No More Learning

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The ark of the covenant, an idol intended primarily for the life of soldiers in camps and on marches, continued also in peace, as the sign of Jahve's presence, to be the centre of his worship. And with the ritual was closely connected, both in the time of Moses and later, the sacred administration of justice, the thora. In all difficult cases inquiry was made of the mouth of Jahve, counsel being sought of the priests, who gave sentence in the name of Jahve,--either according to their own knowledge of his will, or according to a decision of the
lot, --and possessed simply moral authority. The priestly thora was an institution wholly unconnected with and prior to political arrangements ; it existed before the State, and con stituted one of its invisible fundamental pillars. War and law were religion before they were changed into compulsion and civil order; this is the real meaning of the so-called theocracy. A regular state, with specific sanctity, was by no means built up by Moses on the principle, "Jahve the God of Israel;" and after him the old patriarchal constitution of families and clans, the elders of which were leaders in war and judges in
? peace, continued to exist. Only when the whole nation had some great special work to perform was an appeal made to Jahve as the last and extraordinary resource. The theocracy may be said to have arisen to supply the defects of anarchy. Out of the religious consciousness of nationality grew the State, the sanctity of which depended precisely on the fact that it arose as an ideal of religion, to be realized in conflict with indolence and selfishness. "Jahve the God of Israel" accordingly meant that national duties, both internal and external, were conceived as sacred. It did not mean at all that the almighty Creator of heaven and earth had first made a covenant only with this single people, that they might know and worship him. Jahve was not at first the God of the whole world, who then became the God of Israel ; but he was
the God of Israel, and then became much later the God of the world. In an enlightened idea of God,
Moses would have given the Israelites a stone instead of bread ; most probably he left them to think as their fathers had thought about the nature of Jahve in itself, irrespective of his relation to men. With speculative truths, for which there was then no demand whatever, he did not concern himself, but only with practical questions, definitely and necessarily brought before him by the time. The religious starting-point
originally simply
? ? ? 266 BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. [Bk. III.
of the history of Israel is distinguished, not by its marked novelty, but by its normal character. In all ancient nations we find the gods brought into relation with national officers, and religion used as a motive power of law and custom ; but in none with such purity and force as in the case of the
Israelites. Whatever Jahve's real nature may have been -- the God of thunder, or whatever he was, --it retreated more and more into the background as something secret and tran scendent, and no questions were asked concerning The whole emphasis was laid on his action in the world of men, whose aims he made his own. Religion did not call men to participate the life of God, but, on the contrary, God in the life of men but in this did not really fetter but free human life. The so-called particularism of the idea of God, the limitation of Jahve's interest to the affairs of Israel, was the real strength of this religion liberated from the fruitless play of mythology, and facilitated its application to moral duties, which are always first presented and fulfilled only in definite circles. As the God of the nation, Jahve became the God of law and righteousness, and as such grew to be the highest, and finally the sole power in heaven and earth. --After the settlement of the Hebrews in Canaan, the higher civiliza tion of settled life was accompanied by a gradual weakening of their national and religious consciousness. In proportion as Israel coalesced with the conquered country, the gods of the two nations coalesced also, and then arose a syncretism of Jahve with Baal, which lasted on into the time of the prophet
Hosea. But the course of national history fanned the smoul dering coals into blaze. The Philistines aroused Israel and Jahve from their slumber. In the struggle against them was founded Saul's kingdom and his more fortunate successor,
same time deepened the sense of its peculiarity. His intro duction of Phoenician and Egyptian institutions into the worship of Jahve might offend the true old Israelites of his time, but his temple became afterwards of great importance
? David, became the founder of the united Israelite
kingdom, whose military power remained always the proudest memory of the nation. Later Jewish tradition, however, was wrong in making him Levitical saint and pious psalmist. Under Solomon the floodgates were opened to Oriental culture in the wider and higher sense closer intercourse with foreign lands widened the people's intellectual horizon, and at the
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to the religion. The division of the kingdom under Reho- boam was caused both by the discontent at the innovations and strict discipline of Solomon's government, and also by the jealousy of the tribe of Joseph, which had always been the natural rival of the tribe of Judah favoured by David.
