Intellectual Climate and New Theology — Francis Schaeffer

The Line of Despair in Philosophy, Art, and Culture

And I call this the line of despair, the line of despair. And this is a timeline registering that as we come down the steps, the time gets constantly later. We put here philosophy. This is in philosophy.

And we put as a doorway Kant and Hegel and Kierkegaard. We said this is the doorway from the classical philosophy into the new attitude of despair in philosophy. Running down here, finally, to the three branches of existentialism, theological positivism, and the defining philosophy.

And I won't repeat what I said then, but simply say the word that these are philosophies of despair if you compare them with the classical philosophy, which purported to set forth a circle in which all knowledge and then life could be placed.

Second was art. This was philosophy. Art as an expression of this. And we put the impressionist as the doorway. And we ran down here, not that he's the most important by any means, but nevertheless, for reasons we'll point out in a few minutes, we mentioned Salvador Dali with his surrealism, which is a combination of Dada and Freud's subconscious.

In music, we came down, finally ending with music on Cray, Paul Schaeffer's work in music on Cray. In general culture, we came down into, finally ended with Henry Miller. And not again anywhere near the most important man, in a way.

And yet, for reasons that I'll show tonight, I think I'll leave it there. And we ended there. We put this line as 1930, and this line as 1965. Now tonight, in dealing with theology, and this is theology.

The New Theology as Part of the General Cultural Consensus

And I pointed out last time that we could divide this into 100 divisions as easily as into the five steps. I've included a basket of general culture, just simply because this can't break down everything in anywhere near careful form.

Theology is last. But theology also, if we do this, we come to Kierkegaard again. And we come down then to Karl Barth. And the reason I would put 1930 is just a rough day for Barth. Simply a rough day.

Now, the new theology is not something isolated from the general cultural consensus. It seems to me often both those who are not Christians and those who are Christians make a mistake in comprehending the new theology and are taken by surprise by developments in the new theology because they don't realize that it is not something that is isolated.

That it really is a part of the general cultural consensus as a whole, of which we spoke for an hour or more last time. In this, I would say that it seems to me that any real distinction in a historical sense between theology and philosophy has totally evaporated.

And so in reality, the theology is a part of the philosophy. And yet, under a separate heading, I've kept it over here just simply for clarity. Now then, if we put Karl Barth here, I would suggest if we come down to 65, we could think of two men.

We could think of Tillich. And we could think of Robeson with Honest to God. Again, one might say, are these the most important? That isn't my point. They're simply to fit into the texture of the lecture as we will develop it.

And we must understand that this stream of modern theology, the new theology, comes from Kierkegaard just as much as secular existentialism comes from Kierkegaard. They both come equally from him. He is the father of both.

There are great differences among the new theologians, tremendous differences, and equally among those who sometime are called, spoken of as the new liberalism, which has, in a way, come after the neo-orthodoxy.

And tremendous differences among those who constitute this general school. Yet nevertheless, yet nevertheless, there's a definite unity too. And I would suggest that this loss of unity has been the loss of the concept of this unity of something called the neo-orthodox theology, the new theology, or using the continental word, the mentality of neo-orthodoxy.

The loss of the concept of the unity of this in studying the diversity between Barth, Brunner, Niebuhr, and so on, has been a real loss in understanding it. Real differences, and it's worthwhile to spend time as to the differences.

But if one only sees the differences, it seems to me, one misses the point of a mentality, a unified personality, a unified system that reaches throughout the neo-orthodox flow. Now we must see that in theology, you have the same basic situation prior to the rise of Karl Barth in here, that you had back here in the philosophic circle.

And the breakdown of the optimistic humanism, thinking that a universal philosophy could be built upon a purely humanistic basis, the breakdown that came before Kant repeated itself also here in theology.

In theology, the old liberalism had come to a full stop, a dead stop. And the reason it had come to a dead stop was simple in its basis. And that is that liberalism had a naturalistic presupposition or a humanist presupposition.

