The description of this obedience or response of faith is required, thus, since revelation offers a vision of God to whom we should give our total allegiance and of whom we can also give some account, we can speak of faith as involving both ‘believing in’ and ‘believing that’. A trusting and obedient adherence to Jesus Christ (?des qua) allows believers to express something of who he is and what he has revealed, giving their assent to truths about God that have now been disclosed (?des quae). An inference from Paul, who mentions the obedience of faith by which we obey the Lord (Rom. 16:26) – fides qua – and the confession by the lips (Rom. 10:9) – fides quae. 

This version of faith obviously corresponds to the two models of revelation primarily as the experience of a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ which initiates a con?dent commitment of one’s life to Christ, and revelation secondarily as propositions about God that are now disclosed and known to be true, or the confession of faith. This commitment and confession (both made possible by God) support a con?dence that one’s future here and hereafter is safe in the hands of God.

This ‘believing in’ and ‘believing that’ also involve accepting the foundational witness to the experience of God coming from the Old Testament and the New Testament (O’Collins, 2011). This foundational witness coupled with Tradition, require some interpretation and promotion, which is granted by the authentic duty of the church’s Magisterium. The Magisterium has long been seen as the custodian and authentic interpreter of Divine revelation. Thus, as seen in the Catechism, the church expounds explicitly on this deposit of faith, and how faith is to be attached to the revelation of God. The Catechism is therefore divided into four main parts namely;

1. The Creed – the faith professed
2. Sacraments – the faith celebrated
3. Christian morality – the faith lived
4. Prayer – the faith prayed

This emphasizes the centrality of faith of to what is the Divine self-communication, whether it is personal or public. Lawrence Feingold in his book, Faith Comes from What is Heard (2016), discusses the essence of faith from the Biblical definition of faith as “assurance of things hoped for and conviction of things unseen” (Heb. 1:1). He distinguishes first and foremost between the human faith and divine faith, the former which is the free and personal assent of the will to what is seen either by the intellect or the sense and the latter is the supernatural gift from God that illumines and guides human faith to assent to God.

It should be noted as Feingold did, that the Divine self-communication, requires some disposition of faith, as Jesus spoke about the disposition for faith most directly in the parable of the sower, which is presented as a parable of fundamental importance (Mark 4:13). The four kinds of soil represent four different dispositions of the heart for receiving the seed of the sower, which represents the word of Christ. Jesus is warning the disciples that not all—but only one group among four—have the proper dispositions for receiving the Word in faith and persevering in it.

CONCLUSION

Thus far, we have seen the indispensability of the human experience to the Divine self-communication and the place of faith. Without the human experience there is no revelation and without faith there is no experience of Divine revelation. Faith is engagement with the message of Divine Revelation. The Catechism tells us that “faith also involves giving free assent to all that God has revealed” (CCC. 150). In other words, we say ‘yes’ not only to God but also to the truth or message that he has revealed— the truth which we see above is given to us in Sacred Scripture and Tradition, and protected for us through the Church’s Magisterium. Needless to say, coming to a point of total faith in God, total surrender to him and his ways, and total adherence to his revealed truth, is a lifelong journey demanding tremendous cooperation with God’s grace.