1 ,„ I I' ¦ : 1 ' i ! ' ! *r II ' : ! I • YAiLE-wanwEissinnP iLniaisiMsy - Gift of Trowbridge Reference Library 1927 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION THE MACMILLAN COMPANY HEW YORK - BOSTON • CHICAGO - DALLAS ATLANTA ¦ SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO (7^ CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION BY GEORGE BURMAN FOSTER »« . Late Professor of the Philosophy of Religion in the University of Chicago; Author of "The Finality of the Christian Religion," and "The Function of Religion in Man's Struggle for Existence" EDITED BY DOUGLAS CLYDE MACINTOSH Dwight Professor of Theology in Yale University I3eto gorb THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1921 All rights reserved COPYKIGHT, 1921, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Set up and electrotyped. Published, February, 1921 EDITOK'S PREFACE George Burman Foster was born on the second of April, 1857; and died on the twenty-second of December, 1918. Prior to his occupancy of the chair of the Philosophy of Religion in the University of Chicago he was Professor of Systematic The ology in the Divinity School of the same institution. The pres ent volume embodies his lectures on the dogmatics and ethics of the Christian religion in the form in which these were last delivered to his theological classes. The main body of the book is made up of the dictated portion of the lectures. The foot-notes contain a report, also practically verbatim, of elabora tions and extemporaneous remarks introduced by the lecturer at the indicated points of the main discussion. Former students will recognize here especially many of the brilliant and memorable sayings of this inspiring and thought-provoking teacher. Professor Foster was a remarkably sympathetic interpreter of points of view other than his own. But in his exposition oP the appreciations and viewpoint of the Christian religious man, one knew that it was not a case of understanding through mere sympathetic imagination ; he was speaking out of the depths of his own experience. He knew what religion was, for it was his daily life. It was this in no small part that made him the fearless critic of unintelligent dogmatism in the name of religion. With him radical criticism was instrumental ; the conservation of genuine religious values was the end. He was interested in the remov ing of those things which were shaken, that the things which were not shaken might be seen to remain. He could take more daring excursions into the realms of doubt than would have been spiritually safe for a less deeply religious man. He could. venture to question even fundamentals, and the vitality of his religious life and spiritual appreciations would carry him vi EDITOR'S PRE^CE through to the home of abiding values. And he was great enough frankly to retrace his steps when he found any good reason for doing so. Humane and sympathetic toward every fellow-sufferer, his sensitive soul was called upon to pass through many experiences which were peculiarly tragic. But in a very real sense it may be said that his suffering, even here, was vicarious. For he was able, as few are, to lead the afflicted and perplexed to the sources of spiritual strength. As he himself said, it is not those who suffer most who are in the greatest danger of losing their faith in view of the disasters and calamities to which human life is subject; their need of God is too imperious for them to be able to give him up. And, with all allowance for such modifications of opinion as are to be expected from time to time in the mind of so eager and incessant a thinker, I believe it may be said that this book as it stands represents in the main those moral and religious convictions to which in the various vicissitudes of life this sincere lover of truth was ever wont to return after all investigation and reflection. As editor of this work, I must assume responsibility not only for the title, but for the fact of publication itself. I am not sure that Professor Foster ever contemplated giving these lec tures to the public. However, I am glad to have the approval of Mrs. Foster in the present undertaking. Obviously the book lacks the finished form which it would have received had it been put forth by the author himself, but I must leave it to the interested reader to judge whether the decision to publish has been well- or ill-advised. The book must speak for itself. D. C. Macintosh. New Haven, November 11, 1920. CONTENTS FIRST TREATISE: THE DOGMATICS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION Introductory. page §1. The problem of the scientific treatment of dog matics . . . 1 §2. Division of our subject 5 PART I. THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS . . 7 A. The Essence of Christianity as Religion .... 7 a. The Historical Phenomenon of Christianity ... .7 §3. Faith in Christ as the center of Christianity 7 §4. The Christian faith in God, in connection with the idea of redemption . . . 9 b. The Peculiarity of the Religious Life, as against Other Sides of the Life of the Spirit ... . . 10 §5. The way to a knowledge of the essence of religion 10 §6. The salient distinguishing marks of the religious life .11 §7. Human need and surrender to divine revelation the basis of the religious life . 13 §8. The importance of feeling in religion, and the character of the religious judgment as value- judgment ... 15 §9. The relation of religion to the other spiritual ac tivities of man, i. e., to the aesthetic, the sci- . . entitle and the moral 17 §10. Examination of deviating conceptions of religion, and comprehensive definition . . . 22 §11. The question as to the origin of religion . . 24 c. The Peculiarity of Christianity as against Other Religions . 28 §12. The gradation of religion (stages of religious de velopment) .... 28 §13. Comparative characteristics of Christianity 29 §14. The essential and permanent in Christianity . . 31 B. The Truth of the Christian Religion 33 a. The Effort to Provide a Theoretical Proof of the Truth of the Christian Faith . . 33 §15. The stimulus to attempts at theoretical proof . 33 §16. The insufficiency of the traditional theistic argu ments ... • .... 34 §17. The comprehensive reason for the collapse of all the attempts at theoretical proof . 35 b. Practical Substantiation of the Truth of the Christian Faith . 38 §18. The two main points of practical proof, and the modern views of the world which confront Christianity . . .38 §19. The immediately experienced worth of Christian faith for the individual and the community . 39 §20. Philosophic amplification of the question of worth 42 vii viii CONTENTS PAGE ,c. The Revelation-Basis of our Christian Faith 43 §21. The need of supplementing the value-judgment argument . . ... 43 §22. The revelation of God in the person and spiritual work of Jesus Christ .... ... 44 §23. Justification and amplification of the proof from given revelation .... . 46 §24. Connection between the revelation-proof and the worth-proof .... . .48 d. Inferences from the Christian Revelation- Concept 49 §25. The fundamental character of the Christian reve lation-concept .49 §26. The content of the Christian revelation-concept in relation to the New Testament proclamation of Jesus Christ ... . .51 §27. The question of the extension of the revelation- concept to Old Testament history and to extra- Christian humanity 53 C. The Knowledge which Accrues to Christian Faith, and Christian Dogmatics . . .55 a. The Character of the Knowledge which Accrues to the Chris tian Religious Faith, and of the Theologico- Scientific Knowledge of that which is Believed 55 §28. Christian religious knowledge as faith's under standing of revelation ... .55 §29. Scientific dogmatics in its distinction from the knowledge which accrues to Christian faith . 56 §30. The relation of the knowledge which acrues to faith, and the relation of dogmatics also, to the theoretical knowledge of the world . . .57 b. The Sources of the Knowledge that Accrues to Christian Faith, and Dogmatics ... .60 a. The Sacred Scriptures . . 60 §31. Exposition and appreciation of the ecclesiastical doctrine of inspiration . 60 §32. Historical judgment concerning the importance and the origin of the Old and New Testament collection of writings 62 §33. The judgment of Christian faith concerning the importance and origin of Sacred Scriptures . 63 §34. The principles guiding the employment of Sacred Scripture in Christian dogmatics 65 p. The Doctrine of the Church ... 67 §35. The importance of the development of Christian doctrine in general for our faith-knowledge and and for dogmatics . ... 67 §36. The importance of the reformation understanding of salvation for the knowledge which accrues to faith and for dogmatics . . .68 §37. The importance of evangelical confessions for faith-knowledge and for dogmatics .... 70 c. The Method of Christian Dogmatics 71 §38. The method of the orthodox ecclesiastical dog matics ... 71 §39. The various methods of modern dogmatics . . 73 §40. Comprehensive and constructive statement of the dogmatic method 76 §41. Definition and demarcation of our further task . 78 CONTENTS ix PAGE PART II. THE SUPERSTRUCTURE OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 80 §42. Introductory . . 80 A. God and the World ... . . 81 a. The Nature of God Revealed in Jesus Christ 81 a. Fundamental Definition of the Nature of God . . 81 aa. The View of Scripture and of Church Doctrine as to God 81 §43. The Old Testament and the New Testament knowl edge of God . . . ... 81 §44. The doctrine of God in the orthodox ecclesiastical dogmatics ... ... 83 bb. The Systematic or Constructive Development . 84 §45. The absolute end of God revealed in Jesus Christ, or the Kingdom of God . . .84 §46. The spiritual work of God revealed in Jesus Christ, in order to the realization of his King dom .... . . 89 §47. The world-governing work of God revealed in Jesus Christ in order to the actualization of his Kingdom ... 91 §48. Comprehensive definition of the essence of God. (God as "Love," as "Heavenly Father") 92 cc. Critical Limitation 94 §49. The apparent contradiction between the concept " personality " and the absoluteness of God 94 §50. The revealed and the hidden sides of God's being 96 S. The Trinitarian Unfolding of the God-idea ... .98 §51. Exposition and evaluation of the Christian doc trine of the Trinity 98 §52. The Christian faith in God's Word and Spirit 100 b. God and the. Finite World in General .... . . 102 u.. God's Relation to the World as His Creature and Instru ment ... .... 102 §53. The Christian view of God and the Christian view of the world. (Division of the subject) . 102 aa. Creation and Preservation . 103 §54. The ecclesiastical doctrine and the Biblical view of creation and preservation . . 103 §55. Systematic development of the Christian tenets concerning creation and preservation . . .104 §56. Relation between the Christian creation-faith and the present scientific picture of the world . 106 bb. The Divine Government of the World and Providence . 108 §57. The ecclesiastical doctrine and Biblical views of God's providential rule ... . 108 §58. The ground and content of the Christian provi dence-faith ... 109 §59. Providence and miracle. Providence and freedom 111 §60. The doctrine of angels . . 113 fl. God's Attributes in Connection with the World as His Creature and Instrument 114 §61. Concept and division of the attributes of God 114 §62. Eternity and omnipresence, omnipotence and om niscience of God . . 116117118 119 . 119 §63. The goodness of God §64. The wisdom of God c. God and the Ethical World u. The Divine Destiny of Man CONTENTS §65. The doctrine of ecclesiastical dogmatics concern ing the original state (status mtegritatis) . 119 §66. The Christian propositions concerning the divine destiny and endowment of man . . 120 fl. Human Sin . . .... 122 aa. The Essence of Sin and the State of Sin of the Indi vidual and of Humanity .... . 122 §67. The doctrine of sin in ecclesiastical dogmatics 122 §68. The criterion, concept and fact of human sin . 124 §69. The grounds of the power of sin in us and around us ...... 125 . 127 128 128 . 129 . . 131 133 §70. The guilt of sin and the stages of sin . bb. Sin and Evil . .... §71. The evil embedded in sin itself . §72. Sin and outer evil §73. The doctrine of Satan 7. God's Relation to Sinful Humanity aa. God's Dominion, Rule, in Relation to Human Sin . 133 §74. God's decree, or purpose, in relation to human sin 133 §75. God's judicial and pedagogic guidance and the goal of his ethical world-order . 134 bb. God's Attributes in Relation to Human Sin . 135 §76. In general ... .135 §77. The attributes of God as judging sin 135 §78. The attributes of God as redeeming sinners 136 §79. The combination of the two series of attributes as regards human sin . . 137 B. God and Jesus Christ the Lord . . 138 a. The Problem of Dogmatic Christology and the Way to Its Solution . .138 o. The Problem Especially in Relation to the Biblical Material 138 §80. What the Biblical material is, and its worth for our task ... 138 §81. The problem in relation to the Biblical witness of faith in Jesus Christ 141 j8. The Direction of the Principal Christological Attempts 143 §82. The ecclesiastical two-nature doctrine, and its per sistence into the present . 143 §83. The rationalistic Christology and its persistence into the present ... 147 §84. Schleiermacher's Christology, and its further de velopment in the present . 151 7. The Way to the Solution of the Problem . . .153 §85. Historical, ethical and religious evaluation of the person and work of Jesus ... 153 §86. Fundamental ethical and religious judgment con cerning Jesus . . .... 158 b. The Systematic Development of Propositions of Faith Con cerning Jesus Christ. The Man Jesus as Medi ator between God and Man ... . 161 a. The Earthly Life of Jesus as the Being of God in Jesus and the Being of Jesus in God . . 161 §87. Examination of the ecclesiastical doctrine of the three-fold office of Christ . 161 §88. God's being in Jesus: Jesus the hearer of divine life 163 §89. God's being in Jesus : Jesus the bringer of divine life in us . . 165 CONTENTS xi PAGE §90. Jesus' being in God: Jesus the perfect man, well- pleasing to God . . ... . 167 §91. Jesus' being in God: Jesus our representative be fore God . ... 168 §92. Synthesis. God in Jesus and Jesus in God, or Jesus the mediator of the new covenant 171 (3. The Suffering and Death of Jesus as Consummation of His Earthly Life . 172 §93. The problem, and attempts of the church to solve it. Critique of these attempts . . 172 §94. Jesus' suffering and death as culmination of a human life well-pleasing to God and vicarious for us . 177 §95. Jesus' suffering and death as consummation of the divine work of grace . 179 §96. Comprehensive expression of the redemptive worth of the suffering and death of Christ . 180 SECOND TREATISE: THE ETHICS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION §97. Introduction: The task of Christian ethics in re lation to the task of Christian dogmatics . 190 §98. The relation of Christian ethics to philosophical ethics, and the task of grounding or establish ing Christian ethics . 192 PART I. THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS • . 194 A. The Peculiarity of the Moral Life . . 194 §99. The conception of the moral law . . . 194 §100. The essence of the moral judgment, in relation to other value-judgments . 197 §101. The idea of freedom and accountability . 198 §102. The process of conscience as psychical forms of the manifestation of the ideas of moral law and freedom .... 199 B. The Truth of the Main Moral Ideas . . . 201 §103. The controversies over and the new interpreta tions of the moral law . . . 201 §104. The truth of the idea of the mo'ral law . 203 §105. The truth of the idea of freedom. Determinism and Indeterminism 205 C. The Historical Development of the Moral Concepts and the Universal Validity of the Christian Moral Views . . ... 211 §106. The factors of progressive moral development . 211 §107. Proof of the universal validity of the Christian ideal of morality ... . 212 §108. Morality and religion: Christian revelation and the question of a religionless morality 215 PART II. THE SUPERSTRUCTURE OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS 220 §109. Sources and method . . 220 A. The Revelation of God in Jesus Christ as the Basis of the New Christian Life ........ 221 xii CONTENTS PAGE a. The New Ethical Goal of Life, Revealed in Jesus Christ . .221 §110. The kingdom of God revealed in Jesus as the chief good and as the ethical norm . . . 221 §111. The divine law preached by Jesus in its distinc tion from other laws of life . . 224 §112. The law of God in its main content as preached by Jesus ... 226 §113. The revelation of the Christian ideal of life in the person of Jesus Christ himself, or Jesus as example . . 228 b. The New Ethical Power of Life, Given in Jesus Christ . . 229 §114. The need of a renewing ethical power of life . . 229 §115. The renewing ethical power of life given to us in the idea of the Holy Spirit ... . . 230 §116. The operative motive for the ethico-religious life proceeding from Jesus Christ 231 §117. Methodic conclusions for the further treatment and division of Christian ethics . 234 B. The Christian Formation of the Human Personal Life, or Individual Christian Ethics . 235 a. The Christian Personality as Gradually Becoming . 235 §118. The idea of conversion in relation to the temporal development of the Christian life . 235 §119. The character of true repentance 237 §120. The problem of Christian perfection 238 b. The Growth or Becoming of Personality in the Doing of Duty and the Fulfilment of Vocation . 239 §121. The idea of duty and the validity of this idea for the Christian life . 239 §122. Vocation .241 §123. Self-dependence of moral personality on the basis of vocation ; the question of collision of duties . 242 §124. The question of a super-dutiful and a sub-dutiful act 244 c. The Becoming of Christian Personality as Formation of Virtue and Character ... ... 248 a. The Concept and Main Features of Christian Character 248 §125. Virtue and virtues; character and characters . 248 §126. The main features of the religious character of the Christian ... .250 §127. The main features of the moral character of the Christian ... 253 fl. The Formation of Christian Character, Especially in View of Sin . . . . . 255 §128. Education and self-education 255 §129. The question of asceticism and the struggle with temptation ... 257 §130. Christian character and recurring guilt . . . 259 7. The Fundamental Frame of Mind of the Christian (The Basic Temper or Disposition of Christian Char acter) . . ... 260 §131. Relation between the dignity of the Christian character and honor in human society . 260 §132. The Christian life and hereafter: the question of eternal life . 261 8. The Single Virtues .261 §133. The task of this section, and the matter of divi sion 263 CONTENTS xiii PAGE §134. The principles of duty and the virtues of religio- ethical moralization of the self and of the world 264 §135. Love to God from the standpoint of duty and virtue .... 266 §136. Love to neighbor from the standpoint of duty and virtue ... 267 C. The Christian Formation of the Life of Human Fellowship, ob Social Christian Ethics . . 268 a. Christianity and Culture in General . 268 §137. The concept and the diverse ramifications of civi lization, or culture . 268 §138. The fundamental relation of Christianity to civi lization, or culture . . ... 269 b. The Individual Orders, or Communions of Secular Culture . 271 u. The Family ... . . 271 §139. Christian marriage . . 271 §140. Conclusions from the Christian valuation of mar riage, as to the relations of the sexes 273 §141. The Christian household . 274 fl. The Economic Life . . 275 §142. The idea and problem of eocnomic life . . 275 §143. The attitude of Christianity to capital and labor, or the life of work and of gain 276 §144. The ethical requirements that Christianity makes of the economic order 277 Glossary ¦ 2gl Index 283 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION FLRST TREATISE THE DOGMATICS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION INTRODUCTORY §1. The Problem of fhe Scientific Treatment of the Dogmatics of fhe Christian Religion. 1. The dogmatics of the Christian religion * seeks to give a scientific exposition of the Christian faith. It is a doctrine of faith, of the content of faith, and therefore of the world of faith, i. e. a world which faith affirms to be reality.2 But it is precisely on this account that the fundamental difficulty of dogmatics arises, viz., How can the invisible spiritual reality affirmed by faith become an object of scientific investigation and exposition ? Notes to §1:1 1. Christian dogmatics, Christian ethics and Christian apologetics are commonly included under systematic theology. Other religions have their own dogmatics, ethics and apologetics. Christian dogmatics is not identical with biblical theology. Biblical theology, as such, yields no universally valid truth. It is simply a branch of historical theology, of history. It tells what was, and is not at all concerned with what ought to be, and so biblical theology as such does not constitute the message of the preacher any more than isolated biblical ideas as such constitute the message of the preacher. Biblical religion, with its dogmatics and ethics, was historically and temporarily conditioned in a social and intellectual situation in which we do not participate. Dogmatics, however, undertakes to set forth what is universally valid and preaehable. The preacher's message is formulated in the dogmatics and ethics of the Christian religion. Dogmatics is not -philosophy of religion, although the study of dog- 1 2 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION matics raises many philosophical problems. Philosophy of religion has dogmatics as a part, and the most important part, of its subject- matter. Hegel said that dogmatics set forth Christian truth in the form of Vorstellung, i. e. in a presentative, symbolic, pictorial form ; but that philosophy of religion set it forth in the form of Begriff, i. e. of concept. Philosophy of religion would undertake to make the tran sition from the symbolic, which is proper in religion, to universal concepts. Hegel's general position in its original form has been over come; but like John Brown, while its body lies mouldering in the grave, its soul goes marching on, and this particular distinction of Vorstellung and Begriff gives the general distinction between dog matics and philosophy of religion. Dogmatics is not so abstract, nor does it seek so ultimate a universal. It seeks truth more nearly in the form of symbol. Thus it sets forth better what is preachable. Biblical theology is concerned with facts. Philosophy is concerned with truth. Christian dogmatics is concerned with the religious truth belonging to the Christian religion. But dogmatics is concerned with the statement of Christian truth in such a form as can be domesti cated in the experience of the modern man. There will be doubtful points, but they will be seen to be due to the connection of dogmatics with biblical and historical data regarding which scientific investiga tion is itself in doubt to-day. I am willing to say that when dog matics comes to fruition, its statements will not be jeopardized by the fact or non-fact of historical elements. While we are not concerned in dogmatics to set forth what empirical sciences hold, we do aim to set forth the Christian religion so as not to clash with scien tific presuppositions and procedure and results. The reading most strongly recommended in connection with the course is Kaftan's Dogmatik. I am inclined to doubt its philosophical basis, but in the way he goes at the problem and in the Christian con tent and solidity of his thinking, Kaftan's work is unsurpassed to-day in dogmatics. [This was in 1905.] 2. Theology or dogmatics, as doctrine of religion (Kant's Religions- lehre), or doctrine of faith (Schleiermacher's Glaubenslehre), is in cluded in the science of faith, or science of religion (Religionswissen- schaft) as part of its subject-matter. Whether or not Christian faith is right in its doctrines of God, the world, man and salvation, is not quite the business of dogmatics. That is the work of apologetics. Whether it is reality or illusion is not the question, though faith affirms the reality, and I do not see how faith could survive if the ideas were to be regarded as illusion. Christian dogmatics has not to defend the truth of the view of God and of man which is implicit in the Christian faith, but to set forth the content of that faith, the intellectual element which is integrally there. Dogmatics is analogous to a statement of the tenets of the Eepub- CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 3 lican party from the standpoint of the Republican party. The state ment is made for a practical, not a philosophical end. Is philosophy everybody's affair? Some are pragmatic, rather than speculative, and their religion must come that way. Others are meta physical to the nth. power. They have to wear out their teeth on the file of ultimate questions; whether they get anything thereby or not, they have to gnaw at it. The dogmatic and practical has its place. There is something which ought to be done. If we are going to do it, we must do it together; and if we are to do it together, we must have a common platform, and it must not be too academic. Philosophy has the right to criticize any dogmatic platform, to examine it from the standpoint of reason. It acts as a purifier, cor rective, and ennobler. The last word is said by the philosopher. As people rise in intelligence, they are more and more influenced and led by the philosopher. But philosophy is more likely to be found outside the church and politics than inside. The ecclesias tical and the political crowd shrink and shrivel in the presence of philosophers. The practically-minded wince under philosophical criticism, and would be more comfortable without the philosophers. The program of the philosopher is not immediately practicable with the crowd, but ultimately it is the only practicable thing. Every philosopher dies some sort of death, but progress is the progressive appropriation of philosophical ideals. The crowd passes through three successive stages with reference to the ideals of the philosopher : conflict, compromise, capitulation. Eor leadership, one cannot be too far ahead of the crowd! 2. This difficulty would be avoided by assigning to dogmatics the task of delivering an exposition of dogmas subject to au thoritative revision, i. e. of doctrines officially valid in a given church.1 Moreover, some theologians have assigned dogmatics to historical theology. In that case the difficulty would be avoided. But historical theology is concerned with facts, not with truth; with what was, not with what ought to be. And indeed this limitation of the dogmatic task to historical theol ogy has not been adhered to, even by these evangelical theo logians themselves, least of all by Schleiermacher, who is the great champion of the conception. Moreover, this limitation is impracticable in connection with the evangelical appreciation of dogma, for the evangelical church subjects its beliefs, or dogmas, to a progressively better knowledge of the Scriptures. That is, dogma has no static and absolute value to the evan gelical theologians. 4 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION Note to §1 : 2 1. Dogmas are deliverances concerning faith, sustained by ecclesi astical authority. If dogmatics were exposition of dogmas authoritatively taught, the dogmatician would not be responsible for getting at the inner spiritual reality; the authority would be responsible for that. The historical theologian is not concerned with the search for the universally valid. A dogma is like a political platform. It is conventional. The un conventional, the heretical, is bohemianism. 3. A different stating of the task of dogmatics grows out of a consideration of the nature of the Christian faith alongside of the historical problem. Christian dogmatics, it will be seen, in quires not only as to the officially valid ecclesiastical doctrine, but as to the universally valid Christian truth.1 Note to §1 : 3 1. When do dogmatic declarations pass as proved ? Do they pass as proved when they are seen to be necessary constituents of the religious conviction as a whole that is valid in the evangelical church and pecul iar to it? Have they validity apart from the presuppositions of faith? For example, that the world was created is a conviction of Christian religious faith. Is it a necessary constituent to that faith, inalienable from the Christian faith? If so, does it pass as proved on that account? Also, is that declaration valid apart from faith? Should we have the proposition, if we had no religious faith? Is it a concept which is an instrument in any of the sciences to-day? If not, and if dogmatic propositions are valid for faith, but not for science, it is not to be expected of science that it will furnish these propositions, or even corroborate them. They must only be such that science need not demolish them. Does science need to negate faith's proposition that the world was made by God? I do not have to make my faith valid from the point of view of science, do I? But suppose I say the world was made in six days. Science denies this. The added proposition is not a proposition of faith, but a datum for scientific consideration. It is a case of conflict between scien tific theory and scientific theory, not between science and faith. To say "in six days" is to corrupt and weaken faith and expose it to attack, and to fall a victim to science which will either refute me, or else bring the subject under agnosticism. 