The Ascent to Truth

Thomas Merton was a Benedictine friar who turned to a writing career within the monastic fold. While perhaps inevitable given his great energy and zeal (which misdirected were probably responsible for his turbulent life before he converted to Catholicism) he later used his very considerable intellectual and artistic gifts for the right end, praising God and creation, and exploring the spiritual in a world which both thirsts for it and decries it is irrelevant at the same time. The Ascent to Truth is one of Merton's finest works, and it explores the mysticism of the 'dark night', expemplified by St John of the Cross but also by Gregory of Nyssa and Eckhart. Merton also engages in a theological and philosophical analysis of Truth using modern scholasticism but thankfully avoids dessicating God's reality through dry concepts. Merton thirsts for God as a living reality and treats him as such, and certainly the God Merton describes is not that of the philosophers, but that of the Bible and the Christian tradition, the living 'Thou.' He also writes with considerable insight into the modern predicament and the dangers and possible rewards of the spiritual journey, from the mirage of New Age occultism which promises much but delivers nothing, and the Christian way which demands much and appears to give nothing, but in fact gives all in return for little. The way of the Cross demands the death of the ego, and Merton is emphatic on this point as much as St John was, but not the death of the true Self, which abides in God (not in substance but in will and created good by participation). Merton revitalises our faith in the face of arid modern and postmodern forms of nihilism and offers us the path to darkness and joy and final peace, which is only ever found in Christ and in God.

This is the young Thomas Merton tackling a great Spanish mystic that he was able to read in the original language. The Sign of Jonas, another book, makes wonderful side comments about the Carmelite mystic John of the Cross but here Merton really tries to meditate and explain him. It is not always successful. Merton did not think the book a success. Nevertheless, it is a good introduction to the problem of the tension between living by faith which enlightens the mind and the experience of God which can be so blinding as to create a dark night.