;^P?n. DENUA&K. TRANSLATED FEOM THE GERMAN REV. WILLIAM URWICK, M.A. EDINBUEGH: T. & T. CLAEK, 38 GEOKGE STEEET. 1898. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. The Idea of Dogmatic Theology, Religion and Revelation, Christianity and the Christian Church, Catholicism and Protestantism, . . Protestantism and Evangelical Theology. Theology and Holy Scripture, Theology and Church Confessions, Theology and the Christian Idea of Truth, Na of Section. c>agft 1-3 1 4—14 5 15—19 15 20—25 25 27 51 28 54 29—36 57 n. THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF GOD. The Nature of God, ..... The Attributes of God, ..... The Divine Hypostases : The Triune God, . . 37—45 73 40—51 91 52—58 102 III. THE DOCTRINE OF THE FATHER. The Creation, ..... Creation and Cosmogony, Man and the Angels, . . o Man Created in the Image of God, The First Adam, ...» The Fall of Man from God, . . . The Mystery of the Full, , The Depravity of Human Nature, or Original Sin, ..... Sinful History, .... Superhuman Evil. Demoniacal Powers and the Devil, ..... Guilt and Punishment. Death ; and the Vanity of all Creatures, • . . 59—78 113 62— f]7 IKJ 68—71 126 72—75 135 7G— 78 147 79—112 155 80—91 159 92—95 173 96—98 183 99—107 186 lOS— 112 2U8 IV CONTENTS. Tub Providence of God, The Free Course of the World and tlic Mani fold Wisdom of God, . Heathenism, .... The Chosen People, ... Na of Section. Vige. 113 214 - lU— 118 216 119—120 224 121—124 229 THE DOCTRINE OF THE SON. Thk Incarnation of God in Christ, . The Union of the Divine and Human Natures in Christ, .... The Development of the God-man, The Circumstances of the God-man, Thc Mediatorial Office of Christ, and His Work The Prophetic Office of Christ, The High-Priesthood of Christ, The Kingly Office of Christ, 125—180 237 s 129—133 258 139—143 274 144—147 288 i, 148 295 149—155 295 156—169 302 170—180 315 THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT. The Procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son, ..... The Founding and Maintaining of the Church, Inspiration and the Apostolic Office, . The Essential Attributes or Notes of the Church, The Operations of Grace, Freedom and Grace, The Election of Grace, The Plan of Salvation, The Means of Grace, Tlie Word of God and Holy Scripture, The Ordinances of the Lord, The Preaching of the Word, Prayer in the Name of Jesus, The Sacraments, Baptism, (Confirmation), The Lord's Supper, (Penance), (Orders), Fhk Perfecting of thk Church, Tiie Hesurrectiou from the Deail, The Intermediate State, The Final Advent of the Lord, and the Con- summation of all things, 181—184 330 18.-.— 235 335 18G— 189 338 190—198 344 199—272 353 200—205 354 206—224 362 225—235 383 L'36 400 237—243 400 244 411 245 412 246 415 247 417 2:. 1—257 422 258 431 259—270 432 271 443 272 445 273—291 450 274—275 452 276—277 457 278—291 465 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. The work of the learned and pious Dr Martensen, Bishop of Seeland, in Denmark, which is now presented in an English dress, was originally written in Danish, and has gone through several editions. A German translation of it soon appeared, but the Author not being satisfied with that rendering of his work, re-wrote it himself in German, and the present English version is a translation of this later German edition prepared by Dr Martensen himself. The work is what we call a text-hook, or manual of Chris- tian Dogma ; and while here and there the English reader may perceive a degree of abstruseness in the method of treat- ing certain doctrines, — the Doctrine of the Trinity, for example, — which is only a reflection of the profoundness of the Author's thought, he will find throughout, a clearness and conciseness, not always to be met with in German theo- logical works. The Author's plan is simple ; his mode of treatment is marked by brevity ; yet he seldom fails, with the accuracy of a master mind, to deal with and throw light upon the cardinal points and bearings of each dogma of the Christian system. His interpretations and applications of various texts of Scripture are fresh and suggestive, so that the work, with the help of the Index now appended, will be found valuable as a book of reference, by all ministers and expounders of God's Holy Word. vi translator's preface. Being a Lutheran, we find that the Aiitnor gives pro- minence to the efiicacy of our Saviour's redemption upon man's body and the kingdom of nature. We English Pro- testants diti'er with liim here, specially in the application of his theory to the sacraments, but the recollection of this bias is necessary, in order to the right understanding of some ex- pressions in the work. The Translator, whose name appears on the title-page, begs to state, that for the first 180 pages of this English version the Rev. Dr Simon of Berlin, the translator of Dorner in this series, is responsible. The work then came into the present writer's hands, and the remainder, as well as the revision of the whole, and the conduct of it through the press, has de- volved upon him. Hatherlow, Cheshire, Uh Nov. 1866. INTRODUCTION. Dogmatic Theology. §1- DogmRtic tlieology treats of the doctrines of the Christian faith held by the community of believers, in other words, by the Church. A confessing and witnessing church cannot be conceived to exist without a definite sum of doc- trines or dogmas. A dogma is not a ^o'ga, not a subjective, human opinion, not an indefinite, vague notion ; nor is it a mere truth of reason, whose universal validity can be made clear with mathematical or logical certainty : it is a truth of faith, derived from the authority of the word and revelation of God ; — a positive truth, therefore, positive not merely by virtue of the positiveness with which it is laid down, but also by virtue of the authority with which it is sealed. Dogmatics is the science which presents and proves the Christiai^ doctrines, regarded as forming a connected system.* Dogmatics is not only a science of faith, but also a know- ledge grounded in, and drawn frovi faith. It is not a mere historical exhibition of what has been, or now is, true for others, without being true for the author ; nor is it a philosophical knowledge of Christian truth, obtained from a stand-point outside of faith and the church. For even sup- posing— what yet we by no means concede — that a scientific insight into Christian truth is possible, without Christian faith, yet such philosophizing about Christianity, even though its conclusions were ever so favourable to the church, could * Of. Mynster : "Ueber den Begiiff der Dogmatik" — in the "Studien und Kritiken." A t JDOGMATIC THl^OLOCJY. [OhsCT. not be onlled dogmatics. Theology stands within the ])ale of Christianity ; and only that dogmatic theologian can be esteemed the organ of his science, who is also the organ of his church; — which is not the case with the mere philosopher, whose only aim is to promote the cause of pure science. This desire to attain an intelligent faith, of which dogmatics is the product ; this intellectual love of Christian truth, which should be found especially in the teachers of the church, is inseparable from a personal experience of Christian truth. And, as this intellectual apprehension of what faith is gi'ows out of personal faith, modified by a recognition of the ex- perience of other believers, so its ultimate aim is to benefit the community of believers, and bring fruit to the church. We may say, therefore, that dogmatic theology nears its goal Tust in proportion as it satisfies equally the demands of science and of the church. We hear it, indeed, often said at the pre- sent day, — e.g., by Strauss, who, viewing dogmatic speculation from the stand-point of modern science, has sought to repre- sent it as antiquated, — that the notions "scientific" and " ecclesiastical " are absolutely incompatible with one another ; that only the so-called pure science, which starts without pre- suppositions, deserves the name of science, etc. : but such objections need occasion the church no surprise, since in the very first centuries of its existence many such were made by heathen philosophers. In spite of all these objections, there lias been from the first a constant effort in the church to pro- duce a science of the church that shall accord with the distinctive nature of Christian truth, and with the conditions imposed in this temporal form of existence upon the appre- hension of truth in general; and this effort will continue to be made till the end of time — made by those, and for those, who cannot, and will not, take a position outside of Christi- anity ; who, on the contrary, feel it indispensable that their life and modes of thought should be shaped by Christianity. Observations. — The limits within which dogmatic theology is confined, may be given, in a general way, as the Catechism on the one hand, and on the other, philosophy, in so far as it proposes to make Christianity its object, yet takes a position outside of the Christian faith.- In the popular catechetical exhibition of truth is contained the Obiter.] DOGMATIC TlJKOl.OUY. 3 germ of all dogmatical theology. But tlie scientific element is found here only in. a potential foi'm, the main object being practical and ecclesiastical. Not until the scientific element, as such, appears, can we speak of dog- matic knowledge. This, as is well known, has, in its development, assumed various forms, among which are speculations, which involve a certain relation between dogmatics and philosophy. Now, although the question, how far dogmatic theology has a speculative character, is much disputed, it is at all events clear that that speculation which treats the truthfulness of Christianity as something problematical, which looks for certainty re- specting it in the results of its own investigations, cannot be called dogmatical speculation. For dogmatics assumes at the outset the absolute truth of Christianity, indepen- dently of all speculation. The do; -TtoZ gtm, so often expressed by an inquiring philosophy, is for dogmatic theology answered at once ; the theologian does not make the truth depend on his investigation, but only seeks to gain by his thought a firmer grasp of the truth which he already accepts as absolutely certain, and at which he first arrived in quite another way than that of speculation. The scientific interest felt by the theologian is therefore radically different from that purely logical enthusiasm which Fichte lauds — tliat logical enthusiasm which urges one to think merely for the sake of thinking, unconcerned and indifferent as to the results to which one may be brought. The theologian confesses himself to be in so far a Realist, that he thinks, not for the sake of thinking, but for the sake of truth; he confesses, to use Lessing's pertinent simile, that the divine revelation holds the same relation to his investigations as does the answer of an arithmetical problem, given at the outset, to the problem itself. Dogmatics, therefore, does not make doubt its starting-point, as philosophy is often required to do ; it is not developed out of the void of scepticism, but out of the fulness of faith ; it does not make its appearance in order by its arguments to prop up a tottering faith, to serve as a crutch for it, as if, in its old age, it had become frail and staggering. It springs out of the perennial, DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Obscr. juvenile vigour of faith, out of the capacity of faith to un- fold from its own depths a wealth of treasures of wisdom and of knowledge, to build up a kingdom of acknowledged truths, by which it illumines itself as well as the surrounding world. Dogmatics serves, therefore, not to rescue faith in the time of its exigency, but to glorify it, — in gloriam Jidei, in gloriam dei. A mind starved by doubt has never been able to produce a dogmatic system. If we look at the great theologians who rank in this department as masters and models — at Athanasius, Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas, or at the Re- formers and their successors, — we always find that it was faith which moved and impelled them to their work; that in their meditations and studies they were not wandering about in the uncertainty of doubt, but stood firm in the certainty of faith. Indeed, it may be said in general that it is faith which has furnished the impulse to all genuine ecclesiastical stmctures. And if we consider the fevi dogmatic productions of our time which bear the stamp of independent thought, we find again that what distinguishes them from the great mass of philosophical productions, is just this effort to evolve the cognitions that are involved in f;\ith. In this respect, ScJdeiermacher's Dogmatics marks a turning-point of modern times. For, wliatever may be thought as to the depth of the views, and the purity of the ftiith there expressed, still at all events one of the great results accomplished by that work is that many have been aroused by it to see that dogmatic theology has an independent principle quite its own, and is not obliged to hold its domain in fee from a philosophy foreign to itself — In saying that the sphere of dogmatics is bounded on the one side by the catechism, on the other by that philosophy which merely makes ftxith an object of its examination, we aimed to give a preliminary, temporary definition. For within these limits tliere is room for a great variety of more or less perfect forms of pre- senting dogmas ; and it is, therefore, the object of this Introduction to de^^cribe the kind of knowledge, the f/rniis cognosccndi, which constitutes the peculiarity of the science of dogmatics. Sect. 4.] EELIGION AND EEVELATION. 5 What dogmatic theology is, can be explained only in con- nection with a definition of Christianity and the Christian Church, of the Church Catholic and Evangelical ; and this in turn takes us back to the more general notions of Eeligion and Kevelation. Although these points can be fully discussed only in the dogmatic system itself, yet they must be here treated in a preliminary and general way, in order to fix the true meaning of dogmatics. Religion and Revelation. §4. ^ All religion is a sense of God's existence, and of man's relation to God; including the difference and opposition between God and the universe, God and man ; but at the same time, the solution, the removal of this opposition in a higher unity. Religion ma}'" therefore be more accurate!}'' described as man's consciousness of his communion with God, of his union with God. Religion differs from art and from philosophy. For, although philosophy, too, consists in a recognition of God, inasmuch as its subject is God, His relation to the universe, and to man ; and, although art may likewise have the same character, since it may make God's revelations the subject of its representations ; — yet there is between these spheres and that of religion the essential differ- ence, that the speculative and aesthetic relation to God is only one of a secondary order, a relation mediated by ideas, thoughts, and images ; whereas the religious relation to God is a relation of existence — a relation of personal life and being to God. We may, therefore, say that religion, in the true sense of the word, is a life in God. While thus the heroes of art and science have God only in the reflected image of thought and fancy, the pious man has God in his very being, — a difference whose reality forces itself upon us when we set prophets and apostles over against poets and philosophers. There is, therefore, the same difference between philosophy and art on the one hand, and religion on the other, as between the ideal conctiption or pictorial representation of one who prays and labours for the kingdom of God, and personal life, prayer and labour for the kingdom of God. 6 RELIGION AND llEVELATION. [Sect. e. §5. The relierious relation to God must therefore be still more particularly defined as a Jtohj, a personal relation to God, finding its universal expression in the conscience. For con- science has not merely a side directed towards the world, it is not merely the consciousness of the moral law which should control human life ; it has also a side directed towards God, although in most men this side is obscured. Conscience is man's original knowing together with God (con-scientia) the relation of his personal being to God ; an immediate, per- ceptible, co-knowledge with God. For, as I know myself to be in my conscience, so I live, and so I am. The relations between God and men acquire religious significance only as they spring from, or are received into, this fundamental rela- tion ; and certainty respecting divine and human things is a religious certainty only when it is the certainty of conscience. But this holy relation to God can be sustained only by Theists, not by Pantheists ; it pre-supposes necessarily a free Creator, who knows and wills, and who makes known His eternal power and Godhead in the creation. Only when the creature and the human person, have in reference to God a relative inde- pendence ; only in case the created will meets the eternal will of God, can we speak of holiness in man, as distinct from God, or as united with Him. Holiness and conscientiousness, as the history of heathenism shows, are not characteristics of panthe- istic religions: at best they are only feebly developed therein. Hence these are imperfect and untrue forms of religion ; — or as we may otherwise express it, the heathen's sense of divine things is polluted by mixture with his sense of earthly things ; his religious sentiments, as all myths show, are polluted by mixture with his aesthetic and speculative sentiments. As man is designed in general to be at once himself, and a member of a greater whole, this is pre-eminently true of religion, for which he is pre-eminently designed. Accord- ino-ly, a man's religious sense, though it is of the most individual ami personal nature, involves the consciousness of his belonging to a community. For only in a Idngdom of God, only in a kingdom of individuals animated by God, standing to one another in tlie reciprocal relation of lu-oduc- Sect. 7.] RELIGION AND REVELATION. 7 tivity and receptivity, of giving and taking, can religion develop its real wealth. History abounds in illustrations of the power of religion to form communities. This is shown not only by the temple and the synagogue under the Old Covenant ; not only by the Christian Church and the Christian Conventicle, but also by the religions of heathen nations. Where religion becomes a merely private thing, only a concern of individuals, then we may discern a sign of a state of dis- solution, of a break between the individual and society. Observations. — The assertion sometimes made of late, that religion is a talent, and that we can no more demand that every man be religious than we can require every man to possess artistic or philosophic talent, is false. For though there may be men who have more religious capacity than others ; though we may speak of a talent and of a genius for religion, yet, since religion is the central vocation of man, the obligation rests on every one to be religious, just as every one is required to be moral ; though this obligation does not imply that there may be no such thing as a genius for morality. It is, however, an oft-repeated assertion that there are many men who are moral without being religious ; and we do not deny its truth : we only maintain that such a morality is neither radical nor deep. Without some sort of religion, without a certain belief in Providence, be it only a vague belief in an all-controlling power, no self-conscious morality is conceivable. § 7. In seeking to gain a more definite view of the psychological forms in which religion manifests itself, we may assume it to be now universally admitted that psychologically religion presents itself exclusively neither as feeling alone, nor as perception alone, and volition ; that we are to treat the question no longer as one of an either — or, but as one of a hotli — and. Schleier- macher, in his Dogmatics, makes the feelings the exclusive seat of religion ; and, inasmuch as feeling is a term designating the most immediate contact of consciousness with its object, it may be said, indeed, that the foundation of a religious cha- racter is denoted by it — its foundation, but not its completion. In designating religious feeling as a feeling of absolute de- 8 RELIGION AND REVELATION. [Sect. 8. pendence, he follows the mystics in describing piety as a thcopathic state, as a state in which man feels his inmost soul touched by the power in which we live and move and have our being, — a holy TrdOo^, in which man feels himself to be a vessel and an abode of the Deity. This description not only reminds one of mysticism ; it is itself mystical ; for it leaves us in dusky uncertainty as to what the absolute power is on which we feel ourselves dependent ; whether it be an imper- sonal Absolute, a Fate, or an ethical, holy, good Power. Only in the latter case can the theopathic state, the feeling of abso- lute dependence, be a feeling that elevates and makes free. For it is only by relation to a good, a holy Power that the feeling of one's own personality is confirmed ; not by relation to an impersonal Absolute. In order, therefore, to avoid this ambiguity, we would define* the religious feeling in its funda- mental form as a feeling of unbounded reverence. In this is involved the deepest feeling of dependence, of finiteness, of creatureship, of humility ; at the same time, it implies that the Power on which I feel myself to be dependent is the good, the holy Power to which I feel myself in my conscience bound; not a Fate, which can be an object of fear only, not of reve- rence. This reverential dependence is the germ of the trust, devotion and love, which we see in the religion of the patri- archs. In Abraham's reverence we find expressed the depen- dence of the creature on the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth ; but we also find in it a faint anticipation of the glorious freedom of the sons of God. §8. ^ Man, in so far as his religion is one of mere feeling, is in a state of passive subjection to God ; in so far as his religion, on the contrary, consists in knowledge, he is, — to use again a term borrowed from the mystics, — free in relation to God. It is the light of knowledge through which the religious feeling of dependence, instead of being an oppressive one, becomes an elevating feeling of fteedora ; only by means of this light can the obscure, mystical feeling of dependence be transfigured into a feeling of reverence, devotion, and love. For it is only in the light of knowledge that God becomes a distinct object of consciousness; only when this light is enjoyed can the afore-mentioned relation of distinction and ♦ With My lister. Sect. 8.] EELIGION AND liEVELATlON. 9 of unity between God and man be a free relation. The knowledge of which we speak is, however, not a knowledge of religion, but, as Daub designates it, a knowledge in reli- gion, as indeed is implied in the very idea of conscience, which is not only a feeling, but also a perception. Hegel's definition of religious knowledge as an immediate knowledge we are very willing to adopt, only we mean by the immediate, not the lower, imperfect knowledge, which is to be superseded by philosophy as the perfect knowledge, but the original, pri- mitive knowledge which lies at the basis of speculation. Keligious cognizance of God is not knowledge in the form of abstract thought ; but the idea of God assumes shape in a comprehensive view of the world, and of human life in its relation to God, a view of heaven and earth, nature and history, heaven and hell. Piety cognizes not merely by thoughts growing out of the relations of conscience and con- fined to these relations, but also by means of the mental picture which springs from these same relations. When we now denominate not only the reason, but also the iwiagination as the organ of religious perception ; when we say that with- out fancy no one can get a lively conception of God, the assertion may to many sound strange. But experience shows that no religion has ever assumed an important historical character without developing a comprehensive ideal view of the universe, an imaginative view by which the invisible is blended with the visible ; whether this blending or marriage has the significance of a mere myth and symbol, or connects itself with a truly divine revelation. We will not here appeal to the Grecian religion of beauty, nor to the grand, fanciful conceptions embodied in the myths of the North ; for it might justly be said that in these the religious element is corrupted by its mixture with the poetical. We appeal to Judaism and to Christianity itself, both of which most distinctly teach that God's essence is invisible, like thought and spirit ; both of which, however, by their sacred history, their symbolic and ngurative language (incomprehensible without a corresponding religious fancy) most emphatically confirm our assertion that fancy appertains not merely to superstition, but also to tnie religion. But it must be constantly kept in mind that the religious conceptions generated by fancy are in their origin 1 0 RELIGION AND KEVELATION. [Sect «. religious conceptions, that they are the views of those who stand in a religious relation to God, not the product of culture or of art. It is true even of myths, that they are no product of culture, but, on the contrary, are implied in culture. Ohsei^ations. — One's religious views may be held at second hand, i.e., in a philosophical or aesthetic way. And just because religious perception deals with an objec- tive element, that of thought and fancy, it may be sundei'ed from its vital source in the affections, and be exercised in a merely aesthetic or philosophic way, inde- pendent of personal faith. Thus there are philosophers, poets, painters, and sculptors, who have represented Christian ideas with great plastic power, yet without themselves having a religious possession of those ideas; being brought into relation to them only through the medium of thought and fancy. Thus too, a large propor- tion of the men of the present time hold religious views only in an aesthetic way, or merely make them the subject of refined reflection ; hold them only at second hand, because they know nothing of the personal feelings and the determinations of conscience which correspond to them ; because, in other words, their religious knowledofe does not spring from their standing in right religious relations. The adoption of religious notions, nay, even of a comprehensive religious view of life, is therefore by no means an infallible proof that a man is himself religious. The latter is the case only w^hen the religious views are rooted in a corresponding inward state of the mind and heart ; when the man feels himself in conscience bound to these views ; in short, when he believes in them. And even though a man, with the help of Christian views, could achieve wondei'S in art and science, could prophesy, and cast out devils, yet Christ will not acknowledge him unless he himself stands in right personal relations to these views. It is specially necessary at the present time to call attention to this double manner in which religious notions may be entertained. §9. Personal religion is not complete till it assumes the form of religious volition. Through feeling and knowledge Obser.l religion and revelation. 1 1 Goci seeks to draw man into his kingdom ; but only tlirougli the WILL does religion become, on the part of man, an actual worship of God. No man can absolutely avoid being moved by religious feelings ; no one can avoid being in some sense put into a theopathie state, though it be only for passing moments ; no one can absolutely escape from the light of the religious knowledge which forces itself upon us through the conscience. But it rests with man whether he shall encourage these feelings, whether he shall resolve to let these feelings prevail, whether he shall surrender himself, and freely assume the relation of a worshipper of the God who has revealed Himself. The will forms, therefore, the key-stone, the deter- ' mining power, in the religious consciousness. § 10. These several factors, which together make up religion, limit and sustain one another ; for, as the feelings, e.g., are indebted to the will for true profundity, so, on the other hand, energy of will depends on depth of emotion. But these all unite together, and the central point of union we call faith. Faith is a life of feeling, a life of the soul, in God (if we understand by soul* the basis of personal life, wherein, through very fulness, all emotion is still vague) ; and no one is a believer, who has not felt himself to be in God and God in him. Faith knows what it believes, and in the light of its intuition it views the sacred truths in the midst of the agitations and turmoil of this world's life ; and though its knowledge is not a comprehensive knowledge, although its intuition is not a seeincr face to face, althouR-h in clearness it is inferior to these forms of apprehension, yet in certitude it yields to neither ; for the very essence of faith is, that it is firm, confident certitude respecting what is not seen. Faith, finally, is the profoundest act of the will, the pro- foundest act of obedience and devotion. JSfertio credit nisi volens ; therefore, faith necessarily passes over into action ; partly into definite acts of worship (sacrifice, prayer, sacra- ment), partly into actions belonging to the sphere of morality, Mdiich thus receives a religious impress. Observations. — Whenever either of the above developed * Gcmuth, i.e., the seat of the affections, sentiments, and emotions; the ernotional nature. English has for it no specific terra. 12 RELIGION AND REVELATION. [Scct. 12. elements of faith is made prominent to the exclusion of the others, a false phase of it is presented, and there results a one-sided, moibid kind of religion. One-sided prefeience given to feeling, leads to mysticism. One- sided stress laid on religious knowledge and sentiments, leads either to abstract orthodoxy or to an aesthetic play of the fancy with religious notions. One-sided promin- ence given to the will, leads, as in the case of Kant and Fichte, to " moralism." §11. Faith in God is faith in God's revelation, or in God's communication of Himself to His creatures ; a self-com- munication in which the communications of divine truth, light and life condition each other. Being belief in the supernatural transcendental God, who reveals His nature and His will in the world, faith distinguishes life in God from life in the world ; the believer knows that his conception of God is not derived from the world, nor from his own heart, but from God who reveals Himself to man. This consciousness of a difference between holiness and worldliness, is insepar- able from conscious faith ; and for this reason heathendom is destitute of faith in the strict sense of the word, since in heathendom there is no real difference between the holy and the profane, no real difference between a godly and a worldly spirit. Heathendom may indeed exhibit a sort of piety, an ivffelSiia, but no faith, inasmuch as the liglit of revelation is lacking, or shines only by transient flashes into the darkness. At the best there can be found there onlj' sporadic demonstra- tions of faith ; its calm repose is not known. §12. Revelation being a communication of Spirit to spirit, the Spirit and not nature must be its only perfect medium. For, although it is indeed the creative Spirit who speaks through nature to the created spirit, yet nature with her inar- ticulate language speaks only in an indirect and figurative n)anner of the eternal power and godhead of the Creator. A direct, unambiguous revelation can be found only in the world of spirit, of the word, of conscience, and of freedom, in other words, of history. Revelation and history are, therefore, not to be sejiariited; yet, if tli'^re wer^ no other history than pro- Sect. 12] RELIGION AND REVELATION. 13 fane history. God's revelation would still be without an ade- quate medium. Profane histoiy reveals to us, it is true, a development of ideas, of divine potencies and forces ; but that this development, — inquiring as it does, agreeably to its ob- jective character, only after the great whole, after the race in general, and seeming to be quite indifferent to individuals ; — that this course of worldly events serves to accomplish the designs of a holy will, and to build up a kingdom of God in which God, thi-ough the medium of the whole, puts Himself into a personal relation to each individual soul ; this we may learn from conscience. In the general course of events we look in vain for such a revelation of this mystery that we can find repose in it. We hear, indeed, the sacred voice of God speaking through the voices of profane history ; and in the deeds of men, in secular events, we discern also the deeds of God ; but in the tumult of the world's history our ear con- founds God's voice with the voices of men, and the holy, pro- vidential design now and then disclosed in the fate of men, is concealed again from our sight amidst the restless stream of events. If we may, in truth, speak of a sacred, divine reve- lation, then there must be a history within history, there must be within profane history a sacred history, in which God re- veals Himself as God; a history in which is revealed the sacred design of the world as such, in which the word of God so en- cases itself in the word of man that the latter becomes the pure organ for the former, and in which the acts of God are so involved in the acts of men that the latter become a per- fectly transparent medium through which the former may be seen. Sacred history must, therefore, have the form of a his- tory of a covenant, in which God, by means of sacred events, enters into a special personal relation to man ; it must be the history of an election, a selection from profane history. And so it appears in the history of Israel, in which everything revolves around the holy purposes, the word, and the acts of God ; and this finds its completion and its fulness in the sacred history of Christ ; so that thus the history of the Christian church, as a new history within history, flows through the history of the universe. The revelation here in- dicated, involved in sacred history and propagated by the church, we call the special positive revelation, as distinguished I 4 RELIGION AND REVELATION. [Sect. 18. froai the general revelation given in nature and in the moral world, from tlie revelation presented in the history of a merely natural development of the human race. § 13. When the three great forms of religion, Heathenism, Judaism, and Christianity, are termed three several stages in the development of the religious consciousness, it must not be forgotten that only Judaism and Christianity, with their sacred history, have a common principle of development; while heathenism, with its myths, points to an essentially different [)rinciple. To be sure, some ancient and modern Gnostic sys- tems have tried to show that the three religions are all of a piece, pronouncing heathenism, as the natural starting-point in the religious development of man, to be the fundamental form, and representing the sacred history of Judaism and Christianity as only a modification of the mythical spirit. But this effort involves a rejection of the notion of revelation and a disregard of the radical difference between revelation and myth. Myths, it is true, have this in common with re- velation, that the}'' are not arbitrarily invented, but, like re- velation, have an objective, mysterious origin. But myths have their mysterious origin in the spirit of the world, in the cosmical spirit, while revelation has its origin in the Holy Spirit. Myths contain, therefore, most certainly, a rich fund of ideas, but contain no expression of a holy will. Precisely because their contents are nothing but ideas, mythical forms have merely a seeming existence ; they are for the imagination and the fancy ; they are only personifications of ideas. And precisely because revelation is the revelation of a holy ivill, does it demand, as its medium, history, historical facts, histo- rical personages ; for only in history is the will in its element ; the holy will, only in sacred history. The mythical dream- world with its personifications must vanish before the light of culture, because it presents in the fermentations of fancy only what philosophy and art present in the form of clear conscious- ness ; for in myths the distinctly religious element is found only in a vague, sporadic, and mystical form. Revelation, on the contrary, cannot be supplanted by any science, just because it is not a lower form of knowledge, but is sacred fact and holy life. By this statement we by no means deny that within th« Sect. 15.] CHKISTIANITY AND THE CHRISTTAN CIIUI'vCII. 15 sphere of revelation there may, and even must, be constructed a system of symbols in which sacred ideas are symbolised in a manner resembling mythical representations ; nor again do we deny that on the basis of a sacred history a mythology may be developed, as we see it in Catholicism, where a sei'ies of legends has entwined itself like a creeping plant around the trunk of sacred history. We only mean to affirm that revela- tion, being based upon the principle of personality, is insepar- able from a sacred history, and is radically different from the mythical world of dreams and shadows. The designation of the three great forms of religion as different stages of consciousness, is not exhaustive. They are rather three stages of being : — a truth expressed by Chris- tianity when it describes itself at once as a new creation of the human race, and as a redemption of it from the untrue, abnormal being exhibited in heathenism ; Judaism exhibiting the incipient and preparatory economy of redemption. Whilst the heathen are estranged from God and stand in relation only to the divine ideas which manifest themselves in the world, without being brought by these into relation to the will of the divine Creator himself, the Jews, as a chosen people, are raised to a higher stage of being, where the way is prepared even for the new creation, — the new creation which first began to be fully accomplished in the Incarnation of God in Christ. Christianity and the Christian Church. § 15. The widest conceivable contrast of existence between God and the world is presented in the relation of Creator to creature, of the holy God to sinful man. If now we consider the different religions in their relation to this fundamental problem of religion, we may sa}^: Heathenism is unacquainted with the problem ; Judaism lives in it and looks for its solu- tion ; but only Christianity gives the actual solution. Heathenism is unacquainted with the problem of creation, or the religious problem presented by dependence on a holy crea- tive God. The antithetic relation between God and the universe is viewed only superficially ; as in all forms of pantheism, the antithesis between God and the universe is 16 CHRISTIANITY AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. [SccL 15. only ideal ; and hence the solution is found in figures, myths, and symbols. Judaism, on the contrary, feels its relation of creatureship, and consequently of conscientious obligation ; but this relation involves a dualis'm between heaven and earth ; God and the universe are two different beings, not merely two sides of the same being ; over against God stands a created world as not-God ; a created spirit stands in the relation of obligation, of dependence, of obedience ; here the opposition is real. But the creature strives to return to, yearns to be- come united with, the Uncreated one. "Thou hast created us for thyself, and our heart is restless, and will not rest till it rests in thee, O Lord ! " And yet there is an infinite dis- tance between the eternal, the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth, and the finite, limited human creature who is dust and ashes, — a chasm which seems incapable of being filled. Christianity solves this problem by its gospel of the Incar- nation of God in Christ. The antithesis is not removed by figures or myths, for it is an antithesis of being, and must be removed by a change in the sphere of being. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, the Word which was in the beginning with God and himself was God, the Word by whom all things were made ; men beheld His glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. As the incarnate Word, as He in wdiom the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily, Christ is the Mediator between God and the creature, the Mediator whose ofiice it is to transmute man's relation of created dependence into one of unlimited freedom, to transform men from creatures into children of God. The idea of an incarnation runs, it is true, also through the m3'ths of heathendom ; but the union there implied between God and man is a merely natural union, which does not recognise the actual separation in point of holiness. It was, therefore, the design of Judaism to maintain this truth, until the fulness of time should come, when heaven and earth could become truly united in Christ. The heathen's notion of the union of God and man is not the notion that God has become man, but that man becomes God, — not the notion of an incarnation of God, but of an apotheosis of man. The idea of incarnation dawns on the Jew in his Messianic hope, but is checked by the con- stant fear of making God and man one is essence ; for which Sect 35 j CHRISTIANITY AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 1? reason the perfect conception of the incarnation is not here found. Yet the hope of Israel shows itself to be a holy hope in that it conceives the Messiah as coming froTYi above through God's condescending love, to which human nature stands in a merely passive, receptive, submissive relation. But the fundamental problem of religion is still more pro- found than that of creation. The separation between heaven and earth is not only that between Creator and creature, but between the holy God and a sinful world. Heathenism know? nothing of this problem. For to the heathen evil is only limitation, ignorance, a natural defect, a fate which cleaves to finiteness, but not SIN, not the disturbance of a holy relation towards God, originating in the will of the creature, Judaism lives and moves in this problem. Its sacred tradition begint with the account of the fall of man ; and this breach betweeu the holy God and sinful man runs through the whole history; of Israel, incessantly attested by the law and the prophets. But the restoration of the broken relation, the atonement for sin, is in Judaism only foreshadowed by types and prophecies Not until God becomes incarnate in Christ, does the true Me- diator enter into the world. " God was in Christ, reconcilino the world unto himself."* In this gospel of the crucified One is contained the solution of the hard problem of sinfulness. The atonement was not accomplished by images and myths — " for our sin is not a mock or painted thing, and therefore our Redeemer is also not a painted Redeemer : " the God-man really suffered ; He was really crucified as an atonement for the sin of the world. With Him, the new Adam, the whole race is organically united, and " He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them and rose again."-f" The essence of Christianity is, therefore, nothing else than Christ Himself. The founder of the religion is Himself, its sum and substance. He is not merely the historical founder of a religion ; His person cannot be separated from the doc- trine which he proclaims, bub has an eternal, ever-present significance for the human race. As he is the Mediator and Propitiator, the sacred point of unity between God and the sinfuJ world, so He is also continually the Redeemer of the human race * 2 Cor. V. 17. t 2 Cor. v. 15. B 18 CHRISTIAKITY AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. [Sect. -".i. All regenerating, all purifying, all sanctifying influences by wLich man is freed fiom his state of bondage to sin, and made to partake of the mystery of the incarnation and atonement, proceed from the person of Christ, through the Spirit going out from Him into His Church. §16. The conception of sacred history is inseparable from that of MIRACLES. The full discussion of this subject must be reserved for the dogmatic system itself; but we niay here in general terms designate the miracle of the Incarnation, of God becoming man in Christ, as the fundamental miracle of Christianity. Christ Himself is the prime miracle of Christi- anity, since His coming is the absolutely new beginning of a spiritual creation in the human race ; a beginning, whose significance is not only ethical, but cosmical. Tlie person of Christ is not only a historical miracle, not merelj'- a new starting-point in the world's moral development; as such it would be only relatively a miracle, a wonder, in the same sense, as the appearance of every great genius may be so termed, not being analogous to anything preceding. But Christ is something new in the race. He is not a mere moral and relicrious ojenius, but the new man, the new Adain, whose appearance in the midst of our race has a profound bearing not only on the moral, but on the natural world. He is not a mere prophet, endowed with the Spirit and power of God, but God's only begotten Son, the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person, for whose redemptive aj)pear- ance, not only man, but nature, waits. The person of Christ is, therefore, not only a historical, but a cosmical miracle ; not to be explained by the laws and forces of this world, this world's history and natural phenomena. But in order to be able to appropriate to itself the new revelation in Christ, the lunnan race must receive a new sense, a new spirit ; the spirit of Christ must enter into a permanent union with man, as the principle of a new development — a development conceivable only as proceeding from an absolutely new beginning in the conscious life of the race. The miracle of the Incarnation is hence inseparable from that of INSPIRATION ; or the outpouring of the Spirit ou the clay of Pentecost ; through which the principle of the uew Sect. 17.] CmtlSTIANITY AND THE CIIEISTIAX CHURCH. 19 development is implanted in the human race, and from which the new life of fellowship, and the new sense of fellowship take their rise. The miracle of inspiration is the same in the subjective, as the miracle of the revelation of Christ in the objective, sphere. To these two new commencements, which form two sides of one and the same fundamental miracle, the miracle of the new creation, the Christian Church traces its origin. All the individual miracles of the New Testament are simply evolutions of this one ; and all the Old Testament miracles are only foretokens, anticipatory indications of the new creating activity which in the fulness of time is concen- trated in the miracle of the Incarnation, and of the founding of the church. §17, Here we come to the opposing principles of Supernatu- ralism on the one side, and Naturalism and Rationalism on the other. If a distinction is to be made between naturalism and rationalism — they being in fact only two sides of one and the same thing, each necessarily leading to the other — the former is referable primarily to the objective, the latter to the subjective, side of existence. Both reject miracles ; but naturalism directs its opposition chiefly against the miracle of incarnation, because it recognises no higher laws than tliose of nature ; rationalism directs its main attacks against the miracle of inspiration, because it denies that there is any other and higher source of knowledge than reason. But, although there will always be men who affirm that the notions of nature and revelation, of reason and revelation (the latter taken in the positive, Christian sense of the word), are notions that exclude each other, yet within the Christian Church itself this can never be conceded. We take first into consideration the issue between Super- naturalism and Naturalism. Here the decision of the question depends upon how the system of law and forces which we call nature, is conceived — whether it be con- ceived as a system in itself, finally and eternally fixed, or a,s a S3^stem that is passing through a teleological develop- ment, a continued creation. In the latter case new potencies, new laws and forces must be conceivable as entering into operation ; th.e preceding stages in the creation preparing the 20 CHRISTIANITY AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. [Sect I7. way for them, and prefiguring them, though not the source from which they can be derived. This is the Christian view of nature. In terming itself the new, the second creation, Christianity by no means calls itself a disturbance of nature, but rather the completion of the work of creation ; the revela- tion of Christ and the kingdom of Christ it pronounces the last potency of the work of creation ; which power, whether regarded as completing or as redeeming the world, must be conceivable as teleological ; operating so as to change and limit the lower forces, in so fjxr as these are in their essential nature not eternal and organically complete, but only tem- poral and temporary. Hence the point of unity between the natural and the supernatural lies in the teleological design of nature to subserve the kingdom of God, and its consequent susceptibility to, its cajxtcity of being moulded by, the super- natural, creative activity. Nature does not contradict the notion of a creation ; and it is in miracles that the dependence of nature on a free Creator becomes perfectly evident. But, while nature does not contradict the notion of a creation, the assumption of a creation is quite as little inconsistent with the notion of nature. For, although the new creation in Christ does do away with the laws of tltis natvire, yet it by no means destroys the notion of nature itself. For the very notion of nature implies, not that it is a hindering restraint to freedom, but rather that it is the organ of freedom. And as the miraculous element in the life of Christ reveals the unity of spirit and of nature, so the revelation of Christ at once antici- pates and predicts a new nature, a new heaven, and a new earth, in which a new system of laws will appear ; a system which will exhibit the harmony of the laws of nature and of freedom, — a state for which the whole structure of the present creation, with its unappeased strife between spirit and nature, is only a teleological transition period. Naturalism, on the contrary, regards nature as a system in itself, eternal and organically cpm])lete. In this system there is nothing which cannot be explained as a development of the laws, forces, possibilities, and conditions, that are the same from eternity to eternity. The speculative assumption from which speculative naturalism starts, is that of pantheism, the canon of wliich Spinoza gives us. He identilies Clod and Sect. 17."] CHRISTIANITY AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 2l nature, defines God as natura naturans, the universe as natura naturata ; thus he shuts miracles out entirely, since the notion of nature which he lays down is utterly incom- patible with that of a creation, of a transcendental beginning. For even the first creation is denied, since nature (natura naturata), though it exists through God {natura naturans), yet did not come into existence through God, through a free creative " Let there be," which of itself would have involved a miracle. But to Spinoza it is no more a miracle that God and the universe should exist together, than that in a circle there should be both centre and circumfeience, and that centre and circumference should be conceived as simultaneously existent. And just as Spinoza finds it impossible to conceive a single law of the circle to be annulled, he cannot conceive that any law of nature can be annulled ; because this would be an annulling of God's own nature, which according to Spinoza, is nothing different from the nature of this world. This we consider the only consistent form of naturalism. I'or Deism, — although, for the sake of maintaining the immuta- bility of natural laws, it denies miracles, yet assumes that the universe was created, — assumes thus after all a transcendental beginning ; concedes at least that the first day of this world was made to dawn by a miracle ; concedes that this origin is not self-evident as the pi-opositions of mathematics and physics are, certain relations of time, space, and nature, being assumed. But Deism stops with this miracle ; it regards nature as being from this point completed ; like a clock which, once made and wound up, pursues its changeless course, to aU eternity. He who, on the conti'ary, admits a continued creation, must also assume that nature continues to be susceptible of free, divine agencies ; he must assume the continuance of a transcendental activity in nature and the course of the world. Wherever men believe in a living Providence ; wherever men believe in the power of jjrai/er ; wherever the words, "Blessings come from above," are not an empty sound, there men believe also that miracles are constantly taking place in secret, that we are everywhere surrounded by invisible, supernatural, and sacred influences, which are able to act on nature as something dis- tinct from God. But this belief must be at once recoOTiised as imperfect, unless men v/ill go further and recognise the 22 CHRISTIANITY AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. [Sect. IS. great and manifest miracle, the miracle of the revelation of Clirist* Observations. — In our time we find tlie denial of mir- acles fullj'' carried out by Strauss, in the critical life of Jesus, and in his Christian Dogmatics. Strauss' criticism has heen called thorough-going scepticism. It is rather thorough -going dogmatism, based on the assumptions of naturalism. The demonstrative force of his criticism rests on the constantly recurring repetition of the thought, developed long ago with much greater brevity and force by Spinoza : " Miracles are impossible ; there is no trans- cendental beginning, for God and nature are one, from eternity to eternity ! " But this proposition, on which Strauss everywhere either expressly or tacitly rests the arguments, by which he transforms every portion of sacred history into a myth ; — this proposition Straus-s has subjected to only a very superficial sceptical examin- ation. This is evident especially from the fact, that he considers only the feeblest representations of the Chris- tian view, and that he caricatures and parodies even these. We, for our part, do not at all pretend to be " free from assumptions ; " but we can just as little accord to Strauss " scientific " freedom from assumptions. We accord to him this freedom only in a religious respect, i. e., we allow that he has a Inch of interest in the deepest pro- blems of the religious life. §18.