“The Quest for Certainty”
The Seven Storey Mountain
By Thomas Merton
In the autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton explains how he sought to find certainty in his life through religion. Merton began the book by giving an overview of his early childhood. His father was from New Zealand and his mother was an American who lived in France. Both his father and mother were artists and did not earn much money. When his parents needed extra money, Merton’s father would do various jobs in order for the family to survive. For example, he would garden occasionally and he even played the organ at the local Episcopalian church for a short period of time. This church was the first that Merton would attend. He did not understand the rituals or the concept of prayer. This lack of understanding about churches or religion, for that matter, was contributed to the fact that he never received any formal religious training from his parents. It is evident that Merton’s mother was a Quaker, but she did not choose to involve her family in the faith. Early in Thomas’s life, his mother died from stomach cancer. From this point on, Thomas would spend some of his time living with his grandparents in New York and he would travel part-time with his father to France. Merton had a fascination with the numerous cathedrals in France. Although he knew nothing about the monastic vocations or religious rules connected to the pictures in the cathedrals, hi...
Determinism, a doctrine that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will, especially when up against nature. An influential component found in naturalistic writing, London, Garland, and Crane each lend their writing to this movement, realism, modeled after the writings of Darwin, Marx, and Freud. Determinism, generally pessimistic, presents itself in the form of Koskoosh, an elderly, blind man left to die by his tribe. This indigenous, cold-climate tribe embraces the “survival of the fittest” mentality. Simply surviving was a burden for this tribe and they certainly did not have the resources to sustain a dependent person. The story mentions the good times when the dogs and people were fat, as
I believe Thomas did a subpar job of executing logos, ethos, and pathos in his “This I Believe” essay. The essay had its strong moments especially in how easily the audience could relate to Thomas’s belief; even with this being so, the essay lacked depth in many areas which caused the essay to have a too simplistic and dull feel to it. This same belief Thomas holds and believes in so strongly has been the cause of great history changing wars and for millions of people to leave their homes and lives behind all for a single belief. Overall Thomas’s belief is incredibly rooted in to his very being causing the person he is today because of this I believe he will hold this belief for most if not all his life however the manner in which he wrote about his belief, unfortunately, was not as strong as the belief itself.
We live in a fallen world filled with evil desires, temptations, and idols. Many believed that if one desires to be as holy and as close to God as possible then they must distance themselves from sin. This involves putting aside worldly desires and possessions since anything of this fallen world is sinful. This calling brought many people to live simplistic lives alone. However, around fourth century a man named Pachomius founded a place where people with this similar interest could live together, known as a monastery (Benedictine Abbey of Christ in the Desert). This way of living became very appealing not only for spiritual pursuits but also for the pursuit of knowledge. Outside of monasteries the literacy rate was extremely low. For the most part only monks knew how to read and write. For these reasons monasteries began to be established all over Europe. However, with so many of them styles and rules became very different. There were many different kinds of rule that separated monasteries fro...
Francis of Assisi is one of the most influential personalities in the entire world. In the book ‘Francis of Assisi: Performing the Gospel Life,’ Cunningham recounts the life of this humble monk who lived in the medieval times, and shaped the Christian life, which spread in Western culture throughout the rest of history. I believe Cunningham accurately accounts for the life of Francis of Assisi, and in doing so; he provides a trajectory of the Christian faith from its early and historical proponents through its fusion with western culture, and its subsequent spread throughout the world.
closer to God. The monasteries were a place to get away from evil and anything
In Dr. Osman’s lecture and in Life and Miracles of St. Benedict, monasteries were portrayed as places for people to escape the harsh times and live together worshipping God. In The Dark Ages, the narrator discusses how many nuns and monks would try to escape because they were forced to go there, some even going as far as scaling the walls of their convent or monastery. These holy places offered many people the escape and religious freedom that they craved, but not everyone loved the strict life that monks and nuns lived. (The Dark Ages, “Marriage of Monks and
In beginning his lengthy phenomenology for identifying the pathway in which Geist will realize itself as Absolute Knowledge, Hegel begins at what many considered the most basic source of all epistemological claims: sensual apprehension or Sense-Certainty. Though the skeptical tradition took this realm as a jumping-off point for making defensible epistemological claims, Hegel sees in the sensual a type of knowledge so general and abstract as to be entirely vacuous. Focusing on the principle that anything known in the Scientific sense must be communicable, through language or its approximations, Hegel shows that whatever the sensual purports to know is inherently incommunicable and therefore cannot represent true knowledge.
As previously stated Saint Augustine wasn’t always a Saint. Before he fully converted to Christianity, Saint Augustine encountered numerous acts, in which his decisions were not always that of a righteous Saint. The first noticeable co...
