This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Why is love beyond all measure of other human possibilities so rich and such a sweet burden for the one who has been struck by it? Because we change ourselves into that which we love, and yet remain ourselves. Then we would like to thank the beloved, but find nothing that would do it adequately. We can only be thankful to ourselves. Love transforms gratitude into faithfulness to ourselves and into an unconditional faith in the Other. Thus love steadily expands its most intimate secret. Closeness here is existence in the greatest distance from the other- the distance that allows nothing to dissolve - but rather presents the “thou” in the transparent, but “incomprehensible” revelation of the “just there”. That the presence of the other breaks into our own life - this is what no feeling can fully encompass. Human fate gives itself to human fate, and it is the task of pure love to keep this self-surrender as vital as on the first day.
Change | Existence | Faith | Fate | Gratitude | Life | Life | Love | Nothing | Revelation | Fate |
Mark Rutherford, pseudonymn for William Hale White
Man is the revelation of the Infinite, and it does not become finite in him. It remains the Infinite.
Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe
‘In the future to come…“a New Torah will come forth from Me.” At that time there will also be the revelation of Divinity in the world, in ultimate completion and without any concealment at all, as it says, “the glory of God shall be revealed and all flesh shall see together for the mouth of God has spoken.” For it will be seen in a revealed fashion that the existence of “all flesh” [that is, physicality] is the Godly power that brings it into being ex-nihilo [out of no-thing], the power of Atzmuss, and consequently there is no difference between higher and lower, since they are One…’
Concealment | Divinity | Existence | Future | Glory | God | Power | Revelation | Time | Will | God | Torah |
Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe
The true idea of the Oneness of God, is that this Oneness should also include the world. But, the reason that it is written “God is One,” is because that if it was written “God is Only,” the explanation would be that His Blessed unity was in the Ohr En Sof [infinite light] (and not in the world). Therefore, in order that the world would be able to feel this Blessed unity… it says “God is One” so that the seven heavens and the one earth, and the four directions of the world will be nullified to the One [Only] unity of the world… This appears in the revelation of the power of Atzmuss that includes and joins the idea of “One” and “Only.”
Oneness | Order | Power | Reason | Revelation | Unity | Will | World | Blessed |
When the sacred manifests itself in any hierophany, there is not only a break in the homogeneity of space; there is also a revelation of an absolute reality, opposed to the nonreality of the vast surrounding expanse. The manifestation of the sacred ontologically founds the world. In the homogenous and infinite expanse, in which no point of reference is possible and hence no orientation can be established, the hierophany reveals an absolute fixed point, a center.
Absolute | Revelation | Sacred |
The salvation of Judaism cannot come either from Orthodoxy or from Reform. Orthodoxy is altogether out of keeping with the march of human thought. It has no regard for the world view of the contemporary mind. Nothing can be more repugnant to the thinking man of today than the fundamental doctrine of Orthodoxy, which is that tradition is infallible. Such infallibility could be believed in as long as the human mind thought of God and revelation in semi-mythological terms. Then it was conceivable that a quasi-human being could hand down laws and histories in articulate form. Being derived from a supramundane source, these laws and histories, together with the ideas based on them, could not but be regarded as free from all the errors and shortcomings of the human mind. Whenever a tradition contradicts some facts too patent to be denied, or falls below some accepted moral standard, resort is had to artificial interpretations that flout all canons of history and exegesis. The doctrine of infallibility rules out of court all research and criticism, and demands implicit faith in the truth of whatever has come down from the past. It precludes all conscious development in thought and practice and deprives Judaism of the power to survive in an environment that permits of free contact with non-Jewish civilizations.
Doctrine | Faith | God | History | Ideas | Man | Mind | Nothing | Power | Practice | Regard | Research | Revelation | Salvation | Thinking | Thought | Tradition | Truth | World | God | Thought |
Judaism boasts of no exclusive revelation of eternal truths that are indispensable to salvation, of no revealed religion in the sense in which that term is usually understood.
Eternal | Indispensable | Religion | Revelation | Sense | Truths |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
All faiths constitute a revelation of Truth, but all are imperfect and liable to error.
