Theology. The history of Christianity has had for its grand result
the unveiling of this mystery--the realisation and recognition of
theology as anthropology. The distinction between Protestantism and
Catholicism--the old Catholicism, which now exists only in books,
not in actuality--consists only in this, that the latter is Theology,
the former Christology, i.e., (religious) Anthropology. Catholicism
has a supranaturalistic, abstract God, a God who is other than human, a
not human, a superhuman being. The goal of Catholic morality, likeness
to God, consists therefore in this, to be not a man, but more than a
man--a heavenly abstract being, an angel. Only in its morality does
the essence of a religion realise, reveal itself: morality alone
is the criterion, whether a religious dogma is felt as a truth or
is a mere chimera. Thus the doctrine of a superhuman, supernatural
God is a truth only where it has as its consequence a superhuman,
supernatural, or rather antinatural morality. Protestantism, on the
contrary, has not a supranaturalistic but a human morality, a morality
of and for flesh and blood; consequently its God, at least its true,
real God, is no longer an abstract, supranaturalistic being, but a
being of flesh and blood. "This defiance the devil hears unwillingly,
that our flesh and blood is the Son of God, yea, God himself,
and reigns in heaven over all."--Luther (Th. xvi. p. 573). "Out
of Christ there is no God, and where Christ is, there is the whole
Godhead."--Id. (Th. xix. p. 403). Catholicism has, both in theory and
practice, a God who, in spite of the predicate of love, exists for
himself, to whom therefore man only comes by being against himself,
denying himself, renouncing his existence for self; Protestantism,
on the contrary, has a God who, at least practically, virtually,
has not an existence for himself, but exists only for man, for the
welfare of man. Hence in Catholicism the highest act of the cultus,
"the mass of Christ," is a sacrifice of man,--the same Christ, the
same flesh and blood, is sacrificed to God in the Host as on the
cross; in Protestantism, on the contrary, it is a sacrifice, a gift
of God: God sacrifices himself, surrenders himself to be partaken
by man. (See Luther, e.g., Th. xx. p. 259; Th. xvii. p. 529.) In
Catholicism manhood is the property, the predicate of the Godhead (of
Christ)--God is man; in Protestantism, on the contrary, Godhead is
the property, the predicate of manhood (Christ)--man is God. "This,
in time past, the greatest theologians have done--they have fled
from the manhood of Christ to his Godhead, and attached themselves
to that alone, and thought that we should not know the manhood of
Christ. But we must so rise to the Godhead of Christ, and hold by
it in such a way, as not to forsake the manhood of Christ and come
to the Godhead alone. Thou shouldst know of no God, nor Son of God,
save him who was born of the Virgin Mary and became man. He who
receives his manhood has also his Godhead."--Luther (Th. ix. pp. 592,
598). [236] Or, briefly thus: in Catholicism, man exists for God;
in Protestantism, God exists for man. [237] "Jesus Christ our Lord
was conceived for us, born for us, suffered for us, was crucified,
died, and was buried for us. Our Lord rose from the dead for our
consolation, sits for our good at the right hand of the Almighty
Father, and is to judge the living and the dead for our comfort. This
the holy Apostles and beloved Fathers intended to intimate in their
confession by the words: Us and our Lord--namely, that Jesus Christ
is ours, whose office and will it is to help us ... so that we should
not read or speak the words coldly, and interpret them only of Christ,
but of ourselves also."--Luther (Th. xvi. p. 538). "I know of no God
but him who gave himself for me. Is not that a great thing that God
is man, that God gives himself to man and will be his, as man gives
himself to his wife and is hers? But if God is ours, all things are
ours."--(Th. xii. p. 283.) "God cannot be a God of the dead, who are
nothing, but is a God of the living. If God were a God of the dead,
he would be as a husband who had no wife, or as a father who had
no son, or as a master who had no servant. For if he is a husband,
he must have a wife. If he is a father, he must have a son. If he is
a master, he must have a servant. Or he would be a fictitious father,
a fictitious master, that is, nothing. God is not a God like the idols
of the heathens, neither is he an imaginary God, who exists for himself
alone, and has none who call upon him and worship him. A God is he
from whom everything is to be expected and received.... If he were God
for himself alone in heaven, and we had no good to rely on from him,
he would be a God of stone or straw.... If he sat alone in heaven
like a clod, he would not be God."--(Th. xvi. p. 465). "God says:
I the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth am thy God.... To be a God
means to redeem us from all evil and trouble that oppresses us, as sin,
hell, death, &c."--(Th. ii. p. 327.) "All the world calls that a God
in whom man trusts in need and danger, on whom he relies, from whom
all good is to be had and who can help. Thus reason describes God,
that he affords help to man, and does good to him, bestows benefits
upon him. This thou seest also in this text: 'I am the Lord thy God,
who brought thee out of the land of Egypt.' There we are taught what
God is, what is his nature, and what are his attributes,--namely,
that he does good, delivers from dangers, and helps out of trouble
and all calamities."--(Th. iv. pp. 236, 237.) But if God is a living,
i.e., real God, is God in general, only in virtue of this--that he is
a God to man, a being who is useful, good, beneficent to man; then, in
truth, man is the criterion, the measure of God, man is the absolute,
divine being. The proposition: A God existing only for himself is
no God--means nothing else than that God without man is not God;
where there is no man there is no God; if thou takest from God the
predicate of humanity, thou takest from him the predicate of deity;
if his relation to man is done away with, so also is his existence.
Nevertheless Protestantism, at least in theory, has retained
in the background of this human God the old supranaturalistic
God. Protestantism is the contradiction of theory and practice; it has
emancipated the flesh, but not the reason. According to Protestantism,
Christianity, i.e., God, does not contradict the natural impulses of
man:--"Therefore we ought now to know that God does not condemn or
abolish the natural tendency in man which was implanted in Nature
at the creation, but that he awakens and preserves it."--Luther
(Th. iii. p. 290). But it contradicts reason, and is therefore,
theoretically, only an object of faith. We have shown, however,
that the nature of faith, the nature of God, is itself nothing else
than the nature of man placed out of man, conceived as external to
man. The reduction of the extrahuman, supernatural, and antirational
nature of God to the natural, immanent, inborn nature of man,
is therefore the liberation of Protestantism, of Christianity in
general, from its fundamental contradiction, the reduction of it to
its truth,--the result, the necessary, irrepressible, irrefragable
result of Christianity.
THE END.
NOTES
[1] The opening paragraphs of this Preface are omitted, as having
too specific a reference to transient German polemics to interest
the English reader.
[2] For example, in considering the sacraments, I limit myself to two;
for in the strictest sense (see Luther, T. xvii. p. 558), there are
no more.
[3] "Objectum intellectus esse illimitatum sive omne verum ac, ut
loquuntur, omne ens ut ens, ex eo constat, quod ad nullum non genus
rerum extenditur, nullumque est, cujus cognoscendi capax non sit,
licet ob varia obstacula multa sint, quæ re ipsa non norit."--Gassendi
(Opp. Omn. Phys.).
[4] The obtuse Materialist says: "Man is distinguished from the brute
only by consciousness--he is an animal with consciousness superadded;"
not reflecting, that in a being which awakes to consciousness,
there takes place a qualitative change, a differentiation of the
entire nature. For the rest, our words are by no means intended to
depreciate the nature of the lower animals. This is not the place to
enter further into that question.
[5] "Toute opinion est assez forte pour se faire exposer au prix de
la vie."--Montaigne.
[6] Homini homine nihil pulchrius. (Cic. de Nat. D. l. i.) And this
is no sign of limitation, for he regards other beings as beautiful
besides himself; he delights in the beautiful forms of animals, in
the beautiful forms of plants, in the beauty of nature in general. But
only the absolute, the perfect form, can delight without envy in the
forms of other beings.
[7] "The understanding is percipient only of understanding, and
what proceeds thence."--Reimarus (Wahrh. der Natürl. Religion,
iv. Abth. § 8).
[8] "Verisimile est, non minus quam geometriæ, etiam musicæ
oblectationem ad plures quam ad nos pertinere. Positis enim aliis
terris atque animalibus ratione et auditu pollentibus, cur tantum
his nostris contigisset ea voluptas, quæ sola ex sono percipi
potest?"--Christ. Hugenius (Cosmotheor., l. i.).
[9] De Genesi ad litteram, l. v. c. 16.
[10] "Unusquisque vestrum non cogitat, prius se debere Deum nosse,
quam colere."--M. Minucii Felicis Octavianus, c. 24.
[11] The meaning of this parenthetic limitation will be clear in
the sequel.
[12] "Les perfections de Dieu sont celles de nos âmes, mais il les
possede sans bornes--il y a en nous quelque puissance, quelque
connaissance quelque bonté, mais elles sont toutes entières en
Dieu."--Leibnitz (Théod. Preface). "Nihil in anima esse putemus
eximium, quod non etiam divinæ naturæ proprium sit--Quidquid a Deo
alienum extra definitionem animæ"--St. Gregorius Nyss. "Est ergo,
ut videtur, disciplinarum omnium pulcherrima et maxima se ipsum
nosse; si quis enim se ipsum norit, Deum cognoscet."--Clemens
Alex. (Pæd. 1. iii. c. 1).
[13] For religious faith there is no other distinction between the
present and future God than that the former is an object of faith,
of conception, of imagination, while the latter is to be an object of
immediate, that is, personal, sensible perception. In this life and
in the next he is the same God; but in the one he is incomprehensible,
in the other comprehensible.
[14] Inter creatorem et creaturam non potest
tanta similitudo notari, quin inter eos major sit
dissimilitudo notanda.--Later. Conc. can. 2. (Summa
Omn. Conc. Carranza. Antw. 1559. p. 326.) The last distinction between
man and God, between the finite and infinite nature, to which the
religious speculative imagination soars, is the distinction between
Something and Nothing, Ens and Non-Ens; for only in Nothing is all
community with other beings abolished.
[15] Gloriam suam plus amat Deus quam omnes creaturas. "God can
only love himself, can only think of himself, can only work for
himself. In creating man, God seeks his own ends, his own glory,"
&c.--Vide P. Bayle, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Philos. u. Menschh.,
pp. 104-107.
