertheless has in itself no religious meaning, no more than when we speak of faith in God, in the soul and its immortality etc. Believing is here still the ordinary faith, which we exercise daily, but applied to religious representations. In the N. Test. πιστις, however, is wholly and entirely religiously determined, in object, ground, and origin; it itself denotes a religious relation of man to God. In Hebr. 11:1 ἐλπιζομενα, πραγματα οὐ
βλεπομενα are called the general object of the Christian faith. Already hereby faith in the religious sense is distinguished from the knowledge which we possess through immediate certainty. Faith in the external world, in the senses, in the laws of thought, etc. rests on one's own inward observation. We have of all these things an immediate consciousness. But the object of the Christian faith is invisible and not susceptible to any observation. If something is immediately observed by ourselves, faith is superfluous; faith stands over against seeing, Rom. 8:24; 2 Cor. 5:7. With that it is not in conflict, that revelation nevertheless took place in space and time, that the person of Christ could be seen and touched. For as object of faith this whole revelation nevertheless is not observable. Many saw Jesus and nevertheless did not believe in Him; only His disciples beheld in Him a δοξα ὡς μονογενους παρα πατρος, Joh. 1:14. Object of faith are words and deeds only sub ratione Dei. But in Scripture πιστις as fides salvifica acquires an even more pregnant meaning; it has as object not all manner of words and deeds of God in themselves, but the grace of God in Christ, the promises of the gospel, [473] Mk. 1:15; Joh. 3:16, 17:3; Rom. 3:22; Gal.
2:20, 3:26 etc. This special object comes for faith still under another category into consideration than under that of true as against false. And the general nature of faith is thereby so modified, that it does not pass over into a firm and certain knowing, into an objective holding-for-true, but also includes a heartfelt trust in, an entire surrender to, a personal appropriation of the promises of God, bestowed in the gospel.
Next, faith in the religious sense is distinguished from immediate certainty in that the latter rests on one's own, but the former on another's insight. Already this is noteworthy, that the word faith is not in general use for all those cases in which knowledge rests on immediate perception. Faith
in the external world, in the senses, in the laws of thought, in the prima principia is usually designated as immediate knowing. And indeed this immediate knowledge, like the demonstrative, rests on one's own perception and insight. Insofar it can therefore also be called a knowing in distinction from believing. But with the fides salvifica it is a different case.
This very certainly has the grace of God in Christ as object. But of that grace of God we would not bear the least knowledge, if it had not come to us through the testimony of others, if it were not assured to us in the H.
Scripture. Between the person of Christ and our faith, therefore, the testimony of the apostles comes to stand. The word of God is medium gratiae. Now indeed that Scripture comes into consideration for faith only as God's word, 1 Thess. 2:13. For religious faith cannot rest except in a testimony of God, Joh. 3:33; Rom. 10:14 v.; 1 Joh. 5:9-11. But nevertheless faith is bound to that Scripture. It has the grace of God as object, but as it is testified in the H. Scripture; or, as Calvin Inst. III, 2, 6 expresses it, it has as object Christum evangelio suo vestitum. Therefore faith, as in one act, extends both toward the person of Christ and toward the Scripture. It embraces Christ as Savior and the Scripture as God's word. And therefore both is also true: through Christ to the Scripture and through the Scripture to Christ. The Scripture leads to Christ and directs man's thoughts and affections to Him, who now lives in heaven. Even those who remove all notitia and assensus [474] from the fides salvifica and want to have it pass wholly and entirely into fiducia, cannot do without letting this fiducia arise from an impression made on the soul by the image of Christ. Pietism too is bound to external means. It may limit those means and want to know nothing of a catechism or dogmatics; it nevertheless tries to lead the children to conversion by speaking to them of the dear Jesus, Pierson, Eene
levensbeschouwing bl. 13. There is also no other way to the heart of man than through his head and his consciousness. God's Spirit alone can work immediately in the heart; we are bound to the means. The Scripture is and remains medium gratiae. But conversely faith in Christ also in turn works back upon faith in the Scripture; it binds and fastens us to that Scripture and makes us trust in it in need and death. Our soul may therefore be indissolubly bound to Christ, the living Lord in the heavens, by the unio mystica of the H. Spirit; for our consciousness Christ, the whole world of the ἐλπιζομενα, is there only through the testimony of God in his word. And therefore the fides salvifica also always includes a knowing. Indeed this knowledge of saving faith is essentially distinguished from the knowledge of the fides historica. Even if the latter precedes, it is nevertheless later newly grafted onto the fides salvifica and changes in character. It is not a mere holding for true but a firm and certain knowledge in the sense of the H. Scripture. The biblical idea of knowing is a wholly different and much deeper one than that of ordinary usage. But nonetheless the knowledge which the believer possesses is not immediate and not obtained by one's own insight; it is bound to the H. Scripture; it rests on the testimony of apostles and prophets as on the word of God.
