Believing Someone vs. Believing in Someone - 2 - G.E.M. Anscombe

Below will be found another quote from the article Faith. Anscombe is addressing the problem of making a group of learned men the sole guardians of faith. It is fine to have such men carefully guarding the faith - the Catholic faith in Anscombe's context - but did they really know and control all that is to be said and experienced about it? I love the phrase "scattered through different learned heads." These learned heads' faith was not more valuable in God's eyes than the faith of the most simple believer.

Her paragraph below shows that Catholicism is indeed populist as well as intellectual and rational. Truth of the Gospel should be as widely broadcast as possible and believed by everyone no matter their station in life.


Here is the quote from the book Faith in a Hard Ground - article on Faith - p. 42 where Anscombe is talking about certain changes that the Catholic Church had made.


What about the faith of the simple? They could not know all these things. Did they then have some inferior brand of faith? Surely not! And anyway, did those who studied really think they knew all these things? No: but the implication was that the knowledge was there somehow, perhaps scattered through different learned heads, perhaps merely theoretically and abstractly available. In the belief that this was so, on was being rational in having faith. But then it had to be acknowledged that all this was problematic - and so adherence to faith was really a matter of hanging on, and both its being a gift and its voluntariness would at this point be stressed.

Here's the punchline.:

For everyone is to have faith, and their learning doesn't give them a superior kind of faith. Everyone is to run; and few are road sweepers.

Isn't she calling the learned men the road sweepers, the ones who clean up messes and make the road a safer place? Not sure, but all of us - simple and learned - have to run the race of faith.

I will ask this, even though Anscombe did not. Who do we keep an eye on as we run? Jesus Himself, of course. He is also our closest Friend and Companion in the race, cheering us on and picking us up when we fall. He must be close or we could not look to Him as we run. He is as close as close can be.

Hebrews 12 English Standard Version (ESV)

Jesus, Founder and Perfecter of Our Faith

12 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.