Page 72 - Eclipse of God

The Love of God and the Idea of Deity 45

Cohen objectified the results of his succumbing to faith by
merging it in his system of concepts. Nowhere in his writings
does he directly state it; but the evidence is striking. When was
it that the decisive change occurred?

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The answer lies in the change that crept into Cohen’s way of
thinking about the love of God. It was only at a late period
that Cohen, who concurrently with the development of his
system was dealing in a series of essays with the heritage of
the Jewish faith, gave an adequate place to the cornerstone of
that faith, the love of God, the essential means by which the
Jewish faith realized its full and unique value. Only three years
after the “Ethics,” in his important research into “Religion and
Morality,” whose formulations, even keener than those of the
“Ethics,” interdict “interest in the so- called person of God and
the so- called living God,” declaring that the prophets of Israel
“combatted” the direct relation between man and God, do we
find a new note about the love of God. “The more that the
knowledge of God is simultaneously felt to be love of God,
the more passionate becomes the battle for faith, the struggle
for the knowledge of God and for the love of God.” It is ev-
ident that at this point Cohen is beginning to approach the
vital character of faith. Yet the love of God still remains some-
thing abstract and not given to investigation.
Once again, three years later, Cohen’s short essay on “The
Love of Religion” begins with the curious sentence, “The love
of God is the love of religion,” and its first section ends with
the no less curious sentence, “The love of God is therefore the
knowledge of morality.” If we carefully consider the two uses
of the word “is,” we are able to distinguish a purpose: which
is to classify something as yet unclassified but nevertheless