4. Accordingly "theological encyclopedia" must assign to Christian dogmatics its place, not under the historical, but tinder the " normative " disciplines.1 Note to §1:4 1. An historical discipline would be concerned with officially valid CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 5 Christian doctrine. A normative discipline is concerned with uni versally valid Christian truth. The relation between explicative and normative sciences harks back to the great metaphysical discussion regarding the relation between cause and worth, which is the ultimate problem. See Wundt's Ethics, on normative and explicative sciences. Cf. James : Varieties of Religious Experience, Ch. I. 5. If now according to this the task of a systematic, scien tific determination of the content of the Christian faith still exists, the question arises, What is it that science in the nature of the case is competent to perform as regards our subject-mat ter, viz. the "world of faith" to which we referred at the outset ? §2. Division of our Subject. 1. In order to solve the question of §1 : 5, we must consider first of all the character of Christianity as religion, and the proof of its claim to give universally valid truth of revelation. It is only when this is done that the essence of the knowledge which accrues to Christian faith and the share of science in the exposition of the content of the Christian faith can be determined. All this forms the foundation of Christian dog matics, which must precede the superstructure. By foundation is meant simply the doctrine of principles. 2. Accordingly the foundation involves a more comprehensive task than the old " prolegomena to dogmatics." Indeed the task is three-fold : (A) to establish the essence of Christianity as religion; (B) to determine the truth of the Christian re ligion; and, on the basis of these two, (C) to expound (a) the knowledge which accrues to the Christian religious faith, (b) the theological-scientific doctrines of faith (i. e. dogmatics) in their inner connection and in their difference,1 and (c) what the connection is, and what the difference, between thoughts that accrue to faith and thoughts concerning that faith. Under A and B the cardinal points of the philosophy of religion and apologetics must be discussed, but as auxiliary and instru mental. But the unitary center of the whole fundamental part is the fixation of the concept of Christian revelation; the unitary goal is the gaining of firm ground and a clear norm 6 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION or rule for a science of Christian faith, i. e. of the doctrine which accrues to Christian faith. Note to §2:2 1. The theologian's fallacy (corresponding to James's "psychol ogist's fallacy") is the confounding of the theologian's own ideas about ideas which accrue to faith with those ideas themselves. 3. It is on account of this special end, but also from general principles (cf. §5), that we set out in Part A. not with the universal idea of religion, but with (a) the concrete historical phenomenon of Christianity, in order to determine more compre hensively and more accurately the essence of Christianity (b) by means of a psychological analysis of the religious life and (c) by means of a religio-historical comparison. PART I. THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS A. THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY AS RELIGION a. The Historical Phenomenon of Christianity §3. Faith in Christ as the Center of Christianity. 1. As an historical phenomenon Christianity, as its name indicates, is to be referred to a unitary starting point and to an original basic character.1 Note to §3:1 1. Was there no Christianity before Christ? Historically, No. Philosophically and religiously, Yes. Wherever there is a Christian relationship, there is Christianity. 2. Faith in Jesus as Christ (Xpioro's), and therein as Lord (Kvpios) was constitutive for the formation of a self-dependent Christian religious community. It is precisely this faith which constitutes (a) the connection of Christianity with the religion of the Jewish people, but also (b) its severance from it, and (c) its distinction from all other religions. 3. This Christ-faith is by no means a mere addition or accre tion which contradicts the original proclamation of Jesus. Rather is it an answer or response to Jesus' own claim to pos sess Messianic dignity.1 Note to §3:3 1. Since the above notes were prepared, I have come to be more doubtful as to whether Jesus really did lay claim to Messianic dignity. According to Weinel it is our scientific duty to confess that the data are wanting for a sure judgment with reference to the matter one v juiAAwj/) . Its goods, how ever, projected into the present, are manifest wherever men in filial confidence and in the practice of love, imitating God, are subject to the will of God and enjoy his reign in order to their salvation.1 This future-present redemptive good was pro claimed in the first Christian community (partly in other ex pressions) as content of the gospel of Christ. Equally so this Christian redemptive good has in the later history of Christian ity, although understood very variously, formed a distinguishing characteristic of the Christian religion, (b) This redemptive good of the kingdom of God is as to its content indissolubly connected with the task and problem of the perfect righteous ness (SiKaioovvq) . Jesus delineated this good vividly in free fidelity toward the Old Testament commandments. It is not an ascetic relation, but the love of God and neighbor, which has world-abnegation and self-abnegation only as its negative and obverse side. The first community further exemplified this new law of Christ. It has remained during subsequent history a constitutive factor of Christianity, although under manifold depletions and distortions, and under greatly changed cultural conditions, (c) The relation between the divine gift and the human task is defined by Jesus: the fulfilment of the divine will is the condition of the participation in the full blessing of God ; but God first meets man with his forgiveness and educa- 10 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION tive blessings, especially in Jesus Christ himself as bringer of the kingdom of God (§3:3). This conception, powerfully formulated by Paul, has persisted in Christianity, in spite of much fluctuation and corruption. Note to §4:2 1. The goods of the Kingdom were already present to the conscious ness of Jesus, but the Kingdom, was to come. 3. The God-idea which corresponds to Jesus' original mes sage of the kingdom of God is expressed in the name of God as " our Father in heaven." This name of God has become regulative for Christianity by virtue of its position in the Lord's prayer. b. The Peculiarity oe the Religious Life, as against Other Sides of the Life of the Spirit.1 Note to b 1. What do we mean by the spiritual life? The aesthetic, ethical and scientific are included. But the religious is also included, and I know not what else there is in the spiritual life. Does the re ligious connote something as specific in the life of the spirit as the others mentioned, or is the religious an attitude toward reality in cluding all of these others? §5. The Way to a Knowledge of the Essence of Religion. 1. The historical phenomenon of Christianity, whose content we have to present in its most salient features, is combined with a series of other historical phenomena, under the universal con cept of religion. It serves the more comprehensive and more accurate knowledge of Christianity itself, and therewith the solution of our problem, if we make clear to ourselves the char acter of the whole aspect of the human spiritual life' designated by the name religion. 2. We may not derive the essence of religion from the un certain etymology of the word, but only from an investigation of the phenomenon itself, (a) But such investigation cannot stop with an investigation of only the most elementary forms of religion.1 (b) A process of induction would be abortive which specified the common marks of all empirically given THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 11 religions, without distinction. Such a procedure would result in a too indefinite universal concept. Note to §5 : 2 1. One cannot understand the essence of man from a study of the human embryo merely. A present fad among scientists (e. g. Lester F. Ward) is to discover the essence of religion by an embryological study of religion. The resulting concept is extremely poverty- stricken, as compared with the richness and fulness of the higher forms of religious life. Moreover, we are able' inwardly to understand foreign religions only from the standpoint of our own religion. Abso lute impartiality is impossible, but we can enter sympathetically into what we may suppose to be the experiences of other religious people, and compare them with the religious life with which we are familiar. 3. Thus we are led to this, viz. to take our starting-point in a definite content of the historical life, and of course in the content which is highest and best known to us, that is, there fore, in the Christian. Using the Christian as a type, or species, we may investigate the specific character of the reli gious life, and to be sure, first of all in comparison with the other sides of the spiritual life. When we have once found these single features, we shall have to indicate how they may be recognized in other religions, although effaced in many ways, in many ways modified, perhaps thoroughly distorted. §6. The Salient Distinguishing Marks of the Religious Life. 1. The religious life, considered first of all in its Christian form, is differentiated from the other sides of the spiritual life by the following characteristics: (a) It is swayed and gov erned in its entire course by (a) the certainty of a supramun- dane power on which we, together with the world, are totally dependent. To be sure the believer is able to represent this power only with the aid of fantasy.1 But the believer lives at the same time in the firm conviction that that which is thus represented is reality.2 (/?) To this power is attributed a morally binding authority over us. To it is attributed also decisive importance and inner participation in and sympathy for us and our life, primarily in and for our blessedness or sal vation, (b) Toward this power accordingly from the human side there is a relation of feeling and willing of a peculiar 12 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION character, viz. (a) a surrender of the will to it in submission and obedience, expressed in conduct of the life and in worship and prayer; and (fl) a feeling of humble submission and of cheerful confidence, (c) In this way a personal communion is sought with that supramundane power itself. This com munion embraces the gaining of blessedness, which is dependent upon it, and a position of freedom over against the world.3 Notes to §6 : 1 1. The supramundane power is represented symbolically by means of such expressions as " Rock," " Shield," " High Tower," " Friend," " Captain," " Pilgrim," " Father." 2. Feuerbach regarded religious ideas as injurious illusions ; Lange held that they were useful illusions. Now there is a certain function which illusion often has in experience, but if the believer should come permanently to the conviction that all the characteristic ideas of religion are illusion, the result would be fatal for his religion. Cancel the idea-element in faith and you destroy the faith. The emotional and volitional sides suffer atrophy, it would seem, when the idea-element is destroyed. 3. The three elements mentioned in (a), (b) and (c), are the three characterisics of the Christian religion. The personal communion with the supramundane power and the blessedness will not appear as a donation, but as an achievement. 2. Something of all these characteristics must be found every where where we speak of religion at all. To be sure they ap pear in infinitely many individual modifications, (a) Every where there is the certainty of a supramundane power or pow ers, and everywhere an authority laying claim to man, and a decisive influence on his life and blessedness are attributed to that power or powers. But infinitely diverse is (a) the view of the supramundaneness of that power or powers, as also of the kind and extent of its influence, as also again of the kind and degree of the certainty of the existence and dominion of that power or powers.1 Infinitely diverse also are (/8) the ground of the authority of that power and the idea of the content of the expected blessedness, and of the relation of that power or powers to that blessedness, of the conditions of obtaining that blessedness.2 (b) Everywhere there is a relation of will and feeling, which is analogous to 1 (b) above. But inexhaustibly manifold is (a) the surrender of will in relation to its inten- THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 13 sity and pureness ; and indefinitely shaded and graded are (/8) the feelings of submission and confidence, and their relation to each other.3 (c) Everywhere there is some sort of communion with the deity and dominion over the world striven for. But the former is in various degrees of a spiritual and ethical char acter. So is the latter various in scope and content. Notes to §6 : 2 1. The diversity extends from Spinoza at one extreme to Herrmann, the absolute dualist in theology, at the other. 2. In the Christian religion what we have to do with, ultimately, is a spiritual relation, not the holding of any particular historical datum as true. It is a supersensible, superhistorical relationship that we are concerned with; and the requiring of adhesion to any fact in history is subversive of the Christian religion. A jury of twelve scholars would scarcely agree on oath with reference to any historical fact in the life of Christ. Is it not too much, then, to require ad hesion to this or that historical fact in order to be a Christian? Is it not too much to ask of Aunt Dinah down South? She cannot get at the facts, unless she takes them blindly, like the charcoal-man whom Luther questioned. 3. In view of this diversity, there is ground for large-hearted charity on the 'part of the preacher and pastor. There is also need of pedagogic diversity in dealing with the diversity of religious life and development. Moreover, there is a call for an optimistic spirit of appreciation of any degree of obedience, confidence and assurance. For example, referring to obedience toward God, it may be shown that the thirsty man, drinking water, by so much obeys God; that the laborer, eating his dinner, is by so much obeying God. Any degree of recognition of the order of the world and submission to it is recognition of God. We can prove to the " atheist " that he is not an atheist, inasmuch as he eats his dinner. §7. Human Need and Surrender to Divine Revelation the Basis of the Religious Life. 1. If in all religions there are the three characteristics indi cated, the further question arises whether a unitary practical interest, i. e. interest in life, which binds men to religion, is not to be found everywhere also.1 (a) The Christian religion be comes inwardly a part of man by awakening the practical ques tion, the question of life, viz. Can I become blessed ? Can I be saved? How can I obtain eternal life? (Cf. §6:1, a, fi and c.) (b) But all other religions reckon with man's desire 14 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION for (positive) happiness, or at least (negative) liberation from definite evils, or human need and sin in general ; and it is pre cisely in this that they have their root in the heart of their adherents. It is from this standpoint that all the particular characters specified in §6:2 are to be understood. Note to §7 : 1 1. What we refer to is an interest of life, rather than of specula tion. The distinction is not an absolute one, to be sure, but religion is concerned with practical, rather than theoretical interests. It did not come to satisfy theoretical interests, and even its doctrines came to satisfy practical needs. The theoretical interest is present, but the primary interest is practical. 2. But this desire which is powerful in all religions and all manifestations of their life does not perhaps generate the gods as mere "wish-beings" (Wiinschwesen) -1 Rather the pious man not only in Christianity but also in all other religions knows himself to be bound by divine authority and demonstra tion of power, and he holds himself to definite impressive dis closures of supramundane power or powers, in other words to " revelations." The man who desires blessedness does not pur posely create the gods, but finds them, lights upon them, as we say; and this is the case in the various religions of the phe nomenal world.2 Notes to §7:2 1. When a person or a people is in dire need of help, does desire of rescue generate the rescuer, in the sense that the wish is father of the thought? The idea of a rescuer has a psychological origin, and so is generated; but we are speaking of the being to whom the idea is referred. God is felt to have authority. The authority-feeling is psychologically generated, of course; but is the authority of no ob jective validity? Theoretically, we must consider the contention that we cannot tell whether the gods are mere W-ilnschwesen or not. But practically it is 'quite different. The only way one has religious assurance is prac tically. And while one may not be able to prove or disprove the objective validity of the belief in the authority of God on speculative grounds, practically one may become assured of it. 2. It is when practical religion weakens that the question seriously arises as to whether the gods are " wish-beings " or not. 3. Faith in such divine revelations is further upborne and sustained in all religions by religious communions. On the THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 15 basis of the revelations believed in, the various religious com munions cherish in their circles definite religious views of God or the gods, of the world and of life; also certain sentiments, certain tendencies of the will, customs, commandments, prom ises and expectations ; and these communions are held together on their side by this common possession. §8. The Importance of Feeling in Religion, and fhe Character of fhe Religious Judgment as Value-Judgment. 1. All fhe main psychic functions, ideation and judgment as well as feeling and willing, participate in religion, no less than in all the unitary activities of our spiritual life.1 This is true of Christianity, but also of the other religions. Nevertheless Schleiermacher was not wrong in assigning to feeling a central place in the religious life.2 For the ideas belonging to religion, ideas of God and of the world, tendencies of the will and deeds, are expressions of personal piety in full measure only when they are apprehended in feeling, or better expressed, in what the Bible means by " heart," according to their importance or their worth for the unitary personal life of man. In other words, all this emerges from the reaction of the whole heart. Notes to §8 : 1 1. An extreme Ritschlian tendency has urged that the intellectual movement is practically absent in religion. But that is psycholog ically impossible. 2. Starbuck, reviewing James's Varieties of Religious Experience, says that feeling is but the splash of the spray on the ocean of life. There is some basis for this, and yet the centrality of feeling in religion must be maintained. 2. It has become customary in theology to express the inti mate relation of religious ideas and judgments to the heart that perceives values, by the proposition that all religious cognition terminates in value-judgments. This proposition is true and right, only under two conditions, viz. : (a) The concept value- judgment is not to be opposed to the concept existence-judgment. Rather is it essential to a judgment of faith to affirm a reality (v. §6:1 a and 2 b).1 (b) Faith-judgments, especially the Christian faith-judgments, may not be understood as express ing that reality in the sense of a mere postulate which must be 16 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION drawn up on account of its worth. Rather faith-judgments affirm that reality on the basis of disclosures in the given world, or of revelations (v. §7: 2).2 But under these two conditions the characterization of the propositions of faith as value-judg ments has its objective right. For they are not theoretical judgments, whose validity reposes on the necessitations of per ception and thought, but, according to their epistemological significance they are " thymetic " judgments,3 whose validity reposes on the attitude of the feeling and willing ego to the ideated objects, i. e. on an evaluation of revelation. More ac curately, value-judgments are confidence judgments, or trust- judgments, in many religions fear-judgments.4 Notes to §8 : 2 1. This in opposition to the type of Ritschlianism represented by Bender. 2. This in opposition to Kant. 3. Cf. Reischle: Werturteile und Glaubensurteile. 4. Note the difference between what " the world " means to the man of religion, and what it means to the man of science ; between " man " from the point of view of anthropology, and " man " from the point of view of religion. Even if the value-judgment be an existence judg ment, it is not as existence judgment that you think of it. 3. Within the religious community faith-judgments consid ered psychologically, not epistemologically, are constantly in danger of sacrificing their character as value-judgments, and of becoming an object of assent without the participation of the evaluating " heart," x precisely as religious acts are in danger of deteriorating to mere legal or customary external acts. Note to §8 : 3 1. This is what is meant by " intellectualism " in religion. It is adhesion to a set of ideas or formulas, theoretically, where there is no corresponding religious process in consciousness. It is the evil of both rationalism and orthodoxy. There is a place for intellectual assent in religion. But religious judgments have a practical origin, and they have no values apart from the religious process in consciousness wliich structurally pro duces the religious idea. What is the good of the God-idea without religion? What is the good of the flag without patriotism? (Of course the flag shows that there was patriotism once upon a time!) Of what use is it to be on my knees, if there is no prayerfulness in my spirit? There is constant danger that the fixed, static God-idea THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 17 may be out of relation with experience, through failure to reconstruct the God-idea ever anew as a mode of expressing our new values and our reactions to the world and human history. 4. The character of religious value-judgments becomes more distinct still when we assign them their place in the scale of value-judgments in general. These value-judgments may be classified as follows: (a) Natural or hedonistic value- judg ments, which we form on the basis of natural inclination and impulse and of the ends growing out of these, (b) Legal value-judgments, which we exact on the basis of the rules of right, and of our position in society, (c) Ideal or normative value-judgments, which we express on the basis of ideas, or norms, and therefore with the claim to universal validity. These ideal value- judgments are (a) aesthetic, (/?) intellectual, (7) moral, and (8) religious. §9. The Relation of Religion to fhe Other Spiritual Activities of Man, i. e. to fhe Aesthetic, fhe Scientific and fhe Moral. 1. The value-judgments specified in §8:4 are only the ex pression or exhibit of man's corresponding practical activities, or reactions. In particular, the ideal value-judgments men tioned in §8:4 (c) are the manifestation or exhibition of the human spiritual life, according to its various sides, aesthetic, scientific, moral and religious.1 It is important to relate re ligion to these other three reactions of spiritual life. Note to §9 : 1 1. There is difference as well as kinship between the religious func tion and other functions of the human spirit. The modern tendency to monism must not interfere with fidelity to facts and the disparate ness of spiritual facts. Only when we have recognized multiplicity have we the problem of monism on our hands. 2. The cesthetic-spiritual activity rests on this, viz. that by means of the complex of ideas which nature proffers or art creates, the free play of our fantasy and at the same time of our sensations and feelings is excited and thereby an aesthetic pleasure awakened. Now without doubt, religion has a cer tain similarity to the aesthetic elevation of feelings, and re ligion has ever employed art as a means of expression and 18 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION manifestation. Because of this religion and art are often con founded. But in essence they are very different.1 In aesthetic life it is the relation of the ideated object to fantasy that comes into consideration. The question of the reality of that object is incidental. But in the religious life everything depends upon the practical question of our blessedness, our salvation in some sense of the word, and therefore upon the reality of the supra mundane power or powers of which we form ideas.2 Notes to §9:2 1. In much of worship of a higher, sacramental order there is aesthetic rather than religious elevation. The apprehension of the peculiar religious object is wanting. The ethical authority of that object also is consequently wanting. The sense of harmony is present, but that is a truncated religious experience. The roots are not there. Art has sestheticised the Cross, and religion makes use of this, but the attitude of the religious man is different from that of the mere artist, as the attitude of the thirsty man toward water is different from that of the artist who is not thirsty. 2. Religion may externalize itself in aesthetic forms, e. g., in music, architecture, vestments, cross, and cult; but aesthetics is not con cerned with the reality of the object set forth aesthetically. Rehgion, on the other hand, is fundamentally concerned with this. But by no definitive scientific proof can you compel a man to hold that God exists. Indeed, as Schultz points out, in his Grundriss der christlichen Apologetik, much of the power and blessedness of re ligion depends upon the fact that scientific proof is impossible. Otherwise one might be made pious as one is made mathematical. If the proof of religion were scientific, then impiety would be mere nonsense. The remedy for doubt and the fear of subjective illusion is mainly practical; it is to live deeply and fully on one's religious possessions and in the experiencing of their values. 3. Scientific activity is guided by the ideal of truth and sets out from a comprehensive cognition of the real.1 In re ligion also, in the propositions or tenets or articles of faith, the question as to the truth, and therefore as to the reality of that which is believed, is essential.2 Therefore an intel- lectualistic tendency can constantly take root in religion.3 But leading interests, proof of truth, content and goal of truth in religion and in its faith- judgments are of a different kind, according to §8:2, from what they are in science and in its formulas. THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN. DOGMATICS 19 Notes to §9 : 3 1. Science knows no law but its own, and no authority but truth. It wants the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Science cannot stand unveraciousness, subjectively, or untruth, ob jectively. Is that as true in religion as it is in science? 2. If one is persuaded that the traditional tenet is not true, he may keep the form and stuff it with a new content. If he cannot do this, he will give it- up, even if he thinks he will go to the devil for it. John Stuart Mill said he would not hold that that was right for God which would be wrong for man, and if God would send him to hell for that, to hell he would go. 3. Intellectualism is the worst one-sidedness in religion. It is worse than either emotionalism or moralism. 4. Even the moral life is essentially different from the reli gious. The former is guided by the thought of the " ought," that is, a rule of human relationship and conduct, acknowl edged to be unconditioned and universally valid; or, in other words, the moral life is guided by the idea of the good. Re ligion on the other hand is related to a real supramundane power, authoritative for us, ordering, disposing, guiding our lives. Religion therefore is ruled by the thought, not of the good, but of the Supreme Being, and at the same time by the idea of the chief good. Ethics as such does not need to relate itself to a supramundane object; but in Christianity the reli gious and the moral are in the most intimate relations to one another. In this their reciprocal penetration, they form that activity of the human personality which is ethical, that is, guided by norms for the will, and free. In other religions the connection with the moral life, therefore the ethical personal character of the religion, is attained only in very various de grees. 