still has no end_, is just as decisive for us. The end of each of the six
days is mentioned by the solemn repetition of the words: "And the evening
and the morning were the first day," etc.; but it is not mentioned in
regard to the seventh day. Now if, according to the meaning of the author,
the seventh day had also had its end like any of the six preceding days, he
would at the seventh and _last_ day have had _double reason_ for mentioning
its end; and the omission of that concluding word would indeed be
inconceivable. When Dillman says: "The formula 'and (it became) the
evening' is wanting, because the account is here at an end, and is no
longer to be carried over to another day, and because for that reason its
designation as seventh day is presupposed in v. 2," we have to reply that,
under the supposition of the days of creation having {302} been common
earthly days, a carrying over of the account to further days was certainly
to be expected, even if from nothing else than the formula: "And the
evening and the morning were the first day," etc. For then the human weeks
could have followed the week of God, in which man, following the divine
example, would have had to work six days and to rest one. The same
commentator says (p. 24): "The author could not even have dared make a
statement about the life-duration of the first men, if to him the day in
which he was created had been an indefinitely long period of time." But,
according to the conception of the Biblical author supposed by us, only the
"day of God," in which he was created, would have been an indefinitely long
period of time (although we are not willing to identify the days of God
with certain earthly periods of time); the earthly days and the earthly
years, on the other hand, would have their existence after the fourth day
of creation, and thus, according to that view, we could estimate and name
the earthly years and days of all that which happened before the fourth day
of creation, under the condition that we have, or believe we have, the
means of estimating them. When Dillmann continues: "On the contrary, the
author took these days as nothing else than days," we wholly agree with
him; but add to it: "not days of the creature, but days of God."
By this long duration of the seventh day, we are obliged to draw still
another conclusion; namely, that according to the conception of the author
the six preceding days also must have far exceeded the duration of earthly
days. This leads us to another Biblical analogy, whose direct power of
demonstration for a long {303} duration of the Biblical days of creation
is, it is true, justly contested, but which, as soon as we have to assume
for other reasons that according to the author the days of creation far
exceed the earthly days as to duration, becomes a strong support of this
view. For it is certainly not unimportant that in the 90th Psalm, the psalm
of Moses, the mediator of the Sinaitical legislation, to the circle of
ideas of which that account of the creation so entirely belongs, the
thought is expressed which is also taken up in the second letter of St.
Peter, with its developed cosmological conceptions: namely, the thought
"that one day _is_ with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years
as one day."
With that exegesis of the seventh day as one still remaining up to the
present, we are in clear accord with the more developed theology of the New
Testament, and with the interpretation which it itself gives of that divine
day of rest. Jesus himself, in St. John, V. 17, puts aside a reproach of
the Pharisees in reference to a healing on the Sabbath, with the words: "My
father worketh hitherto, and I work." This answer only has a meaning in the
sense: my father worketh hitherto, although, since the accomplishment of
the days of creation, he enjoys the Sabbath-rest; and thus I also work on
the Sabbath as on a work-day. And the Letter to the Hebrews, in its fourth
chapter, looks through the medium of the ninety-fifth Psalm back to this
Sabbath of creation which, as a day of rest of God, exists to-day, and the
entering into which is given and promised to the people of God.
By this whole conception of the Biblical week of creation, which appears to
us _exegetically_ much more {304} natural and unconstrained than any other,
we alone reach that conception which the author of that record _intends to_
reach; namely, a conception really worthy of God, of his temporal relation
to the world, and of the relation of human days to the divine days of
creation; we get a foundation for the commandment to keep the Sabbath, the
idea of which can be completed without disturbing the idea of God. The
relation of God to the whole temporal course of this present world, from
its beginning to its end, for the religious mode of contemplation of man
who, as the image of God, looks to the creative activity of God for a
prototype and an example for his own activity, can be comprised in one
single, great, divine week, whose first six days last to the completion of
the creation of man, and whose seventh day still lasts and will last to the
completion of the course of the world--till the latter itself, and mankind
with it, can enter into the divine rest.
From this religious interpretation, which we have to ascribe to that
Biblical idea of the divine week of creation, it by no means follows that
religion has to demand of natural science that it shall reach in its
cosmogonic investigations the same succession in the appearance of things
as we find in the Biblical account. This would be nothing else but an
actual carrying of a pretended religious interest over beyond the limits of
a realm in which the deciding vote belongs to natural science. However
incomplete the cosmogonic knowledge of the latter may be, it nevertheless
is at present established clearly enough to reject forever such a demand.
Astronomy convinces us that it is entirely inconceivable that all which
belongs to the work of the fourth Biblical day of creation, even {305} the
whole formation of stars and of our system of planets, _succeeded_ the work
of the third day, the formation of earthly continents and plants. And
geology in its strata, which exhibit petrifactions, shows us that the
relative Biblical days' works in reality did not succeed one another
alternately in such a way that the one began where the other ceased, but
that from the beginning of organic life the works of the third and the
fifth days from the carboniferous period, also the works of the third,
fifth, and sixth days, developed themselves perfectly by the side of each
other. It would be an excess of refinement to identify any Biblical day of
creation with any period or any complex of periods in the development of
the earth or of the world.
On the other hand, for a Christianity founded upon the Holy Scripture, it
is still not entirely without interest to compare _the results of natural
science and the extent and succession of the Biblical days' works with one
another_. For a declaration which undertakes to trace something which has
so deep a hold on human life as the Sabbath-rest, back to the prototype of
directly divine action, is certainly worthy of attention. Now if we wish to
make such a comparison, we can only do it in exact analogy with the way and
manner in which we compare the predictions of the prophetical word with
their fulfilment. For in so far as the declarations of that Biblical record
about the circumstances of creation have religious value of which we are to
take notice, they as declarations concerning events of which man certainly
cannot have historical knowledge of his own, come entirely under the point
of view of the _prophetical word_; with the exception that they do not
contain a forward-looking but a {306} _backward-looking prophecy_. This is
one of the most correct and fruitful thoughts which Johann Heinrich Kurz,
in his "Bibel und Astronomie" ("Bible and Astronomy"), Berlin, Wohlgemuth,
1st edition, 1842, has expressed, but has fantastically misused, in that
work, in general so prolific of indefensible positions; a fate which, as is
well known, the forward-looking prophecy has had also often enough to
undergo.
In the same manner as we have to explain the forward-looking prophecy from
two factors--on the one hand, from the circumstances of time, the
knowledge, the dispositions, and the characters of prophets; on the other,
from the receptivity of their mind for the mind of God and the last
purposes of his actions--we also have explained that record of creation
from two factors: on the one hand, from the view and the knowledge of its
time, and on the other from the receptivity of its author for a pure and
living idea of God and of the religious relations of human life. And we
shall also have to do likewise when interpreting it. For the interpretation
of the forward-looking prophecy, we have behind us the experience of
thousands of years, from which the following principles, of treatment and
interpretation have resulted. As long as such a prophetic word is not yet
fulfilled, so long, indeed, its meaning is and remains the object of
Christian faith and Christian hope; but it is difficult and almost
impossible to distinguish in it, what is lasting substance, and what is
transient form. Perhaps many a thing is looked upon as substance, which in
the fulfilment appears to be only an image and form; and perhaps many a
thing as form, which in the fulfilment shows itself as a more concrete
reality than we had supposed. {307} And it would even be psychologically a
violent assumption, if we should presuppose in the mind of the prophet a
still greater knowledge of the future course of things, than that which he
expresses; or if we should separate him in his worldly knowledge, and even
in the form of his prophetic utterances, from the views and limits of his
time. But by far the most fruitless effort of all would be to construct
beforehand out of his words the particulars of the historical course of the
future. Attempts of this kind have been defeated whenever they have been
made. But if the fulfilment of such a prophetic word has once taken place,
it is a joy and a strengthening of faith to all following generations, and
even after the final fulfilment of all prophecy, it will still be a joy to
the children of God in their perfection, to compare prophecy and fulfilment
and to allow the prophecy to be illumined by the light of fulfilment, the
fulfilment by that of prophecy.
All this finds its full application to the Biblical narrative of creation.
That which in the forward-looking prophecy is the historical fulfilment, is
in the backward-looking the scientific investigation. So long as the latter
was not directed at all to the prehistoric history of the earth, it was an
audacious undertaking to separate in the Biblical six days' work substance
and form from one another; it was and is still an unpsychological violence
to suppose in the human author of the narrative all possible knowledge of
psychical and scientific secrets, and to lift him above the child-like
views of his time concerning the things of this world. But it was by far
the most fruitless undertaking to construct in detail from his words a
picture of the real {308} circumstances of the creation and development of
the world. Attempts of this kind have been often made; but they have
produced nothing but dreams. And certainly the attempt to control and
correct natural investigation by means of such dreams would be like trying
to correct well-established facts of history by the prophecies of a still
earlier period, or even to prove them false. But from the time when natural
science, as it is at present, began to pay attention to the prehistoric
history of the earth and even of the universe, such a comparison has been
possible.
