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71
"God," a God who is actual only insofar as God "begins," and a God
whose beginning is beginning and ending at once.
Therecan be no doubt that Hegel intends the kenosisof the Phenome-
nologyof Spirit to be a purely philosophical realization of what faith
knows as crucifixion and resurrection,but in the Scienceof Logicthat
kenosispasses into a purelyabstractformof actuality,and if that actuality
is an abandonmentof itself, it is thereinand therebya self-negation,and
a self-negationwhich is a negation of negation, a negation of negation
which faith knows as the crucifixionor the death of God. This is that
movementor life which is the very center of the science of logic, just as
it is the deepest groundof a purely Hegelianthinking,but that thinking
is a thinking of what the Christianfaith knows as God, as Hegel again
and againdeclares,and if Hegel can identifythe Christianreligion as the
absolute religion, that is because he knows Christianityas the fullest
manifestexpression and realizationof absolute Spirititself. That is that
absolute Spiritwhich is finally the sole content and movement of both
the phenomenologyof Spiritand the science of logic, which from a the-
ological perspectiveis to say that this content and movement is finally
and solely the ChristianGod, and if this is our only purelyphilosophical
thinking which knows God only as the ChristianGod, this is that God
who is only self-emptyingor self-negation,and thereforecannot be the
God who is only God, or the God who is and only is an absolutely
transcendentimpassivity,or an absolutelysovereign majesty. The true
God who can be known as being "in-itself" (in sich), can only actually
be so known by the negativemovement of God's being "for-itself"(fir
sich), and that is a self-negatingor self-emptyingmovement, a move-
ment in which Spiritrealizes itself as Subjectonly by abandoningitself
as Substance,and that itself is the life or movement of Triebor kenosis.
Now if the God who is "in-itself" is illusory and unreal apartfrom
the God who is "for-itself,"theologically that can only mean that the
God who is the absolutelytranscendentGod is illusoryand unreal apart
from the CrucifiedGod, just as the power and the majestyof God are
illusoryand unrealapartfrom the love of God, for the Christianaffirma-
tion that God is love is inseparablefrom the uniquely Christianconfes-
sion of the passion and the death of God, and if that death is finally
resurrection,it is so only through the final ending of the God who is
God and only God, or the God who is simply and only "Being-in-itself."
In the ScienceofLogic,Hegel could know the God who is only God as the
"bad infinite," the infinite that cannot become finite, and if that is the
purely abstractGod, that abstractionis an empty or vanishing abstrac-
tion, and is so immediately in the very movement of absolute Spirit.
Thus there is not and cannot be a God who is only "in-itself,"or a God
who is only God, and this because God is a "living God," a God who
cannot finally be solitary and alone, and cannot be so alone precisely
because God is God. But God is God only by not being only God, only
by not being pure transcendence,and that self-negation is present in
every act or actualizationof God, so that it is just as fully present in the
creationas it is in the crucifixion,a creationwhich is a final ending of a
purely transcendenttranscendence,just as the crucifixion is the final
ending of a purely religious transcendence. Neither transcendenceis
present as such in the science of logic, and if they do become presentin
the phenomenology of Spirit, this is a presence which is finally an
absence, for here their actualizationis inseparablefrom their negation,a
negation which is a true reversalof abstractspirit or the "bad infinite."
So it is that God is God only by not being God, for the ChristianGod
is God only by not being God, and if that is a uniquelyChristianidentity
of God, that is a God who is absent from Christianscholasticism,except
when that scholasticism undergoes its reversalwith the full advent of
nominalism and a uniquely Christian mysticism. If the Godhead of
Meister Eckhartis a Godhead which is not God, that is the Godhead
which is conceptuallyrealizedin Hegel's absolute Spirit,and if Eckhart
is one of Hegel's deeper sources or grounds,that is a groundwhich is a
uniquelyChristianground. Unfortunately,Hegel had little knowledgeof
or interest in medieval philosophy, just as he was largely ignorant of
medievalcultureas such, and far more so than of the Orientalworld, for
he could know the Oriental world as the antithesis of the Occidental
world. That antithesis, for Hegel, is most purely present in Hinduism,
for he could know Brahman-Atmanonly as a purely abstractpower,
where thereis no real categoryof being, and if this made possible for the
first time the separationof empirical self-consciousness from absolute
self-consciousness,as Hegel declaresin the section on Hinduism in the
lectureson the philosophy of religion, God now attainsproperobjectiv-
ity for the first time, and only now does the break between objectivity
and subjectivitybegin. Now God is manifestas Totality,but this totality
is essentially object, and is altogetherin opposition to human beings.
Their reconciliationand return from that abstractyet objective power
occurs only in the Incarnation,so that true incarnationis the abandon-
ment of all intrinsic objectivityor substance, an abandonmentending
the possibility of that submergence in unconsciousness which Hegel
knows as a union with Brahman-Atmanor Nirvana.
