For this reason the religious man feels no need of culture. Why

had the Hebrews no art, no science, as the Greeks had? Because they

felt no need of it. To them this need was supplied by Jehovah. In

the divine omniscience man raises himself above the limits of his

own knowledge; [171] in the divine omnipresence, above the limits

of his local standpoint; in the divine eternity, above the limits

of his time. The religious man is happy in his imagination; he has

all things in nuce; his possessions are always portable. Jehovah

accompanies me everywhere; I need not travel out of myself; I have

in my God the sum of all treasures and precious things, of all that

is worth knowledge and remembrance. But culture is dependent on

external things; it has many and various wants, for it overcomes the

limits of sensational consciousness and life by real activity, not by

the magical power of the religious imagination. Hence the Christian

religion also, as has been often mentioned already, has in its essence

no principle of culture, for it triumphs over the limitations and

difficulties of earthly life only through the imagination, only in

God, in heaven. God is all that the heart needs and desires--all

good things, all blessings. "Dost thou desire love, or faithfulness,

or truth, or consolation, or perpetual presence?--this is always in

him without measure. Dost thou desire beauty?--he is the supremely

beautiful. Dost thou desire riches?--all riches are in him. Dost thou

desire power?--he is supremely powerful. Or whatever thy heart desires,

it is found a thousandfold in Him, in the best, the single good,

which is God." [172] But how can he who has all in God, who already

enjoys heavenly bliss in the imagination, experience that want, that

sense of poverty, which is the impulse to all culture? Culture has

no other object than to realise an earthly heaven; and the religious

heaven is only realised or won by religious activity.

The difference, however, between God and man, which is originally only

quantitative, is by reflection developed into a qualitative difference;

and thus what was originally only an emotional impression, an immediate

expression of admiration, of rapture, an influence of the imagination

on the feelings, has fixity given to it as an objective quality, as

real incomprehensibility. The favourite expression of reflection in

relation to this subject is, that we can indeed know concerning God

that he has such and such attributes, but not how he has them. For

example, that the predicate of the Creator essentially belongs to God,

that he created the world, and not out of matter already existing,

but out of nothing, by an act of almighty power,--this is clear,

certain--yes, indubitable; but how this is possible naturally passes

our understanding. That is to say: the generic idea is clear, certain,

but the specific idea is unclear, uncertain.

The idea of activity, of making, of creation, is in itself a divine

idea; it is therefore unhesitatingly applied to God. In activity, man

feels himself free, unlimited, happy; in passivity, limited, oppressed,

unhappy. Activity is the positive sense of one's personality. That is

positive which in man is accompanied with joy; hence God is, as we

have already said, the idea of pure, unlimited joy. We succeed only

in what we do willingly; joyful effort conquers all things. But that

is joyful activity which is in accordance with our nature, which we do

not feel as a limitation, and consequently not as a constraint. And the

happiest, the most blissful activity is that which is productive. To

read is delightful, reading is passive activity; but to produce what

is worthy to be read is more delightful still. It is more blessed to

give than to receive. Hence this attribute of the species--productive

activity--is assigned to God; that is, realised and made objective

as divine activity. But every special determination, every mode of

activity is abstracted, and only the fundamental determination, which,

however, is essentially human, namely, production of what is external

to self, is retained. God has not, like man, produced something in

particular, this or that, but all things; his activity is absolutely

universal, unlimited. Hence it is self-evident, it is a necessary

consequence, that the mode in which God has produced the All is

incomprehensible, because this activity is no mode of activity,

because the question concerning the how is here an absurdity,

a question which is excluded by the fundamental idea of unlimited

activity. Every special activity produces its effects in a special

manner, because there the activity itself is a determinate mode of

activity; and thence necessarily arises the question: How did it

produce this? But the answer to the question: How did God make the

world? has necessarily a negative issue, because the world-creating

activity in itself negatives every determinate activity, such as would

alone warrant the question, every mode of activity connected with a

determinate medium, i.e., with matter. This question illegitimately

foists in between the subject or producing activity, and the object

or thing produced, an irrelevant, nay, an excluded intermediate idea,

namely, the idea of particular, individual existence. The activity in

question has relation only to the collective--the All, the world; God

created all things, not some particular thing; the indefinite whole,

the All, as it is embraced by the imagination,--not the determinate,

the particular, as, in its particularity, it presents itself to the

senses, and as, in its totality as the universe, it presents itself

to the reason. Every particular thing arises in a natural way;

it is something determinate, and as such it has--what it is only

tautology to state--a determinate cause. It was not God, but carbon

that produced the diamond; a given salt owes its origin, not to God,

but to the combination of a particular acid with a particular base. God

only created all things together without distinction.

It is true that according to the religious conception, God has created

every individual thing, as included in the whole;--but only indirectly;

for he has not produced the individual in an individual manner,

the determinate in a determinate manner; otherwise he would be a

determinate or conditioned being. It is certainly incomprehensible

how out of this general, indeterminate, or unconditioned activity

the particular, the determinate, can have proceeded; but it is

so only because I here intrude the object of sensational, natural

experience, because I assign to the divine activity another object

than that which is proper to it. Religion has no physical conception

of the world; it has no interest in a natural explanation, which can

never be given but with a mode of origin. Origin is a theoretical,

natural-philosophical idea. The heathen philosophers busied themselves

with the origin of things. But the Christian religious consciousness

abhorred this idea as heathen, irreligious, and substituted the

practical or subjective idea of creation, which is nothing else than

a prohibition to conceive things as having arisen in a natural way,

an interdict on all physical science. The religious consciousness

connects the world immediately with God; it derives all from God,

because nothing is an object to him in its particularity and reality,

nothing is to him as it presents itself to our reason. All proceeds

from God:--that is enough, that perfectly satisfies the religious

consciousness. The question, how did God create? is an indirect doubt

that he did create the world. It was this question which brought man

to atheism, materialism, naturalism. To him who asks it, the world

is already an object of theory, of physical science, i.e., it is an

object to him in its reality, in its determinate constituents. It

is this mode of viewing the world which contradicts the idea of

unconditioned, immaterial activity: and this contradiction leads to

the negation of the fundamental idea--the creation.

The creation by omnipotence is in its place, is a truth, only when

all the phenomena of the world are derived from God. It becomes, as

has been already observed, a myth of past ages where physical science

introduces itself, where man makes the determinate causes, the how of

phenomena, the object of investigation. To the religious consciousness,

therefore, the creation is nothing incomprehensible, i.e.,

unsatisfying; at least it is so only in moments of irreligiousness,

of doubt, when the mind turns away from God to actual things; but it

is highly unsatisfactory to reflection, to theology, which looks with

one eye at heaven and with the other at earth. As the cause, so is

the effect. A flute sends forth the tones of a flute, not those of a

bassoon or a trumpet. If thou hearest the tones of a bassoon, but hast

never before seen or heard any wind-instrument but the flute, it will

certainly be inconceivable to thee how such tones can come out of a

flute. Thus it is here:--the comparison is only so far inappropriate

as the flute itself is a particular instrument. But imagine, if it

be possible, an absolutely universal instrument, which united in

itself all instruments, without being in itself a particular one;

thou wilt then see that it is an absurd contradiction to desire a

particular tone which only belongs to a particular instrument, from

an instrument which thou hast divested precisely of that which is

characteristic in all particular instruments.

But there also lies at the foundation of this dogma of

incomprehensibility the design of keeping the divine activity apart

from the human, of doing away with their similarity, or rather their

essential identity, so as to make the divine activity essentially

different from the human. This distinction between the divine and

human activity is "nothing." God makes,--he makes something external

to himself, as man does. Making is a genuine human idea. Nature gives

birth to, brings forth; man makes. Making is an act which I can omit,

a designed, premeditated, external act;--an act in which my inmost

being is not immediately concerned, in which, while active, I am not

at the same time passive, carried away by an internal impulse. On

the contrary, an activity which is identical with my being is not

indifferent, is necessary to me, as, for example, intellectual

production, which is an inward necessity to me, and for that reason

lays a deep hold on me, affects me pathologically. Intellectual

works are not made,--making is only the external activity applied

to them;--they arise in us. To make is an indifferent, therefore a

free, i.e., optional activity. Thus far then--that he makes--God is

entirely at one with man, not at all distinguished from him; but an

especial emphasis is laid on this, that his making is free, arbitrary,

at his pleasure. "It has pleased God" to create a world. Thus man

here deifies satisfaction in self-pleasing, in caprice and groundless

arbitrariness. The fundamentally human character of the divine activity

is by the idea of arbitrariness degraded into a human manifestation

of a low kind; God, from a mirror of human nature, is converted into

a mirror of human vanity and self-complacency.

And now all at once the harmony is changed into discord; man, hitherto

at one with himself, becomes divided:--God makes out of nothing;

he creates,--to make out of nothing is to create,--this is the

distinction. The positive condition--the act of making--is a human

one; but inasmuch as all that is determinate in this conception is

immediately denied, reflection steps in and makes the divine activity

not human. But with this negation, comprehension, understanding

comes to a stand; there remains only a negative, empty notion,

because conceivability is already exhausted, i.e., the distinction

between the divine and human determination is in truth a nothing,

a nihil negativum of the understanding. The naïve confession of this

is made in the supposition of "nothing" as an object.

God is Love, but not human love; Understanding, but not human

understanding,--no! an essentially different understanding. But wherein

consists this difference? I cannot conceive an understanding which

acts under other forms than those of our own understanding; I cannot

halve or quarter understanding so as to have several understandings;

I can only conceive one and the same understanding. It is true that

I can and even must conceive understanding in itself, i.e., free from

the limits of my individuality; but in so doing I only release it from

limitations essentially foreign to it; I do not set aside its essential

determinations or forms. Religious reflection, on the contrary,

denies precisely that determination or quality which makes a thing

what it is. Only that in which the divine understanding is identical

with the human is something, is understanding, is a real idea; while

that which is supposed to make it another--yes, essentially another

than the human--is objectively nothing, subjectively a mere chimera.

