Fourth Letter to Fr. Pastells
Dapitan, April 4, 1893
My Most Reverend Father:
In time I received your gift, Monsignor Bougaud’s work*, which I am reading with the liveliest interest. It is one of the best works of its kind that I have seen, not only by its exposition, but also by its eminently Christian and conciliatory spirit, by the clarity with which the author writes and the strength of his convictions. If Sarda’s work is that of a champion or a polemist, Monsignor Bougaud’s is that of a prelate in the most beautiful sense of the word.
Let us see if by reading it, I shall change my faith or the faith that you miss in me will be restored; if not, we shall have to content ourselves with what God has given to each of us.
Do not be surprised that I am quite late in answering your esteemed letter of last February 2nd. For such delay, I am very sorry. Were it possible. I should prefer to be charged with discourtesy rather than be accused of wounding your convictions directly in this discussion.
With Your Reverence it would have been much pleasanter for me to confine myself to defending my views rather than taking the offensive. However, you challenge me, and so, much against my will, I accept the challenge but with manu nuda (naked hand) as I do not like to use arms –– for that matter, I do not have any, not even books with which to prove my citations.
We are in accord that God exists. How can I doubt His existence when I am convinced on my own? To recognize the effect is to admit the cause. To doubt the existence of God is to doubt one’s conscience; and to doubt one’s conscience is to doubt everything. In such a case, what would be the purpose of life?
Now, if the result of reasoning may be called faith, my faith on God is blind, blind in the sense that it knows nothing. I neither believe nor disbelieve the qualities that many people ascribe to Him. I smile at the definitions and lucubrations of theologians and philosophers about that ineffable and inscrutable Being. Convinced that I stand before that supreme Problem which confused voices wish to explain to me, I cannot but answer: "Perhaps, you are right; but the God I am aware of is far greater and far better. Plus supra!" (far beyond)!
I do not believe the Revelation impossible. Rather, I believe in it. Not, however, in the revelations which each and every religion claims to possess. If we examine, compare, and scrutinize such revelations impartially, we shall detect in all of them human claws and the stamp of the age in which they were written. No; mans makes his God in his own image and then ascribes to Him his own works in the same manner that the Polish magnates used to choose their king and then impose their will on him. All of us do the same: Your Reverence does it when you say, "He who made eyes, will he not see? He who shaped ears, will he not hear?" Pardon me, but since we have already spoken about the bull of Anacreon,, let us hear it below: "He who made the horns, will he not know how to gore?" No; what is perfection with us may be imperfection with God.
Poor inhabitants that we are of a small planet lost in at the infinite space, let us now make God in our own image. However brilliant and sublime our intellect may be, it is at best a tiny spark that glows and is extinguished in a moment. But it alone can give us an idea of that blaze of fire, that conflagration, that vast sea of light.
I believe in revelation, but in that living revelation of Nature which surrounds us everywhere; in that powerful, eternal, incessant, incorruptible, clear, distinct, and universal voice like the one from whom it emanates; that revelation which speaks to us and pervades our being from birth to death. What books can reveal to us better God’s goodness, love, providence, eternity, glory, and wisdom? Coeli enarrant gloriam Domini, et opera manum ejus enunciat firmamentum (The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows his handiwork). What more Bible, what more gospel, does humanity wish? Ah, does not Your Reverence believe that men did wrong in seeking the divine will in palimpsests or parchments and temples, instead of searching for it in the works of Nature and under the august dome of the heavens? Instead of interpreting obscure passages or phrases designed to provoked hatred, wars, and dissensions, would it not have been better to interpret the works of Nature to enable us to adapt our lives more readily to its inviolable laws and utilize its forces for our perfection? When did men begin to act as brothers? Was it not only when they found the first pages of the work of God? Like the prodigal son who, blind to the joys of his parents’ home, left in search of other homes, mankind has for centuries wandered, miserable and full of hate.
I do not deny that there are precepts of absolute necessity and usefulness clearly enunciated in Nature, but God has lodged them in the human heart, in man’s conscience, His best temple. Hence, I adore more this good and provident God. He has endowed each of us with all that is necessary to save ourselves and has continuously opened to us the book of His revelation with His priest unceasingly speaking to us through the voice of our conscience.
Consequently, the best religions are the simplest ones, the most natural, the ones most in harmony with the needs and aspirations of man. Herein lies the principal excellence of the doctrine of Christ.
When I say that the voice of my conscience can come only from God, I do not prejudge; I merely deduce. God could not have created me for my misfortune; for what wrong could I have done to Him before I was born, that He should decree my perdition? Nor could He have created me for no purpose or for an indifferent one; for then, why my sufferings why the slow torture of my unceasing longing? For a good purpose He must have created me, and for that I have no better guide than my conscience, my conscience alone, which judges and appraises my acts. He would be inconsistent if after having created me, He did not provide me with the means to attain that purpose. He would be like the blacksmith who wanted to make a knife, but did not sharpen any of the edges.