While that uniquely Orientalunion is the antithesisof the uniquely
Christian union with God, it is nevertheless a real even if abstract
because Hegel could so deeply know the death of God that he could
know such an historicalcontingency,and if he could know that contin-
gency as absolutenecessity, that is because he could know it as an actu-
ality that is finally the actualityof God. The Hegelian system is trulyan
empty system if it is empty of God, and empty if it is empty of the
CrucifiedGod, for it is only that death which is the ground of a purely
immanentconsciousnessand actuality,an actualitywhich is empty of all
metaphysicaland religioustranscendencejust because and only because
it is groundedin the death of God. But that death is absoluteliberation,
and even a liberationof God, for it reconciles the Godheadof God with
its own otherness, an othemess that is a real and actual othemess, and
an othemess whose very negation is an absolute liberationrealizingan
absolutefreedom,and a freedomwhich Hegel could know as a freedom
inauguratedby the Incarnation.
If Hegel alone conceptuallyknew the atonementas the atonementof
God with God, as the atonementof the inactiveand abstractGod which
is "in-itself" with the totally active and embodied God which is "for-
itself," this occurs only throughthe death of that abstractGod itself, a
death which is crucifixion,yes, but which is also the resurrectionof
concretetotalityinto absolutefreedom. Here, crucifixionis resurrection,
an identitywhich is firstproclaimedin Paul and the FourthGospel, and
thus an identity which is at the very center of an original Christianity,
but an identitywhich was not theologicallyrecovereduntil Hegel. And
it was recoveredby Hegel only by way of a passage throughthe death of
God, a passage which is a passage into the very depths of God, depths
which are nothing less than the kenosis of self-emptyingof the God-
head, and depths which release that Godheadinto the othemess of God-
head itself. That otherness certainly comprehends historical actuality,
and a totallyimmanenthistoricalactuality,indeed, an historicalactuality
which truly becomes or realizes itself only as a consequence of that
death, so that the death of God is the centerof history,and the centerof
that total historywhich is the evolution of freedomand of life. But that
center is also the center of a purely logical or purely conceptualthink-
ing, a thinkingwhich advancesonly by negatingor emptyingitself, and
a thinkingwhose method is pure negation, a pure negationor pure neg-
ativitywhich is the movement and activityof absolute Spirit itself, an
absolute Spiritwhich is absolute immediacyand absolute mediation at
once, but is so only as a consequenceof that primalurge or Triebwhich
is its innermostnature. Now if that Triebor thatkenosisis illusory,then
so likewise is the Hegelian system as a whole, for then self-negation
could not be an ultimateand absolutemovement,and the Hegeliansys-
Christian God truly unique, and so finally unique that it has no true
counterpartsin the world religions? Nothing poses this question more
forcefullythan does the very symbol of the death of God, which is his-
toricallyunique in the history of religions, and historicallyunique as a
real and actualdeath, and as a final and ultimatedeath, and as that one
death which is the sole source of liberationand redemption.
Yet the truth is that this very symbol has historically evolved in
Christianity,for even if it is at the very center of the New Testament,it
virtually disappears in patristic or ancient Christianity, only being
reborn in early medieval art, and not triumphingin medieval art until
the fifteenthcentury,and only in the seventeenthcenturydoes it become
embodied in Christianpoetry in ParadiseLost, and not triumphingin
that poetryuntil the propheticand apocalypticpoetryof Blake,just as it
does not become embodied in philosophicalthinkinguntil Hegel. Thus
the death of God is not a dominantor a commandingsymbol in Christi-
anityuntil the adventof the modem world, and even then it only gradu-
ally evolves in the Christianconsciousnessand sensibility,not becoming
universallymanifest until the end of the eighteenth century, and then
only decisively so through the violence and the terror of the French
Revolution. Both Blakeand Hegel knew that revolutionas the historical
realizationof the death of God, and that is the very point at which the
ChristianChurchfully passes into the peripheryof history, so that the
FrenchRevolutionmost decisivelyembodies the end of Christendom. If
that ending embodieda terrorwhich horrifiedthe world, both Blakeand
Hegel could unveil that terroras a unique terrorinspired by the histori-
cal actualizationof the death of God, an actualizationwhich ended all
traditionalor given grounds of moralityand judgment,just as it ended
the establishedgrounds of politics and society. Here, the death of God
is not only an interiorevent, but a publiclyactualevent, and so actualas
to be a universalevent, for Hegel the firstuniversalevent in history,and
an event that within less than a centurywas destined to transformthe
world as whole. Now everyliving religioustraditionmust confrontthis
event, for this was the event which most profoundlyinaugurateda uni-
versal process of secularization,and a secularizationthat Hegel could
know as the positive embodiment of the Kingdomof God.
Here, we are very close to the deep "offense"of Hegel's system, an
"offense" even in a Pauline sense, for it was recreated as such by
Kierkegaard,who did so by employingan Hegelianlanguageand dialec-
tic, for now offense is manifest as an absolute negation of God, and
finally a self-negation of God. Kierkegaardunderstood this far more
deeply than did any subsequenttheologian,so that the absoluteparadox
REFERENCES
Werke.Stuttgart:F. Frommann.
Hegel,G.W.F. Saimtilche
1927-1940