"Philosophy begins with man's question; religion begins with God's question and man's answer."
- Abraham Heschel
"Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it."
- Jesus (Rabbi from Nazareth)
Sometimes hope restored is as simple as faith exercised.
6 comments:
ted - what's the story on Heschel? I have the book, but haven't read much yet.
How did you get into him?
just wondering who this dude is ..
Well for starters he is now officially one of my favorite authors. I actually started reading him because I kept seeing him quoted by other authors I was reading. Last year we taught all the way through the book of Mark and so I spent a lot of time studying not only Jesus but his culture. It was an incredible journey that opened my eyes to the differences between "western" and "near eastern" thought that continues to have tremendous impact on my walk.
Anyway, Wikipedia has a good overview of his life and work at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Joshua_Heschel.
More than anything, at least for me, he has reminded me that faith is about wonder...awe...a sense of transcendence that changes us and moves us to action in the here and now. I highly recommend checking him out.
Philosophy? My find myself getting tied up in knots and running in circles about things that ulitmately don't ever have any tanglible results. One question always leads to 10 more, at least.
What are you trying to say with these 2 quotes because they seem to contradict each other. To receive the kingdom like a child means throwing philosophy out the window.
How does receiving the kingdom equate to throwing out of philosophy?
I don't see any contradiction. Heschel's point is simply that theology (i.e. the knowldege of God) starts with God, not us. That parallels Jesus comment of the fact that unless we "recieve" we can't enter. To recieve means you don't have. That's why, to me, the "search for truth" is kind of silly. Truth isn't something you search for, it finds you (John 18).
I see philosophy (the word Heschel used)from an analytical perspective. We try to figure out who God is. What we do with the answer is up to us. We can think about it more, or accept it "as a child".
When have you given one of your children a gift and had them stop and think about why your giving, and all the implications involved, before taking it? Children don't think about that stuff. What's freely given is freely taken.
When I think of Jesus saying that, I visualize Him standing there with a bunch kids bouncing around Him begging for His attention. While all the adults were still trying to get their mind around who He was, being skeptical. I think they wanted to understand BEFORE commiting.
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