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Thomas Merton and Christian Morality

Thomas Merton has commented on Camus's interpretation of Kafka's The Castle and summarizes Camus's understanding of grace, faith, and justification, finding that Camus believed that the meaning conveyed by these terms is that the individual "is bidden to renounce his human dignity, his honor, his assertion of his personal worth, and submit blindly to 'answers' and 'commands' which are an insult to his humanity. His act of submission makes him 'worthy of grace.' He who has thus surrendered his dignity in a blind act of self-prostration before the unknown has passed the test of faith, has made the 'leap' into the dark, and is thereafter 'justified.' All further activity rooted in this submission is 'right' and 'good.' It is virtuous and it [proves that] he is one of the elect. . . " Merton further finds that Camus's understanding of these central Christian concepts is a caricature for which Christians are responsible, for Camus is simply expressing his repugnance for a twisted and degraded form of "Christian morality" which has evolved historically in the framework of a civilization with social institutions that have tended to preserve "Christian values" by embalming them instead of allowing them to renew their own intrinsic life. Different writers and theorists have tended either to embalm Christian values or to allow them to renew themselves by means of their own intrinsic life.

Martin Luther, for instance, saw a reason for renewing Christian values by removing them from the pernicious influence of the Catholic Church of his time. Martin Luther challenged the authority of the Catholic Church and in so doing created a movement away from the strictness of Catholic teaching and from the idea that communion with God required the intercession of the papacy and the religious structure of a Church. His protest may have challenged the rule of the Catholic Church, but it affirmed the importance of religion and religious belief. Lut...

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Thomas Merton and Christian Morality. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 00:54, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1680920.html