Page 121 - Eclipse of God

94 Chapter 6

moreover, the relationship between the ethical and the reli-
gious was impaired. For when a sanctification of the people as
a people is no longer recognized or no longer taken seriously,
then the peoples accept the new faith not as peoples but as
collections of individuals. Even where mass conversions take
place, the people as a people remains unbaptized; it does not
enter as a people into the new covenant that has been pro-
claimed.
This means that here a great spiritual power, such as was
prophecy in Israel, no longer executes the task of denouncing
and reproving, for the sake of the people’s holiness, the unholy
both in public life and in the private life of the individual who
has been participating in this public life, so to speak, “in good
conscience.” Certainly in the history of Christian peoples there
has been no lack of men of the spirit afire and ready for mar-
tyrdom in the struggle for righteousness; but the injunction,
“You shall become a holy people unto me,” no longer stood
living behind them.
Something else, of still deeper import, was added to this. It
too was connected with the meaningful and legitimate devel-
opment of the fundamental supremacy of the religious. That
which formed the kernel of the prophetic teaching in Israel was
the work of life to be fulfilled out of the full intention of faith,
and the intention of faith was the innermost action of man. It
was against ritual works emptied of the intention of faith that
the prophets fought. It was against moral works emptied of
the intention of faith that their successors in the time of Jesus
fought, to whom belonged the great Pharisaic teachers and
Jesus himself. The Pauline and the Paulinistic theology de-
preciated works for the sake of faith. It left undeveloped that
which bound the two together, the demand for intention of
faith, intention of work out of faith, the demand which under-
lay the proclamation of that which is pleasing to God from the