Experience

One thing all religions are very bad at is answering the question why. Why is there something rather than nothing? Why do we exist? Of course they cannot. This is why we have generated mythologies, but while these might have satisfied a need in pre-scientific days they no longer do so. At one level they were superseded by theology – fides quaerens intellectum – and this seeking understanding is something that goes very deep. Today the purely intellectual pursuit of understanding is felt to be non-productive, perhaps, as someone said, because no sooner do you master one philosopher and stand breathless with admiration at the wonderful edifice he has constructed, than you come across another who demolishes him. Experience is what matters today and I suppose today’s theology needs to be experientia quaerens intellectum.

Ultimately our human experience is all we’ve got and this experience is riven with impossibilities and contradictions. There is in each of us a yearning, sometimes barely felt, sometimes of excruciating urgency, to transcend the limits and constraints of here and now, to consume and be consumed, to possess and be possessed, to love absolutely.