The Right Side of Mystery

Although Garrigou-Lagrange is criticized for being excessively rigid, intransigent, and formulaic -- they even called him the sacred monster of Thomism -- he has his softer side. He's not all dogma, syllogisms and deductive logic. 

Rather, he cautions us against being "Like a child who studies the piano and cannot yet fathom what gives the works of the masters their value," and of coming "to a halt too readily at the formulas without seeking to pass through in order to thereby reach the Divine Reality signified, in order to penetrate and taste the revealed mysteries."

So, the formulas are not for their for own sake, rather, in order to penetrate and taste the Mystery which can never be contained by manmode language, because it's up there and we're down here. I do my best, but 

When we aim high, there is no public capable of knowing whether we hit our target.

Moreover, to each his own. Not everyone responds to the same material in the same way. Truth is true, but speaking it is analogous to painting, and there are realists, impressionists, abstract expressionists, et al. Which school is best? Whichever one gets the job done.

Yes, but what's the job? We -- or the Aphorist, rather -- touched on it yesterday, but here are a couple more:

The existence of a work of art demonstrates that the world has meaning. Even if it does not say what that meaning is.

And 

Strictly speaking, the work of art does not have a meaning but rather a power. 

So, not only is the power anterior to the meaning, in a certain sense it is the meaning. 

Now, transpose this to religion. Especially in a western world conditioned by scientistic materialism, we want it to make sense in those terms -- to contain it in the wideawake and cutandry -- which is to underlook the power of the mystery. But 

If God were the conclusion of a rational argument I would feel no need to worship him.

Man calls "absurd" what escapes his secret pretensions to omnipotence.

Christ is the truth. What is said about Him are mere approximations to the truth.

Why do some religions persist while most fade away, like species that go extinct? 

Authentic works of art explode after their time, like forgotten artillery projectiles on a battlefield.

Likewise authentic works of religion, to say nothing of authentic revelation. It's why the Bible continues to have such explosive meaning, some parts more than others. In any event, the Bible is only the signifier for a signified that must again be penetrated and tasted. 

The Bible is not the voice of God but that of the man who encounters him.

Note the present tense. It is what God wants to say, channeled through you and I (or through I, period). 

Continuing with what G-L says above, he speaks of the great spiritual masters -- for not every great saint is a great theologian -- who didn't necessarily undertake a conceptual analysis (or synthesis) of the dogmas of the faith, nor deduce various theological conclusions, but who

profoundly lived upon these mysteries precisely by passing through the formula so as to go on to the Divine and Living Reality that they signify.

"How many simple but profound Christian souls live upon these mysteries more, perhaps, than many theologians!" Sometimes I wish I were one of them. But you know how it is:

Created reason is absolutely subject to uncreated truth.

Which is why God has seen fit to hide the Mystery from the tenured but reveal it to babes.

Which is not to say infantile. As St. Thomas says,

The act of the believer is not terminated at the enunciable statement but at the thing, at the revealed mystery itself. 

Before which we are indeed like a babbling child, which is an 

aphasia go through before the noesis in your head becomes real. Ascent you a son, amen for a child's job! 

Nonsense.

Correct!

Too old, older than Abraham, too young, young as a babe's I AM.... A godsend, a touch of infanity, a bloomin' yes. 

Words words words. 

In its superior simplicity, faith is like an utterly simple circle.

O.

The teachings of the greatest theologians, seeking to explain the dogmas of faith, are like a polygon inscribed within this circle, so as to elaborate its content and riches.

The number of potential polygons is literally infinite. Am I wrong?

 We've circled a lot of goround in this post. Where does it leave us? I'll let Schuon play us out: 

The man who rejects religion because, when taken literally, it sometimes seems absurd... such a man overlooks one essential thing, despite the logic of his reaction: namely, that the imagery, contradictory though it may be at first sight, nonetheless conveys information that in the final analysis is coherent and even dazzlingly evident for those who are capable of having a presentiment of it or of grasping it.