^ If we now attend to the relation of Supernaturalism to Rationalism, we find that the attacks of rationalism are chiefly directed against Inspiration, and the iniiracida gratia; con- nected with it, while those of naturalism are directed against the Incarnation, and the rairacula naturw connected with it. If we consider reason as the thinking mind which searches the depths of existence, and ask whether reason, as it mani- fests itself in us, is something finished and complete in itself, the rationalist will very readily concede a progressive develop- ment of reason ; a development that leads to new discoveries and cognitions ; nay, the more profound rationalism of our day willingly admits that as " there is more reason in history, ♦ Mynster: Ueber den Begiiff dcr Dogmatik (in the "Studicn und Kritiken.'M cSecL 18.] CHlUSTIANilT Ai\D THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 23 SO there is also more history in reason, than men in general are inclined to assume." But what the rationalist does not con- cede is, that there should be a new and different source cf knowledge than the universal reason {y.omg Xoyog) from which the human race has always drawn and will continue to draw ; — that there are other truths than those which are evolved out of the inborn reason of the human race. Hence he re- duces Inspiration to the enthusiasm of genius ; sees in revealed Truth only truths of reason clothed in an antique form ; and explains the miracle of regeneration as being the fruit of re- ligious education and culture. Thus rationalism falls back upon, the assumptions of naturalism ; for, denying that a new source of knowledge has been opened in Christ, it must also deny that in Christ a new source of life is opened different from all other sources of life in creation. If, however, it is certain that in Christ a new source of life is opened, then there must have been also a new source of knowledge opened ; a realm of divine counsels hitherto hidden ; a realm of new cognitions which cannot be explained as the product of a de- velopment of reason. But these by no means conflict with the universal cognitions of human reason, although they in various ways modify them. For, on the one hand they serve to fill up and C07ni)lete the rational cognitions ; on the other, they serve to free the universal human reason from the dark- ness with which universal sinfulness has infected it. To sup- pose that this implies an insoluble dualism in the realm of knowledge, is as incorrect as to suppose that in the system of the universe the two creations imply an insoluble duality. For, as there is only one system of creation, though in this there are two grand stages, so there is also but one system of reason, although herein are involved two degrees in the revelation of reason. Objectively considered, the unity lies in the fact, that it is the same Logos that reveals himself in both creations : but that the revelation of the Loo;os in Christ is a higher degree of revelation, differing from His universal revelation in that it is a revelation which completes and redeems the world ; whereas the other merely creates and preserves. Subjectively considered, the unity is found in the fact, that the human reason stands in a receptive relation to- wards the Spirit of Christ, as the Spirit that completes and 24- CHUISTIANITY Ax\D THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. [Sect. 1». redeems t-lie world ; — a receptivity through which refison is to be raised to a higher stage of productivity. That revelation (as is so often asserted) contradicts the laws of reason, (a term, by the way, whose meaning is as unfixed as is the science of dialectics itself), can be admitted only in the same sense a.s it may be admitted that the revelation in Christ contradicts the laws of morality. For, as Christianity does abolish the moral laws, considered as independent abstractions, in order to ratify them all in enforcing the duty of love, which is the fulfilling of the law : so also it abolishes the laws of reason, as abstrac- tions, in order to ratify them in revealing the wisdom of Christ, which is the fulfilling of the law of reason (ffop/a ©eoD in opposition to (ro^/a toD xoV/xou). Observations, — Regeneration is for the individual what inspiration is for the whole church at the period of its foundation. It is the new bej^inninfj which involves a susceptibility for the revelation of Christ. No one can attain faith by the mere prosecution of his education and by reflection ; although these may doubtless in various ways prepare the way for regeneration. But only in case this new beginning becomes an object of consciousness. can a truly Christian knowledge begin. Even if we should conceive an ideally perfect system of Christian theology, this would not suffice to convince an unbe- liever. It would at the most only force from the unbe- lievers the confession that, if he were a believer, i. e., if he had an experimental conviction of the truth of the objects of faith, — if his very being were brought into relation to them, — he would follow the same method in developing his faith and making it clear to himself. § 19. The community of Christian believers, or the Chris- tian Church, differs from every other religious community in that it was founded by Christ, that the personality of the God-man is implied in the fact of its existence. The com- munity of believers is brought into relation to God as Father, only through Christ, and onl}'- through Christ is it a fellow- ship in the Holy Ghost. Hence that which remains un- changeable amidst all the developments that are taking })lace in lue Church, is such by virtue of its uninterrupted counec- Sect. 20.] CATHOT.ICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. 25 tion with Christ as the Head of the ecclesiastical organism — • a connection at once historical and mysterious, because it is a relation not only to the Saviour mentioned in history, but also to the Saviour now present in His Church, who rose from the dead and ascended to heaven. This positive element in the doctrines and institutions of the Church, must be sought in its evolution of the notions, " Word of God " and " Sacra- ment." But in the more particular definition of these, the Christian Church is divided by two confessions, — the Catholic, and the Evangelical or Protestant, An Introduction to a dogmatic system must confine itself to a discussion of the Church's principle of cognition, as preparatory to a presenta- tion of its own scientific principle. Hence we shall here con- sider the difference between the two confessions only, in laying down our view of the divine word, which is the canon, the guide and norm for the doctrine and life of the Church. Catholicism and Protestantism. i^ 20. Inasmuch as both confessions profess a general belief in God as Father, Son, and Holj'- Ghost ; inasmuch as both reject the ancient and the modern forms of Naturalism and Rationalism, both recognise the truth that the Christiao Church rests upon a Divine Word, derived from the Founder Himself, and delivered to the Church through the apostles. For it is only through the apostles that we have received Christianit}'-, and that Christianity only is genuine, which can show itself to be apostolic. The difference between the confessions does not consist merely in the difference of the relation which thev assign to the oral and the written word of the apostles (tradition and Scripture), but in their different views respecting the scope of the apostolate. The Catholic holds to a living apostolate in the Church, perpetuating itself through all time — an inspiration constantly kept up in the represen- tatives of the Church. He claims to possess in the decisions of the councils and of the pope a divine utterance invested with apostolic authority, as infallible as the word of the first apostles which was spoken in the world ; and he claims to have in these decrees the infallible interpretation, an infallible con- tinuation, of that first apostolic word. The Evangelical ^6 CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. [Sect. 2a cliurch, like the Catholic, confesses that the Spii-it of the Lord is with the Church unto the end of the world, leading it into all truth ; but that perfect union of the Spirit of God and man, which is called Inspiration, and which constitutes the essence of the apostolate, it assigns exclusively to the be- ginning of the Church, to the period of its foundation ; and, although it admits the relative validity of tradition, it yet regards the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament as the only perfect, authentic and absolutely canonical expression of the original fulness of the apostolic spirit. But the dift'erence here indicated rests on another which lies still deeper — a difference in the conception of the essence of Christianity itself The Evangelical Church views Chris- tianity as a Gospel ; as glad tidings of the new life and the new creation in Christ, offered to men as a free gift of heavenly grace ; whereas the Catholic Church for the most part regards f\iith as a new law, and Christ as a new lawgiver. Hence, representing the Gospel merely as an external autho- rity to which the believer must yield, and not recognizing the principle that the gospel is to be freely accepted, and to be developed anew in every believer's inner experience, the legal church, for this very reason, cannot be satisfied with a canon of faith which, like the Holy Scriptures, contains what the church needs for the preservation of the time doctrine only in an undeveloped though completed form. It requires a canon in which every particular element is developed ; it requires a hierarchy endowed with power to expound the law with infallible authority in all its single precepts. Catholicism does not inquire after any internal canon found in the Chris- tian experience of believers, but lays all the more stress on the external canon. It inquires little about hoiv faith appro- priates Christianity (fides qua creditur), for it is secretly afraid of the conflicts accompanying the development of fciith, and of the possible errors and abuses that are inseparable from it ; but all the more carefully does it inquire what the object of the faith is {fides quae creditur). The Catholic doc- trine of the infallibility of the church, i.e., of the hierarchy, is thus to be traced ultimately to this legal character of the church, and to the efforts, growing out of tliis, to guaran- tee to itself, in an external manner, the genuineness of its Obser.] Catholicism and pkotestantism. 27 Christianity — efforts by which it removes itself farther and farther from the very thing that is to be guaranteed. Observations. — The Catholic train of thought, in which truth and error are so strangely mixed, is, in its main features, the following : — What are the external marks of genuine Christianity ? For from the earliest times Christianity has stood over against Christianity, since doctrines entirely opposed to each other have been preached in the name of Christi- anity. The fundamental criterion can be none other than " the apostolical." The Christianity which lays claim to genuineness, must be able to prove that it dates from the apostles. It is only through the apostles that we have Christianity at all ; only from them can we learn what should be called by that name. They are organs of reve- lation and have the spirit of inspiration ; the.'r minds are the pure, colourless medium through which heavenly truth casts its rays into history ; only through this me- dium can we see Christ as in a true mirror. Therefore the church in its contest with heresy has the task to per- form of making sure to itself its union and connection with the mind of the apostles. But by what means does the church preserve its union with the apostles ? The Scriptures are used by heretics as well as by the church. In order to understand them the Christian faith is ne- cessary ; for, considered in themselves, they may be inter- preted in the most diverse ways, and every heretic reads them through his own spectacles. Besides this, they are not sufficient ; for many questions may arise that are not answ^ered in the Scriptures, and yet the church in every stage of its progress needs the apostolic spirit for its guidance. The Bible is only an historical monument of this spirit ; but the spirit itself must reveal itself through the church as a living, present realitj'". Hence, it is con- cluded, there must be in the church a living continua- tion of the apostolic mind. The first form in which this living continuation, this actual presence, of the apostolic mind is conceived, is Tradition. As distinguished fiom the apostolic turitings, Tradition signifies the apostolic word, which propagates ^8 CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. Ohscr. itself from generation to generation as a living power, orally delivered by the apostles to their disciples, and handed down by them to their successions. Says Ire- naeus, " We can coimt up the bishops who were installed in the churches by the apostles, and their successors down to the present time. Even if the apostles had left us no writings, we should still have to observe the order of the tradition which they gave to those to whom they in- trusted the churches. Many barbarians believe in the gospel of Christ, having written that gospel in their hearts, without paper and ink, by carefully preserving the old tradition." (Irenaeus adv. haer. III.) If, however, tradition is to be the actual presence of the apostolic mind, its propagation must not be a matter of accident. In the course of time tradition itself needs in- terpretation, and in this, human caprice and error must be excluded. Therefore there must be in the church an order of teachers appointed by God and endowed by spe- cial grace with the power to hand tradition down pure and unadulterated. The apostolate is continued in the episcopate. Together with their office the apostles com- municated also their spirit ; and, as they themselves were inspired, and only by virtue of that inspiration were strictly organs of revelation, the same is true of their suc- cessors. The apostolic spirit continues its deathless exist- ence through the mystical body of the episcopate, which body becomes visible in the councils. The Spirit of in- spiration hovers over the councils, explains and interprets the words which He himself spoke in past ages, and which He himself wrote in the sacred books. What the sacred authors meant ; what they often made known only in enigmatical hints because the church could not yet bear it ; that is now revealed in the course of time by the same Spirit who came upon them on the day of Pentecost, and under whose inspiration they composed their writings. The sacred stream of inspiration, therefore, flows through all history. The Spirit accompanies his church in the form of the episcopate, and through it establishes the unity of the church, raising it above all the changes of time, and making it indestructible. This unity comes CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANl iSM. 29 into view in the councils, the spiritual body of the episco- pate. The single bishop, as such, is not inspired : he is inspired only in so far as he is one with the body. The diversity of the individual minds that are present at the council are made harmoniously to blend in the unity of Spirit, the Spirit moving each one to give up his one- sidedness for the sake of promoting the unity of the body. But now the unity of the body must become visible in one supreme head. The episcopate must be centralized in the primacy. The immediate presence of the apostolic spirit would not be perfectly realised if it were not concentrated in one real person. The council is a person only as having a moral character ; it only re- presents, signifies the unity of the church, but is not that unity itself, for all bishops cannot be present at tlie council ; moreover, controversies may arise among the representatives, and then the inspiration is only with the rtiajority. But in the Pope, as the supreme head of the church, the unity of the church is embodied, not in a mere so-called moral person, not in a mere majority, but in a real, individual person ; in him is collected the whole fulness of the divine power and intelligence of the episcopate ; in him the Spirit of inspiration has found its personal focus. He is the pure, personal mirror for the Spirit of truth, whose rays are scattered throughout all Christendom. As Peter held the primacy in the circle of apostles, so the Pope holds it in the circle of bishops. In the doctrine of the primacy the system of Catholicism reaches its climax. From the Roman chair the apostle is still speaking on whom, according to the will of the Lord, His church was to be built ; here the church has an infallible testimony of the truth, ele- vated above all doubt ; for, as the central organ of in- spiration, the Pope has unlimited authority and power to ward off all heresy. In so far as he speaks, ex catJicdra, his consciousness is a divine-human consciousness ; and he is so far vicarius Ghristi. As Peter once said to the Redeemer, " Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life," so all Christendom turns in the same way — not to Christ, but to the successor of Peter. 30 CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. [Sect. 21. The system of Catholicism grows, therefore, out of an offort to grasp revelation as a purely objective thing ; — which involves the task of assuring itself of a living and infallibly apostolic organ for the continued apprehension and communication of the revelation. But in the midst of these efforts the oiiginal object of knowledge has been gradually forgotten. Catholicism has developed itself into a great system of guarantees of Christianity ; but Chris- tianity, the thing itself, which was thus to be guaranteed, has been thrown into the shade. The opposition between genuine and spurious Christianity has been gradually re- duced to the affirmation and the negation of these guaran- tees. To attack the infallibility of the Pope and of the Church is the prime heresy. The spirit of reformation awakes in the Church, and bitterly complains that Judaism and heathenism have crept in under the mask of the hierarchy, that the Word of God has been perverted by the commandments of men (traditiones humance), that Christ is virtually no more preached, that faith has become to most men an unknown thing, because nothing is preached but faith in the Pope and the Church, instead of the one, the saving faith in the Redeemer, as the true Mediator between God and man. The critical investiga- tions provoked by the spirit of reformation demonstrate that the external criteiia of truth, employed by the Catholic Church, are invalid ; for tradition stands opposed to tradition, council to council, pope to pope. The Catholic a^ .ertion that the Church has a visible unity is unhistorical ; it is an idea that is refuted by facts. The Reformation leaves the guarantees of Christianity, and goes back to Christianity itself ; and, committing itself to the guidance of the Spirit who is not confined to Rome, but raises up and endows free Christian men wherever and whenever He wills ; it undertakes the work of purifying the temple, of cleansing the Church, by means of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Scriptures. §21. It has often been said that the principle of Protestantism is that of suhjedivlty — a proposition which, expressed in this indefinite, general form, is liable to misconception The aim Sect. 22. j CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. 31 of tlie Reformation was as much to regain objective Christi- anity, to sepai'ate the true tradition from the false or at least transient traditions (traditiones huonancc), as to revive subjec- tive, personal Christianity. What the Reformation desired was neither exclusively the objective nor the subjective ; it was the free union of the objective and the subjective, of the thing- believed and the person believing, of divine revelation and the religious self-consciousness. This free union of the objective and the subjective the Evangelical Church claims to have secured through its so-called formal and material prin- ciple, which expresses the two sides, the objective and the subjective side, of the same truth. By the term formal principle, is meant the Holy Scriptures ; by the term material principle, is meant justification by faith. On a correct appre- hension of these principles, often misunderstood and often insipidly treated, depends a correct understanding of Pro- testantism.* §22. It is obvious that, unless our Christianity is to be a merely subjective, private Christianity, there must be a canon of Christianity, independent of our subjective moods and circumstances. Now, the objective canon for all Christianity is, it is true, nothing else than Christ himself., as a holy, personal Redeemer ; and, if it is asked where we find Christ, our first answer is the same as the Catholic gives — in the Church, which is the body of Christ, the organism of which He is the living, omnipresent Head. In the Church, in its confessions and its proclamations, in its sacraments and its sacred services, the exalted and glorified Redeemer is pi'esent, and bears living testimony to Himself in behalf of all who believe through the power of the Holy Ghost. It is, however, on the other hand, obvious that a correct relation to the exalted, glorified Christ is conditional upon a correct relation to the historical Christ, to the historical facts of His revela- tion, without which one's conception of the exalted and glorified Christ loses itself in the vagueness of mysticism. Hence, when we say that we must look for Christ in the Church, we are led back to the Apostolic Church. The Apostolic Church exhibits to us not only the original form of * C'f. Dorncr, Das Princip. unscrer Kirclie. 82 CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. [iSecl. 2a Christian life, and the relation which it presents, as sustained by Christian believers to the invisible Redeemer after His ascent to lieaven ; but it is, at the same time, the possessor of the original image of Christ, the image of the Word, which became flesh and dwelt among us ; the image of Christ as He was historically revealed. Now, it being certain that the Apostolic Church, as opening the progressive development of the Church, contained Christianity in its genuine form, it is quite as certain that there must have been delivered to us a trustworthy exhibition of Christianity as it originally was. For this is certain: either no one can now make out what Christianity is ; in which case Christianity is not a divine revelation, but only a myth, or a philosophical dogma; or there must have been given a reliable tradition of the manner in which the apostles conceived and received Christ, whereby every succeeding age is enabled to preserve its connection with the Apostolic Church, and with genuine Christianity. So far we agree with the Catholics. Our views, however, differ from theirs, in that we, with the Reformers, find the perfect, tnistworthy form of apostolic tradition only in the Hoi}'' Scriptures of the New Testament. As to tradition — in the sense of something handed down by the Church, side by side with the New Testament — we hold, with the Re- formers, that there is nothing in it which can, with such cer- tainty as can the Scriptures, demonstrate that it had an immediate or even mediate apostolic origin, and that it has preserved through long ages its pure, apostolic form. We hold, therefore, that the Scriptures are the ultimate touch- stone of criticism (lapis lydius), which must decide on the Christianity of tradition. Even though we must say that the essentials of Christianity are found in tradition, that the Spirit of Christ controls its development, still experience teaches that inspiration was not continued in the post-apostolic times, and that very soon, in the formation of traditions, there arose a mixture of canonical and apocryphal elements. Facts likewise show that, in those periods of the post-apostolic church, in which the growth of tradition was not controlled by the Holy Scriptures, a purely apocryphal tradition has been developed. The oral tradition of the apostles had to be exposed very early to disfigurement. But in contrast with Sect. 23.] CATHOLICISM AND PKOTESTANTISM. 33 the fleetincf and mutable character of tradition, the Scriptures remain a firm, immovable witness. Littera scripta manet. This faith in the Scriptures which we share with the Re- formers; this faith in their sufficiency as a canon of Chris- tianity, in the completeness of the apostolic testimony therein recorded ; this faith is a part of our Christian faith in Pro- vidence, in the guidance of the Church by the Lord ; — a faith which, like every form of faith in Providence, cannot he demonstratively proved, and can be confirmed only by the lapse of time. Within the sphere of our own experience, however, we are able to see, in view of the evident uncertainty of tradition, that without the Scriptures we should have no firm hold, and should not be able to distinguish what is canonical from what is apocryphal. Without the Scriptures a reformation of the Church in that long period of corruption, of darkness, would have been impossible ; and a new founding of the Church, or at least a new mission of apostles, would have been necessary.* The principle maintained by the Reformers respecting the Scriptures assumes primarily a negative attitude towards tradition ; but its relation to tradition is by no means merely negative, although often so conceived. Tliere are indeed those who hold the principle in such a form that they admit nothing to be valid in the Church whose Biblical origin cannot be in the strictest manner authenticated. But this view is entirely foreign to the Lutheran Reformation, although traces of it * Cf. Thiersch : Vorlesimgen uber Katholicismus mid Protestantisrau?, vol. i., p. 320. " This is an act of the confidence which we put in Divine Providence and in the guidance of the Church by Ciirist and His Spirit. For it was not unknown to the Most High that a time would come when whatever was derived from the apostles in the ibrni of unwritten tradition would, through the long- continued fault of men, become unstable and unreliable, and that His Church would need a sacred, uncorrupted record accessible to all, such as His people under the Old Covenant had had in the writings of Moses and the pro- phets. For, if the Holy Scriptures are not the refuge to which the Church is dii-ected to fly, since that which is called tradition has become the object of just offence and insoluble doubt, then the Church has no refuge at all, no secure position, and there would be left for her nothing but to wait to be a second time miraculously founded, or to look for a new mission of apostles." As is well known, the gii'ted and highly-respected author has himself drawn the latter inference— in which we cannot follow hini. 34 CATHOLICISM xVND PROTESTANTISM. [Sect. 23. may be found in the Swiss. The Lutheran Refomnatiou, in its original form, took a positive attitude towards both dog- matic and ritual tradition, in so far as it was cecutnenical tradition ; i.e., so far as it bore the mark of no particular church, being neither Greek Catholic nor Roman Catholic, but simply Catholic. Accordingly, the Evangelical Church adojjts the oecumenical symbols, the Apostolic, the Nicaean, and the Athanasian, as the purest expression of dogmatic tradition. Thus Luther's Catechism retains, in the Ten Commandments, the three Creeds, the Lord's Piayer, and the doctrine of the sacrament, of baptism, and of the altar, the same fundamental elements in which primitive Christianity was propagated among the common people through the darkness of the middle ages. Thus, too, the Reformers pointed to a series of testi- monies out from early Church, a consensus patrum, in proof of the primitive character and age of their doctrine. And Luther and Melanchthon recognized not only the importance of dogmatic tradition, but manifested also the greatest reve- rence and caution in reference to ritual tradition. The im- portance which they attached to this is shown especially in their retaining and defending, in opposition to the Anabaptists, infant baptism, a custom which is certainly dei'ived not chiefly from the Scriptures, but from tradition. The same thing is shown by their continuing to observe the principal Christian festivals ; for these, too, were the product of a continued tra- dition. In like manner they retained man}'- portions of the liturgy and of the hymns of the Church, wdiich had acquired a value for all Christians. Thus we see thatj by their prin- ciples. Scripture and tradition were not torn asunder, but only placed in their proper relation to each other. And even if it may be said that the Reformers, finding themselves en- tangled in a web of traditions, in which true and false, canonical and apocryphal elements were almost indissolubly mixed together, sometimes cut the knot instead of unt^'ing it^ — this proves nothing against the principle of the primacy of Scripture. For this rule cannot be annulled or altered so lon-T as nothing can be put beside the Scriptures that ih able to vindicate for itself the same dcj^ree of authority. Observations. — Some among us have thought that the Reformation could be bettered by making simply the bap- Obscr.] CATHOLICISM AND TEOTESTANTISM. 35 tismal formula or the Apostles' creed the supreme canon of Christianity,* instituted for this purpose by the apostles, or rather by our Lord himself, and suited by its simplicity, brevity, and positiveness to serve as an unchangeable rule of faith and of biblical interpretation. They claim that the Reformers, by taking the Scriptures for their rule, opened the door to all the vague and capricious notions with which the Evano-elical church has been inundated. But, with all reverence for the Apostles' creed, we can still see in this proposal no improvement on the doctrine of the Reformers. We admit the various abuses superinduced by an unspiritual treatment of the doctrine respecting the supreme authority of the Scriptures. We acknowledge the great importance attaching to the Apostles' creed as the oldest oecumenical testimony of the Chi-istianity of the first centuries. We concede that this symbol, as to its con- tents, may be called apostolic, not only because we find every part of it adopted in all places where the church has had an existence, but also because we find it in the New Testament expressed with the same or with equivalent terms. We know, too, that this symbol is not a mere extract from the Scriptures, the canon of which was not completely fixed until about the same time that this sym- bol itself seems to have received its final form (in the 4th centuiy). But in thus conceding that it is the oldest and purest tradition that has come down to us from the an- cient church, and that it will always maintain its position as the foundation of all creeds on account of its biblical simplicity, we yet by no means concede that it contains in itself an authority supreme and all-decisive. Rather, we must maintain that its authority rests upon its scriptural- ness, i.e., not on its derivation from, but on its agreement with, the language of Scripture. We cannot concede that this symbol is designed to be the highest critical autho- rity in the church ; we must rather maintain that its whole character is such as to make it quite unfit for such a use. The Apostles' creed cannot of itself be a supreme and ultimate authority, because, although in substance apostolic, yet butli in its original and its present form it * The well-known view of Gruudtyig. 30 CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. [Sect. 2S. is a post-apostolic piuduction. It has, to be sure, been maintained as, even in its present form, a work of tbc apostles or even of our Lord himself. But in reply to such an unhistorical assertion, we only need to point, in the first place, to the complete silence of the New Testa- ment respecting it; and, in the second place, to the un- refuted and irrefutable disclosures that have often been made concerning the various forms which this symbol is found to have had in the early church ; forms which, it is true, agree in substance, but by no means give all the parts of the symbol completely, while those that are given are not in all equally complete. From this it is evident that the creed was not handed down by the apostles from the beginninof in a finished form, but is the result of various attempts to present the substance of what the apostles taught ; finally assuming the fixed form which now the whole church adopts. Those, however, who maintain that this creed is of strictly apostolic origin, base their proof not so much on history as upon an idea of what must necessarily have belonged to the founding of the church. In- asmuch, they say, as the church promises salvation to be- lievers, the question must necessarily, upon its estab- lishment, have been definitely answered, — What and how much must be believed in order to salvation ? In other words : the conditions of salvation must at the very outset have been fixed in a manner that should serve for all time ; they must in all periods find a concurrent expression in connection with the rite of baptism. There- fore, the confession now made at baptism must have been heard at the first Christian baptism, not a single article can have been taken from, not a single article added to it ; for in that case the church would have changed its creed, would have changed the conditions of salvation, if it had declared at one time a shorter, at another a longer summary of doctrines to be necessary to salvation. But the idea underlying this argument is as little satis- factory as is the argument from .history, and seems more suited to the legal than to the evangelical church. The apostolical traditions which have come down to us, and Ohser.] CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. 37 the general experience of Christendom, teach us that Chris- tianity is not primarily a new law, but a new life and a new creation ; hence it follows that, when it is asked what is necessary to salvation, we must pronounce the saving- agent to be not chiefly a definite quantum of doctrinal propositions, but the communication and reception of the principle of the neiv citation, for which reason our elder theologians describe fides salvifica as justifying faith in the PERSON of Christ. In other words : The apostolic tradi- tion given us in the Scriptures shows us that no fides ex- plicita is absolutely necessary to salvation ; but that a fides implicita — i.e., a faith which, though undeveloped and unconscious, involves the principle and substance of what the Creed expresses with the definiteness of a prescribed rule, — is also a saving faith. It is true only of lifeless, mechanical things {e.g., a ring or a chain), that the whole cannot be had without having all the parts. In living, organic objects, it is verj^- possible to have the whole with- out having all the parts. But eternal life, and the things that belong to eternal life must, as all will allow, be con- sidered as subject to the laws of life. Hence we find in the Gospels that our Lord adjudges salvation to men who join themselves by faith to Him as the Redeemer, without this faith being developed throughout in all its parts. " Thy faith hath made tliee whole," He said, in many in- stances, without laying down any other conditions. So He declares Peter to be blessed because he confesses Him to be the only begotten Son of God, although many articles of the apostolic creed are lacking in this con- fession. (Matt. xvi. 16, 17.) This notion of a de- finitely limited quantum of propositions as being absolutely necessary to salvation, calls our attention back to the articuli fundamentales which were laid down by the early Protestant theologians ; who, notwith- standing their correct definition of the fides salvifiica, never- theless designated the articuli fundamentales as those articles the acceptance of which was necessary to salvation. But herein they laid themselves open to the charge of teaching error. For clearly salvation is an individual thing, and the misconception of a truth, while it may in 36 CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. [Sccf. '2is. one individual be no hindrance to his salvation, may en- danger the salvation of another who has reached a higlier stage of mental development. Hence, if we hold fast to the truth that salvation is an individual thing, and yet are not satisfied with faith in the Redeemer as the ground of salvation, as a ])rinciple of life necessarily either present or not })resent, then we must either hold that in this matter there is something which in its individual applica- tions is indefinable, or we shall he in danger of reposing in a certain set of propositions, trusting that, if we only hold to them, we may be indifferent to everything else.* We cannot determine what is fundamental, by its relation to the salvation of individuals, but by its relation to the preservation and growth of the church. Fundamental ar- ticles are those on which are conditioned the preservation and growth of the church in sound doctrine ; mediately, therefore, it is true, the education and growth of the in- dividual ; just as the church, by means of its developed faith, supports and maintains the faith of the individual, which is often in various respects imperfect and unde- veloped. Although, however, the notion of the necessity of fundamental articles is thus connected with that of the preservation and growth of the church, yet this latter no- tion must be always somewhat subject to flux and change, inasmuch as times may come in the course of the progres- sive developments of the church, in which doctrines may be seen to have a fundamental significance which was not before recognized. True, it must be maintained that what- ever is really fundamental miLst at all times have lived and * On this point we fully agree with the excellent sentiments of Julius Miilhr in his work, "Die Evangclischc Union" (p. 20): "As an inalienable acquisi- tion,— derived by the Protestant Cliurch out of the sad decay of its orthodox theolog)', especially in the latter part of the 1 7th century and after, out of the pietistic and Jloravian reaction, and out of the revival of living faith in the pre- sent century — we must regard the conviction that the faith which saves does not consist in the adoption of a scries of articuli fidei fundamentales primarii, but in an absolute and truthful surrender of one's self to the personal Saviour; a sur- render of which the simplest cliild is ca])able. Although this conviction may in the next few years liave to sustain violent attacks and be biandcd as heresy — the attacks have, indeed, already begun — yet it is so deeply rooted in the divinu word and in thu fundamental religious sentiment of the Reformers, that wo can- not but have confidence in its final triumph." Ohscr^^ CATHOLICISM AND PEOTESTAWTISM. 39 moved in the depths of the consciousness of the church ; "but it is hj no means necessary that the church should at aI.1 times have possessed it in an explicit form, still less in the form of a sharply defined formulary. For the first thing, the absolutely necessary thing, is life, life in its fulness; rules, laws, and formularies are secondary, are only relatively necessary. Accordingly, so long as the apostolic spirit in its fulness was alive in the churches, there was, so far as can be seen, no necessity for any other formula of faith than that which was given by our Lord himself, Matt, xxviii. 19 (" in tliename of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost") ; for this formula in- cludes the whole of Christianity, the fulness of which was proclaimed by apostolic lips, and which in actual life made itself eveiywhere felt as a new creation. But after this period of fulness and inspiration had passed, when the church was no longer led by the apostles, when errone- ous doctrines began to force their way, and bring con- fusion, into the churches, then it necessarily became a matter of the greatest consequence to the leaders of tlie church to ^preserve the treasures which had been handed down by the apostles ; and now they began to put the main points of the preaching of the apostles into the shape of a formula, for which a basis had already been given by our Lord himself So too a beginning was made in the collection of the apostolic writings into a canon. The great importance of the Apostles' creed lies in the fact that it was the first work of the post-apostolic church, in which the church repeated, in the form of a creed, what had been orally transmitted from the apostles ; just as a catechumen repeats, and says yea and Amen to, what he has received from his teachers, with the resolution to preserve it and transmit it to the next generation* According to all his- torical evidences the construction of this creed was a gradual process, undergoing many transitions until it finally received the fixed form which it now has. Now, to be sure, the confession of the Apostles' creed must be con- * Of. A. G. Rudelbacli : Ueber die Bedcutung des Apostolisclien Symbol- urns, p. 22 40 CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. [Obser. sidcred as esseutial to the completeness of the baptismal act ; since the church testifies its purpose to train up those who are baptized in tliis faith ; and the baptized must de- sire to be partakers of the faith of the church; though, of course, retaining the right to examine whether the testi- mony of the church agrees with that of the apostles. Nevertheless, it can by no means be affirmed that this confession is the substance of the bajitism itself For no one can maintain that a baptism, without a complete con- fession prescribed by the church, is invalid or must be repeated, in case it is in other respects administered in accoi'dance with the Lord's own appointment. The Apostles' Creed is not only, historically considered, a post-apostolic production ; itsAvhole inner form and contents are such as to prove its insufficiency to serve as the highest critical standard in the church. Every word of it would be unintelligible, if we had not a richer souixe to which we could resort for an explanation. Hence also we find that the church fathers of the first three centuries never sepa- rated tradition from the Scriptures ; and Irenaeus, so often appealed to on the point of the rule of faith, himself calls the Scriptures " columna et fundamentum eccleslae." It is quite clear too that without the Scriptures we should derive from the Apostles' Creed a poor support. Though it is a symbol used at baptism, yet it gives us not the slifjhtest information concerning the sacramental signifi- cance of baptism ; and with a full confession of the Apostles' Creed might be joined such a conception of baptism as finds in this sacrament only a symbolic cere- mony. It gives us quite as little light respecting the Lord's supper. The same is true of the important doc- trine of justification by faith, a doctrine whose funda- mental importance, doubtless, few among us will have the courage to question. Even the doctrine of the person of Christ is so indefinitely stated that both Aiians and Socinians have been able to adopt the creed ; and the latter have always appealed to the harmony of their belief with the Apostles' Creed in order to prove themselves to be good Christians. If it is answered that those who bring heresies into the creed, misinterpret it, and disregard Obser.j CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. 41 the consequences which necessarily flow from the creed we assent to this fully. Only we must then express our surprise at the way in which the Nicene and Athanasian creeds are often depreciated by those who affirm that the Apostles' Creed alone has the right to determine what Christianity is. For, if this creed cannot be understood except as inferences are deduced from it, it would seem to be far safer to adopt that development of it which is pre- sented by the oecumenical councils of the church in those later symbols, — in which, through the aid of the Holy Scriptures, the great and comprehensive truths implied in the earlier symbol are drawn out, — than to fancy that we maybe indifferent to the later creeds as being only a work of biblical scholars ; and yet that any person whatever may Inmself deduce the necessary inferences from the Apostles' Creed, and that too, perhaps, without consulting the Scriptures at all. To leap over the intervening symbols in this way, and go back immediately to the Apostles' Creed, is to imitate the course of the Socinians. But whether it is done from the stand-point of infidelity or of faith, it will always be an unhistorical procedure. We are, therefore, unable to see in this theory respect- ing the Apostles' Creed, any improvement upon the Refor- mation. We can see in it only a reaction against the one-sided view of the authority of the Scriptures, which has displayed itself in so many ways within the Protestant churches ; — a reaction kindred to that of Puseyism in the Anglican church, in which, however, we discern no possi- bility of a new development. §24. The formal pi-inciple of Protestantism, or its objective canon of Christianity, is therefore the Holy Scriptures in their indissoluble connection with the confessing church. But the notion of a canon of Christianity, be it found in the Bible or in the church, points to a conscious mind for which it is a canon. The external canon points to an internal canon, by whose aid alone it can be correctly understood ; and that internal canon is the regenerated Christian mind, in which tlie Spirit of God bears witness with the spirit of man {testimonium spiritus sancti). To the unregen.erated and merely natural mind. 42 CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. {Sect. 24. both the Bible and the church, the testimony of the church in word and in deed, in doctrine and worship, will be nothing more than the outward, sensible presence of Christ was to the unbelievers of His age. Only to that mind in which Cliristi- anity, in which the spirit of the Scriptures and of the church, is present as an inner principle of life, do the Scriptures and tradition unfold their contents ; without this internal canon they remain unintelligible. It has been said that the Bible must be interpreted according to the analog ia Jiclei; but how can such an analogia fidei, such a summary of the essential dogmas of the Scriptures, be obtained without a Christian mind which has come into possession of Christian truth in a manner relatively independent of the Scriptmes ; and which, by virtue of this conception of Christian truth, is able to recognize what is essential in the Scriptures as essential It has been said that the Scriptures should be interpreted accord- ing to the rule of faith (symbolum ax)ostolicu7ri); but by what is the rule of fliith in its turn to be interpreted, unless by the Christian mind, which in this summary of doctrinal proposi- tions can detect the invisible principle which gives them their organic unity, and at the same time is able to distinguisli, in these different propositions, the leading from the subordinate ones, the central from the peripheral ? For all parts in an organism cannot be alike central, alike essential. Lastly, it has been said (by Augustine) that the Scriptures must be inter- preted '^iorpi'jug, in a manner worthy of God and divine things ; but how is this possible, unless the Christian idea of God is alive in the mind ? The idea of this internal canon is the internal and matervd principle of Protestantism. This material principle is usually called justification by faith. But we must here guard against that misconception of it which makes justification by faith only a doctrinal proposition. For then it -would be merely a traditum, an addition to what is positively given, but not, in relation to this, a new side, some- thing a priori. Justification by faith must here be taken as an expression for subjective Christianity, for the regenerated mind, for the new creature in Christ, in whom the certainty of justification through Christ, the certainty of the forgiveness of sins, and of adoption into the family of God, — and, accord- ingly, the certainty of the glorious freedom of the sons of God, Ohser.] CATHOLICISM and protestantism. 43 — is the centre of life. And this new creature, by virtue of its living Christian experience, by virtue of the conception, which it cai-ries within itself, of Christian life and Christian truth, knows itself to be, not a tabula rasa, but a relatively independent centre, to have an a priori existence, in relation, not only to the church, but even to Holy Scripture itself. It is true, Christianity as a subjective thing is born from the womb of the church, and must always stand in a relation of external dependence to the church and the Scriptures ; but, as we above showed in general that man's ^elationtoGod must be changed from one of dependence to one of relative freedom, the same holds true in particular of man's relation to the Christian re- velation. Personal Christianity must, in the course of its develop- ment, come to a point where it no longer stands in a relation of mere dependence to what is imposed from without, but in a free, reciprocal relation to it. It was this self-dependence of the Chi'istian life that displayed itself in an extraordinary degree at the time of the Reformation. Luther's standing- point was the consciousness of " the freedom of a Christian man," the divinely inspired certainty of union with Christ through faith (" Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me," Gal. ii. 20) ; the sure confidence that faith has, not only outside of itself, but in itself, the Spirit that leads into all truth. Governed by these two principles, that of subjective, and that of objective Christianity, in their vital and reciprocal relation to eadi other, he accomplished the reformation of the church ; and on this same reciprocal relation of these factors depends at all tunes the prosperity of the Evangelical Church. Here we meet an objection. Christianity in the individual, enter- ing into this reciprocal relation to external Christianity is not only modified by the individual, but exerts a modifying influence on him, reproducing the Scriptures and tradition in a free form, and thus constructing a new tradition ; as we see in the case of the Reformation, by wdiich new creeds were developed. Now it may be said that this subjective Christi- anity is by no means infallible, beciuse the individual, although regenerated and led by the Spirit of God, is yet not inspired. This we must concede. We grant that the church, so long as it is undergoing the process of development, will never correspond with its ideal. We admit that the Refer- 44 CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. [Sect. 24. mation did not bring the church back to its apostolic or its ideal condition, but that this condition is yet to be realized. But we aflirm tbat it is only in this way that it can be attained. It may be granted that there are many things in tradition, many ti'uths in the Roman Church, which were not duly appreciated by the Reformers. But we maintain that the principle of the Reformation leaves us the possibility of .securing what may have been neglected ; and we maintain, further, that no reformation can ever be effected in spirit and in truth, unless the principle is accepted, that nothing shall pass for truth which cannot stand the final test of the word of God and the mind of man, freely investigating, in the liberty wherewith Christ makes us free. Observations. — When the formr.l and the material principle (the Scriptures and the Church on the one side, and the testimony of the Spirit in the individual Christian on the other) are taken out of their organic connection with, and reciprocal relation to, each other, then false notions of the Church arise. Church history shows us cases in which the Christian Church has only the form of a legal church ; then again cases in which it has merely the form of a school or of a sect. But all these phenomena are to be explained as the dissolution of the vital union, of the vital, reciprocal relation between theprincii)les above described. We will now indicate the chief forms which the Church assumes when the formal principle is maintained and the material set aside. The formal principle, when the material principle is neglected, may be maintained predominantly in the form of tradiiion ; this gives us one-sided Catholicism. In this case the only question asked is, What and how much shall be believed, and how can this be most securely guar- anteed, so as to guard against the evils of individual caprice? Secure in the possession of genuine Christianity, and confirmed by its guarantees, the mind subordinates itself to the church, so that there can be no thought of au internal conflict growing out of the process of testing and appropriating what the Church teaches. When such a conflict takes place, it is a purely individual matter, not springing from the principle of the church itself. Obser.] CATHOLICISM AND PEOTESTANTISM. 