Artık Maria Puder, yaşamak için kendisine kayıtsız ve şartsız muhtaç olduğum bir insandı. Bu his ilk anlarda bana da garip geliyordu. Bu yaşıma kadar mevcudiyetinden bile haberim olmayan bir insanın vücudu birdenbire benim için nasıl bir ihtiyaç olabilirdi?
Liberals welcomed higher criticism because they recognized a radically different view of the Bible was necessary for intelligent moderns. They felt free from the need to defend the whole Bible as the infallible Word of God. They no longer had to take into account a God who killed the firstborn sons of the Egyptians or who ordered the Israelites to kill their enemies to the last woman and child or who sent bears to maul children who poked fun at a prophet.
The studies of the higher critics, said the liberals, make it clear that God has revealed himself through an evolutionary process. It began with primitive, bloodthirsty ideas of a tribal God and showed how the Jews slowly came to grasp the idea of a righteous God who can be served only by one who does justly, loves mercy, and walks humbly with his God. This evolutionary revelation of God, they said, finds its fulfillment in Jesus, where God is portrayed as the loving Father of all humanity.
Immanence carries the idea of God’s nearness, his presence in the world, and his working through nature. An extreme version of immanence is found in pantheism, which claims that God is the world and the world is God. Transcendence, on the other hand, implies the reality of God apart from the world, different, above, and beyond. An extreme version of transcendence is found among the deists, for whom God is separate and remote from the world, as a watchmaker who makes a watch but then leaves it to operate without his attention.
"Bize en çok zarar verecek, bizi belirsizlikte bırakacak ve en nihayetinde bizi kendi karanlığına esir edecek insanları gördüğümüzde içimizde kopan o muazzam heyecan fırtınasını 'aşk' zannederiz. Oysa o his aşk değil, beynimizin tanıdık bir tehlikeyi algıladığında bastığı alarm butonudur. Sağlıklı, net ve tutarlı insanlar bize bu tehlikeli adrenalini yaşatmadığı için onları 'sıkıcı' bulur ve eleriz."