The Rationality of Faith

“You are right to say that Faith is an internal relationship with God, first given to us as a gift of Love for us and then freely reciprocated to God in our Love of Him. But that gift extends beyond just God and the self. If we are made in the image an likeness of God and of God is Trinity from whom all Creation comes, then the Love we experience with God, necessarily, must be extended to others. This is where Faith becomes Religion...this is where personal belief becomes universal Vocation. If I Truly Love my students then I should want them to know that they are eternally Loved and in that relationship with God, they can learn to better Love each other. Ultimately, this is the Gospel message.”

We cannot internalize Faith. We cannot look at Faith as only a personal experience. It may be a personal choice, at least initially, but to believe in Jesus is to believe in the unity and complementarity of all human beings and the persons of the Trinity. Faith may be a personal choice, but it is a choice to be in relationship with all. When I wrote this response to a Catholic high school teacher, I was addressing something he had written that was theologically and anthropologically problematic. He had suggested that it was only his job to really create a space where our students could explore their own Faith and to find ways to express and live that Faith, openly. He did not say anything about expressing the Catholic Faith. There is not a problem with what he said, not exactly, but it is not enough. But Catholic Faith is rational in that it takes personal belief and asks how it helps all of humanity to experience the Love of God. To say that Faith is just a personal choice makes it entirely subject to the individual and their own experience and interpretation. But to what end? What is the point of a Faith that is only internal?

St. Thomas More Catholic Church in Centennial, Colorado. Jesus and Thomas More both teach us how Faith cannot be isolated to the individual. It must be public as well. (photo P. Smith)

            Education is communal, usually.  It is normally oriented toward a greater society for the better of that society. Catholic Education, in particular, should be oriented toward not only the greater society of humankind, but to a relationship between that society and God. Therefore, it is not in the character, the anthropological character, of Catholic schools or humans, for that matter, to promote any idea that Faith should be limited to the individual. Perhaps the natural question is to wonder how can we teach this idea to people who do not believe in God or who have very different ideas about who God is. As a teacher, I have found myself grappling with this problem. I suppose the only way I know how to respond to this question is the make the claim that any rational Faith will always seek unity as opposed to disunity. Any rational Faith will always promote an idea of Love as opposed to an idea of sin. Any rational Faith will seek Mercy rather than condemnation. I challenge my students or any critics who claim Faith to be an individual choice rather than a choice and a communal action to answer my own question: “Is personal or individual Faith rational?” In Catholic schools, we need to help ourselves and our students to start looking at Faith in a rational manner. We need not just to “feel” about Faith…we also need to think about it.