MORAL CERTAINTY IN MOTIVES OF
CREDIBILITY
Protestant faith is total adhesion to Christ
without the need for intermediaries or help from reason. They
find it insulting to reason out their devotion to Christ. At
first sight, this seems praiseworthy; but, in truth, this is a defective
faith.
In the Catholic Church, faith must be built
on reason, because faith is a grace and, like all graces, it must be
built on nature. So, before we can make an act of faith, that faith
has to be built on nature, i.e. natural reasoning.
Therefore, before we can make an act of
faith we have to reason out logically the existence of God, the fact
that God gave us Divine Revelation and, as a consequence, we must
believe and act on what He had revealed.
The act of receiving and acting on truths of
revelation is called Faith. While the reasoning is based on
logic, the act of Faith is based on the authority of God.
While we use reasoning in making our logical conclusions, we
relinquish reasoning when we make an act of Faith.
The logical reasoning gives us moral
certainty about the things we believe in. Since this is purely
natural or human, we can accept or reject our own conclusion.
We may discover by reasoning that there is a God but reject His
dominion over us.
Moral certainty is not as good as
mathematical certainty. When we say two plus two is four, our
certainty is obvious to our minds. Moral certainty is not
evident to our minds but it is still certainty and sufficient for us
to safely make grave decisions in our lives, like a complete change
in our way of living.
We need this logical thinking to give us
moral certainty that the things we believe in are believable.
And it is on this natural reasoning that we build our act of Faith.
The grace of faith builds on this natural reasoning and thus we
develop absolute certainty. This is the Catholic Faith.
It has theological certainty, a certainty superior to natural certitude. . .It is supernatural certitude, the highest degree of
certitude. This is what makes a Catholic so sure that there is
a God, that God gave us Divine Revelation and the content of this
revelation is surely the only way to heaven. This certitude
makes us so sure of our beliefs that we become willing to give up our
lives for our beliefs.
(10-10-10)
|