45 The formal principle again may, v/ben the material principle is set aside, be maintained predominantly in the form of the Scriptures ; this gives us a new form of the legal Church, such as was seen within the sphere of Pro- testantism in the orthodoxy of the seventeenth century. Here the Scriptures are regarded as a book of laws ; and, the individual Christian, not maintaining a relative inde- pendence over against the Scriptures, is unable to dis- tinguish in the Scriptures between the essential and the incidental, and practices a genuine relic-worship towards the letter of the Bible. That this is a tendency towards Catholicism, is shown by the fact that those who follow it carry the principle on from Scidpture to tradi- tion ; inasmuch as the church creeds are accepted as a rule for the interpretation of the Scripture ; and no divergence from them is tolerated. Secure in the pos- session of the inheritance left by the fathers, secure in the possession of "the pure doctrine," of the genuine presentation of the plan of salvation, they forget that in their inner life they have not experienced what the creeds describe ; that they are calculating with dogmatic for- mulce without possessing the vital, religious realities denoted by the formula}. The plan of redemption has become a mere theory, for which, nevertheless, in the heat of dogmatic strife they display the extremest zeal. How far men had gone in depreciating subjective Christianity, — the testimony of the Spirit, — is most distinctly seen in the controversy of the orthodox Christians with the Pietists respecting the theologia irrege'ditorwni. The orthodox expressly affirmed that the official acts of un- regenerate preachers might be attended with as rich a blessing as those of the regenerate, if only they preached the orthodox doctrines, and that it was possible to pene- tiate into the truths of the Holy Scriptures without a regenerate heart. This is indeed so far true, that thought and fancy may be to a certain degree inspired by Christi- anity without its taking root in the heart. But this ortlio- doxy had become estranged not only from the Christian heart, — the living Christian experience, on which all true penetration into the meaning of Scripture is conditioned, 4-6 CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. [Sect. 24. — but also from the idea of Christianity. By Christian knowledge it meant in reality nothing but a logical and intellectual appropriation of " the pure doctrine " in its consequences. Judgment on this carnal orthodoxy could not long be delayed. Rationalism stood before the door with the assertion that even tlie natural man and the natural reason can understand and expound the Holy Scriptures. And what was Rationalism but a great theologia irregeni' torii7)i which overflowed Protestant Chi-istendom ? Ortho- doxy having lost tlie key of knowledge was no longer able to make a stand against Rationalism, and gradually sank down into that form of supernaturalism in which, faint and ready to surrender, it led a sickly existence. The principle of the authority of the Scriptures now fell into the hands of the rationalists, who maintained it not only to the exclusion of the testimony of the Spirit, but also to the exclusion of all ecclesiastical tradition. Rationalism broke with all the traditions of the Church, seeing very clearly that they were not bone of its bone nor flesh of its flesh. The Church was thus changed into a school in which the learned exercised their acumen in interpreting the Scripture. In its first stage, never- theless, Rationalism had a religious character, and sought by means of a rational exposition of the Bible to purify Christianity, regarding it as one with the truths of natural religion. In its further course, however, it turned against the Scriptures, disputed the genuineness of its books, transformed sacred history into mj'^ths, etc. Although these attacks of the schools on the Bible seem dangerous to many, yet for him who himself lives within the em- brace of Christianity they are of subordinate importance. For the individual Christian will recognize in the Church his objective counterpart, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh ; herein he will find the womb from which his new life was born, the rock from which he was hewn; together with the witnessing Church, he will recognize in the Scriptures the archetypal work of the same Spirit whose workings he feels in itself and out of himself; he will experience the divine power of the biblical "Word in his heart, and leave it to the Christian schools to tight Obs6r.\ CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. 47 the subject out in its scientific form. And when the sub- ject is brought before the forum of science, the history of science shows that, though r;itionalistic criticisms have been able to raise many doubts and make many diffi- culties, yet down to the present day, whenever a positive answer should have been given to the question respecting the origin of the Scriptures, of the Church, and of the new life in the hearts of believers, the answer has been want- insr. Neither Rationalism nor Naturalism has thus far been able to give a scientific explanation of this new creation ; they have been unable to furnish an adequate explanation. While a one-sided adherence to the formal principle leads now to a one-sided catholicizing tendency, now to & rationalistic scholasticism, a new series of one-sided forms of the church appears, when the material principle is main- tained, and the formal principle sacrificed. When the individual Christian severs himself from all connection with history and tradition, and lightly esteems the written word, relying upon his being born of the Spirit, and accordingly needing no Christ outside of himself, because he has Christ in himself, — then originate sects, based on visionariness and fanaticism. Here is displayed the religious a priori, without limitation. As there is in science an a priori, through which thought transforms all nature, the whole external world, into a shadow and alle- gory of itself, so there is a religious a priori by means of which fanatical piety transforms the church and the Scriptures into a mere reflection of the inner, spiritual Christian life which it lives within itself Since this dis- regard of the church and of the Bible is at the same time a disregard of " Christ outside of us," it leads logically to the denial of the miracle of the Incarnation; and then the subjective religion ceases to be subjective Christianity. For what it calls Christ " in us," is nothino- but a o-eneral idea ; what it calls the inner light, is merely the light of nature wrapped in a mist coloured by Christianity. To this extreme, however, not many of the sects have proceeded. Most of them bow to the authority of the Scriptures, but break with the church and tradition. This, however, is their mistake, that they fancy that they 48 CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. [SccL 24. are able to put themselves into immediate connection with the apostolic church. For, as Christianity in indi- viduals owes its birth to the church, so church history and tradition form the c;jnnecting link between us and tlie apostolic church. Although the thread which binds the present with the apostolic church, is not visible and palpable as the Roman Catholics think, yet it extends through the histoiy of the church, thi-ough its doctrines and institutions ; it can be traced with the eye of the Spirit by means of the Holy Scriptures; whereas every independent attempt to establish a purely biblical church must necessarily fail. And although we do not accept in the Roman sense the proposition : evangelio non a^ederem, nisi me suaderet ecclesice auctoritas, yet the principle has a validity which cannot with impunity be overlooked. For, although the church must submit to the authority of the Scriptures, yet it is the church that has to educate the individual and lead him to the sources of the Holy Scriptures, if he is to reach that stage of maturity at which he can himself judge of the relation between what is ecclesiastical and what is Christian. In order to overcome the various forms of one-si dedness here referred to, there must exist an organic, reciprocal, relation between Scripture tradition and the Christian individual born of the Spirit. On this reciprocal relation depends the health of the church ; and, if we conceive a time when these factors shall have thoroughly permeated one another, then will the church have reached its highest earthly goal ; it will have returned through the strifes of its period of development back to the fulness of life re- vealed by the apostolic chuicli as a model for all time. But just because in the Evangelical notion of the church, freedom is one of the factors, the Evangelical Church cannot be expected to enjoy a perfectly uninterrupted progress, but rather to pass through temporary periods of fermentation and dissolution. For where there is free- dom, there are also abuses of freedom. Seemingly the Catholic church knows no such states of disintegration and confusion as does the Protestant. The principle of authority throws a veil over the secret injury, the secret Sect. 25.] CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. 49 unbelief and doubt, that assert themselves within the church. In the Protestant church, on the contrary, all these defects are manifest. Many members of the Pro- testant church, however, have become weary of the abuses of freedom, of arbitrary interpretations of Scripture, of the numerous vague appeals to the Spirit, &;c., and are seized with a longing for surer ecclesiastical guarantees, for a tradition possessing not merely relative, but absolute authority, in order thus to obtain rest. This security they seek, now in the consensus of the first three centu- ries, now in that of the first five or six centuries. "A Catholic current is passing through the world," says Geijer, in one of his last writings ; and this " Catholic current " will become more and more noticeable, the nearer the time of the great religious movements and crises approaches. But to lay down a tradition which can claim to be in itself infallible; to impose ecclesiastical guarantees which shall make superfluous for the church all internal struggles for freedom, will fortunately be impossible — fortunately for the development of freedom, which needs not only a given truth, but a truth which, being given, must continually be acquired anew by an internal process of appropriation. The various manifestations of sympathy with Catholicism exhibited of late, are of use in awaken- ing what in many had been slumbering, viz., an apprecia- tion of the importance of the church and of tradition as the natural connecting link between faith and the Bible. But whenever these sympathies have turned into anti- pathy to the principle and the inmost essence of the Re- formation, they lead, as various facts have lately shown, to Rome, and to a repose in the guarantees which are there ofiered. § 25. The Evangelical church appears in two leading forms, the Lutheran and the Reformed. The Swiss Reformation started primarily from the formal principle, that of the authority of the Scriptures ; whereas the Lutheran originated more especially in the material principle, in the depths of the Christian consciousness, in an experience of sin and redemp- tion. The first Lutheran written creed, the Augsburg Con- D 50 PROTESTANT DOGMATICS. [Sect. 26. fession, has no locus respecting the Scriptures ; in it the Cliristian consciousness gives expression to the truths con- tained within itself, their scripturalness being presupposed. With this freedom, this deHcacy of emotion * which is a spe- cial characteristic of the Lutheran church, is joined a pro- found reverence for what the church has inherited from his- tory. The Lutheran Reformation manifested the greatest caution in regard to tradition, and observed the principle of rejecting nothing that could be reconciled with the Scriptures ; whereas the Swiss Reformation introduced in many respects a direct opposition between the biblical and the ecclesiastical, and in several particulars followed the principle that all eccle- siastical institutions should be rejected unless they could be deduced from the letter of the Bible. In these diverse views of the principle of the Reformation, and in the carrying out of them in the formation of church creeds, there is betrayed a diversity in the tendency of the Christian spirit, which is but inadequately designated by the antithesis between " emotion" and " intellect." "f The antithesis is better expressed by say- ing that the Reformed church, although vigorously protest- ins: against the lesfal church of Rome, is nevertheless in- fected with the legal spirit, whereas the germ of the fulness of the gospel is found in Lutheranism. Still the antithesis can be fuDy seen only by considering the difference between the two churches in the main points of their doctrinal sys- tem, especially in that point in which the Christian view of life finds its highest expression, viz., in the doctrine of the sacratnenis. Protestant and Evangelical Dogi\l\tics. §20. The Theology of the Evangelical chui'ches must be de- veloped out of their principles. Qualis ecclesia, talis theo- logia. It must have therefore not only a biblical and ec- clesiastical, but also a free, scientific character, by virtue of the idea of Christian truth that is involved in living faith. * GemiitJisinnerlichkeit, an uutianslatable expression. Literally, " inwaiduess of emotion, or affection." — V. P. Tr. t " GeniUtlilichkeit und Verstandigkeit." Sect 27.] DOGMATICS AND THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 51 Under the first two forms the formal principle, under the lat- ter the material principle, find in dogmatics their place. Observations. — The foregoing statement implies a separa- tion of dogmatics from ethics. What in actual life should not be separated, viz., Christian conceptions and Christian actions, must in science be treated as distinct. In dog- matics the relation between God and man is exhibited as an existent relation, whereas in ethics it is regarded as a relation still future, to be attained by the free efforts of believers. Hence dogmatics presents the Christian sense of God in its repose ; ethics presents the same in its mo- tion. This difference is, it is true, only relative, but it is yet of importance that these leading aspects of the gene- ral theme be kept apart, since otherwise the one may easily be supplanted by the other, especially the ethical by the dogmatical, ethical principles being treated only as supplements to the dogmatic principles, and not as being in themselves independent. The statement that dogmatics is only the scientific expression of the same doctrine which is to be preached, is true only in so far as that ^ihe foun- dation of all Christian preaching — nam.ely, the confession and the testimony of the revealed truth, — finds in dog- matics its corresponding scientific presentation. In so far, however, as the thing aimed at is to introduce revealed truth into the life, to apply it to ourselves and others, — and in Christian preaching the main point always is this, since it should not only impress on us what we ought to be- lieve, but also what we ought to do, — then preaching receives its corresponding scientific presentation and answer in ethics, which science contains the rules and patterns of Christian conduct. Dogmatics and the Holy Scriptures. §27. ^ ^ The biblical character of dogmatics is seen primarily in the fact that the New Testament holds to it the rela- tion of the supreme critical standard, resj^ecting everything that is laid down as dogmatic truth. It is the last touch- stone which furnishes a corrective against ail traditiones 5S DOGMATICS AND THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. [Sect. V. pe'i'TnaneB which have been mixed up with the develop- ment of dogmas. Nothing therefore can be propounded a,? Christian doctrine which cannot be traced back to apostolic testimony and the apostolic course of thought — which can- not be traced back to something that foreshadows it in the statement or intimations contained in apostolic doctrine. But the Scriptures form the supreme canon, not only in relation to criticism, but also in relation to the church as an organism. Dogmatic thought is not only to be tested by the Bible, must not only not contradict the Bible, but it must be organically fructified and continually reinvigorated by the fulness of scrip- tui'al doctrine. As the archetypal work of the Spirit of in- spiration, the Scriptures include within themselves a world of germs for a continuous development. While every dogmatic system grows old, the Bible remains eternally young, because it does not give us a systematic presentation of truth, but truth in its fulness, involving the possibility of a variety of systems. That which is said of the kingdom of heaven, that it is like leaven, which is to leaven the whole lump, is true in like manner of the relation of Scripture to human think- ing. Hence it is correctly said : Theologus in scripturis nas- citur. Theology must always sustain to the Scriptures the relation of a humble receiver, of a constant disciple, and may in this respect be compared to Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to His words. But holding to the Bible the relation of disciple does not forbid, but rather requires, that the contents of biblical doc- trine should be reproduced as the truths of one's own con- sciousness. Hence, when we say that dogmatic propositions must bear evidence that they are based on the Word of God, we must still on the other hand say that one must be able to exhibit them as inward and present truths of consciousness ; accordingly there is to be considered not only the scriptural- ness of these propositions, but also the validity and signifi- cance which tliey have in themselves, apart from the fact that they are written. In proportion as these two demands are complied with, dogmatic propositions have value. So long as the theologian can only pronounce a dogma biblical, with- out at the same time being able to show its inner and per- manent significance, and, vice versa, so long as the theologian Ohser.] DOGMATICS AND CHURCH CONFESSIONS. 53 can only express the religious and ideal significance of the dogma, without being able to prove its harmony with the teachings of Scripture, — so long the problem of dogmatics is unsolved. The use of the Scriptures in dogmatics must not, however, consist in a mere appeal to single passages, or in a comparison of single passages ; this mode of procedure too often betrays the narrow-minded view that nothing is true which cannot be proved to be literally found in the Bible. We agree rather on this point with Schleiermacher, when he says that in our biblical studies there should be constantly developed a more comprehensive use of the Scriptures, in which stress shall not be laid on single passages taken apart from the context, but in which attention is paid only to the longer and specially fruitful section, in order thus to pene- trate the course of thought of the sacred writers, and find there the same combinations as those on which the results of dogmatic study themselves rest.* Observations. — For Christians the Old Testament is sanc- tioned only by the New ; and no canonical authority can belong to it except what belongs to the preparatory testament after that of the fulfilment has come. On account of its profound organic connection with the New Testament, it is of importance not only as an exegetical auxiliary in the study of the New Testament, but as the delineation of the way in which God led and trained His chosen people, as the testament of the law and of prophecy, as the type or foreshadowing of the eternal treasures, it will always be profitable for doctrine, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.-j' Hence we reject the Gnostic view of the Old Testament, that it is of no account to the Christian Church ; but not less do we reject the Jewish view, which would retain in the Christian Church the Old Testament as an independent canon by the side of the New Testament. For the Old Testament is not Idiag £mXv(riug,l and if it is to serve for Christians as present truth, it must first be interpreted TvivfjbaTiKuig, i.e., from the standpoint of the New Testament, as we see it done especially by the Apostle Paul. This is true even of the * Schleiermacher : der Christliche Glaube 4 ed. I., 148. t 2 Tim. iii. 16. +2 Peter i. 20. 54 DOGMATICS AND CHURCH CONFESSIONS. [Sect. 28 Psalms and Prophets, the most evangelical portions of the Old Testament. For, rich and exhaustless as are the treasures therein contained for the illumination and edifi- cation of the Church, yet the contents cannot be received by the Christian mind as present truths, without being regenerated by the neiv Spirit of Christianity and in various respects reconstructed. Dogmatics and Church Confessions. § 28. A dogmatic treatise claiming to be biblical, but not eccle- siastical, would CO ipso not be biblical, since the Bible itself points to a confessing church, which is to perpetuate itself through all ages. Dogmatics, in order to be such for the whole Church, must harmonize with the oecumenical sym- bols of the Christian Church, among which the Apostles' Creed takes the first place. But dogmatic works must not only have a meaning for the Church in general ; they must also have a confessional chai'acter — a demand which in our days is made with renewed energy. What "nationalities" are in the world, " confessions" are in the Church ; and althouo-h the thought of a union of Christian churches can- not be given up, yet every union will be objectionable whose only object is to extinguish individuality and reduce everything to a latitudinarian basis. If, now, we ask in what sense ecclesiastical sj^mbols have a canonical character in relation to dogmatics, the answer is — they have it as being norTTKB normatcc, or quia et quatenus cum sacra scHptura consentiunt. By the first of these specifications {quia) we would indicate the essential oneness of church doctrines with biblical doctrines ; by the second {quatenus), that there is nevertheless a relative difference between the ecclesiastical and the Christian, between the letter of the sj^'mbols and their spirit, between form and idea. Accordingly, in announcing that we intend to adhere not only to the oecumenical symbols, but also to the creed of the Lutheran Church, particularly as this is given in the Augsburg Confession, we mean thereby that we intend to hold to that type of sound doctrine which is therein contained, being convinced that we are in this way Obser.] dogmatics and chuech confessions. 55 most sure of preserving our connection with the Apostolic Church. We do not regard the Lutheran Confession as a work of inspiration ; yet no more do we regard it as a mere work of man, inasmuch as the age of the Reformation had a special vocation to bear testimony and put forth confessions, just as had those periods of the Church in which the earlier creeds were formed. We make a distinction between type and formula. By the type of Lutheranism we mean its ground form, its inextinguishable, fundamental, and distinctive features. As we recognise in a man or in a people an inward peculiarity, an impress, which belongs to them from eternity, never appearing in perfect clearness in time, and yet recognisable even amidst temporal imperfections : so we can detect in the Christian confessions a church individuality, a fundamental abiding form, which amidst change and growth, is constantly reproducing itself; whereas the theological for- mulce in which this form is expressed are more or less characterized by relativity and transitoriness. To wish to canonize formulae and letters in the symbols, betrays a defec- tive view of history ; for the symbols originated in the midst of great movements of particular periods, and in various ways exhibit the traces of the peculiar theological culture, the peculiar needs and defects of those times. We know very well how scandalously the distinction between " spirit and letter," " idea and form," may be abused ; but this abuse will not prevent its proper and necessary use. And a candid consideration will always lead to the conviction that the chief importance to be attached is not to the formulae, but to the fundamental conceptions of the Church. Therefore, while dogmatic science on the one hand holds to the Church creeds a relation of dependence, it must, on the other hand, in this relation be free to pass critical judgments on the formulae of the symbols, and also to exhibit the funda- mental ideas contained in these sjanbols in a fresh form, corresponding to the present stage of the development of the Church and of theology. Observations. — The opposition between orthodoxy and hete- rodoxy is in the Protestant Church other than in the Catholic. Catholics, assuming the perfect identity of the church and of Christianity, make orthodoxy something 66 DOGMATICS AND CHURCH CONFESSIONS. [Ohser. merely historical, that finds a perfect expression in the doctrinal systems of the church. Protestants, on the other hand, maintaining that there is a relative difference between the church and Christianity, must regard orthodoxy as something which not merely is, but is yet to be, attained. During the course of historical development, the difference between orthodoxy and heterodoxy is relative and variable ; and propositions which at one time on account of their novelty are branded as heretical innovations, may at a later time be justly pronounced orthodox, or purer presen- tations of the essence of Christianity. Every new dog- matic presentation of truth must thus necessarily contain propositions which have the appearance of beingheterodox, since otherwise it would leave everything as it was, and would be only a repetition of the dogmas of the church without attempting to evolve a purer conception of Chris- tian truth. It is manifest that that only is both seemingly and really heterodox and heretical, which under the sem- blance of Christianity denies its essence. Hence all heresies ai'e derived from Judaism and heathenism, that is, from the standpoint of " the old man," and are always forms of Judaism or heathenism under a Christian mask. There- fore, heresies are chiefly developed in regard to the doctrine of the Pei'son of Christ, who is the centre of the new revelation. As it is from this starting-point that new views of God and man are unfolded, so it is from this that heresies proceed. Branching out from this point in every direction taken by Christian thought, they are in their in- most essence nothing but attempts to conceive Christianity as a renovated Judaism or heathenism. But just as there must be in every healthy, social development, a constant effort to eliminate the foreign elements which seek by stealth to gain admission, in order to check and undermine that which is peculiar in the development : so there must be in the Christian church a constant effort to eliminate the Jewish and heathen elements {croiyjTa roZ 7i6aiJ.o\j), which seek to creep into the church under the semblance of Christianity ; and this effort implies a constant spiritual return to Christ, and, what is inseparable from a true con- ception of Christ, the gift of being able to try the spirits.* * 1 John iv. 1. Sect. 29.] DOGMATICS AND THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF TRUTH. 57 Dogmatics and the Christian Idea of Truth. §29. In saying that a mind, regenerated by Christianity, must be able to reproduce from its own depths the doctrines of the Bible and the church in a scientific form, we express only what is involved in the doctrine, rightly understood, of the testimoniutn spiritus sancti. The witness of the Spirit is taken in a sense quite too limited, when it is taken as merely a practical testimony in the conscience, the feehngs, tlie heart, and not at the same time as a testimony borne by the Spirit of God, as the Spirit of truth, through the medium of the thoughts and cognitions of men. We know that the chief witness, on which all else depends, is that which is borne in " demonstration of power ;" yet Christian knowledge is one element which belongs to the completeness of the testi- mony which the Spirit bears to the truth of Christianity. In thus attaching to the testimonium spiritus sancti not only a practical, but also theoretical importance, and in presuppos- ing in the believing mind a Christian truth-idea which meets the truth positively presented to it ; — in thus assuming a i-elatively independent source of Christianity, different from the Scriptures and from the church, we are propounding in respect to speculation, nothing but what, in respect to ethics and art, is conceded by all without hesitation. In respect to morals, we are obliged to assume a (relatively) a priori source of Christianity ; for, to say nothing of Christian ethics as a science, there has been developed in life, in history, a variety of ethical views and notions, which, it is true, modify, and are modified by, the views and notions originally given, but are by no means a copy of them ; they have, therefore, been developed out of the inmost depths of the Christian conscious- ness, by which new problems have been both presented and solved. In regard to aesthetics, we are obliged to make the same assumption. For Christian art has produced a world of new creations, which have, to be sure, their archetypes in the positive revelation, but yet point to a Christian idea of beauty which must have stirred in the minds of the artists themselves. Now, as we may thus speak of a . Christian idea of morality. 58 DOGMATICS AND THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF TRUTH. [Sect 80, without which all independent ethical productivity would be impossible ; and, as we may speak of a Christian idea of beauty, without which Christian art would be inconceivable ; so we must also be able to speak of a Christian idea of truth, without which Christian science, all the dogmatic labours, whose monuments are found in the most important works both of ancient and modern times, — nay, even the construc- tion of church creeds, would be impossible and inconceivable. Observations. — The biblical expression for this idea is Wisdom,* not wisdom as a divine attribute, but as a divine thought which, before the creation of the world, played before the face of God. Hence, objectively considered, the Christian truth-idea is the holy wisdom-thought which has assumed shape in the Christian revelation, and in the life-giving fulness of this revelation constitutes the regu- lating, distinguishing, and co-operating principle which amidst variety pi'oduces connection, plan, and purpose. But this holy wisdom-thought must also be present as an " inner light," in the human spirit which has believingly received the revelation ; it must give light to the believer's own view of revelation. By virtue of this sacred wisdom- thought, which in the believer's consciousness is the principle of thought, human thought is able to search the deep things of revelation (1 Cor. ii, 1 4), to trace out the connection and the foundation of Christian conceptions, and to endeavour to produce a mental counterpart of the eternal, revealed wisdom. §30. Christian knowledge is a knowledge in faith ; for only through faith can the human mind become partaker of divine wisdom. Credo ut intelligam. A gnosis, which starts from an autonomy that discards all assumptions, which assumes that the human mind is able by its own powers to evolve the truth out of itself, which desires at the outset to occupy the theocentric stand-point, forgets that the human mind is created, and denies the creatureship of man. For faith confesses that human knowledge is that of a creature, that it must rest on experience, that it must begin with an immediate percep- tion of, and contact with, its object, that it must receive the * Prov. viii., Sirach xxiv., Book of Wisdom vii. Sect. 31.] DOGMATICS AND THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF TRUTH. 59 light of truth as a gift which comes down from above, and that it must stand in a relation of humility and trust to the giver.* For human knowledge all independence is conditioned by dependence ; all self-activity, all intellectus activus, is con- ditioned on susceptibility, on intellectus passivus. The false gnosis which will not believe in order to know, denies not only the creatureship of man, but also his sinfulness and need of redemption. For it is only through regeneration that the human mind, darkened by sin, can be lifted up to that stage of life and existence, at which it can have a correct view of divine and human things. But regeneration expresses itself in faith. The assertion of Christians, that faith is the mother of knowledge, is substantially confirmed by the analogy of all other spheres of human knowledge ; for all human knowledge has its root in an immediate perception of the object. And, as it is useless for one who lacks hearing to talk about music ; as it is useless for one who has no sense for colours to develop a theory of colour, the same holds true respecting the cognition of sacred things. " The Strasburg minster," says Steffens, " and the Cologne cathedral, tower up high into the air, and yet, like Herculaneum and Pompeii, they have been to whole generations buried, and men have not seen them, because they lacked the faculty." And so, we may add, there are whole generations who have not seen, and do not see, the Christian Church in history, although it is like a city on a hill. They have no eye for it because they have no faith. §31. By its " credo ut intelligam " Christian dogmatics is distinguished from that form of knowledge which starts with the proposition, " de omnibus duhitantum est," so far, namely, as this proposition means that thought must cut itself loose from all presuppositions and start off on a voyage of discovery, in order to find truth, be the truth what it may. In Christian knowledge the motive power is not doubt, but faith. Yet we may allow the existence of a sceptical element in Christian theology, if we use the expression to denote the critical and dialectic impulse contained in faith. Since faith finds itself * Cf. the Author's " Dissertation von der Autonomie des Menschlichen Selbstbewusstseins. " 60 DOGMATICS AND THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF TRUTH. [Sect. 31. in a world of sinfulness, of falsehood, and error ; and since the church has the world not only out of itself, but in itself, faith must have a tendency to criticise, to try the spirits whether they are of God, to test whether the church and Christianity coincide, to test itself in order to assure itself of its own genuineness. And, since faith is also a cognition (§ 8), it must have a dialectical impulse to make clear to itself the antitheses involved in its own trains of thought. Christian faith is very different from artless credulity ; and what has been said in recommendation of childlike and simple faith must be under- stood cu7)i grano sails; for true simplicity of faith requires one to try the spirits and to try one's self. Accordingly, Luther had doubts respecting ecclesiastical traditions and re- specting the genuineness of his own monastic Christianity ; and the different periods of the history of the church show that church teachers who were distinguished alike for the simpli- city and the heroic strength of their faith, felt an impulse to make their ftiith clear to themselves by means of the sharpest dialectics. From the earliest ages of the Church this critical tendency has manifested itself in the sharp line of separation drawn between the proper doctrines of Christianity and here- tical elements. This procedure necessarily, in every case, gave occasion to a dialectic examination of the particular points in question ; for to draw a distinction between orthodoxy and heresy must surely be impossible, unless we test each indivi- dual doctrine by our view of the essence of Christianity ; and test our view of the essence of Christianity by its harmonious conformity with the entire chain of Christian conceptions. In this sense, taking it as critical and dialectic, we may concede the presence of an element of scepticism in dogmatic theology ; to a certain extent we must doubt, not merely in order to know aright, but also to believe aright. But if we break loose from the foundation of faith, if we become regardless of the vital interest we have in Christianity, if we cast aside its fun- damental idea instead of seeking to correct our view of it, and to understand it more completely, and set up our scepticism as an independent source of truth, we shall fall, as the history of Protestantism plainly illustrates, into Rationalism with its all-dissolving criticism and empty dialectics. Observations. — It frequently occurs that thorough-going ^ect. 32.] DOGMATICS AND THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF TRUTH. 61 doubt relative to the foundations of Christianity becomes the means of leading the soul to a living conviction of its truth ; important, however, as may be the influence of such doubt, not only in a religious and moral, but even in a scientific respect, it has nothing whatever to do with dogmatic theology as such. One who entertains doubt as to the very basis of Christianity cannot feel an interest in dogmatic theology ; for his sole enquiry is hog (j.01 ttov gtu> ; a demand which must be substantially satisfied ere strictly dogmatic investigations can begin. §32. The proposition — credo ut intelligam — to which we have just given prominence in opposition to every form of au- tonomic Rationalism, is not to be taken either in the scholastic sense or in that of the theology now commonly designated the " Theology of Feeling." The scholastic divines fell very soon into a mechanical view thereof ; for they drew the substance of their faith without any sort of critical examination from the creeds prevailing in the church, and started with preliminary principles which totally lacked an inner reality answering to their outward form. The mystics, and more recently Schleiermacher, struck into a path directly opposite to that pursued by the scholastics : — they viewed faith as an inner vital principle, and constituted religious feeling the guide and pioneer of religious knowledge. In consequence, how- ever, of the mystics misapprehending the nature of revelation, and Schleiermacher's defining dogmatic theology as a descrip- tion of religious states and experiences, both of them fell into a new error, relatively to the " credo ut intelligam." Dog- matic theology became in their hands a mere doctrine con- cerning the nature of a religious man, or of piety, instead of being a doctrine of the nature of God and His revelation ; it treated rather of man's need of Christianity and his experi- ence of its workings in his soul, than of Christianity itself, in its eternal truth and its claim to be accepted as such by men. Thus defined, it relates simply to the subjective ordo salutis; whilst the facts of revelation, the pillars and foundations of the truth, are left to be accepted and moulded, agreeably to the particular ideas and needs of individual believers. If the full significance of faith as an inner vital principle is to be 62 DOGMATICS AND THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF TRUTH. [Sect 82. recognized, it must be considered not merely as the experi- ence of the practical workings of Christianity, but also as the intellectual organ, or the contemplative eye, for the domain of revelation. This latter aspect is recognized by speculative mystics and theosophists (like Joseph Bohme), who teach that faith itself involves a vision. And although they, in their turn, fell into an error, the error of attaching too slight im- portance to the historical, attention was called in a profound manner to the objective religious relation of faith. Taking for granted therefore the relation to an objective historical revelation, we define dogmatic theology, not primarily as the science of " the believer " (the proper and only place for treat- ing fully of the " Cliristian Believer," his character, life, and the roots thereof, is Christian Ethics) ; but as the science or doc- trine of faith {fides quce creditur), not primarily as a system of pious emotions, but as the science of the truths of the Christian Faith ; not primarily as a description of the states of pious souls, but as a development of the believing view of revelation. We are aware, indeed, — and many illustrations of the fact might be adduced from the history of speculation, both in former and modern times, — that the demand for such an objective mode of consideration has frequently led to revelation being treated in a purely theoretical spirit by men totally destitute of religious experience ; has given rise to an intellectualism which paid no regard to the practical aspects of Christianity : but this is by no means necessarily involved in the idea of a knowledoje which, besides beino- the know- ledge of religion, is itself religious. Whilst we cannot regard feeling as a principle of knowledge : — for the proper and only princiiole of knowledge is the idea, the thought of the divine wisdom ; — we must maintain it to be a condition. The idea, which is the true principle of knowledge in matters of faith, can never arise save in a man that is actually religious ; and our intellectual eye grows dim the moment it ceases to draw nourishment from the heart ; it becomes like the lamp of the foolish virgins which went out for lack of oil. On this ground the profoundest thinkers of the middle ages justly demanded that Scholasticism should be united with mysti- cism, that the intellcetus should not be without affectus. Observations. — The view of dogmatic theology as the science Obser.] dogmatics and the christian idea of tkuth. 63 of pious states of mind seems to be favoured by certain features of the Reformation ; for example, by the special and new stress it laid on the "fides qua creditur" and conse- quently on the subjective ordo salutis, in opposition to the vain and barren metaphysical discussions indulged in by the scholastic divines. The Application was made with new force, Edification was aimed at with new zeal, as we remark in particular in the well known and somewhat one-sided passage of the First Edition of Melanchthon's ** Loci," where he says, — " Non est, cur multum operae ponamus in locis illis supreniis, de deo, de unitate, de tri- nitate Dei, de mysterio creationis, de modo incarnationis. Quaeso te, quid adsecuti sunt jam tot saeculis scholastici theologistae, quum in his locis solis versarentur ?- Hoc est Christum cognoscere, heneficia ejus cognoscere." In the subsequent editions he omitted this passage, and without doubt because he felt that it might easily give rise to a serious error — the error, namely, of con- stituting as the standard of Christianity the needs of men and their experience of its workings, instead of esti- mating the needs of individual men and human experi- ences by the standard supplied by objective Christianity: the error of being so greatly concerned for the "believer" and the state of his soul as to be indifferent to the "Faith" [Fides quce creditur); of being so intent on edi- fication as to forget the substance which is to edify, and the ground on which the building up is to be effected. This has shown itself clearly enough in Protestant Churches in times past, and manifests itself also in the arbitrary atomistic religiousness of the present day. Luther, whom no one can charge with being indifferent to the edificatory aspects of Christianity, drew a very sharp distinction between the thing itself and its application {res ipsa et usus) ; for example, between the sacraments in themselves and the use made of them ; and insists on the necessity of being clear about the doctrines which tell us what Christianity, what the thing itself is ; because other- wise our talk about the practical, about the application and use of the doctrines will be foolish. Now the aim of dog- matic theology is to exhibit the " fundamental form of 64 DOGMATICS AND THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF TRUTH. [Sect. 85. sound doctrine " in such a way that it may be a guide to the public proclamation of the Gospel with due reference to the special circumstances and culture of any particular age. But besides this practical end, dogmatic theology is also an end in itself. For though we allow the perfect justice of the remark of Melanchthon adduced above, so far as it relates to useless speculations, which have no- thing to do with life ; we still consider the knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of God to be in itself a good, and deem the knowledge of the glory of God to be a source of edification. Even if we make the acknow- ledgment that God's ways are unsearchable ; this very knowledge of the divine unseavchableness and the adora- tion of God's hidden wisdom will acquire greater force if we first traverse the path of human knowledge. The ignorance which remains after a man has attempted to know, is a very different thing from the ignorance of him who has never made such an attempt, who has never known the speculative impulse. As there is a knowledge peculiar to the theologian, to the c^erus as distinguished from the laity, the laid (b}^ which we do not mean anything at all like the gnostic distinction between exoteric and esoteric) ; so also must the theologian have a sense of ignorance which the layman has never experienced. Per opiio<ionerri this may be seen from the circumstance that theological pride is as often associated with esoteric ignorance as with esoteric knowledge ; just as philosophic pride reveals itself as frequently under the mask of a Soci-ates as in the garb of a Paracelsus. § 33. The task of dogmatic theology, therefore, is to set forth Christian views in the form of a connected doctrinal sys- tem. This process is primarily an explicative one, that is, its first business is to unfold the elements contained in Christian intuition, to develope the inner connection existing between them. But we cannot undertake to explain or unfold, with- out feeling also the impulse to speculate or comprehend ; in other words, we cannot be content merely with exhibiting the connection between the various parts of what we find given to our hand, but we desire also to understand the why and where- Sect. 33.] DOGMATICS AND THE CHEISTIAN IDEA OF TEUTII. 65 fore : the goal of systematic theology is not merely the ita but the quare. A thorough explanation will be unable to avoid antitheses of thought, antinomies, which require medi- ating, or reconciling ; for, as Jesus Sirach says, " aU the works of the Most High are two against two, and one against the other" (eh. xxxiii. 1 6) ; and the essential feature of speculation is to reconcile antagonisms in the higher unity of the idea. If our exhibition of Christian doctrine do not rest on a speculative vision, it will either be a mere outward thing, a thing of the understanding, or limit itself to its purely practical significance and applications. Many, therefore, as may have been the doubts entertained by an Irenaeus and a Luther too, regarding the efibrts to attain a speculative com- prehension of Christian truth, we find everywhere in their works traces of the action of that contemplative eye which views individual details in the light of the one fundamental idea. We grant too that the latter was right in asserting that dogmatic theology as a thetic (positive) theology has to do in the first instance with the ita and not with the quare ;* but must at the same time deny the possibility of separating the explicative from the speculative action of the mind by any fixed and impassable line of demarcation. Every ita contains a hidden quare, which, the moment we undertake a thorough explication, is sure to come to light and summon us to seek after the higher kind of comprehension which we designate speculative. We must never forget, indeed, that this specula- tive comprehension is precisely the fragmentary part of our knowledge ; whereas faith embraces in its intuition the entire fulness of the truth — a fulness which will never be exhausted by any explicative or speculative efforts of the human mind. But, just as they have always been put to shame who pre- tended to have attained the comprehension of everything ; so, and not less, have they been put to shame, who have sought to set a limit once for all to human comprehension, to mark a " non plus ultra." beyond which no one could ever advance. For it has always become evident subsequently that there was a " plus ultra ;" and the boundary lines supposed to be fixed * Luther often complains of the curiosity of the scholastic sophists with their constant quare, and admonishes his readers to be content with tlie ita. F 6G DOGMATICS AND THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF TRUTH. [Scct. 34. showed themselves to be fluctuating, by being actually re- moved. A healthy mode of looking at things will recognize therefore that speculative comprehension is itself a very mo- bile and dialectic conception which cannot be settled with a mere dry Yea or Nay ; with the assertion, that it must either bo perfect or not exist at all, for it is itself a groiving thing. Any conclusion arrived at in comprehending Christian truth will therefore never be more than relative ; each solution of the problem will be a new enhancement thereof; the conclu- sion to which we have brought our knowledge will contain a " divinatory " element pointing to another and still higher solution.* ^ 34. The scientific method followed in systematic theology is partly apologetic and partly dogmatic, in the stricter sense. As apologetic it confirms and justifies Christian truth by the negation and overthrow of what is either non-Christian or un- Christian : as dogmatical, it investigates and exhibits Christian truth in its inner and essential richness. The first develop- ments of Christian dogma, arising as they did out of struggles with Judaism and heathenism, bore a predomi- nantly apologetic character, one might even say, polemic character ; for from the Christian point of view Apolo- getics and Polemics, defence and attack are inseparable from each other.*!- But, because the spirit of Judaism and heathenism encountered by the early church still continues under a variety of forms to stir in the world, it is necessary that systems of Christian truth should continue to overcome the world with their weapons of criticism. Besides, the dis- tinction between the apologetic and the dogmatic, in the stricter sense, is merely relative ; for, as on the one hand, error and pretence can only be thoroughly laid bare in the * Concerning the distinction between the explanatory and the speculative methods of development, and concerning what is merely relative and transitory in this distinction, see Sibbern's Treatise, Beidrag til Besvarelfen af det Sporgs- maal : Hvad er Dogmatik ? (Philos. Archiv. und Repertor. Heft 3 und 4.) t See 1 Peter iii. 15 — " Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear." 2 Cor. X. 5 — "Casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalttth itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. " Sect. 35.] DOGMATICS AND THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF TRUTH. 67 light of a positive knowledge of truth ; so, on the other hand, the full power of the truth is first revealed when it vanquishes contradiction, § 35. We have finally to consider the relation between dog- matic theology and philosophy. One thing is clear, that dog- matic theology is totally opposed to heathen philosophy which aims at arriving at truth by its own means. As Christianity entered into the world with a call to repentance and conver- sion, and with a doctrine drawn from a source totally differ- ent from philosophy, its necessary influence was, of course, to lead away from the wisdom of this world. But, having itself given birth to a new sum of knowledge, to a system of theology, the question arises whether there is room for a Chris- tian philosophy alongside of Christian theology, and in what relation the two stand to each other ? We take for granted at present that there is such a thing as Christian philosophy ; we take for granted, further, that it is subject to the same fun- damental conditions of knowledge as theology, that is, that it must start with the credo ut intelligam : but we distinguish between the former and the latter as follows — philosophy, even when Christian, is a knowledge of the universe, a systematic view of the world as a whole ; theology is the knowledge of God. The distinction is, it is true, merely a relative one, but still a distinction. Philosophy directs its search to the divine law which pervades the universe, and is fulfilled by the vari- ous circles of the world of nature and the world of spirits; and aims to understand Christianity as the fulness of the laws of the world. Philosophy, therefore, begins with the manifold variety of objects contained in the world and reduces them to the kingdom of God as their one centre, in whose light they all become intelligible. Theology, dogmatics, on the con- trary, takes up its point of view from the very first at the centre, makes the one, the kingdom of God, as such the exclu- sive object of its investigations. Even Christian philosophy must begin with the universe and its variety and endeavour to show in a series of general contemplations and enquiries, that Christianity is the highest force of existence and life. Dog- matics, on the contrary, takes up its position in the church ; and seeks to exhibit the doctrines of the Christian Faith in 68 DOOMATICS AND THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF TRUTH. [Ohser. their inner inherent connection with each other. So far, how- ever, as dogmatic theology has the apologetic aspect to which reference was made above, it stands connected with tlie philo- sophy of religion. We may, therefore, say philosophy sets forth Christian knowledge in its universal aspects ; theology in its central significance. Philosophy is at home everywhere; the home of theology is the church. Observations. — The peculiar distinction between theology and philosophy becomes clear also when we compare men who have a talent for philosophy with those whose talent is for theology. The talent for philosophy manifests itself in the discovery of categories which admit of application to all the various cycles of existence, and thus set forth the entire world in a new light. For example, the distinctive characteristic of the system of the first Christian philoso- pher, John Scotus Erigena, is its idea of the " divisio na- turae" the way in which he carries out the idea of the uncreated, creating, and created nature. In the system of Leibnitz, the Monad is the all-comprehensive category by which the entire world is set in a new light ; in Spinoza's Bj^stem, " substance ;" in Fichte's, " the Ego and the non- Ego ;" in Schelling's, " the Absolute ;" in Hegel, " the Idea." Every new system of philosophy presents us with new general definitions, by means of which the thinker hopes to find his way through the labyrinthine edifice of the world ; and the reality of his philosophy depends on the force and efficiency with which he is able to carry out his design. The productiveness of the theolo- gian lies in a totally diflferent sphere. It manifests itself, not in the discovery of new categories of the world, but in the development of the old categories of revelation with new vigour into a complete system of religious and eccle- siastical knowledge. Take, for example, the categories, " sin and redemption," " law and gospel" — how they be- came to Augustine, to the Reformers, and to Schleier- niacher, the source of a new view of Christianity, Ortake the doctine of the Trinity, " the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost;" how it opened to Athanasius, and indeed, to the theologians both of the middle ages and of modern times, the possibility of giving a new re- Sect. 86.] DOGMATICS AND THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF TRUTH. 