[16] Pelagianism denies God, religion--isti tantam tribuunt
potestatem voluntati, ut pietati auferant orationem. (Augustin de
Nat. et Grat. cont. Pelagium, c. 58.) It has only the Creator, i.e.,
Nature, as a basis, not the Saviour, the true God of the religious
sentiment--in a word, it denies God; but, as a consequence of this,
it elevates man into a God, since it makes him a being not needing
God, self-sufficing, independent. (See on this subject Luther against
Erasmus and Augustine, l. c. c. 33.) Augustinianism denies man; but,
as a consequence of this, it reduces God to the level of man, even
to the ignominy of the cross, for the sake of man. The former puts
man in the place of God, the latter puts God in the place of man;
both lead to the same result--the distinction is only apparent,
a pious illusion. Augustinianism is only an inverted Pelagianism;
what to the latter is a subject, is to the former an object.
[17] The religious, the original mode in which man becomes objective
to himself, is (as is clearly enough, explained in this work) to
be distinguished from the mode in which this occurs in reflection
and speculation; the latter is voluntary, the former involuntary,
necessary--as necessary as art, as speech. With the progress of time,
it is true; theology coincides with religion.
[18] Deut. xxiii. 12, 13.
[19] See, for example, Gen. xxxv. 2; Levit. xi. 44; xx. 26; and the
Commentary of Le Clerc on these passages.
[20] Augustine, in his work Contra Academicos, which he wrote when
he was still in some measure a heathen, says (l. iii. c. 12) that the
highest good of man consists in the mind or in the reason. On the other
hand, in his Libr. Retractationum, which he wrote as a distinguished
Christian and theologian, he revises (l. i. c. 1) this declaration
as follows:--Verius dixissem in Deo. Ipso enim mens fruitur, ut beata
sit, tanquam summo bono suo. But is there any distinction here? Where
my highest good is, is not there my nature also?
[21] Kant, Vorles. über d. philos. Religionsl., Leipzig, 1817, p. 39.
[22] Kant, l. c., p. 80.
[23] To guard against mistake, I observe that I do not apply to the
understanding the expression self-subsistent essence, and other
terms of a like character, in my own sense, but that I am here
placing myself on the standpoint of onto-theology, of metaphysical
theology in general, in order to show that metaphysics is resolvable
into psychology, that the onto-theological predicates are merely
predicates of the understanding.
[24] Malebranche. (See the author's Geschichte der Philos., 1
Bd. p. 322.) "Exstaretne alibi diversa ab hac ratio? censereturque
injustum aut scelestum in Jove aut Marte, quod apud nos
justum ac præclarum habetur? Certe nec verisimile nec omnino
possibile."--Chr. Hugenii (Cosmotheoros, lib. i.).
[25] In religion, the representation or expression of the nothingness
of man before God is the anger of God; for as the love of God is
the affirmation, his anger is the negation of man. But even this
anger is not taken in earnest. "God ... is not really angry. He is
not thoroughly in earnest even when we think that he is angry, and
punishes."--Luther (Th. viii. p. 208).
[26] Luther, Concordienbuch, Art. 8, Erklär.
[27] Luther, Sämmtliche Schriften und Werke, Leipzig, 1729,
fol. Th. iii. p. 589. It is according to this edition that references
are given throughout the present work.
[28] Predigten etzlicher Lehrer vor und zu Tauleri Zeiten, Hamburg,
1621, p. 81.
[29] "That which, in our own judgment, derogates from our self-conceit,
humiliates us. Thus the moral law inevitably humiliates every man
when he compares with it the sensual tendency of his nature."--Kant,
Kritik der prakt. Vernunft, 4th edition, p. 132.
[30] "Omnes peccavimus.... Parricide cum lega cæperunt et illis
facinus poena monstravit."--Seneca. "The law destroys us."--Luther
(Th. xvi. s. 320).
[31] "Das Rechtsgefühl der Sinnlichkeit."
[32] "This, my God and Lord, has taken upon him my nature, flesh
and blood such as I have, and has been tempted and has suffered in
all things like me, but without sin; therefore he can have pity on
my weakness.--Hebrews v. Luther (Th. xvi. s. 533). "The deeper we
can bring Christ into the flesh the better."--(Ibid. s. 565.) "God
himself, when he is dealt with out of Christ, is a terrible
God, for no consolation is found in him, but pure anger and
disfavour."--(Th. xv. s. 298.)
[33] "Such descriptions as those in which the Scriptures speak of God
as of a man, and ascribe to him all that is human, are very sweet and
comforting--namely, that he talks with us as a friend, and of such
things as men are wont to talk of with each other; that he rejoices,
sorrows, and suffers, like a man, for the sake of the mystery of the
future humanity of Christ."--Luther (Th. ii. p. 334).
[34] "Deus homo factus est, ut homo Deus fieret."--Augustinus (Serm. ad
Pop. p. 371, c. 1). In Luther, however (Th. i. p. 334), there is a
passage which indicates the true relation. When Moses called man
"the image of God, the likeness of God," he meant, says Luther,
obscurely to intimate that "God was to become man." Thus here the
incarnation of God is clearly enough represented as a consequence of
the deification of man.
[35] It was in this sense that the old uncompromising enthusiastic
faith celebrated the Incarnation. "Amor triumphat de Deo," says
St. Bernard. And only in the sense of a real self-renunciation,
self-negation of the Godhead, lies the reality, the vis of the
Incarnation; although this self-negation is in itself merely a
conception of the imagination, for, looked at in broad daylight,
God does not negative himself in the Incarnation, but he shows
himself as that which he is, as a human being. The fabrications which
modern rationalistic orthodoxy and pietistic rationalism have advanced
concerning the Incarnation, in opposition to the rapturous conceptions
and expressions of ancient faith, do not deserve to be mentioned,
still less controverted.
[36] "Nos scimus affici Deum misericordia nostri et non solum
respicere lacrymas nostras, sed etiam numerare stillulas, sicut
scriptum in Psalmo LVI. Filius Dei vere afficitur sensu miseriarum
nostrarum."--Melancthonis et aliorum (Declam. Th. iii. p. 286, p. 450).
[37] St. Bernard resorts to a charmingly sophistical play of
words:--"Impassibilis est Deus, sed non incompassibilis, cui proprium
est misereri semper et parcere."--(Sup. Cant. Sermo 26.) As if
compassion were not suffering--the suffering of love, it is true, the
suffering of the heart. But what does suffer if not thy sympathising
heart? No love, no suffering. The material, the source of suffering,
is the universal heart, the common bond of all beings.
[38] Religion speaks by example. Example is the law of religion. What
Christ did is law. Christ suffered for others; therefore, we should do
likewise. "Quæ necessitas fuit ut sic exinaniret se, sic humiliaret
se, sic abbreviaret se Dominus majestatis; nisi ut vos similiter
faciatis?"--Bernardus (in Die nat. Domini). "We ought studiously to
consider the example of Christ.... That would move us and incite us,
so that we from our hearts should willingly help and serve other
people, even though it might be hard, and we must suffer on account
of it."--Luther (Th. xv. p. 40).
[39] "Hærent plerique hoc loco. Ego autem non solum excusandum
non puto, sed etiam nusquam magis pietatem ejus majestatemque
demiror. Minus enim contulerat mihi, nisi meum suscepisset
affectum. Ergo pro me doluit, qui pro se nihil habuit, quod
doleret."--Ambrosius (Exposit. in Lucæ Ev. l. x. c. 22).
[40] "Quando enim illi (Deo) appropinquare auderemus in sua
impassibilitate manenti?"--Bernardus (Tract. de xii. Grad. Humil. et
Superb.).
[41] "Deus meus pendet in patibulo et ego voluptati operam
dabo?"--(Form. Hon. Vitæ. Among the spurious writings of
St. Bernard.) "Memoria crucifixi crucifigat in te carnem
tuam."--Joh. Gerhard (Medit. Sacræ, M. 37).
[42] "It is better to suffer evil than to do good."--Luther
(Th. iv. s. 15).
[43] "Pati voluit, ut compati disceret, miser fieri, ut misereri
disceret."--Bernhard (de Grad.). "Miserere nostri, quoniam
carnis imbecillitatem, tu ipse eam passus, expertus es."--Clemens
Alex. Pædag. l. i. c. 8.
[44] "Dei essentia est extra omnes creaturas, sicut ab æterno fuit Deus
in se ipso; ab omnibus ergo creaturis amorem tuum abstrahas."--John
Gerhard (Medit. Sacræ, M. 31). "If thou wouldst have the Creator,
thou must do without the creature. The less of the creature,
the more of God. Therefore, abjure all creatures, with all their
consolations."--J. Tauler (Postilla. Hamburg, 1621, p. 312). "If a
man cannot say in his heart with truth: God and I are alone in the
world--there is nothing else,--he has no peace in himself."--G. Arnold
(Von Verschmähung der Welt. Wahre Abbild der Ersten Christen, L. 4,
c. 2, § 7).
[45] "Exigit ergo Deus timeri ut Dominus, honorari ut pater, ut
sponsus amari. Quid in his præstat, quid eminet?--Amor." Bernardus
(Sup. Cant. Serm. 83).
[46] Just as the feminine spirit of Catholicism--in distinction from
Protestantism, whose principle is the masculine God, the masculine
spirit--is the Mother of God.
[47] "Dum Patris et Filii proprietates communionemque delectabilem
intueor, nihil delectabilius in illis invenio, quam mutuum amoris
affectum."--Anselmus (in Rixner's Gesch. d. Phil. II. B. Anh. p. 18).
[48] "Natus est de Patre semper et matre semel; de Patre sine sexu,
de matre sine usu. Apud patrem quippe defuit concipientis uterus; apud
matrem defuit seminantis amplexus."--Augustinus (Serm. ad Pop. p. 372,
c. 1, ed. Bened. Antw. 1701).
[49] In Jewish mysticism, God, according to one school, is a
masculine, the Holy Spirit a feminine principle, out of whose
intermixture arose the Son, and with him the world. Gfrörer,
Jahrb. d. H. i. Abth. pp. 332-334. The Herrnhuters also called the
Holy Spirit the mother of the Saviour.
