expressions which, to begin with, have in themselves a certain generality, and which exegesis can transfer to the region of general views, but which Faith by its explanation of the death of Christ lays hold of in their true meaning; for Faith is essentially the consciousness of absolute truth, of what God is in His true nature. But we have already seen what God is in His true essential nature; He is the life-process, the Trinity, in which the Universal puts itself into antithesis with itself, and is in this antithesis identical with itself. God in this element of eternity represents what encloses itself in union with itself, the enclosing of Himself with Himself. Faith simply lays hold of the thought and has the consciousness that in Christ this absolute essential truth is perceived in the process of its development, and that it is through Him that this truth has first been revealed.
This view represents, to begin with, the religious attitude as such, in which the Divine is itself an essential moment. This anticipation, this imagining, this willing of a new Kingdom, “a new heaven and a new earth,” of a new world, is found amongst those friends and acquaintances who have been taught the truth; this hope, this certainty has made its way into the real part of their hearts, has sunk into their inmost hearts as a reality.
Accordingly the Passion, the death of Christ does away with the human side of Christ’s nature, and it is just in connection with this death that the transition is made into the religious sphere; and here the question comes to be as to how this death is to be conceived of. On the one hand, it is a natural death brought about by injustice, hate, and violence; on the other hand, however, believers are already firmly convinced in their hearts and feelings that they are not here specially concerned with morality, with the thinking and willing of the subject in itself or as starting from itself, but that the real point of importance is an infinite relation to God, to God as actually present,
