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c) There are not only those who are unconcerned with the problem of the reality of God, but an increasing number who are not even unconcerned about the problem because it has never been a problem for them. Their lives, like all the rest, are woven of securities and uncertainties, facilities and difficulties, achievements and failures. Therefore, this life presents problems, and very serious ones, but all within life itself: they are inter-vital problems. Taken as a whole, life for these persons does not present any problems: it is what it is and nothing more. This is a life, which reposes on itself. Consequently, there is no occasion to talk about choice, indeed not even about will to fundamentality: this is the atheist life. It is not the case of an atheism placing itself “against” the reality of God. Being “against” is not essential to atheism. Every day sees the increase in the numbers of those whose atheism does not go against anything or anyone. It is also not the case that atheism is unconcernedness and still less agnosticism, but that it is a case of life lived in and by itself, “and nothing more”: it is a-theist life in the merely privative sense of the prefix “a”. And for such a person, since life is something, which undeniably exists, any appeal to another founding reality, outside or above it, would have to be the responsibility of the non-atheist. Atheism would be, therefore, the primary attitude, and any other attitude to refer to God in any of its forms (belief, agnosticism, unconcernedness) would need justification: the conditio possidentis, as a jurist would say, would be the fact of a-theist life. All the rest are options, and as a consequence, only “the rest” is optional.

Is this the case? To profile a-theism with precision is more difficult than it might seem at first glance. In the first place, What exactly is understood when it is said that life {282} taken in and by itself is not a problem? We have already pointed this out: it is not a question of inter-vital problems, but of problems taken in their entirety. And that is the question. Life taken in its entirety is life insofar as it is the constitution and construction of my being, of my I. Every one of the acts of life, and a fortiori the entire course of them, concerns not only what things are, other men, and even my own individual characteristics, but where in the midst of all this, the person is “in reality”. Things (in the widest sense of the term, including all men and my own individual reality) are certainly what configures my life. But this life is the act of making my I, of making my being by confronting all of reality. Things, therefore, configure the being of my reality precisely by their character of reality. This character of reality is thus what, in things and through them, determines my being. And as such it is a power to which I am religated: this is the power of the real. It constitutes the fundamentality of my life. Regardless of what vocabulary may be employed, this is a fact; moreover, it is “the” fact of life. To say that life is taken in its entirety consists, therefore, in saying that personal life is taken in religation, i.e., as determined by the power of the real. But, this power of the real is nothing outside real things. Now, this is quite enigmatic; indeed, it is a serious problem. And it is so for all men. It is a problem, which arises prior to that of whether this enigma is founded in the reality of God. That is why we find ourselves inexorably hurled to know intellectively what that power, that fundamentality, might be; this is indeed the dawn of an intellective process. And how do we know it intellectively? Some in fact have intellectively known this power, therefore the fundamentality of life, as {283}a function of an absolutely absolute reality, of God. Others intellectually know that the power of the real in things is a fact and nothing more than a fact, without need of an ulterior fundament: that is the pure facticity of the power of the real. And it is in this that atheism consists. It is not only life in and by itself, but life resting upon the pure facticity of the power of the real: this is fundamentality as pure facticity. It is then clear, in the first place, that in the a-theist person an intellective process occurs about the entirety of life, and therefore, for that person life is as problematic as it is for everyone else. What happens is that, perhaps without being aware of it, the atheist gives a solution to this problem; he gives it by means of facticity. Hence, and this is the second thing that must be pointed out, to resolve the problem of the fundamentality of life with pure facticity means eo ipso that the facticity of the power of the real is an interpretation, just as much an interpretation as the admission of the reality of God. The problem of the power of the real needs to be resolved, and to accomplish this it is necessary to give reasons, any kind of reasons, but to give reasons. Whoever admits the reality of God has to offer his reasons (we have done this in Chapter Three); but they must be given also by the one that sees the power of the real as pure facticity. Atheism is not, therefore, the primary attitude, the conditio possidentis, with respect to which one who admits the reality of God must justify himself; rather, atheism needs an homologous justification, since it is not a primary attitude. Theism and atheism are two modes in which the intellective process comes to a conclusion with respect to the problem of the power of the real. The facticity of the power of the real is not a pure factum, but an intellection, and like any intellection is in need of fundament. This fundament must {284} be achieved through the intellective way. Atheism consists, therefore, not in having no problem, but in understanding the power of the real, i.e., the fundamentality of life, as pure facticity.

