The new atheists mistake religion for what philosophers have made of religion, W. says. They mistake it for the religion of metaphysics, which is to say an entirely philosophical sense of religion.
Metaphysical philosophy, as in Plato's idea of the Good, seeks a justice beyond time, W. says. Religion seeks a justice in time. Eternity is in time, that's what religion says, says W.
Religion breaks with the perpetual flow of time, W. says. It's conception of the future is not merely as the continuation of the present. It's not an indefinite series of now-points stretching into an imperceptible beyond, whose eternity is merely additive. Religion – and here W. means Judaism, and especially the Judaism of Cohen and Rosenzweig - is the active intervention of the future that illuminates the present in its totality.
For the Jew, the future is not swept away in the great river of time, W. says. Rather, it calls to an end the illusion of its interminable neverendingness, which conceals only the entropy of time. Eternity is not a moment outside of time, banished to the endless cycle of 'before' and 'after', but enters into time by directing it towards justice and peace.
Lars Iyer's Blog 