Jul 01 2008
Tuesdays with St. Thomas: Faith brings Union with God
From his Catechetical Instruction on the Apostles’ Creed, St. Thomas Aquinas writes:
The first thing that is necessary for every Christian is faith, without which no one is truly called a faithful Christian. Faith brings about four good effects. The first is that through faith the soul is united to God, and by it there is between the soul and God a union akin to marriage. “I will espouse thee in faith” (Hos 2.20). When a man is baptized the first question that is asked him is: “Do you believe in God?” This is because Baptism is the first Sacrament of faith. Hence, the Lord said: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved” (Mk 16.16). Baptism without faith is of no value. Indeed, it must be known that no one is acceptable before God unless he have faith. “Without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb 11.6). St. Augustine explains these words of St. Paul, “All that is not of faith is sin” (Rom 14.23) in this way: “Where there is no knowledge of the eternal and unchanging Truth, virtue even in the midst of the best moral life is false.”
This passage from a medieval theologian might come as quite a shock to Protestants who think that the Catholic Church teaches baptism alone is necessary for salvation. The teaching of the Church has always been the teaching of the Risen Lord, who said: “He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned” (Mk. 16.16).
Jesus is clear: Baptism and believe are both necessary for salvation, but in order to teach us that the sacraments are not magic and that we’ve been given the freedom to choose God or reject him, Christ tells us that baptism alone won’t save us. We must also believe.
What kind of belief are we talking about? Nowadays, when we speak of believing in God we mean primarily that we believe that God exists. St. Thomas would have rejected this notion. For St. Thomas, God’s existence could be known through the natural light of human reason, and this teaching was confirmed at the First Vatican Council. Thus, for St. Thomas, God’s existence is a preamble of faith — that which comes before faith, that on which faith is build.
For St. Thomas and for the Catholic Church, when we say that we believe in God, we say that we believe in what God has said. We believe that God is true, that he cannot lie; faith, therefore, is akin to trusting in God’s revelation. This is one reason why St. Thomas equates faith with union. Just as we cannot be united in heart and mind with people we do not trust, so too we cannot have union with God if we do not trust in what he has said about us and about himself.
Without faith, we cannot please God. The prophet Habakkuk said: “The righteous shall live by faith” (Hab 2.4). To live by faith means that we order our lives according to the will of God — that is, according to the Commandments, the Beatitudes, and the moral precepts of the Church. Living by faith is the only motivation for morality that God finds pleasing.
