Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/27

 the difference to remain; but, on the contrary, its nature is just to resolve or cancel the difference. God posits Himself in this element of difference, but He also abolishes it as well.

When accordingly we attach predicates to God in such a way as to make them particular, our first concern is to harmonise this contradiction. This is an external act, the act of our reflection, and consequently, owing to the fact that it is external and takes place in us, and is not the content of the Divine Idea, it follows that the contradictions cannot be harmonised. The Idea in its very nature implies the abolition of the contradiction. Its essential content and nature consists in the very fact that it posits this difference and cancels it absolutely, and this represents the living nature of the Idea itself.

(b.) In the metaphysical proofs of the existence of God, we can see that, in passing from Notion to Being, the Notion is not thought of merely as Notion, but as existing also, as having reality. It is in connection with the standpoint with which we are now dealing, that the necessity arises of making the transition from the Notion to Being.

The divine Notion is the pure Notion, the Notion without any limitation whatsoever. The Idea implies that the Notion determines itself, and consequently posits itself as something different from itself. This is a moment or stage of the divine Idea itself, and just because the thinking, reflecting spirit has this content before it, there arises the necessity for this transition, this forward movement.

The logical element of this transition is contained in those so-called proofs. It is within the Notion itself, and with the Notion as the starting-point, and, in fact, by means of the Notion, that the transition must be made to objectivity, to Being, and this in the element of thought. This which appears in the form of a subjective necessity is content, is the one moment of the divine Idea itself.