Finally, the Christian faith is further distinguished from immediate certainty by the fact that it does not arise of itself from human nature. In the external world, in the principia, in observation, in the laws of thought, etc., every human being believes of himself, without command, on the basis of his own insight. But it is not so with the Christian faith. Faith is not of all, 2
Thess. 3:2. However completely human it is, no donum superadditum, but the restoration of man; yet the psychical man stands hostile over against believing. For faith in the Christian sense presupposes self-denial, [475]
crucifixion of one's own thoughts and will, distrust in ourselves, and, over against that, trust in God's grace in Christ. Therefore, just as the fides salvifica has God himself as its object and rests on his testimony; so it also has Him as its author. He himself is he who through the H. Spirit moves man to faith and leads all his thoughts captive to the obedience of Christ,
Mt. 16:17; Joh. 6:44; 1 Cor. 12:3; 2 Cor. 10:5; 1 Thess. 2:13; 2 Thess. 3:2; Ef. 1:15, 16; Col. 1:13; Phil. 1:29. Thereby the Christian faith is wholly and entirely religiously determined. Object, ground, and origin lie wholly and solely in God. Through this religious character the fides salvifica is essentially distinguished from immediate certainty, which is sometimes designated by the name of faith, and also from the πιστις, of which the Greeks sometimes spoke in a religious sense. The Christian faith is pure religion, religio subjectiva. That man is truly religious who thus believes; he is image, child, heir of God.
4. In the Christian church, however, that view soon became the dominant one, which saw in faith an assent of the understanding to the revealed truth.
Very common is the definition of faith as ἑκουσιος της ψυχης συγκαταθεσις, as ὑπερ τας λογικας μεθοδους την ψυχην εἰς συγκαταθεσιν ἑλκουσα, cf. Suicerus, Thes. Eccl. s. v. Denzinger, Vier Bücher von der relig. Erk. II 467 f. Kleutgen, Theol. der Vorzeit, 2e Aufl. IV 246 f.
Augustine gives the same definition: credere est cum assensione cogitare, de praed. sanct. c. 2. Quid est credere, nisi consentire, verum esse quod dicitur, de spir. et litt. c. 31. Fides est virtus, qua creduntur, quae non videntur, Enchir. c. 8. Tract. 40 in Joh. n. 9. de trin. 13, 1. Scholastic theology usually began the investigation into the nature of faith with the definition in Hebr. 11:1 and the last-mentioned definition of Augustine,
Lombardus, Sent. 3, 23 e. a. Thomas treats of faith in his Summa Theol. II 2
qu. 1 sq. and says that the object of faith is God and other things nisi secundum quod habent aliquem ordinem ad Deum, qu. 1 art. 1. The ground of faith lies only in this, that aliquid est a Deo revelatum, ib. and its author is God alone, ib. qu. 6 art. 1 and 2. The Vatican defined [476] faith as a virtus supernaturalis, qua Dei aspirante et adjuvante gratia, ab eo revelata vera esse credimus, non propter intrinsecam rerum veritatem naturali rationis lumine perspectam sed propter auctoritatem ipsius Dei revelantis, qui nec falli nec fallere potest, sess. 3, Const. dogm. de fide cap. 3. Faith is at Rome an assensus firmus ac certus to the truths of revelation on the ground of the authority of God in Scripture and church, Thomas, S. Theol.
