What is Faith?

Many people think that faith means believing something without any
evidence or verification.

Or worse, they think that faith is just a subjective feeling about

something such as God or the meaning of life. Both of these views make
faith out to be something unreasonable or irrational. But both of these
views are serious mistakes about what faith is. So, what is faith?

And is it possible for anyone to live without it?

Sometimes, people believe something because it is evident to their
senses. For example, the sun went down at 7pm this evening. Why do you
believe that? “I saw it and looked at my watch as it was happening”
someone might say. Or the water on the stove is getting hot. Why do you
believe that?

Because “I touched it” the person might say. At other times, people
believe something not because it is evident to the senses but because it
is evident to their reason. 2 + 2 = 4, or every whole is greater than a part
of it. One can see these things, and other truths like them, with the eyes
of intelligence.

Now, when someone judges something to be true either because it is

evident to their senses or because it is evident to their reason, the
judgment is not a matter of faith. It is a matter of knowing these things.
One sees such truths either with the senses or with the mind.
Sometimes, however, one believes something not because it is evident to
one’s own senses or because it is evident to one’s own reason,
but because someone else sees it and testifies to it.

Perhaps a friend saw the sunset at 7pm while you were inside, and
reported it to you. Believing something on the word or testimony of
another person is called faith. Faith, then, is not a case of
believing something without any evidence or reason at all, but a case of
believing something with another kind of evidence besides one’s own
senses or reason. Faith is believing something on the word of a witness.
If the witness is trustworthy, then it is quite reasonable to believe the
testimony. When faith is properly understood for what it is, as believing
something on the word of another, it is clear that faith is an ordinary and
natural part of human life.

When a doctor says you have a specific disease, for example, to believe
the doctor is an act of faith. When a history book says George Washington
camped at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777, to believe the book is an
act of faith. When a teacher of a foreign language says this is how a
certain word is pronounced, to believe it is an act of faith. When you
believe your mother when she tells you where you were born, it is an act
of faith. Same too with believing your birth certificate. When your
mother tells you that this man is your father, that too is an act of faith.
Who else knows that but she? And if you say that a DNA test confirms
that this man is your father, well unless you are an expert in reading DNA
tests, that too is an act of faith in the expert. In fact, to learn how to read
DNA tests requires many acts of faith in science textbooks over the
course of one’s education, and scientists regularly make acts of faith
when they report their findings to one another and believe one another.
In practice, they do not double check each other’s every claim with
independent experiments or studies.

In fact, human beings will take tremendous risks on the faith we have in
one another. Every time someone flies on a plane, for example, the
airline company says what? They say in effect, “we are going to put you
in this metal tube, lift you up thousands of feet into the air, and hurl
you through the sky at hundreds of miles per hour. But you will be fine.
Just trust us.” And people trust the airlines every day and climb on
board knowing full well that from time to time planes crash and burn
and people die. Or think of a case of someone with a brain tumor. After
being diagnosed with a brain tumor, the surgeon says “Okay, so you need
brain surgery. In the surgery, first I am going to cut open your skull.
Then I am going to take a knife and insert it into your brain. Then I will
cut out the tumor and probably a portion of your brain with it. But you’ll
be fine. Just trust me.” And people go in for brain surgeries every day.

Flying on planes, going for surgeries, and other acts of faith are all
ordinary and reasonable things to do. If someone were to try to
live without ever believing what other people say, that person would
become dysfunctional. How would you ever learn history, science, foreign
languages, or even your first language. In fact, how would you learn
someone’s name? You meet someone for the first time. “Hi, my name is
Joe. What’s your name? Bob. I don’t believe you. Prove it.”
Relationships go nowhere without faith. In fact, how do you know your
own name? Someone told you. Perhaps your parents or family members.
All of this goes to show just how central faith is to human life.

Faith is a natural and inescapable part of life, and without it neither

individuals nor societies could function. Faith in general, therefore, is a
reasonable thing. It is of course necessary to consider our sources, think
about who we are believing, consider their qualifications and credentials,
and evaluate it all with care. But it is not possible to double check all
one’s sources all the time, so just what the requirements are for double
checking is a big philosophical question. But it is safe to say that credible
witnesses make for a reasonable faith.

Now what does all of this have to do with Christian faith? What we
have been discussing so far is human faith, the faith that human beings
naturally and ordinarily have in each other’s testimony. But from the
earliest days, Christians saw a comparison or analogy between that
natural and ordinary human faith and the supernatural gift of faith in
God and Jesus Christ. For example, it says in the First Letter of John: “If
we believe the word of men, how much greater is the word of God.” In
other words, if it is a reasonable thing for human beings to have faith in
the word of merely human witnesses even though humans are fallible
and often mistaken, how much more reasonable is it for us to have faith
in the word of God who is infallible, makes no mistakes, and
cannot either deceive or be deceived.
Another example: In the First Letter to the Thessalonians, St. Paul says:
“And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the
word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word
of men but as what it really is, the word of God…” That passage shows
how conscious the early Christians were of believing not only human
testimony, but divine testimony – the word of God. So, too, it should be
with us. What we believe by faith is not merely human testimony, but
the word of the living God.

There are many signs to confirm that it is in fact the word of God, the
signs are accessible to reason, and we shall look at them in later videos.
And yet faith is not born from merely rational reflection upon evidence
or signs. Faith is a gift of God born from the Spirit of truth at work within
our souls and illuminating everything. The Spirit moves us, in
coordination with the whole Church, to believe everything that God has
revealed.

