WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BELIEVE?
Faith is the fundamental act of Christian existence.
The essential structure of Christianity finds expression in the act of faith, which is the
an­swer it gives to the question: How can we attain our destiny and thereby realize
our humanity?
There are of course other answers.
Not all reli­gions are a "faith".
For example, Buddhism in its classical form does not at all tend toward this act of self-transcendence,
of encounter with the one who is totally other, with this God who speaks to me or who summons
me to love.
In­stead, Buddhism is characterized by an act of radical internalization, not an act
that makes one emerge from oneself, but an act of returning into oneself.
This act is meant to lead to libera­tion from the yoke of individuality, from the burden
represented by the fact of being a per­son, to a return into the common unity of be­ing.
Compared with the experience we have of being, we can describe the absolute otherness of
this "being" as non-being, as nothing.
1. Faith and Everyday Life: A Fundamental Human Attitude
It is not my intention to enter this particular discussion.
What interests us for the moment is, put very simply, how to understand the fundamental
act of Christian existence, the act of faith.
As soon as we set out on this path of reflection, we encounter a difficulty, since we must ask:
Is faith truly an attitude worthy of a modern adult?
"Believing" seems a provisional, transitory stage that ought in the last analysis to be
left behind ... although this is often inevi­table in our life, precisely because we are speak­ing
here of a provisional attitude.
No one is truly capable of possessing a personal knowledge and mastery of all those realities
on which our daily life in a technological civilization is based.
We are obliged to accept an enormous number of
things, in most cases putting our trust in ''sci­ence" --and all the more so, because
the experi­ence we have in common seems a sufficient
confirmation of this trust.
All of us, to a greater or lesser degree, make use of the products of technology, although
we are ignorant of its scientific foundations: Which of us can calculate or verify the statics
of a building?
Which of us knows how an elevator works--to say noth­ing of the worlds of electricity
and electronics, which are so familiar to us?
And how far, ­to move onto a much more delicate subject--can we trust the information on the
packaging of a pharmaceutical compound?
We could mul­tiply examples....
We live within a network of unknown quantities, with the general expecta­tion that these
will provide us with positive experiences.
We believe that all this is not unfounded, and this kind of "faith'' allows us to
enjoy the benefits of other people's professional knowledge.
But what kind of faith is this, which we prac­tice all the time without even noticing and which
is at the basis of the life we share every day?
Without at once trying to offer a definition, let us begin on the level of what is immediately observable.
Two contrasting aspects of this kind of ''faith" strike us at once.
First of all, we can affirm that a faith of this kind is indispensable in our life.
This is true for the simple reason that, if this were not the case, nothing would function
any more: each one of us would have to start afresh all the time.
This is also true on a deeper level, in the sense that human life becomes impossible if
one can no longer trust the other and others, if one cannot rely a priori on their expe­rience
and knowledge and on what they offer us.
This is one of the positive aspects of this "faith''.
On the other hand, of course, it is the expression of an ignorance that makes the best of a bad
job: it would undeniably be better if we did possess the appropriate knowledge.
We have elaborated here what we might call an "axioiogical structure" of this natural faith.
We have examined the values it contains and seen that such a faith is a lesser value than
"knowledge" but at the same time a foundational value of human existence.
Without this basis, no society could survive.
We can also identify the various elements involved in the "structure of
action" of such a faith.
These are three in num­ber.
First, this faith always refers to someone who possesses up-to-date knowledge of the
question: it presupposes that qualified and credible persons do in fact possess this knowledge.
The second element is the trust on the part of the "multi­tude" of those who, in the
daily use they make of things, do not rely on the solid knowledge that actually produced them.
Finally, the third element we must mention is the existence of a kind of verification
of knowledge in daily ex­perience.
I am not capable of verifying scien­tifically whether the act of switching on a reading
lamp is the result of a process based on the principles of electricity, but this does not
lead me to reject the affirmation that this is in fact the case, because my household
appliances function in daily life, despite my own lack of professional knowledge.
This means that although I may not have been initiated into this knowledge, nevertheless
I am not acting in a pure ''faith" bereft of any kind of confirmation.