Page 57 - Eclipse of God

30 Chapter 3

on Job, and bring him to love Him Himself. This is presumably
what Whitehead meant when he said that religion is the passage
from God the void to God the enemy and from Him to God
the companion. That the believing man who goes through the
gate of dread is directed to the concrete contextual situations of
his existence means just this: that he endures in the face of God
the reality of lived life, dreadful and incomprehensible though it
be. He loves it in the love of God, whom he has learned to love.
For this reason, every genuine religious expression has an
open or a hidden personal character, for it is spoken out of a
concrete situation in which the person takes part as a person.
This is true also in those instances where, out of a noble mod-
esty, the word “I” is in principle avoided. Confucius, who spoke
of himself almost as unwillingly as of God, once said: “I do
not murmur against God, and I bear no ill will toward men. I
search here below, but I penetrate above. He who knows me is
God.” Religious expression is bound to the concrete situation.
That one accepts the concrete situation as given to him
does not, in any way, mean that he must be ready to accept
that which meets him as “God- given” in its pure factuality. He
may, rather, declare the extremest enmity toward this happen-
ing and treat its “givenness” as only intended to draw forth his
own opposing force. But he will not remove himself from the
concrete situation as it actually is; he will, instead, enter into it,
even if in the form of fighting against it. Whether field of work
or field of battle, he accepts the place in which he is placed. He
knows no floating of the spirit above concrete reality; to him
even the sublimest spirituality is an illusion if it is not bound
to the situation. Only the spirit which is bound to the situation
is prized by him as bound to the Pneuma, the spirit of God.
As an objection to the definition of religion which I have
suggested, one might adduce the ascetic tendencies of some
religions. Insofar, however, as they do not weaken the religious