It is wisdom, which for him is not compelled by “proofs” but is born and grows in the soil of freedom.

In Tomberg’s view, personal certainty is not a science. No one concerned with philosophical theology should ignore this attempt at a rather more speculative Grammar of AssentĪuthor of The Future of Love: Essays in Political Theology, etc.

Out of this insight he develops a symbolist metaphysics that refuses any sundering of the personal from the cosmological, albeit in a distinctly post-Kantian fashion. Somewhat like Vladimir Solovyov, he points to the paradox of invisible explanation of visible experience as something that unites science with religion. In his late work, Valentin Tomberg makes much clearer the relationship of his orthodox Christian esotericism to ancient and modern philosophical traditions. Were he here today, he would face similar difficulties, requiring other conscious and costly “free” decisions, each heroic, valoric, and loving. Since history has labeled this the post-truth era, the testimony of one man’s Personal Certainty could not be more urgently needed. In tracing how he learned to diagnose personal error, how he learned to change, how he found the courage to reconsider his personal religious commitment, how he learned to re-adjust and self-correct, we learn of the consciousness required to actually inhabit and shoulder freedom in a new and living way.

As his perspectives widened and deepened, Certainty traces how and why new capacities rooted and were liberated in his life and how he sustained human, intellectual, psychological, and spiritual growth. Most of all, he was able to share intimately regarding the mystery of prayer, meditation, contemplation, liturgy, the rosary, while reflecting upon the communion of saints, the Risen Christ, Mary and all that is Sophianic, and more. Tomberg consistently moved forward-evolved-through internal and external experience of war and upheaval, turbulence and concentration, migration and choice, ideals and possibilities, hope and disappointment, truth and deception, strength and fragility, hypocrisy and integrity. It maps the human-making curriculum required of and inhabited by a specific writer of consummate merit and unique destiny. Personal Certainty strikes me as a work of astonishing maturity, humility, texture, and insight.

Valentin tomberg tarot