The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University

Citation of Books Detail

Click here to return to the main list

Author QuotedRudolf Bultmann
Title QuotedForm Criticism: Two Essays on New Testament Research
Date (Year/Month/Day)1964/01/07
Imprint[S.l.] : [s.n.]. 1962
QuotationYou ask about spiritual books. I have been reading all sorts of things, things which I find spiritual. Rudolf Bultmann's Essays is a challenging book, terribly interesting, and his anti-mysticism has a point. It is good to tussle a bit with something of this kind, in order to get down to the real foundation of everything, which is faith. I have also been reading [Karl] Jaspers. His Way to Wisdom has some good things in it. And a French phenomenologist, Merleau-Ponty, who seems to me at times to get close to Zen, though I am sure he has no intention of doing so. Zwi Werblowsky (I think I told you he was here, Professor of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem) has sent a very interesting Spanish Jew of the eleventh century who has Moslem elements. Bahya Ibn Paquda. Then there is Martin Lings's book on a wonderful Moslem mystic, which I may have mentioned when I was in the hospital: Shaikh Ahmad Al-'Alawi.
Quotation SourceThe Hidden Ground of Love: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Experience and Social Concerns.; Selected and edited by William H. Shannon. / New York : Farrar Straus Giroux. 1985, p. 364
Letter toEtta Gullick
Notes 
Link to Merton's Copy  

(If there is a link above showing up as a number, click it to open another window with a full text version.)