In addition, however, the atheist makes a choice. The facticity of the power of the real is a personal possibility, and its appropriation by choice is just living life as something, which is sufficient unto itself, or autosufficiency of life. It is autosufficiency not in a pejorative sense, but in the etymological sense of something, which is enough to itself in its own line: a life that is what it is, and how it is, and nothing else. Autosufficiency of life is the choice for the facticity of the power of the real. And by being a choice is personal surrender to facticity, it is faith in facticity. Atheism is just the faith of the atheist. Faith, we saw, is formal surrender to a person as true. Hence, the atheist formally surrenders to his own formal reality as unique, and sufficient true personal reality. And it is in this surrender to himself as true that the faith of the atheist consists. The atheist understands himself as surrendered to himself, and accepts himself as such. Therefore he makes a choice; atheism is no less a choice than theism.

Consequently, atheism as a way of life has, despite what we are told, an intellective process with respect to the power of the real, and a choice with respect to it; these are the two moments of the will to fundamentality. Therefore atheism is the setting in motion of the will to fundamentality. This will unfolds itself into intellection of the power of the real as pure facticity, and into choice for the autosufficiency of personal life. It therefore is not an exception to anything we have discussed.

But just as in the foregoing cases, and {285} independently of this autosufficient facticity, the a-theist will to fundamentality displays an essential characteristic of every will to fundamentality. What is, actually, this autosufficient facticity? It is not the fact that one may be sufficient unto oneself for one’s own life, if by “life” one understands the interactions of the progress of vital actions, of situations, etc. Because living as we have already indicated, does not consist in the occurrence of vital acts, but in the very simple act of possessing myself configuredly as reality. And a-theism refers, as we have already indicated, to this aspect, according to which throughout the whole of life I advance by configuring my I, feature by feature. And about life so understood the atheist informs us that it is something, which ends in itself, and is the act of an I, which ends in it: autosufficiency is a mode of being absolute in its own line. This is what we must first draw out, that atheism is a will to fundamentality, which rests upon the I as absolute being in its own way. But this does not mean the atheist is not aware that he was born on a certain day and will die some day. On the contrary, the atheist believes that his own being is pure facticity and nothing more. Facticity is a mode of relativity of being: my I is something absolute, but only relatively absolute. This is the second aspect we must stress: atheism is a will to fundamentality, which concerns the I as something acquired in life, i.e., as something relative. And these two aspects “at one and the same time” constitute the will to fundamentality of the atheist as a will to be relatively absolute. Atheism is the interpretation of the relatively absolute being as autosufficient facticity. But this is just an interpretation; autosufficient facticity is only a mode of being relatively absolute. And because of this atheism reveals to us that, as radical principality, the will to {286} fundamentality is a will to be relatively absolute. In order to will oneself as autosufficient facticity, one must begin by willing oneself as relatively absolute being. The will to fundamentality is, therefore, will to be, to be relatively absolute, but to be.

d) Let us return now to the starting point of these analyses. We were attempting to conceptualize the “relation” between intelligence and faith. We recognized that intelligence and faith are essentially different acts: intelligence is apprehension of the real as real, and faith is personal surrender to a personal reality qua true. But these two acts are not disconnected; rather, are rooted in a unique attitude: the will to truth, which in our case is will to fundamentality. It is the will to discover the fundament, making of what is discovered the express fundament of my life, i.e., of the configuration of my I. Intelligence discovers the fundament to us and with it the possibility of my personal life. In order to incorporate it into my life, the will must choose to appropriate this possibility, and that is what faith is. Therefore, in the will to incorporate its fundament into my life, intelligence and faith are one at root. Intelligence is the intellective process, and faith is the fundamental choice. We next ask, What is the characteristic of this radicality? And we said that these two acts, intellective process and choice, are not only anchored in a will to fundamentality, but that this will is the radical principle of an attitude, which unfolds into intellective process and choice. Radicality is unfolding. Therefore, the will to fundamentality is essential to the human person as such; it is the origin of an attitude we inexorably have by the mere fact of being persons, and which unfolds itself into intellective {287} process and choice with respect to the ultimate fundament of life, in the constitution of the I.

