In Luke, Jesus joins the two disciples who are on their way from

Jerusalem to the neighbouring village of Emmaus (ἐγγίσας συνεπορεύετο

αὐτοῖς); they do not recognize him on the way, a circumstance which

Luke attributes to a subjective hindrance produced in them by a higher

influence (οἱ ὀφθαλμοὶ αὐτῶν ἐκρατοῦντο, τοῦ μὴ ἐπιγνῶναι αὐτὸν), and

only Mark, who compresses this event into few words, to an objective

alteration of his form (ἐν ἑτέρᾳ μορφῇ). On the way Jesus converses

with the two disciples, after their arrival in the village complies

with their invitation to accompany them to their lodging, sits down to

table with them, and proceeds according to his wont to break and

distribute bread. In this moment the miraculous spell is withdrawn from

the eyes of the disciples, and they know him: [2109] but in the same

moment he becomes invisible to them (ἄφαντος ἐγένετο ἀπ’ αὐτῶν). Just

as suddenly as he here vanished, he appears to have shown himself

immediately after in the assembly of the disciples, when it is said

that he all at once stood in the midst of them (ἔστη ἐν μέσῳ αὐτῶν),

and they, terrified at the sight, supposed that they saw a spirit. To

dispel this alarming idea, Jesus showed them his hands and feet, and

invited them to touch him, that by feeling his flesh and bones then

might convince themselves that he was no spectre; he also caused a

piece of broiled fish and of honeycomb to be brought to him, and ate it

in their presence. The appearance to Simon is in Luke described by the

expression ὤφθη; Paul in the first Epistle to the Corinthians uses the

same verb for all the Christophanies there enumerated, and Luke in the

Acts comprises all the appearances of the risen Jesus during the forty

days under the expressions ὀπτανόμενος (i. 3) and ἐμφανῆ γενέσθαι (x.

40). In the same manner Mark describes the appearance to Mary Magdalene

by ἐφάνη, and those to the disciples on the way to Emmaus and to the

eleven by ἐφανερώθη. John describes the appearance at the sea of

Tiberias by ἐφανὲρωσεν ἑαυτὸν, and to all the Christophanies narrated

by him he applies the word ἐφανερώθη. Mark and Luke add, as the close

of the earthly life of the risen Jesus, that he was taken away from

before the eyes of the disciples, and (by a cloud, according to Acts i.

9) carried up to heaven.

In the fourth gospel Jesus first stands behind Mary Magdalene as she is

turning away from the grave; she however, does not recognize him even

when he speaks to her, but takes him for the gardener, until he (in the

tone so familiar to her) calls her by her name. When on this she

attempts to manifest her veneration, Jesus prevents her by the words:

Touch me not, μή μου ἅπτου, and sends her with a message to the

disciples. The second appearance of Jesus in John occurred under

peculiarly remarkable circumstances. The disciples were assembled, from

fear of the hostile Jews, with closed doors: when all at once Jesus

came and stood in the midst of them, greeted them, and

presented—apparently to their sight only—his hands and feet, that they

might recognize him as their crucified master. When Thomas, who was not

present, refused to be convinced by the account of his fellow disciples

of the reality of this appearance, and required for his satisfaction

himself to see and touch the wounds of Jesus: the latter, in an

appearance eight days after, granted him this proof, making him touch

the marks of the nails in his hands and the wound in his side. Lastly,

at the appearance by the sea of Galilee, Jesus stood on the shore in

the morning twilight, without being known by the disciples in the ship,

asked them for fish, and was at length recognized by John, through the

rich draught of fishes which he procured them; still, however, the

disciples, when come to land, did not venture to ask him whether it

were really he. Hereupon he distributed among them bread and fish, of

which he doubtless himself partook, and finally held a conversation

with John and Peter. [2110]

Now the general ideas which may be formed of the life of Jesus after

his resurrection are two: either it was a natural and perfectly human

life, and accordingly his body continued to be subject to the physical

and organic laws; or his life was already of a higher, superhuman

character, and his body supernatural and transfigured: and the

accounts, taken unitedly, present certain traits to which, on the first

view, each of these two ideas may respectively appeal. The human form

with its natural members, the possibility of being known by means of

them, the continuance of the marks of the wounds, the human speech, the

acts of walking and breaking bread,—all these appear to speak in favour

of a perfectly natural life on the part of Jesus even after the

resurrection. If it were possible still to demur to this, and to

conjecture, that even a higher, heavenly corporeality might give itself

such an aspect and perform such functions: all doubts must be quelled

by the further statement, that Jesus after the resurrection consumed

earthly food, and allowed himself to be touched. Such things are indeed

ascribed even to higher beings in old myths, as for example, eating to

the heavenly forms from whom Abraham received a visit (Gen. xviii. 8),

and palpability to the God that wrestled with Jacob (Gen. xxxii. 24

ff.): but it must nevertheless be insisted that in reality both these

conditions can only belong to material, organized bodies. Hence not

only the rationalists, but even orthodox expositors, consider these

particulars as an irrefragable proof that the body and life of Jesus

after the resurrection must be regarded as remaining still natural and

human. [2111] This opinion is further supported by the remark, that in

the state of the risen Jesus there is observable precisely the same

progress as might be expected in the gradual, natural cure of a person

severely wounded. In the first hours after the resurrection he is

obliged to remain in the vicinity of the grave; in the afternoon his

strength suffices for a walk to the neighbouring village of Emmaus; and

only later is he able to undertake the more distant journey into

Galilee. Then also in the permission to touch his body there exists the

remarkable gradation, that on the morning of the resurrection Jesus

forbids Mary Magdalene to touch him, because his wounded body was as

yet too suffering and sensitive; but eight days later, he himself

invites Thomas to touch his wounds. Even the circumstance that Jesus

after his resurrection was so seldom with his disciples and for so

short a time, is, according to this explanation, a proof that he had

brought from the grave his natural, human body, for such an one would

necessarily feel so weak from the wounds and torture of the cross, as

always after short periods of exertion to require longer intervals of

quiet retirement.

But the New Testament narratives, as we have seen, also contain

particulars which favour the opposite idea of the corporeality of Jesus

after the resurrection: hence the advocates of the opinion hitherto

detailed must undertake so to interpret these apparently antagonistic

features that they may no longer present a contradiction. Here it may

seem that the very expressions by which the appearances of Jesus are

ordinarily introduced, as ὤφθη used of the appearance in the burning

bush (Exod. iii. 2, LXX.); ὀπτανόμενος, of the appearance of the angel

in Tobit xii. 19; ἐφάνη, of the angelic appearances in Matt. i. and

ii., may seem already to point to something supernatural. As still more

decided indications, the idea of a natural going and coming which may

be presupposed in some scenes, is contradicted in others by a sudden

appearance and disappearance; the supposition of an ordinary human body

is opposed by the frequent non-recognition on the part of friends, nay,

by the express mention of another form, ἑτέρα μορφὴ; above all, the

palpability of the body of Jesus appears to be opposed by the

capability which, according to the first impression from the text, is

lent to him in John, namely, that of entering through closed doors.

But, that Mary Magdalene mistook Jesus at first for the gardener, is

thought even by commentators who ordinarily are not diffident of the

miraculous, to be most probably accounted for by the supposition that

Jesus had borrowed clothes from the gardener, who very likely dwelt

near to the grave; moreover, say these writers, both in this instance

and in the journey to Emmaus, the disfiguration of the countenance of

Jesus by the sufferings of crucifixion may have contributed to prevent

his being recognized, and these two circumstances are alone to be

understood from the expression ἑτέρα μορφὴ, another form, in Mark.

[2112] As to the disciples going to Emmaus, in the joyful astonishment

caused by the sudden recognition of him whom they had believed dead,

Jesus, it is said, may easily have withdrawn from them unobserved in

the most natural manner; which, however, they, to whom the whole fact

of the resuscitation of Jesus was a miracle, might regard as a

supernatural disappearance. [2113] Nor, we are told, do the

expressions: ἒστη ἐν μέσῳ αὐτῶν or εἱς τὸ μέσον he stood in the midst

of them, especially in John, where they are accompanied by the ordinary

words ἦλθεν he came, and ἔρχεται he comes, imply anything supernatural,

but merely the startling arrival of one who had just been spoken of,

without his being expected; and the assembled disciples took him for a

spirit, not because he entered in a miraculous manner, but because they

could not believe in the real resuscitation of their deceased master.

[2114] Lastly, even the trait which is supposed to be decisive against

the opinion that the body of the risen Jesus was a natural and human

one,—the coming when the doors were shut ἔρχεσθαι θυρῶν κεκλεισμένων in

John,—has long been interpreted even by orthodox theologians so as no

longer to present any obstacle to that opinion. We will not discuss

explanations such as that of Heumann, according to which the doors were

not those of the house in which the disciples were assembled, but the

doors of Jerusalem in general, and the statement that they were shut is

an intimation of its having been that hour of the night in which it was

customary to close the doors, while the fear of the Jews represents the

motive, not for the closing of the doors, but for the assembling of the

disciples. Apart from these expedients, Calvin himself pronounces the

opinion that the body of the risen Jesus passed per medium ferrum et

asseres, to be pueriles argutiæ, for which the text gives no occasion,

since it does not say that Jesus entered per januas clausas, but only

that he suddenly appeared among his disciples, cum clausæ essent januæ.

[2115] Still Calvin upholds the entrance of Jesus of which John here

speaks as a miracle, which must consequently be supposed to consist in

this, that Jesus entered cum fores clausæ fuissent, sed quæ Domino

veniente subito patuerunt ad nutum divinæ majestatis ejus. [2116] While

more modern orthodox divines only contend for the less definite

position, that in the entrance of Jesus some miracle took place, its

precise character being unascertained. [2117] Rationalism has found

means entirely to banish the miraculous from the event. The closed

doors, we are told, were opened to Jesus by human hands; which John

omits to notice, only because it is understood as a matter of course,

nay, it would have been absurd of him to say: they opened the doors for

him, and he went in. [2118]

But in thus interpreting the words ἔρχεται τῶν θυρῶν κεκλεισμένων,

theologians have been by no means unprejudiced. Least of all Calvin;

for when he says, the papists maintain a real penetration of the body

of Jesus through closed doors in order to gain support for their tenet

that the body of Christ is immense, and contained in no place, ut

corpus Christi immensum esse, nulloque loco contineri obtineant: it is

plain that he combats that interpretation of the words of John merely

to avoid giving any countenance to the offensive doctrine of the

ubiquity of Christ’s body. The more modern expositors, on the other

hand, were interested in avoiding the contradiction which to our

perceptions is contained in the statement, that a body can consist of

solid matter, and yet pass without hindrance through other solid

matter: but as we know not whether this was also a contradiction in the

view of the New Testament writers, the apprehension of it gives us no

authority to discard that interpretation, providing it be shown to be

in accordance with the text. We might certainly, on a partial

consideration, understand the expression the doors being shut, τῶν

θυρῶν κεκλεισμένων, as an intimation of the anxious state into which

the disciples were thrown by the death of Jesus. But already the

circumstance that this particular is repeated on the appearance of

Jesus before Thomas excites doubts, since if the above was the only

meaning, it was scarcely worth while to repeat the observation. [2119]

But as in fact in this second instance the above cause for the closing

of the doors no longer exists, while the words τῶν θυρῶν κεκλεισμένων

are immediately united with ἔρχεται, he comes: what was before the most

apparent meaning, namely, that they are intended to determine the

manner of the coming of Jesus, is here heightened into a probability.

[2120] Further, the repeated statement that Jesus came when the doors

were closed is again followed by the words ἔστη εἰς τὸ μέσον, which

even in connexion with ἦλθεν, to which they are related as a more

precise determination, imply that Jesus suddenly presented himself,

without his approach having been seen: whence it is undeniably evident

that the writer here speaks of a coming without the ordinary means,

consequently, of a miraculous coming. But did this miracle consist in

passing through the boards of the doors? This is combated even by those

who espouse the cause of miracles in general, and they confidently

appeal to the fact, that it is nowhere said, he entered through the

closed doors διὰ τῶν θυρῶν κεκλεισμένων. [2121] But the Evangelist does

not mean to convey the precise notion that Jesus, as Michaelis

expresses himself, passed straight through the pores of the wood of

which the doors were made; he merely means that the doors were shut and

remained so, and nevertheless Jesus suddenly stood in the

chamber,—walls, doors, in short all material barriers, forming no

obstacle to his entrance. Thus in reply to their unjust demand of us,

to show them in the text of John a precise determination which is quite

away from the intention of this writer, we must ask them to explain why

he has not noticed the (miraculous) opening of the doors, if he

presupposed such a circumstance? In relation to this point Calvin very

infelicitously refers to Acts xii. 6 ff., where it is narrated of

Peter, that he came out of the closed prison; no one, he says, here

supposes that the doors remained closed, and that Peter penetrated

through wood and iron. Assuredly not; because here it is expressly said

of the iron gate of the prison which led into the city, that it opened

to him of its own accord (v. 10). This observation serves to give so

lively and graphic an idea of the miracle, that our Evangelist would

certainly not, in two instances, have omitted a similar one, if he had

thought of a miraculous opening of the doors.

