Faith is a great blessing when it proceeds from a fervent mind, from great love, and a zealous soul. It shows we are practical Christians, it conceals human worthlessness and, despising earthly reasoning, seeks after knowledge of heavenly things. Or, rather, it takes possession of and rules by conquest that which the wisdom of men cannot discover. Let us, then, have faith and let us not entrust our own affairs altogether to reason. Why is it then, may I ask, that the Greeks were able to discover nothing of God? did they not know pagan wisdom? how is it, then, that they were unable to get the better of fishermen, tent-makers, and unlettered men? Was it not because the Greeks trusted everything to reason, while the latter placed all their confidence in faith? This is why these prevailed over Plato and Pythagoras and, in word, over all who are in error: familiar with astrology, and mathematics, and geometry and arithmetic. They surpassed all who had had a thorough and complete education, and became as far superior to them as true philosophers are to those who actually dull and witless by nature.
-Saint John Chrysostom, was a famed preacher and commentator on Scripture. |
Zone 6: Saturday
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)