The third volume
appeared
in three editions, between 1874 and 1888, differing in some points from each other.
Pleiderer - Development of Theology in Germany since Kant
1 73
sequently capable of a human development. During this development, his Logos-consciousness occasionally flashed through the human limitations, in recollection of his pre- existence, but ordinarily it remained only the latent ground of the development of his human consciousness, which rose
step by step to complete identity with the divine Logos-
consciousness, whereby, and not before, the man
was received into the complete unity of the life of the Trinity. The opponents of this theory rightly remarked that it deviated widely from the orthodox doctrine of God and Christ, in representing the life of the Trinity as interrupted and deprived of its second person by the conversion of the
Logos into the human soul of Jesus during the latter's life
on earth, and in regarding Jesus as only a potential but not actual God-man ; but for us the chief interest lies in the fact
that the theory is evidently on the point of quite breaking away from the ecclesiastical dogma, and taking the side of the
speculative theory, according to which the universal capacity for the divine, the innate destiny and vocation of every human soul, was typically realised in Jesus.
Still further removed from orthodoxy was the teaching of the Erlangen theologian, Christian von Hofmann. His doctrine of the Atonement was the most prominent though not the only instance of his heterodoxy, and hence was the first object of attack on the part of orthodox theologians.
Hofmann, indeed, only wished to teach old truth in a new form, but a glance at his system shows the serious extent of the neology in his teaching. A vein of modern Rationalism runs through his theology, but it is concealed, by means of an artificial dialectic, behind a supernaturalism rather Biblical than ecclesiastical. His theological system is given in his two chief works, Weissagung und Erfilllung and Der Schrift- beweis (1852-56), to which may be added his collected Schutz-
schriften, containing an exposition and defence of his system against ecclesiastical attacks.
Hofmann, exactly like Schleiermacher, bases his theology upon the inward experience of the facts of personal Chris tianity. This experience he attempts to develop into a system of organically connected statements, in which every individual fact is to find its definite and necessary place as an historical presupposition or inference. And the Schriftbeweis, or proof from Scripture, he holds to consist precisely in show
Jesus
? s
? ? ? 174 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
ing that Biblical history and doctrine as a whole finds its
proper place in the systematic development of the facts which
make us Christians ; it is not that certain dogmatic
tions are to be proved by individual texts of Scripture, but the Biblical history of revelation as a whole, from the creation to the consummation of the world, is to be explained from the point of view of the necessary premises of our experience of
and inferences from need not be said that the subjective conception of Christian experience thus acquires fundamental importance the interpretation and explanation of the history, and that arbitrary and violent expedients are not always avoided in the case of important points. At bottom this Schriftbeweis the supernatural istic counterpart of Hegel's Philosophy of History both pursue the same method of deducing history from a priori ideas, philosophical ideas the one case, theological in the other both connect historical events with transcendental relations the one, with the movement of the idea through the antithesis of its ele ments to the unity of the concept and of reality the other, with the movement of the Persons of the Trinity through antithetical modes of existence to the unity of love and blessedness.
The fellowship with God into which we know that we have been admitted through Christ has, Hofmann teaches, the divine Trinity as its eternal condition. For the self-deter mination of the divine love beyond itself, having for its object the gradually evolving man of God, i. e. , historical humanity, presupposes an eternal self-determination on the part of God within himself, having as its object the eternal man of God, or the Son of God (who accordingly not really God at all, or Person in the Trinitarian nature of God, but the pre- existent ideal man, something like the Pauline Christ). God's eternal will of love, or his inward divine relation to his Son,
accomplished in the history which transpires between him and mankind. This history has a threefold beginning one given to by God, one given to by itself, and one a fresh beginning, annulling the latter and completing the former, God having appointed his Son for this. Since the final end of the divine will the man Jesus, mankind necessarily began in a single man, Eve being taken therefore from her husband. The original state of mankind was a state of actual and true, though only incipient, holiness and blessedness, not excluding
Christianity,
proposi
? ? ? is
it
it
it. It
:
is
a
is
in is
: ;
;
in
;
? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. I 75
the possibility of self-determination in opposition to God. The source of the first sin, however, did not lie in man, but outside him, in the temptation of Satan, who was able to deceive the woman. This brought mankind into a state the reverse of life from God, under the necessity of death and the seductive influences of Satan. Still there existed the possibility of divine counter-influence, prophetically testified to in the revelation of God to Israel, and fully realised in the incarnation of the eternal Son. His entrance into the humanity
derived from Adam was for it the realisation of God's eternal will of love, since he was the beginner and originator of per fect fellowship with God for the same humanity which had in its sin made a beginning opposed to the holiness of God, and frustrating God's work of love. At the same time, how ever, his inward divine relation to the Father became involved in the most extreme antithesis possible to it without cancelling itself. For as having become a member of Adamite human ity, the Son was bound to an obedience to the Father which involved undergoing the consequences of God's anger inflicted upon the sinful race. But the sinfulness of the human race inherited from Adam could not possibly be shared by the Son, from the fact that his incarnation was a deed of holy self- determination, to the accomplishment of which nothing was necessary on man's part except obedient faith in the divine word of promise on the part of the woman destined to con ceive him. His human action could then only be the con tinuation, by means of a sinless human nature, of the holy self-determination by which he had become man.