Thus in this narrative of John the supernatural will not admit of being

removed or diminished: nor is the natural explanation more satisfactory

in relation to the expressions by which Luke describes the coming and

going of Jesus. For if, according to this Evangelist, his coming was a

standing in the midst of the disciples, στῆναι ἐν μέσῳ τῶν μαθητῶν, his

going a becoming invisible to them, ἄφαντος γίνεσθαι ἀπ’ αὐτῶν: the

concurrence of these two representations, taken in connexion with the

terror of the disciples and their mistaking him for a spirit, will

hardly allow the supposition of anything else than a miraculous

appearance. Besides, if we might perhaps form some idea how Jesus could

enter in a natural manner without being observed into a room filled

with men: we should still be at a loss to imagine how it could be

possible for him, when he sat at table at Emmaus, apparently with the

two disciples alone, to withdraw himself from them unobserved, and so

that they were not able to follow him. [2122]

That Mark, under the words ἑτέρα μορφὴ understands a form miraculously

altered, ought never to have been denied; [2123] but this is a point of

minor importance, because it involves only the narrator’s own

interpretation of the circumstance which had been already stated, but

with a different explanation, by Luke: namely, that the two disciples

did not know Jesus. That Mary Magdalene took Jesus for the gardener,

was hardly, in the view of the Evangelist, the consequence of his

having borrowed the gardener’s clothes: rather, the spirit of the

narrative would require us to explain her not knowing him by supposing

that her eyes were held (κρατεῖσθαι, Luke xxiv. 16), or that Jesus had

assumed another form; while her taking him for the gardener might then

be simply accounted for by the fact that she met the unknown man in the

garden. Nor are we authorized by the evangelical narratives to suppose

a disfiguration of Jesus by the sufferings of the cross, and a gradual

healing of his wounds. The words Touch me not in John, if they were to

be regarded as a prohibition of a touch as painful, would be in

contradiction, not merely with Matthew, according to whom Jesus on the

same morning—that of the resurrection—allowed the women to embrace his

feet, but also with Luke, according to whom he on the same day invited

the disciples to handle him; and we must then ask, which representation

is correct? But there is nothing at all in the context to intimate that

Jesus forbade Mary to touch him for fear of pain; he may have done so

from various motives: concerning which, however, the obscurity of the

passage has hitherto precluded any decision. [2124]

But the most singularly perverted inference is this: that the

infrequent and brief interviews of Jesus with his disciples after the

resurrection are a proof that he was as yet too weak for long and

multiplied efforts, and consequently was undergoing a natural cure. On

this very supposition of his needing bodily tendance, he should have

been not seldom, but constantly, with his disciples, who were those

from whom he could the most immediately expect such tendance. For where

are we to suppose that he dwelt in the long intervals between his

appearances? in solitude? in the open air? in the wilderness and on

mountains? That was no suitable abode for an invalid, and nothing

remains but to suppose that he must have been concealed among secret

colleagues of whom even his disciples knew nothing. But thus to conceal

his real abode even from his own disciples, to show himself to them

only seldom, and designedly to present and withdraw himself suddenly,

would be a kind of double dealing, an affectation of the supernatural,

which would exhibit Jesus and his cause in a light foreign to the

object itself so far as it lies before us in our original sources of

information, and only thrown upon it by the dark lantern of modern, yet

already obsolete, conceptions. The opinion of the Evangelists is no

other than that the risen Jesus, after those short appearances among

his followers, withdrew like a higher being into invisibility, from

which, on fitting occasions, he again stept forth. [2125]

Lastly, on the presupposition that Jesus by his resurrection returned

to a purely natural existence, what conception must be formed of his

end? In consistency he must be supposed, whether at the end of a longer

[2126] or a shorter time after his resuscitation, to have died a

natural death; and accordingly Paulus intimates that the too intensely

affected body of Jesus, notwithstanding it had recovered from the

death-like rigidity produced by crucifixion, was yet completely worn

out by natural maladies and consuming fever. [2127] That this is at

least not the view of the Evangelists concerning the end of Jesus is

evident, since two of them represent him as taking leave of his

disciples like an immortal, the others as being visibly carried up to

heaven. Thus before the ascension, at the latest, if until then Jesus

had retained a natural human body, it must have undergone a change

which qualified him to dwell in the heavenly regions; the sediment of

gross corporeality must have fallen to the earth, and only its finest

essence have ascended. But of any natural remains of the ascended Jesus

the Evangelists say nothing; and as the disciples who were spectators

of his ascension must have observed them had there been such, nothing

is left for the upholders of this opinion but the expedient of certain

theologians of the Tübingen school, who regard as the residuum of the

corporeality of Jesus, the cloud which enveloped him in his ascension,

and in which what was material in him is supposed to have been

dissolved and as it were evaporated. [2128] As thus the Evangelists

neither represent to themselves the end of the earthly life of Jesus

after the resurrection as a natural death, nor mention any change

undergone by his body at the ascension, and moreover narrate of Jesus

in the interval between the resurrection and ascension things which are

inconceivable of a natural body: they cannot have represented to

themselves his life after the resurrection as natural, but only as

supernatural, nor his body as material and organic, but only as

transfigured.

In the point of view held by the Evangelists, this conception is not

contradicted even by those particulars which the friends of the purely

natural opinion respecting the life of the risen Jesus are accustomed

to urge in their support. That Jesus ate and drank was, in the circle

of ideas within which the gospels originated, as far from presupposing

a real necessity, as the meal of which Jehovah partook with two angels

in the tent of Abraham: the power of eating is here no proof of a

necessity for eating. [2129] That he caused himself to be touched, was

the only possible mode of refuting the conjecture that an incorporeal

spectre had appeared to the disciples; moreover, divine existences, not

merely in Grecian, but also (according to the passage above quoted,

Gen. xxxii. 24) in Hebrew antiquity, sometimes appeared palpable, in

distinction from unsubstantial shades, though they otherwise showed

themselves as little bound by the laws of materiality as the palpable

Jesus, when he suddenly vanished, and was able to penetrate without

hindrance into a room of which the door was closed. [2130]

It is quite another question, whether on our more advanced position,

and with our more correct knowledge of nature, those two different

classes of particulars can be held compatible with each other. Here we

must certainly say: a body which consumes visible food, must itself be

visible; the consumption of food presupposes an organism, but an

organism is organized matter, and this has not the property of

alternately vanishing and becoming visible again at will. [2131] More

especially, if the body of Jesus was capable of being felt, and

presented perceptible flesh and bones, it thus exhibited the

impenetrability of matter, proper to it as solid: if on the other hand

he was able to pass into closed houses and rooms, unhindered by the

interposition of walls and doors, he thus proved that the

impenetrability of solid matter did not belong to him. Since then

according to the evangelical accounts he must at the same time have had

and not have had the same property: the evangelical representation of

the corporeality of Jesus after the resurrection is manifested to be

contradictory. And this contradiction is not of such a kind that it is

divided among the different narrators; but the account of one and the

same Evangelist includes those contradictory features within itself.

The brief account of Matthew, it is true, implies in the embracing of

the feet of Jesus by the women (v. 9) only the attribute of

palpability, without at the same time presenting an opposite one; with

Mark the case is reversed, his statement that Jesus appeared in another

form (v. 12) implying something supernatural, while on the other hand

he does not decidedly presuppose the opposite; in Luke, on the other

hand, the permission to touch his body and the act of eating speak as

decidedly in favour of organic materiality, as the sudden appearance

and disappearance speak against it; but the members of this

contradiction come the most directly into collision in John, where

Jesus, immediately after he has entered into the closed room unimpeded

by walls and doors, [2132] causes the doubting Thomas to touch him.

§ 140.

DEBATES CONCERNING THE REALITY OF THE DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF JESUS.

The proposition: a dead man has returned to life, is composed of two

such contradictory elements, that whenever it is attempted to maintain

the one, the other threatens to disappear. If he has really returned to

life, it is natural to conclude that he was not wholly dead; if he was

really dead, it is difficult to believe that he has really become

living. [2133]

When we form a correct opinion of the relation between soul and body,

not abstractly separating the two, but conceiving them at once in their

identity, the soul as the interior of the body, the body as the

exterior of the soul, we know not how to imagine, to say nothing of

comprehending, the revivification of a dead person. What we call the

soul is the governing centre which holds in combination the powers and

operations of the body; its function, or rather the soul itself,

consists in keeping all other processes of which the body is

susceptible in uninterrupted subjection to the superior unity of the

process of organic life, which in man is the basis of his spiritual

nature: so soon as this regulating power ceases to act, the supremacy

in the various parts of the body is assumed by these other, inferior

principles, whose work in its prosecution is corruption. When once

these have acceded to the dominion, they will not be inclined to render

it back to their former monarch, the soul; or rather this is

impossible, because, quite apart from the question of the immortality

of the human spirit (Geist), the soul (Seele) as such ceases in the

same moment with its dominion and activity, which constitute its

existence; consequently, in a revivification, even if resort be had to

a miracle, this must consist in the direct creation of a new soul.

Only in the dualism which has become popular on the subject of the

relation between body and soul, is there anything to favour the opinion

of the possibility of a revivification properly so called. In this

system, the soul in its relation to the body is represented as like a

bird, which, though it may for a time have flown out of the cage, can

yet be once more caught and replaced in its former abode; and it is to

such figures that an imaginative species of thought cleaves, in order

to preserve the notion of revivification. But even in this dualistic

view, the inconceivability of such an event is rather concealed than

really diminished. For in the most abstract separation, the

co-existence of the body and soul cannot be held as indifferent and

lifeless as that of a box and its contents; on the contrary, the

presence of the soul in the body produces effects, which again are the

conditions whereby that presence is rendered possible. Thus so soon as

the soul has forsaken the body, there is a cessation in the latter of

those activities which according to the dualistic idea were the

immediate expressions of the influence of the soul; at the same time,

the organs of these activities—brain, blood, etc., begin to stagnate; a

change which is coincident with the moment of death. Thus if it could

occur to the departed soul, or be imposed on it by another, to re-enter

its former dwelling-place: it would find this dwelling, even after the

first moments, uninhabitable in its noblest parts, and unfit for use.

To restore, in the same way as an infirm member, the most immediate

organs of its activity, is an impossibility to the soul, since in order

to effect anything in the body it has need of the service of these very

organs: thus the soul, although remanded into the body, must suffer it

to decay, from inability to exercise any influence over it; or there

must be added to the miracle of its reconveyance into the body, the

second miracle of a restoration of the lifeless bodily organs: an

immediate interposition of God in the regular course of nature,

irreconcileable with enlightened ideas of the relation of God to the

world.

Hence the cultivated intellect of the present day has very decidedly

stated the following dilemma: either Jesus was not really dead, or he

did not really rise again.

Rationalism has principally given its adhesion to the former opinion.

The short time that Jesus hung on the cross, together with the

otherwise ascertained tardiness of death by crucifixion, and the

uncertain nature and effects of the wound from the spear, appeared to

render the reality of the death doubtful. That the agents in the

crucifixion, as well as the disciples themselves, entertained no such

doubt, would be explained not only by the general difficulty of

distinguishing deep swoons and the rigidity of syncope from real death,

but also from the low state of medical science in that age; while at

least one example of the restoration of a crucified person appeared to

render conceivable a resuscitation in the case of Jesus also. This

example is found in Josephus, who informs us that of three crucified

acquaintances whose release he begged from Titus, two died after being

taken down from the cross, but one survived. [2134] How long these

people had hung on the cross Josephus does not mention; but from the

manner in which he connects them with his expedition to Thekoah, by

stating that he saw them on his return from thence, they must probably

have been crucified during this expedition, and as this, from the

trifling distance of the above place from Jerusalem, might possibly be

achieved in a day, they had in all probability not hung on the cross

more than a day, and perhaps a yet shorter time. These three persons,

then, can scarcely have hung much longer than Jesus, who, according to

Mark, was on the cross from nine in the morning till towards six in the

evening, and they were apparently taken down while they still showed

signs of life; yet with the most careful medical tendance only one

survived. Truly it is difficult to perceive how it can hence be shown

probable that Jesus, who when taken from the cross showed all the signs

of death, should have come to life entirely of himself, without the

application of medical skill. [2135]

According to a certain opinion, however, these two conditions—some

remains of conscious life, and careful medical treatment—were not

wanting in the case of Jesus, although they are not mentioned by the

Evangelists. Jesus, we are told, seeing no other way of purifying the

prevalent messianic idea from the admixture of material and political

hopes, exposed himself to crucifixion, but in doing so relied on the

possibility of procuring a speedy removal from the cross by early

bowing his head, and of being afterwards restored by the medical skill

of some among his secret colleagues; so as to inspirit the people at

the same time by the appearance of a resurrection. [2136] Others have

at least exonerated Jesus from such contrivance, and have admitted that

he really sank into a deathlike slumber; but have ascribed to his

disciples a preconceived plan of producing apparent death by means of a

potion, and thus by occasioning his early removal from the cross,

securing his restoration to life. [2137] But of all this our

evangelical sources give no intimation, and for conjecturing such

details we have no ground. Judicious friends of the natural

explanation, who repudiate such monstrous productions of a system which

remodels history at will, have hence renounced the supposition of any

remains of conscious life in Jesus, and have contented themselves, for

the explanation of his revivification, with the vital force which

remained in his still young and vigorous body, even after the cessation

of consciousness; and have pointed out, instead of premeditated

tendance by the hands of men, the beneficial influence which the partly

oleaginous substances applied to his body must have had in promoting

the healing of his wounds, and, united with the air in the cave,

impregnated with the perfumes of the spices, in reawakening feeling and

consciousness in Jesus; [2138] to all which was added as a decisive

impulse, the earthquake and the lightning which on the morning of the

resurrection opened the grave of Jesus. [2139] Others have remarked, in

opposition to this, that the cold air in the cave must have had

anything rather than a vivifying tendency; that strong aromatics in a

confined space would rather have had a stupefying and stifling

influence; [2140] and the same effect must have been produced by a

flash of lightning bursting into the grave, if this were not a mere

figment of rationalistic expositors.

