THE MYSTERY OF THE LOGOS AND DIVINE IMAGE.
The essential significance of the Trinity is, however, concentrated
in the idea of the second Person. The warm interest of Christians
in the Trinity has been, in the main, only an interest in the Son
of God. [53] The fierce contention concerning the Homousios and
Homoiousios was not an empty one, although it turned upon a letter. The
point in question was the co-equality and divine dignity of the second
Person, and therefore the honour of the Christian religion itself;
for its essential, characteristic object is the second Person;
and that which is essentially the object of a religion is truly,
essentially its God. The real God of any religion is the so-called
Mediator, because he alone is the immediate object of religion. He
who, instead of applying to God, applies to a saint, does so only on
the assumption that the saint has all power with God, that what he
prays for, i.e., wishes and wills, God readily performs; that thus
God is entirely in the hands of the saint. Supplication is the means,
under the guise of humility and submission, of exercising one's power
and superiority over another being. That to which my mind first turns
is also, in truth, the first being to me. I turn to the saint, not
because the saint is dependent on God, but because God is dependent
on the saint, because God is determined and ruled by the prayers,
i.e., by the wish or heart of the saint. The distinctions which the
Catholic theologians made between latreia, doulia, and hyperdoulia,
are absurd, groundless sophisms. The God in the background of the
Mediator is only an abstract, inert conception, the conception or
idea of the Godhead in general; and it is not to reconcile us with
this idea, but to remove it to a distance, to negative it, because
it is no object for religion, that the Mediator interposes. [54]
God above the Mediator is nothing else than the cold understanding
above the heart, like Fate above the Olympic gods.
Man, as an emotional and sensuous being, is governed and made happy
only by images, by sensible representations. Mind presenting itself as
at once type-creating, emotional, and sensuous, is the imagination. The
second Person in God, who is in truth the first person in religion, is
the nature of the imagination made objective. The definitions of the
second Person are principally images or symbols; and these images do
not proceed from man's incapability of conceiving the object otherwise
than symbolically,--which is an altogether false interpretation,--but
the thing cannot be conceived otherwise than symbolically because the
thing itself is a symbol or image. The Son is, therefore, expressly
called the Image of God; his essence is that he is an image--the
representation of God, the visible glory of the invisible God. The
Son is the satisfaction of the need for mental images, the nature of
the imaginative activity in man made objective as an absolute, divine
activity. Man makes to himself an image of God, i.e., he converts
the abstract being of the reason, the being of the thinking power,
into an object of sense or imagination. [55] But he places this image
in God himself, because his want would not be satisfied if he did not
regard this image as an objective reality, if it were nothing more
for him than a subjective image, separate from God,--a mere figment
devised by man. And it is in fact no devised, no arbitrary image;
for it expresses the necessity of the imagination, the necessity of
affirming the imagination as a divine power. The Son is the reflected
splendour of the imagination, the image dearest to the heart; but
for the very reason that he is only an object of the imagination,
he is only the nature of the imagination made objective. [56]
It is clear from this how blinded by prejudice dogmatic speculation
is, when, entirely overlooking the inward genesis of the Son of God
as the Image of God, it demonstrates the Son as a metaphysical ens,
as an object of thought, whereas the Son is a declension, a falling
off from the metaphysical idea of the Godhead;--a falling off, however,
which religion naturally places in God himself, in order to justify it,
and not to feel it as a falling off. The Son is the chief and ultimate
principle of image-worship, for he is the image of God; and the image
necessarily takes the place of the thing. The adoration of the saint
in his image is the adoration of the image as the saint. Wherever the
image is the essential expression, the organ of religion, there also
it is the essence of religion.
The Council of Nice adduced, amongst other grounds for the religious
use of images, the authority of Gregory of Nyssa, who said that he
could never look at an image which represented the sacrifice of Isaac
without being moved to tears, because it so vividly brought before
him that event in sacred history. But the effect of the represented
object is not the effect of the object as such, but the effect of
the representation. The holy object is simply the haze of holiness in
which the image veils its mysterious power. The religious object is
only a pretext, by means of which art or imagination can exercise its
dominion over men unhindered. For the religious consciousness, it is
true, the sacredness of the image is associated, and necessarily so,
only with the sacredness of the object; but the religious consciousness
is not the measure of truth. Indeed, the Church itself, while insisting
on the distinction between the image and the object of the image,
and denying that the worship is paid to the image, has at the same
time made at least an indirect admission of the truth, by itself
declaring the sacredness of the image. [57]
But the ultimate, highest principle of image-worship is the worship of
the Image of God in God. The Son, who is the "brightness of his glory,
the express image of his person," is the entrancing splendour of the
imagination, which only manifests itself in visible images. Both
to inward and outward contemplation the representation of Christ,
the Image of God, was the image of images. The images of the saints
are only optical multiplications of one and the same image. The
speculative deduction of the Image of God is therefore nothing more
than an unconscious deduction and establishing of image-worship: for
the sanction of the principle is also the sanction of its necessary
consequences; the sanction of the archetype is the sanction of its
semblance. If God has an image of himself, why should not I have
an image of God? If God loves his Image as himself, why should not
I also love the Image of God as I love God himself? If the Image of
God is God himself, why should not the image of the saint be the saint
himself? If it is no superstition to believe that the image which God
makes of himself is no image, no mere conception, but a substance,
a person, why should it be a superstition to believe that the image
of the saint is the sensitive substance of the saint? The Image of
God weeps and bleeds; why then should not the image of a saint also
weep and bleed? Does the distinction lie in the fact that the image
of the saint is a product of the hands? Why, the hands did not make
this image, but the mind which animated the hands, the imagination;
and if God makes an image of himself, that also is only a product
of the imagination. Or does the distinction proceed from this, that
the Image of God is produced by God himself, whereas the image of
the saint is made by another? Why, the image of the saint is also
a product of the saint himself: for he appears to the artist; the
artist only represents him as he appears.
