RELIGION AND THE INTELLECTUALS
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nized.
If
people had sufficient intellectual strength and insight to
realize that another type of knowledge, ontological in nature, has
to complement the scientific knowledge of phenomena, then we
might place hope in the possibility of a great epoch, in which
science and wisdom would be reconciled.
Prophetic or institutional religion?-Let
me say that the ques–
tion has been answered by God, when He sent the prophets of
Israel and finally His Son, and instituted His Church. From the
time of Moses on, prophetic and institutional religion have been
one and the same religion-with inner tensions which are but a
token of life and fecundity.
Frederick II of Prussia and the theorists of Enlightened Despotism
preceded Charles Maurras in justifying religion as a mere safeguard
for the political order and means of social discipline. That kind of
a justification could only foster atheism, and is an offense to God
and man.
As concerns the pluralist principle, I think that it must apply
in
the body politic, since, as a matter of fact (a fact which in itself is a
misfortune) , men are religiously divided. So men belonging to
various spiritual lineages have to live together and work for the
same temporal common good. But to regard pluralism as a good
in itself in the very realm of religious belief would be nonsense,
since in this realm what matters is truth about God; and there is only
one truth.
Literature.-
The revival of religion in the literary world comes,
it seems to me, from the simple fact that as a rule the literary world
is a mirror--:-but sensitive to hidden or nascent rays-of the big
human world. The rays it reflects, moreover, are not always religious
in our day, as existentialist literature has proved in Europe. To my
mind, the present emphasis upon myth among literary theorists has
to do with poetry, in no way with religion.
Truth.-
The position which you ascribe to Malraux or Heideg–
gel' seems to me just as preposterous, on the spiritual level, as Maur–
ras' position on the political one. For religion is nothing, or less than
nothing, if it does not convey
truth
to us. And there is no attainment
of truth if not by means of definite beliefs. Emotional or behavioristic
religion, using philosophical or literary aspirin to relieve the lofty
anxieties of the superego, is not worth considering. It is but an
