The Gift of Self -- Excerpt from tape series by Gil Bailie

As I revisit the tape series, The Gift of Self: Reflections on the Meaning of Christian Discipleship by Gil Bailie I will try to leave fresh notes here on our blog.

Conclusion to tape 1

"There is no unique subject: no personality without otherness; no consciousness turned in upon itself; no real being without intersubjectivity; no real knowledge nor ontological density without mystery. And no man without God."

- Henri de Lubac

Gil concludes the first session with the following:
"Either he is right or we moderns are right. The money is on the board and the dice are rolling… We moderns, by and large, have put all our faith in something other than what he (de Lubac) says. The gamble is whether or not some kind of selfhood that knows nothing of what de Lubac is talking about can retain its independence and its sanity and its civility as it moves further and further away from the biblical tradition that de Lubac is articulating."

"...note with interest: '…no real knowledge ... without mystery.' This takes us back to the Enlightenment project which was to achieve real knowledge by mere acts of rational or empirical analysis. We must take our hats off (to the Enlightenment) for it has produced a mountain of insights and information – but as Eliot says, 'Where is wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?' "

"Again, de Lubac says that it (information) looses its status as knowledge if it does not defer religiously to something greater than itself."