Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/16

 and thus this Present is one which raises itself as well and is essentially reconciled, and is brought by means of the negation of its immediacy to a perfected form as universality, a perfection or completion which, however, does not yet exist, and which is therefore to be conceived of as future. It is a Now of the present whose perfect stage is before it, but this perfect stage is distinguished from the particular Now which is still immediacy, and it is thought of as future.

We have, speaking generally, to consider the Idea as divine self-revelation, and this revelation is to be taken in the sense indicated by the three categories just mentioned.

According to the first of these, God exists in a pure form for the finite spirit only as thought. This is the theoretical consciousness in which the thinking subject exists in a condition of absolute composure, and is not yet posited in this relation, not yet posited in the form of a process, but exists in the absolutely unmoved calm of the thinking spirit. Here God is for it thought of, exists for thought, and Spirit thus rests in the simple conclusion that He brings Himself into harmony with Himself by means of His difference—which, however, here exists only in the form of pure ideality, and has not yet reached the form of externality—and is in immediate unity with Himself. This is the first of these relations, and it exists solely for the thinking subject which is occupied with the pure content only. This is the Kingdom of the Father.

The second characteristic is the Kingdom of the Son, in which God exists, in a general way, for idea or figurative thought in the element of mental pictures or representation by ideas. This is the moment of separation or particularisation in general. Looked at from this second standpoint, what in the first stage represented God’s Other or object, without, however, being defined as such, now receives the character or determination of an