[50] "For it could not have been difficult or impossible to God to
bring his Son into the world without a mother; but it was his will
to use the woman for that end."--Luther (Th. ii. p. 348).
[51] In the Concordienbuch, Erklär. Art. 8, and in the Apol. of
the Augsburg Confession, Mary is nevertheless still called the
"Blessed Virgin, who was truly the Mother of God, and yet remained
a virgin,"--"worthy of all honour."
[52] "Sit monachus quasi Melchisedec sine patre,
sine matre, sine genealogia: neque patrem sibi vocet
super terram. Imo sic existimet, quasi ipse sit solus et
Deus. (Specul. Monach. Pseudo-Bernard.) Melchisedec ... refertur
ad exemplum, ut tanquam sine patre et sine matre sacerdos esse
debeat."--Ambrosius.
[53] "Negas ergo Deum, si non omnia filio, quæ Dei sunt,
deferentur."--Ambrosius de Fide ad Gratianum, l. iii. c. 7. On the same
ground the Latin Church adhered so tenaciously to the dogma that the
Holy Spirit proceeded not from the Father alone, as the Greek Church
maintained, but from the Son also. See on this subject J. G. Walchii,
Hist. Contr. Gr. et Lat. de Proc. Spir. S. Jenæ, 1751.
[54] This is expressed very significantly in the Incarnation. God
renounces, denies his majesty, power, and affinity, in order to
become a man; i.e., man denies the God who is not himself a man, and
only affirms the God who affirms man. Exinanivit, says St. Bernard,
majestate et potentia, non bonitate et misericordia. That which cannot
be renounced, cannot be denied, is thus the Divine goodness and mercy,
i.e., the self-affirmation of the human heart.
[55] It is obvious that the Image of God has also another
signification, namely, that the personal, visible man is God
himself. But here the image is considered simply as an image.
[56] Let the reader only consider, for example, the Transfiguration,
the Resurrection, and the Ascension of Christ.
[57] "Sacram imaginem Domini nostri Jesu Christi et omnium
Salvatoris æquo honore cum libro sanctorum evangeliorum adorari
decernimus.... Dignum est enim ut ... propter honorem qui ad
principia refertur, etiam derivative imagines honorentur et
adorentur."--Gener. Const. Conc. viii. Art. 10, Can. 3.
[58] "Tanta certe vis nomini Jesu inest contra dæmones, ut nonnunquam
etiam a malis nominatum sit efficax."--Origenes adv. Celsum, l. i;
see also l. iii.
[59] "God reveals himself to us, as the Speaker, who has, in himself,
an eternal uncreated Word, whereby he created the world and all things,
with slight labour, namely, with speech, so that to God it is not more
difficult to create than it is to us to name."--Luther, Th. i. p. 302.
[60] "Hylarius ... Si quis innascibilem et sine initio dicat filium,
quasi duo sine principio et duo innascibilia, et duo innata dicens,
duos faciat Deos, anathema sit. Caput autem quod est principium
Christi, Deus.... Filium innascibilem confiteri impiissimum
est."--Petrus Lomb. Sent. l. i. dist. 31, c. 4.
[61] It is therefore mere self-delusion to suppose that the hypothesis
of a creation explains the existence of the world.
[62] It is beside our purpose to criticise this crass mystical
theory. We merely remark here, that darkness can be explained only
when it is derived from light; that the derivation of the darkness
in Nature from light appears an impossibility only when it is not
perceived that even in darkness there is a residue of light, that
the darkness in Nature is not an absolute, but a modified darkness,
tempered by light.
[63] Schelling, Ueber das Wesen der Menschlichen Freiheit, 429, 432,
427. Denkmal Jacobi's, s. 82, 97-99.
[64] Kernhafter Auszug ... J. Böhme: Amsterdam, 1718, p. 58.
[65] L. c. pp. 480, 338, 340, 323.
[66] The Philosophus teutonicus walked physically as well as mentally
on volcanic ground. "The town of Görlitz is paved throughout with pure
basalt."--Charpentier, Mineral. Geographie der Chursächsischen Lande,
p. 19.
[67] L. c. pp. 468, 617, 618.
[68] According to Swedenborg, the angels in heaven have clothes
and dwellings. "Their dwellings are altogether such as the
dwellings or houses on earth, but far more beautiful; there are
apartments, rooms, and sleeping chambers therein in great number,
and entrance-courts, and round about gardens, flowers, meadows, and
fields." (E. v. S. Auserlesene Schriften, 1 Th. Frankf. a. M. 1776,
p. 190, and 96.) Thus to the mystic this world is the other world;
but for that reason the other world is this world.
[69] L. c. p. 339, p. 69.
[70] "Quidquid enim unus quisque super cætera colit: hoc illi Deus
est."--Origines Explan. in Epist. Pauli ad Rom. c. l.
[71] "Quare fecit Deus coelum et terram? Quia voluit. Voluntas enim Dei
causa est coeli et terræ et ideo major est voluntas Dei quam coelum et
terra. Qui autem dicit: quare voluit facere coelum et terram? majus
aliquid quærit, quam est voluntas Dei, nihil enim majus invenire
potest."--Augustinus (de Genesi adv. Manich. l. i. c. 2).
[72] A more profound origin of the creation out of nothing lies in
the emotional nature, as is both directly and indirectly declared in
this work. But arbitrariness is, in fact, the will of the emotions,
their external manifestation of force.
[73] "Certissimum divinæ providentiæ; testimonium præbent
miracula."--H. Grotius (de Verit. Rel. Christ. l. i. § 13).
[74] It is true that religious naturalism, or the acknowledgment of
the Divine in Nature, is also an element of the Christian religion,
and yet more of the Mosaic, which was so friendly to animals. But
it is by no means the characteristic, the Christian tendency of
the Christian religion. The Christian, the religious Providence,
is quite another than that which clothes the lilies and feeds the
ravens. The natural Providence lets a man sink in the water, if he
has not learned to swim; but the Christian, the religious Providence,
leads him with the hand of omnipotence over the water unharmed.
[75] In this contrast of the religious, or biblical, and the natural
Providence, the author had especially in view the vapid, narrow
theology of the English natural philosophers.
[76] "Qui Deos negant, nobilitatem generis humani destruunt."--Bacon
(Serm. Fidel. 16).
[77] In Clemens Alex. (Coh. ad Gentes) there is an interesting
passage. It runs in the Latin translation (the bad Augsburg edition,
1778) thus:--"At nos ante mundi constitutionem fuimus, ratione futuræ
nostræ productionis, in ipso Deo quodammodo tum præexistentes. Divini
igitur Verbi sive Rationis, nos creaturæ rationales sumus, et per
eum primi esse dicimur, quoniam in principio erat verbum." Yet more
decidedly, however, has Christian mysticism declared the human nature
to be the creative principle, the ground of the world. "Man, who,
before time was, existed in eternity, works with God all the works
that God wrought a thousand years ago, and now, after a thousand
years, still works." "All creatures have sprung forth through
man."--Predigten, vor u. zu Tauleri Zeiten (Ed. c. p. 5, p. 119).
[78] Hence is explained why all attempts of speculative theology and of
its kindred philosophy to make the transition from God to the world,
or to derive the world from God, have failed and must fail. Namely,
because they are fundamentally false, from being made in ignorance
of the idea on which the Creation really turns.
[79] It is not admissible to urge against this the omnipresence of
God, the existence of God in all things, or the existence of things in
God. For, apart from the consideration that the future destruction of
the world expresses clearly enough its existence outside of God, i.e.,
its non-divineness, God is in a special manner only in man; but I am at
home only where I am specially at home. "Nowhere is God properly God,
but in the soul. In all creatures there is something of God; but in the
soul God exists completely, for it is his resting-place."--Predigten
etzlicher Lehrer, &c., p. 19. And the existence of things in God,
especially where it has no pantheistic significance, and any such
is here excluded, is equally an idea without reality, and does not
express the special sentiments of religion.
[80] Here is also the point where the Creation represents to us
not only the Divine power, but also the Divine love. "Quia bonus
est (Deus), sumus" (Augustin). In the beginning, before the world,
God was alone. "Ante omnia Deus erat solus, ipsi sibi et mundus et
locus et omnia. Solus autem; quia nihil extrinsecus præter ipsum"
(Tertullian). But there is no higher happiness than to make another
happy, bliss lies in the act of imparting. And only joy, only
love imparts. Hence man conceives imparting love as the principle
of existence. "Extasis bono non sinit ipsum manere in se ipso"
(Dionysius A.). Everything positive establishes, attests itself, only
by itself. The divine love is the joy of life, establishing itself,
affirming itself. But the highest self-consciousness of life, the
supreme joy of life is the love which confers happiness. God is the
bliss of existence.
[81] In Diogenes (L. 1. ii. c. iii. § 6), it is literally, "for the
contemplation of the sun, the moon and the heavens." Similar ideas were
held by other philosophers. Thus the Stoics also said:--"Ipse autem
homo ortus est ad mundum contemplandum et imitandum."--Cic. (de Nat.).
[82] "Hebræi numen verbo quidquid videtur efficiens describunt
et quasi imperio omnia creata tradunt, ut facilitatem in
eo quod vult efficiendo, summamque ejus in omnia potentiam
ostendant."--Ps. xxxiii. 6. "Verbo Jehovæ coeli facti
sunt."--Ps. cxlviii. 5. "Ille jussit eaque creata sunt."--J. Clericus
(Comment, in Mosem. Genes, i. 3).
[83] Exod. xvi. 12.
[84] Gen. xxviii. 20.
[85] Exod. xxiv. 10, 11. "Tantum abest ut mortui sint, ut contra
convivium hilares celebrarint."--Clericus.
[86] It is well known, however, that their opinions on this point
were various. (See e.g. Aristoteles de Coelo, 1. i. c. 10.) But their
difference is a subordinate one, since the creative agency itself is
with them a more or less cosmical being.
[87] Deut. iv. 19. "Licet enim ea, quæ sunt in coelo, non sint hominum
artificia, at hominum tamen gratia condita fuerunt. Ne quis igitur
solem adoret, sed solis effectorem desideret."--Clemens Alex. (Coh. ad
Gentes).
