GOD AS A MORAL BEING, OR LAW.
God as God--the infinite, universal, non-anthropomorphic being of the
understanding, has no more significance for religion than a fundamental
general principle has for a special science; it is merely the ultimate
point of support,--as it were, the mathematical point of religion. The
consciousness of human limitation or nothingness which is united with
the idea of this being, is by no means a religious consciousness;
on the contrary, it characterises sceptics, materialists, and
pantheists. The belief in God--at least in the God of religion--is
only lost where, as in scepticism, pantheism, and materialism, the
belief in man is lost, at least in man such as he is presupposed in
religion. As little then as religion has any influential belief in the
nothingness of man, [25] so little has it any influential belief in
that abstract being with which the consciousness of this nothingness
is united. The vital elements of religion are those only which make
man an object to man. To deny man is to deny religion.
It certainly is the interest of religion that its object should
be distinct from man; but it is also, nay, yet more, its interest
that this object should have human attributes. That he should be
a distinct being concerns his existence only; but that he should
be human concerns his essence. If he be of a different nature, how
can his existence or non-existence be of any importance to man? How
can he take so profound an interest in an existence in which his own
nature has no participation?
To give an example. "When I believe that the human nature alone
has suffered for me, Christ is a poor Saviour to me: in that case,
he needs a Saviour himself." And thus, out of the need for salvation
is postulated something transcending human nature, a being different
from man. But no sooner is this being postulated than there arises
the yearning of man after himself, after his own nature, and man
is immediately re-established. "Here is God, who is not man and
never yet became man. But this is not a God for me.... That would
be a miserable Christ to me, who ... should be nothing but a purely
separate God and divine person ... without humanity. No, my friend;
where thou givest me God, thou must give me humanity too." [26]
In religion man seeks contentment; religion is his highest good. But
how could he find consolation and peace in God if God were an
essentially different being? How can I share the peace of a being if
I am not of the same nature with him? If his nature is different from
mine, his peace is essentially different,--it is no peace for me. How
then can I become a partaker of his peace if I am not a partaker of
his nature? but how can I be a partaker of his nature if I am really
of a different nature? Every being experiences peace only in its own
element, only in the conditions of its own nature. Thus, if man feels
peace in God, he feels it only because in God he first attains his
true nature, because here, for the first time, he is with himself,
because everything in which he hitherto sought peace, and which he
hitherto mistook for his nature, was alien to him. Hence, if man
is to find contentment in God, he must find himself in God. "No one
will taste of God but as he wills, namely--in the humanity of Christ;
and if thou dost not find God thus, thou wilt never have rest." [27]
"Everything finds rest on the place in which it was born. The place
where I was born is God. God is my fatherland. Have I a father in
God? Yes, I have not only a father, but I have myself in him; before
I lived in myself, I lived already in God." [28]
A God, therefore, who expresses only the nature of the understanding
does not satisfy religion, is not the God of religion. The
understanding is interested not only in man, but in the things out of
man, in universal nature. The intellectual man forgets even himself
in the contemplation of nature. The Christians scorned the pagan
philosophers because, instead of thinking of themselves, of their
own salvation, they had thought only of things out of themselves. The
Christian thinks only of himself. By the understanding an insect is
contemplated with as much enthusiasm as the image of God--man. The
understanding is the absolute indifference and identity of all things
and beings. It is not Christianity, not religious enthusiasm, but the
enthusiasm of the understanding that we have to thank for botany,
mineralogy, zoology, physics, and astronomy. The understanding
is universal, pantheistic, the love of the universe; but the grand
characteristic of religion, and of the Christian religion especially,
is that it is thoroughly anthropotheistic, the exclusive love of man
for himself, the exclusive self-affirmation of the human nature, that
is, of subjective human nature; for it is true that the understanding
also affirms the nature of man, but it is his objective nature,
which has reference to the object for the sake of the object, and
the manifestation of which is science. Hence it must be something
entirely different from the nature of the understanding which is
an object to man in religion, if he is to find contentment therein,
and this something will necessarily be the very kernel of religion.
Of all the attributes which the understanding assigns to God, that
which in religion, and especially in the Christian religion, has
the pre-eminence, is moral perfection. But God as a morally perfect
being is nothing else than the realised idea, the fulfilled law of
morality, the moral nature of man posited as the absolute being;
man's own nature, for the moral God requires man to be as he himself
is: Be ye holy for I am holy; man's own conscience, for how could he
otherwise tremble before the Divine Being, accuse himself before him,
and make him the judge of his inmost thoughts and feelings?