The acquisition of righteousness for mankind by Jesus was the effect of his entire holy life, from his incarnation to his death. It began by his assuming human nature in a sinless state as his own, thus making a new beginning in opposition to the sin of Adam. It was continued in the harmony of all he did with the will of God, expressed in consequence of sin in the form of the law, which demanded obedience to the various ordinances of man's social life. It was consummated by enduring the enmity of men in his fidelity to the divine will, preserving his holiness to the end in suffering as well as in action. The death of Jesus was therefore not a
vicarious" atoning sacrifice to the divine punitive righteousness, but an occurrence " resulting from the historical position of affairs, and which became the deed of Jesus by virtue of his
? ? ? ? I 76 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
voluntary submission to But just as this thing which hap pened to him was not the suffering of what sinful humanity would have had to suffer, so the thing which he accomplished was not what humanity ought to have done, but was the obedience of the divinely ordained Saviour to his own voca tion. The abandonment of the Son by the Father to the hostile power of men and the devil brought the history trans acting between God and the second beginner of mankind to a conclusion, which was at the same time the conclusion
the previous history of mankind conditioned by sin. For his maintenance of the office of mediator in opposition to the enmity born of sin lay likewise his deed of satisfaction for the sin of Adamite humanity, that the actual realisation of the relation to God which had been desired and brought about God, a relation for which sin no longer exists, and which holi ness alone. This whole act of God we call the redemption of mankind, irrespective of its effects upon individuals, because
sanctified and glorified human nature in the person of Christ. Its sanctification was its salvation from sin its glorification its salvation from death. This glorification was accomplished by the raising of Christ from the dead, by which he entered upon a new kind of human life, in which his human nature
was the perfect instrument of his unconditional fellowship with the Father. Christ's work of salvation was an expiation of sin, not the sense that the Triune God had claimed some thing as a recompense for the wrong done him, but the sense that for the benefit of the human race he displayed his
? love, which seeks not its own, but what another's. The salvation of the world not based upon the
Triune God having been appeased, but upon the Son having
eternally holy
that relation to the Father which only the Holy One was able to accomplish, but not sinful mankind for itself. Only this sense can his work be called vicarious. The result of this history, commencing with Christ's incarna tion and completed by his death and resurrection, that the relation of the Father to the Son henceforth also the relation of God to the humanity beginning anew in the Son, a relation
which henceforth not determined by the sin of the race of
Adam, but by the righteousness of the Son. But participa tion in this new relation to God open to us only when, virtue of the working of the Holy Ghost, which makes us certain of this change accomplished once for all, we are re
accomplished
? ? is
is
is,
by
is
by inof
is
in
is
it
in
in
is
in
is
;
it
it.
? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 177
solved to belong to the humanity begun afresh in Christ, and therefore to make our own, not only the forgiveness of its sins, but also its life unto God. It is the righteousness of the Son which renders mankind the object of the divine approval; and it is by acting up to the relation to God existing in his person that the individual man becomes certain of its existence, and its existence for him. What he thus becomes certain of is the beginning of a new humanity, though this only becomes such for him by his attaching himself to it as soon as he is certain of its existence.
The near kinship of this theory of salvation to that of Schleiermacher will be at once perceived. The fundamental principles are the same as those recurring in all rationalistic theology since Kant, only here they are, by a somewhat arti ficial dialectic, so interwoven with Biblical supernaturalism as to appear to be the result of the Schriftbeweis. We may even admit that they have points of support in Biblical teaching, although not exactly in accord with true Pauline doctrine. At any rate, we must admit the theologian's right to em phasise some sides of Biblical teaching neglected by ecclesias
tical theology, and to make use of them for his own rational
conception of the dogma. But Hofmann's opponents were quite right in asserting the essential difference between his theory of the Atonement and that of Anselm and Luther ; and Hofmann's wish to represent his teaching as essentially in accordance with the dogma of the Confessions can only be called a piece of strange self-deception. But this want of honesty towards himself and others, this concealment of the heresy of which he was really guilty, is so general a weakness among theologians, that we must not press it too much in
his Dogmatik (1858-9), though he is a step further removed from ecclesiastical dogma. He starts from man's self-con sciousness as involving the three fundamental facts of man's need of salvation, the divine bestowal of salvation, and the completion of salvation in the Church, these facts being directly given in experience. He blames Schleiermacher for emphasising the subjective side of the truth of salvation, the
facts of the religious consciousness, to the detriment of the objective side, the facts of God's personal bestowal of salva tion. (Though how the " facts of salvation," which are only
? relation to individuals.
?
The lines of Hofmann are followed by Daniel Schenkel in
G. T. N
? ? ? 178
DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
historically known, can at the same time be directly given in the religious consciousness, Schenkel does not explain, and throughout his book we can trace the effects of this failure to distinguish between direct facts of the religious consciousness and their conditions, which are only indirectly inferred or historically knowable. ) The truth of the facts of salvation can be established in three ways : first, by their answering to a human need of salvation ; secondly, by their containing a fresh communication of himself by God to man ; thirdly, by their being the basis of a progressive develop ment of the Christian community with regard to salvation.
Above all Schenkel, not without reason, maintains that
theology requires a thorough revision of the idea of religion, which lies at the root of all its propositions. In spite of Schleiermacher's great merit in distinguishing religion from knowledge and conduct, his definition of religion is unsatis factory, as confusing the religious and aesthetic functions by the identification of religion with emotion, and so overlooking its ethical character. Schenkel, for his part, thinks he has discovered a specifically religious organ in the conscience, quite distinct from reason, will, and emotion ; for while in the latter our self-consciousness involves only relation to the world, in the conscience we are conscious of ourselves in primal and direct relation to God. The primary religious function of conscience is the consciousness that God is personally present in us, but that our original normal relation to God is dis turbed by the distracting consciousness of the world, and that we therefore stand in need of the restoration by God of our normal relation to him. It is plain that this theory represents
? convictions of a very complicated origin as the content of conscience, and from the first substi
religious
original
tutes dogmatic presuppositions for a psychological analysis of facts ; but, setting aside his totally inadequate deduction, we must recognise the justice and value of Schenkel's attempt to show " the synthesis of the religious and ethical factors" from the nature of the religious spirit itself, and thus to secure from the first the indissoluble connexion of religious and moral truths.