[88] But of course they only do this in the case of the "absolute
religion;" for with regard to other religions they hold up the ideas
and customs which are foreign to us, and of which we do not know the
original meaning and purpose, as senseless and ludicrous. And yet, in
fact, to worship the urine of cows, which the Parsees and Hindoos drink
that they may obtain forgiveness of sins, is not more ludicrous than
to worship the comb or a shred of the garment of the Mother of God.
[89] Wisd. xix. 6.
[90] See Gfrörer's Philo.
[91] We may here observe, that certainly the admiration of the power
and glory of God in general, and so of Jehovah, as manifested in
Nature, is in fact, though not in the consciousness of the Israelite,
only admiration of the power and glory of Nature. (See, on this
subject, P. Bayle, Ein Beitrag, &c., pp. 25-29.) But to prove this
formally lies out of our plan, since we here confine ourselves to
Christianity, i.e., the adoration of God in man (Deum colimus per
Christum. Tertullian, Apolog. c. 21). Nevertheless, the principle of
this proof is stated in the present work.
[92] "The greater part of Hebrew poetry, which is often held to be
only spiritual, is political."--Herder.
[93] Sebastian Frank von Wörd in Zinkgrefs Apophthegmata deutscher
Nation.
[94] It would be an imbecile objection to say that God fulfils only
those wishes, those prayers, which are uttered in his name, or in
the interest of the Church of Christ, in short, only the wishes which
are accordant with his will; for the will of God is the will of man,
or rather God has the power, man the will: God makes men happy, but
man wills that he may be happy. A particular wish may not be granted;
but that is of no consequence, if only the species, the essential
tendency is accepted. The pious soul whose prayer has failed consoles
himself, therefore, by thinking that its fulfilment would not have been
salutary for him. "Nullo igitur modo vota aut preces sunt irritæ aut
infrugiferæ et recte dicitur, in petitione rerum corporalium aliquando
Deum exaudire nos, non ad voluntatem nostram, sed ad salutem."--Oratio
de Precatione, in Declamat. Melancthonis, Th. iii.
[95] Ja-wort.
[96] Also, on subjective grounds, social prayer is more effectual
than isolated prayer. Community enhances the force of emotion,
heightens confidence. What we are unable to do alone we are able to
do with others. The sense of solitude is the sense of limitation:
the sense of community is the sense of freedom. Hence it is that
men, when threatened by the destructive powers of Nature, crowd
together. "Multorum preces impossibile est, ut non impetrent, inquit
Ambrosius.... Sanctæ orationis fervor quanto inter plures collectior
tanto ardet diutius ac intensius cor divinum penetrat.... Negatur
singularitati, quod conceditur charitati."--Sacra Hist. de Gentis
Hebr. ortu. P. Paul. Mezger. Aug. Vind. 1700, pp. 668, 669.
[97] In the excellent work, Theanthropos, eine Reihe von Aphorismen
(Zurich, 1838), the idea of the sense of dependence, of omnipotence,
of prayer, and of love, is admirably developed.
[98] Luther (Th. xv. p. 282; Th. xvi. pp. 491-493).
[99] "God is Almighty; but he who believes is a God." Luther (in
Chr. Kapps Christus u. die Weltgeschichte, s. 11). In another place
Luther calls faith the "Creator of the Godhead;" it is true that he
immediately adds, as he must necessarily do on his standpoint, the
following limitation:--"Not that it creates anything in the Divine
Eternal Being, but that it creates that Being in us" (Th. xi. p. 161).
[100] This belief is so essential to the Bible, that without it the
biblical writers can scarcely be understood. The passage 2 Pet. iii. 8,
as is evident from the tenor of the whole chapter, says nothing
in opposition to an immediate destruction of the world; for though
with the Lord a thousand years are as one day, yet at the same time
one day is as a thousand years, and therefore the world may, even by
to-morrow, no longer exist. That in the Bible a very near end of the
world is expected and prophesied, although the day and hour are not
determined, only falsehood or blindness can deny. (See on this subject
Lützelberger.) Hence religious Christians, in almost all times, have
believed that the destruction of the world is near at hand--Luther,
for example, often says that "The last day is not far off" (e.g.,
Th. xvi. p. 26);--or at least their souls have longed for the end of
the world, though they have prudently left it undecided whether it
be near or distant. See Augustin (de Fine Sæculi ad Hesychium, c. 13).
[101] Gen. xviii. 14.
[102] "To the whole world it is impossible to raise the dead, but
to the Lord Christ, not only is it not impossible, but it is no
trouble or labour to him.... This Christ did as a witness and a sign
that he can and will raise from death. He does it not at all times
and to every one.... It is enough that he has done it a few times;
the rest he leaves to the last day."--Luther (Th. xvi. p. 518). The
positive, essential significance of miracle is therefore that the
divine nature is the human nature. Miracles confirm, authenticate
doctrine. What doctrine? Simply this, that God is a Saviour of men,
their Redeemer out of all trouble, i.e., a being corresponding to
the wants and wishes of man, and therefore a human being. What the
God-man declares in words, miracle demonstrates ad oculos by deeds.
[103] This satisfaction is certainly so far limited, that it is united
to religion, to faith in God: a remark which however is so obvious
as to be superfluous. Hut this limitation is in fact no limitation,
for God himself is unlimited, absolutely satisfied, self-contented
human feeling.
[104] The legends of Catholicism--of course only the best, the really
pleasing ones--are, as it were, only the echo of the keynote which
predominates in this New Testament narrative. Miracle might be fitly
defined as religious humour. Catholicism especially has developed
miracle on this its humorous side.
[105] Culture in the sense in which it is here taken. It is highly
characteristic of Christianity, and a popular proof of our positions,
that the only language in which the Divine Spirit was and is held
to reveal himself in Christianity is not the language of a Sophocles
or a Plato, of art and philosophy, but the vague, unformed, crudely
emotional language of the Bible.
[106] Many miracles may realty have had originally a physical
or physiological phenomenon as their foundation. But we are here
considering only the religious significance and genesis of miracle.
[107] "If Adam had not fallen into sin, nothing would have been known
of the cruelty of wolves, lions, bears, &c., and there would not have
been in all creation anything vexatious and dangerous to man ...;
no thorns, or thistles, or diseases ...; his brow would not have
been wrinkled; no foot, or hand, or other member of the body would
have been feeble or infirm."--"But now, since the Fall, we all know
and feel what a fury lurks in our flesh, which not only burns and
rages with lust and desire, but also loathes, when once obtained,
the very thing it has desired. But this is the fault of original sin,
which has polluted all creatures; wherefore I believe that before the
Fall the sun was much brighter, water much clearer, and the land much
richer, and fuller of all sorts of plants."--Luther (Th. i. s. 322,
323, 329, 337).
[108] "Tantum denique abest incesti cupido, ut nonnullis rubori sit
etiam pudica conjunctio."--M. Felicis, Oct. c. 31. One Father was so
extraordinarily chaste that he had never seen a woman's face, nay, he
dreaded even touching himself, "se quoque ipsum attingere quodammodo
horrebat." Another Father had so fine an olfactory sense in this
matter, that on the approach of an unchaste person he perceived an
insupportable odour.--Bayle (Dict. Art. Mariana Rem. C.). But the
supreme, the divine principle of this hyperphysical delicacy is the
Virgin Mary; hence the Catholics name her Virginum Gloria, Virginitatis
corona, Virginitatis typus et forma puritatis, Virginum vexillifera,
Virginitatis magistra, Virginum prima, Virginitatis primiceria.
[109] "Salve sancta parens, enixa puerpera Regem,
Gaudia matris habens cum virginitatis honore."
Theol. Schol. Mezger. t. iv. p. 132.
[110] See e.g. J. D. Winckler, Philolog. Lactant. s. Brunsvigæ, 1754,
pp. 247-254.
[111] See on this subject Philos. und Christenthum, by L. Feuerbach.
[112] In relation to this, the confession of Augustine
is interesting: "Ita fluctuo inter periculum voluptatis et
experimentum salubritatis: magisque adducor ... cantandi cousuetudinem
approbare in ecclesia, ut per oblectamenta aurium infirmior animus
in affectum pietatis assurgat. Tamen cum mihi accidit, ut nos
amplius cantus, quam res quæ canitur moveat, poenaliter me peccare
confiteor."--Confess. l. x. c. 33.
[113] Th. xvi. p. 490.
[114] "Because God has given us his Son, he has with him given
us everything, whether it be called devil, sin, hell, heaven,
righteousness, life; all, all must be ours, because the Son is ours as
a gift, in whom all else is included."--Luther (Th. xv. p. 311). "The
best part of the resurrection has already happened; Christ, the
head of all Christendom, has passed through death and risen from
the dead. Moreover, the most excellent part of me, my soul, has
likewise passed through death, and is with Christ in the heavenly
being. What harm, then, can death and the grave do me?"--Luther
(Th. xvi. p. 235). "A Christian man has equal power with Christ, has
fellowship with him and a common tenure." (Th. xiii. p. 648.) "Whoever
cleaves to Christ has as much as he." (Th. xvi. p. 574.)
[115] This exhibits clearly the untruthfulness and vanity of the modern
speculations concerning the personality of God. If you are not ashamed
of a personal God, do not be ashamed of a corporeal God. An abstract
colourless personality, a personality without flesh and blood, is an
empty shade.
[116] Concordienb. Erklär. Art. 8.
[117] This was excellently shown by Faustus Socinus. See his
Defens. Animadv. in Assert. Theol. Coll. Posnan. de trino et uno
Deo. Irenopoli, 1656, c. 11.
[118] Let the reader examine, with reference to this, the writings of
the Christian orthodox theologians against the heterodox; for example,
against the Socinians. Modern theologians, indeed, agree with the
latter, as is well known, in pronouncing the divinity of Christ as
accepted by the Church to be unbiblical; but it is undeniably the
characteristic principle of Christianity, and even if it does not
stand in the Bible in the form which is given to it by dogma, it is
nevertheless a necessary consequence of what is found in the Bible. A
being who is the fulness of the Godhead bodily, who is omniscient (John
xvi. 30) and almighty (raises the dead, works miracles), who is before
all things, both in time and rank, who has life in himself (though an
imparted life) like as the Father has life in himself,--what, if we
follow out the consequences, can such a being be, but God? "Christ is
one with the Father in will;"--but unity of will presupposes unity of
nature. "Christ is the ambassador, the representative of God;"--but
God can only be represented by a divine being. I can only choose as
my representative one in whom I find the same or similar qualities
as in myself; otherwise I belie myself.
