Page 76 - Eclipse of God

The Love of God and the Idea of Deity 49

Reason, from the Sources of Judaism,” Cohen returns to this
problem with even greater prominence: “How can one love an
idea?”— and replies, “How can one love anything save an idea?”
He substantiates his reply by saying, “For even in the love of
the senses one loves only the idealized person, only the idea
of the person.” Yet even if it were correct that in the love of
“the senses” (or more correctly, in the love which comprehends
sensuality) one loves only the idealized person, that does not
at all mean that nothing more than the idea of the person is
loved; even the idealized person remains a person, and has not
been transformed into an idea. It is only because the person
whom I idealize actually exists that I can love the idealized
one. Even though for Dante it was la gloriosa donna della mia
mente, yet the decisive fact is that first he saw the real Beatrice,
who set the “spirit of life” trembling in him. But does not the
motive force which enables and empowers us to idealize a be-
loved person arise from the deepest substance of that beloved
person? Is not the true idealization in the deepest sense a dis-
covery of the essential self meant by God in creating the person
whom I love?
“The love of men for God,” says Cohen, “is the love of the
moral ideal. I can love only the ideal, and I can comprehend
the ideal in no other way save by loving it.” Even on this level,
the very highest for the philosopher who is overwhelmed by
faith, he declares what the love of God is, and not what it in-
cludes. But man’s love for God is not love of the moral ideal; it
only includes that love. He who loves God only as the moral
ideal is bound soon to reach the point of despair at the con-
duct of the world where, hour after hour, all the principles of
his moral idealism are apparently contradicted. Job despairs
because God and the moral ideal seem diverse to him. But
He who answered Job out of the tempest is more exalted even
than the ideal sphere. He is not the archetype of the ideal, but