In treating of revelation, Schenkel complains of the want of a distinction in the older dogmatic theologians between the act and the record of revelation ; for while the former is a direct working of God on the human conscience, this
? ? ? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 1 79 absolute divine act of communication becomes, by its incor
poration with human activity, a human and historically ditioned record of revelation, which on that very account
can never be absolutely perfect, nor completed in past history, since God's revelation of himself is always continued in the historical development of salvation. Of " miracles," Schenkel speaks very variously : on the one hand, he says, with Schleiermacher, that from the religious point of view all phenomena depend upon the divine causality, while from the rational point of view they are at the same time explic able from the uniformity of nature, thus doing away with miracles in the proper sense ; on the other hand, he main tains that specific miracles are creative modifications by God of the uniformity of finite nature, mysteriously introducing something new into the world, though it afterwards obeys natural laws, since, e. g. , the loaves miraculously multiplied stilled the people's hunger like ordinary bread. Schenkel was evidently not clear as to the essence of the question ; his objection to Schleiermacher is unmeaning. Of inspira
tion, Schenkel says that it originates directly from God, but is continued through human instrumentality, so that we must
admit the imperfection of the individual inspirations during the formation of the whole record of revelation. Still it is not enough to say that the Scriptures contain the word of God ; we must also say that they are the word of God, though not all the individual words of the Bible are this, but the
Bible as a whole. Schenkel's method of proof from Scripture corresponds to this conception of its authority ; he interprets the passages in the Bible so that they agree with the affir mations of his " conscience," and where that is impossible, he has recourse to the supposition of the Biblical teacher's
accommodating himself to the conceptions of the people, e. g. , in the doctrine of the devil; an unprejudiced historical estimate of the Bible is unknown to Schenkel.
Accordingly the historical truth of the whole Biblical his tory from the creation of the world onwards is maintained by Schenkel for conscience' sake. In speaking of the Fall he does indeed quote Nitzsch, to the effect that it is " a true but not an external history "; nevertheless it must be regarded as having taken place as an external fact at some time. In
con
? the belief in the historical trustworthiness of the Gospel narratives of miracles, from the supernatural Birth
particular
? ? ? l8o DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
to the Ascension, is represented as a demand of " conscience," and thus historical criticism is indirectly charged with want of conscience ! Schenkel does indeed, as a fact, allow himself several departures from Biblical statements of doctrine, but he always endeavours by artificial interpretations to produce the appearance of complete agreement {e. g. , in the case of the Johannine Christology, of the Pauline doctrine of sin and atonement). On the other hand, he in many points openly and expressly opposes ecclesiastical dogmas, and censures others, e. g. , Hofmann, for trying to conceal their heterodoxy, forgetting that he is himself in precisely the same position with regard to the Scriptures.
Schenkel sees the fundamental error of the ecclesiastical Christology in the fact that it has never been able to acknow ledge the real humanity of Christ ; and the source of this error he holds to be that it assumed the personal Logos, the second Person of the Trinity, to have been the principle constituting the person of Christ. Hence he begins his reconstruction with the doctrine of the Trinity. It is not a triple personality in God which is testified to by conscience and Scripture, but a triple relationship of God to the world, and hence a triple consciousness of God in relation to the world. " God as the Father rests in the eternal source of creation ; as the Son he issues from his absolute source and enters the life of the world, without himself becoming finite, and reflects the eternal image of the world within himself; as the Holy Spirit he transforms the life of the finite back into his absolute source, in such a way that this life ceases to be solely for the finite and comes to be for God, i. e. , for divine and eternal
? The Logos is therefore not a person, but the idea of the world eternally thought in God's self-consciousness, reaching its highest form in the idea of a perfect man. Only in this ideal, not in a real personal, sense can we maintain Christ's pre-existence, and only in this sense must we under stand the Biblical statements with respect to it. " Christ had indeed an eternal pre-existence in God, in so far that the Father had chosen him from all eternity to represent the idea of man within the limits of the historical
of the human race. The Logos, as the eternal, conscious, divine idea of humanity, really became flesh, i. e. , had historical existence as a human person. " The perfected archetype of humanity and the complete image of the deity realised. them
purposes. "
development
? ? ? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. l8l
selves historically in Christ. In respect of his personal nature, Christ did not differ from other men, as would have been the case if he had had within him the personality of the Logos with absolute attributes. Still he is as an indi vidual different from others, in that he is the spiritual centre in which mankind is eternally one ; in him God conceives and contemplates mankind from all eternity as a whole, as a logical and ethical unity. Hence in the conception of Christ's true humanity is involved that of his true Deity. For just as it is the prerogative of every man to be historically in time related to God in his conscience, so it is Christ's pre rogative above all other men to be eternally directly related
to God, and to be conscious of himself as the man in whom the idea of humanity is realised as it was known and willed in God before all time. In this sense we may say that God himself, and nothing less, became man in Christ, because he is the self-revelation of the eternal God, that of his eternal will directed towards the world and humanity. As the self- revelation of God within the limits of a human life, he the representative of Deity to mankind as the personal exempli fication of a true and perfect man, he the representative of mankind relation to Deity conjunction with both, he the eternal mediator and surety, binding mankind to God and
? of salvation.
