MODULE TWO

Intellectualist Model: Faith as Believing

This approach focuses on the reasonableness of faith. Faith need not be incompatible with reason
and the findings of the sciences. Revelation in this model is basically understood as
communication of truths/doctrines and faith consists in intellectual assent to these revealed
teachings.

An intellectualist faith became predominant in the 19th century, which is in continuity with the
dualistic Hellenistic worldview that gives primacy to reason over feelings and the spiritual over
the material, expressed in the earlier theologies of Augustine and Thomas.

Augustine (354-430 CE) was influenced by neo-platonism which is a revival and religious
reinterpretation of the Philosophy of Plato (427-347 BCE) and flourished from the 3rd to the 6th
century AD. A major doctrine of Plato is the notion of the two worlds – the world of truth and
ideas and the world of the senses. The world of ideas is unchanging, fixed, permanent. This is the
world of the real. The world of the senses, on the other hand, is changing, ephemeral, and unreal.
This world is not the ultimate reality but simply a shadowy reflection of the world of ideas. As
such, the idea of what is human, just, and good, existed in the “heavenly” realm or world of
ideas.

Appropriating aspects of neo-platonism, Augustine taught that God places in the human mind the
knowledge of ideas that exist eternally in God him/herself. Revelation is through this direct
illumination from God and not through the senses or concrete experience. Faith thus consists in
inner enlightenment through contemplative knowledge and understanding. Contemplative life is
viewed as per se superior to the active life; such dualism is absent from the biblical
understanding of contemplation, which does not dichotomize between the body and the soul,
reason and emotion, the spiritual and material realities.

Augustinianism was the dominant theology till the 13th cen. when a few Dominican theologians
started dialoguing with the philosophy of Aristotle, a student of Plato. Thomas Aquinas (1225-
74) could not accept the Augustinian concept of revelation as illumination for it left aside the
function of the senses. Thomas found Aristotelianism more helpful: the world of ideas cannot be
divorced from the world of the senses. Our knowledge of God also stems from the senses. For
him, revelation is the communication of conceptual truths that can be known through the
empirical, visible, historical realities in the world. While recognizing the role of the senses in
knowing, Thomas, like Augustine gives primacy to the rational aspect of the person. Faith for
him is intellectual assent to the conceptual truths communicated by God.

While both Augustine and Thomas held reason as the most important part of the person, it is the
industrial revolution (18th-19th cen) and the age of enlightenment (18th cen.) that were the
immediate precursors of rationalism.

Rationalism is characterized by the following:

 1) It recognized only one norm for attaining knowledge, namely rational truth – the truth
dictated to the person by his/her autonomous reason (cf. Enlightenment)
2) Accordingly, it is through reason alone that one can arrive at the truth about God.
3) Consequently, rationalists rejected the belief in revelation containing truths that cannot be
explained by human reason.
4) In line with the spirit of the Enlightenment (18th cen. philosophical movement that gave
primacy to individual critical reason), rationalism holds a profound distrust of tradition
and authority. Reacting to the medieval culture (misnomered as “Dark Ages”),
Enlightenment thinks identified authority with blind obedience and since authority is part
of tradition, that tradition handed down from the past, cannot be reasonable, or should at
least be approached with suspicion.

The Vatican I document De Fide Catholica (1869-1870) rejected rationalism. It acknowledged

the importance of faith that goes beyond that which can be explained by reason: “Faith, declares
the Apostle, is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (DFC no.
13). However, it affirmed that faith is reasonable as well: “Even though faith is above reason,
there can never be any real disagreement between faith and reason, since it is the same God who
reveals the mysteries and infuses faith, and who has endowed the human mind with the light of
reason.” (DFC, no. 5)

While Dei Fide Catholica rejected rationalism, it was nevertheless a child of its time. Its notion
of faith is intellectualist; Vatican I basically understood revelation as communication of
propositional truths or doctrines. Faith, in turn, primarily consists in intellectual assent to these
revealed doctrines. It is an act of the mind assenting to the divine truth.

This doctrinal-intellectualist model was popularized in catechetics in the Philippines in what is

called the PESO approach: P is presentation of doctrines; E is elaboration employing Scripture
and tradition; S is speculative elaboration; O is orientation to daily life. What is important is
knowing the doctrines or content of our faith captured by certain “formulae”: three persons in
one God; two natures of Christ, etc.

The intellectualist faith also developed in the early 20th century among Protestant groups that
stress literal/fundamentalist interpretation of Scriptures. This model has been aggressively
propagated by Conservative Evangelicalism (19-20th cen.) and in the late 20th cen. by the
International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (alliance of confessing evangelicals, that started in
1977). If in the Catholic Church, God’s revelation is found primarily in church doctrines, for
Protestants, this is found in the Scriptures. Scriptures is regarded as a collection of of divine
affirmation, conveying literal truth, that is valid always and everywhere; conveys literal truth.
The Bible in the original manuscript is viewed as entirely free from error.

At this juncture, it might be helpful to assess the intellectualist model of faith.

Strengths

1) Revelation is propositionable and is reasonable

2) The model is attractive for those who want clear norms and standards
Criticisms
1) It depersonalized faith. God’s revelation is intellectualized and reduced to a set of
propositional statements or doctrines. Revelation came to be closely associated with
notions of creed, correct doctrine or a collection of doctrines. Faith is no longer a
personal encounter with Jesus.
2) Secondly, its concept of the person is contaminated by Hellenistic dualism. The human
person is conceived as a hierarchically constituted being, with intellect and will at the top
and the passions and emotions at the bottom. Its chief end is an act of contemplative
knowledge (in contrast to biblical understanding of contemplation).
3) It does not foster responsible commitment to social concerns. Its primary focus is the
immediate relationship of the soul to God.

Emmanuel S. de Guzman and

Agnes M. Brazal

Sources:

Dulles, Avery, sj. “The Meaning of Faith Considered in Relationship to Justice,” in The Faith
That Does Justice: Examining the Christian Sources for Social Change, 10-46, especially 14-22.
Ed. John C. Haughey. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1977.

Merrigan, Terence. “An Assessment of the Theological Content of De Fide Catholica,”

unpublished notes.