Remembering my term of humanism, I have defined as not the narrow sense of humanism, such as technically the Huxleys or the humanist frame, but rather humanism, man at the center and working out only from himself.

And the old liberalism had this naturalistic presupposition or humanist presupposition. And having it, it set out a task for itself. And that is, on the basis of objective scholarship, that it would separate that which it considered unacceptable, the supernatural, from the life of Jesus, while finding the historical Jesus as someone one could build something upon.

Prior to the time of Karl Barth, this had come completely to an end, practically so. It had come to real bankruptcy. It had come to the place where no longer were they thinking that they could produce such an objective scholarship that would give a base to really build on.

That's back here. That's back here. Now we have pointed out that the line of despair does not mean people sit around and cry all the time, but it does mean that when we reach the line of despair, whether we have seen it at the time in philosophy or in the artists we have studied, in the musicians, the general culture, it means that men have come to the place that on a humanist, rational, logical answer on the basis of this, they no longer expect to be able to draw a circle which will encompass all of knowledge and life.

And it's despair in this sense, despair in a negation of all the previous concepts of philosophy, whether you start back at the time of the Hindus, or as I said, or the Greeks, or the Renaissance, it doesn't matter.

Coming up through the German thinking prior to Kant, some would include Kant, this is the technical question in which there's no real interest here, I think. But nevertheless, before that, philosophy had an ideal, the statement that on a humanist basis, a proposition could be put forward which would encompass universally knowledge and life, these two aspects, knowledge and life.

We have said that this line is the line of despair in the sense that here at philosophy, here in art, here in music, here in the general culture, and now here in the, here in the, yes, still working, it's fine.

I didn't fasten this patch, that's not my fault. And here in theology also, that men gave up the concept of a rational solution, a totally rational solution. This in theology showed itself, starting with Barth, I would say, and running through, say, Tewick and Robeson, this breakdown of the hope of the rational showed itself in the separation of, quotation marks, religious truth from contact with the cosmos and with history, with the cosmos meaning those things touched upon by science.

So here you have a new situation, a situation that the old liberals really scorn and still do, where they exist, and that is that you have set aside a basic rationality. You have set aside a proposition that you're going to find a solution on the basis of objective scholarship and there it will stand in the full circle of men's thinking.

Instead of that, you find a situation wherein there is a separation made between that which covers religious truth, quotes, and the things that would touch the cosmos and the things that would touch science.

In short, anything that is verifiable is removed from the consideration. This being so, it really is the same thing as we considered in the philosophic position of Sartre, let us say, and Karl Jaspers.

This is the reason Kierkegaard may honestly be said to be the father of both. The method is the same. The method is the same. The irrationality rests at the point of this separation, the separation of that which is verifiable where science would touch the cosmos and where history would touch history.

This division, therefore, would be a parallel to that wherein in secular existentialism, purpose is divided from that which is rational and logical. Now, I assume you heard the first lecture. I'm not trying to fill in all the details.

Religious Language Without Definition

Now we have two steps, I would say, in the despair. I wasn't sure of the order I should give this lecture, but what I've done is to speak a little bit of a new theology, then show that it relates to a second step of despair in the secular world, intellectual world, then come back to the new theology.

So that's the order of the lecture from this point on. There are two levels of the despair. They're both despair, but they stand two aspects, two levels, as we shall see. I would say that this aspect, the second aspect of despair, is exhibited in the new theology by the fact that religious terms are used to give an illusion of communication without definition.

They are used to give an illusion of communication without definition, and therefore, they seem to be optimistic at first blush. That, I would say, would be the hallmark of the second aspect of the despair, and that is a seeming optimistic statement with no reason to make it.

And in the new theology, it seems to me, this rests at the point of using religious terminology to give an illusion of communication. Without definition. For example, the cross. As soon as the word cross is used in our culture, the cross, whether it's painted or used in words, immediately a certain connotation arises.