In all other definitions of the Divine Being the "nothing" which

constitutes the distinction is hidden; in the creation, on the

contrary, it is an evident, declared, objective nothing;--and is

therefore the official, notorious nothing of theology in distinction

from anthropology.

But the fundamental determination by which man makes his own nature

a foreign, incomprehensible nature is the idea of individuality

or--what is only a more abstract expression--personality. The

idea of the existence of God first realises itself in the idea of

revelation, and the idea of revelation first realises itself in

the idea of personality. God is a personal being:--this is the

spell which charms the ideal into the real, the subjective into

the objective. All predicates, all attributes of the Divine Being

are fundamentally human; but as attributes of a personal being, and

therefore of a being distinct from man and existing independently,

they appear immediately to be really other than human, yet so as

that at the same time the essential identity always remains at the

foundation. Hence reflection gives rise to the idea of so-called

anthropomorphisms. Anthropomorphisms are resemblances between God

and man. The attributes of the divine and of the human being are not

indeed the same, but they are analogous.

Thus personality is the antidote to pantheism; i.e., by the idea of

personality religious reflection expels from its thought the identity

of the divine and human nature. The rude but characteristic expression

of pantheism is: Man is an effluence or a portion of the Divine Being;

the religious expression is: Man is the image of God, or a being akin

to God;--for according to religion man does not spring from Nature, but

is of divine race, of divine origin. But kinship is a vague, evasive

expression. There are degrees of kinship, near and distant. What sort

of kinship is intended? For the relation of man to God there is but

one form of kinship which is appropriate,--the nearest, profoundest,

most sacred that can be conceived,--the relation of the child to the

father. According to this, God is the father of man, man the son, the

child of God. Here is posited at once the self-subsistence of God and

the dependence of man, and posited as an immediate object of feeling;

whereas in pantheism the part appears just as self-subsistent as the

whole, since this is represented as made up of its parts. Nevertheless

this distinction is only an appearance. The father is not a father

without the child; both together form a correlated being. In love

man renounces his independence, and reduces himself to a part; a

self-humiliation which is only compensated by the fact that the one

whom he loves at the same time voluntarily becomes a part also; that

they both submit to a higher power, the power of the spirit of family,

the power of love. Thus there is here the same relation between God

and man as in pantheism, save that in the one it is represented as

a personal, patriarchal relation, in the other as an impersonal,

general one,--save that pantheism expresses logically and therefore

definitely, directly, what religion invests with the imagination. The

correlation, or rather the identity of God and man is veiled in

religion by representing both as persons or individuals, and God as

a self-subsistent, independent being apart from his paternity:--an

independence which, however, is only apparent, for he who, like the

God of religion, is a father from the depths of the heart, has his

very life and being in his child.

The reciprocal and profound relation of dependence between God as

father and man as child cannot be shaken by the distinction that

only Christ is the true, natural son of God, and that men are but his

adopted sons; so that it is only to Christ as the only-begotten Son,

and by no means to men, that God stands in an essential relation

of dependence. For this distinction is only a theological, i.e., an

illusory one. God adopts only men, not brutes. The ground of adoption

lies in the human nature. The man adopted by divine grace is only

the man conscious of his divine nature and dignity. Moreover, the

only-begotten Son himself is nothing else than the idea of humanity,

than man preoccupied with himself, man hiding from himself and the

world in God,--the heavenly man. The Logos is latent, tacit man;

man is the revealed, expressed Logos. The Logos is only the prelude

of man. That which applies to the Logos applies also to the nature

of man. [173] But between God and the only-begotten Son there is no

real distinction,--he who knows the Son knows the Father also,--and

thus there is none between God and man.

It is the same with the idea that man is the image of God. The

image is here no dead, inanimate thing, but a living being. "Man is

the image of God," means nothing more than that man is a being who

resembles God. Similarity between living beings rests on natural

relationship. The idea of man being the image of God reduces itself

therefore to kinship; man is like God, because he is the child of

God. Resemblance is only kinship presented to the senses; from the

former we infer the latter.

But resemblance is just as deceptive, illusory, evasive an idea as

kinship. It is only the idea of personality which does away with the

identity of nature. Resemblance is identity which will not admit

itself to be identity, which hides itself behind a dim medium,

behind the vapour of the imagination. If I disperse this vapour,

I come to naked identity. The more similar beings are, the less are

they to to be distinguished; if I know the one, I know the other. It

is true that resemblance has its degrees. But also the resemblance

between God and man has its degrees. The good, pious man is more

like God than the man whose resemblance to Him is founded only on

the nature of man in general. And even with the pious man there is a

highest degree of resemblance to be supposed, though this may not be

obtained here below, but only in the future life. But that which man

is to become belongs already to him, at least so far as possibility is

concerned. The highest degree of resemblance is that where there is no

further distinction between two individuals or beings than that they

are two. The essential qualities, those by which we distinguish things

from each other, are the same in both. Hence I cannot distinguish them

in thought, by the reason,--for this all data are wanting;--I can

only distinguish them by figuring them as visible in my imagination

or by actually seeing them. If my eyes do not say, There are really

two separately existent beings, my reason will take both for one

and the same being. Nay, even my eyes may confound the one with the

other. Things are capable of being confounded with each other which

are distinguishable by the sense and not by the reason, or rather

which are different only as to existence, not as to essence. Persons

altogether alike have an extraordinary attraction not only for each

other, but for the imagination. Resemblance gives occasion to all

kinds of mystifications and illusions, because it is itself only an

illusion; my eyes mock my reason, for which the idea of an independent

existence is always allied to the idea of a determinate difference.

Religion is the mind's light, the rays of which are broken by the

medium of the imagination and the feelings, so as to make the same

being appear a double one. Resemblance is to the Reason identity,

which in the realm of reality is divided or broken up by immediate

sensational impressions, in the sphere of religion by the illusions

of the imagination; in short, that which is identical to the reason

is made separate by the idea of individuality or personality. I can

discover no distinction between father and child, archetype and image,

God and man, if I do not introduce the idea of personality. Resemblance

is here the external guise of identity;--the identity which reason,

the sense of truth, affirms, but which the imagination denies; the

identity which allows an appearance of distinction to remain,--a mere

phantasm, which says neither directly yes, nor directly no.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SPECULATIVE DOCTRINE OF GOD.

The personality of God is thus the means by which man converts the

qualities of his own nature into the qualities of another being,--of

a being external to himself. The personality of God is nothing else

than the projected personality of man.

On this process of projecting self outwards rests also the Hegelian

speculative doctrine, according to which man's consciousness of

God is the self-consciousness of God. God is thought, cognised by

us. According to speculation, God, in being thought by us, thinks

himself or is conscious of himself; speculation identifies the two

sides which religion separates. In this it is far deeper than religion,

for the fact of God being thought is not like the fact of an external

object being thought. God is an inward, spiritual being; thinking,

consciousness, is an inward, spiritual act; to think God is therefore

to affirm what God is, to establish the being of God as an act. That

God is thought, cognised, is essential; that this tree is thought, is

to the tree accidental, unessential. God is an indispensable thought,

a necessity of thought. But how is it possible that this necessity

should simply express the subjective, and not the objective also?--how

is it possible that God--if he is to exist for us, to be an object to

us--must necessarily be thought, if he is in himself like a block,

indifferent whether he be thought, cognised or not? No! it is not

possible. We are necessitated to regard the fact of God being thought

by us, as his thinking himself, or his self-consciousness.

Religious objectivism has two passives, two modes in which God

is thought. On the one hand, God is thought by us, on the other,

he is thought by himself. God thinks himself, independently of his

being thought by us: he has a self-consciousness distinct from,

independent of, our consciousness. This is certainly consistent

when once God is conceived as a real personality; for the real human

person thinks himself, and is thought by another; my thinking of him

is to him an indifferent, external fact. This is the last degree of

anthropopathism. In order to make God free and independent of all that

is human, he is regarded as a formal, real person, his thinking is

confined within himself, and the fact of his being thought is excluded

from him, and is represented as occurring in another being. This

indifference or independence with respect to us, to our thought,

is the attestation of a self-subsistent, i.e., external, personal

existence. It is true that religion also makes the fact of God being

thought into the self-thinking of God; but because this process goes

forward behind its consciousness, since God is immediately presupposed

as a self-existent personal being, the religious consciousness only

embraces the indifference of the two facts.

