Faith rests on the speaker's authority, not on evidence in the things; formal object is divine revelation

First: up to now the Schools have held that faith, though it does not shut out reasoning, rests rather on the authority of the one who speaks. But faith does not rest chiefly on divine authority if the principal reason we believe the things of faith is a certain evidence of truth in the things themselves, not divine revelation. The definition of faith would also become absurd — that it is the assent we give to God speaking. For then through faith we would believe God speaking only materially, as the Schools say: we would believe the things God spoke, but not because God had spoken them. And it is absurd to define any habit of mind from its object only as material.

Suppose someone skilled in Peripatetic doctrine happens on a book of Aristotle, studies its teaching carefully, recognizes it as true, and even judges from the sharpness of style and manner of arguing that the book is Aristotle's. The assent he gives that doctrine could only absurdly be called faith held toward Aristotle speaking. Yet up to now the Theologians by common consensus not only define faith as assent exhibited to God speaking, and take its object to be God's Word and things revealed by God; they also teach that the formal ground of that object — under which faith apprehends it, and on account of which it receives and acknowledges it — is divine authority and revelation.