But the consciousness of the absolutely perfect moral nature,
especially as an abstract being separate from man, leaves us cold
and empty, because we feel the distance, the chasm between ourselves
and this being;--it is a dispiriting consciousness, for it is the
consciousness of our personal nothingness, and of the kind which is
the most acutely felt--moral nothingness. The consciousness of the
divine omnipotence and eternity in opposition to my limitation in
space and time does not afflict me: for omnipotence does not command
me to be myself omnipotent, eternity, to be myself eternal. But I
cannot have the idea of moral perfection without at the same time
being conscious of it as a law for me. Moral perfection depends,
at least for the moral consciousness, not on the nature, but on the
will--it is a perfection of will, perfect will. I cannot conceive
perfect will, the will which is in unison with law, which is itself
law, without at the same time regarding it is an object of will, i.e.,
as an obligation for myself. The conception of the morally perfect
being is no merely theoretical, inert conception, but a practical
one, calling me to action, to imitation, throwing me into strife,
into disunion with myself; for while it proclaims to me what I ought
to be, it also tells me to my face, without any flattery, what I am
not. [29] And religion renders this disunion all the more painful,
all the more terrible, that it sets man's own nature before him as
a separate nature, and moreover as a personal being, who hates and
curses sinners, and excludes them from his grace, the source of all
salvation and happiness.
Now, by what means does man deliver himself from this state of disunion
between himself and the perfect being, from the painful consciousness
of sin, from the distressing sense of his own nothingness? How does
he blunt the fatal sting of sin? Only by this; that he is conscious of
love as the highest, the absolute power and truth, that he regards the
Divine Being not only as a law, as a moral being, as a being of the
understanding; but also as a loving, tender, even subjective human
being (that is, as having sympathy with individual man).
The understanding judges only according to the stringency of law; the
heart accommodates itself, is considerate, lenient, relenting, kat'
anthropon. No man is sufficient for the law which moral perfection
sets before us; but, for that reason, neither is the law sufficient for
man, for the heart. The law condemns; the heart has compassion even on
the sinner. The law affirms me only as an abstract being,--love, as a
real being. Love gives me the consciousness that I am a man; the law
only the consciousness that I am a sinner, that I am worthless. [30]
The law holds man in bondage; love makes him free.
Love is the middle term, the substantial bond, the principle of
reconciliation between the perfect and the imperfect, the sinless and
sinful being, the universal and the individual, the divine and the
human. Love is God himself, and apart from it there is no God. Love
makes man God and God man. Love strengthens the weak and weakens the
strong, abases the high and raises the lowly, idealises matter and
materialises spirit. Love is the true unity of God and man, of spirit
and nature. In love common nature is spirit, and the pre-eminent spirit
is nature. Love is to deny spirit from the point of view of spirit,
to deny matter from the point of view of matter. Love is materialism;
immaterial love is a chimæra. In the longing of love after the distant
object, the abstract idealist involuntarily confirms the truth of
sensuousness. But love is also the idealism of nature--love is also
spirit, esprit. Love alone makes the nightingale a songstress; love
alone gives the plant its corolla. And what wonders does not love
work in our social life! What faith, creed, opinion separates, love
unites. Love even, humorously enough, identifies the high noblesse with
the people. What the old mystics said of God, that he is the highest
and yet the commonest being, applies in truth to love, and that not
a visionary, imaginary love--no! a real love, a love which has flesh
and blood, which vibrates as an almighty force through all living.
Yes, it applies only to the love which has flesh and blood, for
only this can absolve from the sins which flesh and blood commit. A
merely moral being cannot forgive what is contrary to the law of
morality. That which denies the law is denied by the law. The moral
judge, who does not infuse human blood into his judgment judges
the sinner relentlessly, inexorably. Since, then, God is regarded
as a sin-pardoning being, he is posited, not indeed as an unmoral,
but as more than a moral being--in a word, as a human being. The
negation or annulling of sin is the negation of abstract moral
rectitude,--the positing of love, mercy, sensuous life. Not abstract
beings--no! only sensuous, living beings are merciful. Mercy is the
justice of sensuous life. [31] Hence God does not forgive the sins
of men as the abstract God of the understanding, but as man, as the
God made flesh, the visible God. God as man sins not, it is true, but
he knows, he takes on himself, the sufferings, the wants, the needs
of sensuous beings. The blood of Christ cleanses us from our sins in
the eyes of God; it is only his human blood that makes God merciful,
allays his anger; that is, our sins are forgiven us because we are
no abstract beings, but creatures of flesh and blood. [32]