Hegel's Trinitarian Claim: A Critical Reflection

5. Trinitarian Reconciliation in Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion Lectures

5 Trinitarian Reconciliation in Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion Lectures 1. Introduction and Context In his Berlin lectures1 of 1821, 1824, 1827 and 1831 on the philosophy of religion, Hegel characteristically begins his philosophical presentation of the communitarian2 experience of God by positing an originary unity or totality. Similarly to the way in which he had begun the Phenomenology with “sense certainty”3 and the Logic and consequently the Encyclopedia with “pure being,”4 in these lectures Hegel proposes a Concept of religion as totality. As appropriate to the realphilosophical sphere of religion, he speaks of religion as a totality inclusive of two moments or sides, namely of God as the object of religious consciousness, on the one hand, and religious consciousness itself, on the other. In his 1821 manuscript Hegel writes simply: [We treat first of all of the] Concept of religion as such. This Concept [is known to us] from representation; [so] we know first of all, that religion [is] as such the consciousness of God, . . . But the object, which we are treating of, is religion itself; in it however we at once meet two moments, the object in religion and the consciousness, Subject, the human being who relates him- or herself to it, the religious feeling, intuition and so forth.5 By the 1824 lectures Hegel had drastically revamped the first main section, the “Concept of Religion,” and spoke as well more explicitly and complexly of a structured totality, the speculative Concept of religion, as “the infinite negativity, the affirmative consciousness, which exists only 121 122 Hegel’s Trinitarian Claim as the negation of a finite, as of a negative.”6 This negation of negation, a movement from finite as negative to inclusive infinite knowing itself in and through the finite, took on for Hegel a more integrated and explicitly triadic structure as the moments of the Concept, of God as this inclusive infinite.7 In this first main section of the 1824 lectures, the “Concept of Religion,” Hegel spoke briefly of three forms in the Concept of religion: “substantial unity”; “diremption”; and “absolute affirmation.”8 He had provided an Introduction preceding this section, the “Concept of Religion,” in each of the lecture series. In the 1824 Introduction he more clearly than in the following section, “Concept of Religion,” developed this triadic by establishing first the pure thought itself as yet of course here in religion still on the level of consciousness. Second, Hegel spoke of the differentiation of consciousness into finite knowing Spirit and Spirit as object of this knowing. Third, then however, both in the Introduction and “Concept of Religion” Hegel for the first time developed cult as pertaining to the Concept of religion itself.9 He posited cult as the reconciliation of Spirit previously differentiated as knowing and known.10 By the 1827 lectures and presumably for the 1831 series as well11 the section “Concept of Religion” itself took on an even more definitive and simplified12 triadic structure on the basis of the logical moments of the Concept: universality, where Hegel treats of the problem of beginning with God; particularity, where he examines various forms of religious consciousness; individuality, where he very briefly discusses cult.13 As moments of the Concept of religion these present the development of God Self. Hegel is recorded to have said at the beginning of the 1827 lectures, “first the philosophy of religion is the scientific development, the knowledge of that which God is, through which one experiences by way of recognition what God is.”14 After the Introduction and “Concept of Religion” in each of the lecture series Hegel continued with the second major section of the lectures, “the Determinate Religions,” and ended each lecture series with the third major section, “the Absolute Religion,” which was Hegel’s interpretation of what was for him, historically speaking, the Christian religion .15 In the section “the Determinate Religions,” Hegel worked out over the years what, given the beginning phase of their study in his day, could only be considered a marvelous analysis and serially developed integration of world religions.16 It was however for Hegel the absolute religion, in its “immanent” and inclusively “economic” trinitarian structure,17 which was the religion of absolute subjectivity18 and con- 123 Trinitarian Reconciliation in Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion Lectures sequently constituted the fulfillment of the very Concept of religion as consciousness...