The Object of Faith

It’s late and I’m tired but the show must go on so today/tonight’s post is going to be brief. What is faith aimed at in the Christian life? For the Protestant scholastics there were two categories: First, Christ and then the Scriptures. Muller writes regarding the object of faith,

“obiectum fidei: object of faith;

distinguished by the scholastics into two categories: the obiectum formalis fidei, or formal object of faith, which is Scripture; and the obiectum materialis fidei, or material object of faith which is Christ, or more precisely, the whole revelation of God as it is fulfilled and given in Christ.

Richard Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally From Protestant Scholasticism, Term: obiectum fidei.

In short, Christ is what we believe in [material] and the Scriptures are the means by which we believe in Christ and His work [formal]. This interrelation between the formal and material necessitates the existence of a text capable of such a task i.e., to be the means whereby the Christian believes in Christ and His work. An admittedly corrupted Scripture is not explicitly capable of said task, while an admittedly pure text is.