[119] "How much better is it that I should lose the whole world
than that I should lose God, who created the world, and can create
innumerable worlds, who is better than a hundred thousand, than
innumerable worlds? For what sort of a comparison is that of the
temporal with the eternal?... One soul is better than the whole
world."--Luther (Th. xix. p. 21).
[120] It is true that the heathen philosophers also,
as Plato, Socrates, the Stoics (see e.g. J. Lipsius,
Physiol. Stoic. l. i. diss. xi.), believed that the divine providence
extended not merely to the general, but also to the particular,
the individual; but they identified providence with Nature, law,
necessity. The Stoics, who were the orthodox speculatists of
heathenism, did indeed believe in miracles wrought by providence
(Cic. de Nat. Deor. l. ii. and De Divinat. l. i.); but their miracles
had no such supranaturalistic significance as those of Christianity,
though they also appealed to the supranaturalistic axiom: "Nihil est
quod Deus efficere non possit."
[121] "Dicimur amare et Deus; dicimur nosse et Deus. Et multa in hunc
modum. Sed Deus amat ut charitas, novit ut veritas, etc."--Bernard,
(de Consider. l. v.).
[122] It is true that in one sense the individual is the absolute--in
the phraseology of Leibnitz, the mirror of the universe, of the
infinite. But in so far as there are many individuals, each is only
a single, and, as such, a finite mirror of the infinite. It is true
also, in opposition to the abstraction of a sinless man, that each
individual regarded in himself is perfect, and only by comparison
imperfect, for each is what alone he can be.
[123] With the Hindoos (Inst. of Menu) he alone is "a perfect man
who consists of three united persons, his wife, himself, and his
son. For man and wife, and father and son, are one." The Adam of the
Old Testament also is incomplete without woman; he feels his need of
her. But the Adam of the New Testament, the Christian, heavenly Adam,
the Adam who is constituted with a view to the destruction of this
world, has no longer any sexual impulses or functions.
[124] "Hæ sane vires amicitiæ mortis contemptum ingenerare
... potuerunt: quibus pene tantum venerationis, quantum Deorum
immortalium ceremoniis debetur. Illis enim publica salus, his privata
continetur."--Valerius Max. l. iv. c. 7.
[125] "The life for God is not this natural life, which is subject
to decay.... Ought we not then to sigh after future things, and be
averse to all these temporal things?... Wherefore we should find
consolation in heartily despising this life and this world, and from
our hearts sigh for and desire the future honour and glory of eternal
life."--Luther (Th. i. s. 466, 467).
[126] "Eo dirigendus est spiritus, quo aliquando est
iturus."--Meditat. Sacræ Joh. Gerhardi. Med. 46.
[127] "Affectanti coelestia, terrena non sapiunt. Æternis inhianti,
fastidio sunt transitoria."--Bernard. (Epist. Ex Persona Heliæ
Monachi ad Parentes). "Nihil nostra refert in hoc ævo, nisi de
eo quam celeriter excedere."--Tertullian (Apol. adv. Gentes,
c. 41). "Wherefore a Christian man should rather be advised to
bear sickness with patience, yea, even to desire that death should
come,--the sooner the better. For, as St. Cyprian says, nothing is
more for the advantage of a Christian than soon to die. But we rather
listen to the pagan Juvenal when he says: 'Orandum est ut sit mens
sana in corpore sano.'"--Luther (Th. iv. s. 15).
[128] "Ille perfectus est qui mente et corpore a seculo est
elongatus."--De Modo Bene Vivendi ad Sororem, s. vii. (Among the
spurious writings of St. Bernard.)
[129] On this subject see "Hieronymus, de Vita Pauli Primi Eremitæ."
[130] Naturally Christianity had only such power when, as Jerome
writes to Demetrius, Domini nostri adhuc calebat cruor et fervebat
recens in credentibus fides. See also on this subject G. Arnold.--Von
der ersten Christen Genügsamkeit u. Verschmähung alles Eigennutzes,
l. c. B. iv. c. 12, § 7-16.
[131] How far otherwise the ancient Christians! "Difficile,
imo impossibile est, ut et præsentibus quis et futuris fruatur
bonis."--Hieronymus (Epist. Juliano). "Delicatus es, frater, si et hic
vis gaudere cum seculo et postea regnare cum Christo."--Ib. (Epist. ad
Heliodorum). "Ye wish to have both God and the creature together,
and that is impossible. Joy in God and joy in the creature cannot
subsist together."--Tauler (ed. c. p. 334). But they were abstract
Christians. And we live now in the age of conciliation. Yes, truly!
[132] "Perfectum autem esse nolle delinquere est."--Hieronymus
(Epist. ad Heliodorum de laude Vitæ solit.). Let me observe once
for all that I interpret the biblical passages concerning marriage
in the sense in which they have been interpreted by the history
of Christianity.
[133] "The marriage state is nothing new or unwonted, and is
lauded and held good even by heathens according to the judgment of
reason."--Luther (Th. ii. p. 377a).
[134] "Præsumendum est hos qui intra paradisum recipi volunt debere
cessare ab ea re, a qua paradisus intactus est."--Tertullian
(de Exhort. cast. c. 13). "Coelibatus angelorum est
imitatio."--Jo. Damasceni (Orthod. Fidei, l. iv. c. 25).
[135] "Quæ non nubit, soli Deo dat operam et ejus cura non
dividitur; pudica autem, quæ nupsit, vitam cum Deo et cum marito
dividit."--Clemens Alex. (Pædag. l. ii.).
[136] Thomas à Kempis de Imit. (l. ii. c. 7, c. 8, l. iii. c. 5,
c. 34, c. 53, c. 59). "Felix illa conscientia et beata virginitas,
in cujus corde præter amorem Christi ... nullus alius versatur
amor."--Hieronymus (Demetriadi, Virgini Deo consecratæ).
[137] "Divisa est ... mulier et virgo. Vide quantæ felicitatis sit,
quæ et nomen sexus amiserit. Virgo jam mulier non vocatur."--Hieronymus
(adv. Helvidium de perpet. Virg. p. 14. Th. ii. Erasmus).
[138] This may be expressed as follows: Marriage has in Christianity
only a moral, no religious significance, no religious principle and
exemplar. It is otherwise with the Greeks, where, for example, "Zeus
and Here are the great archetype of every marriage" (Creuzer, Symbol.);
with the ancient Parsees, where procreation, as "the multiplication
of the human race, is the diminution of the empire of Ahriman," and
thus a religious art and duty (Zend-Avesta); with the Hindoos, where
the son is the regenerated father. Among the Hindoos no regenerate
man could assume the rank of a Sanyassi, that is, of an anchorite
absorbed in God, if he had not previously paid three debts, one of
which was that he had had a legitimate son. Amongst the Christians,
on the contrary, at least the Catholics, it was a true festival of
religious rejoicing when betrothed or even married persons--supposing
that it happened with mutual consent--renounced the married state
and sacrificed conjugal to religious love.
[139] Inasmuch as the religious consciousness restores everything which
it begins by abolishing, and the future life is ultimately nothing
else than the present life re-established, it follows that sex must
be re-established. "Erunt ... similes angelorum. Ergo homines non
desinent ... ut apostolus apostolus sit et Maria Maria."--Hieronymus
(ad Theodorum Viduam). But as the body in the other world is an
incorporeal body, so necessarily the sex there is one without
difference, i.e., a sexless sex.
[140] "Bene dicitur, quod tunc plene videbimus eum sicuti est, cum
similes ei erimus, h. e. erimus quod ipse est. Quibus enim potestas
data est filios Dei fieri, data est potestas, non quidem ut sint Deus,
sed sint tamen quod Deus est: sint sancti, futuri plene beati, quod
Deus est. Nec aliunde hic sancti. nec ibi futuri beati, quam ex Deo
qui eorum et sanctitas et beatitudo est."--De Vita solitar a (among
the spurious writings of St. Bernard). "Finis autem bonæ voluntatis
beatitudo est: vita æterna ipse Deus."--Augustin. (ap. Petrus
Lomb. l. ii. dist. 38, c. 1). "The other man will be renovated in
the spiritual life, i.e., will become a spiritual man, when he shall
be restored into the image of God. For he will be like God, in life,
in righteousness, glory, and wisdom."--Luther (Th. i. p. 324).
[141] "Si bonum est habere corpus incorruptible, quare hoc
facturum Deum volumus dasperere?"--Augustinus (Opp. Antwerp, 1700,
Th. v. p. 698).
[142] "Quare dicitur spiritale corpus, nisi quia ad nutum spiritus
serviet? Nihil tibi contradicet ex te, nihil in te rebellabit adversus
te.... Ubi volueris, eris.... Credere enim debemus talia corpora nos
habituros, ut ubi velimus, quando voluerimus, ibi simus."--Augustinus
(l. c. pp. 703, 705). "Nihil indecorum ibi erit, summma pax erit,
nihil discordans, nihil montruosum, nihil quod offendat adspectum"
(l. c. 707). "Nisi beatus, non vivit ut vult." (De Civ. Dei, l. 14,
c. 25.)
[143] And their conceptions of God are just as heterogeneous. The
pious Germans have a German God, the pious Spaniards a Spanish God,
the French a French God. The French actually have the proverb:
"Le bon Dieu est Français." In fact, polytheism must exist so long
as there are various nations. The real God of a people is the point
d'honneur of its nationality.
[144] "Ibi nostra spes erit res."--Augustin. "Therefore we have the
first fruits of immortal life in hope, until perfection comes at the
last day, wherein we shall see and feel the life we have believed in
and hoped for."--Luther (Th. i. s. 459).
[145] According to old books of travel, however, there are many
tribes which do not believe that the future is identical with the
present, or that it is better, but that it is even worse. Parny
(OEuv. Chois. t. i. Melang.) tells of a dying negro-slave who refused
the inauguration to immortality by baptism in these words: "Je ne veux
point d'une autre vie, car peut-être y serais-je encore votre esclave."
