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Intro, Faith and Reason

Introduction to OCIA

  • It focuses on Christian Initiation → Becoming a Christian and living as one (receive the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and first holy communion)
  • It therefore requires conversion to Christ, belonging to Him, living for Him, ordering your life around Him.
  • 3 main features can be identified about the OCIA process:
    • 1. You are called by God and loved by Him, made to be in communion with Him.
    • 2. Know you are a sinner
      • Requires you to confront your fallenness and name it (carry your cross)
      • Luke 9:23-24
        • 23 Then he said to them all, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. 
    • 3. Centered on the Paschal Mystery (the cross)
      • Christ is at once the one who reconciles us to God through his salvific work and the one who offers us the perfect example to follow.
      • Philippians 2:6-11:
        • “who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form,8 he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.9 Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name,10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,11 and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
  • We must imitate Christ’s humility, which for us looks rejecting our false selves and renouncing our imagined divinity.
  • Dying to self and living for God and others (love of God and love of neighbor).

Faith and Reason: “I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but rather I believe in order that I may understand.” – St. Anselm

What is Faith? What is Reason?

Faith → CCC 144 To obey (from the Latin ob-audire, to "hear or listen to") in faith is to submit freely to the word that has been heard, because its truth is guaranteed by God, who is Truth itself. Abraham is the model of such obedience offered us by Sacred Scripture. the Virgin Mary is its most perfect embodiment.

Reason: our capacity to understand and discern the truth and order of creation as coming from God. We are made in His image, therefore we can know the created world, we can know reality.

  • The various sciences provide insights into the created world, we can make sense of it.
  • There is a real concern for having certainty, for knowing what is real, what is reliable

Belief in the World of Today (Introduction to Christianity)

  • Doubt and Belief: Man’s situation before the question of God
  • The challenge of talking about theology/the faith with others. (the clown and the fire story) → What is the limitation of this example/story? 
  • The experience of the believer being challenged in their own belief → the believer does not simply possess perfect/full knowledge with a perfectly clear message.
  • In the move of sharing one’s faith, the uncertainty of belief becomes apparent.
  • The believer does not exist in a situation so different from that of the unbeliever.
    • The believer constantly drifts on the ocean of nihilism, doubt, and unbelief, challenged by a doubt which puts the whole structure of belief into question/uncertainty
    • Similarly, the unbeliever also experiences the challenge and temptation of doubt, possesses faith through doubt in the form of doubt → “perhaps it (the faith) is true?”
    • Allows both believer and unbeliever to be open to one another, prevents them from being shut off to each other, not allowing either to enjoy complete satisfaction.

Both Faith and Reason are necessary

  • The Catholic view is that reason aids an act of faith, it lends motives for belief. It supports an act of faith. Therefore, using reason to explore the faith is really important. There is also no discrepancy between faith and reason → they have the same source, namely God. (CCC 156, CCC 159)
  • Reason does not, however, and cannot, replace faith.

What does this mean for us? Walking by faith and not by sight (Intro to Christianity p.50-51)

  • Saying “I believe” is the conviction that the truly real and fundamental is something invisible. It does not occur in the realm of our senses.
  • Inevitably we deal with the ‘darkness’ of faith as a result. We walk, therefore, by faith and not by sight.

Faith as Standing Firm and Understanding

    • Root word ‘mn (amen) has many meanings → truth, firmness, firm ground, ground, loyalty, to trust, entrust oneself, take one’s stand on something, believe in something. 
    • “If you do not believe, then you do not understand” (Is 7:9)
    • Belief is entrusting oneself to that which has not been made by oneself and never could be made by oneself. Not discovered on the plane of practical knowledge, can’t “lay it on the table” so to speak. 
    • Belief is not a form of incomplete knowledge, something that must be completed. Rather, belief is ordered, not to what can be made (practical), but to the realm of basic decisions → the decision of meaning → not a blind surrender to the irrational, it is rather a movement toward the logos, the ratio, toward meaning and so toward truth itself → concerned with things in themselves, practical knowledge does not inquire in this way.
    • What is belief? It is a human way of taking up a stand in the totality of reality, a way that cannot be reduced to knowledge and is incommensurable with knowledge; it is the bestowal of meaning → The God of Israel is acting in history.
    • “Meaning, that is, the ground on which our existence as a totality can stand and live, cannot be made but only received.” → faith is a gift received.(p.73)

The personal dimension of Christian Faith: I believe in You” (p. 79-81)

Characteristics of the Faith from the Catechism

  • Faith is a grace and a human act.
  • Grace is the aid that helps our intellect/mind say yes to the offer of love that God comes to us with → through the Holy Spirit.
  • Faith is certain and seeks understanding: It grows through love and knowledge which support each other.

Summary

  • Both faith and reason are necessary, especially to deal with the unavoidable uncertainty of existence.
  • Reason aids and supports an act of faith, but it cannot replace an act of faith. One must entrust oneself in an act of faith to something. Christians take their stand on the Logos/Word made flesh.
  • Faith is a gift received (meaning/ground) from God and is necessary for salvation (communion with God)
  • Christian faith is deeply personal, “I believe in you”. It is also communal since it is both received from another and shared to another. God saves us as a community of faithful, as His Church.