Man’s reaching out to God, his questing search for the creative ground of all being, is something quite different from “precritical” or uncritical thought. On the contrary, the rejection of the question about God, the renunciation of this loftiest goal of humanity’s quest, means a closing of the mind to, an ignoring of, the inner call of our being. In this connection, Josef Pieper quotes from a translation of Hesiod by Cardinal Newman in which this thought is expressed with inimitable elegance and accuracy: “Being wise with someone else’s head…is, to be sure, inferior to being wise oneself, but it is infinitely superior to the sterile pride of one who does not achieve the independence of being wise himself, yet at the same time despises the dependence of one who believes on the word of another.”
The same line of thought can be detected in Newman’s own comment on man’s basic relationship to truth. Men are all too inclined – the great philosopher of religious opines – to wait placidly for proofs of the reality of revelation, to seek them out as if they were in the position of judge, not suppliant. “They have decided to put the Almighty to the proof – with controlled passion, a total freedom from bias, and a clear head.” But the individual who thus makes himself lord of the truth deceived himself, for truth shuns the arrogant and reveals itself only to those who approach it in an attitude of reverence, of respectful humility.
From: Auf Christus schauen, pp.21-23