[146] Ahlwardt (Ossian Anm. zu Carthonn.).
[147] There everything will be restored. "Qui modo vivit, erit,
nec me vel dente, vel ungue fraudatum revomet patefacti fossa
sepulchri."--Aurelius Prud. (Apotheos. de Resurr. Carnis Hum.). And
this faith, which you consider rude and carnal, and which you therefore
disavow, is the only consistent, honest, and true faith. To the
identity of the person belongs the identity of the body.
[148] "Neque enim post resurrectionem tempus diebus
ac noctibus numerabitur. Erit magis una dies sine
vespere."--Joh. Damascen. (Orth. Fidei l. ii. c. 1).
[149] "Ipsum (corpus) erit et non ipsum erit."--Augustinus
(v. J. Ch. Doederlein, Inst. Theol. Christ. Altorf, 1781, § 280).
[150] "Præter salutem tuam nihil cogites; solum quæ Dei
sunt cures."--Thomas à K. (de Imit. l. i. c. 23). "Contra
salutem proprium cogites nihil. Minus dixi: contra,
præter dixisse debueram."--Bernhardus (de Consid. ad Eugenium
Pontif. Max. l. ii.). "Qui Deum quærit, de propria salute sollicitus
est."--Clemens Alex. (Cohort. ad Gent.).
[151] Here and in other parts of this work, theory is taken in the
sense in which it is the source of true objective activity,--the
science which gives birth to art,--for man can do only so much as he
knows: "tantum potest quantum scit."
[152] Concerning the biblical conceptions of Satan, his power and
works, see Lützelberger's "Grundzüge der Paulinischen Glaubenslehre,"
and G. Ch. Knapp's "Vorles. über d. Christl. Glaubensl.," § 62-65. To
this subject belongs demoniacal possession, which also has its
attestation in the Bible. See Knapp (§ 65, iii. 2, 3).
[153] Doubtless, this unveiling of the mystery of predestination
will be pronounced atrocious, impious, diabolical. I have nothing to
allege against this; I would rather be a devil in alliance with truth,
than an angel in alliance with falsehood.
[154] A kindred doctrine is that of the Concursus Dei, according to
which, God not only gives the first impulse, but also co-operates in
the agency of the second cause. For the rest, this doctrine is only a
particular form of the contradictory dualism between God and Nature,
which runs through the history of Christianity. On the subject of
this remark, as of the whole paragraph, see Strauss: Die Christliche
Glaubenslehre, B. ii. § 75, 76.
[155] "Dum sumus in hoc corpore, peregrinamur ab eo qui summe
est."--Bernard. Epist. 18 (ed. Basle, 1552). "As long as we live, we
are in the midst of death."--Luther (Th. i. p. 331). The idea of the
future life is therefore nothing else than the idea of true, perfected
religion, freed from the limits and obstructions of this life,--the
future life, as has been already said, nothing but the true opinion
and disposition, the open heart, of religion. Here we believe--there
we behold; i.e., there there is nothing besides God, and thus nothing
between God and the soul; but only for this reason, that there ought
to be nothing between them, because the immediate union of God and the
soul is the true opinion and desire of religion. "We have as yet so to
do with God as with one hidden from us, and it is not possible that in
this life we should hold communion with him face to face. All creatures
are now nothing else than vain masks, under which God conceals himself,
and by which he deals with us."--Luther (Th. xi. p. 70). "If thou
wert only free from the images of created things, thou mightest have
God without intermission."--Tauler (l. c. p. 313).
[156] "Voluntate igitur Dei immobilis manet et stat in seculum terra
... et voluntate Dei movetur et nutat. Non ergo fundamentis suis nixa
subsistit, nec fulcris suis stabilis perseverat, sed Dominus statuit
eam et firmamento voluntatis suæ continet, quia in manu ejus omnes
fines terræ."--Ambrosius (Hexæmeron. l. i. c. 61).
[157] It is only unbelief in the efficacy of prayer which has subtly
limited prayer to spiritual matters.
[158] According to the notion of barbarians, therefore, prayer is a
coercive power, a charm. But this conception is an unchristian one
(although even among many Christians the idea is accepted that prayer
constrains God); for in Christianity God is essentially feeling
satisfied in itself, Almighty goodness, which denies nothing to
(religious) feeling. The idea of coercion presupposes an unfeeling God.
[159] "Natura enim remota providentia et potestate divina prorsus
nihil est."--Lactantius (Div. Inst. lib. 3, c. 28). "Omnia quæ creata
sunt, quamvis ea Deus fecerit valde bona, Creatori tamen comparata,
nec bona sunt, cui comparata nec sunt; altissime quippe et proprio
modo quodam de se ipso dixit: Ego sum, qui sum."--Augustinus (de
Perfectione Just. Hom. c. 14).
[160] "Pulchras formas et varias, nitidos et amoenos colores amant
oculi. Non teneant hæc animam meam; teneat eam Deus qui hæc fecit,
bona quidem valde, sed ipse est bonum meum, non hæc."--Augustinus
(Confess. l. x. c. 34). "Vetiti autem sumus (2 Cor. iv. 18.) converti
ad ea quæ videntur.... Amandus igitur solus Deus est: omnis vero iste
mundus, i.e. omnia sensibilia contemnenda, utendum autem his ad hujus
vitæ necessitatem."--Ib. de Moribus Eccl. Cathol. l. i. c. 20.
[161] At the same time, however, their result is to prove the nature of
man. The various proofs of the existence of God are nothing else than
various highly interesting forms in which the human nature affirms
itself. Thus, for example, the physico-theological proof (or proof
from design) is the self-affirmation of the calculated activity
of the understanding. Every philosophic system is, in this sense,
a proof of the existence of God.
[162] "Christ is ascended on high, ... that is, he not only sits
there above, but he is also here below. And he is gone thither to
the very end that he might be here below, and fill all things, and
be in all places, which he could not do while on earth, for here he
could not be seen by all bodily eyes. Therefore he sits above, where
every man can see him, and he has to do with every man."--Luther
(Th. xiii. p. 643). That is to say: Christ or God is an object, an
existence, of the imagination; in the imagination he is limited to no
place,--he is present and objective to every one. God exists in heaven,
but is for that reason omnipresent; for this heaven is the imagination.
[163] "Thou hast not to complain that thou art less experienced
than was Abraham or Isaac. Thou also hast appearances.... Thou hast
holy baptism, the supper of the Lord, the bread and wine, which are
figures and forms, under and in which the present God speaks to thee,
and acts upon thee, in thy ears, eyes, and heart.... He appears to
thee in baptism, and it is he himself who baptizes thee, and speaks
to thee.... Everything is full of divine appearances and utterances,
if he is on thy side."--Luther (Th. ii. p. 466. See also on this
subject, Th. xix. p. 407).
[164] The denial of a fact is not a matter of indifference; it
is something morally evil,--a disowning of what is known to be
true. Christianity made its articles of faith objective, i.e.,
undeniable, unassailable facts, thus overpowering the reason, and
taking the mind prisoner by the force of external reality: herein
we have the true explanation why and how Christianity, Protestant
as well as Catholic, enunciated and enforced with all solemnity the
principle, that heresy--the denial of an idea or a fact which forms
an article of faith--is an object of punishment by the temporal
power, i.e., a crime. What in theory is an external fact becomes in
practice an external force. In this respect Christianity is far below
Mohammedanism, to which the crime of heresy is unknown.
[165] "Præsentiam sæpe divi suam declarant."--Cicero (de
Nat. D. 1. ii.). Cicero's works (de Nat. D. and de Divinatione)
are especially interesting, because the arguments there used for the
reality of the objects of pagan faith are virtually the same as those
urged in the present day by theologians and the adherents of positive
religion generally for the reality of the objects of Christian faith.
[166] "Quod crudeliter ab hominibus sine Dei jussu fieret aut
factum est, id debuit ab Hebrais fieri, quia a deo vitæ et necis
summo arbitrio, jussi bellum ita gerebant."--J. Clericus (Comm. in
Mos. Num. c. 31, 7). "Multa gessit Samson, quæ vix possent
defendi, nisi Dei, a quo homines pendent, instrumentum fuisse
censeatur."--Ib. (Comm. in Judicum, c. 14, 19). See also Luther,
e.g. (Th. i. p. 339, Th. xvi. p. 495).
[167] It was very justly remarked by the Jansenists against the
Jesuits: "Vouloir reconnoitre dans l'Ecriture quelque chose de la
foiblesse et de l'esprit naturel de l'homme, c'est donner la liberté
à chacun d'en faire le discernment et de rejetter ce qui lui plaira
de l'Ecriture, comme venant plûtot de la foiblesse de l'homme que de
l'esprit de Dieu."--Bâyle (Dict. art. Adam (Jean) Rem. E.).
[168] "Nec in scriptura divina fas sit sentire aliquid
contrarietatis."--Petrus L. (l. ii. dist. ii. c. i.). Similar thoughts
are found in the Fathers.
[169] This is especially apparent in the superlative, and the
preposition super, hyper, which distinguish the divine predicates, and
which very early--as, for example, with the Neo-Platonists, the
Christians among heathen philosophers--played a chief part in theology.
[170] "Scit itaque Deus, quanta sit multitudo pulicum, culicum,
muscarum et piscium et quot nascantur, quotve moriantur, sed non
scit hoc per momenta singula, imo simul et semel omnia."--Petrus
L. (l. i. dist. 39, c. 3).
[171] "Qui scientem cuncta sciunt, quid nescire nequeunt?"--Liber
Meditat. c. 26 (among the spurious writings of Augustine).
[172] Tauler, l. c. p. 312.
[173] "The closest union which Christ possessed with the Father, it
is possible for me to win.... All that God gave to his only-begotten
Son, he has given to me as perfectly as to him."--Predigten etzlicher
Lehrer vor und zu Tauleri Zeiten. Hamburg, 1621, p. 14. "Between the
only-begotten Son and the soul there is no distinction."--Ib. p. 68.