Religion was at that time no obstacle to the separation, as the temple services in Jerusalem had not yet become exclusive, the worship instituted by Jeroboam at Bethel and Dan being equally legitimate ; there were images in both places, and indeed wherever there was a sanctuary. There was in general no difference in the religious and spiritual life of the two kingdoms, save that religious movements generally first originated in Israel. A new stage in the history of religion began with the appearance of the prophet Elijah, the most
striking heroic figure in the Bible, towering solitary above his time, and whose memory was preserved by legend and not
against the syncretism between Baal and Jahve, from which very few in Israel had kept free. For Elijah there were not several Powers with equal claims and equally worthy of worship, but everywhere only one holy and mighty Being, revealed, not like Baal in the life of nature, but like Jahve in the ethical demands of the spirit ; the idea of God began in individual men to rise above national limitation. -- In the flour ishing period of the Northern kingdom, under Jeroboam II. , Hebrew literature began. The religious lyrics, telling of the mighty deeds of God through and for Israel, which were
originally handed down by word of mouth, were now com mitted to writing and collected ; thus arose the " Book of the Wars of Jahve" and the " Book of the Upright," the oldest
Hebrew histories. The next step was to write history in prose, making use of documents or family recollections. The books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings contain a considerable part of these ancient historical writings. At the same time certain collections of judicial maxims and decisions of the priests were written down, of which we have an example in
? When Jahve had thus founded the nation and
by history.
kingdom, primarily by its struggle with external foes, he commenced an attack, within the nation and in the spiritual sphere, upon the foreign elements which had been hitherto admitted without much opposition. Ahab's erection of a temple for the Tyrian Baal in Samaria was the occasion of Elijah's contention against the Baal cultus generally, and
? ? ? 268 BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. [Bk. III.
the so-called " Book of the Covenants " (Exod. xxi. , xxii. ). A little later, perhaps, were recorded the legends of the Patriarchs and of the earliest times, which cannot have had a very early origin. When in this way a literary age had arisen, the pro phets also began to write down their speeches. --With the growth of civilization and national prosperity, worship also became more stately than in the simple times of antiquity. This was also the channel by which heathenism could, and did again and again, make its way into the worship of Jahve ; especially was this the case with the private sanctuaries, so that kings and prophets emphatically insisted on the publicity of worship, which provided a corrective for the worst excesses. The priests, moreover, did not merely offer sacrifices, but were also the advisers and instructors of the people, although these more important duties were neglected in comparison with the more lucrative ones connected with the sacrifices. The belief of the nation was the simplest possible : Jahve is the God of
Israel, Israel's helper in need, the judge to secure him justice against his enemies. But Jahve's work was seen, not in the fate of individuals, but in that of clans and nations. Rarely has history so powerfully touched the chords of a nation's heart ; rarely has it been to this extent regarded as the effect of the divine action, to which human action can only inquir ingly adapt itself, or prayerfully submit. Events were mira cles and signs, chance the pointing finger of a higher hand. This way of looking at history was preserved from triviality because the history of a people, not of individuals, was the object of attention. The faith of men thus gained an emotional vividness, the conception of God a magnificent reality. Seers and prophets saw by second sight what Jahve
did, but there was no theology which coolly speculated about him. Men did not seek to know his principles of action, but his immediate intention, in order to act accordingly. The living proof of actual experience was compatible with great freedom of expression ; the reality of experience did not fear even contradictions. Jahve had incalculable moods ; he caused his face to shine, and he was wroth, it was not known why ; he created good and evil, punished sin and tempted to sin. Satan had not then robbed him of some of his attributes. In spite of all this, Israel did not doubt him. On the whole, times had hitherto been prosperous ; the disharmony between external experience and faith had not become so painful as to
? ? ? ? Ch. II] OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM AND EXEGESIS. 269
demand a reconciliation. The case was different when the great Assyrian power began to stretch out its arms towards Israel. -- In anticipation of the coming troubles, the prophet Amos made his appearance, the first and purest representative of a new phase of prophecy. While all the minor nations trembled before the approach of the eastern conqueror, the Israelite prophets alone were neither surprised nor dismayed, but in advance solved the terrible problem history presented. They enlarged religion so as to embrace the conception of the world, which had proved fatal to other religions, before it had
really become part of the profane consciousness of the people. Where others saw the ruin of what was most holy, they saw the triumph of Jahve over appearances and vain beliefs. Whatever might fall, what was valuable remained firm. The very time they lived in became for them the unfolding story of a divine drama, the course of which they watched with prophetic foresight and intelligence. Everywhere the same laws, everywhere the same goal of development. The nations are the actors, Israel the hero, and Jahve the poet of the tragedy. The prophets, of the line of whom Amos was the first, did not proclaim a new God, but they preached that the God of Israel was primarily and above all the God of righteousness, and Israel's God only in so far as Israel satisfied his righteous demands. They therefore reversed the traditional order of the two fundamental articles of faith. This delivered Jahve from the danger of coming into collision with the world, and suffering shipwreck ; the sovereignty of right extended further than the might of the Assyrians. Thus an historical contingency enabled moral convictions to
break through the limitations of the narrow faith in which they had grown to maturity, and so to bring about an advance in the knowledge of God. This is the so-called ethical monotheism of the prophets ; they believed in the moral order of the world, in the unfailing validity of righteous ness as the supreme law for the whole world. From this point of view Israel's prerogative seems to be annulled, and Amos, who states the new doctrine with the greatest abrupt ness and regardlessness of consequences, sometimes verges upon the denial of it ; he calls Jahve the God of hosts, i. e. of the world, but not the God of Israel. Still, the special relation of Jahve to Israel was not doubted by the prophets; they only made its condition a moral instead of a physical one. They
? ? ? ? 27O BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. [Bk. III.