It's not just an emotional connotation, but a total connotation. Carl Gustav Jung, of course, has said there's a collective unconscious. I do not think he's right, as he defines it, and yet it must be said that in each culture, one can find a collective mentality, in a sense.

A collective consensus or memory would be better. That's better, not consensus, if you'd remove that. A collective memory in each culture, reaching back far into the memory of the people. Now, when we use the word cross in our culture, it reaches back almost to that place wherein our culture can be said to begin.

It reaches back all the way to the time in the Christian era. Consequently, the word cross carries a connotation. It carries a connotation which is loaded with emotionalism, which is loaded with motivating powers, just because the word cross is used.

If, for example, on the other hand, one used the word cross in the world of Islam, it would be quite a different reaction. If you used the word crescent here, it would be quite a different reaction. There are loaded words, rooted down into centuries of thinking and centuries of structuring in a whole culture.

So when the word cross is used, something is brought forward in this connotation. Notice in this sense that these religious words are only symbols. They are used as symbols, but that they have exactly the opposite purpose than religious symbols, I mean, than scientific symbols.

Exactly the opposite than the usage of scientific symbols. But by using the word symbol, the new theologian comes in on the prestige of the scientific use of the word symbol, because it's a great symbol, it's a tremendous, tremendous matter of prestige in this day, in our age of science.

We're in the right building to say this. Now when you are here, therefore, when we think about this, therefore, we find that in a scientific symbol, the thing that makes the symbol increasingly valuable is an increasingly fine definition.

So eventually, if a man puts forth a brand new theory that is far out in the world of the new physics, maybe only two or three men understand his symbols at first. And they're the only ones that can understand the new proposition.

But the use of a symbol is an exact speech, which rests upon a very careful, exact definition, at least between two men. Otherwise, the scientific symbol is not used. Now, on the other hand, in the religious symbols, as is used in the new theology, it is exactly opposite.

In the new symbols, and the new theology instead of that, the value is upon no definition. So they're exactly opposite. For example, when Tillich says the God behind God, this is an undefined word, this is a symbol, but it's a symbol that's never defined.

But it isn't only the word God that's never defined, but intrinsically in the system, none of the symbols are defined, not really. The words are used in an undefined form in order to bring forth an illusion of communication and to tie down into the memory of the race.

So then when these words are used, you think you know what it means, and then you find that you haven't been told after all. This, therefore, I would say, is in clear exhibition that indeed we are dealing with despair in this theology if we think of despair in the sense of a denial of the old classical philosophic concept or the concept of all educated men, and that is dealing with things wherein there was a unity of truth, wherein things could be discussed rationally and logically, even if one finally came to a negative conclusion.

So it is rational despair. Tying it into the very last thing of our lecture last time, where we listened to the disc on Musique Concrète, I would say it's as though I had played the disc of Musique Concrète and then said, please, as an act of faith, hear this as the unity and diversity of Bach.

Now, those of you who heard the disc, I am not exaggerating for the sake of emphasis. I think it is exactly that and exactly that and exactly that. Noted in this use of the new theology, there is no base presented to us.

The base is already made impossible because of the intrinsic separation of religious truth from that which is verifiable. But on the other hand, man cannot live in the despair of no meaning. And this is a strange thing for modern man.

Modern man can put forth man as a machine, but he finds he cannot live as a machine. This is first of all individually, but also in the social structure. Man finds that he is not able to live on the basis of the fact that rationally, he is only mathematics and the machine.

This is not so. And so therefore, men ask us in the new theology to accept a jump without a base in order to give us an optimistic answer when the rationality would lead to a pessimistic answer. It is therefore to be called a faith in faith, a faith in faith.

Rationality would lead to pessimism. Merely rationality, logic, mathematics, machines. No meanings to the particular and peculiarly no meaning to man. But the other is presented to us as a faith in faith that we give an optimistic statement rather than a pessimistic.

