THE EXISTENTIAL ATTITUDE OF A (NON)BELIEVER
Bronė Gudaitytė
St. Ignatius of Loyola College, Kaunas, Lithuania
Skaidrīte Gūtmane
European Christian Academy, Jūrmala, Latvia
Keywords: Faith in God, Credere in Deum, Theoretical and practical aspects of faith, World of meaning and absurdity, Western Christian tradition.
Abstract:
Western Christian tradition, from the early Church Fathers (St. Augustine) to the great medieval theologians (Thomas Aquinas), constantly speaks of the fundamental difference between two forms of faith: „believing in God” and „believing God.” In our day, this relationship reveals the specific attitude of the believer towards God: „to believe in God (Christ) means to acknowledge the fact that God exists; […] to believe in God (Christ) means to surrender oneself completely to God, to become one with Christ, to become a member of his mystical Body, to accept the Christian faith in its fullest sense. Such faith is not merely an act of the mind. Still, it also requires the involvement of the will, the whole person’s devotion to God.”1 By believing in God (credere Deum), a person only theoretically acknowledges that God exists. However, by believing in God (credere in Deum), he professes Him with his whole life.
„Believing in God” as a theoretical aspect of faith and „believing in God” as a practical aspect of faith can also be distinguished in the case of unbelief. A person who considers himself an unbeliever may, on the one hand, deny God with scientific or philosophical arguments, i.e., decide the question of (un)belief on the level of knowledge, but live as if God existed. On the other hand, a person may theoretically acknowledge God but deny Him in their own life, i.e. resolve the question of (un)belief on the level of life.
Objectively, reality is the same for both believers and non-believers. However, subjectively, believers and non-believers experience their relationship with the world differently. This divides the same reality into different worlds – the world of meaning and the world of absurdity. By saying their fiat with believing love, Christians accept the world as a gift. Meanwhile, non-believers do not accept the world as a gift. The world remains foreign to them, just as they remain foreign to the world.
The purpose of this article is to discuss how people living in Western culture seek to give meaning to their existence.
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