Even if a unity of faith is not possible, a unity of love is.
Hans Urs Von BalthasarRead
St. Paul would say to the philosophers that God created man so that he would seek the Divine, try to attain the Divine. That is why all pre-Christian philosophy is theological at its summit.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that the essence of humanity is a pursuit of the divine, linking philosophy to theology.
Hans Urs Von Balthasar emphasizes that the fundamental purpose of human existence is to seek a connection with the Divine. He argues that the highest points of pre-Christian philosophy inherently point towards theological concepts, underscoring the relationship between philosophical inquiry and the quest for spiritual understanding.
In practice
In a lecture on the intersection of philosophy and religion, this quote can illustrate the importance of seeking deeper truths.
Even if a unity of faith is not possible, a unity of love is.
It is to the Cross that the Christian is challenged to follow his Master: no path of redemption can make a detour around it.
A truth that is merely handed on, without being thought anew from its very foundations, has lost its vital power.
The Holy Spirit knows what a particular age's most pressing need is far better than men with their programs.
The first attempt at a response: there must have been a fall, a decline, and the road to salvation can only be the return of the sensible finite into the intelligible infinite.
But the saints are never the kind of killjoy spinster aunts who go in for faultfinding and lack all sense of humor. (Nor should the Karl Barth who so loved and understood Mozart be regarded as such.)For humor is a mysterious but unmistakable charism inseparable from Catholic faith, and neither the "progressives" nor the "integralists" seem to possess it - the latter even less than the former.
Language is never fully trustworthy, but when it comes to eating animals, words are as often used to misdirect and camouflage as they are to communicate. Some words, like veal, help us forget what we are actually talking about. Some, like free-range, can mislead those whose consciences seek clarification. Some, like happy, mean the opposite of what they would seem. And some, like natural, mean next to nothing.
There are nuclear-weapons-free zones in several parts of the world already, except that they're not implemented fully, because the U.S. won't allow it.
Stick to what's in front of you - idea, action, utterance.
How then to enforce peace? Not by reason, certainly, nor by education. If a man could not look at the fact of peace and the fact of war and choose the former in preference to the latter, what additional argument could persuade him? What could be more eloquent as a condemnation of war than war itself? What tremendous feat of dialectic could carry with it a tenth the power of a single gutted ship with its ghastly cargo?
Maybe I am naive, but I don't think talking about the Holocaust with total and complete cynicism is possible for Israeli politicians. It's inevitable that the Holocaust is part of Israeli politics.
Nobody can acquire honor by doing what is wrong.
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