emphasised the idea -- not as yet the name -- of the Covenant and the corresponding idea of the Law, and made these the basis of religion. Nevertheless, their attention was directed, not as yet to the righteousness of the individual and the heart, but to national uprightness and social action. The negative result of their ethical monotheism was their attack on ritual, so far as it was regarded as a means of purchasing the favour of God without moral worth. Above all, the prophets at tacked the sensuous rites connected with worship as a heathenish service of Baal. The prophets were taught by history to know the awful severity of the righteousness of Jahve ; they are the founders of the religion of the Law. This is what constitutes their importance, not their being the forerunners of the gospel. Least of all are they the latter on account of their Messianic prophecies. In them they really fall back upon the patriotic but illusive hopes of the common people, and the " false prophets," whom they on other grounds assail. This was the proof of the insufficiency of their princi ple. In view of the facts and necessities of history, the posi tion of the prophets inevitably led them to transcend the limits of their nation and the world. It was due to the prophets that the fall of Samaria did not injure but strengthened the religion of Jahve ; they saved the faith by destroying the illusion ; they also immortalised Israel by not involving Jahve in the ruin of the nation. --After the fall of Samaria, the king
dom of Judah, which had hitherto politically and religiously followed in the wake of the northern kingdom, succeeded to its position. The prophet Isaiah was the means of saving it from immediately sharing the fate of the northern kingdom, by being involved in the foreign politics of the time, and of securing for it a century of quiet and prosperous development. He despised politics, and yet understood them better than the short-sighted, practical politicians of his day ; he took in at a glance the confusion of the time, for he stood outside and above it. A magnificent faith in the victorious, universal sovereignty of Jahve gave him courage and discretion amid the storms of the time. While the great military powers of the world threatened to stamp out Jerusalem, he beheld in spirit the time when the great nations should come to pay homage in the city of Jahve, and truth go forth from Zion. Truth never expressed its confidence in itself with greater
assurance of victory. But this joyful confidence was mingled
? ? ? ? Ch. II. ] OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM AND EXEGESIS.
271
with tragic resignation. Isaiah recognised the inevitableness of heavy judgments, to which the greater part of the nation would succumb, and only a small remnant be spared as a sacred seed for the future. And to prepare this remnant to realise the ideal of a people of God, first on a small scale, he considered to be the most pressing duty of the age. The
prophets thus entered on the path of practical reform, begin ning with the purification of worship. Isaiah energetically resumed the attack on the worship of images, which Hosea had previously derided, and obtained its actual abolition under King Hezekiah. But the popular religion offered so stout a resistance to this reform that Hezekiah's son Manasseh had to comply with it in the restitution of ritualistic superstitions, and even permit its increase by the adoption of all kinds of heathen rites and forms. The counter-reformation aped in bloody fanaticism the sacred zeal of the prophets, children were sacri ficed in honour of J ah ve- Moloch in the valley of Gehenna. This period, in which the antithesis between ritualistic bigotry and pure morality reached its acutest form, witnessed the
origin of the powerful warnings of the prophet Micah, and perhaps also the commands of the Decalogue, which con cerned ritual only negatively by the command to abstain from idols, and constituted moral goodness the sole content of the divine Will, quite on the lines of Micah vi. 6-8. -- A short but very fruitful triumph was obtained by the prophetic efforts at reform under King Josiah. One of their results was the Book of Deuteronomy, supplementing the Decalogue by an actual national code of laws, based chiefly on a modification of ancient legal maxims. It was the first book of Law and Covenant, the comprehensive programme of a reorganisa tion of the theocracy according to the ideals of the prophets. Here is shown more plainly than anywhere else that Prophets
and Law are not opposed to each other, but are identical and
related as cause and effect. Nowhere is the fundamental
thought of the prophets expressed more clearly than in Deuteronomy, that Jahve demands nothing for himself, but regards and demands justice between man and man as the true religion, and that his Will is not hidden high above us or far off from us, but is to be found in the sphere of moral con
duct known and understood by all. The most important
? ritual in this code was the centralisation of the worship of Jahve in Jerusalem, and the abolition of all
regulation regarding
? ? ? 272 BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. [Bk. III.
