No More Learning

The credit of having chased away the mists and clouds of
dogmatic illusions such as these, and of restoring to the critical
understanding its rights, belongs to the Swabian theologian, David Friedrich Strauss. Two previous works upon Im mortality, the authors of which, Richter and Feuerbach, were reckoned among the Hegelian school, had indeed, by the radically negative conclusions therein reached by the appli
? ? ? ? Ch. III. ] SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY. 133
cation of this philosophy, shaken the confidence generally felt in Hegelian orthodoxy ; but since the other adherents of the school were active in protesting against these negative infer ences, such isolated efforts produced no very important effect. When, however, Strauss brought the heavy artillery of his
criticism, distinguished equally by learning and penetration, to bear first on the historical foundations of dogma and then on dogma itself, the unsubstantial fabric of Hegelian dogmatism was within a few years completely destroyed. The first and greatest shock was given by Strauss's work on the life of
Jesus, which will occupy us in the next book. As the polemi
cal literature which his Life of Jesus provoked was chiefly
occupied with dogmatical reflections and speculation, rather than with historical criticism, Strauss was induced to supple ment it by a further critical work on the history of Christian dogmas, bearing the title, Die christliche Glaubenslehre in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwickelung und im Kampf mit der modernen Wis sensc haft" (1840-41). The strong point of the book is its acute and ingenious application of the principle that the history of dogma is its destruction and the story of the process of its dissolution. Strauss himself, in his preface, characterises his method in the forcible words : " Individual subjective criticism is a water-pipe which any boy may close for a time ; objective criticism, as it is accomplished in the course of centuries, advances like a foaming torrent against which all sluices and dams are powerless. " In " the same pre face he thus describes the object of his work : Its purpose is --if the profane figure is allowable --to do for the science of dogmatics what the balance-sheet does for a commercial house. If the firm is not made directly the richer by learns exactly what its resources are and that often as valuable as an actual increase of them. Such survey of our dogmatic property in our days rendered the more urgently necessary
proportion as the majority of theologians entertain the greatest illusions on the subject. The depreciation of the old theological stock-in-trade made by the criticism and polemics of the last two centuries greatly underrated and on the other hand, the doubtful assistance supposed to be derived from the emotional theology and mystical philosophy of the present century much over-estimated. generally imagined that the greater part of the lawsuits which are pending with regard to those depreciations have been won, and that there
? ? ? is
is
It is
a
is
is
;
in
:
it, it
? 134 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
is certainty of the greatest profits from these newly opened resources. But it is not impossible that these suits should all be lost in a single day, and if then these new mines should also disappoint expectations, failure would be inevitable.
Reason enough, surely, to know in time, after careful calcu lation, the relation of the credit to the debit side of the
was only possible in the case of a man in whose nature religious feeling was much weaker than critical intellect, and who had besides grown accustomed in the Hegelian school to that intellectualism which makes knowledge everything and all other vital functions nothing, and in which particularly religion was regarded only as theoretical and bound to stand or fall with a particular theory. Strauss's study of Schleiermacher might have preserved him from this gross error ; but great as was his acumen in descrying Schleiermacher's dogmatic weaknesses, he was quite unable to understand the importance of Schleiermacher's theory of religion, and the justice of the distinction between religion and theology. In general, the overweening self-confidence of "absolute knowledge" fostered in Hegel's school had materially tended to accentuate the negative radicalism of Strauss's criticism. Whoever imagines himself to possess the key to all the riddles of the world in the formulae of his philosophical school, will very naturally pass a much more negative sentence upon all attempts to form a con ception of the world from a religious point of view, than the man who humbly recognises the relativity of all our knowledge and is under no illusion with regard to the value of the for mulae of all systems. The absolute and irreconcilable an tagonism between philosophy and theology which Strauss
tries to show, in the case of each dogma, is the final result of the historical process, arises unavoidably then only when both the philosopher and the theologian make the same mistake of embracing a dogmatism which propounds its formula; as infallible truths. This is indisputably the case to a marked degree with the Hegelian-Straussian philosophy of " absolute knowledge. " But since this dogmatism is the opposite of
account ! "
The result of this
of accounts, Strauss declares to be the complete bankruptcy of the Christian faith ; neither is it merely the dogmatic formulae of the theology of the Church that are subject to this process of dissolution, but, Strauss holds, that with them the Christian religion must pass away, and even religion in general. This marked precipitation
balancing
? ? ? ? Ch. III. ] SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY. ' 1 35
scientific, the radicalism of Strauss's History of Dogmatics evidently cannot decide the general question of the relation of religion and science.
The final consequences of Strauss's position were inferred
by Feuerbach. Strauss did not go beyond an idealistic pantheism, which, while it gave up the God of religion, at least assumed a universal spiritual principle, an " idea" which realises itself in the finite, evolves nature from itself, and becomes conscious of itself in man ; and in this Feuerbach recognised a remnant of mysticism which must be got rid of ;
the Absolute above man he declared to be an empty abstrac tion, the really Absolute or Divine is man himself. All and every system of theology, not excepting speculative theology, ' 1
must therefore be superseded by anthropology. But if man alone is divine, how can he come to believe in and worship a God ? Feuerbach answers that the conception of God is an illusion, formed of the wishes of the heart and of the poetic imagination. The gods are Wunschwesen, i. e. , the wishes and ideals of the human heart objectified by the imagination.
