hat it must destroy the religious content, or what Fackenheim refers to as "the religiously represented" or "representation" (1:162, et passim). This is especially apparent inasmuch as Hegel declares (and as Fackenheim notes) the religious phenomenon of Christianity to be decisive in the philosophical enterprise. At the same time, Hegel repeatedly refers to the inadequacy of Christianity as religion, which suggests that he is philosophically hostile to it. The dilemma emerges because it is unclear whether Hegel accepts or rejects the Christianity that he deems so important as prelude to what might be called post-Christian secular philosophy, and what Hegel himself calls modern philosophy. It might seem, for example, that Hegel is trying to have it both ways, both secular and Christian in a world that requires him to choose one or the other. But as Fackenheim explains, it is not Hegel's intention to take sides in the secular-religious dialectic.
Hegel's philosophy requires an infinite divine-human Life to mediate between finite life and infinite Thought, and that this, for Hegel is Christian life. What emerges now is that Christianity cannot fulfil this mediating function if a final conflict erupts which is itself incapable of mediation--between it and philosophic thought. It is Hegel's goal to bring about a final "peace" between the final religion and the final philosophy. It would appear that unless he can achieve this peace, his whole philosophy falls into fragments (1:163).
What making peace means in this context is that Hegel seeks to synthesize disparate philosophical emphases into the scheme of philosophy as a whole. That peace, as Fackenheim shows, is the structure of the transfiguration of religion into philosophy, or Thought. The ultimate triumph is of secular thought inasmuch as Hegel's philosophical scheme is programmatically secular. But Hegel understands that the question of the divine as a category of human experienc...