Nevertheless, three facts seem to contradict this assertion: the agnostic, who does not find reasons and suspends faith in God; the one who ignores the problem altogether; and the atheist, who does not go beyond his immediate life. We therefore had to examine each of these three facts separately, and have been able to discover that agnosticism just as much as unconcernedness and atheism consist, despite appearances, in an intellective and choice process regarding the fundament; and therefore they all possess a true will to fundamentality. But this examination has uncovered something else besides: it has put before our eyes in a preeminent fashion the will to fundamentality as originating principle of the constitution of the I. The agnostic has allowed us to see that the will to fundamentality as a principle of attitude is the will to search; the one ignoring the problem has allowed us to see that the will to fundamentality as a principle of attitude is the will to live; and the atheist has allowed us to see that the will to fundamentality as a principle of attitude is the will to be. As a principle of attitude, the will to fundamentality is, therefore, will to be, to live, and to search. And now we shall be able to conceptualize in a unified manner these three characteristics of the will to fundamentality. In what does the principal unity of these three moments, and therefore the turning towards the reality of God, consist? At the risk of monotonous repetitions, we shall state it very concisely because it has been more or less expressly mentioned in the preceeding.

To do this let us tackle the question at its very root. Even though it may seem that we are returning to points already quite {288} remote in this study, it will be necessary to utilize them precisely in order to apprehend faith in God in all its human concretion.

Man, as we have said, from the beginning, is a living and personal substantive reality. His life consists in possessing himself, affirming himself (let us put it this way) as an I. The I is not my substantive reality, but the being of my substantive reality. The progression of one’s life is nothing but the configuration, feature by feature, of this I, of this being. It is in constituting himself as being of the substantive that formally living consists. This is the intrinsic and formal unity of the human being and living: to live is to auto-possess oneself as “being”, i.e., as an I. This being has two sources. One, that according to which man “is” a reality, which possesses itself, which belongs to itself, which is “its own”. It is in this that being a person consists. The I, the being of man, is a personal being. According to the other source, man by “being” affirms his reality as his own in the process of confronting all real things qua real. Therefore, belonging to himself is a belonging with respect to everything real; it is an absolute belonging. Personal being is, therefore, an absolute being. But since it is something realized, this I, this being, is only a relatively absolute being. A relatively absolute personal being is that in which to be I consists.

Man realizes himself as a being supported by real things and by other men that he encounters during the course of his life, and by his own individual characteristics. Which means that in this his personal being, man certainly is with real things (we now use “thing” for anything with which man lives), but that in which he is with them is “the” reality. To have or {289} to desire a real thing is to have or to desire a mode of being in reality; that mode is precisely the characteristic of that real thing. Therefore, it is “the” reality, when living with things, which dominates me and determines my relatively absolute being. Reality, as that which is dominant with respect to the constitution of the I, is the power of the real. To be inexorably dominated by this power is what constitutes religation. Through this power we find ourselves, therefore, religated to “the” reality. And “the” reality present to me in this religating power constitutes the fundamentality of my personal being.

When I actually become aware of reality, several possibilities intervene between things and their realizations. In fact, to be aware of reality is, eo ipso to sketch some possibilities of responding not only to this or to that, but of responding really by means of this or that to “the” reality. Man has to sketch the mode of being with each thing in reality: these are the possibilities. To respond, therefore, man has to appropriate some of them. This appropriation is formally volition. Volition has an essential moment of reality; that which the will desires is always but my mode of being in reality, i.e., my mode of being real in reality. Therefore it is, a feature of my I, of my relatively absolute being. Because of this, that which the will desires is always, ultimately, my relatively absolute being, not only materially (to realize my relatively absolute being in the material sense only is proper to every act of life, including the merely vegetative), but formally and reduplicatingly. That which determines my act is reality. And it is religation to this power of the real what now determines me to desire {290} formally in each thing known intellectively as real, my relatively absolute being. And since the actuality of the real thing in intellection is its real truth, it follows that the tendency, which has taken me to the volition of my relatively absolute being, has taken me to desire my being in real truth. Every will starts from and is nourished with and issues forth in my real truth. The will to be I is essentially the will to real truth. Therefore, my relatively absolute being incorporates in its entity itself my own real truth. Therefore, it follows that the will to real truth is the will to be relatively absolute being, living from reality and founded in it. It is radically and unitarially the will to be and to live.