It tells us, it is true, that the Biblical days' works did not follow each
other in the course of earthly and cosmic developments in such a way, that
the one began where the other ceased, but that they passed on in the long
lines of their course, beside one another, and above one another. But
looking upon their _meridian altitudes_, they nevertheless, where we are
able to undertake certain geological comparisons, follow one another
exactly in the same order in which the days follow one another in that
Biblical record. The meridian altitude of the _third day_ (for here the
certainty of geological knowledge first begins for us) has to be looked for
where the continents are formed and the vegetable life preponderates on
earth: and that is the _carboniferous period_. The meridian altitude of the
_fourth day_ must have been reached where for the first time the covering
of vapor and clouds of the earthly atmosphere permanently parted, and sun,
moon, and stars became visible: and geology finds this time in the period
which lies between the carboniferous period and the trias--in the _Permian
period_, as it is called in England, in the _dyas_ of the {309}
fossiliferous and of cupriferous slate and _Zechstein_, as we call it in
Germany. The meridian altitude of the _fifth day_ has to be looked for
where ocean-life, with its sauria and innumerable animals, gave its impress
to organic life on earth, and the air was filled with inhabitants: geology
calls such a time the _secondary period_ of trias, Iura, and chalk. That
ocean-life preponderated in this period, is beyond any doubt; while in
general geology gives us more meagre information about the inhabitants of
the air than of the animals of the ocean and land. The flying sauria of
Iura are still characteristic enough to leave at least the possibility that
the winged world, which in value still stands below the mammalia, assisted
in giving to that secondary period its proper type. Finally, the meridian
altitude of the _sixth day_ cannot be anywhere else than where the animals
of the land became the most characteristic inhabitants of the globe, and
where man appeared: and that is the tertiary period of geology, in which
mammalia appeared in great numbers and variety, and at the end of which we
find the first traces of the appearance of man.
We nevertheless do not assign special weight to the establishment of such a
correspondence. The religious value of the idea of a divine week of
creation is rendered perfectly certain to us, if we only find that it is
reconcilable with a pure idea of God. That would not be the case, if we had
to look upon the week of creation as an earthly week; but it is perfectly
so, if the divine week stretches over the whole temporality of the course
of the world. Therewith we can be satisfied. For we have neither
theological nor philosophical nor {310} scientific evidences enough to draw
from these Biblical utterances any _metaphysical conclusions_ in reference
to the relations of God to the temporal development of the world. We should
not dare to contest directly such metaphysical relations: for the human
week, with its day of rest, is such an eminently fortunate and blissful
invitation, the observance of this command is accompanied by such a
striking prosperity in all life-relations of a people, its non-observance
by such an evident curse, and, moreover, the idea of man bearing the image
of God is such a fruitful idea, satisfying equally spirit and mind, that we
have to remember the possibility that the institution of the human week,
with its day of rest, is certainly founded on the real relations of the
life-process of that creature which bears the image of God to the activity
of its divine prototype upon the earth. But nevertheless, we just as little
dare to attempt or to challenge the establishment of such metaphysical
relations: for a theosophistic treatment of numbers seems to us no fruitful
field for the promotion of religion--neither for the promotion of religious
knowledge nor for that of religious life.
Still, however, the result of our comparison between Biblical and
scientific interpretation seems to us worth mentioning for a special
reason. It is true, we have found a succession of the _meridian altitudes_
of the Biblical days in the same order in which, according to the Biblical
relation, the days' works followed one another; but we have found in the
_total course_ of the Biblical days that their works in reality passed on
in long lines contemporaneously with one another. Now, since that first
part of our result--the succession of _meridian {311} altitudes_--is the
least we have to expect, if the counting of the days shall at all have an
objectively real ground in the world's process, on the other hand, the
second part of our result--the far-reaching contemporary existence of the
different Biblical days--has an exact analogy with those prophecies whose
partial or entire fulfilment permits us a more certain judgment of the
character of prophecy and a more certain comparison between prophecy and
fulfilment. Even the prophetic world knows of a divine day, which in the
prophecies occupies an eminent and central position: it is the day of the
Lord as the day of judgment and salvation. This day of the Lord also stands
before the eye of the prophet, certainly not as a common earthly day of
twenty-four hours, but as a day of God rising above earthly days and
embracing an infinite number of them, although it also has its very
distinct meaning which comes into the earthly temporality. But in the
historic fulfilment, there happen along with it a thousand things which do
not belong to it; for two-thirds of mankind that day did not dawn at all;
and as to its temporal course, it had its dawn in the beginnings of
mankind,--its sunrise took place eighteen hundred years ago, and its
meridian altitude is still impending.
Finally, that even the piety of those who composed the Biblical records,
and of all those who see in them the manifested evidences of their faith,
assigns no religious weight to the succession of the days' works, becomes
clear from the before-mentioned fact, that the second account of creation,
which makes man and his ethical primitive history its centre, relates the
creation of the inhabitants of the earth in quite a different order from
{312} the first one. We shall treat of this point again, and more in
detail, for another reason, in the following section.
We still have to treat of the question as to what position the Holy
Scripture and Biblical Christianity take regarding a _development in
general_: and here also we have only to say that they are very favorable to
such an idea. The works of the six days themselves are in their succession
nothing else but a development, a permanent differentiation of that which
was not separated before, a continuous unfolding of the more simple into
the more complex, an always progressing preparation of the globe for newer
and higher forms of existence, until finally man appeared. In the Biblical
account of creation, the idea which forms the basis of every evolution
theory, (namely, that the new which appears has its conditions and
suppositions, its creative secondary reasons, in the preceding), is
pronounced with special clearness. When it says: "Let the Earth bring forth
grass and herb,... and the earth brought forth," etc.; "And God said: Let
the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life,"
etc.; "Let the earth bring forth the living creature; and it was so;" and
"God made the beast of the earth,"--the creative causality also is
mentioned in the clearest words by the side of and under the causality of
the Creator, by means of which the latter had made creatures. The friendly
relation between the Biblical account and the evolution theory even goes so
far that the Holy Scripture, like that theory, does not permit animals to
come forth from plants, although the latter represent the lower, the former
the higher, and that, plants are a {313} necessary condition for animals,
but that even according to the Bible both kingdoms come forth from the
inorganic of the earth. When treating of the creation of plants, it says,
"Let the earth bring forth grass," etc.; and when treating of that of
animals, it says, "Let the earth bring forth the living creature." At last,
if science should once succeed in perceiving more clearly than now the
origin of the organic from the inorganic, it would have in those words the
means for a harmony with the Biblical conception.
Now, just as evidently as the Holy Scripture is favorable, in general and
as a whole, to the idea of evolution, so certainly it seems to reject it
precisely at that point where the whole interest of our question lies;
namely, in reference to the origin of the single species. For here, when
treating of the creation of plants as well us of animals, it is said in
most distinct words: "_after his kind_." But the contradiction is only
apparent. As to the way and manner in which God created every species,
whether he used secondary causes or not, nothing else is said than that God
created every species, that the creatures exist in distinctly marked
species, and that these species are not chance, but lie in the plan of
God--that they are his work. This fact, that it was God who wished to
create each species as species, and in reality created it, is just as
firmly established, if the species came forth from one another and were
developed in gradual transitions, as if they received their existence in
some other way. As, in the fifth day's work, we find simply the words: "And
God said, _Let the earth bring forth_ the living creature: and it was so;"
and "_God made_ the beast of the earth,"--in precisely the same way {314}
God could indeed _create_ single plants and animals _after their kind_, in
such a way that one should come forth from another, that they should be
developed from one another.
§ 2. _The Creation of Man._
The most important facts which we have to mention, as bearing upon the
position of the Christian doctrine of the creation of man in reference to
the evolution theory, have been treated of in Chapter I, _A_. We have
especially convinced ourselves of the fact, that the new, even if it has
its secondary causes, and comes into existence in gradual development, is
no less a creation of God, and has no less the full value of the new, than
if it were created instantaneously. Likewise man also stands before us
untouched in the full newness and dignity of his being, in the full
qualitative and not simply quantitative superiority of the highest gifts of
his mind, and especially of his personality, his ego, his liberty,--in one
word, in his full image of God,--whether we have to look upon him as
created in gradual development or as created suddenly.
There are two circumstances in the Biblical account from which we see that,
although it is naturally silent as to the descent problem, it not only
knows and acknowledges the connection of man with the lower creatures of
the earth, but also expressly directs attention to it.
One of these circumstances is connecting man's creation with that of
land-animals, in a single day's work. We do not lay more stress on this
union than that of the Holy Scripture, although it emphasizes so strongly
the dignity of man in his likeness to God and in his having entire {315}
supremacy over the whole earth, and although it could have found therein
reasons enough for assigning a proper day to the creation of man, to which
the whole preceding creation pointed, and whom the whole creation on earth
should serve, yet in its account of the creation it evidently desires man
to be looked upon in his connection as a creature with the animal world.
Moreover, we should not overlook, in the Biblical account, that the
benediction which God gives to the animals of the water and the air, at the
end of the fifth day, is in the sixth day not pronounced over the
land-animals--although they certainly are as much entitled to it as fish
and birds--but over man. Of course, it is presupposed that the land-animals
naturally partake of the benediction of man, so far as it can be due to
them; the benediction, namely, of fertility and of increase. According to
these indications and to the Biblical conception, man stands in still
another and closer connection with the animal world than in that of mere
supremacy over it.
