No More Learning

e. , abstractly logical -- formula, as follows: "The absoluteness of the spirit ual Being of God consists therein, that the actus purus of his self-sufficient existence within himself is the non-temporal and non-spatial condition, i. e. , the eternal and omnipresent source, of the temporal and spatial process of the finite world. " God is the source of the world, not by temporal act of creation out of nothing, but in that by a non-temporal method he produces from himself the material being of the world, and makes it external to himself. The latter expression is intended defi
nitely to provide against any pantheistic confusion of God and world ; but, it must be confessed, the conception of the abso lute Spirit producing from himself, and making external to himself, a material world, the nature of which is antithetical to his own spirituality, is as unrealisable in thought as the Church's idea of creation, which lays no claim to logical truth.
Moreover, in Biedermann's case this claim rests upon a de lusion ; the categories of (Insichseins) existence within self,
and making external to self (Aussersichsetzens), evidently be long to the intuition of space, and are therefore by no means
purely logical, but figurative expressions, which are not purer but only much less significant than the expressions usually borrowed from the analogy of the human spirit. Biedermann's rejection of this one possible way of arriving at positive (though, of course, always relative) statements about God, ostensibly in the interests of " pure thought," which, it is said, can lay claim to absolute appropriateness, was not the strength but the weakness of his theology, betraying his bondage to the logical formalism and dogmatism of the Hegelian school.
Biedermann discusses at length the nature of divine revela tion. It is a process within the human spirit, effected by God, in which man's spiritual activities are not set aside but raised above their finite limitation, so as to experience the divine.
? ? ? ? I42 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
More particularly, we may distinguish three elements in the
divine revelation : it appears as the basis of man's spiritual life
in his bent to rationality (Vernunftrieb), as the law of his spiritual life in his conscience, and as the force securing its normal realisation in his religious and moral freedom. This latter is the properly religious revelation, which takes place in the faith of the religious man as illumination, blessedness, and sanctification. These inward experiences of the religious spirit are the effect therefore of direct divine action or revelation, and in this consists the only revelation properly so called ; on the other hand, things lying behind or outside them, whether external events or history or sacred scriptures or ceremonial observances, are in themselves only phenomena of mans life of faith ; though a natural confusion of the external and de rived with the inward and primary causes them to be looked upon as direct divine revelations, and gives them in the faith of the Church a position of unchangeable divine authority given once for all. Hence we have the principle of super natural authority common to all positive religions, and their tendency to strictly preserve anything traditional as having ostensibly come directly from God. This failure of super- naturalism to recognise the natural side of historical religion is corrected by Rationalism, which calls attention to the natural historical conditions of all religious phenomena, but on the other hand exaggerates the truth of this observation by treat ing everything in religion as a merely natural product of the human mind, and quite dispensing with the divine factor. The problem of critical and speculative theology Biedermann con siders to be to preserve such a mean between the two ex tremes that the supernatural or divine, and the natural or human come to be recognised as the two inseparably united sides of every revelation and throughout the whole history of religion. Biedermann has also applied this principle to the Christian tradition and to the solution of the great questions of Christology, of the nature and value of the Bible, and of the creeds of the Church.
The Christian religion, he teaches, had its historical source in the person"of Jesus, while its essential nature or principle is to be found in the religious relation as it is presented to us in the religious consciousness of Jesus as a new fact of revela tion determining his whole personality and at the same time creating faith in that personality. " We can therefore call the
? ? ? ? Ch. III. ] SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY. I43
religious personality of Jesus the essential principle of Chris tianity, meaning by this that the new saving influence on man kind with this new object of faith, was simply the characteristic
religious consciousness of this person, which took the form of the consciousness of sonship to the heavenly Father. Un doubtedly this personal consciousness of Jesus points to a divine revelation, and so far was miraculous, but only in the relative sense, not as something transcending the constitution of humanity, but as itself the highest fulfilment of the religious and moral destiny of the race ; in Jesus the religious truth that we are all called to be sons of God became, with immediate freshness and force, the content of our knowledge and feeling and a motive-power in our will ; in this sense he is the Son of
God and the Saviour /car e^p-xfiv. But when the Church con verted this relative miracle of the original religious personality
? of Jesus into a miracle pure and simple, the superhuman person of the God-man from heaven, it did so in consequence of the above-mentioned psychological " law of identification," ac cording to which the divine source of revelation gets directly
identified with the human means of its manifestation. Bieder- mann considers it to be the business of dogmatic Christology to correct this optical illusion from which all its difficulties spring, to discriminate between the person of Jesus and the Christian principle, the spirit or the ideal of life, the idea of Christianity, and to do this in such a way as neither to con
found the two nor to abstractly separate them, but rather to
present the person as the historical embodiment of the prin
ciple, and the principle as the ideal significance of the person. In this idea of the business of Christology, Biedermann is in
substantial accord with the theory of Alexander Schweizer above noticed, though the theories are somewhat differently formulated.
