We believe…
But what is it to believe?
To believe in the God described in the Creed, to have saving faith in the one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, involves three acts: knowing, assenting, and trusting. If a thing remains wholly unknown to me, then I cannot believe in it. To believe in the triune God first requires that I have knowledge of Him. This is how Paul establishes the necessity of preaching: ‘How are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?’ (Rom. 10:14). God must be encountered before He can be believed, and He is encountered in the proclamation of the gospel. Apart from it, we cannot get even to the knowledge that is the first act of faith. Or at least anyone beyond infancy cannot: David does speak of believing in the womb (Ps. 22:9-10), so things can work differently for infants, as they did for John the Baptist too, who was filled with the Spirit and rejoiced at the presence of the unborn Jesus (Luke 1:15;44). Infants are evidently able to have what Reformed theologians have called ‘seed’ or ‘root’ faith. We may think the same of people with impaired mental capacity. For everyone else, hearing the word is the prerequisite for belief.
