The education of liberty, the taming of our instincts, the
enfranchisement or REDEMPTION of our soul,--this, then, as
Lessing has proved, is the meaning of the Christian mystery.
This education will last throughout our life and that of
humanity: the contradictions of political economy may be solved;
the essential contradiction of our being never will be. That is
why the great teachers of humanity, Moses, Buddha, Jesus Christ,
Zoroaster, were all apostles of expiation, living symbols of
repentance. Man is by nature a sinner,--that is, not essentially
ILL-DOING, but rather ILL-DONE,-- and it is his destiny to
perpetually re-create his ideal in himself. That is what the
greatest of painters, Raphael, felt profoundly, when he said that
art consists in rendering things, not as nature made them, but as
it should have made them.
Henceforth, then, it is ours to teach the theologians, for we
alone continue the tradition of the Church, we alone possess the
meaning of the Scriptures, of the Councils, and of the Fathers.
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