And I would relate it again to the music on Cray and asking you to listen to it as though it were the unity in the midst of the diversity that Bach gives us. But now I would point out that this is not shut up into the new theology.

This faith in faith is in order to get an optimistic answer when the rationality would give us a pessimistic one is not only in the theological statement of the new position, it is also about as on many sides in the secular world.

This is the second aspect I'm speaking of now of the level of despair. And to exhibit this, here you Leonardo da Vinci can be said to be the first modern man. Leonardo da Vinci, of course, followed Pacino.

He was a Neoplatonist. And this was the dominant thinking of forensia at the Renaissance. Now, Leonardo da Vinci had a line. And in the line, being the first mathematician in a sense of modern sense, one can say he's the first mathematician in the modern sense.

In that sense, you have mathematics. And this he saw would lead only to the particular. And he saw this just as much as any man has ever seen it since. No modern man has gone beyond Leonardo da Vinci at this point.

But Leonardo da Vinci put his hope in painting. And he hoped to paint what the Neoplatonists called the soul. The soul. Now, the soul is not to be confused with the soul as used in Christian thinking.

The soul is the universal. So you would have a soul of the universe just as much as the individual man having a soul. I want to read a little bit from a work of Giovanni Giontili, who before his death was probably the greatest philosopher in contemporary Italy.

Giontili is not a Christian, but he understands and sets forth Leonardo da Vinci's position most clearly. And this is shown through innumerable multiplicity, susceptible of mathematical treatment, which Leonardo was the first to proclaim, anticipating the canons of Galilean science, which is modern science.

It is a multiplicity that can be ordered in a closed and fixed system, necessary and mechanically invariable, according to causal relationship, which is nothing but the factual connection between the condition and the conditioned, capable of endowing the total or the totality with a mechanistic character proper to the single element.

This is a very hard and clear statement by Giontili. But Giontili continues and says this. The unity of the inward illuminates the fantasy, and the intellect comes to break up this unity into the endless multiplicity of sensible appearances.

Hence the anguish and the innermost tragedy of this universal man, that is Leonardo, divided between two irreconcilable worlds, leaves in the mind an infinite longing, made up, as it were, of regret and sadness.

It is the longing for a Leonardo different from the Leonardo that he was. One who could have gathered himself up at each phrase and remain closed himself off, either altogether in his fantasy or altogether in his intelligence.

It's a little bit rough because of the translation from the Italian. But the thrust of this is certainly obvious. What is fine, we said, Giontili said, he wasn't able to paint the soul. He was not able to prove that the painter could bring forth the universal.

And consequently, he was forever torn. He was torn between seeing that mathematics leads only to the particulars and machinery. But on the other hand, he could not give up the hope of some sort of a universal.

And Giontili said, if he could have chosen either one or the other and just sort of shut himself away, he could have come to peace. But he couldn't do this. Why couldn't he do it? He couldn't do it for the reason I indicated last time.

And that is prior to the time of Hegel and that which followed, no educated man could do it. It was considered the absolute antithesis of an educated man and of rationality. He could not do it. It was against thousands of years of rationality of thinking.

Hundreds of years and up to the day of Hegel. No educated man could accept. I would remind you again of the circles I drew that made up the study of the history of philosophy prior to Hegel. Now, the first step, the first step of the despair of modern man is that modern man has accepted the dichotomy which Leonardo could not accept and nobody accepted.

Modern man, with all his knowledge of the particulars has become on the background of human thought of thousands of years as we trace it, the uneducated man, regardless of the particulars. If they're right, modern man is in the wilderness no matter how much technology he knows.

The Secular Mystical Jump

Now then, here in this section of Blackboard, I would point out, I would make this line again. This is this line. No. Modern man, modern man therefore sees rationality on his humanistic base and logical base leads to mathematics, leads to the machine.

