Preambles of Faith

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PREAMBLES OF FAITH

Classically, those conclusions taken from the natural and philosophic sciences that are of use in demonstrating the validity of the Catholic faith or of the apologetic that is designed to defend it. In the pyramidal structure of the 19th-century scientificohistorical apologetic, the praeambula fidei were presumed to have been previously demonstrated from first principles in the study of the several sciences that are related to apologetics, so that only relevant conclusions needed to be considered in the defense of faith. Thus, the objective validity of the human power to know, the existence and absolute nature of objective truth, the existence and spirituality of the soul, the freedom of the will, the existence of a personal God and His principal attributes, the ethical necessity for man to worship God, etc., were all included among the preambles of faith without which, it was felt, a scientific apologetic could not be constructed. These propositions were presumed to have been conclusions validly drawn in the sciences of epistemology, theodicy, psychology, and ethics. Any philosophic or scientific theory that impugned one or more of these fundamental propositions was to be rejected, while any theory that supported them was to be favored.

In more recent apologetic thought there is a departure, to some degree, from the closely reasoned and what many consider to be the almost rationalistic method of the 19th-century defense of the reasonableness of faith. The pioneer work of J. H. newman (A Grammar of Assent ) raised the question regarding the reasonableness of the faith of the multitude of Catholic believers who are unable to grasp the reasoning involved in the apologetic employed to demonstrate its reasonableness. His conclusion was that it is by the convergence of evidence and the congeniality of orthodox beliefs among themselves that one comes to a reasonable basis for belief, rather than by the syllogistic method employed in scientific apologetics. Within the structure of his thought, the metaphysical question raised is how could there be such a convergence of evidence if the point toward which all the evidences gravitated were not the truth. This approach widens considerably the traditional definition of praeambula fidei to include not only the propositions previously noted, but a number of evidences that are personalistic in character and may be recognized only vaguely by the ordinary Christian. Newman's approach left room for the investigations of depth psychology and a consideration of the influential but not fully conscious convictions of the individual that form the context of his entire reasoning capacity.

In the 1960s the a priori conditions of faith were sought in the historical dimension of human existence experienced as transcendental openness to the absolute mystery of being and thus predisposing man to accept the revelation of God-man as the concrete historical and social realization as well as the historical, objective expression of his existential openness (see Bouillard, rahner, Darlap). As a consequence Rahner takes for a starting point of the way to faith man as the potential believer who, thanks to the abiding presence of the eschatological Christ-event in the world, is already in possession of what he is to believe, e.g., God's self-communication in Jesus Christ. Preambles of faith are therefore an implicit faith as an abiding feature of man's existence oriented to explicit faith as to its objective and conscious self-expression in the society of believers.

Since man discovers more and more the unlimited varieties of his own historical tradition, and thus a common philosophical ground for all believers and unbelievers is found extremely difficult, in the 1970s the preambles of faith were sought rather in the empirical fact of the already existing believing community. This conception of the preamble of faith does not assume any philosophical notion of human existence or religion in general by determining a priori which philosophy or religion should be the most adequate for man. It takes the community of believers as God-given, Christ-sign-event as puzzling datum strong enough to raise in man questions concerning God's personal presence in Jesus Christ.

Preambles of faith will be defined according to the concept of the apologetics they are designed to support. In an apologetic designed to arrive at the necessity of belief (credendity), they appear in strictly demonstrable, propositional form, whereas in the more recent Biblical and personalistic approaches to apologetics that strive to show no more than the reasonableness (credibility) and desirability of belief, they assume a less rigid and wider aspect that is more a way of life than the foundation for a syllogistic analysis.

See Also: apologetics; faith.

Bibliography: g. muschalek, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. j. hofer and k. rahner (Freiberg 1957–65) 8:653–657. k. rahner and h. vorgrimler, Kleines theologisches Wörterbuch (Freiburg 1961) 296–297. m. nicolau, Sacrae theologiae summa, ed. Fathers of the Society of Jesus, Professors of the Theological Faculties in Spain (Madrid 1962) 1.1:44–45. m. c. d'arcy, The Nature of Belief (New York 1931; rev. ed. 1958). a. dulles, Apologetics and the Biblical Christ (Westminster, Md. 1963). j. h. newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (London 1870). j. alfaro, "Preambles of Faith," Sacramentum Mundi. An Encyclopedia of Theology, ed. k. rahner, c. ernst, et al., 6v. (New York 1968–70) 2:324–326 h. bouillard, The Logic of Faith (New York 1967). a. darlap, "Theologie der Heilgeschichte," Mysterium Salutis 1 (Einsiedeln 1965) 1–156. t. horvath, Faith Under Scrutiny (Notre Dame 1975). b. j. f. lonergan, Insight, A Study of Human Understanding (London 1957). k. rahner, "A Way to Faith," Sacramentum Mundi. An Encyclopedia of Theology, ed. k. rahner, c. ernst, et al., 6v. (New York 1968–70) 2:310–317.