When we think impatiently, with bias and in anxiety, we know we cannot trust the results. Insights gained in ecstasy – and sometimes they are – need to be subjected to the contemplation of temperate, not necessarily cold, reason. When we have arrived at a settled conviction of the truth of what we seek to know, there is indeed both a “freedom from littleness” and bigotry and a sense that what we know is as certain as the convictions of our faith. – pg 62
“This Intellectualism first and chiefly comes into collision with precept, then with doctrine, then with the very principles of dogmatism; – a perception of the Beautiful becomes the substitute for faith”
To put this in biblical terms, “Knowledge puffs up” (1 Cor 1:18). As Christians we must not substitute the mind for the whole person. All is to be under the lordship of Christ. The intellect itself must be reborn. Newman put it this way, reflecting on John 3:7:
“Your whole nature must be re-born; your passions, and your affections, and your aims, and your conscience, and your will, must be bathed in a new element, and reconsecrated to your Maker, – and the last not the least, your intellect.” (in Apologia per la vita sua) -pg70
“When the heart is rooted in God, the mind is free to play.”-Mary Jo Weaver. Humour, punning, laughter: these foster humility. They lighten the load a true intellectual begins to feel when the burden of truth – disagreeable as much truth about the human situation is – becomes too heavy to bear. For the “truth” is that, save God alone, no person – intellectual or otherwise – has all the truth. The one who thinks so is not only insufferable but just plain wrong. – pg82
“When St. Paul suggests to the Christian: whether you eat or drink or whatsoever else you do, do all to the glory of God, must apply to the Christian in search of light. For him the true is the glory of God: he must keep it always in mind, submit to it in everything.”-A G Sertillanges (The Intellectual Life)
Holiness is being set apart for the glory of God, for God’s glory is holiness, his set-apartness from all else, his Otherness…. So first of all, to be holy is to be set apart for God’s service. And second, to be holy is to be characterized by the character of God – that is by the image of God in which he made us. To the extent that we are in God’s image, we are holy. When the Word became flesh himself, he showed us what the image of God is like in its fullest expression. To have a passion for holiness then is to have a passion to be like Christ. Since we find ourselves even at our best to be only broken images of God, we are in a fix we cannot fix. If we are to be fixed, it will be God who fixes us. And he does. But he does this not just by redeeming us through the death and resurrection of Jesus but through restoring us into his image. A passion for holiness is a passion for God to remake us. This is done through gradual means, the means of grace, the disciplines of the Christian life: baptism, Holy Communion, worship, fellowship with other believers, prayer, study and meditation on him and his written Word, fasting, solitude, service. – pg90
Dangerous indeed it is to cordon off the intellect from a devotion to God and a passion for truth and holiness. Sertillanges says it well:”Purity of thought requires purity of soul; that is a general and undeniable truth. The neophyte of knowledge should let is sink deeply into his mind.” -pg95
“When men begin all their works with the thought of God, acting for His sake, and to fulfill His will, when they ask His blessing on themselves and their life, pray to Him for the objects they desire, and see Him in the event, whether it be according to their prayers or not, they will find everything that happens tend to confirm them in the truths about Him which live in their imagination, varied and unearthly as those truths may be.” – John Henry Newman
If we are bent on knowing the truth and are committed to obeying the truth as we come to know it )that is, if we are morally attuned), we can come to know truth about God and his world. -pg95
“As the Bible constantly teaches, “obedience to the light we possess is the way to gain more light.” Nor must our obedience be anything other than unconditional: “till we aim at complete, unreserved obedience in all things, we are not really Christians at all.” -Newman
“The Christian is prepared to say [when he or she reads the text], ‘I don’t like the sound of this, but golly, if this is what it really means, I’m going to have to pray for grace and strength to get that into my heart and be shaped by it.’ ” – NT Wright
