THE MYSTERY OF FAITH--THE MYSTERY OF MIRACLE.
Faith in the power of prayer--and only where a power, an objective
power, is ascribed to it, is prayer still a religious truth--is
identical with faith in miraculous power; and faith in miracles is
identical with the essence of faith in general. Faith alone prays;
the prayer of faith is alone effectual. But faith is nothing else
than confidence in the reality of the subjective in opposition to
the limitations or laws of Nature and reason,--that is, of natural
reason. The specific object of faith, therefore, is miracle;
faith is the belief in miracle; faith and miracle are absolutely
inseparable. That which is objectively miracle or miraculous power
is subjectively faith; miracle is the outward aspect of faith, faith
the inward soul of miracle; faith is the miracle of mind, the miracle
of feeling, which merely becomes objective in external miracles. To
faith nothing is impossible, and miracle only gives actuality to
this omnipotence of faith: miracles are but a visible example of
what faith can effect. Unlimitedness, supernaturalness, exaltation of
feeling,--transcendence is therefore the essence of faith. Faith has
reference only to things which, in contradiction with the limits or
laws of Nature and reason, give objective reality to human feelings
and human desires. Faith unfetters the wishes of subjectivity from the
bonds of natural reason; it confers what Nature and reason deny; hence
it makes man happy, for it satisfies his most personal wishes. And
true faith is discomposed by no doubt. Doubt arises only where I go
out of myself, overstep the bounds of my personality, concede reality
and a right of suffrage to that which is distinct from myself;--where
I know myself to be a subjective, i.e., a limited being, and seek to
widen my limits by admitting things external to myself. But in faith
the very principle of doubt is annulled; for to faith the subjective
is in and by itself the objective--nay, the absolute. Faith is nothing
else than belief in the absolute reality of subjectivity.
"Faith is that courage in the heart which trusts for all good to
God. Such a faith, in which the heart places its reliance on God alone,
is enjoined by God in the first commandment, where he says, I am the
Lord thy God.... That is, I alone will be thy God; thou shalt seek
no other God; I will help thee out of all trouble. Thou shalt not
think that I am an enemy to thee, and will not help thee. When thou
thinkest so, thou makest me in thine heart into another God than I
am. Wherefore hold it for certain that I am willing to be merciful
to thee."--"As thou behavest thyself, so does God behave. If thou
thinkest that he is angry with thee, he is angry; if thou thinkest
that he is unmerciful and will cast thee into hell, he is so. As thou
believest of God, so is he to thee."--"If thou believest it, thou hast
it; but if thou believest not, thou hast none of it."--"Therefore,
as we believe so does it happen to us. If we regard him as our God,
he will not be our devil. But if we regard him not as our God, then
truly he is not our God, but must be a consuming fire."--"By unbelief
we make God a devil." [98] Thus, if I believe in a God, I have a God,
i.e., faith in God is the God of man. If God is such, whatever it
may be, as I believe him, what else is the nature of God than the
nature of faith? Is it possible for thee to believe in a God who
regards thee favourably, if thou dost not regard thyself favourably,
if thou despairest of man, if he is nothing to thee? What else then
is the being of God but the being of man, the absolute self-love
of man? If thou believest that God is for thee, thou believest
that nothing is or can be against thee, that nothing contradicts
thee. But if thou believest that nothing is or can be against thee,
thou believest--what?--nothing less than that thou art God. [99]
That God is another being is only illusion, only imagination. In
declaring that God is for thee, thou declarest that he is thy own
being. What then is faith but the infinite self-certainty of man, the
undoubting certainty that his own subjective being is the objective,
absolute being, the being of beings?
Faith does not limit itself by the idea of a world, a universe,
a necessity. For faith there is nothing but God, i.e., limitless
subjectivity. Where faith rises the world sinks, nay, has already
sunk into nothing. Faith in the real annihilation of the world--in an
immediately approaching, a mentally present annihilation of this world,
a world antagonistic to the wishes of the Christian, is therefore
a phenomenon belonging to the inmost essence of Christianity;
a faith which is not properly separable from the other elements
of Christian belief, and with the renunciation of which, true,
positive Christianity is renounced and denied. [100] The essence
of faith, as may be confirmed by an examination of its objects down
to the minutest speciality, is the idea that that which man wishes
actually is: he wishes to be immortal, therefore he is immortal;
he wishes for the existence of a being who can do everything which
is impossible to Nature and reason, therefore such a being exists;
he wishes for a world which corresponds to the desires of the heart,
a world of unlimited subjectivity, i.e., of unperturbed feeling,
of uninterrupted bliss, while nevertheless there exists a world
the opposite of that subjective one, and hence this world must pass
away,--as necessarily pass away as God, or absolute subjectivity,
must remain. Faith, love, hope, are the Christian Trinity. Hope has
relation to the fulfilment of the promises, the wishes which are not
yet fulfilled, but which are to be fulfilled; love has relation to
the Being who gives and fulfils these promises; faith to the promises,
the wishes, which are already fulfilled, which are historical facts.
