The theological virtues of faith, hope, and
charity occupy a preeminent place in St. Thomas' moral theology, and naturally so.
Aquinas recognizes, rightly, that faith, hope, and charity are the virtues by which the Christian
lives the Christian life.
This life is theological, according to Aquinas, because as Scripture indicates, it has God
as its immediate source and end.
Accordingly, the virtues of faith, hope, and charity are called theological because, as
the very engines of the Christian life, they also have God as their immediate source and end.
Infused in us by God, the theological virtues elevate our powers of intellect and will so
that by acts of these virtues, acts of believing, hoping, and loving, we can, by grace, reach
beyond our natural goods to possess our final and supernatural good, our theological good,
God himself.
When he treats the theological virtues in the Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas is concerned,
primarily, to show that faith, hope, and charity, as described by St. Paul in the New Testament,
are virtues in the Aristotelian sense of the term.
Aquinas proceeds, then, question after question, in an Aristotelian mode.
Similar to the way that Aristotle treated the acquired virtues, Aquinas describes each
of the theological virtues in terms of their subject, their object, and their proper act.
Beginning with faith, then, St. Thomas inquires,
first, into the virtues object.
He notes that we can describe the object of faith in two ways, materially and formally.
Materially considered, the object of faith is God himself, as He is in Himself.
As the act of a virtue ends and rests in its object, the act of faith ends and rests in God.
Formally considered, the object of faith is that aspect of God Himself that comes under
the consideration of faith, and that is His truth, or more precisely, those truths about
Himself that God has revealed to us.
Formally considered, then, the object of faith is God as truth.
Or better, God as first truth, revealing Himself to the world.
Considered materially and formally, therefore, the object of faith is the true God and the
truths of God, the latter of which the Church collects and summarizes in the Articles of
Faith.
Aquinas explains that by assenting to the
Articles of Faith, the believer comes to possess God's truth, and thus God Himself.
Accordingly, because both God and God's truths are the object of faith, there are various
ways in which the act of faith ends and rests in God.
We believe in faith, first of all, that God is, that there is a God.
We also believe in faith, God, as the trustworthy witness of His truth.
And finally, we believe in faith, in God or unto God, unto union with Him in the communion
of knowledge that he establishes with us.
The subject of faith, or rather, the seat
of the virtue in us.
Where exactly faith is infused in us, St. Thomas explains that as faith has, as its
object, God as first truth, then faith is infused in and perfects that human power concerned
with truth, which is the intellect.
Infused as a supernatural perfection of intellect, faith elevates and perfects the functionings
of human reason, so that the human agent can apprehend and understand the Articles of Faith,
and without seeing or proving their reality, judge them to be true.
Choosing to assent to the Articles of Faith as true involves a graced act of belief, which
brings us, then, to Aquinas' description of the act of faith.
The act that is proper to faith is an act of belief.
Aquinas explains that belief is one of four ways in which we affirm the truth of a proposition,
without seeing or demonstrating its truth.
If we can see or demonstrate the truth of some proposition, then we know it with certainty,
we possess it firmly.
But if we can't see or demonstrate the truth of some proposition, then we can doubt its
truth, suspect its truth, opine about its truth, or believe its truth.
Belief is the strongest of these acts, for it holds confidently and firmly to the truth
of the proposition, certain of its truth.
Not because we can see its truth, we can't or don't, but due to the testimony of another,
or an expert in the matter, for example.
Faith elevates the natural act of belief by
allowing the believer to hold confidently, not to some unseen or indemonstrable natural
truth, but to an unseen and indemonstrable supernatural truth.
Faith makes this act of belief based on the testimony that God Himself gives to His revelation.
By believing God and what He says, the believer shares intimately in the knowledge of God.
In the light of faith, seeing is not believing, as the adage goes, but believing is seeing.
Seeing God and what He sees because He tells us what He sees.
In faith, therefore, the believer comes to know what God knows.
And thus, for Aquinas, does faith mark the beginning of eternal life in us.
By participating in God's eternal knowing, the believer is offered, thereby, a share
in God's eternal loving.
Faith is only for this world, of course.
Once the Christian enters heaven, belief in God's truth gives way to vision of God's truth.
In beatitude, the one once believed is now known and loved, face to face.
As belief constitutes the interior of faith, confession or profession constitutes faith's
exterior act.
Accordingly, Aquinas notes that faith can be sinned against, both interiorly and exteriorly.
Unbelief, heresy, and apostasy sin against faith's interior act of belief, while blasphemy
sins against faith's exterior act of confession.
Aquinas rounds out his treatment of faith
by discussing the two gifts of the Holy Spirit that perfect the act of faith.
Remember that for Aquinas, the gifts of the Holy Spirit render the Christian docile, in
mind and will, to the promptings of the Spirit, who refines and further divinizes the work
of the virtues in us.
Thus, the gift of understanding further perfects faith by giving the believer a Spirit-taught
insight into the essence of the Articles of Faith, which bears fruit in the purity of
heart mentioned by Christ in the Beatitudes.
Faith, perfected by understanding, allows the believer to develop a vision of God in
faith, purified of unnecessary earthly imagery and analogies.
For its part, the gift of knowledge further perfects faith by giving the believer a Spirit-taught
judgment regarding the truth of created things in view of God, which bears fruit in the mourning,
spoken of by Christ in the Beatitudes.
Faith perfected by knowledge allows the believer to mourn the ways that heretofore, with a
weak or undeveloped faith, he allowed created things to take the place of God.
In conclusion, when we grasp what St. Thomas
explains, regarding the object, the subject, and the act of faith, we can appreciate the
definition of faith that he himself provides.
Commenting on St. Paul's description of faith, as the assurance of things hoped for, the
conviction of things not seen, Aquinas writes that faith is a habit of mind, whereby eternal
life is begun in us, making the intellect ascent to what is not apparent.
Aquinas summarizes his definition beautifully in his hymn to the Eucharist, The Adoro te devote.
A line in one verse says, "Credo quiquid dixit Dei Filius", "I believe whatever the Son of
God has said."
When we make this act of faith, Aquinas concludes, the first rays of the light of glory dawn
in our minds.
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