WORLD HOPES
Sir,-Professor Wood’s cogent article on developments during the last centufy ends with the suggestion that "the mag--nificent Thomist reconciliation of reason with faith’ may provide the way out of
our world trouble The nations aré leaning on a reed in looking tc the United Nations as an instrument for securing enduring world peace. It is just another form of what Professor Wood describes as "faith in constitutions as a panacea; one expression of 18th Century confidence in the capacity of the unaided intellect to solve the problems of human society." Thomas Aquinas taught that we had two sources of knowledge, divine revelation (supernatural) and human intellect (natural) and that all our knowledge begins with the senses. It seems to me that one of the major difficulties consequent upon accepting this view is that the word "divine" has in our language the definite meaning of pertaining to a deity, inferring a person, called God. And immediately we begin to think of a personal Deity, we become unconsci'ously embroiled and befogged with our own personalities and our ideas of personal responsibility, which leads to the allocation of responsibility for good and evil to-that personality we call God. -Therefrom flows a variety of religions ‘and their various influences on human life and action. » If we could bring ourselves to accept the idea of an. impersonal source of supernatural inspiration that it is beyond our capacity to define, which operates in some way beyond our comprehension, we might get rid of sectarianism and all its potentialities
for oblique spiritual vision and unceasing rivalry and strife, and open the way for a more fruitful co-operation of the main elements of the Thomist philosophy. After all, we come from we don’t know where, and we go to we don’t know where; and yet we profess through our various religions, to be positive about what we must beliéve and do here in order to thrive, or be all right in that unknown to which we all must pass. The liberation of the human spirit must precede the political liberation of the nations.
J. MALTON
MURRAY
(Oamaru).
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 449, 30 January 1948, Page 5
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351WORLD HOPES New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 449, 30 January 1948, Page 5
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