In respect of this intolerant dogmatism, Ritschl's
theology
marks a return to the weakest side of that Rational ism which he has so severely censured.
Pleiderer - Development of Theology in Germany since Kant
God regards this ethically perfect sacrifice not simply as an individual act, but as the common deed of man
kind generally as represented in Christ, and hence looks
upon mankind general as the normal development begun in by Christ were already finished which the more natural as this atonement was eternally willed and historically accomplished by God himself. Thus Schenkel rejects, with
Hofmann and Schleiermacher, the ecclesiastical doctrine of vicarious satisfaction made to the punitive divine justice, and holds that the atoning element was rather that Christ by his holy life, attested by his death, made amends for the sin
assuring
? ? it
;
; is
is
in
if
; in
a is
of
it
in
is
is,
? 1 82 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
of mankind, i. e. , actually overcame it and destroyed it at its root, and thereby gave God the pledge of a life of humanity well-pleasing to him. This triumph over the supremacy of sin put an end to the cause of the discord between God and mankind, and rendered it possible for God to look upon mankind as if the new development of life, begun in principle, was already actually accomplished. Christ's deed was vica rious only in the sense that his suffering and action exempli fied by anticipation what we are bound to suffer and do in fellowship with him. But when the work of atonement has once been comprehended, "with the help of the conscience,"
as a truly ethical deed, salvation, i. e. , the individual appro priation of the effects of the atonement on the part of each individual, must necessarily also be ethically conceived. Salvation can no longer be supposed to consist in the impu tation to a man of another's merits, faith being merely the passive acceptance of this justifying sentence of God. On the contrary, the new life won, in principle, for mankind by Christ, must be practically realised in each individual ; and this is done by faith, inasmuch as faith is the central activity of man's conscience in relation to God. Faith is the subjective condition of justification, inasmuch as the man by virtue of this change in his conscience, participates in the atoning per sonal life of Christ, and has received into his heart the new
divine principle of life exemplified in Christ. This beginning of a new life in the believer, God imputes to him as if it were already completed ; he regards it on account of the perfection of the principle active in it (the personal life of Christ), proleptically, as if it were itself already perfect.
The close connexion of this doctrine of atonement and of justification with the fundamental principles of Kant's philo
sophy of religion is very plain ; the difference is only that what Kant called the ideal of a humanity pleasing to God, Jesus being the conspicuous example of here identified with the ideal person of Christ but both cases by receiving this ideal into his own heart that the man becomes good in principle, and thus righteous before God, in spite of his asting empirical imperfection. That Jesus was not only the model but also the creative cause of this ethical and religious
process, while the society which he founded was its social mediate cause, the theological addition to the Kantian theory made as early as Schleiermacher, and which we have
? ? ? is
;
in
it is
it, is
? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 1 8 J
met with in various phases in the discussion of this group of
theologians.
Most nearly akin to Hofmann and Schenkel is the theo
logian AlbreCht R1tsChl ; with Schenkel he lays special stress on the ethical element, with Hofmann he emphasises the historical and social element, and claims with him to be a true Lutheran ; he is distinguished from both by the peculi arity of his epistemology and his method, which he eclectically derived from Kant and Lotze. In his book, "Metaphysik tind Theologie, he very emphatically opposed the bad episte mology and metaphysics" of previous theology, and offered his own as the foundation of an altogether new theology.
On a closer inspection, however, this, his famous theory of cognition, is seen to be only a dilettante confusion of the irreconcilable views of subjective idealism, which resolves things into phenomena of consciousness, and common-sense realism, which looks upon the phenomena of consciousness as things themselves, admitting no distinction between phenomena as perceived by us and the being of things in themselves ; a confusion to which the nearest parallel is the semi-idealistic, semi-materialistic theory of the Neo-Kantian
? author of the Geschichte des Materialismus (2nd ed. 1873), which enjoyed a brief celebrity as having supplied, it was
thought, a justification of the sceptical tendencies of the time. We may, moreover, conjecture that Ritschl did not make this theory of cognition the basis of his theology from the first, but rather propounded it subsequently, in its defence. In spite of its intrinsic worthlessness, it is well calculated to furnish this theology, in its wavering between the subjective dissolution of the objects of theology and the affirmation of their objective reality, with an appearance of scientific justifi cation having a certain attraction at least for amateurs in these questions.
Ritschl expounded his theological system in the third volume of his principal work, Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, of which the first and second volumes had contained the
history of the dogma and its Biblical-theological premises respectively. The third volume appeared in three editions, between 1874 and 1888, differing in some points from each other. Indeed, a careful comparison of the later presenta tions with the earlier shows an increasing advance in the direction of speculative scepticism and historical dogmatism.
Lange,
? ? ? 184 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
" Religion was defined by Ritschl in the first edition as the common recognition of the dependence of man on God," or, more precisely, " as our view of the world from the basis of the idea of God and our estimate of ourselves from
our sense of dependence upon God in relation to the world. " The peculiarity of the religious view of the world he holds to be that it involves the conception of a whole, while theoretical knowledge in philosophy and the special sciences is limited to the general and particular laws of nature and spirit, and cannot by its methods of experience and observation attain to the conception of the world as a unity and a whole. Wherever philosophy has claimed by its methods to construct a view of the universe, we should rather discern an impulse of religion, which philosophy must distinguish as specifically different from its own object of systematic know ledge. Conflicts between religion and science are to be avoided by religion retaining as its privilege the right of viewing the world in its unity, and by science limiting itself to the particular phenomena of the world. Afterwards, on the other hand, Ritschl admitted that philosophy also treated of the world as a whole, with the object of comprehending it under one supreme law. Hence the distinction between religious and scientific knowledge is not to be sought in its object, but in the sphere of the subject, viz. , in the difference in the attitude of the subject towards the object. For religion, he now states, " is occupied with judgments of value ( Werthurtheile)" i. e. , with conceptions of our relation to the world which are of moment solely according to their value in awakening feelings of pleasure or pain as our dominion over the world is furthered or checked. "In all religion, by the help of the sublime spiritual Power which man adores, the solution is attempted of the contradiction in which man finds himselt placed as a part of the natural world and as a spiritual person
For in his
? ality with its claim to sovereignty over nature.
position he is a part of nature, in subjection to
upon and checked by other things, but as spirit he
by the impulse to maintain his independence against external things. In these circumstances arises religion as a belief in superior spiritual powers by whose help the deficiencies in man's own power are supplied. " All religion seeks to supple ment, by means of the idea of God, man's sense of personal dignity in the face of the hindrances of the world this idea
dependent moved
? ? ;
it, is
? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 1 85
of God is " the ideal bond between the particular view of the world and the vocation of"man to attain goods (Giiter) or the
highest good (happiness. ) ' The thought of God must be treated in Christian theology solely as a judgment of value, or as a conception valuable for the attainment of goods. This is the same theory of religion as the well-known one of Feuer- bach: the gods are the " Wunschwesen," invented by man from his practical need of a supplement to his own powerlessness over nature. But while the pathological explanation of the idea of God by motives of human feeling was intended by Feuer- bach to deny the truth of this idea in an objective sense, and to affirm its purely imaginary character, the theory is directed by Ritschl to the exactly opposite conclusion, that the emotional value of the conception of God for the preservation of man's sense of personal dignity is also the warrant of its truth. That this warrant is not sufficient to insure to theology a knowledge of speculative truth and the character of a science, had indeed been
? formerly fully recognised by Ritschl himself, who had therefore in his first edition still
held the necessity and possibility of an independent proof of the existence of God, founded upon the general data of the human mind ; as such he had regarded the ethical proof as stated in Kant's Critique ofJudgment, and had expressly declared that the "acceptance of the idea of God on that proof was no practical belief (as Kant had thought), but an act of speculative cognition," by which the general rationality of the Christian view of the world is established and thereby the possibility of a scientific theology secured, while such a theo logy would be impossible if the idea of God could not be established to the satisfaction of speculative knowledge also as its necessary basis. In the third edition, on the other hand, this position is altogether abandoned ; we now read " this acceptance of the idea of God as Kant remarks, a practical belief, and not an act of speculative cognition. " In
justification of this change of view, alleged that
the work of theology to preserve the distinctive character of the idea of God, that allowable to use only in judgments of value. Hence theoretical proofs of the idea of God are doomed to failure, "because their professed results, even true, do not accord with the Christian thought of God, that
Seligkeit.
? ? 1
in
it is
if
it is
it is
is, it
? 1 86 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
they fail to express its value for men, in particular for men as sinners. " Thus while Ritschl formerly recognised that a scientific and universally valid justification of the belief in God, and consequently of theology, cannot consist merely in an inference from the religious view of the world to its inner coherence, but must be based upon independent and univer sal data of the human mind, he now, on the contrary, pro nounces the theoretical method of proof objectionable in not being confined to Christian judgments of value, or in aiming to be not only simple practical belief, but also independent theoretical knowledge. We see from this how, from the sub
jective conception of religion, is deduced the limitation of the
science of religion, or theology, to the sphere of judgments of value, or subjective truth, and the abandonment on principle of all attempts to attain objective truth valid for the knowing mind in general.
In accordance with his principle that the Christian thought of God must be put forward only in judgments of value, Ritschl teaches that God should be thought of only as love.