All Your Reverence’s brilliant and subtle arguments, which I shall not try to refute because it would require a whole dissertation, can not convince me that the Catholic Church is endowed with infallibility. In it the human claws are no less apparent. It is a more perfect institution than the others, but human nevertheless, with all the defects, errors, and vicissitudes inherent in the work of man. As the direct heir of the political sciences, the religions, and the arts, of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, it is more wisely and ably managed. Its foundation lies in the heart of the people, in the imagination of the multitude, in the attachment of women; but like all other religions, it has its dark points, which veils under the name mysteries; it has its puerilities, which it sanctifies as miracles; it has its divisions or dissensions, which it calls sects or heresies.
Nor can I believe that before the advent of Jesus Christ, all the peoples were in the abyss you speak of. Precisely, there is Socrates who dies for proclaiming the existence of only one God. There is divine Plato. There are the virtuous Aristides, Phocion, and Miltiades. There is Zarathustra, founder of the religion of force; and there is Kung Sien, founder of the religion of reason and China’s lawmaker.
Neither can I believe that after Christ everything has been light, peace, and happiness; that the majority of men have become just. To confute all such assertions, you have the battlefields, the stakes, the destructive fires, the prisons, the crimes committed, the tortures of the Inquisition, the hates that Christian nations engender against one another on account of flimsy differences; the slavery that for eighteen centuries was tolerated, if not sanctioned. Prostitution is still rampant. There is, finally, a great portion of society that is still hostile to its own religion.
Your Reverence will tell me that all this exists because they left the church. But did not these evils exist when the church was dominant? Did they not exist in the Middle Ages, and when the whole of Europe was a battlefield? Did they not exist when in the first three centuries the church was in the catacombs, in distress, and without power? If there was a peace then ––and there was no peace ––it could not have been due to the church because the church was not in power.
I rejoice , my dear Father Pastells, when I see men like you, filled with faith and virtue, sustain a faith and lament the present troubles of humanity. This shows love of that faith. I rejoice, too, that generous spirits like Your Reverence watch over the future of that faith. But I rejoice more when I behold humanity in its immortal march, always moving forward, in spite of its failings and errors, in spite of its deviations, because all this proves me its glorious end, and that it has been created for a better purpose than to be devoured by flames. All this fills me with trust in God who will not allow His handiwork to be destroyed in spite of the devil and all our acts of madness.
As to contradictions in the canonical books and miracles I confess that the subject has been so thoroughly threshed out that it is a waste of time to go over it again. All can be explained when one is favorably inclined to hear, and all can be accepted when one is willing to believe. This will has an enormous power over the will. I shall not speak either of the contradictions in the genealogies or of the Cana miracle which Christ performed although he said His hour had not yet come. Nor shall I speak of the loaves of bread and fishes, or of the temptation, etc. All these things do not reduce the stature of the man who uttered the Sermon on the Mount and the famous, "Father, forgive them . . ." What I am after far transcends all that.
Who died on the Cross? Was it the God or the man? If it was the God, I do not understand how a God, conscious of his mission, could die. I do not understand how a God could exclaim in the garden, "Pater, Si possible transeat a me calix ista" (Father, if it possible, let this cup pass from me) and again exclaim on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken?" This cry is absolutely human. It was the cry of a man who had faith in the justice and goodness of his cause. Except the words, "Hodie mecum eris" (Today you will be with me), it is the cry of Christ on Calvary. All this shows a man in torment and agony, but what a man! To me, Christ the man is greater than Christ the God. Had it been God who said. "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do," those who laid hands on him should have been forgiven, unless we say that God is like the certain men who say one thing and then do another.
I find another objection to the miracles of Christ in the apostasy of his disciples and their refusal to believe in his resurrection. had they really witnessed so many acts of wonder and resurrection, they would not have deserted him so cravenly nor doubted his resurrection. Whoever gives back life to others can very well recover his own.
As to Your Reverence’s explanation about the miracles that He has decreed the laws will not contradict himself by suspending them at certain times in order to attain certain objectives, it seems to me that though he may not contradict himself, yet he is inferior to him who can realize the same objectives without suspending the operation of laws. A good one governs in peace without changing or disturbing anything.
Your Reverence calls this the stupid pride of rationalists. But a question suggests itself: who is more stupidly proud, the man who is satisfied with following his own reason, or the man who tries to impose on others what reason does not prompt him to tell them, but just because he surmises it to be the truth? What has been reasoned out has never appeared stupid to me. Pride has always manifested itself in the idea of domination. . . .
I congratulate Your Reverence for the relative rest and leisure give you in reducing the load you used to carry.
