My favorite politician is . . .
Vaclav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic, because . . .
. . . he believed people had lost sight of Transcendence.
Watch our two minute video (or read the text below).
Loving our neighbor depends on whether or not there is a God who first loved us.
Transcendence means we depend on God who is apart from us.
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It was 1994. I was a high school teacher instructing young people that there must be a source of authority outside of ourselves. Then I read a speech that the then president of The Czech Republic had given at Stanford University. He immediately became my favorite politician. Vaclav Havel said
“Democracy must rediscover and renew its own transcendent origins. Democracy must renew its respect for an external order. This order is above us but also in us and among us. Transcendence is the only possible and reliable source of human respect, political order, and all authority.”
Why did Havel use the word transcendence? Havel believed, as do those of us in The Comenius Institute, that transcendence is the basis for any truth. No matter what truth a human being speaks or writes, something is true because an outside authority exists. Transcendence means we have an external source of all knowledge. We can count on something being right or wrong because of transcendence.
The God of the Bible is transcendent. He is apart from, not a part of, creation. In fact the Bible declares “He is before all things, and in him all things are held together.” Transcendence means there is an outside standard for good and bad, truth and falsehood, right and wrong. If no God exists we have no meaning or purpose, no reason to love our neighbor.
When the Soviet system died and the Berlin Wall fell, Vaclav Havel was moved from prison to the presidency. Vaclav Havel is my favorite politician for many reasons. But I esteem Havel most for his view that a transcendent authority must exist apart from humans. Havel believed that human responsibility only makes sense if divine authority exists. His Stanford speech says it well: a source of truth must exist outside of humanity.
For Truth in Two, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, President of the Comenius Institute, personally seeking Truth wherever it’s found.
An intellectually challenging and inspiring post! Thank you, Mark!
Mark – you are expert at finding theological truths throughout the world, whether speaking about Eastern European political dissidents who helped bring down the Soviet system, or about childhood classics like The Wind in the Willows. As you often say, “All truth is God’s truth.”