All metaphysical statements regarding God's absoluteness, his existence through himself, in himself, and for himself, must be rejected as "heathenish metaphysics," connected with the false theory of knowledge which maintains the existence of things irrespective of our conception of them. The idealistic subjec- tification of the idea of God on the lines of Feuerbach seems a necessary consequence of this. Such is not, however,
Ritschl's intention ; on the contrary, he seeks to conceive of the personality of God as objectively real. That this involves the assertion of an absolute existence of God in himself, as
from his existence in relation to us, or his love, is plain, but is not admitted by Ritschl. He says that the attribute of personality is only the form for God's love. If this proposition were taken strictly, it would finally come to mean that our conception of the personality of God is the form under which we personify love as " God," which is the view of Feuerbach and the Positivists. But Ritschl does not mean ' this ; indeed, he speaks also of an " intrinsic purpose of God," into which God takes up the purpose of the world, or which he realises in the education of the human race for the kingdom of God. But such a purpose is a relation of the
1 Selbstzweck Gottes.
? distinguished
? ? ? Ch. IV] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 187
will to itself, and therefore presupposes a being which is not solely love, that existing for others, but exists also as a
in and for itself. This inner self-subsistence of God,
with his loving communication of himself, not merely a
necessary metaphysical conception, but also of great religious
since the foundation, as Dorner has well remarked, of the Biblical conception of God's holiness and righteousness, which in the teaching of the Bible and the Church inseparable from that of his love. But this side of the idea of God altogether neglected by Ritschl. He says " In comparison with the conception of love there
no other of equal value. In particular this holds of the con ception of holiness, which its Old Testament sense for several reasons, not valid in Christianity, and the use of which in the New Testament obscure. " And with regard to God's righteousness, which, according to Biblical doctrine, his holiness " actively shown, Ritschl (like Hofmann) considers that his action for the salvation of the members of his religious community, and identical fact with grace. "
This connected with Ritschl's peculiar doctrine of sin.
He altogether rejects the idea of original sin, because assumes that there will previous to its individual acts an assumption related to the false doctrine of things in them selves, and because the hypothesis of an innate evil tendency makes both responsibility and education impossible. The latter demands the exactly opposite hypothesis, " that the general though still indefinite impulse towards good exists in the child, although not guided by a general insight into the good, and not yet tested by the various relations of life. "
For the conception of original sin we must, therefore, substi tute that of the " kingdom of sin," i. e. , of the collective unity of free actions opposed to the purpose of the kingdom of God, and of the inclinations acquired thereby. The law of sin the will not natural loss of its freedom, but a consequence of the necessary reaction of every act of the will upon the direction of the power of volition. Accordingly the unchecked repetition of selfish determinations of the will produces ten dency to selfishness, and the sin then transmitted from one individual to another by the interaction of their conduct in
subject
importance,
? Ritschl has not indeed shown how any selfish deter minations of the will at all can be explained, there exists in the child by nature only an indefinite impulse towards good
society.
? ? ;
is
if is a
is
is a
is
in
is
it is
is
is,
in it is
;
it is is
:
is
a is
is is
in
in
it
is,
? 1 88 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
for the attempt to explain it from ignorance is certainly un satisfactory. Ritschl holds, namely, that ignorance, as ex perience proves in the case of children, is "a very momentous factor in the origination and development of sin ; " and further, that it is " the essential condition of the conflicts of the will with the order of society as the rule of goodness, and also the condition of the fixity of the will in its resistance to this order. "
It may easily be seen how little this explanation accords with experience, of which a very different account is given even by the heathen poet (Nitimur in vetitum), and above all by the Apostle Paul (Rom. vii. ). In Ritschl's case also, this treat ment of sin as ignorance is not so much the result of actual observation as a postulate of his doctrine of God and recon ciliation. To the regulative conception of God corresponds, he says, the distinction between the two stages of sin -- an im perfect stage, not excluding the capability for redemption, and a completed stage, consisting in a final purpose of opposition to the known will of God. Since the latter is only a hypo thetical possibility, of which we can nowhere assume the reality, all actual sin of mankind is confined to the former stage, and this is regarded by God as " the relative stage of ignorance. " The artificial method by which Ritschl tries to harmonise his theory with the statements of the Bible, may be here passed over as valueless.
The correlative to the love of God is the kingdom of God, inasmuch as it is the union of men for mutual and common action from the motive of love, which action, as correlative to the purpose of God himself, and as the specific operation of God, is the perfect revelation of the fact that God is love. In the precise development of this thought there is again a noticeable difference between the first and the later editions of Ritschl's work. In the first the Christian idea of the king dom of God is the highest stage of ethical society among men, though removed from the earlier preparatory stages to no greater degree than these from each other. It is more perfect in virtue of its greater extent, but is not essentially different in kind, since the pre-Christian forms of society (family, friend ship, nationality) originated in love. And since, as is then stated, this union of men, wherever realised, must always be regarded as dependent upon God, and as the effect and reve lation of His love, the conception of a universal revelation of God throughout all human history is evidently presupposed,
? ? ? ? Ch. IV] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 1 89
since this history has never been without ethical fellowship and love. In the later editions, on the other hand, the com parison of the Christian kingdom of God with the preparatory stages of ethical society in history is omitted, and the love of God is exclusively confined to the historical Christian Church, which, by acknowledging Christ as its Lord, itself comes to stand in the same relation as he to God. Whereas it was formerly maintained that " God loves the human race from the point of view of its vocation to the kingdom of God," we are now told that " God is love as revealing himself through his Son to the Church founded by the latter in order to educate it for the kingdom of God " ; and whereas we were then told that all ethical union originated in love, and that all action from love must always and everywhere be regarded as de pendent on God, and as the effect of the revelation of his love, it is now stated that " All love of man originates accord ing to Christian ideas in the revelation of God in Christ. "
From these statements it would directly follow that before Christ there was neither a revelation of God nor an ethical association of men. If that be so, from what source were religion and morality in pre-Christian humanity derived ? This
Ritschl has never explained. Simply to deny that it had any religion or morality, would lead to a pessimism more extreme than that of Augustine, and would strangely contradict Rit- schl's optimistic view of the goodness of human nature.
Finally, it is evident that the limitation of the divine revela tion solely to the person of Jesus, whose historical connection with the religion of Israel is undeniable, verges close upon the denial of revelation altogether. Thus ultra dogmatism in the end leads to the opposite extreme, as has actually been
? in Ritschl's disciple, Bender.
In his Christology, Ritschl starts from the principle that in
a personal life what is real and actual consists of spiritual effects and nothing else. By this means the Christological problem is much simplified. Not only the dogma of the two natures, but the whole metaphysical background of ecclesias tical Christology is thus got rid of, even more decisively than in Schleiermacher's theology, and replaced by an historical view of the subject. In strange contrast with this, Ritschl nevertheless continues to speak with orthodox theology of the deity of Christ. It is true this term has for him an altogether different meaning. It is the expression of our estimate of
exemplified
? ? ? 190 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
Jesus, of our trustful acknowledgment of the unique value of what his life effected for our salvation, but is not meant to predicate any metaphysical characteristic of his nature what ever, or any transcendental unity of his nature with God. The predication of the deity of Christ sums up his unmistakable importance as the perfect revealer of God and as the manifest type of spiritual supremacy over the world. Our religious estimate of Christ must be tested by the connection of his action in the world with his religious convictions and with his ethical motives. It has no direct reference to his presumptive possession of innate qualifications and capacities, for Christ does not influence us thus, but morally and religiously only. Jesus is the representative of the perfect spiritual religion, standing in a reciprocal relation of union with the God who is the originator and final end of the world. This involved his re cognition of God's divinest purpose, the union of men by love, as the task of his own life, whereby he experienced that in dependence of the world which the members of his Church ought to come to share with him. The peculiar value of his life on earth gains the character of a permanent rule by serving as a pattern for our religious and ethical vocation. This authority, which either excludes all other standards or else subordinates them to itself, and which is also the ultimate regu lative principle of all human trust in God, is equivalent in value to his deity. On the other hand, metaphysical attributes of deity cannot be ascribed to him for the simple reason that they
are altogether outside the religious method of cognition, which is concerned only with j udgments of value. So too the passages
of Scripture from which Christ's personal pre-existence has been inferred, are only to be understood in the sense that, in the thought and will of God, Christ from the beginning was the head of the community of the kingdom of God, which is the object of the world. The Johannine formula of the Word becoming flesh, means that the Word, which is the general form of divine revelation, became in him a human person, i. e. , that he is the perfect revelation of God.
While it follows from this that the doctrine of Christ's work must not be separated from that of his person, Ritschl further rejects the usual dogmatic distinction of his threefold office as prophet, priest, and king. In order to form a single compre hensive conception of Christ's work, we must regard it from the point of view of his vocation. Now, this vocation was the
? ? ? ? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. I9I
foundation of the kingdom of God, or of the universal ethical association of men as the divine object of the world. But since, as the founder of the kingdom of God in the world, or the representative of God's moral sovereignty over men, he is unique in comparison with all other men who have received from him the same purpose, he is the factor in the world in whose intrinsic purpose God, in a creative way, gives effect to, and manifests his own intrinsic purpose, so that all his actions in fulfilment of his vocation constitute the revelation of God, present and perfect, in him ; or, in other words, he is one in whom the Word of God is a human person. This theory gives the consistent ethical and religious estimate of Christ, and thus the christological problem of theology is solved. It is not the business of theology to inquire how the person of Christ came from God, and came to be that which is the sub
ject of our ethical and religious estimate, especially as the problem lies beyond the possible range of inquiry. The grace and faithfulness of Christ in the fulfilment of his voca tion, and the elevation of his spiritual aims beyond the limited and natural motives of the world, constitute the elements of his historical appearance which are comprehended in the attribute of his deity. Looked at with reference to man, this patience and faithfulness of Christ is the result of his devotion to his calling of realising the kingdom of God among men as their supermundane destination, supported by his special knowledge of God ; with reference to the divine Being, this human life appears as the completed revelation of God, since the final purpose of the world, to which Christ's life is de voted, is founded in God's inner purpose, or in his will of love.
For the complete definition of Christ's deity the further sup position is required that his grace and faithfulness and world- subduing patience have produced as their effect the society of the kingdom of God, with analogous attributes. This is evidently equivalent to saying that the "deity " of Christ con sists in the original exemplification and communication of the same true piety and morality in which consists also the
? " deity," or better, the fellowship with God, the divine son-
and divine likeness of Christians. This is the same
ship
thought as that found in the whole of Schleiermacher's
except that the latter usually express it more simply, being less painfully anxious to keep to the ecclesiastical term, to which from this position, really no just claim can be made.
school,
? ? ? 192
DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [BV. II.