Our theologian adopts a similar course in describing the Reformation. Here too he distinguishes the principle from its historical manifestation in the formation of the Reformed
churches. The former consists in a fundamental tendency of the Christian spirit, which always exists in the Church, be cause belonging to the essence of Christianity -- the tendency to react against its own misrepresentation in the Church, and to maintain its peculiar truth in contradistinction to the lower stages represented by the religions of nature and of law. The
Reformation gave dogmatic expression to this tendency in the
? ? ? 144 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
" formal principle" of the sole authority of the word of God,
and in the "material principle" of justification from grace alone and through faith. But when the Churches of the Pro testant confessions were formed, it was only the practical religious importance of this principle that was recognised, and the consequences involved in it were not worked out. It was indeed historically unavoidable and justifiable in itself to go back for a knowledge of Christian truth behind the tradition of the Church to the Scriptures as historically the original source of this knowledge. But this historical appreciation of the Scriptures did not suffice ; they were regarded as " the word of God" absolutely, and infallible divine authority was
consequently
ascribed to them. Thereby the traditional
Catholic theory of authority was in principle still adhered to,
and only the form of the authority changed, though in a way
which might be regarded as an advance. But there was only a relative difference between the Protestant's principle of Scripture and the Catholic's principle of tradition. Equally opposed to the essence of Protestantism was the elevation of ecclesiastical forms of doctrine of historic growth to the posi tion of symbolic statements of unconditional authority. What is really Protestant is simply the continual regeneration of doctrinal theology out of the living principle of Christianity by means of the scientific criticism of the previous development of dogma.
This is the task of theological science which must not be hindered by any theory of inspiration. On the contrary, theo logy has to distinguish in the Scriptures, no less than in the creeds, between the ideal truth as the lasting kernel and the historically conditioned wrappings in which it appears in the
Biblical and ecclesiastical forms of doctrine. Biedermann has sought to do this. He gives an account first of the whole system of Biblical theology, and next of the theology of the Church with its central christological dogmas ; he then pro ceeds to critically analyse these dogmas, and finally presents their pure ideal content in a systematic form. This mode of treatment has the advantage of furnishing a strictly objective account of the Biblical and ecclesiastical doctrines, the histori cal account being kept separate from the theologian's own critical and speculative estimate of it ; but it combines the double disadvantage, that each individual doctrine is treated of in various parts of the book, thus rendering a connected view
? ? ? ? Ch. III. ] SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY. 145
less easy, and that the positive result, the pure logical essence of the historical subject-matter and its critical analysis, proves to be very much too meagre and vague to help the
Church of the present day to understand its faith. It is true that this defect is the consequence, not only of the form of treatment, but also of the theory of knowledge before con sidered. The metaphysics and psychology based upon this theory exercise also an influence for evil upon the matter of his eschatology : a consequence of it is the denial of the immor tality of the soul, since according to this theory the soul must be conceived only as the ideal side of the body and together with but not as an independent entity. clear that the Christian Church cannot accept this theory without cutting
? itself off from its whole past history
be the more readily rejected scientifically inadmissible, --for
and such a demand may proportion as also
depends upon the unde- monstrable assumptions of a philosophical dogmatism. This
the weak side of Biedermann's work, which in other respects contains so much that excellent.
Christian Hermann Weisse also belonged at first to Hegel's school, but probably perceived the error of logical idealism, and tried to correct a manner which bears close resemblance in many respects to the theosophy of Schelling's later years and of Baader, while his system not without the originality of genius, and contains an abundance of profound and fertile
dependence
The fact that his Philosophische Dogmatik oder Philosophic des Christenthums has notwithstanding had no important influence upon theology, maybe explained partly by Weisse's heavy style, partly by the little sympathy his purely deductive method meets with in the bent of our time towards
thoughts.
induction. To do Weisse justice, must not be forgotten that his speculative reasoning, in all departments, cluding religion, commands wide knowledge of the empirical subject-matter, and that he succeeds in working up this into his deductive statement in a most suggestive manner.
Weisse's Philosophische Dogmatik begins with a specula tive construction of the nature of God, which his departure from Hegel's logical idealism at once becomes apparent. The divine Reason, in which the eternal and necessary truths of reason are contained as an intelligible world, according to Weisse, not the whole nature of the Deity, but only the first element or stage of the primary possibility of all Being, but
empirical
g. T.
? ? it,
is, L
it
It is
in
a
in
is
it in
is
is
it in
;
it is
it,
? 146 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
not as yet reality. To reason and its necessary thoughts we
must add the divine Heart (Gemiith), in which the divine life,
as sentient and perceptive, begets a profusion of forms which prefigure the ideal types of the world ; and from this profuse creation of inward thoughts and figures there arises, thirdly, the divine Will, which freely works upon this given material, and so actualises the nature of God as personality and love. The identification of these three elements, or stages, with the Persons of the Trinity is a concession to dogmatic theology for which Weisse could quote precedents from the history of dogma ; but the conception of the self-realisation of God as a process in time preceding the creation of the world, is open to graver objections, and reminds us strongly of Gnostic
The creation of the world, too, Weisse represents as a series of acts beginning and continuing in time, the first of which was the formation of matter, or the chaotic fundamental forces, which proceeded from the divine Will by its action on the ante-creative products of his " nature " (or his heart), and formed the material for God's further organising and shaping activity as creator. From the nature of matter thus conceived Weisse explains the metaphysical necessity of evil in the world. The matter of the world, as the externalised will of God, which has put itself in antithesis to his personal will, possesses a dis tinct spontaneity of creature-existence which passes into a real
? mythology.
to the inwardness and blessedness of God, and hence is the common root of both physical and moral evil. Just as matter, though generated by God, presents notwith standing, as something relatively independent, an antithesis to his personal will, so God cannot all at once and by a fiat of will put an end to the evil involved in matter, but can only
gradually end the misery unavoidably involved in every fresh birth of living creatures, by the progressive creative activity of his loving will, and transform it into gladness. To this pre human evil, having its final metaphysical source in the self-will of the creature as such, Weisse refers ideas commonly held of the devil. Similarly the first origination of sin in the personal creature according to him, not to be sought so much in conscious acts of will, as in the genesis before time of the per sonal will out of the natural spontaneity of individual
antagonism
beings. These are, at any rate, profoundly suggestive thoughts, which
a serious and earnest theology cannot pass over with indiffer ence.
