Re: Very little goes well (was: Re: OK, etc.)

From: David Alan Beck (dabeck@IUPUI.EDU)
Date: Tue Aug 21 2001 - 21:43:29 EDT


Rhonda,
You wrote:
Abraham, they are unsubsumable. As such, they are proof of God's
existence,
making the Jewish peope a sign in Percy's system (I think--I'm still
working
this out). Why does faith need proof, you might ask? Beats me, but
Aquinas
spent a whole lot of time on the subject, so it certainly predates Percy.

Yeah well, I'm not sure Aquinas didn't waste a lot of his time on the
subject. (Wasn't he the one who said, on his death bed, that his work was
all "straw" to be burned?) Anyway, Jew or no Jew, we can all go into a
cave and "have it out" with God; more than likely we are going to leave
with a toothache. I mean, how does one square Percy's comments about the
Jew (especially in The Moviegoer) with his later work. I'm not sure he
believed that faith could be aquired by any sign. How do we reconcile the
"Jews" of MG with his later works (that seem to imply the Kierkegaardian
leap)? As for "proof", I'm not sure Pecy offers an answers (thankfully).

(Rhonda: I'm not saying that you were implying that he was. I'm just
making an observation.)

David Beck

"The only true joy on earth is to escape from the
prison of our false self, and enter by love into union
with the Life Who dwells and sings within the essence of
every creature and in the core of our own souls."

                                -Thomas Merton



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