[174] "God can as little do without us as we without him."--Predigten
etzlicher Lehrer, &c., p. 16. See also on this subject--Strauss,
Christl. Glaubensl. B. i. § 47, and the author's work entitled,
P. Bayle, pp. 104, 107.
[175] "This temporal, transitory life in this world (i.e., natural
life) we have through God, who is the almighty Creator of heaven and
earth. But the eternal untransitory life we have through the Passion
and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.... Jesus Christ a Lord
over that life."--Luther (Th. xvi. s. 459).
[176] It is curious to observe how the speculative religious
philosophy undertakes the defence of the Trinity against the godless
understanding, and yet, by doing away with the personal substances,
and explaining the relation of Father and Son as merely an inadequate
image borrowed from organic life, robs the Trinity of its very heart
and soul. Truly, if the cabalistic artifices which the speculative
religious philosophy applies in the service of the absolute religion
were admissible in favour of finite religions, it would not be
difficult to squeeze the Pandora's box of Christian dogmatics out
of the horns of the Egyptian Apis. Nothing further would be needed
for this purpose than the ominous distinction of the understanding
from the speculative reason,--a distinction which is adapted to the
justification of every absurdity.
[177] The unity has not the significance of genus, not of unum but of
unus. (See Augustine and Petrus Lomb. l. i. dist. 19, c. 7, 8, 9.) "Hi
ergo tres, qui unum sunt propter ineffabilem conjunctionem deitatis qua
ineffabiliter copulantur, unus Deus est." (Petrus L. l. c. c. 6.) "How
can reason bring itself into accord with this, or believe, that three
is one and one is three?"--Luther (Th. x. iv. p. 13).
[178] "Quia ergo pater Deus et filius Deus et spiritus s. Deus cur
non dicuntur tres Dii? Ecce proposuit hanc propositionem (Augustinus)
attende quid respondeat ... Si autem dicerem: tres Deos, contradiceret
scriptura dicens: Audi Israel: Deus tuus unus est. Ecce absolutio
quæstionis: quare potius dicamus tres personas quam tres Deos, quia
scil. illud non contradicit scriptura."--Petrus L. (l. i. dist. 23,
c. 3). How much did even Catholicism repose upon Holy Writ!
[179] A truly masterly presentation of the overwhelming contradictions
in which the mystery of the Trinity involves the genuine religious
sentiment, is to be found in the work already cited--Theanthropos. Eine
Reihe von Aphorismen--which expresses in the form of the religious
sentiment what in the present work is expressed in the form of the
reason; and which is therefore especially to be recommended to women.
[180] "Sacramentum ejus rei similitudinem gerit, cujus signum
est."--Petrus Lomb. (l. iv. dist. 1, c. 1).
[181] In relation to the miracle-worker faith (confidence in God's aid)
is certainly the causa efficiens of the miracle. (See Matt. xvii. 20;
Acts vi. 8.) But in relation to the spectators of the miracle--and
it is they who are in question here--miracle is the causa efficiens
of faith.
[182] "Here we see a miracle surpassing all miracles, that Christ
should have so mercifully converted his greatest enemy."--Luther
(Th. xvi. p. 560).
[183] Hence it is greatly to the honour of Luther's understanding
and sense of truth that, particularly when writing against Erasmus,
he unconditionally denied the free will of man as opposed to divine
grace. "The name Free Will," says Luther, quite correctly from the
standpoint of religion, "is a divine title and name, which none ought
to bear but the Divine Majesty alone." (Th. xix. p. 28).
[184] Experience indeed extorted even from the old theologians,
whose faith was an uncompromising one, the admission that
the effects of baptism are, at least in this life, very
limited. "Baptismus non aufert omnes poenalitates hujus
vitæ."--Mezger. Theol. Schol. Th. iv. p. 251. See also Petrus
L. l. iv. dist. 4, c. 4; l. ii. dist. 32, c. 1.
[185] Even in the absurd fiction of the Lutherans, that "infants
believe in baptism," the action of subjectivity reduces itself
to the faith of others, since the faith of infants is "wrought by
God through the intercession of the god-parents and their bringing
up of the children in the faith of the Christian Church."--Luther
(Th. xiii. pp. 360, 361). "Thus the faith of another helps me to
obtain a faith of my own."--Ib. (T. xiv. p. 347a).
[186] "This," says Luther, "is in summa our opinion, that in and
with the bread, the body of Christ is truly eaten; thus, that all
which the bread undergoes and effects, the body of Christ undergoes
and effects; that it is divided, eaten and chewed with the teeth
propter unionem, sacramentalem." (Plank's Gesch. der Entst. des
protest. Lehrbeg. B. viii. s. 369). Elsewhere, it is true, Luther
denies that the body of Christ, although it is partaken of corporeally,
"is chewed and digested like a piece of beef." (Th. xix. p. 429.) No
wonder; for that which is partaken of is an object without objectivity,
a body without corporeality, flesh without the qualities of flesh;
"spiritual flesh," as Luther says, i.e., imaginary flesh. Be it
observed further, that the Protestants also take the Lord's Supper
fasting, but this is merely a custom with them, not a law. (See Luther,
Th. xviii. p. 200, 201.)
[187] 1 Cor. xi. 29.
[188] "Videtur enim species vini et panis, et substantia panis et
vini non creditur. Creditur autem substantia corporis et sanguinis
Christi et tamen species non cernitur."--Bernardus (ed. Bas. 1552,
pp. 189-191).
[189] It is so in another relation not developed here, but which may
be mentioned in a note: namely, the following. In religion, in faith,
man is an object to himself as the object, i.e., the end or determining
motive, of God. Man is occupied with himself in and through God. God
is the means of human existence and happiness. This religious truth,
embodied in a cultus, in a sensuous form, is the Lord's Supper. In this
sacrament man feeds upon God--the Creator of heaven and earth--as on
material food; by the act of eating and drinking he declares God to
be a mere means of life to man. Here man is virtually supposed to be
the God of God: hence the Lord's Supper is the highest self-enjoyment
of human subjectivity. Even the Protestant--not indeed in words, but
in truth--transforms God into an external thing, since he subjects
Him to himself as an object of sensational enjoyment.
[190] "Nostrates, præsentiam realem consecrationis effectum
esse, adfirmant; idque ita, ut tum se exserat, cum usus legitimus
accedit. Nec est quod regeras, Christum hæc verba: hoc est corpus
meum, protulisse, antequam discipuli ejus comederent, adeoque panem
jam ante usum corpus Christi fuisse."--Buddeus (l. c. l. v. c. l, §§
13, 17). See, on the other hand, Concil. Trident. Sessio 13, cc. 3,
8, Can. 4.
[191] Apologie Melancthon. Strobel. Nürnb. 1783, p. 127.
[192] "The fanatics, however, believe that it is mere bread and wine,
and it is assuredly so as they believe; they have it so, and eat mere
bread and wine."--Luther (Th. xix. p. 432). That is to say, if thou
believest, representest to thyself, conceivest, that the bread is not
bread, but the body of Christ, it is not bread; but if thou dost not
believe so, it is not so. What it is in thy belief that it actually is.
[193] Even the Catholics also. "Hujus sacramenti effectus,
quem in anima operatur digne sumentis, est adunatio hominis ad
Christum."--Concil. Florent. de S. Euchar.
[194] "If the body of Christ is in the bread and is eaten with faith,
it strengthens the soul, in that the soul believes that it is the
body of Christ which the mouth eats."--Luther (Th. xix. p. 433; see
also p. 205). "For what we believe that we receive, that we receive
in truth."--Ib. (Th. xvii. p. 557).
[195] Hence the mere name of Christ has miraculous powers.
[196] "Gott glauben und an Gott glauben."
[197] "If I wish to be a Christian, I must believe and do what other
people do not believe or do."--Luther (Th. xvi. p. 569).
[198] Celsus makes it a reproach to the Christians that
they boast: "Est Deus et post illum nos." (Origenes
adv. Cels. ed. Hoeschelius. Aug. Vind. 1605, p. 182).
[199] "I am proud and exulting on account of my blessedness and the
forgiveness of my sins, but through what? Through the glory and pride
of another, namely, the Lord Christ."--Luther (Th. ii. p. 344). "He
that glorieth let him glory in the Lord."--1 Cor. i. 31.
[200] A military officer who had been adjutant of the Russian general
Münnich said: "When I was his adjutant I felt myself greater than
now that I command."
[201] To faith, so long as it has any vital heat, any character,
the heretic is always on a level with the unbeliever, with the atheist.
[202] Already in the New Testament the idea of disobedience
is associated with unbelief. "The cardinal wickedness is
unbelief."--Luther (xiii. p. 647).
[203] God himself by no means entirely reserves the punishment of
blasphemers, of unbelievers, of heretics, for the future; he often
punishes them in this life also, "for the benefit of Christendom and
the strengthening of faith:" as, for example, the heretics Cerinthus
and Arius. See Luther (Th. xiv. p. 13).
[204] "Si quis spiritum Dei habet, illius versiculi recordetur: Nonne
qui oderunt te, Domine, oderam?" (Psal. cxxxix. 21); Bernhardus,
Epist. (193) ad magist. Yvonem Cardin.
[205] "Qui Christum negat, negatur a Christo."--Cyprian (Epist. E. 73,
§ 18, edit. Gersdorf.).
[206] Thus the apostle Paul cursed "Elymas the sorcerer" with
blindness, because he withstood the faith.--Acts xiii. 8-11.
[207] Historically considered, this saying, as well as the others
cited pp. 384, 385, may be perfectly justified. But the Bible is not
to be regarded as an historical or temporal, but as an eternal book.
[208] "Tenerrimam partem humani corporis nominavit, ut apertissime
intelligeremus, eum (Deum) tam parva Sanctorum suorum contumelia lædi,
quam parvi verberis tactu humani visus acies læditur."--Salvianus,
l. 8, de Gubern. Dei.
[209] 1 Cor. x. 20.
[210] Phil. ii. 10, 11. "When the name of Jesus Christ is heard,
all that is unbelieving and ungodly in heaven or on earth shall be
terrified."--Luther (Th. xvi. p. 322). "In morte pagani Christianus
gloriatur, quia Christus glorificatur."--Divus Bernardus. Sermo
exhort. ad Milites Templi.