69 presentation of Christian truth. Or think of the expres- sions, " this is," " this signifies," connected with the doc- trine of the Lord's Supper, and the dispute about the real presence: what a determined influence they had on the entire character of the Lutheran and Reformed Church, at the age of the Reformation. Doctrinal or dogmatic pro- ductiveness is at home in this central sphere ; philosophic productiveness bears a more encyclopaedic character. § 36. Dogmatic theology enters into a reciprocal relation, not only to Christian, but also to non-Christian philosophy. As the church exists in the world, the mind of the church must develope itself in connection with and relation to the culture and wisdom of the world ; the relation of dogmatic theology to philosophy must be not merely a polemical relation, but also one of recognition ; in other words, it must seek to appro- priate and work up the elements of truth, which every real system of philosophy contains. But in entering into such a relation to philosophy, theology is very liable to fall into an error — an error which made its appearance at a very early period of the church's history and which constantly re-appears — the error, namely, of Syncretism, of concluding a false Con- cordat and unholy alliance with philosophy. The result of such an alliance has always been that theology has borrowed its light from philosophy, that a non-Christian was a substituted mode of looking at questions, and that to dogmatic theology might truly be applied the words, " Aristotelera pro Christo vendere." We find an uncritical mixture of dogmatic theology and philosophy, for example, under various shapes in the works of the Alexandrian divines, where the categories of Platonism are frequently substituted for Christianity. The same experi- ence was repeated during the middle ages in the case of divines under the influence of Aristotle. And we all remember how the categories of the modern Aristotle, Hegel, exerted a similar influence. These false modes of mediating, this show of effect- ing a reconciliation between faith and knowledge, reminds one of Augustine, who says in his " Retradationes " that during his Platonic period he found Plato in the gospel, and supposed himself, in this way, to have effected the reconciliation of re- ligion and philosophy. When Christianity spoke of the wis- 70 DOGMATICS AND THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF TRUTH. [Sect. 36. tlom of this world he inieipreted it to refer to a wisdom which rests in the sensuous, in the xoV/xoj a/dSjjrdj, and does not rise to the xoV/xos vorin'i. When Christianity spoke of the kingdom which is not of this world, he interpreted it to refer to the kingdom of ideas ; and the man who lived in the kingdom of ideas was the spiritual, regenerated man, in opposition to the psychical, natural man, and so forth. Relatively to such modes of reconciling philosophy and theology, which in all essential features have been frequently resorted to again in our own day, we cannot insist earnestly enough on the neces- sity for theology to rest content with the " foolishness " of the Gospel ; on the duty of not sacrificing its own wealth for the mere semblance of clearness ; on the danger of trying to secure premature clearness and ripeness. For by anticipating in this manner that true, inner development from the inherent central principle of Christianity, it will lose both substance and form, both the truth and true clearness ; seeing that such true clearness is born of the darkness of mystery. Luther says truly, " he who means to philosophize with profit in Aristotle, must first become a fool in Christ." We must, therefore, lay down the canon, that it is the duty of theology in the first instance, and predominantly, to treat philosophy sceiDtically and critically. But such a sceptical and critical relation to philosophy necessarily involves conscientious efibrts to pene- trate really into it, and thoroughly to investigate it ; it is as different as possible from the relation recommended by some who treat the two as clean and unclean food ; who say, con- cerning the latter, " Taste not, touch not," without reflecting that their own theology, which, whether they call it biblical or ecclesiastical, is in many respects a word of man, may perhaps contain many impure elements, of which philosophy might cleanse it. When they say, indeed, that nothing can be learned from a philosophy which is not pervaded by the spirit of Christianity ; — it is true, that such a philosophy can give them no direct information regarding the kingdom of God ; but indirectly, it ma.}- instruct them, so far as every real system of philosophy throws a new light on the kingdom of nature, which is the preliminary condition of the kingdom of grace. Tliey forget that it is the same Logos who works in tlie kingdom of nature and in that of grace ; that the germs Sect. 36.] DOGMATICS AND THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF TRUTH. 71 of the latter lie scattered about in the domain of the former. The logical and ontological investigations, pursued by philo- sophy, in the various forms which it has assumed in the course of its historical development, supply a foundation of preparatory instruction for all science. Logic and onto- logy are contained in tlieology, and condition its develop- ment ; as was shown with peculiar clearness during the im- portant conflict that took place in the Middle Ages between the Nominalists and .Realists ; a conflict which has re- appeared in every form of modern philosophy. But every system of philosophy of any profundity, supplies the intellect in a pneumatological respect, with a fermenting element which theology must in its own way assimilate and work up ; notwithstanding, that when the same propositions are found occurring both in philosophy and theology, frequent occa- sion will be found for reiterating the old saying, " Two may say the same thing, and yet it is not the same." Those who try thoroughly to follow out the injunction, " Touch not, taste not," will soon fall into the danger of contenting themselves in false security with their traditional theological systems ; and repeat as often as they may, that Christian knowledge must be living and not dead, their Christian knowledge will be one, between which, and the natural life of man in its highest utterances, there is no vital reciprocity. As our motto, therefore, we will take, instead of the words, " Touch not, taste not," those others addressed by Paul to the Corin- thians (1 Cor. iii. 22), " All things are yours, whether Cephas or the world ;" — which may surely be taken as equivalent to, " whether the wisdom of the Apostles or the wisdom of the world, whether Peter and Paul, or Plato and Schelling, or Aristotle and Hegel;" although certainly it is also meant that we should draw a clear distinction between the wisdom of the Apostles and the wisdom of the world. THE CHEISTIAN IDEA OF GOD. THE NATURE OF GOD. §87. Tlie God of revelation is not a hidden God ; He is not that indefinite dsTov, which is but another name for the dark root and cause of finite existence, and a mere blind force : nor is He the thought which orders the worlds, and which, being incapable of thought or resolve itself, is really identical with the order of which it is the source. The God of revelation is a Spirit, (John iv. 24). Being a Spirit, He reveals Himself in the first instance as " the Lord ; " but considered in the fulness and truth of His nature. He is not merely "the Lord," who keeps Himself distinct and apart from the world, but eternal " Love," which reconciles the world with itself, (1 John iv. 16.) We have no intention here of proving the existence of the re- vealed God ; we propose simply to glance at the conceptions formed of God apart from revelation, in which man gave expres- sion to the knowledge of Deity which he arrives at by nature, — a knowledge related to revelation as the elements of a science (ffroi^iTa Tou xoa/Mou) are related to its full development. The representations of the Divine nature given by revelation will thus gain in clearness and certainty : and by considering the " proofs for the existence of God," we shall be furthering tlie knowledge of His nature. § 38. The various proofs for the existence of God, though gene- rally acknowledged to be formally invalid in a syllogistic point of view, are profoundly significant as indicating the general starting points for the development of the idea of God primarily 73 74 THE NATURE OF GOD. [Sect J»». dwelling in the human mind. They mark in a general way the principal stages of the knowledge of God arrived at by man independently of the positive revelation contained in the Scriptures. The manifold witnesses for God which man finds in and arouna himself are here reduced to certain general prin- ciples, and the various and intricate ways by which the human mind is brought to God, are indicated by the summary results of thought. Man rises to God and to the knowledge of the divine nature in two ways — by the contemplation of himself and by the contemplation of the world. The latter method is embodied in the cosmolofjical and teleolooical aro-uments : the former in the ontological and moral. But no one of these methods conducts man to a true knowledge of the nature of God so long as he is ignorant of the revealed testimonies which Christianity awakens around us and in us. Observations. — Whatever be the point of view from which the subject is considered, God is defined to be the God of the " world " and of " man ; " the knowledge of His nature, therefore, is conditioned by the knowledge possessed of that world and that human spirit, for which He ap- pears as God. Hence, also, whatever the point of view, the substance of the idea of God answers to the signifi- cance attributed by man to himself, and the world which he inhabits. A superficial knowledge of the world and self leads to an equally superficial knowledge of God. Where the world is treated as a mere seeming, and human life as an empty play, it is impossible that a true idea of God should spring up ; only where the world and man are recognized as having in a relative sense, being, life, and freedom in themselves, as this is first brought properly to liglit by Christianity, can we think aright of God. § 89. The cosmological argument or the " argumentum e con- tingentia mundi" takes for its starting point, the finitude, transitoriness, contingency of the world, without paying at- tention to the internal distinctions between the various kinds of existences, and especially without regarding the essential distinction between the kiiinrdom of nature and the kinofdom of freedom. The world here is merely the domain of external antagonisms of contingent, changing phenomena, whose forms Sect. S9.] THte NATURE OF GOD. 75 come and go in an eternally revolving circle. Everything is transitory — man no less than the flower of the field. But so certainly as finite existences dissolve and perish ; even as cer- tainly does the eternal ground into which they are dissolved, and out of which they issue remain ; so certainly as the world has no real existence in itself, but merely the show of an existence, even so certainly is its existence not its own exist- ence, but that of another beinor, of the Divine Being. This is Acosmism, xosi^oi a-MCiioi;. The fundamental idea of this line of argument, to wit, the idea of God as universal being, is distinctive of pantheism in all its forms ; and the feeling of the transitoriness of the world which corresponds to the above idea, is the characteristic and fundamental feeling of every form of pantheistic religiousness. But the God of this argu- ment and this religiousness is a hidden God, about whose nature, though we live and move and have our being in Him, nothing is known save that He is power and necessity. This is the idea which lies at the basis of Oriental pantheism, which regards the Deity as the life of the universe, eternally giving birth to and eternally annihilating existences. Spino- zism was its philosophical revival. What the cosmological proof is in relation to the outer world, such is the ontological in relation to the inner world of self-consciousness ; the result is the same, to wit, acosmism. Reflecting upon itself, and shutting out every determinate form of thought, every determinate subject of thought — re- flecting on thought simply as thought — the mind falls back on God as the eternal ground of thought, the eternal possi- bilit}'' of self-consciousness with its changing variety of thoughts. Thought itself is inconceivable, save on the pre- supposition of a spiritual being as its inner ground and inner source. Consciousness can only be conscious of itself — consciousness can only be self-consciousness — as it is the consciousness of truth, or of God. Thought can separate itself from every determinate idea, save that of existence. The mind may entertain doubt as to any and every determi- nate form of being, but not as to being in itself; for in the very act of laying down a proposition — which is an impossi- bility without the copula is {esse) — it is compelled to afiirnj being in general. The mind may be sceptical as to every 7b* THE NATURE OF GOD. [Sect 40. determinate form of the idea of God, but it cannot call in question the idea of God as the first being, which is the principle of thought itself Self-consciousness and God, tliought and truth, are therefore inseparable. But because the ontological proof of the existence of God treats God simply as " pure truth," it establishes merely the general possibility of a knowledge of God ; it does not give us any actual knowledge of Hira. That form of religion whose object and nourishment are " pure ti-uth " is pantheistic mysticism. In mystical self-contemplation the soul seeks to free itself from all shews and unrealities, by regarding itself as the point of revelation for deity, as the " pure light" in which all finite thinking is consumed and swallowed up. §40. The cosmological argument conducts us, as we have seen, to a God who is mere power and necessity ; the teleological argument glorifies this power and necessity into freedom and intelligence. Whilst the cosmological argument takes as its starting-point the transitoriness of the world, the teleological begins with the consideration of its glory. This latter point of view is peculiar to the western mind ; to which has been given an insight into the domain of history as distinguished from that of nature. The world is not mere shew and seem- ing ; it is a reality, rich in meaning, and subserving a great design ; it is a grand combination of inner rational ends and means ; to this feature of the world life owes its value and significance. Finding, however, that every one of the various ends subserved by the vital forces of the world limits some other end, and that every end becomes in its turn a means, we are led to regard all these limited ends as means to one great, ultimate, self-realizing end, to wit, the absolute Idea or God. The contemplation of nature from the teleological point of view reveals God to us as the indwelling, formative activity of the world, as its organific soul {natura naturans) ; the contemplation of the human mind, from the same point of view, reveals to us God as the all-ruling Spirit of the world, wlio, by the dialectical process of history, evolves Himself a.s His own result. This is the theology of pantheism, or of the immanent God ; which has found expression in some recent sy.stems of philosophy. The teleological spirit of the world is O'mr.'] THE NATURE OF GOD. 77 here identical with the teleological order of the world. God and the world are but two sides or aspects of one and the same unity ; there is in reality no relation of contrast. The moral argument for the existence of God is the sub- jective aspect of the teleological one. As humanity cannot be satisfied with a God who is merely the God of nature and not the God of history, so is it unable to find rest in tlie on- tological God to whom we are led by pure thought : — hu- manity yearns for the God apprehended in conscience. In contemplating our ethical nature, we find that the law which raises its voice in the human breast requires unconditional submission of the will, and we are led to believe in a moral government of the world, whose aim is the good and the pro- gress thereof onwards to complete victory over evil. Fichte, in particular, carried out this thought, looked at from the pantheistic point of view, in his doctrine of God as the moral order of the woi-ld. The religion of those who take this view consists in a mystical surrender to the moral rule to which mundane aflfairs are subject ; in a self-sacrificing readiness on the part of individuals to give up their life in the service of the idea. So long as God and man are not viewed as dis- tinct from each other in the manner of the Scriptures, the existence of personal relation of love between them is impos- sible. On the view first referred to, God has real existence only in so far as we ourselves by our moral endeavours pro- duce Him ; what the God-inspired man does is God ; God and the kingdom of God are one. Observations. — The teleological is the fundamental category of thought in its developed stage. It is the category of freedom ; indeed, in its deepest significance it is the cate- gory of Christianity itself The ripest thinker of the Greek world, Aristotle, regarded " the idea" as having a teleological character. Thought, during the middle ages, •was guided and ruled by this category. The battle be- tween Leibnitz and Spinoza was a battle for its validity. Existences must be considered as standing in relation not merely to causae efficientes, to their immediate causes, but also to causae finales ; indeed the causae effccientes them- selves must be conceived as moved by the causae finales, or in other words, by the eternal rational ends meant to 78 THE NATURE OF GOD. [Sect. 41. be subserved by created objects — which ends, although in one respect yet awaiting realization in the future, must in anotlier respect be supposed to be ah-eady oijerative. We cannot fully understand present realities unless we look forward to the result intended finally to be attained. Present actualities thus acquire a double significance, and receive a double explanation. The natural explanation recognizes solely causae efficientes, and looks upon every- thing as the product of the next working forces : the spiritual explanation finds everywhere a deeper signifi- cance (ymvoia) ; it gives another turn to the natural, em- pirical explanation, by showing that the phenomena of nature and history have an end other than themselves, an end fixed by Divine wisdom, which, whilst lying out beyond, is now working in them as their motive prin- ciple. The whole of modern speculation has a teleologi- cal character. But the antagonism between pantheism and theism manifests itself the moment a deeper view is taken of the teleological principle according to which the world is created and ordered. §41. The teleology of pantheism is self-contradictory ; for, accord- ing to it, God, as a Spirit, is the result, without being at the same time the presupposition of the world's development. So far as pantheism recognizes in God the foundation of all exist- ence. He is simply the slumbering thought, which does not think itself, but with instinctive necessity unfolds itself in successive developments in the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of history. As a Spirit, therefore, God is merely the God i/g ov, but not the God hi oh ra 'xavra. But such a God is not the absolute, the all-perfect Spii'it ; for the marks of a creature cleave to Him. He is not truly the eternal Spirit ; for his spiritualit}'^ is acquired in time, and He presses forward in the finite Spirit of man, through a progressus in injinituin, after real existence, without ever actually attaining it in ful- ness. In Him power and wisdom are disjoined ; for as a creative force the world-spirit is blind ; and as seeing wisdom He is incapable of creating. Only through the medium of the spirit of man has He some remembrance of that which He produced as tlie dreaming spirit of nature ; " how He then Sect. 41.] THE NATURE OF GOD. 79 oi'dered the heavenly bodies, formed the earth with its various substances, gave animals and plants their organisms ;" — this also is " the reason why man, or God in man, is now able to understand the laws of nature ;" although, with all His know- ledge He is not able to affix one leaf to a common nettle.* Not only is this conception of God unsatisfactory, as opposed to the true idea of perfection, but it does not supply a suffi- cient explanation {ratio siijfficiens) of the existence of the world. For to trace back the marvels of nature and con- sciousness to a voSg working instinctively, or a natura naturans, is to give an explanation, that itself very greatly needs ex- plaining ; and one is iuvoluntai'ily reminded of Lessing's words that " many persons leave off reflecting where they ought pro- perly to begin." We too recognize in nature an unconscious activity of reason — we trace it in crystals, in plants, in the artistic impulses of animals ; in history too we recognize an unconscious activity of reason, the highest individual embodi- ment of which, we designate genius ; this is all matter of fact ; but it is hy no means a matter of course that it is so, and this is, therefore, precisely the point at which that 6av/xd^iiv, that wonder ought to be excited, which Plato calls the beginning of philosophy. For the very question with which we have to do is — How is a rational instinct possible, that works plastically, like a blind force, and yet carries out the plans of wisdom ? We, for our part, are unable to conceive such a blind rational activity, save as a natura naturans^ which is itself naturata, as grounded in a creative and wise will, revealing itself in the laws by which the vital operations of creation are everywhere ordered. The variously compli- cated concatenation of rational means and ends which co- operate both in nature and history, to the realization of some purpose, necessarily implies a self-reflective princi])le, which determines itself and all other things. But the only principle which really implies its own existence, and which postulates everything else for itself, the only principle which has power over itself, which does not lose itself in the product of its activity, which returns more profoundly into and on itself * Compare Strauss, Dogmatik I. 351 ; where we cannot but be reminded of the old saying in the book of Job (xxxviii. 4): " Where wast thou, when I laid the foundations of the earth ? " 80 THE NATURE OF GOD. [Sect 4a every time that it goes forth from itself, is will, personality. God is a person, that is, He is the self-centralized Absolute, the eternal fundamental being, which knows itself as a centre, as the / am in the midst of its infinite glory (Isaiah xliv. 6.), which is conscious of being the Lord of this glory. He is not the undefined klov, but do; ; He is seeing omnipotence, in the depth of whose wisdom the end which the world is destined to serve, and of which the creature only becomes aware in time, was eternally contained in the form of a counsel. Tlie world is accordingly not merely a system of eternal thoughts, but a system thoroughly worked out from eternity, and the signs of the presence of reason which we find in nature and history, viewed in their inmost significance, must be pronounced to be revelations of the will of the God of creation and providence, of Him who makes known in the world His eternal power and Godhead (Romans i., 18 ff!) The ontological and moral view thus acquires pro- founder significance. That eternal something, without the presupposition of whose existence human thought is an in- soluble riddle, is the thinking energy, the true God {Deus verax), who pervades all spirits, leads them to wisdom, and scatters all deception and mere seeming. And the obhgation which we feel we are under to fulfil the law written in our hearts (Romans ii. 14 fF.), is in its deepest roots an obligation to obey the personal Will, the holy Being, who speaks to us through our conscience, and thus reveals Himself as the invisible One, in conjunction with whom we know what we know (cON-scieTis). §42. Against the belief in the personality of God, pantheism has always objected that the ideas "absolute" and "personal" contradict each other. " As the absolute, unconditioned, unlimited being, God must be one and all ; as a person, He can only be conceived as limited, bounded by a world which is not part of Himself ; and this is opposed to the idea of the absolute." We cannot allow, however, that this contradic- tion really exists. The existence of created beings distinct from God, is not such a limit as to clash with the idea of a perfect being. When pantheism calls the omnipotent Creator of heaven and earth a limited being, it forgets that the limi- Ohser.] THE NATURE OF GOD. 81 tation in question, so far as it deserves the name, is self-limi- tation, and that self-limitation is inseparable from a perfect nature. The inward fulness of the divine essence is reflected in the inner infinitude of the divine self-consciousness, and God thus has possession of Himself and the fulness of His being. An all-perfect being, which should be unaware of its own perfection, would lack one very essential element of per- fection. God limits His own power by calling into exist- ence, out of the depths of His own eternal life, a world of created beings to whom He gives, in a derivative manner, to have life in themselves. But precisely in this way above all others — that He is omnipotent over a free world — does God reveal the inner greatness of His power most clearly. That is no true power which refuses to tolerate any free move- ment outside of itself, because it is resolved to be and to do everything directly and by itself: that is true power which brings free agents into existence, and is notwithstand- ing able to make itself all in all. In other connections. Pan- theists are fond of laying stress on the idea of inner infini- tude ; but they forget it the moment they allude to God. To Him they apply the idea of external infinitude, of ex- tensive absoluteness — instead of the idea of intensive central absoluteness ; and all the objections brought against the personality of God, converge at last in the irrational re- quirement that God shall be Himself the Universe (unum versum in oTimia), instead of being its Lord. Observations. — The apostle Paul traces the rise of heathenism to the circumstance that men did not worship God as God, but served the creature more than the Creator. In a certain sense, indeed, they were serving God ; for it is the power of His Godhead which moves in created things; the objects of their worship were divine powers, divine ideas. But they did not worship God himself; they did not worship Him as God, as the Lord. They were blinded, as the ancient author of the Book of Wisdom .says, by the beautiful forms of mundane things, and did not consider how much more beautiful must the Lord of these things be in whom beauty takes its rise. They marvelled at the might and force working in created objects, but considered not how much mightier F S2 THE NATUKE OF GOD. [Ohser. He is wlio i^repared them (Wisdom xiii. 3, 4). In other words, they accepted the derived, instead of the unde- rived Absolute. For in a sense, to wit, so ffir as it is a divine fulness, a totality of divine forces and ideas, the universe can be designated the Absolute ; only it is the derived, and not the original Absolute, In reality, therefore, there can be only two religious and two scientific systems — the Pantheistic and the Theistic ; — the former having for its highest, the derived absolute, the universe ; the latter based on the original absolute ; that is, on God as God. The antagonism be- tween pantheism and theism, is not merely an antagon- ism of science, of schools, but in its deepest roots, a re- ligious antagonism ; it cannot therefore be fought out alone in the domain of science. Our deciding for pan- theism or for theism, depends not merely on thought, but also on the entire tendency of our inner life ; depends not merely on the reason, but also on the con- science, or, as Scripture terms it, on the hidden-man of the heart. Where the mind is unduly absorbed in physical or metaphysical pursuits, the tendency of the inner life is pantheistic ; where, on the contrary, the ethical is recognized as the fundamental task of existence^ the tendency of the inner life is theistic. We are aware, indeed, that among pantheistic thinkers there have been men who must be counted not only amongst the greatest intelligences, but also amongst the noblest souls, of the human race ; but we find precisely in these profoundest and noblest pantheists a something reaching out beyond their pantheism ; we think we can discern in them a yearning and a striving, of which they themselves are unconscious, after an ethical, personal God such as their system denies. In their moments of greatest enthusiasm they have experienced a need of holding intercourse with the highest idea, as though it were a personal being. Even in Spinoza a certain bent towards personality is discernible ; for example, when he speaks of intellectual love to God, and styles it a part of that infinite love with which God loves Himself Schelling, Fichte, and Hegel too were stirred by a religious, an ethical mysticism, Sect. 43.] THE NATUllE OF GOD. 83 which contained the genu of a personal relation to a per- sonal God. Very different from these esoteric thinkers — who, wandering in a mystical twilight on the loftiest heights of pantheism, confounded their deep love to the idea with love to God, and who were prevented from seeing the frightful consequences of their system by the ideal brilliancy which suffused the kingdoms of the world and the glory thereof from the point of view they occupied — widely different from these men are those who have latterly begun to preach pantheism from the housetops. "Young Germany" has the sad glory of having reduced the negative consequences of pantheism to a system, for which it has tried to secure acceptance with the multitude. Instead of Schelling's or Hegel's intellectual, poetical, logico-mystical view of the world, we have at last been presented with an ordinary and vulgar " systeme de la nature." In the rough hands of this generation, the wings of the pantheistic butterfly have lost their mystic dust ; once it shone with great brilliancy ; now it pre- sents itself in all its prosaic nakedness, or even with a death's head on its wings. We hear it now proclaimed without circumlocution, in all the simplicity of prose, that there is no God ; the name " God " is now a tedious word, to which no clear meaning can be attached ; let us therefore speak of " nature " instead of God ; of the " forces " and " laws of nature," instead of the divine attributes; of the "course of the world" or the "pro- gress of the age," instead of divine providence; and so forth ; for we can understand that. This popular pan- theism is working like leaven in the minds of the masses, and has played a most active part in the most recent movements of the time. The antagonism between pan- theism and theism, which was once discussed in the schools of philosophers or in the esoteric conversations carried on in the higher walks of literature, has now become exoteric, and is taking hold of our populations in the form of a conflict between the denial of God and the belief in God. 43. If God is personal, we should expect Him to reveal 84 THE NATURE OF GOD. [Sect. 4«. Himself in the domain of personality, in a sphere of created spirits, by whom He can be beHeved in, known, and loved ; we should expect Him to prepare for Himself, in the midst of the kingdom of nature, His own holy king- dom. The personal God is not merely the God of all creatures, but in a special sense the God of His Ghurch, of His saints. The idea of the God of the Church, who, as such, reveals Himself to humanity, in its heathenish, — that is, apostate condition, in its condition of bondage to the world and its elements, as the new creator, as the Redeemer, is inseparable from the idea of a special, supernatural revelation — of a sacred history in the midst of the ordinary profane history of mankind — of personal organs of revelation — of a Word of God and of divinely founded institutions. In the creation and sustentation of the Church under the Old and New Co- venant we find the most complete and living testimony to the existence of a personal God, of " the Lord," whose essence is love ; and the various routes by which men arrive at a know- ledge of their creator converge on this gi'eat highway of light. The cosmolooical and teleological evidences of God's existence are first seen in their full force in the light of that kingdom which stands immoveably firm in the stream of time, of that divine household which was established in Christ in the ful- ness of the times. The ontologiciil and moral evidences acquire full significance from *' t.estimoniuvi spiritus sancti," from the witness borne by God's own Spirit, the Spirit of truth and holiness in the hearts of believers. Observations. — Theism owes its vitality, vigour, and fulness to the idea of God as the God of the Church. It is ]ios- eible, indeed, to speak of a theism Avhich is the natural religion of man — natural, so far as it arises in human nature through the contemplation of the works of crea- tion. The Apostle Paul tells us that even heathens ought to have had this kind of natural religion, inasmuch as the eternal power and Godhead of God are clearly seen from the creation of the world and are understood by His works (Romans i. 20). But judging from experience pantheism would rather appear to be the natural religion of man. For the myths, the cnltus and the philo- sophical notions current amongst the heathen, have their Obser.] THE natuee of god. 85 root in pantheism. Experience shows us that apart from a positive revelation, natural theism has not only lacked the power to form a community, a Church, but even lacked the power vitally to possess, fill, and animate in- dividual men. The God of theism is known amongst heathens merely as "the unknown God," (Acts xvii. 23). Nevertheless, the unknown, that is, in this instance, the true God, did not leave Himself without a witness amongst heathens. For, both in their reli<_dons and their philosophy, traces are discoverable of a holy influence exerted by conscience — scattered indeed, flashing in on the surrounding darkness like lightning, quickly dis- appearing again, but yet distinctly bearing this character; we find interwoven with the woof of pantheism a weft of theistic elements concerning which none can say whence they have come. It is the unknown God who revealed Himself by these flashings out of a higher region, and by the holy forebodings and motions which were traced to a daimonia: — an admonitory warning force which quietly counteracted and restricted men's corrupt tendencies, and by awakening a deeper sense of need and deeper seekings (what Paul calls a ■^s'ka(pav, a, feeling) after God, prevented their being completely lost in the beggarly elements of the world. We need here only refer to Socrates, who, though himself a heathen, was a powerful corrective of the carnal and worldly tendency of heathenism. We, who have grown up under the influence of Christianity, are ac- customed to regard theism as a natural reliofion, for we find many who, whilst refusing to believe in Christianity as a positive supernatural i-evelation, still cleave to the living God, who reveals Himself in the works of nature and the course of human life ; but it is difficult to say how much of this theism is due to the influence of Christianity, and how much has a purely natural origin. Clear it is, however, that this undefined theism — apart from Christ, apart from the Church — which is professed by many of our contemporaries, produces but a very vague sort of piety. It is of great importance, indeed, as preparing the way for the belief in a positive revelation, as a principle of conservation, by which the 86 THE NATURE OF GOD. [Scd. 43. soul is raised above the world and conducted towards the kingdom of God ; but on no man can it confer the fulness of truth and life after which we all yearn. Amongst philosophers, no one has expounded this natural religion of theism, as we may perhaps venture to term it, with gi'eater clearness and force than F. H. Jacobi. The strength of conviction and eloquence with which this noble- minded man asserted his faith in a living God will never be forgotten by those who listened to him ; and his tes- timony was in truth a beneficent corrective, a protest in the name of truth against the worship of the universe, the deification of the idea and the apotheosis of the Ego which were then so much the fashion. When he pro- tested against making; the self-consciousness of man absolute, and said — " My watchword and that of my reason is not my Ego,* but one who is more than I, better than I, one who is entirely different from me, to wit, God — I neither am, nor care to be, if He is not;" or when he resisted the doctrine of natural philosophy con- cerning an impersonal absolute, and inculcated with the whole force of his thought and feeling the truth — " He who hath planted the ear shall He not hear? He who hath formed the eye shall He not see ?" — he undoubtedly gave utterance to a testimony which was written from the creation of the world in the hearts of men ; although the original characters of this sacred inscription were afterwards darkened by the hieroglyphics of pantheism: and this is the testimony which we can call the testimony of natural religion. His religion, however, was merely a movement towards, not a resting in, the kingdom of God. It lacked a Mediator between God and man, One to bridge over the infinite gap between the creature and the Eternal, after whom our hearts yearn (" he that seeth Me seeth the Father ") ; it took no notice of the problem of sin, and its solution in the Gospel of the Cross. And much as this theism may speak of faith, in the fullest sense of the term, it was not a religion of faith ; it was rather the religion of those yearnings and forebodings * See his " Sendschrcihen an Fichtt." Olser.] THE NATURE OF GOD. S*l which stir the souls of many in our days, but which can never reach their goal, save in the God of the Church. " The word God," says Luther, in a passage where he attacks the pantheists of that age, " the word God has many significations ; the true, the right God is the God of life and consolation, of righteousness and goodness." These words, however, did not flow forth from a vague, undefined religion of yearnings and premonitions, but from the clearly-defined religion of faith. For Luther believed that the God of life and consolation, of righteous- ness and goodness, had assumed a determinate form, had vouchsafed His presence in a determinate manner as the God of the Church. Luther was quite as well aware as the philosophers that God is omnipresent, that He is not shut up in temples ; but he knew also that God is only present for us where He vouchsafes His presence in a special, determinate manner. " Although God is omni- present, He is nowhere ; I cannot lay hold of Him by my own thoughts without the Word. But where He himself has ordained to be present, there He is certainly to be found. The Jews found Him in Jerusalem at the throne of grace ; we find Him in the Word, in Baptism, in the Lord's Supper. Greeks and heathens imitated this by building temples for their gods in particular places, in order that they might be able to find them there ; in Ephesus, for example, a temple was built to Diana, in Delphi one to Apollo. God cannot be found in His majesty — that is, outside of His revelation of Himself in His Word. The majesty of God is too exalted and grand for us to be able to grasp it ; He therefore shows us the right way, to wit, Christ, and says, ' believe in Him, and you will find out who I am, and what are my nature and will.' The world meanwhile seeks in innumerable ways, with great industry, cost, trouble, and labour, to find the invisible and incomprehensible God in His majesty. But God is and remains to them unknown, although they have many thoughts about Him, and discourse and dis- pute much ; for God has decreed that He will he unhnow- dble and unapprehensihle apart from Christ." * * See Lutlier's "Table Talk." 88 THE NATURE OF GOD. [Sect. 44. § 4^' To know God as the Spirit who is not only the God of all creation, but has revealed Himself in Cln-ist as the God of His church, is the aim of Christian theology. When Diony- sius the Areopagite and John Scotus Erigena teach that God is absolutely incomprehensible, not merely for us, but also in Him- self, on the ground that if He were known, the comprehension of Him would subject Him to finitude, antagonism, limita- tion ; when they assert God to be an absolute mystery, above all names, because every name drags Him down into the sphere of relations ; when they refuse to conceive of God save as the simply one (rJ carXug h), as pure light, which does not differ from pure darkness, in which neither way nor path is discernible ; when they object to calling God anything but " pure nothing," not because of His emptiness, but because of His inexpressible fulness, in virtue of which He transcends every " something," — on which ground also they define Him as super-essential {vTipovcio;) : — they give utterance, no doubt, to their sense of the unfathomable depth of the mystery ; but still such a mystical, neo-platonic mode of looking at the subject is an error — is a falling back on the indeter- minate absolute of pantheism. By excluding the idea of understanding the Divine nature, mysticism excludes also the possibility of a revelation. For to comprehend a being is to know it in its relations ; and if it did not pertain to the nature of God to enter into relations, to make Himself intel- ligible, He would not have revealed Himself. God possesses His absolute " deity" in the inner relations of self-conscious- ness alone, and it is only as He enters into a variety of relations to the world which He has created, that He reveals to it His nature. Mystical theology commits the error of supposing pure " deity" to be better than " God," the living God, who reveals Himself in a variety of ways ; like pantheism in all its forms, it overlooks the significance of limitation as a con- dition of inner, intensive infinitude.* Now, as God is in Himself knowable and comprehensible, so does He make Himself relatively discoverable and compre- hensible to the creatures made in His image. Kant, in- deed, maintains that divine things are totally incomprehen- • Compare Martensen's " Meister Eckart." Sect 46.] THE NATURE OF GOD. 89 sible, because human thought is bound to finite forms, which have merely subjective validity ; but this is only true of rea- son as it has fallen away from God and is left to itself, but not of human reason as enlightened by the word and Spirit of God. Christianity recognizes both a searching Qpeuvav, 1 Cor. ii. 10) and a comprehending (xaraXa(3sffdai, Eph. iii. 18). § 45. But the idea of a revelation is utterly inadmissible, whether we hold, on the one hand, that God is wholly unsearchable and incomprehensible, as do many Christian apologists ;* or, on the other hand, go to the opposite extreme of asserting Him to be completely searchable and comprehensible. Even in the light of Christianity, what the Son of Sirach said is still true, " To no one hath the Eternal given perfectly to de- clare His works. Who can comprehend His great marvels ? Who can measure the greatness of His might ? Who can tell out His great mercies ? A man, when he hath done his best, hath scarcely begun ; and when*he thinks he hath finished, there is still much lacking" (Ecclus. xviii, 4—6). Not merely because of the limited extent of our outward experience — for when we look at the works of creation, we must say again Math the Son of Sirach, '* We see hut the fewest of His ivorhs : for much greater are still hidden from us;" not merely on this account is our knowledge imperfect, but also because of the inner, inexhaustible riches of the Divine essence. We are warranted indeed in saying, that as Christianity is the perfect, final revelation of the nature and will of God, it must be possible to arrive at a fundamental knowledge of the per- fect truth, at a fundamental idea of the truth. But revela- tion points back to the mystery ; and it is only in God him- self that the mj'-stery ceases ; for before Him all things stand revealed with perfect clearness. He alone has a perfect knowledge of the eternal iDossihilities of the revelation ; whereas the inner connection between mystery and revela- tion, between possibility and actuality, can only be rela- tively, not absolutely known by created spirits. When, how- ever, the claim is raised to a speculative comprehension of God, to an insight into the mystery, that is, into the eteenal * For example, Mansel, in his " Limits of Religious Thought," a book which, however well meant, is quite aiiti-Christian in its tendencies. — Tr, 90 THE NATURE OF GOD. [Sect. 45- POSSIBILITIES of revelation, then may be applied with full truth the words : — " When a man has got to the end, then he is just beginning ; and when he ceases, he is still full of ques- tions." Even the profoundest speculative knowledge must be supplemented by a believing ignorance ; and the deepest attempts to fathom the mystery of God reveal to us unfti- thomable abysses which no eye can search. But this unfa- thomableness it is which is the source of reverence and ad- miration— of that element of vague anticipation which is the condition of all true knowledge. For this reason the empty intellectualistic tendency which made its appearance in the ancient church amongst some of the Arians (the Euno- mians), who maintained that God must be as transparent as a logical or mathematical truth, was repudiated by the church- teachers of that day. But Gnosticism also was repudiated, because it claimed, by an intuition of the speculative fancy, that direct vision of God face to face which is really re- served for the future life. The error of the Gnostics con- sisted in cutting away the stem of knowledge from the root of ftiith, in breaking down the wall of separation between this world and the next ; in overleaping the historical and cosmical conditions by which knowledge is at present bound ; in aiming to occupy in this world tlie point of view which is peculiar to blessed spirits. Though it is true that the kingdom of God is come, that the perfect is revealed, it is also true that it has still to come, that it still remains to be revealed. When existence, when life has been made free with the freedom of its ideal, then also will knowledge be free. If, then, we wish our teachinos rerjardiiif; the knowleds;e of the Divine nature to be true, we must combine the apparently opposite declara- tions of the Scriptures : — " We know all things" (1 John ii. 20,) and "now we know in part" (1 Cor. xiii. 12) ; we know Him now, and yet we shall not see Him as He is till yonder world (1 John iii. 2) : We search the depths of Deity, and yet no man hath seen God at any time (1 Cor. ii. 10 ; 1 John iv. 1 2), seeing that He dwelleth in light to which no man can approach," (1 Tim. iv. J 6). What has been here advanced may be summed up in the formula, that we can have a true, though not an adequate knowledjie of the nature of God. We cannot have an ade- Sect. 40.] THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 91 quate knowledge of God, that is, a knowledge co-extensive in every feature with its subject. Such a knowledge would he that vision of Him face to face, which cannot be ours till the last change is accomplished and everything partial shall have ceased. We can, however, have a true knowledge, that is, a knowledge true in principle, true in its tendency, and true in the goal at which it aims ; — true because it goes out from and leads to God. This distinction between a true and an adequate knowledge of God hovered before the minds of our elder theologians when they distinguished between a " theologia viaiorum et beatorum." The Attributes of God. §46. The nature of God reveals itself in His attributes. If God were the simply One (jb airXSjg ev), the mystic abyss, in which every form of determination is extinguished, there would be nothing to be known in the unity. But the livino- God reveals the unity of His nature by a variety of determi- nations of His essence, or attributes. His attributes express the different aspects of the same essence ; tliey are different fundamental utterances of one and the same nature. They are therefore not separate from each other, but in each other, penetrate each other, and have their common centre of unity in the same divine Ego. Although, therefore, they are dis- tinctions which in the act of acknowledging we are compelled again to deny, they are by no means to be taken for human modes of looking at the nature of God ; they are not man's modes of apprehending God, but God's modes of revealino- Himself We are unable, therefore, to agree with Nomi- nalism when it represents ideas and general conceptions as merely ours, and consequently treats the conceptions which we form of the divine essence as nothing but forms in which we express our religious need of the world, lacking anything objective corresponding thereto in God himself.* Distinctly * For remarks on the merely subjective view of the divine attributes set forth by Kant and Schleiermacher, see my treatise on "Die Autonomie, * §§ 14, 28. 92 THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. [Sect. 47. as we must allow that the idea of God ought to be jiuiged of everything merely human, of all untrue anthropomorphisms, we cannot but raise our voice against Nominalism as incompatible with the idea of revelation. To say that we are bound to conceive of God as the Holy and Just One, whilst He in Himself is not holy and just, to call upon God by this name, whilst He does not thus make Himself known to us, is to brand the inmost of truth, of faith, a lie. We teach, accordingly, with Realism, that the attributes of God are objective determinations in His revelation, and as such are rooted in His inmost essence. Observations. — Not Nominalism alone, but one form of Real- ism also is chargeable with denying the reality of the divine attributes. Realism assigns, indeed, objective validity to ideas and general conceptions. But when it has a pantheistic basis — as is sometimes the case — the attributes of God assume the character of a mere system of objective ideas. The ideas of omnipotence, of righteousness, of goodness, are recognized, and vali- dity is ascribed to them independently of our thought ; but their centre of unity is merely the formal ground of mysticism, and not a personal subject. This form of Realism, which looks upon personality itself as a mere anthropomorphism, takes a false view of that idea which is the inmost light of all other ideas. For the idea of omnipotence, of holiness, of justice, is a mere blind thought, unless there be One who is the Omnipotent, the Holy, the Righteous. § 47. In treating of the subject of the divine attributes, our older theologians adopted the division into " aitrihuta ahsoluta," and "attributa relativa]' that is, into attributes which express the relation of God to Himself, and such as express His rela- tion to the world. This division, however, is attended with the difficulty that there are no divine attributes, which, if conceived as living attributes, are not transitive, that is, do not express a relation of God to the world ; — nor are there any which are not reflexive, that is, which do not go back on God himself We gain a more determinate principle of divi- sion when we consider the twofold relation which God holds Sect. 48.] THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 03 to the world. The relation of God to the world, namely, is on the one hand a relation of unity, on the other hand, a rela- tion of diversity or antithesis. Indeed, oui'ireligious life, with all its morals and states, moves between these two poles — that of unity and that of diversity, that of freedom and that of dependence, that of reconciliation and that of separation. In our treatment of this subject, therefore, we shall have to give prominence now to the one and then to the other of the momenta of unity and diversity. § 48. As the Being who has life in Himself (John v. 26), in whom is contained all fulness OyrXrjpoma), God is the eternal. In the eternal God are all the possibilities of existence, all the sources of the entire creation. The eternal is the one who is, the I AM, who is a se, the unalterable and unchangeable. But His unchangeableness is not a dead unchangeableness; for it is to produce Himself with infinite fruitfulness out of Himself. His eternity, therefore, is not an eternity like that of the •' eternal Hills ;" it is not a crystal eternity, like that of the " eternal stars ;" but a living eternity, blooming with never- withering youth. ' But His self-production. His Becoming [Werden], is not the fragmentary growth or production we witness in time. Created life has time outside of itself, because it has its fulness outside of itself The Eternal lives in the inner, true time, in a present of undivided powers and fulness, in the rhythmic cycle of perfection. The life He lives is unchangeably the same, and yet He never ceases to live His life as something new, because He has in Himself an inex- haustible fountain of renovation and of youth. For this reason the Church magnifies the " Ancient of Days," as the " incorruptible " (af ^a^rw) and eternal King, who alone hath immortality (1 Timothy i. 17; vi. 16 ; Psalm xc. 2.) The eternal God is omnipresent in His creation. Creation as a mere possibility without reality lies in the depths of the Eternal Being ; as an actuality, possessing any existence different and separate from that of God, it " lives and moves " in the omnipresent One. Everything is filled by God ; but that which is filled is different from that by which it is filled The omnipresent God is the inmost fundamental being of everything that exists ; He is the life of all that lives, the 94 THE ATTltlBUTES OF GOD. [Sect. 49. Spirit of all spirits. And as He is all in all, so is all in HitQ. As the bird in the air, as the fish in the sea, so do all crea- tures live and move and have their being in God. The world of time and space, of nature and history, is contained in Him, as in the uncreated rovog ruv SXuv. But although creation is contained in God, God is not contained in His creation (Psalm cxxxix. 