I've known a few highly educated "intellectuals" in my life. The one thing that has always amazed me is how they have no sense of "wonder" or "mystery". Everything is cut and dry to them. In the New Testament, Jesus was talking to his disciples and said something that has always stuck with me: "Unless you become as one of these little children..." (Paraphrased) I have often reflected on these words. Children are full of wonder! They believe in mystery! Remember when we were kids we really believed we could fly! We believed we could leap a tall building in a single bound like Superman! We believed. I am convinced this is the type of faith that Jesus speaks about. A childlike faith. "Wonder". :)
Well said, and it's interesting you should make this connection between wonder and the ways of children, because Thomas Aquinas saw a connection between wonder and teaching: "But if we speak of [Christ] with respect to empiric knowledge, wonder could be in Him; and He assumed this affection for our instruction, i.e., in order to teach us to wonder at what He Himself wondered at. Hence Augustine says...: 'Our Lord wondered in order to show us that we, who still need to be so affected, must wonder. Hence all these emotions are not signs of a disturbed mind, but of a master teaching'" (Illa, q. 15, art. 8).
As a Medievalist I often find their love of Wonder, of beauty something to be marvelled at and very much a moving thing. I've tried to capture it in some of my stories but doubt they fully capture the grandeur of how the Medieval world must have seemed and how the universe appeared to them.
The more we strip the world of beauty so that it becomes as dry and humourless as an academic person is themself, the more the world seems to me, to be a dying thing.
It is indeed a moving thing, and it encourages us to try to recover some of what has been lost. I agree, there are times when it feels like postmodernity is increasingly gloomy and listless. Wonder can help us rediscover the joy of being alive.
Dante *does* sound like he's talking about the Uncreated Light here. That's interesting coming from a Catholic. I tend to think of that as an Orthodox thing.
The imagery of uncreated Light is prominent in the Divine Comedy, and Aquinas mentions it in the Summa, but I think you're right, it seems to be associated more with eastern Christianity than western.
I've known a few highly educated "intellectuals" in my life. The one thing that has always amazed me is how they have no sense of "wonder" or "mystery". Everything is cut and dry to them. In the New Testament, Jesus was talking to his disciples and said something that has always stuck with me: "Unless you become as one of these little children..." (Paraphrased) I have often reflected on these words. Children are full of wonder! They believe in mystery! Remember when we were kids we really believed we could fly! We believed we could leap a tall building in a single bound like Superman! We believed. I am convinced this is the type of faith that Jesus speaks about. A childlike faith. "Wonder". :)
Well said, and it's interesting you should make this connection between wonder and the ways of children, because Thomas Aquinas saw a connection between wonder and teaching: "But if we speak of [Christ] with respect to empiric knowledge, wonder could be in Him; and He assumed this affection for our instruction, i.e., in order to teach us to wonder at what He Himself wondered at. Hence Augustine says...: 'Our Lord wondered in order to show us that we, who still need to be so affected, must wonder. Hence all these emotions are not signs of a disturbed mind, but of a master teaching'" (Illa, q. 15, art. 8).
As a Medievalist I often find their love of Wonder, of beauty something to be marvelled at and very much a moving thing. I've tried to capture it in some of my stories but doubt they fully capture the grandeur of how the Medieval world must have seemed and how the universe appeared to them.
The more we strip the world of beauty so that it becomes as dry and humourless as an academic person is themself, the more the world seems to me, to be a dying thing.
It is indeed a moving thing, and it encourages us to try to recover some of what has been lost. I agree, there are times when it feels like postmodernity is increasingly gloomy and listless. Wonder can help us rediscover the joy of being alive.
Well said that’s how I feel.
Dante *does* sound like he's talking about the Uncreated Light here. That's interesting coming from a Catholic. I tend to think of that as an Orthodox thing.
The imagery of uncreated Light is prominent in the Divine Comedy, and Aquinas mentions it in the Summa, but I think you're right, it seems to be associated more with eastern Christianity than western.