There was an interesting passage in Paul Johnson’s History of the Jews, describing a debate that took place in 1263 between Chrstians and Jews.

The Jewish Rabbi Nahmanides put his own case well. He said:

The doctrine in which you believe the foundation of your faith cannot be accepted by reason. Nature affords no grounds for it. Nor have the prophets ever expressed it.

He told the king that only life-long indoctrination could persuade a rational person that God was born from a human womb, lived on Earth, was executed and then returned to his original place. The argument is, sadly, rather convincing.

And then, by chance, I found a church open in a small village in the Provencal Drome, La Motte Chalancon. The decor was utterly simple, the features of this Romanesque church stark, the modern stained glass, made by Irudut (1963), was the best I had ever seen.

In this quiet place of prayer, decorated almost as if it were a Calvinist church, reason seemed unimportant; as if it could follow the debates one way or another. What was important here was feeling; a feeling of God which, in this place, was returned by a simple idea.