CAN I BE A CHRISTIAN ?
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—NOt being numbered among the intellectual elite of Under Thirty I hesitate to suggest that the writer of " Why I am not a Christian—I " is herself guilty of an intellectual error. She uses one argument only, that of " the insult to the intelli- gence." That is to say, that Miss A., aged 24 in the year 1938. estimates her intellect higher than that of Paul, Augustine. Aquinas, Francis, Newman and nineteen hundred years of Christian men and women. It is not impossible that she is right but I do not think she could prove it. In fact, her mind rejects a proposition which is incapable of proof on an assump- tion which is incapable of proof. From a purely infellectua. standpoint, what has satisfied the mind of an Aquinas or a Newman I find acceptable, and I suggest that Miss A. would find all the arguments she has so far missed in this mattcr of God if she would consult Aquinas.
If we assume for a moment that there is a God-Creator, is it not probable that His mind would be beyond even the highest human intelligence ? Failure to understand God, therefore, does not appear to be a conclusive argument against His exis- tence. It was precisely the intellectuals among the Jews who rejected Christ and the humble-minded who accepted Him.
There must, therefore, be some other means of approach to Christianity than through the intellect. Miss A. has, perhaps, experienced a catch in the throat at the beauty of a landscape suddenly revealed ? She might try opening her heart as well as her mind to the idea of God and see whether she could not experience a similar catch in the throat at the beauty of the Christian revelation. This would probably stimulate the receptivity of what appears from her article to be rather an arid
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