Notwithstanding all these improbabilities, which are against the

opinion that Jesus came to life after a merely apparent death by the

operation of natural causes, this nevertheless remains so far possible,

that if we had secure evidence of the resuscitation of Jesus, we might,

on the strength of such certainty as to the result, supply the

omissions in the narrative, and approve the opinion above

presented,—with the rejection, however, of all precise conjectures.

Secure evidence of the resurrection of Jesus, would be the attestation

of it in a decided and accordant manner by impartial witnesses. But the

impartiality of the alleged witnesses for the resurrection of Jesus, is

the very point which the opponents of Christianity, from Celsus down to

the Wolfenbüttel Fragmentist, have invariably called in question. Jesus

showed himself to his adherents only: why not also to his enemies, that

they too might be convinced, and that by their testimony posterity

might be precluded from every conjecture of a designed fraud on the

part of his disciples? [2141] I cannot certainly attach much weight to

the replies by which apologists have sought to repel this objection,

from that of Origen, who says: Christ avoided the judge who condemned

him, and his enemies, that they might not be smitten with blindness;

[2142] to the opinions of the modern theologians, who by their

vacillation between the assertion that by such an appearance the

enemies of Jesus would have been compelled to believe, and the opposite

one, that they would not have believed even on such evidence,—mutually

confute one another. [2143] Nevertheless, it can still be urged in

reply to that objection, that the adherents of Jesus, from their

hopelessness, which is both unanimously attested by the narratives, and

is in perfect accordance with the nature of the case, here rise to the

rank of impartial witnesses. If they had expected a resurrection of

Jesus and we had then been called upon to believe it on their testimony

alone: there would certainly be a possibility and perhaps also a

probability, if not of an intentional deception, yet of an involuntary

self-delusion on their part; but this possibility vanishes in

proportion as the disciples of Jesus lost all hope after his death. Now

even if it be denied that any one of the gospels proceeded immediately

from a disciple of Jesus, it is still certain from the epistles of Paul

and the Acts that the Apostles themselves had the conviction that they

had seen the risen Jesus. We might then rest satisfied with the

evangelical testimonies in favour of the resurrection, were but these

testimonies in the first place sufficiently precise, and in the second,

in agreement with themselves and with each other. But in fact the

testimony of Paul, which is intrinsically consistent and is otherwise

most important, is so general and vague, that taken by itself, it does

not carry us beyond the subjective fact, that the disciples were

convinced of the resurrection of Jesus; while the more fully detailed

narratives of the gospels, in which the resurrection of Jesus appears

as an objective fact, are, from the contradictions of which they are

convicted, incapable of being used as evidence, and in general their

account of the life of Jesus after his resurrection is not one which

has connexion and unity, presenting a clear historical idea of the

subject, but a fragmentary compilation, [2144] which presents a series

of visions, rather than a continuous history.

If we compare with this account of the resurrection of Jesus, the

precise and internally consistent attestation of his death: we must

incline to the other side of the dilemma above stated, and be induced

to doubt the reality of the resurrection rather than that of the death.

Hence Celsus chose this alternative, deriving the alleged appearance of

Jesus after the resurrection, from the self-delusion of the disciples,

especially the women, either dreaming or waking; or from what appeared

to him still more probable, intentional deception: [2145] and more

modern writers, as, for example, the Wolfenbüttel Fragmentist, have

adopted the accusation of the Jews in Matthew, namely, that the

disciples stole the body of Jesus, and afterwards fabricated, with

slender agreement, stories of his resurrection and subsequent

appearances. [2146] This suspicion is repelled by the remark of Origen,

that a spontaneous falsehood on the part of the disciples could not

possibly have animated them to so unflinching an announcement of the

resurrection of Jesus amid the greatest perils; [2147] and it is a just

argument of modern apologists that the astonishing revolution from the

deep depression and utter hopelessness of the disciples at the death of

Jesus, to the strong faith and enthusiasm with which they proclaimed

him as the Messiah on the succeeding Pentecost, would be inexplicable

unless in the interim something extraordinarily encouraging had taken

place—something, in fact, which had convinced them of his resurrection.

[2148] But that this cause of conviction was precisely a real

appearance of the risen Jesus—that, indeed it was necessarily an

external event at all—is by no means proved. If we chose to remain on

supranatural ground, we might with Spinoza suppose that a vision was

produced by miraculous means in the minds of the disciples, the object

of which was to make evident to them, in a manner accordant with their

powers of comprehension and the ideas of their age, that Jesus by his

virtuous life had risen from spiritual death, and that to those who

followed his example he would grant a similar resurrection. [2149] With

one foot at least on the same ground stands the supposition of Weisse,

that the departed spirit of Jesus really acted on the disciples whom he

had left behind; in connexion with which he refers to the apparitions

of spirits, the impossibility of which remains unproved. [2150] In

order to escape from the magic circle of the supernatural, others have

searched for natural external causes which might induce the belief that

Jesus had risen and had been seen after his resurrection. The first

impetus to this opinion, it has been conjectured, was given by the

circumstance that on the second morning after the burial his grave was

found empty, the linen clothes which lay in it being taken first for

angels and then for an appearance of the risen Jesus himself: [2151]

but if the body of Jesus was not reanimated, how are we to suppose that

it came out of the grave? Here it would be necessary to recur to the

supposition of a theft: unless the intimation of John, that Jesus on

account of haste was laid in a strange grave, were thought available

for the conjecture that perhaps the owner of the grave caused the

corpse to be removed: which however the disciples must subsequently

have learned, and which in any case has too frail a foundation in the

solitary statement of the fourth gospel.

Far more fruitful is the appeal to the passage of Paul (1 Cor. xv. 5

ff.), as the most appropriate starting point in this inquiry, and the

key to the comprehension of all the appearances of Jesus after his

resurrection. [2152] When Paul there places the Christophany which

occurred to himself in the same series with the appearances of Jesus in

the days after his resurrection: this authorizes us, so far as nothing

else stands in the way of such an inference, to conclude that, for

aught the Apostle knew, those earlier appearances were of the same

nature with the one experienced by himself. Now with respect to the

latter as narrated to us in the Acts (ix. 1 ff., xxii. 3 ff., xxvi. 12

ff.), it is no longer possible, after the analysis of Eichhorn [2153]

and Ammon, [2154] to retain it as an external, objective appearance of

the real Christ; even Neander [2155] does not positively dare to

maintain more than an internal influence of Christ on the mind of Paul,

only appending in a very beseeching manner the supposition of an

external appearance; and even that internal influence he himself

renders superfluous by detailing the causes which might in a natural

manner produce such a revolution in the disposition of the man thus:

the favourable impression of Christianity, of the doctrine, life and

conduct of its adherents, which he had here and there received,

especially on the occasion of the martyrdom of Stephen, threw his mind

into a state of excitement and conflict, which he might indeed for a

time forcibly repress, perhaps even by redoubled zeal against the new

sect, but which must at last find vent in a decisive spiritual crisis,

concerning which it need not surprise us that in an oriental it took

the form of a Christophany. If according to this we have in the Apostle

Paul an example, that strong impressions from the infant Christian

community might carry an ardent mind that had long striven against it,

to a pitch of exaltation which issued in a Christophany, and a total

change of sentiment: surely the impression of the sublime personality

of Jesus would suffice to inspire into his immediate disciples,

struggling with the doubts concerning his messiahship which his death

had excited in them, the experience of similar visions. They who think

it necessary and desirable in relation to the Christophany of Paul to

call in the aid of external natural phenomena, as thunder and

lightning, may also seek to facilitate the explanation of the

appearances of the risen Jesus which his immediate disciples believed

themselves to have previously had, by the supposition of similar

incidents. [2156] Only it must be observed that, as Eichhorn’s

explanation of the event in the life of Paul proved a failure from his

maintaining as historical every single detail in the New Testament

narrative, as the blindness of Paul and his cure, the vision of

Ananias, and so on, which he could only transform into natural

occurrences by a very strained interpretation: so it would inevitably

render impossible the psychological explanation of the appearances of

Jesus, to acknowledge as historical all the evangelical narratives

concerning them, especially those of the tests which Thomas applied by

touching the wounds of Jesus, and which Jesus himself afforded by

taking material nourishment; and indeed these narratives, from the

contradiction which they are shown to present, have not the slightest

claim to such a character. The two first gospels, and our chief

informant in this matter, the Apostle Paul, tell us nothing of such

tests, and it is quite natural that the Christophanies which, in the

actual experience of the women and Apostles, may have floated before

them as visions of much the same character as that which Paul had on

the way to Damascus, when once received into tradition, should by

reason of the apologetic effort to cut off all doubts as to their

reality, be continually more and more consolidated so that the mute

appearances became speaking ones, the ghostlike form was exchanged for

one that ate, and the merely visible body was made palpable also.

Here however there presents itself a distinction, which seems at once

to render the event in the history of Paul unavailable for the

explanation of those earlier appearances. To the Apostle Paul, namely,

the idea that Jesus had risen and appeared to many persons was

delivered as the belief of the sect which he persecuted; he had only to

receive it into his conviction and to vivify it in his imagination

until it became a part of his own experience: the earlier disciples, on

the contrary, had before them as a fact merely the death of their

Messiah,—the notion of a resurrection on his part they could nowhere

gather, but must, according to our conception of the matter, have first

produced it; a problem which appears to be beyond all comparison more

difficult than that subsequently presented to the Apostle Paul. In

order to form a correct judgment on this subject, we must transport

ourselves yet more completely into the situation and frame of mind into

which the disciples of Jesus were thrown by his death. During several

years’ intercourse with them he had constantly impressed them more and

more decidedly with the belief that he was the Messiah; but his death,

which they were unable to reconcile with their messianic ideas, had for

the moment annihilated this belief. Now when, after the first shock was

past, the earlier impression began to revive: there spontaneously arose

in them the psychological necessity of solving the contradiction

between the ultimate fate of Jesus and their earlier opinion of him—of

adopting into their idea of the Messiah the characteristics of

suffering and death. As, however, with the Jews of that age to

comprehend meant nothing else than to derive from the sacred

scriptures: they turned to these, to ascertain whether they might not

perhaps find in them intimations of a suffering and dying Messiah.

Foreign as the idea of such a Messiah is to the Old Testament, the

disciples, who wished to find it there, must nevertheless have regarded

as intimations of this kind, all those poetical and prophetic passages

which, like Isa. liii., Ps. xxii., represented the man of God as

afflicted and bowed down even to death. Thus Luke states as the chief

occupation of the risen Jesus in his interview with the disciples, that

beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all

the scriptures the things concerning himself, i.e. that Christ ought to

have suffered such things (xxiv. 26 f., 44 ff.). When they had in this

manner received into their messianic idea ignominy, suffering and

death, the ignominiously executed Jesus was not lost, but still

remained to them: by his death he had only entered into his messianic

glory (Luke xxiv. 26) in which he was invisibly with them always, even

unto the end of the world (Matt. xxviii. 20). But how could he fail,

out of this glory, in which he lived, to give tidings of himself to his

followers? and how could they, when their mind was opened to the

hitherto hidden doctrine of a dying Messiah contained in the

scriptures, and when in moments of unwonted inspiration their hearts

burned within them (Luke xxiv. 32),—how could they avoid conceiving

this to be an influence shed on them by their glorified Christ, an

opening of their understanding by him (v. 45), nay, an actual

conversing with him? [2157] Lastly, how conceivable is it that in

individuals, especially women, these impressions were heightened, in a

purely subjective manner, into actual vision; that on others, even on

whole assemblies, something or other of an objective nature, visible or

audible, sometimes perhaps the sight of an unknown person, created the

impression of a revelation or appearance of Jesus: a height of pious

enthusiasm which is wont to appear elsewhere in religious societies

peculiarly oppressed and persecuted. But if the crucified Messiah had

truly entered into the highest form of blessed existence, he ought not

to have left his body in the grave: and if in precisely such Old

Testament passages as admitted of a typical relation to the sufferings

of the Messiah, there was at the same time expressed the hope: thou

wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one

to see corruption (Ps. xvi. 10; Acts ii. 27); while in Isa. liii. 10,

he who had been represented as led to the slaughter and buried, was yet

promised a prolongation of his days: what was more natural to the

disciples than to reinstate their earlier Jewish ideas, which the death

of Jesus had disturbed, namely, that the Christ remaineth for ever

(John xii. 34), through the medium of an actual revivification of their

dead master, and, as it was a messianic attribute one day to call the

dead bodily from the grave, to imagine also as returning to life in the

manner of a resurrection?