7). Although the omnipresent One is essen- tially present in every leaf and every grain of wheat (Iv rrasl). He dwells and moves freely in Himself, in virtue of His eternity. He is above and outside of all His creatures, and governs all the possibilities of their existence {bvip vdv7uv\ Omnipresence, therefore, must be conceived as the free, self- determining presence of God with His creatures, to each of whom He wills to stand in a different relation. The funda- mental error of pantheism is the notion that God is omnipre- sent of necessity. God is present in one way in nature, in another way in history ; in one way in the Church, in another way in the world ; He is not, in the same sense, present alike in the hearts of His saints, and in those of the ungodly; in Heaven and in Hell (James iv. 8). That we live and move and have our being in God, — an idea which pantheism sets forth as the profoundest and loftiest wisdom, — is one of the most elementary truths of Christianity, and was comprised in the first instruction given to its Catechumens (Acts xvii. 28). But they were also taught by no means to stop there ; for that which chiefly concerns us is the special presence of God in His church, and not merely that universal presence by which all creatures alike are embraced, and in which there is nothing to bless the soul. The eternity and omnipresence of God are one in His absolute knowledge. None but a God who knows is able to live at once in Himself and in His creatures. § 49. The OMNISCIENT God is the self-manifest God, whose own essence is clear to Himself and to whom all other beings are naked and open. His eternal being is transfigured into eternal thought; in Him the life is light. The life of the creature is never completely laid open to its intelligence ; there always remains a mystery which it has not fathomed ; God on the contrary knows the entire fulness of His being • Sect. 49.] THE ATTEIBUTES OF GOD. 95 He is completely transparent to Himself. Hence the custom from of old of representing God under the figure of an eye ; not that He has an eye, but that He is eye ; His essence is know- ledge. Relatively to the creature omniscience is an omnipre- sent, all-searching, all- penetrating vision (Heb. iv. 13 ; Matt. X. 30). In that he knows all things in their eternal unity, He knows them also in their inner diversities and distinc- tions. It was God who divided between light and darkness ; He knows substance as substance and appearance as appear- ance ; He knows the possible as possible and the actual as actual (Matt. xi. 23; 1 Sam. xxiii. 11); He knows the necessary as necessary, and the free under the conditions which He has Himself imposed on freedom. The omniscient God is eo ipso omnipotent ; " Scientia et potentia in unum coincidunt." The omniscient God has com- plete dominion over Himself, and in affirming His own being He acts with the most complete freedom and with thorough will. But omnipotence can only reveal itself as omnipotence by revealing itself as power over beings other than itself, by realizing its eternal thoughts in a world, different from God. If God is to have power over all and in all. He cannot Him- self be all. Omnipotence as thinking, reveals itself in the rational order of existences, in the laws which pervade and regulate history and nature ; but it is by no means confined and shut in by this course of laws. Pantheism recognizes only an omnipotence which, as it were, is encompassed by the laws of the world ; theism, on the contrary, recognizes a God who had the beginning of the world in His power, and who is able to commence a oieiu work of creation in the midst of the already existing order of nature. We discern, therefore, the Divine omnipotence with special clearness, when we look to the supernatural commencement of the world. By faith we know that the visible world was produced, not by a mere force of nature but by the Word of God ; and in the economy of redemption we recognize the God of marvels who is able to create a new thing on earth (Ps. Ixxvii. 1 5 ; Jer, xxxi. 22). The declaration, "With God nothing is impos- sible," (Luke i. 87, Matt, xix. 26), is in this respect the grea,t canon of faith, in revelation ; and has no limitation save the internal one, that it refers to the God of revelation, who can- 96 THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. [Sect. 50. not deny Himself, but must necessarily act in harmony with His own eternal thoughts. With this exception, however, it teaches that the divine omnipotence is absolutely unlimited ; it sets before us the idea of the wonder-working God who Ikis not expended His creative power in the laws and forces of nature, but still contains within Himself, in the depths of His being, an inexhaustible fountain of possibilities of new beginnings, new revelations, new signs. To profess that the Divine omnipotence expended all the possibilities open to it when it created the present order of nature, is to represent Him either as not a creator at all, after the manner of pan- theism, or as having exhausted His power as creator in pro- ducing the world, after the manner of deism. Omniscience and omnipotence are combined in the Divine WISDOM, in the practical, teleological knowledge of God. §50. The only WISE God is not merely a God of knowledge, but also a God of action — a God of decrees, of providence, of fore- sight,— who directs His efforts to the realisation of the infi- nite design of His will. The subject of the divine wisdom was the eternal image of the world, which was to be realized in time. In the Holy Scriptures, accordingly, wisdom is re- garded not merely as a divine attribute, but also as the divine thought, which the Only Wise God "possessed in the begin- ning of His ways." What speculation calls the idea, the world-forming thought, is called in the Holy Sciipture wis- dom, which was with the Lord, and " daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him" (Pro v. viii. 30). It is described not merely as the inner reflection of the divine mind, but also as operative, all-moulding thought. For wisdom (the idea, the divine (!o(pia, the heavenly maiden, as theosophists have styled her,) is the " worker of all things" (Wisdom vii. 22). This artist was with the Most High when He pre- pared the heavens, when He set bounds to the depths, when He established the clouds above and laid the foundation of the earth. But in man alone can it complete its work. It sought rest in all things : it received an heritage amongst all peoples and Gentiles, but in Israel alone (Ecclus. xxiv.), in the Church of God, did it receive an abiding place, where "she entereth iu all ages into holy souls, making them friends of Sect. 50.] THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 97 God, and prophets," (Wisdom vii. 27). Under the Old Cove- nant, the Church learned the wisdom of God from the law and the prophets, and from its works in the visible creation. But the riddle of wisdom is first solved in the New Cove- nant, where prophecy finds its fulfilment, where the topstone is put to the manifestations of wisdom in creation, and the wisdom that is in Christ is all in all. The glorious descrip- tions of nature, which throughout the Old Testament proclaim the glory of the Creator, are in the New Testament thrown into the shade by the wisdom displayed in the work of re- demption* Solomon in his wisdom "spake of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall" (1 Kings iv. 33); but his wise dis- course is cast into the shade by the words of Him in whom '* all things are to be gathered together in one" (Eph. i. 10) ; and the Pauline wisdom was ' to know nothing among men save Christ alone ' (1 Cor. ii. 2). The power of wisdom is righteousness. What omnipotence is in relation to omniscience, that righteousness is in relation to wisdom. In saying that God is a righteous God, we expressly postulate omnipotence as moral power. A complete revelation of righteousness is therefore possible only in the world of Freedom. That of which we find the type in nature, where a power may be discerned reducing to order its wild and irregular forces, and setting bounds and limits — which says, " hitherto shalt thou come, and no further ; here shall thy proud waves be stayed," (Job xxxviii. 11) — shows itself in its full significance in the domain of the Will. Righteousness is the organizing power in wisdom — it is that distributive energy which assigns to each creature in the divine state its ordained place. But this distributive power is also discrhninative ; it maintains intact the distinctions it has established ; it brings to light the difference between good and evil, and reveals itself in judgment and retribution."!- In righteousness, wisdom has an eternal guarantee against all human arbitrariness : for the * Eph. iii. 10: "To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church, the manifold wisdom of God.'' Rom. xi. 33 : " O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!" t Gal. vi. 7 ; "Be not deceived ; God is not mocked : for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." See also Romans ii. 6 — 8. a 98 THE ATTRII5UTES OF GOD. [Scct. 50. just and righteous power of God is present wherever man works unrighteousness, and causes that it hastens with un- avoidable necessity onwards to its crisis. There is nothing hid that shall not one day be brought to light, sifted and judged, and in this sense we can say that the world's history is a continuous self-judgment. It is due to righteous- ness that Avisdom continues to be wisdom, notwithstanding the folly of the world ; that the wisdom of this world is shown to be folly in the light of the Gospel ; that the might of the world is brought to nought by the Word of God. Whether righteousness be considered as distributive or judi- cative, we must hold fast the canon that, inasmuch as its manifestations are manifestations of the eternal wisdom, every such revelation has a teleological bearing on the highest good. Separated from wisdom, the idea of divine righteousness or justice is a blind levelling power, nothing more nor less than the heathen Nemesis or Fate ; rent asunder from the idea of the good, we are landed in the principle — " ficd justitia, pereat mundus." The wisdom and righteousness of God ai-e combined in His GOODNESS. So far from righteousness standing in irreversible antagonism to goodness, it forms in point of focta constituent element of goodness.* Goodness which does not do justice, which does not uphold laws, is not goodness ; for precisely in executing justice, nay, even in executing punitive justice, does goodness reveal itself ; for in that way it seeks to conduct creation to, and educate it for itself. We may chai-acterize the goodness of God in a general way by saying that He has consti- tuted the great end of creation His own end (reXoc), that in constituting creation a means of revealing Himself He makes His own revelation of Himself a means for the furtherance of the good of creation. It is the nature of goodness to possess its own fulness only in communication, to have only as it gives. But no one is good save the one God (Mark x. 1 8). As every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights, so also do we derive our susceptibility for these gifts from the same source. To the end that He might be * 1 John i, 9 ; " If we confess our sins He '\s faithful and just to forgive us our Bins, and to cleanse us from ail unrighteousness." Romuns iii. 2C ; "To declaim his righteousness, that he might be ju»t, and the justifierof him which believetb in Jesug." Sect. 51.] THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 99 " Gom/municativum, Sui" God has brought forth a creature whose nature it is to be " indigentia Dei." He has created the need and the yearning, in order that He might be able to be its fulness and satisfaction. Susceptibility to the commu- nication of the Divine life we find at all stages of creation, but in man alone does it exist in a perfect form — to wit, as sus- ceptibility for God Himself On this very ground man is the most perfect creature, because he is created to stand in abso- lute need of God. It is in man that the goodness of God fii-st reveals itself as love. Considered in relation to the universe the communica- tion of the Divine life is goodness ; considered in rela- tion to personality, it is love. All creatures partici- pate in the goodness of God ; but personal creatures alone can be constituted partakers of His love. God is love (1 John iv. 16). He neither can nor will be without His kingdom — the kingdom which is constituted by 'I and Thou," in which not meiely Divine powers and gifts, but the Divine personality itself dwells in the soul and the soul in it. All the Divine attributes are combined in love, as in their centre and vital principle. Wisdom is its intelligence; might its productivity; the entire natural creation and the entire revelation of rie:ht- eousness in history are means by which it attains its teleolo- gical aims. When the fulness of the time came love revealed its true nature to the object beloved, and prepared itself in Christ a Church for eternity. And as Christ in His gospel made known to our race the inmost thoughts of His wisdom — " if He had had a better gospel, He would have given it us " — so does He make those who believe partakers of His own divine nature (2 Peter i. 4). This unity is more than a moral union ; it is one of essence ; it is more than the mysti- cal unity of pantheism, for it is one of holiness. Viewed in relation to sin eternal love is compassionate grace ; viewed in relation to the education of sinful man, it is long-suffering ; viewed in relation to its promises and the hope which it awakens in the hearts of men, it is faithfulness (1 Peter iv. 19 : "As unto a faithful Creator.") The kingdom of love is established on the foundation of HOLINESS. Holiness is the principle that guards the eternal 1 00 THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. [Sect. 51- distinction between Creator and creature, between God and man, in the union effected between them ; it preserves the Divine dignity and tnajesty from being infringed by the Divine love ; it eternally excludes everything evil and impure from the Divine nature (Isaiah vi. 3 : " Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts." See also Deut. vii. 21 ; James i. 13 ; Heb. x. 27 ; xii. 29). The Christian mind knows no- thing: of a love without holiness. Error has been fallen into relatively to this subject, both in a speculative and practical direction. The speculative error we find embodied in panthe- istic mysticism, which converts the free moral necessity which moved love to create man, into a mere metaphysical, natural necessity. For example, Angelus Silesius says : — •' God has as much need of me, as I of Him ; His nature I help Him to guard and He guards mine. I know that without me God cannot live a moment, If I should perish, He too must needs give up the Ghost Nothing there is save I and Thou ; if we two cease to be, God then is no more God, and heaven falls to ruin." Tliese mystical paradoxes are true indeed, so far as they give expression to the element of necessity in the divine love — the necessity under which it lies of willing to reveal itself by an infinite communication of itself But the position that God needs man as much as man needs God, is true only so far as it is accompanied by the recognition of the majesty of God as revealed in His holiness ; so far as reverence \& guarded in the midst of love. The holy God testifies to us in our con- sciences, that He has no need of man, in order that He may be able to say to Himself "/." The holy God testifies to us in conscience, that love is not an indefinit.e flowing over of the nature of man into that of God, but a community of ^;erso?is, the purity of which depends on strict regard being paid to the limits separating the one from the other. The practical error is antinomisni, which consists in rending asunder gospel and law, and in pouring contempt on the law and God of the Old Testament, — a contempt which we find expressed by several Gnostic writers, who, supposing that love gave something of the license commonly awarded to genius, set at naught the idea of duty as something appropriate solely to subordinate Sect. 51.] THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 101 beings. We acknowledge, indeed, that holiness without love, as embodied in the Pharisees, is no true holiness ; that mere duty, the mere categorical imperative " thou shalt," apart from the promises of the Gospel, is not the spiritual law of Christ ; but we must at the same time maintain with equal distinct- ness, that a gospel of love without law, is a false and impure gospel. The true Gospel confirms and is itself the fulfilment of the law. The reflection of the rays of love back on God, after passing through His kingdom, is blessedness. Blessedness is a term expressive of a life which is complete in itself It is the eternal peace of love, which is higher than all reason ; it is the sabbath of love in its state of eternal perfection (Heb. iv. 3). But the sabbath of love must not be compared with the i-jbaifjjovia,, with the idle enjoyment attributed to heathen gods ; love's eternal rest is eternal activity. " My Father worketh hitherto" (John v, 17). In the more exact development of the idea of blessedness this difficulty arises, that on the one hand God must be conceived of as self-sufficient, and needing no one — "not having need of anything" (Acts xvii. 25) — and on the other hand that His blessedness must be conceived of as conditional upon the perfecting of His kingdom ; because divine love can satisfy itself only as it is bliss-giving, only therefore as it becomes all in all. The only way to solve this contradiction, is to assume that God has a twofold life — a life in himself of unclouded peace and self-satisfaction, and a life in and with His creation, in which He not only submits to the conditions of finitude, but even allows His power to be limited by the sinful will of man. To this life of God with His crea- tion, must be referred the Biblical ideas of divine grief, divine anger (Eph. iv. 30 ; Rom. i. 1 8), and others which plainly imply a limitation of the divine blessedness. This limitation, however, is again swallowed up in the inner life of perfection which God lives, in total independence of His creation, and in triumphant prospect of the fulfilment of His great designs. We may therefore say with the old theosophic writers, " in the outer chambers is sadness, bufc in the inner ones unmixed joy." 102 THE DIVINE HYPOSTASES. [Sect. 52> THE DIVINE HYPOSTASES. The Triune God. §52. We have seen that the divine attributes find their har- monizing completion and unity in love ; — love, which is not merely one single aspect of the divine essence, but that essence in its fulness. Indeed, all the divine attributes are but moi'e precise definitions of love. Taking love as the starting point of a new contemplation, we are introduced at once to a new cycle of relations in the divine revelation. We have now to speak not only of single " aspects " of the relation between God and the world, but of that relation in its entirety ; and the same Gospel which teaches us that God is Love, teaches us also that the one love reveals itself in a threefold personality as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Al- though the Christian mind rests in the purest monotheism, it can only attain to a knowledge of the one Love through the medium of the three Persons. Christian worship calls men away from the altars of polytheism, and elevates their souls to the one God, but it does so in a threefold direction ; for we know by faith that eternal life streams down to us out of three personal fountains of love — from God the Father who has created us ; from God the Son who has redeemed us ; and from God the Holy Ghost who sanctifies us, and makes us the childi-en of God : — in this Trinity alone do we possess the whole of love. Father, Son, and Spirit are not qualities, not powers or activities of the nature of God ; they are hypostases, that is, distinctions in the divine nature expressing not merely single " aspects," single " rays " of that nature, but each expressing by itself the entire essence ; they are momenta each of which for itself at the same time, and in equal degree, reveals the whole of God, the whole of love, though each in a difierent way. All the divine attributes are in the Father, who created the world by His divine word, and from eternity formed the decree to establish His kingdom. All the divine attributes are in the Son, the eternal Word, who was in the beginning with God and was Himself God, through whom aU thint/s are created, and who, when the time was fulfilled. Sect sa.] THE DIVINE HYPOSTASES. JOS became Flesh and dwelt among mea (John i. 14 ; Philippians ii. 6 ; Hebrews L 3 ; Matt. xi. 27). All the divine atti-ibutes are in the Holy Spirit, through whom we know what is given us by God, and search the depths of the Father and the Son (1 Cor. ii. 10; Matt, xxviii. 1 9 ; 1 Cor. xii. 3-7 ; 2 Cor. xiii. 13; Titus iii. 4-6). For each of these is the whole of love, though each in a different relation. The Christian doctrine of one God in three centres of reve- lation, each of which by itself reveals the whole of God, has not been merely the offspring of metaphysics, but has grown out of faith in the facts of revelation. The first simple, his- torical faith in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost is expressed in the directest possible form in the apostolic formula which is still used by the Church in the performance of the rite of baptism. In rearing on this apparently scanty foundation its clearly defined doctrine of the Tri-unity, of one God in three persons or hypostases, the design of the Church was to secure the Christian conception of God from every sort of adultera- tion, whether coming from Judaism or Heathenism. The contest waged by the Church against Arianism and Sabelli- anism was a struggle for Christianity as the perfect revelation of the Love of God, which excludes both Deism with the yawning gulf it interposes between God and the creature, and Pantheism with its commixture of the two. Arianism, which calls the Fatlier alone God, and considers the Son and the Spirit to be subordinate beings, is an apostacy to unbelieving Judaism with the insurmountable wall of separation which it raised between God and the creature. Only in the reflection of glory of the Most High, as it shows itself in His works, only through the medium of divine powers and workings, only by the law of his will, is man able to attain a knowledge of God, God (according to Arianism) sits on His throne above the world in incomprehensible majesty ; never does He show Himself to man, who in nature sees only the hem of the garment of the Most High, and in history only His finger, but can never see Him face to face. In opposition to such a doctrine, the Church replied that it is true the Father did not come into the world, but that God would not be love if the Son did not proceed from the Father ; if the 104 THE DIVINE HYPOSTASES. [Sect. 54, God, who., as the Father, is above the world, were not from the beginning in tlie world as the Son, as God of God, who is the Light and Life of the world, and who, when the time was fulfilled, became Flesh in Christ. If Christ is merely a Demi-god ; or if He is a mere man, who raised Himself up to the highest degree of resemblance to God possible to man; if He is merely an Arch-angel, or the greatest of all the Prophets, that is, after all, merely a creature ; then is Christianity not the perfect revelation. For no creature, no man, no angel, but God alone is able to reveal God as He is; the God-man alone, whc unites in Himself the created and uncreated natures, is able to fill up the gulf between Creator and creature, to be the perfect Mediator of love between the two. The same remarks apply also to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. As God can only be revealed through God, so can He also only be appropriated and loved through God. The God who is the object of knowledge and love must Him- self be the principle of knowledge and love in the human mind. If the Holy Spirit is a mere divine force or activity, it is not God himself who dwells as the Holy Ghost in His Church as in His temple; consequently, the love and self- communication of God to the human soul are not a reality. When, therefore, we keep firm hold, with Athanasius, on the oneness of the nature of the Son and Spirit with the nature of the Father (6,aoou(r/a) ; when we maintain that they are not mere divine gifts or foi'ces, but God himself, who is revealed in Christ, and God himself, who is the Spirit in His Church, we are asserting the immanence of God, His holy presence in creation. But as the Christian conception of God differs from un- believing Judaism, so also does it differ from Heathenism, with its pantheistic commingling of God and creation. The Sabellian heresy is chargeable with this same commingling of God and creation. Sabellianism designates Father, Son, and Spirit God ; but it takes Father, Son, and Spirit to be only three different modes of the manifestation of the divine essence, so far as it shines into the world ; not inner, eternal distinctions in God himself: — in other words, the Trinity tirst comes into existence with the world. Prior to the ^cct. 54.] THE DIVINE HYPOSTASES. 105 existence of the world, or independently thereof, God is not triune, but pure unity, impersonal deity, raised above every distinction and every determination. The Unity broke out into a Trinity when the world came into being ; or, to put the matter more correctly, the manifestation of the essence of God as triune, is coincident with the development of the world, nay more, with the development of the religious consciousness. So far as the divine essence is viewed as the originator of the world, it appears to the religious consciousness in the light of a Father ; in Christ we represent to ourselves the same essence as a Son ; in the Church, as the Holy Spirit. God did not, however, become Son till the fulness of the time was come ; and He first became Spirit in and with the Church. The Trinity, therefore, denotes here merely the different momenta of the history of revelation, the various steps in the self-upholding of the divine essence in the world. In opposi- tion to such a doctrine, the Church had no alternative but to object that it no less than Arianism denies Christianity to be the perfect revelation of God as love. For we cannot speak of a revelation of love, where God in Himself is mere impersonal deity, which first became conscious of itself as an Ego in Christ, and first knows itself as Spirit in the Church. If God is love, He must have been able freely to resolve on revealing Himself in the world ; and revealing Himself eter- nally to Himself, He must have lived an inner life of love. If God reveals Himself to us in a threefold personal form, as Father, Son, and Spirit, He must also be from eternity mani- fest to Himself, and must love Himself, in the threefold rela- tion of Father, Son, and Spirit. If, then, we are able to say that the one God looks into His world, as it were, with three faces {rpia TpoVwTa), we must also say that these faces are turned not merely outwards toward the world, but also inwards, toward Himself, that they behold themselves in mutual reflection. Otherwise, they would be deceptive masks, and not the revelation of the true inner being of God. Ac- cording to Sabellianism, however. Father, Son, and Spirit are mere masks, which simulate a revelation of love, whilst in re- ality there is nothing behind them but an impersonal essence which can neither love nor be loved. And as Sabellianism does away with the revelation of love, so also does it deny 1 06 THE DIVINE HYPOSTASES. [Sect. 55. the majesty of the triune God as independent of the vjorld. The same charge may be brought against every pantheistic explanation of the doctrine of the Trinity, from Sabellius down to Schleierraacher and Hegel. For this reason, following the example of the Church, we draw a distinction between the revelation of God to the world {ad extra) and His eternal revelation to Himself {ad intra) : in other words, between the ceconomic Trinity and the Trinity of essence (jpo'zog a-roKaX-j-^iug and rporrog v'7rdpt,i!>i-.) Observations. — Although the Holy Scriptures consider the divine Trinity principally in connection with the his- torical economy of redemption — in connection with the eternal counsel of the Father to redeem, with the coming of Christ, with the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church ; still there is by no means a complete absence of hints that this economic Trinity, this Trinity of revela- tion expresses not merely God's relation to man, but also His essential relation to Himself. When we read in the Gospel of John that the Word was in the beginning tvith God, and was itself God, we are introduced to an inner distinction between God and God, to an inner relation of God and God. And when Paul says that the Spirit searches the depths of God, he teaches that the Spirit is not a mere activity of God directed to the world, but also an activity directed inwardly, in other words, that the Spirit of God, who is Himself God, searches God. In these and similar expressions, the Church necessarily found the clearest summons to trace back the economic to an essen- tial Trinity. Indeed such a demand arises in general out of the idea of God as revealed to Himsel£ § 55. A full living knowledge, a comprehensive intuition of the essential Trinity is impossible to created minds ; for we are unable to represent to ourselves the esoteric glory of God. and in this connection we may say, " The triune God dwells in light into which no man can approach." A living and clear intuition of the triune essence of God is only possible to us, so far as it has revealed itself in the economy of the uni- ver.se, in the works of creation, redemption, and sanctification. Still we must be capable of a shadowy knowledge, that is, of Sect. 66.] THE DIVINE HYPOSTASES. 107 an ontological knowledge of the essential Trinity. The idea of the Trinity of essence is one with the idea of the Divine per- sonality ; and, therefore, to have an ontological conception of the essential Trinity is to have a conception of the form which is fundamental and necessary to the personal life of God ; is to have a conception of those momenta of the essence of God, without which personality and self-consciousness are incon- ceivable. It is true, both ancient and modern Arianism is of opinion that God may be a personal God without being a Trinity, and that the personality of God is sufficiently secured if we represent to ourselves a " God the Father," to whom we attribute self-consciousness and will. But we ask, — is it possible for us not merely to imagine to ourselves, but to think, that God could have been from eternity con- scious of Himself as a Father, if He had not from eter- nity distinguished Himself from Himself as the Son, and if He had not been as eternally one with the Son in the unity of the Spirit? Or, in other words. Is it possible to conceive of God as eternal self-consciousness without conceiving of Him as eternally making Himself his own object ? When, therefore, following in the footsteps of the Church, we teach that not merely the Father, but also the Son and the Holy Spirit eternally pre-existed and are inde- pendent of creation, we say that God could not be the self- revealed, self-loving God, unless He had eternally distinguished Himself into I and Thou (into Father and Son), and unless He had eternally comprehended Himself as the Spirit of Love, who proceeds forth from that relation of antithesis in the Divine essence. In thus following the analogy of the human consciousness, — which we conceive ourselves justified in d©.-ing, seeing that man is created in the image of God, — we are liable to be met by the objection that the distinctions in the human mind are merely ideal, not real, not hypostatic distinc- tions. This objection, however, rests on a misapprehension of the distinction between the created and uncreated self-con- sciousness. For the circumstance that the Trinity as con- ceived of in the human mind, is merely an ideal and not an hypostatic trinity, is due to its being created. As created, the human mind is bound down by the antithesis between being and thought, and its self-consciousness can only de- 108 THE DIVINK HYPOSTASES. [Sect. 56. velope itself in relation to and connection with beings, with a world existing outside of itself. In God, on the contrary, thought and being are one, and the movement by which God com])letes His seli'-consciousness is a movement not merely of the divine subject, but also of the divine substance. So certainly as God could not but open Himself to Himself in all the blessedness of His being ; so certainly must a -rXi^sw/Aa be laid bare in Him, a kingdom of essences, of ideas, of powers and forces, an inner uncreated world (xoV.ao? votj-oc). Inasmuch as, in the cycle of self-consciousness, the triple relation of the divine Ego to itself is conditioned by its triple relation to the unci'eated heavenly world, the three Ego-centres become not merely ideal, but hypostatic distinctions, not merely forms of consciousness, but forms of subsistence (r^oVo/ u'^rdp^iug), §56. As the Ego arising out of its primal natural ground, re- vealing itself to itself, and unfolding its fulness in the form of distinct thought, God is the eternal Father. Looking on the heavenly image of the world as it arises out of the depths of His own natm*e, God sees the image of His own essence, His own Ego in a second subsistence. The heavenly ideal world, which is born out of the depths of God, and discharges the same function for the divine self-consciousness as the out ward world for the human mind, would not be a system, but rather a chaos, would be split up into a variety witliout order, if the birth of this heavenly ideal had not been at the same time the birth of God Himself as the Logos, as the principle of thought in the living world of light which dawned on the Father, as the ordaining, all-embracing, and all sustaining principle in that objective manifoldness which presents itself to the Father's gaze. The apostle John says, " In the begin- ning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." He thus describes the eternal Word, in which the Father perceives Himself, not merely as the spok' n, but also as the speaking, — not merely as the revealed, but also as the revealing Word. Here, in the doctrine of the inner revelation of God, lies the distinction between Christian and Jewish theology. The Old Testament represents God as becoming manifest to Himself in Wisdom, which was with Sect 56.] THE DIVINE HYPOSTASES. 109 Him from the beginning, and before the creation of the world acted its part, and "rejoiced always" before His face. In the Old Testament, however, Wisdom is merely the eternal image of the world, the idea which, though uncreated and supernatural, is not God Himself, but something between the Most High and the created world. The same may be said of the Religious Philosophy of Philo, where Logos is merely another term for the heavenly world {zosf/jog vonrog), which, though uncreated, is subordinate to God. Jewish tlieology represents God in His inner revelation as occupied solely with the thought of the world, and makes the Father the Father merely of the idea of the world, and of the creature. But in order to become conscious of Himself, God required not merely to think something other than Himself, but to think Himself as another ; in order to know Himself as the Father, He must think of Himself not primarily as the Father of the creature or of the idea, but as the Father of the thinking Logos, who is the vehicle of the idea, and without whom no single thought would present itself to the Father as an object different from Himself, When therefore we say that God knows Himself as a Father, we say that He knows Himself as the ground of the heavenly universe, which proceeds eternally forth from Him, solely because He knows Himself as the ground of His own outgo- ing into this universe, in which He hypostatizes Himself as Logos. When we say that God knows Himself as Son, we say. God knows Himself as the One who from eternity pro- ceeded forth from His own Fatherly ground, He knows Himself as the 8sv-spoc &s6c, who objectively reveals the fulness wrapped up in the Father. Without the Son, the Father could not say to Himself /; for the form of the Ego, without an objective something different from the Ego (a non-Ego, a Thou), in relation to which it can grasp itself as Ego, is incon- ceivable. What the outward world, what nature, what other persons are, for us, — to wit, the condition of our own self-con- sciousness,— the Son and the objective world which arises be- fore the Father in and through the Son {dl ahroZ) are for the Father, — to wit. the condition of His own identity.* But if the * Compare the treatises of Nitzsch and Weisse. "Von der Wesentlichen DreieiiiiKKeit Gottes." 110 THE DIVINE HYPOSTASES. [Sect. 66. inner revelationwere terminated in the Son, God would be mani- fest to Himself merely according to the necessity of His natui-e and thought, not according to the Freedom of His will. It would be merely in intellectual contemplation that God would stand related to the heavenly world which by a necessity of na- ture proceeds forth from Him in the birth of the Son ; but He would not stand to it in the relation of a free formative cause. It is only because the relation of God to His world is that of a freely worldnrj, moulding, ci'eatiug agent, as well as that of a natural logical necessity, that He constitutes Himself its Lord. If then the " birth " of the Son out of the essence of the Father denotes the momentum of necessity, the " proces- sion " of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, denotes the momentum of freedom in the inner revelation. The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, as the tliird hypostasis ; whose work it is to transform and glorify the necessary subject of thought into the free act of the will, and to mould the eternal kingdom of ideas into a kingdom of inner creations of free conceptions. The fatherly rrXyipu/Ma which is revealed in the Son as a kingdom of ideas, of necessity proceeding out of the depths of His being, is glorified by the free artistic action of the Spirit into an inner kingdom of glory {Brl'^u), in which the eternal possibilities are present before the face of God as magical realities, as a heavenly host of visions, of plastic archi- types, for a revelation ad extra, to which they desire, as it were, to be sent forth. Only on the basis of such a free procession of the Spirit, which is at the same time a free rei^'ocession, can the relation between the Father and the Son be one of love. In the Spirit alone is the relation of God to Himself and to His inner world, not merely a metaphysical relation, a relation of natural necessity, but a free, an ethical relation. But not- withstanding that the Spirit is a distinct h3^postasis, the per- fecting completing momentum in the Godhead, the entire Trinity must also be designated Spirit. " God is a Spirit," says Christ ; and this is the comprehensive designation of the true, that is, of the Trinitarian God. There are therefore three eternal acts of consciousness, and the entire divine Ego is in each of these three acts. Each liypostasis has being solely through the other two. Here Sect. 67.J THE DIVINE HYPOSTASES. Ill there is no temporal first or last. The entire Trinity stands in one present Now, three eternal flames in the one light. §57. In His inner glory the triune God knows Himself as the Lord of the heavenly world, of the inexhaustible variety of ideas and forces, of the heavenly host of visions. But the glory (3(>ga) of God would not be perfectly revealed, if He shut Himself within Himself, content to reveal Himself to Himself alone. The personal God can be truly self-sufficient only in one way, to wit, by manifesting Himself as the Lord of an actual world of spirits, of a kingdom of personal beings, by whom He can be known and loved. A perfect dominion is a dominion over free beings ; and perfect love is not merely the love of God to Himself, to His own perfection, but must also be conceived as love to what is imperfect ; in other words, it must be conceived as the wall to create a world, one of whose essential features is the need of God ; a world of finite person- alities in whose midst He purposes to establish the kingdom of perfect love. The magic visions which play in His inner self-revelation before the face of God, must be conceived therefore as determining themselves to counsels relating to creation and to the economy of the kingdom of God amongst created things — counsels which even as counsels possess reality, in so far as their fulfilment is eternally anticipated in that Will to which alone belong the kingdom, the power, and the glory. In the execution of these eternal counsels, or in the revelation of God ad extra, the same momenta find expres- sion as those to which we have referred in considering His inner self-revelation. God creates the world through the Son ; He reveals Himself as Father and Creator only so far as, in His character of Logos, He is at the same time the immanent principle of the creation — the principle which, when the ful- ness of the time was come, became the actual Mediator be- tween the Father and the manifold variety of the universe. The eternal counsels relating to the kingdom of God in the world are revealed in Christ. But these eternal counsels revealed in Christ are carried into execution by the Holy Spirit alone, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, and whose work it is to glorify the Son and to give the kingdom of heaven reality in the work! ; so that the Spirit is the 112 THE DIVINE HYPOSTASES [Sect. 57. plastic, consummating, completing principle in the divine economy. But that which in the inner revelation manifests itself in one eternal Now, manifests itself in the economy of history under the conditions of time. Through the Law and the promises of the Prophets God revealed Himself as the Father ; in the fulness of the times He revealed Himself as the Son, when the Word became flesh and dwelt amonfr us ; and by the miracle of Pentecost He constituted Himself the Spirit of the Church. These main points of the economy of revelation are repeated during the first half of the Chui-ch's year, and are brought to a close and summed up in Trinity Sundaj'-, as a testimony to our belief that the Trinity of His- tory has its foundation and roots in the supra- historical Trinity of the divine essence. As the revelation of God in the world presupposes His eter- nal self-revelation, so must the former conduce to the fuller and richer unfolding of the latter. God loves Himself in His Son ; but through the creation and the Incarnation the rela- tion between Father and Son becomes not merely a relation of antithesis between God and God, but also a relation be- tween God and the FtTsthorn of all creation, between God and the God-man, between the Father and Christ. In conse- quence of the relation of love between Father and Son becom- ing subject to the conditions of time and of finite creatures ; in consequence of God in Christ taking up created finitude into His own essence, the relation between Father and the Son is not merely an intellectual relation of love, but becomes — we know no better expression — a pathological relation of love, in which God moves agreeably to His heart as well as to His majesty. It is when His glory is reflected back to Him, not merely from a kingdom of ideas, but from a kingdom of actual spirits, a kingdom of souls, all united together under Christ and all witnesses, not merely of the eternal power and Godhead of God, but also of His saving grace, and then only, that the divine blessedness becomes in the full sense perfect. It then for the first time becomes perfect, in so far as it is the will of God not merely to rest in His eternal majesty — for in this the Triune God was able to rest independently of the world, before the foundations of the world were laid ; but to rest and be blessed in the completed Sect. 58.] DIVINE HYPOSTASES. 113 work of grace and love, in the glorious liberty of the children of God, — a goal which will not be reached until, in the words of the Apostle Paul, God shall be all in all. Then first, in the new Economy (in the new Heavens and the new Earth), will the glory of the triune God be perfectly revealed — the glory which is reflected from His perfect communications of love to the creature. §58. As the doctrine of the Trinity embraces the entire Christian view of Revelation, there being no point in the economy of revelation capable of being understood without it ; the follow- ing exhibition of systematic theology will necessarily be a development of the economic Trinity, a development of the doctrine of the Father, Son, and Spirit, as they have revealed themselves in the works of creation, regeneration, and sancti- fication. In the present treatise, therefore, we shall pursue the path marked out for us in the earliest ages in the Apostles' Creed.* * Amongst recent dogmatic theologians to Marheineke belongs the merit of having revived this division. Amongst the Reformers Calvin adopted it in his " Institutio Christianca Reli^ionis" n THE DOCTEINE OF THE FATHEE. Creation. §59. In the act of creation God brings forth that which is not God, that, the essence of which is different from His own essence ; He brings forth free finite beings, whom He purposes to fill with His own fulness. Because God is Love, it is impossible for Him to shut himself up in himself, as a mere God of "ideas;" on the contrary, He cannot but constitute Himself the " Father of Spirits," the Ruler of the manifold variety of " the Living," the Spirit in the realm of spirits and souls, in which he purposes to prepare for Himself a dwelling. The idea of creation is, therefore, inseparable from that of the in- carnation of God in the world (taking this latter expression in a general sense). In a certain sense one may say that God created the world in order to satisfy a want in Himself; but the idea of God's love requires us to understand this want as quite as truly a swperfiuity. For this lack in God is not, as in the God of Pantheism, a blind hunger and thirst after ex- istence, but is identical with the inexhaustible riches of that liberty which cannot but will to reveal itself From this point of view, it will be clear, in what sense we reject the proposition, and in what sense we accept it, " without the world God is not God." § -HO. As Love is the ground of creation, so the "klnrjdorn of love Sect. 60. ] THE DOCTillxNE OF THE FATHER. 1 ] 5 is its end and aim (causa finalis creationis). But in the kingdom of love God and His creatures are reciprocally means and end to each other. As God himself alone can be the final goal of His ways, we must undoubtedly say, " creat sibi mun- duvi." But as God glorifies His love to Himself through His love to the world, we may equally say, " creat nobis munduni." A God who should have created the world purely for His own glorification (in gloriam suam), without constituting it an end to itself, would be a mere egoistic power, but not eternal love. This hard thought occurs in the theology of Calvin, who re- presents even individual human beings as mere dependent vessels for the honour of God, and as born and pre-or- dained either to blessedness or to damnation. It occurs also in pantheistic systems, which treat individual men as mere vessels for the glory of the idea, for the spirit of the world ; about whose weal or woe that spirit is completely indifferent. If the means by which God reveals Himself are mere means and nothing more, the Divine will itself loses its significance, because in that case it operates upon a worthless and insignificant material ; whereas the eternal power and deity of the Creator acquires fuller significance, the nobler the finite beings are which He has brought into existence. In agreement therefore with the hints given by the Scripture we combine the two formulcB, God has created the world " in gloriam suam " and " in salutem nostrara"* Observations. — The reciprocal relationship of means and end here described, we shall find recurring when we come to discuss the doctrine of the new creation. For Christ, the incarnate Logos^ came not to be ministered unto, but to minister ; He came to make Himself a means for the human race. But the same Christ makes the entire human race, and with it the whole creation, visible and invisible, a means for the revelation of His glory, and is therefore an infinite end to Himself. The kingdom of nature is merely a preparation for His coming ; human souls are to be constituted vessels of the activity of the • Eph. i. 12—14; "Unto the praise of his glory." 2 Cor. iii. 18 ; "We all with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." 116 THE DOCTRINE OF THE FATHER. [ISccC. 65t Holy Spirit ; and all tongues are to confess that Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. §61. When God creates, He calls into existence that which has no beinof. This is the meaning: of the old doctrine that God created the world out of nothing (2 Maccabees vii. 28.) Not that the nothing out of which the world is created is literally nil, = 0 ; regarding which the principle would apply, " ex nihilo nihil fit." The nothing out of which God creates the world are the eternal possibilities of His will, which are the sources of all the actualities of the world* But as God can only have power over the possibilities of His being, so far as He is open and manifest to Himself; and as these eternal possibili- ties are only known to Him in the Son : the proposition that God creates the world out of nothing, is inseparable from the other proposition that He creates the world through the Son. When we say that God creates the world through the Son, we mean that he lays hold on the thought of the world not im- mediately, but in the thought in which He conceives Himself as His Son ; that He conceives the creative thought of love alone in the love with which He loves Himself. The Old Testament clearly teaches that God created the world by His word, by an omnipotent " Let there be ;" but it does not recognize the truth that the Word by which God creates the world is God Himself, that God himself is the immanent World-Logos, who causes one eternal thought of His wisdom after another to pass into reality. Creation and Cosmogony. §02. It is involved in the idea of creation that God brings forth, not something dead, but something living, to wit, a creature which, being endowed with independence, is able in turn to ■ Heb. xi. 3 ; " Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of thingi which do appear." Sect. flS] CREATION AND COSMOGONY. '117 produce and develop itself. "We must accordingly conceive of creation as lajdng the foundation of a cosmogony, or of the self-development of the world, of its genesis. The Mosaic account of creation gives expression to the fundamental idea of creation, when it tells us that the world was created by the omnipotent word of God. He spake, " Let there be light," and there was light. Each of the six days of crea- tion, that is, each new epoch in the system of the world, makes its appearance solely in virtue of the omnipotent word spoken by the Creator. But this same account contains also the idea of a cosmogony, of a genesis ; for creation is repre- sented as taking place progressively, as rising from the imper- fect to the more perfect ; by which we are to understand that the progress made by creation depends on the progress made by the creatures themselves in the course of their natural self-development. Each new day of creation dawned when the time was full ; when all the conditions and presupposi- tions of its dawn had been developed. But notwithstanding that the Mosaic account of creation contains in this way the idea of a cosmogony, or of the natural birth of things, it was not thoroughly followed up and unfolded by the later Jews. On the contrary, one must say it was necessary that the doc- trine of creation should here be set forth exclusively in its opposition to and distinction from the naturalistic view of the world that prevailed among the heathen. In Judaism the world is predominantly regarded as creatura, not as natura ; as xTiGig, not (puaii;. But for this very reason, the Jews failed to understand the full significance of creation. For it is not by the production of an impotent world, without independ- ence, and which melts like wax before His breath, but by the production of a world which is endowed with freedom and a limited measure of independent power, that the Creator reveals His power as the power of wisdom and love. §63. Whilst Judaism had no eye for the cosmogony of creation, Heathenism had no eye for the creative element in the cosmo- gony. Whilst the Mosaic account of creation begins with the Spirit as that which is original, with the Spirit of God tliRt J 1 8 CREATION AND COSMOGONY. [Scd. 63. moved on the fiice of the waters, with the creative word, at whose command light and all the forms of life entered on existence ; the heathen writers of Greece begin with the dark and formless chaos, in whose womb all beings slumbered in the form of dreaming and fermenting germs, out of which they develop themselves by degrees in a dark and instinctive manner. They view the world exclusively as xr/V/?, not as (pCffti, as natura, not as creatura. With them all is birth ; there is no creation. Light, for example, does not come into existence through the word of the Creator, but develops itself out of darkness, through which it breaks its way as through a dark womb, where its rays were originally imprisoned. The kingdom of the Spirit and of freedom is not called forth out of the night of possibility by the creative command of love, by the eternal Father of spirits ; it fights its way by its own power out of the depth of the life of nature, emancipating itself from the blind forces of nature, and wresting from them their sceptre. Accordingly, we find that the nobler and more beautiful gods of Greek mythology de- veloped themselves through the conquest and overthrow of the Titans, of the rough and formless forces of nature. In the mythology of the North, the myth of the Yetten Y7)ier, whom the Ases kill,* and out of whose monstrous body they build up the world, is an expression for the process by which a higher teleology broke through into existence, both in na- ture and in history. But being a cosmogony without creation, and being impregnated with theogony, the cosmogony of heathens became an incomplete, imperfect thing. Failing to recognise a true hegivning of the world, they found it impossible to arrive at a true ccmpletion of the world ; they were unable to get beyond a half organization. a world born before its time, a teleology in which unrecon- ciled antagonistic elements eternally ferment. As they knew nothing of an omnipotent creative Word that orders all things, their view of the world supplies the spectacle of an unclear mix- ture, an unreconciled twofoldness of spirit and nature, of pro- vidence and blind necessity, of idea and formless matter (Da»j), of fiystcTYi and chaos. In this way the world of the Greeks was developed into a kingdom of beauty ; but their mora] • Sec § § 101, 120. and notes. Sect. Si."] CREATION AND COSMOGONY. 