... is often mistakenly assumed to be the road to complacency. Not for W.H. Auden, as Wilfred McClay makes plain in this excellent review of Arthur Kirsch's Auden and Christianity: Grappling with God: The faith of a famous poet.
... he was convinced that all ratiocinations and speculations about God's nature were arrogant assumptions and empty human pretensions, merely learned ways of "taking His name in vain." Instead, he believed the worthiest Christians were those who remained perpetually humble and perpetually uneasy in their outlook, their minds stretched taut between the contrary poles of belief and skepticism.
"Our faith," he insisted, must be "well balanced by our doubt," for a Christian "is never something one is, only something one can pray to become."
No comments:
Post a Comment