There can be no such thing as special priestly functions on the part of Christ which are not included in those of his general vocation. If Christ is to be conceived as priest, he is so fundamentally because as the Son of God he stood in the closest communion of purpose with God, and carried this out in every moment of his life, since every act and word in his life's work, until his voluntary and patient suffering of death, sprang from his religious relation to God. The juridical conception of a satisfaction of God's punitive righteousness offends against the design of religion, since law and religion are contradictory standards of action, and the assumption that in God righteousness and grace tend in opposite directions, is irreligious, the unity of the divine will being the inviolable condition of all trust in God. Even if we agree with Ritschl's rejection of the theory of satisfaction, we cannot approve of his unsympathetic judgment of the Pauline and orthodox doctrine of the atonement ; we cannot but see in this an illustration of that Rationalistic dogmatism which is neither able nor willing to appreciate objectively, from a given religious point of view, the historical and psychological conditions of dogmatic con ceptions, or to admit their relative validity for such a point of view.
In respect of this intolerant dogmatism, Ritschl's theology marks a return to the weakest side of that Rational ism which he has so severely censured.
Not specially the death of Christ, which is only the com prehensive term to express his religious union with God, as
of the Christian society in the sense that in it there exists a union of men with God, in spite of their sins and of the accentuation of their feeling of guilt. The standard and historical source of this union is Christ's union with God, which he preserved in the faithful execution of his vocation to found the kingdom of God. For the grace and faithfulness of God, which is the ultimate efficient cause of the forgiveness of sin, is made manifest solely by the purpose which controlled all Christ's work of conducting men into such a relation to God as should save them from sin and gather them under the moral rule of God. From this point is first deduced the formula, that God makes the union of the members of Christ's Church with Christ the condition of admitting them
? predicable
his life, but his work in his vocation
preserved throughout
generally, brings about the forgiveness of sins, or justifica tion, or atonement. These synonymous conceptions are
? ? ? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS.
to a union with himself. But this proposition
with Schleiermacher's doctrine of salvation) receives forthwith in Ritschl an important modification. He maintains (though on the basis of very arbitrary exegesis) that it is historically certain that Christ conceived not individuals but the society to be founded by him and represented in the twelve apostles, as the direct object of the forgiveness of sins which he was to grant. Hence he pronounces Schleiermacher's formula wrong, that in Protestantism the relation of the individual to the Church depends on his relation to Christ, while in Catholic ism the converse holds good ; for in the case of Protestant Christians also the right relation to Christ is conditioned, not only historically (which is self-evident) but ideally, by the fellowship of believers, since no action of Christ upon men is conceivable except in accordance with the antecedent purpose of Christ to found a society. Schleiermacher's formula is only the reflection of the pietistical disintegration of the idea of a church, which dated from the individualistic theory of salvation in the Lutheran theology, but was not in harmony with Luther's own view (according to his Short Catechism). As in the pur pose of Christ the guarantee of a universal forgiveness of sins and the foundation of his Church were equivalent ideas, so in
the result of his work it is the same thing to be certain ot having one's sins forgiven and to belong to Christ's commu nity. The forgiveness of sins or reconciliation is possessed by the individual only as a member of the religious society ot Christ, in consequence of the immeasurable interaction of his own personal freedom and the determining influence of the
society. It is not by an individual imitation of Christ that we become assured of salvation, as pietists and mystics held, including Schleiermacher and his followers, for all
imitation of Christ in the proper sense is rendered impos sible by the difference of the special conditions of his life from those of the members of his Church ; but we are warranted
in the assurance of being children of God by belonging to the society founded by Christ. Moreover, love to God and Christ is not an apt description of the religious function of the individual, for we might understand by it " an imagi nary private relation to God and Christ," bearing the char acter of indifference to the world or of fleeing from In
these statements Ritschl's social positivism and his dislike of the mystical element religion carried to such extremes
(which
agrees
1 93
? o. t.
? ? in
is
o
it.
? 194 DEVELOPMENT OK DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
as plainly to do violence to essential interests of Christian
piety.
The justification possessed by the Christian as a member of
Christ's community is attested practically by his freedom or dominion over the world. This is not to be understood in the empirical sense but ideally, though not therefore any the
less a reality. It in general, faith in God's providence that the religious dominion over the world exercised for in the view of the world as a unity, under the idea of God as our Father, and in the corresponding estimate of ourselves, all things and events are regarded as means to our good. Under this Christian belief in" providence Ritschl appears to include also the hypothesis of miracles. " He puts both in contrast, as the general teleological and the miraculous view of the uni verse, with the scientific view, and he seeks to deprive the oppo sition of the latter (which however not directed against the teleological, but only against the miraculous view) of its force by reference to the incompleteness of our scientific knowledge
of the world and to the immediate certainty of the feeling personal worth expressing itself in the belief in providence.
He warmly opposes the view of the theology of the Aufkl'dr- ung, that the belief in providence a part of natural religion
? or of general scientific culture.
trary, confident trust in God
the Christian religion, since
Christ's Church of our reconciliation to God a statement which, considering the innumerable expressions of trust God in non-Christian religions, particularly the Old Testa ment, requires considerable modification related to the statement above considered, that God has revealed himself as love only in Christ this case, as in others, a difference
made an exclusive peculiarity, which simply un- historical dogmatism. There are however several good points in Ritschl's detailed account of the Christian belief provi dence as that must approve itself in patience and humility amid all the vicissitudes of life, and that shown Chris tian prayer, which chiefly thanksgiving or humble recogni tion of the divine rule. Finally, the moral perfection of the community of the kingdom of God deduced from its re ligious view of the world, and shown that manifests itself
degree
in the faithfulness of the individual to his calling, since moral action in a calling the form of each man's total
primarily
He holds that, on the con exclusively the contribution rests upon the assurance
? ? is it is
it is
it
it in is
is
is
it is
;
:
is
it
is ; in
is,
is in
;
in
of inofof of
is
in
is
;
? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 1 95
contribution to the kingdom of God. In this way freedom
is realised in law. But freedom is identical in kind with the
religious functions of belief in providence, patience, humility, and prayer, in which, in consequence of the Reconciliation, the individual becomes assured of his value as part of a whole in comparison with the world. The two spheres of morals and religion are so connected that neither can exist without the other. In the religious dominion over this world lies the present blessednesss of eternal life. But the moral formation of character also has eternal life for its object, since the certainty to the person of the indestructibility of spiritual existence is always connected with the experience of the
value of the ethical and religious character. Thus it is equally important to assert that the eternal life is given by God in the reconciliation through Christ, and that the completion of our salvation is attained by the development of the ethico- religious character and by the perfection in its kind of our life- work in our vocation. In spite of all this the moral and the religious sides of Christianity are not brought into a perfectly harmonious unity by Ritschl, as is seen in the remarkable statement that we must take both points of view alternately (viz. that of moral freedom and that of dependence upon God), an evident admission that the two are mutually exclusive. This is the inevitable consequence of his conception of re ligion as supplementing our freedom. The external dualism between moral freedom and the religious feeling of depen dence thus introduced from the first runs like a red thread through the whole of his theology, and is in particular the real cause of his dislike of religious mysticism, in which
freedom is felt in experience to be realised not along with but in dependence, the difference of the two being thus brought
he shares Ritschl's epistemological principles. He maintains with Kant the limitation of our knowledge to the realm of experience, to our external and internal perceptions and their logical combination so as to form regular relations of natural and spiritual existence ; and he denies the possibility of a metaphysical knowledge of the transcendental, which, he
holds, inevitably involves contradictions. But while Ritschl's school constructs an insurmountable barrier between our
? into a harmonious unity. Lipsius Among the opponents of Ritschl's theology,
oc cupies a prominent place, and all the more that, to a certain
extent,
? ? ? I96 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
theoretical knowledge of the universe and our ethico-religious certainty, Lipsius demands a connected and consistent theory of the universe, which shall comprehend the entire realm of our experience as a whole. He rejects the doctrine of dualism in a truth, one division of which would be confined to "judg ments of value," and be unconnected with our theoretical knowledge of the external world. The possibility and neces sity of combining the results of our scientific knowledge with the declarations of our ethico-religious experience, so as to form a consistent philosophy, is based, according to Lipsius, upon the unity of the personal ego, which on the one hand knows the world scientifically, and on the other regards it as the means of realising the ethico-religious object of its life. The former is effected by the study of the causal connection of external and internal events, and the latter by referring them teleologically to the ethical subject and its vocation. Neither of these modes of looking at things can be reduced to the
other, neither employed indifferently to supplement the de ficiencies of the other ; only in their mutual relation do they yield the whole of reality for us. Moreover, they must not be placed externally side by side in such a way that the one would be limited to the life of nature, and the other to that of history, but the sphere of teleology extends likewise into nature, and that of causality into history. Nevertheless, it is the sphere of the historical and ethical life of humanity which first elevates the teleology imperfectly traced in nature to the position of a prime factor in the construction of our philosophy of things. No one can be compelled by the method of scien tific proof to recognise the teleological unity of the world ; it is the personal feeling of moral obligation which leads to the belief in a moral order of the world superior to the order of nature. But this ethical certainty must not be allowed to make us indifferent to the natural conditions of the moral life, which can only fulfil its vocation by their means. This justifies the rule as to method, as rigidly keeping the causal, or empirical, and the teleological, or ideal, view of the world clearly distinct, as, again, of connecting them as the two sides of the same thing. By the application of this method by Lipsius to dogmatic theo
logy, it assumed in his hands the form of an ethico-religious phi losophy of life and the world, which as such is throughout teleo logical, but which must also remain in thorough harmony with the empirical or causal point of view of theoretical science.
? ? ? ? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 197
Lipsius defines religion as the solution of the riddle pre sented by the contradiction of our empirical determination by nature to our ethical vocation. Religion does not primarily concern society, but the individual, though the individual only in virtue of his necessarily seeking religious fellowship ; it is thus the most individual and at the same time the most uni versal of man's concerns. Its empirical motive lies in man's instinct of self-preservation, which seeks help from a super natural power, and for this purpose enters into a personal relation with ranging upwards from reverent dread to child like trust and thankful love. But the ultimate source even of the elementary form of the feeling, as well as of its advance from natural"to ethical religion, the supersensible nature of man, or his transcendental freedom," which both determines the entire course of his ethical development, and also leads him to enter into religious relations. For this freedom can only be realised in transcendental dependence upon a free Will, such as contains both the creative source of man's capacity for transcendental freedom and the power to realise
above the determination by nature. Inasmuch as the religious man, by rising to a Will above nature, becomes conscious of the action of this same Will in his own spirit, we have here the root of all belief revelation. On its meta physical side, therefore, religion a real mutual relation between God and man, the home of which the personal spiritual life of the latter revelation and religion are therefore convertible terms. The reality of this mutual relation consists in a personal fellowship of faith, experienced in the intercourse of prayer its manner lies beyond the analysis of the under standing, and constitutes the mystery of religion. As stages of religion, Lipsius distinguishes natural religion, ethical re ligion its legal form, and the religion of salvation, which the divine Will revealed not merely as an imperious law, but as love delivering from sin and evil. This highest stage
realised in Christianity.