I've known a lot of people who do not believe in God who have come to Judaism for other reasons, such as a relationship or a philosophical view that drew them in. One of the strange and miraculous things about Jewish practice is that it seems to engender belief. People wonder, "Why does Chabad ask passersby to put on tefillin?" It seems that there's this almost magical effect to it. The mitzvah not only provokes spiritual questions, but engenders a longing for belief, and ultimately belief itself. So even though, theologically, Judaism without God doesn't make sense, I would say that, as a practice, Judaism can begin in non-belief but conclude in belief. For me, authenticity means truth. It means connecting with a revelation that happened in the past. If there's any hope for Judaism at all, it lies in the belief that Judaism goes back to Moses and Mount Sinai. Otherwise, Judaism is just a fraud, an illusion.
Authenticity | Belief | God | Hope | Longing | Means | People | Practice | Relationship | Revelation | God |
Pitirim A. Sorokin, fully Pitirim Alexandrovich (Alexander) Sorokin
Ideational culture, has these characteristics: The defining principle is that true reality is supersensory, transcendent, spiritual. The material world is variously: an illusion (maya), temporary, passing away (“stranger in a strange land”), sinful, or a mere shadow an eternal transcendent reality. Religion often tends to asceticism, or attempts at zealous social reform. Mysticism and revelation are considered valid sources of truth and morality. Science and technology are comparatively de-emphasized... Economics is conditioned by religious and moral commandments (e.g., laws against usury). Innovation in theology, metaphysics, and supersensory philosophies. Flourishing of religious and spiritual art (e.g., Gothic cathedrals)
Art | Economics | Eternal | Illusion | Innovation | Mysticism | Reality | Religion | Revelation | Technology | Truth | World | Art |
Pitirim A. Sorokin, fully Pitirim Alexandrovich (Alexander) Sorokin
They are the ideational, sensate, and idealistic systems of truth and knowledge. Ideational truth is the truth revealed by the grace of God, through His mouthpieces (the prophets, mystics, and founders of religion), disclosed in a supersensory way through mystic experience, direct revelation, divine intuition, and inspiration. Such a truth may be called the truth of faith. It is regarded as infallible, yielding adequate knowledge about the true-reality values. Sensate truth is the truth of the senses, obtained through our organs of sense perception. If the testimony of our senses shows that `snow is white and cold,' the proposition is true; if our senses testify that snow is not white and not cold, the proposition becomes false... Idealistic truth is a synthesis of both, made by our reason. In regard to sensory phenomena, it recognizes the role of the sense organs as the source and criterion of the validity or invalidity of a proposition. In regard to supersensory phenomena, it claims that any knowledge of these is impossible through sensory experience and is obtained only through the direct revelation of God. Finally, our reason, through logic and dialectic, can derive many valid propositions.... Human reason also `processes' the sensations and perceptions of our sense organs and transforms these into valid experience and knowledge. Human reason likewise combines into one organic whole the truth of the senses, the truth of faith, and the truth of reason. These are the essentials of the idealistic system of truth and knowledge... This preliminary outline of the three systems of truth shows that each is derived from the major premise of one of our three supersystems of culture. Each dominates its respective culture and society. If we have a preponderantly ideational culture, its dominant truth is always a variety of the revealed truth of faith; in a sensate system of culture the truth of the senses will prevail; in a idealistic culture the idealistic truth of reason will govern men's minds. With a change of dominant cultural supersystem, the dominant truth undergoes a corresponding change. [Response to Pilate's question "What is truth?" with the description of three general truth-systems which "correspond to our three main supersystems of culture"]
Change | Culture | Experience | Grace | Knowledge | Logic | Organic | Question | Reason | Regard | Revelation | Sense | System | Truth | Will | Yielding | Govern |
Peter Geach, fully Peter Thomas Geach
We cannot balance against our obedience to God some good to be gained, or evil to be avoided, by disobedience. For such good or evil could in fact come to us only in the order of God's Providence; we cannot secure good or avoid evil, either for ourselves or for others, in God's despite and by disobedience. And neither reason nor revelation warrants the idea that God is at all likely to be lenient with those who presumptuously disobey his law because of the way they have worked out the respective consequence of obedience and disobedience. Eleazer the scribe (2 Maccabees 6), with only Sheol to look forward to when he died, chose rather to go there by martyrdom—praemitti se velle in infernum—than to break God's law. 'Yet should I not escape the hand of the Almighty, neither alive nor dead.'
