Schuon Apostolo Paulo

Frithjof Schuon   – Algumas referências a Paulo Apóstolo  

However that may be, the desire to enclose universal Reality in an exclusive and exhaustive "explanation" brings with it a permanent disequilibrium due to the interferences of Maya; moreover it is just this disequilibrium and this anxiety that are the life of modem philosophy. Nevertheless this aspect of unintelligibility, this kind of "irrationality", this elusive and almost "mocking" element in Maya that condemns philosophy "according to the flesh" (St. Paul) to a vicious circle and finally to suicide, proceeds in the last analysis from the transcendence of the Principle, which will no more allow itself to be imprisoned by blind ratiocinations than will our sensorial faculties allow themselves to be perceived by our senses; the use of the word "imprisoned" allows the "indicative" value of logical processes to remain unquestioned. [[Thought and mental cristallizations]

Contrary to what occurred in the Greek and Oriental Churches, the intellectuality of the Latin Church became largely identified with the philosophical mode of thought, notwithstanding the formal rejection of philosophy by St. Paul (i Cor. i. 19; 11. 5-16; iii. 18, 19, 20 and Col. ii. 8). [[Philosophy and Christianity]

It has been said that beauty and goodness are the two faces of one and the same reality, the one outward and the other inward; thus goodness is internal beauty, and beauty is external goodness. Within beauty it is necessary to distinguish between appearance and essence. A love of beauty, from the point of view adopted here, does not signify attachment to appearances, but an understanding of appearances with reference to their essence and consequently a communication with their quality of truth and love. Fully to understand beauty, and it is to this that beauty invites us, is to pass beyond the appearance and to follow the internal vibration back to its roots; the aesthetic experience, when it is directed aright, has its source in symbolism and not in idolatry. This experience must contribute to union and not to dispersion, it must bring about a contemplative dilatation and not a passional compression; it must appease and relieve, not excite and burden. [[NA: Everything that Saint Paul says in his magnificent passage on love (1 Corinthians 13) is equally applicable to beauty, in a transposed sense.] [[Truths and Errors Concerning Beauty]