- Eclipse of God
Eclipse of God is a period in which God or the divine is absent from the world, the idea that the world is now in a time of darkness or evil resulting from an abandonment by God. A variation of
theothanatology , or theGod is dead movement, the eclipse of God is normally, though not always, understood as a historical period which might end. In philosopherMartin Heidegger 's formulation, it is the period of 'double lack,' in which the old gods have died and a new God has not yet come.This view was also expressed by the German poet
Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin , when he wrote " 'Aber weh! es wandelt in Nacht, es wohnt, wie im Orkus, Ohne Goettliches unser Geschlecht.' " ('But alas! our generation walks in night, dwells as inHades , without the divine').Some Jewish theologians, like Professor
Richard Rubenstein believe that this eclipse of God is the reason forthe holocaust and support a secularization of Jewishness of the sort exemplified byZionism and the founding of thesecular state ofIsrael .Martin Buber
Martin Buber wrote a book with the title "Eclipse of God: Studies in the Relation Between Religion and Philosophy." In it Buber considers the crisis of the critiques 20th century philosophers and philosophy in general for attempting to approach God as an object, or 'it', rather than as a subject, or 'thou'. He writes, 'Eclipse of the light of heaven, eclipse of God — such indeed is the character of the historic hour through which the world is passing.'ee also
*
Theothanatology
*Holocaust theology
*God is dead
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