Page:Essence of Christianity (1854).djvu/57

 contradicts God. For example, it is a contradiction of reason to connect with the idea of the highest reality the limitations of definite time and place; and hence reason denies these of God, as contradicting his nature. The reason can only believe in a God who is accordant with its own nature, in a God who is not beneath its own dignity, who on the contrary is a realization of its own nature: i.e., the reason believes only in itself, in the absolute reality of its own nature. The reason is not dependent on God, but God on the reason. Even in the age of miracles and faith in authority, the understanding constitutes itself, at least formally, the criterion of divinity. God is all and can do all, it was said, by virtue of his omnipotence; but nevertheless he is nothing and he can do nothing which contradicts himself, i.e., reason. Even omnipotence cannot do what is contrary to reason. Thus above the divine omnipotence stands the higher power of reason; above the nature of God the nature of the understanding, as the criterion of that which is to be affirmed and denied of God, the criterion of the positive and negative. Canst thou believe in a God who is an unreasonable and wicked being? No, indeed; but why not? Because it is in contradiction with thy understanding to accept a wicked and unreasonable being as divine. What then dost thou affirm, what is an object to thee, in God? Thy own understanding. God is thy highest idea, the supreme effort of thy understanding, thy highest power of thought. God is the sum of all realities, i.e., the sum of all affirmations of the understanding. That which I recognise in the understanding as essential, I place in God as existent: God is, what the understanding thinks as the highest. But in what I perceive to be essential, is revealed the nature of my understanding, is shown the power of my thinking faculty.

Thus the understanding is the ens realissimum, the most real being of the old onto-theology. “Fundamentally,” says onto-theology, “we cannot conceive God otherwise than by attributing to him without limit all the real qualities which we find in ourselves.” Our positive, essential qualities, our realities, are therefore the realities of God, but in us they exist with, in God without, limits. But what then withdraws the limits from the realities, what does away with the limits? The understanding. What, according to this, is the nature