"One may be astonished and even scandalized at the frequency, in religious climates, of more or less unintelligent opinions and attitudes, let it be said without euphemism; the indirect cause of this phenomenon is that religion, the goal of which is to save the largest possible number of souls and not to satisfy the need for causal explanations of an intellectual elite, has no motive for directly addressing the intelligence as such. In keeping with its end and with the capacity of the majority, the religious message is basically addressed to intuition, sentiment, and imagination, and then to the will, and to reason to the extent that the human condition requires it; it informs men of the reality of God, of the immortality of the soul and of their ensuing consequences for man, and it offers man the means of saving himself. It is not, does not wish to be, and cannot be, or offer, anything else, at least not explicitly; for implicitly it offers everything."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Philosophers from SwitzerlandNon-fiction authorsPoets from SwitzerlandPainters from SwitzerlandSufi poets
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Frithjof_Schuon
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Frithjof Schuon
1907 – 1998
Schweizer Religionsphilosoph
179 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Frithjof Schuon →
Related Quotes
"Original man was not a simian creature barely capable of speaking and standing upright; he was a quasi-immaterial bei…"
"The worldly or imperfect man journeys through life as if on a long road; if he is a believer, he sees God above him i…"
"One must not tire of affirming this: the origin of a creature is not a substance of a material kind, it is a perfect …"
"A classic example of a naive dogma is the Biblical story of creation, followed by that of the first human couple: if …"
"To say that man is "made in the image of God" means that he represents a central and not a peripheral subjectivity, a…"
"It is in man’s theomorphic nature that in his capacity as man and in God’s creative intention, he cannot be something…"
"Man is a divine manifestation, not in his accidentality and his fallen state, but in his theomorphism and his primord…"
"Moral liberty and intellectual objectivity constitute a priori man’s deiformity."
"The human being, by his nature, is condemned to the supernatural."
"Objective intelligence, free will, virtuous soul: these are the three prerogatives that constitute man."