In them man contemplates his own nature, not as it really held by the limitation of the world, but as he wishes to be, as the unlimited omnipotence of feeling. Religious faith
the self-assurance of the heart demanding the satisfaction of its desires. A miracle the realisation (of course the imagined realisation) of a supernatural wish. Christ the
omnipotence of subjectivity, the reality of all the wishes of the heart the conception of an incarnate God the disclosure of the truth, that the nature of God simply man. So also the Christian heaven means, just like the Christian God, the fulfilment of all wishes. Immortality the testament of
? in which makes its last will as heaven the unfolded nature of the Deity, also the frankest declara tion of the inmost thoughts of religion.
Feuerbach stands at the head of those who hold religion to be an idealistic fiction without actual truth, viz. , the modern Positivists and Agnostics. But while the latter with cautious scepticism decline to deal with the metaphysical questions as to the origin of the world and of man, Feuerbach only aban doned the idealistic dogmatism of his Hegelian school to adopt that of materialism. He held that only what cognis able by the senses, what material, real even in man the spiritual only an effect of the sensible, the sole reality
religion,
? ? is
;
;
is,
is
is ;
;
is is
is
it is
it
is
is
it
is
is
is
in
? 136 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
" der Mensch ist, was er isst" man is what he eats, was
Feuerbach's watchword. It follows of course that
finally
from this cynical point of view religion can only be regarded as a foolish aberration, a kind of mental disorder ; but since
by the same hypothesis the other objects of man's spiritual endeavour, morality, art and science, must lose all their mean ing and value, this position is really self-destructive. For if man is only a material product of nature, like a plant or an animal, it is inconceivable why he should come to form moral ideas of any kind, or to propose scientific views on any ques tion. The naturalistic point of view adopted by Feuerbach could logically lead only to the rejection of all ideas and
ideals, or to pure nihilism and solipsism, as is clearly shown in Max Stirner's notorious book, Der Einzige und sein Eigen- thum. The same holds good of the last book in which Strauss laid before the world his final confession of faith, Der alte und der neue Glaube, 1872. Like Feuerbach, he abandoned the dogmatism of idealism for that of naturalism, undeterred by the logical inconsistencies of naturalism and the difficulties of Feuerbach's theory of knowledge. On the principles of modern natural science, he now believed himself able to
? explain the world as a mechanism of blind material
forces, without any final cause, and hence without any spiritual prin
ciple ; nevertheless he sought to acknowledge reason and
in the universe, and honour them with a certain piety. Man he considered a part of nature, developed from the ape by Darwinian selection ; nevertheless he required him never to forget that he was man, and not merely a part of nature, that in him nature had not merely striven upwards, but even to surpass herself; he must therefore be guided in his action by the idea of the race, and by the consciousness of mutual obligation seek to mitigate the cruel struggle for exist ence, although as a part of nature he cannot wholly avoid
comes to this then, man a part and again not a part nature the product of an aimless mechanical natural process, and yet a product in which nature has striven to surpass her self! The struggle for existence, the right of the stronger, the only law ruling the world, and yet man bound to be guided the altruistic principle of the idea of the race The new creed which includes such gross contradictions, without even attemping their solution, can hardly claim more scientific importance than any one of the old confessions of faith. In
goodness
? ? ; by
!
is
is
of it.
It
is
? Ch. III. ] SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY. 1 37
point of fact, both philosophy and theology soon passed from Strauss's last book to the order of the day. His earlier con tributions to historical criticism ought not however to be forgotten. We shall speak of them in the next book.
But neither the right nor the left wing of the Hegelian
school permanently enriched dogmatic theology, owing to the weakness of the former in historical criticism, and of the latter in the appreciation of religious facts. On the other hand, we have to mention a number of men who, avoiding these two extremes, tried to gain by the aid of speculative philosophy a profounder conception of the Christian faith. The most im
works in this connexion are three : Biedermann s Christliche Dogmatik, Weisses Philosophische Dogmatik, and Rothes Theologische Ethik. Their common feature is a
speculative theism and a theistic and theological view of history, in which the facts as well as the ideas and ideals of Christianity find a place.
At the time of Alois Emanuel Biedermann's youth scien tific and ecclesiastical circles had been deeply stirred by the Hegelian philosophy and Straussian criticism. Both pro foundly affected him and greatly enriched his thought, without robbing him of his freedom and individuality. He never was an Hegelian in the strict sense of the school, but from the first regarded Hegel's characteristic method of a priori dialectic as an error and as the untenable weakness of the system, and tried to correct it by a less ambitious departure from experi ence. Still, he saw profound truth in the fundamental principle of the Hegelian philosophy, that reason is in everything which exists and occurs, and must, as the creative nature of things, be comprehended by our own rational thought. He likewise recognised the great importance of Strauss's critical labours, although he early perceived that the limitation of Strauss's powers lay in the fact that he could not rise above the critical dissolution of the conceptions of ecclesiastical tradition
to the speculative recognition and presentation of the religious truth contained in them, Biedermann regarded criticism, in which he was equal to Strauss in point of rigour, as only one half of the problem to be solved ; the other, and certainly not less important half, being to formulate as conceptual know- 1 ledge the content of religious truth after it has been purified in the crucible of critical analysis. To make this positive addi tion to Strauss's negative results, he regarded as his own life-
portant
? ? ? ? I38 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
work, to the accomplishment of which he devoted the labours of his best years. The result of these labours is contained in his chief work, Die Christliche Dogmatik, the first edition of which appeared in 1868, and the second in 1884-5, en" larged by a philosophical introduction in which is expounded the theory of knowledge underlying his metaphysics and theology.