[211] Petrus L. 1. iv. dist. 50, c.4. But this passage is by no means
a declaration of Peter Lombard himself. He is far too modest, timid,
and dependent on the authorities of Christianity to have ventured
to advance such a tenet on his own account. No! This position is
a universal declaration, a characteristic expression of Christian,
of believing love. The doctrine of some Fathers of the Church, e.g.,
of Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, that the punishment of the damned
would have an end, sprung not out of Christian or Church doctrine,
but out of Platonism. Hence the doctrine that the punishment of
hell is finite, was rejected not only by the Catholic but also by the
Protestant church. (Augsb. Confess. art. 17). A precious example of the
exclusive, misanthropical narrowness of Christian love, is the passage
cited from Buddeus by Strauss (Christl. Glaubensl. B. ii. s. 547),
according to which not infants in general, but those of Christians
exclusively, would have a share in the divine grace and blessings if
they died unbaptized.
[212] "Fugite, abhorrete hunc doctorem." But why should I flee from
him? because the anger, i.e., the curse of God rests on his head.
[213] There necessarily results from this a sentiment which, e.g.,
Cyprian expresses: "Si vero ubique hæretici nihil aliud quam adversarii
et antichristi nominantur, si vitandi et perversi et a semet ipsis
damnati pronuntiantur; quale est ut videantur damnandi a nobis non
esse, quos constat apostolica contestatione a semet ipsis damnatos
esse." Epistol. 74. (Edit, cit.)
[214] The passage Luke ix. 56, as the parallel of which is cited John
iii. 17, receives its completion and rectification in the immediately
following v. 18: "He that believeth in him is not condemned; but he
that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed
in the name of the only begotten Son of God."
[215] Faith, it is true, is not "without good works," nay, according to
Luther's declaration, it is as impossible to separate faith from works
as to separate heat and light from fire. Nevertheless, and this is the
main point, good works do not belong to the article of justification
before God, i.e., men are justified and "saved without works, through
faith alone." Faith is thus expressly distinguished from good works;
faith alone avails before God, not good works; faith alone is the
cause of salvation, not virtue; thus faith alone has substantial
significance, virtue only accidental; i.e., faith alone has religious
significance, divine authority--and not morality. It is well known that
many have gone so far as to maintain that good works are not necessary,
but are even "injurious, obstructive to salvation." Quite correctly.
[216] "Causa fidei ... exorbitantem et irregularem prorsus favorem
habet et ab omni jure deviare, omnem captivare rationem, nec judiciis
laicorum ratione corrupta utentium subjecta creditur. Etenim
Causa fidei ad multa obligat, quæ alias sunt voluntaria, multa,
imo infinita remittit, quæ alias præcepta; quæ alius valide gesta
annullat, et contra quæ alias nulla et irrita, fiunt valida ... ex
jure canonico."--J. H. Boehmeri (Jus Eccles. lib. v. tit. vii. §
32. See also § 44 et seq.).
[217] "Placetta de Fide, ii. Il ne faut pas chercher dans la nature
des choses mêmes la veritable cause de l'inseparabilité de la foi
et de la pieté. Il faut, si je ne me trompe, la chercher uniquement
dans la volonté de Dieu.... Bene facit et nobiscum sentit, cum illam
conjunctionem (i.e., of sanctity or virtue with faith) a benifica Dei
voluntate et dispositione repetit; nec id novum est ejus inventum, sed
cum antiquioribus Theologis nostris commune."--J. A. Ernesti. (Vindiciæ
arbitrii divini. Opusc. theol. p. 297.) "Si quis dixerit ... qui
fidem sine charitate habet, Christianum non esse, anathema
sit."--Concil. Trid. (Sess. vi. de Justif. can. 28).
[218] See on this subject Luther, e.g., T. xiv. p. 286.
[219] "Therefore good works must follow faith, as an expression of
thankfulness to God."--Apol. der Augs. Conf. art. 3. "How can I make
a return to thee for thy deeds of love in works? yet it is something
acceptable to thee, if I quench and tame the lusts of the flesh, that
they may not anew inflame my heart with fresh sins." "If sin bestirs
itself, I am not overcome; a glance at the cross of Jesus destroys its
charms."--Gesangbuch der Evangel. Brüdergemeinen (Moravian Hymn-book).
[220] The only limitation which is not contradictory to the nature
of love is the self-limitation of love by reason, intelligence. The
love which despises the stringency, the law of the intelligence,
is theoretically false and practically noxious.
[221] The Peripatetics also; who founded love, even that towards all
men, not on a particular, religious, but a natural principle.
[222] Active love is and must of course always be particular and
limited, i.e., directed to one's neighbour. But it is yet in its
nature universal, since it loves man for man's sake, in the name of
the race. Christian love, on the contrary, is in its nature exclusive.
[223] Including external nature; for as man belongs to the essence
of Nature,--in opposition to common materialism; so Nature belongs
to the essence of man,--in opposition to subjective idealism;
which is also the secret of our "absolute" philosophy, at least in
relation to Nature. Only by uniting man with Nature can we conquer
the supranaturalistic egoism of Christianity.
[224] Yes, only as the free bond of love; for a marriage the bond
of which is merely an external restriction, not the voluntary,
contented self-restriction of love, in short, a marriage which is
not spontaneously concluded, spontaneously willed, self-sufficing,
is not a true marriage, and therefore not a truly moral marriage.
[225] "Because God does good through government, great men and
creatures in general, people rush into error, lean on creatures
and not on the Creator;--they do not look from the creature to the
Creator. Hence it came that the heathens made gods of kings.... For
they cannot and will not perceive that the work or the benefit comes
from God, and not merely from the creature, though the latter is a
means, through which God works, helps us, and gives to us."--Luther
(T. iv. p. 237).
[226] "They who honour me, I will honour, and they who despise me
shall be lightly esteemed."--1 Sam. ii. 30. "Jam se, o bone pater,
vermis vilissimus et odio dignissimus sempiterno, tamen confidit
amari, quoniam se sentit amare, imo quia se amari præsentit, non
redamare confunditur.... Nemo itaque se amari diffidat, qui jam
amat."--Bernardus ad Thomam (Epist. 107). A very fine and pregnant
sentence. If I exist not for God, God exists not for me; if I do not
love, I am not loved. The passive is the active certain of itself,
the object is the subject certain of itself. To love is to be man,
to be loved is to be God. I am loved, says God; I love, says man. It
is not until later that this is reversed, that the passive transforms
itself into the active, and conversely.
[227] "The Lord spake to Gideon: The people are too many that are
with thee, that I should give Midian into their hands; Israel
might glorify itself against me and say: My hand has delivered
me,"--i.e., "Ne Israel sibi tribuat, quæ mihi debentur." Judges
vii. 2. "Thus saith the Lord: Cursed is the man that trusteth in
man. But blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord and whose
hope is in the Lord."--Jer. xvii. 5. "God desires not our gold,
body and possessions, but has given these to the emperor (that is,
to the representative of the world, of the state), and to us through
the emperor. But the heart, which is the greatest and best in man,
he has reserved for himself;--this must be our offering to God--that
we believe in him."--Luther (xvi. p. 505).
[228] Christian baptism also is obviously only a relic of the
ancient Nature-worship, in which, as in the Persian, water was a
means of religious purification. (S. Rhode: Die heilige Sage, &c.,
pp. 305, 426.) Here, however, water baptism had a much truer, and
consequently a deeper meaning, than with the Christians, because
it rested on the natural power and value of water. But indeed for
these simple views of Nature which characterised the old religions,
our speculative as well as theological supranaturalism has neither
sense nor understanding. When therefore the Persians, the Hindoos,
the Egyptians, the Hebrews, made physical purity a religious duty,
they were herein far wiser than the Christian saints, who attested
the supranaturalistic principle of their religion by physical
impurity. Supranaturalism in theory becomes anti-naturalism in
practice. Supranaturalism is only a euphemism for anti-naturalism.
[229] "Eating and drinking is the easiest of all work, for men like
nothing better: yea, the most joyful work in the whole world is eating
and drinking, as it is commonly said: Before eating no dancing, and,
On a full stomach stands a merry head. In short, eating and drinking
is a pleasant necessary work;--that is a doctrine soon learned and
made popular. The same pleasant necessary work takes our blessed Lord
Christ and says: 'I have prepared a joyful, sweet and pleasant meal,
I will lay on you no hard heavy work ... I institute a supper,'
&c."--Luther (xvi. 222).
[230] "Manifestum igitur est tantum religionis sanguini et affinitati,
quantum ipsis Diis immortalibus tributum: quia inter ista tam sancta
vincula non magis, quam in aliquo loco sacrato nudare se, nefas esse
credebatur."--Valer. Max. (l. ii. c. i.)
[231] See the author's "Leibnitz."
[232] [Here follows in the original a distinction between Herz,
or feeling directed towards real objects, and therefore practically
sympathetic; and Gemüth, or feeling directed towards imaginary objects,
and therefore practically unsympathetic, self-absorbed. But the verbal
distinction is not adhered to in the ordinary use of the language,
or, indeed, by Feuerbach himself; and the psychological distinction
is sufficiently indicated in other parts of the present work. The
passage is therefore omitted, as likely to confuse the reader.--Tr.]
[233] "Haereticus usu omnium jurium destitutus est, ut
deportatus."--J. H. Boehmer (l. c. l. v. Tit. vii. § 223. See also
Tit. vi.)
[234] Very many Christians rejected the punishment of death,
but other criminal punishments of heretics, such as banishment,
confiscation--punishments which deprive of life indirectly--they did
not find in contradiction with their Christian faith. See on this
subject J. H. Boehmer, Jus. Eccl. Protest. l. v. Tit. vii. e.g. §§
i. 155, 157, 162, 163.
[235] On this subject I refer to Lützelberger's work: "Die Kirchliche
Tradition über den Apostel Johannes und seine Schriften in ihrer
Grundlosigkeit nachgewiesen," and to Bruno Bauer's "Kritik der
Evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker und des Johannes" (B. iii.).
[236] In another place Luther praises St. Bernard and Bonaventura
because they laid so much stress on the manhood of Christ.
[237] It is true that in Catholicism also--in Christianity generally,
God exists for man; but it was Protestantism which first drew from
this relativity of God its true result--the absoluteness of man.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Essence of Christianity, by Ludwig Feuerbach