? ? is,
? Ch. III. ] SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY. I47
The process of creation, which reaches its climax in the generation of rational creatures, is continued in the process of the history of civilisation and religion, which must be regarded as a continual " incarnation of God," in the sense that human nature is transformed from earthly nature to one in the image of God, and the ideal " Son-Man " is realised in the human race. The history of religion Weisse conceives as beginning in a consciousness of God, which in its essence is spiritual and with an ethical content, but vacillates between unity and plu rality, spirituality and a sensuous form. From this undeter mined beginning, either monotheism or polytheism might be developed. The fact of the priority of the latter development in heathen national religions is explained by the psychological law that the activities of the imagination and the heart are earlier in the ascendant than those of the conscious will. Pro gress in the mythological age consisted partly in the refine
? ment of the aesthetic form of the myths -- in conjunction with
the general development of each people -- partly in the ethic- ising of their religious contents. From the first the physical and ethical permeated mythology, it is true ; but while at the beginning the physical predominated, the emphasis was after wards laid on the ethical ; the sensuous materials of the intui tive imagination were more and more freely melted down into the form of their ideal content, quite independent of the direct phenomena of nature ; the gods of nature were personified and brought into connection with man's moral life. Hence we cannot deny the moral and religious value of the mythological religions, particularly the Grecian ; Weisse does not hesitate to say that in them was already at work the same power of God to save and sanctify which ecclesiastical dogmatism wishes us to regard as the sole property of the so-called revealed re ligions in the stricter sense. And he rightly adduces in favour of this broad human view the early Christian doctrine of the pre-Christian mission of the divine Logos. Though the re ligion of the Old Testament is a revelation in a higher sense, yet it is not this in such a way as to justify the exclusion of the polytheistic religions from the common idea of the incarna
tion of the divine. But what from the first distinguished the Hebrews' conceptions of God was their subordination of the imagination, the source of myths, to the ethical power of will, the source of history. The legislation of Moses was a typical act of liberation, inasmuch as it showed mankind that its
? ? ? 148 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
divine vocation was to rise above nature to a moral order of life. This conception of God was then freed from its national limitation, and the universal religious ideal prefigured in the teaching of the prophets, which may be compared to the teaching of Greek philosophy " and of the Mysteries ; for this too had risen in the Platonic Idea of the Good " to the rank of a monotheistic principle, and in the doctrine of immortality of the Mysteries to an ethical spiritualisation of religious hopes and ideals.
This universal historical process of the incarnation of God, or the realisation of the " Son- Humanity," is consummated in Jesus, who combined and gathered up the historical conditions into an act of personal consciousness. This permeation of the human nature by the divine, whereby the man Jesus became above all other mortals the instrument of the highest revelation of God, the personal " Son-Man," must not be understood mythically as a physical event, but as an ethical miracle accom plished in the soul of this unique personality. The peculiar characteristics of the personality of Jesus may be summed up by saying that he was endowed with genius in the highest sense of the word, analogous to that of all those historical per sonalities who have been originators in the realm of religion, in particular the prophets of Israel, though in the case of Jesus we must suppose an extraordinary intensification of the gifts of talent and genius. Religious experience was intensified in him to the absolute power of an inward revelation which first raised the historical revelation of God in the human race to its summit of perfection ; for this revelation, for the first time concentrating in consciousness the whole truth of the idea of God, completely permeating the heart and will of the entire personality, presented a person before the eyes of the world, who, within the limits of humanity, exhibited purely and com pletely the image of God. This is the same Christology as that of A. Schweizer and Biedermann, above described ; with the latter Weisse shares the speculative framework of his
? Christology,
and with the former the more definite delineation
of the historical character ; common to him with both is the
rejection of the mythically supernatural, and the translation of
it into ethical ideality in the domain of history.
Very closely allied to Weisse's speculations is Richard
Rothe's Theologische Ethik {isted. 1845-8
; 2nded.
His method also is deductive construction by means of specu
1864sq. ).
? ? ? Ch. III. ] SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY. 1 49
lative ideas, resulting in a Christian system of philosophy,
to which the supernaturalism of the Bible, the theosophy of
Schelling and Oetinger, and the theology of Schleiermacher have been made to contribute. The combination of these diverse elements in a systematic whole forms a work of art of too peculiar a character to admit of its being used as a general authority, but the charm of which consists in its being the
and reflection of a rich and noble mind, a profound thinker, a vivid imagination, and a truly devout soul.
Rothe himself describes his method as follows : speculative
thought, when engaged in speculation, closes its eye abso lutely to everything without, and looks solely into itself; it follows only the dialectical necessity under which every idea produces new ones from its own fertility. It is not till after wards, when speculation has completed its construction, that the consideration of reality has to be added, as the test of the conformity or nonconformity of the results of speculation with
product
? if the latter be the case, the mistake must be looked for in the manipulation of the ideas. Rothe therefore fully shares the formal principle of
the Hegelian school -- its dialectical method ; his results how ever differ widely from those of this school, and approximate very closely to Schelling's theosophy and Schleiermacher's theology ; and this is owing partly to the peculiar distinction drawn by him between philosophical and theological specula tion, according to which the contents and drift of the latter are from the first quite different from those of the former.
