[472] And a Protestant, if he is critical AGAINST himself, would say: I risk, as the Prophets and Jesus and the Apostles would risk it. I MAY BE in error, but I don't subject myself to the church; the only one who can judge me is God Himself. -- That would be the HUMBLE Protestant answer. Now here you have the opposition of the two attitudes, what I call autonomy^a and

heteronomy.^b -- Another question? QN: Is it possible to have a complete vacuum in the religious realm, or in the education of the child? Is it possible to live [in] a real vacuum? PT: Now if there are symbols^c already given in very early years, then there is no vacuum, but there is critical emptiness, critical brokenness, of the symbols. They have no meaning any more; they can become meaningless, but they are still there potentially. And that is the reason why I am for

giving them early. They can be reawakened in every moment of life, and we have innumerable experi- ences that, in special situations, completely forgotten prayers and other symbols simply awake. But if you don't give anything, if you do not introduce, but either don't say anything, or teach in this sense of history of religion, then you produce a very dangerous vacuum, which is perhaps not complete but is vacuum with respect to the religious contents, and into this vacuum other demonic symbols may enter. QN: What is the responsibility of a teacher, say of a class in the public class that contains people of all denominations, say--Protestants and Catholics and Jewish people together? PT: Yes, now I wanted to postpone this question to the problem of church and state because

here we come to the so-called separation of church and state, which is partly a meaningful, partly