New Seeds 4: Everything That Is, Is Holy
This is part of an ongoing, occasional series of essays offering commentary on Thomas Merton’s classic book New Seeds of Contemplation (1961)
Background and Context
As with the previous chapter, “Seeds of Contemplation,” chapter four, “Everything That is, Is Holy” (NSC 21–28), also appeared in the 1949 edition of Seeds of Contemplation, albeit in a different and shorter form. While these versions bear the same title, and the New Seeds version includes substantive sections of the Seeds edition, a substantial revision and expansion took place between the two publications.
In addition to the content itself that varies, as we saw with the last chapter, Donald Grayston observes that in Merton’s subsequent revisions of Seeds into the revised version of Seeds (December 1949) and then in New Seeds (1961) his tone is noticeably tempered from a stricter, more harsh sense of asceticism in the earliest versions to a more inclusive and inviting style.
Another facet of the development of New Seeds from the earlier versions is the addition of more material related to the “True Self” and “False Self,” with particular attention given to unpacking the meaning of the “False Self.” For example, in the text known as “Typescript 2” (TS2) that Merton developed between the 1949 revision of Seeds and the eventual publication of New Seeds, Merton adds a lengthy reflection that begins on the bottom of page 26 and closes the published version of New Seeds on page 28. It opens with the line: “The ‘False Self’ must not be identified with the body. The body is neither evil or unreal…” (NSC 26).
The earlier version of this chapter in Seeds places greater emphasis on sainthood and the means by which canonized saints throughout Christian history used, engaged, or saw (uti) the created things of the world as a means to draw closer to God and appreciate God’s proximity to creation (frui). This bears a distinctly Augustinian notion of the ordered and disordered love, which importantly does not view the created world as bad or evil (as some Gnostic and other traditions might). However, created things, Augustine insisted, were meant to be used (uti) as a means to loving or, literally, “enjoying” (frui) God for God’s own sake. This is a way of thinking about the difference between means and ends; the things of the world could be rightly loved as a means to a greater love, but God is to be loved for God’s own sake as an end in itself.
This Augustinian framing appears in an especially stark way in the last few lines of this chapter in Seeds:
The fulfillment we find in creatures belongs to the reality of the created being, a reality that is from God and belongs to God and reflects God. The anguish we find in them belongs to the disorder of our desire which looks for a greater reality in the object of our desire than is actually there: a greater fulfillment than any created thing is capable of giving. Instead of worshipping God through His creation we are always trying to worship ourselves by means of creatures.
But to worship ourselves is to worship nothing. And the worship of nothing is hell (7).
A revision of these lines appears near the middle of the chapter in New Seeds, with an interesting edit made to what is the final line in the Seeds edition. New Seeds reads: “But to worship our false selves is to worship nothing. And the worship of nothing is hell.”
While the structure, and to some degree sentiment, remains in tact, the emphasis is placed now on the concept of the “False Self,” which is a major theme in this chapter of New Seeds. It also anticipates the next two chapters in New Seeds that focus attention on the meaning of the “True Self” in important ways.
Commentary: “Everything That Is, Is Holy”
This is quite an extraordinary chapter in New Seeds. While the text remains as accessible as the other parts of New Seeds, there is a density to this chapter that invites a slow reading and sufficient reflection. It includes several important theological and spiritual insights, which draw from resources dating back to the Patristic era such as the insights of Irenaeus of Lyons and Augustine of Hippo, as well as resonances with medieval influences like Bonaventure. Merton masterfully weaves these threads of spiritual wisdom together in a manner to which contemporary seekers can relate.
I love this chapter and could spend weeks unpacking the insights from it for further consideration. But for our purposes here, I want to highlight three key themes: the goodness of creation, reading the book of nature, and the introduction of the “false self.”
The Goodness of Creation
Merton, channeling the early Christian apologists of the first Christian centuries—here I think of Ireaneus of Lyons first of all—puts a significant amount of effort in this chapter toward affirming the goodness of creation against those who would adopt something of a Gnostic or anti-materialist spirituality over an authentic Christian spirituality.