Even religion, however, does not abide by this indifference of the

two sides. God creates in order to reveal himself: creation is the

revelation of God. But for stones, plants, and animals there is no

God, but only for man; so that Nature exists for the sake of man,

and man purely for the sake of God. God glorifies himself in man:

man is the pride of God. God indeed knows himself even without man;

but so long as there is no other me, so long is he only a possible,

conceptional person. First when a difference from God, a non-divine

is posited, is God conscious of himself; first when he knows what

is not God, does he know what it is to be God, does he know the

bliss of his Godhead. First in the positing of what is other than

himself, of the world, does God posit himself as God. Is God almighty

without creation? No! Omnipotence first realises, proves itself in

creation. What is a power, a property, which does not exhibit, attest

itself? What is a force which affects nothing? a light that does not

illuminate? a wisdom which knows nothing, i.e., nothing real? And what

is omnipotence, what all other divine attributes, if man does not

exist? Man is nothing without God; but also, God is nothing without

man; [174] for only in man is God an object as God; only in man is

he God. The various qualities of man first give difference, which

is the ground of reality in God. The physical qualities of man make

God a physical being--God the Father, who is the creator of Nature,

i.e., the personified, anthropomorphised essence of Nature; [175]

the intellectual qualities of man make God an intellectual being, the

moral, a moral being. Human misery is the triumph of divine compassion;

sorrow for sin is the delight of the divine holiness. Life, fire,

emotion comes into God only through man. With the stubborn sinner

God is angry; over the repentant sinner he rejoices. Man is the

revealed God: in man the divine essence first realises and unfolds

itself. In the creation of Nature God goes out of himself, he has

relation to what is other than himself, but in man he returns into

himself:--man knows God, because in him God finds and knows himself,

feels himself as God. Where there is no pressure, no want, there is no

feeling;--and feeling is alone real knowledge. Who can know compassion

without having felt the want of it? justice without the experience

of injustice? happiness without the experience of distress? Thou

must feel what a thing is; otherwise thou wilt never learn to know

it. It is in man that the divine properties first become feelings,

i.e., man is the self-feeling of God;--and the feeling of God is the

real God; for the qualities of God are indeed only real qualities,

realities, as felt by man,--as feelings. If the experience of human

misery were outside of God, in a being personally separate from him,

compassion also would not be in God, and we should hence have again

the Being destitute of qualities, or more correctly the nothing, which

God was before man or without man. For example:--Whether I be a good

or sympathetic being--for that alone is good which gives, imparts

itself, bonum est communicativum sui,--is unknown to me before the

opportunity presents itself of showing goodness to another being. Only

in the act of imparting do I experience the happiness of beneficence,

the joy of generosity, of liberality. But is this joy apart from

the joy of the recipient? No; I rejoice because he rejoices. I feel

the wretchedness of another, I suffer with him; in alleviating his

wretchedness, I alleviate my own;--sympathy with suffering is itself

suffering. The joyful feeling of the giver is only the reflex,

the self-consciousness of the joy in the receiver. Their joy is a

common feeling, which accordingly makes itself visible in the union

of hands, of lips. So it is here. Just as the feeling of human misery

is human, so the feeling of divine compassion is human. It is only

a sense of the poverty of finiteness that gives a sense of the bliss

of infiniteness. Where the one is not, the other is not. The two are

inseparable,--inseparable the feeling of God as God, and the feeling

of man as man, inseparable the knowledge of man and the self-knowledge

of God. God is a Self only in the human self,--only in the human power

of discrimination, in the principle of difference that lies in the

human being. Thus compassion is only felt as a me, a self, a force,

i.e., as something special, through its opposite. The opposite of God

gives qualities to God, realises him, makes him a Self. God is God,

only through that which is not God. Herein we have also the mystery

of Jacob Böhme's doctrine. It must only be borne in mind that Jacob

Böhme, as a mystic and theologian, places outside of man the feelings

in which the divine being first realises himself, passes from nothing

to something, to a qualitative being apart from the feelings of man

(at least in imagination),--and that he makes them objective in the

form of natural qualities, but in such a way that these qualities still

only represent the impressions made on his feelings. It will then be

obvious that what the empirical religious consciousness first posits

with the real creation of Nature and of man, the mystical consciousness

places before the creation in the premundane God, in doing which,

however, it does away with the reality of the creation. For if God

has what is not-God, already in himself, he has no need first to

create what is not-God in order to be God. The creation of the world

is here a pure superfluity, or rather an impossibility; this God

for very reality does not come to reality; he is already in himself

the full and restless world. This is especially true of Schelling's

doctrine of God, who though made up of innumerable "potences" is yet

thoroughly impotent. Far more reasonable, therefore, is the empirical

religious consciousness, which makes God reveal, i.e., realise himself

in real man, real nature, and according to which man is created purely

for the praise and glory of God. That is to say, man is the mouth of

God, which articulates and accentuates the divine qualities as human

feelings. God wills that he be honoured, praised. Why? because the

passion of man for God is the self-consciousness of God. Nevertheless,

the religious consciousness separates these two properly inseparable

sides, since by means of the idea of personality it makes God and

man independent existences. Now the Hegelian speculation identifies

the two sides, but so as to leave the old contradiction still at

the foundation;--it is therefore only the consistent carrying out,

the completion of a religious truth. The learned mob was so blind

in its hatred towards Hegel as not to perceive that his doctrine, at

least in this relation, does not in fact contradict religion;--that

it contradicts it only in the same way as, in general, a developed,

consequent process of thought contradicts an undeveloped, inconsequent,

but nevertheless radically identical conception.

But if it is only in human feelings and wants that the divine

"nothing" becomes something, obtains qualities, then the being

of man is alone the real being of God,--man is the real God. And

if in the consciousness which man has of God first arises the

self-consciousness of God, then the human consciousness is, per

se, the divine consciousness. Why then dost thou alienate man's

consciousness from him, and make it the self-consciousness of a being

distinct from man, of that which is an object to him? Why dost thou

vindicate existence to God, to man only the consciousness of that

existence? God has his consciousness in man, and man his being in

God? Man's knowledge of God is God's knowledge of himself? What

a divorcing and contradiction! The true statement is this: man's

knowledge of God is man's knowledge of himself, of his own nature. Only

the unity of being and consciousness is truth. Where the consciousness

of God is, there is the being of God,--in man, therefore; in the being

of God it is only thy own being which is an object to thee, and what

presents itself before thy consciousness is simply what lies behind

it. If the divine qualities are human, the human qualities are divine.

Only when we abandon a philosophy of religion, or a theology, which is

distinct from psychology and anthropology, and recognise anthropology

as itself theology, do we attain to a true, self-satisfying identity

of the divine and human being, the identity of the human being with

itself. In every theory of the identity of the divine and human

which is not true identity, unity of the human nature with itself,

there still lies at the foundation a division, a separation into two,

since the identity is immediately abolished, or rather is supposed

to be abolished. Every theory of this kind is in contradiction with

itself and with the understanding,--is a half measure--a thing of

the imagination--a perversion, a distortion; which, however, the more

perverted and false it is, all the more appears to be profound.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE TRINITY.

Religion gives reality or objectivity not only to the human or divine

nature in general as a personal being; it further gives reality to

the fundamental determinations or fundamental distinctions of that

nature as persons. The Trinity is therefore originally nothing else

than the sum of the essential fundamental distinctions which man

perceives in the human nature. According as the mode of conceiving

this nature varies, so also the fundamental determinations on which

the Trinity is founded vary. But these distinctions, perceived in one

and the same human nature, are hypostasised as substances, as divine

persons. And herein, namely, that these different determinations

are in God, hypostases, subjects, is supposed to lie the distinction

between these determinations as they are in God, and as they exist

in man,--in accordance with the law already enunciated, that only

in the idea of personality does the human personality transfer and

make objective its own qualities. But the personality exists only in

the imagination; the fundamental determinations are therefore only

for the imagination hypostases, persons; for reason, for thought,

they are mere relations or determinations. The idea of the Trinity

contains in itself the contradiction of polytheism and monotheism,

of imagination and reason, of fiction and reality. Imagination gives

the Trinity, reason the Unity of the persons. According to reason, the

things distinguished are only distinctions; according to imagination,

the distinctions are things distinguished, which therefore do away

with the unity of the divine being. To the reason, the divine persons

are phantoms, to the imagination realities. The idea of the Trinity

demands that man should think the opposite of what he imagines,

and imagine the opposite of what he thinks,--that he should think

phantoms realities. [176]

There are three Persons, but they are not essentially

distinguished. Tres personæ, but una essentia. So far the conception is

a natural one. We can conceive three and even more persons, identical

in essence. Thus we men are distinguished from one another by personal

differences, but in the main, in essence, in humanity we are one. And

this identification is made not only by the speculative understanding,

but even by feeling. A given individual is a man as we are; punctum

satis; in this feeling all distinctions vanish,--whether he be

rich or poor, clever or stupid, culpable or innocent. The feeling

of compassion, sympathy, is therefore a substantial, essential,

speculative feeling. But the three or more human persons exist apart

from each other, have a separate existence, even when they verify

and confirm the unity of their nature by fervent love. They together

constitute, through love, a single moral personality, but each has

a physical existence for himself. Though they may be reciprocally

absorbed in each other, may be unable to dispense with each other,

they have yet always a formally independent existence. Independent

existence, existence apart from others, is the essential characteristic

of a person, of a substance. It is otherwise in God, and necessarily

so; for while his personality is the same as that of man, it is

held to be the same with a difference, on the ground simply of this

postulate: there must be a difference. The three Persons in God have

no existence out of each other; else there would meet us in the heaven

of Christian dogmatics, not indeed many gods, as in Olympus, but at

least three divine Persons in an individual form, three Gods. The gods

of Olympus were real persons, for they existed apart from each other,

they had the criterion of real personality in their individuality,

though they were one in essence, in divinity; they had different

personal attributes, but were each singly a god, alike in divinity,

different as existing subjects or persons; they were genuine

divine personalities. The three Persons of the Christian Godhead,

on the contrary, are only imaginary, pretended persons, assuredly

different from real persons, just because they are only phantasms,

shadows of personalities, while, notwithstanding, they are assumed to

be real persons. The essential characteristic of personal reality,

the polytheistic element, is excluded, denied as non-divine. But by

this negation their personality becomes a mere phantasm. Only in the

truth of the plural lies the truth of the Persons. The three persons

of the Christian Godhead are not tres Dii, three Gods;--at least they

are not meant to be such;--but unus Deus, one God. The three Persons

end, not, as might have been expected, in a plural, but in a singular;

they are not only Unum--the gods of Olympus are that--but Unus. Unity

has here the significance not of essence only, but also of existence;

unity is the existential form of God. Three are one: the plural is

a singular. God is a personal being consisting of three persons. [177]

