Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/137

 This represents the absolute capacity possessed by the subject for taking a share in the truth, both as it exists in itself and as it exists in an objective form, the capacity for reaching the truth, for being in the truth, for attaining to a consciousness of the truth. This consciousness of doctrine is here presupposed and actually exists.

It is clear from this, both that some kind of doctrine is necessary, and that the doctrine is already formed when the Spiritual Community definitely exists. It is this doctrine which is represented in a pictorial way, and constitutes a content in which we see and have shown in an absolutely completed form what ought to be accomplished in the individual as such.

This doctrine is thus regarded as something presupposed so far as its main elements are concerned, as something already formed, while it is in the Spiritual Community itself that it first gets a matured form. The Spirit which is poured out is the beginning, what makes the beginning, that in which the doctrine takes its rise. The Spiritual Community is the consciousness of this Spirit, the expression of what the Spirit has discovered, and by which it has been laid hold of, namely, that Christ is for the Spirit. The distinction involved in the question as to whether the Spiritual Community gives expression to its consciousness on the basis of a written document, or attaches its own self-determinations to tradition, is not at all an essential one; the main point is, that by means of the Spirit, which is present in it, this Community is the infinite power and authority whereby its doctrine is further developed and gets a more specific form. This authority makes its presence felt in both of those different cases. The exposition of a document which lies at the basis of any doctrine is always in its turn a form of knowledge, and develops into new specific truths; and even if, as in the case of tradition, it attaches itself to something given or taken for granted,