The Nature of faith

[James H.]

I am very ignorant when it comes to many aspects of theology, so my question will probably be easy to answer.

Is faith necessarily tied to intellect? Another way to put this question might be: Can babies, after they are baptized, have faith?

Understand that this thread is not meant to question infant baptism, or even meant to necessarily be about baptism. It's basically an inquiry into the nature of Faith from the Orthodox perspective.

Thanks

James

PS: I will be out of the country for couple months so I may not be able to check in as often as I have been this past week. I'm just letting you know in case I don't respond immediately. I am still interested in what all of you have to say!

[Gilbert Gandenberger]

My understanding of this is that faith is driven by our will, not our intellect. Our intellect is to be the servant of our faith. We are commanded to have faith. We can be intelligently faithful or ignorantly faithful, but these are not differences in degree of faithfulness.

To illustrate, we cannot say that the most intelligent person would have the greatest faith as a result of their intelligence.

A baby can have the faith of a baby.

An example from Scripture - St. John the Baptist leapt while in his mother's womb in the presence of our Lord, who was also in His mother's womb. That was an act of faith, of an unborn child.

Travel safely, may God bless & keep you!

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Dear James,

If by intellect you mean the rational faculty in man, then I do not think that faith is necessarily tied to this although it can be aided by it. If you use the word 'intellect' however in its more Orthodox sense of 'nous' then I think they are necessarily connected for faith is the noetic knowledge of God & things divine.

This is why babies are baptised even though at that stage they cannot rationally understand the things of God. Many point by analogy to the fact that babies need food and know what it is before they can rationalise about it- and so with the things of the Church. They really do of course need the grace of Christ before they can rationalise about it. But about your specific question of knowledge- I would say that babies also know about & understand the things of the Church in their own way after they are baptised. Babies have the noetic faculty for we are created with it by God (this is another argument against abortion).

For example one can often see that babies who are brought by their parents to Communion are at ease with it; I have one baby in the parish who when he is brought by his parents to the Cup, has the most angelic smile on his face. On the other hand it is terrible to see the reaction of babies & children who are rarely brought to Church- often as they approach the Cup they begin screaming, flailing about and have the most frightening looks on their little faces. Somehow in all of this there is a close connection between the 'knowledge' which the baby and/or child aquires from being in the Church and approaching the Eucharist. Without fully understanding it ourselves we can say that babies and children 'know' where they are when they are brought to church by their parents.

In Christ- Fr Raphael
PS: have a safe journey James & a blessed Pentecost.