The three persons are thus only phantoms in the eyes of reason, for

the conditions or modes under which alone their personality could

be realised, are done away with by the command of monotheism. The

unity gives the lie to the personality; the self-subsistence of the

persons is annihilated in the self-subsistence of the unity--they

are mere relations. The Son is not without the Father, the Father

not without the Son: the Holy Spirit, who indeed spoils the symmetry,

expresses nothing but the relation of the two to each other. But the

divine persons are distinguished from each other only by that which

constitutes their relation to each other. The essential in the Father

as a person is that he is a Father, of the Son that he is a Son. What

the Father is over and above his fatherhood, does not belong to his

personality; therein he is God, and as God identical with the Son as

God. Therefore it is said: God the Father, God the Son, and God the

Holy Ghost:--God is in all three alike. "There is one person of the

Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the

Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all

one;" i.e., they are distinct persons, but without distinction of

substance. The personality, therefore, arises purely in the relation

of the Fatherhood; i.e., the idea of the person is here only a

relative idea, the idea of a relation. Man as a father is dependent,

he is essentially the correlative of the son; he is not a father

without the son; by fatherhood man reduces himself to a relative,

dependent, impersonal being. It is before all things necessary not

to allow oneself to be deceived by these relations as they exist in

reality, in men. The human father is, over and above his paternity,

an independent personal being; he has at least a formal existence for

himself, an existence apart from his son; he is not merely a father,

with the exclusion of all the other predicates of a real personal

being. Fatherhood is a relation which the bad man can make quite an

external one, not touching his personal being. But in God the Father,

there is no distinction between God the Father and God the Son as

God; the abstract fatherhood alone constitutes his personality, his

distinction from the Son, whose personality likewise is founded only

on the abstract sonship.

But at the same time these relations, as has been said, are maintained

to be not mere relations, but real persons, beings, substances. Thus

the truth of the plural, the truth of polytheism is again affirmed,

[178] and the truth of monotheism is denied. To require the reality of

the persons is to require the unreality of the unity, and conversely,

to require the reality of the unity is to require the unreality of the

persons. Thus in the holy mystery of the Trinity,--that is to say,

so far as it is supposed to represent a truth distinct from human

nature,--all resolves itself into delusions, phantasms, contradictions,

and sophisms. [179]

CHAPTER XXV.

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SACRAMENTS.

As the objective essence of religion, the idea of God, resolves itself

into mere contradictions, so also, on grounds easily understood,

does its subjective essence.

The subjective elements of religion are on the one hand Faith and Love;

on the other hand, so far as it presents itself externally in a cultus,

the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper. The sacrament of Faith

is Baptism, the sacrament of Love is the Lord's Supper. In strictness

there are only two sacraments, as there are two subjective elements

in religion, Faith and Love: for Hope is only faith in relation to

the future; so that there is the same logical impropriety in making

it a distinct mental act as in making the Holy Ghost a distinct being.

The identity of the sacraments with the specific essence of religion as

hitherto developed is at once made evident, apart from other relations,

by the fact that they have for their basis natural materials or

things, to which, however, is attributed a significance and effect

in contradiction with their nature. Thus the material of baptism

is water, common, natural water, just as the material of religion

in general is common, natural humanity. But as religion alienates

our own nature from us, and represents it as not ours, so the water

of baptism is regarded as quite other than common water; for it has

not a physical but a hyperphysical power and significance; it is the

Lavacrum regenerationis, it purifies man from the stains of original

sin, expels the inborn devil, and reconciles with God. Thus it is

natural water only in appearance; in truth it is supernatural. In

other words: the baptismal water has supernatural effects (and that

which operates supernaturally is itself supernatural) only in idea,

only in the imagination.

And yet the material of Baptism is said to be natural water. Baptism

has no validity and efficacy if it is not performed with

water. Thus the natural quality of water has in itself value and

significance, since the supernatural effect of baptism is associated

in a supernatural manner with water only, and not with any other

material. God, by means of his omnipotence, could have united the same

effect to anything whatever. But he does not; he accommodates himself

to natural qualities; he chooses an element corresponding, analogous

to his operation. Thus the natural is not altogether set aside; on the

contrary, there always remains a certain analogy with the natural, an

appearance of naturalness. In like manner wine represents blood; bread,

flesh. [180] Even miracle is guided by analogies; water is changed into

wine or blood, one species into another, with the retention of the

indeterminate generic idea of liquidity. So it is here. Water is the

purest, clearest of liquids; in virtue of this its natural character

it is the image of the spotless nature of the Divine Spirit. In short,

water has a significance in itself, as water; it is on account of its

natural quality that it is consecrated and selected as the vehicle

of the Holy Spirit. So far there lies at the foundation of Baptism a

beautiful, profound natural significance. But, at the very same time,

this beautiful meaning is lost again because water has a transcendental

effect,--an effect which it has only through the supernatural power of

the Holy Spirit, and not through itself. The natural quality becomes

indifferent: he who makes wine out of water, can at will unite the

effects of baptismal water with any material whatsoever.

Baptism cannot be understood without the idea of miracle. Baptism

is itself a miracle. The same power which works miracles, and by

means of them, as a proof of the divinity of Christ, turns Jews and

Pagans into Christians,--this same power has instituted baptism and

operates in it. Christianity began with miracles, and it carries

itself forward with miracles. If the miraculous power of baptism

is denied, miracles in general must be denied. The miracle-working

water of baptism springs from the same source as the water which at

the wedding at Cana in Galilee was turned into wine.

The faith which is produced by miracle is not dependent on me, on

my spontaneity, on freedom of judgment and conviction. A miracle

which happens before my eyes I must believe, if I am not utterly

obdurate. Miracle compels me to believe in the divinity of the

miracle-worker. [181] It is true that in some cases it presupposes

faith, namely, where it appears in the light of a reward; but

with that exception it presupposes not so much actual faith as a

believing disposition, willingness, submission, in opposition to an

unbelieving, obdurate, and malignant disposition, like that of the

Pharisees. The end of miracle is to prove that the miracle-worker

is really that which he assumes to be. Faith based on miracle is the

only thoroughly warranted, well-grounded, objective faith. The faith

which is presupposed by miracle is only faith in a Messiah, a Christ

in general; but the faith that this very man is Christ--and this is

the main point--is first wrought by miracle as its consequence. This

presupposition even of an indeterminate faith is, however, by no

means necessary. Multitudes first became believers through miracles;

thus miracle was the cause of their faith. If then miracles do not

contradict Christianity,--and how should they contradict it?--neither

does the miraculous efficacy of baptism contradict it. On the

contrary, if baptism is to have a Christian significance it must

of necessity have a supernaturalistic one. Paul was converted by a

sudden miraculous appearance, when he was still full of hatred to

the Christians. Christianity took him by violence. It is in vain to

allege that with another than Paul this appearance would not have

had the same consequences, and that therefore the effect of it must

still be attributed to Paul. For if the same appearance had been

vouchsafed to others, they would assuredly have become as thoroughly

Christian as Paul. Is not divine grace omnipotent? The unbelief

and non-convertibility of the Pharisees is no counter-argument;

for from them grace was expressly withdrawn. The Messiah must

necessarily, according to a divine decree, be betrayed, maltreated

and crucified. For this purpose there must be individuals who should

maltreat and crucify him: and hence it was a prior necessity that

the divine grace should be withdrawn from those individuals. It

was not indeed totally withdrawn from them, but this was only in

order to aggravate their guilt, and by no means with the earnest

will to convert them. How would it be possible to resist the will

of God, supposing of course that it was his real will, not a mere

velleity? Paul himself represents his conversion as a work of divine

grace thoroughly unmerited on his part; [182] and quite correctly. Not

to resist divine grace, i.e., to accept divine grace, to allow it

to work upon one, is already something good, and consequently is an

effect of the Holy Spirit. Nothing is more perverse than the attempt

to reconcile miracle with freedom of inquiry and thought, or grace

with freedom of will. In religion the nature of man is regarded as

separate from man. The activity, the grace of God is the projected

spontaneity of man, Free Will made objective. [183]

It is the most flagrant inconsequence to adduce the experience that

men are not sanctified, not converted by baptism, as an argument

against its miraculous efficacy, as is done by rationalistic orthodox

theologians; [184] for all kinds of miracles, the objective power

of prayer, and in general all the supernatural truths of religion,

also contradict experience. He who appeals to experience renounces

faith. Where experience is a datum, there religious faith and feeling

have already vanished. The unbeliever denies the objective efficacy

of prayer only because it contradicts experience; the atheist goes

yet further,--he denies even the existence of God, because he does

not find it in experience. Inward experience creates no difficulty

to him; for what thou experiencest in thyself of another existence,

proves only that there is something in thee which thou thyself art

not, which works upon thee independently of thy personal will and

consciousness, without thy knowing what this mysterious something

is. But faith is stronger than experience. The facts which contradict

faith do not disturb it; it is happy in itself; it has eyes only for

itself, to all else it is blind.

