T. Merton: Created for a supernatural life
NOTES FROM MY READING
Thomas Merton · The Seven Storey Mountain · opening of Part Two
Man was created to live in subordination to a supernatural life. He was never meant for a purely natural life and a purely natural happiness.
and one’s philosophy
One leads down by itself. The other cannot be walked in one’s own strength — and yet a person can set out on it: by admitting his misery and accepting what comes from above.
→ walk through the stops: from the present state down (−1, −2) and up (1–5)
One’s own will, one’s own philosophy, one’s own ethics. These are not obviously evil things — they simply rely on a source that is not enough. Natural love, says Merton, is always in some sense selfish; the path from it leads down by itself, without effort.
The end of the way down. Not a punishment from outside but the logical goal of nature left to itself: disintegration. That is why Merton says the second path “must” exist — and why it cannot begin in man. Continue with stop 1.
The beginning of the way up — the only step a person can take alone. Not an achievement but an admission: the path of my nature leads down and I have nothing in me to turn it around with. Merton starts right there — the second part of the book opens with a diagnosis, not a story.
One’s will, one’s philosophy, one’s ethics. Right at the limit of human strength: beyond it nobody gets any further on his own. The grey dashed line above the limit is the path he would like to walk alone — and which leads nowhere.
Sanctifying grace comes from outside and from above; man does not produce it, he only receives it. The band of light begins where human strength has run out. It is not a reward for the climb — it is the one thing that makes the climb possible.
The work of grace in the soul: faith, hope and love, which cannot be trained (hence “infused”), and the seven gifts of the Spirit (Isa 11:2). New equipment for an order that “immensely exceeds human strength”.
The soul on its natural level is a clear crystal in the dark: perfect by nature, but lacking something it can only receive from outside. As soon as light shines in it, it is as if it became light itself — and it gains a share in infinitely unselfish love.
When a ray of light falls on a crystal, it gives it a new property. And when God’s love plays on the instrument of the human soul, the same thing happens. This is the life called sanctifying grace. Click the crystal on the right and switch the light off.
the light goes on
“The soul left on its own natural level is a potentially clear crystal that remains in the dark. It is perfect by nature, but it lacks something it can receive only from outside and beyond itself. But as soon as light shines in it, it is as if it were turned into light, and it seems to lose its own nature in the radiance of a higher nature — the nature of the light that is in it.”
A crystal with light in it does not stop being a crystal — it finally does what it was cut for. The darkness spoiled nothing in it, but it lit nothing up either. The light does not come from the crystal; the crystal is for the light. That is why Merton does not speak of a better person, but of a person who lacks something he cannot give himself.
Merton, a fresh convert, writes in the language of the Thomist theology he has only just learned. Three terms are enough for the chapter to make sense.
A lasting state, not a passing feeling: God’s own life shared with the soul (2 Pet 1:4 — “partakers of the divine nature”). Given at baptism — which is why the chapter ends at the font. It is not help towards good actions but a new nature from which good actions only then grow.
Faith, hope and love (1 Cor 13:13). “Infused” as opposed to “acquired”: a natural virtue you train by repetition (Aristotle’s courage, temperance), these three you do not — God pours them into the soul together with grace. They are capacities human nature cannot reach by itself.
Seven, according to Isa 11:2: wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, piety and the fear of the Lord. Dispositions through which a person readily follows God’s guidance — in Merton’s image, the ray that breaks into separate colours in the crystal.
The end of Part One found Merton at Columbia (1937–38): Gilson’s The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy gave him the idea of God as aseitas — being that exists of itself; Huxley’s Ends and Means led him to mysticism and asceticism; the Hindu monk Bramachari advised him to read Augustine’s Confessions and The Imitation of Christ; and Blake, the subject of his thesis, taught him that art without faith is a dead end. So the second part begins with a theoretical summary of what had gathered in him — and then tells how it turned out: reading about Hopkins, the sentence “what are you waiting for?”, the walk to Corpus Christi to see Fr Ford, and baptism on 16 November 1938.
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