Page 39 - Eclipse of God

12 Chapter 2

us, and we in a living relationship to him. Spinoza includes
these two aspects in the one concept of God’s intellectual love,
and the adjective “intellectual” is to be construed in the light of
the anti- anthropomorphic tendency of this philosopher, who
was endeavouring to put an end to the human disposition to
conceive images of God. Thus he aimed to give greater strin-
gency to the Biblical prohibition, without, however, impairing
the reality of the relation between God and man. He failed to
avoid this impairment solely because he recognized only the
supreme aspect of the relation, but not its core, the dialogue
between God and man— the divine voice speaking in what be-
falls man, and man answering in what he does or forbears to
do. However, Spinoza clearly stated his intention.
The thinking of our time is characterized by an essentially
different aim. It seeks, on the one hand, to preserve the idea
of the divine as the true concern of religion, and, on the other
hand, to destroy the reality of the idea of God and thereby
also the reality of our relation to Him. This is done in many
ways, overtly and covertly, apodictically and hypothetically, in
the language of metaphysics and of psychology.
An argument against Spinoza, which long remained un-
known, and to which insufficient attention is paid even to- day,
was formulated at the beginning of our era. It is a proposition
found (together with several variants) in the remarkable notes
set down by Kant in his old age: “God is not an external sub-
stance, but only a moral condition within us.” It is true that Kant
did not stop with this proposition. In the course of his rest-
less search he propounded diametrically opposite theses in the
same notes, but the reader who does not shrink from the ar-
duous labour of reading them will nevertheless recognize that
this is what Kant ultimately sought and tried to apprehend— a
God who would meet the requirement of the philosopher’s
earlier “postulate of practical reason,” a God who would over-