It is true that religion, even on the standpoint of its mystical

materialism, always requires the co-operation of subjectivity, and

therefore requires it in the sacraments; but herein is exhibited its

contradiction with itself. And this contradiction is particularly

glaring in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper; for baptism is given

to infants,--though even in them, as a condition of its efficacy, the

co-operation of subjectivity is insisted on, but, singularly enough,

is supplied in the faith of others, in the faith of the parents,

or of their representatives, or of the church in general. [185]

The object in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper is the body of

Christ,--a real body; but the necessary predicates of reality are

wanting to it. Here we have again, in an example presented to the

senses, what we have found in the nature of religion in general. The

object or subject in the religious syntax is always a real human or

natural subject or predicate; but the closer definition, the essential

predicate of this predicate is denied. The subject is sensuous,

but the predicate is not sensuous, i.e., is contradictory to the

subject. I distinguish a real body from an imaginary one only by this,

that the former produces corporeal effects, involuntary effects, upon

me. If therefore the bread be the real body of God, the partaking of

it must produce in me immediate, involuntary sanctifying effects;

I need to make no special preparation, to bring with me no holy

disposition. If I eat an apple, the apple of itself gives rise to

the taste of apple. At the utmost I need nothing more than a healthy

stomach to perceive that the apple is an apple. The Catholics require

a state of fasting as a condition of partaking the Lord's Supper. This

is enough. I take hold of the body with my lips, I crush it with my

teeth, by my oesophagus it is carried into my stomach; I assimilate

it corporeally, not spiritually. [186] Why are its effects not held

to be corporeal? Why should not this body, which is a corporeal,

but at the same time heavenly, supernatural substance, also bring

forth in me corporeal and yet at the same time holy, supernatural

effects? If it is my disposition, my faith, which alone makes the

divine body a means of sanctification to me, which transubstantiates

the dry bread into pneumatic animal substance, why do I still need an

external object? It is I myself who give rise to the effect of the

body on me, and therefore to the reality of the body; I am acted on

by myself. Where is the objective truth and power? He who partakes

the Lord's Supper unworthily has nothing further than the physical

enjoyment of bread and wine. He who brings nothing, takes nothing

away. The specific difference of this bread from common natural bread

rests therefore only on the difference between the state of mind at

the table of the Lord, and the state of mind at any other table. "He

that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation

to himself, not discerning the Lord's body." [187] But this mental

state itself is dependent only on the significance which I give to

this bread. If it has for me the significance not of bread, but of

the body of Christ, then it has not the effect of common bread. In

the significance attached to it lies its effect. I do not eat to

satisfy hunger; hence I consume only a small quantity. Thus to go no

further than the quantity taken, which in every other act of taking

food plays an essential part, the significance of common bread is

externally set aside.

But this supernatural significance exists only in the imagination;

to the senses, the wine remains wine, the bread, bread. The Schoolmen

therefore had recourse to the precious distinction of substance and

accidents. All the accidents which constitute the nature of wine and

bread are still there; only that which is made up by these accidents,

the subject, the substance, is wanting, is changed into flesh and

blood. But all the properties together, whose combination forms this

unity, are the substance itself. What are wine and bread if I take

from them the properties which make them what they are? Nothing. Flesh

and blood have therefore no objective existence; otherwise they must

be an object to the unbelieving senses. On the contrary: the only

valid witnesses of an objective existence--taste, smell, touch,

sight--testify unanimously to the reality of the wine and bread,

and nothing else. The wine and bread are in reality natural, but in

imagination divine substances.

Faith is the power of the imagination, which makes the real unreal,

and the unreal real: in direct contradiction with the truth of the

senses, with the truth of reason. Faith denies what objective reason

affirms, and affirms what it denies. [188] The mystery of the Lord's

Supper is the mystery of faith: [189]--hence the partaking of it is the

highest, the most rapturous, blissful act of the believing soul. The

negation of objective truth which is not gratifying to feeling,

the truth of reality, of the objective world and reason,--a negation

which constitutes the essence of faith,--reaches its highest point

in the Lord's Supper; for faith here denies an immediately present,

evident, indubitable object, maintaining that it is not what the reason

and senses declare it to be, that it is only in appearance bread,

but in reality flesh. The position of the Schoolmen, that according

to the accidents it is bread, and according to the substance flesh,

is merely the abstract, explanatory, intellectual expression of what

faith accepts and declares, and has therefore no other meaning than

this: to the senses or to common perception it is bread, but in truth,

flesh. Where therefore the imaginative tendency of faith has assumed

such power over the senses and reason as to deny the most evident

sensible truths, it is no wonder if believers can raise themselves

to such a degree of exaltation as actually to see blood instead of

wine. Such examples Catholicism has to show. Little is wanting in order

to perceive externally what faith and imagination hold to be real.

So long as faith in the mystery of the Lord's Supper as a holy, nay

the holiest, highest truth, governed man, so long was his governing

principle the imagination. All criteria of reality and unreality, of

unreason and reason, had disappeared: anything whatever that could

be imagined passed for real possibility. Religion hallowed every

contradiction of reason, of the nature of things. Do not ridicule the

absurd questions of the Schoolmen! They were necessary consequences

of faith. That which is only a matter of feeling had to be made a

matter of reason, that which contradicts the understanding had to be

made not to contradict it. This was the fundamental contradiction of

Scholasticism, whence all other contradictions followed of course.

And it is of no particular importance whether I believe the Protestant

or the Catholic doctrine of the Lord's Supper. The sole distinction

is, that in Protestantism it is only on the tongue, in the act of

partaking, that flesh and blood are united in a thoroughly miraculous

manner with bread and wine; [190] while in Catholicism, it is before

the act of partaking, by the power of the priest,--who however here

acts only in the name of the Almighty,--that bread and wine are really

transmuted into flesh and blood. The Protestant prudently avoids a

definite explanation; he does not lay himself open, like the pious,

uncritical simplicity of Catholicism, whose God, as an external object,

can be devoured by a mouse: he shuts up his God within himself, where

he can no more be torn from him, and thus secures him as well from the

power of accident as from that of ridicule; yet, notwithstanding this,

he just as much as the Catholic consumes real flesh and blood in the

bread and wine. Slight indeed was the difference at first between

Protestants and Catholics in the doctrine of the Lord's Supper! Thus

at Anspach there arose a controversy on the question--"whether the body

of Christ enters the stomach, and is digested like other food?" [191]

But although the imaginative activity of faith makes the objective

existence the mere appearance, and the emotional, imaginary existence

the truth and reality; still, in itself or in truth, that which is

really objective is only the natural elements. Even the host in the pyx

of the Catholic priest is in itself only to faith a divine body,--this

external thing, into which he transubstantiates the divine being, is

only a thing of faith; for even here the body is not visible, tangible,

tasteable as a body. That is: the bread is only in its significance

flesh. It is true that to faith this significance has the sense of

actual existence;--as, in general, in the ecstasy of fervid feeling

that which signifies becomes the thing signified;--it is held not to

signify, but to be flesh. But this state of being flesh is not that of

real flesh; it is a state of being which is only believed in, imagined,

i.e., it has only the value, the quality, of a significance, a truth

conveyed in a symbol. [192] A thing which has a special significance

for me, is another thing in my imagination than in reality. The

thing signifying is not itself that which is signified. What it is,

is evident to the senses; what it signifies, is only in my feelings,

conception, imagination,--is only for me, not for others, is not

objectively present. So here. When therefore Zwinglius said that

the Lord's Supper has only a subjective significance, he said the

same thing as his opponents; only he disturbed the illusion of the

religious imagination; for that which "is" in the Lord's Supper, is

only an illusion of the imagination, but with the further illusion

that it is not an illusion. Zwinglius only expressed simply, nakedly,

prosaically, rationalistically, and therefore offensively, what the

others declared mystically, indirectly,--inasmuch as they confessed

[193] that the effect of the Lord's Supper depends only on a worthy

disposition or on faith; i.e., that the bread and wine are the flesh

and blood of the Lord, are the Lord himself, only for him for whom

they have the supernatural significance of the divine body, for on

this alone depends the worthy disposition, the religious emotion. [194]

But if the Lord's Supper effects nothing, consequently is nothing,--for

only that which produces effects, is,--without a certain state of mind,

without faith, then in faith alone lies its reality; the entire event

goes forward in the feelings alone. If the idea that I here receive

the real body of the Saviour acts on the religious feelings, this

idea itself arises from the feelings; it produces devout sentiments,

because it is itself a devout idea. Thus here also the religious

subject is acted on by himself as if by another being, through the

conception of an imaginary object. Therefore the process of the

Lord's Supper can quite well, even without the intermediation of

bread and wine, without any church ceremony, be accomplished in the

imagination. There are innumerable devout poems, the sole theme of

which is the blood of Christ. In these we have a genuinely poetical

celebration of the Lord's Supper. In the lively representation of the

suffering, bleeding Saviour, the soul identifies itself with him;

here the saint in poetic exaltation drinks the pure blood, unmixed

with any contradictory, material elements; here there is no disturbing

object between the idea of the blood and the blood itself.

But though the Lord's Supper, or a sacrament in general, is nothing

without a certain state of mind, without faith, nevertheless

religion presents the sacrament at the same time as something in

itself real, external, distinct from the human being, so that in the

religious consciousness the true thing, which is faith, is made only

a collateral thing, a condition, and the imaginary thing becomes the

principal thing. And the necessary, immanent consequences and effects

of this religious materialism, of this subordination of the human to

the supposed divine, of the subjective to the supposed objective,

of truth to imagination, of morality to religion,--the necessary

consequences are superstition and immorality: superstition, because

a thing has attributed to it an effect which does not lie in its

nature, because a thing is held up as not being what it in truth is,

because a mere conception passes for objective reality; immorality,

because necessarily, in feeling, the holiness of the action as such

is separated from morality, the partaking of the sacrament, even

apart from the state of mind, becomes a holy and saving act. Such,

at least, is the result in practice, which knows nothing of the

sophistical distinctions of theology. In general: wherever religion

places itself in contradiction with reason, it places itself also

in contradiction with the moral sense. Only with the sense of truth

coexists the sense of the right and good. Depravity of understanding is

always depravity of heart. He who deludes and cheats his understanding

has not a veracious, honourable heart; sophistry corrupts the whole

man. And the doctrine of the Lord's Supper is sophistry.

The Truth of the disposition, or of faith as a requisite to communion,

involves the Untruth of the bodily presence of God; and again the

Truth of the objective existence of the divine body involves the

Untruth of the disposition.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE.