Meanwhile, if the body of Jesus was interred in a known place, and

could there (so far as we are not at liberty to suppose a theft, or an

accidental removal) be sought for and exhibited: it is difficult to

conceive how the disciples in Jerusalem itself, and not quite two days

after the interment, could believe and declare that Jesus was risen,

without refuting themselves, or meeting with refutation from their

adversaries, (to whom however they appear to have made the first

disclosure as to the resurrection of their Messiah at Pentecost,) by

ocular demonstration at the grave. [2158] Now it is here that the

narrative of the first gospel, which has been unjustly placed below the

others, presents an explanatory and satisfactory indication. According

to this gospel also the risen Jesus does indeed appear in Jerusalem,

but only to the women, and so entirely as a mere preparation for a

succeeding interview, nay, so superfluously, that we have already

questioned the truth of this appearance, and pronounced it to be a

later modification of the legend of the angelic appearance, which

Matthew nevertheless also included in his narrative. [2159] The sole

important appearance of Jesus after the resurrection occurs, according

to Matthew, in Galilee, whither an angel, and Jesus himself on the last

evening of his life and on the morning of the resurrection, most

urgently directed his disciples, and where the fourth gospel also, in

its appendix, places an appearance of the resuscitated Jesus. That the

disciples, dispersed by their alarm, at the execution of their Messiah,

should return to their home in Galilee, where they had no need, as in

the metropolis of Judea, the seat of the enemies of their crucified

Christ, to shut the doors for fear of the Jews, was natural. Here was

the place where they gradually began to breathe freely, and where their

faith in Jesus, which had been temporarily depressed, might once more

expand with its former vigour. But here also, where no body lay in the

grave to contradict bold suppositions, might gradually be formed the

idea of the resurrection of Jesus; and when this conviction had so

elevated the courage and enthusiasm of his adherents that they ventured

to proclaim it in the metropolis, it was no longer possible by the

sight of the body of Jesus either to convict themselves, or to be

convicted by others.

According to the Acts, it is true, the disciples so early as on the

next Pentecost, seven weeks after the death of Jesus, appeared in

Jerusalem with the announcement of his resurrection, and were

themselves already convinced of it on the second morning after his

burial, by appearances which they witnessed. But how long will it yet

be, until the manner in which the author of the Acts places the first

appearance of the disciples of Jesus with the announcement of the new

doctrine, precisely on the festival of the announcement of the old law,

be recognized as one which rests purely on dogmatical grounds; which is

therefore historically worthless, and in no way binds us to assign so

short a duration to that time of quiet preparation in Galilee? As

regards the other statement—it might certainly require some time for

the mental state of the disciples to become exalted in the degree

necessary, before this or that individual amongst them could, purely as

an operation of his own mind, make present to himself the risen Christ

in a visionary manner; or before whole assemblies, in moments of highly

wrought enthusiasm, could believe that they heard him in every

impressive sound, or saw him in every striking appearance: but it would

nevertheless be conceived, that, as it was not possible that he should

be held by the bonds of death (Acts ii. 24), he had passed only a short

time in the grave. As to the more precise determination of this

interval, if it be held an insufficient explanation, that the sacred

number three would be the first to suggest itself; there is a further

idea which might occur,—whether or not it be historical that Jesus was

buried on the evening before a sabbath,—namely, that he only remained

in the grave during the rest of the sabbath, and thus rose on the

morning after the sabbath πρωῒ πρώτῃ σαββάτω which by the known mode of

reckoning might be reconciled with the round number of three days.

[2160]

When once the idea of a resurrection of Jesus had been formed in this

manner, the great event could not be allowed to have happened so

simply, but must be surrounded and embellished with all the pomp which

the Jewish imagination furnished. The chief ornaments which stood at

command for this purpose, were angels: hence these must open the grave

of Jesus, must, after he had come forth from it, keep watch in the

empty place, and deliver to the women, who (because without doubt women

had had the first visions) must be the first to go to the grave, the

tidings of what had happened. As it was Galilee where Jesus

subsequently appeared to them, the journey of the disciples thither,

which was nothing else than their return home, somewhat hastened by

fear, was derived from the direction of an angel; nay, Jesus himself

must already before his death, and, as Matthew too zealously adds, once

more after the resurrection also, have enjoined this journey on the

disciples. But the further these narratives were propagated by

tradition, the more must the difference between the locality of the

resurrection itself and the appearances of the risen one, be allowed to

fall out of sight as inconvenient; and since the locality of the death

and resurrection was not transferable, the appearances were gradually

placed in the same locality as the resurrection,—in Jerusalem, which as

the more brilliant theatre and the seat of the first Christian Church,

was especially appropriate for them. [2161]

CHAPTER V.

THE ASCENSION.

§ 141.

THE LAST COMMANDS AND PROMISES OF JESUS.

In the last interview of Jesus with his disciples, which according to

Mark and Luke closed with the ascension, the three first Evangelists

(the fourth has something similar on the very first interview)

represent Jesus as delivering testamentary commands and promises, which

referred to the establishment and propagation of the messianic kingdom

on earth.

With regard to the commands, Jesus in Luke (xxiv. 47 f.; Acts i. 8) in

parting from his disciples appoints them to be witnesses of his

messiahship, and charges them to preach repentance and remission of

sins in his name from Jerusalem to the uttermost parts of the earth. In

Mark (xvi. 15 f.) he enjoins them to go into all the world and bring to

every creature the glad tidings of the messianic kingdom founded by

him; he who believes and is baptized will be saved, he who believeth

not, will (in the future messianic judgment) be condemned. In Matthew

(xxviii. 19 f.) the disciples are also commissioned to make disciples

of all nations πάντα τὰ ἔθνη, and here baptism is not mentioned

incidentally merely, as in Mark, but is made the subject of an express

command by Jesus, and is besides more precisely described as a baptism

in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, ἐις τὸ

ὄνομα τοῦ πατρὸς καὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ καὶ τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος.

The impediments to the supposition that Jesus delivered to his

disciples the express command to carry the announcement of the gospel

to the Gentiles, have been already pointed out in an earlier connexion.

[2162] But that this more definite form of baptism proceeded from

Jesus, is also opposed by the fact, that such an allocation of Father,

Son, and Spirit does not elsewhere appear, except as a form of

salutation in apostolic epistles (2 Cor. xiii. 14: the grace of our

Lord Jesus Christ, etc.); while as a more definite form of baptism it

is not to be met with throughout the whole New Testament save in the

above passage of the first gospel: for in the apostolic epistles and

even in the Acts, baptism is designated as a βαπτίζειν εἰς Χριστὸν

Ἰησοῦν, or εἰς τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ baptising in Christ Jesus, or

in the name of the Lord Jesus, or their equivalent (Rom. vi. 3; Gal.

iii. 27; Acts ii. 38, viii. 16, x. 48, xix. 5), and the same threefold

reference to God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is only found in

ecclesiastical writers, as, for example, Justin. [2163] Indeed the

formula in Matthew sounds so exactly as if it had been borrowed from

the ecclesiastical ritual, that there is no slight probability in the

supposition that it was transferred from thence into the mouth of

Jesus. But this does not authorize us to throw the passage out of the

text as an interpolation, [2164] since, if everything in the gospels

which cannot have happened to Jesus, or which cannot have been done or

spoken by him in the manner there described, were to be pronounced

foreign to the original text, the interpolations would soon become too

numerous. So far it is with justice that others have defended the

genuineness of the baptismal formula; [2165] but their grounds for the

assertion that it was delivered in this manner by Jesus himself are

insufficient: the two opinions then resolve themselves into a third,

namely, that this more definite form of baptism does indeed belong to

the original context of the first gospel, but without having been so

delivered by Jesus. [2166] Jesus had, during his life, predicted in

divers ways the propagation of his kingdom beyond the limits of the

Jewish nation, perhaps also had intimated the introduction of baptism

to be his will; and—whether it be the fact that, as we learn in the

fourth gospel, the disciples already practised baptism in the lifetime

of Jesus, or that they first made this rite a sign of reception into

the new messianic society after his death,—in any case it was entirely

in the manner of the legend to place the injunction to baptize, as well

as to go out into all the world, in the mouth of the departing Christ

as a last declaration of his will.

The promises which Jesus gives to his adherents in parting from them,

are in Matthew, where they are directed exclusively to the eleven,

limited simply to the assurance that he, to whom as the exalted Messiah

all power was delivered both in heaven and on earth, would be invisibly

with them during the present age, αἰὼν, until at the consummation

συντέλεια of this term, he should enter into permanent visible

communion with them: precisely the expression of the belief which was

formed in the first Christian community, when the equilibrium was

recovered after the oscillations caused by the death of Jesus.—In Mark,

the last promises of Jesus seem to be gathered from the popular opinion

concerning the gifts of the Christians, which was current at the period

of the composition of this gospel. Of the signs, σημεία, which are here

promised to believers in general, the speaking with (new) tongues,

λαλεῖν γλώσσαις (καιναῖς) in the sense intended 1 Cor. xiv., not in the

manner described in Acts ii. which is a mythical modification, [2167]

actually appeared in the primitive church; as also the casting out of

devils δαιμόνια ἐκβάλλειν; and it may even be conceived that sick

persons were cured in a natural manner by faith in the laying on of

hands, ἐπίθεσις χειρων by a Christian: on the contrary the taking up of

serpents ὄφεις αἴρειν (comp. Luke x. 19) and the power of drinking

poisons with impunity, have never had any existence except in the

superstitious belief of the vulgar, and such signs of discipleship

would have been the last to which Jesus would have attached any

value.—In Luke, the object of the last promise of Jesus is the power

from on high δύναμις ἐξ ὕψους, which according to the promise of the

Father, ἐπαγγελία τοῦ πατρὸς, he would send on the apostles, and the

impartation of which they were to await in Jerusalem (xxiv. 49); and in

Acts i. 5 ff. Jesus more precisely designates this impartation of power

as a baptism with the Holy Spirit, πνεῦμα ἅγιον, which in a few days

would be granted to the disciples in order to qualify them for the

announcement of the gospel. These passages of Luke, which place the

impartation of the Holy Spirit in the days after the ascension, seem to

be in contradiction with the statement of the fourth gospel, that Jesus

communicated the Holy Spirit to his disciples in the days of his

resurrection, nay, on his very first appearance in the circle of the

eleven. In John xx. 22 f. we read, that Jesus, appearing among the

disciples when the doors were closed, breathed on them and said:

Receive ye the Holy Ghost, λάβετε πνεῦμα ἅγιον, wherewith he connected

the authority to remit and retain sins.

If this were the only passage relating to the impartation of the

Spirit, every one would believe that the disciples had it communicated

to them by Jesus when he was personally present among them, and not

first after his exaltation to heaven. But in accordance with the

harmonizing interest, it has been concluded, first by Theodore of

Mopsuestia, and recently by Tholuck, [2168] that the word λάβετε,

receive, in John, must be taken in the sense of λήψεσθε, ye shall

receive, because according to Luke the Holy Spirit was not imparted to

the disciples until later, at Pentecost. But as if he wished to

preclude such a wresting of his words, the Jesus of John adds to them

the symbolical action of breathing on the disciples, which unmistakably

represents the receiving of the Holy Spirit as a present fact. [2169]

It is true that expositors have found out a way of eluding even this

act of breathing, by attributing to it the following signification: as

certainly as Jesus now breathes upon them, so certainly will they at a

future time receive the Holy Ghost. [2170] But the act of breathing

upon a person is as decided a symbol of a present impartation as the

laying on of hands, and as those on whom the apostles laid their hands

were immediately filled with the Spirit (Acts viii. 17, xix. 6), so,

according to the above narrative, the author of the fourth gospel must

have thought that the Apostles on that occasion received the Spirit

from Jesus. In order to avoid the necessity of denying, in opposition

to the clear meaning of John, that an impartation of the Spirit

actually took place immediately after the resurrection, or of coming

into contradiction with Luke, who assigns the outpouring of the Spirit

to a later period, expositors now ordinarily suppose that the Spirit

was granted to the Apostles both at the earlier and the later period,

the impartation at Pentecost being only an increasing and perfecting of

the former. [2171] Or more correctly, since Matthew x. 20 speaks of the

Spirit of the Father as already sustaining the disciples in their first

mission: it is supposed that they were first endowed with some

extraordinary power before that mission, in the lifetime of Jesus; that

on the occasion in question, shortly after his resurrection, he

heightened this power; but that all the fulness of the Spirit was not

poured out upon them until Pentecost. [2172] What constitutes the

distinction between these steps, and especially in what the increase of

the gifts of the Spirit consisted in the present instance, is, however,

as Michaelis has already remarked, not easy to discern. If in the first

instance the apostles were endowed with the power of working miracles

(Matt. x. 1, 8) together with the gift of speaking freely (par)r(êsi/a)

before tribunals (v. 20), it could only be a more correct insight into

the spirituality of his kingdom that Jesus communicated to them by

breathing on them; but of this they were still destitute immediately

before the ascension, when, according to Acts i. 6, they asked whether,

with the impartation of the Spirit, within the next few days, would be

associated the restoration of the kingdom to Israel. If however it be

supposed that each successive impartation of the Spirit conferred no

new powers on the disciples, but was merely an addition in measure to

that which was already present in all its diversified powers: [2173] it

must still be held surprising that no Evangelist mentions, together

with an earlier impartation, a later amplification; but instead of

this, besides an incidental mention of the Spirit as enabling the

disciples to defend themselves before tribunals, in Luke (xii.

12),—which, since it is not here, as in Matthew, connected with a

mission, may be regarded merely as a reference to the time after the

later outpouring of the Spirit,—each of the Evangelists mentions only

one impartation, and represents this as the first and last. This is,

indeed, a clear proof that, to place in juxtaposition three

impartations and to regard them as so many different degrees, is only

an effort to harmonize the gospels by introducing into them what is

foreign to the text.