II 2 qu. 2 art. 1. qu. 4 art. 2. Bellarminus, de justific. I c. 5, 6. Becanus, Theol. schol. tom. II pars 2 tract. 1 cap. 1 sq. Perrone, Praelect theol. V 1840 p. 251 sq. Jansen, Praelect. theol. I 684. Kleutgen, Theol. der Vorzeit,
IV 205 f. Denzinger, Vier Bücher von der rel. Erk. II 426 f.
In practice this view of faith had very harmful consequences. In the first place faith in fact became nothing else than an intellectual assent to a mysterious doctrine far transcending reason, whether explicitly to all its various or implicitly to some necessary dogmas. The distinction between this faith and the fides historica accepted by the Protestants is not possible with this view and was therefore also decisively rejected by Roman theology. Rome has nothing other than a fides historica. From this it further followed that this faith, if it was nothing else than an intellectual assent, could impossibly be sufficient unto salvation. It had to be supplemented by another virtue in the will, viz. love, and then becomes fides formata. Faith thereby loses its central place in the Christian life, it is lowered to one of the seven praeparationes for the gratia infusa of the justificatio; and the centre of gravity comes to lie entirely in love, i.e. in the good works. And finally it
was difficult to maintain that faith in the above-mentioned sense was a fruit of the gratia interna, as Augustine understood it. The confession that faith was a gift of God was weakened. The assistentia and inspiratio of which the Vaticanum speaks is often in Roman theology limited to the gift of a general grace or even also to the gift of the natural powers. Believing was the more meritorious in proportion as it was more man's own free act and consisted more in the acceptance of incomprehensible mysteria fidei, in a sacrificium intellectus. [477] The Reformation altered this Roman conception of faith in all respects. It restored the religious nature of the πιστις. In the first place it made a principled distinction between the fides historica and the fides salvifica.
Historical faith might in some cases precede and in itself be of great value; it was and remained essentially different from saving faith. All the Reformers were unanimous in the judgment that saving faith, if not only then certainly also, consisted in knowledge. None of them allowed faith to be absorbed into an unconscious affection or mood of the mind. But the knowledge that was an element of saving faith was nevertheless quite different from that of historical faith. The latter might later benefit the fides salvifica; yet it itself thereby changed in character and began to live from a new principle. The fides therefore again received among the Reformers a proper, spiritual, religious nature, not gradually but essentially distinct from all other faith in life and science, indeed even from historical faith.
Naturally such a faith, then, could not proceed from the same principle from which all other faith arises in man. The Reformation was unanimous in the confession that the fides salvifica was a gift of God. It was not a fruit of the natural powers of man nor even of common grace. It was a fruit of the special grace of the H. Spirit, an activity of the new, regenerated man, and
therefore also perfectly sufficient unto salvation. With Rome faith takes only a preparatory place; and rightly so, for at bottom it is nothing other than historical faith. But with the Reformation it again received the central place which it occupies in the N. Test.; it does not need to be supplemented by love, it is sufficient to obtain a share in all the goods of salvation. He who thus believes stands not in the vestibule but in the sanctuary of Christian truth; he is incorporated into Christ, partaker of all his benefits, an heir of eternal salvation. Difficult, however, it was with this profound conception of the fides salvifica, to define its nature correctly and to render it in clear words. The theology of the Reformation has at all times wrestled with it. With respect to the question wherein the proper act [478] of faith is situated, the answers diverge very widely. It has been defined as by knowing, assenting, trusting, taking refuge, etc., or by one of these or by all together. Only later, in the doctrine of faith, can all this be investigated more closely. But so much is certain, that faith in the theology of the Reformation was not a knowing of any doctrinal truths, but that it was a bond of the soul to the person of Christ according to the Scriptures and to Scripture as the word of Christ. The fides salvifica was again through and through religious. God's grace in Christ was its object, the testimony of God in his word was its ground, the H. Spirit was its author. It was in every respect religiously determined.
5. This faith brings with it, according to Scripture, a certainty of its own.
It is a ὑποστασις and ἐλεγχος of the things hoped for and unseen, Hebr.
11:1; not because it is in itself so firm and fixed, but because it rests on God's testimony and promise, as the continuation of Hebr. 11 clearly teaches. It makes the invisible goods of salvation so certain for us, indeed much more certain, than personal insight or a scientific proof would ever be
able to do. Therefore in Scripture there is mention of the παρρησια, Hebr.
