Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/135

 Speaking more strictly, the difficulty is that the subject is different from the Divine Spirit, and appears as something which is its finitude. This finite element is taken away, and the reason of this is that God looks on the heart of Man, on the substantial will, on the most inward all-embracing subjectivity of Man, on the inner, true, earnest act of will.

Besides this inner will, and as distinguished from this inner substantial reality, there further exists in Man an element of externality, of defectiveness, which shows itself in the fact that he commits mistakes, that he can exist in a way which is not in conformity with this inner, substantial, essential nature, this substantial, essential inwardness.

But externality, otherness—in short, finitude, or imperfection as it may further be defined, is degraded to the condition of something unessential, and is known as such. For in the Idea the otherness, or Other-Being of the Son, is a passing, disappearing moment, and not at all a true, essential, permanent, and absolute moment.

This is the notion or conception of the Spiritual Community in general; the Idea, which so far is the process of the subject within and in itself—this subject being taken up into the Spirit—is spiritual, in the sense that the Spirit of God dwells in it. This pure self-consciousness which thus belongs to it is at the same time a consciousness of the truth, and this pure self-consciousness which knows and wills the truth is just the Divine Spirit in it. Or, this self-consciousness taken as faith which rests on the Spirit, i.e., on a mediation which does away with all finite mediation, is the faith wrought in Man by God.

(b.) The Realisation of the Spiritual Community.

The real Spiritual Community is what we in general call the Church. This no longer represents the rise of