Dominus Iesus §7

7. The proper response to God's revelation is “the obedience of faith (Rom 16:26; cf. Rom 1:5; 2 Cor 10:5-6) by which man freely entrusts his entire self to God, offering 'the full submission of intellect and will to God who reveals' and freely assenting to the revelation given by him”‌.¹⁵ Faith is a gift of grace: “in order to have faith, the grace of God must come first and give assistance; there must also be the interior helps of the Holy Spirit, who moves the heart and converts it to God, who opens the eyes of the mind and gives 'to everyone joy and ease in assenting to and believing in the truth'”‌.¹⁶

The obedience of faith implies acceptance of the truth of Christ's revelation, guaranteed by God, who is Truth itself:¹⁷ “Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed”‌.¹⁸ Faith, therefore, as “a gift of God”‌ and as “a supernatural virtue infused by him”‌,¹⁹ involves a dual adherence: to God who reveals and to the truth which he reveals, out of the trust which one has in him who speaks. Thus, “we must believe in no one but God: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”‌.²⁰

For this reason, the distinction between theological faith and belief in the other religions, must be firmly held. If faith is the acceptance in grace of revealed truth, which “makes it possible to penetrate the mystery in a way that allows us to understand it coherently”‌,²¹ then belief, in the other religions, is that sum of experience and thought that constitutes the human treasury of wisdom and religious aspiration, which man in his search for truth has conceived and acted upon in his relationship to God and the Absolute.²²

This distinction is not always borne in mind in current theological reflection. Thus, theological faith (the acceptance of the truth revealed by the One and Triune God) is often identified with belief in other religions, which is religious experience still in search of the absolute truth and still lacking assent to God who reveals himself. This is one of the reasons why the differences between Christianity and the other religions tend to be reduced at times to the point of disappearance.

(15) Ibid., 5.

(16) Ibid.

(17) Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 144.

(18) Ibid., 150.

(19) Ibid., 153.

(20) Ibid., 178.

(21) John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Fides et ratio, 13.

(22) Cf. ibid., 31-32.