A SLUMP IN GERMAN THEOLOGY
I.
In the universal readjustment--or, to use the favourite expression of
Nietzsche, in the "transvaluation"--of political and spiritual values
which must follow the war, we may confidently expect a general slump
in all German values. There will be a slump in German education and in
German erudition, in German music and in German watering-places. There
will be a slump in that "exclusive morality" for which Lord Haldane
could not find an equivalent in the English language, and for which,
in his famous Montreal address, he could only find an equivalent in
the German word _Sittlichkeit_. But, most important of all, there will
be a lamentable slump in the most highly prized of all German
values--German theology.
Germany may still retain a monopoly of toys; Germany may still
continue to supply Princes to the vacant thrones of Europe; but it is
eminently probable that God Almighty will cease to be made in the
Vaterland.
II.
No one who has not been brought up in a Scottish Presbyterian
University atmosphere realizes the mystical prestige hitherto enjoyed
by German theology. The education of a Scottish divine was thought
incomplete, a graduate in divinity, however brilliant and devout,
could not get an important charge, if he had not received the hallmark
and consecration of a German theological faculty. And what was true of
German Universities was equally true of German theological books.
Publishers like Messrs. Clark, of Edinburgh, and Messrs. Williams and
Norgate, of London, made considerable fortunes merely from their
translations of German works of divinity.
The prejudice in favour of German Universities and against French
Universities goes back to the early days of the Reformation. Already
in "Hamlet" we find the serious young man going to Wittenberg and the
frivolous young man going to Paris in quest of worldly amusement. That
pro-German and anti-French prejudice has continued until our own day.
In vain have I for twenty years attempted in the Universities of
Scotland to send our graduates to French Universities. In vain did I
contend that one single year spent in the Sorbonne provided greater
intellectual stimulus than a whole decade spent in a German
University. The old Puritan feeling against France proved too strong.
Until the year 1914 the stream of our students continued to be
directed to Göttingen and Heidelberg, to Bonn and Berlin. Even in our
distant colonies, even in Toronto, I found that the majority of
teachers were "made in Germany," whilst of American Universities it is
hardly too much to say that many of them had actually become German
institutions.
III.
The prejudice which sent Scottish and English ministers of the Gospel
to complete their preparation in Germany was all the more
extraordinary because Positive Christianity had almost vanished from
the theological faculties of Protestant Germany. Even as Holy Russia
has remained on the whole the most Christian nation in Europe,
Protestant Prussia was certainly the least Christian. It was aptly
said by Huxley of the philosophy of Comte, that Comtism was
Catholicism minus Christianity. We might say in the same way of German
theology, that it was philosophy and metaphysics and philology minus
Christianity. Seventy-five years ago David Frederick Strauss, who
would be forgotten but for the pamphlet of Nietzsche, wrote a
ponderous treatise of a thousand pages, translated by George Eliot, to
prove that Christ was a myth. At the end of his life he strenuously
attempted in his "Old and New Faith" to find a substitute for
Christian theology. German Protestantism travelled the road he
indicated. The German people have ceased to believe in Christianity;
but they have come to believe in the self-styled Anti-Christ
Nietzsche. They have ceased to believe in God; but they still believe
in His self-appointed vicegerent, the Kaiser. They have ceased to
believe in Providence; but they still believe in a Providential German
nation. They have ceased to believe in the Holy Trinity; but they
believe all the more fanatically in the New Trinity of the Superman,
the Super-race and the Super-State. And it is this new fanatical
belief which has brought about the war of the nations.
IV.
The prejudice of our Protestant Churches in favour of German
Theological Faculties proceeded on the assumption that German
Protestantism was identical with Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. Surely
that strange assumption does little credit to the spiritual insight of
our divines. German Protestantism has absolutely nothing in common
with Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. For whatever may have been adduced
against British and American Nonconformity, it must be admitted that
at least Anglo-Saxon Nonconformity was generally what it professed to
be. Anglo-Saxon Nonconformity actually did refuse to conform,
Anglo-Saxon Protestantism did actually protest. The separation between
Church and State was a fundamental principle of Anglo-Saxon policy,
and that separation was no ideal platonic theory. Nonconformists gave
up their emoluments, they again and again risked their lives in
defence of their principles. In defence of their principles tens of
thousands migrated to distant climes.
For that very reason Anglo-Saxon Nonconformity has rendered
inestimable service to political liberty. German Protestantism has
never rendered a single service to political liberty, for the simple
reason that its political practice has been consistently the reverse.
So far from Lutheran Protestantism being based on the separation of
Church and State, it was based on the confusion of spiritual and
temporal power. That confusion began with the very earliest days of
Lutheranism. Lutherans are inclined to depreciate the personality and
activity of John Huss, the great Slav reformer, because, judged from
worldly standards, John Huss seems to have been a failure. As a matter
of fact, the Slav reformer was the ideal spiritual hero. The Teutonic
reformer was in many ways a time-server. To Luther must be traced the
principle that spiritual allegiance must follow temporal allegiance,
that the subjects must follow the creed of their Prince. That belief
was expressed in the Protestant motto, _Cujus regio illius religio_,
and that motto even to this day accounts for the bewildering religious
geography of the German Empire.
That servile attitude of the Protestant Church to the German State has
survived to this generation; whereas the Roman Catholic Church made a
brave stand against Bismarck in the _Kulturkampf_, the Lutheran Church
has remained a docile State Church. This Erastianism is illustrated by
no one more signally than by the Pontifex Maximus of Prussian
Protestantism, His Excellency Wirklicher Geheimrath Adolf von Harnack.
Harnack has earned world-wide fame as a bold interpreter of the
Scriptures, but he has refused to countenance those ministers who were
discharged merely because they acted on his teachings. In his
exegesis, Harnack has been the most uncompromising of critics. In his
religious politics, he has been the most tame of courtiers, the most
pliable of diplomats. He has taken infinite liberties with the Sacred
Texts. He has never taken any liberties with the sacred majesty of the
Kaiser.
V.
The confusion of temporal and spiritual power in German Protestantism
brought about two great evils--servility in politics and indifference
in religion. But it also seemed to bring one great compensating
advantage--namely, complete toleration of other creeds. People do not
fight for a creed to which they have become indifferent. Frederick the
Great gave equal hospitality to the free-thinking Voltaire and to the
Jesuits who had been expelled from most Catholic countries.
That compensating advantage of religious toleration seemed to further
the higher intellectual life of the Universities, and in one sense it
did. But it must not be forgotten that neither religious toleration
nor the higher intellectual life ever extended to the province of
politics. The freedom of the Prussian Universities was always limited
by the necessities of the State and the accidents of politics. With
regard to religion and political thought, the Prussian State always
acted on the principle implied in the cynical epigram of Gibbon: "All
religions are equally true to the believer. They are equally false to
the unbeliever, and _they are equally useful to the statesman_." For
three hundred years the Prussian statesmen have attempted to utilize
the Christian religion, and Prussian Christian divines have in fact
proved the most serviceable of tools. Unfortunately, in the process
religion has disappeared from Prussian soil, and with the liberating
influence of the Christian religion has vanished political liberty.