a. We have knowledge of God, and, in fact, immediate knowledge. We are not to seek to comprehend God, it is said, we are not to argue about God, because rational knowledge has proved of no use here.
b. We must ask for a support for this knowledge. We have this knowledge only in ourselves, thus it is only subjective knowledge, and therefore a foundation is asked for. Where, it is asked, is the place in which divine Being is, and in reply to this, it is said, “God is in Feeling.” Thus feeling gets the position of a basis or causal ground in which the Being of God is given.
These propositions are quite correct, and are not to be denied, but they are so trivial that it is not worth while to speak of them here. If the science of religion be limited to these statements, it is not worth having, and it is not possible to understand why theology exists at all.
a. We have immediate knowledge of the fact that God is. This proposition has, in the first instance, a quite simple and ingenuous meaning; afterwards, however, it gets a meaning which is not ingenuous or without a suggestion of bias, namely this, that this so-called immediate knowledge is the only knowledge of God; and in taking up this position modern theology is in so far opposed to revealed religion, and likewise to rational knowledge, for it, too, denies this proposition.
The element of truth in this must be considered more closely. We know that God is, and this we know immediately. What does “to know”[1] mean? It is different from cognition or philosophical apprehension.[2] We have the expression “certain” (gewiss), and we are accustomed to oppose certainty to truth. The term “to know”[3] expresses the subjective manner in which a thing exists for me in my consciousness, so that it has the character of something existent.
Knowledge,[4] therefore, essentially means this, that the
