Charity is the love of God or friendship with God.
But in order to know the object of love one must first have the virtue of faith, so faith is prior to charity in this way.
Does knowledge of the existence of God obviate the need of the virtue of Faith? No, because there are revealed truths which are inaccessible to natural human reason, such as there are Three Divine Persons.
Can one know at two different levels? According to Aquinas, once one knows that God exists, one cannot have faith that He does exist. But is this really the case? Can the intellect assent 'twice' insofar as there are two reasons for it to assent -- one according to the dynamism of faith, one according to its own natural power? Or does the latter completely remove the necessity of the former?
How is faith a gift? Does the act of faith surpass the natural capacity of the intellect? (No.) How is it supernatural? (Efficient causality alone?)
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