5. Religion is allied with all these spiritual activities. In the latter as in the former, man as spiritual being seeks to mount above mere naturality, mere natural conditionedness or determinedness, although in very various degrees, to be sure.1 But in this whole matter religion occupies a special position over against all other sides of the spiritual life. Religion would put human life into relation with a supramundane reality. This striking difference between religion and the rest of the cultural life is manifest in the history of humanity, and 20 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION in the strained relation of religion again and again to the en tire secular culture.2 Notes to §9 : 5 1. Of science itself the real spiritual function is simply the mount ing of the human spirit above naturality, inner and outer; it is the achieving of a certain supramundanenegg. The spiritual function of art is the spirit's mounting above the rawness and ugliness and repulsiveness of much of our empirical life — again the becoming supramundane of human personality. Similar things may be said of morality and religion. 2. The nub of the conflict between religion and science was that science wanted dependableness and system, and it could not get on with the religious object, so it undertook to eliminate that object. But the most pitiable conflict is the conflict between religion and morality, a conflict which is going on today. Many men who are most interested in the moral function today are not quite clear about the religious function. They try to show the identity of the two, yet the conflict persists. Morality wants religion to do away with the supramundane object and take the moral ideal as its object. Religion can not do it, and it would ruin morality in the long run if it did. History ought to be worth something to us. In the entire history of religion there has been present without exception a power outside of the human power, which is best designated therefore by the word " supramundane," a power, or powers, or being, in which man has believed. This is an inalienable feature of religion, high and low, at home and abroad, millennium after millennium. Now this is what the modern moral man is trying to get rid of. Modern morality, with its ideal which has grown up out of experi ence, now wants to be content for the specifically religious conscious ness also. But the moral function and the religious function are not identical. Our moral function consists in the production of values, goods. Religion is the conviction that the structure and function of the universe are such as to render the production of values (moral values included) possible. We would not sow wheat if we were con vinced that the field would not grow wheat ; nor would we be so likely to produce moral values, if we thought the universe was against these values. Thus the religious conviction is implicit in the moral, aesthetic and scientific life. But my production of aesthetic values is different from my conviction about the universe, even though the two are intimately related. Similarly, morality is not religion, nor religion morality; and yet religion without morality would become less religious, and morality without religion less moral. The divorce of morality and religion would be the destruction of both — not necessarily for the individual, but for society and the race. Religion is not always worship of a personal God, to be sure. THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 21 Take Buddhism, for instance. It staggers the man who tries to define religion, and there is a temptation to treat it as a philosophy, rather than a religion. It is a philosophy, but it is also a religion. What, then, is the religious object in Buddhism? It believes in gods, spirits and ghosts, but its belief in them is not a religious belief. Buddha did not believe himself to be dependent on them. But he had an object on which he believed both gods and men to be dependent, and with which he sought harmony. That object was the moral order of the world. The moral order of the world func tioned for Buddha as God functions for us. Whence comes the moral order? Buddha did not ask that question, for the same reason that the theist does not ask, Whence comes God? Where we ask about the ground of the moral order of the world, the Buddhist would ask about the ground of the existence of God. Now the religious object of original Buddhism, the moral order of the world, being impersonal, worship, in the ordinary sense of the term, was not called for. Is cult, then, a sine qua non of religion ? In religion there is (1) belief in a supramundane being, or power, or powers; (2) man feels himself dependent upon that being, or power, or those powers; (3) he seeks to be in harmony with that object (being, power, or powers) ; and (4) in that harmony he finds his freedom. Cult comes in in connection with the third of these, the seeking of harmony with the religious object. In present-day Christianity cult is suffering eclipse, because of the passing of the old theory of redemption. Historically, the purpose of cult has been to get God on our side, by giving gifts or doing something. It was not originally to get ourselves into harmony with God, but to get that being or power into harmony with us. But if that power is external and changeless, as in Buddhism, what is the good of cult? It could be subjectively serviceable only, enabling the individual to get into harmony with the religious object. Has cult any other than this subjective value, and if we say it has not, will cult survive the change in point of view? The Old Testament prophets criticized the people for offering cult (sacrifices, feasts and fasts, and prayers) instead of morality. Lincoln was not so much concerned with the question whether God was on his side as with the question whether he was on God's side. The stars do not go out of their course for any man ; does prayer effect any change in God? Would you be willing to assume responsibility for all the consequences of the literal fulfilment of your petitions? Is not the ultimate prayer, " Not my will, but thine be done " ? It is not meant, however, that the effect of prayer is merely " reflex " ; but rather that there is at bottom a point where the divine and the human will are one (for otherwise God would be a fractional God only), and that true prayer is an expression of our deepest and truest life, which is God's life in us. It is not an external deed, something that we go about doing; it is the normal functioning of our spiritual life, the 22 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION most fundamental activity of spiritual life. Does it pay to pray? There is something almost blasphemous about the question. As well might one ask, Does it pay to admire the rainbow? or, Does it pay to love? It is like supposing that the only value of a work of art is its money value. There is no value, so far as getting things is con cerned, in getting down on our knees and asking for them. "Your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things." But there is value in giving form and expression, externalization and realization to the prayer-life. Buddhism, as- we have seen, is peculiar in having as its religious object the moral order of the world. Would not modern natural sci ence find it easier to affiliate itself with the Buddhistic than with the Christian point of view? What room is there anyway for a God who is disparate from the natural and moral order of the world? And if we were to insist on Buddhists adopting the idea of a personal God, without any change in their whole view of the world, might we not be forcing upon them a lower category than their own? Even in Christianity have we not had a thousand years of history in which the highest category was not personality, but substance {ovaia) ? Either God is person, essentially as we know personality, or, so far as we are concerned, God is not personal at all. And if we strip off the attribute of personality from God, we have not much left. If we say God's personality is like ours, we are picturing God to our selves by means of a symbol which is doubtless inadequate, but not necessarily erroneous. If we say God's personality is not like ours, we land in agnosticism. If God is personal, and personality is what we find in man, is not God also more than that ? The trouble here is that we cannot put any content into the notion of " super-person ality," except a sub-personal content It is our right to use the highest category we have to set forth God, and that highest category is personality. And as for the modern cutting out of the God-idea, it is so radical and so foreign to the Christian religion that I do not recognize it. If Christianity keeps on retiring our convictions regarding God and immortality in favor of the modern emphasis upon sanitation, education, regard for natural law, and the like, will there be any great difficulty in unifying Christianity with Buddhism? Will our religion stand the stripping off from our faith of the belief in immortality? Is it personal immortality enough if my spiritual effectiveness persists forever? Or is it essential that I myself be there? §10. Examination of Deviating Conceptions of R'eligion, and Comprehensive Definition. 1. The results of our religio-psychological analysis (§§6 to 9) are in conflict with various other conceptions of religion. THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 23 In these latter there are justifiable moments, indeed, though presented in a one-sided manner, (a) The results to which we attain are in conflict with the theoretical conception of re ligion as advocated in recent times on the one side by the speculative philosophy (the Hegel notion that religion is an expression of philosophical truth in the form of imaginative representation, Vorstellung), on the other side by empirical investigation (religion an element of the interest in causation, v. §9:3). All this is too intellectualistic.1 (b) These re sults are in conflict with the aesthetic-mystical conception, e. g. that in Schleiermacher's Discourses, especially the first edi tion, reflected in his later definition of religion as feeling of dependence.2 This conception is also combined with the the oretical interpretation of religion, and Hegel himself is not free from this combination (cf. §9:2). (c) These results are in conflict again with a one-sided endaemonistic concep tion, such as that of Feuerbach. Such a conception is not just to the importance of faith in revelation, i. e. it is not true to the objective reference of religion, nor is it just to the interaction of religion and morality on the other hand (v. §7:2; §9:4). (d) These results are in conflict, again, with the one-sided moralistic or rigoristic conception, e. g. of Kant, and on the part of rationalism (v. §9:4). 3 (e) These re sults are in conflict with the combination of different concep tions, without any clear point of unity, as is found, for exam ple in Biedermann (cf. §7: l).4 Notes to §10 : 1 1. Here religion would be primitive science, or (with Hegel) primi tive philosophy. 2. Man is active in religion, not merely dependent. 3. Kant's definition of religion as the treating of human duties as divine commands, fails to do justice to the feeling of dependence, to the revelation-concept, and to cult (if cult is to be regarded as belonging essentially to religion). 4. Biedermann tries to ride two horses which are not always going in the same direction. 2. We may now combine the characteristics of the religious life in its developed form as set forth in §§6 to 9 as follows: Religion is faith in spiritual being, or beings, or powers, or 24 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION power, ruling outside of and above the sphere of man ; feeling of dependence on these powers, and the need of getting into harmony with them (which, when accomplished, brings free dom and peace). Or, more fully, religion is man's seeking communion with a supramundane power, or powers, which lay claim to him and determine his life, a seeking which is nur tured within a community, consummated in ideas and judg ments of faith, in feelings of reverence and trust, as well as in surrender of the will and in worshipful acts. This seeking has its roots in the worth-perceiving heart and in the desire for blessedness on the part of man, and it is evoked by impres sions due to disclosures of that power in the real world. In brief, religion is the uplift of man to the supramundane, an .uplift that is practically conditioned and of a practical kind.1 Note to §10 : 2 1. Are worshipful acts instinctive and organic in the rehgious consciousness, and so, abiding? Or are they a passing phase in re ligious expression? The philosopher, as such, has no cult. Has he gone astray, or will religion come to this? Has religion a right to have its own peculiar way of expressing itself, as art has, and as mor ality has? Or will moral acts be the expression of religion? Must you have a flag for there to be patriotism? I am in doubt about the whole matter; but while I believe in moral service as the expression of rehgion, I believe that worshipful acts are instinctive and spon taneous. They have place, not because they pay in getting the Deity to do something, and not because they pay in superinducing a mental condition, but for the same reason that the lamb plays on the hill side in the sunshine, or the child goes to its mother, or the chick lifts up its head. Worshipful acts are the organic and proper way of expressing religious emotions. §11. The Question as to the Origin of Religion. 1. Our religio-psychological analysis setting out from Chris tianity attempted to elucidate the religious life of man given as fact, and the life of humanity in the sense of religion. But the question as to the origin or rise of religion in the individual man and in humanity is a different question from this.1Note to §11 : 1 1. It is not the business of dogmatics to do the historical and psychological work in connection with this problem, but to formulate THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 25 the net results of such investigation, and to employ those results in its own task. An interesting contribution has just been made by L. von Schroeder in an essay entitled "Der Ursprung der Religion" in a volume entitled Beitrage zur waiter Entwichelung der christlichen Religion (Munich, 1905). He agrees that nature- worship and soul-cult (v. H. Spencer and J. Lippert) have been factors in the genesis of re ligion, but claims that religion has had another root, more important than these two. He refers to the widespread faith, even among the lowest peoples, in a supreme, good Being, thought of as creative, and requiring altruistic morality of the individual, a Being re garded as not demanding any definite cult, but as being worshipped when one did right and good (cf. A. Lang; The Making of Religion). Schroeder finds the roots of altruistic ethics in the animal kingdom, in instinctive love, mutual help, subordination to a common end, and the instinct of self-sacrifice of the individual for the species, as when the parent risks life for the protection of its offspring. The theory as to the origin of religion is then developed as follows: When in the course of evolution there appeared an individual re flective enough, after feeling the power of the inherited altruistic animal instinct leading into recognized danger and suffering, to raise the question, Why do we do this ? Why must the individual sacri fice itself? the answer would not be in terms of the psychology of instinct, of course, but would probably take the form of the sugges tion, There must be some one who wills that we act in this manner. He is not to be seen, yet he must be the greatest and mightiest and highest, since all must follow his will without seeing or hearing him. Then, if these primitive thinkers conceived the simple thought that this great Being must be the one who made the world and man, they would be led to conclude that he must be friendly, since he had made so much for man. Thus the thought arose of the supreme, good Being, whose will was the law of self-sacrificing morality for man. It was the great birth hour of humanity as humanity, the real birth hour of religion and the real birth hour of morals in human understanding. Now if this theory of Schroeder is historically correct and can be made out, it is very important for our task. It is true that nature- worship and soul-cult do not quite explain the genesis of the moral in religion. But this theory would mean that the kernel of the faith is indissolubly bound up with the moral, with the idea of the good. It puts a stop to the modern cry that religion and morality can be divorced, and it indicates that on fundamental problems the primitive answer was essentially that of our most profound philosophy. We have here too a further illustration of the way in which what Christianity has most feared often turns out to be a foundation stone indispensable to it. A generation ago the evolutionary hypothesis produced a panic in religion. Now it would seem that the only 26 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION adequate defense of the Christian religion involves the evolutionary hypothesis. Here we have an evolutionary vindication of the view that altruistic good is organic, structural, original in life. We cannot make the transition (logically) from abstract egoism to ab stract altruism, but here we are able from an evolutionary point of view, to explain (psychologically) how an egoistic person can make the transition to altruism. 2. The origin of religion in the individual man is every where mediated by religious tradition and education. But such origin presupposes an original endowment in man, i. e. the endowment to spiritual personality, or to the unity and freedom of the self over against the world, and also the con sequent question as to the meaning and performance of the whole cosmic process.1 With the teleological thought of en dowment, however, the limits of aetiological explanation are indicated.2 Notes to §11:2 1. The traditional is not the original. Spontaneity is the original. 2. There can be causal explanation of the passive, the acquired; but what does the acquiring cannot be so explained. 3. The question as to the origin of religion " in humanity " leads first of all into historical investigation as to the original form of religion. But this investigation, like all investiga tion into the first beginnings of life, loses itself in the obscurity of pre-historical existence.1 All that remains, therefore, un less one foregoes all effort at scientific explanation, is the pos sibility of a psychological hypothesis which seeks to make the genesis of religion understandable on the basis of the general psychological endowment and external situation of man. Note to §11': 3 1. The animal kingdom has a kind of history; values are acquired in animal life. As far as we can go in our investigations, all is most reassuring to one who believes in the originality and the structuralness of the good in reality. Would it not be a more ade quate God-faith to hold that reality is originally and structurally good throughout, even if we had to give up the questions as to per sonality, trinity in unity, etc., than to hold to the old doctrine of an absentee good Being, with a cosmos which was not originally or structurally good? Is this what people mean when they say that the God- idea is passing away? THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 87 4. The psychological hypotheses concerning the genesis of religion move in different directions, ever according to the conception and meaning of religion (cf. §10). The hypothesis most approximate to the view set forth above may now be given. The origin of religion is to be explained as follows: (a) On the one hand it is to be explained from the problem of the happiness of man over against the world (v. -§7), a problem in which the tendency to the unity and freedom of the self comes to elementary expression, (b) On the other hand at the same time, the origin of religion is to be explained from the immediate impression of certain natural phenomena upon men, the impression that a power announces itself in these phenomena, a power which claims man and is or may be made mindful of his happiness and well-being. This is what Schroe der would call the nature- worship root of religion, (c) The ancestor-worship root is the soul-cult theory set forth by Schroe der. (d) Finally, according to Lang and Schroeder, by the side of the egoistic root mentioned above there is equally orig inal and structural the altruistic root. This last is the source of the moralization of religion and accounts for the indissolubil ity throughout of religion and morality. But as yet hy potheses remain indefinite and uncertain in details, on account of our ignorance of the state of primitive man. Moreover, all hypotheses lead to an original endowment in man, and thus to the limits of aetiological explanation. 5. If the truth of religion is acknowledged, then the pre supposition underlying the human inner life must be viewed as (a) a divine endowment, while that from without which awakens this impression must come under the point of view of (b) a divine disclosure. The religious knowledge thus gained must be viewed as (c) divine self-disclosure to man by means of those disclosures. But these thoughts lead beyond the pale of religio-psychological and religio-historical consid eration.1Note to §11:5 1. The truth of religion is wrapped up with the question regarding the revelation-idea of religion. Religiosity is psychological and in dubitable. But the revelation-idea is a presupposition to account for this religiosity from the standpoint of religion. But this is not a 28 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION psychological or historical, but a metaphysical question. Is religion true? Psychology cannot say. Dogmatics cannot escape philosophy, the Ritschlians to the contrary notwithstanding. c. The Peculiarity of Christianity as against Other Religions. §12. The Gradation of Religion (Stages of Religious Develop ment). 1. In spite of our setting out from Christianity in our analy sis of the religious life, we have drawn in the other historical formations of religion by way of comparison. They are to be distinguished from Christianity and from one another; and yet never by mere single externals, but by the individual stamp or mold of all the features of the religious life (v. §6). The individuality of a religion has its root (a) in the revelation- basis which gives norm to that religion (v. §7:2), or (b) in the hoped for or enjoyed redemptive good (§7:1). 2. Effort has been made to gain a, survey at least of the in exhaustible manifoldness of religions, by classification into groups. This classification has unconsciously assumed the character of a gradation, of stages of worth or development. These classifications have been very variously constructed, al ways in accordance with the main point of view. Also they aid in very diverse degree in an inner understanding of the distinctions important for the life of religion. 3. If we set out from the revelations of the various reli gions in their correlation to the happiness striven for, we get the following fundamental order or arrangement: (a) Na ture religions, which hold to disclosures of divine powers in striking natural phenomena and orders, especially in beneficent and injurious natural phenomena. The lowest stages of na ture religion are fetichism and animism. The highest stages pass in fluid transition over into (b) folk religions, or ethicized or humanized nature religions, in which divine disclosures are found not only in the region of nature, but above all in the region of the folk-life, wilh its processes and orders. To this (polytheistic) double group, a second double group (exalted above polytheism) fastens on, viz. (c) law religions, which (a) find the regulative revelation of God in the communica- THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 29 tion of a unitary law of life and (;8) expect retribution for man according to the measure in which he fulfils the law; and (b) redemption religions, which believe in a redeeming disclosure of deity, viz. (a) mystical redemption religion, (/8) pessimistic redemption religion (Buddhism, which, in its orig inal form, some think is not real religion at all), and (y) Christian redemption religion, which is of a positive, ethical and historical character. §13. Comparative Characteristics of Christianity. 1. Christianity is historical redemption religion par excel lence, in so far as it has its center in faith in Jesus as the Christ, and therewith as redemptive revealer of God (v. §3). Now other religions also condition connection with their reli gious communities upon recognition of their historical found ers. This is especially the case with the two world-religions associated with Mohammed and Buddha. But there is a dis tinction between Christianity and them in this matter, (a) Christianity by virtue of its inner character acknowledges Jesus Christ not only as prophet and supreme model, but as redeem ing Savior and Lord, and as abiding ground and immediate object of personal faith (cf. §3). (b) Another distinction is the kind and content of the salvation expected from Jesus Christ. 2. Ethical redemption religion (cf. §9:4) — this is what Christianity is by virtue of its law of life and its redemptive good, (a) The law religions are also expressed in a unitary law of life (§12: 3, c), but the new law of life arising from Jesus has, as compared with them, (a) a different content, i. e. a spiritual, moral content (cf. § 4:2, b) ; (/?) another kind of validity — i. e. it is valid on account of its inner worth; and (y) another position in the whole of religion, espe cially in relation to the redemptive good (cf. §4: 2, c) — i. e. the law in law religion is the cause of its redemptive good ; in Christianity it is its effect, (b) The redemptive good itself, in distinction from (a) the good striven for in nature religion and folk religion, also from (/?) the reward expected in law religions, is of a purely ethical kind, and it is this fact that distinguishes Christianity from the other redemption religions. 30 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION The latter redeem man to (a) absorption of the soul in God, or to (ft) self -liberation from a painful existence.1 But re demption in Christianity signifies the uplift of spiritual per sonality from sin and guilt to filial communion with the perfect God and with all the children of God (cf. §4: 2, a). Note to §13 : 2 rl. The ontological, pantheistic religions end with man's absorption in God, with the dissipation of his personality and individuality. He may enrich the life of the Absolute, as dead leaves falling to the ground enrich the life of the tree. He becomes a fertilizer of the Absolute. In the newer idea, the re-inclusion of man in God is left out of account, and the race is put in place of God. The personal life ceases, it is held, but it enriches the life of the race. At death there will take place my absorption in the race for the fertilization of the race. i Pantheism and the older theism are both overcome; panentheism is [now more nearly the word we should use. "'Christianity is not so much concerned with redemption from pain, as it is to make pain auxiliary to the development of moral per sonality. 3. Also the Christian view of God as heavenly Father (§4:3), or as redemptive and pedagogic holy love, compared with the view of God of other religions confirms the charac teristic of Christianity as historical and positive ethical re demption religion, or as religion of the Gospel.1 Note to §13 : 3 1. The new religio-historical movement in Germany, represented by i Troeltsch, Bousset, Wernle, J. Weiss, and Weinel, is the culmina- ! tion of what has been going on for two hundred and fifty years. It j accepts the absolute relativity of all historical life, and hence of i^Jesus. It eliminates the idea of the isolatedness and singularity of Christianity and puts it into genetic connection with the develop ment of the historical religious life, and relativizes it. It accepts seriously the hypothesis of universal evolution. It tends to hold that the distinction between. God and the world is an abstraction of importance, but only an abstraction, a distinction comparable to the distinction between volition and act, or between inside and outside. But the men of this school confess Jesus as a creative revelation- personality, and are enthusiastic in their devotion to him as Savior and Lord (cf. G. B. Foster: "Some Modern Estimates of Jesus," American Journal of Theology, Vol. IX, 1905, pp. 333 ff.). Weinel says, "After Jesus, it is his religion, or none." But is it Jesus' religion, or is it our religion with faith in Jesus? THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 31 §14. The Essential and Permanent in Christianity. We may now gather up at the close of this main division (A) the salient features which confront us in (a) the histor ical phenomena of Christianity (§§3 and 4), and in (b) the comparison of Christianity with other religions (§§12 and 13). 1. As to objective content, Christianity may be defined as the gospel of the love of God the heavenly Father, who redeems us and educates us for his kingdom, this love being revealed in Jesus Christ.1 Subjectively considered, the Christian life consists in our trastfuTsurrender to Jesus Christ,2 by means of which we win (a) filial communion with God, and (b) sanctification in discipline and love.3 By means of these (communion and sanctification) we gain (c) eternal life, be ginning here already and awaiting consummation hereafter.4 Notes to §14 : 1 1. Must Christianity be considered' as the absolute religion, or may it be superseded? Not all of the content of Christianity has yet been externalized. The adjective " Christian " will best char acterize the human ideal forever. Tertullian was right : " Mens humana natwraliter Christiana." The more one develops along the lines of inherent manliness the more he will come to be like Christ in his disposition. To be truly human will ultimately be to be Christian. To Christianize is not to dehumanize humanity, but to humanize humanity. 