Jump of faith.

The image of the clown and the unsuspecting villagers – how we have shown – is insufficient. We wanted to illustrate the relationship between belief and disbelief. But faith remains in the neighed world. In our introduction to Christianity, we ask the fundamental question: what does it mean when a person says: “I believe”? It is an entirely temporal question. Given the history that has become part of our consciousness and knowledge of man’s consciousness, we ask ourselves: what does the Christian confession want to express by the word “I believe” today, bearing in mind our existence and attitude towards reality? We thus arrive at an analysis of the text, forming a guide to our reflections: the Apostles’ Creed, the introduction to Christianity, and a summary of its fundamental truths. It begins clearly with the words “I believe”… We will not yet explain this word based on its content; we will not ask why the word ” I believe” appears in a certain form, with certain content, and in connection with worship. The service text and a certain content indeed mark the meaning of the word “Credo,” but the word “Credo” also carries and determines all the following and the framework of the service. We will leave both out for the moment and instead think carefully about its attitude when a Christian confesses his Credo and thus the core of Christianity, namely his faith. We often assume without thinking that “religion” and “faith” are the same thing, and that every religion is also a “faith.” But this is only true partially. The Old Testament was not referred to by the word “faith,” but the word “law.” It was a particular order of life in which the act of faith had yet to have its meaning. In the Roman religion.

The word religion meant the observance of certain ceremonial customs; belief in the supernatural may have been absent, but one was not without religion. Religion is a system of ceremonies in which careful observance is decisive. Such is the whole history of religion. This outline only indicates how little we understand when a Christian utters this basic word “Credo” when he calls his attitude to reality an attitude of faith. We are interested in the meaning the word “Credo” has. What position is meant by this word? How is it possible that the involvement of our self, the merging of our self with this “I believe,” is so difficult? How is it that our present self is so difficult to identify with the “I” of previous generations of believers? Let’s have no illusions. The creed, to transform the schematic “I” of the principle into a personal “I” with soul and body, has always been an exciting and almost impossible thing. Instead of reviving the schema with soul and body, we have become mere schematics. Perhaps the faithful will ever lament: in the Middle Ages, our countries were, after all, religious. This is not entirely true. If we look behind the scenes of history, we find that many people allowed themselves to be dragged by the environment. The number of people internally involved in the vortex was relatively small. History shows that faith was just a given system of life for many, and the real meaning of the word “believe” was as distant to them as it was to many people today. Why? Because between God and man, man can only see with his eyes what God is not, and therefore, God – an invisible being – remains and will always remain outside the field of vision of man. We cannot see Him. Man, however, moves in the space of seeing, of touching – he cognizes with his senses. But in this space of the reasons, God never appears; even if that space were expanded, I don’t know how far. This vital message about God is already essentially is in the Old Testament: God does not lie outside our field of vision so that we could see him if we walked a little further, farther away. No, God stands substantially outside our field of vision, no matter however far that field extends.

Here we see already the outlines of what the word Credo – I believe. One is not content with what one sees but seeks another approach to reality. He calls faith, and in it, he finds the decisive moment of his view of the world in general. If this is the case, the word “Credo” contains the fundamental relationship to reality. It is not a specification of this, but a fundamental attitude to being, existence, the self, and the whole. If something is invisible, it doesn’t mean it’s unreal, but the opposite, this invisible truly real carries and makes possible all other realities. What makes reality possible gives man human existence and enables his human existence. Let us put it another way: To believe is to decide for this invisible that we encounter at the core of our existence, as a point – and this invisible is at the same time necessary for our existence.