The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University

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Author QuotedSophocles
Title QuotedAntigone
Date (Year/Month/Day)1961/07/28
Imprint 
QuotationLooked over notes on Sophocles' Antigone. Must read it again and again. How great are the Greeks, how much we owe them, how foolish to set them aside in silly contrasts with the Bible. Sophocles throws light on his contemporaries Isaiah and Jeremiah. Especially the problem of true obedience - to God, and false obedience - to tyrants who confound the upper and the nether world, try to hold them apart by force of will, and declare heaven to be hell, and hell heaven. They demand obedience as justification of their pride and violence and by their logic disobedience is the greatest sin.
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. 146
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