other sanctuaries. The motive of this radical innovation was the consistent carrying out of the pure monotheistic religion, and opposition to the heathenish naturalism, which had taken such firm root in the idolatry of the high-places that it could only be exterminated by the abolition of the latter. The limitation of the worship of Jahve to Jerusalem was the popu lar and practical form of the prophetic monotheism ; but the subsidiary consequence of this measure, and one not intended by the legislator, was to strengthen the hierarchy at Jeru salem. Thus the first practical consequence of the prophetic efforts at reform contained the germ of the subsequent de generation of their work. --The theocratic zeal aroused in the people for Law and temple appeared to all to be a pledge of lasting prosperity. Only one man was not deceived by the external appearance, the prophet Jeremiah. In warning words he pointed those who thought themselves secure to the fate of Shiloh and the Ephraimites ; he was rewarded with scorn and persecution. The patriotic fanaticism, which would not learn either from Jeremiah or the course of history itself, led to the destruction of Jerusalem, and the carrying away of the people into the Babylonian captivity. Jeremiah, who had foreseen this, did not despair, but turned his eyes towards a better future for religion and his people. In his hopeless struggle with popular infatuation and obstinacy he had come to see that the real want was a new heart, which could be created by no teaching and no form of worship, but could only be given by God to individual men. The endeavour to make religion individual and inward was the new tendency which sprang out of the decline of the nation, and was pre figured in the individualistic piety of the last and greatest of the prophets, Jeremiah. In place of the nation he was him self the subject of religion ; he only, not Israel, had fellowship with Jahve. He knew that the future and eternity depended upon him, for the nation was not eternal, but the truth which the nation despised, and of which he was certain. -- The small Jewish colony that returned from the exile was no longer a State, but only a religious community. The means for its organisation could only be supplied by the temple service and the priesthood of Jerusalem. The hierocracy, for which even
at the beginning of the Exile Ezekiel had begun to prepare, was now inevitably realised. The high-priest, with the nobility of the priests, beside whom the common Levites sank
? ? ? I
? Ch. II. ] OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM AND EXEGESIS. 273
to mere temple servants, became the centre and rulers of the community. But in the confusion of the next decades the religious spirit threatened to die out, and the Jewish colony to perish by its mixture with the semi-heathenism of the inhabi tants of the country. Then came, under Ezra, a new rein forcement of Jews from Babylon, who aroused afresh in the colony in Palestine the spirit of strict loyalty and the exclusive- ness of the Jewish nature towards everything not Jewish, which had been more fully developed in a foreign land. The introduction of Ezra's priestly code laid the foundation of the
Judaism of later times. This post-Deuteronomic legislation deals, not with a nation, but with a community, and regulates chiefly the worship. Political matters are left out, as they concern the foreign government. The constitution of the community is assumed to be the hierocracy. The head of the worship is the head of the whole community ; the high- priest takes the place also of the king. The other priests are officially his subordinates, as the bishops are subordinate to the pope. They are distinguished from the Levites, the lowest rank of the clergy, not only by their office, but also by
their noble birth. In this clerical organisation the govern ment of holiness is outwardly realised. Inwardly the ideal of holiness governs life by a net of ceremonies and observances which separate the Jew from the man. The renovated ritual of the Temple, augmented by fresh sacrificial rites, had essen tially the same object ; it provided a fixed and united centre for the new theocracy, and formed a protecting shell around the faith and customs of the Fathers for the preservation of ethical monotheism until it could become the common pro perty of the world.
-- Underneath this husk of ceremonial
precepts the kernel of prophetic religion did not altogether die. On the contrary, the individualisation of piety made
further progress. Men began to reflect upon religion. The so-called " Wisdom " was evolved, of which we have literary remains in the Book of Job, in the Proverbs of Solomon and of the son of Sirach, and in Ecclesiastes. And that reflec tion was not injurious to depth of feeling, but that, on the contrary, individualism tended to make religion a matter of the heart, is shown by the Psalms, which all belong to this period. It was an immense advance that the devout Hebrew became assured of his communion with God, as he does in many Psalms, by inward experience, and thus dared to trust
? G. T. T
? ? ? 274 BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. [Bt III.
to himself in his religious relations. This was a subsidiary
product of prophetism, but of equal importance with its chief product, the Law ; it was the universalisation of the personal experience which the prophets, while outwardly unsuccessful, had had in themselves of the inward saving power of truth. While Judaism in the following centuries was petrified under the influence of the externality of ceremonial law, the germ of a nobler future lived on in the depths of inward feeling such as occasionally finds its expression in the " Wisdom " books and the Psalms. The gospel developed these hidden im pulses of the Old Testament, while it protested against the dominant tendency of Judaism. And the religious individual ism of the gospel remains the salt of the earth.
