Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/123

 individual, Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter’s son, the Son of God, the Christ?

These two questions are commonly mixed up together, with the result that if this particular person was not God’s Son sent by Him, and if this cannot be proved to be true of Him, then there is no meaning at all in His mission. If this were not true of Him, we would either have to look for another, if indeed one is to come, if there is a promise to that effect, i.e., if it is absolutely and essentially necessary, necessary from the point of view of the Notion, of the Idea; or, since the correctness of the Idea is made to depend on the demonstration of the divine mission referred to, we should have to conclude that there can really be no longer any thought of such a mission, and that we cannot further think about it.

But it is essential that we ask first of all, Is such a manifestation true in-and-for-itself? It is, because God as Spirit is the triune God. He is this act of manifestation, this self-objectifying, and it is His nature to be identical with Himself while thus making Himself objective; He is eternal love. This objectifying as seen in its completely developed form in which it reaches the two extremes of the universality of God and finitude or death, and this return into self in the act of abolishing the rigidity of the antithesis is—love in the infinite sorrow, which is at the same time assuaged in it.

This absolute truth, this truth in-and-for-itself that God is not an abstraction, but something concrete, is unfolded by philosophy, and it is only modern philosophy which has reached the profound thought thus contained in the Notion. It is not possible at all to discuss this truth in unphilosophical platitudes which suggest an idea of contradiction that is so entirely valueless and is so absolutely wanting in what is spiritual.

But this notion or conception must not be thought of as one which gets a complete form in philosophy only, it is not only potentially true; on the contrary, it belongs