On the doctrine of gods. -- Jehovah is the god who presumed to make himself the chosen god, and not to tolerate any other gods beside himself. Only the fewest people can guess that this god, even so, and necessarily so, must count himself among the gods; how else could he set himself apart? That is how he could become the one, only god, apart from whom (praeter quem) there was no other. What is a god who raises himself up against the others to become the chosen one? In any case, he is never "the" God pure and simple, if what this means could ever be divine. What if the divinity of a god lay in the great calm from which he recognizes the other gods? "God is"--speaking this way is thoughtlessness, and a veiling of thoughtlessness to boot, not to mention the presumption that such idle talk reveals, if it is supposed to be the talk of a thinking person at all. Anxiety in the face of the divine flees to "God," who neither is a god, nor can be "the" god; or else one flees to mere theology.

¶ 1:36 AM