Here let us call upon the founder of modern rationalism -- Descartes. In the eyes of one of the greatest philosophers, it was sheer absurdity to clai… - Michel Henry

Precise behaviors of the kind indicated in the New Testament were summarized by medieval theology as the “seven works of corporal mercy” (to feed those who are hungry, clothe those who are naked, care for the sick, release captives, visit prisoners, and so on) and of spiritual mercy (teach the ignorant, convert sinners, console the afflicted, pardon one’s enemies, pray for the living and the dead, and the like). It is not conformity with an external model of conduct that is required. Rather, within each person who performs each of the stated acts of mercy, salvation flows. Salvation is the second birth entry into the new Life. The action of the Christian ethic places the living person into the absolute Life that was before him and, giving him to himself, gave him life in his condition as Son.

Science as such has no relation with culture, because it develops outside of its realm. We sought to establish this situation in the preceding chapter, and on its own it does not justify any pejorative evaluation or condemnation that would lead to the disqualification of science. The philosopher has the duty to intervene only when the domain of science is understood as the sole existing domain of true being and subsequently leads to the rejection of the domain of life and culture into nonbeing or an illusory appearance. Once again, it is not the scientific knowledge that is in question; it is the ideology joined to it today which holds that it is the sole possible knowledge and that all other ones must be eliminated. Amidst the collapse of the beliefs, that is the sole belief that persists in the modern world, the previously encountered and universally echoed conviction that knowledge means science.

It is the first decisive characteristic of the Truth of Christianity that it in no way differs from what it makes true. Within it there is no separation between the seeing and what is seen, between the light and what it illuminates. And this is because there is in that Truth neither Seeing nor seen, no Light like that of the world. From the start, the Christian concept of truth is given as irreducible to the concept of truth that dominates the history of Western thought, from Greece to contemporary phenomenology. This traditional concept of truth determines not only most of the philosophical currents that have succeeded one another until the present day but even more so the ideas currently held about truth within the domain of scientific knowledge and within common sense, which is more or less impregnated with the scientific ideal. It is precisely when the Christian concept of Truth ceases to determine the collective consciousness of society, as it did in the Middle Ages, that the divorce from the Greek idea of a true knowledge and a true science appears in full force. And the consequence is, if not the suppression of the Christian concept, then at least its repression into the realm of private life, or even superstition.