4:16; πεποιθησις, Ef. 3:12; πληροφορια, Hebr. 6:11, 12, 10:22 of faith; and θαρσος, Mt. 9:2; καυχησις, Rom. 5:12; χαρα, 1 Petr. 1:8, etc. are ascribed to it. It stands over against doubt, care, fear, distrust, Mt. 6:31, 8:26, 10:31,
14:31, 21:21; Mk. 4:40; Luk. 8:25; Joh. 14:1; Rom. 4:20; Jak. 1:16.
Certainty is throughout the whole of Scripture a characteristic of faith. Even in the midst of the heaviest temptations, when everything is against it, in hope against hope, the believer holds his ground as seeing the Invisible
One, Job 19:25; Ps. 23, 32, 51; Rom. 4:20, 21, 5:1, 8:38; Hebr. 11, etc.
Rather does the believer give up everything than that he should deny his faith. Nothing is too precious to him for his faith, neither his money nor his property, neither his honor nor his life. Faith is ἡ νικη ἡ νικησασα τον κοσμον, 1 Joh. 5:4.
This certainty of faith was unknown to science. It made its entrance into the world with Christianity, Janet et Séailles, Histoire de la philosophie,
Paris 1887 p. 668. [479] Greek philosophy recognized two kinds of certainty, one that arose from sense-perception, and another that was obtained through thinking. Commonly the first was placed far below the second; sense-perception gave only δοξα, but thinking led to ἐπιστημη.
Aristotle in the latter again distinguished between that which rested on proofs, and that which rested on evidence. There were in science thus three ways to arrive at certainty: observation, argumentation, and evidence. This threefold certainty obtained citizenship in philosophy, with the understanding that the empiricists sought certainty chiefly in observation and the rationalists in thinking. Alongside this scientific certainty
Christianity placed the certainty of faith. Concretely and practically this certainty was displayed to the skeptical world in the believing congregation,
especially in its martyrs and witnesses of blood. And theoretically it was expressed and developed in Christian theology. In the doctrine of the certainty of faith there is an important difference between Rome and the Reformation with respect to the question whether the certitudo fidei also includes the certitudo salutis, the absolute assurance of one's own salvation.
From Augustine onward this certitudo salutis has been denied and contested by the Roman church and theology. Rome maintains that absolute assurance of salvation is only the portion of some believers, who have received it through a special revelation, but by no means flows from the nature of faith.
Ordinary believers, with respect to their salvation, have only a certitudo moralis, conjecturalis, but no certitudo fidei. For this certainty there is no place in the Roman system, since it is only compatible with the confession of God's electing love, and would make the laity independent of church and priest. Cf. Augustinus, de bono persev. c. 8, 13, 22, de civ. Dei c. 12. Epist,
107, etc. G. J. Vossius, Historia pelagiana 1655 p. 578 sq. Comment. op Sent. I dist. 17. Thomas, S. Theol. II 1 qu. 112 art. 5. Bellarminus, de Justif.
I c. 10. III c. 2 sq. Conc. Trid. sess. 6 cap. 9 can. 13, 14, and later in the doctrine of faith. Yet the Roman theologians do acknowledge the certitudo fidei with respect to the objective truths of revelation. Facilius, said
Augustine, Conf. 7, 10, dubitarem vivere me, quam non esse veritatem, [480] quae per ea, quae facta sunt, intellecta conspicitur. Albertus Magnus made a distinction between faith in philosophy and in theology. There faith is nothing other than credulitas and no path to knowledge; but in theologicis fides lumen est, certissimam faciens adhaesionem et assensum.... et ideo est via et medium ad scientiam veritatis divinorum, in Stöckl, Philos. der M. A.
II 365, cf. further Thomas, S. Theol. II 2 qu. 4 art. 8. Bellarminus, de Justif.
III c. 2. Billuart, Summa S. Thomae VIII p. 86 sq. Dens, Theol. II 241 sq.
Daelman, Theol. I p. 12 sq. And with that, in general, the Protestant theologians agree. No one has expressed this certainty of faith more sharply and strongly than Calvin. Faith with him is certa, firma, plena et fixa certitudo, more certitudo than apprehensio, cordis fiducia et securitas, etc.