The atonement wrought by Christ consisted in the restora
tion of the fellowship mankind with God, disturbed by sin, and the cancelling of the effects of sin, guilt, and punishment. This result was only possible by the manifestation in his own person of the ethical perfection of human nature, and especi ally by his condemnation of sin in its weakness, and revealing his divine self-sacrificing love in all its glory by his suffering and death. God regards this ethically perfect sacrifice not simply as an individual act, but as the common deed of man
kind generally as represented in Christ, and hence looks
upon mankind general as the normal development begun in by Christ were already finished which the more natural as this atonement was eternally willed and historically accomplished by God himself. Thus Schenkel rejects, with
Hofmann and Schleiermacher, the ecclesiastical doctrine of vicarious satisfaction made to the punitive divine justice, and holds that the atoning element was rather that Christ by his holy life, attested by his death, made amends for the sin
assuring
? ? it
;
; is
is
in
if
; in
a is
of
it
in
is
is,
? 1 82 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
of mankind, i. e. , actually overcame it and destroyed it at its root, and thereby gave God the pledge of a life of humanity well-pleasing to him. This triumph over the supremacy of sin put an end to the cause of the discord between God and mankind, and rendered it possible for God to look upon mankind as if the new development of life, begun in principle, was already actually accomplished. Christ's deed was vica rious only in the sense that his suffering and action exempli fied by anticipation what we are bound to suffer and do in fellowship with him. But when the work of atonement has once been comprehended, "with the help of the conscience,"
as a truly ethical deed, salvation, i. e. , the individual appro priation of the effects of the atonement on the part of each individual, must necessarily also be ethically conceived. Salvation can no longer be supposed to consist in the impu tation to a man of another's merits, faith being merely the passive acceptance of this justifying sentence of God. On the contrary, the new life won, in principle, for mankind by Christ, must be practically realised in each individual ; and this is done by faith, inasmuch as faith is the central activity of man's conscience in relation to God. Faith is the subjective condition of justification, inasmuch as the man by virtue of this change in his conscience, participates in the atoning per sonal life of Christ, and has received into his heart the new
divine principle of life exemplified in Christ. This beginning of a new life in the believer, God imputes to him as if it were already completed ; he regards it on account of the perfection of the principle active in it (the personal life of Christ), proleptically, as if it were itself already perfect.
The close connexion of this doctrine of atonement and of justification with the fundamental principles of Kant's philo
sophy of religion is very plain ; the difference is only that what Kant called the ideal of a humanity pleasing to God, Jesus being the conspicuous example of here identified with the ideal person of Christ but both cases by receiving this ideal into his own heart that the man becomes good in principle, and thus righteous before God, in spite of his asting empirical imperfection. That Jesus was not only the model but also the creative cause of this ethical and religious
process, while the society which he founded was its social mediate cause, the theological addition to the Kantian theory made as early as Schleiermacher, and which we have
? ? ? is
;
in
it is
it, is
? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 1 8 J
met with in various phases in the discussion of this group of
theologians.
Most nearly akin to Hofmann and Schenkel is the theo
logian AlbreCht R1tsChl ; with Schenkel he lays special stress on the ethical element, with Hofmann he emphasises the historical and social element, and claims with him to be a true Lutheran ; he is distinguished from both by the peculi arity of his epistemology and his method, which he eclectically derived from Kant and Lotze. In his book, "Metaphysik tind Theologie, he very emphatically opposed the bad episte mology and metaphysics" of previous theology, and offered his own as the foundation of an altogether new theology.
On a closer inspection, however, this, his famous theory of cognition, is seen to be only a dilettante confusion of the irreconcilable views of subjective idealism, which resolves things into phenomena of consciousness, and common-sense realism, which looks upon the phenomena of consciousness as things themselves, admitting no distinction between phenomena as perceived by us and the being of things in themselves ; a confusion to which the nearest parallel is the semi-idealistic, semi-materialistic theory of the Neo-Kantian
? author of the Geschichte des Materialismus (2nd ed. 1873), which enjoyed a brief celebrity as having supplied, it was
thought, a justification of the sceptical tendencies of the time. We may, moreover, conjecture that Ritschl did not make this theory of cognition the basis of his theology from the first, but rather propounded it subsequently, in its defence. In spite of its intrinsic worthlessness, it is well calculated to furnish this theology, in its wavering between the subjective dissolution of the objects of theology and the affirmation of their objective reality, with an appearance of scientific justifi cation having a certain attraction at least for amateurs in these questions.
Ritschl expounded his theological system in the third volume of his principal work, Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, of which the first and second volumes had contained the
history of the dogma and its Biblical-theological premises respectively.
The third volume appeared in three editions, between 1874 and 1888, differing in some points from each other. Indeed, a careful comparison of the later presenta tions with the earlier shows an increasing advance in the direction of speculative scepticism and historical dogmatism.
Lange,
? ? ? 184 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
" Religion was defined by Ritschl in the first edition as the common recognition of the dependence of man on God," or, more precisely, " as our view of the world from the basis of the idea of God and our estimate of ourselves from
our sense of dependence upon God in relation to the world. " The peculiarity of the religious view of the world he holds to be that it involves the conception of a whole, while theoretical knowledge in philosophy and the special sciences is limited to the general and particular laws of nature and spirit, and cannot by its methods of experience and observation attain to the conception of the world as a unity and a whole. Wherever philosophy has claimed by its methods to construct a view of the universe, we should rather discern an impulse of religion, which philosophy must distinguish as specifically different from its own object of systematic know ledge. Conflicts between religion and science are to be avoided by religion retaining as its privilege the right of viewing the world in its unity, and by science limiting itself to the particular phenomena of the world. Afterwards, on the other hand, Ritschl admitted that philosophy also treated of the world as a whole, with the object of comprehending it under one supreme law. Hence the distinction between religious and scientific knowledge is not to be sought in its object, but in the sphere of the subject, viz. , in the difference in the attitude of the subject towards the object. For religion, he now states, " is occupied with judgments of value ( Werthurtheile)" i. e. , with conceptions of our relation to the world which are of moment solely according to their value in awakening feelings of pleasure or pain as our dominion over the world is furthered or checked. "In all religion, by the help of the sublime spiritual Power which man adores, the solution is attempted of the contradiction in which man finds himselt placed as a part of the natural world and as a spiritual person
For in his
? ality with its claim to sovereignty over nature.
