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283 INTRODUCTION ON THE POSSIBILITY OF OBTAINING THE KINGDOM BY PRAYER in tyrannos!1 T HE assertion that one might be able to tempt God is perhaps the most absurd of the many absurd assertions that faith has brought into the world. God the Creator, before whom—according to the assertion of just that faith— nations are like a drop in the bucket, and man—again in the words of that faith—this maggot, the son of man, this worm, should be capable of tempting him, God! And even if by thinking this way, one were thinking less of the almighty Creator than of the Revealer, how could it be imagined that even he, if he really is the God of love, could be tempted by man? Wouldn’t this God then be restricted in his love and be bound to man’s actions, and not have (as, after all, faith itself asserts) unlimited freedom and follow only the impulse of his own love? Or finally, is it the Redeemer whom man can tempt? Him probably more than any other. For according to the views of faith, man does have, in relation to him, a freedom that he does not have as creature and as child of God: the freedom to act or at least the freedom to decide, to pray. But precisely in prayer, Jews and Christians incessantly repeat the petition: “Lead us not into temptation !” So here it is the reverse: there is produced before God the twofold denial of his providence and of his fatherly love. It is he who would be thought capable of permitting himself the sacrilegious game of “tempting: his creature and his child. If prayer were then really the opportunity to tempt God, this opportunity would still be severely restricted due to the ever-present fear that possibly when the one who is praying thinks he is tempting, is already himself being tempted. Or, would that possibility of tempting God rest on the fact that God tempts man? If, on the other hand, in that possibility—and it’s only a possibility—the freedom is shown that man possesses at least toward the Redeemer God, (though not toward the Creator and the Revealer), for though he was created without his will, and though Revela1 Latin: military term; command to charge against the tryrants. ABOUT TEMPTATION PART THREE: INTRODUCTION 284 tion comes to him without his merit, still, “not without him” does God want to redeem him—if, on the other hand, then, this freedom of prayer shows itself in the possibility of tempting God, wouldn’t then maybe the temptation of man by God be the necessary prerequisite of this his freedom? So indeed it is. A rabbinic legend tells the tale of a river in a faraway land that is so pious that it stops flowing on the Sabbath. If, instead of the Main, it was this river that flowed through Frankfurt—there is no doubt that the whole Jewish community there would strictly observe the Sabbath. But God does not give such signs. Obviously, he shudders at the inevitable result: that then precisely the least free, the most fearful and the weakest would be the “most pious.” And God obviously wants only those who are free for his own. But, in order to discern between free men and slavish souls, the mere invisibility of his rule is hardly sufficient. For the fearful ones are fearful enough to prefer, when in doubt, to take the path which “in any case” does not hurt and will even possibly— with a fifty-fifty chance—be useful. Therefore, in order to separate the wheat from the chaff, God must not only not be advantageous , he must be absolutely damaging. So he has no choice: he must tempt man; not only must he hide his ruling from him, he must even deceive him about it; he must make it difficult for him and even impossible to see it, so that man may have the opportunity to believe in him and to trust in him truly, that is, in freedom. And on the other hand, man must also reckon with this possibility that God only “tempts” him, so that in every temptation he still has the impulse to keep his trust, and not listen to the immortal voice of Job’s wife, who advises him: “Curse God and die!” And so man must know that at times he is tempted in the name of his freedom. He...

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