2. In substituting Jesus' person for his cause [the gospel about? Jesus for the gospel of Jesus], has Christianity gone astray from its birth ? The essential thing in the Christian faith in Jesus is that God is as good as Jesus is, even though appearances may sometimes be to the contrary. If we can stick to this in all the grind and torture and darkness of this world, we can live in hope and die without despair. If the will at the heart of things is, in its attitude] toward us, as good as the will of Jesus, I can bury my child, I can pass through invalidism, lose my fortune, be maligned, and die for gotten before I die; I can assume too that the divine attitude toward me in my guilt will be one of mercy. If God is truly represented by the will of Jesus, made omnipotent, what need I fear? If we depart from this, we depart from the Christian religion. As people decline to believe this, they decline, theoretically and practically, from Christianity. 3. The doctrine of sanctification illustrates the interpenetration of ** religion and morality in Christianity. In Christianity there is no relation to man which is not a relation to God, and no relation to God which is not a relation to man. 32 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION 4. See, in this connection, Lessing's "Education of the Human Race" — an old rationalistic book, but one which might have been written yesterday — and Lessing's " The Demonstration of the Spirit and of Power." 2. All these features point to the essential and permanent content of Christianity and the Christian life, (a) But the gospel had to be preached by Jesus himself in the use of the ideas and forms of expression of his time.1 (b) Also the Christian life was lived by the disciples of Jesus in the defi nite relations, and tasks under which they stood.2 Thus the gospel and the Christian life have formed manifold individual formations under changing times and circumstances. But, for all that, in the points specified above, the changing forms can preserve an inner unity and continuity with the original gos pel. In the degree that these changing forms bring those characteristic features to distinct individual expression and organization are they really Christian.3 Notes to §14:2 | 1. The difficulty in adapting the gospel to the modern world-view I lies in the fact that it was at first preached lashed close home to the ' dualistic conception. This is reflected in such expressions as "Your Father in heaven." God is in the rosebud and in the soul of the little child as well as in heaven. Besides, " heaven " has not the same significance now as it had then. 2. In our generically different world-view and tasks, we cannot copy primitive Christianity, theoretically and practically, and this gets us into trouble with orthodoxy. Monism is not dualism. Im manent values of present human life are in conflict with transcendent eschatology, and that is the end of that matter too. 3. There are churches to whom we send missionaries. They are very different from us, but are we sure that they are not Christian ? They may worship images, appropriate the perpetual body of Christ through their physical organisms in the mass, believe in evil spirits and witches, and in a literal resurrection of the physical body — hair, teeth, stomach and all — but if they trust the love of God in Jesus Christ, commune with God and thereby grow in a holy hfe, which is eternal life here and hereafter, they are Christians, and all these other things are not such as necessarily keep them from being Christians. We are introducing the Western civilization to certain churches of the Near East under the guise of missions; it is an optical illusion, which has its advantages. The one thing, the lack of which in their Christianity is most serious of all, is the idea of THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 33 the capacity of development in Christianity, and to get that idea into them, you must get them to develop. Now let us turn to the other extreme. May one trust the love of God in connection with the idea that man is a unity, that the dis tinction between altruism and egoism is not absolute, that the dis tinction between God and the world is an abstraction, that person ality as we know it is inadequate as an expression of God, that a more adequate expression is the moral order of the world? Here the problem is more serious. Do the gospel and the modern viewl of the world (with its monism, its divine immanency, its dynamic and/ energic becoming) inwardly belong together? It is hard to make/ this go, but I believe it can be done. j 3. Thus understood, Christianity, in distinction from the rigidity of law religions and from the unhistoricalness of the other redemption religions, is a religion of the spirit, which, along with the permanent features it contains, enters into liv ing history, i. e. it itself enters into a process of development.1 Precisely in this capacity for development by which Chris tianity is distinguished from other religions do we find the basis (a) for its missionary claims more consciously and more consistently than can be made by any other religion, and (b) for its claim to be the ultimate religion, and to proclaim uni versally valid, permanent truth. Note to §14: 3 1. Christianity is a religion of the spirit. Law religion is, in the nature of things, historyless, static. Even other redemption re ligions are, as a matter of fact, historyless. They have a static meta physics. Christianity is distinctively historical, a religion of the spirit, and it belongs to the nature of spirit to externalize itself, to enter into process and development. B. THE TRUTH OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION1 a. The Effort to Provide a Theoretical Proof of the Truth of the Christian Faith.2 §15. The Stimulus to Attempts at Theoretical Proof. 1. If the claim of Christianity to be universally valid truth is to be justified it would seem best at first sight to take the same path which leads to the fixation of otherwise universally valid truths, viz. the path of a scientific proof wherein the 34 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION necessitation of perception and of thought would be the decisive criterion. Notes to B 1. As in Part A dogmatics gives a resume of the psychological, his torical and philosophical study of religion, so in Part B it gives a resume of the apologetic vindication of the right of the Christian religion to a permanent function in the development of the spiritual life of man. f~ 2. Apologetics is in a state of flux to-day, and I hesitate to do anything with it any more, and reserve the right to change all this J if I have to do so. But I am still inclined to think that, much as ! our thinking is being colored by pragmatism and the activity-philo sophy, the main contention of our apologetics abides. 2. Mediaeval scholasticism has made this effort within the history of Christianity in a certain scope; so did scholastic orthodoxy, but in more definite limits. This attempt has been repeated in manifold forms in rationalism and in various branches of modern philosophy and of modern theology. 3. The other side of the shield, that is, the obverse side of this attempt to make the world of faith of Christianity, or a part of it, directly accessible to a theoretical proof, is, how ever, the danger that science and faith fall into hostile camps. Since this contradiction can be legitimized only temporarily by the thought of a " two-fold truth," the further danger arises of violent efforts at unification, whether these efforts be by (a) a hierarchical subjection of science under the yoke of " faith," or (b) a rational reduction of faith to the universal truths of reason. 4. But our question is not merely concerning these dangers, but concerning the possibility of a theoretical proof of the objects of faith, or of a part of them. §16. The Insufficiency of the Traditional Theistic Arguments. 1. Efforts at a theoretical proof of the fundamental idea of the Christian faith, have been concentrated upon the so-called proofs of the existence of God. The traditional forms of these proofs are (a) ontological, (b) cosmological, (c) teleological, (d) psychological, (e) historical. These persist still, even in The present, though in developed form. Even where new THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 35 proofs are attempted they share with the last four mentioned the method of regress from a given state of fact to its meta physical presuppositions. 2. None of these proofs has power to compel the assent of the intellect. They lack the necessitation of perception and of thought (a) partly in their starting-point, (b) partly in the progress from this starting point. What survives in these proofs is (a) in part postulates of thought, (b) in greater part postulates and expressions of the worth-perceiving heart. These postulates are of great preliminary importance for the Christian faith, but in themselves they are still too indefinite and general to be able to lead us to the Christian God-idea in its determinateness. §17. The Comprehensive Reason for fhe Collapse of All fhe Attempts at Theoretical Proof of fhe Existence of the God of Christian Faith. 1. The insufficiency of all theoretical proofs flows on fhe one side from the essence of the religious, and especially of fhe Christian faith in God. The Christian God-idea has for its essential content (§4:3 and §13: 3) the idea of a holy and gracious God, who will redeem and educate us for blessedness in his kingdom. The reality of such a God and of his do minion in the world can never be reached by a syllogism of the understanding, but can be apprehended in the heart's recep- , tivity for redeeming and pedagogic love (cf. §8). 2. On the other side the collapse of all efforts at proof is grounded in the character and limits of theoretical cognition. (a) Theoretical knowledge, according to its character, appre hends the given material of perception in the forms of space and time, and as a manifold of causally successive interacting things and processes. It orders the world just apprehended as comprehensively as possible into (a) a system of concepts and laws, but also into (/?) an intelligible system of development, especially in the region of animated nature and of mental life. This ordering is accomplished by the aid of hypotheses, which widen and refine the net of conditions, (b) Now in doing this work we hit upon the limits of knowledge, which cannot 36 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION be transcended. As an absolutely given presupposition of knowledge there is on the one hand (a) the stuff of sensation streaming to us, and on the other hand (/?) our own cognitive consciousness, with its necessary cognitive forms and ideals. Over against these two limiting points, all that is possible is only the cognitive postulate, viz. that the given stuff of sensa tions will be adapted to our cognitive consciousness, in that it will admit of being ordered by the latter into a unitary sys tem of knowledge. But it is impossible to press on by way of logically necessary steps to a knowledge of the content of the ultimate ground both of the world and of our conscious ness. Now the proofs of the existence of God, at least on their theoretical side, are only vain attempts to transcend the limits herewith specified.1 Note to §17 : 2 , — N l 1. After orthodoxy gained, by these proofs, the existence of God, I its further procedure was as follows: (1) God is above and outside of man. God is in heaven; man, on earth. These stand not only for different localities, but for different values. (2) God is holy and merciful, but man on the earth is ruined and empty of holiness. (3) The relation between God and man must of necessity be one of communication, or of revelation from God to man, from heaven to earth. (4) How is this communication or revelation to be known by man, dissociated from God, to be revelation? Only by outer ob jective signs. That is, revelation must announce its origin from Absolute Intelligence by predictions, and from Aboslute Power by miracle. Prediction and miracle are the signs that it is revelation from God. (5) In order to the perpetuity of this revelation, com municated in definite time and space, to the subsequent world, the revelation must be embodied in Sacred Scripture. But how is the Scripture to be guaranteed to be revelation? To this end the Scrip tures must be inspired by the Author of the revelation. (6) So far the whole process is by God himself, all on the object-side — all this that is to make revelation certain and accessible to man; the media tion to the subject is still wanting, and this is most important. (7) The .subject appropriates the revelation by the interpretation of the Scriptures; but how will the subject detect that the supposed ¦ revelation is really divine? The answer is, By the miracle and prediction accompanying the original communication of the revela tion. Very well, but how detect that these are real miracles and predictions ? The answer is, By the witness of the Scriptures. Very well again, but how detect again that the witness of the Scriptures is true? The answer is that the Scriptures are inspired by a truthful THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 37 God. Good again, but how detect the inspiration as divine? The answer is, By the inner witness of the Holy Spirit, who, as we read in the Holy Scriptures, recognizes his own work therein. Good again, but how shall we be certain that this really originates from the Holy Spirit, and not from our own spirit? (8) Here the thread of the orthodox system snaps. In place of the divine witness for revelation we now put human proofs, arguments from the genuine ness and trustworthiness of the Biblical writings to the truth of that which they narrate of revelations of God, and from the divine worthiness of the content of Scriptures to their divine origin. But many human doubts correspond to these human proofs. The gen uineness and trustworthiness of the Scriptures have been assailed. Possibilities of deception or of self-deception, and of the obscura tion of historical truth by legendary narratives and mythical forma tions, have irresistibly suggested themselves. The Bible appears as an aggregate of writings, of very unequal merits. At times there was no fulfilment to the prediction; at other times, no prediction to the fulfilment. Miracle is dissolved by mythical explanations. In , the revelation man recognizes his own laws — laws, if not of his I reason, of his feeling and imagination. — ~ - — » The above is the critical self-dissolution of the dualistic view of the world, and of all the efforts to patch it up. Some, e. g, E. Zeller, have said that with dualism goes the Christian religion. Strauss tried to affiliate the Christian religion with a monistic view of the world, but failed, and came out into materialism and aestheticism. Baur, Pfleiderer and the Cairds make the same attempt, and remain Christian. Others say, We eannot do anything with the problem, and so we will be anti-metaphysical philosophers. Kaftan exempli fies this position; he has to employ metaphysics to quite an extent in order to get rid of metaphysics. He has never criticized his con cept of "revelation." But, in any case, dualistic supematuralism has been retired. But what are we to have in place of it — monism or pluralism? I am sure as to negations, not as to affirmations. 3. This critical limitation of theoretical knowledge has, how ever, a great indirect worth for the proof of the truth of the Christian faith, (a) It may be turned critically against the tendencies of a dogmatic metaphysics which is hostile to Chris tianity, against materialistic, monism, (b) It shows that on the side of theoretical knowledge the region remains free in which Christian faith moves, (a) Along with the knowledge of the single phenomena of the world there is, as equally essen tial for man, the apprehension of worth in various value-judg ments (v. §8). (/?) Along with the effort after a cognitive system of the world, there is the question as to a unitary mean- 38 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION ing of the world, (y) Along with the aetiological explanation, there is the teleological understanding of the world and its last End and Ground. 4. By means of this distinction, in connection with our ques tion as to the truth of the Christian faith, we are led over from the attempts at theoretical proofs to the attempts at a substantiation that is practically direct. b. Practical Substantiation of the Truth of the Christian Faith. §18. The Two Main Points of Practical Proof, and fhe Mod ern Views of fhe World Which Confront Christianity. 1. In the practical proof only those reasons are to be sys tematically apprehended to which the Christian proclamation itself appeals, and on which the plain Christian reflects in his religious life, when he assures himself of the truth of his faith against his doubts. These reasons lie (a) in reminding ourselves of what we have in our faith for our innermost life, and (b) in reminding ourselves of the evidences, or disclosures, in which the power of a holy, redeeming and pedagogic love confronts us as reality in a manner that convinces the heart. 2. In these two points (a and b above) Christianity has to compare itself with other modern views of fhe world which rest on a different interpretation of the world and of our des tiny in it; especially (a) with aesthetic, or naturalistic pan theism, (b) with pessimism, into which a naturalistic or ma terialistic world-view consistently lands us. Also (c) scepti cism, or agnosticism, fluctuates between these two views of the world (a and b just mentioned). 3. In the conflict of Christianity with these three world- views, it is not faith against science, but faith against faith.1 The question is, (a) Which faith is the one that corresponds best to the essential needs of man and of humanity? Which faith functions most serviceably in the development of the spiritual life of man and of the race? (b) What faith can claim for its support the inwardly convincing disclosures of the world in which we live ? That is, do the facts, manifestations of the world in which we live, comport better with naturalism, THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 39 pessimism, or agnosticism on the one hand, or with the Chris tian conviction on the other? In which direction does our inward conviction point? (On the basis of our inward con viction, considering wide reaches of time and space, can we be pessimists ? Does the trend of things require pessimism ?) Note to §18 : 3 1. If the Christian religion is a sum of propositions, then it must be propagated by proof. But if its content is will and personality, then its propagation must be by will and personality (cf. the re cent article by Theodor Kaftan on " The Christian Faith in the Intellectual Life of the Present " ; also H. Miinsterberg, Psychology and Life, pp. 112, 113). §19. The Immediately Experienced Worth of Christian Faith for the Individual and the Community. 1. What has the single Christian in his faith, so far as he actually lives in it? (a) First,- a supreme goal of his en deavor, viz. that of filial communion with the holy God, and therewith true righteousness at the same time (v. §4:2, a and b). Precisely this goal, however, is certain to him as the unconditionally worthful and obligating, especially in compari son with all other goods and tasks.1 Still the latter often result somehow in distraction and dissipation, and in servility, but the Christian's goal places before him an inner stay and content of life without drawing him away from the world it self.2 In this way the Christian passes from distraction to inner unity, from dependence on the world to inner freedom from it, and precisely therein to a truly spiritual personal life, to the gaining of the >fn>xv- Hence the conviction that one is able to appeal to the conscience of others by holding this goal up before them, (b) But the Christian is not simply left to his own endeavor after this goal, but he lives on faith in a redeeming and pedagogic power of God. Thereby the Chris tian wins free uplift above the crippling and crushing expe riences which confront him on the way to the goal; that is to say, above guilt and weakness in temptation, above pain and death. There does not seem to be a theoretical explanation for the Christian of these four dark riddles, but there is a practical solution, viz. through the uplifting certainty (a) of 40 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION the forgiveness of guilt,3 (£) of God's holy power shielding us from temptation, (y) of education through pain, (8) of re demption from death.4 Thus even here the Christian in his faith can experience something of the supramundane eternal life in communion with God.5 .-Notes to §19 : 1 | 1. The profoundest religious spirits have felt this: "What have I in heaven but thee? And on earth there is none that I desire beside thee." " Thou hast been our dwelling place in all genera tions." " Thou, my everlasting portion." " The soul is restless till it rests in thee." Not the gifts of God are God, but God himself is God. Man's other goods and tasks are not his goal, but instruments to that greater goal. As motion of nerve and muscle may be bearer of the look of love, that most precious gift which one human heart can give another, so the whole social nervous system should be ex pression and bearer of higher values. 2. According to the old dualism, if you are to have the one, you cannot have the other. According to the newer insight, you can have the one (rightly) only in the other. " Is this vile world a friend to f_j[race, to help me on to God ? " When it came to the erecting of natural impulses into ethical, the older Christianity failed. It con demned all dancing, for instance; but, while there may be evil in connection with it, proper dancing produces a distinct moralization and socialization of life. Not even the saloon is an unmitigated evil ; its strength, hold and value are to be found in its function as a social rendezvous, and this its good point should be utilized and retained. The reason why monism has not become theoretically clear is that it has not been carried out practically in society. Practical monism must precede theoretical monism. The divine element is present in impulses and instincts and appetites, as well as in goals and ideals. After all, psalm-singing is not an indispensable means in the spiritual izing and ethicizing of life; but play is indispensable. Segregation of the natural impulses results in inner diremption, and tends toward a life of servility to these things. The older Christianity surrendered its case; it virtually maintained that the suppression of natural impulse was so good that it was altogether too good for man. But the goal of the Christian, rightly appreciated, gives him a content of life which acts as a stay and gives him balance in the suppression of natural impulses. 3. The notion of the forgiveness of guilt seems to be dropping out of preaching. Why? Is it because we do not know what it means? Is it because of the inviolability of law and the principle of causation in the moral as well as in the physical? Is "forgive ness of guilt," as applied to the divine, a figure of speech? Or is THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 41 not restoration of fellowship and communion, together with the con sciousness that a sense of paralysis has gone, evidence of forgive ness? 4. The notion of redemption from death has largely dropped out of preaching. The attitude of most with- regard to death is that of the ostrich, which sticks its head in the sand; it is an attitude of stoical waiting, with as little thought on the matter as possible. That is no victory over death. Has not the Christian an abiding victory over death; not some mere antidote to chloroform him for a while, but an inner triumph, making death servant and minister to his life? The absence of problem to Jesus in these things is the remarkable thing. The inner mastery of Jesus, the constancy and thoroughness of his inner triumph over pain, death and all evil, makes him redemptive for us. The impression he makes upon us is redemptive in its effect (cf. Kant). 5. Eternal life is life in enjoyment of the inner values of per sonality. 2. Christian faith is worthful for human fellowship. It is not merely mediately worthful, as means of promoting culture and the fellowship of culture. Rather the kingdom of God with its communion of religio-ethical personalities in faith and love proves itself immediately to be the absolutely worthful thing for humanity. Besides, experience shows that secular culture is stable and beneficent only through this eternal con tent and end; without the latter, the former is hollow and pernicious.1Note to §19 : 2 1. Eternity is the persistence of the worthful through the mutations and illusions of the temporal; it is essentially continuity of values. Eternity is thus not a gift, but an achievement. The eternity of Christ was achieved by him. Nothing ethical is obtained by the sheer attitude of passivity toward it. Eternity is not a continuation of existence. All that persists of the achievements of the past is the value for which these achievement are the raw material. The notion of resurrection has no place in this view, except as it is taken figuratively. In early Christianity, until adjustment was made to Greek ideas, resurrection was a straightforward con ception, meaning resurrection of the body. The whole notion is historically conditioned; it belongs to the old Judaic eschatology, and is not of abiding significance. [In answer to a student's question as to what became of the body of Jesus] I'm not on tap on everything! I spent an hour before a congregation once, marshalling proofs 42 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. "Your sermon did not give me the uplift it usually does," said a woman. "You did not prove your point," said a man. It was indeed a failure, both religiously and scientifically. Christianity is not a proposition, to be proved by historical arguments. If it were, the way to Christianize would be not by bearing witness, but by studying logic. But that would be to get off the Christian platform. My sermon was not a Christian sermon, and it was not of any account. 3. The importance that personalities have for the proof of the truth of Christianity follows from 1 and 2. Personalities in their life and in their work for others authenticate the worth of Christian faith for the individual and for human society. §20. Philosophic Amplification of the Question of Worth. 1. If, according to §19: 1, the individual Christian can win in Christianity inner unity and freedom, and thereby the character of a spiritual personality, philosophy, or the science of the essential activities of the human spirit, shows the fol lowing: (a) The effort for that spiritual personal life is nothing accidental for man, but pervades all his spiritual ac tivities as their unitary, fundamental activity. This funda mental tendency attains a pronounced character in the moral life, with its acknowledgment of an unconditioned " ought." But this tendency does not come to its completion in this moral life alone; the moral life requires a religious view of God and the world to which man may yield himself. Indeed such a view is the stay of morality.1 (b) From this point of view two considerations may be mentioned: (a) All that a moral command ought to do for a man is done by the Christian moral commandment in a more perfect manner, not to be intensively or extensively surpassed. (/8) A religious view of God and the world which is in perfect harmony with the perfect moral law is proffered in Christianity. (The elaboration of a and j8 is the essence of the problem of Christian ethics.) Therefore, according to <* and /? Christianity brings to completion the tendency referred to under (a) above — the tendency to a true spiritualization of personality, a tendency essential to THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 43 Notes to §20 : 1 1. This is vital to Christianity. So far as I can see, the bottom falls out, if this goes. There is much in life which looks as if it were not true; but closer examination will show that it is true, I believe. Note the relation of consistent pessimism to the moral life. / 2. The tendency to ethicization and spiritualization of personality is structural, organic with man, and Christianity falls right in with the structural nature of man. Christian ethics must make much of this. The spiritualization of reality is the cosmic task. 2. The same thing is taught us by the philosophic considera tion of human society, (a) Human society is, as to its basis, nature and interest society, just as the human individual is, originally and fundamentally, nature and interest individual; but the society points with inner necessity, just as in the case of the individual, to a progressive regulation (or moralization) and spiritualization, which is striven for also in our human cultural development. In this connection, therefore, the ques tion arises as to a supreme unconditioned norm, and a supreme, absolutely unconditioned goal of development, (b) But since progress in history is not effectuated as nature-process, but by human deed, the further question arises at the same time as to the moral personal powers by means of which society can be held together, and development carried on further. 