The Virtue of Faith

St. Paul (Heb. 11:1) defines faith as “the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not.”

The act of believing, the act of faith, is the assent of the intellect under the motion of the will; both intellect and will are involved in the act of faith. But the virtue of faith is a habit of the intellect. Faith thus resides inthe intellect which assents to truth and holds onto itpossessingly. This fact is in no wise affected by the further fact that the intellect was moved to its assent by the will.

Whatever gives a thing a determinateness of being is called, in the language of philosophy, a form of that thing. What gives a thing its essential being in itself, is its intrinsic form; what comes to a thing from outside,lending perfection or effectiveness, is an extrinsic form. Now, the virtue of faith has its intrinsic form in being the habitual assent of the intellect to truth. But for the virtue of faith to be operative, to be living and active, it must be suffusedwith charity. Hence, it is often said that “charity is the form of faith.” Charity is here an extrinsic form.

And when charity (which is the grace, love, and friendship of God) is not in the soul, faith is not operative; itis lifeless; it is without its activating extrinsic form. Such faith is called formless. Thus, when a person commits a mortal sin, and thereby deprives his soul of charity, he does not lose the faith, but he renders it powerless to get him on to heaven; he renders the faith in him “formless.”

Faith with its extrinsic form of charity is living faith. This is the virtue of faith, that is a habit in aman that serves as the principle of good acts. Lifeless or formlessfaith is not a virtue.

Faith in itself is one virtue, and it is also one inits content of truths, that is, in its object. Of course, there isa subjective distinction between John’s faith and Richard’sfaith, inasmuch as these are two individual persons, each with his own faith. But the faith itself is one and the same, whether it bein John or Richard. Says St. Paul (Eph. 4:5): “One Lord, one faith, one baptism.”

Living faith is the first of virtues, preceding all others. As St. Augustine says (Contra Julian. iv), thereare no real virtues unless faith be presupposed. He speaks, ofcourse, of supernatural virtues.

Faith gives absolute certitude of the truths believed,because it is a virtue directly infused into the soul by God who is truth itself.