Inst. I, 7, 5; II, 2, 8; III, 2, 14 v., 14, 8; 24, 4, etc. With Lutheran as well as Reformed theologians faith is a firmus assensus, a certa cognitio, which excludes all doubt and all uncertainty, Schmid, Dogm. der ev. luth. K. S.
299 f. Hase, Hutt. Rediv. § 108. Heid. Catech. vr. 21. Heppe, Dogm. der ev. ref. K. S. 384 f.
6. By science, particularly by philosophy, little attention has in general been devoted to this certainty of faith. Only Kant first incorporated and acknowledged it in a modified sense. Kant assumed in the main three kinds of certainty. The first is empirical, problematic certainty, which rests on one's own or another's observation and consists in an opining, in a theoretical or practical believing. Next there is a logical, scientific, apodictic certainty, which is again twofold and bears either an intuitive character, as in mathesis, or, as in philosophy, a discursive character. These are the same kinds of certainty that were already assumed in Greek philosophy. But alongside these Kant now also makes room for a moral, assertoric certainty. The supersensible and the supernatural are, namely, according to Kant unknowable. God has intentionally withheld the knowledge of them from us, in order that we should not place the destiny of man in knowing but in acting, in the fulfilment of his moral calling. With a view to this ethical destiny, man accepts the truth of some propositions, without which [481] he cannot fulfil this ethical task. Thus on practical, psychological grounds he believes in the existence of God, the soul, and immortality. This is moral faith. The certainty which man obtains through
this faith is not theoretical in nature, but practical, moral. It makes him say, not: I am certain; nor also: it is morally certain; but: I am morally certain.
There is thus a threefold certainty, an empirical, logical, and moral, expressed and rendered by the words opining, knowing, and believing,
Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Methodenlehre II 3, ed. Kirchmann S. 632 f. The philosophy after Kant has indeed in part adopted this doctrine of certainty of Kant, but has added nothing essentially new to it. Cf. Dr. Franz Grung,
Das Problem der Gewissheit, Heidelb. 1886.
By contrast, Kant's doctrine of moral certainty has exercised great influence on theology. When the authority of Scripture and church had been undermined, people sought in it the foundation of religion and theology.
The well-known text John 7:17, already employed by Kant himself, Rel. innerhalb der Gr. usw. ed. Rosenkranz S. 135, has become the point of departure of this direction. Indeed, there lies in this moral certainty a deep truth, and it may be gratefully acknowledged that Kant assigned it a place in his philosophy. Of the invisible things we have a wholly different certainty than of those which we can perceive with our senses or prove with our thinking. Faith in the things which one hopes for and does not see also does not proceed without the will, without the moral disposition and the spiritual experience. But nevertheless it deserves no recommendation to exchange the certainty of faith of Holy Scripture, of the congregation, and of Christian theology for Kant's moral certainty. First of all, the remark is not superfluous that certainty is always a state of consciousness. The human spirit can, with respect to a question or a proposition, be in a different state; it can stand over against it in a state of uncertainty, doubt, suspicion, opinion, etc., but also in a state of absolute certainty. Certainty is the rest of human consciousness in the found and acknowledged truth. The
understanding strives, namely, for knowledge, for truth. That is the character and the nature of the understanding; the true is its good, its wealth, the fulfillment of its need. [482] When it finds that truth it is therefore satisfied; it rests in it, it feels itself safe and certain. Certainty is rest, peace, joy, blessedness; in veritate requies. Certainty is the normal state of the human spirit, just as health is that of the body. Doubt, uncertainty, by contrast, is unrest, discontent, misery. Strictly speaking, therefore, certainty itself is not moral; it is called so only because the grounds on which the truth rests with it are of a moral nature. But then, the grounds on which scientific and moral truth rest are not such as to be separated from one another and set over against one another as theoretical and practical. In reality there does not exist such a dualism as Kant assumes in his twofold certainty. Subjectively, head and heart, and objectively, the visible and invisible things are not thus to be divided into two. The heart also exercises influence in scientific investigation. The πιστις in a broad sense also occupies a great place there. Much of what in science passes for fixed and certain rests on moral or immoral grounds. And conversely, it is nevertheless consciousness which, also in moral certainty, weighs and judges the moral grounds on which one or another proposition is acknowledged and accepted as true. The will may move the understanding to accept one or another truth; but that acceptance itself is nevertheless an act of the understanding; and the understanding can do this only because it itself, to a greater or lesser degree, acknowledges and sees the truth. The certainty of faith does not come about through theoretical proofs, but just as little through a decision of the will. Finally, various objections have already earlier been raised against Kant's postulate theory. They can still be increased with these questions: does it accord with the nature of true
morality, which nevertheless also consists in humility, modesty, etc., to postulate the existence of God and of immortality on the ground of our moral nature and destination? does moral certainty still retain its force even then, when the moral human being falls into sins, is in temptation and conflict, and is tossed to and fro by doubt? are moral grounds sufficient, in order, over against the contestation of science, to build upon them faith in God's existence, the consciousness of forgiveness, the hope of blessedness?