Philosophical speculation must, Rothe thinks, start from the pure consciousness of the ego, from this formal act of thinking self, abstracted from all content ; theological speculation, on the contrary, must start from the consciousness of God, which in its immediate certainty is co-ordinate with self-consciousness, and is therefore adapted to be the starting-point of an indepen dent system of speculation entirely parallel to the philosophical one ; an assertion which is exposed to the objection of being an unfounded petitioprincipii, and has nowhere found acceptance. We must however see how Rothe constructs his system on the basis of this principle professedly free from assumptions.
The conception of the absolute as the "self-determined" involves the distinction of potentiality and actuality. Hence we must think of pure potentiality, indeterminate and indif ferent Being, as the first thing in the Deity. From this hidden
the actual condition of the world ;
? ? ? 150
DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
source the actuality of God springs in the double form of per sonality and nature ; and originally Rothe had made nature in God the cause and therefore the antecedent of his person ality ; but in his second edition he makes God's personality rise directly from his potentiality and determine the further pro cess of his self-actualisation ; though, it must be acknowledged, that a clear conception of this is impossible, since we have no analogy in man's personality to guide us. The similarity of this speculative conception of God to that formulated by Weisse is at once evident, though Rothe does not wish, like Weisse, that the three elements or stages of the divine nature should be identified with the three Persons of the ecclesiastical dogma of the Trinity, but pronounces the con nexion to be altogether remote and unessential. From God's affirmation of himself as ego, Rothe further deduces his simul taneous affirmation of his non-ego, at first, as existing in voluntarily in thought only ; but when God actualises this imagined non-ego by a free act of will, it becomes pure matter. This is for God a limitation of his absoluteness (though created by himself), which as such he strives to abolish, but cannot simply negative, since it is necessarily implied in his ego.
Hence his active relation to matter can only consist in intro ducing spirit into thus raising to the position of his alter ego, created spirit. This fashioning of undivine matter into the organ of the divine spirit the continuous process of creation, which may be conceived as the continuous " becoming of the world " Weltwerdung), or, in relation to its goal, as more definitely " the incarnation (Menschwerdung) of God within the limits of material existence. " But inasmuch as this creative activity in organising matter at each stage dependent on the previously created things as its means, and in the last instance on matter as its substratum, cannot be purely absolute. This the ground of the want of complete ness every stage of the world, and of the imperfection of its condition at all times. All evil the world, including moral evil or wickedness, has its final source therefore, according to Rothe as well as Weisse, in the never wholly vanquished antagonism which the distinct life of matter presents to the will of God. And this true not only of the present epoch of the world, but of all future ones for every new period of creation will again have to contend with the dross of matter inherited from the one before Hence Rothe, like Origen,
? ? ? it.
;
in
is it
is
is
in
is it
(
it,
? Ch. III. ] SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY. I 5 I
maintains that the end of the world is always followed by a new period of creation.
Rothe's conception of the ethical vocation of mankind is
closely connected with these cosmological speculations.
as the spiritualisation of material elements is the purpose of the perpetual creative work of God, so the ethical vocation of the personal creature is the appropriation of material nature by means of his self-determination determining nature. Man is by self-determination to become a personal character, but at the same time by cultivating nature he is to become lord of the world. Hence if God's purpose with the world is identical with the progressive civilisation of historical humanity, the normal ethical action of the latter must be identical with religion, for it is action performed in fellowship with God, who influences and directs man's growing personality, and for the purpose of God, whose will is to occupy the world as personality. From this Rothe infers that morality and piety in their normal development are co-extensive, and that a piety without morality would be an abstract, phantom piety. In particular, " Christian piety is absolutely identical with pure and complete morality," and hence its community, the Church, is identical with the ethical community, the State. At present, it is true, as the moral has not reached its true normal condition, and the ethical community has not yet fully developed into a universal organism of states, this is only an ideal to be aimed at, and not immediately realisable ; but even now it must be the final end determining our moral and religious develop ment.
These fundamental principles of his theological speculation Rothe consistently followed out in relation to practical church politics. He opposed every form of ecclesiasticism that lacks
moral stamina, that pietistically shuns the world or is hier archically hostile to and insisted on practical Christianity with fine breadth of mind he recognised all that true and good in modern culture, in art and science, in the intercourse of nations, and in cultivated society Christianity and true humanity ought not only to form a close alliance, but Chris tianity ought to become absolutely moral and human, and humanity absolutely religious and Christian. Undoubtedly noble principles, which any case retain their truth, even we object to the formula of the " absolute equivalence and coincidence of religion and morality, Church and State," on
Just
? ? ? in
if ;
;
is
it,
? 152 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
account of the psychological and social difference of the two
spheres, and though we regard Rothe's eschatological forecast of the future as a transcendental fiction.
For in spite of the rationality of Rothe's view of the moral vocation of mankind, he still distinctly accepts the super- naturalism of the Biblical and ecclesiastical doctrines. Though regarding sin as an unavoidable passage in the course of the moral development of personality out of nature, he still believes that pre-Christian humanity fell a prey to an abnormal develop ment, to sinful depravity, from which it could only be delivered and restored to its normal moral condition by a miraculous act on the part of God, resuming the interrupted creation and beginning it afresh, viz. , by the sending of the supernatural person of the second Adam in Jesus of Nazareth. This second Adam, Rothe held, had necessarily to come into the world in a purely supernatural way, springing indeed from natural humanity, yet not called into being by its own develop ment and in the ordinary way, but by a creative act of God
upon which was absolutely miraculous the Saviour had to be born of a woman, though not begotten by a man, but created by God. Only thus, Rothe thought, could he be the second Adam and begin the normal moral development of mankind. He was not indeed from the first actually a divine person, but became such the course of his life consequence of his supernatural birth. For from the first moment of his personal life God entered into a relation of real union with him, in order by means of his moral development to dwell in him in ever closer approximation to absolute unity. The
course of his life was therefore a continual process of Man
becoming God and God becoming Man. This was completed the resurrection and the elevation of Christ to the divine sovereignty of the world, which he at present exercises his
spiritual presence Christendom, until on his visible return to earth he will establish the perfect kingdom of God. Together with Christ will appear the saints, clothed then with spiritual body, the bodies of the pious upon the earth will be made spiritual, while the ungodly will be given up to
judgment, i. e. , to total destruction.
