(Editor's Note: This is the first in a seven-part series designed to break open the beauties of the Catechism in hopes that more Catholics will begin exploring its riches for themselves. There is a veritable wealth of information in the Catechism, which is itself but a small reflection of the riches of the Deposit of Faith. So, if you’ve not been properly introduced, meet the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the most beautiful fruit to date of the Second Vatican Council. May the two of you enjoy a long and lasting relationship!)
The Catechism of the Catholic Church
Part One: The Profession of Faith
Section One (26-184): “I Believe” – “We Believe”
God can be known with certainty from human reason alone, and yet believing, or faith, is possible only with the help of the Holy Spirit. What may seem like a contradiction in these two statements is in fact a reflection of two truths about faith: faith in God does not contradict the reason that can discern the existence of God, but nonetheless is itself a gift of God.
The Catechism makes the case rather simply that the proofs of the existence of God attainable by reason are the beauty and order of creation (the physical world) (32) and the makeup of the human person, who has always sought after goodness, beauty, truth, and the infinite (33). In this way man can reason himself into knowledge of a participation in “Being itself,” a reality that St. Thomas says “everyone calls ‘God’” (34).
Thus can man know that there is a God. This God, however, is not satisfied with mere knowledge. He desires intimacy with his creation, and therefore reveals himself to man and gifts him with the grace to believe in God with faith. In telling us this, the Catechism adds that the reasoned proofs of God’s existence “can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason” (35). Moreover, this entirely reason-able connection to God “can be forgotten, overlooked, or even explicitly rejected by man” (29). This is precisely why, the Catechism tells us, man needs grace to believe. Paragraph 37 cites Pius XII’s Humani Generis on this point: “The human mind…is hampered in the attaining of such truths, not only by the impact of the senses and the imagination, but also by disordered appetites which are the consequences of original sin.”
A key distinction here is the difference between knowledge and faith. While we may attain knowledge of the existence of God via our reason, he is still not directly visible to our senses (cf. Pius XII as quoted in 37). In its discussion of the faith of Abraham, the Catechism puts forward as the definition of faith Hebrews 11:1: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (146). To know there must be a God is one thing; to believe in this God and live and act as if he is real is another. After all, we cannot see this God. Skeptics will jeer; those who have rejected the reality of God will tempt others to disavow what their reason and the grace of God lead them to believe.
“Faith is a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by him” (153). By responding to God with faith, man is cooperating with the divine grace of God, which is gifted to him and which calls all men to believe and enter into relationship with God. In a wonderfully complex sentence typical of St. Thomas, the Catechism quotes the Angelic Doctor: “Believing is an act of the intellect assenting to the divine truth by command of the will moved by God through grace” (155). The Catechism goes on to state that our reason cannot be in conflict with our faith, since both come from the one God, “who can neither deceive nor be deceived” (156; cf. 159). After all, we are made “in the image of God” (36) and therefore must be capable of aligning our reason and faith in our Creator.
So, we can know that God exists with our God-given reason. God invites us into intimate relationship with him through revelation and gifts us with the ability to believe in him by faith. We need this relationship, this gift of faith, to be saved and to spend eternity with him in paradise (cf. 161). Once one has arrived at an understanding of this and comes to believe in it, not living in accord with this divinely inspired knowledge would be entirely contrary to reason. Such unreason would be strikingly inconsistent with belief in the God who must exist.
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Next Friday: “The Power of God”
Mark Dittman is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the National Catholic Register, Lay Witness, and Catholic Dossier. He can be reached at [email protected].
