The Mystical Element of Religion, as studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her friends, Volume 1 (of 2)Hügel, Friedrich, Freiherr von
Religion
The Mystical Element of Religion, as studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her friends, Volume 1 (of 2)
Hügel, Friedrich, Freiherr von
Catherine, of Genoa, Saint, 1447-1510
There is the ancient, Greek contribution, chiefly intellectual and
aesthetic, mostly cold and clear, quick and conclusive, with, upon
the whole, but a slight apprehension of personality and freedom, of
conscience and of sin, and little or no sense of the difference and
antagonism between these realities and simply Mathematical, Mechanical
laws and concepts. It is a view profoundly abstract, and, at bottom,
determinist: the will follows the intellect necessarily, in exact
proportion to the clearness of information of the former. And the
strength of this view, which was possible even to that gifted race
just because of the restrictedness of its knowledge concerning the
length and breadth of nature and of history, and still more with regard
to the depths of the human character and conscience, consists in its
freshness, completeness, and unity. And this ideal of an ultimate
harmonization of our entire life and of its theory we must never lose,
more and more difficult though its even approximate realization has of
necessity become.
There is next the middle, Christian contribution, directly moral and
religious, deep and dim and tender, slow and far-reaching, immensely
costly, infinitely strong; with its discovery and exemplification of
the mysterious depth and range and complexity of human personality
and freedom, of conscience and of sin; a view profoundly concrete
and at bottom libertarian. The goodwill here first precedes, and then
outstrips, and determines the information supplied by the intellect:
“Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.” And the
strength of this position consists in its being primarily not a view,
but a life, a spiritual, religious life, requiring, implying, indeed
proclaiming, definite doctrines concerning God and man, and their
relations to each other, but never exhausted by these doctrines even
in their collectivity, inexhaustible though these in their turn are by
their union with the life of the spirit, their origin and end.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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