Here is an excerpt from Fr. Henry Grahams book, What is Real - TopicsExpress

Here is an excerpt from Fr. Henry Grahams book, What is Real Faith? I have paraphrased it to make it a little more clear, as the book is 100 years old. This is a fascinating distinction in different ways that Catholics and protestants use the word faith. I think this is a very powerful argument to use. -------------- Catholics and Protestants all agree that FAITH is necessary for salvation; for, according to St. Paul, we are justified by faith.” The Catholic view of FAITH is defined by the Council of Trent, which called faith “the beginning of human salvation, the foundation and root of all justification. But our agreement with Protestants ends with the question that necessarily follows, namely, WHAT IS FAITH? Ask the average protestant or evangelical, and you will find that by faith he means: trusting in Jesus Christ for salvation; believing that He shed His Blood upon the Cross and thus washed our sins away; and personally accepting Christ and His offered Redemption. A famous protestant confession of faith states that the principal acts of saving faith are accepting, receiving, and resting upon Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life, by virtue of the covenant of grace. Or, to quote the more familiar answer of the Shorter Catechism to the question: What is faith in Jesus Christ? Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace whereby we receive and rest upon Him alone for salvation as He is offered to us in the Gospel. According to this doctrine, when we have faith in Christ, Christ accepts us and looks upon us as righteous even though we are not really so. He imputes His righteousness to us; He covers over our sins with His merits, much as a fall of snow covers a mudheap. And so Luther taught: God cannot see in us any sin, though we are full of sin; nay, are sin itself, inside and out, body and soul, from the top of the head to the soles of the feet, but He only sees the dear and precious Blood of His Beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, wherewith we are sprinkled.” But this kind of Trust in Christ, even though it does fit within the dictionary definition as a type of FAITH, is not the true and proper and Scriptural meaning of saving FAITH at all. Yes, the word FAITH may sometimes mean trust in a person, belief in his power, and a general hope and confidence in such person. A child has this kind of faith in his parents, and Christians all have this kind of faith in Jesus Christ and in our Heavenly Father. You find this kind of faith in these Biblical passages: James 1:6: let him ask in faith, with no doubting; Luke 8:48: Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; Matt. 15:28: 0 woman, great is thy faith; and Matt. 14:31: “thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” But this is NOT the kind of FAITH that God demands of us as necessary for salvation--that kind of trust is not saving (or justifying) faith. St. Paul himself actually distinguishes this kind of faith (trust in the person of Christ) from faith (salvific/justifying) and considers the former type of faith (trust, assurance, confidence) to be A RESULT or EFFECT of saving faith: Eph. 3:12: “in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.” In the Catholic view, stated as such, we hold saving FAITH to be a supernatural gift of God, which enables us to believe without doubting whatever God has revealed (Baltimore Catechism); or, according to the fuller definition of the Vatican Council, a supernatural virtue by which, through the grace of God inspiring and helping us, we believe as true all that God has revealed, not on account of their truth as perceived by natural reason, but on account of the authority of God revealing them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived. This deeper type of faith is a total intellectual belief--an assent of the mind not just to the person of Christ, but to all of the Truth He taught; it is the acceptance of whatever doctrines God has taught, simply because He has taught them. The acceptance of Christ into my heart, as a Protestant asserts, is also an appropriate act of the will; but saving faith is the deeper kind of faith, where we not only trust in Christ and accept Him into our hearts, but we assent to everything He has taught us, both in His person, and in the Holy Spirit whom He sent. This, and nothing else, is true faith. The will must move the intellect to make this act of faith, and grace is required to move the will to operate, as Our Lord taught when He said: No man can come to Me except the Father, Who hath sent Me, draw him.” John 6:44. In the long run, therefore, it is all a matter of Gods mercy bestowing grace. For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; for it is the gift of God Eph. 2:8. Here is just one example to prove the Catholic view as such: Go ye into the whole world, said Our Lord, and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be condemned.” Mark 16:15, 16. Now, Our Lord is here speaking of justifying faith: he that believeth shall be saved. And the faith He speaks of is to be that faith by which the Gospel is to be believed. And what is the Gospel ? It is the whole Christian religion, the whole scheme of salvation as announced by Christ and the Apostles, in all its parts. Go and teach all nations. Preach the Gospel to every creature. Now, to believe the Gospel is an intellectual act, a work of the intelligence, accepting and assenting to the truths of the Gospel. It is not, as I said before, merely believing that Christ died for you upon the Cross, and trusting to that for salvation. That is only a part of Gods Revelation. A man stands up in a meeting, and says he is saved because God so loved the world as to give His only-begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him may not perish but may have everlasting life, and he that believeth in the Son hath everlasting life,” John 3:16, 86, and He loved me and gave Himself for me. Or he buttonholes his neighbour at an Evangelistic meeting, and asks him, Are you trusting in the Blood ? and Have you decided for Christ? and if he gets an answer in the affirmative, he will say : Hallelujah! You are on the Lords side! You are saved! I know all this, because I have seen it and heard it, and taken part in it. But that is not faith. It is a mere sentiment, a feeling, a persuasion I am afraid more or less fanatical concerning one single point of the Christian Revelation. It is narrowing faith down to one particular act in Our Lords Redemption, and ignoring all the rest. From this description you would never imagine that Jesus Christ taught anything about the Church, or the Sacraments, or good works. It is therefore essentially and fundamentally a false notion of faith a delusion and a heresy.