Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/112

 Other is God Himself and has potentially the divine nature in it, and that the abolishing of this difference, of this otherness, this return, this love, is Spirit.

This consciousness involves the truth that faith does not express relation to anything which is an Other, but relation to God Himself. These are the moments with which we are here concerned, and which express the truth that Man has come to a consciousness of that eternal history, that eternal movement which God Himself is.

This is the description of the second Idea as Idea in outward manifestation, and of how the eternal Idea has come to exist for the immediate certainty of Man, i.e., of how it has appeared in history. The fact that it is a certainty for men necessarily implies that it is material or sensuous certainty, but one which at the same time passes over into spiritual consciousness, and for the same reason is converted into immediate sensuousness, but in such a way that we recognise in it the movement, the history of God, the life which God Himself is.

III.

THE IDEA IN THE ELEMENT OF THE CHURCH OR SPIRITUAL COMMUNITY, OR, THE KINGDOM OF SPIRIT.

What was first dealt with was the notion or conception of this standpoint for consciousness; what came second was what was supplied to this standpoint, what actually exists for the Spiritual Community; the third point is the transition into this Community itself.

This third sphere represents the Idea in its specific character as individuality; but, to begin with, it exhibits only the one individuality, the divine, universal individuality as it is in-and-for-itself. One is thus all; once is always, potentially, from the point of view of the Notion,