everything, it is not a symbol, but, on the contrary, its subjectivity, its inner form, its self is essentially this very history itself, and the history of the Spiritual is not found in some form of existence, which is inadequate to express the Idea, but rather in its own element. It is therefore necessary for the Spiritual Community that Thought, the Idea, should become objective. At first, however, the Idea appears in a single individual in a material, pictorial form; this must be discarded, and the real signification, the eternally true essence must be brought into view. This is the faith of the Spiritual Community when it is coming into existence. It starts from faith in the individual, this individual man is changed by the Spiritual Community, He is recognised to be God and is characterised as the Son of God and as comprising all of the finite which attaches to subjectivity as such in its development, but as being subjectivity He is separated from substantiality.
The material or sensuous manifestation is accordingly changed into knowledge of the Spiritual. We thus see the Spiritual Community starting from faith, but regarded in another aspect it appears in the form of Spirit. The different significations of faith and of verification or proof have now to be brought out.
Since faith starts from the sensuous way of viewing things, it has before it a history in time; what it holds as true is an outward ordinary event, and the verification of the truth of this is conducted according to the historical and juridical mode of verifying a fact, which gives sensuous certainty; the idea formed of the basis upon which truth rests takes as a foundation the material certainty of other persons regarding certain material facts, and brings other facts into connection with these.
The history of the life of Christ is thus the outward form of verification; but faith alters its meaning, that is to say, we have not merely got to do with faith as faith in a certain external history, but with the fact that this particular man was the Son of God.
