All genuine religion involves a quest since God must remain largely unknown, and this by his very nature. He must remain latens Deitas in Aquinas' phrase:
Adoro te devote, latens Deitas,
Quæ sub his figuris vere latitas;
Tibi se cor meum totum subjicit,
Quia te contemplans totum deficit.
Godhead here in hiding, whom I do adore,
Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more,
See, Lord, at Thy service low lies here a heart
Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art.
(tr. Gerard Manley Hopkins, here.)
But as religion becomes established in the world in the form of churches, sects, denominations with worldly interests it becomes less of a quest and more of a worldly hustle. Dogmatics displaces inquiry, and fund-raising faith. The once alive becomes ossified.
Mature religion must be more quest than conclusions. It is vastly more a seeking than a finding. More a cleansing of windows and a polishing of mirrors than a glimpsing. Perhaps when religion and philosophy are viewed as a quest they merge into one another. (But compare Leo Strauss on the tension between Athens and Jerusalem!)
The critic of religion wants to pin it down, reducing it to dogmatic contents, so as to attack it where it is weakest. Paradoxically, the atheist knows more about God than the sophisticated theist — he knows so much that he knows no such thing could exist. He knows the divine nature and knows that it is incompatible with the existence of evil — to mention one line of attack. Aquinas, by contrast, held that the existence of God is far better known than God's nature — which remains shrouded in a cloud of unknowing.
The religionist also wants religion pinned down and dogmatically spelled out for purposes of self-definition, other-exclusion, worldly promotion and political leverage. This is a reason why reformers like Jesus are met with a cold shoulder — or worse.
Related Posts (on one page):
- The Asymmetry of Atheism and Theism
- Mature Religion: More Quest than Conclusions
up to the present day, I haven't seen any good argument for the conclusion that the dogmas of my faith are reprehensible or in conflict with the right ethics of belief and that my faith prevents me from thinking critically. I've already mentioned that on this blog. See, Aquinas, quoted by you, was a Christian.
Is your comment supposed to apply to what I said?
T,
Thanks for the link.
I stand with Augustine's crede, ut intelligas and Anselm's credo, ut intelligam.
if your paragraph
plays off any faith and any church, then "yes" to your question. And, in fact, the paragraph does savour just like that, doesn't it?
Finally, I add: one can hold a religious dogma (or quite many religious dogmas) without being a dogmatic.
2. Disallowing comments from a particular person, or deleting an offensive, off-topic, or otherwise substandard comment, has nothing to do with censorship. People who think otherwise confuse censorship with lack of sponsorship. I am under an obligation not to interfere with anyone's exercise of legitimate free speech rights. But I am not under any obligation to aid and abet anyone's exercise of free speech rights, legitimate or illegitimate.
3. The Comments area is not an open forum for anyone to say anything about any topic. As the name implies, it is primarily for commenting on the author(s)' posts. But to comment on them, one must have read them. And if I have spent three hours on a post, a reader will not understand it in thirty seconds. Secondarily, the Comments area is to facilitate civil discussion between and among commenters as long as the discussion remains on-topic.
4. Some undesirables: The skimmers, those who cannot read but only read-in. The sophists who, abusing argument, argue for the sake of argument. The ideologues, those who are out for power, not truth. The uncivil. The illogical. The politically correct. Worst of all, perhaps, are those who exemplify the anti-Socratic property: those who think they know what they don't know. If Socrates was famous for his learned ignorance, these types are marked by their ignorant unlearnededness.