Recapitulation: The Face of the Figure
The Eternal had become figure in the truth. And the truth is none other than the countenance of this figure. Truth alone is its countenance. And be very careful for the sake of your souls: you have seen no figure, only heard speech—as it is said in the revealed world around-and-about. But in the redeemed world above-and-beyond, brought about forcibly by the more powerful blessing recited at the right place, there the word falls silent. Of this world, consummate and pacified, it is said: “May he make his countenance to shine upon you.”
GOD’S COUNTENANCE
The truth is this shining of the divine visage alone. It is not a figure of its own, hovering freely, but solely the countenance of God, shining forth. But for him whom he lets his visage shine upon, to him he also turns his visage. As he turns his visage to us, so may we recognize him. And this cognition does not recognize figuratively. Rather it recognizes the truth as it is, that is as it is in God: as his countenance and part. By no means does it become a figurative truth because this countenance is turned toward us, God’s portion imparted to us; for even as literal and most literal truth it would be none other than—portion and countenance. In the Star of Redemption, then, in which we saw divine truth become figure, there shines forth none other than the countenance which God turned shiningly toward us. Yea, we now recognize the Star of Redemption itself, as it has at last emerged as figure for us, in the divine visage. And only in this recognition is its cognition consummated.
For as long as we only knew its course, without as yet seeing its configuration, just so long the order of the original elements remained unfixed. True, the unrestrained to-and-fro fluttering of the Perhaps had long since sunk away powerlessly; God, world, and man had structured themselves in a definite mutual order which came to them on the course; the sequence of the three hours of the day of God had ordained an unalterable relationship among themselves to the elements of the All so that the course was recognized as the course of the constellation to which these elements of the course belonged. But though the Star was thus sighted, it still seemed able to rotate about itself, so that world and man seemed nonetheless still to experience their own day within the already fixed sequence of the three periods of the day of God, with which this day of their own did not simply coincide. Only for God was redemption really the Ultimate. For man, however, his creation in the image of God implied being redeemed for every conceivable consummation, for the world likewise the descent of God in revelation. Thus it seemed as though the three hours were only hours of the day of God, while the day of man and the day of the world would be another [day].
The whole object of the third Part, which dealt with the Eternal of the redeemed hypercosmos, was to prove the contrary. That apparent interchangeability was here itself rooted to the spot in configurations which were assigned their fixed position in the eternal truth of the day of God. In eternal life, admittedly, redemption was already anticipated for the world in revelation which, after all, contains everything; eternal life was planted in the revelation to the one people, so that it itself no longer alters; this eternal life will one day return in the fruit of redemption as it was once planted. So too a piece of redemption is here already really placed into the world, the visible world, and it becomes true that, seen from the world, revelation would actually already be redemption. And on the eternal way, for its part, one really does again begin with man’s innate image-of-God character. Here redemption takes place through the new Adam, free of sin, not fallen, and with him it already exists. The miraculous birth of the second Adam renews this creation in the image of God, and man, endowed with soul, here makes it his own and thus becomes heir to redemption, to a redeemedness which is his own from of yore, from creation on and only waits to be claimed by him. Thus it becomes true that, from man’s point of view, creation would actually already be redemption.
Thus the relationships of time here find their precise place. For man was created as man in revelation, and in redemption he was permitted and required to reveal himself. This simple and natural temporal relationship, in which being created preceded revealing oneself, now establishes the entire sequence of the eternal way through the world, its own chronology, the consciousness which is found in every present between past and future and on the way from past to future. On the other hand the peculiar inversion of chronological sequence for the world which we have already noticed several times, now receives its graphic confirmation. For to the world, the experience of awakening to its own manifest consciousness of itself, namely the consciousness of the creature, occurs at its creation, and only in redemption is it first properly created; only there does it acquire its firm durability, that constant life in place of the ever-new existence born of the moment. Thus awaking precedes being for the world, and this inversion of chronological sequence establishes the life of the eternal people. For its eternal life constantly anticipates the end and thus turns it into beginning. In this inversion, it denies time as decisively as possible and places itself outside of time. To live in time means to live between beginning and end. He who would live an eternal life, and not the temporal in time, must live outside of time, and he who would do this must deny that “between.” But such a denial would have to be active if it is to result, not just in a not-living-in-time but in a positive living-eternally! And the active denial would occur only in the inversion. To invert a Between means to make its After a Before, its Before an After, the end a beginning, the beginning an end. And that is what the eternal people does. It already lives its own life as if it were all the world and the world were finished. In its Sabbaths it celebrates the sabbatical completion of the world and makes it the foundation and starting point of its existence. But that which temporally speaking, would be but starting point, the law, that it sets up as its goal. Thus it experiences no Between for all that it naturally, really naturally, lives within it. Rather it experiences the inversion of the Between. Thus it denies the omnipotence of the Between and disavows time, the very time which is experienced on the eternal way.