Balance | Evil | God | Good | Law | Obedience | Order | Reason | Revelation | God |
What came to me as a revelation was the use of rhythm in developing an overall structure in music.
Call your opinions your creed, and you will change them every week. Make your creed simply and broadly out of the revelation of God, and you will keep it to the end.
Change | Creed | Revelation | Will |
It has sometimes seemed to me there are three weak stones sitting dangerously in the foundations of the modern Church: first, a government that excludes democracy; second, a priesthood that excludes and minimizes women; third, a revelation that excludes, for the future, prophecy.
Government | Revelation | Government |
Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan
To a Sufi, revelation is the inherent property of every soul. There is an unceasing flow of the divine stream, which has neither beginning nor end.
Beginning | Property | Revelation |
Pope Pius XII, born Eugenio Marìa Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli NULL
It is undeniable that when a mind enlightened and enriched with modern scientific knowledge weighs this problem calmly, it feels drawn to break through the circle of completely independent or autochthonous matter, whether uncreated or self-created, and to ascend to a creating Spirit. With the same clear and critical look with which it examines and passes judgment on facts, it perceives and recognizes the work of creative omnipotence, whose power, set in motion by the mighty "Fiat" pronounced billions of years ago by the Creating Spirit, spread out over the universe, calling into existence with a gesture of generous love matter bursting with energy. In fact, it would seem that present-day science, with one sweeping step back across millions of centuries, has succeeded in bearing witness to that primordial "Fiat lux" uttered at the moment when, along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation, while the particles of chemical elements split and formed into millions of galaxies. It is quite true that the facts established up to the present time are not an absolute proof of creation in time, as are the proofs drawn from metaphysics and Revelation in what concerns simple creation or those founded on Revelation if there be question of creation in time. The pertinent facts of the natural sciences, to which We have referred, are awaiting still further research and confirmation, and the theories founded on them are in need of further development and proof before they can provide a sure foundation for arguments which, of themselves, are outside the proper sphere of the natural sciences. This notwithstanding, it is worthy of note that modern scholars in these fields regard the idea of the creation of the universe as entirely compatible with their scientific conceptions and that they are even led spontaneously to this conclusion by their scientific research. Just a few decades ago, any such "hypothesis" was rejected as entirely irreconcilable with the present state of science. As late as 1911, the celebrated physicist Svante Arhenius declared that "the opinion that something can come from nothing is at variance with the present-day state of science, according to which matter is immutable." In this same vein we find the statement of Plato: "Matter exists. Nothing can come from nothing, hence matter is eternal. We cannot admit the creation of matter."
Absolute | Existence | Judgment | Knowledge | Light | Love | Metaphysics | Mind | Need | Nothing | Opinion | Present | Question | Regard | Research | Revelation | Theories | Time | Universe | Witness | Work |
Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, fully Réginald Marie Garrigou-Lagrange
What does it tell us fi rst about relativism in the philosophical domain and then in that of dogma? It says (III, i): “Reason can arrive at the certain knowledge of the existence of God and the certain signs of divine Revelation.” Nevertheless “it will never be able to function in this way rightly and surely unless it has been properly formed; that is to say unless it has been penetrated by this healthy philosophy that we have received as a patrimony from the centuries of Christendom which have preceded us: patrimony that has been constituted over a long period of time, and that has attained to this superior degree of authority precisely because the very magisterium of the Church has submitted to the norms of divine Revelation itself its principles and its principal assertions which such grand minds have little by little discovered and defi ned. This philosophy received and commonly accepted in the Church defends the authentic and exact validity of human reason, the unshakable principles of metaphysics—the principle of suffi cient reason, of causality, of fi nality—fi nally the capacity to arrive at a certain and immutable truth.
Authority | Capacity | Church | God | Knowledge | Little | Philosophy | Principles | Revelation | Will | God |