In Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Thomas Merton quotes “magnificent lines” from Karl Barth:

Everyone who has to contend with unbelief should be advised that he ought not to take his own unbelief too seriously. Only faith is to be taken seriously; and if we have faith as a grain of mustard seed, that suffices, for the devil has lost his game.

Merton says “this is one of the great intuitions of Protestantism,” and explains in what sense the traditional Protestant doctrine of sola fide (faith alone) can be accepted as true by himself, a believing Catholic:

To take one’s good works seriously is to be a pharisee. Only faith is to be taken seriously because only the mercy of God is serious. And if we put too much emphasis on the seriousness of what we do [we set ourselves up to be] judged as men who have taken seriously something other than His infinite mercy. . . . In taking faith seriously it is God whom we take seriously, not ourselves . . . God Who gives me faith and renews that gift, by His mercy, at every moment, in spite of my unbelief. This I think is one of the central intuitions of evangelical Christianity. . . . It is something, too, which many Protestants have themselves forgotten, becoming instead obsessed with faith as it is in themselves, constantly watching themselves to see if faith is still there, which means turning faith into a good work and being justified, consequently, by works.

So, according to Merton, there are two ways to get Christianity wrong: self-righteousness (the wrong tendency within Catholicism) and self-absorption (the counterpart within Protestantism). And both can be reduced to works-righteousness; this is, indeed, one of the central insights of the Reformation. Merton has thus shown that Protestants and Catholics have found an underlying unity in how they get Christianity wrong. But in the famous opening lines of Conjectures, Merton also says — again referring to Barth — that there’s an underlying unity in how they get Christianity right:

Karl Barth had a dream about Mozart. Barth had always been piqued by the Catholicism of Mozart, and by Mozart’s rejection of Protestantism. For Mozart said that “Protestantism was all in the head” . . . Barth, in his dream, was appointed to examine Mozart in theology. . . . But Mozart did not answer a word. I was deeply moved by Barth’s account of this dream. . . . The dream concerns his salvation, and Barth perhaps is striving to admit that he will be saved more by the Mozart in himself than by his theology. Each day, for years, Barth played Mozart every morning before going to work on his dogma: unconsciously seeking to awaken, perhaps, the hidden sophianic Mozart in himself, the central wisdom that comes in tune with the divine and cosmic music and is saved by love, yes, even by eros. . . . Barth says, also significantly, that “it is a child, even a ‘divine’ child, who speaks in Mozart’s music to us.” . . . Fear not, Karl Barth! Trust in the divine mercy. Though you have grown up to become a theologian, Christ remains a child in you. Your books (and mine) matter less than we might think! There is in us a Mozart who will be our salvation.

Merton and Barth were both wrestling with what it meant to be created in God’s image, and — as in the famous passage, Matthew 18:3 — saw that image most clearly in human beings who could express childlike joy.

Thomas Merton and Karl Barth died on the same day, December 10, 1968.