Thus there are in the New Testament three distinct opinions concerning

the impartation of the Spirit to the disciples of Jesus; and in two

respects they form a climax. As regards the time, Matthew places the

impartation the earliest—within the period of the natural life of

Jesus; Luke, the latest—in the time after his complete departure from

the earth; John in an intermediate position—in the days of the

resurrection. As regards the conception of the fact, it is the simplest

in Matthew, the least perceptible to the senses, for he has no special

and external act of impartation; John already has such a feature, in

the act of breathing on the disciples; while with Luke, in the Acts,

the gentle breathing has become a violent storm, which shakes the

house, and with which other miraculous appearances are united. These

two series of gradations stand in opposite relations to historical

probability. That the Spirit πνεῦμα, which, whether it be regarded as

natural or as supernatural, is in either case the animating power of

the messianic idea in its Christian modification, was communicated to

the adherents of Jesus so early as Matthew narrates, is contradicted by

his own representation, for according to him, that Christian

modification—the introduction of the characteristics of suffering and

death into the idea of the Messiah,—was not comprehended by the

disciples long after the mission described in Matt. x.; and as the

discourse of instructions there given contains other particulars also,

which will only suit later times and circumstances: it is easy to

imagine that the promise in question may have been erroneously referred

to that earlier period. Only after the death and resurrection of Jesus

can we conceive what the New Testament calls the πνεῦμα ἅγιον to have

been developed in the disciples, and in so far the representation of

John stands nearer to reality than that of Matthew; but, as certainly

the revolution in the sentiments of the disciples described in the

foregoing section, had not taken place so early as two days after the

crucifixion: the account of John does not approach so near to the truth

as that of Luke, who allows an interval of at least fifty days for the

formation of the new opinions in the disciples. The position of the

narratives with respect to historical truth is reversed by the other

climax. For in proportion as a narrative represents the impartation of

a spiritual power as perceptible to the senses, the formation of a

sentiment which might spring from natural causes as miraculous, the

origin of a faculty which can only have been developed gradually, as

instantaneous: in the same proportion does such a narrative diverge

from the truth; and in this respect, Matthew would stand at the least

distance from the truth, Luke at the greatest. If we therefore

recognise in the representation of the latter the most mature product

of tradition, it may be wondered how tradition can have wrought in two

opposite ways: receding from the truth in relation to the determination

of the manner and form of the impartation, approaching the truth in

relation to the determination of the time. But this is explained as

soon as it is considered, that in the changes in the determination of

the time, tradition was not guided by critical inquiry after truth—this

might well have caused surprise,—but by the same tendency that led to

the other alteration, namely, to present the impartation of the Spirit

as a single miraculous act. If Jesus was said to have shed the Spirit

on his disciples by a special act: it must seem appropriate to assign

this act to his state of glorification, and thus either with John to

place it after the resurrection, or with Luke after the ascension;

indeed the fourth Evangelist expressly remarks that in the lifetime of

Jesus, the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet

glorified (vii. 39).

This interpretation of the opinion of the fourth Evangelist concerning

the impartation of the Spirit to the disciples, is attested as the

correct one by the fact, that it throws unexpected light on an

obscurity in his gospel with respect to which we were previously unable

to come to a decision. In relation to the farewell discourses of Jesus,

it was not possible to settle the dispute, whether what Jesus there

says of his return is to be referred to the days of his resurrection,

or to the outpouring of the Spirit, because the description of that

return as a seeing again seemed to speak as decidedly for the former,

as the observation that in that time they would no longer ask him

anything, and would understand him fully, for the latter: a dispute

which is decided in the most welcome manner, if it can be shown to be

the opinion of the narrator that the impartation of the Spirit fell in

the days of the resurrection. [2174] At first indeed it might be

thought, that this impartation, especially as in John it is connected

with the formal appointment of his disciples as his envoys, and the

communication of the authority to remit and retain sins (comp. Matt.

xviii. 18), would have been more appropriate at the close than the

commencement of the appearances of the risen Jesus, and in a full

assembly of the Apostles than in one from which Thomas was absent; but

on this account to suppose with Olshausen that the Evangelist for the

sake of brevity merely appends the impartation of the Spirit to the

first appearance, though it really belonged to a later interview, is an

inadmissible violence; and we must rather allow, that the author of the

fourth gospel regarded this first appearance of Jesus as the principal

one, and the one eight days later as merely supernumerary in favour of

Thomas. The appearance chap. xxi. is also a supplement, which the

author, when he wrote his gospel, either had not known, or at least did

not recollect.

§ 142.

THE SO-CALLED ASCENSION CONSIDERED AS A SUPERNATURAL AND AS A NATURAL

EVENT.

The ascension of Jesus is reported to us in the New Testament in three

different narratives, which in point of fulness of detail and

picturesqueness of description form a progressive series. Mark, who in

the last portion of his gospel is in general very brief and abrupt,

only says, that after Jesus had spoken to the disciples for the last

time, he was received up (ἀνελήφθη) into heaven and sat on the right

hand of God (xvi. 19). With scarcely more definiteness it is said in

the gospel of Luke that Jesus led his disciples out as far as Bethany,

ἐξω ἕως εἰς Βηθανίαν, and while he here with uplifted hands gave them

his blessing, he was parted from them (διέστη), and carried up into

heaven (ἐνεφέρετο); whereupon the disciples fell down and worshipped

him, and forthwith returned to Jerusalem with great joy (xxiv. 50 ff.).

In the introduction to the Acts, Luke gives more ample details

concerning this scene. On the mount of Olives, where Jesus delivered to

his disciples his last commands and promises, he was taken up before

their eyes (ἐπήρθη), and a cloud received him out of their sight. While

the disciples were watching him, as he went up into heaven on the

cloud, there suddenly stood by them two men in white apparel, who

induced them to desist from thus gazing after him by the assurance,

that the Jesus now taken from them would come again from heaven in the

same manner as he had just ascended into heaven; on which they were

satisfied, and returned to Jerusalem (i. 1–12).

The first impression from this narrative is clearly this: that it is

intended as a description of a miraculous event, an actual exaltation

of Jesus into heaven, as the dwelling-place of God, and an attestation

of this by angels; as orthodox theologians, both ancient and modern,

correctly maintain. The only question is, whether they can also help us

to surmount the difficulties which stand in our way when we attempt to

form a conception of such an event? One main difficulty is this: how

can a palpable body, which has still flesh and bones, and eats material

food, be qualified for a celestial abode? how can it so far liberate

itself from the laws of gravity, as to be capable of an ascent through

the air? and how can it be conceived that God gave so preternatural a

capability to Jesus by a miracle? [2175] The only possible reply to

these questions is, that the grosser elements which the body of Jesus

still retained after the resurrection, were removed before the

ascension, and only the finest essence of his corporeality, as the

integument of the soul, was taken by him into heaven. [2176] But as the

disciples who were present at the ascension observed no residuum of his

body which he had left behind, this leads either to the above mentioned

absurdity of an evaporation of the body of Jesus, or to Olshausen’s

process of subtilization which, still incomplete even after the

resurrection, was not perfected until the moment of the ascension; a

process which must have been conducted with singularly rapid retrograde

transitions in these last days, if the body of Jesus, when penetrating

into the closed room where the disciples were assembled, is to be

supposed immaterial; immediately after when Thomas touched him,

material; and lastly, in the ascension, again immaterial. The other

difficulty lies in the consideration, that according to a just idea of

the world, the seat of God and of the blessed, to which Jesus is

supposed to have been exalted, is not to be sought for in the upper

regions of the air, nor, in general, in any determinate place;—such a

locality could only be assigned to it in the childish, limited

conceptions of antiquity. We are well aware that he who would attain to

God and the circle of the blessed would make a superfluous circuit, if

he thought it necessary for this purpose to soar aloft into the higher

regions of the firmament; and the more intimately Jesus was acquainted

with God and divine things, the farther certainly would he be from

making such a circuit, or from being caused to make it by God. [2177]

Thus there would be no other resource than to suppose a divine

accommodation to the idea of the world in that age, and to say: God in

order to convince the disciples of the return of Jesus into the higher

world, although this world is in reality by no means to be sought for

in the upper air, nevertheless prepared the spectacle of such an

exaltation. [2178] But this is to represent God as theatrically

arranging an illusion.

As an attempt to set us free from such difficulties and absurdities,

the natural explanation of this narrative must needs be welcome. [2179]

This distinguishes in the evangelical accounts of the ascension, what

was actually beheld, and what was inferred by reasoning. Certainly,

when it is said in the Acts: while they beheld, he was taken up,

βλεπόντων αὐτῶν ἐπήρθη: the exaltation to heaven seems here to be

represented as a fact actually witnessed. But the Rationalists tell us

that we are not to understand ἐπήρθη, as signifying an elevation above

the earth, but only that Jesus, in order to bless the disciples, drew

up his form and thus appeared more elevated to them. They then bring

forward the word διέστη, he was parted from them, in the conclusion of

Luke’s gospel, and interpret it to mean that Jesus in taking leave of

his disciples removed himself farther from them. Hereupon, they

continue, in the same way as on the mount of Transfiguration, a cloud

was interposed between Jesus and the disciples, and together with the

numerous olive-trees on the mount, concealed him from their sight; a

result which, on the assurance of two unknown men, they regarded as a

reception of Jesus into heaven. But, when Luke in the Acts immediately

connects ἐπήρθη with the statement, and a cloud received him, καὶ

νεφέλη ὑπέλαβεν αὐτὸν: he implies that the taking up was an

introduction to the being received by the cloud; which it would not be

if it were a mere drawing up of the body, but only if it were an

exaltation of Jesus above the earth, since only in this case could a

cloud float under, carry, and envelop him, which is the idea expressed

by ὑπέλαβεν. Again, in the Gospel of Luke, the fact that he was parted

from them is represented as something which took place while he blessed

them, ἐν τῷ εὐλογεῖν αὐτον αὐτοὺς; now no one when pronouncing a

benediction on another, will remove from him: whereas it appears very

suitable, that Jesus while communicating his blessing to the disciples

should be carried upward, and thus, while rising, have continued to

extend over them his outstretched hand as a symbol of his blessing.

Thus the natural explanation of the disappearance in the cloud falls to

the ground of itself; while in the supposition that the two individuals

clothed in white apparel were natural men, Paulus only disguises a

final and strongly marked essay of the opinion espoused by Bahrdt and

Venturini, that several epochs in the life of Jesus, especially after

his crucifixion, were brought about by the agency of secret colleagues.

And Jesus himself—what, according to this opinion, must we suppose to

have become of him after this last separation from his disciples? Shall

we, with Bahrdt, dream of an Essene lodge, into which he retired after

the completion of his work? and with Brennecke appeal, in proof that

Jesus long continued silently to work for the welfare of mankind, to

his appearance for the purpose of the conversion of Paul? But, taking

the narrative of the Acts as historical, this was connected with

circumstances and effects which could be produced by no natural man,

even though a member of a secret order. Or shall we with Paulus

suppose, that shortly after the last interview the body of Jesus sank

beneath the injuries it had received? This could not well have happened

in the very next moments after he had appeared still active among his

disciples, so that the two men who joined them might have been

witnesses of his decease,—who, even admitting this, would not have

spoken in accordance with the truth; but if he continued to live for

any length of time he must have had the intention to remain for that

period in the concealment of a secret society; and to this must then be

supposed to belong the two men clothed in white, who, doubtless with

his previous sanction, persuaded the disciples that he had ascended

into heaven. [2180] But this is a mode of representation, from which in

this instance as in every other, a sound judgment must turn away with

aversion.

§ 143.

INSUFFICIENCY OF THE NARRATIVES OF THE ASCENSION. MYTHICAL CONCEPTION

OF THOSE NARRATIVES.

Among all the New Testament histories of miracles, the ascension least

demanded such an expenditure of perverted acumen, since the

attestations to its historical validity are peculiarly weak,—not only

to us who, having no risen Jesus, can consequently have no ascended

one, but apart from all prior conclusions and in every point of view.

Matthew and John, who according to the common idea were the two

eyewitnesses among the Evangelists, do not mention it; it is narrated

by Mark and Luke alone, while in the rest of the New Testament writings

decided allusions to it are wanting. But this absence of allusions to

the ascension in the rest of the New Testament is denied by orthodox

expositors. When, say they, Jesus in Matthew (xxvi. 64), declares

before the high priest, that hereafter the Son of Man will be seen

sitting at the right hand of God: this presupposes an exaltation

thither, consequently an ascension; when in John (iii. 13), he says, no

one hath ascended into heaven but the Son of Man who came from heaven,

and at another time (vi. 62) tells the disciples that they will

hereafter see him ascend where he was before; further, when on the

morning of the resurrection he declares that he is not yet ascended to

his Father, implying that he is about to do so (xx. 17): there could

hardly be more explicit allusions to the ascension; again, when the

apostles in the Acts so often speak of an exaltation of Jesus to the

right hand of God (ii. 33, v. 31, comp. vii. 56), and Paul represents

him as ascended up far above all heavens ἀναβὰς ὑπεράνω πάντων τῶν

οὐρανῶν (Ephes. iv. 10), Peter, as gone into heaven πορευθεὶς εἰς

οὐρανὸν (1 Pet. iii. 22): there can be no doubt that they all knew of

his ascension. [2181] All these passages, however, with the exception

perhaps of John vi. 62, where a SEEING the Son of Man ascend, θεωρεῖν

ἀναβαίνοντα τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, is spoken of, contain only in

general his exaltation to heaven, without intimating that it was an

external, visible fact, that took place in the presence of the

disciples. Rather, when we find Paul in 1 Cor. xv. 5 ff. ranking the

appearance of Jesus to himself, which occurred long after the alleged

ascension, with the Christophanies before this epoch, so entirely

without any pause or indication of a distinction: we must doubt, not

merely that all the appearances which he enumerates besides his own can

have occurred before the ascension, [2182] but whether the Apostle can

have had any knowledge at all of an ascension as an external fact which

closed the earthly life of Jesus. As to the author of the fourth

gospel,—in his metaphorical language, we are not compelled by the word

θεωρῆτε, any more than by the ὄψεσθε in relation to the angels

ascending and descending upon Jesus, i. 52, to ascribe to him a

knowledge of the visible ascension of Jesus, of which he gives no

intimation at the conclusion of his gospel.