I hope I have not wearied the reader with this excerpt from
Wellhausen's sketch of the history of Israel. Its insertion
was necessary, inasmuch as it is possible to properly esti mate the great importance of the Old Testament criticism
of to-day only by a comparison of this new conception of Israelite history with the earlier traditional one. There we
had from beginning to end a series of riddles, of psychological and historical puzzles ; here everything is comprehensible, we have a clear development, analogous to the rest of history, the external history of the nation and the internal history of its religious consciousness in constant accord and fruitful inter action ; and though not an unbroken advance in a straight line of the whole people, still a laborious struggle of the repre sentatives of the higher truth with the stolid masses, a
in which success and defeat succeed each other in dramatic alternation, and even failure only serves to aid the evolution of the idea itself in ever greater purity from its original integuments. This is human history, full of marvels and of Divine revelation, but nowhere interrupted by miracle or by sudden, unaccountable transitions.
So bold an innovation necessarily provoked considerable opposition. This was often expressly, and perhaps still oftener silently, directed against what seems to us precisely the advantage of this new theory, viz. the substitution of a humanly comprehensible development for mysterious miracles and revelations. Since this opposition rests on dogmatic assumptions lying outside history, it cannot determine the course of the historian. Serious consideration, on the other hand, is due to such objections as have been raised by learned.
? struggle
? ? ? Ch. II. ] OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM AND EXEGESIS. 275
dogmatically unbiassed, Old Testament scholars, and are based on scientific research. Specially important, in this connec tion, are Ewald's eminent scholars : Dillmann, Schrader, and
Noldeke ; further, Riehm, Delitzsch, Strack, Bredenkamp, Ryssel, Curtiss, Finsler, Konig, Kittel, and others. I cannot here enter on the various, often conflicting, views of these scholars as to the composition of the Pentateuch. Their
chief objections to the theory of Reuss and Graf may be sum marised as follows : From the fact that in a given historical period we find no traces of the observance of a law, we cannot forthwith infer the non-existence of the law at that time, since it is possible for laws to be in existence long before they come to be observed in practice. Further, the difference between the prophets and Deuteronomy on the one hand, and the priestly code on the other, is exaggerated by the critics ; some variations may be explained by the difference in the points of view and objects aimed at. The view that the prophets and the Deuteronomist had no acquaintance with the priestly code must be qualified, for both the prophets and Deuter onomy presuppose the existence of a thora relating to the ritual. 1 The distinction between priests and Levites was not first introduced by Ezekiel, but was presupposed by him as already long in existence. Finally, the chief objection that the priestly code itself contains several directions which cannot be explained from the time of Ezra, but point to a very early, certainly pre-Deuteronomic date. Also the linguistic peculiari ties of the priestly code present indications of an early period,
not that after the exile, and part even point to the earliest period of Hebrew literature.
The advocates of the Reuss-Graf theory have not been slow to answer these objections. Kayser, in his essays on the present position of the question of the Pentateuch,2 has subjected them to an examination, the conclusion of which that the three lines of attack made by Old Testament scholars on Grafs theory have been repelled. " The theory has maintained all its positions without giving way an inch. When the history of ritual has shown that the laws of the Elohistic book were first promulgated in the time of Ezra when the history of literature makes plain that the book was unknown
This also maintained by Vatke in his posthumous Introduction to the Old Testament (1887), though without renouncing the main principle of his early book -- The Prophets before the Law.
? Jahrb. fur prot. Theol. , vii. 2-4 Heft.
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BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. [Bk. III.
to all previous writers, and can only be properly understood
by a reference to Ezekiel's mode of thought ; when, finally, the
history of language is compelled against its will to show that the book bears all the characteristics of this time, --then what
further proof can we possibly expect of its really belonging to it ? Until further evidence is forthcoming, we shall be justi fied in regarding Grafs theory as the best substantiated and alone satisfactory explanation of the Pentateuch. " Still even the adherents of this theory admit that various questions of detail have still to be answered. It is acknowledged that the
historical book, even after the removal of the priestly code, is derived from two sources, a Jahvistic and an Elohistic one ; as to the mutual relation of which
pre-Deuteronomic
opinions are still quite divided. In Deuteronomy it is doubt ful whether the introductory and concluding chapters come from the author of the book himself, or whether they were added by a later hand, for the purpose of connecting it with the earlier historical work. Of still greater importance is the question whether the law promulgated by Ezra was the whole of the Pentateuch, or only the main contents of the
? priestly code, which was afterwards incorporated by the disciples of Ezra in the earlier work, perhaps enlarged by the legal
additions and historical narratives.
