October 18, 2021
Dear Nikola,
Thank you for your reply to my ruminations, and please forgive my perseveration. It's as if my brain were afflicted with an itch which I can't help scratching. Given my fixation on the sentence: The just shall live by faith, the responsible course for me would have been to read and reread, to memorize these verses, the whole chapter 38, all 39 chapters of the Letter to the Hebrews, all the other Epistles, the New Testament, ... the entire Bible. Instead I cheated and read the de.Wikipedia article entitled: "Brief an die Hebräer" and what I learned is that I may be alone in my ignorance but that I am not alone with my perplexity about the meaning of the text.

About thirty years ago, I composed the first chapter of my first novel as an overture to the writing and reading of books. I staged a conversation in which a student presumes to instruct his professor with newly discovered wisdoms to the effect:
a) that the Bible is the prototype of all books.
b) that the reading of texts, biblical and secular, requires "faith" in a meaning which is transcendental to the reader, and, accordingly
c) that all writing and all reading are bridges between what is public, objective, and what is private, subjective.

I am reminded that each and every one of our coins, from the penny to the dollar, is imprinted with "IN GOD WE TRUST", as our monumental tribute to the separation of church and state. What is the difference, if any of my saying "I believe in God." and "I trust in God", or, for that matter, "I believe that God exists."? And how does Psalm 46 fit into the picture:

1 God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

2 Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;

3 Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah.

4 There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High.

5 God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early.

6 The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted.

7 The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.

8 Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations he hath made in the earth.

9 He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire.

10 Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.

11 The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.

I retreat to my hypothesis that "the divine" as a projection of subjective consciousness into a social, if not indeed a cosmic universe, is an invention of the human spirit to assuage the desperate loneliness of its solitude.

Be well and stay well, and please give my regards to your parents.

EJM