Miracle is an essential object of Christianity, an essential article of
faith. But what is miracle? A supranaturalistic wish realised--nothing
more. The Apostle Paul illustrates the nature of Christian faith by
the example of Abraham. Abraham could not, in a natural way, ever hope
for posterity; Jehovah nevertheless promised it to him out of special
favour, and Abraham believed in spite of Nature. Hence this faith was
reckoned to him as righteousness, as merit; for it implies great force
of subjectivity to accept as certain something in contradiction with
experience, at least with rational, normal experience. But what was
the object of this divine promise? Posterity, the object of a human
wish. And in what did Abraham believe when he believed in Jehovah? In
a Being who can do everything, and can fulfil all wishes. "Is anything
too hard for the Lord?" [101]
But why do we go so far back as to Abraham? We have the most striking
examples much nearer to us. Miracle feeds the hungry, cures men born
blind, deaf, and lame, rescues from fatal diseases, and even raises
the dead at the prayer of relatives. Thus it satisfies human wishes,
and wishes which, though not always intrinsically like the wish for the
restoration of the dead, yet in so far as they appeal to miraculous
power, to miraculous aid, are transcendental, supranaturalistic. But
miracle is distinguished from that mode of satisfying human wishes
and needs which is in accordance with Nature and reason, in this
respect, that it satisfies the wishes of men in a way corresponding
to the nature of wishes--in the most desirable way. Wishes own
no restraint, no law, no time; they would be fulfilled without
delay on the instant. And behold! miracle is as rapid as a wish is
impatient. Miraculous power realises human wishes in a moment, at
one stroke, without any hindrance. That the sick should become well
is no miracle; but that they should become so immediately, at a mere
word of command,--that is the mystery of miracle. Thus it is not in
its product or object that miraculous agency is distinguished from
the agency of Nature and reason, but only in its mode and process;
for if miraculous power were to effect something absolutely new,
never before beheld, never conceived, or not even conceivable, it
would be practically proved to be an essentially different, and at
the same time objective, agency. But the agency which in essence,
in substance, is natural and accordant with the forms of the senses,
and which is supernatural, supersensual, only in the mode or process,
is the agency of the imagination. The power of miracle is therefore
nothing else than the power of the imagination.
Miraculous agency is agency directed to an end. The yearning after the
departed Lazarus, the desire of his relatives to possess him again,
was the motive of the miraculous resuscitation; the satisfaction of
this wish, the end. It is true that the miracle happened "for the
glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby;" but
the message sent to the Master by the sisters of Lazarus, "Behold,
he whom thou lovest is sick," and the tears which Jesus shed,
vindicate for the miracle a human origin and end. The meaning is:
to that power which can awaken the dead no human wish is impossible
to accomplish. [102] And the glory of the Son consists in this: that
he is acknowledged and reverenced as the being who is able to do what
man is unable but wishes to do. Activity towards an end is well known
to describe a circle: in the end it returns upon its beginning. But
miraculous agency is distinguished from the ordinary realisation
of an object in that it realises the end without means, that it
effects an immediate identity of the wish and its fulfilment; that
consequently it describes a circle, not in a curved, but in a straight
line, that is, the shortest line. A circle in a straight line is the
mathematical symbol of miracle. The attempt to construct a circle
with a straight line would not be more ridiculous than the attempt
to deduce miracle philosophically. To reason, miracle is absurd,
inconceivable; as inconceivable as wooden iron or a circle without
a periphery. Before it is discussed whether a miracle can happen,
let it be shown that miracle, i.e., the inconceivable, is conceivable.
What suggests to man the notion that miracle is conceivable is
that miracle is represented as an event perceptible by the senses,
and hence man cheats his reason by material images which screen the
contradiction. The miracle of the turning of water into wine, for
example, implies in fact nothing else than that water is wine,--nothing
else than that two absolutely contradictory predicates or subjects
are identical; for in the hand of the miracle-worker there is no
distinction between the two substances; the transformation is only
the visible appearance of this identity of two contradictories. But
the transformation conceals the contradiction, because the natural
conception of change is interposed. Here, however, is no gradual, no
natural, or, so to speak, organic change; but an absolute, immaterial
one; a pure creatio ex nihilo. In the mysterious and momentous act of
miraculous power, in the act which constitutes the miracle, water is
suddenly and imperceptibly wine: which is equivalent to saying that
iron is wood, or wooden iron.