The Sacraments are a sensible presentation of that contradiction

of idealism and materialism, of subjectivism and objectivism,

which belongs to the inmost nature of religion. But the sacraments

are nothing without Faith and Love. Hence the contradiction in the

sacraments carries us back to the primary contradiction of Faith

and Love.

The essence of religion, its latent nature, is the identity of the

divine being with the human; but the form of religion, or its apparent,

conscious nature, is the distinction between them. God is the human

being; but he presents himself to the religious consciousness as a

distinct being. Now, that which reveals the basis, the hidden essence

of religion, is Love; that which constitutes its conscious form is

Faith. Love identifies man with God and God with man, consequently it

identifies man with man; faith separates God from man, consequently it

separates man from man, for God is nothing else than the idea of the

species invested with a mystical form,--the separation of God from

man is therefore the separation of man from man, the unloosening of

the social bond. By faith religion places itself in contradiction with

morality, with reason, with the unsophisticated sense of truth in man;

by love, it opposes itself again to this contradiction. Faith isolates

God, it makes him a particular, distinct being: love universalises;

it makes God a common being, the love of whom is one with the love of

man. Faith produces in man an inward disunion, a disunion with himself,

and by consequence an outward disunion also; but love heals the wounds

which are made by faith in the heart of man. Faith makes belief in

its God a law: love is freedom,--it condemns not even the atheist,

because it is itself atheistic, itself denies, if not theoretically,

at least practically, the existence of a particular, individual God,

opposed to man. Love has God in itself: faith has God out of itself;

it estranges God from man, it makes him an external object.

Faith, being inherently external, proceeds even to the adoption

of outward fact as its object, and becomes historical faith. It is

therefore of the nature of faith that it can become a totally external

confession; and that with mere faith, as such, superstitious, magical

effects are associated. [195] The devils believe that God is, without

ceasing to be devils. Hence a distinction has been made between faith

in God, and belief that there is a God. [196] But even with this bare

belief in the existence of God, the assimilating power of love is

intermingled;--a power which by no means lies in the idea of faith

as such, and in so far as it relates to external things.

The only distinctions or judgments which are immanent to faith, which

spring out of itself, are the distinctions of right or genuine, and

wrong or false faith; or in general, of belief and unbelief. Faith

discriminates thus: This is true, that is false. And it claims truth

to itself alone. Faith has for its object a definite, specific truth,

which is necessarily united with negation. Faith is in its nature

exclusive. One thing alone is truth, one alone is God, one alone has

the monopoly of being the Son of God; all else is nothing, error,

delusion. Jehovah alone is the true God; all other gods are vain idols.

Faith has in its mind something peculiar to itself; it rests on a

peculiar revelation of God; it has not come to its possessions in an

ordinary way, that way which stands open to all men alike. What stands

open to all is common, and for that reason cannot form a special object

of faith. That God is the creator, all men could know from Nature;

but what this God is in person, can be known only by special grace,

is the object of a special faith. And because he is only revealed

in a peculiar manner, the object of this faith is himself a peculiar

being. The God of the Christians is indeed the God of the heathens,

but with a wide difference:--just such a difference as there is between

me as I am to a friend, and me as I am to a stranger, who only knows

me at a distance. God as he is an object to the Christians, is quite

another than as he is an object to the heathens. The Christians

know God personally, face to face. The heathens know only--and

even this is too large an admission--"what," and not "who," God

is; for which reason they fell into idolatry. The identity of the

heathens and Christians before God is therefore altogether vague;

what the heathens have in common with the Christians--if indeed

we consent to be so liberal as to admit anything in common between

them--is not that which is specifically Christian, not that which

constitutes faith. In whatsoever the Christians are Christians,

therein they are distinguished from the heathens; [197] and they are

Christians in virtue of their special knowledge of God; thus their

mark of distinction is God. Speciality is the salt which first gives a

flavour to the common being. What a being is in special, is the being

itself; he alone knows me, who knows me in specie. Thus the special

God, God as he is an object to the Christians, the personal God, is

alone God. And this God is unknown to heathens, and to unbelievers

in general; he does not exist for them. He is, indeed, said to exist

for the heathens; but mediately, on condition that they cease to be

heathens, and become Christians. Faith makes man partial and narrow;

it deprives him of the freedom and ability to estimate duly what

is different from himself. Faith is imprisoned within itself. It is

true that the philosophical, or, in general, any scientific theorist,

also limits himself by a definite system. But theoretic limitation,

however fettered, short-sighted and narrow-hearted it may be, has

still a freer character than faith, because the domain of theory

is in itself a free one, because here the ground of decision is the

nature of things, argument, reason. But faith refers the decision to

conscience and interest, to the instinctive desire of happiness; for

its object is a special, personal Being, urging himself on recognition,

and making salvation dependent on that recognition.

Faith gives man a peculiar sense of his own dignity and importance. The

believer finds himself distinguished above other men, exalted above

the natural man; he knows himself to be a person of distinction, in

the possession of peculiar privileges; believers are aristocrats,

unbelievers plebeians. God is this distinction and pre-eminence

of believers above unbelievers, personified. [198] Because faith

represents man's own nature as that of another being, the believer

does not contemplate his dignity immediately in himself, but in this

supposed distinct person. The consciousness of his own pre-eminence

presents itself as a consciousness of this person; he has the sense of

his own dignity in this divine personality. [199] As the servant feels

himself honoured in the dignity of his master, nay, fancies himself

greater than a free, independent man of lower rank than his master,

so it is with the believer. [200] He denies all merit in himself,

merely that he may leave all merit to his Lord, because his own

desire of honour is satisfied in the honour of his Lord. Faith is

arrogant, but it is distinguished from natural arrogance in this,

that it clothes its feeling of superiority, its pride, in the idea

of another person, for whom the believer is an object of peculiar

favour. This distinct person, however, is simply his own hidden self,

his personified, contented desire of happiness: for he has no other

qualities than these, that he is the benefactor, the Redeemer, the

Saviour--qualities in which the believer has reference only to himself,

to his own eternal salvation. In fact, we have here the characteristic

principle of religion, that it changes that which is naturally active

into the passive. The heathen elevates himself, the Christian feels

himself elevated. The Christian converts into a matter of feeling,

of receptivity, what to the heathen is a matter of spontaneity. The

humility of the believer is an inverted arrogance,--an arrogance

none the less because it has not the appearance, the external

characteristics of arrogance. He feels himself pre-eminent: this

pre-eminence, however, is not a result of his activity, but a matter

of grace; he has been made pre-eminent; he can do nothing towards

it himself. He does not make himself the end of his own activity,

but the end, the object of God.

Faith is essentially determinate, specific. God according to the

specific view taken of him by faith, is alone the true God. This

Jesus, such as I conceive him, is the Christ, the true, sole prophet,

the only-begotten Son of God. And this particular conception thou

must believe, if thou wouldst not forfeit thy salvation. Faith is

imperative. It is therefore necessary--it lies in the nature of

faith--that it be fixed as dogma. Dogma only gives a formula to

what faith had already on its tongue or in its mind. That when once

a fundamental dogma is established, it gives rise to more special

questions, which must also be thrown into a dogmatic form, that hence

there results a burdensome multiplicity of dogmas,--this is certainly

a fatal consequence, but does not do away with the necessity that

faith should fix itself in dogmas, in order that every one may know

definitely what he must believe and how he can win salvation.

That which in the present day, even from the standpoint of believing

Christianity, is rejected, is compassionated as an aberration, as a

misinterpretation, or is even ridiculed, is purely a consequence of the

inmost nature of faith. Faith is essentially illiberal, prejudiced;

for it is concerned not only with individual salvation, but with

the honour of God. And just as we are solicitous as to whether we

show due honour to a superior in rank, so it is with faith. The

apostle Paul is absorbed in the glory, the honour, the merits of

Christ. Dogmatic, exclusive, scrupulous particularity, lies in the

nature of faith. In food and other matters, indifferent to faith,

it is certainly liberal; but by no means in relation to objects

of faith. He who is not for Christ is against him; that which is

not christian is antichristian. But what is christian? This must be

absolutely determined, this cannot be free. If the articles of faith

are set down in books which proceed from various authors, handed

down in the form of incidental, mutually contradictory, occasional

dicta,--then dogmatic demarcation and definition are even an external

necessity. Christianity owes its perpetuation to the dogmatic formulas

of the Church.

It is only the believing unbelief of modern times which hides

itself behind the Bible, and opposes the biblical dicta to dogmatic

definitions, in order that it may set itself free from the limits

of dogma by arbitrary exegesis. But faith has already disappeared,

is become indifferent, when the determinate tenets of faith are

felt as limitations. It is only religious indifference under the

appearance of religion that makes the Bible, which in its nature and

origin is indefinite, a standard of faith, and under the pretext of

believing only the essential, retains nothing which deserves the name

of faith;--for example, substituting for the distinctly characterised

Son of God, held up by the Church, the vague negative definition of a

Sinless Man, who can claim to be the Son of God in a sense applicable

to no other being,--in a word, of a man, whom one may not trust oneself

to call either a man or a God. But that it is merely indifference

which makes a hiding-place for itself behind the Bible, is evident

from the fact that even what stands in the Bible, if it contradicts

the standpoint of the present day, is regarded as not obligatory,

or is even denied; nay, actions which are essentially Christian,

which are the logical consequences of faith, such as the separation

of believers from unbelievers, are now designated as unchristian.

