Our Lord
Don Quixote is the prototype of the vitalist whose faith is based upon
uncertainty, and Sancho is the prototype of the rationalist who doubts
his own reason.
Tormented by torturing doubts, August Hermann Francke resolved to call
upon God, a God in whom he did not believe, or rather in whom he
believed that he did not believe, imploring Him to take pity upon him,
upon the poor pietist Francke, if perchance He really existed.[34] And
from a similar state of mind came the inspiration of the sonnet entitled
"The Atheist's Prayer," which is included in my _Rosario de Sonetos
Liricos_, and closes with these lines:
_Sufro yo a tu costa,
Dios no existiente, pues si tu existieras
existieria yo tambien de veras._[35]
Yes, if God the guarantor of our personal immortality existed, then
should we ourselves really exist. And if He exists not, neither do we
exist.
That terrible secret, that hidden will of God which, translated into the
language of theology, is known as predestination, that idea which
dictated to Luther his _servum arbitrium_, and which gives to Calvinism
its tragic sense, that doubt of our own salvation, is in its essence
nothing but uncertainty, and this uncertainty, allied with despair,
forms the basis of faith. Faith, some say, consists in not thinking
about it, in surrendering ourselves trustingly to the arms of God, the
secrets of whose providence are inscrutable.
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