position he is a part of nature, in subjection to
upon and checked by other things, but as spirit he
by the impulse to maintain his independence against external things. In these circumstances arises religion as a belief in superior spiritual powers by whose help the deficiencies in man's own power are supplied. " All religion seeks to supple ment, by means of the idea of God, man's sense of personal dignity in the face of the hindrances of the world this idea
dependent moved
? ? ;
it, is
? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 1 85
of God is " the ideal bond between the particular view of the world and the vocation of"man to attain goods (Giiter) or the
highest good (happiness. ) ' The thought of God must be treated in Christian theology solely as a judgment of value, or as a conception valuable for the attainment of goods. This is the same theory of religion as the well-known one of Feuer- bach: the gods are the " Wunschwesen," invented by man from his practical need of a supplement to his own powerlessness over nature. But while the pathological explanation of the idea of God by motives of human feeling was intended by Feuer- bach to deny the truth of this idea in an objective sense, and to affirm its purely imaginary character, the theory is directed by Ritschl to the exactly opposite conclusion, that the emotional value of the conception of God for the preservation of man's sense of personal dignity is also the warrant of its truth. That this warrant is not sufficient to insure to theology a knowledge of speculative truth and the character of a science, had indeed been
? formerly fully recognised by Ritschl himself, who had therefore in his first edition still
held the necessity and possibility of an independent proof of the existence of God, founded upon the general data of the human mind ; as such he had regarded the ethical proof as stated in Kant's Critique ofJudgment, and had expressly declared that the "acceptance of the idea of God on that proof was no practical belief (as Kant had thought), but an act of speculative cognition," by which the general rationality of the Christian view of the world is established and thereby the possibility of a scientific theology secured, while such a theo logy would be impossible if the idea of God could not be established to the satisfaction of speculative knowledge also as its necessary basis. In the third edition, on the other hand, this position is altogether abandoned ; we now read " this acceptance of the idea of God as Kant remarks, a practical belief, and not an act of speculative cognition. " In
justification of this change of view, alleged that
the work of theology to preserve the distinctive character of the idea of God, that allowable to use only in judgments of value. Hence theoretical proofs of the idea of God are doomed to failure, "because their professed results, even true, do not accord with the Christian thought of God, that
Seligkeit.
? ? 1
in
it is
if
it is
it is
is, it
? 1 86 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
they fail to express its value for men, in particular for men as sinners. " Thus while Ritschl formerly recognised that a scientific and universally valid justification of the belief in God, and consequently of theology, cannot consist merely in an inference from the religious view of the world to its inner coherence, but must be based upon independent and univer sal data of the human mind, he now, on the contrary, pro nounces the theoretical method of proof objectionable in not being confined to Christian judgments of value, or in aiming to be not only simple practical belief, but also independent theoretical knowledge. We see from this how, from the sub
jective conception of religion, is deduced the limitation of the
science of religion, or theology, to the sphere of judgments of value, or subjective truth, and the abandonment on principle of all attempts to attain objective truth valid for the knowing mind in general.
In accordance with his principle that the Christian thought of God must be put forward only in judgments of value, Ritschl teaches that God should be thought of only as love.
All metaphysical statements regarding God's absoluteness, his existence through himself, in himself, and for himself, must be rejected as "heathenish metaphysics," connected with the false theory of knowledge which maintains the existence of things irrespective of our conception of them. The idealistic subjec- tification of the idea of God on the lines of Feuerbach seems a necessary consequence of this. Such is not, however,
Ritschl's intention ; on the contrary, he seeks to conceive of the personality of God as objectively real. That this involves the assertion of an absolute existence of God in himself, as
from his existence in relation to us, or his love, is plain, but is not admitted by Ritschl. He says that the attribute of personality is only the form for God's love. If this proposition were taken strictly, it would finally come to mean that our conception of the personality of God is the form under which we personify love as " God," which is the view of Feuerbach and the Positivists. But Ritschl does not mean ' this ; indeed, he speaks also of an " intrinsic purpose of God," into which God takes up the purpose of the world, or which he realises in the education of the human race for the kingdom of God. But such a purpose is a relation of the
1 Selbstzweck Gottes.
? distinguished
? ? ? Ch. IV] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 187
will to itself, and therefore presupposes a being which is not solely love, that existing for others, but exists also as a
in and for itself. This inner self-subsistence of God,
with his loving communication of himself, not merely a
necessary metaphysical conception, but also of great religious
since the foundation, as Dorner has well remarked, of the Biblical conception of God's holiness and righteousness, which in the teaching of the Bible and the Church inseparable from that of his love. But this side of the idea of God altogether neglected by Ritschl. He says " In comparison with the conception of love there
no other of equal value. In particular this holds of the con ception of holiness, which its Old Testament sense for several reasons, not valid in Christianity, and the use of which in the New Testament obscure. " And with regard to God's righteousness, which, according to Biblical doctrine, his holiness " actively shown, Ritschl (like Hofmann) considers that his action for the salvation of the members of his religious community, and identical fact with grace. "
This connected with Ritschl's peculiar doctrine of sin.
He altogether rejects the idea of original sin, because assumes that there will previous to its individual acts an assumption related to the false doctrine of things in them selves, and because the hypothesis of an innate evil tendency makes both responsibility and education impossible. The latter demands the exactly opposite hypothesis, " that the general though still indefinite impulse towards good exists in the child, although not guided by a general insight into the good, and not yet tested by the various relations of life. "
For the conception of original sin we must, therefore, substi tute that of the " kingdom of sin," i. e. , of the collective unity of free actions opposed to the purpose of the kingdom of God, and of the inclinations acquired thereby. The law of sin the will not natural loss of its freedom, but a consequence of the necessary reaction of every act of the will upon the direction of the power of volition. Accordingly the unchecked repetition of selfish determinations of the will produces ten dency to selfishness, and the sin then transmitted from one individual to another by the interaction of their conduct in
subject
importance,
? Ritschl has not indeed shown how any selfish deter minations of the will at all can be explained, there exists in the child by nature only an indefinite impulse towards good
society.