Now he has a possibility. His possibility is to accept the dilemma and just say, I'm a machine. And some men have and tried to live with this. But let me point out that these men are few. These men are few.

The second act of the tragedy of the modern man in despair is the man has found he cannot live actually accepting with rational fullness that this is all there is. I'm not saying no one has, but in general it has not been so.

And these men I have set forward in the first lecture, I have largely chosen because they're fine, brilliant examples of men who haven't been able to stand merely having this under the line. Now I would put it into three categories.

First, the philosophy. And you remember that I mentioned Karl Jaspers of Switzerland. Though he's not known as much in this country as either Heidegger and Sartre, Camus, yet I think really in some ways he is the most brilliant of the existential thinkers.

Karl Jaspers, as I pointed out last time, said this is true that if you deal in rationality, that's all you get. But there is a possibility to sit in non-rationality, to sit in the non-logic. And when you do this, you can wait for the final experience.

And in the final experience one has, if one has the final experience, one has some certainty of being and one has some hope of meaning. These are the two areas. One has some hope or some certainty of being and some hope of meaning.

But notice in order to achieve this, after you say that the logical and rational always leads to this, you must, as I said last time, be honest here and say this is non-rational, non-logical. And a man like Jaspers would acknowledge this very, very simply, that this is so.

Consequently, he says, well, you can have a final experience. But as I pointed out last time, it brings the whiplash of no communication. No communication either with others as to what the final experience is and no communication to yourself two weeks later what the final experience was.

At least you can't talk about it in any terms that would be in words. At least this. You can talk about it in other ways. That's a different problem. But communication is lost. Communication is lost. And one finds these men in a tension that is very difficult.

Yet, nevertheless, it is a specialized kind of despair. It is not a despair of the man who comes to full cynicism and full nihilism. When a man comes to you filled with nihilism, a consistent nihilist, a consistent man with full cynicism, it is a different matter.

He says, all right, that's it. There's no purpose. There's no meaning. At places, I am not sure of my own being. And regardless of what next step he takes, at least he is intellectually honest in the old area of the concept of rationality.

But this is a specialized despair. It is despair that is accepting a final experience above rationalizations and above verbalizations. I would suggest also, as I pointed out last time, that Aldous Huxley, with his emphasis on drugs, not only for escape and not even primarily for escape, but primarily for a first-order experience, exhibits the same thing.

In faith, these men are saying, on the basis of rationality, we cannot move. But there is a faith in us, a hope in us, that there is something, what I would call, upstairs. If you make this downstairs, then this is upstairs.

And there is a hope in something, a faith in something, upstairs. So it is a special kind of despair, a despair that seeks answers out of all contact with rationality. Now, in the discussion of intellectual thinking through the years, there has always been the line of nature and grace.

Think of Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Raphael, Van Eck, all these men wrestled with the problem of nature and grace. Botticelli, these all can be fit into this general structure. But one thing that was always accepted, prior again to the breakthrough of the line of despair, is that there was a unity between nature and grace.

There was a unity between nature and grace. Now, this was made as a statement without any basis for the unity very often. And I personally think it is only biblical Christianity that can give a statement of the unity of nature and grace.

So I don't want to go into that tonight. But nevertheless, the mentality, the expectation, was that there was a unity if one could find it. But notice now, in these divisions I have pictured here, with Carl Gustav Jung, for example, or Carl Jaspers, I beg your pardon, Carl Jaspers and the First Order experience under drugs, and I would say OSD is, and I think, in the same direction.

You have a different situation. Instead of grace and nature with an accepted unity, you have a very different concept. And it's a fantastically different concept because now, instead of nature and grace, you have rationality and faith.

And that changes the world. The faith with no contact in the rational. And one thing I find difficult, as I said last time with many Americans, is that they think that secular existentialism can be counted as an optimistic statement when reality in France, practically nobody would accept it.

