about Faith (and the Via Negativa) - "You can only believe what you do not know."

Ad Reinhardt
from http://www.formidablemag.com/ad-reinhardt/

"First of all, faith is not an emotion, not a feeling. It is not a blind sub-conscious urge toward something vaguely supernatural. It is simply not an elemental need in man’s spirit. It is not a feeling that God exists. It is not a conviction that one is saved or “justified” for no special reason except that one happens to feel that way. It is not something entirely interior and subjective, with no reference to any exterior motive. It is not just a “soul-force.” It is not something that bubbles up out of the recesses of your soul and fills you with an indefinable “sense” that everything is all right. It is not something so purely yours that its content is incommunicable. It is not some personal myth that you cannot share with anyone else, and the objective validity of which does not matter either to you or God or anybody else. ... But it is also not an opinion. It is not a conviction based on rational analysis. It is not the fruit of scientific evidence. You can only believe what you do not know." - Thomas Merton

From New Seeds if Contemplation, Chapter 18

Quoted in "Ad Reinhardt and the Via Negative / The Brooklyn Rail", an article by John Yau.