? ? ;
is
if is a
is
is a
is
in
is
it is
is
is,
in it is
;
it is is
:
is
a is
is is
in
in
it
is,
? 1 88 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
for the attempt to explain it from ignorance is certainly un satisfactory. Ritschl holds, namely, that ignorance, as ex perience proves in the case of children, is "a very momentous factor in the origination and development of sin ; " and further, that it is " the essential condition of the conflicts of the will with the order of society as the rule of goodness, and also the condition of the fixity of the will in its resistance to this order. "
It may easily be seen how little this explanation accords with experience, of which a very different account is given even by the heathen poet (Nitimur in vetitum), and above all by the Apostle Paul (Rom. vii. ). In Ritschl's case also, this treat ment of sin as ignorance is not so much the result of actual observation as a postulate of his doctrine of God and recon ciliation. To the regulative conception of God corresponds, he says, the distinction between the two stages of sin -- an im perfect stage, not excluding the capability for redemption, and a completed stage, consisting in a final purpose of opposition to the known will of God. Since the latter is only a hypo thetical possibility, of which we can nowhere assume the reality, all actual sin of mankind is confined to the former stage, and this is regarded by God as " the relative stage of ignorance. " The artificial method by which Ritschl tries to harmonise his theory with the statements of the Bible, may be here passed over as valueless.
The correlative to the love of God is the kingdom of God, inasmuch as it is the union of men for mutual and common action from the motive of love, which action, as correlative to the purpose of God himself, and as the specific operation of God, is the perfect revelation of the fact that God is love. In the precise development of this thought there is again a noticeable difference between the first and the later editions of Ritschl's work. In the first the Christian idea of the king dom of God is the highest stage of ethical society among men, though removed from the earlier preparatory stages to no greater degree than these from each other. It is more perfect in virtue of its greater extent, but is not essentially different in kind, since the pre-Christian forms of society (family, friend ship, nationality) originated in love. And since, as is then stated, this union of men, wherever realised, must always be regarded as dependent upon God, and as the effect and reve lation of His love, the conception of a universal revelation of God throughout all human history is evidently presupposed,
? ? ? ? Ch. IV] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 1 89
since this history has never been without ethical fellowship and love. In the later editions, on the other hand, the com parison of the Christian kingdom of God with the preparatory stages of ethical society in history is omitted, and the love of God is exclusively confined to the historical Christian Church, which, by acknowledging Christ as its Lord, itself comes to stand in the same relation as he to God. Whereas it was formerly maintained that " God loves the human race from the point of view of its vocation to the kingdom of God," we are now told that " God is love as revealing himself through his Son to the Church founded by the latter in order to educate it for the kingdom of God " ; and whereas we were then told that all ethical union originated in love, and that all action from love must always and everywhere be regarded as de pendent on God, and as the effect of the revelation of his love, it is now stated that " All love of man originates accord ing to Christian ideas in the revelation of God in Christ. "
From these statements it would directly follow that before Christ there was neither a revelation of God nor an ethical association of men. If that be so, from what source were religion and morality in pre-Christian humanity derived ? This
Ritschl has never explained. Simply to deny that it had any religion or morality, would lead to a pessimism more extreme than that of Augustine, and would strangely contradict Rit- schl's optimistic view of the goodness of human nature.
Finally, it is evident that the limitation of the divine revela tion solely to the person of Jesus, whose historical connection with the religion of Israel is undeniable, verges close upon the denial of revelation altogether. Thus ultra dogmatism in the end leads to the opposite extreme, as has actually been
? in Ritschl's disciple, Bender.
In his Christology, Ritschl starts from the principle that in
a personal life what is real and actual consists of spiritual effects and nothing else. By this means the Christological problem is much simplified. Not only the dogma of the two natures, but the whole metaphysical background of ecclesias tical Christology is thus got rid of, even more decisively than in Schleiermacher's theology, and replaced by an historical view of the subject. In strange contrast with this, Ritschl nevertheless continues to speak with orthodox theology of the deity of Christ. It is true this term has for him an altogether different meaning. It is the expression of our estimate of
exemplified
? ? ? 190 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
Jesus, of our trustful acknowledgment of the unique value of what his life effected for our salvation, but is not meant to predicate any metaphysical characteristic of his nature what ever, or any transcendental unity of his nature with God. The predication of the deity of Christ sums up his unmistakable importance as the perfect revealer of God and as the manifest type of spiritual supremacy over the world. Our religious estimate of Christ must be tested by the connection of his action in the world with his religious convictions and with his ethical motives. It has no direct reference to his presumptive possession of innate qualifications and capacities, for Christ does not influence us thus, but morally and religiously only. Jesus is the representative of the perfect spiritual religion, standing in a reciprocal relation of union with the God who is the originator and final end of the world. This involved his re cognition of God's divinest purpose, the union of men by love, as the task of his own life, whereby he experienced that in dependence of the world which the members of his Church ought to come to share with him. The peculiar value of his life on earth gains the character of a permanent rule by serving as a pattern for our religious and ethical vocation. This authority, which either excludes all other standards or else subordinates them to itself, and which is also the ultimate regu lative principle of all human trust in God, is equivalent in value to his deity. On the other hand, metaphysical attributes of deity cannot be ascribed to him for the simple reason that they
are altogether outside the religious method of cognition, which is concerned only with j udgments of value. So too the passages
of Scripture from which Christ's personal pre-existence has been inferred, are only to be understood in the sense that, in the thought and will of God, Christ from the beginning was the head of the community of the kingdom of God, which is the object of the world. The Johannine formula of the Word becoming flesh, means that the Word, which is the general form of divine revelation, became in him a human person, i. e. , that he is the perfect revelation of God.
