Hegel's Metaphysics of God

In the second chapter, we saw that Hegel’s ontological proof demonstrates that human beings can come to know God because God manifests himself to us through our reflection on our experience of the world. As a result we can see that, in Hegel’s formulation of the ontological proof, two distinct components are necessary: a God who reveals himself and humans who become aware of this revelation. Consequently, we can look at the ontological proof from two different sides: from the side of the development of human knowledge of God and from the side of God, who externalizes himself and thereby communicates himself to humans. Hegel alludes to these two perspectives regarding our knowledge of God several times in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion . Referring to the objectification of the divine idea in creation and human consciousness’ developing an awareness of the infinite through reflective experience, Hegel writes: “Since this [is] the history of the divine idea in finite spirit, this history itself directly contains two sides: it is the history of finite consciousness itself as isolated in immediacy; and [it is] this history as an object for consciousness, as objective in and for itself , i.e., as the history of God as it is in and for itself” ( LPR III , 91).