But even if moral certainty were also sufficient for the [483] philosopher, it is unusable for the Christian. For even if Kant's Vernunftreligion could rest on it as on a firm foundation; it is not able to bear the truth of the Christian religion.
For all these reasons, Kant's moral certainty cannot replace Christian certainty of faith. This is proved, moreover, by the distinction that Kant makes between supposing, believing, and knowing. Supposing was, according to him, a holding-for-true on insufficient grounds, believing on subjectively sufficient grounds, and knowing on objectively sufficient grounds, Kritik der reinen Vern. ed. Kirchmann S. 632 f. Now this distinction is correct precisely with respect to believing in daily life and with regard to such things as can be known. Then indeed believing is a lesser and weaker degree of knowing. But in religion faith is certainty itself.
The distinction was already determined more correctly by Augustine. He says: tria sunt item velut finitima sibimet in animis hominum distinctione dignissima: intelligere, credere, opinari. Quae si per se ipsa considerentur, primum semper sine vitio est, secundum aliquando cum vitio, tertium nunquam sive vitio, de util. cred. c. 11. Inter credere autem atque opinari hoc distat, quod aliquando ille, qui credit, sentit se ignorare quod credit, quamvis de re, quam se ignorare novit, omnino non dubitet, sic enim firme
credit; qui autem opinatur, putat se scire, quod nescit, de mendac. c. 3.
Thomas describes the distinction thus: de ratione opinionis est quod accipiatur unum cum formidine alterius oppositi; unde non habet firmam inhaesionem. De ratione vero scientiae est quod habeat firmam inhaesionem cum visione intellectiva; habet enim certitudinem procedentem ex intellectu principiorum. Fides autem medio modo se habet; excedit enim opinionem in hoc quod habet firmam inhaesionem; deficit vero a scientia in eo quod non habet visionem, S. Theol. II 1 qu. 67 art. 3. In a similar sense Zanchius gave this definition: opinio is a cognition neither certain nor evident, fides is a cognition certain but not evident, scientia is a cognition equally certain and evident, Op. II 196. Believing and knowing are therefore not distinguished in certainty. Faith brings with it a certainty just as strong as knowing. Indeed, the certainty of faith is, of the two, the stronger in intensity; it is almost unshakable and ineradicable. [484] For faith someone stakes his life and everything. Galileo swore three times to renounce his faith in the Copernican system. Kepler, against his conviction, occupied himself at Graz with astrology in order to provide for his livelihood; the needy mother (astronomy) had to live from the foolish daughter (astrology).
Who gives up his life for a scientific thesis, e.g. that the earth revolves around the sun? But religion breeds martyrs. The certainty of faith far surpasses scientific certainty in intensive power. Bonaventure, however, rightly makes a distinction within certainty between the certitudo adhaesionis and the certitudo speculationis, Sent. III dist. 23 art. 1 qu. 4, cf.
Stöckl. Philos. des M. A. II 883. The former is greater in the certainty of faith than in scientific certainty, for often no arguments, no flatteries, no tortures are able to bring someone's faith into wavering. He clings with his whole soul to the object of faith. But the certitudo speculationis need not
always, but can sometimes nevertheless be stronger in science than in faith.
It is the same thought that Augustine expressed: knowing is always sine vitio, but believing occurs aliquando cum vitio. Believing itself is no proof of the truth of what is believed. There is a great difference between subjective assurance and objective truth. In faith everything depends on the grounds on which it rests.