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C. THE DOCTRINE OF FAITH IN HISTORY.
1. BEFORE THE REFORMATION.
From the very earliest times of the Christian Church faith stood
out in the minds of the leaders as the one great condition of salvation. Alongside of it
repentance also soon became rather prominent. At the same time there was little reflection at
first on the nature of faith and but little understanding of the relation of faith to the other parts
of the ordo salutis. There was no current definition of faith. While there was a tendency to use
the word “faith” to denote the acceptance of the truth on testimony, it was also in some cases
employed in a deeper sense, so as to include the idea of self-surrender to the truth
intellectually received. The Alexandrians contrasted pistis and gnosis, and regarded the former
primarily as initial and imperfect knowledge. Tertullian stressed the fact that faith accepts a
thing on authority, and not because it is warranted by human reason. He also used the term in
an objective sense, as a designation of that which must be believed, — the regula fidei. Even up
to the time of Augustine little attention was devoted to the nature of faith, though it was
always acknowledged to be the pre-eminent means in the appropriation of salvation.
Augustine, however, gave the matter a greater measure of consideration. He spoke of faith in
more than one sense. Sometimes he regarded it as nothing more than intellectual assent to the
truth. But he conceived of evangelical or justifying faith as including also the elements of self-
surrender and love. This faith is perfected in love and thus becomes the principle of good
works. He did not have a proper conception, however, of the relation between faith and
justification. This is partly due to the fact that he did not carefully distinguish between
justification and sanctification. The deeper conception of faith that is found in Augustine was
not shared by the Church in general. There was a tendency to confound faith with orthodoxy,
that is, with the holding of an orthodox faith. The Scholastics distinguished between a fides
informis, that is, a mere intellectual assent to the truth taught by the Church, and a fides
formata (charitate), that is, a faith informed (given a characteristic form) by love, and regarded
the latter as the only faith that justifies, since it involves an infusion of grace. It is only as fides
formata that faith becomes active for good and becomes the first of the theological virtues by
which man is placed in the right relation to God. Strictly speaking it is the love by which faith is
perfected that justifies. Thus in faith itself a foundation was laid for human merit. Man is
justified, not exclusively by the imputation of the merits of Christ, but also by inherent grace.
Thomas Aquinas defines the virtue of faith as a “habit of the mind, by reason of which eternal
life has its inception in us, inasmuch as it causes the intellect to give its assent to things that are
not seen.”
2. AFTER THE REFORMATION.
While the Roman Catholics stressed the fact that justifying faith
is merely assent and has its seat in the understanding, the Reformers generally regarded it as
fiducia (trust), having its seat in the will. On the relative importance of the elements in faith