Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/24

 of its own being. It was Aristotle chiefly who conceived of God under the abstract determination of activity. Pure activity is knowledge (in the scholastic period actus purus); but in order that it may actually appear as activity, it has to be posited in its moments or stages. Knowledge implies the existence of an Other or object which is consciously known, and since it is knowledge which knows it, it is reckoned as belonging to it. This explains how God, who represents Being in-and-for-self, eternally produces Himself in the form of His Son, distinguishes Himself from Himself, and is the absolute act of judgment or differentiation. What He thus distinguishes from Himself does not take on the form of something which is other than Himself; but, on the contrary, what is thus distinguished is nothing more nor less than that from which it has been distinguished. God is Spirit; and no darkness, no colouring or mixture enters into this pure light. The relation between Father and Son is expressed in terms of organic life, and is used in the popular or figurative sense. This natural relation is merely pictorial, and, accordingly, never entirely corresponds to the truth that is sought to be expressed. We say that God eternally begets His Son, that God distinguishes Himself from Himself, and thus we begin to say of God that He does this, and that in being in the Other whom He has brought into definite existence, or posited, He is simply with Himself, has not gone outside of Himself, and this is the form of love; but, at the same time, we ought to know that God is Himself just this entire act. God is the beginning; He does this definite thing; but He is equally the end only, the totality, and it is as totality that God is Spirit. God thought of simply as the Father is not yet the True. (Thus in the Jewish religion He is conceived of without the Son.) He is, on the contrary, Beginning and End; He is His own presupposition, He constitutes Himself His presupposition—this is simply another form of the fact of