Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/227

 relation. Here, then, the aspect of freedom, of subjectivity, is to be considered, as contradistinguished from the first aspect, which is that of Being. Thus it might be said that the first is God in His Being, the second the subject in its subjective Being. God is, is present; that is to say, has a relation to consciousness. Thus worship is itself in the first place theoretical, in as far as it itself, after doing away with the antithesis, quits the region of idea or ordinary thought likewise. As determined, God is not as yet the true God. In as far as He is no longer determined and limited in His actually existing manifestation, is He Spirit, manifestation which exists in and for itself. The Being of God therefore involves a relation to consciousness; only as an abstract God does He exist for consciousness as a something beyond the present, as “Other.” Inasmuch as He is in His manifestation as He is potentially, He has an absolutely realised existence; therefore consciousness, and essentially self-consciousness, belong to His manifestation, for every form of consciousness is self-consciousness. Thus God is essentially self-consciousness. The characteristic of consciousness is included in the first aspect as well, and that which we have termed the general idea of God may likewise be called the Being of God.

Thus knowledge has its place as associated with worship, and the general form in which it appears as belonging to it is what we call Faith.

I.—Of Faith.

1. Faith belongs to this practical relation on its subjective side. It belongs to the knowing subject, in as far as in it self-consciousness not only has a knowledge of its object as theoretical, but has certain knowledge of it—a knowledge of it, in fact, as something which is absolutely Existent, and alone True. In this certainty it has relinquished its independent Being, which is the element of truth in its