In Christianity we must distinguish between the character istic fundamental religious relation and the fundamental his torical fact the former made actual by the latter, -- that
in the historical person of Christ but the value of the latter to us lies its being the vehicle of that fundamental relation, --that the sonship of man to God, which as such involves his participation the kingdom of God as God's final purpose
? by rising
? ? in
is
is,
in
in
;
;
in is
is
;
is
;
is,
is
it
in
is
a
it,
? I98 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
for the world. His sonship to God is subjectively conditioned by penitence and faith, and is objectively based upon God's reconciling and redeeming grace. This therefore, the specifically religious good, to the acquirement of which Chris tianity the vehicle, and primarily the highest good for the individual. The ethical association of men under the idea of the kingdom of God, which the ethical and social side of Christianity, subordinate to its religious and individual side. The Christian's religious experience of his sonship to God the subject-matter of the Christian faith with regard to God, man, and the world this contains no theoretical truths as to the objective nature of God and the world, but primarily only descriptions of the experienced relations of God to the religious man and to his world, though including declarations as to the supersensible realities of which faith assured. This faith, with its declarations, derived from the teleological contem plation, peculiar to the Christian, of the divine action in nature and history, and the course of his own life, a way of regarding the divine activity which, though does not rest on speculative (causal) knowledge, must not be inconsistent with it. Theo logical doctrines are therefore not mere descriptions of sub
jective devout states of consciousness, nor mere judgments of
value,
are descriptions of objective relations between God, man, and
the world, based upon subjective religious experiences, which are
? with no corresponding judgments of being but they
associated with the feeling of their being of the highest value for the subject.
All the declarations of the Christian faith have their objec tive foundation the revelation of God in Christ, of which the New Testament writings are the documentary authorities.
Revelation God's manifestation of himself for man. takes place by various stages --in the order of nature, in the moral order of the world, and in the order of salvation, which stages must be conceived as included in God's eternal plan of the world. The subject-matter of the highest, or Christian revela tion, not the kingdom of God, the announcement of which was not brought by Christ as something new, but God's saving and reconciling designs towards man, including the ethical idea of the kingdom of God as the necessary conse quence of the fellowship of love between God and his children. Nor does the guarantee of the truth of the Christian revelation consist the individual being a member of the community
? ? in
it is
;
is
is is
is
in
It
it
is
is
;
is
is is
it
is,
? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 1 99
which possesses reconciliation and redemption, but in his per
sonally appropriating by faith these saving blessings revealed in the Gospel, and thus obtaining the immediate personal ex perience of his reconciliation to God. This immediate personal certainty of salvation, in virtue of its resting upon the witness of the spirit, is the true centre and heart of Christian piety, its mystery not to be theoretically proved, but practically ex perienced, like the experience of the moral law, which is equally undemonstrable empirically, and yet is the foundation of the whole moral life. Still, the individual certainty of sal vation is preserved from the suspicion of being subjective self- deception by its known agreement with the similar experience of the whole Christian society.
These are the fundamental principles of Lipsius' theology, as expounded in his Abhandlungen zur Dogmatik, and in his work. Philosophie und Religion. From his more special trea tise (Lehrbuch der cvang. prot. Dogmatik, 1876 ; 2nd ed. , 1879) we may here notice his treatment of the dogmas l of God, Christ, Justification, and the Church.
The divine Trias of revelation must have its foundation in the divine nature. But our thought has no possible means of arriving at any logically tenable conclusion as to internal distinctions in the transcendental divine nature, much less as to personal distinctions in the Trinity. All such attempts lead to mythological conceptions. Similar difficulties arise from the application of the idea of the Absolute to the Christian idea of God. It true, an unavoidable necessity of our thought to conceive God as in fact absolute, i. e. as raised above the world of time and space only as the absolute cause is he the almighty creator and ruler of his world. But the ethical view of the world demands, again, that we should con ceive the absolute source of the world as personal, i. e. accord
ing to the analogy of our human consciousness. For the source of the world of nature and of spirit cannot be less than spirit, and real spirit personal, self-conscious, and self- determining spirit. Nevertheless, impossible for our thought to show how personality can be consistent with ab soluteness. Personality arrived at via eminentice, absolute ness via ncgationis but these two methods yield no coherent
'
? do not give his exposition of these doctrines in the words of the text of the above work, but according to the author's most recent personal explana tions.
? ? I'
;
is, it is
is
is
it is
;
? 200 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
conception, but a double series of statements, which we cannot see how to bring into unity. A personal consciousness and will, not confined by the limitations of time, is as inconceivable to us as it is impossible for us, on the other hand, to think of the divine knowledge and will as conditioned by time. Space and time are indeed the forms in which God reveals himself, and which are therefore for him no more mere appearance than the variety of his particular acts of will. But our thought cannot reconcile the participation of the divine knowledge and action in the temporal and spatial distinctions of earthly life with the elevation of the divine nature above the world and time. The pretended speculative solutions of this and similar difficulties are only apparent. We can therefore apply the conception of the absolute to God only as a critical canon or rule which serves to prevent us, in our figurative use of human analogies, from making finite our idea of God, by con tinually reminding us of the purely symbolic validity of these
statements about God. The idea of an infinite consciousness
and will remains indeed a necessity of our thought, but is only
a Grenzbegriff, a conception containing no adequate know ledge of God's nature and attributes. The religious value of the theological ideas of the divine attributes consists, on the other hand, in their being descriptions, based on religious experience, of the action of the divine Will upon us and our world. The Christian faith regards the existence and course of the world from the teleological point of view as the means of securing the divine purpose of the world -- without prejudice to the scientific causal theory of the world. The same course of the world must be placed entirely under the point of view of natural causation, and also entirely under that of a divine purpose, since the divine teleology manifests itself as the power immanent in the course of nature. This distinction between the causal connection of all events and their teleological con trol by the overruling divine Will justifies also the religious belief in miracles, which as such are never empirically demon strable, but from the teleological point of view are an actual proof of a special divine intervention. The belief in provi dence is indeed inseparably connected with every religious theory of the world, and therefore not peculiar to Christianity, but it reaches its perfection only by means of the Christian consciousness of salvation. Not that the Christian was the first to refer every event to the purposes of the divine king
? ? ? ? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 201
clom --that was done in the Old Testament -- but because he first recognised the infinite value of every human soul as an
object of special divine care.
In the doctrine of the person and work of the Saviour, the
empirical must likewise be distinguished from the religious mode of regarding them. The former regards the Saviour as the historical founder of the Christian religion, the personal representative and source of the new religious principle ani mating the Christian Church. The latter recognises in him the personal revelation of God's will to save the individual and human society. For the former, Jesus Christ is only historically important ; for the latter, he has also a direct religious significance. The object of faith is always primarily the eternal good which God, by Christ, gives to believers as their own. It is not, however, an eternal idea or truth of the reason that is illustrated in the person of Jesus, but God's eternal will of love become in Christ an historical act of love.
The revelation of saving and reconciling grace in Christ is not merely a proclamation but a revelation by deed. The reconciliation is not simply the liberation of the human spirit from its mistrust of God, arising from its ignorance, but primarily the reconciliation of God to man, an actual new relation entered into by God with mankind, and revealed by him in the consciousness of believers. This new relation is eternally based upon God's plan of salvation, the goal to which the divine governance of human history has always been directed ; but it was only historically realised when the historical conditions were given. These were on the one hand the actual realisation of a perfect life of harmony with God (perfect righteousness), and on the other, humble submission
to the connection between sin and misery established by God for the common life of the human race, and the consequent recognition of the divine sentence upon sin (perfect satis faction). The Christian faith affirms both to have been vicariously accomplished in Christ's sufferings and death, not in the sense of legal substitution, but in the sense of action and passion on the part of the new humanity in its personal head. As the head of the new humanity, Christ is its repre sentative with God ; mankind is reconciled to him in so far as it enters by means of faith into communion with Christ. On the other hand, Christ, in virtue of the reconciliation of God and man being actually accomplished in him, is the repre
? ? ? ? 202 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
sentative of God in relation to men, the bearer of the divine revelation to them, proclaiming as a fact the reconciliation actually accomplished by him. This position of Christ as mediator between God and man is described in ecclesiastical
statements about the union of the divine and human natures in Christ's person, and about a
transcendental work of reconciliation accomplished by Christ in relation to God, by which God himself was delivered from
a conflict between his mercy and justice. In both points these theories transgress the limits imposed upon human know ledge ; and it is of minor importance that the philosophical means used to establish these theologoumena were borrowed partly from Platonic eclectic speculations, partly from the legal conceptions of the middle ages. These theologoumena must be employed in theology simply as figurative expressions, and any higher claim necessarily turns them into mythology. The Christian faith is content to speak of God being in a unique manner in Christ, in the sense that in his personal con sciousness and life-work was actually accomplished the revela
tion of the love of God as seeking the salvation of mankind. Historically considered, Christ's life-work must be regarded from the ethical point of view of his personal vocation to found the society in which is realised the kingdom of God, by
tradition by metaphysical
? life in harmony with God gradually overcoming the power ot sin. Reconciliation thus appears as the consequence ot salvation. But the Christian faith is not content with this. That the founder of the society is its pattern has not been
demonstrated, the " sinlessness" of Christ remains from this position a mere possibility. On the other hand, from the teleological point of view it is simply included in the statement of the belief that Christ is the personal revelation of the divine love. For God can be perfectly revealed only in a man religiously and ethically perfect, and one, therefore, altogether fitted to be the pure organ of his revelation. This holiness of Christ is the specifically religious miracle. God
historically
reconciles the world to himself by creating in Christ a new man, in whom mankind appears in the perfection desired by God, and therefore as reconciled to God.