This theory of knowledge occupies a peculiar position intermediary between Hegel's logical idealism and Spinoza's parallelism of extended and thinking Being as the two sides of the one substance. Biedermann holds firmly to the He gelian principle that the substance of spirit is logical Being, and hence can be wholly and entirely comprehended in logical categories, both in respect of the infinite spirit, or God, and of the finite spirit, or man. But he does not hold that the logical Being of spirit includes within it all Being, and that the world is only the development and manifestation of the absolute logical idea ; nor does he think that we can construct and logically deduce the world by means of an a priori dia lectic. On the contrary, he teaches that spiritual or ideal
Being is never given us other than with and in sensuous or material Being, and only in such a way that they are by nature antithetical--the one, logical Being, is outside space and time ; the other, material Being, spatial and temporal, but both are combined with and in each other to form the one whole reality. The problem of cognition accordingly in the case of any content of consciousness, so to distinguish the ideal
Being from the material Being, in combination with which exists, as to make clear both the antithesis of their respective natures, and at the same time the indivisible unity of their substance. This abstraction of logical Being from material
Being, and the comprehension of the former, as the ideal content of experience, " in purely logical categories, what Biedermann means by pure thought. " This theory of cog nition the foundation of his metaphysics from follow,
in his view, the answers to the most important questions re garding soul and body, God and world. On this very account we must not refrain from stating the grave objections to which the theory open. In the first place, we must observe that the conception " ideal Being " ambiguous, since denotes sometimes thinking Being (spirit, consciousness), sometimes
denkendes Sein.
? ? ? 1
1
is
it
it
is
is is
;
it
is,
? Ch. III. ] SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY. 1 39
ently expect that this thinking Being, or spirit, will be com prehended purely and entirely in logical categories. Neither can we assent to the proposition that ideal or spiritual Being is timeless, while temporal Being as such is physical or material ; Being thought, as the idea of a triangle, of spirit, or of history, is indeed timeless ; but thinking Being, or spirit itself, is never given us in experience as timeless Being, but always as the consciousness of our ego taking place in time. Whether this peculiarity of occurring in time, which always attaches to the Being of spirit in our experience, is accidental and can be dispensed with in thought, is a difficult question, and has been variously answered ; but whatever answer be
given, at any rate the identification of spiritual with timeless
Being can never be taken for granted as an unquestionable axiom. Further, with regard to the fundamental principle of
this theory of knowledge, viz. , the parallelism of ideal and material Being as the two inseparable sides of one substantial reality, I remark, firstly, that this view, derived from Spinoza, cannot be deduced from the analysis of our consciousness, since direct experience is always entirely a phenomenon of consciousness, and hence ideal Being, from which we after wards mediately infer the existence of an external material Being. Secondly, as a psychological hypothesis this theory is not calculated satisfactorily to explain the relation of body and soul without doing violence to the facts of experience. Thirdly, as a metaphysical hypothesis it is equally unfitted to
the relation of the world to God ; for if the world is both spiritual and material Being, we cannot see how it should have its foundation in a purely spiritual God ; vice versa, if with Biedermann we accept the latter hypothesis, we should expect the reduction of material Being in some way to spiritual Being, and not the co-ordination of the two as from the first opposite in nature. Hegel's monism of absolute Spirit, and Spinoza's dualism of Thought and Extension, are theories too contradictory to admit of combination in a single system. Biedermann most likely recognised the one-sided
1 gedachtes Sein.
relation, law). Now it is cer
Being thought1 (conception,
tainly wrong to say that thinking Being, i. e. , being which thinks, is merely logical Being, since the same Being which thinks also wills and feels ; for this reason we cannot anteced
? explain
? ? ? 140 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
character of absolute logical idealism, and its need of amend ment from the side of actual experience ; but in having recourse, with this object in view, to Spinoza's dualism of thinking and corporeal Being, he grafted a foreign and an tagonistic shoot upon the trunk of idealism, and left unremoved Hegel's fundamental defect, his abstract logical formalism. Still, by this alteration Biedermann attained one object--a more definite distinction between God and the world, thus the substitution of theism for pantheism, though still in too abstract a form ; and to do this was an essential condition for a right view of religion.
The investigation of the nature of religion was improved in the second edition of Biedermann's work by the psycho
logical description of it being placed before the inquiry into its metaphysical basis. Biedermann defines Religion as the endeavour of the human ego to rise above the limiting nega tions of the world as the scene of its natural life by appealing to a Power raised above such limitation, in order by its help to obtain deliverance ; it is produced by anything which discloses the opposition between man's demands of life and the limita tion he experiences. The psychical form of this endeavour is
Faith, in which all the elementary functions of the personal
spirit are harmoniously combined : a feeling of dependence and mundane limitation as the point of departure, and of freedom as the goal of the act of appeal, a conception of an infinite Power above man, a desire to rise to this Power, with a longing for deliverance from the cramping limitations of the world. This whole act of the man, theoretical and practical in one, constitutes real "religious faith "; while "faith" in the sense of mere theoretical belief is not a religious act at all. Precisely because religious faith is something other than a mere form of secondary knowledge, it can never be rendered obsolete and replaced by any higher kind of knowledge, such as philosophy.
Philosophy can exercise a purifying influence upon the theo retical side of religion, --on the various modes of conceiving the contents of faith, --but can never replace the distinctly reli gious act of faith itself -- the practical elevation of the man to God. By this means Biedermann secured himself against the Hegelian confusion of religion and philosophy, which had led Strauss to the fatal step of annulling the former by means of the latter, and strictly guarded the indefeasible rights of the reli gious life against all encroachments on the part of knowledge.