I'm thinking of the Sarkind, no? As an optimistic statement. It isn't so. To understand Carl Jaspers at his heart, you have to understand that the only way you can hope for the final experience is completely abstracted from, a total dichotomy from, all rationality and all logic.

As soon as you bring in the ringer, as I used last time, of rationality and logic, you have destroyed the basis of the possibility of the final experience if rationality and logic leads mathematically to machinery only.

You can't have both. You can't have both. So therefore we have a situation in which we have rationality in opposition to faith, and faith in a total sense. A faith you cannot talk about. A faith you cannot communicate.

A totally non-propositional faith. A faith above verbalization. A faith in which all content is minimized if not completely removed. The best way to say it is a faith in faith. In contrast, of any sort of idea of faith, that the value of the thing would be a faith in what it is fixed.

The word faith has two different meanings in the historic Christian faith. I'd point out, the value of faith is not in the faith. The value of the faith is in the object upon which the faith is fixed.

In this new mentality of tension, of faith and rationality, the value of the faith is a complete abstraction from rationality. An entirely different situation. So therefore, in my lecture, for example, on existentialism, as I did fairly recently in the University of Freiburg, I would always draw the line between the two different meanings of faith.

This is where the difference, I think, comes to its clearest line. So now here we have rationality and faith. I would say again, it is still despair. In the fact that there is no hope of a rational, logical answer, or even in the hope that anything can really be discussed about these things.

Not really. Not really. But because man cannot stand on the basis of only the bottom line, he is forced to this jump, which is a disavowal of all that which was considered education through the mark of educated men, and the denial of classical philosophy all through the ages.

And it is hard to stand there. I have met a few men in the far out group who have tried logically to stand with courage only on the basis of mathematics and the particulars, and so on. But there are very few.

It is very, very difficult to do. Carl Gustav Jung, again, marks two things cut across us. The external world, and he says the collective unconscious from inside. Nevermind the collective unconscious part of it, but it's true, these two things cut across us.

It's very difficult to live as though things are only machinery, both from the world that faces us, and more peculiarly, who I am. And then beyond the who I am, those social relationships which make up so much of the importance of human life.

Men find it very difficult to do, and so they're forced into this act of irrational faith. I have a friend of mine who's considered one of the most brilliant young men in physics in England at this present time.

And he was talking to me one time. I was in Lloyd's, Lion's Corner House near Marble Arch, and I stimulate him. I understand enough what he's talking about, so he likes to talk. And we were talking, and he was way out and far, far out, someplace in the matter of particles moving in opposite directions in the vortex.

And he was talking about this thing. And so we find that reality had pretty well come to the place of only electric charges moving in opposite directions in a vortex. And he was speaking of all this. He was rather excited about it.

And I was learning all sorts of things, very pleased. And then I reached across and I put my hand on his. And he had recently become a Christian with us at La Brie. And I said, Peter. And he said, yes, Dr. Schaefer.

And I said, that's fine for you as a Christian, because you know who you are. But what do your friends do who do not know who they are when reality to them is only this sort of a mathematical formula, when they come home to their wife?

And this is not an easy question. It's nothing to smile about. Some of the I've met men who stand and weep at this point. And he looked at me and he said, he thought a moment and he said, well, thinking them over, I suppose that the way each of them live is in a complete dichotomy.

And here you go. In the laboratory, they're under the line. But when they come home and they take their wife in their arm, they move into an area of irrational secular faith. It's irrational secular faith.

If you ask them to justify it, they couldn't possibly answer two words in their scientific and mathematical framework. It doesn't exist to them, but they cannot stand it. And so when they come home, they take their wife in their arms and they view her on an entirely different level.

Non-rational, it is true, but in a dichotomy. One time I was crossing the Mediterranean from Lisbon to Genoa and we were on the boat and I met a man who was building radio stations in Africa and other places for a large American concern.