The second circumstance to which we have to call attention, is the
declaration (Genesis II, 7), that God created man out of earth; or rather,
as the literal translation says: "_And the Lord God formed man (of) dust of
the ground._" It is of no importance whether the accusative "dust of the
ground" is, as some say, a mere appositive, or, as others explain it, the
accusative of matter. When the account calls man dust of the ground, or a
being formed of dust, the difference is infinitely insignificant, whether
the earthly matter out of which God formed man who is dust of the earth,
was an animal organism or not; whether man was formed {316} directly or
indirectly out of the earth, and whether the forming demanded a longer or a
shorter time. For that it did demand time, and that it was not an
instantaneous creation, is implied in the expression "to form."
We call attention to this passage for still another reason. The second
account of creation, as it begins Genesis II, 4, and goes on to the end of
the third chapter, is strikingly different from the first account, Genesis
I-Genesis II, 4. It has its origin in that author whose book is called that
of the Jehovist, or, more lately, the judaico-prophetic book; and who,
among all those that have contributed stones to the building of the
Pentateuch, gives the deepest insight into the nature of sin and grace, and
into the divine plan of salvation. Now in this book, from the religious
point of view so extremely worthy of attention, the account of the creation
is given quite differently. Man is the centre of the account; that which
does not directly refer to him is entirely omitted. The order in which the
inhabitants of the earth were created, is not only not divided into the six
day's works of the first account, and in verse 4 is not only directly taken
as the work of a single day, in the expression [Hebrew: BAYWOM] (in the
day, in which = when), without especial stress being put upon the
expression "one day," for [Hebrew: BAYWOM] has become a particle; but this
order is entirely different from the other. In the second account, the
succession is the following: "first, man; then, the paradise into which man
is placed; next, the trees (the question at what time the rest of the
vegetable world was created is left entirely without answer); then, the
determination to create also an assistant to man; next, the creation of
animals; finally, the creation of the woman out {317} of a rib of man."
Now, although it is wholly beyond doubt that the two accounts had different
authors, the question will nevertheless arise, how it was possible that
those who inserted these two accounts in the Holy Scripture, one after the
other, could so harmlessly put side by side and read one after the other
these two accounts, so entirely contradictory, without being obliged to
think that the truth of the one would refute the other. They certainly must
have had in some way the conviction that the one account was consistent
with the other. But such an agreement between the two accounts is only
possible when we either see in them only ideal truths, or when one of the
two shall represent the actual reality of the circumstances of creation,
and the other rather their ideal character. In case we should have to make
such a distinction, it cannot be doubtful which of the two accounts has
more of the real, and which more of the ideal character. In the first
account nothing is related which does not give direct points of connection
in the real process, as we can imagine it. In the second account, we find
many points which hardly permit a direct literal conception, even on the
part of the first readers of the account and of the editors of the canon of
the Old Testament: for instance, besides the different order in which the
first account is given, the creation of the woman out of the rib of man:
this account, when ideally taken, is so inexpressibly comprehensive,
pregnant, and deep--when taken really, so perfectly improbable. It will be
likewise difficult to believe that even the old readers of the account--at
least those of them who looked deeper and were more enlightened--took with
extreme {318} literalness the expression, that God breathed into the
nostrils of man who is dust of the ground, the breath of life. The third
chapter has still other features from which we have at least to assume that
the author did not at all intend to give importance to an extremely literal
conception of it. Now, if the second account is the more ideal one, the
meaning of it is: that man, his being, his aim, his primitive history, is
made the centre of the entire description, and around him all the rest is
grouped; while in the first account he appears to be more the end of the
whole creation--as he presents himself to natural investigation in the real
process of creation, as the last member in the chain, not as the centre in
a circle or a star. Now if that is the case, if the second account of
creation, having man as its centre, is the more ideal, then we certainly
must not overlook the fact that in the ideal account man is called dust of
the ground. Then the nature of dust also belongs, from the ideal point of
view, so necessarily to the nature of man that the question, whether the
connection of this man who is dust of the ground, with this ground, is
brought about through the form of a preceding animal organism, or not, is
no longer of importance. Therefore, if we oppose the animal ancestry of man
for the general reasons that we do not wish to descend from something
lower, that lower nevertheless is present as dust of the ground. And if we
oppose such a pedigree on account of the ugliness and wickedness which
exist in the animal world, we have to point to the fact that, on the one
hand, mankind also has stains which are uglier than those which disfigure
the wildest beast of prey, and that, on the other hand, the animal world
shows features which {319} are so noble that no man need be ashamed of
them. It is certainly a right feeling to which Darwin, in his "Descent of
Man," gives expression, when he says: "For my own part, I would as soon be
descended from that heroic little monkey who braved his dreaded enemy in
order to save the life of his keeper, or from that old baboon who,
descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade
from a crowd of astonished dogs, as from a savage who delights to torture
his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without
remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by
the grossest superstitions." We have but to add:--if only the coming forth
from the creative hand of God, the creation in his own image, the communion
with Him and being a child of His, are preserved. And that all this can be
preserved, even when adopting descent and evolution, we have seen from
repeated considerations.
But we have to draw still another conclusion from the difference between
the two accounts of creation. If the succession, in which the inhabitants
of the earth appear in the first account, is so entirely different from
that in the second, as it evidently is, we have necessarily either to give
up the historical reality of the one or of the other account, or of both,
or to suppose that the creation of the inhabitants of the earth took place
in a way and manner which makes it possible to perceive a _real_ connection
of the succession in the first account, _as well as_ in that of the second,
with the real processes of creation. Now we do not at all intend to argue
with those who choose the first part of the dilemma; we ourselves join with
them, and believe that salvation does {320} not depend upon the objective
reality of that succession, nor the possession of salvation on the faith of
such reality. But we leave to the consideration of those who, in their
religious convictions, think themselves bound to the objective reality of
both accounts, the following thoughts: If not only ideal depth, but also a
connection with the empirical and historical reality of the process of
creation, is to be assigned to the succession of the first account as well
as to that of the second, it is only possible by assuming a
descent--namely, that man, _e.g._, may be called in one sense the first of
creatures, inasmuch as with the first organism that was already given which
was afterwards developed into man, and inasmuch as all which was otherwise
created and developed as aspecial species, was only present on account of
that aim; and that man in another, in the merely empirico-historical sense,
is still also the last of creatures. Thus, then, the advocates of descent
would find themselves in the unaccustomed position, equally surprising to
friend and foe, of being in a much more friendly relation to the Biblical
belief in revealed religion than their opponents. We should see the
apparent discords not only between Scripture and nature, but also between
account and account, dissolved into harmony, and above the double relation
of the two accounts we should see the morphological ideas of Oken and
Göthe, the ideas of types of Cuvier, Agassiz, and Owen, the laws of
development of K. E. von Baer, and finally the ideas of descent of Lamarck
and Darwin, reach a friendly hand to one another. And even the old joys of
a teleological view of nature, adorned indeed with queue and wig, but at
present rejected with too much disdain, even if they {321} are called
ichthyo-teleological and insecto-teleological, would attain in this
reconciliation their modest, subordinate place. Moreover, we should then
have the satisfaction of seeing again that a religiousness which in its own
realm gives absolutely free play to natural investigation, and does not
find it beneath its dignity to learn from natural science, can on that
account retain its own autonomy in its own realm much more uncontestedly;
and that, as it seems to us in the present case, it can go much farther in
the use which it makes of its autonomy and in the extension of the revealed
character of its religious records to physical processes and circumstances,
than is either necessary or safe, and that it nevertheless is rewarded for
keeping peace with natural science by more rich, more living, and more
correct glimpses into the harmony between the word of God and the work of
God, than would be the case with a religiousness which, without regard to
natural science, weaves its cosmogonies from the Holy Scripture alone.
§ 3. _The Primitive Condition of Man: Paradise, the Fall of Man, and
Primitive History._
After the Holy Scripture has narrated the creation of man in two accounts,
the second of them gives us a continuation in the well-known account of
Paradise and of the fall of man, with its consequences; and the further
development, of the Biblical doctrine, as well as of Christian theology,
has also taken the substance and quintessence of these narratives into its
representation of the Christian truths of salvation.
We shall not throw any obstacles in the way of bringing about an
understanding between the Darwinian views {322} and the Biblical primitive
history, by acknowledging the justice of the view that Christian piety
might in some way contain in itself the demand that also the form in which
the facts of truth in Genesis III are given to us, has historical reality.