? ? ? ? Ch. III. ] SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY. 141
But Biedermann does not end with the psychological de scription of religion. Though this has its proximate source in the nature of man himself, as finite spirit, the appeal of his
soul to God is incomprehensible without the metaphysical supposition of relations on God's part with man ; the fact of religion presupposes the existence and self-revelation of God. The legitimacy of this presupposition, of which the religious consciousness has an immediate certainty, is shown by the reasoning intellect in the "proofs of the existence of God"; and then the idea of God is put into a " pure "--i. e. , abstractly logical -- formula, as follows: "The absoluteness of the spirit ual Being of God consists therein, that the actus purus of his self-sufficient existence within himself is the non-temporal and non-spatial condition, i. e. , the eternal and omnipresent source, of the temporal and spatial process of the finite world. " God is the source of the world, not by temporal act of creation out of nothing, but in that by a non-temporal method he produces from himself the material being of the world, and makes it external to himself. The latter expression is intended defi
nitely to provide against any pantheistic confusion of God and world ; but, it must be confessed, the conception of the abso lute Spirit producing from himself, and making external to himself, a material world, the nature of which is antithetical to his own spirituality, is as unrealisable in thought as the Church's idea of creation, which lays no claim to logical truth.
Moreover, in Biedermann's case this claim rests upon a de lusion ; the categories of (Insichseins) existence within self,
and making external to self (Aussersichsetzens), evidently be long to the intuition of space, and are therefore by no means
purely logical, but figurative expressions, which are not purer but only much less significant than the expressions usually borrowed from the analogy of the human spirit. Biedermann's rejection of this one possible way of arriving at positive (though, of course, always relative) statements about God, ostensibly in the interests of " pure thought," which, it is said, can lay claim to absolute appropriateness, was not the strength but the weakness of his theology, betraying his bondage to the logical formalism and dogmatism of the Hegelian school.
Biedermann discusses at length the nature of divine revela tion. It is a process within the human spirit, effected by God, in which man's spiritual activities are not set aside but raised above their finite limitation, so as to experience the divine.
? ? ? ? I42 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
More particularly, we may distinguish three elements in the
divine revelation : it appears as the basis of man's spiritual life
in his bent to rationality (Vernunftrieb), as the law of his spiritual life in his conscience, and as the force securing its normal realisation in his religious and moral freedom. This latter is the properly religious revelation, which takes place in the faith of the religious man as illumination, blessedness, and sanctification. These inward experiences of the religious spirit are the effect therefore of direct divine action or revelation, and in this consists the only revelation properly so called ; on the other hand, things lying behind or outside them, whether external events or history or sacred scriptures or ceremonial observances, are in themselves only phenomena of mans life of faith ; though a natural confusion of the external and de rived with the inward and primary causes them to be looked upon as direct divine revelations, and gives them in the faith of the Church a position of unchangeable divine authority given once for all. Hence we have the principle of super natural authority common to all positive religions, and their tendency to strictly preserve anything traditional as having ostensibly come directly from God. This failure of super- naturalism to recognise the natural side of historical religion is corrected by Rationalism, which calls attention to the natural historical conditions of all religious phenomena, but on the other hand exaggerates the truth of this observation by treat ing everything in religion as a merely natural product of the human mind, and quite dispensing with the divine factor. The problem of critical and speculative theology Biedermann con siders to be to preserve such a mean between the two ex tremes that the supernatural or divine, and the natural or human come to be recognised as the two inseparably united sides of every revelation and throughout the whole history of religion. Biedermann has also applied this principle to the Christian tradition and to the solution of the great questions of Christology, of the nature and value of the Bible, and of the creeds of the Church.
The Christian religion, he teaches, had its historical source in the person"of Jesus, while its essential nature or principle is to be found in the religious relation as it is presented to us in the religious consciousness of Jesus as a new fact of revela tion determining his whole personality and at the same time creating faith in that personality. " We can therefore call the
? ? ? ? Ch. III. ] SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY. I43
religious personality of Jesus the essential principle of Chris tianity, meaning by this that the new saving influence on man kind with this new object of faith, was simply the characteristic
religious consciousness of this person, which took the form of the consciousness of sonship to the heavenly Father. Un doubtedly this personal consciousness of Jesus points to a divine revelation, and so far was miraculous, but only in the relative sense, not as something transcending the constitution of humanity, but as itself the highest fulfilment of the religious and moral destiny of the race ; in Jesus the religious truth that we are all called to be sons of God became, with immediate freshness and force, the content of our knowledge and feeling and a motive-power in our will ; in this sense he is the Son of
God and the Saviour /car e^p-xfiv. But when the Church con verted this relative miracle of the original religious personality
? of Jesus into a miracle pure and simple, the superhuman person of the God-man from heaven, it did so in consequence of the above-mentioned psychological " law of identification," ac cording to which the divine source of revelation gets directly
identified with the human means of its manifestation. Bieder- mann considers it to be the business of dogmatic Christology to correct this optical illusion from which all its difficulties spring, to discriminate between the person of Jesus and the Christian principle, the spirit or the ideal of life, the idea of Christianity, and to do this in such a way as neither to con
found the two nor to abstractly separate them, but rather to
present the person as the historical embodiment of the prin
ciple, and the principle as the ideal significance of the person. In this idea of the business of Christology, Biedermann is in
substantial accord with the theory of Alexander Schweizer above noticed, though the theories are somewhat differently formulated.