Commentators have, it is true, taken all possible pains to explain the

want of a narrative of the ascension in the first and fourth gospels,

in a way which may not prove inimical either to the authority of the

writings, or to the historical value of the fact. They maintain that

the Evangelists who are silent on the subject, held it either

unnecessary, or impossible, to narrate the ascension. They held it

unnecessary, say these expositors, either intrinsically, from the minor

importance of the event; [2183] or extrinsically, on the consideration

that it was generally known as a part of the evangelical tradition;

[2184] John in particular supposed it to be known from Mark and Luke;

[2185] or lastly, both Matthew and John omitted it as not belonging to

the earthly life of Jesus, to the description of which their writings

were exclusively devoted. [2186] But we must contend, on the contrary,

that the life of Jesus, especially that enigmatical life which he led

after his return from the grave, absolutely required such a close as

the ascension. Whether it were generally known or not, whether it were

important or unimportant,—the simple æsthetic interest which dictates

even to an uncultivated author, that a narrative should be wound up

with a conclusion, must have led every evangelical writer who knew of

the ascension to mention it, though it were but summarily at the end of

his history, in order to avoid the strange impression left by the first

gospel and still more by the fourth, as narratives losing themselves in

vague obscurity. Hence our apologists resort to the supposition that

the first and fourth Evangelists held it impossible to give an account

of the ascension of Jesus, because the eyewitnesses, however long they

might gaze after him, could still only see him hovering in the air and

encircled by the cloud, not entering heaven and taking his place on the

right hand of God. [2187] But in the ideas of the ancient world, to

which heaven was nearer than to us, an entrance into the clouds was in

itself a real ascent into heaven, as we see from the stories of Romulus

and Elijah.

Thus it is undeniable that the above Evangelists were ignorant of the

ascension: but the conclusion of the most recent criticism, that this

ignorance is a reproach to the first Evangelist as a sign of his

unapostolic character, [2188] is the less in place here, because the

event in question is rendered suspicious not merely by the silence of

two Evangelists, but also by the want of agreement between those who

narrate it. Mark is at variance with Luke, nay, Luke is at variance

with himself. In the account of the former, it appears as if Jesus had

ascended into heaven immediately from the meal in which he appeared to

the eleven, consequently from out of a house in Jerusalem; for the

phrases: he appeared with the eleven as they sat at meat, and upbraided

them—and he said—So then after the Lord had spoken unto them he was

received up into heaven, etc., ἀνακειμένοις—ἐφανερώθη· καὶ ὠνείδισε—καὶ

ἐ͂ιπεν—Ὁ μὲν οὖν κύριος, μετὰ τὸ λαλῆσαι αὐτοῖς, ἀνελήφθη κ.τ.λ. have an

immediate dependence on each other, and it is only by violence that a

change of place or a distinction of time can be introduced. [2189] Now

an ascent into heaven directly out of a room is certainly not easy to

imagine; hence Luke represents it as taking place in the open air. In

his gospel he makes Jesus immediately before his ascension, lead out

his disciples as far as Bethany ἕως εἰς Βηθανίαν, but in the Acts he

places the scene on the mount called Olivet ὄρος τὸ καλούμενον ἐλαιῶνα;

this, however, cannot be imputed to him as a contradiction, since

Bethany lay in the neighbourhood of the mount of Olives. [2190] But

there is a more important divergency in his statement of time; for in

his gospel, as in Mark, we are left to infer that the ascension took

place on the same day with the resurrection: whereas in the Acts it is

expressly remarked, that the two events were separated by an interval

of forty days. It has already been remarked that the latter

determination of time must have come to the knowledge of Luke in the

interim between the composition of the gospel and that of the Acts. The

more numerous the narratives of appearances of the risen Jesus, and the

more various the places to which they were assigned: the less would the

short space of a day suffice for his life on earth after the

resurrection; while the determination of the lengthened period which

had become necessary to forty days precisely, had its foundation in the

part which this number is known to have played in the Jewish, and

already in the Christian legend. The people of Israel were forty years

in the wilderness; Moses was forty days on mount Sinai; he and Elias

fasted forty days; and Jesus himself previous to the temptation

remained the same length of time without nourishment in the wilderness.

As, then, all these mysterious intermediate states and periods of

transition were determined by the number forty: this number presented

itself as especially appropriate for the determination of the

mysterious interval between the resurrection and ascension of Jesus.

[2191]

As regards the description of the event itself, it might be thought

admissible to ascribe the silence of Mark, and of Luke in his gospel,

concerning the cloud and the angels, purely to the brevity of their

narratives; but since Luke at the close of his gospel narrates

circumstantially enough the conduct of the disciples—how they fell down

and worshipped the ascended Jesus, and returned to the city with great

joy: so he would doubtless have pointed out the information

communicated to them by angels as the immediate source of their joy,

had he known anything of such a particular at the time when he composed

his first writing. Hence this feature seems rather to have been

gradually formed in tradition, in order to render due honour to this

last point also in the life of Jesus, and to present a confirmation of

the insufficient testimony of men as to his exaltation into heaven by

the mouth of two heavenly witnesses.

As, according to this, those who knew of an ascension of Jesus, had by

no means the same idea of its particular circumstances: there must have

been in general two different modes of conceiving the close of the life

of Jesus; some regarding it as a visible ascension, others not so.

[2192] When Matthew makes Jesus before the tribunal of the high priest

predict his exaltation to the right hand of the divine power (xxvi.

64), and after his resurrection declare that now all power is given to

him in heaven and earth (xxviii. 18); and nevertheless has nothing of a

visible ascension, but on the contrary puts into the mouth of Jesus the

assurance: I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world, ἐγὼ

μεθ’ ὑμῶν εἰμι πάσας τὰς ἡμέρας ἕως τῆς συντελείας τοῦ αἰῶνος (v. 20):

it is evident that the latent idea, on which his representation is

founded, is that Jesus, doubtless immediately on his resurrection,

ascended invisibly to the Father, though at the same time remaining

invisibly with his followers; and that out of this concealment he, as

often as he found it expedient, revealed himself in Christophanies. The

same view is to be discerned in the Apostle Paul, when in 1 Cor. xv. he

undistinguishingly places the appearance to himself of the Christ

already ascended into heaven, in one series with the earlier

Christophanies; and also the author of the fourth gospel and the rest

of the New Testament writers only presuppose what must necessarily be

presupposed according to the messianic passage: Sit thou at my right

hand, Ps. cx. 1: that Jesus was exalted to the right hand of God;

without deciding anything as to the manner of the exaltation, or

representing to themselves the ascension as a visible one. The

imagination of the primitive Christians must however have felt a strong

temptation to depict this exaltation as a brilliant spectacle. When it

was once concluded that the Messiah Jesus had arrived at so exalted a

position, it would appear desirable to gaze after him, as it were, on

his way thither. If it was expected, in accordance with the prophecy of

Daniel, that his future return from heaven would be a visible descent

in the clouds: this would naturally suggest that his departure to

heaven should be represented as a visible ascent on a cloud; and when

Luke makes the two white-apparelled angels, who joined the disciples

after the removal of Jesus, say: this same Jesus, who is taken up from

you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go

into heaven (Acts i. 11): we need only take the converse of this

declaration in order to have before us the genesis of the conception of

the ascension of Jesus; for the mode of conclusion was this: as Jesus

will at some future time return from heaven in the clouds, so he must

surely have departed thither [2193] in the same manner.

Compared with these primary incentives, the Old Testament precedents

which the ascension of Jesus has in the translation of Enoch (Gen. v.

24; comp. Wis. xliv. 16, xlix. 16; Heb. xi. 5), and especially in the

ascension of Elijah (2 Kings ii. 11; comp. Wis. xlviii. 9; 1 Macc. ii.

58), together with the Grecian and Roman apotheoses of Hercules and

Romulus, recede into the background. Apart from the question whether

the latter were known to the second and third Evangelists; the

statement relative to Enoch is too vague; while the chariot and horses

of fire that transported Elijah were not adapted to the milder spirit

of Christ. Instead of this the enveloping cloud and the removal while

holding a farewell conversation, may appear to have been borrowed from

the later representation of the removal of Moses, which however in

other particulars has considerable divergencies from that of Jesus.

[2194] Perhaps also one trait in the narrative of the Acts may be

explained out of the history of Elijah. When this prophet, before his

translation, is entreated by his servant Elisha that he will bequeath

him a double measure of his spirit: Elijah attaches to the concession

of this boon the condition: if thou see me when I am taken from thee,

it shall be so unto thee; but if not, it shall not be so; whence we

might perhaps gather the reason why Luke (Acts i. 9) lays stress on the

fact that the disciples beheld Jesus as he went up (βλεπόντων αὐτῶν

ἐπήρθη): namely, because, according to the narrative concerning Elijah,

this was necessary, if the disciples were to receive the spirit of

their master.

CONCLUDING DISSERTATION.

THE DOGMATIC IMPORT OF THE LIFE OF JESUS.

§ 144.

NECESSARY TRANSITION FROM CRITICISM TO DOGMA.

The results of the inquiry which we have now brought to a close, have

apparently annihilated the greatest and most valuable part of that

which the Christian has been wont to believe concerning his Saviour

Jesus, have uprooted all the animating motives which he has gathered

from his faith, and withered all his consolations. The boundless store

of truth and life which for eighteen centuries has been the aliment of

humanity, seems irretrievably dissipated; the most sublime levelled

with the dust, God divested of his grace, man of his dignity, and the

tie between heaven and earth broken. Piety turns away with horror from

so fearful an act of desecration, and strong in the impregnable

self-evidence of its faith, pronounces that, let an audacious criticism

attempt what it will, all which the Scriptures declare, and the Church

believes of Christ, will still subsist as eternal truth, nor needs one

iota of it to be renounced. Thus at the conclusion of the criticism of

the history of Jesus, there presents itself this problem: to

re-establish dogmatically that which has been destroyed critically.

At the first glance, this problem appears to exist merely as a

challenge addressed by the believer to the critic, not as a result of

the moral requirements of either. The believer would appear to need no

re-establishment of the faith, since for him it cannot be subverted by

criticism. The critic seems to require no such re-establishment, since

he is able to endure the annihilation resulting from his own labours.

Hence it might be supposed that the critic, when he seeks to rescue the

dogma from the flames which his criticism has kindled, acts falsely in

relation to his own point of view, since, to satisfy the believer, he

treats what is valueless for himself as if he esteemed it to be a

jewel; while in relation to the believer, he is undertaking a

superfluous task, in labouring to defend that which the latter

considers in no way endangered.

But on a nearer view the case appears otherwise. To all belief, not

built on demonstration, doubt is inherent, though it may not be

developed; the most firmly believing Christian has within him the

elements of criticism as a latent deposit of unbelief, or rather as a

negative germ of knowledge, and only by its constant repression can he

maintain the predominance of his faith, which is thus essentially a

re-established faith. And just as the believer is intrinsically a

sceptic or critic, so, on the other hand, the critic is intrinsically a

believer. In proportion as he is distinguished from the naturalistic

theologian, and the free-thinker,—in proportion as his criticism is

conceived in the spirit of the nineteenth century,—he is filled with

veneration for every religion, and especially for the substance of the

sublimest of all religions, the Christian, which he perceives to be

identical with the deepest philosophical truth; and hence, after having

in the course of his criticism exhibited only the differences between

his conviction and the historical belief of the Christian, he will feel

urged to place that identity in a just light.

Further, our criticism, though in its progress it treats of details,

yet on becoming part of our internal conviction, resolves itself into

the simple element of doubt, which the believer neutralizes by an

equally simple veto, and then spreads anew in undiminished luxuriance

all the fulness of his creed. But hereby the decisions of criticism are

only dismissed, not vanquished, and that which is believed is supported

by no intermediate proof, but rests absolutely on its own evidence.

Criticism cannot but direct itself against this absence of intermediate

proof, and thus the controversy which seemed ended is renewed, and we

are thrown back to the beginning of our inquiry; yet with a difference

which constitutes a step forward in the discussion. Hitherto our

criticism had for its object the data of Christianity, as historically

presented in the evangelical records; now, these data having been

called in question in their historical form, assume that of a mental

product, and find a refuge in the soul of the believer; where they

exist, not as a simple history, but as a reflected history, that is, a

confession of faith, a received dogma. Against this dogma, presenting

itself totally unsupported by evidence, criticism must indeed awake, as

it does against all deficiency of proof, in the character of a

negativing power, and a contender for intermediate proof: it will,

however, no longer be occupied with history, but with doctrines. Thus

our historical criticism is followed up by dogmatical criticism, and it

is only after the faith has passed through both these trials, that it

is thoroughly tested and constituted science.

This second process through which the faith has to pass, ought, like

the first, to be made the subject of a distinct work: I shall here

merely give a sketch of its most important features, that I may not

terminate an historical criticism without pointing out its ultimate

object, which can only be arrived at by dogmatical criticism as a

sequel.

§ 145.

THE CHRISTOLOGY OF THE ORTHODOX SYSTEM.

The dogmatic import of the life of Jesus implicitly received, and

developed on this basis, constitutes the orthodox doctrine of the

Christ.