119 and spiritual "being remained bound by the chains of the flesh ; and over the beautiful world of light hovered blind fate, threatening to cast down men and gods again into the old chaos. If the fear of the old chaos is to be thoroughly banished, if the world is to be seen to be in very deed an oi"derly system, not chaos but mind must be conceived as the primal, original being, and the creative Spirit must be held to have brooded in the beginning upon the face of the waters. Observations. — A faint presentiment of the fact of the world being a creation is contained in the idea of the Father of the All, and of the completion of the world by Ragna- rokr, which we find in the mythology of the North. The Northern mind thus gave expression to the premo- nition that the world has not merely a cosmogonic but also a creatui-al origin, that the riddle of life cannot be solved in a merely natural way, but demands a super- natural solution, that is, a solution through a creative teleology. §64. The ideas of creation and cosmogony are combined in the Johannic view of the divine Logos as the immanent principle of the world, by whom everything that has had an origin has come into existence. John teaches, on the one hand, that the existence of the world has its ground in a creative PRODUCTION ; on the other hand, that the world exists in virtue of a TRANSITION from not-being to being, through a growth, an arising, a birth, a Jieri, a yiynsdai. The world, therefore, has had a twofold beginning, a cosmogonic and a creative, a natural and a supernatural beginning. The cos- mogonic or natural beginning is the relative, the finite one, which as such is split up into a sporadic variety. Every species of organization appears in a sporadic form; accordingly, considered from the cosmogonic or natural point of view, the world may be said to have had an innumerable number of beginnings; each of the infinitely many vital germs, which, so far as they are regarded exclusively from the naturalistic point of view, have their sole common centre of unity in chaos, constitutes a new beginning. But the innumerable natural 120 CREATION AND COSMOGONY. [Olser. beginnings, all have their ground in the one, creative, super- natural beginning, in the will of the divine Logos, who has in Himself the source of life and light, and causes the entire variety of vital forces to issue forth to the exercise of the power of free and independent motion. It is only because this supernatural beginning, this creative will, continues to stir in the many finite beginnings ; and, in virtue of its free omnipresence, permeates with light and activity the natural development ; that the agitation of chaos can be thoroughly overcome, and the sporadic antagonistic elements be united to form one organic, systematic, and harmonious whole. The world, therefore, at every moment of its existence, must be regarded both as natura, or an OT'ganism developing itself, and as creatura, or continuous revelation of the divine will; and it is the one, solely because it is also the other. Whilst, then, we meet everywhere in the New Testament with the idea of creation, we no less clearly find the idea of organism and natural development. As an instance of the latter idea, we may refer to the important position occupied by the " grain of seed," in the New Testament chain of thought, whether the subject under consideration be the first creation or the second. The New Testament recognizes no seed-corn without creation, and no creation, in the natural world or in the spiritual, without a seed-corn or germ. Observations. — In regard to the efforts made by philosophy to solve the problem of the rise and origin of things, we remark that it is in all cases limited to the choice between the type of mythology and that of revelation. For although we do not overlook the distinction between intuition and conception, there is no denying the foct, that all that is essential in the knowledge possessed by humanity, and the fundamental features of its consciousness of these things are embodied either in myths or in revela- tion. Nothing more can be positively known concern- ing these things than is furnished by mythology and revelation, by the mythological representation of chaos and the Mosaic idea of the creative Word, the profounder significance of which was first opened up by John in the prologue to his gospel. The one oi the other of these two types is necessarily followed by every logically Sect. 65.'] CREATION AND COSMOGONV. 121 self-consistent system of philosophy. The most recent philosophical systems have received their fructifying element principally from the mythological type, especially from the Greek view of the world, and have endeavoured to explain the origin of things in a purely cosmogonic way, to the exclusion of creation proper. But the philo- sophical image of the world that has thus been produced is marked by the same defects as its mythical prototype. No pantheistic system of philosophy, be it developed with ever so great dialectic skill, is able to work its way thoroughly out of the old heathenish chaos. If mind or spirit had not been the original of all things, if the cre- ative Spirit had not moved at the beginning on the face of the waters, the chaotic masses would never have been reduced to order. If nature existed before spirit, the Spirit can never be more than a mere Demiurge, or archi- tect who works with materials which he finds ready to hand. He is but the half-conscious spirit of the world who works his way more and more fully to light as culture and civilization advance, but is never able to complete his work, because he is himself bound to the antagonism which it is his mission to overcome — the antagonism, to wit, between the conscious and the unconscious. Under these conditions mind can never attain to supremacy over the dark natural ground or root of things which lies beyond self-consciousness. That Spirit only, who is able in a perfect sense to commence His work of creation, has power also to complete it §65. So far as the cosmogony, and with the cosmogon}^ the " birth of time," has its ground in a creative will, which is independent of all the conditions of time, the creation of the world may be described as eternal. But so far as the activity of the creating will is conditioned by the successive growth of the creature, the world may be said to have originated in time. Time is neither a mere form of sub- jective intuition, as Kant defined it, nor a " thing in itself," 1 5j:c creation and cosmogony. [Sect 66. It is the form — as truly objective as subjective — in which the teleological development of creation is accomplished ; in which the various momenta, which in the idea constitute one inner undivided unity, necessarily enter on partial and progressive existence. Beginning and result, reality and idea, are not coincident in time ; on the contrary, they are outside of each other. It is in this outiuard relation between the teleological momenta, and in the successive movement through which they are brought to form an inner unity, that time has its existence. As teleological time has had a beginning, so must it also have an end. For the goal of the development must finally be reached, and that which is fragmentary must be done away with by what is perfect. Time, too, owing as it does its existence to the antithesis and discord between the finite and the infinite, between the ideal and the real, between the variety of life and its unity, must also ulti- mately be absorbed into eternity, that is, into the complete unity of the finite and infinite, into the undivided fulness of life. § 66. The Christian dogma of the creation of the world in time does not relate merely, as has been frequently said, to meta- physical subtleties, but has a profound religious and moral significance. The inmost kernel of the dogma, namely, is the idea of a creative teleology, and what is closely connected therewith, of an Mstorico-iDroiDhetical view of mundane life as a development, which points forward to a fulness of the times. As the Mosaic narrative teaches us that the natural universe was completed in a series of days of creation, that is, epochs of time, so too must we say that the kingdom of free- dom is brought into existence in a like series of days of creation. No sooner does one epoch in the history of the world come to an end, than a new creative day dawns — the words " let light be " are spoken anew by the divine creative Word. But as the natural creation attained its con- summation and rest in man, so also does the spiritual creation move onwards through a series of creative days or epochs, to that eternal rest or Sabbath which has a significance not merely for creation, but also for the Creator. The teleologi- cal, or historico-prophetical view of time as the gradual Obser.'] cosmogony and creation. 123 passage of the creature into eternity, is incompatible on the one hand with the representation of mundane life as a con- stantly and uniformly recurring cycle ; on the other hand, with the idea of an endless progress {progressus in injini- tum). Observations. — If we represent time to ourselves as a series that never runs out, without beginning or end, to which, whithersoever we look, whether forwards or backwards, we can see no limit, we cease to take a teleological view of it and things. The objection raised by some, that the world cannot have had a beginning, because every space of time must be supposed to have been preceded b}^ an- other space, rests on a forge tfulness of teleological prin- ciples. Time that precedes teleological time is a mere abstraction, which has meaning only when we make the experiment of conceiving of " pure," that is, empty time, of a naked Chronos without determinate contents ; or, so far as we conceive it to contain something, to con- tain pure matter, the infinite nebulous world, " the waters " (Gen. i. 2), on which the creative spirit had not yet moved with his plastic energy. This sort of time, gazing into which we seem to be gazing into an immense mass of mist and cloud, where there is no separation be- tween light and darkness, where the momenta of existence by which time is determined, are not separated from each other, where there is no measure for time, — this may fairly be termed limitless, immeasurable time. But from the moment the words were spoken, " Let there be light," words which brought the teleological development into action and inaugurated the epochs of organic creation and the history of creation proper, we can only speak of definite time, time which is ^measured in God's eternal wisdom, by which all the periods of the world, all the aeons, are determined. (•' Thou hast ordered all things in measure, number, and weight." — Wisdom xi 21). That time, according to its true idea, is not limitless, is indicated symbolically in the Holy Scriptures by the numbers employed both in the account of the creation of the world and in the prophetic announcements of its de- struction and renovation. We cannot really form a con- 1 24 COSMOGONY AND CREATION. [Sect. fig. ceptioD or attain an intellectual intuition of a development which has no whence and whither, no beginning, middle, and end. And as we are compelled to assume a first day upon which the periods of the organic creation were in- augurated, so also are we compelled to assume a last day ; understanding by it the transition of the creature into eternity, that is, into the true, God-filled time. The proposition, " Time has no reality for God" — a pro- position which is not seldom advanced even by theologians who suppose themselves to have taken their stand on divine revelation — is incompatible with the idea of creation, and leads to acosmisTn. If time has no existence for God, creatures too whose development takes place in time, have no existence for God. If it is not unworthy of God to create a finite world at all, it cannot be unworthy of Him to accept the consequences which necessarily flow from such a creation. If it be His will to establish His king- dom in creation. He must take part in the vital develop- ment of the creature. He must subject Himself also to all the conditions involved in the idea of creation. Not only is the creature subject to growth, but creative love also has made its revelation of itself subject to growth, to de- velopment.* For although God in His own knowledge anticipates the development of the world and the result thereof ; although to Him a thousand j^ears are as one day ; love, that is, in other words, the living fellowship of the Creator with His creature would lack perfection, if the opposition between thought and actuality, purpose and execution, promise and fulfilment, had not also signifi- cance. For it cannot surely be immaterial with God whether He merely loves and knows his creation, without being known and loved by it ; or whether in knowing He is known, and in loving He is loved. We cannot con- ceive it possible that the Son of God should become, not merely ideally present in humanity, but actually man, that He should suffer, be crucified, and reconcile the world with the Father, in the fulness of the times, without sup- posing a profound movement to have taken place in God's own life of love. And the fact that the world lives and •Compare Sibhcrn's "Speculative Kofinoponie," — p. 113 Seel. (>7.J CREATION AND COSMOGONY. 125 moves in God as eternal power and righteousness, and that God as the source of sanctification and blessing is all in all, must affect not merely creation, but God Himself also. Taking, therefore, for our starting point, the idea of creation as a free revelation of the love of God, we exclude the dead conception of the divine unchangeableness, which represents God as too exalted, too lofty, to come into con- tact with time, that is, with the actual life of His crea- tures ; too exalted, one ought indeed to say, to create at all. We also equally exclude the idea of a God who is Himself sunk and lost in the great stream of time. For as God has subjected Himself to the conditions of History, not from any necessity of nature, but from free love. He remains at every moment of His mundane life the " Lord of the Ages." _ , § 67. ^ So far as the divine will brings into existence new hegin- Things, and inaugurates new stages of development and epochs, — new days of the world, — God reveals Himself as the tran- scendent, the supra-mundane principle, as the supernatural principle in nature, as the supra-historical principle in history. For new stages of development, whether in nature or in his- tory,— although the way is prepared for them, and their appearance is conditioned by already existing forces, — can never be explained by or derived solely from such forces. In nature Ave find no direct transition from the inorganic to the organic ; by no continuation of the process of self-develop- ment can the animal world ever produce a man ; nor can a new epoch in the history of the world, — the epoch in which a new and essentially higher form of the ideal of the freedom of the human race finds realization, — be shown to be the mere prolongation and onward movement of the pre- ceding epoch. Interruptions of the unfruitful " progressus in infinituin " are in all cases due to a movement from the centre, to an act of creative freedom, out of whose fulness new beginnings of life are established in nature and fruitful momenta in the history of the world. The movement in question cannot take its rise in the creature itself, it is an act of God in nature, and an act of God in human freedom. But the divine will does not merely institute the beginning 126 CREATION AND COSMOGONY. [Scct. 67. of higher forms of life in nature and history ; God continues also His activity through the medium of the activity of the creature as rcf/ulated by laiv ; He contines His activity within the limits oi" the laivs of develo])ment, of the manifold variet\' of finite causes and their reciprocal action. So far, His work- ings are not transcendent, but immanent. It is this antithesis between the transcendent and immanent activity of God that ffives rise to the distinction between creation and sustainonent. Creative work passes on into sustaining activity so far as the creative will assumes the form of laiv, so far as it works at every stage of development under the form of the order of the natural and spiritual world, in, with, and through the laws and forces of the world.* But the creative power again breaks forth out of the sustaining activity, passes out beyond the order of the lower world, constitutes itself the principle of a higher mundane order, to which the first stands in the mere transient relation of a means or a basis. Hence this higher order is a nnivacle relatively to the lower. The animal is a miracle for the plant ; man is a miracle for the whole of nature. For the true idea of a miracle is that of an effect in nature which cannot be explained by the laws of nature, which can only be explained as the result of a thoroughly origincd movement fi'om the divine centre. Divine providence unites and glorifies the creative and sustaining activities ; for it involves the idea of the goal and perfection of the world. But as the ultimate end of the world is first revealed in man, the true character of providence can never be known till the position of man in the world is understood. Observations. — The antithesis between creation and sustain- ment shows itself not merely in the relation of the different stages to each other, but also within one and the same stage of development. For so far as we regard the individual creature as a continuation of the series of development of the genus or species, it is merely an ex- pression of the sustaiiwient of the said genus or species. So far, however, as the individual creature is not a mere repetition of what had gone before, but something new and orioinal ; so far is it a revelation of the creative * Gen. viii. 22 ; " While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and coH and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease." Sect. 68.] MAN AND THE ANGELS. 127 activity of God. The less the independence possessed by a creature, — the more destitute it is of peculiar cliarac- tenstics, — the more inclined shall we feel to regard it as a mere link in the maintenance of the species. The more independent and free, on the contrary, a creature is, the more truly can we say of it, it is an individual, it has life in itself; the more shall we feel called upon to see in it the finger of the Creator, and to regard it, not as a product of nature, but as a product of God. Man and the Angels. §68. That part of the creation which we call nature attains its culminating point in man, in whom God and the creature meet and become united. It is for this reason that Christian thought has contemplated man both as a microcosm and as a microtheism, as an image of the world and an image of God. But besides man. Revelation takes notice of another class of spiritual beings, namely, the angels. Whether the utterances of the Holy Scriptures respecting the angels be regarded as an expression for a higher cosmical empiricism, or as a religious symbolism ; in either case they express the truth, that man is the central poiiit of the creation. The angels are to be regarded as among the pvesumed conditions for the existence of man ; as would appear indeed from the Scriptures,* according to which they shone like spiritual morning-stars at the very beginning of the Creation, and before the appearance of man upon the Earth. According to the intimations which Scripture and ecclesi- astical teaching afford us respecting the nature and essence of angels, we must represent them to our minds as pure spirits, and not, like men, attached to bodies and limited by the con- ditions of space. Their home is heaven, but not heaven in the astronomical m.eaning of the expression, but rather heaven in the intellectual and spiritual sense. If, on the one hand, they are entirely unshackled by the conditions of space, just * "When the morning- stars sang together, and all the sons of God shout«d for joy." — Job xxxviii. 7. 128 MAN AND THE ANGELS. ISect. 6S. as little, on the otber, are tlicy subjected to the conditions of time. An angel cannot become old. Youth and age are antitheses which have no meaning as applied to them. Al- though they have an origin, and indeed may be said to have a history in so far as a falling off fi-om God has taken place in the angel-world, yet have they no history in the sense of a continuous development, a continuous progress and advance to a state of maturity. For, from the beginning of their exist- ence, the angels have ranged themselves either on the side of God or against him, and it is only in so far as they enter into the world of mankind that they have any part in a progres- sive history. Passing out of that heavenly kingdom in which the good angels sing the praises of the Most High, the angels enter the world of man, and work as spirits of light for the furtherance of the kingdom of God upon earth. If we now combine these characteristics in one general view — characteristics which the older theologians have de- duced from the Scriptures, and strive to grasp them and place them clearly before our mind — we shall find that the world of angels will almost involuntarily suggest to us the world of ideas. The whole description of the angels in its fundamental features conforms exactly to the Ideas, those intei mediate existences, those mediators between God and the real world, those bringers of light, who bear their messages from God to men, those heavenly hosts, who encircle the throne of the ]\Iost High, to reflect his glory back upon himself. It is not ideas as they are presented to our abstract thought, but rather ideas as they are presented to our intuition as living powers and as active spirits (crvsi/xara) which are to be regarded as angels. The Apostle Paul calls the angels princi- palities and powei's,* and he thus describes them as reigning in certain definite departments of the economy of God, as rulers to whom different regions in the Creation are sub- jected ; and when we regard them from this point of view, we * "For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions, or princi- palities, or powers : all things were created by him and for him." — Col. i. 16. "Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come." — Eph i. 21. Ohser.] man and the angels. 129 are naturally reminded of the gods of mythology. What philosophy calls ideas, and mythology calls gods, receive in revelation the name of angels ; but it is the peculiar charac- teristic of the angels to be ever active for the kingdom of God. Ideas, the divinities of life, operate as angels then, and then only, when their tendency is, not in the direction of the kingdom of this world, but in that of the kingdom of God, as their main object — when they are mediators for the kingdom of holiness. Observations. — In Dent, xxxii. 8-9, we find in the Septuagint: "When the Most High divided to the nations their in- heritance, when he separated the sons of men, he set the bounds of the heathen according to the number of the angels of God, but he himself took up his abode in Israel." This passage contains an intimation of the tendency sug- gested above. It was in Israel, therefore, that the Lord himself took up his abode, but over the heathens he placed his angels. It was not in his immediate personal presence, but only through finite mediators, through subordinate deities, that the Highest revealed himself in heathendom ; and it was his goodness to heathendom that, although it was left without GoD in the world in the highest sense of that name, it was still not left with- out ideas. It was through the instrumentality of ideas that God revealed himself to the heathens, although the heathens did not acknowledge HiTn to whom the world of ideas belonged. In so far, therefore, as the deities of mythology may be regarded as the ministerino- spirits of that Providence which preserves the human race from sinking into an utterly unspiritual state, in so far as they operated in the fallen race as a protecting and maintaining power, until the time was fully come in which God decreed to reveal himself as the God of the heathens also, to this extent must thej'- be regarded as angels, even from the higher point of view which is occu- pied by revelation. But in so far as these deities are idols, in so far as they draw men away from the true God, and incite them to fight against the kingdom of God, to this extent they are demons. It is in this light that I 130 MAN AND THE ANGELS. [Sect. 89. they are regarded by tlie apostles* and the first teachers of the Church. For the hostility of the gods necessarily ensued upon the first appearance of Christianity ; a war between the gods of heathenism, and the one true God. It will moreover be evident at once from the foreefoinfr remarks, that the fundamental conception which must be taken as the original starting point is the conception of powers and spirits. Whether these are to be regarded as angels or as demons, depends entirely upon the rela- tion in which they stand to the kingdom of God. And as heathenism has a side which is turned towards the kingdom of God, as well as one which is turned away from it, we are perfectly justified in asserting, in the language of revelation, that angels as well as demons have been active agents in heathenism. §69. If we start from powers and spirits as the fundamental conception, we shall see at once that the question respecting the ijersonality of angels must receive different answers. For all that is of an unfixed and dialectical character con- tained in the conception of " spirit," is equally applicable to the conception of " angel." From the tempest which executes the behests of the Lord, to the Seraph who stands before His throne, there exist a very great diversity and variety of angels. There are many sorts of spirits under the heavens, and for this very reason also many degrees of spirituality and spiritual independence ; and we may therefore very properly assert that the angels are divided into classes, without being obliged on that account to acknowledge the further develop- ment of this thought, as we find it in the work of the Arcopagite, respecting the heavenly hierarchy. If we con- template the angels in their relation to the conception of per- sonality, we may say : there are powers, whose spirituality is so far from being independent, that they possess only a repre- sented personality; in short, are only personifications. Of such a character are the tempests and flames,-|" which execute the commands of the Lord, and the ansrel who troubled the water of * "Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of devils." — 1 Cor. x. 21. I " Who makcth his angels spirits, his ministers a flaming fire." — Ps. civ. 4. Sect. 69.] MAN AND THE ANGELS. 181 the pool of Bethesda,* in whom we recognize nothing more than the peisoniiication of one of the powers of nature. There exist other powers in the creation which possess a higher degree of sj)iritiiality, an intermediate state of exist- ence between personification and personality. Under this category may be classed the spiritual powers in history, as fur instance the spirits of nations and the deities of mytho- logy. He is but a very superficial thinker who can recog- nize in the spirit of a people nothing more than a mere per- sonification, a mere generic expression for the aims and aspi- rations of individuals. If, on the one hand, we must not hypostasize such a national spirit, or attribute to it an inde- pendent existence, just as little, on the other, shall we be justified in regarding it as a mere personification ; for what- ever can impart soul and spirit to other things, must also in a certain degree contain spirit in itself. It is only a Saddu- cean view of mythology which can desire to contemplate its deities as the mere products of human imagination, as mere personifications of human feelings and passions, without attri- buting to them a certain kind of spirituality of their own, quite independent of the human individuals who may feel themselves governed, animated, or inspired by them. But if in this manner we find powers in history, which hover in the region lying between personality and personification, it is no less certain that revelation recognizes a third class of cosmi- cal powers which constitute a free and personal spiritual kingdom. Our Lord and His apostles have borne testimony to this representation among their followers, by whom its correctness had been expressly called in question, in as much as the Sadducees asserted that there was neither angel nor spirit.f If to this assertion, which we are constantly meet- ing at every turn, we oppose the authority of the scriptural doctrine, we must at the same time observe, that no specula- tion will ever be able to decide how far there may be powers existing in the creation, possessing such a degree of spirit- * " For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water : whosoever, then, first after the troubling of the water stepped in, was made whole of whatsoever disease he had." — John v. 4. t "For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither ange) nor spirit; but the Pharisees confess both." — Acts xxiii. 8. 132 MAN AND THE ANGELS. [Sect. JO. uality in themselves, as to be able to serve their Creator, or to resist His will, with a personal consciousness of the act. Speculation can neither affirm nor deny anything on this point, but should rather take to heart the words of the poet : " there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Revelation tells us, that at the be- ginning of the creation the shouts of joy of the children of God resounded at the same time as the songs of the morning stars ;* and when in our daily prayer we say, " Thy wiU be done on earth, as it is in heaven," our thoughts will natur- ally revert to the heavenly hosts, the perfect instruments for the carrying out of the holy will of the Father. §70. If we now endeavour to determine the relation between the nature of angels and human nature with a somewhat greater degree of precision, it will be evident that in one re- spect the angels are higher than men, whereas in another they occupy an inferior position : higher because they are powers and energies, the strong, the mighty ones,-f- who exe- cute the commandments of the Lord, elevated above all earthly limitations : inferior, because they bear the same re- lation to man as the universal to the microcosmical ; for which reason they are also represented as spirits waiting and tending upon human life, as a firmament of stars ministering to the life of earth in its historical convulsions. Although the angel, in relation to man, is the more powerful spirit, man's spirit is nevertheless the richer and the more compre- hensive. For the angel in all his power is only the expres- sion of a single one of all those phases which man in the inward nature of his soul, and the richness of his own indi- viduality, is intended to combine into a complete and perfect microcosm. If we contemplate the revelations respecting the angels in the Scriptures, we can obtain no definite outline of tlieir personality, but only a vague and hazy picture which always remains enshrouded in the undefinable brightness and splendour of their spirituality, while, on the other hand, • " When the morninc;-stars sang together, and all the sons of God shontcd for joy." — Job xxxviii. 7. I " Bless the Lord, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do his com- n»andnaiit6, hearkening unto the voice of his word." — I's. ciii. 20. Sect 71.] MAN AND THE ANGELS. 133 Christ and the apostles stand before us as clear and sharply defined figures. It is precisely because the angels are only spirits, but not souls, that they cannot possess the same rich existence as man, whose soul is the point of union in which spirit and nature meet. This high privilege, which man enjoys above the angels, finds its expression in the Scriptures, where it is said that the Son of God was made not angel, but man. He does not take on Him the nature of angels, but He takes on Him the seed of Abraham.* He was will- ing to unite Himself with nature alone, which is the central point of the creation. The saints will judge the angelSj-f* in conjunction with Christ they will judge all the powers of existence, all the energies and spirits which have moved under the heavens. When the apostles speak of the angels as desiring to look into the mystery of the redemption, in order that the wisdom of God in the gospel might be made known to principalities and powers, J the nature of these spirits is expressly stated as that of witnesses to the glory of man, while they themselves cannot, like man, be made partakers of Christ in any real manner. As man is that point in which the spiritual and corporeal worlds are united, and as humanity is the particular form in which the Incar- nation has taken place, it follows that men are capable of entering into the fullest and most perfect union with God, while angels, on account of their pure spirituality, can only be made partakers of the majesty of God, but cannot, in the same immediate manner as man, be made partakers of His revelation of love, the mystery of the Incarnation, and the sacramental union connected with it. If we pursue our investigations still further, and inquire into the nature of the activity of angels in human affairs, we * " For verily he took not on him the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham." — Heb. ii. 16. t " Know ye not that we shall judge angels ? how much more things that pertain to this life ? " — 1 Cor. vi. 3. X " Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you hy them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, which things the angels desire to look into." — 1 Pet. i. 12. " To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places miglrt be known by the Church, the manifold wisdom of God." — Eph. iii. 10. 134 MAN AND THE ANGELS. [Sect. 71, shall find intimations that they are the ministenng spirits of Providence. Just as the Son of God is the primary Medi- ator between God and man, the angels are relative mediators, and appear especially as ministering spirits for Christ and the kingdom of Christ. Christ's entrance into the world and departure from it, His birth, resurrection, and ascension, are all accompanied by the ministry of angels; and clear intima- tions are to be found in the Book of the Acts, that angels have also been co-operative in the extension of Christianity. Roman Catholicism has developed the doctrine of the active interfer- ence of angels to such an extent as to cast the mediatorial office of Christ completely into the shade ; but later Protest- antism, by speaking of angels as if they had long ago entirely ceased to take any active part in human aflfairs, has been no less guilty of taking a one-sided view of this question. When Christ says, " Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man" (John i. 51), we are to understand this as signifying, that through the whole course of history angels will continue to be active ; that when Christ comes with His kingdom, " ministering .spirits" will be ready, in the fullest and most comprehensive sense of the expression. In our days, indeed, the belief in angels has been too much thrust out of sight, even in the consciousness of believers ; but in spite of this, the generally accepted representation of the " powers of this earthly life" offers a point of connection to which this belief may be attached, and through which it may attain a firmer footing, a representation indeed which is constantly expressed in a worldly sense, but which it is of great importance to conceive also in a sacred one. "When we give utterance to this representation in the light of the Christian doctrine of Providence, we have already entered u])on the ground apper- taining to the belief in angels For the essential and dis- tinguishing marks in the conception of an angel are not personality, but spirit and power, operating as instruments for the fulfilment of the holy designs of Providence in the lives of men. May we not then in this sense assert, that the angels of the nations were active among them in the introduction of Christianity? May we not say that the spirits, the idea.s, to the d(miinion of which the people were of course subjected, have been the natural approaches Ohser] '*'^ ^^^ '^^^ angels. 135 for the admission of holiness, — mediators, who have prepared the way of the Lord in the heart of the people, and have thus been the determining conditions of the particular adop- tion of Christianity by that people ? And when Christ says that He will send out His angels on the day of judgment to call too-ether His elect from the four corners of the world * does not this signify, that just as the demoniacal powers will make their influence felt, more especially in the later periods of history, so also will all good powers display their might and sovereignty by leading men to Christ, and by striving to bring about the consummation, that the separation between light and darkness be completed. On that day will the Lord deny the wicked, not only before His Father, but before all the holy angels.-f* The ungodly shall be deserted, not only by God, but by all the gods, by all good powers. Observations. — Schleiermacher is of opinion that there is no essential difference between the belief in angels and the belief in the existence of rational beings in other planets, inasmucb as the angels owe their origin to no other source than the necessity which man feels for peopling the universe with rational beings different from himself. But this manner of regarding the subject rests upon an utterly erroneous conception of the nature of angels. For even if we accept the very doubtful hypothesis, that there are also inhabitants upon the other heavenly bodies, we can only imagine them to ourselves as in some measure analogous to man, consequently as rational beings, whose existence is a certain form of union of body and spirit ; and these individuals, therefore, will again require angels, and stand under the influence of universal powers. On every heavenly body in which we image a human race to exist, the metaphysical opposition between heaven and earth will also manifest itself, and consequently the opposition between a human life moving on in a succes- * "And he shall send his angels with a great sotxnd of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." — Matt. xxiv. 21. t " Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my woi'ds, in this adul- terous and sinful generation, of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he Cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."— Mark viii. 38. 136 MAN CREATED IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. [Sect. 7'2. sion of historical events, and those universal powers and energies of Providence to which human life stands in a certain relation, will be apparent. Man Created in the Image of God. §72. While the angels are pure spirits, and the objects of the natural world are imprisoned as it were in a state of uncon- scious corporeity, man, on the other hand, is the free, personal unity of spirit and nature, a spiritual soul, which is not held captive in corporeity, like natural objects, but intended to manifest itself with freedom through the instrumentality of the body, as a temple of the Spirit. In this temple the whole corporeal world finds its central point, illuminating and glo rifying everything, just in the same manner as the spiritua- world collects its rays in the inner being of man, as in a focus in which all things converge. The dignity of man is entirelyl lost sight of in the heathen view, which endeavours to ex- plain the manner in which he first came into existence as purely cosraogonical, and conceives man as nothing more than the spirit of nature, which has come to a consciousness of it- self. But the view of man's nature as presented in revelation is, that he has been created after the image of God, and is as copy, and in a state of created dependence, what the divine Logos is as pattern, and as itself creative. And it is only upon this supposition that we can explain that man, although a limb of the great body of nature, although unwinding him- self from out of the swaddling-bands of the natural life, al- though subject to the natural laws for the development of his species, is nevertheless free of nature, and free of the world, and that in every human individual there exists something unconditioned, by means of which he is independent of the entire macrocosm. Observations. — The heathen view of man is very significantly expressed in the mythical Sphinx, in which the human countenance rises out of the savage form of an animal. It is the cosmical fermentation which is represented in this mixture of animal and man, of nature and spirit Sed. 72.] MAN CREATED IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. 137 Man here endeavours to disentangle himself from the coil of natural life, but he is chained to it, and imprisoned, and not allowed to rise to free and independent human existence. As is well known, it was the sphinx which proposed to men the riddle ; What animal is that, which in the morning goes on all fours, in the day-time on two legs, and in the evening on three ? And although it was the Greek who solved the riddle, when he answered that it was man, yet did he by no means succeed in finding a true answer to the riddle of liberty. For even Greek humanity itself may be represented under the image of a sphinx, the upper part of which is a beautiful virgin, a form fair to behold, but the lower part of which is a monster. While Greek humanity presents us with an image of freedom in its social and moral life, in its art and in its science, this image of freedom arises out of the dark ground of its natural life. In the background of the bright world of freedom stands blind fate, an evidence that man is not yet emancipated from the macrocosm. And if the Greek was unable to solve the riddle of freedom, the Roman Stoic also met with no greater success. For the Stoic only en- deavours to get out of the difficulty by sacrificing himself to the great monster with the defiance of resignation, with the courage of despair. From whatever side we look at Heathenism, it always appears that man has only the world for his principle, and therefore can never in reality be free from the world. It is true, the free spirit is seen to emerge from out of the natural life, just as the counte- nance of the sphinx rises from the animal body, but it never really becomes free. It is only when man, the creative freedom {lihertas liherans) takes the holy will of love for his principle, only when he is the free and im- mortal organ of this will, that he is free with regard to the world, free with regard to nature, although himself constituting a member of the world. §73. The conception of humanity therefore consists in this, that two principles, the cosmical and the holy, are intimately com- bined together in man into a free and personal unity. It is the vocation of man to be lord of the earth ; but as a free 138 MAN CREATED IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. [Scct. 73. organ for the holy will of the Creator, it is his vocation to glorify and raise his freedom into a dependence on God, his life in the world into a life in God, his ideal of the world into the ideal of the kingdom of God. The conception of man is by no means exhausted by the definition, that man is a free rational being. His humanity is founded on this, that as a free rational being he is a religious being, that his reason and his freedom are determined by the laws of conscience. Conscience is the seal and pledge of man's freedom and in- ward independence of the universe ; but it is so only in so far as it is also the token of his dependence upon his Creator. The nature of man in his relation to conscience is such, that he is lord in so far only as he is at the same time servant, — that he is in spirit and in truth his own, in so far only as he is in spirit and in truth the Lord's also. Observations. — The world of modern culture regards it as its greatest honour that it has developed the idea of humanity, and that its leaders and teachers, its thinkers and poets, are heroes of humanity. Humanity has be- come the universal watchword of modern times, a synonyme for freedom, and all-sided development, in opposition to bondage and barbarism. Indeed, with a great many of our contemporaries every positive char- acteristic in this conception has been entirely lost ; and it has been very aptly remarked that the modern world, in- stead of the old saints of Catholicism, has procured for itself a new saint of its own, namely the humanus, whom it seeks after at all times, among all nations, and in all re- ligions and churches. But in this humanus we are only too often reminded of heathenism, rather than of man created in God's image. If we wish to institute a somewhat closer comparison between the Christian and the heathen conceptions of humanity, we may start from the position that the oppos- ite of humanity is barbarism^. But what is barbarism ? Barbarism is not only opposed to culture, is not only a want of education, but is just as much opposed to a true uncorrupted nature; it is indeed a perversion of the original relations of nature. In history, in the moral world, bar- barism is precisely that which chaos is in nature, a dis- order in the fundamental elements of human nature Ohser.] MAN CREATED IN THE IMAGE OF GOD, ISU Heathenism considered in its cosmological relations can never get beyond the old chaos, and similarly, in its an- thropological and ethical relations, it is equally unable to liberate itself from the jprinciiDle of barbarism, because it is tainted with disorder and confusion in the ethical foun- dations supplied by nature. Culture is the highest expression for the heathen humanity, which overlooks the fact, that human liberty itself requires to be cultivated by divine grace, — requires to be made free by a higher liher- tas liberans. Heathen humanity develops only the auto- nomic, the independent element in human nature, it seeks only to make the earth subject to itself, and man the centre in a kingxlom of world-ideals. The relationship of dependence arising from creation, the recipient, submissive relationship to the divine love, the yearning after God as a need of man's nature, and the holy liberty arising from it, are all wanting in the heathen humanity. The barbarism of it appears in this, that there is a whole region in the soul, which lies fallow and unculti- vated, that the noblest seed of the spirit does not grow in this soil, that the deepest feelings and emotions of the mind, religious humility and love, divine sorrow, and joy in God, cannot germinate in the coldness and hardness of the heart. Instead of these genuine human feelings a wilderness of coarse feelings and profane thoughts grows up in this heathen world of cultivation, and is but very ineffectually concealed by the glorious blossoms of art and science. Many men of cultivation in modern times, display a certain coarseness of feeling with reference to matters of religion, and to the more delicate moral relation- ships, which is little in harmony with their scientific and sesthetic culture. Greek humanity, while it quite ignores all dependence on the Creator, cannot preserve itself from lapsing into a very pei'nicious dependence on the world. And, however high it may place the human individual, it does not escape entertaining barbarous views of the human individual touching his glorification. This barbarism has manifested itself in our days in the denial of the im- mortality of the soul, as also in the position, that it is the highest vocation of the individual to become the organ of the idea or of the spirit of the world. This 140 MAN CREATED IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. [Sect. 73. world-spirit does not trouble itself about the individual, but only about the work which it intends to perform through his instrumentality. The worth of the individual is, therefore, only to be estimated according to the extent to which he is adapted for executing the works and per- forming the acts which have to be executed and performed in the name of the idea; according, therefore, to his genius and talent; and great genius is the highest representation of humanity. But this is precisely the nature of barbar- ism,— to estimate the humanity of the individual accord- ing to his talents and his deeds, instead of according to his conscience and his will; to make the personality merely a vehicle for the talent, the will merely a vehicle for the act, instead of making the act a means for developing the inward man. This same barbarism manifests itself in such propositions as the following: every individual is nothing more than the work which he does, and his sig- nificance is precisely equal to what he accomplishes and makes known during his phenomenal existence * Both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism acknowledge man to have been created in the image of God, but the idea of humanity is very differently viewed in the two confessions; because the relationship between nature and grace is differently conceived. Catholicism regards gi*ace as a donum superadditum, as a higher gift which the Almighty added after He had created man; but, at the same time, it maintains that human nature would still have been a true human nature even without Divine grace. Protestantism teaches, on the other hand, that it :s an essential pai't of the conception of human nature not to be nature entirely left to itself, not to be the so-called "merely human," but for the human to manifest the Divine, in liberty to manifest grace. Tlie barbarism of Catholicism consists in its combining the two fun- damental factors of human life in an outward and mechanical manner, a barbarism which manifests itself not only in its dogmas, but also in its life, in. as much as throughout Catholicism we meet everywhere with a * Compaic Zcuthcn's Humanitat, Betragtet fra ent Clni^tcligt Staudpuiict, p. 19 Sect. 74.] MAN CREATED IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. 141 certain dualism between the Divine and the human, the holy and the profane, the religious and the moral, the aims and objects of the church, and the aims and objects of the world. Protestantism, on the contrary, proposes to itself as the problem of true humanity, that the relation of man to God, and his relation to the world, should permeate each other in a free and spiritual manner. § 74. When we assert that the Divine image or the essence of humanity must be recognised as present in every human in- dividual, this must not be understood to signify that human individuals are distinguished from each other only externally and with reference to differences arising from sense and time, while the inward man is the same in each individual. If the essence of the individual were only the universal abstract man, if it possessed no inward and eternal peculiarity, it would be nothing more than a meaningless repetition of the genus, but no real individual. Just, therefore, as each human individual must be regarded as a link in the suc- cession of the development of the genus, it is also at the same time a particular form of the Divine image, a particular and a new point of manifestation of the Divine will. These consi- derations supply the answer to the question, whether human individuals are horn or created, — the question respecting the soundness of Traducianism or Creatianism. The truth to which Traducianism may lay claim consists in this : that every human individual is a product of the natural activity of the species, just as this is determined by the peculiarities of the race, the family, and the parents. But the truth of Creatianism lies in this: that the universal natural activity, by means of which the species propagates itself, and new souls are formed, that this mysterious natural activity constitutes the instrument and means for the individualizing activity of the Creator, that each single human being therefore is a new manifestation of the Divine will, which thus prepares for itself a peculiar form of its own image. Each of these views is only true, when it affirms its own antithesis. According to the one-sided view presented by Traducianism, the individual is reduced into a condition of utter dependence upon the species, and its whole existence is thus entirely determined by 1 42 MAN CREATED IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. [Sect. 74. the preceding scries. An eternal particularity, an infinite germ of freedom is perfectly inconceivable on the hypothesis of Tradiicianism, because the latter can never get beyond the notion of the species, and the naturalistic conception of the individual which is implied in it. According to a one-sided Creatianism, on the other hand, every individual proceeds from the hand of his Creator as pure and undefiled as the first Adam ; and the apparent dependence of the individuals upon the preceding members of the series, the notion of inherited qualities, and especially the phenomenon of natural shifidness, become quite inexplicable. The Scriptures acknowledge both points of view — "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me " (Ps. IL 5), are the words of the Psalmist confii-ming Traducianism. But at another place the Psalmist also bears witness, that the providential eye of the Creator watches over the birth of the individual, when he says: "I will praise Thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." " My substance was not hid from Thee when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being imper- fect" (Ps. cxxxix. 