only if this nation sacrifices itself in its national expression, in its will-to-power, for the sake of justice, can it be the content of ultimate concern. Only then is it truly ultimate. As long as it remains another form of nationalism, driven by the will to power, imperialism, and all the other things, it is no better than anything else. In fact, it is worse: it is demonic, and it destroys. The same is true with the Christian symbol of the cross of the Christ. This fight is going on between Jesus and the disciples in the whole story in the New Testament. The disciples always wanted to have an ultimate without the sacrifice of its finite bearer. They wanted to have a political leader and liberator. But they didn’t get it; Jesus denied this possibility. And in the moment in which he accepted the title of the Messiah, in the same moment he announced his death. With his profoundest philosophy of religion, he called Peter (who said “This should not happen to you!") "Satan!"—i.e., not to sacrifice oneself is demonic temptation for him who is the bearer of ultimate concern.—Now this is the criterion.

And this is not abstraction. When my generation, especially in Germany and other Continental European states, was confronted with the threat of Nazism, Fascism, and, in a different way, Communism, and when this threat became in Nazi Germany a real threat of life and death, we needed a criterion. “Why not make the nation, or the Nordic race, the ultimate concern of one's limited life?" This was the question. And this is something I say personally: the answer was the Cross!—and there was no other answer. Namely, this must be demonic because it is a system of lies and murder, not a system of self-sacrifice. And it must be a system of lie and murder because if a finite reality makes itself absolute without sacrificing itself, it inescapably comes into conflict with other finite realities which have the same faith, and then lie and murder are the values with which the ultimate concern tries to carry itself through against all resistance.

We now have three elements, and that is what I call religion. On the one hand our ultimate concern (unconditional, ecstatic, affirmed in infinite passion); secondly, the concrete content, everything in the whole world which can be used as the bearer of our ultimate concern—it then becomes a symbol for it. And thirdly: the criterion which separates the truly ultimate from the idolatric ultimate. And this criterion is the criterion of self-sacrifice.

Now we will carry this threefold principle through in relation to the reality of man's cultural life. There we will repeat it again and again in this and that direction. And I think I can close today with the special section on philosophy of religion.