Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Fides ex auditu --Saint John of the Cross

 "And the Spirit said to Philip: Go near, and join thyself to this chariot."
Acts 8:29

I just came across this line in Saint John of the Cross in which he is comparing faith to understanding and says that faith does not come through the senses.

Faith knowledge is to the soul what the knowledge of colors is to a man born blind (who has never seen colors). "That is how faith is for the soul, which tells us things which we never saw nor understood in themselves nor in their likenesses, for they have none; and so, of it we have no light of natural knowledge (ciencia) since what it tells us is not proportioned (proporcionado) to any sense, but we know it from the hearing (el oido), believing what it teaches us, subjecting and blinding our natural light; because, as Saint Paul says, Fides ex auditu (Rom 10:17), as if to say: Faith is not knowledge (ciencia) which enters through any sense, but rather merely the consent of the soul to that which enters through the hearing (el oido)."

Saint John of the Cross, The Active Night of the Spirit, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, Bk. 2, Chapt. 3, 3.

"The theologians say that faith is a habit of the soul, certain and dark." It is dark because of the excessive light which it gives for which man does not have an adequate natural faculty. Ibid, Bk. 2, Chapt. 3, 1.

Faith is man's assent to the revelation of God, and it is transmitted through the word of truth as taught and lived by the Church, by the power and working of the Holy Spirit. It is transmitted and received through the testimony of faith of believers, in the same Holy Spirit.