Page 105 - Eclipse of God

78 Chapter 5

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unconscious creates the idea of a deified or divine man.” This
70
figure, which embraces Christ and Satan within himself, is
the final form of that Gnostic god, descended to earth as the
71
realization of the “identity of God and man,” which Jung
once professed. He has remained faithful to this god, repeat-
edly intimating its prospective appearance. 72
Jung’s psychology of religion is to be understood as the an-
nouncement of that god as the Coming One. To Nietzsche’s
saying, “All the gods are dead, now we desire that the super-
man live!” Heidegger, in a note otherwise foreign to him, adds
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this warning : “Man can never set himself in the place of God
because the essence of man does not reach to God’s sphere of
being. On the contrary, indeed, in proportion with this im-
possibility, something far more uncanny may happen, the na-
ture of which we have still hardly begun to consider. The place
which, metaphysically speaking, belongs to God is the place
in which the production and preservation as created being
of that which exists is effected. This place of God can remain
empty. Instead of it another, that is, a metaphysically corre-
sponding place can appear, which is neither identical with
God’s sphere of being nor with that of man, but which, on
the other hand, man can, in an eminent relation, attain. The
superman does not and never will step into the place of God;
the place rather in which the will to the superman arrives is
another sphere in another foundation of existing things in an-
other being.” The words compel one to listen with attention.
One must judge whether that which is said or intimated in
them does not hold true to- day and here.

Notes

1. L’existentialisme est un humanisme (1946), 21. All the quo-
tations in this essay except one (see note 54) are trans-