The most recent thorough investigation of all these ques tions, including a consideration of antagonistic views, is given by Kuenen in his Historisch-kritische Einleitung in die Bucher des alten Testaments hinsichtlich Hirer Entstehunz und
Sammlung (1885, German trans, by Weber, 1887; English by Wicksteed, 1887). He comes to the conclusion that in the year of the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah (444 B. C. ), the Deuteronomic-prophetic sacred history and the priestly legis lative historical book were still separate, and that the two were first combined to form the Hexateuch in the course of
the fifth century by the Sopherim of the school of Ezra ; that the text of the Hexateuch even then underwent numerous revisions during a considerable period, of which traces remain in the discrepancies between the three recensions (textus re- ceptus, Samaritan Pentateuch and the Alexandrine translation). Of further advocates of this theory, we may here mention Stade (Geschichte Israels, incomplete), Budde {Die biblische Urgeschichte, 1883), Smend (Commentar zu Ezechiel), Duhm (Theologie der Propheten, 1875), Schultz
Theologie, 2nd ed. , 1878).
(Alttestamentluhe
? ? ? CHAPTER III.
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY AND THE HISTORY OF DOGMA.
The way in which ecclesiastical history is written is always
largely determined by dogmatic or philosophical theology. The extent and character of his own comprehension of Christi
the ecclesiastical historian in his view of the Church's past and in his judgment of the action of the his torical personages and the growth of the institutions, customs, and doctrines of the Church. Again, on the other hand, a comprehension of the history of the Church is a factor in the formation of a dogmatical view of the nature of Christianity, and of the significance of its traditions in the doctrine and customs of the Church. Hence an account of the develop ment of theology in our century is bound to include works on ecclesiastical history, so far at least as the most important of them are typical of a definite tendency or stage of theological knowledge.
During the flourishing period of Rationalistic theology, at the end of the last and beginning of this century, church history was written on the pragmatic method, of which the best known exponents were Spittler and Planck, both Swabians by birth, and invited from Tubingen to Gottingen, where they entered on long and successful careers both as teachers and authors. Spittler's Grundriss der Geschichte der christl. Kirche (1782), is written from the point of view of the Aufklarung, in order to show how the human mind had risen through the revolutions of eighteen centuries to its present freedom in religious matters. The book is mainly
anity guides
? of the secular-political side of the Church ; its religious and theological side being cast into the background.
Like Gottfried Arnold, Spittler sympathised with the heretics in their opposition to the orthodox Church ; but this sympathy
was not due in Spittler, as in Arnold, to religious mysticism, but to the dogmatic indifferentism of the Aufklarung, to which
the nature of Christianity as religion had become problem
descriptive
? ? ? 27S
BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. [Bk. III.
atic and incomprehensible. Since Christian history is thus from the beginning deprived of any guiding principle, it is
impossible to discover any theological coherence in and comes to be " one long lamentation over the weakness and corruption of the human mind," which, however, still gradu
Providence, which from time to time, the sending of wise men, brings about a change for the better. The persons and phenomena
ally improved by the happy dispensations of
of history are not explained and judged according to the
and motives of their own time, but all alike are estimated by the standard of the modes of thought of the Aufklarung, and anything not agreeing with forthwith condemned as stupidity, phantasy, and error.
More moderate in tone, but written essentially on the same pragmatic method, are Planck's works, Geschichte der Entstel- lung, der Verdnderungen nnd der Bildung unseres protestant ischen Lehrbegriffs von Anfang der Reformation bis zur Einfuhrung der Concordienformel vols. , 781-1800), and
principles
? Geschichte der christlich-kirchlichen
vols. 803-1 809). The excellence of these works consists
in the exactness of the examination of authorities, the careful regard of the various concurring circumstances, external rela tions, and inward inclinations conditioning actions, and the sagacity in the discovery and combination of motives, thus producing a lifelike and vivid picture of historical events.
