The Authority of God and the Act of Faith

This article seeks to contribute to the debate about the act of faith, which has been dormant since the late 1950s. The timeliness of this endeavour is suggested by contemporary culture's increasing disconnection from faith and religion. This effort is carried forward through a consideration of the voluntary aspect of the act of faith in which love is presented as both the product of, and the mediator between, the absence and presence of God. The traditional lines of the problem of the act of faith are examined in the thought of St Thomas and in the position adopted by the First Vatican Council with a view to clarifying the notion of the authority of God as that by which one believes. In this, God's authority is shown to have a real connection to the love that believes all things (1 Cor 13: 7).