He who makes this demand has only his own short-sightedness and imprudence
to blame, if he also loses the substance with the form, the figurative
nature of which can be shown to him only too certainly. We acknowledge it
as a real providence of God, which intends faithfully to guard believing
man against a senseless and slavish adherence to the letter, and against
grounding his means of salvation upon insecure foundations, that at the
grand and venerable portal of Holy Scripture two accounts stand peacefully
beside one another, which, if we penetrate through the form into their
substance, complete one another in magnificent and profound harmony, but
which, if we look upon the form as their substance, so diametrically
contradict each other that we cannot do anything else but reject the one or
the other, or, still more logically, both. We think that this hint is
strong enough to be understood, and bears, like all bowing before truth and
its power of conviction, rich fruit not only for our knowledge, but also
for the purity, certainty, and richness of our religiousness. We shall not
lose by this acknowledgment the character of revelation and the impression
of the truth of these Biblical records, but shall be able through them, and
through them alone, to gain and perceive it. It is true, the first account,
and still more the second--the account of the creation and of the primitive
history of man--has in its external form an exceedingly close relationship
to the poetical myths of the ancient nations of the Orient; but {323} its
difference does not consist essentially in the form--although this too,
being the form of a true and correct substance, shows differences enough
from these heathen myths--but consists in the substance itself. These
heathen myths certainly contain many beautiful, deep, and true factors, but
always, besides, fundamental ideas which we have to reject as half-true or
wholly erroneous: sometimes a dualistic conception of God and the world,
sometimes a materialization of the divine, the spiritual, and the ethical,
sometimes fatalistic and sometimes magic elements in great number. These
Biblical representations, on the other hand, certainly appear to us still
in a picturesque form which is analogous to that formation of myth; for it
really seems to be the only form in which the mind of man, in his first
epoch of life, was able to perceive and represent supernatural and ethical
truth, as we are to-day able to represent the highest relations of our mind
to the supernatural and the ethical only in pictures and parables; but the
Biblical representations offer us, under this plastic covering, a substance
which, in view of the most extensive criticism, of the deepest speculation,
and of the most enlightened and practically most successful piety, is still
established as the purest, the most correct, and the most fruitful
representation of the nature of God, and of the ethical nature and the
ethical history of man.
Moreover, we shall not make it difficult to bring about an understanding
between the Darwinian theories and the Biblical doctrine, by supporting the
other view taught by the Holy Scripture--that death came into the animal
world first through the fall of man, and that the fall of man first brought
the character of perishableness {324} into the condition of the earth or
even of the universe. There are essentially three Biblical passages to
which those refer who think that they find such a view in the Holy
Scripture; namely, Romans V, 12; Romans VIII, 19-23, and Genesis III; but
they are wrong. That the Apostle Paul, in Romans V, 12, by the world, into
which death came through sin, did not mean the universe or the globe, but
mankind, is plain enough from the connection, and is only demanded by the
difference of meaning which in the Greek, as well as in the German
language, the word "world" has according to its connection. And in Romans
VIII, 19-23, where he speaks of the subjection of the creature to vanity,
he does not mention a certain time in which it happened, nor an historical
occasion, as the fall of man, which should have given the impulse to this
subjection; but he only says, in general, that it was God who "hath
subjected the creature to vanity," and that he hath "subjected the same _in
hope_." He who reads this passage without prepossession, can be led to no
other idea than to this: that God has subjected the creature to the law of
vanity from the very beginning of creation--not forever, but from the very
beginning--with the intention that he shall also celebrate his
transfiguration and deliverance from the yoke of perishableness, together
with the perfection of mankind, and with the manifestation and
transfiguration of the children of God. And even the curse of the ground
(Genesis III, 17) is no cursing of the universe, or of the globe and its
creatures, but only a cursing of _the ground_; and of this not on its own
account, but only in its relation, as a means of subsistence, to man, and
in opposition to the {325} exemption from labor which his life hitherto
had, and to the agreeableness of his means of support in paradise.
After having thus rejected these two perversions of the Biblical doctrine,
there remains to us as an established substance of the latter, and as an
essential part of Christian dogmatics, so far as it may come into contact
with the _Darwinian_ views, at least the following: Man was originally
created by God, good and happy. To his goodness there also belonged the
possibility of having a sinless development, as he ought to have had; and
to his happiness there also belonged a life amid surroundings wholly
corresponding to him, and the possibility of obtaining exemption from death
and all evils by way of a self-controlling submission to God, which resists
temptation. We purposely express ourselves thus. For the Biblical primitive
history does not say that man was _created_ with exemption from the law of
death, but that the latter must have been _granted_ to him as a reward for
his submission: the tree of life stood _by the side of_ the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, and only the eating of the fruit of the tree of
life, by avoiding the eating of the forbidden fruit, should have given to
man that immortality which he forfeited by disobedience. Man became
disobedient, and, in consequence of it, subject to death; the harmony
between man and his surroundings disappeared; the earth became to him a
place of labor and of death; and now began for man his historical
development as a web of guilt, of punishment, and of education and
redeeming mercy.
Now, in the presence of this Biblical view, the question comes up first of
all: is a view according to which man should have been able and obliged to
take a sinless {326} development, and, in case he had taken it, should have
been exempt from the fate of death and of the ills preceding it, and
endowed with immortality as to body and soul--is such a view in any way
reconcilable with the Darwinian ideas of development, according to which
man came forth from the series of lower organisms, subject to death?
We could avoid answering this question by a deduction similar to that which
we drew in Chap. I, § 3, when treating of the question of the
reconcilableness of the idea of evolution with theism, but of which we
likewise made no use. We could show that in this question no other
difficulties present themselves to the religious consciousness, than such
as existed long before the appearance of the Darwinian theories and were
overcome by pious consciousness and religious reasoning. For a difficulty
entirely similar to that which here appears to us, when looking upon the
whole human _species_ and its origin, stood before us heretofore, when
looking upon the human _individual_ and his origin. From the standpoint of
Biblical Christianity, we ascribe to the human individual an immortality of
the soul and a coming resurrection of the body; but we do not to the human
embryo at the beginning of its development in the womb. Now we know that
the development of man from that embryo to perfect man is wholly gradual;
that we cannot observe and predicate of any organ, of any quality, of any
activity of body, soul, or mind, exactly the moment when it comes into
existence; and that therefore we cannot give the moment when we could
assume that something so decidedly great and new as the immortality of the
soul and the prospect of a {327} resurrection of the body, begins for the
human individual. Although we know all this, nevertheless in all
discussions of the question whether we have to hope for an immortality of
the soul and a resurrection of the body, the gradual development has hardly
ever been, so far as we know, a weight--in any case, never the decisive
weight--in the balance _against_ the supposition of an immortality. If we
can look upon the idea of an immortality of the soul and of a resurrection
of the body as reconcilable with the fact, that the human individual was
only developed gradually out of something which was still soulless and
perishable, we also have to look upon the other fact as reconcilable with
the gradual development of the whole _species_; namely, that man, if he
should have developed himself without sin, would have reached an
immortality of body and soul. But we shall not enter this path which would
lead us around the whole question. For the objection might be made, that
the scientific and philosophic impossibility of assuming an eternal
duration of an individual that originated in time, has, indeed, always been
pointed out, and only the _assertion_, not the _proof_, of the contrary has
been opposed to it; but that Darwinism puts this impossibility into new and
full light. Therefore, if we wish to reach a certain basis for our
conviction, nothing else remains to us but to enter upon that question
wholly and exclusively from Darwinian premises.
Now these premises, indeed, indicate to us a _development_ of things, but a
development of such a kind that there appears to us something new, and
always new in a rising line. The rising of this line of development
consists in the fact that the spiritual comes forth from the {328} natural
in permanent progress and in always higher development: that mind
vanquishes matter. The first new thing which meets us in the development of
the globe, is the organic and life; the second, sensation and
consciousness; the third, self-consciousness and free-will. Now let us once
suppose imaginary human spectators of every first appearance of these
phenomena. Would he who thus far had only known inorganic phenomena and
processes, have dared, before the appearance of life, to utter the
proposition: matter can also become living and live? And who would have
dared to suggest the further doctrine: matter can also feel and get a
consciousness of things? Finally, who would have dared even to say: matter
can also become a self-conscious and free personality? To every person who
would have pronounced such dreams of the future, there would have been
opposed, apparently with full right, the inviolable mechanism of the
inorganic world. But all this nevertheless took place. If something
material can be led so far that a personality lives in it, that, with the
assistance of this material basis, is able to perceive the ideas and the
eternal, that can act in accordance with aims and designs and can set
itself the highest aims, and that may even enter upon a loving and
child-like relation to the highest primitive cause of all things, then we
are no longer permitted to say that the material, of which the body of such
a personality consists, could not have been subjected to the service of
such a personality so far, that the latter could have vanquished the
elements of the destruction of life in an eternal process of spontaneous
renewal.
It is true, with such a concession alone we have not {329} gained anything
directly. For _in abstracto_ everything is finally conceivable which does
not contradict the logical laws of reasoning--even the basilisk and the
mountain of diamonds in stories and fairy tales. But such an _abstract_
conceivableness has not the least value for the knowledge of the _real_,
nor even for the knowledge of the _really possible_. For in the world of
being and becoming, everything in its last elements, forces, qualities, and
laws, as well as in the last causes of its development, is something so
absolutely _given_, that only afterward are we able to analyze that which
is present, from our observations, or to follow from the given factors that
which can be, or which under other conditions would have become different,
and that we are not able to synthetically construct the one or the other in
advance, independently from the factors of reality. If, therefore, that
concession shall attain a scientific value, and if the conditional
sentence: Man would not have been subject to death if he had not sinned, is
to become an admitted and unassailable part of Christian theology, we have
to look in the realm of phenomena, and in the course of that which took
place, for _facts_ which _prove_ that man, if he had not committed sin,
would not have died, and which thus change that merely abstract,
possibility into a real one.
Now we have such a fact in the _resurrection of the Lord_. If it really
took place, then it is the last earthly stage in the course of the Lord's
work of Redemption, and then it permits us to draw conclusions backwards as
to what would have become of man, if he had not been in need of this
redemption, if he had had a sinless development instead of one with sin.