14-16). And the Lord says to Jeremiah, "\ formed thee in the belly" (Jer. i. 5). Even if it remains a mystery, how in the secret laboratory wherein man is formed nature and creation merge in one another, — how the activity of the Creator, and the conditions of nature mutually set limits to each other, — for birth has its secrets even as death has, — still must each individual be regarded at once from the point of view offered by Traducianism, and also from that of Creatianism, or, in other words, as a continuation and a mem- ber in the series, and also as a new and original beginning. We cannot assign any other signification to the representation oi i\\Q 'pre-existence of souls than this: that souls have pre- existed as possibilities in the depths of the Divine creative power, a position which may easily be reconciled with another, namely, that souls have been laid down as possibilities in the depths of the nature of the species. Observations. — If in the contemplation of the creation of the world generally, we have advanced the position, that the world must be regarded from the point of view of natural development as well as from that of the creation, this Ohser.] man created in the image of god. 143 position meets with its bigliest application in onan. Man is the most perfect creature, because he is the most per- fect nature, and he is the most perfect nature, tecause he is the most perfect creature. He is the most perfect nature, because he is the individual, or nature in itself ; but it is precisely for this very reason, that no ofher nature points so directly to the Creator as its originator, for the individual cannot be explained out of a merely general activity of nature, which can only produce individuals in semblance or patterns. " That is a nature," is the expres- sion we use, when we w4sh to say of anybody, that he is a real man, a genuine individual who has originality and character in his soul, and cannot therefore be understood b}' general categories of species and kind, but b}'- the study of himself alone. But to whatever extent it can be predicated of any one that he is a nature in himself, just to that same extent does he appear before us as a neiu and original point of commencement in the series, that is to say, just so far as he appears as natura, to the same extent does he also appear as creatura. Now, although every human individual must be contemplated as well from the point of view of creation as from that of propa- gation, there is a relative difference which nevertheless must not be disregarded in the contemplation of liuman individuals, a difference which is the same as that which we have treated above as the difference between creation and preservation. The more primitive and the more original human individuals are, the more readily do they allow of being conceived from the point of view of crea- tion, and the more does the question respecting the man- ner of their first coming into existence, admit of an explanation on the Croatian hypothesis. On the othei* hand, the less primitive they are, the more do they appear as mere shoots or offsets from that which has preceded them, and therefore only as members or links in the preservation of the species, of the people and of the family, just as also in the economy of the life of the community, they appear as if intended only to pre- serve, continue, and prolong, what others have commenced and established. The representation of the divine activity 1 44 MAN CREATED IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. [Sect. 74. of the Creator then takes a far more subordinate place, and the Traducian explanation obtains the pre-eminence, always remembering, however, that this opposition is only a relative one, because we must always presuppose a creation-moment in every individual, if it is to be a true individual in the image of God, and not a mere individual in semblance. It is just this Creatianism in the sense given above, by which the creation of the world of man- kind is distinguished from that of the world of natuie. Strictly speaking, it is only the genera and species which are created in nature. Individuals come into ex- istence through continued Traducianism, while the indi- vidualizing activity of the Creator manifests itself here only in hasty and prefigurative intimations. Every human individual on the other hand, contains in itself an eternal idiosyncrasy, and therein, a talent given and entrusted to it by God, which, although remaining in many individuals in a latent and inactive condition, must nevertheless be supposed as existent, if they are to be regarded as creatures created in the image of God. Although there are many individuals in whom the Creatian-moment is not to be discerned, it nevertheless forces its necessary recognition upon us through the teleological contemplation of history. If, for instance, we cast a glance at the groups of talents which rise upon the horizon of history at critical epochs, like new clusters of stars, and which are evidently ordained to solve the pro- blem of a particular age, we shall find that the original natural destination of these individuals can only be ex- plained on the supposition of Creatianism. For even if we were to assume that talents are welling forth in one uninterrupted stream from the fruitful womb of nature, — an assumption, by the way, in direct contradiction to the law of economy which history teaches us in this respect, — it would still be a matter of chance what talents Nature produced at any given epoch, because every histo- rical period is perfectly indifferent to Nature, considered purely as such. On the other hand, the greater the in- fluence which real talent exercises upon its time, the more evident does it appear, that it was ordained pre- cisely for this particular historical period, that indeed, as Ohsei'.] MAN creati<:d in the image of god. 145 the Prophet says, it was ah-eady fashioned in the womb for its peculiar Avork. According to purely pantheistic views, it is nothing but the historical spirit of the age which causes the individuals to become what they are. But even if we grant that this view is a correct expres- sion for one side of the problem, it is still necessary to add, that the new period, the new historical dawn first breaks in upon us in great individuals, and that these bringers of light, these children of the dawn, are not mere empty vessels, which can be filled with any soi't of spirit indifferently, not mere clay out of which the particular epoch can mould whatever it may please ; but that they are original natures with a particular stamp upon them from the first, which contain within themselves the source of a determined form of activity, by which they them- selves determine the form and colour of their time. But in this manner we find ourselves obliged to assume Pro- vidence as operating not only in the world of conscious- ness, but also in the hidden fundamental nature of the species. For, if we regard Providence only as a governing providence in history, but not at the same time as a creating Providence in nature, — if we do not recognize the comprehensive signification of the words spoken by the Lord to the Prophet : " Before T formed thee in the belly, I knew thee ; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a pro- phet unto the nations" (Jer. i. 5), how are we to explain this coincidence between talent and the problems of his- tory ? If it is only a blind genius of nature who in its hidden workshop forms the tools of history, how comes it, that it never makes mistakes, producing a Dante when history requires a Luther ? Whence comes it that it does not produce philosophical and contemplative natures, when history requires practical and heroic natures, and vice versa ? The harmony between the natural vocation of individuals and the requirements of history admits of no otlier suflicient explanation [ratio syfjicieU'S) than that to be found in the conception of a creative Providence, which wields a power at once over both nature and history. K 146 MAN CREATED IN THE IMAGE OF GOB [tSect. U Tn the meantime, however, we cannot help presuming the pi-esence of the creative force, even where it cannot be recognized. Christ sa3^s : "A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come : but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remem- bereth no more the anguish for joy that a man is born into the world," John xvi. 21. This joy that a man is born into the world is conceivable as a spiritual joy on the hypothesis of Creatianism alone. The spiritual joy at the birth of a child is not merely the joy at the pre- servation and continuation of the species or family, but the joy that a really oieiu existence has come into the world, an existence which has never been before, and never will come again. But that there exists a relative difference between different individuals follows at once from the very conception of a kingdom of man. For a kingdom must contain a variety of differences and degi'ees. The activity of the Creator cannot manifest the same abundance at every point ; and is, moreover, subjected at every point to the determined conditions of the relatively independent activity of nature, or of the Traducian force. Even here then the conception of election alreadj' mani- fests itself — a conception which will appear again in a higher form in the kino-dom of iji'ace — for even in the kingdom of nature we must already begin to distinguish between the elect and favoured natures, and those which, relatively speaking, have been overlooked and placed in the shade. But it must be especially observed here, that this NATURAL ELECTION, as we will designate it, decides nothing respecting the personal merit of individuals. The personality of man depends on the free union of talent with will, and we here regard this union only as a possi- bility. From which it follows, that he who has m himself the greater possibility, is by no means on that account the greater personal reality ; on the contrar}- in this respect, as Christianity teaches, the last may become the first, and he who is faithful over a few things may be placed higher than he who is unfaithful (•ver many things. And hence it also follows, that the importance of a talent considered merely with reference Sect. 75.] MAN CREATED [N THE IMAGE OF GOD. 1 47 tC' its influeiice on the course of historical events is bv nc means a measure of its ethical worth ; because it is easy to imagine the development of a talent up to a certain degree of activity as necessarily determined by nature, and of a merely instinctive character, vv'ithout its being- sanctified by the operation of the will. What has here been stated with reference to indi- viduals, respecting a natural election founded in the cir- cumstances and conditions of their creation, is equally true of the idiosyncrasies of nations. Although it is the vocation of each nation to represent one side of the divine image, we must nevertheless distinguish between such natu'-es as are more primitive, and such as are more derived, between such as express more decidedly the idea of creation, and such as express more decidedly the idea of maintenance and preservation. § 75. The entire diversity of individuals created in God's image, of nations, of tongues, and of races, finds its unity in the divine Logos, the uncreated image of God (imago del ahsoluta), who in the fulness of times himself becomes man. If the divine Logos did not Himself become man, the Ideal of humanity would not be realized ; for each of the created individuals represents only an imperfect, a relative union of the Logos and man, of the uncreated and the created divine image. The Logos having become man, reveals the whole fulness of the ideal according to which human nature was originally planned, but which can be realized only imperfectly in each finite individual. If the divine Logos did not become man, humanity would be without any real point of unity and without a head. It would want the actual Mediator, who can lead the species out of the created relations of dependence into the spiritual relations of freedom, who can raise it from the level of the natural life to the level of perfection and true being. We therefore accept the essentially Christian belief, that the Son of God would have been made man, and would have come into the world, even if sin had not come into the world,* — the belief, that when God created man after his * See Irena2iis adv. haer. Book 5, Ch. IG. — "That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things iu Christ, both 1 48 THE FIRST ADAM. [Sect. 76. own image, He created him in the image of his Son, in the image ot" the Son who was to become incarnate, so that even at the creation of man the image of Christ was present to the mind of the Creator, and was the prototype according to which man was created. The First Adam. § 7G. Tlie Church answers the question respecting the origin of the human race and of history, by pointing to a first pair of human beings,* and she recogniscsin the first Adam the natural pattern of the second Adam, who was to come in the fulness of times ;-|- but thei'e is another view which has obtained advo- cates in all times, and which asserts that the human race has developed itself from several centres entirely indepen- dent of each othei". As the question here at issue lies entirely beyond the limits of our present experience, its answer must also ultimately depend on the general fundamental view which we take of the vocation and condition of man. The naturalistic point of view, which docs not recognise revelation as the necessary presupposition for the development of human freedom, regards the origin of human life entirely under the type of natural development. It supposes that in different which are in heaven, and which arc on earth ; even in him :" Eph. i. 10. " Who is the image of tlie invisible God, tlie first-born of every creature : And he is the head of the bodv, the church : who is the beginning the first-born from the dead; that in all things he might have the pre-eminence:" Col. i. 15 and 18. "And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness :" Eph. iv. 24. " And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him : Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all and in all." Col. iii. 10, II. * "And the rib, which the Lord God hath taken from man, made he a woman, aud brought her unto the man :" Gen. ii. 22. "And he answered and said unto them Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female :" Matt. xix. 4. " And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation." Acts xvii. 26. f "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin ; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:" Rom. v. 12. " And so it ic written, The first man Adam was made a living soul ; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit." 1 Cor. xv. 45. Sect. 77.J THE FIRST ADAM". 1 4-9 regions of the earth, the Aborigines (0/ al-ox^ovsc) sprang out of the slime of matter. At last in the midst of their struo-o-lino- 00 o and wrestling with the powers of nature, the Promethean spark of genius flashed up in some of these children of the earth, and these it is who have become the heroes of culture and humanity, and have led their brothers further on the road of " self-liberation." Whether this view establish itself on a foundation of Deism, which, it is true, recognises a Creator above the stars, but a creator who having given His world the first impulse towards its further development, remains for ever after an inactive spectator, — or whether it endeavours to establish itself on a basis of Panthism, and regards the spirit of man as a self-developing power of the Godhead — on either hypothesis it has entirely perverted the true conception of the nature of creation, and of man created after the image of God. For if man is a creature after the image of God, the creating principle must also be the principle of his development; and the true development of man can never be imagined as left entirely to itself, but only as guided by revelation and grace. §77. If we allow that the significance of history is to be found in its representation of the mutual relations between the human and the divine wills, between self-consciousness and revelation, that its ultimate object is the perfect union of God and man, it follows that these mutual relations and this union must have been present in the beginning of history as in a fruitful germ. Humanity is not to propagate itself corporeally alone, it must also propagate itself intellectually by means of sacred tradition. And as surely as revelation and sacred tra- dition constitute the foundation of the history of the develop- ment of man in God's image, just so surely can this history have only one starting-point, because this is the condition for the propagation of the sacred tradition from one generation to another. The i-epresentation of Paradise and of the first Adam is founded, therefore, not only in the letter of Christi- anity, but also in its spirit ; and the opposite view must be rejected as Pelagian, because it makes liberty begin without divine grnce, self-consciousness without a divine word. And just as the human race, regarded from the point of view of a 150 THE FIBST ADAM. [Sect. 77 spiritual propagation, must be conceived as having only one starting-point, the same assumption will appear as a no less necessary logical consequence if we regard it from the point of view of natural propagation. Jb'or as man is the unity of spirit and nature ; as tlie development of mind and soul is conditioned by a corresponding constitution of nature, the intellectual unity of the race is also conditioned by its natural unity, or by the fact that the whole human race has sprung from " one hlood." To a certain extent we may recognize this in the relations between parents and children, in families and in races, in which the intellectual relationship is not to be separated from the blood-relationship ; but we are also obliged to regard this natural relationship as transmitted to the race in its entirety. And although this view of tlie matter is the more obscure, it is at any rate clear, that only on the supposition of "first parents" can the hypothesis of ihe universal innate sinfulness of man, in its Chrisiini sense, be maintained. On the hj^pothesis of avToy^dovig, or of many original starting-points of the human race, independent of each other, the universal sinfulness of man must be regarded as something which belongs to the original arrangement of the creation. But only on the supposition of " first parents " can it be regarded as something which was introduced afterwards, and which has penetrated through to all. Observations. — It is in the first Adam that Creatianism attains its fullest significance. The first Adam was created in a sense in which we cannot predicate creation of any of his posterity. His is a miracle for the whole of nature, which can only supply the conditions necessary for his existence, but which cannot effect his existence of itself It is this miracle which Naturalism endeavours to avoid by assuming that mankind has come into existence through a generatio oequivoca, that the fluid-element has been impregnated in the very beginning with germs of life, which, through the accidental concurrence of certain physical conditions (temperature, electricity, galvanism, (Sic.,) have developed themselves into human organizations. In this manner everything appears to go on in conformity with natural laws, and miracle seems to be most success- fully got rid o£ For if the fact of a miracle were con- Obser.} the first ADiUL 151 ceded at only one point of the system, it might, of course, recur again at other points, more especially at the appear- ance of the second Adam in the midst of mankind. But is the miraculous really disposed of by this hypothesis ? This most remarkable coincidence of natural conditions requisite for the development of the germs of man, supposed to be dormant in the depths of nature, this predetermined har- mony,— is not this indeed a teleological miracle ? And is it not a contradiction to what we generally designate as the eternal laws of nature, i.e., to the laws of our ex- experience as it is at 'present, if we imagine men to arise out of the " fluid element," at different parts of the earth, whether it be in the form of children or of adult human ♦ beings ? Is, then, this solution of the enigma of the ori- gin of mankind more conceivable than that offered by the Mosaic tradition, and the representation that the Lord God formed Adam of the dust of the ground, and breathed into him spirit of His own Spirit? Something inexpli- cable, something beyond the domain of our sensible per- ceptions, remains on either hypothesis ; because on either hypothesis we are carried beyond the present conditions of experience and of sensible perception. But the diffe- rence is this : in the former case we arrive at a supposi- tion which is perfectly monsti'ous, because the miiacle is effected by blind powers ; while, on the other hand, the latter representation awakens feelings of awe and admira- tion, because the miracle is effected by the Spirit, by holy wisdom. It does not fall within the province of dogmatic theology to enter into any minute and lengthy investigations re- specting the differences between various races and nation- alities, based upon either physiological or philological considerations. It is well known that sometimes points of difference have been regarded as the original element, and sometimes differences have been developed out of the presupposed unity. Both explanations are supported by the authority of scientific men of high repute. For the world of experience is ambiguous on this point, and one evidence is opposed to another. But we have not to do here with a mere question respecting the variety of I 5 2 THE FIRST ADAM. [Sect. 78. reasons for and against, but rather with the question as to whicli is the one sufficient and decisive reason for our judgment. However greac importance maj" be attached to the investigations of natural science, tliey can never bring us any farther in this question than to a supposition, an assumption, which they endeavour to raise to "the Jiighest ijvohah'dlty " by the consideration of tlie facts. And although there are great scientific authorities for the hypothesis of the descent of the whole human race from a single pair, which we can oppose to other equally great authorities, who assert the contrary, dogmatic theology cannot support itself on conjectures and assumptions of natural science. It must know that the final decision in these investigations must depend upon the views we hold respecting creation, revelation, and sacred tradition, and also respecting the relations between spirit and nature. And here dogmatic theology is in its own peculiar pro- vince, and must decide the question according to its own laws, leaving the investigations of natural science to go their own way ; yet in the confident exj^ectation that the ultimate conclusions arrived at by natural science can never contradict revelation. §78. The real relation to God in the fii'st Adam cannot have been a state of perfection, neither, on the other hand, a mere disposition, but rather a living commencrment which contained within itself the possibility of a progressive development and a fulfilment of the vocation of man. It is the one-sidedness of Augustinianism to confound the conceptions of innocence and sanctity ; to attribute to the first man a purity of will and a perspicuity of knowledge, which can properly be con- ceived only as the goal of a free self- development. The Augus- tinian dogma has not been able to escape from a Docetic conception of the first Adam ; inasmuch as his true human nature becomes mei-e appearance, if his innate innocence is to be conceived as real sanctity. (Compare 1 Cor. xv. 45-47, where it is expressly intimated that the first Adam stood only upon the level of the natural life, whorens the kingdom of tlie Sj)iritas such only came into the world with the second Ohser.] the first ad am. 153 Adam*). Pelagianisra, on the other hand, confounds inno- cence with animal I'udeness, and regards the original image of God iu Adam only as a dormant ccqoacity. But when man is abandoned to a mere capacity or talent, he can never arrive at real relioion ; as mav be seen in the case of savages at the present day, among whom, it is true, we must presume the bare capacity, but who nevertheless display utter religious in- capacity ; for they never get even as far as the commencement of the development of their capacities, but always require some impulse from without. As, therefore, we can be just as little satisfied with the hypothesis of the mere capacity as with tliat of a developed state of perfection, we say that the first Adam has had in him the LIVING beginning of a true relation to God. This beginning of a blessed development of life in a created dependence, this starting-point for liberty, so pregnant with life, containing in itself a blissful future, is the true con- ception of Paradise. Observations. — It is precisely because Paradise lies outside the conditions of our present experience, that it is so easy a task for criticism to prove the impossibility of our forming for ourselves a picture of the first Adam. There is a certain analogy between the representation of Para- dise, of the first conditions of human life, and the repre- sentation of the last conditions of human life, that is to say, of a future life. Both lie alike beyor.d the condi- tions of present experience ; which is tlie reason why there are so many persons who esteem them as mere pic- tures of the fancy. But because we are not able to have any empirical intuition of the Paradise of our past or of our future, we are not on that account the less obliged to think of it, as we also see it in faith, as in a glass darkly. Although, therefore, the first Adam stands like a figure in the background of the human race, shrouded in a cloud, and with an undefined outline, a dim memory, as indis- tinct as the recollection of the first awaking to self-con- sciousness in each individual ; yet does the consciousness * " And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul ; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that whicli is natural ; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthj^ ; the second man is the Lord from Heaven." 154 THE FIRST ADAM. [Obser. of the species, ^vhell cliiected upon itself, necessarily return to this dim memoiy ; because without it the consciousness of the species \voi;ld be entirely wanting in unity and connection. It is a just remark of Steff'ens, when seeking some analogy to Paradise in our pi-esent experience, that this is to be found in the first enthusiasm, the first love to the Eternal, the first meeting of the human and the Divine spirit. The history of all great actions, of all great thoughts, has begun with a fruitful enthusiasm, with a moment which, though unconsciously, contained within itself, as a pattern, the fulness of a whole future. Comparatively speaking, a paradise may be discovered in every highly gifted man, and in every eventful epoch of history. Only that which has germinated in such a be- ginning can eventually become fruit, and that develop- ment alone is healthy which remains true to the begin- ning that it has received from God. This first enthusiasm, this inspiration, is the moment of creation in the king- dom of self-consciousness. No intellectual creation can ever be perfected b}^ dint of a mere psychological possi- bility,— it must first be fructified and awakened by a higher inspiration. The faculty of reason is the com- mon property of all mankind ; but he alone possesses the spirit, who can embody reason in a progressive deve- lopment ; and the gift of being able to make a beginning has always been the peculiar characteristic of genius. Just as the history of every important individual and of every important nation points back to such a beginning of the spirit, the first Adam must also have had a begin- ning of the spirit for that development which Avas to pre2oare the way for the entrance of the second Adam, with whom a new creation, a new kingdom of the Spirit, the kingdom of the perfection of the world, was to come into force. And the human spirit, which has lost its connec- tion with its first love, with its god-inspired primeval time, is a fallen spirit, which has at the same time lost its future. Obser.] man's fall from god, 165 Man's Fall froji God, §79. If the divine likeness was not to be a mere gift, but rather a self-acquirecl attribute of Immanity, it was neces- sary that the paradisaical condition should come to an end. The liberty of man had therefore to be brought within the range of temptation. The possibility of temptation lies in the fact, that there exists a woi-ld outside God, which can be mis- taken for God, — a resplendent glory, which can be preferred to God, and that this two-sided ness repeats itself in man's own nature, inasmuch as he has been created both in the likeness of the world and in the likeness of God. Consider- ing the nature of temptation from a psj-chological point of view, we may say that in temptation the opposed funda- mental impulses of human nature seek to bias tlie will. If, on the other hand, we contemplate temptation from a meta- physical ]ioint of view, we must say that superhuman powers, namely, God and the cosmical principle, seek man through his affections, in order to tempt him, and to force him to a decision. That there must be temptation, may be deduced as a necessary consequence from the conception of created liberty ;* but that its issue should be the fall of man can only be known by means of an historical and psychological experience. Observations. — In the Mosaic account of the fall of man (Gen. iii.), we meet with a combination of history and sacred symbolism, a figurative representation of an actual event. The fact of the fall is there represented by a con- sciousness to which both pai-adise and the fall are trans- cendental and prehistoric; for which reason there can be no immediate knowledge of it, but only a mediate and an allegorical one, as in a glass darkly. In our attempt to find the significance of this dark image, we will first call attention to the mystical tkees which stand in the warden. That the tree of life desiof- uates life in God apnears self-evident ; the tree of know- * Compare Sibbern's Patliology, p. 67. I 56 man's fall from god. [Sect. 79, led^ itself in .a false independence. 192 SUPERHUMAN EVIL, § 103. As good does not become active till it assume a personal form, so is it with evil likewise. The evil principle can only be conceived of as a will, which is the foe of God and man. If c^vil be taken as impersonal, its sting is taken away, and it .sinks into a mere power of nature. But what must we sup- pose its personality to be ? The evil principle cannot certainly be personal in the same sense as the good principle, as God, is personal. The evil principle cannot be personal in itself; it can only obtain personality in a creature who is endowed with will. Were we to imagine the evil principle as a per- sonal anti-god, who existed in the fulness of his own being apart from God's creation, we should fall into Manichaeism. Evil can only obtain personal existence surreptitiously ; the negative principle can be helped to personality only by the will of some creature. In other words : — the devil, under- standing thereby the cosmical princi})le, can only become personal in the creatures who submit to become its instru' ments ; — it can only become personal in its kingdom. The personality, moreover, which pantheism attributes to its God — as it can become active only in finite spirits, in the human consciousness, in the moral order of the world, — this kind of personality is all that can be assigned to the Devil ; because he must be conceived of not as an individual creature, but as a universal principle. But such a personality is not a real existence, a being resting in itself, it is only a becoming, something that hovers half way between existence and non- existence, between personality and personification, between reality and possibility, between " it is " and " it seems." The conception of the Devil as the god of time throws us back upon the notion of a personality continually becoming pei- sonal. The devil, as the evil principle, ceaselessly strives after existence, which it can obtain only in time, only in this world ; it therefore unceasingly lays snares for men, in order to obtain existence in them, in order, like the vampire, to procure for itself fulness, by sucking their heart's blood. Whereas the Manichaean theory makes the evil principle a perfect and complete existence, an actuallj'- existing god opposed to the God of good ; according to the principles of Christianity we must teach that the evil principle exists only Ohscr.'] SUPERHUMAN EVIL. 199 in so far as it continually generates itself in God's creation, as it smuggles its kingdom in, like tares among the wlieat. The devil of Christianity endeavours to make himself what the evil spirit according to Manichaeism actually is, — namely, a god who divides the government of the world witli the God of goodness. Observations. — Schleiermacher, in his celebrated criticism upon the doctrine of the devil, endeavoured to prove that the expressions of the New Testament upon the subject cannot be harmonized in one conception, but have been blended together from various constituent parts ; that the doctrine of the devil accordingly subverts itself; and that Jesus and his Apostles must only have availed them- selves incidentally of the popular belief, without intend- ing to develop or to ratify any doctrine upon the subject. It is however a more profound and worthier task to shew that these various declarations are only different aspects of the same conception, and that they are essentially con- nected together and explain one another. Though we by no means hold (as will be seen in what follows) that the doctrine of Scripture is exhausted by the representation of the devil as the principle of evil, this is withal the fun- damental definition which we must in the first instance fully grasp ; and the enquir}- regarding the devil as a pei'sonal evil being, has no real import till this is recog- nized as the fundamental idea. We shall now endeavour to confirm the chief points above developed out of holy Scripture. If we look to the Old Testament our attention is specially directed to two points, namely, to the seiyent in the Book of Genesis, and to Satan in the Book of Job (Gen. iii. ; Job i.). Orthodox theology has often as- serted that the serpent in paradise was the devil. The Old Testament does not say so, and therefore we may in the present connexion pass by the question whether the serpent was led by an evil spirit, or whether an evil spirit assumed the form of a serpent. If we abide by the original narrative, we may say that the serpent is the allegorical designation for the cosmical principle which opposed itself to man in a temptation. So far as tempta- 194 SUPERHUMAN EVIL. [Sect. 103. Hon is necessary to man, paradise cannot be without a serpent, sind so far as Satan is only the tem])ter who evokes human freedom, bringing it into action and mani- festation, we may say that he has a function to peiform in the divine economy. This, moreover, is attributed to him in the Old Testainent, in the Book of Job, when he appears in heaven among the Sons of God, and obtains permission to tempt Job by means of various plagues. Here he is not only the neutral tempter, but evil subjec- tivity comes to light in him. He is not yet indeed the Satan of the New Testament, who is driven from the pre- sence of God, because he wills evil as such ; but he takes a malicious pleasure in undermining and deceiving human virtue. His joy consists in spying out the weaknesses and sins of men, and in bringing men by his temptations to manifest these ; and then he leturns back to the Lord as the accusing angel to prove the untrustworthiness of human virtue. He does not yet appear, strictly sj)eak- ing, as the evil spirit, for he practises a certain kind of justice, namely, the negative justice of irony, but he is without goodness or tenderness. That Satan which ap- pears in heaven among the Sons of God reminds us of the Loke* of Northern mythology, — not Utgardelohe but AsaloJce, who, notwithstanding his wickedness, lived upon a trusted footing in the.Walhalla with the gods. Goethe has conceived his Mephistophiles after the same pattern. This idea of Satan aj)pears in the New Testament in the * The Scandinavians seem to have rcpjarded Loki or Loke as the evil prin- ciple, whom notwithstanding]; they ranked among the gods or Ases. The Edda (Mythol. 26) oils him " the calumniator of the gods, the grand contriver of deceit and frauds, the reproach of the gods and men. He is beautiful in his figure, but his mind is evil, and his inclinations inconstant. Nobody renders him divine honours. He surpasses all mortals in the arts of perfidy and craft." The older form of his name, Lodur, denotes^/-*, as his brothers Kari and Oegir denote the elements of aii- and water. They were the sons of Feriot " the old giant." As Odin and Honir gave man reason and soul, Loke gave him the warmth of life and sensual feelings. Hence "the flesh" is allied with the evil principle in this mythology. Loke gained access to the Ases in consc(|uence of tlieir innocent play with gold being transformed into a lust for gold (Mammon). Jlcnce he was called the Asaloke. Utgard was a city of the giantSkryniner visited by Thor, and Utgardloke "the demon from without" was the King of this city. See Mallet's transl. of the Edda, and Herzog's Real Encyk. Art. Mythologie. — 2V. Obser.] SUPERHUMAN EVIL. 195 words of the Lord to Peter : " Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat !" (Luke xxii. 31). The Lord prays for Peter that his faith may not fail him, and exhorts him to strengthen his brethren. The accuser desires to sift the believers in order to spy out their weaknesses, and to tempt them ; the superficial and unstable in faith and in life cannot hold their ground against his temptations ; the unstable are marked out to be surprised by his cunning machina- tions. Sincerity and stability are needed if one is not to be brought to shame and ruin. This representation of Satan is, according to Schleier- macher, one of the elements which go to make up the New Testament doctrine of the devil : the other element, which is far different from this, must have been derived, he thinks, from the Persian Dualism, so far as the essential ex- istence of an evil being could be adopted by a monotheistic people. But the idea of the devil, as the evil one, o'Tovrj^og, the enemy, (Matt. xiii. 19, 39,) may easily be explained as arising naturally out of the expansion of the first element. Its affinity with the evil being whom the Parsees believed in may have been the occasion of its development in the consciousness of the nation, but revelation itself has not borrowed the idea from any external soui-ce. Satan hav- ing first been looked upon as negative irony, without positive righteousness or goodness, is now recognized further as one who not only takes pleasure in the ruin of men, but who makes evil in and for itself, evil as such, his object and aim. The activity of evil appears in the New Testament partly in the form of cunning, and partly in that of power. In the form of cunning he works as the enemy who sows tares among the wheat, who perverts the true doctrine, and in the form of an angel of light, spreads a false wisdom (2 Cor. xi, 1 4.) In this way he is specially dangerous to the faithful and to the spiritually awakened. Power, on the other hand, is the main feature of his influence over those who are beyond the range of the true faith, or who have fallen therefrom. Thus he " taketh the word out of the hearts " of the ungodly (Matt. xiii. 19), so that they do not understand, and are 190 SUPERHUMAN EVIL. [Sect. 103. not converted. The heathen woilJ is accordingly spoken of in the New Testament as the kingdom of Satan, and " to deliver a person over to Satan," (1 Cor. v. 5), is, in the phraseology of the New Testament, to excommunicate him from the fellowsliip of God, to give liim over to heathenism. The New Testament gathers up the various points of the idea of the devil in the designation Antichrist. (1 John ii. 18.) Antichrist is that historical expression for the devil, the meaning of which is gradually declared in the historical development of religion in the world. The super-historical and metaphysical import of the idea is indicated in the designation " the prince of this world" (John xiv. 30.) The most appalling outgoings of satanic power are in those possessed, of whom the New Testament speaks. Demons are not only the mere sinful propensities of the man ; they are spirits, powers, by which the man is en- slaved. When Christ addresses himself to the possessed, He does not speak to the man, but to the demons ; and the man possessed answers, not in his own name, but in theirs. But the consideration of demoniacal possession shews us that the evil spirit seeks possession of man in order to procure an activity for itself, because it has in itself only an abstract existence. When the demons go out of a man, they betake themselves to the wilderness, and to diy places, (Luke xi. 24) ; apart from humanity, they have only an empty, unproductive existence ; and accordingly they lie in wait continually for the opportunity to return again to the Avorld of man, and to set up their abode there. Or they remain in the air, (Eph. ii. 2 ; vi. 1 2,) in the undetermined, unformed element ; and this mode of expression in like manner shews that, apart from the world of man, they have only an empty being. Or again, they go into the swine, (Matt. viii. 32,) they are Gent back into nature, into the world of unclean animals, from whence they had before insinuated themselves, into the human world, in order to contaminate souls. The idea of the wilderness as the abode, the retreat of evil spirits, reminds us of Peter's comparison of the roaring lion — " Your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion goeth Obser.] superhuman Evit. 107 about, seeking whom he may devour," (1 Peter v. 8.) Here again it is implied that the devil hungers after ful- ness of life, and must come for his substance, for the material on and in which he works, and for bis means of nourishment to the world of man. § 104. Thus far we have considered the devil only as a principle. But as this negative principle can obtain for itself personality only in free creatures, a question arises wdiich is not of a speculative but of an empiric character, namely, — Did this principle enter first into manJdnd, or had it entered into creatures of another order before its coming into the world of man ? Abiding by the assumption that the devil has personal existence only in the world of man, we may conclude our con- sideration of the subject according to what has already been developed, by saying ; — the devil is originally the cosmical principle, which as such is not yet evil ; it is moreover the tempting principle that seduced man in paradise, because it shewed him the reality of the world, which he can prefer to the reality of God. But still it is not evil, still it is only the possibility of a devil ; and the temptation accordingly assumes the form of a natural impulse only which man can repel if he will. In the serpent the evil spirit only glimmers or dawns; in the serpent Satan is, so to speak, still in swad- dling clothes. He becomes the actual devil — the personal evil — for the first time, when man has allowed him entrance into the sphere of consciousness. It is man, therefore, who gives the devil being ; but it by no means follows from this that man is only his own devil. It is another, a superhuman principle to which existence is imparted by man, a tempting, seducing, making-possessed, and inspiring power, to which man lends himself, as to a non-ego. And though the existence of the devil has from the beginning been dependent upon man, man on the other hand has been subdued by his dominion, and by his demoniacal workings since he has obtained entrance into the human w^orld. The devil is a spirit that man has conjured to himself, and is not able to cast out. He cannot accomplish the exorcism which is needed, by his own power ; he requires the higher help of Him who is the Master and Lord of the spirit-world. 108 SUPERHUMAN EVIL. [Sect ICS. The view of the devil here developed may be described as that obtained from the stand-point of immanence, inasmuch as no personal reality is attributed to the devil, beyond or apart from the world of man. Speculation concerning the doctrine of the devil has usually terminated here, as may be seen, for example, in Schelling's Sdtanologie, which is the latest important treatise upon the subject. § 105. Although it must certainly be affirmed that the negative principle has no personality in itself, but can only obtain per- sonality in living creatures, it by no means follows that this principle has obtained personality in human creatures alone. Biblical tradition and ecclesiastical teaching recognizes a ])er- sonal fall from God, which took place in the angel-workl be- fore the fall of man. The term angel indeed has the same indefiniteness and width as lies in the idea " spirit," and it is not, therefore, necessary when we speak of an angel always to understand a personal spirit : there are angels mentioned in Holy Scripture that are clearly mere personifications, or mere intermediate beings, hovering between personality and per- sonification : but the fundamental usage of Scripture teaches us that such an explanation does not apply to all cases, and that there are among angels, personal spirits ; and among these again some who have fallen from God ; — " angels who kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation " (Jude 0), (the place assigned to them, and their due rank in the order of creation); — angels "that have sinned" and "are reserved unto judgment" (2 Peter ii. 4). Among many demons Reve- lation speaks of one^ who is called " the chief of the devils " (Luke xi. 15), who is the originator of the fall, and of false- hood. This beginning of the fall our Lord gives us a hint of, when He says " he abode not in the truth," and when He calls him "the father of lies " (John viii. 44). As this evil angel, the chief of the devils, the head of the kingdom of evil, is de- scribed in Sci-ipture as the evil principle itself in persona, a? not only a devil but as the devil, we may explain this upon the supposition, that this ci'eature is the one, among all crea- tures, who, on account of his position in the realm of creatures, succeeded in making himself t'lce central mn-nitesioiion oi tJ?*i cosmical principle (as ot tne evil principle); the creature in S'id. 106 1 SUPERHUMAN EVIL. 199 which that principle attained perfect personality, so that he is the most peiiect representative and supporter of it. We must accordingly define i/.ore accurately what we have already de- veloped, thus: — The evil principle has in itself no personality, but attains a progressively universal personality in its king- dom ; it has no individual personality, save onl})- in mdividual creatures, who in an especial manner make themselves its organs ; but among these is one creature in whom this principle is so hypostasized that he has become the centre and head of the kingdom of evil. And as in the foregoing section we said that the declarations of Scripture regarding the devil had no deeper meaning than this, as they do not speak of more than one single creature, as they do not speak of a uni- versal principle ; this acknowledgment must be supplemented by the corresponding or additional truth. It is clearly the witness of the closest investigation of Scripture, as the most eminent doctors of the Church have perceived, that the de- clarations of Scripture regarding the devil, the enemy, speak of him as Tnore than a principle, more than a universally evil volition, speak, that is, of an active personal will; although, of course, sometimes the one, and sometimes the other aspect, sometimes the altogether spiritual, sometimes the personal element is that which appears more prominently. The con- flict of Christ with the devil is certainly a conflict with a universal principle; yet it does not obtain its full import, un- til it is realized as a personal will whom He repels and over- comes. And when the Church in baptism renounces the devil and all his works and all his ways, she does not renounce the evil principle only, which surrounds us on every hand, but the personal enemy of God and man, the evil will who appeared in the creation, the will which opposes God and his kingdom, who says no to every yea and amen that Christ utters. §106. Bej^ond the world of man, evil has had a mysterious begin- ning ; it had a history before it received a history upon earth ; and we are reminded of the mythical dream of the conflict of the Titans against the gods before the origin of man. We have now reached that side of the subject which transcends speculation : for the conception of angels and fallen angels, the conceivahleness of a creature that is the central manifestation 200 SUPERHUMAN EVIL. [Scct. 106. of evil, and that in a special sense may be called Evil — this no speculation can reasonably deny. It has been said, indeed, that the idea of such an absolute evil creature would be Manichaean, but this rests upon a misconception ; for it can- not be supposed that evil is the essence of this creature in a metaphysical sense, but that it is so only in an ethical sense ; and the centralizations of evil which we already find in the world of man, are the only typos thereof, shewing how evil in an ethical sense may become the element of a creature's life. As little inconceivable will it be found that the human world should be open to the influence of a higher and personal spirit-world. We suppose, in accordance with revelation, that both angels and demons are pure, i.e., bodiless spirits ; they are not, therefore, subject to the conditions of corporeity and of space, they may be in the universe where they will ; and, accordingly, ecclesiastical symbolism has represented both angels and demons as tvinged beings. And as, according to the representations of Revelation, it belongs to the definition of an angel to be a ministering spirit for the development of the kino-dom of God among men, we must also allow it con- ceivable that demons in like manner seek the theatre of their activity in the world of man, endeavour here to organize their kingdom, here to obtain fulness and substance for their empty being. Against the conceivableness of the devil as an evil creature there is no objection, but it must certainly be con- fessed that this being can neither be handled nor seen, com- prehended nor perceived. For to comprehend how a single creature can become the central manifestation of evil, requires an insight into the cosmical position and import of this crea- ture, which lies beyond our ex])erience. And we are equally unable to discern the real possibility of this evil creation, its power and influence upon the world of man ; we are equaliy unable to perceive it in its absolute wickedness, because absolute wickedness, when we contemplate it, transforms itself into an abstraction. In poetry, therefore, when the devil is presented in a visible individuality, it is necessary always to conceal somewhat of its absolute wickedness, to present only satanic characters (as, for example, Mephistophiies by Goethe) instead of the satanic essence itself^ which, as the pure ui.naturaluess, resists j^cisonation. But it is not the ]es.s Sect lOG.] SUPERHUMAN EVIL, 201 a fact, for which the Word of God is our authority, that there is a father of lies ; there is an enemy of God and man ; there is a superhuman evil will, whose kingdom and dominion we strengthen and further by our sins.* But although we cannot comprehend this enemy, though every attempt to do so is i'M^anjitv r-Ig a ov^ luisazs^ (Col. ii. 18), we can nevertheless understand that it is only when will resists will that any mention can in truth be made of spi- ritual conflict. While we conceive of tlie kingdom of evil without a personal head, we have to fight only against a principle, against an impure world-spirit, against an active force more or less blind, a force which is half nature and half spirit, — a definition which has certainly a comprehensive refer- ence to evil, but which does not exhaust the full conception of it. The expression, " father of lies," refers to an intelli- gence, a personal self-consciousness, and through him the struggle against evil becomes a really spiritual struggle. And although there are implied depths of spiritual wickedness (/Sa^jj Tov ^arava, Rev. ii. 24) which cannot be fathomed in the present earthly stage of knowledge, yet the consciousness of a demo- niacal kingdom and of its chief — that dark, gloomy back- ground of Christian consciousness — and the dread of the devil, the profound horror of demoniacal fellowship — form the dark basis for the Christian fear of God. However much the history of superstition may show ns what errors arise, when what can only be comprehended spiritually is taken in a literal and fleshly sense ; and however often we are content with such expressions as " the power of evil," " the evil prin- ciple," " the impure spirit-world," in our expositions of Scri]i- iure, yet the more profound consideration of Scripture, of life, and above all of the stern conflict against evil, will ever lead back our thoughts to the doctrine of an evil will. " How- ever often the reality of the devil be turned away from in life and science, and be explained as a mere chimera, the ear- nest inquirer will ever again come back to it, and the doc- ti'ine of his existence will continually become anew the sub- ject of investigation."*!- § ^07. If we now, in conclusion, inquire as to the teleological re- * Compare Nitzscli, System der Cliristl. Ldtre. 5 Ausg. 237. t Daub in Judas Iscliarioth. 202 SUPERHUMAN EVIL. [Sed. 107. lation of the devil to the economy of the kingdom of God, we must reject the view, which has of late been put forth by Schelling, that the existence of the devil is relatively neces- sary ; that he is a participating factor, recognized by God, in the divine economy ; because he is, in a negative sense, the moving principle in history, which without him would come to a stand. It must on the contrary be said, that we may certainly recognize the necessity of the cosmical principle for the revelation of God, but not in the form of the evil prin- ciple and the evil will ; we may certainly recognize the ne- cessity of temptation, but not of the fall; in a word, that the thought of evil is a necessity, but not the evil thought. As, however, the devil, having once attained an illegitimate exist- ence, must necessarily be an instrument in the realization of God's designs, we may explain his teleological relation and import thus : — he is the unwilling medium for the revela- tion of God's righteousness towards the human race. Thus Scripture describes him as the angel of death, who fills sin- ful humanity with the fear of death ; " That through death He might destroy him that hath the power of death, that is, the devil ; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage" (Heb, ii. 14). The dominion which he exercises over man, in virtue of his all-embracing world-egotism, weighs like a fate upon the sin- ful race of man ; he is, to adopt a mythical comparison, the serpent Midgard* " the earth-encompassing torment." His dominion is established as the just punishment of the race who have given themselves up to him. But by Christ his power is brokeji ; and the relation of the devil to the Church is therefore different from his relation to the world. For the faithful his power is not a fate, to which they must in suf- fei-ing submit, it possesses only the force of a tempting power against which they must watch and pray, but which may be overcome by the aid of the Holy Spirit. As, on the one • The serpent Miclg.nrd was, according to Northern mytholojry, the product of the marriage of Loke (the evil principle) with the giantess Angrboda (" mes- senger of anguish"). At the request of the gods, who feared the new monster, Odin the universal Father cast him into the sea. As the sea compasses all lands with its troubled waters, the serpent was called Midgardswurm, "the earth-encompassing torment." Sec 3fallet's Northern Antiquities, and Htrzog'i Kcal Eucyk., Article Mythologie der alten Gcrmauen. — Tr. GUILT AND PUNISHMENT. 