Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/85

 them certain, i.e., this Idea, namely, the unity of divine and human nature, attains the stage of certainty, that, so far as they are concerned, it receives the form of immediate sense-perception, of outward existence—in short, that this Idea appears as seen and experienced in the world. This unity must accordingly show itself to consciousness in a purely temporal, absolutely ordinary manifestation of reality, in one particular man, in a definite individual who is at the same time known to be the Divine Idea, not merely a Being of a higher kind in general, but rather the highest, the absolute Idea, the Son of God.

The expression, “the divine and human natures in One,” is a harsh and awkward one; but we must forget the pictorial idea associated with it. What we have got to think of in connection with it is the spiritual substantiality which it suggests; in the unity of the divine and human natures everything belonging to outward particularisation has disappeared; the finite, in fact, has disappeared.

It is the substantial element in the unity of the divine and human natures of which Man attains the consciousness, and in such a way that to him Man appears as God and God as Man. This substantial unity is Man’s potential nature; but while this implicit nature exists for Man, it is above and beyond immediate consciousness, ordinary consciousness and knowledge; consequently it must be regarded as existing in a region above that subjective consciousness which takes the form of ordinary consciousness and is characterised as such.

This explains why this unity must appear for others in the form of an individual man marked off from or excluding the rest of men, not as representing all individual men, but as One from whom they are shut off, though he no longer appears as representing the potentiality or true essence which is above, but as individuality in the region of certainty.