Doubt as an Avenue of Communication

I want to hang onto this comment of Angelico’s and the passage he quoted from Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity, because I see it as key, possibly, to the unique character of Korrektiv. I re-quote it here as a placemarker for further consideration.

No one can lay God and his Kingdom on the table before another man; even the believer cannot do it for himself. But however strongly unbelief may feel justified thereby, it cannot forget the eerie feeling induced by the words ‘Yet perhaps it is true.’ That ‘perhaps’ is the unavoidable temptation it cannot elude, the temptation in which it, too, in the very act of rejection, has to experience the unrejectability of belief. In other words, both the believer and the unbeliever share, each in his own way, doubt and belief, if they do not hide from themselves and from the truth of their being. Neither can quite escape either doubt or belief; for the one, faith is present against doubt; for the other, through doubt and in the form of doubt. It is the basic pattern of man’s destiny only to be allowed to find the finality of his existence in this unceasing rivalry between doubt and belief, temptation and certainty. Perhaps in precisely this way doubt, which saves both sides from being shut up in their own worlds, could become the avenue of communication.

Could this serve as a formative piece of that Korrektiv Press manifesto or mission statement we’ve been casting about for? The fine print at the bottom of that gravestone?