Its fundamental principles are found in the New Testament. The root of

faith in Jesus was the conviction of his resurrection. He who had been

put to death, however great during his life, could not, it was thought,

be the Messiah: his miraculous restoration to life proved so much the

more strongly that he was the Messiah. Freed by his resurrection from

the kingdom of shades, and at the same time elevated above the sphere

of earthly humanity, he was now translated to the heavenly regions, and

had taken his place at the right hand of God (Acts ii. 32 ff., iii. 15

ff., v. 30 ff.; and elsewhere). Now, his death appeared to be the chief

article in his messianic destination; according to Isa. liii., he had

suffered for the sins of his people and of mankind (Acts viii. 32 ff.;

comp. Matt. xx. 28; John i. 29, 36; 1 John ii. 2); his blood poured out

on the cross, operated like that which on the great day of atonement

the high priest sprinkled on the mercy-seat (Rom. iii. 25); he was the

pure lamb by whose blood the believing are redeemed (1 Pet. i. 18 f.);

the eternal, sinless high priest, who by the offering of his own body,

at once effected that, which the Jewish high priests were unable to

effect, by their perpetually repeated sacrifices of animals (Heb. x. 10

ff., etc.). But, thenceforth, the Messiah who was exalted to the right

hand of God, could not have been a common man: not only was he anointed

with the divine spirit in a greater measure than any prophet (Acts iv.

27, x. 38); not only did he prove himself to be a divine messenger by

miracles and signs (Acts ii. 22); but also, according as the one idea

or the other was most readily formed, either he was supernaturally

engendered by the Holy Spirit (Matt. and Luke i.), or he had descended

as the Word and Wisdom of God into an earthly body (John i.). As,

before his appearance on the earth, he was in the bosom of the Father,

in divine majesty (John xvii. 5); so his descent into the world of

mortals, and still more his submission to an ignominious death, was a

voluntary humiliation, to which he was moved by his love to mankind

(Phil. ii. 5 ff.). The risen and ascended Jesus will one day return to

wake the dead and judge the world (Acts i. 11, xvii. 31); he even now

takes charge of his church (Rom. viii. 34; 1 John ii. 1), participating

in the government of the world, as he originally did in its creation

(Matt. xxviii. 18; John i. 3, 10; Col. i. 16 f.). In addition to all

this, every trait in the image of the Messiah as sketched by the

popular expectation, was attributed with necessary or gratuitous

modifications to Jesus; nay, the imagination, once stimulated, invented

new characteristics.

How richly fraught with blessing and elevation, with encouragement and

consolation, were the thoughts which the early Church derived from this

view of the Christ! By the mission of the Son of God into the world, by

his delivery of himself to death for the sake of the world, heaven and

earth are reconciled (2 Cor. v. 18 ff.; Eph. i. 10; Col. i. 20); by

this most stupendous sacrifice, the love of God is securely guaranteed

to man (Rom. v. 8 ff., viii. 31 ff.; 1 John iv. 9), and the brightest

hopes are revealed to him. Did the Son of God become man? Then are men

his brethren, and as such the children of God, and heirs with Christ to

the treasure of divine bliss (Rom. viii. 16 f., 29). The servile

relation of man to God, as it existed under the law, has ceased; love

has taken the place of the fear of the punishment threatened by the law

(Rom. viii. 15; Gal. iv. 1 ff.). Believers are redeemed from the curse

of the law by Christ’s sacrifice of himself, inasmuch as he suffered a

death on which the law had laid a curse (Gal. iii. 13). Now, there is

no longer imposed on us the impossible task of satisfying all the

demands of the law (Gal. iii. 10 f.)—a task which, as experience shows,

no man fulfils (Rom. i. 18-iii. 20), which, by reason of his sinful

nature, no man can fulfil (Rom. v. 12 ff.), and which only involves him

who strives to fulfil it, more and more deeply in the most miserable

conflict with himself (Rom. vii. 7 ff.): whereas he who believes in

Christ, and confides in the atoning efficacy of his death, possesses

the favour of God; not by works and qualifications of his own, but by

the free mercy of God, is the man who throws himself on that mercy just

before God, by which all self-exaltation is excluded (Rom. iii. 31

ff.). As the Mosaic law is no longer binding on the believer, he being

dead to it with Christ (Rom. vii. 1 ff.); as, moreover, by the eternal

and all-sufficient sacrifice of Christ, the Jewish sacrificial and

priestly service is abolished (Heb.); therefore the partition wall

which separated the Jews and Gentiles is broken down: the latter, who

before were aliens and strangers to the theocracy, without God and

without hope in the world, are now invited to participate in the new

covenant, and free access is opened to them to the paternal God; so

that the two portions of mankind, formerly separated by hostile

opinions, are now at peace with each other, members in common of the

body of Christ—stones in the spiritual building of his Church (Eph. ii.

11 ff.). But to have justifying faith in the death of Christ, is,

virtually, to die with him spiritually—that is, to die to sin; and as

Christ arose from the dead to a new and immortal life, so must the

believer in him arise from the death of sin to a new life of

righteousness and holiness, put off the old man and put on the new

(Rom. vi. 1 ff.). In this, Christ himself aids him by his Spirit, who

fills those whom he inspires with spiritual strivings, and makes them

ever more and more free from the slavery of sin (Rom. viii. 1 ff.). Nor

alone spiritually, will the Spirit of Christ animate those in whom he

dwells, but corporeally also, for at the end of their earthly course,

God, through Christ, will resuscitate their bodies, as he did the body

of Christ (Rom. viii. 11). Christ, whom the bonds of death and the

nether world could not hold, has vanquished both for us, and has

delivered the believer from the fear of these dread powers which rule

over mortality (Rom. viii. 38 f.; 1 Cor. xv. 55 ff.; Heb. ii. 14 f.).

His resurrection not only confers atoning efficacy on his death (Rom.

iv. 25), but at the same time is the pledge of our own future

resurrection, of our share in Christ in a future life, in his messianic

kingdom, to the blessedness of which he will, at his second advent,

lead all his people. Meanwhile, we may console ourselves that we have

in him an Intercessor, who from his own experience of the weakness and

frailty of our nature, which he himself assumed, and in which he was in

all points tempted as we are, but without sin, knows how much

indulgence and aid we need (Heb. ii. 17 f., iv. 15 f.).

The expediency of describing in compendious forms the riches of their

faith in Christ, was early felt by his followers. They celebrated him

as Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at

the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us, Χριστὸς ὁ

ἀποθανών, μᾶλλον δὲ καὶ ἐγερθεὶς, ὃς καὶ ἔστιν ἐν δεξιᾷ τοῦ θεοῦ, ὅς

καὶ ἐντυνχάνει ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν (Rom. viii. 34); or with more particularity as

Jesus Christ our Lord, who was made of the seed of David according to

the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to

the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead, Ἰ. Χ. ὁ

Κύριος, γενόμενος ἐκ σπέρματος Δαβὶδ κατὰ σάρκα, ὁρισθεὶς υἱὸς θεοῦ ἐν

δυνάμει κατὰ πνεῦμα ἁγιωσύνης, ἐξ ἀναστάσεως νεκρῶν (Rom. i. 3 f.); and

as confessedly the great mystery of godliness, ὁμολογουμένως μέγα τῆς

εὐσεβείας μυστήριον, the following propositions were presented: God was

manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels,

preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into

glory, θεὸς ἐφανερώθη ἐν σαρκὶ, ἐδικαιώθη ἐν πνεύματι, ὤφθη ἀγγέλοις,

ἐκηρυχθη ἐν ἔθνεσιν, ἐπιστεύθη ἐν κόσμῳ, ἀνελήφθη ἐν δόξῃ (1 Tim. iii.

16).

The baptismal formula (Matt. xxviii. 19), by its allocation of Father,

Son, and Holy Ghost, presented a sort of framework in which to arrange

the materials of the new faith. On this basis was constructed in the

first centuries what was called the rule of faith, regula fidei, which

in divers forms, some more concise, others more diffuse, some more

popular, others more subtle, is found in the different fathers. [2195]

The more popular form at length settled into what is called the creed

of the apostles. This symbol, in that edition of it which is received

in the evangelical church, has in its second and most elaborate article

on the Son, the following points of belief: et (credo) in Jesum

Christum, filium ejus (Dei patris) unicum, Dominum nostrum; qui

conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria virgine; passus sub

Pontio Pilato, crucifixus, mortuus et sepultus, descendit ad inferna;

tertia die resurrexit a mortuis, ascendit ad cœlos, sedet ad dextram

Dei patris omnipotentis; inde venturus est, judicare vivos et mortuos.

Together with this popular form of the confession of faith in relation

to Christ, there was also framed a more rigorous and minute theological

digest, occasioned by the differences and controversies which early

arose on certain points. The fundamental thesis of the Christian faith,

that the Word was made flesh, ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο, or, God was

manifested in the flesh, θεὸς ἐφανερώθη ἐν σαρκὶ, was endangered on all

sides, one questioning the Godhead, another the manhood, and a third

the veritable union of the two natures.

It is true that those who, like the Ebionites, denied the Godhead, or

like that sect of the Gnostics called Docetæ, the manhood of Christ,

separated themselves too decidedly from the Christian community, which

on her part maintained that it was necessary that the mediator of God

and man should unite both in friendship and harmony by means of a

proper relationship to each, and that while he represented man to God,

he should reveal God to man, ἔδει τὸν μεσίτην θεοῦ τε καὶ ἀνθρώπων διὰ

ἰδίας πρὸς ἑκατέρους οἰκειότητος εἰς φιλίαν καὶ ὁμόνοιαν τοὺς

ἀμφοτέρους συναγαγεῖν, καὶ θεῷ μὲν παραστῆσαι τὸν ἄνθρωπον, ἀνθρώποις

δὲ γνωρίσαι τὸν θεόν. [2196] But when it was merely the plenitude of

the one nature or the other, which was contested,—as when Arius

maintained that the being who became man in Christ was indeed divine,

but created, and subordinate to the supreme God; when, while ascribing

to Christ a human body, he held that the place of the soul was occupied

by that superior being; when Apollinaris maintained that not only the

body of Jesus was truly human, but his soul also, and that the divine

being only served in the stead of the third principle in man, the νοῦς

(understanding);—these were opinions to which it was easier to give a

Christian guise. Nevertheless the Church rejected the Arian idea of a

subordinate God become man in Jesus, for this reason among others less

essential, that on this theory the image of the Godhead would not have

been manifested in Christ; [2197] and she condemned the idea of Arius

and Apollinaris, that the human nature of Christ had not the human ψυχὴ

(soul), or the human νοῦς (understanding), for this reason chiefly,

that only by the union of the divine, with an entire human nature,

could the human race be redeemed. [2198]

Not only might the one or the other aspect of the nature of Christ be

defaced or put out of sight, but in relation also to the union of the

two, there might be error, and again in two opposite directions. The

devout enthusiasm of many led them to believe, that they could not draw

too closely the newly-entwined bond between heaven and earth; hence

they no longer wished to distinguish between the Godhead and manhood in

Christ, and since he had appeared in one person, they acknowledged in

him only one nature, that of the Son of God made flesh. Others, more

scrupulous, could not reconcile themselves to such a confusion of the

divine and the human: it seemed to them blasphemous to say that a human

mother had given birth to God: hence they maintained that she had only

borne the man whom the Son of God selected as his temple; and that in

Christ there were two natures, united indeed so far as the adoration of

his followers was concerned, but distinct as regarded their essence. To

the Church, both these views appeared to encroach on the mystery of the

incarnation: if the two natures were held to be permanently distinct,

then was the union of the divine and human, the vital point of

Christianity, destroyed; if a mixture of the two were admitted, then

neither nature in its individual quality was capable of a union with

the other, and thus again no true unity would be attained. Hence both

these opinions were condemned, the latter in the person of Eutyches,

the former, not with equal justice, in that of Nestorius; and as the

Nicene creed established the true Godhead of Christ, so that of

Chalcedon established his true and perfect manhood, and the union of

the two natures in one undivided person. [2199] When subsequently there

arose a controversy concerning the will of Christ, analogous to that

concerning his nature, the Church, in accordance with its previous

decisions, pronounced that in Christ, as the God-man, there were two

wills, distinct but not discordant, the human will being subordinate to

the divine. [2200]

In comparison with the controversies on the being and essence of

Christ, the other branch of the faith, the doctrine of his work, was

developed in tranquillity. The most comprehensive view of it was this:

the Son of God, by assuming the human nature, gave it a holy and divine

character [2201]—above all he endowed it with immortality; [2202] while

in a moral view, the mission of the Son of God into the world being the

highest proof of the love of God, was the most efficacious means of

awakening a return of love in the human breast. [2203] To this one

great effect of the appearance of Christ, were annexed collateral

benefits: his salutary teaching, his sublime example, were held up to

view, [2204] but especial importance was attached to the violent death

which he suffered. The idea of substitution, already given in the New

Testament, was more fully developed: the death of Jesus was regarded,

now as a ransom paid by him to the devil for the liberation of mankind,

who had fallen into the power of the evil one through sin; now as a

means devised by God for removing guilt, and enabling him to remit the

punishment threatened to the sins of man, without detriment to his

truthfulness, Christ having taken that punishment on himself. [2205]

The latter idea was worked up by Anselm, in his book entitled Cur Deus

homo, into the well known theory of satisfaction, by which the doctrine

of Christ’s work of redemption is placed in the closest connexion with

that of his person. Man owes to God perfect obedience; but the

sinner—and such, are all men—withholds from God the service and honour

which are His due. Now God, by reason of his justice, cannot suffer an

offence against his honour: therefore, either man must voluntarily

restore to God that which is God’s, nay, must, for complete

satisfaction, render to him more than he has hitherto withheld; or, God

must as a punishment take from man that which is man’s, namely, the

happiness for which he was originally created. Man is not able to do

the former; for as he owes to God all the duties that he can perform,

in order not to fall into sin, he can have no overplus of merit,

wherewith to cover past sins. On the other hand, that God should obtain

satisfaction by the infliction of eternal punishment, is opposed to his

unchangeable goodness, which moves him actually to lead man to that

bliss for which he was originally destined. This, however, cannot

happen consistently with divine justice, unless satisfaction be made

for man, and according to the measure of that which has been taken from

God, something be rendered to him, greater than all else except God.