Our theologian adopts a similar course in describing the Reformation. Here too he distinguishes the principle from its historical manifestation in the formation of the Reformed
churches.
The former consists in a fundamental tendency of the Christian spirit, which always exists in the Church, be cause belonging to the essence of Christianity -- the tendency to react against its own misrepresentation in the Church, and to maintain its peculiar truth in contradistinction to the lower stages represented by the religions of nature and of law. The
Reformation gave dogmatic expression to this tendency in the
? ? ? 144 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
" formal principle" of the sole authority of the word of God,
and in the "material principle" of justification from grace alone and through faith. But when the Churches of the Pro testant confessions were formed, it was only the practical religious importance of this principle that was recognised, and the consequences involved in it were not worked out. It was indeed historically unavoidable and justifiable in itself to go back for a knowledge of Christian truth behind the tradition of the Church to the Scriptures as historically the original source of this knowledge. But this historical appreciation of the Scriptures did not suffice ; they were regarded as " the word of God" absolutely, and infallible divine authority was
consequently
ascribed to them. Thereby the traditional
Catholic theory of authority was in principle still adhered to,
and only the form of the authority changed, though in a way
which might be regarded as an advance. But there was only a relative difference between the Protestant's principle of Scripture and the Catholic's principle of tradition. Equally opposed to the essence of Protestantism was the elevation of ecclesiastical forms of doctrine of historic growth to the posi tion of symbolic statements of unconditional authority. What is really Protestant is simply the continual regeneration of doctrinal theology out of the living principle of Christianity by means of the scientific criticism of the previous development of dogma.
This is the task of theological science which must not be hindered by any theory of inspiration. On the contrary, theo logy has to distinguish in the Scriptures, no less than in the creeds, between the ideal truth as the lasting kernel and the historically conditioned wrappings in which it appears in the
Biblical and ecclesiastical forms of doctrine. Biedermann has sought to do this. He gives an account first of the whole system of Biblical theology, and next of the theology of the Church with its central christological dogmas ; he then pro ceeds to critically analyse these dogmas, and finally presents their pure ideal content in a systematic form. This mode of treatment has the advantage of furnishing a strictly objective account of the Biblical and ecclesiastical doctrines, the histori cal account being kept separate from the theologian's own critical and speculative estimate of it ; but it combines the double disadvantage, that each individual doctrine is treated of in various parts of the book, thus rendering a connected view
? ? ? ? Ch. III. ] SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY. 145
less easy, and that the positive result, the pure logical essence of the historical subject-matter and its critical analysis, proves to be very much too meagre and vague to help the
Church of the present day to understand its faith. It is true that this defect is the consequence, not only of the form of treatment, but also of the theory of knowledge before con sidered. The metaphysics and psychology based upon this theory exercise also an influence for evil upon the matter of his eschatology : a consequence of it is the denial of the immor tality of the soul, since according to this theory the soul must be conceived only as the ideal side of the body and together with but not as an independent entity. clear that the Christian Church cannot accept this theory without cutting
? itself off from its whole past history
be the more readily rejected scientifically inadmissible, --for
and such a demand may proportion as also
depends upon the unde- monstrable assumptions of a philosophical dogmatism. This
the weak side of Biedermann's work, which in other respects contains so much that excellent.
Christian Hermann Weisse also belonged at first to Hegel's school, but probably perceived the error of logical idealism, and tried to correct a manner which bears close resemblance in many respects to the theosophy of Schelling's later years and of Baader, while his system not without the originality of genius, and contains an abundance of profound and fertile
dependence
The fact that his Philosophische Dogmatik oder Philosophic des Christenthums has notwithstanding had no important influence upon theology, maybe explained partly by Weisse's heavy style, partly by the little sympathy his purely deductive method meets with in the bent of our time towards
thoughts.
induction. To do Weisse justice, must not be forgotten that his speculative reasoning, in all departments, cluding religion, commands wide knowledge of the empirical subject-matter, and that he succeeds in working up this into his deductive statement in a most suggestive manner.
Weisse's Philosophische Dogmatik begins with a specula tive construction of the nature of God, which his departure from Hegel's logical idealism at once becomes apparent. The divine Reason, in which the eternal and necessary truths of reason are contained as an intelligible world, according to Weisse, not the whole nature of the Deity, but only the first element or stage of the primary possibility of all Being, but
empirical
g. T.
? ? it,
is, L
it
It is
in
a
in
is
it in
is
is
it in
;
it is
it,
? 146 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
not as yet reality. To reason and its necessary thoughts we
must add the divine Heart (Gemiith), in which the divine life,
as sentient and perceptive, begets a profusion of forms which prefigure the ideal types of the world ; and from this profuse creation of inward thoughts and figures there arises, thirdly, the divine Will, which freely works upon this given material, and so actualises the nature of God as personality and love. The identification of these three elements, or stages, with the Persons of the Trinity is a concession to dogmatic theology for which Weisse could quote precedents from the history of dogma ; but the conception of the self-realisation of God as a process in time preceding the creation of the world, is open to graver objections, and reminds us strongly of Gnostic
The creation of the world, too, Weisse represents as a series of acts beginning and continuing in time, the first of which was the formation of matter, or the chaotic fundamental forces, which proceeded from the divine Will by its action on the ante-creative products of his " nature " (or his heart), and formed the material for God's further organising and shaping activity as creator. From the nature of matter thus conceived Weisse explains the metaphysical necessity of evil in the world. The matter of the world, as the externalised will of God, which has put itself in antithesis to his personal will, possesses a dis tinct spontaneity of creature-existence which passes into a real
? mythology.
