Hegel on the need for transformation historical forms of Christianity

Abstract

The article is devoted to Hegel’s contribution to solving the problem of the further development of Christianity and the religious spirit in general. Although the philosopher himself did not directly state the need for such a development anywhere, the article shows that the entire content of Hegel’s “Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion” speaks precisely about it. To demonstrate this, the author of the article analyzes, firstly, the final part of the last lecture of the named course and, secondly, traces the lecturer’s train of thought leading to this conclusion. From certain religions Hegel proceeds to the absolute religion, as he calls Christianity, interpreted by him as the result of the historical development of the religious spirit. The author of the article, following Hegel, identifies and examines the philosophical prerequisites and results of the formation of the Christian doctrine. The philosophical principle of absolute religion laid down by ancient thought, he argues, in the course of the history of Christianity turns into its philosophical outcome — into the philosophical removal of the revealed religion of representation into the concept of the religion of truth and freedom. In patristics, the immediate reasonableness of the philosophical teaching of the Neoplatonists, who summarized ancient philosophy as a whole, made itself felt. Medieval scholasticism undertook a rational exposition of the reasonable content of the most important Christian dogmas. The reason, strengthened in the scholastic school, initiated the Reformation of Catholic Christianity. The Enlightenment declared itself a resolute opponent of any, including religious, superstitions, identifying with them the reasonable content of the historical form of Christianity. Classical German philosophy flourished on the premises created by the Reformation and the Enlightenment. In Kant’s critical philosophy and Fichte’s science, she overcame the intellectual abstraction of a transcendent god. The possibility of transforming the historical form of Christianity into an absolute religion of truth and freedom from the formal possibility originally inherent in it became a real possibility due to the fact that in Hegel’s works the philosophical negation of the denial by the enlightened mind of the religious idea of God into the concept of an absolute idea was realized. The processing of the ideological content of the historical form of Christianity into the logical form of philosophy allowed Hegel to devote the third part of his lectures on the philosophy of religion to a detailed explication of the philosophical idea of absolute religion, understood as a concrete identity of the concept of the idea of God and the process of realization of this concept in the world, man and the spirit of a religious community. This allows the philosopher to discover the inner necessity of the transformation of historical Christianity. According to Hegel, only philosophy, which through rational thinking restores the true content of the form of religious representation in the concept, can save the Christian community from its progressive decomposition. The article concludes with the conclusion that Hegel’s interpretation of Christianity as an absolute religion of truth and freedom remains to this day the only detailed philosophical exposition of the true Christian faith, as it was articulated by a Lutheran of the first third of the 19th century, who understood what he believes in.