Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/160

 is when it appears in antagonism to Enlightenment, to the theory which holds that the content is of no consequence, to opinion, to the despair which renounces the truth. The aim of philosophy is to know the truth, to know God, for He is the absolute truth, inasmuch as nothing else is worth troubling about save God and the unfolding of God’s nature. Philosophy knows God as essentially concrete, as spiritual, real universality which is not jealous but imparts itself. Light by its very nature imparts itself. Whoever says that God cannot be known, says He is jealous, and so makes no earnest effort to believe in Him, however much he may speak of God. Enlightenment, that conceit, that vanity of the Understanding is the most violent opponent of philosophy, and is displeased when the latter points to the element of reason in the Christian religion, when it shows that the witness of the Spirit, of truth, is lodged in religion. Philosophy, which is theology, is solely concerned with showing the rationality of religion.

In philosophy, religion gets its justification from thinking consciousness. Piety of the naive kind stands in no need of this, it receives the truth as authority, and experiences satisfaction, reconciliation by means of this truth.

In faith the true content is certainly already found, but there is still wanting to it the form of thought. All forms such as we have already dealt with, feeling, popular ideas, and such like, may certainly have the form of truth, but they themselves are not the true form which makes the true content necessary. Thought is the absolute judge before which the content must verify and attest its claims.

Philosophy has been reproached with setting itself above religion; this, however, is false as an actual matter of fact, for it possesses this particular content only and no other, though it presents it in the form of thought; it sets itself merely above the form of faith, the content is the same in both cases.