Lesson 18 –
Preambles to Faith & Theology of Miracles

Philosophy and the historical study of religion should play a role in our discernments about truth claims of various competing religious traditions.

Aquinas’s position holds that God gives us the grace of supernatural faith in the truth of Christianity and also provides us with signs of credibility or indications of warranted belief. The signs don’t procure the faith but they indicate outwardly, as it were, the truth of the faith, so that one can see that there is something reasonable about believing that God is at work in the mystery of Christianity.

Course Reading

Summa Contra Gentiles bk. I c. 4 | St. Thomas Aquinas

Summa Theologiae II-II q. 2, a. 10 | St. Thomas Aquinas

Excerpt from question 2, article 10 of the Second Part of the Second Part of the Summa Theologiae:

“The reasons which are brought forward in support of the authority of faith, are not demonstrations which can bring intellectual vision to the human intellect, wherefore they do not cease to be unseen. But they remove obstacles to faith, by showing that what faith proposes is not impossible; wherefore such reasons do not diminish the merit or the measure of faith.”

Course Listening

When Is Religious Belief Irrational? | Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P.

Related videos from earlier in the series

This episode was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this project are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.