Very bright man, very nice one. But when he found I was a pastor, I'm sure he thought he could have some entertainment. And we started to talk and I must say I enjoyed him. I really thoroughly enjoyed him.

We had a good time. But as I got toward the end of the evening and the moon was setting over the Mediterranean, and if you've ever seen this, you know what I mean. And the next day we were coming to Genoa and I had noticed he had a very beautiful and lovely wife.

She was Jewish and beautiful, warm, vivant, just everything. And so we find here that as I watched the way he handled her at the table, I knew he loved her. I just knew he loved her. And what I did to him, I must say, caused me great pain.

But I thought, I want to preach the gospel to this man and I want him never to forget. And so I said to him, excuse me, I'm sorry, but before you go in, I want to ask you a question. And he said, yes.

I said, when you take your wife in your arms at night, do you always know she's there? And I have never in my life seen such a thing. It was as though I had caught a fox in a trap. And I've never forgotten his eyes and I've never forgotten him and I never will.

And I hated it. And yet I felt that maybe he would realize his position and listen to the answers I had given him. And he just shouted at me. No, I'm not all sure she's there. He went in and slammed the cabin door.

It is not easy to accept this position. I'm not saying nobody does. I've met some men who try. Pollock played it out until he committed suicide. And one must say his works were both valid to his mentality and he had courage to the end.

But it's a difficult thing to do, even here in Harvard, thinking of a man's connection with Harvard, the B .B. Bernson. The world expert on Renaissance art. There's a book written about him that says this, that he lived with his woman, Mary, for a number of years.

Then he married her. But as it says in the book, that they had agreed to be independent as to love affairs. And when anybody chided B .B., he would always say something in the nature of, and this is given in the book as a direct quotation, he had little patience with optimistic idealists who would forget, quote, the animal basis of our nature.

So he lived his sex life consistently. But there's the other side of the picture. B .B. hated modern art. Boy, he hated it. He really hated it. And when people asked him why he hated it, his standard answer was because it was beastle.

It is a very difficult thing to live consistently on this other basis. In fact, I say it's impossible if one thinks of consistency. But it's certainly difficult. Therefore, we are surrounded now in the second era, the second level of the despair.

Mysticism in Modern Art and Music

The making of the dichotomy with nothing up above, in a sense, and then the making of the dichotomy be putting a secular jump of faith up above. A secular mystical jump. And if you're taking notes, the word mystical has some importance.

A secular mystical jump into the upper story, non-rational, non-logical, no base. Faith demanded in a way that historic Christianity has never asked that men have toward historic Christianity. Faith that is of such a nature that a discussion is not possible in the area of the verifiable.

No historic Christian position that's really historic Christian, biblically placed, has ever asked such a thing. A faith that is total in this sense. Now, in each of these areas, you can find illustrations of the second level of despair.

And first of all, let us look at art. I have discussed Aldous Huxley and especially Karl Jaspers in the area of philosophy, making the upstairs. Now as an act of faith. Now in art. First of all, Paul Klee.

We have a, Klee is from Switzerland, of course, and Klee is one of the few modern artists who have ever lectured on the theory of making pictures from a viewpoint of modern art. He did this in Germany before he was put out by Hitler.

And also, also he, back about 1920, he wrote a book with some other men of the same general thinking, putting forth their theories. And as a rather, rather the crux of this, I would read you a very, very short quotation from Klee.

This is his own writings as to what he said he viewed his art to be. He called it, this section, in plastic polyphonic. Equals, elements and the regrouping. Elements would be a technical term to Klee.

I'll just mention quickly, it would be point, line, space, tone value as to weight, this sort of, this sort of element. This is technically is his word element as he uses it by definition. Elements and the regrouping, then quote.

But that is not art in its most exalted form. In its most exalted form, there is behind the ambiguity a last mystery. And at that point, the light of the intellect dies away miserably. It's exactly the same thing.