Finally, the terrestrial world will also be spiritualised and placed communication with the heavenly spheres. Thus the kingdom of earth be comes the kingdom of heaven.
We shall not here inquire how far these doctrines are con
? ? ? in
a
it,
in
by
in
in
in
;
? Ch. III. ] SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY. 1 53
sistent with the speculative premises of the system. It is certain that Rothe's heart and imagination clung as firmly to this miraculous world of faith as his energetic ethical mind insisted on moral action and the reconciliation of Christianity with the culture of our time. We may say there dwelt two souls within his breast ; yet the two were united in him so as to form a complete harmonious personality, and it was just this which enabled him to generously tolerate and acknow ledge the very various tendencies of the Christianity of to day. " To the pure all things are pure," and Rothe was one of the purest.
? s
? ? ? CHAPTER IV.
ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS.
Under this head I include a series of theologians, belonging to the most recent past and the present, who in spite of the difference of their results possess the common characteristic of trying to reconcile the faith of the Church with their own thought and that of their contemporaries, without making their faith dependent upon the hypotheses and formulae of a definite philosophical system. At this point I wish expressly to pre mise that I do not in any way use the adjective " eclectic " in a derogatory sense. In philosophy, it is true, the word has usually such a sense, because from a philosopher we are wont to demand a harmonious system based on a definite funda mental principle, and giving a scientific account of the world, and hence we regard the eclectic method of philosophising, which tries to combine thoughts derived from various quarters, as defective. Even in the case of philosophy, however, we might object, that precisely the most important and fruitful contributions to it have derived the most varied elements from previous philosophers, and have never been more than partially successful in thoroughly combining them ; so that even in philosophy our unfavourable judgment ought not to condemn the eclectic method as such, but only unsatisfactory attempts to reconcile contrary modes of thought. Much more will this hold in the case of theology, which is not intended to construct systematic scientific explanations of the world, but to exhibit the belief of a particular Church for the practical purposes of its ministers at a particular time. If we consider that the theology of the Church is the product of its history
? during eighteen
centuries, enriched with contributions from
the most various minds, we must admit at all events that here,
in a much greater degree than in philosophy, systematic unity
can never be more than an approximately attainable ideal. If we further consider that the needs of the Church of to-day, for which the theologian must work, are of the most various
? ? ? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 1 55
kinds, and that their variety grows with the Church's wealth
in individual religious life, we shall come to the conclusion,
that a theology sacrificing this diversity of religious interests and forces in an attempt to work out in systematic form a definite and limited principle, fulfils its task worse than a
In proportion as a theology is dependent upon one particular philosophical system, it is certain to be wrecked upon the limitations of the latter, for its influence is confined to the narrow circle of the adherents of the system, and to the short period it is in vogue. The more, on the other hand, the theo
logian succeeds in giving expression to the religious and ethical ideal existing in the mind of the Church with a breadth of view and a freedom of treatment which recognises fully the (relative) justice of the claims of the various existing modes of thought and belief, the greater will be his success in pre
to extended circles the means of a common religious understanding, a symbol therefore of the community of faith, which always exists in spite of all differences. It however, evident that the theological works which aim at eclectically reconciling the old and the new, according to the needs of the Churches of to-day, must not be measured by the standard of
strict theological science. These theologians are right in so far as they succeed in finding for the faith of the fathers an
expression intelligible and acceptable to the present genera tion where they are wrong when any of them confounds the conditional truth of his dogmatic statements with an uncon ditional and universal truth, and in his dogmatic arrogance disputes the equal justification of other presentations of it. shall therefore, think, be justified in confining myself to an objective review of the characteristic opinions of the individual theologians of this class, without attempting a critical estimate of them. also purposely refrain from arranging them ac cording to their dogmatic schools the only difference of general nature among these mediating eclectics that with some of them conservative fear of breaking with ecclesias tical tradition predominant, and with others a free recasting
and development of this tradition. But this an altogether
an eclectic attitude towards the various
theology maintaining
philosophical systems, and contenting itself with rendering the Church's belief intelligible and useful to the general edu cated thought of the day. This is confirmed by experience.
? senting
indefinite distinction for even the conservative
reproduction
? ? ;
is a
I
is
is
is,
:
I
aI
;
is
? 156 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
of ecclesiastical dogma necessitates in some measure a recast ing of its original meaning, and even the liberal development of it is not intended to break the continuity of the historic growth of the Church's creed, and involves therefore to some extent an " accommodation " to tradition. I shall begin with
those mediating theologians who have the greatest affinity with the speculative theologians already discussed, while
differing from them in that their speculative thinking is not so much an end in itself as the form in which the given ecclesiastical dogmas can be best exhibited with such modifi cations as the times demand.