3. In connection with the considerations amplified in 1 and 2, the superiority of Christianity (a) to other religions and (b) to the other views of the world mentioned in §18: 2 may be indicated. c. The Revelation-Basis of our Christian Faith. §21. The Need of Supplementing the Value- Judgment Argu ment. 1. The worth-argument for the Christian faith is, of course, indispensable. But if it were decisive by itself alone, we should be restricted to a moral postulate in the sense of Kant. 2. This postulate-standpoint, however, (a) would be insuffi cient, for it would require us to uplift our own selves on the strength of our own moral convictions to the certainty of God, 44 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION and would leave us in doubt as to whether we were not sup porting ourselves merely on the uplifting, subjective thought of God. (b) This postulate does not correspond to the char acter of real religion (§7:2), least of all to Christianity with its reference to revelation.1 Note to §21 : 2 1. The value-judgment argument has as its necessary correlate the revelation-concept; otherwise it lacks objectivity. 3. Therefore in intimate connection with the worth-question, the revelation-question is to be investigated (v. §§3, 7, 18).1 JSTote to §21 : 3 1. The Ritschlians are wrong in finding only value-judgment in Ithe Christian doctrine of the resurrection, and ignoring the psycho- J. logical basis of the value- judgment. Does Christian faith need to be distressed by the vicissitudes of critical investigation? Historical science cannot give immediate cer tainty of God, which is a religious acquisition ; but it may be helpful to religion in taking away false props. Religion has its hearth and home elsewhere. §22. The Revelation of God in fhe Person and Spiritual Work of Jesus Christ. 1. Where does the redeeming and pedagogic love of God disclose itself in the actual world in a way that convinces and conquers the human heart? The Christian proclamation it self directs our attention not merely to single individual ex periences, but to a disclosure belonging to human history, that is, to the person and spirit-work of Jesus Christ 2. Jesus Christ's own person shows in his entire discourse, in his conduct, in his sufferings and death, that God's holy love concerned with the actualization of his kingdom was in- expugnably certain to Jesus on the basis of his inner expe rience. Jesus Christ's own person shows also that his whole life was determined by this inner communion with God, and was unfolded, drawn out in the service of God, and also in the service of holy love for man. Precisely this character of the person of Jesus accredits itself to our hearts and conscience as a reality of the supramundane divine life; more accurately, of the holy love of God in that life. THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 45 3. But Jesus' person is not to be considered by itself alone. It is to be considered in its effects.1 If one analyzes the unitary, spiritual effect which has gone out from Jesus within human history in the circle of his immediate followers, and also in entire subsequent Christianity, four sides of that effect may be distinguished, viz. : (a) the awakening of conscience to the recognition of that which we men fall short of, and which we ought to be ; (b) the peace or comfort of the hunted and fearful conscience, peace and comfort which Jesus as Savior brought to publicans and sinners, and since then to all who trust in him; (c) along with this, at the same time, im pulse and ability to a life of sanctification through discipline and pruning, especially through love.; and (d) power to over come pain and death by communion with him. But all these four sides in the present spiritual effects of Christianity point us back to Jesus himself as the personal bearer and bringer of this resultful spirit. Therefore, a power of God redeeming us from sin and the world, and in this regard supramundane, confronts us as real and as operative.2 Notes to §22 : 3 1. Some aspects of reality cannot be fully understood, because that reality is not yet finished. The effects of the person of Jesus are not yet ended. 2. It is not quite accurate to say that Jesus does it. It is God in him that does it. The object of faith is God himself; but the dis closure of God is in the spirit and disposition of Jesus. Not Jesus with God, but God in Jesus, is the object of religious faith. 4. Therefore the person and spirit and work of Jesus Christ brings us face to face with the decisive question of trust or confidence. But if we ourselves, on the basis of the impres sion of Jesus' person and work, surrender ourselves trustfully to him, we can have the experience in ourselves that the spir itual working of God, and therewith of God's redeeming and pedagogic holy love, is an operative reality (v. Titus 2 : 11, 12). 5. The spiritual person and effectiveness of Jesus Christ is therefore the central revelation of God, in the last analysis the basis of faith. It is only from the standpoint of this revelation that all further disclosures of God in the history of 46 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION Jesus himself, in Christianity, or in our own lives, are in telligible to us.1 Note to §22 : 5 1'. As we could not know man by a mere embryologies! study, so we can not know the Christian revelation of God by merely investi gating the historic Jesus as an isolated individual and apart from his effectiveness in human life and history. §23. Justification and Amplification of fhe Proof from Given Revelation. 1. Two objections of the most serious character possible are made to the foregoing argument on the basis of revelation. (a) First objection : Our historical knowledge of Jesus Christ is too uncertain for faith to rest upon and adhere to his per son.1 But (a) in receptivity for the impression of the Jesus Christ of the gospels and for his spirit-work in Christianity with which we come into contact, and (/8) in one's own ex perience of his redemptive power, an experience flowing from faith, an immediate certainty of the divine spirit in him and in his work may be gained.2 (b) Second objection: Jesus Christ, as member of history, cannot be bearer of absolutely divine life and of absolute truth, but can have only relative importance.3 But this affirmation is itself only a dogma either of (a) pantheistic faith, or of (/8) a natural science theory of evolution.* Notes to §23 : 1 1. It is not the man who has not certainty that Jesus existed that is none of his ; it is he who has not the spirit of Christ that is none of ihis. This is what I say to myself in these days in which the his toricity of Jesus is denied (e. g., by Kalthoff) ; but I am not quite certain about the matter, for the question arises, Can we have the spirit of Christ, if we lose the certainty that Jesus existed? 2. This was written before I fell into a degree of doubt about the matter. Historical science will keep on erecting Jesus into a problem; otherwise it becomes static, and science dies. The certainty we need is religious as against historical certainty. Its basis is not an historical scientific inquiry, but a moral and religious experience. 3. Objection (a) is the most serious that can possibly arise on ac count of the work of historical science; objection (b), the most serious that can arise on account of philosophical developments. The Hegel- THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 47 ian philosophy urges that it is not like the Idea to shake out all its fulness into a single historic exemplar. This would mean the necessary relativity of any Jesus of history. [Professor William Adams Brown relates that on one occasion he asked Professor Foster the question, "What problem are you work ing on now?" and received the reply, "I am looking for the Ab solute in history, and I am convinced that unless we can find it, it will be fatal for the Christian religion."] 4. The philosopher would prove that Jesus is relative, by saying that everything in history is relative; but how will he prove that everything, historical is relative? When it is affirmed that the abso lute is to be found in the historic Jesus, that it is dogma does not disprove it. Naturalism would explain Jesus as remainderless construction of environmental forces. Now we may admit the traditional and evo lutionary factors in the life of Jesus; but it is still true that no consciousness can be remainderlessly explained by external forces. There is a moment of spontaneity in every personality. And as suredly there is an active and creative moment in the conscious ness of Jesus. It is a judgment of faith that Jesus Christ is self- uplifted above the whole evolutionary series; and this judgment of faith science can neither establish nor refute. Spontaneity and novelty are not breaches of continuity, for they are everywhere. It is only a higher degree of empirical inexplicability that we find in Jesus. The principle of activity is original; for if the static were original, nothing could get started. Why may not an entirely new spiritual force appear in the cosmos? May not the cosmos be like a symphony, with a new instrument appearing? The ongoing of existence is not at an even pace. There have been times when a thousand years have been as a day, and there have been crises in which one day has been as a thousand years. Even new species may appear by mutation, in a single leap. And so the affirmation that Jesus is purely relative and to be transcended in history, is a dogma ; it is not a necessity of scientific and philosophical reflection. 2. A philosophical amplification of the given revelation- proof, as already of the worth-proof (§20), may be attempted. We relate the revelation in Jesus Christ to the rest of human history in its actual course, (a) Suppose we consider reve lation on the basis of the religious and moral development of humanity. It may be viewed as consummation of that which was actually sought by man in that development, or which was only approximately gained therein. That is, it may be the fruition of man's own yearning. To be sure the Christian historico-philosophical treatment must grant the impenetrabil- 48 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION ity of many intricate waves of religious and moral history, especially on account of the disturbing encroachments of hu man sin in the course of that history, (b) Conversely, sup pose we consider human history from the standpoint of revela tion. Then that history gains for us its spiritual meaning and point of unity first through the actualization of divine life in Jesus Christ; in him the acme of history is given, but at the same time the starting point of a new life, which is itself capable again of infinite unfolding.1 Note to §23:2 1. Is the redemptive revelation in Jesus Christ new in content? 3. On the basis of this amplification critical comparison may be elaborated (as was done in §20: 13). (a) Christianity as compared with other religions, rests on a convincing and com prehensive revelation, (b) It is superior to the two world- views previously mentioned, viz. aesthetic pantheism and pes simism (§18:2, 3); superior not only in its worth, but su perior in its understanding of the world; superior not only religiously, but also philosophically (for there is implicit in Christianity a world-view of its own). §24. Connection between fhe Revelation-Proof and fhe Worth-. Proof. 1. The revelation-proof is most intimately connected with the worth-proof, (a) That which is worthful in Christian faith, viz. the consummation or perfecting of man and of hu manity, is revealed in it, is already reality in the being and work of Jesus Christ.1 (b) The reality to which Christian faith holds is known only in his name, and it is understood and experienced in his redeeming worth. Note to §24 : 1 1. What is the distinctive peculiarity of Jesus? It is his faith in the infinite worth of human personality before God. This accounts for his attitude toward sinners and toward children, and for such sayings as that about the sun and rain on the evil and the good. How did he get that faith? Not from his environment. At that time emphasis was laid upon the worthlessness of man. He got his estimate of human worth from his own human self-consciousness, and he interpreted God as being like what he found in himself. THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 49 I am more and more struck with the way Jesus falls in line with humanism. And the modern type of Christianity is Christian hu manism. Once, people made little of man, in order to make much of God. Now we must make much of man, if we are to make much of God. And as for Jesus Christ, we must insist on his humanity, if we are to see his dignity. The old view was that in spite of his humanity he was great. The modern view is that through his human ity he was great. 2. It is precisely in this reciprocal relationship of the worth- proof and the revelation-proof that the practical proof of the truth of the Christian faith is to be found as a whole. The sum of it is this, viz.: The need of man (cf. §7: 1) — and indeed not the accidental but the supreme spiritual-moral need of man — is not merely awakened, but perfectly satisfied and stilled by the revelation of God in Jesus Christ (cf. §7:2). d. Inferences from the Christian Revelation-Concept. §25. The Fundamental Character of the Christian Revelation- Concept. 1. The Christian concept of revelation is implicitly gained by means of the proof of the given revelation. At all events it is different from the revelation-concept of the orthodox ec clesiastical dogmatics. The latter rests on the equivalence of revelatio specialis with the Sacred Scriptures. In consequence of this, revelation is conceived (a) as communication of doc trine; (b) as internally authoritative and statutory; (c) as miraculous in the sense that main stress is placed upon the absence of natural mediations; (d) as historyless.1 Note to §25 : 1 1. Given the old Weltanschauung, it was hard to escape the or thodox conception of revelation. 2. This revelation-concept of orthodoxy has experienced a sharp and definitive criticism by rationalism. But rational ism did not extricate itself from the orthodox putting of the question. It was with Schleiermacher that the gradual trans formation of the revelation-concept set in. 3. In opposition to (a) the orthodox ecclesiastical as well as to (/?) the rationalistic and (y) the modern liberalistic con- 50 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION ceptions, revelation is to be understood directly on the basis of the person of Jesus Christ, and on that basis, is to be de fined as follows : (a) Revelation is, more centrally, disclosure of personal life in which God is known and experienced. The concept of external revelation is not to be subordinated or retired in favor of an inner revelation. To be sure every revelation of God necessarily involves an effect upon the inner life; but it is essential to Christian faith to keep to outward historical disclosures of God from which this inner effect emanates.1 (b) Revelation has the character of (a) an in wardly grounded authority, so far as it accredits itself as such in conscience ; 2 and of (/?) a norm of freedom, in that it re quires only full acknowledgment, recognition, assent.3 Thus the liberalistic reproach of blind authority-faith and of external positivism is done away with, and yet justice is done to the orthodox thought of an authority for faith and of a positive historical basis of Christianity, (c) Revelation is the con summation or the perfecting of human nature for its eternal destiny and vocation. Thus revelation signifies the entrance, not unmediated, of a truly supramundane life, and of the Spirit in our world, (d) Revelation is an historical phe nomenon which is yet super-historical in content and kind, i. e. transcends the temporal, finite, in its content of life, and in its efficiency encroaches into the time series of history. Thus understood the concept of revelation designates Jesus Christ not only as starting-point of the Christian religion, but as permanent center of the personal religious life. To be sure, there are many roads that lead to faith, and many stimuli of the Christian life without direct relation to Jesus Christ. But it is only through this latter that Christianity is vigorous and procreative. Notes to §25 : 3 1. The merit of rationalism was its subjectivity, its insistence upon the inwardness of revelation. The merit of orthodoxy was its objectivity, its insistence upon the outwardness of revelation. Here the point was to avoid limiting revelation to subjective experience in the absence of any stimulus for that experience; in other words, to avoid illusion. 2. Karl Pearson points out that science will oppose the concept of revelation only when it is appealed to in justification of conduct, THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 51 but will oppose it then in the interest of the moral function of science (as seen in scientific ethics). 3. Revelation is a stimulus which requires a free moral response to it. But revelation as Catholicism conceives it does not admit of free assent. 4. Accordingly, therefore, revelation in the Christian sense may be defined as a disclosure of God within human history for the purpose of our salvation — a disclosure which sustains and gives norm to the faith of the Christian. As to the Bible we may say, Only that in the Bible is authoritative which is revelation of God, and only that in the Bible is revelation of God which is capable of being mediated by religious faith.1 2 Notes to §25 : 4 1. The supramundane has to do with values. What does the will \ will? Can the will strive for more time and space? Or does it strive for more significance, value, meaning? What does the will desire? Is striving for eternal life striving for more time, or striving for value? (Cf. Miinsterberg : The Eternal Life.) Miinsterberg believes in the eternity of the values, but he does not make the con nection between the value and whom the value is for. 2. To me, " fact " means what I cannot deny. §26. The Content of the Christian Revelation-Concept in Re lation to the New Testament Proclamation of Jesus Christ. 1. The decisive, central revelation of God is in Jesus Christ, in his personal spirit and efficacy (§22:5). The question then arises, What is the relation of the various single sides of the New Testament narrative and witness concerning the being and work of the earthly and exalted Jesus Christ to this cen tral revelation? This question does not exist for those who hold that the whole Biblical Christ is, as " undivided and in divisible unity," revelation of God. But owing to the char acter of the Biblical proclamation as a whole, which is an articulated thing, and owing to the question as to how, on our part, we can attain to inner understanding and to independent certainty of faith concerning the single sides of the Biblical Christ, we are under the inner necessity of signalizing one center of faith within the Biblical collective witness (Gospels and Epistles) concerning Jesus Christ. That center is the so-called historical Christ, the Savior-person of Jesus Christ 52 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION in its spiritual being and work, belonging to our human his tory. It is only from the standpoint of this center that the single moments of the narrative of Jesus Christ, as members of the revelation of God, can be understood, and the various witnesses of him can be evaluated. 2. Jesus' words are revelation in the degree that they in terpret what is embedded in his Savior-person. His deeds and suffering are revelation in the degree that they are part of his work as Savior. The miraculous deeds of Jesus Christ are not as such the decisive criterion of the revelation of God to him; but if we are made certain of these deeds through his person as Savior (not by historical science), the powers (Swo/uck) of Jesus in their importance for his redemptive work become to us members of the total revelation given in him. 3. It is only on the basis of the center designated, i. e. on the basis of the supramundane content of the person of Jesus that we can be certain that the appearances of the Crucified One to his disciples were not illusions, but divine revelations, by means of which the Crucified One was declared to be the Lord that overcame the world and death. Only this revelation in the Risen One, terminating the earthly life of Jesus, casts full light backward on the power and worth of Jesus' earthly life-work, and forward on the life and work of the Exalted Christ and God's saving power.1 The New Testament revela tion of God is closed in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ, and accordingly there is full Christian revelation-faith only where the surrender and trust toward Jesus' earthly person culminates in the certainty of faith in his appearances after death. So only do we appreciate the full power of his person in its saving value upon those who felt that power in his life. Note to §26 : 3 1. See Arnold Meyer: Die Auferstchung Christi. 4. The revelation of God, which was concluded as above, continues in the further course of history in a certain sense.1 (a) This Jesus Christ and the will of God in him are in wardly revealed to every believer, (b) In the spiritual power of the Christianity of Jesus Christ, the power of the Spirit and God's plan of redemption are further made known, (c) THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 53 Yet all this is not a new revelation of God as to content, for new revelation would carry with it a new religion. It is only the effective unfolding of the one regulative revelation of God in Jesus Christ, and of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Note to §26 : 4 1. Science is a revelation of God, a revelation that Jesus did not make. The same is true of art. But at one point — in his inner disposition, his attitude toward God and man — Jesus made a revela tion that has not been surpassed. To Christian faith it is satisfactory and unsurpassable, but its unsurpassableness is not scientifically demonstrable. The Messianic consciousness of Jesus did not permit him to reveal the wealth of ultimate reality in the realms of science, art, and the order of the state. Arnold Meyer says that in Jesus humanity revealed its innermost secret, viz. that everyone who bears a human countenance immedi ately belongs to God, and is, each in his own way, an image of God. Now every man ought to be brought to this consciousness, and if this is to be done, it must be done by some one. Is every one competent to do it? Is every one competent to perform a similar service in art, in science, or in government? There must, of course, be some"7 thing Shakespeare-like in all of us, or Shakespeare would not grip us; and there must be something Jesus-like in all of us, or Jesus would not appeal to us. But it is in the presence of Shakespeare, not in his absence, that we can become like Shakespeare; and it is in the presence of Jesus, not in his absence, that we can become like; Jesus.§27. The Question of the Extension of the Revelation-Concept to Old Testament History and to Extra-Christian Hu manity. 1. From the Christian standpoint we recognize by faith the final revelation of God, regulative for us, in Jesus Christ alone.1 But the Old Testament history, evaluated from the Christian standpoint, is preparatory revelation of God, or it is the basis and soil of the Old Testament. That is to say (a) on the one hand, that the God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ gradedly actualized his redemptive will in the history of the people of Israel, which was a coherent, teleologically ordered history. A religio-ethical knowledge and life was awakened there, which approximated the Christian, but of course in va rious degrees. It was awakened (a) by divine guidance of 54 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION this people, as well as (P) by prophetic personalities. The pedagogic efficiency of God was carried on in this way (v. Lessing's Education of the Human Race), (b) On the other hand, this pedagogic efficiency of God did not reach its goal on the soil of that history, but first in Jesus Christ. Thus the moral religious knowledge and life of Israel points on be yond itself. A new covenant is promised, even in the Old Testament itself. Besides, there are thoughts and problems in the Old Testament which begin to break through the pale of the Old Testament religion, e. g. internal and external uni versalism. (c) For us Christians this preparatory revelation of God is not the decisive ground and regulative norm of faith. It is, however, means to pedagogic introduction into the Chris tian faith; also confirmation and enrichment of that faith. The Old and New Covenant together form one revelation-his tory, combined ir. Jesus Christ. Note to §27:1 1. The precepts of Jesus are not to be isolated from his time and self, and erected in a legalistic way as a norm for life. Even the spirit of Jesus is not to be externally copied. And yet the ultimate consummation of human personality and of society is in and through the efficiency of the spirit which was in Jesus. 2. Already according to §23 : 2 the pagan development is not to be put outside all teleological connection with the revela tion of God in Jesus Christ. Within the former also there are revelations of God, in nature and in history, also in the religions, and especially in the moral history, in conscience and especially in great personalities, in guiding spirits; elements of Christian truth are to be found in the religious life of extra- Christian peoples. But we have there no unitary develop ment leading directly to the Christian revelation, as is the case in Israel. We have rather a manifold striving among the various peoples on the basis of the forms of revelation just mentioned. This striving calls upon Christianity as a ques tion for an answer. But in the attempted solutions, in spite of many approximations to Christianity, it is ever again de flected from the path that leads to Christianity, be it (a) in nature worship, or (b) in the humanization of the gods, and THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 55 pantheism, or (c) in external legality, or (d) in false ways of redemption, as set forth in §12: 3. C. THE KNOWLEDGE WHICH ACCRUES TO CHRISTIAN FAITH, AND CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS a. The Character of the Knowledge which Accrues to the Christian Religious Faith, and of the Theo- logico-Scientific Knowledge of that which is Believed. §28. Christian Religious Knowledge as Faith's Understand ing of Revelation. 1. The character, or species, of the knowledge of Christian truth is determined according to one's view concerning the proof of the truth of Christianity. According to its essence it is as follows: (a) Understanding of fhe revelation of God in Jesus Christ. The invisible spiritual reality above us, around us, for us, in us and before us, which Christianity proclaims becomes certain and understandable through the revelation sketched and articulated in §§25, 27. According to the New Testament, it is accessible to us only through the Spirit of God, and because this Spirit proceeds from Jesus Christ through the revelation of God in him. (b) Faith's understanding of that revelation. One can become aware of that revelation only by trustful surrender and there can be a personal experience only on the basis of this faith, i. e. a per ception of its effects in our own life (§22: 4). 2. The knowledge which accrues to Christian faith is, ac cordingly, fastened to personal conditions; i. e. (a) to the will ingness to acknowledge and fulfil Jesus' moral requirements, and (b) to the willingness to accept his redeeming benefits. Therefore the conviction of faith is one that grows with the growing Christian personality. This is true of knowledge which accrues to experience. One can experience God's power only by venturing upon that power by faith, in the tasks and conduct of life. 3. The knowledge which accrues to Christian faith finds its immediate expression in enthusiastic confession of what is be lieved or of what is experienced in faith.1 This confession 56 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION is usually fixed in the Christian community in articles of faith. These are designations of invisible spiritual realities of which the Christian can and should become aware through confidence in God's revelation in Jesus Christ. Note to §28 : 3 1. Normally there is no confessionless faith. Like patriotism, faith must externalize itself. Only as it expresses itself does it realize itself.§29. Scientific Dogmatics in its Distinction from the Knowl edge which Accrues to Christian Faith. 1. The theological-cognitive work of scientific dogmatics is different from the knowledge which accrues to personal faith (cf. the problem in §l).x This difference consists in the methodically prosecuted reflection (a) concerning the grounds of our certainty of the reality of the invisible world of faith, in which the Christian lives, (b) concerning what belongs to that world, and (c) concerning how it is. related to the know- able, empirical world of science. On the one side, the work of dogmatics is closely related to the life of faith, for the reflec tion referred to above will be possible only to him who earnestly desires to live in Christian faith. On ihe other side, the work of dogmatics is different from the life of faith as such, and the capacity for the former depends upon entirely different conditions from the personal knowledge that accrues to faith.2 Notes to §29 : 1 1. The difference is similar to that between practical, experiential knowledge of the world and the scientific knowledge of the world. 2. It would seem as if the endowments and tasks of the prophet tended to incapacitate him for the sobriety and impartiality of dis interested scientific reflection. Still, the theologian must be a man of faith and a man of scientific reflection. 