The Church was perfectly justified in adjudging damnation to heretics

and unbelievers, [201] for this condemnation is involved in the nature

of faith. Faith at first appears to be only an unprejudiced separation

of believers from unbelievers; but this separation is a highly

critical distinction. The believer has God for him, the unbeliever,

against him;--it is only as a possible believer that the unbeliever

has God not against him;--and therein precisely lies the ground of

the requirement that he should leave the ranks of unbelief. But

that which has God against it is worthless, rejected, reprobate;

for that which has God against it is itself against God. To believe,

is synonymous with goodness; not to believe, with wickedness. Faith,

narrow and prejudiced refers all unbelief to the moral disposition. In

its view the unbeliever is an enemy to Christ out of obduracy, out

of wickedness. [202] Hence faith has fellowship with believers only;

unbelievers it rejects. It is well-disposed towards believers, but

ill-disposed towards unbelievers. In faith there lies a malignant

principle.

It is owing to the egoism, the vanity, the self-complacency of

Christians, that they can see the motes in the faith of non-christian

nations, but cannot perceive the beam in their own. It is only in

the mode in which faith embodies itself that Christians differ from

the followers of other religions. The distinction is founded only

on climate or on natural temperament. A warlike or ardently sensuous

people will naturally attest its distinctive religious character by

deeds, by force of arms. But the nature of faith as such is everywhere

the same. It is essential to faith to condemn, to anathematise. All

blessings, all good it accumulates on itself, on its God, as the

lover on his beloved; all curses, all hardship and evil it casts on

unbelief. The believer is blessed, well-pleasing to God, a partaker

of everlasting felicity; the unbeliever is accursed, rejected of God

and abjured by men: for what God rejects man must not receive, must

not indulge;--that would be a criticism of the divine judgment. The

Turks exterminate unbelievers with fire and sword, the Christians with

the flames of hell. But the fires of the other world blaze forth into

this, to glare through the night of unbelief. As the believer already

here below anticipates the joys of heaven, so the flames of the abyss

must be seen to flash here as a foretaste of the awaiting hell,--at

least in the moments when faith attains its highest enthusiasm. [203]

It is true that Christianity ordains no persecution of heretics, still

less conversion by force of arms. But so far as faith anathematises,

it necessarily generates hostile dispositions,--the dispositions

out of which the persecution of heretics arises. To love the man who

does not believe in Christ, is a sin against Christ, is to love the

enemy of Christ, [204] That which God, which Christ does not love,

man must not love; his love would be a contradiction of the divine

will, consequently a sin. God, it is true, loves all men; but only

when and because they are Christians, or at least may be and desire

to be such. To be a Christian is to be beloved by God; not to be a

Christian is to be hated by God, an object of the divine anger. [205]

The Christian must therefore love only Christians--others only

as possible Christians; he must only love what faith hallows and

blesses. Faith is the baptism of love. Love to man as man is only

natural love. Christian love is supernatural, glorified, sanctified

love; therefore it loves only what is Christian. The maxim, "Love

your enemies," has reference only to personal enemies, not to public

enemies, the enemies of God, the enemies of faith, unbelievers. He

who loves the men whom Christ denies, does not believe Christ, denies

his Lord and God. Faith abolishes the natural ties of humanity;

to universal, natural unity, it substitutes a particular unity.

Let it not be objected to this, that it is said in the Bible, "Judge

not, that ye be not judged;" and that thus, as faith leaves to God

the judgment, so it leaves to him the sentence of condemnation. This

and other similar sayings have authority only as the private law of

Christians, not as their public law; belong only to ethics, not to

dogmatics. It is an indication of indifference to faith, to introduce

such sayings into the region of dogma. The distinction between the

unbeliever and the man is a fruit of modern philanthropy. To faith,

the man is merged in the believer; to it, the essential difference

between man and the brute rests only on religious belief. Faith

alone comprehends in itself all virtues which can make man pleasing

to God; and God is the absolute measure, his pleasure the highest

law: the believer is thus alone the legitimate, normal man, man as

he ought to be, man as he is recognised by God. Wherever we find

Christians making a distinction between the man and the believer,

there the human mind has already severed itself from faith; there man

has value in himself, independently of faith. Hence faith is true,

unfeigned, only where the specific difference of faith operates in

all its severity. If the edge of this difference is blunted, faith

itself naturally becomes indifferent, effete. Faith is liberal only in

things intrinsically indifferent. The liberalism of the apostle Paul

presupposes the acceptance of the fundamental articles of faith. Where

everything is made to depend on the fundamental articles of faith,

there arises the distinction between essential and non-essential

belief. In the sphere of the non-essential there is no law,--there

you are free. But obviously it is only on condition of your leaving

the rights of faith intact, that faith allows you freedom.

It is therefore an altogether false defence to say, that faith leaves

judgment to God. It leaves to him only the moral judgment with respect

to faith, only the judgment as to its moral character, as to whether

the faith of Christians be feigned or genuine. So far as classes

are concerned, faith knows already whom God will place on the right

hand, and whom on the left; in relation to the persons who compose

the classes faith is uncertain; but that believers are heirs of the

Eternal Kingdom is beyond all doubt. Apart from this, however, the God

who distinguishes between believers and unbelievers, the condemning and

rewarding God, is nothing else than faith itself. What God condemns,

faith condemns, and vice versâ. Faith is a consuming fire to its

opposite. [206] This fire of faith regarded objectively, is the anger

of God, or what is the same thing, hell; for hell evidently has its

foundation in the anger of God. But this hell lies in faith itself, in

its sentence of damnation. The flames of hell are only the flashings of

the exterminating, vindictive glance which faith casts on unbelievers.

Thus faith is essentially a spirit of partisanship. He who is

not for Christ is against him. [207] Faith knows only friends or

enemies, it understands no neutrality; it is preoccupied only with

itself. Faith is essentially intolerant; essentially, because with

faith is always associated the illusion that its cause is the cause

of God, its honour his honour. The God of faith is nothing else than

the objective nature of faith--faith become an object to itself. Hence

in the religious consciousness also the cause of faith and the cause

of God are identified. God himself is interested: the interest of

faith is the nearest interest of God. "He who toucheth you," says the

prophet Zachariah, "toucheth the apple of His eye." [208] That which

wounds faith, wounds God, that which denies faith, denies God himself.

Faith knows no other distinction than that between the service of God

and the service of idols. Faith alone gives honour to God; unbelief

withdraws from God that which is due to him. Unbelief is an injury to

God, religious high treason. The heathens worship demons; their gods

are devils. "I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they

sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should

have fellowship with devils." [209] But the devil is the negation of

God; he hates God, wills that there should be no God. Thus faith is

blind to what there is of goodness and truth lying at the foundation

of heathen worship; it sees in everything which does not do homage

to its God, i.e., to itself, a worship of idols, and in the worship

of idols only the work of the devil. Faith must therefore, even in

feeling, be only negative towards this negation of God: it is by

inherent necessity intolerant towards its opposite, and in general

towards whatever does not thoroughly accord with itself. Tolerance

on its part would be intolerance towards God, who has the right to

unconditional, undivided sovereignty. Nothing ought to subsist,

nothing to exist, which does not acknowledge God, which does not

acknowledge faith:--"That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,

of things in heaven and things on earth, and things under the earth;

and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to

the glory of the Father." [210] Therefore faith postulates a future,

a world where faith has no longer an opposite, or where at least

this opposite exists only in order to enhance the self-complacency

of triumphant faith. Hell sweetens the joys of happy believers. "The

elect will come forth to behold the torments of the ungodly, and at

this spectacle they will not be smitten with sorrow; on the contrary,

while they see the unspeakable sufferings of the ungodly, they,

intoxicated with joy, will thank God for their own salvation." [211]

Faith is the opposite of love. Love recognises virtue even in

sin, truth in error. It is only since the power of faith has been

supplanted by the power of the natural unity of mankind, the power

of reason, of humanity, that truth has been seen even in polytheism,

in idolatry generally,--or at least that there has been any attempt

to explain on positive grounds what faith, in its bigotry, derives

only from the devil. Hence love is reconcilable with reason alone,

not with faith; for as reason, so also love is free, universal, in its

nature; whereas faith is narrow-hearted, limited. Only where reason

rules, does universal love rule; reason is itself nothing else than

universal love. It was faith, not love, not reason, which invented

Hell. To love, Hell is a horror; to reason, an absurdity. It would

be a pitiable mistake to regard Hell as a mere aberration of faith,

a false faith. Hell stands already in the Bible. Faith is everywhere

like itself; at least positive religious faith, faith in the sense in

which it is here taken, and must be taken unless we would mix with it

the elements of reason, of culture,--a mixture which indeed renders

the character of faith unrecognisable.

