Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Miracles

I was thinking, too, that the credibility of miracles is positively demonstrated by such facts as the conversion of Claudel or Maritain. That these events can be believed in, is absolutely undeniable. Now nobody can think that these men believed without adequate facts to go upon. So taking their belief as a base, we must ask on what conditions it is possible, we must rise from the fact to the conditions on which it depends. This is the best and only way for genuine religious reflection to take.
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Deep down beneath the critical attitude to the Gospel stories, is the implicit assertion 'It oughtn't to have happened like that.' In other words, we inwardly sketch the idea with really paralysing presumption and folly of what revelation ought to have been like. And I have a very strong suspicion that in this criticism there is always the idea 'this can't be true,' so that of course one must be able to pick holes, find contradictions, etc. It seems to me that this laying down of law by the individual consciousness ought to be rejected in principle. The Gospel words, in fact: 'become as little children.' Glorious words, but quite unintelligible to anyone who believes that there is an intrinsic value in maturity.

Gabriel Marcel, A Metaphysical Diary (1928-1933), tr. Katharine Farrer (1949)

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