German Idealism's Trinitarian Legacy

Dale M. Schlitt

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781438462226, 9781438462219
• eBook ISBN: 9781438462233
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Dale M. Schlitt presents a study of trinitarian thought as it was understood and debated by the German Idealists broadly—engaging Schelling's philosophical interpretations of Trinity as well as Hegel's—and analyzing how these Idealist interpretations influenced later philosophers and theologians. Divided into different sections, one considers nineteenth-century central Europeans Philipp Marheineke, Isaak August Dorner, and Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov under the rubric "testimonials." Another section studies twentieth-century Germans Karl Barth, Karl Rahner, and Wolfhart Pannenberg, who share "family resemblances" with the Idealists, and a third addresses the work of twentieth- and twenty-first century Americans, Robert W. Jenson, Catherine Mowry LaCugna, Joseph A. Bracken, and Schlitt himself, whose work reverberates with what Schlitt terms "transatlantic Idealist echoes." The book concludes with reflection on the overall German Idealist trinitarian legacy, noting several challenges it offers to those who will pursue creative trinitarian reflection in the future.

PART 1

THE IDEALIST TRINITARIAN ADVENTURE

Introduction to Part 1

Fichte, but especially Hegel and Schelling, have had an enormous impact on the development of trinitarian thought. Through their creative philosophical interpretations of the ancient notion of Trinity they already influenced certain theologians of their day. But their enduring impact lay more in the influence, both direct and indirect, that they and their thought have exercised on much trinitarian thinking during the rest of the nineteenth century and especially throughout the twentieth on into the twenty-first centuries. We continue to feel their influence in trinitarian thinking even today.1

We can trace this influence back to the overall approach according to which, from early on, Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling, each in his own way, embraced and were fully enamored with what they understood to be the triadic structure of dynamically developing subjectivity. In their earliest philosophies they had not yet in an explicit way linked this overall fascination for triadic structure with the religious notion of Trinity. Yet their interest in the triadic predisposed especially Hegel and Schelling to consider Trinity from a variety of perspectives as they continued to develop their thought over many years.2

Johan Gottlieb Fichte: Setting the Stage

Fichte (1762–1814) was the earliest of the three to focus so intensely on what came to be this Idealist trademark, namely, the triadic structure of subjectivity. In his search to find a way to ground all experience and knowledge he rejected Kant’s notion of the thing-in-itself. He argued at length that all we had to deal with was consciousness as such.3 In his groundbreaking work of 1794–95, Science of Knowledge,4 he laid out his basic principle (Grundsatz), followed by two further principles. These three principles were to ground all science and thinking. He reworked various parts of this study over the years following its publication. But it was his initial formulation of the triadic structure of subjectivity which had such a great impact on Hegel and Schelling, and with which we can briefly remain in view of present interests.

Fichte argued that all we have to start with is the basic principle: I = I; I am I; I am (Ich = Ich; Ich bin Ich; Ich bin).5 Since the “I” does not adhere in anything else and underlies all experience, this is a principle of initial identity. With the affirmation of this first principle, Fichte is working out philosophy as a scientific knowing of knowing, a doctrine of knowledge based in one starting point. However, though this initial identity of the I is the certainty of my relation with myself, it does not explain its own reality, namely, being free as it is and yet limited. For Fichte, then, as a second principle the I posits or sets over against itself a not-I or not-self (Nicht-Ich).6 The I posits itself as limited by the not-I, which is an other over against the I itself. The third principle is the recognition that each of these first two principles determines the other.7 The I posits the not-I as limiting itself and the I limits the not-I. The I, as limited by the not-I, is passively posited. The I, as knowing it limits the not-I or object, is active. With this third principle Fichte accounts for the reciprocal interaction between self and other. These three principles underlie and ground the further elaboration of his systematic thought. He will go on later to work with a form of trinitarian expression.8 But it is really his initial insight into the dynamic triadic structure of subjectivity which, as modified and further developed by Hegel and Schelling, has had an impact through their thought on subsequent trinitarian thinking.9

1

Georg W. F. Hegel

A Daring Claim

Hegel (1770–1831) acknowledged that Fichte followed in the tradition of Descartes and Kant when Fichte identified the I as an initial unity and, along with Kant, as the source of the categories of thought. He praised Fichte for taking the tremendous step of trying to show how the categories of thought arise in necessary fashion out of the initial I itself. But Hegel claimed that with the ever-recurrent presence of the non-I Fichte ended up in what Hegel called an absolute contradiction. The non-I should have been absolute and inclusive in its own right. So from Hegel’s perspective Fichte ended up merely with the infinite of infinite progression, in which limit constantly recurs without an enriched return to a renewed identity. Though in Fichte’s view thought was creative, Fichte was not able to reintegrate subjectivity and objectivity in a true concept of spirit as movement of inclusive subjectivity.1

