Seeds of Destruction by Thomas Merton

Author:Thomas Merton [Merton, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781429945073
Google: HliYbges4F4C
Amazon: 0844659886
Barnesnoble: 0844659886
Goodreads: 679330
Published: 2020-08-19T02:14:26+00:00

THE CHRISTIAN IN WORLD CRISIS

1 75

charity of the Church must then save man in spite of himself by making him obey the authority of

‘ ‘the right side” in this blind conflict for power.

And fortunately the Church still has enough power to demand his submission ! She must preserve her power so that wicked man may have a supernatural authority to which he may submit …

This is not Pope.John’s conception of authority, of man or of the order of salvation !

It is easy to see that Pope John’s ideas go back to the optimism of St Paul and of the Gospels. St Paul in moving passages outlines the great mystery of the whole cosmos redeemed in Christ, the new creat10n.

For the eager longing of creation awaits the revelation of the sons of God. For creation was made subject to vanity—not by its own will but by reason of him who made it subject-in hope, because creation itself also will be delivered from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the sons of God. For we know that all creation groans and travails in pain until now.

And not only it, but we ourselves also who have the first-fruits of the Spirit-we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.

Romans 8 : I 9-2 3

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. For in him were created all things in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and things

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Seeds of Destruction

invisible, whether Thrones, or Dominations, or Principalities, or Powers. All things have been created through and unto him, and he is before all creatures, and in him all things hold together. Again, he is the head of his body, the Church; he, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he may have the first place. For it has pleased God the Father that in him all his fullness should dwell, and that through him he should reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in the heavens, making peace through the blood of his cross.

(Colossians 1 : 1 5-20)

Pope John also echoes the optimism of St Thomas Aquinas who was regarded as a revolutionary in the thirteenth century because of the bold scope of his vision which united the created and the uncreated, nature and grace, reason and faith in a vast unity. St Thomas gave the Church his great unified theology in a period when the division between earth and heaven, nature and supernature, philosophy and theology, reason and faith, had become so acute that they threatened to become irreconcilable. His task, as Joseph Pieper sees it, was this:

A “legitimate union” would mean two things. First it would mean joining the two realms so that their distinctiveness and irreducibility, their relative autonomy, their intrinsic justification, were seen and recognized, Second it would mean making their unity, their compatibility, and the necessity for their conjunction ap-

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