{330}
We know very well that in mentioning this fact we meet not only the
opposition of those who contest a teleological, theistic, and especially a
Christian view of the world, but also the natural doubts of those who
defend with warm interest teleology and the ethical fundamentals and
productive forces of Christianity, but who think it more advisable to pass
over the whole question of the resurrection in cautious silence. The main
consideration which hinders them from believing in the reality of the
resurrection of Jesus Christ, is not the want of historical attestation,
but rather the absolute want of any attested analogy in the other events
which have taken place on the earth. What we commonly see and witness in
the dead, is without exception precisely the opposite of that which is
related about the further fate of Jesus crucified. Now we have repeatedly
had occasion to point out that the want of analogy cannot at all be a proof
of a fact's not having taken place, supposing it otherwise well
established. Especially if a _development_ of events follows aims, it lies
in the nature of this development that in its course in all the places
where we really and actually can speak of a development, of a process,
things appear and must appear which were not present before, and which,
even if they once appeared, nevertheless need not necessarily be repeated,
except at certain times which correspond to the plan of development;
namely, when "their time has come." All these are events which are wanting
in analogy, but which cannot be doubted at all on that account. That was
the case with the first appearance of organic life, also with the first
appearance of beings having sensation and consciousness; moreover, it was
the case with the first appearance of each of the thousands {331} of
species of organic beings: all these things, at the time when they first
appeared, lacked every analogy in the past, and were perhaps repeated for
some time, in primitive generations, perhaps not; at any rate, they have
all ceased to have analogies within the memory of man. In an eminent degree
does the first appearance of man want every analogy with what we observe
elsewhere. We never see men appear on the stage of the earth, who were not
originated by men; yet this event, so contrary to all analogy, did once
take place, and stands without parallel and analogy in the midst of the
series of events, so far as our knowledge can reach.
Thus the resurrection of the Lord must also necessarily want analogy, in
case it is an event which really marks a station of progress in the
development of earthly creatures and their history, and in case also its
nature and its importance tend not to bring mankind, or at least those who
believe in him who has been raised, at once under the influence of its
physical consequences, but only so far to prepare the way for these
consequences in intellectual and moral life-forces. And precisely such an
event is the resurrection of Jesus, according to the announcement of the
Lord as to himself and his work, and according to the development of this
personal testimony in the minds of his first disciples, and also according
to what Jesus actually became for mankind, and especially for Christianity.
According to this testimony of Jesus and his apostles, and to this actual
experience, Jesus is the Redeemer, whose work is to make amends for the
destruction caused by sin, and thus to originate and establish a new
creation in mankind which, from inner, mental, and spiritual beginnings,
{332} renews mankind, and becomes the leaven which, in long periods of
labor, leads it to the goal of perfection; a perfection in which the whole
creation shall participate--with which, indeed, mankind is inseparably
connected on the whole natural side of its existence. But then it also lies
in the nature of the resurrection of Jesus to be single in its kind, and
without analogy, until that time shall have come in the development of
mankind when the last enemy, death, shall be forever removed and overcome.
We quite fail to conceive how those who acknowledge design in the world,
can avoid the acknowledgment of the resurrection of Jesus--supposing the
fact to be historically established: whereof we shall have to speak
hereafter. It is, indeed, quite impossible to speak of a goal of mankind,
if annihilation--annihilation of single personalities as well as of mankind
as a whole--is its certain destiny. Where and what is this end of mankind,
if the last generation of the globe is to perish with the destruction of
this globe, or languish and die even before that destruction, and if
nothing will be left of mankind beyond the soulless material for new
formations in their putrifying corpses and desolate homes and works of art?
Where and what is this goal, if all which once set human minds and hearts
in motion, and which stimulated the intellectual and moral work of the
human races, simply ceases to exist, no longer finds anywhere even a place
of remembrance, and nowhere has a fruit to exhibit, except perhaps in the
mind of a God who once set the cruel play in motion, and now permits it to
cease, in order to procure for himself a change in the entertainment? A
mere immortality of human {333} souls, without resurrection and without the
perfection and transfiguration of the universe, is not afforded us by this
goal, which we certainly need, if we are to think at all of a goal for
mankind. For if all departing souls should be carried into another world
whose only relation to the further course of the earthly history of mankind
was in the fact, that the dead are always gathered in it; into another
world whose only relation to the past of the earthly history of mankind
should be in the fact, that it is divided into a heaven and a hell for
those who reach it; if in this world everything should move on, without
end, in eternal coming and going; and if nothing could be said of that
other world than that everything there is different from ours--even that we
should there have no possible points of contact with this world: then we
should have nothing else but a gloomy dualism of the world for which
neither our intellectual, nor our psychical, and least of all our physical,
organization is in any way prepared, we should have in it no satisfaction
of our noblest instincts, no goal to which we would be led by any of the
guides who show us the paths which we have to follow on earth. Only a
resurrection and transfiguration of the earth and the universe, as well as
of a glorified mankind, show us such a goal. For this aim, for such a
_real_ continuation of life of the single personality, and of all mankind,
after the long work of moral and intellectual development, all noble and
worthy instincts of mankind are prepared--from the instinct of
self-preservation up to the instinct of self-sacrifice for ideal purposes
and the instinct of moral perfection and community with God. We find that
in all the rest of creation, instincts and inherent powers {334} are
present to be satisfied. The naturalistic tendencies which at present
control so many minds, are very much inclined to found their whole view of
the world upon this correlation of instinct, function, and satisfaction.
Should, then, the highest instincts of the highest creature on earth alone
make an exception? Have they originated from illusions, and do they lead to
illusions? We cannot refrain from quoting a word which Alb. Réville, of
Rotterdam, has written in the first part of the October issue of the "Revue
des Deux Mondes," 1874, on the occasion of a criticism of E. v. Hartmann's
"Philosophy of the Unconscious"; though it was written only in defence of
theism in general. We quote from a report of E. P., in the _Augsburger
Allgem. Zeitung_, Oct. 27, 1874, which is all at present at our command:
"When the young bird, fluttering its wings on the edge of its mother's
nest, launches forth for the first time, it finds the air which carries it,
while a passage is opened for it. Instinct deceived the bird just as little
as it deceives the multitude of large and small beings which only live in
following its incitations. And should man alone, whom spiritual perfection
attracts--man whose characteristic instinct it is to raise himself mentally
toward the real-ideal, the superiority of which he cannot sufficiently
describe, should man, who obeys his nature, dash his head against the wall
built of unhewn stones of unconscious, blind, and deaf force? Nature,
indeed, has too much spirit--according to Hartmann himself--to indulge in
such an absurdity; and the philosophy of the 'unconscious Unconscious' will
never permit it." It is true, there is actually present in mankind, and in
it alone, such a discord between {335} instinct and satisfaction: man has
in himself instincts which are opposed to sin and death, and nevertheless
sin and death exist. But the redemption through Christ, and especially the
knowledge of his resurrection, announces to us that this discord is
removed.
Therefore, he who in general acknowledges that mankind in its development
has had given to it goals which correspond to its gifts and instincts, has
every reason to look about and see whether, in the course of human history,
certain things have happened which point at such aims--indications which
prophetically assure mankind, that it advances toward a spiritual and moral
perfection, and toward an undiminished participation of all members of
mankind in this perfection. Such an assurance is offered us in the
resurrection of Jesus; and therefore, all who have not abandoned a
teleological view of the world, have reason for _examining it with
reference to the degree of its historical truth_. This degree is the
highest which we can in general claim of any historical event.
In order to show this with such brevity as is necessary in the present
book, and at the same time to guard ourselves against every danger of
prejudice in the investigation, we shall for this occasion assume
hypothetically that all, even the most extreme, assertions of Biblical
criticism as to the authenticity and inauthenticity of the books of the New
Testament, and as to the difference of their component parts and the time
of their composition, are correct and proven; and see what then remains
established. In the first place, it is an acknowledged fact, that Peter
first, then the eleven apostles at different times, and between these more
than five hundred "brethren" (_i.e._, nearly or fully all who had preserved
their {336} attachment to the Lord till his death), saw the appearances of
the risen one, a few days after his death; and, indeed, under the most
different circumstances, and under mental conditions in which they did not
at all expect any such second appearance. We have, in regard to this, the
most authentic written evidence of the apostle Paul, in the fifteenth
chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians: a letter whose authenticity
no criticism has dared to doubt. This letter was written in the spring of
58: and Paul himself had already been changed from a persecutor into a
believer in Christ in the year 36--_i.e._, one year after the death of
Jesus, which took place in 35; he went to Jerusalem in 39, and here
everything was related to him by Peter, as we know from his letter
(likewise not contested) to the Galatians. Thus the authentic information
of the man, who in 58 collected the historical proofs of the reality of the
resurrection of Jesus for his Corinthian Christians, goes back to four
years after the death of Jesus, and to the personal witnesses of the
appearances; as in that letter he also refers to the fact that "many of
these five hundred brethren are still living." Moreover, it is an
established fact, that the first written evidences of the evangelical
history from which our canonical gospels subsequently originated, likewise
contained accounts of the appearance of the risen one. Finally, it is an
established fact that, from the very beginning, the whole meaning of
evangelical preaching turned on the two facts of the death and of the
resurrection of Jesus, as on the two cardinal points of all preaching of
salvation; also that all the faith of those who embraced the Gospel was
founded upon these two facts, as upon the historical fundamentals of the
{337} salvation which comes from Jesus; and that thus Christianity, with
all its effects, which have unhinged the old world and diffused streams of
blessing over mankind, has its historical basis in faith in the death of
Jesus and his resurrection. This is our historical chain of proof. And that
evidence which gives certainty to its most important link, on which
everything depends--the _appearance_ of the risen one--is the entire
failure of all the attempts at explaining that appearance from a seeming
death, from an intended deception, from a self-delusion, from a vision and
an ecstasy, from a poetic myth; in short, from any other cause than, that
the Lord really appeared to his disciples as the man who was dead, but who
is risen and lives. We cannot follow Keim in all his methods of
reconstructing the life of Jesus, and we believe that he is much too timid
regarding the consequences which follow from an objective, real appearance
of Jesus after his death; but we acknowledge it as a high merit of his
christological works, that although he is willing to use criticism to the
utmost, he has so thoroughly and strikingly shown the impossibility of
explaining the appearance of Jesus after his death differently from the
real manifestations of his still living person. It is well that Strauss, in
his "The Old Faith and the New," declares the history of the resurrection
of Jesus a _historical humbug_; for it may open the eyes of many, if the
tendency, of which Strauss is leader, is no longer able to explain
Christianity--the noblest, purest, and most successful religion which has
come into existence in the whole history of mankind--otherwise than by
calling it a humbug. With him who is pleased with this manner of explaining
the most perfect blossom and fruit of {338} the tree of mankind, we
certainly can find no common ground of mutual understanding.
