Page 84 - Eclipse of God

Religion and Modern Thinking 57

into the “world,” our work. All that being is established, we are
established, our meeting with it is established, and in this way
the becoming of a world, which takes place through us, is es-
tablished. This establishment of a universe, including ourselves
and our works, is the fundamental reality of existence which is
accessible to us as living beings. Contrasted with this reality,
the demand that man recover his creative freedom appears as
a demagogic phrase. That “creative freedom” which really be-
longs to us, our participation in creation, is established, as we
ourselves. It is a question of using this freedom properly, that
is, in a manner worthy of the fact that it is a freedom which
is given to us, nothing less and nothing more. He who sets in
the place of it the postulate of the “recovery of freedom” turns
aside from true human existence, which means being sent and
being commissioned.
Sartre has started from the “silence” of God without asking
himself what part our not hearing and our not having heard
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has played in that silence. From the silence he has concluded
that God does not exist, at any rate not for us, for a god whose
object I am without his being mine does not concern me. This
conclusion is possible for Sartre because he holds the subject-
object relation to be the primary and exclusive relation between
two beings. He does not see the original and decisive relation
between I and Thou, compared with which the subject- object
relation is only a classifying elaboration. Now, however, Sartre
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goes further : One “must draw the consequences.” God is si-
lent, that is, nothing is said to one that is unconditional or un-
15
conditionally binding. “There is no sign in the world.” Since,
therefore, no universal morality can tell us what to do, since
all possibility of discovering absolute values has disappeared
with God, and since man, to whom henceforth “all is permit-
16
ted,” is at last free, is indeed freedom itself, it is for him to
determine values. “If I have done away with God the father