Bernard. Thomas Merton was asked to write the book. Thomas Merton based a lot of his life off of the things St. Bernard did. Thomas Merton did quite a bit of studying on St. Bernard and it is evident in the The Last of the Fathers. The Last of the Fathers is close to serving a biography of St. Bernard. The book talks about certain years in St. Bernard’s life. There are three main years that Thomas Merton focuses on. The years are: 1115, 1124 and 1145.These three years are Thomas Merton’s attempt to provide an outline of St. Bernard’s travels in the service of God, to describe his monastic reforms, his new foundations, and his interventions in the affairs of kings, bishops and such. In 1115 St Bernard is young and takes over as abbot at the age of twenty-five. St. Bernard practically saved the life of a new monastery at the time, Clairvoux. In 1124 St. Bernard nears the end of a providential reform that will prepare him for his works later in life. This is where we get his “religion”. Based on Thomas Merton’s dedication to learning about St. Bernard I believe that Thomas Merton also has a pretty strong belief in the same thing. St. Bernard says that he has to learn that man is not an angel, that monks still have bodies, and that man is supposed to be divinized by grace and not destroyed by it. St. Bernard talks about how one Saint who is pure and spiritual does not feel temptation is different than
Many bishops and abbots (especially in countries where they were also territorial princes) bore themselves as secular rulers rather than as servants of the Church. Many members of cathedral chapters and other beneficed ecclesiastics were chiefly concerned with their income and how to increase it, especially by uniting several prebends (even episcopal sees) in the hands of one person, who thus enjoyed a larger income and greater power. Luxury prevailed widely among the higher clergy, while the lower clergy were often oppressed. The scientific and ascetic training of the clergy left much to be desired, the moral standard of many being very low, and the practice of celibacy not everywhere observed. Not less serious was the condition of many monasteries of men, and even of women (which were often homes for the unmarried daughte...
Catholicism. He stayed at Hodder for two years, where he was partially happy, then the
Gerard Manley Hopkins had eight siblings and was born of Manley and Catherine Smith Hopkins. His parents were Anglicans that followed the Catholic tradition in sacraments and papacy. By instilling the theological values, faith and morals into Gerard, he became heavily influenced by his family. His parents taught him, as well as their other children to love God. Gerard guaranteed his mother that he would strengthen his connection with God and familiarize himself with the Scripture, so Gerard began to read the New Testament at school. Manley, his father, was an officer of the laity and helped out at the Church. He taught children at the Sunday school including his own son Gerard. Other relatives influenced his faith, too. His uncle was a clergyman and helped Gerard’s father write a renowned book of faith. John Smith, his uncle on his mother’s side, was an officer of the laity; he fortified the religious tradition and teaching within the family and in the community. Through the guidance of his parents and his father and mother’s relatives, Gerard Hopkins developed a strong, binding connection with God.
In A Short and Easy Method of Prayer, Madame Guyon touches on how one can accept all things God through prayer. Through the simple steps of meditation and reading accompanied by meditation, Madame Guyon teaches the reader how to use those steps to have a relationship with God. As a person of the Quietism faith in the seventeenth century, Madam Guyon was going against the norm of the church structure. Not only was she advocating people did not need to go to weekly services but she was also going against the male’s leaders of the church. One of the questions this book can help historians to answer is how religion shape everyday life. However, the readers need to keep in mind the biases surrounding this book. This is just one of the many religious
As a boy Thomas, parents placed him in the monastery of Monte Casino near his home as an oblate. He was the only one among his siblings whom the parents intended for a life in the abbacy, as they recognized him becoming an abbot would someday become to their benefit. In 1239 after 9 years in sanctuary of spiritual and cultural life, Thomas was forced to return to his parents, due to a military conflict between Emperor Frederick II and Pope Gregory IX. The emperor expelling the monks, because of the obedience they were giving to the pope. After returning to his parents, he was sent to the “Naples University” and was found by the emperor; now is where he encountered several things, some begin scientific and philosophical works that were translated from “Greek and Arabic”. Although his early life became the shaping of his older life hood , his older years are the key to his impotence in his...
I admire both St. Augustine and Bridgid of Kildare greatly. They began a new way of religious life by providing a peaceful place where anyone could come to rest and reflect no matter what their station in life. In our busy society we rarely have time to sit down, clear our minds, and meditate on what is important to us. Somehow our modern society is unable to combine work, pleasure, and prayer. St. Augustine and Bridgid of Kildare founded several monasteries where the above three things were woven into each day. There were times for tending the fields, giving thanks to God, and relaxing. However, personal reflection has fallen by the wayside in today's cultured. Many people have forgotten about the fulfillment that solitude and prayer can bring to one's life. This is even true in my own life. I am so consumed with social activities, schoolwork, extra curricular activities, etc that I forget to stop and take the time to be present with God and my thoughts. I think that I would be a better person and Christian if I just took ten minutes out of my day to pray, meditate, or write in my journal. Spirituality is something that I have lost, but through the examples set by St. Augustine and Bridgid ...