to the inwardness and blessedness of God, and hence is the common root of both physical and moral evil. Just as matter, though generated by God, presents notwith standing, as something relatively independent, an antithesis to his personal will, so God cannot all at once and by a fiat of will put an end to the evil involved in matter, but can only
gradually end the misery unavoidably involved in every fresh birth of living creatures, by the progressive creative activity of his loving will, and transform it into gladness. To this pre human evil, having its final metaphysical source in the self-will of the creature as such, Weisse refers ideas commonly held of the devil. Similarly the first origination of sin in the personal creature according to him, not to be sought so much in conscious acts of will, as in the genesis before time of the per sonal will out of the natural spontaneity of individual
antagonism
beings. These are, at any rate, profoundly suggestive thoughts, which
a serious and earnest theology cannot pass over with indiffer ence.
? ? is,
? Ch. III. ] SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY. I47
The process of creation, which reaches its climax in the generation of rational creatures, is continued in the process of the history of civilisation and religion, which must be regarded as a continual " incarnation of God," in the sense that human nature is transformed from earthly nature to one in the image of God, and the ideal " Son-Man " is realised in the human race. The history of religion Weisse conceives as beginning in a consciousness of God, which in its essence is spiritual and with an ethical content, but vacillates between unity and plu rality, spirituality and a sensuous form. From this undeter mined beginning, either monotheism or polytheism might be developed. The fact of the priority of the latter development in heathen national religions is explained by the psychological law that the activities of the imagination and the heart are earlier in the ascendant than those of the conscious will. Pro gress in the mythological age consisted partly in the refine
? ment of the aesthetic form of the myths -- in conjunction with
the general development of each people -- partly in the ethic- ising of their religious contents. From the first the physical and ethical permeated mythology, it is true ; but while at the beginning the physical predominated, the emphasis was after wards laid on the ethical ; the sensuous materials of the intui tive imagination were more and more freely melted down into the form of their ideal content, quite independent of the direct phenomena of nature ; the gods of nature were personified and brought into connection with man's moral life. Hence we cannot deny the moral and religious value of the mythological religions, particularly the Grecian ; Weisse does not hesitate to say that in them was already at work the same power of God to save and sanctify which ecclesiastical dogmatism wishes us to regard as the sole property of the so-called revealed re ligions in the stricter sense. And he rightly adduces in favour of this broad human view the early Christian doctrine of the pre-Christian mission of the divine Logos. Though the re ligion of the Old Testament is a revelation in a higher sense, yet it is not this in such a way as to justify the exclusion of the polytheistic religions from the common idea of the incarna
tion of the divine. But what from the first distinguished the Hebrews' conceptions of God was their subordination of the imagination, the source of myths, to the ethical power of will, the source of history. The legislation of Moses was a typical act of liberation, inasmuch as it showed mankind that its
? ? ? 148 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
divine vocation was to rise above nature to a moral order of life. This conception of God was then freed from its national limitation, and the universal religious ideal prefigured in the teaching of the prophets, which may be compared to the teaching of Greek philosophy " and of the Mysteries ; for this too had risen in the Platonic Idea of the Good " to the rank of a monotheistic principle, and in the doctrine of immortality of the Mysteries to an ethical spiritualisation of religious hopes and ideals.
This universal historical process of the incarnation of God, or the realisation of the " Son- Humanity," is consummated in Jesus, who combined and gathered up the historical conditions into an act of personal consciousness. This permeation of the human nature by the divine, whereby the man Jesus became above all other mortals the instrument of the highest revelation of God, the personal " Son-Man," must not be understood mythically as a physical event, but as an ethical miracle accom plished in the soul of this unique personality. The peculiar characteristics of the personality of Jesus may be summed up by saying that he was endowed with genius in the highest sense of the word, analogous to that of all those historical per sonalities who have been originators in the realm of religion, in particular the prophets of Israel, though in the case of Jesus we must suppose an extraordinary intensification of the gifts of talent and genius. Religious experience was intensified in him to the absolute power of an inward revelation which first raised the historical revelation of God in the human race to its summit of perfection ; for this revelation, for the first time concentrating in consciousness the whole truth of the idea of God, completely permeating the heart and will of the entire personality, presented a person before the eyes of the world, who, within the limits of humanity, exhibited purely and com pletely the image of God. This is the same Christology as that of A. Schweizer and Biedermann, above described ; with the latter Weisse shares the speculative framework of his
? Christology,
and with the former the more definite delineation
of the historical character ; common to him with both is the
rejection of the mythically supernatural, and the translation of
it into ethical ideality in the domain of history.
Very closely allied to Weisse's speculations is Richard
Rothe's Theologische Ethik {isted. 1845-8
; 2nded.
His method also is deductive construction by means of specu
1864sq. ).
? ? ? Ch. III. ] SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY. 1 49
lative ideas, resulting in a Christian system of philosophy,
to which the supernaturalism of the Bible, the theosophy of
Schelling and Oetinger, and the theology of Schleiermacher have been made to contribute. The combination of these diverse elements in a systematic whole forms a work of art of too peculiar a character to admit of its being used as a general authority, but the charm of which consists in its being the
and reflection of a rich and noble mind, a profound thinker, a vivid imagination, and a truly devout soul.
