The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University

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Author QuotedBernard Piault
Title QuotedWhat Is the Trinity
Date (Year/Month/Day)1962/05/07
ImprintNew York : [s.n.]. 1959
Quotation"If India were to hear the word of Christ and be converted, it is possible that she would be hardly capable of considering the divine mystery in the ways traditional to the Christian East and West, full of living inspiration though they are. Young in the faith and proud of her own cultural heritage, she might give us instead a Hindu theology of the Trinity." - Bernard Piault in What Is the Trinity? [New York, 1959], p 118 Especially in getting away from the Augustinian psychological treatment of the mystery. In the theology of the Trinity as we have it in the West we are under the domination of Augustine's introspective and generally non-mystical contemplation that is centered on the self as medium to that which is above the self. Meeting of the logos and the soul in the soul's concept of itself, experience of itself?? Surely not mere reflection on our own experience of ourself and hence to the Trinity by inference. It must be more than that.
Quotation SourceTurning Toward the World: The Pivotal Years. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 4, 1960-1963.; Edited by Victor A. Kramer. / San Francisco : Harper Collins. 1996, p. 217-18
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