Man, therefore, determines his personal being in a will to real truth, i.e., by the presence of reality as fundament of his life. Inasmuch as reality is present to me as fundament of the personal being of my life, it constitutes reality-fundament. Thus, any intellection of reality-fundament is intrinsically and formally the outline of the possibility to live foundedly; i.e., it is the ambit of a possible choice. Concerning reality-fundament there is no separation whatsoever between intellection and possible choices. Such choice is an appropriation of possibilities. And in this choice-based appropriation formally consists surrender as such. To surrender oneself to something is to appropriate, through choice, that something as possibility of my self. Essentially, volition is surrender.

What happens is that the power of the real, which determines me religatingly is only in real things, but is not identified formally with any of them nor with all of them together. This is “the” reality as enigma. From this it follows that {291} man as religated to “the” reality by the power of the real is so in a problematic way. In order to determine himself by the power of the real, man cannot allow himself to be dragged along by the real things with which he is, but must try to be in “the” reality with respect to which each thing is a mode of it. Therefore in each thing man must search for the reality in which to be. Whence arises the will to be relatively absolute in the process of living, has to be a will to search. To search for what? Not for the reality of an object,for its own reality, but the reality for me, i.e., the reality, which constitutes the fundament of the power of the real, which holds me religated and which opens for me the realities among which I must choose in order to be living. As long as this fundament is not intellectively known these possibilities for choice remain in suspense. To desire a thing as mode of being here-and-now in reality is, in fact, something which depends essentially upon that which in itself is actually constituting the power of the real as a moment of it. And since this power is the fundamentality of my being, of my personal life, it follows that to search for that which constitutes the power of the real to be here-and-now in reality is nothing but to search for the fundament of fundamentality. Fundamentality is a characteristic of reality which is given to me in religation and therefore, in reality itself, but in reality “as towards”. The terminus of reality “as towards” is something not yet determined. Consequently the terminus of this “towards”, i.e., the fundament, has to be searched for. Man has to search, indeed, for this fundament, and therefore, the will to real truth is a will to fundamentality. As such it is a will, not only to be and to live, but also to search. It is will to be living in search. The unity of these three moments is thus {292} conceptualized, and is the essence itself of the will to fundamentality.

It is in this problem, indeed, where the configuration of my relatively absolute being, of my I moves, not only in fact, but constitutively. The problematism of the power of the real is eo ipso the problematism of my own personal being: the constitution of my I is formally and inexorably problematic. And precisely because of this the will to fundamentality is the free surrender to what intelligence knows intellectively as fundament. It is a free surrender, i.e., founded. The will to fundamentality is will to founded surrender. The will to fundamentality is will to reasonable surrender. The will to fundamentality is in a radical sense a will, which from the ultimate root of my reality, unfolds itself as being, living and searching for a surrender, however deficient it may be, but a true surrender. It is the will to affix my being vitally and firmly on the power of the real, which, though inseparable from things and from my own person, cannot be identified without any further ado with things or with my person. And in this consists what I call “transcendence of the human person”: the characteristic by which the human person cannot be a real person unless including in his reality, as a constituent formal moment of it, a power of the real, which is more than the person and all real things. It is, ultimately, that characteristic by which the relatively absolute being of my reality incorporates in itself formally and constitutively the very happening of its fundamentality. It is not transcendence to the person, but transcendence in the person. Because of this, to surrender to the fundament of the person is not to go outside the person, but to surrender oneself to one’s own constitutive transcendence; and conversely, to surrender to the {293} transcendence of a person is to surrender oneself, in the person itself, to his intrinsic and formal fundament.