2. Accordingly the exposition of scientific dogmatics is dif ferent from the confessional expression of personal faith.1 Christian dogmatics, in the propositions developed by it, strives (a) for as clear an exposition as possible of the principles or grounds decisive for faith itself, (b) for definiteness and sharpness of concepts, (c) for completeness and independence, THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 57 (d) for inner connection and yet clear demarcation between it and the theoretical knowledge of the world; and dogmatics does not strive (e) for homiletic testimony and edification. Note to §29 : 2 1. There is a difference between theology and preaching. The latter should be the immediate testimony which is the dynamic in religion. The theologian, on the contrary, must not assume the attitude of the mere homilist; his special concern is methodical, scientific formula tion of religious conviction. But theology is necessary for perma nent effectiveness. Preaching begins with inner certainty. When doubt comes with further experience, reflective certainty must then be achieved. We must earn it; we cannot take it as a gift. The modern preacher has to make himself an epitome of the past two hundred and fifty years. In patience let him possess his soul, and he will have his message. The patient, long way is the sure and strong way. 3. But with all its conceptual sharpness and definiteness, dogmatics cannot fully exclude (a) Biblical expressions from its designation of the reality of faith,1 nor (b) the analogies of human life. But it must seek to use these expressions and analogies so that they shall correctly and clearly designate what is experienced by the Christian in his living faith in Jesus Christ. Note to §29 : 3 1. Biedermann, in the constructive part of his dogmatics, does away with Biblical expressions, and makes use of the Hegelian jargon of aseity, proseity, etc. The result is a metaphysic of religion which is the least interesting part of his work. To the historical and critical part of his book, however, I am indebted probably more than to any other one book in theology. §30. The Relation of the Knowledge which Accrues to Faith, and the Relation of Dogmatics also, to the Theoretical Knowledge of the World. 1. The knowledge which accrues to faith and the theoretical knowledge of the world are different (cf. §17: 2; §28; §9:3). (a) They are different as to their foundations. The former reposes on the persuasion and conviction of conscience through divine revelation; the latter on the necessitation of idea and judgment through perception and the laws of logical thought.1 (b) They are different as to their character. The former is 58 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION a trusted acquaintanceship; the latter an apprehending and ordering of the given in our forms of thought (v. §8 : 2).2 (c) They are different as to their goal. The former seeks to un derstand the purpose of the world and of God as the Founder and Preserver and Guide of the World; the latter seeks to explain the world as a system of concepts and laws.3 Notes to §30 : 1 1. See F. W. Roberston's Sermon on Conscience. 2. The difference is similar to that between knowing a man and knowing a proposition. The latter is easily done, but the former . -takes time. I 3. Scientific knowledge has for its ultimate presupposition the unity which underlies its principle of natural causation. Rehgious knowledge is not content with just that unity, but must have it en riched. The problem is the inner synthesis of the scientific and the religious. Will the conviction suffice for religion, that the structure and function of the universe are such as to render the production of values possible? Is this what "God" symbolizes? Can we escape the coincidence of the theistic and the cosmic conceptions ? The cos mic process is meaningful for us in our production of values. Is this /'the religious conviction, and is it adequate to life ? Personality is another symbol. Instead of the old " soul " we have now the progressive synthesis of experience. Is there a progressive synthesis of cosmic experience ? The new " cosmos " is a great triumph of science over sense in any case, and perhaps " personality " is our best symbol after all, even in cosmology. 2. But the difference referred to (in 1, above) does not amount to relationlessness. Not only are there connecting links between the knowledge which accrues to Christian faith and the theoretical knowledge of the world but the two touch in the object.1 (a) The faith-knowledge draws the knowable world into its region; not that it seeks to explain that world causally, as science counts causal explanation; but it seeks to understand that world in its meaning.2 (b) However faith- knowledge does not limit itself thereby to the bounds of the empirically given world, but mounts above it and beyond it to the reality (to faith) of the divine will with its supra mundane ends. The task of teleologically articulating the em pirically given knowable world into the world of faith follows for the knowledge which accrues to faith from (a) and (b) above, taken together. THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 59 Notes to §30 : 2 1. Faith affirms teleology; modern science affirms causality simply. The so-called " religion of science," a religion of causality without teleology, has failed. 2. Philosophy mediates between science and religion, between de scription and valuation. 3. For the knowledge which accrues to personal faith, this arrangement and articulation must begin by learning to under stand the history and tasks of one's own life as the leadings and requirements of God for our salvation,1 and it must strive forward to the goal that the world in general is understand able to us by faith as the theater for introducing the kingdom of God. To be sure, riddles of life and of the world remain which require the conflict of faith; but faith is enriched by every solution which it makes, and strengthened by every true conflict.2 Notes to §30 : 3 1. One's vocation should be not only means to getting one's daily bread, but instrumental to the working out of our redemption. " Be ing saved" is the constant maturing of character, and is effected in the daily vocation. 2. A mother who lost three children in the Iroquois fire could find no religious consolation until she accepted the thought that God is in fire, as well as in Jesus. Fire is God's fire, and he does not suspend its nature. 4. Scientific Christian dogmatics can only aim (a) on the one side to make clear by methodic reflection the inalien able affirmations and limits of the faith-knowledge; (b) on the other side to test by methodic criticism the picture of the world of present science, as to its principles; and on the basis of (a) and (b), (c) to bring to as clear an exposition as possible the teleological articulation of nature and history, as these present themselves to our present scientific knowledge, (d) Yet scien tific dogmatics has no specifically different means of solving the riddles of life and of the world than faith itself has. Moreover, with all its endeavor at a Christian natural and historical philosophy, dogmatics will be able to produce only piece work; as Paul says, "We know in part," even at the best.1 60 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION Note to §30 : 4 1. Ostwald and Mach have worked out their philosophies of nature as if there was nothing in the world called the Christian religion, and yet they have made valuable contributions to Christian apolo getics. b. The Sources of the Knowledge that Accrues to Christian Faith and Dogmatics. a. The Sacred Scriptures. §31. Exposition and Appreciation of the Ecclesiastical Doc trine of Inspiration. 1. If, according to §28, faith-knowledge, and according to §29, Christian dogmatics rest on the understanding accruing to faith of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, the question arises as to the source from which this knowledge is to be drawn. The Sacred Scriptures present themselves as such source, but in what sense ? 2. The orthodox ecclesiastical doctrine of the Scriptures af firms their inerrancy. In this assumption it is dominated by a definite view of the origin of the Scriptures, that is to say, that the Scriptures originated from inspiration, (a) The inspiration-concept is itself implicated in the doctrine of in spiration.1 The definition of Scriptures and of the properties (affectiones) belonging to the Scriptures are intimately con nected therewith, (b) The whole doctrine is based essen tially on the " inner witness of the Holy Spirit " (testimonium Spiritus Sancti internum), (c) The rules for the employ ment of Sacred Scriptures in Christian dogmatics are deduced from the inspiration doctrine. Note to §31 : 2 1. There have been many attempts to change the inspiration- concept without' changing the inspiration-doctrine. This marks the beginning of the downfall of orthodoxy. 3. The religious motives of the ecclesiastical doctrine of in spiration emerge most clearly in view of the testimonium Spiritus Sancti, and they are especially understandable against THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 61 the background of the conflict with the Catholic Church on the one hand, and with what was called at the time Schwdrmer (fanatical sects) on the other.1 But critical questions have arisen, first as to 2 (b) above, that is, the question whether the inner witness of the Holy Spirit suffices; (a) whether that inner witness equally includes the entire Scriptures, and (P) whether it can extend also to the mode of the origin of the Scriptures ; secondly, as to 2 (a) above, the question as to whether the doctrine of the witness of the Spirit corresponds to the given facts in the case as regards the Sacred Scriptures, viz., (a) the actual character of the Scriptures, and (/3) the explicit testimony as to the human source of the Sacred Scrip tures. From these two points it follows that the old inspira tion-doctrine has the character of a postulate, (a) which as such is neither to be derived from the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, nor to be harmonized with the character of Chris tianity, and (b) which in addition does not at all satisfy the end which it seeks to serve. From this it follows as to 2 (c) above, that the use of Scripture based on this inspiration- doctrine has only the appearance of fidelity to the Scriptures, but in truth does violence to them.2 Notes to §31 : 3 1. The inspiration dogma was originally gotten out by the Protes tant State Church as a deadly instrument against the Roman Catho lics and the Anabaptists. The Baptists have taken up what was originally a club to break their own heads. 2. See Sabatier: Religions of Authority, and G. B. Foster: Finality of the Christian Religion, chs. Ill, IV. 4. Therefore that view of the Sacred Scriptures needs re construction, both on the basis of historical fact and on the basis of the Christian revelation-faith. The question is, (a) How far does the historical judgment concerning the Scrip tures lead (v. §32) ? (b) On the basis of the Christian reve lation-faith what is to be said concerning the importance and origin of the Sacred Scriptures (v. §33) ? (c) What prin ciples flow therefrom for Christian dogmatics and its employ ment of the Sacred Scriptures ? 62 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION §32. Historical Judgment concerning the Importance and the Origin of the Old and New Testament Collection of Writ ings. 1. With reference to the New Testament writings, this much may be established as historical fact: (a) The New Testa ment canon, once formed, has been of fundamental importance for the entire further history of the Christian Church. This is true with reference to the faith and the life both of the individual and of the community. On the one hand (a) the New Testament as a conservative force has insured the con nection and continuity of the Church with the proclamation (Krjpuy/m) of Jesus Christ which founded it. On the other hand ()8) the New Testament as progressive force has been a determining influence in every rejuvenation of faith on the part of the Church, (b) With the fixation of the New Tes tament canon, in spite of all fluctuations and aberrations con cerning the apostolic character of single writings, there has yet arisen a collection of books which gives us original informa tion concerning the witness to Jesus Christ which founded the Christian Church, a witness, moreover, which is not essen tially corrupted by an alien spirit. As regards the latter, the boundary which was drawn between the New Testament writ ings and other Christian literature is unassailable, at least to the extent that no further old Christian writing has an estab lished claim to articulation in the New Testament canon, (c) Moreover, the composition of single writings themselves has issued from the original power of the new religious life pro ceeding from Jesus Christ. 2. And as to the Old Testament, this much is true: (a) Christianity became an historical power only in its connection with the Old Testament writings, and the Christian view of faith has worked itself out into clearness only with the aid of the Old Testament, partly under the positive influence of the Old Testament, partly in the criticism of the Old Testa ment, (b) With the fixation of the Old Testament canon which the Christian church took over from the synagogue, all the extant classic monuments of the development of the Old Testament religion have found reception in the Church. (c) The origin of the Old Testament Scriptures is to be ex- THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 63 plained for the most part religiously. That origin is either to be referred directly to the prophetic spirit announcing it self in Israel, or it issued indirectly from the faith (created by that Spirit) in the disclosures of God in the outer history and in the legislation of Israel. §33. The Judgment of Christian Faith Concerning fhe Im portance and Origin of Sacred Scriptures. 1. The Christian's judgment of faith does not merge into the historico-scientific judgment, but it has its self-dependent certainty, independently of scientific inquiry. It even puts into a religious life that which is to be historically established, and the judgment of faith answers the question, In what sense are the Scriptures Word of God? According to §§25, 27, only the person of Jesus Christ is Word of God to us in an original manner. It is to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ which is concentrated in his earthly person, but pre pared for in history and unfolded in the disclosure of the Exalted One, that the original properties (affectiones) belong, which the church doctrine ascribed to the Scripture, viz. auctoritas, sufficientia, perspicuitas, effilcacia. But in a deriva tive manner every witness which makes known to us the God revealed in Jesus Christ and awakens faith in Jesus Christ becomes God's Word to us. 2. Among these witnesses the New Testament occupies an entirely singular position, (a) It is only through its media tion that the revelation of God in Jesus Christ is still to-day accessible to us in its original power and fulness. And of course this depends upon the connection given in the New Testament between the narrative concerning Jesus Christ and the fundamental witness of faith concerning him. This worth of the New Testament as fundamental witness of God's revela tion in Jesus Christ is abiding to the single Christian's con viction and experience of faith, and its worth is powerfully corroborated by the history of the Christian Church (v. §32: 1, a), (b) In the fulfilment of this task of ascertaining the original revelation of God, the New Testament, taken as a whole, has the properties stated in 1 above. But its single parts are not of equal worth. Its gradedness becomes evident 64 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION if one asks more definitely, (a) how far its content directly presents the gospel, or is only indirectly related thereto, and (/8) how lofty is the understanding of Jesus Christ by faith which is deposited in it, how far it sets forth Christ. The single factors of the New Testament are therefore Word of God only in the degree that they proffer us the living Word of God in Jesus Christ. 3. There is a corresponding witness of the Christian faith and Christian experience in the Old Testament. That is (a) through the Old Testament mediation the preliminary revela tion of God in Israel exercises on Christians and Christianity its pedagogic efficacy, (b) But the properties (affectiones) designated above do not belong to the Old Testament by itself alone, but only when it is understood in connection with the New Testament, (c) Also the diversity of value of single parts of the Old Testament is much greater than in the New. 4. Now it is from the faith in the significance of the Sacred Scriptures that judgments of faith follow concerning the origin of Sacred Scriptures, judgments which articulate the historical fund in the system of Christian faith, (a) As to the origin of the New Testament writings it is true that they have not arisen through real or verbal inspiration. Still they are the work, or product, or fruit, of fhe Spirit of Jesus Christ, and therewith of the Spirit of God which has informed the New Testament witness in its entire personal life, and therefore also pervaded its literary activity. This " inspiration of person " is not qualitatively different from the Spirit-produced illumi nation of all believers; rather the outstanding position and significance of New Testament authors is founded, not on their " inspiration," but on their special vocation, leadership and endowment. The judgment of faith concerning the com position of the Old Testament is analogous (cf. §32:2, c). Old Testament writings are directly or indirectly a work of the Spirit of God operative in Old Testament prophecy and in the guidance of the people, (b) In addition we judge in faith with reference to the fixation of the two canonical collec tions of writings. Both the formation of the New Testament canon (v. §32:1, b) and the taking over of the Old Testa- THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 65 ment canon (v. §32 : 2, b) took place under the guidance of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. §34. The Principles Guiding fhe Employment of Sacred Scrip ture in Christian Dogmatics. 1. Since, according to §33: 2, the revelation of God in Jesus Christ is accessible to us in its originality only through the Scriptures, there must be a scriptural proof for every propo sition in Christian dogmatics; but a proposition is not scrip tural because passages can be quoted in its support. It is scriptural because it issues with inner necessity or conse- quentialness from believing surrender to the revelation of God to which the Scriptures bear witness.1 Note to §34:1 1. No religious teaching of the Bible can be immediately trans ferred into dogmatics. The conceptual machinery of the Biblical writers had a functional reality to them; are you on that account going to give to these concepts an ontological reality? Is the form of culture of a particular time to be erected into eternal validity ? 2. The material for dogmatics cannot be obtained from the Scriptures by purely exegetical, historical investigation, (a) To be sure, the exegetical, historical work is indispensable for the dogmatic employment of Sacred Scripture; in par ticular the so-called New Testament theology directly yields basis for the dogmatic employment of Sacred Scripture, since it seeks to understand Jesus' proclamation as well as the wit ness of faith on the part of primitive Christianity in their actual historical meaning and connection. But New Testa ment theology yields, as such, no Christian dogmatics, even though New Testament theology does endeavor (a) to appre hend the living religious witness with conceptual clearness, (/?) to shell out the spiritual content from the thought-forms of the time, and (y) to investigate the inner unity in the multiplicity of witness, (b) Dogmatics seeks not only to un derstand what is given in the New Testament in its historical actuality, but to win a judgment concerning some other mat ters, viz. (a) with what right and in what scope faith may 66 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION and must recognize a real revelation of God in what is nar rated concerning Jesus Christ, and (f3) how correct was the understanding of the revelation on the part of the New Testa ment witnesses.1 Note to §34: 2 1. In dogmatics one must steer clear of the philosophical on the one side and the merely historical on the other. 3. This dogmatic employment of Sacred Scripture must be guided by the following points of view: (a) In the light of the New Testament narrative concerning Jesus Christ, dog matics, commencing with the earthly form of Jesus (v. §26: 1) and with his word and work (v. §26:2), has to propound the question as to what in this Jesus Christ can and should become to us an object of the certainty and- obedience of faith by virtue of its being a salvation-bringing revelation of God. (b) In the New Testament witness of faith, in Jesus Christ, dogmatics finds introduction to the understanding and un folding of the revelation given in him. But still the New Tes tament witness of faith must itself be tested by Jesus' word, work and life, and hence the following questions must be raised as to that witness: (a) What is actually witness of faith in Jesus Christ in this witness, and what on the other hand springs from another and different source of knowledge, perhaps from the picture of the world of the time? What is direct presentation of the experienced reality of faith, and what is perhaps an attempt at speculative explanation of that which is believed ? (@) In what degree is a faithful and full understanding of the phenomenon of Jesus Christ discernible in the New Testament, given in that which is actually a wit ness of faith ? In other words, how far does that witness of faith really set forth Jesus Christ? What is common to all the witness, and how far, on the other hand, does the individ ual witness, e. g. the Pauline, show itself to be especially adapted to disclose, to enrich, to ensure against false appre hensions faith's understanding of Jesus Christ? (y). How far is the form of expression, in the faithful presentation of that which is believed, to be considered universally valid, and how far significant only for that time ? x (c) As regards Old Tes- THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 67 lament use, dogmatics has to apply everywhere the New Testa ment as criterion, asking, How far does the Old Testament approximate the heights of the New Testament knowledge that accrues to faith? Note to §34 : 3 1. Paul conquered with the cosmic Messiah, not with the historic / Jesus. Can religion do without mythology? Can we conquer with ' the plain, simple categories of forgiveness, humility, righteousness, etc.? The great Messianic concept was the functional reality with which the primitive church conquered. They regarded it as onto logical reality, but today we see that it was only machinery, and we put it aside as unusable by us, much as we put aside the old reap- hook in harvest, and use the modern binder. But is it not of the na ture of religion to messianize its reality, and must we not yet do that same thing? (See Gunkel's work on Genesis.) The other alternative is to take up the idea of organizing our ap petites and passions, our impulses and instincts into a whole of per sonality, keying ourselves closer together in the social whole, and using scientific and sociological conceptions, and to set up this as our salvation from sin and death and hell. There is nothing strange about this idea of maturing personality; no great historical facts of other-world significance are necessary. There is no poetry; all is plain prose, rational, very rational, almost rationalistic. But it was the drama that did the work, not the Sermon on the Mount. It is character by salvation that appeals to the man in the , slums, not salvation by character. \ j8. The Doctrine of the Church. §35. The Importance of the Development of Christian Doc trine in General for Our Faith-Knowledge and for Dog matics. 1. The thesis that the knowledge of the regulative revela tion "of God is to be drawn from the Sacred Scriptures alone is contested by the Roman Catholic Church. The latter main tains that it possesses not only a supplement to the material of the Sacred Scriptures, but also an infallible guide for their correct interpretation in the ecclesiastical tradition controlled by the teaching office of the Church, and it bases this assertion on the assumption of episcopal succession, but primarily on the postulate of faith of an infallible divine guidance of the Church in her doctrines and institutions. On the evangelical 68 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION 3ide (a) that assumption is rightly rejected as an unhistorical fiction, and (b) this postulate of faith as a conclusion from a false conception of revelation. 2. For the real character of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ assigns to Christianity the task of gaining the content of that revelation from the Sacred Scriptures by means of common labor on the Scriptures. A gradually profounder and richer appropriation of that content can take place only in the experiences of life, and in the great movements of his tory through the conflicts of the spirit under the influences of great personalities. But under these circumstances the de velopment is not ortholinear. It passes through manifold in dividual formations, fluctuations and regresses. 3. It is from every positive contribution of this develop ment of doctrine and of life as it is presented in the life of the Christian community and deposited in Christian educa tion and instruction, that faith derives its guidance to the understanding and to the practical appropriation of the revela tion of God. Of course this development of doctrine and of life, when it has itself taken false paths, can also lead indi viduals astray; therefore access to the Sacred Scriptures, and thereby to the original revelation of God, is to be kept open and free to the practical knowledge that accrues to Christian faith. 4. It is only in connection with the advancement of the practical knowledge that accrues to faith that progress can be made in scientific dogmatics (v. §29), and of course scien tific dogmatics, in its methodic reflection and criticism, has to borrow indices to a correct understanding of the subject from the development of doctrine and of life in the past on the one hand; and on the other hand it has to recognize the by ways of error and of danger from which we must save our selves. §36. The Importance of the Reformation Understanding of Salvation for the Knowledge which Accrues to Faith and for Dogmatics. 1. As evangelical Christians we hold the Reformation to be the most important epoch in the development of the doctrine THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 69 and life of the Church. In the Eastern Church the gospel of salvation appearing in Jesus Christ was coined into Gnosis (yvuio-ts) and cult mysticism (corresponding to the Greek spirit), by means of which the liberation from corruptibleness (or mortality) to incorruptibleness (or immortality) was said to be mediated.1 In the Roman Church something of an eth ical conception of Christianity was indeed preserved, but in legal, civic distortion of the gospel. Salvation was bound down to a hierarchically constituted Church.2 The latter fur nished (a) supernatural doctrines of truth and commandments of life, and (b) sacramental powers of grace, through the obedient reception of which (a and b above) the faithful mem bers of the Church were said to be enabled to good works and to the acquiring of eternal life. As against all this, in the Reformation the gospel of the sin-forgiving grace of God be stowed upon us in Jesus Christ was put in the center. It called every individual to the independent personal appropria tion by faith of this gospel to which the Sacred Scriptures witnessed, and which was entrusted to the community of faith ; and it did so in the conviction that this personal appropriation of faith also produces a life in the spirit of Jesus Christ, and on that account in the kingdom of God. With this life also there was blessedness.3 Notes to §36 : 1 1. The true place for a gospel which has immortality as its central fact is in Greek Catholicism, not in Protestantism. 2. See Kaftan's Truth of the Christian Religion, Vol. I, and Har- nack's History of Dogma and What is Christianity? 3. In the Reformation we see the beginning of moral individualism and autonomy under God, as opposed to institntionalism and heteron- omy. There is a getting away from the ecclesiastical man to a human man, religious, moral and intellectual; from the externality of ec- clesiasticism to the internality of the moral and religious man. 2. According to our evangelical judgment this reformation understanding of salvation is no quantitative supplementing nor qualitative transcending of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, but only an elaboration of its 'true content, on the basis of a profound penetration into the Scriptures as original witness thereof. Therefore the practical knowledge which ac- 70 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION crues to Christian faith can be derived from this reformation understanding of salvation as it is propagated in the evangel ical churches in various degrees; but in the sense that this knowledge led an independent derivation from the Scriptures, evangelical dogmatics finds a guide here, but no legal restric tion. For the evangelical church doctrine seeks to contain the reformation apprehension of salvation ; but it has not the char acter of a dogma, exhausting the content of the revelation of God, and infallible as to form. Our judgment as to the im portance of the evangelical confessional writings follows from this. §37. The Importance of Evangelical Confessions for Faith- Knowledge and for Dogmatics. 