The Essence of Christianity

The Son is the principle by which the world comes into being. The Son, as the second person of the trinity, is begotten by the Father. The Son therefore contains the finite within his nature, and makes creation possible: “The world is not God; it is other than God, the opposite of God, or at least that which is different from God. But that which is different from God cannot have come immediately from God” (59). According to this understanding, God must contain a distinction within himself, and this is what we call the Son.

The relationship between God the Father and God the Son parallels how a human relates to the world. Just as God comes to the world through the intermediary of the Son, so do human beings come to the world through other human beings. In this sense, then, other human beings are to us what the Son is to God; thus, the Son is really other human beings: “The ego, then, attains to consciousness of the world through consciousness of the thou. Thus man is the God of man” (60). Difference within God provides the means for creation, and the distinction within human beings that gives rise to self-consciousness allows for a connection, through others, to the natural world.

Feuerbach turns to the Christian experience of mysticism, arguing that when mystics enter darkness they enter God himself: “If the light in God springs out of the darkness in God, this is only because it is involved in the idea of light in general, that it illuminates darkness, thus presupposing darkness, not making it” (62-63). Mysticism is further evidence that God contains a material aspect, for the immaterial is what is clear and intelligible, while the material is dense, obscure, and dark.

Within religion, mysticism represents an attempt to discern and enter into what is called God’s nature: “The doctrine of Nature in God aims, by naturalism, to establish theism, especially the theism which regards the Supreme Being as a personal being” (68). Religion allows human beings to free themselves from their material limitations; the mystics’ attempt to enter into the self-consciousness of God is a quest to satisfy this desire to be absolutely free. Mysticism shows that religion allows for total subjectivity in the human’s search for the personal subject of God—in the end, however, this is a quest for one’s own personality, since the experience of God is the experience of the self.

Since creation is an act of will, divine revelation of creation affirms the divine nature of the will. Attached to this are the realities of omnipotence, providence, and creatio ex nihilo, or the power to bring something out of nothing. The paradox of omnipotent providence, however, is that it is the manifestation of pure subjectivity in the will: “Providence cancels the laws of Nature; it interrupts the course of necessity, the iron bond which inevitably binds effects to causes; in short, it is the same unlimited, all-powerful will, that called the world into existence out of nothing” (71). The will allows for all things to be, to change, and to come into and out of existence.

Since the Incarnation makes the divine will human, the human will must be wholly provident. God’s will is concerned with bringing humanity into existence, God’s love is concerned with the love of humanity, and the purpose of creation is to create human beings. Human consciousness is the ultimate goal of creation, and with the rise of consciousness, the concept of God becomes possible—in this sense, it is only with the rise of human beings that God is possible, for human beings are the only beings capable of thinking of God and introducing their own personality into the act of contemplating the divine nature.

The realities of nature impress themselves upon the human intellect from the very first moment of perception, which raises the question of the source of nature. The act of creation as the source of nature belongs in a special way to Judaism. In many ways Judaism is unique among the ancient philosophies and religions, especially in its view of the uniqueness of Israel and their own people: “Their principle, their God, is the most practical principle in the world,—namely, egoism; and moreover egoism in the form of religion” (78). In this, they made way for the advancement of religion and humanity.

By positing a creation, they also posited an omnipotent and transcendent creator. In doing so, they lifted humanity up from “idolatry” (worship of the creature) to “true” worship (worship of the creator). In Judaism, the world’s first truly monotheistic religion, all is sacrificed for the one God and his desire. Because God is a projection of human nature, self-consciousness is the power that must rule all and be subject to no other.

In ancient Israel, God was the collective idea of the national consciousness: “Jehovah himself was nothing else than the self-consciousness of Israel made objective as the absolute being, the national conscience, the universal law, the central point of the political system” (81). As religion evolved, God expanded to include all of humanity rather than just a single nation. God finally became the embodiment of universal love instead of preferential love.

When a person turns to the religious act of prayer, they are turning to humanity’s love for itself: “Prayer is the self-division of man into two beings,—a dialogue of man with himself, with his heart” (83). Prayer is the recognition of human omnipotence in matters of the heart, and the recognition that the human will cannot be overtaken or controlled by any outside force. Human feeling is sovereign over all things.