This surrender is the radical choice of the will to fundamentality, and has two aspects. On one hand, it sets in motion the march of intellection towards that fundament to which we are physically hurled. And in this aspect, it is intelligence, which has the last word. Its intellective process can reach a certain level of intellection of the absolutely absolute reality, of the personal reality of God sufficient for life, either to know it intellectively as inscrutable or as indifferent, or rather to submerge ourselves without God in the pure facticity of my relatively absolute being. Only intelligence can decide it. And in making a decision it gives reasons: from the one that more or less vaguely knows God intellectively to the atheist, with the agnostic and the unconcerned person somewhere in the middle, all without exception have to justify intellectively the terminus of their intellection. Here we have provided those reasons that, from my perspective, conclusively lead to the reality of God, and consequently determine the truth of that reality already known intellectively in mere intellection. So intellection is more than mere intellection: it is knowledge. Any demonstration of the reality of God presupposes in the human person a previous intellection of His reality. The proof is just the fundamentation of this intellection, and of that which is known intellectively in it: it converts this intellection into a demonstrative intellection. Due to this, no one is exempt from the necessity of providing reasons. Whether from the viewpoint of the agnostic, the unconcerned person, or the atheist any alleged proof can easily be regarded as an audacious and useless dialectic game. But this is beside the mark, because often it only means that one has abandoned oneself to the easier way, {294} in order to avoid the effort of the proof. On the other hand, when these positions are viewed from the perspective of the proof, they appear as essentially incomplete intellections. Thus, it is not a question of arbitrarily choosing between audaciousness and incompleteness, but to choose foundedly. And this founded option is the result of intellective discussion.

With that we come to the second aspect of the option. Depending on the type of terminus of the intellective process, the choice will be the auto-sufficiency of facticity, the unconcernedness facing the indifferent person, or the surrender to the personal reality of God. But the essential point is that this choice is always physically necessary and therefore always exists, first, by reason of the characteristic of the reality of its terminus: it is reality-fundament; and second, because the will to fundamentality is not just some desire to arrive at the fundament, but a desire such that in it, precisely because what is desired is fundament, the person is gambling physically and really the card of his own relatively absolute being. It is from this that the will to fundamentality acquires its exceptional seriousness. Theism just as much as agnosticism, unconcernedness or atheism, is a mode of the same will to fundamentality. Anything less, even if it were theism, would be radical frivolity. This will is the one that, as an attitude, constitutes the originating principle of an unconditional surrender to the real fundament at which the intellection arrives. The will to fundamentality is thus the originating principle of my personal life understood as constitution of my I. This attitude is, therefore, the one that unfolds itself into intellection and choice.

In Chapter three we expounded the reasons that demonstratively justify the intellection of God, and {295} force us to admit the absolutely absolute reality of a personal God as reality-fundament. This is the personal reality of God as possibility to realize myself as a person. The appropriation of this possibility is therefore the surrender to a personal reality qua true: it is faith. Faith in God is, consequently, the surrender to the transcendence of my person; and reciprocally, the surrender to the transcendence of my person is faith in God. This “reciprocity” is precisely the sense and scope of the proof I proposed. The will to fundamentality is, then, the originating principle of an attitude, which unfolds itself into knowledge of God and faith in Him. When one reaches a personal God, the will to fundamentality is the attitude of being a relatively absolute person “in” the absolutely absolute person, which God is. It is the will to seat the real truth of my person in the real truth of the person of God, transcendent in all things, and in my own person. It is not a question of going outside real things and of my own personal reality, but of being in these things and in my person fully, i.e., of reaching that in which their reality ultimately consists. If we were to see integrally the reality of a grain of sand, we would have seen God in this grain in His personal reality including the trinitary. It is in the attitude to reach a God, transcendent in me, that the principal unity of intelligence, and faith consists.

And so we have seen, in the first place, what faith as such is, and afterwards we have examined the “relation” between intelligence and faith. These were the first two questions that faith posed for us. But there still remains a third question, which is inevitable given the conception of faith, which we have been expounding. Faith, in fact, is the personal surrender to a {296} personal reality qua true. And surrender is appropriation through choice, i.e., volition. But then volition is not a mere intentional determination, as the enunciation of a judgement might be; rather, volition, by reason of being personal surrender, involves the totality of the person himself. Therefore, faith, like the surrender that it is, involves the entire concrete reality of the person who surrenders, and its own mode of surrender is also concretely personal. Thus, faith has a characteristic of essential concretion. What might the concretion of faith be? This is the third and last of the questions we proposed to examine.