But the weak side of this "psychological pragmatism" also specially evident in Planck he tries to explain everything that happens by the accidental subjective motives of individual persons, and fails to understand the deeper causes lying in the general ideas and prevailing tendencies of an age. The sub jectivism of the Aufklarung, which isolates and lays stress on the individual, with his peculiar nature and arbitrary will, reflected in this treatment of history, which substitutes for the great objective forces of human society the trivial play of accident and the caprice of individuals. And since the psy chological motives of men, especially of those living in the past, can never be known with certainty, but at most only conjectured, this pragmatism, which aims at explaining all events by men's subjective motives, leads unavoidably to the ascription of motives really quite foreign to the actors. We often get the impression that the astute aims and plans described by the historian are rather an invention of his own
Gesellschaftsverfassung
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it,
? Ch. III. ] ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY AND HISTORY O* DOGMA. 279
than a part of the history itself. With this principle of the Aufklarung is further connected the incapacity to enter, impar tially and sympathetically, into the modes of thought and the religious interests and wants of the past. Such phenomena as the papacy, scholasticism, and mysticism, find as little favour in the eyes of Planck as of Spittler. That these things were in their time the necessary and therefore legitimate ex pressions of the spirit of religious society, is a fact the subjec tive understanding of the Aufklarung cannot comprehend, but it regards them categorically as lamentable errors, fanaticisms, or even frauds. From this point of view the historian fails to perceive the objective rationality of history, the development of mind through various stages, and the functions of indi viduals foreign to himself, in whom the common spirit of their time found a peculiar and forcible expression. August
Among Planck's auditors from 1 808-10 was Neander, who had shortly before given up Judaism for Chris tianity, and under the influence of Schleiermacher's Reden had resolved to study theology, in order, as he confessed to a friend, to " make war for ever on the common understanding, which gets further and further away from the eternal centre of all being, the Divine. " This confession sufficiently shows how different was the spirit of the scholar from that of his master ; nevertheless Neander was first led by Planck to study the sources of ecclesiastical history, though with very different results in his case. When, in 1813, Neander was called to a chair in the newly founded University of Berlin, he became,
after Schleiermacher, the most important representative of the new theology, which by its profounder appreciation of the
religious life gave him new insight into early Church history. In quick succession he published a series of monographs, on
During its publication appeared, as an independent supple ment, Die Geschichte der Pflanzung und Leitung der christ lichen Kirche durch die Apostel (2 vols. , 1832), and Das Leben
? and his Age, on St. Bernhard, Chrysostom, Tertullian,
Julian
the Gnostic Systems, and Memorials from the history of Christianity, and the Christian life ; then his Allgemeine Ge- schichte der christlichen Religion u. Kirche (10 vols. , 1826-45).
His departure from the earlier method of writ ing Church history was described by Neander himself in the
/esu (1837).
preface to the 2nd ed. of his St. Bernard as follows : "
A new life of faith had arisen, which began to revivify theological
? ? ? 280 BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. [Bk. III.
science also. This gave us the impulse to trace the stream of Christian life in former centuries, and lovingly to include every thing Christian. A shallow Aufklarung, without mind or heart, had, in its conceit and boastful poverty, taught us to despise what was greatest and noblest in former centuries ; but now this had been condemned alike by life and science. An
unhistorical age had given way to new insight into history and to a new desire sympathetically to understand and thoroughly comprehend the characteristic individuality of historical phenomena. " Neander's chief aim was everywhere to understand what was individual in history. In the princi pal figures of ecclesiastical history he tried to depict the repre sentative tendencies of each age, and also the types of the essential tendencies of human nature generally. His guiding principle in treating both of the history and of the present con dition of the Church was -- that Christianity has room for the various tendencies of human nature, and aims at permeating and glorifying them all that according to the divine plan these various tendencies are to occur successively and simultaneously and to counterbalance each other, so that the freedom and variety of the development of the spiritual life ought not to be forced into single dogmatic form. This was the source of his sympathetic appreciation of the most different historical characters, of gnostics and mystics, of saints and heretics, not even excepting the apostate Julian, whom he admired the pathos of phantastic religious enthusiasm even in its hea then garb. Hence also his generous tolerance of tendencies in his own time with which he could not sympathise (e. g. that of his teacher Planck), his championship of the freedom of scientific teaching, even on behalf of Rationalistic opponents, such as the Halle professors, Gesenius and Wegscheider,
when denounced to the government by Hengstenberg. In one direction only Neander failed to exercise his usual toler ance, viz. towards the Hegelian school and the Tubingen criticism. This was so distasteful to him that in his judgment of he became unjust and bitter -- a sign of the consciousness of having before him a scientific movement, not only opposed, but superior to his own. Doubtless that too was incomplete, and needed to be supplemented by Neander but equally certain that was strong just where Neander was weak. Neander divided history into a series of separate pictures, drawn with the loving hand of a master as edifying and instruc