The most important of these theologians, and the type of the whole school, was indisputably Isaac August Dorner, who possessed a deeply reflective Swabian nature, profound religious earnestness, and a vivid sense of the need of sounding by thought the depths of the truths of Christianity dear to his heart. His youth was passed during the time of the great disturbance in the Church created by Strauss's Leben Jesu. While he was repelled by the negative result of this criticism, his love of truth and fairness was equally opposed to the tumultuous mode in which its opponents replied to with their superficial apologies, or even appeals to ecclesiastical and political force. His view was that the business of scientific theology to bring the Christological problem, propounded
Strauss, nearer to a solution. From the historical re
searches undertaken for this end came his great contribution
to the history of Christology, Entwicklungsgeschichte der
Lehre von der Person Christi (1856), a work in which the
author's profound learning, objectivity of judgment, and fine appreciation of the moving ideas of history were shown, as was universally acknowledged. This book was followed later by another important historical work, his Geschichte der pro- testantischen Theologie (1867). Like Alexander Schweizer, Dorner developed and elaborated his own convictions by his diligent and loving study of the history of the Church's thought and belief. He gave these convictions permanent form in his two principal treatises, Christliche Glaubenslehre, and Christliche Sittenlehre, the former of which
? by
appeared shortly before his death 879-8 1), while the latter was post
humously edited by his son (1886).
Dorner's Glaubenslehre a work extremely rich in thought
and matter. takes the reader through mass of historical
? ? It
a
(1 is
is
it,
? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 1 57
material by the examination and discussion of the various opinions of ancient and modern teachers, and so leads up to the author's own view, which is mostly one intermediate be tween the opposite extremes, and appears as a more or less successful synthesis of antagonistic theses. Of his method,
Dorner speaks as follows: "The method of Christian dogmatic
theology must be not simply productive, but rather reproduc tive ; still it must not be merely empirical and reflective, but also constructive and progressive. When the enlightened Christian mind is in harmony by its faith and experience with objective Christianity, which faith knows to be its own origin, and which is also attested by the Scriptures and the scriptural faith of the Church, then such a mind has to justify and develop its religious knowledge in a systematic form. " This is practically the same principle as that adopted by Alexander Schweizer ; and the considerable difference in the results of the two men only proves that this method, while a very valuable one, allows great latitude of individual opinion as to what constitutes objective Christianity, and from the nature of the case must always do so. The arrangement of
Dorner's book is singular. After a lengthy introduction, a
kind of religious phenomenology, leading successively through the different points of view of doubt and of hesitation to that of Christian faith, there follows, in the first part, the discus sion of the general fundamental Christian doctrines -- God, his nature and relation to the world ; man, his nature and original condition ; and finally, religion, as the unity of God and man, resting on divine revelation, realised in the his torical religions, and perfected in the historical appearance of the God-man Christ. Then comes, in the second and special part, the doctrine of sin, its nature and origin, and its con nection with the devil and death, and of Christian salvation, based on Christ's person and work on earth and in heaven, realised in the Church or the kingdom of the Holy Spirit, and to be consummated in the eternity beyond. It is character istic of Dorner that he treats the doctrine of Christ as the God-man among the general fundamental doctrines, placing it before the special doctrines concerning the historical Christ and his work of salvation. The incarnation of God (Gott-
? he regards as a speculative idea of the nature of an a priori truth, following from the nature of God and man, which would necessarily have been realised in history, if there
menschheit)
? ? ? 158
DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
had been no abnormal development of mankind in sin, which was not therefore the condition of the appearance of Christ the God-man, but only of his historical mission of salvation.
This arrangement has, however, the disadvantage of breaking up the doctrine of man, the accounts of his original state and of his sin being separated by the description of the historical
development of religion and revelation until the appearance of the God-man.
The doctrine of God is treated by Dorner with special
thoroughness, and contains valuable thoughts. He rejects the idea of the complete cognisability, as well as of the abso
lute incognisability of God ; our knowledge of God is always incomplete, growing, and relative, but is not therefore untrue. Again, the scientific examination of our belief in God is neither impossible nor unnecessary ; what is indeed primarily an immediate religious certainty, can and ought to be raised to a conviction with a scientific justification. This falls to be done in the section treating of the so-called proofs of the existence of God, though these must be so presented as to contain at the same time the doctrine of the divine nature and attributes. At each stage of the line of proof the idea of God is enriched with some new element, from the metaphysical at tributes of infinitude, omnipresence, and eternity, to the wisdom involving moral purposes, while each successive aspect thus gained of our conception of God is also shown to be the determining principle of some particular religion --the pro cesses of dialectic and history being thus made to run parallel, evidently owing to Hegelian influences. Of the details we must notice Dorner's view of the eternity of God, which he says must not be so conceived as to imply that for God time does not exist, making history a mere semblance without truth ; but the unchangeableness of God's nature does not exclude a changed relation to changes in time, a variation of his knowledge in the course of time ; the immutability
? of God must not be understood in so abstract a sense as to negative his life. Of the spiritual attributes of God justice is placed first, and defined as
God's maintenance of his honour, which, as the absolute standard of all value, is the source of right in the world ; God's justice consists in the ethically good as the absolutely valuable, and secures for it its absolute and unique rights. Absolute intelligence, or omniscience and wisdom, is repre
(Sichselbstgleichkeit)
? ? ? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 1 59
sented as derived from ethical perfection, to indicate that, like everything else, intelligence in the last resort is only a subordinate instrument of moral goodness. The question as to the compatibility of God's self- maintenance, as absolute intelligence and personality, with his self-impartation and immanence in the world, leads to the doctrine of the divine Trinity, which is precisely the Christian synthesis of this antithesis of transcendence and immanence, or of God's just self-maintenance and his loving self-impartation to the world. The essence of every religion is expressed in its conception of God, and thus Christianity by its doctrine of the Trinity has secured itself against both the abstract monotheism of Judaism and the polytheism and pantheism of heathendom. The two Unitarian heresies, Arianism and Sabellianism, were the effects of the imperfections of Jewish deism and heathen poly theism, the former denying the true communion of God and man, the latter the holy exaltation of God above the sinful world. Christian Gnosis rose above both these errors by its conception of the holy love of God, of which the doctrine of the Trinity is the exposition. From this point of view Dor- ner constructs an ethical Trinity : the ethically Necessary, the ethically Free, and the Love uniting both, form the three aspects of the one absolute Personality ; each of these three " modes of being " participates in the personality of God, but is not itself a separate personality, for the absolute personality can only be one. In this way the ecclesiastical dogma of the Trinity is interpreted from the point of view of a speculative theism, bearing the closest resemblance to that of Weisse.
