CHAPTER XX.  WHENCE OUR BELIEF:  GRACE AND WILL.

To believe is to assent to a truth on the authority of God’s word.  We must find that the truth proposed is really guaranteed by the authority of God.  In this process of mental research, the mind must be satisfied, and the truth found to be in consonance with the dictates of right reason, or at least, not contrary thereto.

But the fact that we can securely give our assent to this truth does not make us believe.  Something more than reason enters into an act of faith.

Faith is not something natural, purely human, beginning and ending in the brain, and a product thereof.  This is human belief, not divine, and is consequently not faith.

We believe that faith is, of itself, as far beyond the native powers of a human being as the sense of feeling is beyond the power of a stone, or intelligence, the faculty of comprehension, is beyond the power of an animal.  In other words, it is supernatural, above the natural forces, and requires the power of God to give it existence.  “No man can come to me, unless the Father who has sent Me, draw him.”

Some have faith, others have it not.  Where did you get your faith?  You were not born with it, as you were with the natural, though dormant faculties of speech, reason, and free will.  You received it through Baptism.  You are a product of nature; therefore nature should limit your existence.  But faith aspires to, and obtains, an end that is not natural but supernatural.  It consequently must itself be supernatural, and cannot be acquired without divine assistance.

Unless God revealed, you could not know the truths of religion.  Unless He established a court of final appeal in His Church, you could not be sure what He did reveal or what He meant to say.  Because of the peculiar character of these truths and the nature the certitude we possess, many would not believe all, if God’s grace were not there to help them, even though one could and would believe, there no divine belief or faith proper until the soul lives the faculty from Him who alone can give it.

The reason why many do not believe is not because God’s grace is wanting nor because their minds cannot be satisfied, not because they cannot, but because they will not.

Faith is a gift of God, but not that alone; it is a conviction, but not that alone.  It is a firm assent of the will.  We are free to believe or not to believe.

“As one may be convinced and not act according to his conviction, so may one be convinced and not believe according to his conviction.  The arguments of religion do not compel anyone to believe, just as the arguments for good conduct do not compel anyone to obey.  Obedience is the consequence of willing to obey, and faith is the consequence of willing to believe.”