A God comprehended is no God. - Tersteegen
To find God, one must tear oneself from the seductions of reason. - Lev Shestov
By the continual living activity of its non-rational elements a religion is guarded from passing into rationalism. - Rudolf Otto
In the foregoing material it is argued that our contemporary history is the history of that rationalization of all phases of existence which had issued in the sterility of our technological society. Rationalism, it has been argued, dominates not only secular life but religious life as well; it has generally dominated not only orthodoxy but also atheism and our attempts to strike out for new theological ground.
The exaltation of reason has involved the isolation of the intellect in ancient Greece, the glorification of the "scientific" methodology in the eighteenth century, and the consequent industrialization-technologization of the past two centuries. More significantly than such developments without are their roots within. Psychoanalytically, the roots are deep within, in the cleft between the life instinct and the death instinct; the impossible flight from death becomes instead its adoration. Theologically, the roots are in our own constant re-enactment of the story of Adam and Eve, our choices of the tree of knowlegde over the tree of life, with the resultant pride of management of all phases of existence. We are the grocers whom Zorba scorns, the grocers who, with cool reason, weigh the goodness, the badness, and necessities of Ludice and My Lai, Auschwitz and Hiroshima as well as a thousand other unnamed places that may await us in our future. Ultimately, life itself is subsumed under this weighing and measuring - and life vanishes in our quests for control.
to be continued...
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