1. In reference to the historical fact, (a) it is precisely the oldest and most important among the confessional writings that were not drawn up as doctrinal law for the evangelical churches, but (a-) as public testimony of the newly gained understanding of the gospel on the part of faith,1 and (/9) as basis for controversy, if need be, with the opponents of the Reformation, (b) The confessional writings were originally nothing but witness to the understanding of the Sacred Scrip tures gained at that time. They subjected themselves, there fore, simply to the norm of Sacred Scripture. In the later confessional writings this was the case also, so far as a certain presupposition was concerned, viz. that not only the gospel to which they witnessed, but also the forma doctrinae deposited in them was the only scriptural one, and therefore binding for all time.2 Orthodox ecclesiastical dogmatics has only refined upon this judgment. Note to §37 : 1 1. All creeds ought to be primarily our testimony, not a test for ! j some one else. 2. The main error was in supposing that theological theory could be immediately transferred from Scripture to dogmatics, as of perma nent normative validity for faith. It was a pardonable error then, for historical science was as yet unborn; but it is an unpardonable error now. 2. The worth of confessional writings from a consistent THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 71 evangelical standpoint is to be defined as follows: (a) As officially acknowledged documentary witness of the self-formed evangelical churches, they are the most important for evan gelical dogmatics among the historic guides which show us the doctrinal development of Christianity — most important also in part for the practical evangelical knowledge which accrues to faith.1 The confessional writings have this double value all the more, the more they have the character of re ligious witness, not of theological doctrinal exposition, and the more they themselves present new creations from the newly gained understanding of the Scriptures, (b) But it is at the same time the absolute right of dogmatics critically to evaluate the confessions as human productions, and to judge them by the new understanding of Scripture and the new experience of life of each new time. Note to §37 : 2 1. But distinction is to be made between kernel and shell in his torical confession, as weU as in Scripture. 3. When does a dogmatic have claim to the name " ecclesias tical," or "confessional"? (a) Only when on the basis of an independent investigation of Sacred Scripture, it assents to the one cardinal article common to confessional churches, viz. that we have forgiveness of sin and eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ, (b) Only when on that basis the dog matics acknowledge the practical religious view of our confes sions concerning the attitude of the Christian to God, to the world, to the Church, to the neighbor, as the correct revela tion-knowledge. But on this basis a progress of faith-knowl edge as to content and a further development of theological form are not only admissible, but obligatory in evangelical churches. c. The Method of Christian Dogmatics. §38. The Method of the Orthodox Ecclesiastical Dogmatics. 1. The decision concerning the method of dogmatics to be followed is implicitly given with the view already presented concerning the character and sources of the knowledge which 72 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION accrues to faith and dogmatics. But it is necessary to define the relation of this method to other methods, and first of all to that of the orthodox ecclesiastical dogmatics. 2. There are four methodic elements combined in orthodox ecclesiastical dogmatics, (a) The orthodox ecclesiastical dog matics seeks especially to be Scripture-dogmatics. Each doc trinal section is said to be borrowed and proved from the in spired Scriptures, (b) The orthodox ecclesiastical dogmatics is tradition-dogmatics, for the Scripture is explained accord ing to the analogy of faith (analogia fidei), i. e., however, in the last analysis, according to the sum of the articles of faith acknowledged as authoritative — partly of the old church con fession, partly of the evangelical confession, (c) There is a speculative precipitate ; i. e. it is speculation-dogmatics. This is not only contained in the dogmas that were taken over from the Church, but ecclesiastical dogmatics has elaborated the material gained according to (a) and (b) above by means of logical definitions, inferences and chains of reasonings, into a system of doctrine wherein that which is believed is presented in its objective connection and proved, within certain limits, to the reason, (d) But in one very important point the ortho dox ecclesiastical dogmatics is also the dogmatics of the Chris tian experience, viz. so far as it bases its proof of Scriptural authority on the testimonium Sancti Spiritus internum. 3. The right and the wrong of ecclesiastical dogmatics as to Scripture and tradition follow from the two preceding sec tions, and need not be reproduced here. But with reference to the speculation element there is the following objection. The character of Christian knowledge as faith-knowledge in distinction from science-knowledge is obscured when the faith- truths are viewed, as to their origin, as miraculously com municated, but are treated in scientific exposition as objects of theoretical knowledge. With reference to the experience element, the following should be noted. Full right is to be accorded to the inner witness of the Holy Spirit, but it is also to be required that the inner authorization of Christian truth shall come to validity not merely in this one point which orthodoxy emphasizes, viz. as to scriptural authority, but in every single article of faith or proposition of dogmatics.1 THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 73 Note to §38 : 3 1. Orthodoxy delimited its experience-theology to the authorizing of Sacred Scripture. §39. The Various Methods of Modern Dogmatics. 1. After the disintegrating criticism by rationalism the va rious elements that were externally and rather uncritically combined in ecclesiastical dogmatics fell apart of themselves. But in more recent times those very elements reappeared in new combinations, or else in such a way that one of these elements is the leading one, and the others contributory, (a) There is the method of development from the Christian con sciousness, and in the case of one system in particular, from the experience of regeneration.1 This method brought the fourth element of the orthodox method into prominence. In various degrees the Christian consciousness has been under stood as a consciousness inwardly united with Sacred Scrip ture and church doctrine. The right of this method is (a) its rejection of a legalistic employment of Sacred Scripture and church doctrine, and (ft) its rejection of the treatment of the world of faith as object of purely objective, theoretical knowl edge. The danger of this method is (a) the overgrowth of subjectivity, and (P) unclearness concerning the relation of subjective faith to its historical basis and to the ecclesiastical development of Christianity, (b) The speculative method un folds the element mentioned above in §38:2, c. By indicat ing a necessary progress of thought, it seeks (a) either to develop the entire Christian dogmatics according to its ra tional content of thought, or (P) at least to develop all the rest of Christian truth from the basis of a certain central position of faith. This is done partly in philosophical inter est mainly, partly in theological interest mainly, now in a critical and now in an ecclesiastical spirit.2 The right of this method is the idea of («) the rationality and (P) the inner unity of the Christian faith.3 But since it hopes to prove both the rationality and inner unity in a dialectical, logical way, it dangerously tends to convert our faith-knowledge into gnosis, and fails to do justice to the full import of revela tion.4 (c) The confessionalistic method (v. §38:2, b) takes 74 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION its standpoint in ecclesiastical confession. It seeks to estab lish this confession, or to preserve it as a living power, by " organic development." Its right is that it emphasizes the worth of ecclesiastical doctrine for dogmatics.5 But on the other hand its wrong may be pointed out. So far as it seeks only the repristination of ecclesiastical doctrine, this method falls under the condemnation of unhistoricalness. But so far as it seeks re-establishment and development of ecclesiastical doctrine, it must enter into compact with other methods, e. g. with the dogmatics of the Christian consciousness, or with the speculative method, or with both, (d) The Biblicistic method (v. §38:2, a.) is guided by the principle that Scripture doc trine, and of course the whole Scripture doctrine, must form the material of Christian dogmatics. Its right is on the one hand (a) its penetration into the Scripture thought; on the other hand (P) its liberation from an outward ecclesiastical doctrinal law, as well as (y) the endeavor to be free from merely subjective experience and (8) from philosophical spec ulation. Its defect is (a) its under-estimation of the ecclesias tical doctrinal development, and (P) its unhistorical appre hension of Scripture, which, in order to get a Biblical doc trinal system out of the Scriptures, must do violence to the Scriptures, and yet again recur to speculation or to Christian experience. In this discussion (from a to d) various combi nations are indicated. Rich in such performances or taking its point of departure mostly from (a) above, is especially the so-called mediating theology.6 Notes to §39 : 1 1. See F. H. R. Frank's System of Christian Certainty and System of Christian Truth. 2. Hegel in an ecclesiastical spirit; Baur and Strauss in a critical spirit. 3. Pfleiderer stands for the rationality and inner unity of Chris tian faith. On the other hand Kaftan says it makes no difference with what proposition we begin in dogmatics, thus jeopardizing the Christian conviction of the inner unity of the Christian faith. 4. There is more in rationality than what can be got at dialectically and logically. Its inner unity centers not in the intellectual side, but in the moral disposition of the will. 5. No irreverent and violent breach with the past is scientific. THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 75 6. Beginning with Schleiermacher, and developing into radicalism in some instances, and into a repristination of orthodoxy in others. 2. The mediating theology sought after a higher unity of the methods already mentioned, but did not really attain it. In more recent times the way has been to pass back from Chris tian consciousness and church doctrine to the Scriptures, and within the Scriptures themselves to pass on to the living reve lation of God in Jesus Christ, and on that basis to develop in Christocentric treatment all Christian doctrine, not specula tively but as faith's understanding of revelation.1 (a) In this way on the one side (Ritschl) within the revelation regu lative for faith it is the proclamation in word and deed of Jesus himself that becomes the central norm according to which dogmatics, employing the N. T. witness of faith, and leaning upon the Reformation ecclesiastical confessions has to con struct the unitary religious view of the Christian community concerning God, the world and life, (b) Other dogmaticians set out in a somewhat different way; for them the scriptural material and church doctrine are to be evaluated and the en tire dogmatics drawn up on the basis of the fundamental reli gious experience of God's justifying gift of himself in Jesus Christ. But these dogmaticians emphasize (v. §26:1) the self-revelation of God in the whole Biblical Christ, instead of simply making the earthly Jesus prominent. Thus they keep closer to the line of the Biblicistic method from which they set out.2 Notes to §39 : 2 1. This is the method of Kaftan, Schultz, Reischle, Troeltsch, Herr mann, Harnack, and of the modern younger theologians of our own country. It will stay so long as Jesus Christ is the center of our religion and revelation. If he fails to maintain that central place, this method will go by. But in that case dogmatics will go, and we shall have only philosophy and psychology of religion. The religio-historical movement is rubbing out the line of peculi arity in Christ. We are in a real crisis — a terrible one. Wrede quotes a note from one of the ecclesiastical newspapers in Germany which says that the religio-historical movement means war; for if the gospel as they understand it is preached, the church is overcome and perishes as church; it will be the end of ecclesiastical religion. For example, the new view claims that the difference between 76 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION James and Paul is greater than the difference between Jesus and the pious Jews of his day. They claim that the whole theological, Messianic interpretation of Jesus must be stripped off, and he be just man; that whereas the old view put Jesus over against man, we must now put him in the human category entirely; the attitude one takes toward the question of the divinity of Jesus will depend upon one's philosophy, and will correspond with one's valuation of man, the difference being one of degree only. If this religio-historical movement is mere historical science, giving facts and relations, but no value-judgments, there is left room for the value-judgment of dogmatics. If not, there would seem to be no place left for dogmatics. And it is hard for men to give to /science only what belongs to science, and not to add value-judgments and philosophical interpretation. Does the surrender of discontinuity in religious experience ex clude the possibility of the supremely worthful? Are the supremely worthful and the causal incompatible? There will be no solution of this problem till all the historical material is given over to the philosophy and psychology of religion. ^y" 2. As the Ritschlians say, the revelation which comes to us through Jesus Christ comes from his earthly career alone. What vocation in the world has the Jesus of today — the super-earthly Jesus? None. God alone is all in all. But God is the God whom we know in and through the earthly Jesus. The value of Jesus for religion is the significance of his earthly life as indicating the kind of God there is. Yet the modern theologian believes in Jesus' immortality, because the kind of God who is revealed in Jesus would not snuff out the object of his love, such as Jesus was. §40. Comprehensive and Constructive Statement of the Dog matic Method. 1. According to the view developed concerning revelation (§§25-27), concerning the character of faith-knowledge and science-knowledge (§§28-30), and concerning the importance of Sacred Scripture and the ecclesiastical doctrinal develop ment (§§31-37), the method of faith's understanding of reve lation (sketched in §39: 3) and hence the Christocentric treat ment of dogmatics, although not the basis of dogmatics, seems to have the most to commend it. Any deviation from this method is to be gained by a clearer understanding of the two expressions, "revelation" and "the understanding which ac crues to faith." (a) In line with §39:2 (a) above, and in opposition to §39 : 2 (b) above, in dogmatic work we have to THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 77 lay hold of the earthly person and work of the Savior, Jesus Christ, as the center of the whole revelation of God and as the starting-point of the independent certainty of faith and the inner understanding of faith (cf. §26). 1 But instead of this hindering, it should help us to employ the whole revelation of God (as against the Ritschlians), concentrated in that cen ter indeed, in the dogmatic development of the propositions of Christian faith, and thereby to preserve vital connection with the witnesses of the New Testament community. Thus there is truth also in the revelation-dogmatics allied to Bibli- cism. (b) But scientific dogmatics cannot develop the con tent of revelation in a purely objective historical fixation. It cannot be satisfied simply to indicate that this or that religious view of God, world and life occupies an essential place in the proclamation of Jesus, or in the circle of thought of the apostles. Rather on the basis of methodic reflection it must show, in the case of every single proposition of faith, how we may become aware of the spiritual reality expressed in that proposition; how we may become aware of it by personal faith in God's revelation, and therefore become able to expound that reality in judgments of faith (cf. §29). Note to §40 : 1 1. Everything depends for dogmatics and the church upon the permanent validity of the above statement. It is difficult enough to give up the centrality of the pre-existent and post-existent Christ. But if the centrality of the earthly Christ were given up, our religion would no longer be necessarily called Christian. The concatenations of Jesus with historical, developmental factors do not necessarily destroy his significance and validity for life. Worth need not cease to be supremely worthful on account of causal connection. The supremely worthful does not happen every day ; but that is not to say that it cannot have happened at all. 2. Thus, according to (a) and (b) above, the leading me thodic question of dogmatics is as follows: What is the in visible spiritual reality of which we are to become aware, and whose inner connection we are to know through trustful sur render to the whole revelation of God, concentrated, however, in the earthly life and work of the Savior, Jesus Christ ? Such a dogmatics can take up into itself the truth of the other meth- 78 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION ods mentioned in §39:1. (a) It draws upon the Scriptures and must be scriptural in the sense defined in §34 : 1. (P) It proceeds upon the basis of a critical knowledge of church doctrine, and is thus confessional within the limits specified in §37:3. (y) It seeks to do justice to the importance of the Christian consciousness; i. e. in the case of every single proposition it seeks to show how it is authenticated to us in our subjective religious consciousness, i. e. in personal trust and, on the basis thereof, in inner experience (v. §28). But in so far as the subjective religious consciousness points to basis and norm of faith lying outside of us, the danger of subjectivism is checked. (8) It recognizes, with speculative dogmatics, the need to exhibit the rationality and inner unitari- ness of the ideas that accrue to Christian faith. But it is a question whether it is not simply the functional instead of ontological reality of these ideas with which it is concerned. In the former case it seeks not theoretical but practical proof of rationality. Do the ideas function serviceably in life? The proof of the truth of the ideas is the answer to that ques tion. Also it gets at the inner unity not by a dialectical de velopment of one proposition out of another, but it seeks to show how the Christian propositions of faith, in their inner emergence from faith's understanding of Jesus Christ, as a fact do present a unitary view as a whole, and lead to a unitary, practical relationship. If the ideas are treated as ontological realities then we confront a metaphysical problem of the old kind, as to whether or not that ontological reality may be known as such. The functional contention, in its more cautious moods, not affirming, yet does not deny ontological verity, but contents itself with agnosticism with reference to the matter. Ontological agnosticism is overcome in orthodoxy by its whole view of revelation and of the Bible. §41. Definition and Demarcation of Our Further Task. 1. Through the determination of the method, the scientific task of the Christian dogmatics, sketched in §29, is more fully defined, and the problem of §1 is concluded. Our further task is to expound the content of the Christian faith in scien tific reflection. It involves three special tasks which are (a) THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 79 the thetic (v. §29:2, 3), (b) the apologetic1 and (c) the critical.2 Notes to §41 : 1 1. The apologetic task cannot be entirely isolated from the thetic (i. e. constructive dogmatic) task. Each proposition of modern dog matics carries with it the assumption that the content of faith is in no necessary contradiction with the approved results of modern science. For example, the doctrine of creation can be so stated as to conflict with natural science, and so there is need to show that the exact requirements of Christian faith do not precipitate a conflict with science. This involves an epistemological delimitation of bound aries between dogmatics and natural science. 2. The religio-critical is necessary, since there must be discrimina tion between the theological construction and the religious incentive underlying that construction, and distinction also between the re hgious and the philosophical apprehension of spiritual reality. PART II. THE SUPERSTRUCTURE OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS §42. Introductory. 1. We shall adopt the Christocentric procedure in dogmatics, for reasons given in the former part of our discussion. But this does not of itself decide as to the arrangement of the differ ent parts, or sections. 2. It does not follow from the method previously worked out that the Christocentric method must begin with the doc trine of Christ. In the first main division the revelation given in Jesus Christ was presented as the basis of all knowledge that accrues to faith. (It is not meant that quantitatively there is no knowledge accruing to faith outside of person and work of Jesus Christ, but we are to know of the faith-knowl edge alien to him by virtue of its homogeneity with the faith- knowledge we have in Jesus Christ.) It is on this basis that we must first treat of the power embracing and determining the whole world as that world is to Christian faith, i. e. God revealed in us. Then Jesus' person and work have to be re lated to this God and his dominion. Then again there is the connection of the new spiritual forces and order which have issued from Jesus Christ in history, and of which we become certain through the experience of faith. This too is to be presented in dogmatics. That is, then, we have Jesus Christ in his relation to God as the power and source of all with which faith has to do, and we have Jesus Christ in his rela tion to the fruits in history and in personality of the divine presence in his historical life. We thus arrive at three parts for dogmatics: A. God and the World; B. God and Jesus Christ the Lord; C. God and the Holy Spirit. Part A may be analyzed again into three main subdivisions: a. The Na ture of God Revealed in Jesus Christ ; b. God and the Finite World in General ; c. God and the Moral Order of the World. 80 SUPERSTRUCTURE OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 81 A. GOD AND THE WORLD a. The Nature of God Revealed in Jesus Christ. a. Fundamental Definition of the Nature of God. aa. The View of Scripture and of Church Doctrine as to God. §43. The Old Testament and fhe New Testament Knowledge of God. 1. When we proceed to set forth the nature of God revealed in Jesus Christ, we are confronted with the fact that Jesus nowhere in his discourses seeks expressly to establish the exist ence of God, or to delineate the life and power of God in a coherent and comprehensive way. The reason of this is that Jesus together with his hearers stood on the soil of the Old Testament. (He stood immediately upon the soil of the apoca lyptic knowledge of God of his contemporaries, but this again was conditioned by the Old Testament.) x He presupposes in the case of his hearers, in spite of many aberrations, a convic tion of God's existence, and correct views concerning God's nature and character. Note to §43 : 1 1. Until a year or two ago [this was in 1905] I thought that Jesus overleaped contemporary thought and made connection with the prophets. But I am now of the opinion that this was not the case. 2. What is the content of the Old Testament knowledge of God? (a) In its prophetic culmination it has a two-fold character. It is (<*) sustained by the certainty that Jahweh has revealed himself in history, particularly in leading the people from Egypt, but also afterwards in the later history of Israel, and previously in the time of the patriarchs. But all these historical providences gained (P) their importance first through the prophetic proclamation in which they are put into most intimate connection with the moral orders of the folk-life, and are interpreted as beneficence and judgment of a morally ruling God. Prophets took up events and actuali ties of history and evaluated them religiously. By means of the intimate connection of these two sides (a) and (P), Jahweh 82 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION appears as the exalted God who gloriously reveals himself in blessing and judgment upon Israel, but at the same time as the merciful, faithful covenant God, who redeems his people, (b) In a later time the revelation is more and more concentrated in legislation. In this way a particularistic national feature, a juridical thought of retribution and a conception of natural sanctity were embodied in the God-idea; but on the other hand a spiritualization and more intimate apprehension of the rela tion of God to the individual saint was also involved in this stage.1 Note to §43 : 2 1. This period of legalism was not entirely bad. In this period there was emphasis upon the relation of God to individual life, as well as to folk-life. 3. Compared with the Old Testament knowledge of God, Jesus knew that he did not preach a new God; but he knew that he brought the promised all-fulfilling redemptive revela tion of the old God. But this involved the claim that he pos sessed the full insight into the nature or character of God, which had not been formerly entirely veiled. Jesus, through his living redemptive work, could make man certain of the God of whom he himself was certain. This full penetration of Jesus into God's purpose of salvation found its expression in designating the name Father as the controlling name for God, which gives norm to all views concerning God.1 Note to §43 : 3 1. In the Old Testament the prophetic summit discloses God as Father of the folk. In the apocalyptic writings the notion of God as Father of the individual appears. But they do not seem con sciously and definitely to isolate this name as regulative for the Kingdom of God. [Discussing the question of the originality of Jesus] Must not somebody have originated something on his own account? This re- mainderless regress in explaining means explaining everything by nothing. The good God surely did not give the Jews their long ex istence as a mere parenthesis! There has been spontaneity and crea tive originality all along, even in the roots and juices at the begin nings. There is greater sensitiveness regarding the truth of rehgion today than there is regarding the truth of anything else. SUPERSTRUCTURE OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 83 Human categories are better than civic, in interpreting God's nature. When they are used, the divine right of man is substituted for the divine right of kings, popes and officers. 4. Thus too the disciples of Jesus were certain that through Jesus Christ they had gained the full unveiling of the divine counsel, and thus the full knowledge of God, not first and not primarily through Jesus' word, but through his whole person in his life, suffering, death and resurrection, and through the Spirit proceeding from the Exalted One. All this is ex pressed in the designation of God as " the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Note to §43 : 4 1. We are reminded here of Weinel's heroic confession of faith, " After Jesus, it is his religion, or none." After Jesus' God, it is his God, or none. Perhaps not, speculatively and ontologically, but practically, morally, religiously, spiritually — more particularly, in the God-attitude toward man and history and the world. 5. This name of God assigns to dogmatics the task of sys tematically developing the content of the Christian knowledge of God on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ. §44. The Doctrine of God in the Orthodox Ecclesiastical Dog matics. 1. This task (mentioned in §43:5) was set through the Reformation views of the way to a true knowledge of God. Yet it was not consistently and firmly carried out by the orthodox ecclesiastical dogmatics. To be sure the latter had expressed the principle that the perfect knowledge of God was to be borrowed only from revelation; but, by identifying revelation with Sacred Scripture viewed as a text-book (cf. §25: 1), it was hindered from deriving the knowledge of God from the living revelation of God in Jesus Christ. 