One could use an apparently paradoxical expression and say: The soul can find faith only by losing it. To preserve the integrity of religious feeling, it must shake off all determined and predetermined religious form.

DEFINE: Presents a paradoxical definition of authentic religious feeling as arising through the loss of conventional determinate belief.

QUESTION: Is this claiming faith is necessarily anti-institutional, or only that personal faith must transcend inherited forms before being re-embraced?

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 865