Faith's Assent, Its Relationship to Knowledge --Ratzinger

Cardinal Ratzinger receiving honorary doctorate of theology,
Theology Faculty of Wroclaw/Breslau, Oct. 27, 2000

Saint Thomas Aquinas on the Nature of the Christian Act of Faith

"...[Following Augustine, Thomas defines believing as 'thinking with assent'. This coexistence of thinking and assent is something faith has in common with science. It is characteristic of science for thinking to result in assent. Anyone following its progression ends by saying: Yes, that is right. Assent is also a part of believing. This is not an act of abstention, but a decision , a certainty. Being eternally open, and keeping oneself open in all directions, is exactly what faith is not. It is 'hypostasis', the Letter to the Hebrews says (11:1): taking one's stand, and standing firm, on what is hoped for; being convinced.

"Yet the relationship between assent and thought is different in faith from what is is in science, in knowledge in general. In the case of a scientific demonstration, the obviousness of the business force us, by inner necessity, into assent. The act of perception itself brings about the 'Yes, that is right'. Thomas says that the certainty attained 'determines' our thinking. Thus, in the insight obtained, the movement of thought comes to rest; it finds its conclusion. The structure of the act of faith is quite different. Thomas says about this that here the thought process and the assent balance each other, they are 'ex aequo'. What does that mean? First, it means that in the act of believing the assent comes about in a different way from the way it does in the act of knowing: not through the degree of evidence bringing the process of thought to its conclusion, but by an act of will, in connection with which the thought process remains open and still under way. Here, the degree of evidence does not turn the thought into assent; rather, the will commands assent, even though the thought process is still under way. How can it do that without doing violence to the thinking? To answer this question, we must first be aware that in Thomas Aquinas' terminology the concept of will is more far-reaching than we understand it to be today. What Thomas calls the will corresponds roughly to what in biblical language is called 'the heart. Thus, Pascal's well-known saying comes to mind: 'Le coeur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connait point'. The heart has its reasons; it has its own rationality, which reaches beyond 'mere' reason. On the basis of the logic of this sentence we can get to the meaning; Any perception presupposes a certain sympathy with what is perceive. Without a certain inner closeness, a kind of love, we cannot perceive the other thing or person. In this sense the 'will' always somehow precedes the perception and is its precondition; and the more so, the greater and more inclusive is the reality to be perceived. We are able to give the assent of faith because the will--the heart--has been touched by God, 'affected' by him. Through being touched in this way, the will knows that even what is still not 'clear' to the reason is true.

"Assent is produced by the will, not by the understanding's own direct insight: the particular kind of freedom of choice involved in the decision of faith rests upon this. 'Cetera potest homo nolens, credere non nisi volens', says Thomas on this point, quoting Saint Augustine: Man can do everything else against his will, but he can believe only of his free will. When we realize this, the peculiar spiritual structure of believing becomes clear. Believing is not an act of the understanding alone, not simply an act of the will, not just an act of feeling, but an act in which all the spiritual powers of man are at work together. Still more: man in his own self, and of himself, cannot bring about this believing at all; it has of its nature the character of a dialogue. It is only because the depth of the soul--the heart--has been touched by God's Word that the whole structure of spiritual powers is set in motion and unites in the Yes of believing. It is through all this that we also begin to see the particular kind of truth with which believing is concerned; theology talks about 'saving truth'. For how is it that God actually touches our heart? What gives the 'will' the illumination and the confidence that can then also be shared with the understanding? Augustine says, reflection on his own experience of life: The inmost heart of the human will is the will for happiness. Everything a man does or allows to happen to him can, ultimately, be derived from his will to be happy. When the heart comes into contact with God's Logos, with the Word who became man, this inmost point of his existence is being touched. Then, he does not merely feel, he knows from within himself: That is it; that is HE, That is what I was waiting for. It is a kind of recognition. For we have been created in relation to God, in relation to the Logos, and our heart remains restless until it has found what the songwriter Paul Gerhardt (d. 1676) was talking about in the marvelous Christmas carol 'Ich steh an diener Krippen hier' {Here I stand beside your crib]: 'Before you had made me, you had already thought of how you wanted to be mine'.

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Noone believes what he has not first considered believable, and that thought regarding the believableness of faith is itself a grace of God in the human intellect.

And, therefore, commending that grace which is not given according to any merits, but is the cause of all good merits, he says, "Not that we are sufficient to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God." 2 Corinthians 3:5 Let them give attention to this, and well weigh these words, who think that the beginning of faith is of ourselves, and the supplement of faith is of God. For who cannot see that thinking is prior to believing? For no one believes anything unless he has first thought that it is to be believed. For however suddenly, however rapidly, some thoughts fly before the will to believe, and this presently follows in such wise as to attend them, as it were, in closest conjunction, it is yet necessary that everything which is believed should be believed after thought has preceded; although even belief itself is nothing else than to think with assent. For it is not every one who thinks that believes, since many think in order that they may not believe; but everybody who believes, thinks, -- both thinks in believing and believes in thinking. Therefore in what pertains to religion and piety (of which the apostle was speaking), if we are not capable of thinking anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, we are certainly not capable of believing anything as of ourselves, since we cannot do this without thinking; but our sufficiency, by which we begin to believe, is of God. Wherefore, as no one is sufficient for himself, for the beginning or the completion of any good work whatever, -- and this those brethren of yours, as what you have written intimates, already agree to be true, whence, as well in the beginning as in the carrying out of every good work, our sufficiency is of God, -- so no one is sufficient for himself, either to begin or to perfect faith; but our sufficiency is of God. Because if faith is not a matter of thought, it is of no account; and we are not sufficient to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God.

Anti-Pelagian Writings — St. Augustine