Page 131 - Eclipse of God

104 Chapter 7

Where, therefore, the “suspension” of the ethical is con-
cerned, the question of questions which takes precedence over
every other is: Are you really addressed by the Absolute or by
one of his apes? It should be noted in this connection that,
according to the report of the Bible, the divine voice which
speaks to the Single One is the “voice of a thin silence” (1
2
Kings 19:21). The voice of Moloch, in contrast, usually prefers
a mighty roaring. However, in our age especially, it appears to
be extremely difficult to distinguish the one from the other.
Ours is an age in which the suspension of the ethical fills
the world in a caricaturized form. The apes of the Absolute, to
be sure, have always in the past bustled about on earth. Ever
and ever again men are commanded from out of the darkness
to sacrifice their Isaac. Here the sentence is valid, “That which
the Single One is to understand by Isaac, can be decided only
by and for himself.” But stored away in men’s hearts, there were
in all those times images of the Absolute, partly pallid, partly
crude, altogether false and yet true, fleeting as an image in a
dream yet verified in eternity. Inadequate as this presence cer-
tainly was, insofar as one bore it concretely in mind one only
needed to call on it in order not to succumb to the deception
of the voices.
That is no longer so since, in Nietzsche’s words, “God is
dead,” that is, realistically speaking, since the image- making
power of the human heart has been in decline so that the
spiritual pupil can no longer catch a glimpse of the appear-
ance of the Absolute. False absolutes rule over the soul, which
is no longer able to put them to flight through the image of
the true. Everywhere, over the whole surface of the human
world— in the East and in the West, from the left and from the

2 A bold visual metaphor for an acoustical event: It is a silence, but not a thick and
solid one, rather one that is of such veil- like thinness that the Word shines through it.