Annotation XLIII
”Say only by a word, and my servant shall be healed.” — Matthew 8:8
On justifying faith, and on unformed faith.
John Ferus, in the second book on Matthew, expounding this clause, seems to allude to the error of those who teach that justifying faith is nothing else than a confidence of the divine mercy remitting sins for Christ’s sake — and that unformed faith is nothing else than a historical and empty opinion. For thus he speaks: “Not always is [true] faith what we [commonly] call faith. We call ‘faith’ [merely] to assent to those things which are set forth in the divine histories, and which the Church proposes to be believed. This the scholastics [call] ‘unformed,’ and James calls a ‘dead’ faith. But what sort [of faith] is that which is dead, and lacks its own substantial form? Assuredly it is not faith, but an empty opinion. Far otherwise does Scripture speak of faith; for according to Scripture, faith is nothing else than confidence of the divine mercy promised in Christ. And below: Of this faith mention is made in the Gospel. ‘Whoever believes in the Son of God,’ says Christ, ‘is not judged.’ He speaks here not of historical or unformed faith, but of confidence of the mercy to be shown through Christ; for the highest faith, which Scripture commends, is nothing else than to trust in the gratuitous mercy of God. This is the true faith by which the just man lives; this one [faith] God requires of us,” etc. “You have an example of this faith in this Centurion; for you do not read that he recited the articles of faith, but you read that he approached God with great confidence. Whence it was said, ‘I have not found so great faith in Israel’; and likewise, ‘Go, and as thou hast believed, be it done to thee.’”
Dominic Soto, in [his] Annotations against Ferus, writes that this same definition of faith is also inculcated by the same author in [his] commentaries on John — especially on that [verse] from the third chapter of John, “The man believed the word which Jesus spoke, and he went [his way]”; in which place words of this kind are read: “We are taught what the nature of faith is — namely, to conceive a confidence about God, that he will save us; but how, and when, and through what afflictions, in no way pertains to us.” Examining this opinion, Soto disapproves Ferus, because, contrary to the catholic definition of the theologians, he does not say that faith is the whole assent to those things which God has revealed, or [assent] to the articles of faith, but [makes it] a confidence of the promises — which the Lutherans say suffices for justification, and which the holy Synod of Trent condemned in the sixth session,
canon twelve, in these words: “If anyone shall say that justifying faith is nothing else than a confidence of the divine mercy remitting sins for Christ’s sake, or that it is that confidence alone by which we are justified — let him be anathema.”