The Divisions Of Faith And Why They Are Important
The Importance Of Making Divisions
Sometimes people get impatient with divisions, they don’t want to hear all of the specific details. But making divisions are important for clarity of thought.
When we make a division in theology, we make DISTINCTIONS. Distinctions separate different ideas Without distinctions people get confused. With distinctions comes clarity People who don’t like distinctions are bound to be confused.
So, we make divisions of faith to help us to better understand faith in its various forms or ways it can exist.
We make divisions of faith in different ways. Here we discuss three:
Division By Reason Of What We Believe – The distinction between Divine faith vs. Divine-Catholic faith.
Division By Reason Of The Subject Who Believes – the distinction between a person who’s faith is informed by charity and person who’s faith is not.
Division By Reason Of The Manner Or Way In Which One Believes – The distinction between implicit faith and explicit faith
Divisions By Reason Of What We Believe (The Object Of Faith): Divine Faith Vs. Divine Catholic Faith
Faith as simply divine – this is faith in all truths revealed by God but have not been defined either by the solemn or ordinary magisterium of the Church.
Divine-Catholic faith is faith in truths not only revealed by God but also defined by the Church either in her ordinary or solemn magisterium.
The point is that we can’t just have faith in what God reveals but not what God’s Church says that revelations means. Because of the authority of the Church, we are obligated to believe the definitions and clarifications of the Church as well.
One of the reasons why this distinction is important when talking to people who say things like “Jesus never condemned being gay.”
First of all, even if that were true it wouldn’t matter since the letters of Paul condemn homosexual acts and Paul’s works are a part of Scripture too, but secondly, it’s not true that Jesus did not condemn homosexual acts.
Jesus condemned porneia – all forms of sexual immorality. And we know what He means by that by not only studying the historical context but also because the Church, through Her teaching authority given to Her by Christ himself, has further defined for us what that means, and yes, sexual immorality refers to any kind of sexual activity that is not between a married man and woman.
The Church didn’t just make this up. Rather the Church exercised her divine authority and clarified what was already revealed by God and made it more explicit for us to believe.
So this moral teaching of sexual immorality is part of what we believe to have been revealed by Christ.
Divisions By Reason of The Subject Of Faith: Living Faith Vs. Dead Faith
Living faith (Fides formata) means faith informed by charity and co-existing with it.
Dead faith (Fides informis) means faith without charity as found in those having committed mortal sin.
This distinction is important for understanding people. Basically, there are three kinds of people when it comes to faith:
People who have both faith and charity – This would be a person in a state of grace. They both believe God and love God.
People who have faith but not charity – this is a person not in a state of grace but still believes. This person has the virtue of faith but they are in a state of mortal sin.
People who have neither faith nor charity – This person has none of the theological virtues whatsoever
[Note: There is no fourth category of someone who has charity but not faith. It is impossible to love God but not believe Him!]
The reason why it’s possible to have faith either with or without charity is because faith and charity are different virtues.
Charity is different from faith. Faith is the habit of informing the intelligence. Charity is the habit of informing the will. Hence, the two cannot be the same virtue.
Also, faith is a means, but charity is the end. In theology, we say that charity is the form of all of the virtues meaning that charity is the end or goal and all of the other virtues are directed towards charity. Charity is the essence of spiritual perfection (not faith). The reason why is that all the perfection of the spiritual life lies in union with God, and it is only charity that does this completely.
This is how you can meet people who call themselves Catholic or Christian and they say they believe (maybe they do), they call themselves believers (maybe they are), but yet they still don’t love God because they are in a state of grave sin.
In other words, it is possible to have faith but still not love. One can believe in what God has revealed but still not love God.
But even then having faith is better than not having it. Faith, even when not informed by charity, is a gift from God and very important. Because, as long as I have faith, I have a foundation on which I can build. But if not, I am lost. That’s why the person who has faith but is in a state of mortal sin is better off than a person without faith in a state of mortal sin.
Divisions By Reason Of The Way In Which We Believe Things On Faith.
Here we are talking about a person can have either implicit faith vs explicit faith.
We have explicit faith when we believe a truth clearly and formally revealed in itself, e.g. The Trinity.
We have implicit faith when we believe a truth implicitly contained in another.
For example, since I explicitly believe in the infallibility of the Church. I implicitly believe all of the truths that she teaches (even if I cannot name them all).
Maybe I am a very simple-minded person, I don’t even know that much about the Catechism, but I have faith in the authority and infallibility of the Church. Since I have explicit faith in the Church, I have implicit faith in everything she teaches.