“There is no evil in anything created by God, nor can anything of His become an obstacle to our union with Him,” Merton writes. “We do not detach ourselves from things in order to attach ourselves to God, but rather we become detached from ourselves in order to see and use all things in and for God” (NSC 21).
Later he makes this point again:
The saint knows that the world and everything made by God is good, while those who are not saints either think that created things are unholy, or else they don’t bother about the question one way or another because they are only interested in themselves (NSC 24).
This is clearly the reflection of a maturing Merton, who is concerned about naïve attempts by some Christians to embrace a distorted spirituality of fuga mundi, or “fleeing the world.” While Merton regularly notes the importance of not becoming “of the world,” he is mindful of the fact, especially later in his monastic career, that even the monastery is never fully “out of the world.”
God does not call us to abandon the “joys and hopes, griefs and anxieties” (Gaudium et spes, 1) of people of this world, but to engage them in mutual love and support. Jesus himself makes this point in John’s Gospel, when he tells his disciples that they must be “in the world” but not “of the world” (John 17:14–17).
Reading the Book of Nature
Once Merton affirms the inherent goodness of creation, undoubtedly inspired by early Christian theologians as noted above, he deepens his Augustinian reflections on the place of creation—what he collectively describes as “created things”—in the spiritual life. Chastising those Christians who would dismiss both the goodness of created things and their capacity to assist us in knowing God, and by extension ourselves and others, Merton makes the point that saints do not avoid created things but have eyes to see their goodness and God’s presence as Creator and Sustainer of all.
Merton writes: “It was because the saints were absorbed in God that they were truly capable of seeing and appreciating created things and it was because they loved Him alone that they alone loved everybody” (NSC 23).
An interesting point Merton makes about the ability to see God in and through created things (something Bonaventure explicitly outlines in his Itinerarium, which Merton read and from which he included dozens of excerpts in his original typescript for Seven Storey Mountain before Bob Giroux—correctly—edited them out) is that one does not have to be explicitly “pious” or “Christian” about it. In fact, Merton explains, “A saint is capable of loving created things and enjoying the use of them and dealing with them in a perfectly simple, natural manner, making no formal references to God, drawing no attention to his own piety, and acting without any artificial rigidity at all” (NSC 24).
Here we are reminded of Augustine’s famous contribution to the concept of a natural theology, specifically calling to mind what Augustine calls the “book of nature” or “book of creation.” Like the book of scripture, by reading the “book of nature” properly, one can ascertain some insight about God and God’s presence in creation. God discloses Godself as Creator and Sustainer, but also because all of creation comes from the same divine source, all aspects of creation have the capacity to point back to the Creator in some way.
In his Expositions on the Psalms, Augustine writes: “It is the divine page that you must listen to; it is the book of the universe that you must observe. The pages of Scripture can only be read by those who know how to read and write, while everyone, even the illiterate, can read the book of the universe” (no. 45).
While reading scripture requires literal literacy, the book of nature is open to all, provided they have “eyes to see” what it says about God.
Similarly, in his Sermon 68, Augustine says: “Some people, in order to discover God, read a book. But there is a great book: the very appearance of created things. Look above and below, note, read. God whom you want to discover, did not make the letters with ink; he put in front of your eyes the very things that he made. Can you ask for a louder voice than that?”
Building on the same thread of natural theology, Merton makes the case that one does not need to use overt theological or Christian language, or even reference God as such, in recognizing the divine or transcendent in the world.
Hence a saint is capable of talking about the world without any explicit reference to God, in such a way that his statement gives greater glory to God and arouses a greater love of God than the observations of someone less holy, who has to strain himself to make an arbitrary connection between creatures and God through the medium of hackneyed analogies and metaphors that are so feeble that they make you think there is something the matter with religion (NSC 24).
