Even in our post-Christian age, there are innumerable truths which illuminate the consciousness of the average man which he, since he has given up or never possessed the faith of his fathers, would not himself profess in a dogmatic manner. The average man of the Western world assumes that the universe had a beginning and will have a definite end; he believes that time is moving forward and that each individual event which he participates in during his life is utterly unique and unrepeatable; he believes that since each moment and each action is unique, they are therefore meaningful and significant; he believes, instinctively, that his own personal actions will bring about real change in the world and that those free actions of his will make something happen which would not have happened if he would not have acted, therefore, that he is in some way in charge of his own fate. Modern man also knows, again without any conscious doctrinal justification, that the consequences of a wicked action should not be the same as the consequences of a good action. Moreover, he knows that when something happens in his own life, either a triumph or a tragedy, he expects someone to care. No one, really, can personally tolerate Friedrich Nietzsche’s nihilistic aphorism which states that “man shouts out all of his greatest hopes and desires to the universe, and the universe turns to man and yawns.”

Originally published in Integrity Magazine. Read original article

Original Tags: Church History, Spirituality, Hope, Philosophy, St. Thomas Aquinas, Stoicism, Theology