396
PARTISAN REVIEW
It
is
technique which
is
substituted for man's cultic communion
with the gods. The physical tool can, according to Goldberg, fulfill
to a certain degree the function of the ritualistic sacral act, since
tet::hnique deals on the "unorganic" level with the same problem
that the cult deals with in the "organic" realm. Technique and
ritual have been in opposition since time immemorial.
If
a man
builds an altar he shall not build it of hewn stone, for, according to
the Pentateuch, lifting the technical tool upon the altar he would
desecrate the cultic table.
The forces opposing the cultic union through the process of
fixation are symbolized in the image of the Leviathan. This symbol
has survived as a mythical relic into modem times, and found a
striking revival in the essay of Hobbes on "the matter, form and
power of a commonwealth, ecclesiastical and civic." For it is pre–
cisely through the dissolution of the kin-communities that the artifi–
cially organized society, the mortal god of the state, is erected. The
state functions as a substitute for and heir to the cultic covenant,
institutionalizing the impersonal social contract.
The shift from the cultic community to the society of the state
is
reflected also in the transition from the concrete national religions
to the abstract world religions. The god of the people who broke
through the barrier of the laws of nature turns into the Creator of
the natural order. Whereas the national religions rest on the con–
crete relation of a people to its biological center, the god of the
world religions (when "genuine" peoples no longer exist) represents
not a reality but an abstract notion. The god of a concrete people
cannot do everything, but what he can do he does with power. The
god of the world religions, however,
is
one who can do everything,
possesses all power-and therefore is concretely only an empty
formula, an ideological factade that can be filled with any content.
In the world religions the relation between god and man
is
merely
fictitious. In the process of fixation the actively present god is turned
into an abstract "good lord" who becomes everything and presently
-nothing.
The stages of the metamorphosis of god from the active, present
god of the people to the general god of mankind can be studied in
the literature of the Old Testament. The development from the
ritual of the Pentateuch to the
ethos
of prophetism, which in the