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 Does Science Explain Everything?
Does science explain everything? Is reason the same thing as science or
something different?
Is either reason or science a sufficient guide to life? Or is something else
necessary in order to fully live? Shakespeare was right. “There are more
things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your
philosophy.” And there are more things in heaven and earth than are
dreamt of in all of science.

In the minds of many people today, there is a certain fixed

equation. Reason = science. For many people, reason is nothing other or
nothing more than science. Something similar holds for the term truth.
Many people think that a truth is nothing other than a claim verified by
science. When our sense of reason is reduced to science or scientific
thinking, and our sense of truth is reduced to what science tells us about
the world, then we have passed from science into scientism.

Scientism is an exaggerated understanding of what science is and what

it can do for us. Scientism blows science as such all out of
proportion, and then aims to organize the world according to the
exaggeration. We can say that scientism is the view that science alone
explains all things, and science alone is the guide to life.

Let’s unpack the issue in two basic points. First, science is one thing, and
scientism is another. There is no doubt that over the last several
centuries modern science has developed a new and
unprecedented understanding of the world around us. It is a body of
knowledge well confirmed by evidence. Science has explained many
things, and makes progress in explaining more with the passing of time.
It has brought tremendous benefits and insight into the world of nature,
and yet science has limits.

Science cannot explain everything. Scientific methods are designed to

deal with specific questions in specific subject matters, and are
not designed to answer all questions about all things. For example,
modern science is not able to settle the question of God’s existence or
attributes. After all, science is adapted to investigating specific things in
the world of nature and God exists beyond the world of nature.
Science is also not adequate for answering profound questions about the
meaning and purpose of life. Scientists will be the first to tell you
that, and you will meet them in later videos. Science is also not adequate
for settling moral questions.
Science can tell us how to build a nuclear bomb, for example, but cannot
tell us whether it is right to use one. That’s a moral question. If someone
were to try to live by accepting as true only what science can
confirm, that person would be left thinking there is no public,
accessible, verifiable truth about God, about the meaning of life, or about
moral principles and claims. God, meaning, and morality would seem
totally subjective and private matters.

They are not, but that is how it seems to many people today, especially
to many young people. Because a secularistic education has left many
people submerged in scientism often without even realizing it. But
science is not an adequate compass to life. It was never meant to
be. Rather, science is one form of knowing among others. Another way
to know truth would be, for example, to read some Shakespeare. “What
is done cannot be undone” he says.

It rings true to our reason even though it is not advanced on scientific

grounds. So here is the second basic point. Reason does not equal science
and truth does not equal what is verified by science. There is a
broader and deeper understanding of reason available to us, so let’s
consider it.

According to Thomas Aquinas, God has given all human beings a

common nature, with a certain power or light called reason. Reason is
therefore a gift of God. Its light is essentially a share in the very light of
God. Just like our hearing is a gift from God and we can hear many
things within a limited range of sound, so by the light of reason humans
are able to know many things, but within a certain range – let us call it
the range of reason.

Thanks to the light of reason, many sciences have developed over the
course of human history, but no one of the sciences nor all of
them combined extend to the whole range of reason. By using our reason
not only scientifically, but also philosophically, human beings are able
to know many things beyond the limits of what science can tell us, but
still within the range of reason. For example, through
philosophical reasoning we can know that God exists but we cannot
know what God is. The nature of God remains beyond the range of
reason, and so Scripture says he dwells in unapproachable light.

By the light of reason we can know that the meaning or purpose of life is
to know God to whatever extent he makes possible to us. By the light of
reason we can also know many moral truths and apply them to particular
situations. That is the work of conscience, and everyone has a
conscience. All of this knowledge about God, meaning, and morality is
due to God’s gift of the natural light of reason to us. But even though the
light of reason is great, even here we must say that reason is not
enough to know all that is going on in reality.

Something more than reason is necessary for us to enter into the fullness
of life. For God has another gift to give us. God created us, and gave all
human beings the natural light of reason, because he has a special
supernatural light to give us, to our whole human race. God created us in
order to come to us in Jesus Christ, to reveal himself to us, and to share
with us the life he enjoys in the unapproachable light beyond the range
of reason. Now, the light of God is unapproachable in the sense that we
cannot reach it by our natural, human powers. Again, it is beyond the
range of reason. But God definitely has the power to lift us up to it, and
make us dwell with him in the paradise of light beyond the range of
reason, in the heavenly places.

You and I receive this uplifting, and pass beyond the range of reason,
and begin to live with God in his otherwise unapproachable light by
following Jesus Christ and putting our faith in him. By putting our faith
in Jesus Christ we come to know God in a manner beyond the whole
power of reason.

Faith is a personal and more familiar form of knowing God. And this is
why God created us. So that we might know God personally and love him
and enjoy him forever. To know him that way is the true life,
supernatural life, eternal life. Faith is like a seed of a new life of
knowing God in a higher, personal, and supernatural way. Even the seed
of faith fulfills our rational nature, and answers many questions. But
ultimate fulfillment of the desire to understand comes when we see God
in heaven.

For readings, podcasts, and more videos like this, go to

Aquinas101.com. While you're there, be sure to sign up for one of our
free video courses on Aquinas.
And don't forget to like and share with your friends, because it matters
what you think!