Eklezjalny wymiar wiary chrześcijańskiej

Abstract

In the contemporary understanding of faith its historicosoteriological basis has been exposed. Thus faith in the first place is understood not so much as an act of intellectual acceptance of revealed truths and warranted by the authority of God (Vatican Council I - Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith Dei Filius) but as a personal reception of God who reveals Himself to man in particular historicosoteriological events (Vatican Council II, Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum). Initially this experience brings forth the fruits of a fully spontaneous act of assurance and trust in God, that is receiving Him, believing in Him, and joining in this history of which He himself is the Author. In the reality of the New Testament this faith leads necessarily to the Church. It is the Church herself which appears as a historicosoterioliogical event and in which Triune God always makes present in a lively and real, if mysterious, manner His soteriological works. Such presence and such acting of God in Three Persons in the Church is accessible to man in three ways. First, by means of proclaiming (and listening to) the Word of God, then by saying the Holy Liturgy, and within its frameworks, by celebrating the Holy Sacraments. It is just in these fundamental elements of the Church’s life that the present soteriological history becomes updated, alive and really present. And here it reaches its climax in the Paschal Mystery of Christ. In this context the ecclesial character of faith means that at its bases and in its centre there is a personal experience of God who gives Himself to man after a historical and soteriological manner in the Church and through the Church.