We have been led to all these discussions, by looking for something actual
which should be able to throw its light back upon the earliest primitive
history of mankind--a history which can no longer be historically
investigated. We have found this reality in the resurrection of Jesus; and
the light which it throws upon the primitive history of man, we have
perceived in the conclusion to which it leads us: that man, if he had taken
a sinless development, would also have been exempt from death.
The resurrection of Jesus throws its light upon still another side of the
Biblical doctrine of the primitive condition of man: namely, upon that
which is the religious quintessence of the Biblical doctrine of _Paradise_.
As now the resurrection of the Lord is the beginning and the prophecy of a
new creation on the basis of the old, and as we now hope, with St. Paul,
that this beginning shall manifest its comprehensive cosmic effects, when
the Lord shall manifest them in the resurrection of the "children of God:"
so, in case of a sinless development of man, the beginning of this new and
glorified stage of creation would certainly have been perceptible at the
beginning of the history of mankind and in the relation of man to his
earthly surroundings. But we are of course not permitted to make or to
pursue such a suggestion at present, since a sinful development of mankind,
with its consequences, actually took place.
We have no reason to enter into the discussion of another often and much
debated question, which is connected with the primitive history of man;
namely, {339} _whether mankind is descended from one or more pairs of men_.
We pass it by; because it has no connection whatever with the acceptance or
rejection of the Darwinian ideas, and since it is not yet archæologically
and scientifically solvable. There are Darwinians who think
monogenetically, and others who think polygenetically; and there is still a
third class--and they speak most correctly--who acknowledge that they know
nothing about it. Besides, we can also pass by this question, for the
reason that in spite of the important place which it occupies in the
theological system of St. Paul, we have no right to assign to it, in the
form in which we put it, the decisive dogmatic importance which it still
occupies in many conceptions of Christian theology. For we cannot question
the right of the natural sciences to enter into the discussion of this
question, and to look for a solution of it. As soon as we make this
concession, it necessarily and naturally follows from it, that we must no
longer make the substance and truth of our religious possession, even in a
subordinate manner, dependent on the results of exact investigations: for
our religious possessions have too deep a basis of truth, to permit us to
ground them on the results of investigations in a realm so dark for science
and so far removed from religious interest. As to this question, we may
hope for a future solution in the monogenetic sense: we may rejoice over
the fact that, according to the present state of knowledge, the needle of
the scale rather inclines in favor of a oneness of origin of mankind; but
we must also be prepared to accept the possibility of a contrary result,
without being afraid that in such a case we should have to abandon at once
that religious factor {340} for whose sake the advocates of a monogenetic
descent might defend their view. This religious (and, we may add, quite as
strong ethic) factor consists in the idea of the intimate unity and
brotherhood of mankind. We must absolutely adhere to this idea; for it is
in opposition to the particularism which, quite without exception, governed
the entire old world, even its most highly developed nations, and which was
only penetrated by some beams of hope and prediction in the prophecy of
Israel--one of the most beautiful and blissful gifts of Christianity to
mankind. This idea still contains, as ethical motive, one of the strongest,
most indispensable, and most promising forces in the world. If this idea
shall be a real and lastingly effective one, it certainly must also have
its real basis in the history of the origin of mankind. But, we must ask,
is the only conceivable reality of this basis a monogenetic pedigree, and
do we lose this reality if science should once find that mankind came into
existence not only in one single pair, but in several pairs, even in
different places, and at different times? Even in such a case, the idea of
the unity of mankind would only lose its real basis, if at the same time we
were permitted to think also anti-teleologically--if we were permitted to
suppose that that which came into existence, repeatedly, and in different
places, had each time entirely different causes without a common aim and a
common plan. If we think teleologically, we see the unity of mankind, also
in case of a polygenetic origin, in the unity of the metaphysical and
teleological cause which called mankind into existence; and to rational
beings, endowed with mind, as men are, the metaphysical bond is certainly
stronger than the physical. {341} Precisely the Darwinian ideas of the
origin of species through descent would show us in such a case the real
bond which unites mankind. For then we should only have to go back from the
different points on the stem-lines of the prehistoric generators of these
primitive men, at which men originated otherwise than by generation, in
order to arrive finally at a common root of all these stem-lines: the
members of mankind would even then remain consanguineous among one another,
not only in an ideal, but in a real sense.
Now that the idea of the unity of mankind was holy and important to St.
Paul, is to be inferred in advance from such a universal mind. And when in
Acts XVII, 26, he expresses this idea before the Athenians, so proud of
their autochthony, with the words that "of one blood all nations of men
dwell on all the face of the earth"; or when, in Romans V, and 1
Corinthians XV, he makes use of the idea in order to explain and to glorify
the universal power of redemption of Christ by putting Adam and Christ in
opposition to one another, as the first and the second Adam, so that he
sees sin and death coming forth from Adam, grace and justice and life from
Christ and extending over mankind; then we find this idea quite convincing
and natural, and adhere firmly to the quintessence of these truths, even if
we acknowledge neither in these passages, nor in Genesis I and II, the
intention of God to give us a supernatural manifestation of the exterior
process of the creation of man. Paul himself gives us a hint not to follow
slavishly a literal interpretation, when he says, in Romans V, "as by one
man sin entered into the world and death by sin," and calls this man Adam,
although he knows that according to the {342} Biblical relation, Eve was
the one who was first seduced, and although he expressly points out and
makes use of this priority of the sin of Eve in another connection, and for
another reason.
Finally, we may here also take into consideration the contradictions which
have come up by reason of more recent investigations, in reference to the
_prehistoric conditions of man_, and which, especially in England, have
been designated as the contradiction between the _elevation theory_ and the
_depravation theory_.
In general, this contradiction is looked upon as if a conception of the
primitive history of man, remaining conformable to the Bible, could only be
brought into harmony with a depravation theory, and not with an elevation
theory; but certainly without reason.
The Biblical and Christian conception of the primitive history of man does
not at all demand the conception of a gradual sinking down of mankind from
a supernatural height--of a gradual depravation of our species--which many
representations seem to assume. For, according to it, the fall of man had
already taken place with the first pair of mankind; they were driven from
Paradise, to long hard labor and development; and Paradise was taken from
earth. Even the paradisaical condition, with its short duration, was
deficient in all the various gifts of life which are a product of human
inventive faculty and skill, and which can leave behind vestiges and
remains. But what the Holy Scripture relates or indicates of the
after-paradisaical primitive history of man, wholly corresponds to the idea
of a gradual development out of the more simple and rough, which is
demanded by the evolution theory in its {343} application to history. That,
even according to the Biblical conception, goodness and progress in outer
culture, sin and intellectual stagnation, are not identical, we see from
the fact, that by the Holy Scripture the most successful inventions of man
are not assigned to the more pious Sethites, but to the Titan-like,
rebellious Kainites. Likewise, the evolution theory does not at all require
a constant, general, and exclusive progress of mankind in all its members.
As in the realm of irrational organisms, so in the history of mankind; it
has to assume the most various ramifications with progress, stand-still,
and retrogradation. It is true, it sees in the nations of culture progress
in an upward rising line; but besides, stand-still and retrogradations in
great variety. It also sees in mankind in general a labor of upward rising
development; but it also sees many hindrances of development, and many
shavings which the work throws to one side. But exactly the same thing was
also seen in every religious or profane contemplation of history, long
before the evolution theory was born.
