Citation

Gripaldo, Rolando M. “Agnostic Deism: Rizal’s Religious Philosophy.” International Journal of Philosophy, vol. 31, no. 1, Jan. 2009, pp. 47–67.

Quotes

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Collations

Rizal believed God gave us reason to see things uniquely

God has given man reason and self-esteem, and it must be for some purpose.

to look at things through the prisms of others would offend God because this is tantamount to scorning the “most precious gifts” which He has given to man.

God did not wish that one “who has less judgment should think like one who has more, or vice versa, just as one must not digest with his neighbor’s stomach.”

Truth may have been polarized, or obstructed and distorted, when it enters one’s understanding. Reason can be mistaken and can be limited. Nevertheless, according to Rizal, it is only reason that can correct its own mistakes: “reason alone knows how to get up everytime it falls as perforce it must in its long pilgrimage here on earth.”

Rizal believed God gave us self-love for a purpose

With respect to self-love or self-esteem, Rizal says he has prayed that God should dispossess him of it, but God has preserved it

Self-love, when tempered by reason, can be used as a guide for man’s perfection and integrity since it saves “him from any base and unworthy acts”

Rizal believed that reason and self-love are essential parts of the human

Rizal considers man as a “masterpiece of creation, perfect within his limitations” that to deprive him of his physical or moral component parts, like reason and self-love, would disfigure and render him miserable.

Rizal prays but doesn't ask for anything

Rizal informs Fr. Pastells that he sometimes prays but when he prays he does not ask for anything.

He believes everything he has and whatever happens to him are God’s will, and so he does this or that as guided by his conscience because after all, “God will have his [own] way.”

On his cause

although there are better causes, his cause is good and sufficient for him.

He is not sorry for the humbleness of his cause, the poverty of the rewards it offers, and the little talent that God has given him to serve his cause.

Rizal says he does not aspire for “eternal fame or renown.”

Rizal believes he isn't a Protestant

Rizal denies being a Protestant.

Had he accepted Protestantism, he would now be “rich, free, [and] crowned with honors,” instead of being a poor deportee.

Rizal's beliefs on religion and beliefs

He respects religious ideas but does not consider religion as “a matter of convenience or the art of getting along well in life.”

Rizal concluded two things: (1) an idea sincerely conceived and practiced, no matter how opposite it is to one’s own convictions, deserves a deep respect

(2) “religions, whatever they may be, ought to make men not enemies of one another, but brothers and good brothers at that.”

Every religion claims to possess the truth.

Rizal, truth is seen from different angles and therefore religious, moral, and political truths are complex and must be studied piecemeal. Nobody has the right to judge the beliefs of others, using his own beliefs as norm or criteria.

Thus, the best religions for Rizal are the simplest, “most in conformity of nature, most in harmony with the needs and aspirations of men,” like the doctrine of Christ.

Rizal rejects the infallibility of the church.

Rizal does not believe that before the coming of Jesus Christ, all those people before him were in the “infernal abyss” or hell.

Nor does he believe that after the advent of Christ, everything has been “sunshine, peace, and good fortune, and that most men returned to the ways of the just.”

He says that the man who tries to impose one’s opinions on others is more stupidly proud than the man who is contented with following his own reason.

Rizal believed that the supernatural or divine ight is far superior to human reason

No doubt, far superior to human reason is the supernatural or divine light. But who can justly “claim that he is the reflector of that Light?

Rizal believes in the Creator through reason and not faith

It is not by faith, Rizal contends, “but by reasoning and by necessity” that he firmly believes in the existence of the creator.

Rizal believes God couldn't be adequately described

Who and how he is cannot be adequately described.

Rizal's ideas of God

Rizal says he conceives God as “infinitely wise, mighty, [and] good.” But his idea of “infinite” is confused and imperfect, considering the “wonders of [God’s] works, the order that reigns over the universe, the magnificence and expanse of creation, and the goodness that shines in all” of them.

He prefers to leave the study of God to clearer minds since God, for him, is “the inconceivable, the superhuman, the infinite.”

The thought of Him overwhelms Rizal, makes him giddy, and his reason falls stupefied, dazzled, confounded everytime his reason attempts to reach that Being. Fear overcomes him.

Rizal prefers to be silent

He contents himself with studying God in humanity—his fellow-beings—and in his conscience.

God who has made beauty to consist in variety within unity.”

Rizal believes that “Man makes his own God according to his own image and likeness and then attributes to him his own works.”

Rizal discards the view that God suspends the laws of nature to perform miracles. This God may not contradict himself for suspending the laws of nature at certain times to achieve certain objectives, but “he would be inferior to him who can realize the same objectives without suspending or changing anything”

Rizal believed that God exists

How can I doubt God’s existence when I am so convinced of my own? Whosoever recognizes the effect recognizes the cause. To doubt God’s existence would be to doubt one’s own self-awareness and consequently to doubt everything else. But then, would life have any meaning at all?

Rizal believed that God is unknowable

But this belief in God, which is the result of reasoning, is blind in the sense that it knows nothing. God is unknowable, beyond description.

I neither believe nor disbelieve in the qualities which many attribute to God, and I can only smile at the definitions and elucubrations [sic] of theologians and philosophers concerning this ineffable and inscrutable being. I have this conviction that I stand before the Supreme Problem, which confused voices wish to unravel to me. And I cannot but reply: “You maybe right, but the God I am aware of is much more grand, much nobler: Plus supra!” [“Far beyond!”]

Rizal's thoughts on scriptures

Rizal considers the holy books like the Bible as

insights of men and whole generations put down in writing, the knowledge of the past in which the future is built. Most of these religious precepts are condensations or formulations of the precepts of the natural law as such, they are for me God’s word.

But when a conflict arises among them, Rizal will decide in favor of that which is in most conformity with nature’s law since “nature is the only divine book of unquestionable legitimacy, the sole manifestation of the Creator” on earth.

Besides, Rizal believes that “the Creator desires man to perfect himself by growing in knowledge” and that “victory belongs only to the one who seeks the perfection of others as well as his own.”

What about revelation? It is not impossible, and Rizal believes in it. However, he believes in God’s revelation in nature, which surrounds us everywhere,” and in one’s own conscience—“the voice speaking out through nature”—which to him “penetrates our being from the day we are born to the day we die.”

He does not believe in the revelations which every religion pretends to possess. When compared and impartially scrutinized, those revelations—according to Rizal—disclose the “human imprint and the marks of the times in which they were written.”

Rizals' thoughts on the immortal soul

Rizal believes in the immortality of the soul and the eternity of life. It is apparent that he is conversant with the first law of thermodynamics which says that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed but only transformed from one form to another.

how can I believe in the death of my consciousness, when everything around me tells me that nothing is lost but things merely change? If the atom cannot be annihilated, is it possible for my consciousness which rules the atom to be annihilated?

Rizal believes in the salvation of mankind

Rizal likewise believes in redemption or the salvation of mankind. Man’s fall—“three or even a thousand times in life’s bitter road...will always find salvation.”

Rizal's thoughts on conscience

Not all precepts of absolute necessity and usefulness are “found clearly enunciated in nature,” but God, says Rizal, has implanted these “in the heart, in our conscience, which is God’s nobler temple.”

God kept “the book of his revelation continually open for us, while his priest unceasingly speaks to us through the mysterious voice of our consciences.”

Rizal believed that Jesus was just human

And what about Jesus Christ? Rizal considers him only a man and not a God. For Rizal (1961: 80), “the Christ on Calvary...reveals a man in torment and agony, but what a man. As far as I am concerned, Christ the man is greater than Christ the God.”

Literature notes

Prompts