Tradition and Revolution V

In the final part of this thought provoking essay, Merton discusses true contemplation, God's grace, and theology. Just when we think we can see where he is headed, he throws in a twist at the end which takes us right back to the Church. (Part I is here.)

Tradition and Revolution (cont'd.)

Yet true contemplation is not arrived at by an effort of the mind. On the contrary, a man could easily lose his way in the forest of technical details which concern a professional theologian. But God gives true theologians a hunger born of humility, which cannot be satisfied with formulas and arguments, and which looks for something closer to God than analogy can bring you.

This serene hunger of the spirit penetrates the surface of words and goes beyond the human formulation of mysteries and seeks, in the humiliation of silence, intellectual solitude and interior poverty, the gift of a supernatural apprehension which words cannot truly signify.

Beyond the labor of argument it finds rest in faith and beneath the noise of discourse it apprehends the Truth, not in distinct and clear-cut definitions but in the limpid obscurity of a single intuition that unites all dogmas in one simple Light, shining into the soul directly from God's eternity, without the medium of created concept, without the intervention of symbols or of language or the likenesses of material things.

Here the Truth is One Whom we not only know and possess but by Whom we are known and possessed. Here theology ceases to be a body of abstractions and becomes a Living Reality Who is God Himself. And He reveals Himself to us in our total gift of our lives to Him. Here the light of truth is not something that exists for our intellect but One in Whom and for Whom all minds and spirits exist, and theology does not truly begin to be theology until we have transcended the language and separate concepts of theologians.

That is why St. Thomas put the Summa Theologica aside in weariness before it was finished, saying that it was "all straw."

And yet when the contemplative returns from the depths of his simple experience of God and attempts to communicate it to men, he necessarily comes once again under the control of the theologian and his language is bound to strive after the clarity and distinctness and accuracy that canalize Catholic tradition.

Therefore beware of the contemplative who says that theology is all straw before he has ever bothered to read any.

New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton

Tradition and Revolution IV

Continuing his discussion of Catholic dogma, Merton now looks at it's true benefit to those who have the grace to explore it to the fullest. (Part I is here.)

Tradition and Revolution (cont'd.)

The first step to contemplation is faith; and faith begins with an assent to Christ teaching through His Church; fides ex auditu, qui vos ausit, me audit. "He that heareth you, heareth Me." And "faith cometh by hearing."

It is not the dry formula of a dogmatic definition by itself that pours light into the mind of a Catholic contemplative, but the assent to the content of that definition deepens and broadens into a vital, personal and incommunicable penetration of the supernatural truth which it expresses -- an understanding that is a gift of the Holy Ghost and which merges into the Wisdom of love, to possess Truth in its infinite Substance, God Himself.

The dogmas of the Catholic faith are not merely symbols or vague rationalizations which we accept as arbitrary points of stimulation around which good moral actions many form or develop -- still less is it true that any idea would serve just as well as those that have been defined, any old pious thought would foment this vague moral life in our souls. The dogmas defined and taught by the Church have a very precise, positive and definite meaning which those who have the grace to do so must explore and penetrate if they would live an integral spiritual life. For the understanding of dogma is the proximate and ordinary way to contemplation.

Everybody who can do so ought to acquire something of a theologians' accuracy and sharpness in appreciating a true sense of dogma. Every Christian ought to have as deep a comprehension of his belief as his state will allow him. And this means that every one ought to breathe the clean atmosphere of orthodox tradition and be able to explain his belief in correct terminology -- and terminology with a content of genuine ideas.

New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton

So I'm thinkin' we're looking at more catechesis, whether done through our reading, scripture studies as a group, seeking guidance of spiritual directors, or more along those lines. There are many ways to learn to appreciate and understand the Church's teachings. It is incumbent upon us to pursue them.

We will hear more about where faithful adherence to the Church's dogma takes us in contemplation in Part IV.

Tradition and Revolution III

Continuing the essay, Merton takes on the issue of dogma, both in what men think it to be and what it actually is. What he says was doubtless true when the book was written in 1961 but we see his insight even more from the distance of where relativism has moved us almost 50 years hence. (Part I is here.)

Tradition and Revolution (cont'd.)

The notion of dogma terrifies men who do not understand the Church. They cannot conceive that a religious doctrine may be clothed in a clear, definite and authoritative statement without at once becoming static, rigid and inert and losing all its vitality. In their frantic anxiety to escape from any such conception they take refuge in a system of beliefs that is vague and fluid, a system in which truths pass like mists and waver and vary like shadows. They make their own personal selection of ghosts, in this pale, indefinite twilight of the mind. They take good care never to bring these abstractions out into the full brightness of the sun for fear of a full view of their unsubstantiality.

They favor the Catholic mystics with a sort of sympathetic regard, for they believe that these rare men somehow reached the summit of contemplation in defiance of Catholic dogma. Their deep union with God is supposed to have been an escape from the teaching authority of the Church, and an implicit protest against it.

But the truth is that the saints arrived at the deepest and most vital and also the most individual and personal knowledge of God precisely because of the church's teaching authority, precisely through the tradition that it is guarded and fostered by that authority.

New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton

We will hear more about where faithful adherence to the Church's dogma takes us in contemplation in Part IV.