20o hand, he implies a fatalistic power which is sulDservierjfc to the revelation of God's righteousness, yet, in the same degree as this power is recognized by man it loses its sting, because men, in proportion as they I'ecognize sin as a calamity, are brought to redemption ; so, on the other hand, as he is the tempter, who against his will operates on the faithful to strengthen them in the Spirit of God, liis universal signifi- cance is simply to be the dark ground for the divine reve- lation of light, to minister towards the gloiification and triumph of the Divine love. But his existence in and for it- self is not a necessity in the divine economy of creation ; were this so, he could not be as he is the eternally damned. Were the devil necessary to the perfection of the universe, he might at the Day of Judgment adopt the conclusive plea which the apostle combats, " If tlie truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto His glory ; why yet am I also judged as a sinner?" (Rom. iii. 7.) But this false plea is already conclusively condemned in the Word of God. Guilt and Punishment. Death ; and the Vanity of all Creatures. § los. In so ftir as mankind in virtue of their birth become par- takeis of the sin of the world, their inborn sinfulness must be looked upon as their fate; but in so far as the sin of the race is converted into the actual sin of the individual, it is his guilt. That man's allotted heritage should become his guilt ; or that inborn sinfulness should be imputed to the indivi- dual ; — this has its foundation in the mystery of the will, in the nature of the /. The imputation is conditional upon the appropriation. The Augustinian idea, that the sin of Adam is imputed to his posterity as guilt, is certainly severe and fatalistic, so long as it is not explained, and lersolved into its necessary middle terms ; but the relation is not to be con- strued as an outward mechanical one, as though an absent sin were imputed to the individual ; neither is it to be imagined that sin and guilt are separable from each other. Individuals stand in an orcjanic connection with their Adamic parentage. 204 UUILT AND PUNISHMENT. ^S('Cf. 108, The Adamic nature is the distinctive nature of the individual ; sin is not foreign or alien to the individual. Were we to abide by the definition that sin is the lot or fate of the individual because he now inherits this nature, the individual could only be the object of compassion ; and the individual who main- tained an absolutely passive relation to sin, as to an infirmity of nature only, who preserved a state in which he himself in no sense acquiesced, he might be described as suflTeiing inno- cence. But here comes in the saying of Augustine : Non inviti tales suraus. Fate is, in the will, — in the person's self, — turned into guilt ; the merely organic relation is con- verted into a spiritual one, the natural into a moral relation. This double-sidedness of sin is presented even in the birth of man. For the birth of the individual is not only the result of a preceding parentage, it is also the beginning of a new distinct and independent life. The man is not only born as a being of nature, but as a beginning ego, a germinal self. His development is subject to the indispensable demands of the law of holiness, and the law asks in the first place, not what the man can be according to his activity afterwards — but what he now must be according to his nature. On thi.? ground it is that the apostle says : " We are by nature the children of M^rath " (Eph. ii. 8), and that the heathen have no excuse, " because they worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator" (Rom. i. 20) ; for though their con- sciousness of God was certainly fettered by the powers of this world, yet tlje true knowledge of God is what they are really appointed and called to ; the holy law has a claim upon the will which is not fulfilled, for which no satisfaction is ijiven ; and the sinful will is concluded under that condemnation which is hidden in the depths of consciousness. The Evan- gelical Church according!}^, in her teaching defines original sin, not only as movlms, or vil'nim originis, but as vcre pec- calum* Whereas Catholicism recognizes only an inborn weakness of nature, and only the actual, the manifest sin as sin, the Protestant view penetrates into the mystery of the will, into the union of fate and guilt, of the natural and the moral, of necessity and freedom. Observations. — It is on the ground of tiiis unity of guilt and • See Confessio Augustana, Art. »:. Ohser.] guilt and punishment. 205 destiny that the sinner becomes the subject not only of punishment and of the stern judgment of righteousness, but especially of si/mj^athT/, not only the object of the divine wrath, but also of the divine compassion. On this account it was that the Redeemer of the world wept over Jerusalem (Luke xix. 41), when he pronounced the judg- ment of righteousness upon it ; and on the same ground tlie apostle Paul, when he conducts us down into the deptlis of personal knowledge of sin, depicts not only the strong self-accusation, but self-accusation which includes the feeling of deep pity upon man's part towards himself, a sadness on his own account : " 0 wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me from the body of this death ?" (Rom. vii. 24). The more we view the individual according to the relations of race, and in the light of his sinful nature, the more do his sins present prevailingly the aspect of sufferings, having their origin in the sinful development of the race ; and so much the more also is the aspect of pit}- laid stress upon ; — childhood, and tempted innocence, and inexperience, being for the most part the objects of compassion. And in like manner, on the other hand, the more completely the individual has separated himself from tlie life of the race, and made for himself an independent and personal life, and is contem- plated from this point of view of self-determination, so much the more does he become the object of condemna- tion. Personal guilt grows in proportion as the indi- vidual, instead of enduring the opposition of his sinful nature, appropriates this as his own and develops it ; and instead of laying hold upon the proffered grace of Christ, which will free him from his sinful nature, opposes Christ and rejects Him. In proportion as the sinner knowingly hardens himself against grace, knowingly rejects the Saviour, in that proportion he goes beyond the range of pity and comes as if home to judgment ; he is no more the object of compassion but of horror ; for in the same proportion he is approaching the stand-point of the devil. Hence it follows tliat original sin, as such, never brings with it damnation to any individual ; and that those theologians who, in the strongest sense, have taught thi.'; 206 GUILT AND PUNISHMENT. [Sect. 10». and upon this ground have prejudged regarding the sal- vation of the heathen and of unbaptized ohildi-en, do not sufficiently distinguisli between the condemnation which rests upon the sinful life of the race, and the personal condemnation of each separate individual. Nothing can, strictly speaking, be pronounced regarding the condemna- tion of the individual, unless he himself has made a per- sonal decision, exercising freedom of choice in relation to divine grace, which will redeem him from the power of original sin. But beyond the range of Christ's revelation no judgment whatever can be pronounced absolutely upon any individual, for it is Christ, who, as He 'is set for the rising again' of man, so in a final relation ' is set' also for his fall* §109. The knowledge of sin and guilt depends upon the know- ledge of the law ; " for by the law is the knowledge of sin " (Rom. iii. 20 ; vii. 7) ; and the depth of a person's know- ledge of sin is proportionate to the extent of his knowledge of the law. All knowledge of the law winch views it either in undefined generality merely, or with the perception of particular commands only, brings with it an inadequate knowledofe of sin. The true idea of the law is the idea of an all-embracing rule of personality, the union of the general and particular. But this knowledge, again, cannot be truly living, so long as the law does not come before the man in liersonal form, in a sinless human life which in its entire being reveals the fulness of the law. Hence the true knowledge of sin is attained first in Christ, who in this point of view must be resrarded as the incarnation of the law, the incarnate conscience of the race. For it is only where this holy pic- ture, ' full of grace and truth,' has shined into human souls who were far from truth, that the knowledge of sin has been living ; for there the righteousness of the world grew pale, and the demands of the law and of conversion were perceived in their full range. When the moment came for the revela- * It it only ui>oii the presupposition of the distinction liere indicated that we can appropriate the formula of the Augsburg Confession upon original sin ; Damnans ct affcrcns nunc quoquc ceternam mortem his, qui nan rcnancuniur per Baj)tismum et Sjnritum Sanctum. — Con/essio Augu4ana, Art. ii. Sect 110.] GUILT AND PUNISHMENT. 207 tion of pure hiiuianity in the second Adam, in whom the possibility and reality of a sinless human life was presented, sin wa?i recognized as a violation of nature, as a perversion of the will in its root. The Jews perceived that they, as well as the heathen, were wanting in true righteousness ; and the heathen looked upon sin not only as ignorance, and the want of enlightenment, they considered their earlier state not only as a misfortune but as a hidden guilt. The history of mis- sions shews that the heathen themselves have recognized the truth of the apostle's word that " they are without excuse." For though they certainly have looked upon the state in which they sat in darkness and in the shadow of death as a hard destiny, the result of the universal guilt of the race, and so far as though they weie not without excuse ; as even the apostle, indirectly at least, excuses them when he says : "How shall they call on Him, on whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?" (Rom x. 14, 15) — yet they have not only accused the gods whom they gave up for Christ, but they have accused themselves. §110. With the knowledge of sin and guilt there arises the just view of pain, of misfortune, of the contradiction between the course of this world, and the true ideal of human life. The view of life which is presented in the law of holiness and in the God of conscience, recognizes in the discrepancy between the course of this world and human endeavours, in the op- pression of nations, and in the sufferings of the individual, the revelation of the righteous judgment of God against sin, (Rom. i. 18.) The religious character of the various views of life is embodied in the different ways of regarding and of explaining the miseries of this world. The merely naturalist view takes misfortune to be only the expression of a dark objectless necessity, the unavoidable lot of this finite life. The ethical view looks upon misf )rtune as in close connection with conscience. Even in the heathen world misfortune was con- sidered as punishment, arising from the wrath of the gods, but as yet the true idea of conscience and of sin was not fully perceived. The Nemesis of the Greeks not only punished the 208 GUILT AND PUNISHMENT. [SccL 110. pride of men, but was a levellinf,' power which envied men their good fortune. The God of Hebraism, on the contrary, is a zealous God, who in righteousness visits upon the sinner his sins ; and misfortune is the punishment of transgression of the law of holiness and violation of the Divine will. But as the full perception of original sin as the common sin of the race does not appear in the Old Testament, there was a tend- ency to the belief that whatever suffering befalls the indivi- dual, it bears a strict proportion to his personal sinfulness , that excessive suffering must lead to the conclusion that the subject of it is a sinner above others. This notion appears in the book of Job, for instance. Although this idea is in part contradicted by the teaching of the Old Testament itself, it is not fully exploded except by Christianity. Christianity, by its doctrine of original sin, leads us to view individuals as developed by the sufferings of the race. Those sufferings, which have their cause in the common guilt of the human race and of society, may be accumulated in extraordinary measure upon certain portions of the community, or upon a few individuals therein, without there being any reason to suppose that these are sinners above the rest because they suffer these things. " Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans because they suffered such things? I tell you, nay," (Luke xiii. 2.) And though the sufferings of this present time, brought about by sin, are divine punishments, they are nevertheless in their final intent divine kindnesses, means of healing and means of nurture in the hand of everlasting love, discipline, and wholesome chas- tisement, vaidi/a, (Hebrews xii. 5-12 ; Rev. iii. 10), occasions and means for the manifestation of God's salvation, (Johnix, 3.) Both ways of viewing misfortune hold good in human life ; but which of them must be adopted as the more prominent, in any particular case, can only be decided by the relation in which the times in question, or the individuals m question, stand and have been standing to the law of holiness. The external suffering is not the standard whereby we are to measure the moral state, but, on the contrary, the moral state is to be the measure for the outward suffering. There is no outward sign that can adequately be relied on as a means of deciding whether the calamity be mainly a deserved punish- Sect, in.] GUILT AND PUNISHMENT. 209 ment, or a moulding discipline and a fatherly chastisement ; the final standard of judgment rests in the mystery of indi- vidual conscience. The old ascetics, therefore, rightly spoke, not only of the revealed judgments of God, which are obvious to all who contemplate the course of this world in the light of God's Word ; but of God's hidden judgments also, known only to the individuals themselves in their own consciences. Observations. — The proposition that sin is itself the punish- ment of sin embodies the truth that man, by sin, subjects himself to a moral fatalism, a misera nccessitas mali, expressed by our Lord in the words, " Whosoever com- mitteth sin is the servant of sin," (John viii. 34.) When it is said of God that He hardens the hearts of men, that He gives them over to spiritual blindness, and makes them incapable of understanding His Word, it is not thereby implied that God wills sin as such, but that He permits the 'manifestation of sin ; He wills that sin shall be left to accomplish its own results ; and that He has included sin in the necessary law of development to which every- thing is subject. §111- Holy Scripture sums up all tlie disturbances of human life which are the result and punishment of sin in the designation Death. " The wages of sin is death," (Rom. vi. 23 ; James i. 1 5 ; Rom. v. 1 2.) There are various kinds of death ; and Revelation means by the term not only the death which concerns the inward life,— the spiritual semblance of life, the mock being which the sinner leads apart from God, not only the divided state of the inner man, the breaking-up and dis- memberment of the spiritual powers, which is the result of sin ; but also the death which embraces th,e outward life, the whole array of sicknesses and plagues, which visit the human race, and " all the various ills that flesh is heir to," which ai-e consummated in death, — in the separation of the body and the soul. In calling the death of the body the wages of sin, we give expression to a doctrine belonging to that department of our knowledge which is the darkest. We find the doctrine in Revelation, and it is naturally associated with the horror that we feel in the thought of death as something which is un- 0 210 GUILT AND PUNISHMENT. [Sect. 111. natural in nature, as " the last enemy that is to be destroyed " (1 Cor. XV. 26). This is not a feeling to be condemned as merely sensual ; in its inner essence it is of a spiritual and moral kind, and is found not only in the rude and natural man, but is confirmed in the most spiritual of all religions, in Christianity itself In itself it seems very natural for man to die, and it is not difficult to prove death to be a universal law of nature to M'hich every living thing is subject. But when a man argues from the analogy of nature that death belongs to the natural development of the race the inference is one which will not stand proof For in such an analogy the essential diifercnce between natural existence and man is over- looked. Granting that death is natural for existence generally it by no means follows that it is natural for an individual perso7ial. For natural existences to die seems to involve no contradiction ; they are not individuals — persons — but only exemplars, points of transition in the life of the species, in their very conception they are transitory and mortal. But that the personal and immortal individual — who in the very conception of him is a union of spirit and nature — that this being should die, that the immortal soul should be separated from its body, this in itself is by no means natural ; it is a riddle, a mystery. The modern doctrine of immortality ma}' indeed comfort us with the notion that it is only the body which dies, that death is a liberation for the soul, its freedom from a limiting bondage. But how will this doctrine, which seems to harmonize so well with the problem of death, solve for us the problem of birth ? For what purpose is the soul born in this corporeity, if its union with the body is not only unreal, unessential, but even a hindrance to its freedom 1 And how shall we as Christians, on this ground explain the great importance attached in Christianity to the resurrection of the body as the final achievement of the work of redemp- tion ? " We ourselves," says St. Paul, " groan within our- selves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body," (Rom. viii. 23). Christ indeed died though He was without sin ; and as He says that the corn of wheat must fall into the ground and die, in order to bring forth fruit, (John xii. 24). He seems to describe mortality as naturally %ertaiuinjr to the normal life of man. But lookinj-at it mora Sect. 111.] GUILT AND PUNISHMENT. 211 closely, we find the true explanation of the passage to be, simply, that the Redeemer was made in all points, sin excepted, like unto us ; that He took upon Himself the like- ness of sinful flesh (Rom. viii. 3), that He submitted Himself to all the present conditions of human life and development. While we, therefore, maintain the doctrine of our church that death was not a necessity in man's original state ('potuit non mori), we would not have it believed that it was the original destiny of man to remain for ever on earth ; we would only suppose that another mode of departure, another kind of transformation, would in that case have been natural to man * not that painful dissolution, that violent unclothing of the soul, that decease of the body through the fainting of the spirit. However dark this doctrine may be when we contemplate closely the natural side of the subject, it appears clear again when we consider it in a moral point of view. For even were we to take it for granted that death belonged to man's primeval state, it is clear, notwithstanding, that death by sin must have for man another and a moral import, that as the form of human life was altered by the fall, the form of death must also have been changed. As the world by the fall became this world, as time became this time, so also- must death have become this death. This death, which awaits man in this present world as an inevitable fate, as a destiny whose fulfilment is unconditional, though so uncertain as to its hour, this death, with its impenetrable darkness, with its gloomy demons of doubt and fear, is not natui-al to man created in the image of God. For the sting of death is sin, (1 Cor. xv. 56). This thought lies at the foundation of that sadness which we find expressed in the Old Testament regarding "the shadow of death," and the mournful abode in Sheol, (Psalm vi. 5 ; xxiii. 4). But Christianity at length unveiled the darkness of death, and fully revealed to the worlds the terrible spectre, because it has introduced another, a new death into the world. For though the sting of death is cep tainly felt in secret by the natural man, heathenism shuns the thought of it, and endeavours to hide from itself the monster. " Compare Genesis v. 24, " Enocli walked with God: aud he was not; for God took him." 212 GUILT AND PUNISHMENT. Sect. 112 Observations. — The relation between the Christian and the heathen view of death is apparent in Christian and hea- then art. While Grecian art represents death as a genius with inverted torch, Christianity pictures him as the ske- leton with the scythe and hour-glass. The worldly, eu- demonistic man cannot bear to ponder over the thought of death. He endeavours to withdraw from the terror of death, to soften the thought of it as that which is in- evitable, and thus he throws an cesthetic veil over it in art ; and the Greeks are, as Herder remarks, in this respect like children who hold their hands over their eyes in order not to see the dangerous and friglitful. More closely viewed, the Greek genius with inverted torch is only a poor and meagre consolation ; for it is a pictui-e without hope or comfort, it only points to the end of life in calm yet hopeless resignation. Christi- anity on the other hand strips death of that softening adornment, for it looks at death with the eye of con- science, as the death of the sinner, before which this world vanishes. Its memento mori is not only a remembrance of the transitoriness of life, it is not an aesthetic, mourn- ful lamentation, but a remembrance of the dea h of the sinner, of guilt and judgment. And the Church can with confidence represent death thus, becavise she can plant the cross upon the grave, and shew to the believer the hope- ful symbols of redemption and resurrection. According to the representations given us in revelation, it is not only mon's own nature which has felt the disordering effects of sin, but nature itself which surrounds him : nature not only within us but about us, bears witness (to use an ex- pression of Pascal's) of a lost God. This representation has often in modern times been rejected as a mere poetical phan- tasy, without any foundation in fact. It is not difficult to show in how unsatisfactory a maiuier the entrance of evil into nature has been explained, whether it be by presup)ios- ing that nature is subject to the curse for the sake of man, or (according to Jacob Bohme, Baader, and Steffens), by assum- ing that evil was made to penetrate nature by some super- natural and superhuman power which, having generated in Sect. 112.] GUILT AND PUNISHMENT. 213 itself the principle of disturbance, generated it in those ranges of creation into which it obtains access. It is not difficult to show that such explanations explain nothing, because they need explanation themselves. But it is very difficult to deny that there are phenomena in nature which call forth the prob- lem of the entrance of evil into nature. We will not appeal only to the manifest tokens of moral evil which we so often meet with in nature, we merely refer to the sad ti'uth that asserts itself in the darkness of the human soul, that whispers in the leaves of the forest, in the coiling of the serpent, that howls through the desert in the bloodthirstiness of the wild beasts.* But we especially appeal to the fact that there is manifest in nature an enigmatical contradiction of the inner and true teleology of nature, a contradiction of its own inner conformableness to the end designed. Nature not only pre- sents to us a sound and normal display of its powers, but a range of limited, broken off, and distorted developments ; it shows us a death which is too early ; it shows us the blossom- ing life on the point of its development, when its beauty and its glory should be displayed, struck to the ground by the destroying worm. This frustration of the proper object of nature cannot be looked upon as having its foundation in a ti'ue necessity. Appearances in nature which contain in themselves a destructive principle cannot be viewed as nor- mal. We doubt not that there may be given an adequate T>bysical explanation of such appearances as the desolating pestilence, hurricanes, and eaithquakes ; we doubt not that a theodicy which starts from an outward and finite teleology is able to prove that such phenomena as destroy the life of nature, the life of man, and his noblest works, may in another light be regarded as useful, especially because they hinder other destructive powers in their progress, but we very much doubt whether they can fairly be derived from the true con- ception of nature itself, A tlieodicy which would satisfy us with the general statement of finiteness, and of the necessary development of life by contrasts, only evades the problem. For the false as well as the true development proceeds by means of conti'asts ; and the very question is, wlietiier all the * Compare Munster's Abhandlung von den Trieben. {Schriften der wissen- schqftl, Gesellschaft). 214 GUILT AND PUNISHMENT. [Scct. 113. contrasts whicli tlie life of nature presents to us are normal. And though a fall and satisfactory explanation of the dark- sayings of nature may be impossible in the present limits of our experience,* yet a spiritual, a moral view of nature will always be led back to the words of the Apostle that the creature (ji xrieig) is subject to vanity and sighs for redemp- tion (Rom. viii. 20), Even the person who cannot be convinced that destruction has penetrated the creation which has no freedom nor will, who yet allows that it has penetrated the world of freedom, must i^erceive that the relation of nature to man has been altered by the fall. For nature does not attain its final design unless it be mirrored in the spiritual view of man, unless it be glorified in freedom, and by freedom be reflected back to God. It must therefore be confessed in the deepest sense that the true revelation of nature has been injured by sin. For instead of nature being thus moralized — given a moral import — spirit has been naturalized — has been given a false dependence upon nature. And so long as human re- demption is not complete, nature subdued by destiny and " sub- ject to vanity," cannot realize its true moral import ; with all its beaut}'- it is but a broken piece of mechanism, because by the fall of man it has lost its crown its highest ornament ; because its development has been perverted in the last and finishing point, just when its whole beauty and glory should be unfolded into a temple of the Spirit. THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD. § 113. As the contradiction which ensued upon the fall, finds its solution in redemption, redemption itself has its general ground- work or pre-supposition in divine Providence. The idea of Providence is the development of the idea of creation. It ex- presses the principle that God creates and sustains the workl in order to accomplish His great end, the highest good. Al- • Pascal's words continuallv arc fulfilled regarding the destruction which pre- vails in nature, as well as regarding the prevalence of death in human life: Cc sont dioses, qui se sont pass&.s (Urns un (ftat dt nature tout different du noire, ei qui passent notre capacity vresente. — I'ensecs Uc Pascal. Sect. 114.] THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD. 215 though every created thing is only what it is in relation to the highest good [providentia geiieralis), that good can he reaUzed in the kingdom of fieedom only, and Providence can therefore be revealed, strictly speaking, not in nature but in histoiy only {jprovidentia specialis). Goodness must be realized in history as the development of the freedom of the race. But as good requires a personal appropriation, the in- dividual man is the proper subject of divine providence (pro- videntia sjjecialissima), not in the minute atomistic division of the race, but as a member of the great spiritual love. This is expressed in the idea of the kingdom of God wherein the highest good wdiich does not differ from God himself, is realized in a system of divinely blessed individuals. In consequence of sin, the kingdom of God has to be manifested as a kingdom of redemption, and active Providence must be revealed in the economy of redemption. The Fuee Course of the World and the Manifold Wisdom of God. §114. The purpose of divine Providence is in its nature simple, because it wills only one thing — the good, the kingdom of God ; but in its manifestation it is manifold, not only because He is a living will, but likewnse because He reveals himself not by a merely necessary law of nature, but in the free pro- gress of the world, in a luorld-course which itself includes an endless variety of independent world-forces and energies, which presents an innumerable manifold and complicated play of free causes, and which therefore by no means excludes sin and human spontaneity. And the manifold wisdom of God {h voXvTrol- xiXo: aoo'ia esov) (Epli. iii. ] 0), is revealed in the fact that these movements and complications of freedom must unavoid- ably manifest the eternal counsel of God, and must work to- gether for its accomplishment. The divine counsel is the proper determination or limiting principle of created freedom ; and amid the entanglements of this world's life created free- dom cannot but become the instrument of this counsel and subservient thereto, cither for the fall or for the rising again of itself. 216 THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD. [Sccf. 115. § 115. The supposed contradiction between the course of the world, whose ways ai-e not God's ways, and the absolute dependence of the creature u[)on divine power, arises from a mistaking of the truth that in its essence omnipotence is a moral and self- limiting power. Considering (mly the natural dependence of the creature upon God, the world appears to be the bare and imjnediate expression of the divine wil) ; for there is not a moment in the life of any creature in which it is not depend- ent upon God, who penetrates it with His all- pervading power and gives it "life and breath and all things" (Acts xvii. 25). •' Thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust. Thou sendest forth Thy breath and they are created " (Psalm civ. 29, 80). In this sense, we may, with our older theologians, recognize a concursus del et creaturae in every movement of life and freedom, and grant that God works to- gether with the creature even in evil, so far at least as the power of life which works evil is, in its essential nature, a power derived from God. But this natural dependence upon the divine Omnipotence is only the ground-work of a moral and religious dependence, which allows ample room for the exercise of self-determination. In the moral order of the world God's power does not reveal itself merely as natural omnipo- tence— as the all-generating, world-creating, and world-sus- taining will — but as a cominanding and reminding will, speaking to us " at sundry times, and in divers manners," by the law and the prophets within us as w^ell as without : and likewise as the permissive will (voluntas permissiva), which permits even " darkness " to have its hour and its power (Luke xxii. 58). Viewed then in the light of the holylaiu of God, the course of this woild is not only a working together with God, but a working against Him also ; and the words of Scrip- ture are realized, " man's thoughts are not God's thoughts, neither are man's ways God's ways " (Isaiah Iv. 8) : " the people imagine a vain thing ;" the truth is held " in unright- eousness ;" the spiiits of time and the powers of the daikness of this world 0]>pose God and the kingdom of H.j holiness (Psalm ii. 1-3 ; Punn. i. 18 ; Eph. vi. 12). It is only a false optimism which regards the actual as in and for itself neces- sary. Nevertheless it nmst be nniintaiued that God's holy Ohser.] the providence of god. 217 will fulfils itself in the course of the world : it fulfils itself xar' ouovoixiav, in harmony with nature and with human freedom. What worldly wisdom calls the "stratagem of reason," whereby it hides itself beneath the unreasonable and even the criminal acts of men, and makes use of these in the fulfilment of its aim, we recognize as " the m.anifold wisdom of God," His all pervading, all directing, all governing will, which has entwined its thread in the course of the world. This will of di\dne wisdom does not forcibly prevent the divers failings and sins of men ; it introduces new unforeseen developments whereby it makes use of the devices of men indirectly to accomplish its own holy plan. The true Theodicy cannot undertake the thankless labour of tracing the course of humanity towards its goal in a natural and continuous line of development, as the exact and therefore the shortest way between two points. It rather recognizes that the course of human development re- sembles the wanderiiio- of the children of Israel throug-h the wilderness to the land of promise, which they did not reach by the exact and shortest route, but by a very circuitous jour- ney, with many delays and retrogressions. The true Theodicy does not shut its eyes to the judgments of God upon races and individuals ; it looks upon these as the reaction of divine righteousness against the transgressions of men ; but it takes its stand upon the perception that the primitive revelation of God's righteousness is one of the conditions necessary to the coming of God's kingdom, and that demoniacal powers also must work, even against their will, for the advance of that kingdom of the Spirit and of Love, which is the final end of the creation. It is in that kingdom of God wherein tlie free- dom of grace is fulfilled, wherein God's will is done, not against nor even apart from the will of His creatures, but wherein His free creatures are knowers together and labourers too-ether with God (John xv. 15 ; 1 Cor. iii. 9), that it recognizes a Goncursus in the fullest sense of the word, reaardino- which it may be said, ut idem efcctus non a solo deo, nee a solo creatura, nee partim a deo, partim a creatura, sed una ead&mque effixii^ entia totali simul a deo et creatura producatiir.^ Observations. — A true Theodicy must take Christianity as its basis, and may be raised upon it, but the perfect Theo- ' Quenstedt i. p. 53J. 218 THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD. [SccL 116. dicy cannot be attained except in the perfected his- tory of the world. There are phenomena iu the misfor- tunes of the species and of individuals, whose economic purpose cannot be understood at our present stage of knowledge, but which must be accepted in faith. To demand a perfect Theodicy during this temporal life, would be to require us to see through the course of this world in all its parts, and to expect that the manifold wisdom of God shall be exhausted in this present life. The idea of the partial, of the contrast between mystery and revelation, between faith and sight, the idea and the actual, is inseparable from the temporal, especially from this present time, which is limited by the conflict of light with darkness : — a dispensation wdierein the victory is already won, yet wherein the actual necessarily bears the impress of the undecided, a twofold aspect wherein signs stand opposed to signs. §110. The contradiction which has been supposed to exist be- tween the idea of the free progress of the world and the omniscience of God, rests upon a one-sided conception of omniscience, as a mere knowing beforehand, and an ignoring of the conditional in the divine decrees. An unconditioned foreknowledge undeniably militates against the freedom of the creature, so far as freedom of choice is concerned ; and against the undecided, the contingent, which is an idea in- separable from the development of freedom in time. The actual alone, which is in and for itself rational and necessary, can be the subject of an unconditional foreknowledge ; the actual which is not this, cannot be so ; it can only be foreknown as possible, as eventual. But such an uncon- ditional foreknowledge not only militates against the free- dom of the creature, it equally is opposed to the idea of a freely working God in history. A God literally foreknow- ing all things, would be merely the spectator of events decided and predestined from eternity, not the all-directing oovernor in a drama of freedom which He carries on in reci- procal conflict and work with the freedom of the creature. If we would preserve this reciprocal relation between God and His ci'catures, we must not make the whole actual Sect. 117.] THE PKOVIDENCE OF GOD. 219 course of the world the subject of His foreknowledge, but only its eternal import, the essential truth it involves. The final goal of this world's development, together with the entire series of its essentially necessary stages, must be re- garded as fixed in the eternal counsel of God ; but the prac- tical carrying out of this eternal counsel, the entire fulness of actual limitations on the part of this world's progress, in so far as these are conditioned by the freedom of the crea- ture, can only be the subject of a conditional foreknowledge ; i.e., they can only be foreknown as possibilities, as Futura- hilia, but not as realities, because other possibilities may actually take place. In thus asserting that God does not foreknow all that actually occurs, we by no means imply that every event is not the subject of his all-penetrating cognizance. God is not only before His creatures — " before the mountains w^ere brought forth, or ever the earth was made," — He is also in and with His creatures, in every moment of their development. While God neither foreknows, nor will foreknow w^hat He leaves undecided, in order to be decided in time, He is no less cognizant of and 'privy to all that occurs. Every movement of His creatures, even their most secret tlioughts, is within the range of His all-embrac- ing knowledge. " Thou compassest my path, and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. Whither shall I go from thy Spirit ? or whither shall I flee from thy pre- sence ? If I ascend up into heaven thou art there : if I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there " (Psalm cxxxix.). His knowledge penetrates the entanglements of this world's progress at every point ; the unerring eye of His wisdom discerns in every moment the relation subsisting between free beings and His eternal plan ; and His almighty hand. His power, pregnant of great designs, guides and influences the movements of the world as His counsels require.* § ^17. We must distinguish between the immanent and the transcendant in the operations of the providence of God. We call those of its workings immanent wherein the divine providence encloses itself in the laws of this world's progress, and reveals itself in the form of sustaining power in the * Richard Rothe's Theologische Ethik, i. 124. 220 THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD. [Sect. 117 moral order of things. We call those of its operations trans- cendaut, wherein the course of history is interrupted, and tlie divine will breaks forth in creative or coninuinding manifes- tations, more or less resembling and corresponding to " the ligldning that ligliteneth out of the one part under heaven, and shineth unto the other part under heaven," ("Luke xvii. 24.) When we speak of " tlie finger of God " in the lives of indi- viduals, or of the race, our meaning is, that the combination of circumstances necessary to a certain turning -2)01711 in human history, or whereby some e2)och is begun or termi- nated, is brought about, not by these circumstances them- selves, but by an overruling will manifesting itself in the course of events. It is the idea of wonder, of a miracle, which in these cases takes possession of us. And yet it is a miracle only relatively to us ; it is the expression of creative power either in history alone, or in nature alone, apart from the perfect union and perfect working together of both, as they usually appear. We cannot distinguish sacred history from the perfect miracle ; it is a miracle, for it not only reveals the creative agency of Providence in general, but its special workings, — those special workings whose object is to estab- lish the true belief in Providence among men ; and it unfolds itself in a series of acts which serve as " signs and wonders," i.e., witnesses that the God of history and of conscience is Lord also of nature's laws. Observations. — He who truly believes in continual acts . )f creation, and in a living Providence, must believe also in miracles, i.e., in new manifestations of the divine wixl, both in nature and in history. But we are apt to stop short at the relative miracle, because we regard nature and history as two distinct ranges running side by side, each of which has its own laws and its own miracles. We forget that there are stages in the work of creation when the perfect union of nature and history is revealed, i.e., when the perfect miracle takes place. A man readily allows, for example, that the birth of Christ is a miracle in history, but he will not grant that this birth is a pro- found miracle in nature, — the miraculous conception. Or, again, he allows that the working of the Gospel in the heart of man is a spiritual miracle, whereby the spiritually Obser.] THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD. 221 hliiid and deaf are made to see and to hear ; but he denies that the Gospel can accomplish the same things as miracles of nature. Now, Revelation unites both in one ; it places miracles of nature and of history side by side. " Go and tell John again," said our Saviour, " what ye have seen and heard. The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk ; the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear ; the dead are raised up, and the iDoor have the Gospel preached unto them" (Matt. xi. 4, 5.) Could the idea of Providence, could the idea of a free-creating God be entertained, if He were limited in His revelations by the contrast between nature and history? — if nature, which is a fettering limit to the struggling human spirit in history, and to the free- dom of the creature, were also a limit to the holy will of God ? — if the dominion of God were divided, so that when He reveals Himself as Lord of the spirit-world, he must abandon His claim to reveal Himself as Lord of nature ; and when He reveals Himself as Lord of nature, he must conceal His spiritual Majesty? Is it not the grossest anthropomorphism, — the grossest transference of our limited weakness to the great Creator, — to describe Him as a God who makes the kingdom of His holiness His highest aim, and who yet finds an insuperable barrier in those laws of nature which are opposed to the law of holiness, and who has no power to reconcile tliese, though both were alike ordained by Him ? If a miracle be im- possible to God, He is Himself fettered by the contrast between the law of freedom and the law of nature, whereby every created spirit is fettered, — a bondage which is the inextinguishable mark of created dependence ! There is a mysterious harmony between the nataral and the moral, between facts of nature and facts of his- tory, manifest in what we call the "wonderful" (mirahile), as distinct from what is properly called the " miraculous'' {miraculum). While the miracle, properly speaking, im- plies a violation of the laws of nature, the wonderful, which is closely connected with it, is such a coincidence and working together of nature and history, as reveals a supernatural result to the religious perceptions, while the natural explanation still holds good for the understand- 222 THK PROVIDENCE OF GOD. [Sect. 117. ing. The march of Napoleon into Russia, pregnant with results, and the severe ^vinte^, the invincible Armada of Philip the Second, and the sudden storm (affiavit deus et dissipavit eos), serve as examples of the " wonderful" in the sense referred to. There is in these tilings a sur- prising and unaccountable harmony of nature and his- tory, and yet all is natural ; no law is broken, but the coincidence is inexplicable. Wonders such as these con- tinually present themselves to us both in the world at large and in the lives of individuals. There is, generally speaking, an unaccountable power of nature Avhich plays its part in the historical and moral complications of hu- man life ; and it cannot escape the notice of the careful observer that wonderful coincidences often occur, which to reason may appear only as an extraordinar}'-, inexplic- able chance ; to the poet as a profound play of the spirit of the world, and an active presence of a divine phantasy in the world's progress ; — combinations which lie beyond the range of rational computation, and which, like genii, scorn the narrow laws of human knowledge ; — but in which the Christian discerns the finger of God. But he who truly recognizes the finger of God in these strange coincidences must be led on to a recognition of the ac- tually miraculous. The wonderful is only the half-de- veloped, unperfected miracle. The wonderful possesses that ambiguous character, half chance, lialf Providence, half natural, half divine, just because the coincidence of the holy and the natural is external only ; and faith must still demand a revelation wherein nature and free- dom— separate in the usual course of events — shall not only seek one another in wonderful configurations, shall not only approach one another, but be immediately and essentially united; faith must still long for an unequivo- cal sign, of which it can say. Here is God, and not na- ture.* This sign is given in the sacred history of Christ ; a sign which is spoken against, and which is set for the fall of many, and for the rising again of raanj^-f- • Compare Mynster : Vom BegrifF der Dogniatik. (h\ the Studien tind Kri- liktn.) i Luke ii. 34 : 'I5oi5, ovtos kutjii eh irrdxTiv Kai avdcTTaffiv ttoXXwv ii> rc^ T.. [A favourite quotation of our author; sec §§ \06,] Sect. 118.] THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD. 2.^8 § 118. Tlie perfect revelation of the wonder-working Providence of God is presented in the incarnate Logos, in the world-re- deeming, sonl-saving manifestation of God in Christ. Human history finds its centre, its true meaning, in the revelation of Jesus Christ. It is only in the light which comes from Him that humanity can look back upon a past which is full of meaning, can look forward to a future full of promise, and can contemplate its development as an organic whole. Human history, which moves on apart from Christ, without desire for or belief in Him, knows neithei beginning nor end, it is objectless, it has no centre. The Christian doctrine of Providence, accordingly, finds its full expression in the doc- trine of the election of grace, of the creation and nurture of nations and individuals for the kingdom of God : a nurture that is begun, continued, and perfected, not only by inward spiritual awakenings and movements of soul, not only by the efficacy of God's word and sacraments, but also by the out- ward circumstances of life and destiny. Belief in the providence of God in individual life (provi- dentia sjjecialissima), finds its true foundation in the revela- tion of Christ. As it is evident in the history of mankind from the time that Christ came into the world, so is it also in each particular life. As the ways of Providence may sometimes be inscrutable in the life of the individual, — be- cause man's earthly life is only a fragment, which finds its final explanation in the pregnant future awaiting man beyond the grave, — the believer must nevertheless seek after a partial knowledge of the Divine wisdom and will in this life ; and there never was a truly Christian life without some knowledge of the leadings of God's providence, although true fiiith is not careful to show this palpably. The germ of Christian experience regarding Providence is individual conversion and the experience of the grace of God in Christ, whereby the believer is brought to the very centre of all the divine counsels. As the minuter circumstances of life, inward and outward experiences — even the smallest and most insignificant thing, which, like a blade of grass,, has only a casual and transient import.* — gatlier round this germ of * Matt. X. 30: "The very hairs of your head are all niuiihcred." 224 IHE PROVIDENCE OF GOD, [Sect. 119. life, aad are of importance in its development, the believer traces in all the leadin;^- and drawing will of God. And in the divine counsel, which fulfils itself in individual life, and which appoints the hour not only of our birth but of our death, the believer recognizes no unconditional decree, no fatalistic determination, but a conditional ordainment (2 Kings XX. ; Psalm cii. 25), a decree dependent upon the free action of the individual, who is directed to labour and to pray ; and conditioned also by that economic necessity in which God has put the individual life, intertwined as it is with that of the race generally. But while the manifold wisdom of God in the individual life disappears from our view in its immortality ; while this department of knowledge belongs to the faithful experience of each one ; — to the inner life which is hidden from the world, which the believer lives with his God, and which is embodied in words in Christian biography alone, as for example in the Confessions of St Augustine : — the fundamental facts of that wisdom are written in the history of the race in coarser and more generally legible characters, and Christian thought has from the beginning of the Church, endeavoured to read this in the light of God's holy word. In the next part of our enquiry, we shall consider the leadings of Divine wisdom in Heathendom and among the children of Israel, or in the eaonomy of preparation. Heathendom. §119. Heathendom seems to be beyond the realm of Revelation and even of Providence in its narrower sense ; with its many mythologies it presents the aspect of a Babel (Gen. xi.), wherein the languages are confused and the people cannot understand one another, having lost the common bond of union in the Word and Spirit of God. God nevertheless works in Heathen- dom according to His eternal wisdom, placing it under a necessary law of development, whereby the Babylonish con- fusion of myths regulates itself into a significant whole, in wliich the thoughts of God's providence are hidden. View- ing heathendom as the Apostle Paul does in relation to Israel Sect. 119.] HEATHENDOM. 225 as humanity left to itself, as the loild olive tree ; view- ing also mythology according to Schelling's hap])y com- parison, as " religion growing wild ; " we find that though it may want the divine worship, it must follow the necessary law of natural development. While mythology in itself cannot be considered God's work, as little can it be looked upon as merely man's. And while the history of heathen- dom cannot be called the history of God's revelation as little can it be designated the history of human errors. It is the history of the world-idea, embodied in the nature-bound spirit of peoples who are its spiritual instruments. What would have been a free development of ideas in man's normal condition, now breaks forth out of the chaos of consciousness as a process of theogony, as the birth of a world of Gods. The plastic natural security peculiar to mythology arises from the fact that consciousness is fettered in a life of nature, it is taken with its own inner vision and gives thereto an outward reality. As a man in a dream or in a state of som- nambulism can imagine only "what he performs himself, so mythology by a natural psychological necessity pictures itself to itself, not as an incoherent, but as a connected methodical dream. The mythical consciousness must go through all the manifold forms in which it is possil:)le to take the world-idea instead of God. It must roam through various ranges of existence, and make each a form for the divine. It sees the highest powers of life in the stars, in the heavenly lumin- aries ; it surmises the secret of the All-living in the silent vegetable world ; it regards the animal creation as a sort of hieroglyphics, the mj^stical disguise of the deity ; until the sphinx of nature is thrown down, and man himself is recoo-- nized as the true form of God ; a perception which gives to the myths of Greece and of the North a loftier spirituality than that of the nature-myths of the East. As therefore this long wandering which tlie heathen consciousness must go through presents a progress from the natural to the s])iritual, from the impersonal to the personal, and thus a dark feeling after {-^riXafav, Acts xvii, 27), the unknown God ; we cannot but discern in this law of development both the eternal power of the Creator and His overrulin<'- Providence. 226 HEATHENDOM. [Sect. 12a 5j 120. If it be asked, Wliy has God left men to dream this long dream ? Why has He left the Heatlien to wander their own ways without a true revelation for thousands of years ? — we find the answer already given by the eai'liest doctors of the Church, by the author of the epistle to Diognet, Irenaeus. He replies, Because God would show men what by their own power they could accomplish ; because heathendom, like the prodigal son in the gospel (Luke xv.), must know by experi- ence the vanity of the world. In other words, the kingdom of this world must be revealed in its full range in order to the manifestation of God's kingdom in spirit and in truth. Revelation is the object of existence ; and as the world by the fall has become this world, it must accomplish its own revelation, so as fully to display itself in all its glory and in all its worthlessness, in all its glitter and in all its emptiness. In order that the victory of the true God may be a spiritual a righteous victory, heathendom must exhaust all its possi- bilities, must work out and fill its pantheon, and thus it will be manifest, that what is small and despised of the world, that the still light which shone in the depths of conscience, though the darkness comprehended it not (John i. 5), which shone amid the despised people Israel, — that this alone has power and glory. In the historical fate of heathendom we must therefore recognize not only the power and the wis- dom of the Highest, but His righteousness likewise. Right- eousness demands that unrighteousness should reveal its own condemnatitm, and that the wages of sin should be seen to be death. The mythical world of Gods comes to naught in a spiritual Ragnarok* in the doubt of the understanding and * Odin, the Scandinavian god, the Prince of the Ases, " Gods " or •^Asiatics" (?) who were his children hy Frigga or Frea, "mother earth," dwelt with them in the palace of Walhalla. This palace was the present heaven. At the end of the world Ra