Reply #7: This requirement of commitment, itself, is of profound importance for our [View All]

[Joe Chi Minh]

understanding of the nature of faith in the Christian sense, since just as secular faith and knowledge form a continuum, so do Christian faith and knowledge, and the two, with each other. Simple credulity, a blind, intellectual assent is not what Christ expects of us, but a credence based on scripture and tradition and backed by commitment, all of it at the prompting of the supernatural grace inspired by the Holy Spirit. It's not an intellectual exercise we are called to, but a demanding (though still more rewarding) way of life.

Faith or belief in whether a light comes on when you turn on the switch, or whether, for instance, the bulb will be found to have blown, is of no great moment in terms of our merit as human beings, although secularists have distorted our Christian culture to such an extent that worldly knowledge and understanding is currently viewed almost as the sovereign, supernatural virtue. If a young person suffers a terrible accident, it's perfectly normal to hear someone on the TV or anywhere, say: "And he/she was so intelligent!" (It's also a bit like that with a physically-attractive appearance.)

This, however, was definitely NOT Christ's mindset at all. I'm not a philosopher, but it is clear from the Gospels that the philosophical school of voluntarism is the basis of Christ's 'take' on 'belief'/'faith'. Essentially, it holds that we believe what we want to believe; this, of course, in the normal sense of the word, 'belief', as simple 'credence'.

If we opt to believe that the bulb will be found to have blown when we turn on the switch, statistics suggest that we may be sorely lacking in worldly intelligence, but whatever we choose to believe, would not entail a radical change in our world-view, particularly with respect to our personal morality.

Christian faith, on the other hand, does precisely that. It forces us to look outside ourselves to an external authority to define our moral obligations, irrespective of our and/or the world's preferred version of morality. That is why our faith/belief has this marked dimension of commitment. As we can see, also, our choice of morality is likely to strongly influence our sense of reality, Christ's and the World's 'take' on reality are poles apart.