[Footnote 7: An answer to the volume called _Foundations_.]
And yet:
I can feel every argument against the authenticity of the Gospels,
because I know that if I approached them myself without faith I
should as likely as not brush them aside impatiently as one of a
whole set of fables.
They would be fables to him unless he approached them with faith. And
what is faith? He tells us in the same preface: "Faith is to me, not an
intellectual process, but a divine gift, a special privilege."
It is fair to say that he would now modify this definition, for he has
told me that it is a heresy to exclude from faith the operations of the
intellect. But the words were written when he was fighting the battle of
the soul, written almost on the same page as that which bears these
words:
You have not done with doubt, because you have thrown yourself into
the fortress; you are left to keep doubt continually at bay, with
the cheerful assurance that if you fail, the whole of your
religious life has been a ghastly mistake . . .
for this reason, they have, I think, a notable significance.
Is it not probable that Father Knox has thrown himself into a fortress,
not out of any burning desire to defend it, but solely to escape from
the enemy of his own soul? Is it not probable that he was driven from
the field by Fear rather than summoned to the battlements by Love?
I find this inference justified in numerous ways, and I do not think on
the whole that Father Knox himself would deny it.
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