It is in itself an act of the understanding, but it requires the influence of the will which moves the intellect to assent. The act of faith then is an act of the understanding, whereby we firmly hold as true whatever God has revealed, not because of its intrinsic truth perceived by the natural light of reason, but because God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived, has revealed it. The same council teaches that faith is a gift of God necessary for salvation, that it is an act of the intellect commanded by the will, and that it is a supernatural act. And it is a dogma of the Church defined by the Vatican Council that man is able by the natural light of reason to arrive at the certain knowledge of the existence of the one true God, our Creator and Lord. More commonly do we speak of the conversion of an infidel to the true religion, and most commonly of the conversion of a schismatic or heretic to the Catholic Church.Įvery man is bound by the natural law to seek the true religion, embrace it when found, and conform his life to its principles and precepts. The return of the sinner to a life of virtue is also called a conversion. In the Middle Ages the word conversion was often used in the sense of forsaking the world to enter the religious state. Dei, VIII, xxiv), and in later ecclesiastical Latin, a moral change, a turning or returning to God, to the true religion, in which sense it has passed into our modern languages: the conversion of St. convertor, whence conversio, change, etc.), in the Latin Vulgate (Acts, xv, 3), in patristic (St.

Conversion (from the classical Latin converto, depon.

Pius credulitatis affectus