Page 89 - Eclipse of God

62 Chapter 5

by the last sentence, however, something other is meant than
that I myself am, and not indeed as the subject of a cogito, but
as my total person, then the concept of being loses for me the
character of genuine conceivability that obviously it eminently
possesses for Heidegger.
I shall, however, limit myself to his theses about the divine.
These theses, out of the extremest consciousness of self- drawn
boundaries, are only concerned with the “appearance” of the
divine. They are concerned in particular with those presupposi-
tions of future reappearances which pertain to human thought,
human thought, that is, about being. The most surprising and
questionable thing about these theses to me is the fact that
they designate it or him, the possible reappearance of whom
is their subject, as the divine or God. In all tongues since men
first found names for the eternally nameless, those who have
been named by this word have been transcendent beings. They
have been beings who by their nature were not given to us
as knowable objects, yet beings whom we nonetheless became
aware of as entering into relation with us. They stepped into
relation with us, form- changing, form- preserving, formless,
and allowed us to enter into relation with them. Being turned
toward us, descended to us, showed itself to us, spoke to us in
the immanence. The Coming One came of his own will out
of the mystery of his withdrawnness; we did not cause him to
come.
That has always distinguished religion from magic; for
he whom man imagined that he had conjured up could not,
even if he yet figured as god, be believed in any longer as god.
He had become for man a bundle of powers of which man’s
mysterious knowledge and might could dispose. He who con-
jured was no longer addressed nor was any answer any longer
awakened in him, and even though he recited a prayer, he no