What do you think?
Rate this book
437 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1955
Standing face to face with the world, we often sense a spirit which surpasses our ability to comprehend. The world is too much for us. It is crammed with marvel. The glory is not an exception but an aura that lies about all being, a spiritual setting of reality....
We fail to wonder, we fail to respond to the presence.
The grand premise of religion is that man is able to surpass himself. Such ability is the essence of freedom.And that sounds pretty nice, right? But when you get down to it, it's really just a nicer way of saying that religion is the essence of morality, and without religion why not just treat all humans as the animals we are, and so on. Considering the sheer amount of immorality that's been done in the name of religion all throughout history, I find that argument to be incredibly insulting in its total ignorance even as a religious person. Not to mention that transhumanism has exactly the same basis and is secular, though Heschel gets a pass on that since this was written in the 50s.
Proof and examination are inapplicable to it.which could have fooled me, because I would have thought at the very least that you could ask "did it happen?" if it's discussing events. Though if you're talking about something like Ezekiel's vision, I admit that is pretty inapplicable to scientific scrutiny.
"The quest for immortality is common to all men. To most of them the vexing question points to the future. Jews think not only of the end but also of the beginning. As parts of Israel we are endowed with a very rare, a very precious consciousness, the consciousness that we do not live in a void. We never suffer from harrowing anxiety and fear of roaming about in the emptiness of time. We own the past and are, hence, not afraid of what is to be. We remember where we came from. We were summoned and cannot forget it, as we wind the clock of eternal history. We remember the beginning and believe in an end. We live between two historic poles: Sinai and the Kingdom of God." (pg. 426)