Facs
Transcript
whole history of religion. This makes the history of religion – including mostly culture as well – understandable, and liberates it from being a chaos of nonsensical imaginations. In the whole history of religion, man's ultimate concern is expressed. Man responds to the manifestation of the holy on many places and in many ways.
The second answer points to the criterion of ultimacy by which this whole history of religion, including christianity, is judged. But being judged does not mean being rejected. Judging somebody or something means saying Yes and No to him or it. So we have two criteria: the criterion of adequacy and the criterion of real ultimacy. Where these criteria come together, we have truth of faith in the perfect sense. Where the first remains alone, we have truth of faith, but it may be distorted idolatrously.
Faith has truth insofar as it expresses an ultimate concern adequately. Now what does “adequacy” mean? This word is very important because ordinarily, when we speak about truth, we ask the question “Is the statement true to reality? Does it express reality as reality itself is?” The word “adequacy” means something else. It means the power of expressing an ultimate concern in such a way that it creates a living reaction, activity, following from it, community created by it. If this is the case, then a symbol is adequate – and the history of mankind is full of such adequate expressions of ultimate concern. Symbols which are able to do this are adequate and therefore living symbols.