tragic sense of life

the traditional so-called proofs of the existence of god all refer to the god-idea, to this logical god, the god by abstraction, and hence they really prove nothing, or rather they prove nothing other than the existence of the idea of god.

and thus for the divinity of god is substituted his necessity. and in the necessity, his free will-that is to say his conscious personality-perishes.

suffering is the substance, the starting point for consciousness

a human god- that is the only type of god we are able to concieve of

for man has not deduced the divine from god, but rather he has reached god through the divine...

christianity sprang from the two great spiritual streams-the judaic and hellenic-each one of which had arrived on its account, if not at a precise deffinition of, at any rate a deffinite yearning for, another life.

and men made a god of this christ who suffered, and through him they discovered an eternal essence of a living, human god-that is, of a god who sufferes-it is only the dead, the inhuman, that does not suffer-a god who loves and thirsts for love, for pity, a god who is a person.

to believe in god is to long for his exitence and, further, it is to act as if he existed; it is to live by this longing and to make it the spring of our action. this longing or hunger for divinity begets hope, hope begets faith, and hope and faith beget charity. of thi divine longing is born our sense of beauty, or finality, or goodness.

faith, in a certain sense, creates its object. and faith in god consists in creating god; and since it is god who gives us faith in himself, it is god who is continually creating himself in us.

we wish not only to save ourselves, but to save the world from nothingness. and therefore god. such is finality as we feel it.