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? Ch. III. ] ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY AND HISTORY OF DOGMA. 28 I
tive examples ; but he failed to grasp the connection between
phenomena, or the general ideas which dominate each age and
give to it its special character, or the regularity of the general
development of the religious spirit in the Church. His was too much an emotional nature, and his theology was too much
governed by the subjective point of view of Romanticism for him to be able to do justice to the importance of ideas in religion and to the mental conflict in the different movements of thought in the Church. The great dramatic forces of history were hidden from him by the lyrical emotions of single indi viduals. The same preponderance of emotion in his nature prevented him from fully appreciating historic characters of marked individuality. His own generous heart enabled him indeed sympathetically to study the character of historical per sons, but he always saw in them mainly those features which were in accordance with his own feelings ; the corners and angularities, in which the peculiarities of character find their most significant expression, he smoothed down, and idealised his heroes into copies, more or less, of his own individuality. This was the opposite error to that of the Rationalistic method ; in the latter a want of sympathetic appreciation had led to the misrepresentation and caricature of the figures of history, but in Neander these figures become dim ideal forms, like stars hard to distinguish in the surrounding mist. Finally, Nean- der's pectoral theology involved a serious lack of historical criticism. This failing was indeed shared by almost all Romanticists ; as they had grown tired of the sole sovereignty of the understanding, the understanding was henceforth to have no authority at all, and clear rational investigation be doomed to silence, even in its proper province --historical cri ticism. Too much influenced by the modern historical spirit consistently to exclude criticism on principle, and yet too much of an emotional theologian to make thorough-going use of it where it assailed treasured and beautiful traditions, Neander never freed himself from that hesitation and want of thorough ness which strikes us so painfully in his Life of Jesus} Neander, moreover, regarded miracles, in the proper sense,
as possible, not only in Biblical times, but down to the third
century. If so late, why should they not be accepted much
later, or throughout all history ? Because on that supposition
? f--. ' .
. --
1 Com p. ante, p. 219.
? ? ? 282 BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. [Bk. III.
the scientific weakness of a supernaturalistic treatment of history of such a kind would be much more strange and in tolerable than it actually is in Neander.
Closely allied to Neander, but of a more independent and versatile mind, is the ecclesiastical historian, Carl Hase.
His strength likewise lies mainly in the loving study and deli cate, subtle description of individual phenomena in history.
His pictures of mediaeval saints (Franz von Assisi, Katerina von Siena), and of neue Propheten (Die Jungfrau von Orleans, Savonarola, Thomas Munzer) are both in form and matter
model monographs, and evince a power of sympathetically entering into peculiar phases of religious life such as was possessed in an equal degree only by Neander. But Hase's attitude towards the figures of history is more independent than Neander's ; he does not emphasise merely those sides of a character which appeal to himself, but contrives, in a few brief, pregnant lines, to sketch a clear and complete objective picture of He does not, like Neander, seek for what edifying the religious life of men and nations, but for what
characteristic so that some details may be far from edifying, for the simple reason that the actors in history are men, and often caricature what sublime. In his Lehrbuch der Kirch- engeschichte ed. , 1834, now nth ed. ), Hase has succeeded in compressing an unusually large amount of material into the smallest possible space without anywhere creating the impres sion of a dry skeleton, but he makes " the wealth of life meet ing us in the original monuments of each age reveal itself even in the most compressed outline. " This was possible only to an historian who combined a mastery of style, formed on classic models, such as possessed by few scholars, with happy instinct separating the essential from the unessential. " Only what has at some time truly lived and thereby become im mortal, by representing a ray of the Christian spirit, forms part of history, which a history of the living and not of the dead. " This excellent principle, enunciated in his preface, adhered to by Hase throughout his work. By throwing over board much of the worthless cargo usually carried by the pedantry of scholars, he found room, in the small compass of a single volume, for matter hitherto omitted or insufficiently treated in Church histories, such as the religions of the hea then nations with which Christianity came into contact, or the history of ecclesiastical art. Although the strongest point of
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? Ch. III. ] ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY AND HISTORY OF DOGMA. 283
Hase's Church History is its artistic presentation of a wealth
of material, he gives us also from the stores of his wide histori
cal knowledge, general reflections, birds-eye views, and main
points of observation, as well as his personal verdicts on men
and things. With the kindly tolerance which can be just to
other points of view, he combines a courageous honesty which
shows the dark as well as the bright side of his own Church,
and even of the period of the Reformation, which to other Pro
testant historians is generally too sacred to be freely criticised.
This incorruptible impartiality in judgment is a merit of Hase's history all the more valuable from its rareness among
our theologians. In the year 1885, the aged historian pub lished the first volume of a Church History, to be completed in three volumes, in which the brief outlines and indications of his text-book are further expanded for educated readers generally.