The Essence of Christianity

The doctrine of the Trinity is Christian theology’s attempt to articulate the manner of three divine persons sharing one single divine essence. When the person comes to realize that anthropology must replace theology as the true mode of speculative inquiry, one comes to realize that the doctrine of the Trinity is really a way of attempting to unify the various aspects of human nature that seem distinct, and yet must be united in a single person. For instance: “The idea of the Trinity contains in itself the contradiction of polytheism and monotheism, of imagination and reason, of fiction and reality” (144-145).

Understood on its own, the doctrine of the Trinity forces human reason into logical contradictions. As a doctrine of theology, it falls apart, for to hold the reality of the persons as substantively distinct is to destroy their unity, and to hold the reality of the divine unity is to destroy the substance of the persons. One must either choose a doctrine that holds to three divine persons that destroys monotheism, or one must choose a doctrine that upholds monotheism and destroys the true distinction of persons.

The Christian sacraments are subjective aspects of religion that have been externally concretized in particular forms. The sacraments are the means by which the material world participates in the miracle of faith. By being associated with faith, the waters of baptism are in fact supernatural: “The baptismal water has supernatural effects (and that which operates supernaturally is itself supernatural) only in idea, only in the imagination” (147). As part of the mystery of faith, the facts of nature leave it undisturbed; it does not require the use of reason. Evidence for this lies in the obvious fact of infant baptism.

In the case of the Lord’s Supper, another sacrament, it is again the act of faith that allows it to be what it is. Typically, food is able to be sensed and acts upon the body; conversely, the Lord’s Supper cannot be perceived by the senses, and it acts upon the body only by faith. However, the only difference between this sacrament and regular bread is the mode in which it is received: “This supernatural significance exists only in the imagination; to the senses, the wine remains wine, the bread, bread” (150). Since faith is “the power of the imagination, which makes the real unreal, and the unreal real” (150), the various mysteries of faith are also figments of the imagination, having no existence outside the human mind. The sacraments are realities of subjective experience alone.

The contradiction of the sacraments brings one back to the more basic tension between faith and love. Faith ensures that the idea of God will always be something external to the self; love, on the other hand, does the opposite, it unites and synthesizes.

By faith religion places itself in contradiction with morality, with reason, with the unsophisticated sense of truth in man; by love, it opposes itself again to this contradiction. Faith isolates God, it makes him a particular, distinct being: love universalises; it makes God a common being, the love of whom is one with the love of man. Faith produces in man an inward disunion, a disunion with himself, and by consequence an outward disunion also; but love heals the wounds which are made by faith in the heart of man (153).

Faith always degenerates into a mode of living that requires rules and laws, while love allows the individual to be free of such trappings.

What makes the God of Christianity wholly unique is that he cannot be known by any outside the faith, since it is faith that creates the consciousness of God. Love, however, allows the believer to break out of the confines of faith. Faith constricts, but love liberates: “Love is reconcilable with reason alone, not with faith; for as reason, so also love is free, universal, in its nature; whereas faith is narrow-hearted, limited” (159). In Christianity, one sees the freedom of love constrained by faith; it took a universal love and pared it down into something particular. The love for the man Jesus is just a substitute for the universal love that is the true inheritance of human nature.

The preceding chapters have shown that it is necessary to move beyond Christianity:

The necessary turning-point of history is therefore the open confession, that the consciousness of God is nothing else than the consciousness of the species; that man can and should raise himself only above the limits of his individuality, and not above the laws, the positive essential conditions of his species; that there is no other essence which man can think, dream of, imagine, feel, believe in, wish for, love and adore as the absolute, than the essence of human nature itself (166).

Religion is confining, restrictive, and offers the delusion of having access to some divine other, when in reality it is merely the human being who is explored, known, and loved.

The most important things in life have previously been thought of as important thanks to their connection to religion and the supernatural. Now they must be considered important thanks to what they are in themselves. Gratitude must not go to God but to human beings. The obsession with doing things because of God, of acting ethically because of God, must cease. The energy devoted to God and religion can now be directed toward humanity; nature itself should be considered sacred.