dialect of the sacred

is the essentially unresolvable paradox that because the sacred always manifests itself in a (profane) object, the absolute somehow becomes 'limited and relative'.

For Eliade, this would seem to represent a shift in experiential modes. According to Eliade, 'the sacred always manifests itself as a reality of a wholly different order from 'natural' realities'. An object that manifests the sacred 'becomes something else' it 'is transmuted into a supernatural reality'. On the other hand, from the perspective of the outside observer (as well as from the perspective of the believer, according to Eliade), the believer is still worshipping an 'object' 'the sacred is always manifested through some thing.' For Eliade this represents an essentially unresolvable paradox: the absolute somehow becoming 'limited and relative'. This paradox Eliade refers to as the 'dialectic of the sacred' and he considers this dialectic to apply to every hierophany: 'this paradoxical coming-together of sacred and profane, being and non-being, absolute and relative, the eternal and the becoming, is what every hierophany . . . . reveals'. The Christian understadning of the 'paradox of the incranation' Eliade sees as an explicit formulation of this dialecic.

dialect of the sacred, n.Definitions

dialect of the sacred