Dare We Hope by Hans Urs von Balthasar

Author:Hans Urs von Balthasar
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9780898702071
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2011-10-20T04:00:00+00:00

2. CHRISTIAN FAITH

It can hardly be out of place here to clarify our question by taking an initial look at the nature of Christian faith. That nature emerges most clearly from the situation of early Christian baptism, which—as the theology of the Fathers plainly shows us—“consists” in a “turning away from idols in order to consecrate oneself, through Christ, to the unbegotten God” (Justin, 1 Apol. c 49).1

This could take the following form: the person to be baptized, turned to face the west, renounced the devil and his temptations, then, turned to face the sunrise, responded to the threefold question of the bishop: “Do you believe in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit?” with a threefold “Yes”, after (or during) which he was submerged in the baptismal font. This trinitarian baptismal formula subsequently gave rise to the oldest credo formulas, all of which, of course, obviously contain the threefold division.2

Faith implies this change of bodily direction; con-version [German: “Be-kehrung”], “to turn oneself toward that in which one had still not yet had faith” (Clemens Alex. Strom II, i, 2), This turning toward is one of the whole person toward the God to whom one entrusts oneself (it is no accident that the Latin word fides means both faith and trust; the faithful, fideles, are the God-loyal) because this God appears to us as truth and faithfulness, the true, enduringly sustaining meaning of our existence. “Christian faith means understanding our existence as a response to the Word, the Logos, that sustains and maintains all things. It means affirming the fact that the meaningfulness that we do not create but can only receive has already been given to us.” “The words I believe could virtually be translated here as ‘I give myself over to. . .’ ” (J. Ratzinger).3

Thus we find, in the case of the Fathers, a distinguishing (constantly repeated all the way into the Middle Ages) of three levels within the act of faith, with only the third representing faith in its total fullness: credere Deum (belief that God exists), credere Deo (belief in what God says), credere in Deum (giving oneself believingly over to God).4 This third one certainly includes the two preceding forms, yet in such a way that “faith” implies, by its very essence, the response of the whole man.5 “As a personal call to man by God, revelation calls for a similarly personal response on the part of man.”6 “What, then, does it mean to believe in God? Believingly to enter into God” (Augustine, In Ioh Ev. tract. 29, 6). That this occurs in the community of the Church is self-evident to the Fathers, and yet they expressly refrain (as the credo formulas also do) from formulating: “I believe in the Church” (in ecclesiam); rather, the wording is: “I believe that the Church exists” (credo ecclesiam): with, and inside of, the Church, I believe and entrust myself to God.7

This unconditional entrusting-of-oneself-to-the-truth-of-God contains in itself a similarly complete hope in God and

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