BOOK V
ON THE THEOLOGICAL VIRTUES
FAITH, hope, and charity are called theological virtues because they relate immediately to God, having God for their material and formal object. They thus hold the first place among the Christian virtues; they are of the greatest importance, are most meritorious; and sins against them are the most grievous. In moral theology the acts belonging to these virtues and the sins opposed to them are treated of; the treatment of the virtues is reserved to dogmatic theology.
PART I
ON FAITH
CHAPTER I
THE NECESSITY OF FAITH
I. FAITH is here understood in the sense in which it is used by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews [1] and elsewhere in Holy Scripture. It is an act of the intellect assenting to the truth of a proposition, not because it is evident to reason, but because its truth is vouched for by someone who knows and whom we can trust. The word has this sense among others in English. We say: " I should not like to pin my faith to such a proposition on that writer's authority." Here there is question of human faith resting on human authority. God can manifest the truth to us, and we believe that he has done so. " God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all in these days hath. spoken to us by his Son." Whatever God makes known to us mediately or immediately we are justified in believing on his authority. He can neither deceive us nor be himself deceived; and we are bound to believe all that we know God to have spoken or revealed, otherwise we implicitly
- ↑ Heb. xi.