Over the years Hegel worked out his mature, we could say, true concept of spirit. He presented that concept on the level of religion as a movement of inclusive trinitarian divine subjectivity. He first set forth his philosophical reading of Trinity in his 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit.2 He then succinctly sketched out his readings of Trinity in the 1817, 1827, and 1830 editions of his Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline.3 He filled in these readings at greater length in his 1821, 1824, 1827, and 1831 lectures on the philosophy of religion.4

Hegel saw his true concept of spirit as bringing to explicit formulation the necessary movement of logical thought categories in, from the point of view of his system, the first sphere of logic. This sphere was, formally speaking, a movement of inclusive subjectivity whose realization then occurs in the second and third spheres, respectively, of nature and spirit. These second and third spheres are, in contradistinction to the first sphere of logic, the realphilosophical spheres.5 In his Encyclopedia sketches of this overall movement of spirit, his presentations of Trinity stand as penultimate or second-last moment. He identifies this moment as revealed religion and presents it just before his treatment of philosophy.

The Shape and End Result of Hegel’s Efforts

It will be helpful to take a first look at Hegel’s philosophically informed efforts to reconceptualize Trinity, namely, to develop a philosophy of absolute or inclusive divine subjectivity. We can do this by summarizing selected aspects of his presentation of Trinity in the 1830 Encyclopedia. With this wider systematic context in mind, we will then consider at greater length his presentation of Trinity in his 1827 lectures on the philosophy of religion.

Hegel’s Encyclopedia begins with logic, understood as movement of pure thought and, more precisely, with logic’s initial moment. This initial moment is the thought category of pure being, the being of pure thought. It ends in an enriching advance that, in the philosophy of absolute spirit, is equally enriched resultant return to what was the initial movement of logic. But now, at the end of this encyclopedic, self-developing movement of spirit, the logical concept has become the philosophical concept. Here form and content are truly and fully adequate. Hegel would say that concept and reality are united in the absolute idea. Indeed, as its title indicates, the Encyclopedia constitutes an outline of Hegel’s overall mature philosophical system. It does this, as we have intimated, not as a mere juxtaposition of philosophical sciences. Rather, it presents absolute spirit as idea developing from the immediacy of logic to the logical idea’s self-othering in nature and finite spirit. This development of spirit continues as enriching, advancing return through finite spirit in philosophic thought to the renewed and enriched immediacy, or identity, of the idea. This overall movement from logic to the realphilosophical spheres, culminating in philosophy, is a process of self-determination by absolute spirit. The movement of spirit occurs in logic as inclusive subjectivity, in nature as self-othering of the idea, and then in and through art, religion, and philosophy as absolute subjectivity.

Within this overall process Hegel places revealed religion, which he identifies with Christianity and especially Lutheran Christianity, as the penultimate sphere. In this sphere the content is true but the form is as yet burdened with pictorial representation. It is only the ultimate sphere, philosophy, which is characterized by conceptual clarity. He presents revealed religion schematically in the form of a syllogistically structured “immanent” and “economic,” so to speak, divine self-revelation. This divine self-revelation is the self-development of trinitarian divine subjectivity, the movement of spirit in the realm of revealed religion. He employs an explicitly religious or representational, but nevertheless always philosophically informed, language to lay out “immanent” and “economic” Trinity. He sees these as three syllogistically structured moments of universality (U, Allgemeinheit), particularity (P, Besonderheit), and individuality (I, Einzelheit).6 He again develops the last of these, individuality, as a movement of three self-mediating syllogisms. In the Encyclopedia this moment of individuality climaxes as the effective self-revelation of absolute spirit in and through finite spirit in community. It is the final moment of syllogistically structured divine trinitarian reconciliation. In the sphere of religious representation this reconciliation remains the movement of self-determining divine subjectivity. It has not yet been explicitly established as mediation of the absolute self or concept in the form of philosophical thought where the otherness indicated by reference to God will have been overcome.7