kind generally as represented in Christ, and hence looks
upon mankind general as the normal development begun in by Christ were already finished which the more natural as this atonement was eternally willed and historically accomplished by God himself. Thus Schenkel rejects, with
Hofmann and Schleiermacher, the ecclesiastical doctrine of vicarious satisfaction made to the punitive divine justice, and holds that the atoning element was rather that Christ by his holy life, attested by his death, made amends for the sin
assuring
? ? it
;
; is
is
in
if
; in
a is
of
it
in
is
is,
? 1 82 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
of mankind, i. e. , actually overcame it and destroyed it at its root, and thereby gave God the pledge of a life of humanity well-pleasing to him. This triumph over the supremacy of sin put an end to the cause of the discord between God and mankind, and rendered it possible for God to look upon mankind as if the new development of life, begun in principle, was already actually accomplished. Christ's deed was vica rious only in the sense that his suffering and action exempli fied by anticipation what we are bound to suffer and do in fellowship with him. But when the work of atonement has once been comprehended, "with the help of the conscience,"
as a truly ethical deed, salvation, i. e. , the individual appro priation of the effects of the atonement on the part of each individual, must necessarily also be ethically conceived. Salvation can no longer be supposed to consist in the impu tation to a man of another's merits, faith being merely the passive acceptance of this justifying sentence of God. On the contrary, the new life won, in principle, for mankind by Christ, must be practically realised in each individual ; and this is done by faith, inasmuch as faith is the central activity of man's conscience in relation to God. Faith is the subjective condition of justification, inasmuch as the man by virtue of this change in his conscience, participates in the atoning per sonal life of Christ, and has received into his heart the new
divine principle of life exemplified in Christ. This beginning of a new life in the believer, God imputes to him as if it were already completed ; he regards it on account of the perfection of the principle active in it (the personal life of Christ), proleptically, as if it were itself already perfect.
The close connexion of this doctrine of atonement and of justification with the fundamental principles of Kant's philo
sophy of religion is very plain ; the difference is only that what Kant called the ideal of a humanity pleasing to God, Jesus being the conspicuous example of here identified with the ideal person of Christ but both cases by receiving this ideal into his own heart that the man becomes good in principle, and thus righteous before God, in spite of his asting empirical imperfection. That Jesus was not only the model but also the creative cause of this ethical and religious
process, while the society which he founded was its social mediate cause, the theological addition to the Kantian theory made as early as Schleiermacher, and which we have
? ? ? is
;
in
it is
it, is
? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 1 8 J
met with in various phases in the discussion of this group of
theologians.
Most nearly akin to Hofmann and Schenkel is the theo
logian AlbreCht R1tsChl ; with Schenkel he lays special stress on the ethical element, with Hofmann he emphasises the historical and social element, and claims with him to be a true Lutheran ; he is distinguished from both by the peculi arity of his epistemology and his method, which he eclectically derived from Kant and Lotze. In his book, "Metaphysik tind Theologie, he very emphatically opposed the bad episte mology and metaphysics" of previous theology, and offered his own as the foundation of an altogether new theology.
On a closer inspection, however, this, his famous theory of cognition, is seen to be only a dilettante confusion of the irreconcilable views of subjective idealism, which resolves things into phenomena of consciousness, and common-sense realism, which looks upon the phenomena of consciousness as things themselves, admitting no distinction between phenomena as perceived by us and the being of things in themselves ; a confusion to which the nearest parallel is the semi-idealistic, semi-materialistic theory of the Neo-Kantian
? author of the Geschichte des Materialismus (2nd ed. 1873), which enjoyed a brief celebrity as having supplied, it was
thought, a justification of the sceptical tendencies of the time. We may, moreover, conjecture that Ritschl did not make this theory of cognition the basis of his theology from the first, but rather propounded it subsequently, in its defence. In spite of its intrinsic worthlessness, it is well calculated to furnish this theology, in its wavering between the subjective dissolution of the objects of theology and the affirmation of their objective reality, with an appearance of scientific justifi cation having a certain attraction at least for amateurs in these questions.
Ritschl expounded his theological system in the third volume of his principal work, Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, of which the first and second volumes had contained the
history of the dogma and its Biblical-theological premises respectively. The third volume appeared in three editions, between 1874 and 1888, differing in some points from each other. Indeed, a careful comparison of the later presenta tions with the earlier shows an increasing advance in the direction of speculative scepticism and historical dogmatism.
Lange,
? ? ? 184 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
" Religion was defined by Ritschl in the first edition as the common recognition of the dependence of man on God," or, more precisely, " as our view of the world from the basis of the idea of God and our estimate of ourselves from
our sense of dependence upon God in relation to the world. " The peculiarity of the religious view of the world he holds to be that it involves the conception of a whole, while theoretical knowledge in philosophy and the special sciences is limited to the general and particular laws of nature and spirit, and cannot by its methods of experience and observation attain to the conception of the world as a unity and a whole. Wherever philosophy has claimed by its methods to construct a view of the universe, we should rather discern an impulse of religion, which philosophy must distinguish as specifically different from its own object of systematic know ledge. Conflicts between religion and science are to be avoided by religion retaining as its privilege the right of viewing the world in its unity, and by science limiting itself to the particular phenomena of the world. Afterwards, on the other hand, Ritschl admitted that philosophy also treated of the world as a whole, with the object of comprehending it under one supreme law. Hence the distinction between religious and scientific knowledge is not to be sought in its object, but in the sphere of the subject, viz. , in the difference in the attitude of the subject towards the object. For religion, he now states, " is occupied with judgments of value ( Werthurtheile)" i. e. , with conceptions of our relation to the world which are of moment solely according to their value in awakening feelings of pleasure or pain as our dominion over the world is furthered or checked. "In all religion, by the help of the sublime spiritual Power which man adores, the solution is attempted of the contradiction in which man finds himselt placed as a part of the natural world and as a spiritual person
For in his
? ality with its claim to sovereignty over nature.
position he is a part of nature, in subjection to
upon and checked by other things, but as spirit he
by the impulse to maintain his independence against external things. In these circumstances arises religion as a belief in superior spiritual powers by whose help the deficiencies in man's own power are supplied. " All religion seeks to supple ment, by means of the idea of God, man's sense of personal dignity in the face of the hindrances of the world this idea
dependent moved
? ? ;
it, is
? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 1 85
of God is " the ideal bond between the particular view of the world and the vocation of"man to attain goods (Giiter) or the
highest good (happiness. ) ' The thought of God must be treated in Christian theology solely as a judgment of value, or as a conception valuable for the attainment of goods. This is the same theory of religion as the well-known one of Feuer- bach: the gods are the " Wunschwesen," invented by man from his practical need of a supplement to his own powerlessness over nature. But while the pathological explanation of the idea of God by motives of human feeling was intended by Feuer- bach to deny the truth of this idea in an objective sense, and to affirm its purely imaginary character, the theory is directed by Ritschl to the exactly opposite conclusion, that the emotional value of the conception of God for the preservation of man's sense of personal dignity is also the warrant of its truth. That this warrant is not sufficient to insure to theology a knowledge of speculative truth and the character of a science, had indeed been
? formerly fully recognised by Ritschl himself, who had therefore in his first edition still
held the necessity and possibility of an independent proof of the existence of God, founded upon the general data of the human mind ; as such he had regarded the ethical proof as stated in Kant's Critique ofJudgment, and had expressly declared that the "acceptance of the idea of God on that proof was no practical belief (as Kant had thought), but an act of speculative cognition," by which the general rationality of the Christian view of the world is established and thereby the possibility of a scientific theology secured, while such a theo logy would be impossible if the idea of God could not be established to the satisfaction of speculative knowledge also as its necessary basis. In the third edition, on the other hand, this position is altogether abandoned ; we now read " this acceptance of the idea of God as Kant remarks, a practical belief, and not an act of speculative cognition. " In
justification of this change of view, alleged that
the work of theology to preserve the distinctive character of the idea of God, that allowable to use only in judgments of value. Hence theoretical proofs of the idea of God are doomed to failure, "because their professed results, even true, do not accord with the Christian thought of God, that
Seligkeit.
? ? 1
in
it is
if
it is
it is
is, it
? 1 86 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
they fail to express its value for men, in particular for men as sinners. " Thus while Ritschl formerly recognised that a scientific and universally valid justification of the belief in God, and consequently of theology, cannot consist merely in an inference from the religious view of the world to its inner coherence, but must be based upon independent and univer sal data of the human mind, he now, on the contrary, pro nounces the theoretical method of proof objectionable in not being confined to Christian judgments of value, or in aiming to be not only simple practical belief, but also independent theoretical knowledge. We see from this how, from the sub
jective conception of religion, is deduced the limitation of the
science of religion, or theology, to the sphere of judgments of value, or subjective truth, and the abandonment on principle of all attempts to attain objective truth valid for the knowing mind in general.
In accordance with his principle that the Christian thought of God must be put forward only in judgments of value, Ritschl teaches that God should be thought of only as love.
All metaphysical statements regarding God's absoluteness, his existence through himself, in himself, and for himself, must be rejected as "heathenish metaphysics," connected with the false theory of knowledge which maintains the existence of things irrespective of our conception of them. The idealistic subjec- tification of the idea of God on the lines of Feuerbach seems a necessary consequence of this. Such is not, however,
Ritschl's intention ; on the contrary, he seeks to conceive of the personality of God as objectively real. That this involves the assertion of an absolute existence of God in himself, as
from his existence in relation to us, or his love, is plain, but is not admitted by Ritschl. He says that the attribute of personality is only the form for God's love. If this proposition were taken strictly, it would finally come to mean that our conception of the personality of God is the form under which we personify love as " God," which is the view of Feuerbach and the Positivists. But Ritschl does not mean ' this ; indeed, he speaks also of an " intrinsic purpose of God," into which God takes up the purpose of the world, or which he realises in the education of the human race for the kingdom of God. But such a purpose is a relation of the
1 Selbstzweck Gottes.
? distinguished
? ? ? Ch. IV] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 187
will to itself, and therefore presupposes a being which is not solely love, that existing for others, but exists also as a
in and for itself. This inner self-subsistence of God,
with his loving communication of himself, not merely a
necessary metaphysical conception, but also of great religious
since the foundation, as Dorner has well remarked, of the Biblical conception of God's holiness and righteousness, which in the teaching of the Bible and the Church inseparable from that of his love. But this side of the idea of God altogether neglected by Ritschl. He says " In comparison with the conception of love there
no other of equal value. In particular this holds of the con ception of holiness, which its Old Testament sense for several reasons, not valid in Christianity, and the use of which in the New Testament obscure. " And with regard to God's righteousness, which, according to Biblical doctrine, his holiness " actively shown, Ritschl (like Hofmann) considers that his action for the salvation of the members of his religious community, and identical fact with grace. "
This connected with Ritschl's peculiar doctrine of sin.
