# God in Search of Man  ## Metadata - Author: [[Abraham Joshua Heschel]] - Full Title: God in Search of Man - Category: #books ## Highlights - Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion—its message becomes meaningless. ([Location 329](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=329)) - The primary task of philosophy of religion is to rediscover the questions to which religion is an answer. ([Location 333](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=333)) - In the process of thinking, an answer without a question is devoid of life. It may enter the mind; it will not penetrate the soul. ([Location 337](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=337)) - Philosophy may be defined as the art of asking the right questions. One of the marks of philosophical thinking is that, in contrast to poetry, for example, it is not a self-sufficing pouring forth of insight, but the explicit statement of a problem and the attempt to offer an answer to a problem. Theology starts with dogmas, philosophy begins with problems. Philosophy sees the problem first, theology has the answer in advance. ([Location 341](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=341)) - Philosophy, then, stresses the primacy of the problem, religion stresses the primacy of the person. ([Location 348](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=348)) - Conceptual thinking is an act of reasoning; situational thinking involves an inner experience; in uttering judgment about an issue, the person himself is under judgment. Conceptual thinking is adequate when we are engaged in an effort to enhance our knowledge about the world. Situational thinking is necessary when we are engaged in an effort to understand issues on which we stake our very existence. ([Location 357](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=357)) - the problem of religious philosophy is not how does man arrive at an understanding of God, but rather how can we arrive at an understanding of God. ([Location 368](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=368)) - Philosophy may be pursued as a process of thinking thought, of analyzing the content of thinking, such as principles, assumptions, doctrines. Or it may be pursued as thinking about thinking, as radical self-understanding,2 as a process of analyzing the act of thinking, as a process of introspection, of watching the intellectual self in action. ([Location 376](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=376)) - the study of religion has two major tasks to perform. One, to understand what it means to believe; to analyze the act of believing; to ask what it is that necessitates our believing in God. Two, to explain and to examine the content of believing; to analyze that which we believe in. ([Location 382](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=382)) - Ideas of faith must not be studied in total separation from the moments of faith. ([Location 405](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=405)) - Religious thinking, believing, feeling are among the most deceptive activities of the human spirit. We often assume it is God we believe in, but in reality it may be a symbol of personal interests that we dwell upon. We may assume that we feel drawn to God, but in reality it may be a power within the world that is the object of our adoration. We may assume it is God we care for, but it may be our own ego we are concerned with. To examine our religious existence is, therefore, a task to be performed constantly. ([Location 424](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=424)) - Philosophy of religion has to be pursued in two ways: as radical understanding of religion in terms of its own spirit and as a critical reassessment of religion from the point of view of philosophy. ([Location 436](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=436)) - Things created in six days He considered good, the seventh day He made holy. ([Location 559](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=559)) - One of the goals of philosophy of religion is to stimulate a critical reassessment of philosophy from the perspective of religion. ([Location 574](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=574)) - The worship of reason is arrogance and betrays a lack of intelligence. The rejection of reason is cowardice and betrays a lack of faith. ([Location 611](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=611)) - The prophets are absent when the philosophers speak of God. ([Location 689](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=689)) - The mere remembrance of such an event is hardly powerful enough to hold in its spell the soul of man with its constant restlessness and vitality. ([Location 722](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=722)) - Two sources of religious thinking are given us: memory (tradition) and personal insight. We must rely on our memory and we must strive for fresh insight. We hear from tradition, we also understand through our own seeking. ([Location 731](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=731)) - “Everything is within the power of heaven except the awe and fear of heaven.” ([Location 751](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=751)) - These three ways correspond in our tradition to the main aspects of religious existence: worship, learning, and action. The three are one, and we must go all three ways to reach the one destination. For this is what Israel discovered: the God of nature is the God of history, and the way to know Him is to do His will. ([Location 811](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=811)) - The Greeks learned in order to comprehend. The Hebrews learned in order to revere. The modern man learns in order to use. ([Location 861](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=861)) - If the world is only power to us and we are all absorbed in a gold rush, then the only god we may come upon is the golden calf. ([Location 897](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=897)) - Indifference to the sublime wonder of living is the root of sin. ([Location 1008](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=1008)) - Wonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of the religious man’s attitude toward history and nature. One attitude is alien to his spirit: taking things for granted, regarding events as a natural course of things. ([Location 1041](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=1041)) - No routine of the social, physical, or physiological order must dull our sense of surprise at the fact that there is a social, a physical, or a physiological order. ([Location 1104](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=1104)) - This is one of the goals of the Jewish way of living: to experience commonplace deeds as spiritual adventures, to feel the hidden love and wisdom in all things. ([Location 1111](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=1111)) - For this is the essence of faith: even what appears to us as a natural necessity is an act of God. ([Location 1371](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=1371)) - What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe. ([Location 1597](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=1597)) - Knowledge is fostered by curiosity; wisdom is fostered by awe. ([Location 1598](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=1598)) - In Judaism, yirat hashem, the awe of God, or yirat shamayim, the “awe of heaven,” is almost equivalent to the word “religion.” ([Location 1635](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=1635)) - Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the universe becomes a market place for you. ([Location 1640](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=1640)) - He recognizes only one parent: God as his father. The earth is his sister rather than his mother. Man and earth are equally the creations of God. ([Location 1884](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=1884)) - Inanimate objects are dead in relation to man; they are alive in relation to God. ([Location 1963](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=1963)) - What, then, is reality? To the Western man, it is a thing in itself; to the Biblical Man, it is a thing through God. ([Location 1974](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=1974)) - Plato lets Socrates ask: What is good? But Moses’ question was: What does God require of thee? ([Location 1980](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=1980)) - To the speculative mind, the world is an enigma; to the religious mind, the world is a challenge. The speculative problem is impersonal; the religious problem is a problem addressed to the person. The first is concerned with finding an answer to the question: what is the cause of being? The second, with giving an answer to the question: what is asked of us? ([Location 2195](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=2195)) - What gives birth to religion is not intellectual curiosity but the fact and experience of our being asked. ([Location 2222](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=2222)) - All creative thinking comes out of an encounter with the unknown. We do not embark upon an investigation of what is definitely known, unless we suddenly discover that what we have long regarded as known is actually an enigma. ([Location 2259](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=2259)) - Knowledge is not the same as awareness, and expression is not the same as experience. By proceeding from awareness to knowledge we gain in clarity and lose in immediacy. What we gain in distinctness by going from experience to expression we lose in genuineness. ([Location 2283](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=2283)) - This, indeed, is the greatness of man: to be able to have faith. For faith is an act of freedom, of independence of our own limited faculties, whether of reason or sense-perception. ([Location 2311](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=2311)) - Proofs for the existence of God may add strength to our belief; they do not generate it. ([Location 2348](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=2348)) - just as there is no thinking about the world without the premise of the reality of the world, there can be no thinking about God without the premise of the realness of God. ([Location 2375](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=2375)) - The living soul is not concerned with a dead cause but with a living God. ([Location 2445](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LVOG1M&location=2445))