Thus if faith does not contradict Christianity, neither do those

dispositions which result from faith, neither do the actions which

result from those dispositions. Faith condemns, anathematises; all the

actions, all the dispositions, which contradict love, humanity, reason,

accord with faith. All the horrors of Christian religious history,

which our believers aver not to be due to Christianity, have truly

arisen out of Christianity, because they have arisen out of faith. This

repudiation of them is indeed a necessary consequence of faith; for

faith claims for itself only what is good, everything bad it casts on

the shoulders of unbelief, or of misbelief, or of men in general. But

this very denial of faith that it is itself to blame for the evil in

Christianity, is a striking proof that it is really the originator

of that evil, because it is a proof of the narrowness, partiality,

and intolerance which render it well-disposed only to itself, to its

own adherents, but ill-disposed, unjust towards others. According to

faith, the good which Christians do, is not done by the man, but by

the Christian, by faith; but the evil which Christians do, is not done

by the Christian, but by the man. The evil which faith has wrought in

Christendom thus corresponds to the nature of faith,--of faith as it

is described in the oldest and most sacred records of Christianity,

of the Bible. "If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that

ye have received, let him be accursed," [212] anathema esto,

Gal. i. 9. "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers:

for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and

what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath

Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an

infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye

are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in

them and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my

people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith

the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you,"

2 Cor. iv. 14-17. "When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven

with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that

know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ:

who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence

of the Lord, and from the glory of his power; when he shall come to

be glorified in his saints, and admired in all them that believe,"

2 Thess. i. 7-10. "Without faith it is impossible to please God,"

Heb. xi. 6. "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten

Son, that whosoever believeth in him, should not perish, but have

everlasting life," John iii. 16. "Every spirit that confesseth that

Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit that

confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God:

and this is the spirit of antichrist," 1 John iv. 2, 3. "Who is a

liar, but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist

that denieth the Father and the Son," 1 John ii. 22. "Whosoever

transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not

God: he that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the

Father and the Son. If there come any unto you, and bring not this

doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed:

for he that biddeth him God speed, is partaker of his evil deeds,"

2 John ix. 11. Thus speaks the apostle of love. But the love which

he celebrates is only the brotherly love of Christians. "God is the

Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe," 1 Tim. iv. 10. A

fatal "specially!" "Let us do good unto all men, especially unto them

who are of the household of faith," Gal. vi. 10. An equally pregnant

"especially!" "A man that is a heretic, after the first and second

admonition reject; knowing that he that is such is subverted, and

sinneth, being condemned of himself," [213] Titus iii. 10, 11. "He

that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth

not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him,"

[214] John iii. 36. "And whosoever shall offend one of these little

ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone

were hanged about his neck, and that he were cast into the sea," Mark

ix. 42; Matt, xviii. 6. "He that believeth and is baptized shall be

saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned," Mark xvi. 16. The

distinction between faith as it is expressed in the Bible and faith

as it has exhibited itself in later times, is only the distinction

between the bud and the plant. In the bud I cannot so plainly see

what is obvious in the matured plant; and yet the plant lay already

in the bud. But that which is obvious, sophists of course will not

condescend to recognise; they confine themselves to the distinction

between explicit and implicit existence,--wilfully overlooking their

essential identity.

Faith necessarily passes into hatred, hatred into persecution, where

the power of faith meets with no contradiction, where it does not

find itself in collision with a power foreign to faith, the power

of love, of humanity, of the sense of justice. Faith left to itself

necessarily exalts itself above the laws of natural morality. The

doctrine of faith is the doctrine of duty towards God,--the highest

duty of faith. By how much God is higher than man, by so much higher

are duties to God than duties towards man; and duties towards God

necessarily come into collision with common human duties. God is not

only believed in, conceived as the universal being, the Father of men,

as Love:--such faith is the faith of love;--he is also represented as

a personal being, a being by himself. And so far as God is regarded as

separate from man, as an individual being, so far are duties to God

separated from duties to man:--faith is, in the religious sentiment,

separated from morality, from love. [215] Let it not be replied

that faith in God is faith in love, in goodness itself; and that

thus faith is itself an expression of a morally good disposition. In

the idea of personality, ethical definitions vanish; they are only

collateral things, mere accidents. The chief thing is the subject,

the divine Ego. Love to God himself, since it is love to a personal

being, is not a moral but a personal love. Innumerable devout hymns

breathe nothing but love to the Lord; but in this love there appears

no spark of an exalted moral idea or disposition.

Faith is the highest to itself, because its object is a divine

personality. Hence it makes salvation dependent on itself, not on

the fulfilment of common human duties. But that which has eternal

salvation as its consequence, necessarily becomes in the mind of

man the chief thing. As therefore inwardly morality is subordinate

to faith, so it must also be outwardly, practically subordinate,

nay, sacrificed, to faith. It is inevitable that there should be

actions in which faith exhibits itself in distinction from morality,

or rather in contradiction with it;--actions which are morally bad,

but which according to faith are laudable, because they have in view

the advantage of faith. All salvation depends on faith: it follows that

all again depends on the salvation of faith. If faith is endangered,

eternal salvation and the honour of God are endangered. Hence

faith absolves from everything; for, strictly considered, it is the

sole subjective good in man, as God is the sole good and positive

being:--the highest commandment therefore is: Believe! [216]

For the very reason that there is no natural, inherent connection

between faith and the moral disposition, that, on the contrary, it

lies in the nature of faith that it is indifferent to moral duties,

[217] that it sacrifices the love of man to the honour of God,--for

this reason it is required that faith should have good works as its

consequence, that it should prove itself by love. Faith destitute of

love, or indifferent to love, contradicts the reason, the natural sense

of right in man, moral feeling, on which love immediately urges itself

as a law. Hence faith, in contradiction with its intrinsic character,

has limits imposed on it by morality: a faith which effects nothing

good, which does not attest itself by love, comes to be held as not a

true and living faith. But this limitation does not arise out of faith

itself. It is the power of love, a power independent of faith, which

gives laws to it; for moral character is here made the criterion of

the genuineness of faith, the truth of faith is made dependent on the

truth of ethics:--a relation which, however, is subversive of faith.

Faith does indeed make man happy; but thus much is certain: it infuses

into him no really moral dispositions. If it ameliorate man, if it

have moral dispositions as its consequence, this proceeds solely

from the inward conviction of the irreversible reality of morals:--a

conviction independent of religious faith. It is morality alone, and

by no means faith, that cries out in the conscience of the believer:

thy faith is nothing, if it does not make thee good. It is not to be

denied that the assurance of eternal salvation, the forgiveness of

sins, the sense of favour and release from all punishment, inclines

man to do good. The man who has this confidence possesses all things;

he is happy; [218] he becomes indifferent to the good things of

this world; no envy, no avarice, no ambition, no sensual desire, can

enslave him; everything earthly vanishes in the prospect of heavenly

grace and eternal bliss. But in him good works do not proceed from

essentially virtuous dispositions. It is not love, not the object

of love, man, the basis of all morality, which is the motive of his

good works. No! he does good not for the sake of goodness itself,

not for the sake of man, but for the sake of God;--out of gratitude

to God, who has done all for him, and for whom therefore he must on

his side do all that lies in his power. He forsakes sin, because it

wounds God, his Saviour, his Benefactor. [219] The idea of virtue is

here the idea of compensatory sacrifice. God has sacrificed himself

for man; therefore man must sacrifice himself to God. The greater the

sacrifice the better the deed. The more anything contradicts man and

Nature, the greater the abnegation, the greater is the virtue. This

merely negative idea of goodness has been especially realised and

developed by Catholicism. Its highest moral idea is that of sacrifice;

hence the high significance attached to the denial of sexual love,--to

virginity. Chastity, or rather virginity, is the characteristic virtue

of the Catholic faith,--for this reason, that it has no basis in

Nature. It is the most fanatical, transcendental, fantastical virtue,

the virtue of supranaturalistic faith;--to faith, the highest virtue,

but in itself no virtue at all. Thus faith makes that a virtue which

intrinsically, substantially, is no virtue; it has therefore no sense

of virtue; it must necessarily depreciate true virtue because it so

exalts a merely apparent virtue, because it is guided by no idea but

that of the negation, the contradiction of human nature.

But although the deeds opposed to love which mark Christian religious

history, are in accordance with Christianity, and its antagonists

are therefore right in imputing to it the horrible actions resulting

from dogmatic creeds; those deeds nevertheless at the same time

contradict Christianity, because Christianity is not only a religion

of faith, but of love also,--pledges us not only to faith, but to

love. Uncharitable actions, hatred of heretics, at once accord and

clash with Christianity? how is that possible? Perfectly. Christianity

sanctions both the actions that spring out of love, and the actions

that spring from faith without love. If Christianity had made love

only its law, its adherents would be right,--the horrors of Christian

religious history could not be imputed to it; if it had made faith only

its law, the reproaches of its antagonists would be unconditionally,

unrestrictedly true. But Christianity has not made love free; it has

not raised itself to the height of accepting love as absolute. And

it has not given this freedom, nay, cannot give it, because it is a

religion,--and hence subjects love to the dominion of faith. Love is

only the exoteric, faith the esoteric doctrine of Christianity; love

is only the morality, faith the religion of the Christian religion.

God is love. This is the sublimest dictum of Christianity. But

the contradiction of faith and love is contained in the very

proposition. Love is only a predicate, God the subject. What, then,

is this subject in distinction from love? And I must necessarily ask

this question, make this distinction. The necessity of the distinction

would be done away with only if it were said conversely: Love is

God, love is the absolute being. Thus love would take the position

of the substance. In the proposition "God is love," the subject is

the darkness in which faith shrouds itself; the predicate is the

light, which first illuminates the intrinsically dark subject. In

the predicate I affirm love, in the subject faith. Love does not

alone fill my soul: I leave a place open for my uncharitableness by

thinking of God as a subject in distinction from the predicate. It is

therefore inevitable that at one moment I lose the thought of love,

at another the thought of God, that at one moment I sacrifice the

personality of God to the divinity of love, at another the divinity of

love to the personality of God. The history of Christianity has given

sufficient proof of this contradiction. Catholicism, especially, has

celebrated Love as the essential deity with so much enthusiasm, that

to it the personality of God has been entirely lost in this love. But

at the same time it has sacrificed love to the majesty of faith. Faith

clings to the self-subsistence of God; love does away with it. "God

is love," means, God is nothing by himself: he who loves, gives up

his egoistical independence; he makes what he loves indispensable,

essential to his existence. But while Self is being sunk in the

depths of love, the idea of the Person rises up again and disturbs

the harmony of the divine and human nature which had been established

by love. Faith advances with its pretensions, and allows only just so

much to Love as belongs to a predicate in the ordinary sense. It does

not permit love freely to unfold itself; it makes love the abstract,

and itself the concrete, the fact, the basis. The love of faith is

only a rhetorical figure, a poetical fiction of faith,--faith in

ecstasy. If faith comes to itself, Love is fled.