Is truth knowable? If we know the truth, must we hide it in the name of tolerance? Cardinal Ratzinger engages the problem of truth, tolerance, religion, and culture in the modern world. Describing the vast array of world religions, Ratzinger embraces the difficult challenge of meeting diverse understandings of spiritual truth while defending the Catholic teaching of salvation through Jesus Christ. “But what if it is true?” is the question that he poses to cultures that decry the Christian position on man’s redemption. Upholding the notion of religious truth while asserting the right of religious freedom, Cardinal Ratzinger outlines the timeless teaching of the Magisterium in language that resonates with our embattled culture. A work of extreme sensitivity, understanding, and spiritual maturity, this book is an invaluable asset to those who struggle to hear the voice of truth in the modern religious world.
With the Logos Bible Software edition of Truth and Tolerance, you have an abundance of resources that offer applicable and insightful material for study. You can easily search the subject of Christian unity and access an assortment of useful resources and perspectives from a variety of pastors and theologians.
“relativism has become the central problem for faith in our time” (Page 117)
“Culture is the social form of expression, as it has grown up in history, of those experiences and evaluations that have left their mark on a community and have shaped it.” (Page 60)
“The height of development of a culture is shown in its openness, in its capacity to give and to receive, in its power to develop further, to let itself be purified and thus to become better adapted to the truth and to man.” (Page 60)
“When mystery no longer counts for anything, then politics necessarily becomes the religion.” (Page 126)
“The dominant impression of most people today is that all religions, with a varied multiplicity of forms and manifestations, in the end are and mean one and the same thing; which is something everyone can see, except for them.8 The man of today will for the most part scarcely respond with an abrupt No to a particular religion’s claim to be true; he will simply relativize that claim by saying ‘There are many religions.’9 And behind his response will probably be the opinion, in some form or other, that beneath varying forms they are in essence all the same; each person has his own.” (Pages 22–23)