He altogether rejects the idea of original sin, because assumes that there will previous to its individual acts an assumption related to the false doctrine of things in them selves, and because the hypothesis of an innate evil tendency makes both responsibility and education impossible. The latter demands the exactly opposite hypothesis, " that the general though still indefinite impulse towards good exists in the child, although not guided by a general insight into the good, and not yet tested by the various relations of life. "
For the conception of original sin we must, therefore, substi tute that of the " kingdom of sin," i. e. , of the collective unity of free actions opposed to the purpose of the kingdom of God, and of the inclinations acquired thereby. The law of sin the will not natural loss of its freedom, but a consequence of the necessary reaction of every act of the will upon the direction of the power of volition. Accordingly the unchecked repetition of selfish determinations of the will produces ten dency to selfishness, and the sin then transmitted from one individual to another by the interaction of their conduct in
subject
importance,
? Ritschl has not indeed shown how any selfish deter minations of the will at all can be explained, there exists in the child by nature only an indefinite impulse towards good
society.
? ? ;
is
if is a
is
is a
is
in
is
it is
is
is,
in it is
;
it is is
:
is
a is
is is
in
in
it
is,
? 1 88 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
for the attempt to explain it from ignorance is certainly un satisfactory. Ritschl holds, namely, that ignorance, as ex perience proves in the case of children, is "a very momentous factor in the origination and development of sin ; " and further, that it is " the essential condition of the conflicts of the will with the order of society as the rule of goodness, and also the condition of the fixity of the will in its resistance to this order. "
It may easily be seen how little this explanation accords with experience, of which a very different account is given even by the heathen poet (Nitimur in vetitum), and above all by the Apostle Paul (Rom. vii. ). In Ritschl's case also, this treat ment of sin as ignorance is not so much the result of actual observation as a postulate of his doctrine of God and recon ciliation. To the regulative conception of God corresponds, he says, the distinction between the two stages of sin -- an im perfect stage, not excluding the capability for redemption, and a completed stage, consisting in a final purpose of opposition to the known will of God. Since the latter is only a hypo thetical possibility, of which we can nowhere assume the reality, all actual sin of mankind is confined to the former stage, and this is regarded by God as " the relative stage of ignorance. " The artificial method by which Ritschl tries to harmonise his theory with the statements of the Bible, may be here passed over as valueless.
The correlative to the love of God is the kingdom of God, inasmuch as it is the union of men for mutual and common action from the motive of love, which action, as correlative to the purpose of God himself, and as the specific operation of God, is the perfect revelation of the fact that God is love. In the precise development of this thought there is again a noticeable difference between the first and the later editions of Ritschl's work. In the first the Christian idea of the king dom of God is the highest stage of ethical society among men, though removed from the earlier preparatory stages to no greater degree than these from each other. It is more perfect in virtue of its greater extent, but is not essentially different in kind, since the pre-Christian forms of society (family, friend ship, nationality) originated in love. And since, as is then stated, this union of men, wherever realised, must always be regarded as dependent upon God, and as the effect and reve lation of His love, the conception of a universal revelation of God throughout all human history is evidently presupposed,
? ? ? ? Ch. IV] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 1 89
since this history has never been without ethical fellowship and love. In the later editions, on the other hand, the com parison of the Christian kingdom of God with the preparatory stages of ethical society in history is omitted, and the love of God is exclusively confined to the historical Christian Church, which, by acknowledging Christ as its Lord, itself comes to stand in the same relation as he to God. Whereas it was formerly maintained that " God loves the human race from the point of view of its vocation to the kingdom of God," we are now told that " God is love as revealing himself through his Son to the Church founded by the latter in order to educate it for the kingdom of God " ; and whereas we were then told that all ethical union originated in love, and that all action from love must always and everywhere be regarded as de pendent on God, and as the effect of the revelation of his love, it is now stated that " All love of man originates accord ing to Christian ideas in the revelation of God in Christ. "
From these statements it would directly follow that before Christ there was neither a revelation of God nor an ethical association of men. If that be so, from what source were religion and morality in pre-Christian humanity derived ? This
Ritschl has never explained. Simply to deny that it had any religion or morality, would lead to a pessimism more extreme than that of Augustine, and would strangely contradict Rit- schl's optimistic view of the goodness of human nature.
Finally, it is evident that the limitation of the divine revela tion solely to the person of Jesus, whose historical connection with the religion of Israel is undeniable, verges close upon the denial of revelation altogether. Thus ultra dogmatism in the end leads to the opposite extreme, as has actually been
? in Ritschl's disciple, Bender.
In his Christology, Ritschl starts from the principle that in
a personal life what is real and actual consists of spiritual effects and nothing else. By this means the Christological problem is much simplified. Not only the dogma of the two natures, but the whole metaphysical background of ecclesias tical Christology is thus got rid of, even more decisively than in Schleiermacher's theology, and replaced by an historical view of the subject. In strange contrast with this, Ritschl nevertheless continues to speak with orthodox theology of the deity of Christ. It is true this term has for him an altogether different meaning. It is the expression of our estimate of
exemplified
? ? ? 190 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
Jesus, of our trustful acknowledgment of the unique value of what his life effected for our salvation, but is not meant to predicate any metaphysical characteristic of his nature what ever, or any transcendental unity of his nature with God. The predication of the deity of Christ sums up his unmistakable importance as the perfect revealer of God and as the manifest type of spiritual supremacy over the world. Our religious estimate of Christ must be tested by the connection of his action in the world with his religious convictions and with his ethical motives. It has no direct reference to his presumptive possession of innate qualifications and capacities, for Christ does not influence us thus, but morally and religiously only. Jesus is the representative of the perfect spiritual religion, standing in a reciprocal relation of union with the God who is the originator and final end of the world. This involved his re cognition of God's divinest purpose, the union of men by love, as the task of his own life, whereby he experienced that in dependence of the world which the members of his Church ought to come to share with him. The peculiar value of his life on earth gains the character of a permanent rule by serving as a pattern for our religious and ethical vocation. This authority, which either excludes all other standards or else subordinates them to itself, and which is also the ultimate regu lative principle of all human trust in God, is equivalent in value to his deity. On the other hand, metaphysical attributes of deity cannot be ascribed to him for the simple reason that they
are altogether outside the religious method of cognition, which is concerned only with j udgments of value. So too the passages
of Scripture from which Christ's personal pre-existence has been inferred, are only to be understood in the sense that, in the thought and will of God, Christ from the beginning was the head of the community of the kingdom of God, which is the object of the world. The Johannine formula of the Word becoming flesh, means that the Word, which is the general form of divine revelation, became in him a human person, i. e. , that he is the perfect revelation of God.
While it follows from this that the doctrine of Christ's work must not be separated from that of his person, Ritschl further rejects the usual dogmatic distinction of his threefold office as prophet, priest, and king. In order to form a single compre hensive conception of Christ's work, we must regard it from the point of view of his vocation. Now, this vocation was the
? ? ? ? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. I9I
foundation of the kingdom of God, or of the universal ethical association of men as the divine object of the world. But since, as the founder of the kingdom of God in the world, or the representative of God's moral sovereignty over men, he is unique in comparison with all other men who have received from him the same purpose, he is the factor in the world in whose intrinsic purpose God, in a creative way, gives effect to, and manifests his own intrinsic purpose, so that all his actions in fulfilment of his vocation constitute the revelation of God, present and perfect, in him ; or, in other words, he is one in whom the Word of God is a human person. This theory gives the consistent ethical and religious estimate of Christ, and thus the christological problem of theology is solved. It is not the business of theology to inquire how the person of Christ came from God, and came to be that which is the sub
ject of our ethical and religious estimate, especially as the problem lies beyond the possible range of inquiry. The grace and faithfulness of Christ in the fulfilment of his voca tion, and the elevation of his spiritual aims beyond the limited and natural motives of the world, constitute the elements of his historical appearance which are comprehended in the attribute of his deity. Looked at with reference to man, this patience and faithfulness of Christ is the result of his devotion to his calling of realising the kingdom of God among men as their supermundane destination, supported by his special knowledge of God ; with reference to the divine Being, this human life appears as the completed revelation of God, since the final purpose of the world, to which Christ's life is de voted, is founded in God's inner purpose, or in his will of love.
For the complete definition of Christ's deity the further sup position is required that his grace and faithfulness and world- subduing patience have produced as their effect the society of the kingdom of God, with analogous attributes. This is evidently equivalent to saying that the "deity " of Christ con sists in the original exemplification and communication of the same true piety and morality in which consists also the
? " deity," or better, the fellowship with God, the divine son-
and divine likeness of Christians. This is the same
ship
thought as that found in the whole of Schleiermacher's
except that the latter usually express it more simply, being less painfully anxious to keep to the ecclesiastical term, to which from this position, really no just claim can be made.
school,
? ? ? 192
DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [BV. II.
There can be no such thing as special priestly functions on the part of Christ which are not included in those of his general vocation. If Christ is to be conceived as priest, he is so fundamentally because as the Son of God he stood in the closest communion of purpose with God, and carried this out in every moment of his life, since every act and word in his life's work, until his voluntary and patient suffering of death, sprang from his religious relation to God. The juridical conception of a satisfaction of God's punitive righteousness offends against the design of religion, since law and religion are contradictory standards of action, and the assumption that in God righteousness and grace tend in opposite directions, is irreligious, the unity of the divine will being the inviolable condition of all trust in God. Even if we agree with Ritschl's rejection of the theory of satisfaction, we cannot approve of his unsympathetic judgment of the Pauline and orthodox doctrine of the atonement ; we cannot but see in this an illustration of that Rationalistic dogmatism which is neither able nor willing to appreciate objectively, from a given religious point of view, the historical and psychological conditions of dogmatic con ceptions, or to admit their relative validity for such a point of view.