Therefore, the different views of the earliest primitive history of man,
the theory of depravation and that of elevation, do not stand so opposed to
one another--the former representing the Biblical and religious, the latter
the anti-religious, view of the history--but the question as to the
primitive history is not yet solved in that respect; the depravation
theory, as well as the elevation theory, indicates rather the _directions_
in which investigation has to put its questions to the archæological
sources. Investigation, on the other hand, has free scope in both
directions; and the primitive history of man shows itself to be a realm in
which religious and scientific interest, {344} opponents and advocates of
the descent theory, can peacefully join hands for common labor. Up to the
present, the investigations reach results which seem to fall now more into
one, now more into the other, scale of the balance. On the one hand, the
older the products of human skill are, the more simple they are; on the
other hand, even the oldest remains show man in full possession of that
which distinguishes him from the animal, and attests a spiritual life. The
reader may think of the before mentioned sketches of the reindeer and
mammoth (page 90). If we finally come down to historic times, and to the
present, in order to try to draw conclusions from the comparisons of the
remotest times of which we have historic knowledge, with the present, as to
prehistoric times, we likewise find on the one side vestiges of the lowest
barbarism in the past and present; but on the other side we find that the
oldest written monuments afford a glance into a perfection of intellectual
reflection and into a nobility of moral and religious views which permits
us to draw the highest conclusions as to the intellectual worth of earliest
mankind. The very oldest records of the Holy Scripture give evidence of
this intellectual height; and even the royal programmes of Assyrian
monarchs, which the wonderful diligence and ingenuity of recent
investigators have deciphered from the cuneiform inscriptions, not only
relatively correspond to the height of culture which we find in the ruins
of Assyrian palaces, but even, when looked upon absolutely and aside from
the morality of conquest which they indulge, are inspired by a nobility of
mind, and permeated by a religiousness, which no potentate of recent times
would need to be ashamed of. They have {345} been made accessible to the
public by the work of Eberhard Schrader: "Die Keilinschriften und das Alte
Testament" ("Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament"), Giessen, 1872.
§ 4. _Providence, Hearing of Prayer, and Miracles._
Before we enter into the special christological realm, we have yet to
glance at the realm of the more common relations between God and the
creature, as they have found, in faith in a divine providence, in hearing
of prayer, and in divine miracles, their reflection in Christian
consciousness.
It is true, we had to discuss the chief basis of an understanding in this
matter when treating of the position of the Darwinian theories in reference
to theism in general; but we have a double reason for entering again into
the consideration of the concrete form which this faith has obtained in
Christianity.
One reason is the fact, that faith in a special providence of God, in a
hearing of prayer, and in a connection of the human history of salvation
with miracles, forms a very essential part of the Christian view of the
world and of Christian religiousness. All Holy Scripture is interwoven with
assurances of a providence of God, going even into details; with the most
distinct and solemn promises of the hearing of our prayers; and with the
most emphatic reference to the miracles which it relates. The Lord himself
not only found all these doctrines, and left them untouched, but he
developed them in the most pregnant way, and brought them into the most
intimate connection with the quintessence and centre of his doctrine.
According to his teaching, {346} "a sparrow shall not fall to the ground
without the will of your heavenly Father; but the very hairs of your head
are all numbered." He encourages us to pray, with the words: "Verily,
verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he
will give it you;" and he proves himself to be the Redeemer, through signs
and wonders, and refers to the greatest sign which was to be manifested in
him--the sign of the resurrection.
The other reason for entering upon the discussion of these questions, lies
in the incredible thoughtlessness with which a great part of modern
educated people, even of such men as do not at all wish to abandon faith in
a living God, permit themselves to be governed by the leaders of religious
infidelity, and to be defiled and robbed of everything, which belongs to
the nature of a living God. By many, it is considered as good taste, and as
an indispensable sign of deep scientific learning and high education, and
it forms a seldom contested part of correspondence in newspapers, which
have for their public a wide circle of educated people, that in referring
to the inviolableness of the laws of nature they declare faith in a special
providence of God to be a view long ago rejected, and which is only
consistent with half-civilized individuals; that they look down with a
compassionate and self-conscious smile upon the egoistic implicit faith of
congregations who still pray for good harvest-weather, and see in the
damage done by a hailstorm a divine affliction; that they criticise it as a
sad token of ecclesiastical darkness, when even church-authorities order
such prayers in case of wide-spread calamities; that they fall into a
passion over the {347} narrowness and the dulling influence of pedagogues
who see in the histories which they relate to their pupils or put into
their hands for reading, the government of an ethical order of the world
which goes a little farther than the rule that he who deceives injures his
good name, and he who gets intoxicated injures his health; that they give a
man who still believes in the resurrection of Jesus, to understand that he
has not yet learned the first elements of the theory of putrefaction and
perishableness. That the adversaries of faith in a God thus express
themselves, and try to conquer as much ground as possible for their frosty
doctrine, is certainly quite natural; but that even advocates of theism
should permit such stuff to be presented to them, and can keep silent in
regard to it--nay, that even preachers offer it to their congregations as
ordinary Sabbath edification, and that their hearers can gratefully accept
it--is certainly a suggestive and alarming evidence of the rapidity with
which, in many men who still do not wish consciously and certainly to be
thought godless (_i.e._, to be separated from God), their connection with
the source of light and life is decreasing, and of how strongly the fear
that they may be looked upon as unscientific and imperfectly educated,
overbalances the fear of losing the living God and Father, and therewith
the support of both mind and life.
Now, that this faith in a _special providence_, in a _hearing of prayer_,
and in _divine miracles_, forms an essential part of Christian
religiousness, we do not need to show more in detail; it is an established
historical fact, and an object of direct Christian knowledge. On the other
hand, we have still to say a word concerning {348} that which, on the part
of those just described, is so strongly contested; namely, about the
scientific worth of such a faith, and also about its reconcilableness with
the Darwinism theories.
In the first place, as to the faith in a _special providence of God_, and,
in connection with it, as to the possibility of _a hearing of human
prayer_, such a faith is by itself the inevitable consequence of all
theism; nay, it is precisely identical with theism; it is that which makes
theism _theism_, and distinguishes it from mere deism--_i.e._, from an idea
of God, which merely makes God the author of the world, and lets the world,
after it was once created, go its own way. Now, the theistic idea of God,
which sees the Creator in an uninterrupted connection with his creation, is
in itself the more scientific one: for a God who, although the author of
the world, would not know how to find, nor intend to find, a way of
communication with his creation, would certainly be an idea theologically
inconceivable. We should, therefore, still have to adhere to the idea of a
special providence of God, even if in our discursive reasoning and exact
investigation of the processes in the world we should not find a single
guide referring us to the scientific possibility of such a direct and
uninterrupted dependence of the world on its author. We should then have
simply to declare a conviction of the providence of God to be a postulate
of our reasoning, which is given with the idea of God itself; and would
just as little call this conviction unscientific on account of the fact,
that we are not able to show the modalities of divine providence, as in
reference to the exact sciences we should contest the character of their
{349} scientific value on account of the fact that they are no longer able
to give us an answer exactly where our questions become most important and
interesting.
But the ways in which we are able to realize scientifically the idea of a
divine providence are, indeed, not entirely closed for us. We have several
of them; one starts from the idea of God, others from the empiric created
world.
It belongs to the _idea of God_, that we have to think of the sublimity of
God over time and space, of his eternity and omnipresence, in such a way
that God, in his being, life, and activity, does not stand _in_ time nor
within any limits or differences of space, but absolutely above time and
above all limits and differences of space; that he is _present_ in his
world everywhere and at any time. He who objects to this, can only do it
with weapons to which we have to oppose the objection which the adversaries
of the Christian idea of God so often raise against it--namely, the
objection of a rejectable _anthropomorphism_. In contesting the possibility
of the idea of an uninterrupted presence of a personal and living God in
the entire realm of the universe, the adversaries seem to permit themselves
to be daunted by the difficulty which is offered to man in controlling the
realms of his own activity. The greater such a realm, the more difficult
becomes a comprehensive survey, the more the human influence has to
restrict itself to the greater and more common and to neglect the little
and single. The more removed is the past which helps to constitute the
circumstances of the present, the greater is the human ignorance and
oblivion; the more removed is the future, the greater is the human
incapability of {350} influencing it decisively. Such measures ought to
disappear, even in their last traces, when we reflect on God and divine
activity. If once the idea is established for us of a living God, who is
always present in the world created by him, and in whose "sight a thousand
years are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night,"
the final causal chain of causes and effects may be ever so long, and
stretching over this course of the world from its beginning to its end; the
single phenomena may be woven together of ever so many thousands and
thousands of millions of different causal chains: we nevertheless see above
them all the regulating hand of God from whom they all come, and who not
only surveys and controls their texture in all its threads, but who himself
arranged, wove, and made it. Such a view is not only more satisfactory to
the religious need of man, but it also seems to us more scientific, than a
view which traces everything back to a blind and dead cause, or even to no
ultimate cause at all, and thinks it has entirely removed the last veil, if
it pronounces the great word "causal law."
Now, while our _idea of God_ thus tells us that God has in his hand all
causal chains in the world, and its million-threaded web in constant
omni-surveying presence and in all-controlling omnipotence, our reflection
on the _world_ and its substance and course also leads us from the _a
posteriori_ starting-point of analytical investigation precisely to the
same result; it even leads us to a still more concrete conception of this
idea--namely, to the result, that not only the _causal chains, in their
totality and in their web_, but also _all single links_ of these chains,
{351} have their force and existence only by virtue of a transcendental, or
what is the same, of a _metaphysical_, cause.