Rothe himself describes his method as follows : speculative
thought, when engaged in speculation, closes its eye abso lutely to everything without, and looks solely into itself; it follows only the dialectical necessity under which every idea produces new ones from its own fertility. It is not till after wards, when speculation has completed its construction, that the consideration of reality has to be added, as the test of the conformity or nonconformity of the results of speculation with
product
? if the latter be the case, the mistake must be looked for in the manipulation of the ideas. Rothe therefore fully shares the formal principle of
the Hegelian school -- its dialectical method ; his results how ever differ widely from those of this school, and approximate very closely to Schelling's theosophy and Schleiermacher's theology ; and this is owing partly to the peculiar distinction drawn by him between philosophical and theological specula tion, according to which the contents and drift of the latter are from the first quite different from those of the former.
Philosophical speculation must, Rothe thinks, start from the pure consciousness of the ego, from this formal act of thinking self, abstracted from all content ; theological speculation, on the contrary, must start from the consciousness of God, which in its immediate certainty is co-ordinate with self-consciousness, and is therefore adapted to be the starting-point of an indepen dent system of speculation entirely parallel to the philosophical one ; an assertion which is exposed to the objection of being an unfounded petitioprincipii, and has nowhere found acceptance. We must however see how Rothe constructs his system on the basis of this principle professedly free from assumptions.
The conception of the absolute as the "self-determined" involves the distinction of potentiality and actuality. Hence we must think of pure potentiality, indeterminate and indif ferent Being, as the first thing in the Deity. From this hidden
the actual condition of the world ;
? ? ? 150
DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
source the actuality of God springs in the double form of per sonality and nature ; and originally Rothe had made nature in God the cause and therefore the antecedent of his person ality ; but in his second edition he makes God's personality rise directly from his potentiality and determine the further pro cess of his self-actualisation ; though, it must be acknowledged, that a clear conception of this is impossible, since we have no analogy in man's personality to guide us. The similarity of this speculative conception of God to that formulated by Weisse is at once evident, though Rothe does not wish, like Weisse, that the three elements or stages of the divine nature should be identified with the three Persons of the ecclesiastical dogma of the Trinity, but pronounces the con nexion to be altogether remote and unessential. From God's affirmation of himself as ego, Rothe further deduces his simul taneous affirmation of his non-ego, at first, as existing in voluntarily in thought only ; but when God actualises this imagined non-ego by a free act of will, it becomes pure matter. This is for God a limitation of his absoluteness (though created by himself), which as such he strives to abolish, but cannot simply negative, since it is necessarily implied in his ego.
Hence his active relation to matter can only consist in intro ducing spirit into thus raising to the position of his alter ego, created spirit. This fashioning of undivine matter into the organ of the divine spirit the continuous process of creation, which may be conceived as the continuous " becoming of the world " Weltwerdung), or, in relation to its goal, as more definitely " the incarnation (Menschwerdung) of God within the limits of material existence. " But inasmuch as this creative activity in organising matter at each stage dependent on the previously created things as its means, and in the last instance on matter as its substratum, cannot be purely absolute. This the ground of the want of complete ness every stage of the world, and of the imperfection of its condition at all times. All evil the world, including moral evil or wickedness, has its final source therefore, according to Rothe as well as Weisse, in the never wholly vanquished antagonism which the distinct life of matter presents to the will of God. And this true not only of the present epoch of the world, but of all future ones for every new period of creation will again have to contend with the dross of matter inherited from the one before Hence Rothe, like Origen,
? ? ? it.
;
in
is it
is
is
in
is it
(
it,
? Ch. III. ] SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY. I 5 I
maintains that the end of the world is always followed by a new period of creation.
Rothe's conception of the ethical vocation of mankind is
closely connected with these cosmological speculations.
as the spiritualisation of material elements is the purpose of the perpetual creative work of God, so the ethical vocation of the personal creature is the appropriation of material nature by means of his self-determination determining nature. Man is by self-determination to become a personal character, but at the same time by cultivating nature he is to become lord of the world. Hence if God's purpose with the world is identical with the progressive civilisation of historical humanity, the normal ethical action of the latter must be identical with religion, for it is action performed in fellowship with God, who influences and directs man's growing personality, and for the purpose of God, whose will is to occupy the world as personality. From this Rothe infers that morality and piety in their normal development are co-extensive, and that a piety without morality would be an abstract, phantom piety. In particular, " Christian piety is absolutely identical with pure and complete morality," and hence its community, the Church, is identical with the ethical community, the State. At present, it is true, as the moral has not reached its true normal condition, and the ethical community has not yet fully developed into a universal organism of states, this is only an ideal to be aimed at, and not immediately realisable ; but even now it must be the final end determining our moral and religious develop ment.
These fundamental principles of his theological speculation Rothe consistently followed out in relation to practical church politics. He opposed every form of ecclesiasticism that lacks
moral stamina, that pietistically shuns the world or is hier archically hostile to and insisted on practical Christianity with fine breadth of mind he recognised all that true and good in modern culture, in art and science, in the intercourse of nations, and in cultivated society Christianity and true humanity ought not only to form a close alliance, but Chris tianity ought to become absolutely moral and human, and humanity absolutely religious and Christian. Undoubtedly noble principles, which any case retain their truth, even we object to the formula of the " absolute equivalence and coincidence of religion and morality, Church and State," on
Just
? ? ? in
if ;
;
is
it,
? 152 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
account of the psychological and social difference of the two
spheres, and though we regard Rothe's eschatological forecast of the future as a transcendental fiction.
