Sublime

It is clear that theology can no longer find a permanent basis in the general thinking, feeling and action of contemporary society. The reason for this lies less in theology than in the fact that in a pluralist society, what concerns everyone absolutely, and what society must absolutely desire, is more difficult to identify than in earlier and more

The structure of modern consciousness rests on this integration, and at each period of its development the ego has to absorb essential portions of the cultural past transmitted to it by the canon of values embodied in its own culture and system of education.

The Jewish philosopher Will Herberg once spoke of “cut-flower ethics.” He argued that Jewish ethical norms will last for a brief while, even apart from Jewish teachings, just as flowers uprooted from the soil stay in bloom for a short time after cutting. But soon the flowers fade. Behaviors, too, disintegrate if cut from the soil in which they were