THE ETERNAL GODS
Under the signs of the eternal life and the eternal way, the two “views” thus harden from the “viewpoint” of world or man into figures visible in their own right, and enter under the one sign of the eternal truth. And with that the question as to which order of the three hours is required for the eternal truth itself is simplified. For having recognized eternal truth as that truth which will be at the end and which originates with God at the beginning, it follows that only that order does justice to the ultimate truth which presents itself as from God and in which redemption is really the Last. And precisely in this order-from-God, even the orders from the world or from man, which apparently are still at least possible by its side, find their domicile. There they can reside in safety and recite their Truly as essential and visible configurations under the dominion of the eternal truth. Paganism will live on to the eternal end in its eternal gods, the state and art, the former the idol of the realists, the latter that of the individualists; but these gods are there put in chains by the true God. Let the state claim the supreme place in the All for the world, and art for man; let the state dam up the current of time at the epochs of world history, and art try to divert it into the endless irrigation system of experiences—just let them! He who thrones in heaven mocks them. He confronts their bustling activity, which already is at cross purposes, with the quiet effectiveness of created nature in whose truth the deified world is defined and configured for eternal life, where deified man is bent and dispatched on the eternal way and thus both, world and man, are jointly subordinated to God’s dominion. In the struggle for time, state and art must destroy each other, since the state wishes to stop the flow of time, while art would drift in it. But even this struggle is settled in divinely ruled nature. World and man find room side by side in the eternity of life and the eternity of the way; there they are deified without being idolized.
THE GOD OF GODS
Thus it is only before the truth that the frenzy of all paganism collapses. Its blind and drunken desire to see itself and only itself, climaxing in the eternal struggle of art and the state, is confronted by the quiet superior power of the divine truth which, because everything lies at its feet as one single great nature, can assign to each its portion and thus order the All. As long as art and the state, each for itself, may both regard themselves as omnipotent, just so long each claims all of nature for itself, and rightly so. Both know nature only as their “material.” Only when the truth limited both, the state by means of eternal life, art by means of the eternal way, could it free nature from this double slavery and restore its unity; in this state and art may claim their portion, but no more. As for the truth—whence should it draw its power of carrying the All of nature like a pillar if not from the God who gives himself figure in it and only in it. In the sight of the truth not only does the Perhaps lose its validity—for that had long since disappeared—but in the final analysis every Possibly too. The Star of Redemption, in which the truth achieves configuration, is not in orbit. That which is above, is above and stays above. View points, Weltanschauungen, philosophies of life, isms’ of every sort—all this no longer dares to show itself to this last simple view of the truth. The points of view are submerged before the one constant sight. Views of the world and of life are absorbed into the one view of God. The ism’s retreat before the rising constellation of redemption which, irrespective of whether one believes in it or not, is at any rate meant as a fact and not an ism. Thus there is an Above and a Below, inexchangeable and irreversible. Even the cognizant one may not say If. He too is governed by the Thus, the Thus-and-not-otherwise. And just because there is an Above and a Below in the truth, therefore we may, nay we must call it God’s countenance. We speak in images. But the images are not arbitrary. There are essential images and coincidental ones. The irreversibility of the truth can only be enunciated in the image of a living being. For in the living being, an Above and a Below are already designated by nature prior to all theory or regulation. And of living beings in turn there, where self-consciousness is awake to this designation: in man. Man has an above and a below in his own corporeality. And just as the truth, which gave itself configuration in the Star, is in turn assigned within the Star to God as whole truth, and not to man or the world, so too the Star must once more mirror itself in that which, within the corporeality, is again the Upper: the countenance. Thus it is not human illusion if Scripture speaks of God’s countenance and even of his separate bodily parts. There is no other way to express the Truth. Only when we see the Star as countenance do we transcend every possibility and simply see.
