But the
vengeance is to be executed on God, and in such a case who can be
the avenger? There is no one but God Himself, and thus the
striking thought arises, that God will be the champion against God
of his innocence, after having first murdered it. From the God of
the present he appeals to the God of the future; but the identity
between these two is yet maintained, and even now the God who slays
him is the sole witness of his innocence, in which the world and
his friends have ceased to believe. God must be this now if He is to
avenge him in the future. An inner antinomy is in this way
impersonated; the view of the friends is one of which the sufferer
himself cannot divest himself; hence the conflict in his soul.
But, supported by the unconquerable power of his good conscience,
he struggles till he frees himself from the delusion; he believes
more firmly in the direct testimony of his conscience than in the
evidence of facts and the world's judgment about him, and against
the dreadful God of reality, the righteous God of faith
victoriously asserts Himself.
Job in the end reaches the conclusion that he cannot understand
God's ways.
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