In his encyclopedic system as a whole, this final moment, namely, philosophical thought, is for Hegel the truth or perfect correspondence of subject and object, or better, of self and concept.8 It is this perfect correspondence or absolute spirit, this infinite or inclusive totality, only in so far as it is the end result inclusive of the whole process. As the final moment, philosophy is for Hegel the grounding return to the immediacy of logical thought. It is this enriched return which finally justifies seeing Hegel’s realphilosophical spheres themselves, and in particular his philosophical thought or concept, as his reconceptualization of Trinity. Moreover, it is this return that justifies recognizing his logic as the appropriate systematic logical reformulation of “immanent” Trinity, with “immanent” carefully nuanced so as not to insinuate an independently existent reality. This return on the part of philosophical thought explains why Hegel can use philosophically reinterpreted representational language to describe logic as the presentation of God as God is in the eternal divine essence before the creation of nature and finite spirit.9

When we look at his encyclopedic system, we see that from the perspective of his system in its speculative formulation Hegel appropriately treats of “immanent” Trinity twice. He does this first as movement of self-determining inclusive subjectivity in the form of pure thought or logic. He treats of “immanent” Trinity again as moment of universality in the realphilosophical sphere of the philosophy of religion. He likewise presents “economic” Trinity twice. He does this, first, in the realphilosophical sphere of the philosophy of religion as including “immanent” Trinity. Second, he again treats of “economic” Trinity in philosophical thought as grounding return, as enriched return that justifies the whole process. This return is both to the immediacy of “immanent” Trinity on the level of philosophy of religion and to the immediacy of logic on the level of spirit as a whole. The encyclopedic system is, in its totality, Hegel’s philosophically reinterpreted presentation of “economic” Trinity inclusive of “immanent” Trinity. Hegel rather humbly, though daringly as well, ends his 1827 and 1830 editions of the Encyclopedia with his famous quote from Aristotle’s Metaphysics: “For it is this, what God is” (τοῦτο γὰρ ὁ Θεός).10

In this overall sweep identified by Hegel as what God is, “immanent” Trinity is the initial moment structuring the overall dynamic of divine self-development as self-revelation. From the perspective of his system in its speculative presentation, this overall dynamic is a movement from initial identity to difference to enriched, grounding we could say, return as renewed, inclusive identity. It is a movement from initial infinite, to finitude, to inclusive or true infinite.11 In this way, logically reformulated as inclusive subject, religiously represented as absolute divine subjectivity, and philosophically reconceptualized as absolute spirit, Trinity is for Hegel the whole truth.

In order to flesh out Hegel’s briefer presentation in the 1830 Encyclopedia, we need now to focus on his lectures and, more specifically, his well-developed 1827 lectures. In these lectures Hegel clearly saw religion as the consciousness of the all-encompassing object or God, which has become the fully inclusive self-consciousness of absolute spirit. This inclusive self-consciousness is trinitarian divine self-positing subjectivity. It is, as was the case in the Encyclopedia, a movement in and through finite spirit from universality to particularity to individuality.12 In examining more closely what Hegel said about Trinity in his 1827 lectures, we will first look at what he said in his mature systematic reinterpretation of Trinity. We will then speak of how and why he argued so forcefully concerning the importance of thinking God as Trinity.

Over the course of his four series of lectures on the philosophy of religion, Hegel apportioned theological content somewhat differently in various presentations of the second and third moments in the movement of self-positing trinitarian divine subjectivity. Still the basic progression of this movement from first to second to third sphere or element is consistently describable in terms of moments of the concept as, respectively, universality, particularity, and individuality.

We are here proposing that Hegel sets up the dialectical movement in each of these three elements in such a way that it develops according to, and therefore manifests, a specific syllogistic structure. When we speak of syllogism here, we should mention that we mean Hegel’s particular interpretation of the syllogism and not merely the traditional understanding of syllogism as a form of three-termed movement of inference. Hegel gave to this traditional notion of syllogism a specific dialectical spin when he placed it as a thought determination or moment in the movement of pure thought. For him it was a movement of inclusive subjectivity. It was a self-mediating development of thought, progressing on the basis of a middle term that mediated between the two extremes, the syllogism’s major and minor premises.

It is especially in his 1827 lectures on the philosophy of religion that Hegel uses considerable terminology from his Science of Logic to describe the first element of the consummate religion. He refers to this element as the overall appearance of God. It is the divine idea or the realized unity of concept and reality, in the realm of thought as universality, the immediacy of the “in itself” (an sich).13 His use of logical terms, and especially of the three moments of the concept, is particularly appropriate with ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Identifying Idealist Influences
• Part 1 The Idealist Trinitarian Adventure
• Part 2 Early European Testimonials to Idealist Influence
• Part 3 German Idealist Family Resemblances
• Part 4 American Idealist Echoes
• Conclusion: Idealism’s Enduring Trinitarian Legacy
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index of Names
• Back Cover