In respect of this intolerant dogmatism, Ritschl's theology marks a return to the weakest side of that Rational ism which he has so severely censured.
Not specially the death of Christ, which is only the com prehensive term to express his religious union with God, as
of the Christian society in the sense that in it there exists a union of men with God, in spite of their sins and of the accentuation of their feeling of guilt. The standard and historical source of this union is Christ's union with God, which he preserved in the faithful execution of his vocation to found the kingdom of God. For the grace and faithfulness of God, which is the ultimate efficient cause of the forgiveness of sin, is made manifest solely by the purpose which controlled all Christ's work of conducting men into such a relation to God as should save them from sin and gather them under the moral rule of God. From this point is first deduced the formula, that God makes the union of the members of Christ's Church with Christ the condition of admitting them
? predicable
his life, but his work in his vocation
preserved throughout
generally, brings about the forgiveness of sins, or justifica tion, or atonement. These synonymous conceptions are
? ? ? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS.
to a union with himself. But this proposition
with Schleiermacher's doctrine of salvation) receives forthwith in Ritschl an important modification. He maintains (though on the basis of very arbitrary exegesis) that it is historically certain that Christ conceived not individuals but the society to be founded by him and represented in the twelve apostles, as the direct object of the forgiveness of sins which he was to grant. Hence he pronounces Schleiermacher's formula wrong, that in Protestantism the relation of the individual to the Church depends on his relation to Christ, while in Catholic ism the converse holds good ; for in the case of Protestant Christians also the right relation to Christ is conditioned, not only historically (which is self-evident) but ideally, by the fellowship of believers, since no action of Christ upon men is conceivable except in accordance with the antecedent purpose of Christ to found a society. Schleiermacher's formula is only the reflection of the pietistical disintegration of the idea of a church, which dated from the individualistic theory of salvation in the Lutheran theology, but was not in harmony with Luther's own view (according to his Short Catechism). As in the pur pose of Christ the guarantee of a universal forgiveness of sins and the foundation of his Church were equivalent ideas, so in
the result of his work it is the same thing to be certain ot having one's sins forgiven and to belong to Christ's commu nity. The forgiveness of sins or reconciliation is possessed by the individual only as a member of the religious society ot Christ, in consequence of the immeasurable interaction of his own personal freedom and the determining influence of the
society. It is not by an individual imitation of Christ that we become assured of salvation, as pietists and mystics held, including Schleiermacher and his followers, for all
imitation of Christ in the proper sense is rendered impos sible by the difference of the special conditions of his life from those of the members of his Church ; but we are warranted
in the assurance of being children of God by belonging to the society founded by Christ. Moreover, love to God and Christ is not an apt description of the religious function of the individual, for we might understand by it " an imagi nary private relation to God and Christ," bearing the char acter of indifference to the world or of fleeing from In
these statements Ritschl's social positivism and his dislike of the mystical element religion carried to such extremes
(which
agrees
1 93
? o. t.
? ? in
is
o
it.
? 194 DEVELOPMENT OK DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
as plainly to do violence to essential interests of Christian
piety.
The justification possessed by the Christian as a member of
Christ's community is attested practically by his freedom or dominion over the world. This is not to be understood in the empirical sense but ideally, though not therefore any the
less a reality. It in general, faith in God's providence that the religious dominion over the world exercised for in the view of the world as a unity, under the idea of God as our Father, and in the corresponding estimate of ourselves, all things and events are regarded as means to our good. Under this Christian belief in" providence Ritschl appears to include also the hypothesis of miracles. " He puts both in contrast, as the general teleological and the miraculous view of the uni verse, with the scientific view, and he seeks to deprive the oppo sition of the latter (which however not directed against the teleological, but only against the miraculous view) of its force by reference to the incompleteness of our scientific knowledge
of the world and to the immediate certainty of the feeling personal worth expressing itself in the belief in providence.
He warmly opposes the view of the theology of the Aufkl'dr- ung, that the belief in providence a part of natural religion
? or of general scientific culture.
trary, confident trust in God
the Christian religion, since
Christ's Church of our reconciliation to God a statement which, considering the innumerable expressions of trust God in non-Christian religions, particularly the Old Testa ment, requires considerable modification related to the statement above considered, that God has revealed himself as love only in Christ this case, as in others, a difference
made an exclusive peculiarity, which simply un- historical dogmatism. There are however several good points in Ritschl's detailed account of the Christian belief provi dence as that must approve itself in patience and humility amid all the vicissitudes of life, and that shown Chris tian prayer, which chiefly thanksgiving or humble recogni tion of the divine rule. Finally, the moral perfection of the community of the kingdom of God deduced from its re ligious view of the world, and shown that manifests itself
degree
in the faithfulness of the individual to his calling, since moral action in a calling the form of each man's total
primarily
He holds that, on the con exclusively the contribution rests upon the assurance
? ? is it is
it is
it
it in is
is
is
it is
;
:
is
it
is ; in
is,
is in
;
in
of inofof of
is
in
is
;
? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 1 95
contribution to the kingdom of God. In this way freedom
is realised in law. But freedom is identical in kind with the
religious functions of belief in providence, patience, humility, and prayer, in which, in consequence of the Reconciliation, the individual becomes assured of his value as part of a whole in comparison with the world. The two spheres of morals and religion are so connected that neither can exist without the other. In the religious dominion over this world lies the present blessednesss of eternal life. But the moral formation of character also has eternal life for its object, since the certainty to the person of the indestructibility of spiritual existence is always connected with the experience of the
value of the ethical and religious character. Thus it is equally important to assert that the eternal life is given by God in the reconciliation through Christ, and that the completion of our salvation is attained by the development of the ethico- religious character and by the perfection in its kind of our life- work in our vocation. In spite of all this the moral and the religious sides of Christianity are not brought into a perfectly harmonious unity by Ritschl, as is seen in the remarkable statement that we must take both points of view alternately (viz. that of moral freedom and that of dependence upon God), an evident admission that the two are mutually exclusive. This is the inevitable consequence of his conception of re ligion as supplementing our freedom. The external dualism between moral freedom and the religious feeling of depen dence thus introduced from the first runs like a red thread through the whole of his theology, and is in particular the real cause of his dislike of religious mysticism, in which
freedom is felt in experience to be realised not along with but in dependence, the difference of the two being thus brought
he shares Ritschl's epistemological principles. He maintains with Kant the limitation of our knowledge to the realm of experience, to our external and internal perceptions and their logical combination so as to form regular relations of natural and spiritual existence ; and he denies the possibility of a metaphysical knowledge of the transcendental, which, he
holds, inevitably involves contradictions. But while Ritschl's school constructs an insurmountable barrier between our
? into a harmonious unity. Lipsius Among the opponents of Ritschl's theology,
oc cupies a prominent place, and all the more that, to a certain
extent,
? ? ? I96 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
theoretical knowledge of the universe and our ethico-religious certainty, Lipsius demands a connected and consistent theory of the universe, which shall comprehend the entire realm of our experience as a whole. He rejects the doctrine of dualism in a truth, one division of which would be confined to "judg ments of value," and be unconnected with our theoretical knowledge of the external world. The possibility and neces sity of combining the results of our scientific knowledge with the declarations of our ethico-religious experience, so as to form a consistent philosophy, is based, according to Lipsius, upon the unity of the personal ego, which on the one hand knows the world scientifically, and on the other regards it as the means of realising the ethico-religious object of its life. The former is effected by the study of the causal connection of external and internal events, and the latter by referring them teleologically to the ethical subject and its vocation. Neither of these modes of looking at things can be reduced to the
other, neither employed indifferently to supplement the de ficiencies of the other ; only in their mutual relation do they yield the whole of reality for us. Moreover, they must not be placed externally side by side in such a way that the one would be limited to the life of nature, and the other to that of history, but the sphere of teleology extends likewise into nature, and that of causality into history. Nevertheless, it is the sphere of the historical and ethical life of humanity which first elevates the teleology imperfectly traced in nature to the position of a prime factor in the construction of our philosophy of things. No one can be compelled by the method of scien tific proof to recognise the teleological unity of the world ; it is the personal feeling of moral obligation which leads to the belief in a moral order of the world superior to the order of nature. But this ethical certainty must not be allowed to make us indifferent to the natural conditions of the moral life, which can only fulfil its vocation by their means. This justifies the rule as to method, as rigidly keeping the causal, or empirical, and the teleological, or ideal, view of the world clearly distinct, as, again, of connecting them as the two sides of the same thing. By the application of this method by Lipsius to dogmatic theo
logy, it assumed in his hands the form of an ethico-religious phi losophy of life and the world, which as such is throughout teleo logical, but which must also remain in thorough harmony with the empirical or causal point of view of theoretical science.
? ? ? ? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 197
Lipsius defines religion as the solution of the riddle pre sented by the contradiction of our empirical determination by nature to our ethical vocation. Religion does not primarily concern society, but the individual, though the individual only in virtue of his necessarily seeking religious fellowship ; it is thus the most individual and at the same time the most uni versal of man's concerns. Its empirical motive lies in man's instinct of self-preservation, which seeks help from a super natural power, and for this purpose enters into a personal relation with ranging upwards from reverent dread to child like trust and thankful love. But the ultimate source even of the elementary form of the feeling, as well as of its advance from natural"to ethical religion, the supersensible nature of man, or his transcendental freedom," which both determines the entire course of his ethical development, and also leads him to enter into religious relations. For this freedom can only be realised in transcendental dependence upon a free Will, such as contains both the creative source of man's capacity for transcendental freedom and the power to realise
above the determination by nature. Inasmuch as the religious man, by rising to a Will above nature, becomes conscious of the action of this same Will in his own spirit, we have here the root of all belief revelation. On its meta physical side, therefore, religion a real mutual relation between God and man, the home of which the personal spiritual life of the latter revelation and religion are therefore convertible terms. The reality of this mutual relation consists in a personal fellowship of faith, experienced in the intercourse of prayer its manner lies beyond the analysis of the under standing, and constitutes the mystery of religion. As stages of religion, Lipsius distinguishes natural religion, ethical re ligion its legal form, and the religion of salvation, which the divine Will revealed not merely as an imperious law, but as love delivering from sin and evil. This highest stage
realised in Christianity.
