The sky can speak
06
Sep
Sloterdijk assumes the time that through the
ages men “made gods speak”, this is also what he says about the “speech” of Jesus, and he says with historical propriety: “Finally, those who were invoked too much also made themselves known through the personal incarnation: sometimes they took the liberty of resorting to apparent bodies that came and went as they pleased.” (pg. 22), it is true and this means: Do not use God’s name in vain.
But historical reasoning helps better with the other alternative use of “God”: “… or they were condensed, “in the fullness of time”, into a Son of Man, into a saving Messiah. After Cyrus II, the king of the Persians famous for his religious tolerance, allowed the Jews who had been taken captive to Babylon to return to Palestine in 539 BC, putting an end to an exile of almost sixty years… The spiritual elite of the Jews became much more receptive to messianic good news — Second Isaiah set the tone for this.” (p. 22).
He correctly says when he calls Cyrus “panegyric” (worship of an abstract god), he did not convert or even abandon his beliefs in other gods, as “an instrument of God” he freed a people, the author also recalls Marcião who worshiped “the unknown god” that will make Paul call the Greeks a religious people, but states that the known God is the one that the apostle of the Gentiles (Paul) proclaims in the figure of Jesus, the Redeemer.
The issue of redemption pointed out by Sloterdijk from a historical point of view, has its meaning as these are moments in which “heaven opened”, but he sees it as a spectacle where “The oldest stage of evidence from sensitive and supersensitive sources is shown in the form of commotion of the participants generated by a “spectacle”, a solemn rite, a fascinating hecatomb.” (pg. 24) and this has been repeated throughout the ages, with great speakers and great “media experts”, but this will be the true God, of Augustine as Sloterdijk himself cites him (De vera religione).
He is also right when he says about some who consider themselves to have “divine” gifts: “. In general, it was assumed that there were interpreters capable of associating a practical meaning with the encoded symbols” (pg. 25), but again not these false oracles that seek spotlight.
See how Jesus asks for the healing of a man born deaf/mute (Mc 7,34-36): “Looking at the sky, he sighed and said: “Ephphatah!”, which means: “Open up!” Immediately his ears opened, his tongue loosened, and he began to speak without difficulty. Jesus insistently recommended that they not tell anyone. But, the more he recommended, the more they disclosed”, this small detail that appears in many miracles, do not disclose, that is, it is not a spectacle, it does not mean not doing it well, however, with a sacred sense.
The meaning of this cure is deeper, in addition to making a world deaf from birth hear and speak, reading previous excerpts from the evangelist Mark we find the absurd idea (present in today’s “religious” circles), using the idea of a Syro-Phoenician woman whose daughter had a “demon”, it is not the idea that an illness or some bad occurrence is “punishment from heaven”, as it is from the heart of man that “impure” things come out: evil, greed, etc.
The Ephphatah (open sky) said to cure a deaf-mute from birth is because it is not a common disease, someone whose life and cognitive system were not taught to listen and speak, did so immediately, it´s complex.
In dark times, it is necessary for the deaf to hear and the mute to speak, as there are those who want to remain silent.
Sloterdijk, P. (2024). Fazendo o céu falando; a teopoesia (Making the sky speak: on theopoetry), Trans. Nélio Schneider, Brazil, São Paulo: ed. Estação Liberdade.