2. The orthodox ecclesiastical dogmatics, however, did not stop with the simple narration of Bible utterances concerning God, but gradually advanced to a systematic development. But in this connection it allowed itself to be misled by the scholastic tradition, and the result was that it made the uni versal determination of the essence of God accessible to the " natural knowledge of God " the ground-stock of the doctrine 84 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION of God, in which it then engrafted the specifically Christian determinations.1 In this way it could not win a sure and unitary exposition of the Christian doctrine of God, owing partly to the fluctuating character and partly to the alien origin of the " natural knowledge of God." Instead of this scholas ticism we have to take the path indicated in §43 : 5, in agree ment with the character of the New Testament proclamation concerning God (v. §43: 3 and 4), and at the same time con formably to some old dogmatic method (§40:1). Thus we have, first, on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ, to set forth the single moments of the Christian idea of God; secondly, to combine these moments into a unitary expression. Note to §44 : 2 1. Are you proposing to begin with a speculative, dialectical de termination and construction of the God-idea, making this the ground- stock of the God-conception, and grafting in the Christian concept? The reaction of the whole functional movement in philosophy is against doing this. Hegelism in its original form did this. In modern philosophy there is a great return to a point of view more akin to the Christian religion in general. Is the idea of God to be excogitated through speculative endeavor, or is it to come 1 through great historical unfolding ? Through life it is, and not (Jhrough speculation, except as speculation is a part of life. bb. The Systematic, or Constructive Development of the Chris tian Doctrine of God.1 §45. The Absolute End of God 'Revealed in Jesus Christ, or the Kingdom- of God.2 1. The first moment of the knowledge of God revealed in Jesus Christ is the content of the divine will, or the absolute end of God as regards the world, (a) Jesus Christ's whole life as person has its unitary character in his knowledge that his filial vocation is to usher in the kingdom of God, and to surrender himself entirely to this goal.3 (b) Trust in Jesus Christ as revealer of God involves, therefore, the conviction of faith that this kingdom of God is the goal of the divine will, or the divine end of the world. Note to bb. 1. The God-idea of the Christian faith was not discovered specu- SUPERSTRUCTURE OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 85 latively and apriori. The procedure was very different from that old method which had the general standpoint that a thing must be so, therefore it is so. According to our modern standpoint, things are what they are, and we will look into them and find out what they are. This is science versus apriorism. This scientific approach to the God-idea of Christian faith is truer to the Christian faith, and honors God more, than the speculative approach. Still, at the end it will be found necessary (as against Ritschlianism) to call in philoso phy, in order to delimit and rationalize the God-idea by putting it into our system of concepts. Note to §45 2. The " Kingdom of God " is set forth in eschatological form in Scripture, and yet its kernel is ethical; we need not give up the phrase. Note to §45 : 1 3. " Surrender " is not a good word. Formally there is in it an appearance of a master-subject relation. But this is not true in any legalistic implication. The " surrender " in question is a free sur render ; it does not abridge, but develops personality. " Devotement " is perhaps a better word. 2. The Kingdom of God is supramundane.1 (a) That is to say, qualitatively as to its inner character, it does not con sist in the production of any sort of mundane orders and the communication of mundane goods, but in the possession and the exercise of a personal life exalted above the world.2 This personal life is not of an ascetic, mystical kind. It is a life in filial surrender to the perfect God and in the initiation and exercise of God-like righteousness in the fellowship of love. (b) This inwardly supramundane kingdom of God, as con cerned with the region of its actualization, is also transcend ent ; i. e. it transports us into connection with a reality which lies beyond this empirical world of our knowledge (cf. §30: 2, b).3 This inwardly supramundane kingdom of God can attain its consummation for the individual and the community only under other than these earthly convictions of existence. Notes to §45 : 2 1. This does not mean dualism. " Supramundane " is a noble word. Personality is supramundane, as against the raw and unor ganized. It registers a protest against causality as a category that exhausts reality. It is almost teleological in its significance. 86 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION 2. " The Son of man hath not where to lay his head." That is, there is no appropriate environment to the son of man in merely natural goods. Jesus was thinking of the supramundane. 3. The natural world gives (1) sensuous gratification, (2) work, (3) science and (4) human love. Beyond aU that is the spiritual. Work is good, but no man's work is so perfect or so fully appreciated as to give abiding satisfaction. Science is good, but instrumental, and very limited at that. It cannot forgive sins, nor can it give comfort in the hour of sorrow and death. Human love is good, but where is it so perfect and so constant in its perfectness that the human heart is not pointed to something beyond it? The human spirit in its highest moments points above and beyond the world of empirical reality. " Whom have I in heaven but thee ? and on earth there is nothing beside thee." " Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations." Because you cannot weigh and calculate the supramundane, is it nothing? 3. The concept " kingdom of God " commends itself as the comprehensive designation of the divine end of the world, even on historical grounds. It is central in the proclamation of Jesus. It is not so prominent in the. apostolic witness, but it is used in significant passages, and its meaning is contained in other New Testament expressions. It is involved in faith in Jesus Christ as " Lord " (Kvpios), therefore also in the con cept of God as " Father of our Lord Jesus Christ " (irarqp tov Kvplov rtfum/ Inaov Xpio-rov).1 In later history of doctrine this concept, " kingdom of God," is ever revived. On the Catholic side the concept is preserved but also corrupted by identifying the kingdom of God with the Church of Rome. On the Prot estant side the comprehensive content of the concept was reached in the time of the Reformation and has been occasionally ex pressed in the confessions of the various churches. Note to §45 : 3 1. The Christian's God is the kind of God of which Jesus Christ is a fair representative. After Jesus, it is his God — i.e. essentially — 4. But this concept " kingdom of God " is available on svste- matic grounds also. It is the most comprehensive designation of the Christian salvation, for the kingdom of God is pre sented in our salvation (a) as at once religious and moral, (b) as at the same time immanent and transcendent, present SUPERSTRUCTURE OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 87 and future, (c) as an affair both of the human community and of the individual, (d) as God's supreme end and as our per sonal supreme end. Through all this the absoluteness of the divine end comes to expression most distinctly on two sides. It is unconditionally worthful, and it does not exist for the sake of the world, but the world for it. 5. With this definition and determination of the divine end, the Christian God-idea is exalted into the sphere of the supra mundane, and owing to the ethical content of that end, it is exalted into the sphere of the purely ethical. Moreover, the God-idea is thereby freed in principle from all the limits (a) of nature-, folk- and law-religions, as well as (b) of the other redemption-religions (e.g. Buddhism and Neo-Platonism ; v. §13), as also from those (c) of the Old Testament views of God (v. §43:2). It is only when we rise into that sphere of the ethical life that we ourselves can come to the God of Christian faith.1 2 Notes to §45 : 5 1. There is nothing to be said more important than this, that it is only when we rise into the sphere of the ethical life that we can meet the God of the Christian religion. Also morality is healthy and"] strong only in the warm sunshine of religious enthusiasm. In Mar cus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus we see a fine morality. Yet there is one thing lacking, and so it does not become a procreative reality. What is lacking is the note of victory, such as we find in Paul's " Rejoice in the Lord always ; and again I say, Rejoice." Sto icism may be heroic, but it is not enthusiastic. Its morality is like that of the Indian, hitched to a tree and not flinching, though arrows are shot at him. Christian morality is like that of the fireman saving the child. The one looks selfward ; the other, outward and onward. __J 2. In the whole history of religion there seem to be two ways in which God has been looked upon as coming to man, viz. in revelation and in sacrament. Revelation is inner, personal, spiritual, ethical. It ought not to be made complex and difficult to us. It is the way you reveal youreslf to your friend, when you live with him. Sacrament is defined as an external communication of the divine substance to man, through the senses. The God-idea involved is sub-Christian and pre-Christian. It is not yet lifted up into the fully ethical sphere. What is required of you that you may meet God by way of sacrament? The service of brothers? Not at all, and so its way of getting God is wrong. Jesus was absolutely free from this sacramentism. His way to 88 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION God is the free fulfilment of certain moral requirements. He anni hilates the sacraments. Sacramentism is wrapped up with asceti cism and mysticism, and has no social reference. The old psychology of possession underlies mysticism; this was the way of accounting for all inner crises and cataclysms. It persists in the doctrine of the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. Such mysticism is not neces sarily ethical, and it has to go. There is no verifiable psychology of possession. Martin Luther shared the old psychology of possession. One cannot imagine the modern business man throwing an inkstand at the devil; but it does not follow that he is greater than Luther. Luther is Luther all the same. The same may be said of Paul. He introduced pre-Christian elements in his rationalizing of the death of the Messiah; but he could wish himself accursed for his brethren's sake. Luther made the modern world; Paul made a new type of civilization. They were great in spite of their defective psychology and apologetics, which did their work in their own time and place. Perhaps Paul ought to have thrown overboard more than he did, but he saved the ship, and that is the main consideration. The correlates of revelation and sacrament on the human side are prayer and offering. Prayer is not saying prayers. It is communion with God — a moral yearning. It is profoundly ethical. Offering was originally something given to God which it was believed he would enjoy, as something to eat, or to smell. But the Christian's God is the being to whom nothing can be given, since he has ah things — except your will, and to give this to God is to possess it more surely. A catholicizing deterioration of religion began with the apologetics for the death of Christ, when the offering-idea was introduced. The Messiah's crucifixion was regarded as the Chris tian's propitiatory offering to God. A deterioration of Jesus' rehgion began in this, no matter who did it. When did sacraments begin to take the place of revelation and prayer? When the Lord's Supper and baptism took on redemption values. Paul makes an argument for the resurrection out of vicari ous baptism for the dead. And was it mere figure of speech when he spoke of eating the body and blood of Christ? Was there not some sacramentism in Paul? Wrede and Weinel think Paul was essentially a Roman Catholic sacramentist. I am not convinced that this is as true as they try to make out. With Paul, the kernel was the same as with Jesus, viz. the moral and the religious. At any rate, sacrament and offering are pre-Christian and sub-Christian. Revelation and prayer, the religion of morality — this is what makes up the content of the teaching of Jesus. No offering is required but the day's toil and the night's prayer. The blessing comes not through sacrament, but through communion. I am not prepared to say that sacrament and offering have had no pedagogic value. But they are not Christian ; they are not the sum mit and finality of our religion. Perfumery, the " dim religious SUPERSTRUCTURE OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 89 light," candles, and the like — all this is the easy way of the child and the undeveloped. The race seems to fail to rise to Jesus' atti tude. In the morality of his inner disposition and in his religion of a moral God, it looks more as if the race would never get up to Jesus, than that it would get ahead of him, and he fail to be final. §46. The Spiritual Work of God Revealed in Jesus Christ, in order to fhe Realization of His Kingdom. 1. In order to the full Christian view of God x and in order to the full concept of the supramundaneness and ethical per fection of God there must be not merely the knowledge of the divine end, but also of the work constantly directed to the actualization of that end, and especially of the work of God powerfully revealing itself in the life of the human spirit.2 Notes to §46 : 1 1. There is a great difference between a religionless, speculative manufacture of a God-idea, and going to a definite religion and seeing what kind of a God-idea the religion has produced. 2. My friend, James Ten Broeke, holds that a man's essential reality is the purpose he sets up and the energy with which he sets himself to realize that purpose. May we not apply this to the God- idea as well? 2. This is embraced in the Biblical concept also of " the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ " (Geo? ko.1 Trarrjp tov Kvplov fjplav Ino-ov XpurTov). (a) Jesus himself was conscious of presenting the kingdom of God as the divine end of the world, but also of ushering it in with his Messianic work in a way that through him a redeeming power of God became operative in the hearts of men. (b) Accordingly the first community was certain that in Jesus Christ, both the earthly and the exalted one, God's redeeming work of grace became mighty, in order to the actualization of his counsels in that community. God himself thus became to the primitive com munity "God our Savior" (0eos Smttjp fjfiaiv). 3. In agreement therewith the certainty of a work of God redeeming and educating us for his kingdom is the result for us of faith in Jesus Christ. This appears (a) centrally in the personal life of Jesus Christ himself, which is the only possible starting point for the supramundane rule of God be coming directly actual in the hearts of men (cf. §26:1-3); 90 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION (b) in addition, in the spiritual life of Christianity, through which that redeeming work of God in Jesus Christ is mediated to us to-day (§26: 4) ; 1 (c) but also in God's work of revela tion preparatory for the kingdom of Jesus Christ. ^N-ote to §46 : 3 1. On the basis of the old psychology and world-view men could easily conceive of the mediation of God's redeeming work by the real presence of the exalted Jesus, now omnipresent in the individuals and in the community, and the redemptive work of God could be thought of as carried on by the post-existent ubiquitous Christ. This was elaborated greatly by the post-Reformation theology. But there are two difficulties with this view. The first is a psychological diffi culty, rendering uninteUigible the mystic real presence of Christ's consciousness in us. The other difficulty, which is philosophical, is that of how the man Jesus could become ubiquitous and omnipresent. It means the integration into the man Jesus, on His return to the Father, of the Divine attributes of omnipotence and the rest. This is philosophically unthinkable, and the whole conception lacks ethical effectiveness. Theologians and Biblical historians have retired the thought of a post-existent redemptive efficiency of the ubiquitous Jesus, in favor of the persistence of the power of the human, his torical Jesus, and the redemptive effect of the spiritual community on its members and on others outside. The idea of a physical- metaphysical, human-superhuman influence of the post-existent Jesus is rightly given up. The conception of a pre-existent being laying aside his attributes, and a post-existent being taking back his attri butes, would have significance for a metaphysical, not for a moral, way of salvation. Moreover, this whole conception of an extra- historical being entering the human race is mythology pure and sim ple. Indeed the old conception of the Trinity and of the Deity of Christ is pure mythology, and there can be adhesion to the mythology without the inner process of redemption. To return to the psychological difficulty, it is to be admitted that to the seer hallucination is as real at the time as the perception of reality. And in the old psychology the inner seeing was thought of as real. But from the point of view of modern psychology what is seen, even in Paul's experience, is simply subjective " vision." At all events, we must interpret Paul's vision and the drunkard's vision sim ilarly, i. e. either both according to the old psychology or both accord ing to the new psychology. Besides, the real proof of Paul's conver sion was not the vision or the voice, but the right-about-face in his life. Paul could beat them all at visions, but he showed a more ex cellent way — the way of ethical love. No, the religio-historical school are wrong in their interpretation of Paul. He knew what was worth while. SUPERSTRUCTURE OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 91 4. Thus we recognize in faith in Jesus Christ God's spirit ual power directed to the actualization of the divine end of the world. It is in this way especially that God is revealed within the spiritual, historical life of humanity as the living One, or as "Life," "Light," "Spirit." This is not true in the sense that God's life is to be identified with the whole life of humanity, but in the sense that within the latter God develops a supramundane kingdom with redeeming power. It is only in personal receptivity for the kingdom of God that we our selves find the living God. §47. The World-Governing Work of God Revealed in Jesus Christ in order to fhe Actualization of His Kingdom. 1. The Christian God-idea is not yet fully formed with the two moments already developed (§§45, 46). For did one stop there a gnostic God-idea and a dualistic world-view would not be repelled. The reason we cannot stop there is to be found in the intimate connection between history and the order of nature. 2. There is indeed a third moment in the Biblical faith in God. (a) Jesus led his disciples in all the gifts they received and in all their sufferings to look up to God as the Lord even of the natural order (" Lord of heaven and earth "), and Jesus himself finished his entire work with the certainty that all that befell him even according to the natural order, even though it were brought on by the will of the sinful human world, was yet absolutely subject to the necessity (Set) of the divine counsel, (b) The first community fastened on to the Old Testament conviction of faith as to God's world-ruling power, and they did this directly in the paradox of the cross of Christ, and in the experience of his appearances after death. 3. For us also this same certainty is founded in the faith that in the case of Jesus Christ everything, even suffering and death, served and had to serve the consummation of his person and work, and that this inner consummation must lead to outer victory. This faith receives further confirmation or corrobora tion whenever anything of the guidance of the outer process of the world is seen to serve the end of the kingdom of God — 92 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION anything in the order and process of the world, whether it be (a) in the outer fortunes of the children of Israel, or (b) of Christianity, or (c) of the rest of human history, or (d) in the leadings of our own life. Yet such outer guidances in their importance and significance are never so externally evident that faith in God's world-ruling power becomes vision; and insight into the guidances of God understandable to us is never so extensive that this side of Christian faith can dispense with its foundation in Jesus Christ.1 Note to §47 : 3 1. What would constitute the Christian triumph over pain, suffer ing, evil in the world? Taking it away or discovering some antidote is a negative solution of the problem. The Christian triumph is in chaining the evil to our chariot wheel, converting the burden or men ace into a servant of the maturing of the inner life. This is abso lute victory, making my master my slave. This mastery is not through perfect knowledge and explanation of God's will with reference to it. It is not by sight, but by faith. It is not that we know how God behaves empirically, but that we know God, the God of Jesus Christ, and knowing him we say, " I do not know why this evil is in my life; perhaps I could not know; but I know that God knows why it is there. It is enough for the child to know that the Father knows." "We know that all things work to gether for good," wrote Paul. Now Paul did not know either the " all things" or the "working together" or the "good"; but, knowing God, he passes to this conviction by faith, and triumphs by it. Mere explanation would be inadequate to produce this result. §48. Comprehensive Definition of the Essence of God (God as "Love," as "Heavenly Father"). 1. The three moments of the God-idea developed in §§45 to 47 are indissolubly interrelated; therefore it is impossible to derive one from another, but it is of course possible to seek a unitary comprehensive expression for the three (i. e. the supramundaneness, the end and the work), and this in adhesion to the New Testament wherever possible. 2. In the New Testament we have a comprehensive charac terization, above all in the proposition, " God is love." The content of this concept ("love") is made clear in (a) the ever-imperfect analogy of the noblest human love; above all SUPERSTRUCTURE OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 93 (b) in the perfect love of Jesus Christ, who not only visualizes, so to speak, but brings God's love to us; (c) in the personal experience of God's love in our own inner and outer life. 3. This is regulative for Christian dogmatics also, (a) For it also the concept " love " is the best designation of the unitary character of God which the Christian view of God, in opposition to the thought of an impassive (" impassible ") Being, or of an arbitrary or capricious God, affirms and must affirm, (b) Dogmatics has to borrow the definition or deter mination of the content of this concept of love from revelation of God. (c) The single moments of the concept " love " which may be thus gained are the following: (a.) The object of love is spiritual personalities. In principle, not in fact, the original object of the divine love is Christ, accordingly then through Christ the community of the redeemed, then the world in general (John 3: 16). (P) The goal of the divine love is man's spiritual and moral best; that is to say, the initiation and perfection of their personal communion with God, and their fellowship with one another in faith and love; and this goal thus dually expressed is yet a unitary one as regards this relation of fellowship.1 (y) The mode of the divine love to us is not, as with men, self-abnegation, but yet it does involve what used to be meant by the words " condescension " and " sacrifice " — sacrifice even to the surrender of his most worthy, his Son. Thus the death of Christ is the most precious asset in human history. Note to §48 : 3 1. There is no relation to God which is not a relation to man, and there is no relation to man which is not a relation to God. If you treat man fairly decently, you treat God fairly decently. 4. The love of God in which we have faith mounts above all human love, (a) God's love is holy, i. e. it wills only the truly good and excludes everything that is contrary thereto, or all that is sinful. But since God's opposition to sin is active precisely in his redeeming and pedagogic love, there is no sort of tension between holiness and love, but true holiness is perfect love, and vice versa, (b) God's love, however, is exalted above the finite world and regnant over it. In simpler 94 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION expression all this is comprised in the phrase " Our heavenly Father" (o irar^p fjp.a>v 6 ovpdnos). The concept "Father" designates God not only as (a) author of spirits, but also as (b) generator of a new eternal life in the individual and in the community, and (c) as educator therefor. The concept " heavenly," even with our changed picture of the world, ex presses most distinctly (a) his exaltedness above human fini- tude and sin, and also (b) the world-ruling power of God. Note to §48 : 4 1. Dorner's phrase, " holy love," sets forth the essential character of the Christian God. cc. Critical Limitation. §49. The Apparent Contradiction between the Concept "Per sonality " and the Absoluteness of God. 1. Two concepts are included in the thought of God as heav enly Father.1 These concepts illumine both the limitation of the Christian knowledge of God over against false conceptions, and also its own inner limits (cf. §41:2, c, a. and P). (a) When we think of God as Father, or as holy Love, we apply to him the concept of spiritual personality, in which all those personal predicates inhere with which we as Christians speak of God. (b) When we think of God as " heavenly," or as exalted above the world, or as ruling over the world, we at tribute absoluteness to him. In the system or connection of the Christian faith this concept cannot designate the entire nature or essence of God. It does not even give the main determination or definition of the divine essence from which all others could be derived. It is a logical abstraction. Its function is to set forth God as the Unconditioned, i. e. as the non-conditioned and the all-conditioning. Note to §49 : 1 1. See J. Caird: Fundamental Ideas of Christianity; Wundt's Sys tem der Philosophie (the chapter on Religion) ; Paulsen's Introduc tion to Philosophy (chapters on Theism and Pantheism) ; Eucken : Die Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion. 2. But, thus understood, the concept, absoluteness of God, seems to be in strained relations with that of the divine per- SUPERSTRUCTURE OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS 95 sonality. The concept, absoluteness, since it exalts God above everything finite, seems to exclude not only all gross anthropo morphisms, but also all psychological concepts in general and all analogies of human personal life from the correct knowl edge of God, and places us before the dilemma of either drag ging God down to the finite, or else making him unusable and incomprehensible for our religious life.1 Note to §49 : 2 1. How we manipulate and metaphysicize the God-idea till it is religiously valueless! Look at Neo-Platonism, for instance, with its " super-essential existence." Ultimate reality is set forth in symbols, to be sure, for religious people; but is there any reality which is not so set forth ? 3. Two speculative attempts have been made to solve this difficulty, (a) On the one side there is the attempt to affirm the psychological conception that we apply to God as an ade quate presentation of the form of the divine Being and work. But since these concepts never admit being developed to full clearness and freedom from contradiction, they ever prove to be inadequate with reference to the form of God's inner life and mode of operation, (b) On the other side there is the attempt to purify the psychological concepts of all inadequate elements, and in this way to attain to a purely logical knowl edge of God. But this goal of purification is never entirely reached (witness Lotze and Weisse),1 and as regards the God- idea precisely that is lost in this way which is the main thing to the Christian faith, viz. a divine purpose, an end, a dispo sition that we know of, because it is like the human. Note to §49 : 3 -< -, 1. By the time you have left out all that does not apply to God (Lotze), you have left vox et preterea nihil. If you say that God is personal, but that his personality is not of our kind (Weisse), what knowledge can we have of it? (This is like saying miracles are ac cording to law, but a higher law than any yet discovered, whereas we , do not know whether or not there is any such higher law.) 4. Hence we must substitute critical insight for these specu lative endeavors. To begin with, that dilemma is falsely put. To be sure, all the psychological analogies applied to God may 96 CHRISTIANITY IN ITS MODERN EXPRESSION not be considered as adequate delineations of the form of the super-temporal inner life of God.1 But they do not seek to be adequate,2 although they are the indispensable, thoroughly correct and clear designations of the content and direction of the divine nature and work revealed in Christ and knowable to faith. Note to §49 : 4 1. The modern notion of personality contradicts the old notion of substance (oi