Is faith a single gift from God, or something we can grow in ourselves?
Robert Sungenis answers that there is one faith, as Ephesians 4:5 says, but believers hold it in different degrees because the Spirit gives gifts by measure, so faith can grow. He holds that faith begins entirely as God's gift through prevenient grace, as Trent teaches, rejecting both Pelagian and semi-Pelagian views, and that free will then decides whether to keep it.
A viewer asks how many kinds of faith there are in the Catholic religion, having heard both that faith is a gift from God and that it is something one can personally work on and grow in.
Answer
According to Ephesians 4:5 there is one faith, one Lord, and one baptism; if anyone tells you there are two faiths or two baptisms, no. However, the Catholic religion teaches that God can give more grace to someone who has shown by their free will that they want more faith; it is called the gift of faith, and each of us has a certain degree of faith, because the Spirit gives these gifts out by measure, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12. Some Christians have great gifts, some little, but it is all the same faith; they just believe it more strongly. So you can grow in faith, but it is the same faith and the same religion. Everything starts from God, even the power to believe; if you think your faith is something you generate on your own, you are a Pelagian, and if you think it is partly you and partly God from the start, you are a semi-Pelagian. Our theology is that faith is first a gift of God, what we call prevenient grace, which you can read about in the Council of Trent; God takes the first step and leads men to believe, and then our free will decides whether to keep that gift and cooperate with it.