religious revolution now 215Th e Semitic salvation religions have been, together with the secular
projects of social reconstruction and of personal liberation, a third
torch setting this fi re in the world. In all of them, the human person
participates in the nature of the personal God. In all of them, the idea
of an impersonal divine is rejected as pagan. In all of them, the impulse
to represent God in the category of personality confl icts with the im-
pulse to represent him as pure negation: non- person and non- being,
yet, even in this negativity, as akin to us. In all of them, the history of
redemption shows the path by which our sharing in the life of God may
be made manifest and increased. In all of them, the sense of this par-
ticipation is immediately manifest in the subversion of the hierarchies
of value that would enthrone the noble above the vulgar and deny us all
prospect of fi nding light amid the shadows of the commonplace. In all
of them, the human face is understood to be our most reliable look into
the face of God, and the whole human body, even in death, touched by
an indelible sanctity. In all of them, there is hope of an ascent for the
individual as well as for the community of the faithful. In all of them,
the acts of social change and of transformation of the self required for
this ascent may be forestalled by the idolatrous shortcut of legalism:
salvation achieved cheaply and falsely by obedience to divine law. In all
of them, the defi nitive work of salvation, with its promise to bring us
into the presence of God, is postponed to another moment, beyond
death. In all of them, the terrifying facts of death and groundlessness
are denied with greater or lesser conviction.
Th e threat of estrangement from the present, with all the longing
and sadness to which it may condemn us, falls, as a terrible burden,
upon these intimations of God’s search for us. Nevertheless, the Near
Eastern salvation religions provide as clear a prophecy of our movement
beyond ourselves to a greater life as we have yet seen.
Th at inspired by these several forces men and women all over the
world have come to see themselves as greater and more godlike than
they seem to be and nevertheless fi nd themselves everywhere belittled
and oppressed is now the strongest provocation to religious revolution.
Th e sacred and the profane variants of the struggle with the world have
infl amed the desire for this ascent. Th ey cannot satisfy it.
Th ey can break through the beliefs and institutions that compro-
mise their message only by changing, and changing us as a result. Th ey