Here I am reminded of Karl Rahner’s famous proposal of “the anonymous Christian,” which suggests that there are ways one may in fact be more attuned to the divine in the world and more aligned with the gospel message of action in the world as a non-Christian than many Christians who purport to be followers of Christ and yet do little to demonstrate that concretely in their lives and through their views.
This theme of natural theology or reading the book of nature might be threatening to some triumphalist Christians who view their faith as something held in reserve and exists in a zero-sum contest against others. But the truth is, Merton is encouraging us to look at the very condition of the possibility for contemplation and communion with God, and that is a fundamental human characteristic shared by all people.
The ‘False Self’
Finally, perhaps the most famous theme Merton introduces in chapter four is that of the “false self.” In the following few chapters Merton will begin to layout what he means by the “true self,” but it is here that its counter concept is presented. Merton mentions either the “false self” or, synonymously, the “illusory self” seven times in this short chapter.
Building on his cautionary reflections about false fuga mundi attitudes in the spiritual life, Merton invites readers to shift their focus away from “evil” or “bad” things in the created world and attend to a critical interiority, examining their own hearts and minds. He contrasts the false belief that created things are themselves the problem from which we should flee with the true stumbling block we face, our “false self” (or better, selves, as there is never only one).
The obstacle is in our “self,” that is to say in the tenacious need to maintain our separate, external, egotistic will. It is when we refer all things to this outward and false “self” that we alienate ourselves from reality and from God. It is then the false self that is our god, and we love everything for the sake of this self. We use all things, so to speak, for the worship of this idol which is our imaginary self (NSC 21).
There is only one “true self,” who it is that we are before God. God loves each of us into existence, knows each of our full identities completely, and calls us by name. Anything that is other than that is what Merton refers to as “false” or “illusory,” which is an identity—truly a fiction or “mask”—that is unreal and unknown to God.
The “false self” finds a number of impetuses: sometimes it is our own skewed perception of ourself or desire to be someone other than whom we are; sometimes it is the external social or ecclesial pressure to likewise be different; and sometimes it is rooted in a basic sense of insecurity, resulting in a belief that we must not be good enough as we are and therefore we must “create ourselves” anew.
For some people, this creation of a “false self” is an exercise in freedom. But Merton believes that this is part of the distorting worldview that is the condition of such a creation.
Merton explains: “The only true joy on earth is to escape from the prison of our own false self, and enter by love into union with the Life Who dwells and sings within the essence of every creature and in the core of our own souls” (NSC 25).
He also makes clear that the “false self” is not to be identified with our bodies or with creation as such, as if, again, the only thing that matters is our “souls.” Merton calls this mistaken view “angelism.” Such a view is itself false and “consequently an illusion” (NSC 27) as Merton later explains. We must never lose sight of the truth that we are body and soul, corporeal and open to the transcendent, finite and yet called to eternal life.
There is much more to say about the false self, which will continue to surface as we move through New Seeds, as this is one of the most important and central themes of this book.
Works Cited
Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, ed. John E. Rotelle, vol 2 (New York: New City Press, 2000)
Augustine, Sermons: 51–94, ed. Edmund Hill, vol. 3 (New York: New City Press, 1991).
Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, ed. Zachary Hayes and Philotheus Boehner (St. Bonaventure: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2002).
Irenaeus of Lyons, Against the Heresies: Books 4 & 5, trans. Dominic Unger (New York: The Newman Press, 2024).
Donald Grayston, Thomas Merton: The Development of a Spiritual Theologian (Toronto: Edwin Mellin Press, 1985).
Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions Publishing, 1961).
Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. William V. Dych (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1978).
Daniel P. Horan, PhD, is a Franciscan, Professor of Philosophy, Religious Studies and Theology and Director of the Center for the Study of Spirituality at Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Ind., and Affiliated Professor of Spirituality at the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas. He is a columnist for National Catholic Reporter, and the author of many books, including Engaging Thomas Merton: Spirituality, Justice, and Racism (2023) and A White Catholic’s Guide to Racism and Privilege (2021). Follow him on Facebook.
