Louis Roy begins by speaking of ‘the faith experience’ rather than simply ‘faith’. In spite of current scepticism, and widespread rejection of religion, human beings continue to search for meaning, fulfillment and truth. His goal is to broaden the consideration of faith to include these aspects. It therefore includes also a dimension of hope, an affective as well as an intellectual dimension, a subjective but not necessarily subjectivist aspect (he relies significantly on Bernard Lonergan for whom genuine objectivity is the fruit of authentic subjectivity).
The book begins with the contemporary need for hope (chapter 1), a need that becomes clear when the spiritual quest is understood as a descent into the depths of human experience. Roy believes that this anthropological starting point opens the door to a more effective contemporary presentation of the gospel faith. At the same time, he distinguishes his method of ‘interrelation’ from Tillich's ‘correlation’, the former meaning ‘a dynamic of mutually critical correlations between the Christian traditions and present-day perspectives’ (p. 16). It is not simply a question of trimming the answer of faith to the shape and size of human questions even while faith, understood in the broad sense that he proposes, does respond to those questions while raising even more.
The second part involves listening to voices from the past in regard to this human quest (chapters 2–5, the Bible, Aquinas, Newman, and Lonergan). Roy picks out just some points in what the Bible says about faith. One is to see it in the perspective of hope – ‘Christian faith is a hope founded on the resurrection of Jesus’ (p. 45). Another is to highlight what the Bible says about blindness and deafness, the need in human beings for illumination if they are to see and for healing if they are to hear, the need for witnesses of various kinds if faith is to be made credible. Much attention is given to the affective aspect of faith emphasized in the Johannine writings and to the need for faith in Christ, the Logos incarnate.
The consideration of Aquinas is also selective, picking out just those characteristics of faith in which Roy is interested. So he explains how, for Aquinas, faith can never be separated from love, is always affective and cognitive, is a matter of hope and assent, and furthers the reach of natural reason in its quest for the good of the intellect which is truth. He considers finally Aquinas's use of Augustine's distinction of credere Deo, credere Deum and credere in Deum, another way in which the complexity of the experience of faith is made clear.
Roy's interest in Newman is concentrated on A Grammar of Assent with its distinction of notional and real apprehension, and its development of Aristotle's phronesis into what Newman calls ‘the illative sense’, the sense that makes inferences based on converging evidence and thus justifies real assent in matters of religion. Although Newman might seem to go beyond Aquinas with a broader understanding of the experience of faith that includes imagination and moral action, a less rationalistic reading of Aquinas, as well as recognition of a shared indebtedness to Aristotle, will serve to strengthen the sense that in Aquinas and Newman we have two Christian believers thinking about the same questions in a very similar way. The chapter concludes with a consideration of Newman's use of the triad priest-prophet-king, developed among others by Friedrich von Hugel with his threefold ‘elements of religion’ which provides Roy with a structure for the experience of faith that carries through to the end of the book. A healthy believing will balance appropriately the elements of royal, priestly and prophetic dynamisms (authority, emotion, reason). When things go wrong it is because the right balance of these three elements has been lost.
The turn then to Lonergan, home ground in a sense for Louis Roy, will not be as easy for many of his readers who might already be familiar with the Bible, Aquinas and Newman. He brings alongside the material already presented Lonergan's understanding of the different conversions that arise where the spiritual quest is faithfully pursued: moral, intellectual and religious conversions. Here, he says, ‘faith is the knowledge born of religious love’ (p. 133) – authentic subjectivity bears fruit in the recognition of objective truth. He considers objections to Lonergan coming from Lindbeck and Tracy but the sources he gives for these are somewhat dated and seem to reflect ‘in-house’ debates among disciples of Lonergan. If Lonergan's concern is method rather than presenting particular objects for belief, at what point is faith in Jesus Christ to be introduced? Or does the experience of faith, as Lonergan expounds it, remain open to the possibility of arriving at a variety of concrete religious positions?
The final part returns to the present situation and offers some pastoral applications (chapters 6 and 7, and the Conclusion). The three elements identified by Newman and developed by von Hugel are considered again, as three structuring dynamisms (or factors, or vectors: the language is fluid) within the experience of faith. These dynamisms serve fulfillment, meaning and truth, precisely the things human beings continue to seek according to the introductory chapter of the book. At this point there is a long consideration of self-deception (is all faith bad faith, wishful thinking?) and a consideration of the encounter with Jesus Christ as actualizing and concretizing these three factors. Explicitly Christian faith is always waiting in the wings, the moment in which it is meant to come centre stage is not so clear.
Roy anticipates that some will find his approach too progressive while others will find it too conservative. I wondered whether the book should have been either much longer or much shorter. A shorter book would have allowed for a more concise and precise presentation of what is an important argument. As it is the schematic consideration of the four main sources, with many passing references to other interesting contributions, may leave many readers dissatisfied. The chapters on Aquinas and Newman fit together whereas a bit more work seems to be needed to integrate Lonergan's methodological approach with those of his two classical predecessors. There is no doubt, though, that the pastoral concern that gave birth to the book – to offer contemporaries an informed reflection on the experience of faith in its intellectual, affective and social aspects – is an urgent one.
