I And Thou

not believe in a self-naming of God, a self-definition of God
before men. The Word of revelation is / am that I am.
That which reveals is that which reveals. That which
is is, and nothing more. The eternal source of strength
streams, the eternal contact persists, the eternal voice
sounds forth, and nothing more.

The eternal Thou can by its nature not become It;
for by its nature it cannot be established in measure
and bounds, not even in the measure of the immeasur-
able, or the bounds of boundless being; for by its nature
it cannot be understood as a sum of qualities, not even
as an infinite sum of qualities raised to a transcendental
level; for it can be found neither in nor out of the
world; for it cannot be experienced, or thought;
for we TTnafl THm, TTirn who is, if we say " I believe that
He is "—" He " is also a metaphor, but " Thou " is not.
And yet in accordance with our nature we are continu-
ally making the eternal Thou into It, into some thing—
making God into a .thing. Not indeed out of arbitrary
self-will; God's history as a thing, the passage of God
as Thing through religion and through the products on its
brink, through its bright ways and its gloom, its enhance-
ment and its destruction of life, the passage away from
the living God and back again to THm, the changes
from the present to establishment of form, of objects,
and of ideas, dissolution and renewal—all are one way,
are the way.
What is the origin of the expressed knowledge and
ordered action of the religions ? How do the Presence
and the power of the revelation (for all religions necess-
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