God’s revelation originates from lack and necessity, not abundance or love.

Evidence

In the Encyclopedia Hegel makes the point that the world, as created, is ‘separated by its Entäußerung from the divine being’. For the theologians, this dialectical interpretation of Entäußerung introduces lack into God and ruins the superabundance of the Father. … As far as faith: in the Encyclopedia, Hegel thinks of faith as the movement by which the believer ‘throws off (entäußert) his immediacy, his natural man and his self-will, to close himself in unity with that example (Christ)’. Through this alienation, the believer repeats the movement of kenosis. As the theologians see it, the attitude of the believer theorized in this way no longer includes the expectation of God. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 682 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Devotion to a needy God would, for example, grant a foundational, noncontingent reason for me to exist, if such a needy God exists. Of course, God cannot be both needy and absolute, and foundational justifi cation turns out to be nothing but a comforting illusion. “By positing an absolute end before me, I have abdicated my freedom; questions are no longer posed; I no longer want to be anything but a response to that appeal which requires me” (PC, 117). Th is familiar existential move announces Beauvoir’s commitment to anguish in the absence of absolutes, where belief in absolutes suppresses the risk and uncertainty of existence. While no possible being can be absolute in the required sense, Beauvoir argues that one can justify one’s life through devotion to fi nite Others, if and only if one respects the freedom of Others: “Th ere is devotion only if I take an end defi ned by the other as my end. But then it is contradictory to suppose that I could defi ne that end for him” (PC, 118–19). — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 180 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

In the modern moment, the slope of the subject corresponds to the sending of the Son, an inclination which is also the inclination of the Father towards the Son. Through his act of falling – the descending movement – God shows himself to himself and completes thereby the movement of his proposition. He proceeds and results from this slope, and is not God except through its foundation. Hegel gives the ‘ex’ of ‘ecstasy’ all the dynamic meaning it possesses, making kenosis truly appear as a movement of departure and abasement of the Self in its fall. Alienation or externalization, the possibility of being other than it is, exists always for substance, provoking this ‘relief’ of the human in the divine, the divine in the human. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1258 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Dialectical necessity inscribes lack into divine potentiality, producing a consuming God. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 688; For God to create, God must suffer lack rather than be superabundant — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 682; The concept of a needy God is internally contradictory — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 180 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• For God to create, God must suffer lack rather than be superabundant #corroborates (0.95) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 682
• The concept of a needy God is internally contradictory #contradicts (0.85) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 180
• God becomes God only through self-externalizing fall, not despite it #expands (0.80) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1258
• The idea of God derives from our need for an absolute unobserved observer #exemplifies (0.80)