While it follows from this that the doctrine of Christ's work must not be separated from that of his person, Ritschl further rejects the usual dogmatic distinction of his threefold office as prophet, priest, and king. In order to form a single compre hensive conception of Christ's work, we must regard it from the point of view of his vocation. Now, this vocation was the
? ? ? ? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. I9I
foundation of the kingdom of God, or of the universal ethical association of men as the divine object of the world. But since, as the founder of the kingdom of God in the world, or the representative of God's moral sovereignty over men, he is unique in comparison with all other men who have received from him the same purpose, he is the factor in the world in whose intrinsic purpose God, in a creative way, gives effect to, and manifests his own intrinsic purpose, so that all his actions in fulfilment of his vocation constitute the revelation of God, present and perfect, in him ; or, in other words, he is one in whom the Word of God is a human person. This theory gives the consistent ethical and religious estimate of Christ, and thus the christological problem of theology is solved. It is not the business of theology to inquire how the person of Christ came from God, and came to be that which is the sub
ject of our ethical and religious estimate, especially as the problem lies beyond the possible range of inquiry. The grace and faithfulness of Christ in the fulfilment of his voca tion, and the elevation of his spiritual aims beyond the limited and natural motives of the world, constitute the elements of his historical appearance which are comprehended in the attribute of his deity. Looked at with reference to man, this patience and faithfulness of Christ is the result of his devotion to his calling of realising the kingdom of God among men as their supermundane destination, supported by his special knowledge of God ; with reference to the divine Being, this human life appears as the completed revelation of God, since the final purpose of the world, to which Christ's life is de voted, is founded in God's inner purpose, or in his will of love.
For the complete definition of Christ's deity the further sup position is required that his grace and faithfulness and world- subduing patience have produced as their effect the society of the kingdom of God, with analogous attributes. This is evidently equivalent to saying that the "deity " of Christ con sists in the original exemplification and communication of the same true piety and morality in which consists also the
? " deity," or better, the fellowship with God, the divine son-
and divine likeness of Christians. This is the same
ship
thought as that found in the whole of Schleiermacher's
except that the latter usually express it more simply, being less painfully anxious to keep to the ecclesiastical term, to which from this position, really no just claim can be made.
school,
? ? ? 192
DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [BV. II.
There can be no such thing as special priestly functions on the part of Christ which are not included in those of his general vocation. If Christ is to be conceived as priest, he is so fundamentally because as the Son of God he stood in the closest communion of purpose with God, and carried this out in every moment of his life, since every act and word in his life's work, until his voluntary and patient suffering of death, sprang from his religious relation to God. The juridical conception of a satisfaction of God's punitive righteousness offends against the design of religion, since law and religion are contradictory standards of action, and the assumption that in God righteousness and grace tend in opposite directions, is irreligious, the unity of the divine will being the inviolable condition of all trust in God. Even if we agree with Ritschl's rejection of the theory of satisfaction, we cannot approve of his unsympathetic judgment of the Pauline and orthodox doctrine of the atonement ; we cannot but see in this an illustration of that Rationalistic dogmatism which is neither able nor willing to appreciate objectively, from a given religious point of view, the historical and psychological conditions of dogmatic con ceptions, or to admit their relative validity for such a point of view. In respect of this intolerant dogmatism, Ritschl's theology marks a return to the weakest side of that Rational ism which he has so severely censured.
Not specially the death of Christ, which is only the com prehensive term to express his religious union with God, as
of the Christian society in the sense that in it there exists a union of men with God, in spite of their sins and of the accentuation of their feeling of guilt. The standard and historical source of this union is Christ's union with God, which he preserved in the faithful execution of his vocation to found the kingdom of God. For the grace and faithfulness of God, which is the ultimate efficient cause of the forgiveness of sin, is made manifest solely by the purpose which controlled all Christ's work of conducting men into such a relation to God as should save them from sin and gather them under the moral rule of God. From this point is first deduced the formula, that God makes the union of the members of Christ's Church with Christ the condition of admitting them
? predicable
his life, but his work in his vocation
preserved throughout
generally, brings about the forgiveness of sins, or justifica tion, or atonement. These synonymous conceptions are
? ? ? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS.
to a union with himself. But this proposition
with Schleiermacher's doctrine of salvation) receives forthwith in Ritschl an important modification. He maintains (though on the basis of very arbitrary exegesis) that it is historically certain that Christ conceived not individuals but the society to be founded by him and represented in the twelve apostles, as the direct object of the forgiveness of sins which he was to grant. Hence he pronounces Schleiermacher's formula wrong, that in Protestantism the relation of the individual to the Church depends on his relation to Christ, while in Catholic ism the converse holds good ; for in the case of Protestant Christians also the right relation to Christ is conditioned, not only historically (which is self-evident) but ideally, by the fellowship of believers, since no action of Christ upon men is conceivable except in accordance with the antecedent purpose of Christ to found a society. Schleiermacher's formula is only the reflection of the pietistical disintegration of the idea of a church, which dated from the individualistic theory of salvation in the Lutheran theology, but was not in harmony with Luther's own view (according to his Short Catechism). As in the pur pose of Christ the guarantee of a universal forgiveness of sins and the foundation of his Church were equivalent ideas, so in
the result of his work it is the same thing to be certain ot having one's sins forgiven and to belong to Christ's commu nity. The forgiveness of sins or reconciliation is possessed by the individual only as a member of the religious society ot Christ, in consequence of the immeasurable interaction of his own personal freedom and the determining influence of the
society. It is not by an individual imitation of Christ that we become assured of salvation, as pietists and mystics held, including Schleiermacher and his followers, for all
imitation of Christ in the proper sense is rendered impos sible by the difference of the special conditions of his life from those of the members of his Church ; but we are warranted
in the assurance of being children of God by belonging to the society founded by Christ. Moreover, love to God and Christ is not an apt description of the religious function of the individual, for we might understand by it " an imagi nary private relation to God and Christ," bearing the char acter of indifference to the world or of fleeing from In
these statements Ritschl's social positivism and his dislike of the mystical element religion carried to such extremes
(which
agrees
1 93
? o. t.
? ? in
is
o
it.
? 194 DEVELOPMENT OK DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
as plainly to do violence to essential interests of Christian
piety.
The justification possessed by the Christian as a member of
Christ's community is attested practically by his freedom or dominion over the world. This is not to be understood in the empirical sense but ideally, though not therefore any the
less a reality. It in general, faith in God's providence that the religious dominion over the world exercised for in the view of the world as a unity, under the idea of God as our Father, and in the corresponding estimate of ourselves, all things and events are regarded as means to our good. Under this Christian belief in" providence Ritschl appears to include also the hypothesis of miracles. " He puts both in contrast, as the general teleological and the miraculous view of the uni verse, with the scientific view, and he seeks to deprive the oppo sition of the latter (which however not directed against the teleological, but only against the miraculous view) of its force by reference to the incompleteness of our scientific knowledge
of the world and to the immediate certainty of the feeling personal worth expressing itself in the belief in providence.
