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Christianity
and Paganism
by Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi
Every man has some kind of religion: that is, a
supreme Truth by which he measures all his
judgments -- a supreme Will by which he measures
all his endeavors. These everyone has who is at one
with himself, who is everywhere decidedly the same.
But the worth of such a religion and the honor due
to it, and to him who has become one with it,
cannot be determined by its amount. It's
quality alone decides friendship, a higher
value than to another. At bottom every religion is
anti-Christian which makes the form the thing, the
letter, the substance. Such a materialistic
religion, in order to be consistent, ought to
maintain a material infallibility.
There are but two religions -- Christianity and
Paganism -- the worship of God and Idolatry. A
third, between the two, is not possible. Where
Idolatry ends, there Christianity begins; and where
Idolatry begins, there Christianity ends. Thus the
apparent contradiction is done away with between
the two propositions -- "Whoso is not against me is
for me," and "Whoso is not for me is against
me."
As all men are by nature liars, so all men are
by nature idolators -- drawn to the visible and
averse to the invisible. Hamann called the body the
first-born, because God first made a clod of earth,
and then breathed into it a breath of life. The
formation of the earth-clod and the spirit are both
of God, but only the spirit is from
God; and only on account of the spirit is man
said to be made after the likeness of God. ...
Since man cannot do without the letter -- images
and parables -- no more than he can dispense with
time, which is incidental to the finite, though
both shall cease -- I honor the letter, so long as
there is a breath of life in it, for that breath's
sake.
Excerpted from Christianity
and Paganism, by Friedrich Heinrich
Jacobi
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