For if we analyze the single phenomena in the world, we certainly observe
in the activity of their qualities and forces such a conformity to law,
that, in our reflection on these phenomena, we can go from one phenomenon
to the necessity of another as its cause or its effect, and thus form those
particular causal chains and causal nets in whose arranged representation
natural science consists. But that those qualities and forces exist and act
precisely thus, and not otherwise, and why, we are no longer able to
explain. We can only say: the material and the apparent is no longer their
cause, but their effect; therefore, the cause of that which comes into
existence lies beyond the phenomenon--_i.e._, in the transcendental, in the
metaphysical.
This becomes evident in the _inorganic world_ and in those qualities which
are common to all matter. Such common qualities of the latter are, for
instance, cohesion and gravitation. That all matter has the quality of
cohesion, we can only say because we observe it; but that it must be so,
and why, we are not able to say. This becomes still more evident in
gravitation. Gravitation is so decidedly an action in space, that it
appears to us, together with cohesion, as precisely the bond which binds
the entire material world together. Each single material atom is subject to
its force; but how and why, and especially how and why matter acts upon the
matter _in space_, physics can no longer tell us, but refers us to a
metaphysical cause.
This dependence of each single being, and of all its qualities and forces,
on a transcendental and {352} metaphysical cause of its existence, becomes
most clear to us in the world of the _organic_, and especially in the
transmission and development of organisms. _That_ individuals originate new
individuals of their species; _that_ the fecundated germs, if the necessary
conditions are present, develop themselves out of the first germ and
egg-cell in continually progressive and distinct differentiations, each
after its kind, into the full-grown condition, so that individuals endowed
with a soul and intellectual life are also developed out of such
beginnings;--these are facts which are continually repeated before our
eyes, and men of science have not yet reached the end in pursuing the
actual in these processes into its finest ramifications. But how it is that
individuals _must_ transmit themselves--that the seeds and eggs _must_ have
this force of germination and development--they have not yet been able to
explain, and will never be able to do so. The word "inheritance," which is
to solve the problem, is only a _name_ for the _fact_ which we observe, and
for the regularity of its repetition; but for this fact of inheritance
itself, we seek in vain a _physical_ explanation: we are referred to a
_metaphysical_ cause. Thus, not only the _first_ origin of life on earth is
an enigma to us (as we have seen in Part I, Book II, Chapter I, § 3), but
organic life itself, in its whole existence and course, is a process which,
at every step, and in every place of its course, remains to us in its last
causes physically unexplained, and refers us to metaphysical causes.
If we finally see in all these inorganic and organic processes a striving
towards ends--and we must see it, as soon as we in general observe order,
the category of higher and lower, and the appearance of the higher on {353}
the basis of the lower--we are, with all our teleological observations,
again referred to the metaphysical, and still more decidedly to the
goal-setting metaphysical; and a metaphysical which sets and reaches goals
is nothing else than that in philosophic language which in the language of
religion we call a living _Creator_ and _Ruler of the world_ and the
activity of his _providence_.
From still another side, the knowledge of the world, even in a scientific
way, leads us to the acknowledgment of a divine providence which controls
with absolute freedom every process in every place and in every moment of
the world's course. We see continually, in the midst of nature, and in its
causal course conformable to law, something supernatural, transcendental,
and metaphysical, acting decisively upon the course of nature; and that is
the _free activity of man_. Every man carries in the freedom of the
determinations of his will something transcendental and metaphysical in
himself, which we can call natural only when we mean by nature the summary
of all that which exists, but which we have to call supernatural when we
mean by nature the summary of that which belongs to the world of phenomena
in its traceable causes as well as in its traceable effects. The scale of
life-activities, from the lowest arbitrary motions, from the impulses and
instincts of the animal up to the highest moral action of the will of man,
shows us in indistinct transitions all stages which lead from the natural
to the supernatural, until, in the ethical and religious motives of man, we
arrive at superphysical (_i.e._, supernatural) motives which daily and
hourly invade the natural, and in this invasion consciously and
unconsciously use the forces of nature {354} and their activity,
conformable to law, and in spite of their metaphysical and transcendental
origin, from the moment of their activity, join the natural causal
connection of the world's course. This observation of an invasion of the
physical by the supernatural, as it continually takes place in the free
action of man, leads us in a triple way to the acknowledgment of an action
of divine providence upon the course of the world.
In the first place, this observation shows us, in a very direct way, points
where the free disposition of God acts determinatingly upon the course of
things, and where this action becomes accessible to our observation. These
points are the human personalities, in so far and inasmuch as they permit
themselves to be influenced and determined by the will of God in the
ethical and religious motives of their action, and, when these motives
become actions, determinately act upon the course of things.
In the second place, this observation further leads, by way of two
conclusions, to the acknowledgment of a divine providence.
One conclusion is the following: If there exist in the world free and
intelligent beings which, through their free determinations, guided by
reflection, decisively act upon the course of nature, and if these beings,
on account of these very qualities of freedom and intelligence, occupy the
highest stage among the creatures which we know, the last metaphysical
cause of their existence must also have qualities which are able to produce
such free and intelligent beings--at least the qualities of freedom and
intelligence in the highest degree. And this highest metaphysical cause
which produces free and intelligent personalities in the world, can at
least be no {355} more dependent upon the entire world, whose author it is,
than those personalities are dependent upon that realm in the world in
which they have their existence. We call such a metaphysical cause, to
which we have to ascribe freedom and intelligence in the highest degree,
God; and we call its free position in reference to the world, the
government of the world, or providence.
The other conclusion leads us to the acknowledgment of a connection of
providence with conformability to law in the actions of all forces and
qualities in the world. It is the same conclusion to which we had to refer
in Chap. I, § 6, but which now, as we draw from theism the conclusion of
the acknowledgment of a special divine providence, falls with increased
weight into the scale. It is the following: On the one hand, we observe in
the processes of the world a striving towards ends; on the other, we know
in the world itself only one single creature which acts according to aims,
which sets itself its ends and reaches them with freely chosen means. This
one creature is man. Now man can, as we pointed out in Chap. I, § 6, choose
and use the means with which he wishes to reach his ends, only because he
can rely on the conformity to the end in view and the regularity in the
effect of all the qualities and forces of things. If he could not rely on
them, he certainly could set himself ends; but the reaching of them he
would have to leave to the play of chance. Now if we see, on the one side,
that the only creature known to us which sets itself ends is able to reach
these ends by virtue of inviolable conformity to law in the forces and
effects of its means, and if we see, on the other, that in the course of
the world ends are also reached, and that at the same time {356} all
secondary causes which lead to these ends act with a necessity conformable
to law, we certainly are right in drawing the conclusion that the highest
metaphysical cause of all things--we now say, the living God--has so
prepared the whole universe that his free but regular and systematic
goal-setting and end-reaching action upon the course of all things rests,
as a whole as well as in detail, directly upon the conformity to law of all
forces and their effects.
The observation of a free action of the human personality upon the course
of things, once more leads us back to a reflection on the _idea of God_.
For if we have reason to acknowledge a _freedom_ of the determinations of
human will--and the consciousness of ethical responsibility will be a proof
of this freedom which cannot be invalidated by any contrary reflection--the
question comes up: _how is this freedom of a creature reconcilable with the
idea of God?_ Far be it from us to claim to have found a solution of these
last and most important problems of the human mind. For all meditations on
them but lead to antinomies in the presence of which we dare not churn to
remove all difficulties of reflection still less to solve the difficulties
by pursuing only one chain of reasoning and ignoring the other. The way of
science leads rather to mere _compromises_, and these compromises consist
in the fact, that on every side of our observations or arguments we look
for and adhere to that which results for us in incontestable fact or
indispensable postulate, and that we adhere to all results or postulates
thus found even when we are no longer able to trace their unity and harmony
back to their last sources. Now if, on the one hand, our idea of {357} God
is established as a self-testimony of God to our ethical consciousness and
as a result of our teleological reasoning, and if, on the other, is
established the fact of the world and of its processes going on conformably
to law, and likewise the fact of human freedom and its actions upon the
course of things, and finally the fact of the admission of the human will
and action into a higher teleology which is superior to human will, and
which, in the history of mankind, of individuals, and nations, reaches its
higher ends, now by affirming, now by denying, human will; then we have
simply to account for all these facts as mere _facts_, and the scientific
attempt at pursuing them into their inner connection is nothing else but a
more or less successful compromise. We have to be satisfied with these
indications, for the further discussion of them would lead us far beyond
the task of the present publication. We shall only point out the fact, that
precisely the knowledge of the image of God in man shows us the way to the
knowledge of how it is conceivable that God can create personalities
through whose freedom of will he relatively limits the absoluteness of his
own will.
In all our discussions hitherto, the scientific basis of a faith in the
possibility of an _answer to prayer_ has been evident. All reasons for a
divine providence, also speak with the same force of persuasion for the
hearing of our prayers, as soon as the _idea of being a child of God_ has
become an integral part of our idea of God. And this idea--the idea of God
as the father, and of a relationship of love between the divine and the
human personalities--is so much a part of the Christian idea of God, that
it belongs to its very essence. Only one {358} consideration might offer
scientific difficulties to our faith in the hearing of prayer: namely, if
God hears the prayers of his children, in the course of time new motives
for his action present themselves to him; now, is it reconcilable with the
idea of God, that God makes himself in any such way dependent on that which
first appeared in time, and on the changing moods of the creature? But this
difficulty is precisely the same which we met, when acknowledging human
freedom and its reconcilableness with a divine providence; and we have
tried to indicate above the path which leads to its solution.