“If you believe in God, you do
not do so because some theoretical principles suggest this belief to you or
some foundational institution guarantees his existence. You believe him because
his person, the personal existence of God, gives birth to your trust. His works
and his historical “activity”, his interventions within history, make you want
a relationship with him…
…At whatever level or degree,
faith is an event and experience of relationship, a road radically different
from intellectual certainty and “objective” knowledge. If we wish to know the
God of the biblical tradition, the God if the Church, we must search by the
right road, the road of faith. Logical “proofs” for his existence, the
objective attempts of apologetics, the historical trustworthiness of the
sources of the Christian tradition, can be useful aids in order that the need
for faith be born within us. But they do not lead to faith, nor can they
replace it.
When the Church calls us to her
truth, she does not hold out some theoretical theses which must be accepted in
principle. She invites us to a personal relationship, to a “way” of life which
constitutes a relationship with God o leads progressively and experientially to
a relationship with him. This way transforms our entire life from individual
survival to an event of communion…
We draw near to God by means of a
way of life, not by means of a way of thinking. A way of life includes every
organic function of growth and maturity – it is the way, for instance, which
forms the relationship with our mother and father. From nursing and caressing
and affection and care to conscious communion and acceptance of their love,
there shoots up silently and imperceptibility in the soul of the child faith in
his mother and father. This bond does not require logical proofs or theoretical
securities, unless this relationship has itself been disturbed. Only then do
the arguments of the mind try to substitute for the reality of life”[1].
[1]
Yannaras, Christos, Elements of Faith –
An Introduction to Orthodox Theology, (Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1991),
p.12, 13, 14
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