Aquinas on Faith and the Consent/Assent Distinction

Aquinas on Faith and the Consent/Assent Distinction JUDITH BARAD THE CENTRALARGUMENTof this paper is to show that the account Thomas Aquinas gives of religious faith requires moral as well as intellectual activity for the completion of the act of faith. Aquinas's distinction between assent and consent may allow us to understand how a complete faith, which includes moral acts, differs from an incomplete faith which is indifferent to moral activity. If a complete faith involves the will's act of consent to God, and if God is the goal toward which the person is directed, then consent consists in an orientation of the person's entire life. To my knowledge nobody has, up to this time, presented a detailed discussion of the assent/consent distinction as it was originally developed by Aquinas. My discussion of Aquinas's doctrine of consent will aim at establishing three points: first, consent is a means to a personal encounter with God in His reality. Secondly, consent involves commitment to God's demands. Finally, consent leads to the enactment of that commitment in moral conduct. Aquinas's account of faith is the background of his assent/consent distinction . A mistaken interpretation of his account of faith would, therefore, lead to either a confused or insufficient understanding of this distinction. The most common erroneous interpretation attributes to Aquinas the reduction of faith to a set of religious propositions. John Hick notes that Aquinas's "intellectualist understanding of faith" rests on an "intellectualist assumption which restricts the entire discussion to propositional truths."' Pierre Rousselot also propagates the view that Aquinas is an intellectualist in matters of faith, A consistent theme of his book The Intellectualism of St. Thomas occurs in his introductory section. "Reality formally takes place by means of intellect and.., the destiny of the universe is linked with the noblest act of mind, the vision of God. Now all religion centers around the beatific vision. AccordJohn Hick,FaithandKnowledge(Cleveland,Ohio: Fontana Books,1974),26. [3111 312 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY ~4:3 JULY 1986 ingly.., those who delude themselves into believing that in the intellectualist system religious philosophy is something superadded as an afterthought simply miss the point."' This passage is one of many in which Rousselot stresses the importance of the beatific vision. But, we must ask, even if the beatific vision is the goal of faith, is it part of the act of faith itself?. For the experience of the beatific vision is knowledge and the experience of faith is not knowledge, as it consists in believing the unseen. Once the believer has the vision of God, he is no longer a believer. In the present state of things, the human intellect grasps being only through the medium of abstract concepts which reveal a very limited aspect of reality. Therefore, to claim that all religion centers around the beatific vision is to miss the concrete condition of the believer. And the highest act of the believer , who by definition does not see his object, is an act of life, that is, will. Moreover, the above passage of Rousselot's brings out a further observation which applies to those who claim that Aquinas is an intellectualist. Rousselot emphasizes the connection between Aquinas's doctrine of faith and his metaphysical doctrine. In a very abbreviated version the argument runs as follows: the intellect is the faculty that grasps being: God is pure being: therefore , faith is primarily the concern of the intellect. But, again, the problem is that such an analysis does not consider the concrete condition of the believer. This concrete condition cannot be captured within Aquinas's abstract metaphysical teachings. There is a sense in which human beings can be looked at through the viewpoints of metaphysical teachings but not in their complete integrity as human beings. Metaphysical teachings can only deal with human beings as separate substances without shedding light on the condition of the individual as a complete human being. Consequently, though all the divisions of Thomistic philosophy are interrelated, the most relevant division of Aquinas 's doctrine of faith is his psychological treatment of the human act. In this segment of his work we find his...