Page 137 - Eclipse of God

110 Chapter 8

upon which this unfaithfulness works, in the middle of the
statement of trust. And now he too who is seemingly holding
fast to God becomes aware of the eclipsed Transcendence.
What is it that we mean when we speak of an eclipse of
God which is even now taking place? Through this metaphor
we make the tremendous assumption that we can glance up to
God with our “mind’s eye,” or rather being’s eye, as with our
bodily eye to the sun, and that something can step between
our existence and His as between the earth and the sun. That
this glance of the being exists, wholly unillusory, yielding no
images yet first making possible all images, no other court in
the world attests than that of faith. It is not to be proved; it is
only to be experienced; man has experienced it. And that other,
that which steps in between, one also experiences, to- day. I
have spoken of it since I have recognized it, and as exactly as
my perception allowed me.
The double nature of man, as the being that is both brought
forth from “below” and sent from “above,” results in the duality
of his basic characteristics. These cannot be understood through
the categories of the individual man existing- for- himself, but
only through the categories of his existing as man- with- man.
As a being who is sent, man exists over against the existing
being before which he is placed. As a being who is brought
forth, he finds himself beside all existing beings in the world,
beside which he is set. The first of these categories has its living
reality in the relation I- Thou, the second has its reality in the
relation I- It. The second always brings us only to the aspects of
an existing being, not to that being itself. Even the most inti-
mate contact with another remains covered over by an aspect if
the other has not become Thou for me. Only the first relation,
that which establishes essential immediacy between me and
an existing being, brings me just thereby not to an aspect of