Salvation in History

"I think, therefore I am."   -- Rene Descartes, French philosophe

Not the least of accomplishments, the late Pope John Paul II was an artist, an actor, an able statesman for his Polish homeland, exhibiting both bold love for the people, and courage against their Communist oppressors; as well, he was a highly articulate Pastor, tending his flock as priest, bishop and later as Pope, the spiritual leader of the world's Roman Catholic Christians.

Despite his high scholarship and extensive intellectual abilities, it is sometimes less known that John Paul possessed a formidable intellect for the humanities, the sciences, mathematics and philosophy of all kinds. He had a great interest in astronomy. In one of his many works of literature and philosophy, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, John Paul chooses as his subject, salvation in history. Why does the Christian story of Jesus seem so complicated? Is God really so loving? What about other faith groups who look to their traditions for wholeness, peace, for salvation, for unity? John Paul II (JP II) muses that the answers are long, yet he endeavors to make them simple in this essay for those who are not philosophers, to better carry the message of salvation, as he sees it.

"To be redeemed in salvation, is a profound question." Many faiths' practice for spiritual redemption; it is not limited to Christians. Jews and Buddhists are two other faiths that come to mind. In history, salvation in the west finds its modern roots in the teaching of the Enlightenment thinkers of Europe. John Paul writes, "I put Descartes at the forefront, because he marks the beginning of a new era of European thought, and because this philosopher, who certainly is the greatest France has given the world, inaugurated a great shift in philosophy: 'I think, therefore I am'...the motto of modern rationalism."

"The objective truth of this thought is not as important as the fact that something exists in human consciousness." Descartes inaugurates the modern development of the sciences, including those humanistic sciences, ushering in the new, modern age of western thought.

The French Enlightenment ushered in the "cult of the goddess of reason." To those minds shaped by a naturalistic consciousness of the world, God is decidedly outside of the world. "God working through man turned out to be useless...to modern science, to modern knowledge...which examines the workings of the conscious, the unconsciousness. The Enlightenment, thus, put God, the redeemer to one side."

Consequently, man, divorced from traditions of faith, of spirit, is now expected to live by reason alone. The collected wisdom of the ages, ever present in traditional society is cast aside in favor of reason alone. The presence of a divine Creator, a loving intellect that knows the heart of his creation, that so loved the world, does not need God's love.

The modern world is self sufficient; thus this world must be the world that makes man happy. Yet in the world today, man continues to suffer in body and mind, in poverty and neglect, in loneliness and greed, this world suffers alienation, aimlessness, anxiety, poverty, and suffers alone. Science has not been its help.

"This world,' says JP II, 'in which knowledge is developed by man, which appears as progress and civilization, as a modern system of communication, in a structure of democratic freedoms without limits, is today a world in which man suffers." The world is not capable, despite its reason, to make man happy, to free him from his sufferings, his pain, his death; it cannot save man from evil, illness or catastrophes. Still, now today, the world needs, wants to be saved, to be redeemed and renewed.

Immortality is not part of the world; that is why the Christ speaks in the Gospels of God's love which expresses itself in the offering of his son, so that man may not perish, but have life, eternal. He came that man might be free in love, to lift him and embrace in a redeeming love. For love is always greater than any force of evil."

"The Easter story is the culmination of the story of the "return," of redemption possible and available to all humankind. The history of salvation "not only addresses the question of human history, but also confronts the problem of the meaning of man's existence. It is both a confrontation of history and metaphysics; the encounters between man and God in the world, the divine mysteries of souls constitutes the modern Church." --paraphrased.

Questioning, the Piety of Thinking

"For questioning is the piety of thinking."  --Martin Heidegger, 20th century Existentialist philosopher

In the mind of philosopher, Martin Heidegger, questioning was not anything without thinking. Thus in his view, a questioner is not a dissenter; rather they are listening. All questioning, he believed, gets started from initial listening, that which precedes and guides the questioner. Following this point, Heidegger delves into the spiritual, the pious, the holy. His thoughts concerns the piety of thinking itself.

Bringing the mind of Heidegger into the realm of the beginner, James C. Hart, along with some 25 others  translate the philosopher's work from his native German into English, or give knowledgeable commentary in their book, The Piety of Thinking. 
What, Heidegger pondered, does it mean to objectify?
He saw this social phenomenon in regarding living things as objects; objectifying them for use, as a thing.
What does it mean to think? 
In his view, thinking in some instances is not objectifying; it's instead an expression of a being which wills itself to be. For example, if all thinking were objective, then the creation  of art would be meaningless because it derives from personal thought which 'shows itself' in the work. 
Thus it is non-objective. On the other hand, we, by this view, can accept that thinking about the natural world and the sciences engages in objectivity. 
Thinking is "whatever shows itself however it shows itself."
It is the opposite of hiding, concealment.

Heidegger also then concerns himself with the meaning of speaking. What does it mean to speak? He asks all these deceptively simple questions and arrives at some startling answers. In speaking Heidegger insists one might use words as a tool to enforce the manipulation of others by words; one also may use words as humans do to "open up the world for them, to make a dwelling place in the world."

Finally another question Heidegger poses is that of thinking as a form of speaking. "Is all thinking a form of speaking and is all speaking a form of thinking? What does it mean to 'talk to yourself?" And he warns as early as the 1920s that scientific ways of thinking, objective speaking, threatens to overwhelm all other imaging in the world today. There are in his mind different needs in speaking and thinking, a piety of thinking for Heidegger is perhaps 'compliant to the covering and uncovering of truth.'

Rama Is Strength for the Weak

"Rama is but a synonym for God." --The Way to God by MK Gandhi

The power of the name. Rama writes Gandhi is his book of short meditations, The Way to God, "is the strength of the weak. This strength is not to be obtained by taking up arms... It is to be had by throwing oneself on his name." So it is, Gandhi writes, that the soul needs the "matchless and pure strength of pure faith."

"There is something infinitely higher than intellect that rules us, even the skeptics." In Gandhi's world, even skeptics come to a place in life where they feel they need something better, more than the mind and its intellect. They need something outside of themselves, he writes. "If one puts a conundrum before me [Gandhi], I say to him, "You are not going to know the meaning of God or prayer unless you reduce yourself to a cipher." One must be humble enough in his view to recognize that despite the human talents and intensive intellect, one remains but a mere particle of the universe. The world is composed more fully of itself than to be merely just that one. Likewise, a mere intellectual regard for life and its element is insufficient. "It is the spiritual conception which eludes the intellect, and which alone can give one satisfaction," insists Gandhi.

Faith transcends reason. Most often when our intellect is in defeat, in despair, it is the sudden rising of faith which comes to our rescue. "I ask that you restore the belief that has been undermined... Start with the faith that is also a token of humility, and an admission that we know nothing, that we are less than atoms... [I say so] because the atom obeys the law of its being, whereas we, in the insolence of our ignorance, deny the law of nature... I then used to hug the name of Rama in my childhood." It was the continuation and the development of faith, for in Gandhi's world his eye may be plucked, his worldly goods taken and still the thief will have nothing. For he has not taken Rama, the power of living faith.