“It is the same thing that we all worship; we all think the same; we look up to the same stars; there is one sky above us, one world around us; what difference does it make with what kind of method the individual seeks the truth? We cannot all follow the same path to so great a mystery.”(1)(Senator Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (c. 345 – 402), Roman statesman, orator, and man of letters in fourth century Rome).
“So great a mystery as the Divinity cannot be fixed in one image, which would exclude all others - to one path obligatory for all…He is practising the ethic of tolerance who recognizes in each one a little of the truth, who does not set his own above what is strange to him, and who peacefully takes his place in the multiform symphony of the eternally unattainable that hides itself in symbols, symbols that yet seem to be the only way we have to grasp in some sense the Divinity.”(2)
(Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI).
References - (1) Cited in Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance- Christian Belief and World Religions, (Ignatius Press, 2004)(2) p. 176, the oration of 384 AD by the senator Symacchus before Emperor Valentinian II, in defence of paganism and advocating restoration of statue of goddess Victoria in the Roman Senate, quoted from Gnilka, Chresis.
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