Connected with the nature of the image is another definition of the
second Person, namely, that he is the Word of God.
A word is an abstract image, the imaginary thing, or, in so far as
everything is ultimately an object of the thinking power, it is the
imagined thought: hence men, when they know the word, the name for a
thing, fancy that they know the thing also. Words are a result of the
imagination. Sleepers who dream vividly and invalids who are delirious
speak. The power of speech is a poetic talent. Brutes do not speak
because they have no poetic faculty. Thought expresses itself only by
images; the power by which thought expresses itself is the imagination;
the imagination expressing itself is speech. He who speaks, lays
under a spell, fascinates those to whom he speaks; but the power of
words is the power of the imagination. Therefore to the ancients,
as children of the imagination, the Word was a being--a mysterious,
magically powerful being. Even the Christians, and not only the vulgar
among them, but also the learned, the Fathers of the Church, attached
to the mere name Christ, mysterious powers of healing. [58] And in
the present day the common people still believe that it is possible to
bewitch men by mere words. Whence comes this ascription of imaginary
influences to words? Simply from this, that words themselves are only
a result of the imagination, and hence have the effect of a narcotic
on man, imprison him under the power of the imagination. Words possess
a revolutionising force; words govern mankind. Words are held sacred;
while the things of reason and truth are decried.
The affirming or making objective of the nature of the imagination is
therefore directly connected with the affirming or making objective
of the nature of speech, of the word. Man has not only an instinct, an
internal necessity, which impels him to think, to perceive, to imagine;
he has also the impulse to speak, to utter, impart his thoughts. A
divine impulse this--a divine power, the power of words. The word is
the imaged, revealed, radiating, lustrous, enlightening thought. The
word is the light of the world. The word guides to all truth, unfolds
all mysteries, reveals the unseen, makes present the past and the
future, defines the infinite, perpetuates the transient. Men pass
away, the word remains; the word is life and truth. All power is
given to the word: the word makes the blind see and the lame walk,
heals the sick, and brings the dead to life;--the word works miracles,
and the only rational miracles. The word is the gospel, the paraclete
of mankind. To convince thyself of the divine nature of speech, imagine
thyself alone and forsaken, yet acquainted with language; and imagine
thyself further hearing for the first time the word of a human being:
would not this word seem to thee angelic? would it not sound like
the voice of God himself, like heavenly music? Words are not really
less rich, less pregnant than music, though music seems to say more,
and appears deeper and richer than words, for this reason simply,
that it is invested with that prepossession, that illusion.
The word has power to redeem, to reconcile, to bless, to make free. The
sins which we confess are forgiven us by virtue of the divine power of
the word. The dying man who gives forth in speech his long-concealed
sins departs reconciled. The forgiveness of sins lies in the confession
of sins. The sorrows which we confide to our friend are already half
healed. Whenever we speak of a subject, the passions which it has
excited in us are allayed; we see more clearly; the object of anger,
of vexation, of sorrow, appears to us in a light in which we perceive
the unworthiness of those passions. If we are in darkness and doubt
on any matter, we need only speak of it;--often in the very moment in
which we open our lips to consult a friend, the doubts and difficulties
disappear. The word makes man free. He who cannot express himself is
a slave. Hence, excessive passion, excessive joy, excessive grief, are
speechless. To speak is an act of freedom; the word is freedom. Justly
therefore is language held to be the root of culture; where language
is cultivated, man is cultivated. The barbarism of the Middle Ages
disappeared before the revival of language.
As we can conceive nothing else as a Divine Being than the Rational
which we think, the Good which we love, the Beautiful which we
perceive; so we know no higher spiritually operative power and
expression of power than the power of the Word. [59] God is the sum of
all reality. All that man feels or knows as a reality he must place
in God or regard as God. Religion must therefore be conscious of the
power of the word as a divine power. The Word of God is the divinity
of the word, as it becomes an object to man within the sphere of
religion,--the true nature of the human word. The Word of God is
supposed to be distinguished from the human word in that it is no
transient breath, but an imparted being. But does not the word of man
also contain the being of man, his imparted self,--at least when it
is a true word? Thus religion takes the appearance of the human word
for its essence; hence it necessarily conceives the true nature of
the Word to be a special being, distinct from the human word.