The greater the gods, the freer the humans

"One could almost devise a law to apply to this situation, a law of human emancipation through divine affirmation. It could be summed up as follows: the greater the gods, the freer the humans are. The degree of human obligation towards the law given to them from outside is, contrary to appearances, inversely related to the degree of concentration of,  and separation from, the divine. And if we assume that such a law exists, the sudden appearance of transcendence supplies the unique occasion for its application. The entire signification of religious history may be condensed into this moment. There is a strong temptation to see this in this unifying removal of the divine a rise in the external determination of the human order, as compared with the immediate and abundant presence of the previous polytheistic Supernatural. Nothing could be further from the truth. Immanence presupposes severance from the foundation, while transcendence brings it nearer and makes it accessible."

Marcel Gauchet. The Disenchantment of the World. New French Thought, 1999. s. 51