Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/188

 the particularisation of God is not yet posited as being within Himself, but rather His act of judgment or separation means that He posits something, and what is thus posited and gets a definite character exists at first in the form of an immediate Other. The higher conception is certainly that of God’s act of Creation within Himself, by which He is beginning and end in Himself, and thus has the moment of movement, which is here still outside of Him, in Himself, in His inner nature.

When wisdom is not abstract but concrete, and God is thought of as self-determining in such a way that He creates Himself within Himself, and preserves what is created within Himself, so that it is produced and known as permanently contained within Himself as His Son, then God is known as concrete God, truly known as Spirit.

Since, however, wisdom is as yet abstract, the act of separation, what is posited, is something which has Being, the separation or judgment has still the form of immediacy, but it has this only in so far as it is form, for God creates absolutely out of nothing. He alone is Being, what is positive. He is, however, at the same time the positing of His power. The necessity by which God is the positing of His power is the birthplace of all that is created. This necessity is the material out of which God creates; it is God Himself, and He therefore does not create out of anything material, for He is the Self, and not the immediate or material. He is not One as against an Other already existing, but is Himself the Other in the form of determinateness, which, however, because He is only One, exists outside of Him as His negative movement. The positing of Nature necessarily belongs to the notion or conception of spiritual life, of the Self, and is the sinking of intelligence into sleep. Since power is conceived of as absolute negativity, the Essence, i.e., what is identical with itself, is at first in a state of repose, of eternal calm and seclusion. But this very solitude in its