THE FACE OF MAN
Just as the Star mirrors its elements and the combination of the elements into one route in its two superimposed triangles, so too the organs of the countenance divide into two levels. For the life-points of the countenance are, after all, those points where the countenance comes into contact with the world above, be it in passive or active contact. The basic level is ordered according to the receptive organs; they are the building blocks, as it were, which together compose the face, the mask, namely forehead and cheeks, to which belong respectively nose and ears. Nose and ears are the organs of pure receptivity. The nose belongs to the forehead; in the sacred [Hebrew] tongue it veritably stands for the face as a whole. The scent of offerings turns to it as the motion of the lips to the ears. This first triangle is thus formed by the midpoint of the forehead, as the dominant point of the entire face, and the midpoints of the cheeks. Over it is now imposed a second triangle, composed of the organs whose activity quickens the rigid mask of the first: eyes and mouth. Not that the eyes are mutually equivalent in a mimic sense, for while the left one views more receptively and evenly, the right one fixes its glance sharply on one point. Only the right one “flashes”—a division of labor which frequently leaves its mark deep in the soft neighborhood of the eye-sockets of a hoary head; this asymmetric facial formation, which otherwise is generally conspicuous only in the familiar difference between the two profiles, then becomes perceptible also en face. Just as the structure of the face is dominated by the forehead, so its life, all that surrounds the eyes and shines forth from the eyes, is gathered in the mouth. The mouth is consummator and fulfiller of all expression of which the countenance is capable, both in speech as, at last, in the silence behind which speech retreats: in the kiss. It is in the eyes that the eternal countenance shines for man; it is the mouth by whose words man lives. But for our teacher Moses, who in his lifetime was privileged only to see the land of his desire, not to enter it, God sealed this completed life with a kiss of his mouth. Thus does God seal and so too does man.
Prospect: The Everyday of Life
THE LAST
In the innermost sanctum of the divine truth, where man might expect all the world and himself to dwindle into likeness of that which he is to catch sight of there, he thus catches sight of none other than a countenance like his own. The Star of Redemption is become countenance which glances at me and out of which I glance. Not God became my mirror, but God’s truth. God, who is the last and the first—he unlocked to me doors of the sanctuary which is built in the innermost middle. He allowed himself to be seen. He led me to that border of life where seeing is vouchsafed. For “no man shall see him and live.” Thus that sanctuary where he granted me to see him had to be a segment of the hypercosmos in the world itself, a life beyond life. But what he gave me to see in this Beyond of life is—none other than what I was already privileged to perceive in the midst of life; the difference is only that I see it and no longer merely hear it. For the view on the height of the redeemed hypercosmos shows me nothing but what the word of revelation already enjoined in the midst of life. And to walk in the light of the divine countenance is granted only to him who follows the words of the divine mouth. For—“he has told thee, oh man, what is good, and what does the Lord thy God require of thee but to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.”
THE FIRST
And this Last is not Last, but an ever Nigh, the Nighest; not the Last, in short, but the First. How difficult is such a First! How difficult is every beginning! To do justice and to love mercy—that still looks like a goal. Before any goal, the will can claim to need a little respite first. But to walk humbly with thy God—that is no longer goal. That is so unconditional, so free of every condition, of every But-first and Tomorrow, so wholly Today and thus wholly eternal as life and the way. And therefore it partakes of the eternal truth as directly as do life and the way.
To walk humbly with thy God—nothing more is demanded
there than a wholly present trust. But trust is a big word.
It is the seed whence grow faith, hope, and love, and the
fruit which ripens out of them. It is the very simplest
and just for that the most difficult. It dares at
every moment to say Truly to the truth. To
walk humbly with thy God—the words are
written over the gate, the gate which
leads out of the mysterious-
miraculous light of the divine
sanctuary in which no man
can remain alive. Whither,
then, do the wings of
the gate open? Thou
knowest it not?
INTO LIFE