ABSTRACT
The metaphor for action accepted by modern science and the Reformation tends to be the metaphor of “making a difference” in history. The “enlightened,” instead, cherished a sense of reality according to which the more reason establishes its control over nature, the more “a new age” comes into existence: an age of equality based upon reason, an end to privilege, an era of liberty and brotherliness and equality. Thomas J. J. Altizer among all Christian theologians of the 1960s gave himself most radically to the myth of historymaking. America has been inoculated with optimism and the need to act. The American sense of reality is such that, after a discussion of the human situation, an enormous ritual hunger is stirred. The lust for historymaking is based upon a fundamental mistake. A great many of the most precious human actions are immanent: directed to bringing one’s own activities into operation and then to peaceful completion.