But this can be none other than God himself; and as, on the other hand,

man alone can satisfy for man: it must therefore be a God-man who gives

satisfaction. Moreover this cannot consist in active obedience, in a

sinless life, because every reasonable being owes this to God on his

own behalf; but to suffer death, the wages of sin, a sinless being is

not bound, and thus the satisfaction for the sins of man consists in

the death of the God-man, whose reward, since he himself, as one with

God, cannot be rewarded, is put to the account of man.

This doctrinal system of the ancient church concerning the person and

work of Christ, passed also into the confessions of the Lutheran

churches, and was still more elaborately developed by their

theologians. [2206] With regard to the person of Christ, they adhered

to the union of the divine and human natures in one person: according

to them, in the act of this union, unitio personalis, which was

simultaneous with the conception, it was the divine nature of the Son

of God which adopted the human into the unity of its personality; the

state of union, the unio personalis, was neither essential, nor yet

merely accidental, neither mystical nor moral, still less merely

verbal, but a real and supernatural union, and eternal in its duration.

From this union with the divine nature, there result to the human

nature in Christ certain pre-eminent advantages: namely, what at first

appears a deficiency, that of being in itself impersonal, and of having

personality only by its union with the divine nature; further,

impeccability, and the possibility of not dying. Besides these special

advantages, the human nature of Christ obtains others also from its

union with the divine. The relation of the two natures is not a dead,

external one, but a reciprocal penetration, a περιχώρησις; an union not

like that of two boards glued together, but like that of fire and metal

in glowing iron, or of the body and soul in man. This communion of

natures, communio naturarum, is manifested by a communication of

properties, communicatio idiomatum, in virtue of which the human nature

participates in the advantages of the divine, and the divine in the

redeeming work of the human. This relation is expressed in the

propositions concerning the person, propositionibus personalibus, and

those concerning the properties, idiomaticis; the former are

propositions in which the concrete of the one nature, i.e. the one

nature as conceived in the person of Christ, is predicated of the

other, as in 1 Cor. xv. 47: the second man is the Lord from heaven; the

latter are propositions in which determinations of one or the other

nature, are referred to the entire person (genus idiomaticum), or in

which acts of the entire person are referred to one or the other nature

(genus apotelesmaticum), or lastly, in which attributes of the one

nature are transferred to the other, which however is only possible

from the divine to the human, not from the human to the divine (genus

auchematicum).

In passing through the successive stages of the work of redemption,

Christ with his person endowed with two natures, experienced, according

to the expression of the dogmatical theologians, founded on Phil. ii. 6

ff., two states, statum exinanitionis, and statum exaltationis. His

human nature in its union with the divine, participated from the moment

of conception in divine properties: but as during his earthly life

Jesus made no continuous use of them, that life to the time of his

death and burial, is regarded as a state of humiliation: whereas, with

the resurrection, or even with the descent into hell, commenced the

state of exaltation which was consummated by the sessio ad dextram

patris.

As to the work of Christ, the doctrine of our Church attributes to him

a triple office. As prophet, he has revealed to man the highest truth,

the divine decree of redemption, confirming his testimony by miracles;

and he still unceasingly controls the announcement of this truth. As

high priest, he has, on the one hand, by his irreproachable life,

fulfilled the law in our stead (obedientia activa); on the other, he

has borne, in his sufferings and death, the punishment which impended

over us (obedientia passiva), and now perpetually intercedes for us

with the Father. Lastly, as king, he governs the world, and more

particularly the Church, which he will lead from the conflicts of earth

to the glory of heaven, completing its destiny by the general

resurrection and the last judgment.

§ 146.

OBJECTIONS TO THE CHRISTOLOGY OF THE CHURCH.

The Reformed Church did not go thus far with the Lutherans in their

doctrine of the person of Christ, for they did not admit the last and

boldest consequence drawn by the latter from the union of the manhood

and Godhead—the communicatio idiomatum, or communication of properties.

The Lutherans themselves did not hold that the properties of the human

nature were communicated to the divine, nor that all the properties of

the divine nature, eternity for example, could be communicated to the

human; [2207] and this gave occasion on the part of the Reformed

Church, to the following objection: the communication of properties

must be reciprocal and complete, or it is none at all; moreover, by the

communication of the properties of an infinite nature to a finite one,

the latter is not less annihilated as to its essence than an infinite

nature would be, were it to receive the properties of a finite one.

[2208] When the Lutherans sought shelter in the position, that the

properties of the one nature were only so far shared by the other, as

according to its character is possible, uti per suam indolem potest,

[2209] they in fact did away altogether with the communicatio

idiomatum; and indeed this doctrine has been explicitly given up even

by orthodox theologians since Reinhard.

But the simple root of this complicated exchange of properties, the

union of the divine and human natures in one person, has also met with

contradiction.

The Socinians denied it on the ground that two natures, each of which

alone constitutes a person, cannot be united to form a single person,

especially when they possess properties so opposite, as where the one

is immortal, the other mortal, the one uncreated, the other created;

[2210] and the Rationalists agree with them, insisting more

particularly that the formulæ of the Church, in which the above union

is defined, are almost entirely negative, thus presenting no conception

to the mind, and that in a Christ, who by the aid of a divine nature

dwelling within him, withstood evil and kept himself from sin, the man

who is destitute of such aid can have no true example. [2211]

The essential and tenable points of the rationalistic objections to

this doctrine, have been the most acutely perceived and arranged by

Schleiermacher, who, on this subject as on many others, has brought the

negative criticism of the dogmas of the Church to completeness. [2212]

Before all else he finds it a difficulty, that by the expression,

divine nature and human nature, divinity and humanity are placed under

one category, and what is more, under the category of nature, which

essentially denotes only a limited being, conceived by means of its

opposite. Further, while ordinarily one nature is common to many

individuals or persons, here one person is supposed to partake of two

different natures. Now if by person be meant the permanent conscious

unity of a living being, and by nature, the sum of the laws which

govern the conditions of life in that being: it is not to be conceived,

how two opposite systems of conditions can have but one centre. The

absurdity of this doctrine becomes, according to Schleiermacher,

especially evident in the supposition of two wills in Christ, since,

for consistency, two wills must be associated with two understandings,

and as the understanding and will constitute the personality, Christ

would on this supposition be inevitably divided into two persons. It is

true that the two wills are supposed always to will in unison: but, on

the one hand, there results from this only a moral, not a personal

unity; on the other hand, this unison of wills is not possible in

relation to the divine and the human will, since the latter, which from

its very essence can only exercise itself on particulars as they

present themselves in succession, can as little will the same with the

former, whose object is the whole in its development, as the human

understanding, which acts by reasoning, can think the same with the

divine understanding, which acts intuitively. Hence it evidently

follows also that a communication of properties between the two natures

is not to be admitted.

The doctrine of the work of Christ did not escape a similar criticism.

Passing over what has been objected in point of form to the division of

this work into three offices, the ideas of revelation and miracles,

under the head of the prophetic office, were chiefly called in

question. It was argued that these ideas agreed neither objectively

with just conceptions of God and the world in their reciprocal

relation, nor subjectively with the laws of the human intellect; that

the perfect God could not have created a world which from time to time

needed the extraordinary interposition of the Creator, nor more

particularly a human nature which was incapable of attaining its

destination by the development of its innate faculties; that the

immutable Being could not operate on the world first in this manner,

then in that, at one time mediately, at another immediately, but that

he must always have operated on it in the same manner, namely, in

himself and on the whole immediately, but for us and on individuals

mediately; that to admit an interruption of the order of nature, and of

the development of humanity, would be to renounce all rational thought,

while, in the particular case in question, a revelation or miracle is

not confidently to be recognized as such, since, in order to be sure

that certain results have not proceeded from the powers of nature and

the faculties of the human mind, a perfect knowledge of the resources

of both would be requisite, and of such a knowledge man is not

possessed. [2213]

But the main difficulty lay in the office of high priest, attributed to

Jesus—in the doctrine of the atonement. That which especially drew

forth objections was the human aspect which in Anselm’s system was

given to the relation of God to the Son of man. As it well becomes man

to forgive offences without exacting vengeance, so, thought Socinus,

might God forgive the offences committed against him by men, without

satisfaction. [2214] To meet this objection Hugo Grotius argued, that

not as in consequence of personal injuries, but to maintain the order

of the moral world inviolable, or in virtue of his justitia rectoria,

God cannot forgive sins without satisfaction. [2215] Nevertheless,

granting the necessity for satisfaction, it did not appear to be met by

the death of Jesus. While Anselm, and still more decidedly Thomas

Aquinas, [2216] spoke of a satisfactio superabundans, Socinus denied

that Christ had even borne as much punishment as men have deserved; for

every individual man having deserved eternal death, consequently, as

many substitutes as sinners ought to have suffered eternal death;

whereas in this case, the single Christ has suffered merely temporal

death, and that as an introduction to the highest glory; nor did this

death attach to his divine nature, so that it might be said to have

infinite value, but only to his human nature. On the other hand, Duns

Scotus, [2217] in opposition to Thomas, and subsequently Grotius and

the Arminians (equi-distant from orthodoxy and Socinianism), adopted

the expedient of maintaining, that the merit of Christ was indeed in

itself finite like its subject, his human nature, and hence was

inadequate as a satisfaction for the sins of the world; but that God

accepted it as adequate out of his free grace. But from the admission

that God can content himself with an inadequate satisfaction, and thus

can forgive a part of the guilt without satisfaction, it follows

necessarily, that he must also be able thus to forgive the whole.

Besides these more precise definitions, however, the fundamental idea

of the whole fabric, namely, that one individual can take upon himself

the punishment due to the sins of another, has been attacked as an

ignorant transference of the conditions of a lower order of relation to

a higher. Moral transgressions, it has been said, are not transmissible

obligations; it is not with them as with debts of money, which it is

immaterial to the creditor who pays, provided they are paid; rather it

is essential to the punishment of sin, that it should fall on the

guilty only. [2218] If, according to this, the so-called passive

obedience of Christ cannot have been vicarious, still less can his

active obedience have been so, since as man he was bound to render this

on his own behalf. [2219]

In relation to the kingly office of Christ, the hope of his second

advent to judge the world lost ground in the sentiment of the Church,

in proportion as the opinion obtained, that every individual enters on

a state of complete retribution immediately after death, for this

opinion made the general judgment appear superfluous. [2220]

§ 147.

THE CHRISTOLOGY OF RATIONALISM.

The Rationalists, rejecting the doctrine of the Church concerning

Christ, his person, and his work, as self-contradictory, useless, nay,

even hurtful to the true morality of the religious sentiment,

propounded in its stead a system which, while it avoided all

contradictions, yet in a certain sense retained for Jesus the character

of a divine manifestation, which even, rightly considered, placed him

far higher, and moreover embodied the strongest motives to practical

piety. [2221]

According to them, Jesus was still a divine messenger, a special

favourite and charge of the Deity, inasmuch as, furnished by the

disposition of Providence with an extraordinary measure of spiritual

endowment, he was born in an age and nation, and guided in a career,

the most favourable to his development into that for which he was

destined; and, especially, inasmuch as he was subjected to a species of

death that rendered possible his apparent resurrection, on which

depended the success of his entire work, and was encompassed by a

series of circumstances which actually brought that resurrection to

pass. The Rationalists hold that their idea of the Christ is not

essentially below the orthodox one, as regards his natural endowments

and his external destiny, for in their view also he is the greatest man

that ever trod the earth—a hero, in whose fate Providence is in the

highest degree glorified: while, as regards the internal development

and free agency of Jesus, they believe their doctrine essentially to

surpass that of the Church. The Christ of the Church, they contend, is

a mere automaton, whose manhood lies under the control of his Godhead

like a lifeless instrument, which acts with moral perfection because it

has no power to sin, and for this reason can neither have moral merit,

nor be the object of affection and reverence: according to the

rationalistic view, on the contrary, Jesus had implanted in him by God

the natural conditions only of that which he was ultimately to become,

and his realization of this destiny was the result of his own

spontaneity. His admirable wisdom he acquired by the judicious

application of his intellectual powers, and the conscientious use of

all the aids within his reach; his moral greatness, by the zealous

culture of his moral dispositions, the restraint of his sensual

inclinations and passions, and a scrupulous obedience to the voice of

his conscience: and on these alone rested all that was exalted in his

personality, all that was encouraging in his example.

As regards the work of Jesus, the rationalistic view is, that he has

endeared himself to mankind by this above all else, that he has taught

them a religion to which for its purity and excellence is justly

ascribed a certain divine power and dignity; and that he has

illustrated and enforced this religion by the brilliant example of his

own life. This prophetic office of Christ is with Socinians and

Rationalists the essence of his work, and to this they refer all the

rest, especially what the doctrine of the Church comprehends under the

office of high priest. With them the so-called active obedience has

value solely as an example; and the death of Jesus conduces to the

forgiveness of sins, solely by furthering the reformation of the sinner

in one of these two ways: either, as a confirmation of his doctrine,

and a type of the devoted fulfilment of duty, it serves to kindle a

zeal for virtue; or, as a proof of the love of God to man, of his

inclination to pardon the converted sinner, it invigorates moral

courage. [2222]