Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/161

 The form of the subject as an individual who feels, &c., concerns the subject as a single individual; but feeling as such is not rejected by philosophy. The question merely is as to whether the content of feeling is the truth, whether it can prove itself to be true in thought. Philosophy thinks what the subject as such feels, and leaves it to the latter to settle with its feeling. Feeling is thus not rejected by philosophy; on the contrary, it simply gets through philosophy its true content.

But, in so far as thought begins to place itself in opposition to the concrete, the process of thought then consists in carrying through this opposition until it reaches reconciliation. This reconciliation is philosophy; so far philosophy is theology, it sets forth the reconciliation of God with Himself and with Nature, and shows that Nature, Other-Being is divine, that it partly belongs to the very nature of finite Spirit to rise into the state of reconciliation, and that it partly reaches this state of reconciliation in the history of the world.

This religious knowledge thus reached through the Notion is not universal in its nature, and it is further only knowledge in the Spiritual Community, and thus we get in reference to the Kingdom of God three stages or positions: the first position is that of immediate naive religion and faith; the second, the position of the Understanding, of the so-called cultured, of reflection and Enlightenment; and finally, the third position, the stage of philosophy.

But if now, after having considered the origin and permanent existence of the Spiritual Community, we see that in attaining realisation in its spiritual reality it falls into this condition of inner disruption, then this realisation appears to be at the same time its disappearance. But ought we to speak here of destruction when the Kingdom of God is founded eternally, when the Holy Spirit as such lives eternally in its Spiritual Community, and when the gates of Hell are not to prevail against the