Facs
Transcript
very hard to say whether a symbol which is still accepted (in contrast, in this case, to the symbol of the Holy Virgin) is definitively dead. Sometimes people tell us, “Your Christian symbols are dead.” Now they are dead for many people. The question is, “Can they become alive for them again?” I don't know. And the further question is, “If they can, can all of them, all of those which are preserved in Protestantism – which are very few in comparison with Catholicism – can they become alive again? Can the sacraments become alive again?”:
– all – open – questions!
But this is not the problem of our lectures here. The problem is the truth of faith, and the truth of faith is the adequacy and the living power of a symbol.
Now this was in contrast to an ultimate criterion, to the criterion of ultimacy, as I called it. This was the criterion of adequacy. Let us say a few words about what the criterion of ultimacy says:
A truth of faith must express that ultimate which is really ultimate; or, negatively expressed, it must not be idolatrous, because every symbol which doesn't express the ultimate that is really ultimate is idolatrous.
In the light of this criterion, the history of faith as a whole, the history of religion, including Christianity, stands under a severe judgment. It belongs to the weaknesses of all faith that it becomes idolatrous, that means, that it elevates a finite element to unconditional validity. And this is not only so in polytheism, where we often use the word “idolatrous” easily, but it is