And now all at once the harmony is changed into discord; man, hitherto at one with himself, becomes divided:—God makes out of nothing; he creates,—to make out of nothing is to create,—this is the distinction. The positive condition—the act of making—is a human one; but inasmuch as all that is determinate in this conception is immediately denied, reflection steps in and makes the divine activity not human. But with this negation, comprehension, understanding comes to a stand; there remains only a negative, empty notion, because conceivability is already exhausted, i.e., the distinction between the divine and human determination is in truth a nothing, a nihil negativum of the understanding. The naïve confession of this is made in the supposition of “nothing” as an object.
God is Love, but not human love; Understanding, but not human understanding,—no! an essentially different understanding. But wherein consists this difference? I cannot conceive an understanding which acts under other forms than those of our own understanding; I cannot halve or quarter understanding so as to have several understandings; I can only conceive one and the same understanding. It is true that I can and even must conceive understanding in itself, i.e., free from the limits of my individuality; but in so doing I only release it from limitations essentially foreign to it; I do not set aside its essential determinations or forms. Religious reflection, on the contrary, denies precisely that determination or quality which makes a thing what it is. Only that in which the divine understanding is identical with the human, is something, is understanding, is a real idea; while that which is supposed to make it another, yes, essentially another than the human, is objectively nothing, subjectively a mere chimera.
In all other definitions of the Divine Being the “nothing” which constitutes the distinction is hidden; in the creation, on the contrary, it is an evident, declared, objective nothing;—and is therefore the official, notorious nothing of theology in distinction from anthropology.
But the fundamental determination by which man makes his own nature a foreign, incomprehensible nature, is the idea of individuality or—what is only a more abstract expression—personality. The idea of the existence of God first realizes itself in the idea of revelation, and the idea of revelation first