The miraculous act--and miracle is only a transient act--is therefore
not an object of thought, for it nullifies the very principle of
thought; but it is just as little an object of sense, an object of
real or even possible experience. Water is indeed an object of sense,
and wine also; I first see water and then wine; but the miracle itself,
that which makes this water suddenly wine,--this, not being a natural
process, but a pure perfect without any antecedent imperfect, without
any modus, without way or means, is no object of real, or even of
possible experience. Miracle is a thing of the imagination; and on that
very account is it so agreeable: for the imagination is the faculty
which alone corresponds to personal feeling, because it sets aside
all limits, all laws which are painful to the feelings, and thus makes
objective to man the immediate, absolutely unlimited satisfaction of
his subjective wishes. [103] Accordance with subjective inclination
is the essential characteristic of miracle. It is true that miracle
produces also an awful, agitating impression, so far as it expresses a
power which nothing can resist,--the power of the imagination. But this
impression lies only in the transient miraculous act; the abiding,
essential impression is the agreeable one. At the moment in which
the beloved Lazarus is raised up, the surrounding relatives and
friends are awestruck at the extraordinary, almighty power which
transforms the dead into the living; but soon the relatives fall
into the arms of the risen one, and lead him with tears of joy to
his home, there to celebrate a festival of rejoicing. Miracle springs
out of feeling, and has its end in feeling. Even in the traditional
representation it does not deny its origin; the representation which
gratifies the feelings is alone the adequate one. Who can fail to
recognise in the narrative of the resurrection of Lazarus the tender,
pleasing, legendary tone? [104] Miracle is agreeable, because, as
has been said, it satisfies the wishes of man without labour, without
effort. Labour is unimpassioned, unbelieving, rationalistic; for man
here makes his existence dependent on activity directed to an end,
which activity again is itself determined solely by the idea of the
objective world. But feeling does not at all trouble itself about
the objective world; it does not go out of or beyond itself; it is
happy in itself. The element of culture, the Northern principle of
self-renunciation, is wanting to the emotional nature. The Apostles
and Evangelists were no scientifically cultivated men. Culture, in
general, is nothing else than the exaltation of the individual above
his subjectivity to objective universal ideas, to the contemplation
of the world. The Apostles were men of the people; the people live
only in themselves, in their feelings; therefore Christianity took
possession of the people. Vox populi vox Dei. Did Christianity conquer
a single philosopher, historian, or poet of the classical period? The
philosophers who went over to Christianity were feeble, contemptible
philosophers. All who had yet the classic spirit in them were hostile,
or at least indifferent to Christianity. The decline of culture was
identical with the victory of Christianity. The classic spirit, the
spirit of culture, limits itself by laws,--not indeed by arbitrary,
finite laws, but by inherently true and valid ones; it is determined
by the necessity, the truth of the nature of things; in a word, it is
the objective spirit. In place of this, there entered with Christianity
the principle of unlimited, extravagant, fanatical, supranaturalistic
subjectivity; a principle intrinsically opposed to that of science,
of culture. [105] With Christianity man lost the capability of
conceiving himself as a part of Nature, of the universe. As long as
true, unfeigned, unfalsified, uncompromising Christianity existed,
as long as Christianity was a living, practical truth, so long did
real miracles happen; and they necessarily happened, for faith in
dead, historical, past miracles is itself a dead faith, the first
step towards unbelief, or rather the first and therefore the timid,
uncandid, servile mode in which unbelief in miracle finds vent. But
where miracles happen, all definite forms melt in the golden haze
of imagination and feeling; there the world, reality, is no truth;
there the miracle-working, emotional, i.e., subjective being, is held
to be alone the objective, real being.
To the merely emotional man the imagination is immediately, without his
willing or knowing it, the highest, the dominant activity; and being
the highest, it is the activity of God, the creative activity. To
him feeling is an immediate truth and reality; he cannot abstract
himself from his feelings, he cannot get beyond them: and equally
real is his imagination. The imagination is not to him what it is
to us men of active understanding, who distinguish it as subjective
from objective cognition; it is immediately identical with himself,
with his feelings; and since it is identical with his being, it is
his essential, objective, necessary view of things. For us, indeed,
imagination is an arbitrary activity; but where man has not imbibed
the principle of culture, of theory, where he lives and moves only
in his feelings, the imagination is an immediate, involuntary activity.
The explanation of miracles by feeling and imagination is regarded
by many in the present day as superficial. But let any one transport
himself to the time when living, present miracles were believed in;
when the reality of things without us was as yet no sacred article of
faith; when men were so void of any theoretic interest in the world,
that they from day to day looked forward to its destruction; when
they lived only in the rapturous prospect and hope of heaven, that
is, in the imagination of it (for whatever heaven may be, for them,
so long as they were on earth, it existed only in the imagination);
when this imagination was not a fiction but a truth, nay, the eternal,
alone abiding truth, not an inert, idle source of consolation,
but a practical moral principle determining actions, a principle to
which men joyfully sacrificed real life, the real world with all its
glories;--let him transport himself to those times and he must himself
be very superficial to pronounce the psychological genesis of miracles
superficial. It is no valid objection that miracles have happened,
or are supposed to have happened, in the presence of whole assemblies:
no man was independent, all were filled with exalted supranaturalistic
ideas and feelings; all were animated by the same faith, the same
hope, the same hallucinations. And who does not know that there are
common or similar dreams, common or similar visions, especially among
impassioned individuals who are closely united and restricted to their
own circle? But be that as it may. If the explanation of miracles by
feeling and imagination is superficial, the charge of superficiality
falls not on the explainer, but on that which he explains, namely,
on miracle; for, seen in clear daylight, miracle presents absolutely
nothing else than the sorcery of the imagination, which satisfies
without contradiction all the wishes of the heart. [106]