1. After God, man is, without a doubt, the most mysterious and enigmatic
entity in all the realms of human thought. At the bottomless depth of
human existence there whirl contradictions which defy reconciliation:
life and death, virtue and evil, God and devil, and all that exists in
and around them. Through all its religions, philosophies, sciences,
spiritual and materialistic civilizations, the human race has been
trying to solve essentially one problem, one all-encompassing problem:
the problem of man.
And from all these
exertions and struggles it has fashioned for itself one supreme godhead,
to be worshipped as the highest value and the foremost criterion. That
ultimate godhead is “Man is the measure of everything.” That is to say,
man is the measure of all being and of all things. However, through
this method-his own Divine majesty-man has failed to solve the problem
of man. In measuring himself by himself he has failed to understand
either himself or the world around him (cf. 2 Cor.10: 12). He has
labored in vain. He has mirrored a reflection in a looking-glass. And
he has summed up everything in the agonized cry and the trembling
confession: “By myself I know nothing” (1 Cor. 4: 4). “I know nothing by
myself. I don’t know what is man, nor what is God, nor what is death,
nor what is life. And I feel with all my being that I am a slave to
death, a slave to evil, and through my sins a slave to the devil.” The
yield of all this human exertion has been to weave a body out of all the
human race: “the body of death,” of which every man has become a part.
And what is hidden within this body of death?-stench, putrefaction,
maggots. ”Wretch that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this
death?” (Rom. 7: 24).
