A note dictated to Aurel-Dragoş Munteanu with dedication, 1987. In a slightly modified form, it is included in the introductive text of the first section, titled "The Problem", of "Man, Treatise of Christian Anthropology", volume I, "Problems, The Book of Questions"

Meditation
(translated from the original romanian by Tudor B. Munteanu)

[Christian] dogmatic thinking situates the spirit receptive to the Real above anything ideal, this illusory perfection held by questioning man. The chosen escape through "grace and revelation" from history, which is burdened with endless questions - problems. Ideals belong to historical man, a seeking and questioning being, who unfolds in time and space under the sign of failure. The Ideal is a substitute for essentially religious truth. Its variable and pleasant usefulness moves the spirit of the believer in the manner of Sisyphus, toward an illusory finality, but it is awakened by the unsettling perspective of death and the infinite.

What remains, here, for the man of history? The passing interplay of the logical and the ontological, and illusory invariances. Nothing pure and absolute under human ideals. I place the all too human options of essence and existence within the same context.

P.Ţ. 

The Baptism of our Lord, 1987

For Aurel, on this holiday!