The eternal love of God creates a free world, distinct from God, to establish a communion of love with itself. Being an organism with varied elements, this world is
intended to be the copy of the triune life of God. The creation out of nothing means that the matter and form of the world are alike wholly derived from God ; but this derivation must not be conceived as having had a beginning in time. The conceptions " creation " and " preservation " must neither be confounded nor separated from each other. Preservation is the continued action of the divine creative
will, though in such a way that the secondary causality imparted to the creature itself becomes the means for its own self-reproduction, so that the created world, by reason of the
? all-pervading omnipotence,
is also the cause of itself. If we
? ? ? l6o DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
define creation and preservation teleologically, they lead to the conception of a Providence partly ruling existing things, partly creating new ones. Its final end is a kingdom of moral spirits, governed by holy love ; the freedom of the creature, not fettered by the universal plan, but, as foreknown, is made a part of that plan. Man, on the one hand belonging to nature, and on the other rising above nature as an immortal
spirit, is in the image of God. partly as his original birth right, and partly as his true destination ; he cannot therefore be a mere product of nature, but his existence presupposes a fresh creative act of God. Man, though good by his original creation, became the cause of evil by an act of freewill, of which no further explanation can be given ; the evil became the permanent corruption of human nature, and as such was by the laws of heredity transmitted from the first parents to all mankind. This inherited racial sin involves a general
? need of salvation, but is not personal guilt, and does not decide a man's definitive merit or final destiny, which depends upon his personal decision. The restoration of the image of God, marred by sin in the human race, was only possible by the incarnation of God in the Son.
But this incarnation, as the completion of the revelation of God, was also necessary in itself independently of sin, since mankind was from the first created to arrive at perfection by communion with God. Hence Dorner had previously con nected with the doctrine of man's nature, as created in the image of God, the doctrine of the unity of God and man in religion. God being love, imparts himself to man, and man is spiritually able to receive the communication ; the reality of this impartation and reception affirmed as a unity is religion.
Religion is primarily realised not in one of the spiritual faculties, but in the man as a whole, or in the heart ; as Dorner
very characteristically seeks to prove, not by psychological considerations, but from the fact that God as personality is an indivisible spiritual whole. To God's manifestation of himself in his sovereign power and his will, there corresponds on man's side a primary consciousness of absolute dependence upon God and devotion to him, by reason of which man is filled with divine life in knowledge, freedom, and blessedness. Since religion is not simply a subjective action, but pre supposes an approach of God to man, it implicitly contains the idea of revelation. Revelation is a creative act of God
? ? ? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. l6l
upon the human heart, and its distinctive marks are originality or novelty, constancy and universality, positiveness and
gradual growth. The ideas "supernatural" and "natural," "immediate" and "mediate" in relation to revelation must not be thought of as exclusive and contradictory, but, as from Schleiermacher's point of view, as the two aspects of
every revelation. As regards its form, revelation is partly the outward manifestation of the divine power as interfering in the system of nature (miracles), partly its inward working upon the human spirit (inspiration). The possibility of miracles must be conceded for the sake of the freedom of God in relation to the world, and in virtue of the breadth and elasticity of natural law ; their necessity follows from their importance in authenticating revelation. Very characteristic of Dorner's mode of thought, which is emotional and poetical rather than strictly intellectual, is the sentence, " Every uncorrupted soul rejoices in the miraculous. It is the part of prose to hate the miraculous, of poetry to love it ; of true poetry, of course, which does not create vain phantoms of the imagination, but loves to contemplate the realised ideal, the higher, more perfect, and therefore poetical stage of spiritual freedom, when it is in harmony with nature :"--a sentence which reminds us of the utterances of Romanticism, e. g. , the " magical idealism " of Novalis. Inspiration is the spiritual miracle performed on the spirit as a whole, increasing its strength and purity, or, more particularly, it is enthusiasm (Begeisterung) and enlightenment with regard to truth, for the purpose of establishing permanent religious fellowship. The primary seat of inspiration must not be sought in books, but in men, and must not be separated from the general history of revelation. But though no specific difference can be proved between men endowed with the spirit and inspired men ; still of the latter it is a distinctive and indeed unique characteristic, by virtue of their being vehicles of revelation, that without being personally absolutely incapable of error, they are yet preserved from it in their teaching and preaching, and
? truth, even in historical details, as the word of God. Thus after approaching a freer rational view, Dorner returns to the old ecclesiastical doctrine of the absolute
proclaim only unerring
and infallibility of the Bible, a concession to eccle siastical dogma which was fatal to his position with regard to scientific Biblical criticism.
