Apocalypse, Revolution and Terrorism

I spent a good deal of my youth in deep conversation --with God.For the most part, this was a one-way affair.He (not yet, She) was there to hear my secret wishes, patiently endure my complaints, fears and worries, or to share moments of joy.But no heavenly voices called me to "Save France!", to be a prophet "unto the Gentiles," or even to swing at a 3-0 count.At the very most, there might have been that "still, quiet" voice, more a visceral contemplative sense of conviction or doubt, more a felt urge to action or restraint.But, for the greater part, these responses tended to take the forms of signs.The spot of good fortune, the non-stop hitch-hike ride all the way home, the kindly gesture, just when I needed it -to me, this was how God joined the conversation.In a way the history of serious thought in the West presumes a stage-setting like that.Forget expressly religious or theological thought in the West for the moment, and consider only ethical, moral, political, even esthetic thought.Try to imagine what Western philosophy would be like without God either at its center or even just lurking on the horizon.Imagine what Western philosophy would be without the idea of the Infinite and Limitless, the One, Ens-a-se, Pure Being, the Prime Mover, the Uncaused Cause, the Ultimate Good, the creator and sustainer of the universe and all the elaborate schemes of reasoning going along with them?Jeffrey Kaplan's Apocalypse, Revolution and Terrorism: From the Sicari to the American Revolt against the Modern World is a book whose main protagonists live in exactly the same kind of world I have just described.For many of them all their public actions are sub specie aeternitatis.God is a constant player in every move they make.He (yes, almost always He) has His hand in every event.He is the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega of every deed.The limitless horizon of reality afforded by partnership with God lets the characters around which Kaplan has organized his book think big thoughts --really big thoughts -and, more to the point, launch really big, consequential projects of action -revolutions, popular uprisings, daring schemes of assassination, declarations of millennial

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