For in spite of the rationality of Rothe's view of the moral vocation of mankind, he still distinctly accepts the super- naturalism of the Biblical and ecclesiastical doctrines. Though regarding sin as an unavoidable passage in the course of the moral development of personality out of nature, he still believes that pre-Christian humanity fell a prey to an abnormal develop ment, to sinful depravity, from which it could only be delivered and restored to its normal moral condition by a miraculous act on the part of God, resuming the interrupted creation and beginning it afresh, viz. , by the sending of the supernatural person of the second Adam in Jesus of Nazareth. This second Adam, Rothe held, had necessarily to come into the world in a purely supernatural way, springing indeed from natural humanity, yet not called into being by its own develop ment and in the ordinary way, but by a creative act of God
upon which was absolutely miraculous the Saviour had to be born of a woman, though not begotten by a man, but created by God. Only thus, Rothe thought, could he be the second Adam and begin the normal moral development of mankind. He was not indeed from the first actually a divine person, but became such the course of his life consequence of his supernatural birth. For from the first moment of his personal life God entered into a relation of real union with him, in order by means of his moral development to dwell in him in ever closer approximation to absolute unity. The
course of his life was therefore a continual process of Man
becoming God and God becoming Man. This was completed the resurrection and the elevation of Christ to the divine sovereignty of the world, which he at present exercises his
spiritual presence Christendom, until on his visible return to earth he will establish the perfect kingdom of God. Together with Christ will appear the saints, clothed then with spiritual body, the bodies of the pious upon the earth will be made spiritual, while the ungodly will be given up to
judgment, i. e. , to total destruction. Finally, the terrestrial world will also be spiritualised and placed communication with the heavenly spheres. Thus the kingdom of earth be comes the kingdom of heaven.
We shall not here inquire how far these doctrines are con
? ? ? in
a
it,
in
by
in
in
in
;
? Ch. III. ] SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY. 1 53
sistent with the speculative premises of the system. It is certain that Rothe's heart and imagination clung as firmly to this miraculous world of faith as his energetic ethical mind insisted on moral action and the reconciliation of Christianity with the culture of our time. We may say there dwelt two souls within his breast ; yet the two were united in him so as to form a complete harmonious personality, and it was just this which enabled him to generously tolerate and acknow ledge the very various tendencies of the Christianity of to day. " To the pure all things are pure," and Rothe was one of the purest.
? s
? ? ? CHAPTER IV.
ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS.
Under this head I include a series of theologians, belonging to the most recent past and the present, who in spite of the difference of their results possess the common characteristic of trying to reconcile the faith of the Church with their own thought and that of their contemporaries, without making their faith dependent upon the hypotheses and formulae of a definite philosophical system. At this point I wish expressly to pre mise that I do not in any way use the adjective " eclectic " in a derogatory sense. In philosophy, it is true, the word has usually such a sense, because from a philosopher we are wont to demand a harmonious system based on a definite funda mental principle, and giving a scientific account of the world, and hence we regard the eclectic method of philosophising, which tries to combine thoughts derived from various quarters, as defective. Even in the case of philosophy, however, we might object, that precisely the most important and fruitful contributions to it have derived the most varied elements from previous philosophers, and have never been more than partially successful in thoroughly combining them ; so that even in philosophy our unfavourable judgment ought not to condemn the eclectic method as such, but only unsatisfactory attempts to reconcile contrary modes of thought. Much more will this hold in the case of theology, which is not intended to construct systematic scientific explanations of the world, but to exhibit the belief of a particular Church for the practical purposes of its ministers at a particular time. If we consider that the theology of the Church is the product of its history
? during eighteen
centuries, enriched with contributions from
the most various minds, we must admit at all events that here,
in a much greater degree than in philosophy, systematic unity
can never be more than an approximately attainable ideal. If we further consider that the needs of the Church of to-day, for which the theologian must work, are of the most various
? ? ? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 1 55
kinds, and that their variety grows with the Church's wealth
in individual religious life, we shall come to the conclusion,
that a theology sacrificing this diversity of religious interests and forces in an attempt to work out in systematic form a definite and limited principle, fulfils its task worse than a
In proportion as a theology is dependent upon one particular philosophical system, it is certain to be wrecked upon the limitations of the latter, for its influence is confined to the narrow circle of the adherents of the system, and to the short period it is in vogue. The more, on the other hand, the theo
logian succeeds in giving expression to the religious and ethical ideal existing in the mind of the Church with a breadth of view and a freedom of treatment which recognises fully the (relative) justice of the claims of the various existing modes of thought and belief, the greater will be his success in pre
to extended circles the means of a common religious understanding, a symbol therefore of the community of faith, which always exists in spite of all differences. It however, evident that the theological works which aim at eclectically reconciling the old and the new, according to the needs of the Churches of to-day, must not be measured by the standard of
strict theological science. These theologians are right in so far as they succeed in finding for the faith of the fathers an
expression intelligible and acceptable to the present genera tion where they are wrong when any of them confounds the conditional truth of his dogmatic statements with an uncon ditional and universal truth, and in his dogmatic arrogance disputes the equal justification of other presentations of it. shall therefore, think, be justified in confining myself to an objective review of the characteristic opinions of the individual theologians of this class, without attempting a critical estimate of them. also purposely refrain from arranging them ac cording to their dogmatic schools the only difference of general nature among these mediating eclectics that with some of them conservative fear of breaking with ecclesias tical tradition predominant, and with others a free recasting
and development of this tradition. But this an altogether
an eclectic attitude towards the various
theology maintaining
philosophical systems, and contenting itself with rendering the Church's belief intelligible and useful to the general edu cated thought of the day. This is confirmed by experience.
?