"There are ex-Catholics, ex-Marxists, ex-Buddhists and so forth, but I know of no ex-mystic. Once the transformation due to an authentic mystical experience has happened, it is irreversible." (22)
"Nothing is so dangerous in the Christian apostolate as the paternalistic attitude and false security of one who thinks he is in full possession of the truth. the true Christian ( as also the true Hindu) possesses nothing, not even the truth. Rather, he is possessed by the truth, as Thomas Aquinas points out. He knows God because God knows him." (76)
"Two propositions are universally accepted by Christian Theology: one, salvation comes exclusively through Christ,and two, God does not condemn anybody. Now, this second proposition amounts to saying that God provides every Man coming into existence with the means of salvation.
We have mentioned God's universal will to save. Now if he created Men for union with him, then surely he also provided them with a means whereby to attain this end. If these means were exclusively in the viable Church or in 'official' Christianity, other people could not be saved, but this, in fact, is not so. If it be true that 'outside the Church there is no salvation', this 'Church' should not be identified with a concrete organization, or even with adherence to Christianity.....
....The ultimate reason for this universal idea of Christianity, an idea which makes possible the catholic embrace of every people and religion, lies in the Christian conception of Christ: he is not only the historical redeemer, but also the unique Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, the only ontological -temporal and eternal- link between God and the World....
...(..his providence, even in the 'supernatural' sphere, follows ordered and ordinary ways. And in this sense he provides normal, natural means for leading peoples and individuals to himself.) The normal and natural means within the Christian Church are the sacraments....By virtue of their divine institution those sacraments, when received with the proper dispositions confer the divine grace that they symbolize.
....If we take the concept of the sacrament not in the restricted sense used by the Church when she speaks of the sacraments of the New Law - to distinguish them from other sacraments - but in a more general sense, as applied by Christian Scholastics when speaking of the sacraments of the Old Testament and of the sacramenta naturae (sacraments of nature), then we may well say that sacraments are the ordinary means by which God leads the people of the earth towards himself.
No true sacrament is magical. Nevertheless the sacraments have a special causative strength because of their extrinsic connection with the will of God. Thus the efficacy of the Christian sacraments does not reside in themselves...but depends on the action of Christ within them as instruments of grace. One may or may not assume that the same efficacy is conferred upon all other sacraments....Yet it remains true that Christ may be active and at work in the human being who receives any sacrament, whether Christian or any other.
....The good and bona fide Hindu as well as the good and bona fide Chrsitian are saved by Christ - not by Hinduism or Christianity per se, but through thier sacraments and, ultimately, through the mysterion active within the two religions. This amounts to to saying that Hinduism also has a place in the universal saving providence of God and cannot therefore be considered as negative in relation to Christianity. (83-86)
My purpose is to recall and emphasize that, according to Christian doctrine, the Father in heaven makes his sun to rise on the good and on the evil, and sends rain on the just and the unjust (Matt. 5:45), that Christ is the expectation of the peoples (Gen. 49:10), that his spirit is at work among non-believers (Rom. 15:21, quoting Isa. 52:15), that he is already found by those who did not seek him (Rom. 10:20;cf. Isa. 65:1), and that he is a hidden God (Isa. 45:15) who has sometimes hidden himself either in an unknown God (Acts 17:23) or in the hearts of Men of good will (Cf. Luke 2:14). Christians often need reminding that Christ himself taught Peter not to call profane or impure anything that God has made clean (Acts 10:15), for he already has other sheep which are not following the visible flock (John 10:16) and other disciples who work miracles and are not acknowledged by his visible followers (Mark 9:37). It was Christ also who sent a non-Jewish woman not to sow but actually to reap where others (non-Jews) had toiled, reminding his closest disciples of the meaning of this action (John 4:38). In ancient days God spoke to our fathers in many ways and by many means, now in recent times he has spoken to us through his own Son (Heb. 1:1), in whom everything is summed up (Eph. 1:10), for he is the atonement not only for our sins, but for the defilement of the whole world (1 John 2:2). (88-89)
"If there is a God, he cannot be comprehended by any human intellect, but must transcend all human forces and capacities since, if he exists, he is more than Man. He can be transparent, fully knowable, only to himself. For us he is a mystery in the real sense of the word. A comprehensible, a plainly under-standable God would not be God at all, for I would then be his ground and not he mine, the very source of my under-standing. No human formula, therefore, can give an adequate expression of God." (103)
"If there is a God, his being Ground and Principle is not to be taken only as origin or commencement, but also as end and achievement. He is the timeless and pure ontological foundation of everything. God is not only in the ontic beginning of the universe, but also at its termination and consummation. God is not only the inspiring and originating force and source of all, but at the same time the attracting term and conclusion of all being and activity. God is the fullness toward which each particle of being aspires and each movement tends. God is the goal of the world as well as the destination of history." (104)
" If there is a God, his relation with me can not be an abstract, 'universal' one, but must be real, concrete, definite, constitutive and existential. This is to say, my relation with God is not numerical, quantitative, as if I were a "case" or a 'number' as regards the Absolute, the being, but must be a personal, intimate and particular one, having God as my source, my Being, my maker, my sustainer, my utmost self, my father. My approach to God cannot therefore be simply 'generic' or purely intellectual, but most be integral, total, involving body and soul, intellect and will, and also knowledge, service and love - and all this in a personal, unique and unchangeable way." (105)
"...if God exists, this hypothesis is not irrelevant to anything, is not superfluous in any action of the cosmos, but is in very truth the hypothesis or underlying support of the whole universe along with all our being and acting." (105)
"For Indian philosophy 'reason alone' has but little meaning - and this for two reasons: 1. reason is not isolated from the rest of our human faculties, our human nature; and 2. it is not self-sufficient even in the highest form of knowing.
1. If it is reason that discovers the existence of God, it is a reason incarnated in a human person who has reached some degree of purification, objectivity, freedom of will, and so forth. Reason may be the instrument, but it is not effective unless it is properly used. It is the whole Man who uses it, and he will only use it properly when he is pure, detached, moral. 2. It may be that the light, the power , God has given to reason enables us to discover his existence, but Man has not, in fact, received reason alone. After all, 'reason' is an abstraction, though a very real one, and the Indian mind abhors its conversion into a hypothasis. To those who do not believe in God, the Indian tradition does not say: 'Inquire, think, try to investigate with your reason!' but rather: 'Do penance, gain perspective by detaching yourself from the World, look for a spiritual master, search with your whole being. It is not your reason that is weak, it is you who are ill'....
...The problem thus can only be posed as an epistemological hypothesis: what is the instrument by which we come to know of the existence of God? Among the various instruments reason undoubtedly has a special role, a very important one, for it makes intelligible the structure of the World - that it is contingent, that it is not its own cause. But at the same time, reason has a very weak role, because it can say almost nothing about the nature of this cause. Reason, says Indian philosophy, only functions in its proper place when it listens to the Scriptures and tries to work together with faith to find a basis for a higher understanding." (128-29)
Whoever would grasp what he must believe must use reason. Yet reason must not resist faith, but rather walk with her, waiting on her as a handmaid. And even though at times reason seems contrary to faith, yet in truth faith never gets along wihtout her. . . . Therefore, let your powers of reason be well trained.
--St. Thomas More
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