Note 4 — Chapter XIX · THE ESSENTIAL STANDPOINT OF RELIGION.

In relation to the inner life, grace may be defined as religious genius; in relation to the outer life as religious chance. Man is good or wicked by no means through himself, his own power, his will; but through that complete synthesis of hidden and evident determinations of things which, because they rest on no evident necessity, we ascribe to the power of “chance.” Divine grace is the power of chance beclouded with additional mystery. Here we have again the confirmation of that which we have seen to be the essential law of religion. Religion denies, repudiates chance, making everything dependent on God, explaining everything by means of him; but this denial is only apparent; it merely gives chance the name of the divine sovereignty. For the divine will, which, on incomprehensible grounds, for incomprehensible reasons, that is, speaking plainly, out of groundless, absolute arbitrariness, out of divine caprice, as it were, determines or predestines some to evil and misery, others to good and happiness, has not a single positive characteristic to distinguish it from the power of chance. The mystery of the election of grace is thus the mystery of chance. I say the mystery of chance; for in reality chance is a mystery, although slurred over and ignored by our speculative religious philosophy, which, as in its occupation with the illusory mysteries of the Absolute Being, i.e., of theology, it has overlooked the true mysteries of thought and life, so also in the mystery of divine grace or freedom of election, has forgotten the profane mystery of chance.4