inspiration
G. T. M
? ? ? l62 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
Revelation, and therefore religion too, reaches in" the first instance perfection in a single being, who, as the absolute God-man," is the Revealer pure and simple ; but as the
man after the image of God, is the instrument of securing the perfection of the world, The necessity of the incarnation does not depend merely upon sinful humanity's need of redemption, but is demanded apart from it by the vocation of mankind to reach full communion with God, and to form a united organism under a central head ; for such a universal head, in whom all the limitations of human individuality are done away, can only be a man in whom God's communication of himself to mankind is absolutely and universally realised, or in whom God as Logos has become man. Indeed, the God-man, as the absolute pneumatic personality of universal spiritual power, is not merely the head of men, but also of angels, his kingdom includes all ranks of spirits, and perfects their conscious unity. Finally, Christianity claims to be the absolute religion, which necessitates an absolute God-man as the
centre of this religion. That this intrinsically necessary incarnation actually took place in Jesus of Nazareth is historically proved by his holy personality, his witness to himself, and his work, as well as by the changes still being wrought in mankind by his influence. The question as to the manner in which God's incarnation in Jesus must be conceived as taking place, is the business of theological speculation to answer. On the basis of the historical development of Christology, Dorner constructs a theory of his own, of which the following is an outline. The subject of the incarnation is " God as Logos," i. e. , not a personal Logos hypostatically distinct from God the Father, but God himself in his loving will to reveal and communicate himself to mankind. That
the Logos " became flesh " must not be understood to mean that he assumed human flesh as a garment, or even changed himself into a man, for he would then only have acted the part of a man, without having become a man ; it rather means that God, as Logos, bestowed not merely his own power, but his absolute self, upon the human person of Jesus, from the moment of his birth in ever-growing measure, while the personality of Jesus received this impartation of the divine life with increasing power and receptivity in the course of his free personal life, becoming ever more completely
perfect
? permanent
? ? ? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 1 63
possessed and filled by God, till his human being became at last absolutely and indissolubly one with the divine mode of being of the Logos. The conscience and the Christian witness of the Spirit -- that of course, the moral and religious consciousness its Christian ideality -- mentioned as having analogy to this union of human knowledge and will with the divine whence we might infer that the person of Christ must be conceived as the first and archetypal manifestation of the Christian ideal of piety and morality. But this inference, however natural, would not quite represent Dorner's view, according to which Christ not a mere individual like others, but differs from all empirical individuals in representing the general idea of the human race, freed not only from sin, but also from the limitations and incomplete ness of other individuals in a word, he "the central in dividual," ordained to be the centre, not only of humanity, but also of the whole realm of spirits, being in consequence the eternal celestial sovereign, and the personal judge of the world at his second coming to consummate the kingdom of God. The motives of this Christology of Dorner are plain he wishes to do fuller justice than done by the ecclesiastical doctrine to the human and ethical side of the person of Christ, and at the same time retain as much as possible of its transcendental metaphysics whether he has satisfactorily accomplished this, particular whether a central individual coincident with the idea of the race conceivable actual history, a question will in this place only suggest. The same holds good of Dorner's treatment of the doctrine of the work of Christ, in which he follows the ecclesiastical tradition still more closely than in his doctrine of Christ's person, not only formally in the doctrine of three offices, but materially, especially on the central point -- the atonement by vicarious satisfaction. Dorner teaches that when Christ put himself the place of mankind, order, his own feeling of pain, to bear the divine displeasure against the guilt of
the race, he made himself an offering for us to the punitive justice of God, and thereby became for the world the perfect surety, for whose sake God can grant, not only freedom from punishment, but even blessedness. --That Christ's three offices are perpetuated the corresponding offices of the
w
? Church, a valuable remark of Dorner's, which naturally have suggested a retrospective modification of his
might
? ? is
in
is
in
;
in
is,
in
in
is
is
in : I
is
in
(~
;
is
;
is
? 164 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
doctrine of Christ's work. -- Finally, we must mention that in
his doctrine of justification, Dorner defended the strictly
Lutheran theory against Hengstenberg's more rationalistic form of it. We can, however, trace a certain hesitation on Dorner's part with regard to the decisive question, whether the ground of justification is the objective merit of Christ to which the believer's relation is simply receptive, or not rather subjective faith itself, as the frame of mind pleasing to God, and, therefore, in principle, the beginning of a new life. Dorner's concern as a churchman for the objectivity of the work of redemption, inclines him to the former view; his
personal concern for the ethical conception of the Christian life of faith to the latter.
On the latter point characteristic words of Dorner's are found in his correspondence with Martensen : " The ethical idea is now all-important. . . . More and more I see Schleiermacher's peculiar greatness, and his unique position among modern princes of science, in virtue of his thorough blending of ethics and dogmatics. This will be a mine of wealth for the times which are now at hand. " What Dorner commends in Schleiermacher characterises also the fundamental principle of his own theology ; he tried to blend dogmatics and ethics, and renovate theology and the Church by the ethical idea of personal freedom in God. In this he is in
complete accord with Rothe. The excellence of this object, and the purity and fervour of his devotion to will keep Dorner's memory in honour, however we may judge of the success of his attempts at dogmatic mediation and the tenability
of his particular doctrinal views.
The Danish theologian Martensen, with whom Dorner was
connected in a long and close friendship, represented a similar
? but differed from Dorner in his way of treating theological doctrines. Dorner had arrived at his results by the process of dialectical reflection upon the
various forms of doctrine of ancient and modern theologians but Martensen the historical method put quite into the background in favour of independent speculation, which indeed
everywhere presupposes the ecclesiastical dogmas, specially those of Lutheranism, but tries to skilfully combine them with the ideas of Bohme's and Baader's theosophy.