In Christianity we must distinguish between the character istic fundamental religious relation and the fundamental his torical fact the former made actual by the latter, -- that
in the historical person of Christ but the value of the latter to us lies its being the vehicle of that fundamental relation, --that the sonship of man to God, which as such involves his participation the kingdom of God as God's final purpose
? by rising
? ? in
is
is,
in
in
;
;
in is
is
;
is
;
is,
is
it
in
is
a
it,
? I98 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
for the world. His sonship to God is subjectively conditioned by penitence and faith, and is objectively based upon God's reconciling and redeeming grace. This therefore, the specifically religious good, to the acquirement of which Chris tianity the vehicle, and primarily the highest good for the individual. The ethical association of men under the idea of the kingdom of God, which the ethical and social side of Christianity, subordinate to its religious and individual side. The Christian's religious experience of his sonship to God the subject-matter of the Christian faith with regard to God, man, and the world this contains no theoretical truths as to the objective nature of God and the world, but primarily only descriptions of the experienced relations of God to the religious man and to his world, though including declarations as to the supersensible realities of which faith assured. This faith, with its declarations, derived from the teleological contem plation, peculiar to the Christian, of the divine action in nature and history, and the course of his own life, a way of regarding the divine activity which, though does not rest on speculative (causal) knowledge, must not be inconsistent with it. Theo logical doctrines are therefore not mere descriptions of sub
jective devout states of consciousness, nor mere judgments of
value,
are descriptions of objective relations between God, man, and
the world, based upon subjective religious experiences, which are
? with no corresponding judgments of being but they
associated with the feeling of their being of the highest value for the subject.
All the declarations of the Christian faith have their objec tive foundation the revelation of God in Christ, of which the New Testament writings are the documentary authorities.
Revelation God's manifestation of himself for man. takes place by various stages --in the order of nature, in the moral order of the world, and in the order of salvation, which stages must be conceived as included in God's eternal plan of the world. The subject-matter of the highest, or Christian revela tion, not the kingdom of God, the announcement of which was not brought by Christ as something new, but God's saving and reconciling designs towards man, including the ethical idea of the kingdom of God as the necessary conse quence of the fellowship of love between God and his children. Nor does the guarantee of the truth of the Christian revelation consist the individual being a member of the community
? ? in
it is
;
is
is is
is
in
It
it
is
is
;
is
is is
it
is,
? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 1 99
which possesses reconciliation and redemption, but in his per
sonally appropriating by faith these saving blessings revealed in the Gospel, and thus obtaining the immediate personal ex perience of his reconciliation to God. This immediate personal certainty of salvation, in virtue of its resting upon the witness of the spirit, is the true centre and heart of Christian piety, its mystery not to be theoretically proved, but practically ex perienced, like the experience of the moral law, which is equally undemonstrable empirically, and yet is the foundation of the whole moral life. Still, the individual certainty of sal vation is preserved from the suspicion of being subjective self- deception by its known agreement with the similar experience of the whole Christian society.
These are the fundamental principles of Lipsius' theology, as expounded in his Abhandlungen zur Dogmatik, and in his work. Philosophie und Religion. From his more special trea tise (Lehrbuch der cvang. prot. Dogmatik, 1876 ; 2nd ed. , 1879) we may here notice his treatment of the dogmas l of God, Christ, Justification, and the Church.
The divine Trias of revelation must have its foundation in the divine nature. But our thought has no possible means of arriving at any logically tenable conclusion as to internal distinctions in the transcendental divine nature, much less as to personal distinctions in the Trinity. All such attempts lead to mythological conceptions. Similar difficulties arise from the application of the idea of the Absolute to the Christian idea of God. It true, an unavoidable necessity of our thought to conceive God as in fact absolute, i. e. as raised above the world of time and space only as the absolute cause is he the almighty creator and ruler of his world. But the ethical view of the world demands, again, that we should con ceive the absolute source of the world as personal, i. e. accord
ing to the analogy of our human consciousness. For the source of the world of nature and of spirit cannot be less than spirit, and real spirit personal, self-conscious, and self- determining spirit. Nevertheless, impossible for our thought to show how personality can be consistent with ab soluteness. Personality arrived at via eminentice, absolute ness via ncgationis but these two methods yield no coherent
'
? do not give his exposition of these doctrines in the words of the text of the above work, but according to the author's most recent personal explana tions.
? ? I'
;
is, it is
is
is
it is
;
? 200 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
conception, but a double series of statements, which we cannot see how to bring into unity. A personal consciousness and will, not confined by the limitations of time, is as inconceivable to us as it is impossible for us, on the other hand, to think of the divine knowledge and will as conditioned by time. Space and time are indeed the forms in which God reveals himself, and which are therefore for him no more mere appearance than the variety of his particular acts of will. But our thought cannot reconcile the participation of the divine knowledge and action in the temporal and spatial distinctions of earthly life with the elevation of the divine nature above the world and time. The pretended speculative solutions of this and similar difficulties are only apparent. We can therefore apply the conception of the absolute to God only as a critical canon or rule which serves to prevent us, in our figurative use of human analogies, from making finite our idea of God, by con tinually reminding us of the purely symbolic validity of these
statements about God. The idea of an infinite consciousness
and will remains indeed a necessity of our thought, but is only
a Grenzbegriff, a conception containing no adequate know ledge of God's nature and attributes. The religious value of the theological ideas of the divine attributes consists, on the other hand, in their being descriptions, based on religious experience, of the action of the divine Will upon us and our world. The Christian faith regards the existence and course of the world from the teleological point of view as the means of securing the divine purpose of the world -- without prejudice to the scientific causal theory of the world. The same course of the world must be placed entirely under the point of view of natural causation, and also entirely under that of a divine purpose, since the divine teleology manifests itself as the power immanent in the course of nature. This distinction between the causal connection of all events and their teleological con trol by the overruling divine Will justifies also the religious belief in miracles, which as such are never empirically demon strable, but from the teleological point of view are an actual proof of a special divine intervention. The belief in provi dence is indeed inseparably connected with every religious theory of the world, and therefore not peculiar to Christianity, but it reaches its perfection only by means of the Christian consciousness of salvation. Not that the Christian was the first to refer every event to the purposes of the divine king
? ? ? ? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 201
clom --that was done in the Old Testament -- but because he first recognised the infinite value of every human soul as an
object of special divine care.
In the doctrine of the person and work of the Saviour, the
empirical must likewise be distinguished from the religious mode of regarding them. The former regards the Saviour as the historical founder of the Christian religion, the personal representative and source of the new religious principle ani mating the Christian Church. The latter recognises in him the personal revelation of God's will to save the individual and human society. For the former, Jesus Christ is only historically important ; for the latter, he has also a direct religious significance. The object of faith is always primarily the eternal good which God, by Christ, gives to believers as their own. It is not, however, an eternal idea or truth of the reason that is illustrated in the person of Jesus, but God's eternal will of love become in Christ an historical act of love.
The revelation of saving and reconciling grace in Christ is not merely a proclamation but a revelation by deed. The reconciliation is not simply the liberation of the human spirit from its mistrust of God, arising from its ignorance, but primarily the reconciliation of God to man, an actual new relation entered into by God with mankind, and revealed by him in the consciousness of believers. This new relation is eternally based upon God's plan of salvation, the goal to which the divine governance of human history has always been directed ; but it was only historically realised when the historical conditions were given. These were on the one hand the actual realisation of a perfect life of harmony with God (perfect righteousness), and on the other, humble submission
to the connection between sin and misery established by God for the common life of the human race, and the consequent recognition of the divine sentence upon sin (perfect satis faction). The Christian faith affirms both to have been vicariously accomplished in Christ's sufferings and death, not in the sense of legal substitution, but in the sense of action and passion on the part of the new humanity in its personal head. As the head of the new humanity, Christ is its repre sentative with God ; mankind is reconciled to him in so far as it enters by means of faith into communion with Christ. On the other hand, Christ, in virtue of the reconciliation of God and man being actually accomplished in him, is the repre
? ? ? ? 202 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
sentative of God in relation to men, the bearer of the divine revelation to them, proclaiming as a fact the reconciliation actually accomplished by him. This position of Christ as mediator between God and man is described in ecclesiastical
statements about the union of the divine and human natures in Christ's person, and about a
transcendental work of reconciliation accomplished by Christ in relation to God, by which God himself was delivered from
a conflict between his mercy and justice. In both points these theories transgress the limits imposed upon human know ledge ; and it is of minor importance that the philosophical means used to establish these theologoumena were borrowed partly from Platonic eclectic speculations, partly from the legal conceptions of the middle ages. These theologoumena must be employed in theology simply as figurative expressions, and any higher claim necessarily turns them into mythology. The Christian faith is content to speak of God being in a unique manner in Christ, in the sense that in his personal con sciousness and life-work was actually accomplished the revela
tion of the love of God as seeking the salvation of mankind. Historically considered, Christ's life-work must be regarded from the ethical point of view of his personal vocation to found the society in which is realised the kingdom of God, by
tradition by metaphysical
? life in harmony with God gradually overcoming the power ot sin. Reconciliation thus appears as the consequence ot salvation. But the Christian faith is not content with this. That the founder of the society is its pattern has not been
demonstrated, the " sinlessness" of Christ remains from this position a mere possibility. On the other hand, from the teleological point of view it is simply included in the statement of the belief that Christ is the personal revelation of the divine love. For God can be perfectly revealed only in a man religiously and ethically perfect, and one, therefore, altogether fitted to be the pure organ of his revelation. This holiness of Christ is the specifically religious miracle. God
historically
reconciles the world to himself by creating in Christ a new man, in whom mankind appears in the perfection desired by God, and therefore as reconciled to God.
