dhawk@lll-crg.llnl.gov (David Hawkins) (09/27/89)
Thomas Merton: from "The Ascent to Truth" p. 96-7.
"If you begin juggling with a system of clear ideas which, you think,
delimit and circumscribe the Being of God, you will, by that very fact,
begin judging God according to the measure of your ideas. In doing
this, you destroy God -- in so far as it is intellectually possible to
do so -- in order to replace Him by your system. This, says Saint
Gregory of Nyssa, is clearly a form of idolatry.
"What happens then? Like Job's friends, you set yourself up as a
theological advocate of God. You justify His ways to men not according
to what He is, but according to what your system says He ought to be.
In the end, you find yourself apologizing to the world for God and
demonstrating that, after all, He is not to be blamed for being what He
is because it can be shown that He generally acts like a just, prudent,
and benevolent man. Or rather, to help Him ascend a few degrees in the
estimation of men, you present Him to them as a well-disposed and
democratic millionaire. The word for this is -- blasphemy. It is also
atheism, because a God who depends on your ideas for His justification
cannot possibly exist."
dhawk> I thought this was a pretty appropriate quote for a lot of the
dhawk> discussions I see here. By the way, this isn't one of Merton's
dhawk> more 'accessible' works. Whew!
later, david
--
David Hawkins - dhawk@well.sf.ca.us - {apple,pacbell,hplabs,ucbvax}!well!dhawk
+ "Who sees all beings in his own Self, and his own Self in all beings,
+ loses all fear." -- Isa Upanishad