When faith resolves to believe it runs the risk of committing itself to an error, but it nevertheless believes. there is no other road to faith; if one wishes to escape risk, it is as if one wanted to know with certainty that he can swim before going into the water.
Soren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments
We often forget that Christian faith is a principle of questioning and struggle before it beocmes a principle of certitude and of peace. One has to doubt and reject everything else in order to believe firmly in Christ, and after one has begun to believe, one's faith itself must be tested and purified. Christianity is not merely a set of foregone conclusions. the Christian mind is a mind that risks intolerable purification, and sometimes indeed very often, the risk turns out to be too great to be tolerated. Faith tends to be defeated by the burning presence of God in mystery, and seeks refuge from him, flying to comfortable social forms and safe conventions in which purification is no longer an inner battle but a matter of outward gesture.
Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
We often forget that Christian faith is a principle of questioning and struggle before it beocmes a principle of certitude and of peace. One has to doubt and reject everything else in order to believe firmly in Christ, and after one has begun to believe, one's faith itself must be tested and purified. Christianity is not merely a set of foregone conclusions. the Christian mind is a mind that risks intolerable purification, and sometimes indeed very often, the risk turns out to be too great to be tolerated. Faith tends to be defeated by the burning presence of God in mystery, and seeks refuge from him, flying to comfortable social forms and safe conventions in which purification is no longer an inner battle but a matter of outward gesture.
Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
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