Hegel applies the metabolic rule of assimilation even to God’s self-revelation

Evidence

A God conceived as something to be consumed is in Balthasar’s view an unacceptable concept of God. These ‘mysteries of the act of eating’ extend their darkness in every direction, embracing not only the Entäußerung, the divine self-abasement, but also the Erhebung, the elevation of man to God. Could it not be claimed that Hegel’s way of conceptualizing self-revelation must make religion the site of the mutual devouring of God and man, each attracted to the other by their respective hunger for being? It is worth remembering the arguments of the Philosophy of Nature, which maintained that ‘in every process, organic and spiritual, assimilation (Assimilation) is the most essential factor’. Not even God will escape from the rule prescribing ingestion and digestion; even He finds himself submitted to the ‘substantial change, i.e. the general immediate transformation of one external or particular material into another’. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 722

Categorization

• XREF: The assimilation of God echoes the plasticity rubric — near-deconstruction of substance — that threads her whole reading of Hegel. — connects to: Hegel read the animal organism as a syllogism of self-relation, assimilation, and generic process; God’s self-emptying is a founding and not merely a diminishment for Hegel — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 1258
• DEFINE: Shows Entäußerung as a hunger-driven mutual devouring, extending the assimilation concept from nature into theology.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 722

Broader Connections

• God’s self-emptying is a founding and not merely a diminishment for Hegel #expands (0.85) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1258