He warmly opposes the view of the theology of the Aufkl'dr- ung, that the belief in providence a part of natural religion
?
sequently capable of a human development. During this development, his Logos-consciousness occasionally flashed through the human limitations, in recollection of his pre- existence, but ordinarily it remained only the latent ground of the development of his human consciousness, which rose
step by step to complete identity with the divine Logos-
consciousness, whereby, and not before, the man
was received into the complete unity of the life of the Trinity. The opponents of this theory rightly remarked that it deviated widely from the orthodox doctrine of God and Christ, in representing the life of the Trinity as interrupted and deprived of its second person by the conversion of the
Logos into the human soul of Jesus during the latter's life
on earth, and in regarding Jesus as only a potential but not actual God-man ; but for us the chief interest lies in the fact
that the theory is evidently on the point of quite breaking away from the ecclesiastical dogma, and taking the side of the
speculative theory, according to which the universal capacity for the divine, the innate destiny and vocation of every human soul, was typically realised in Jesus.
Still further removed from orthodoxy was the teaching of the Erlangen theologian, Christian von Hofmann. His doctrine of the Atonement was the most prominent though not the only instance of his heterodoxy, and hence was the first object of attack on the part of orthodox theologians.
Hofmann, indeed, only wished to teach old truth in a new form, but a glance at his system shows the serious extent of the neology in his teaching. A vein of modern Rationalism runs through his theology, but it is concealed, by means of an artificial dialectic, behind a supernaturalism rather Biblical than ecclesiastical. His theological system is given in his two chief works, Weissagung und Erfilllung and Der Schrift- beweis (1852-56), to which may be added his collected Schutz-
schriften, containing an exposition and defence of his system against ecclesiastical attacks.
Hofmann, exactly like Schleiermacher, bases his theology upon the inward experience of the facts of personal Chris tianity. This experience he attempts to develop into a system of organically connected statements, in which every individual fact is to find its definite and necessary place as an historical presupposition or inference. And the Schriftbeweis, or proof from Scripture, he holds to consist precisely in show
Jesus
? s
? ? ? 174 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
ing that Biblical history and doctrine as a whole finds its
proper place in the systematic development of the facts which
make us Christians ; it is not that certain dogmatic
tions are to be proved by individual texts of Scripture, but the Biblical history of revelation as a whole, from the creation to the consummation of the world, is to be explained from the point of view of the necessary premises of our experience of
and inferences from need not be said that the subjective conception of Christian experience thus acquires fundamental importance the interpretation and explanation of the history, and that arbitrary and violent expedients are not always avoided in the case of important points. At bottom this Schriftbeweis the supernatural istic counterpart of Hegel's Philosophy of History both pursue the same method of deducing history from a priori ideas, philosophical ideas the one case, theological in the other both connect historical events with transcendental relations the one, with the movement of the idea through the antithesis of its ele ments to the unity of the concept and of reality the other, with the movement of the Persons of the Trinity through antithetical modes of existence to the unity of love and blessedness.
The fellowship with God into which we know that we have been admitted through Christ has, Hofmann teaches, the divine Trinity as its eternal condition. For the self-deter mination of the divine love beyond itself, having for its object the gradually evolving man of God, i. e. , historical humanity, presupposes an eternal self-determination on the part of God within himself, having as its object the eternal man of God, or the Son of God (who accordingly not really God at all, or Person in the Trinitarian nature of God, but the pre- existent ideal man, something like the Pauline Christ). God's eternal will of love, or his inward divine relation to his Son,
accomplished in the history which transpires between him and mankind. This history has a threefold beginning one given to by God, one given to by itself, and one a fresh beginning, annulling the latter and completing the former, God having appointed his Son for this. Since the final end of the divine will the man Jesus, mankind necessarily began in a single man, Eve being taken therefore from her husband. The original state of mankind was a state of actual and true, though only incipient, holiness and blessedness, not excluding
Christianity,
proposi
? ? ? is
it
it
it. It
:
is
a
is
in is
: ;
;
in
;
? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. I 75
the possibility of self-determination in opposition to God. The source of the first sin, however, did not lie in man, but outside him, in the temptation of Satan, who was able to deceive the woman. This brought mankind into a state the reverse of life from God, under the necessity of death and the seductive influences of Satan. Still there existed the possibility of divine counter-influence, prophetically testified to in the revelation of God to Israel, and fully realised in the incarnation of the eternal Son. His entrance into the humanity
derived from Adam was for it the realisation of God's eternal will of love, since he was the beginner and originator of per fect fellowship with God for the same humanity which had in its sin made a beginning opposed to the holiness of God, and frustrating God's work of love. At the same time, how ever, his inward divine relation to the Father became involved in the most extreme antithesis possible to it without cancelling itself. For as having become a member of Adamite human ity, the Son was bound to an obedience to the Father which involved undergoing the consequences of God's anger inflicted upon the sinful race. But the sinfulness of the human race inherited from Adam could not possibly be shared by the Son, from the fact that his incarnation was a deed of holy self- determination, to the accomplishment of which nothing was necessary on man's part except obedient faith in the divine word of promise on the part of the woman destined to con ceive him. His human action could then only be the con tinuation, by means of a sinless human nature, of the holy self-determination by which he had become man.
The acquisition of righteousness for mankind by Jesus was the effect of his entire holy life, from his incarnation to his death. It began by his assuming human nature in a sinless state as his own, thus making a new beginning in opposition to the sin of Adam. It was continued in the harmony of all he did with the will of God, expressed in consequence of sin in the form of the law, which demanded obedience to the various ordinances of man's social life. It was consummated by enduring the enmity of men in his fidelity to the divine will, preserving his holiness to the end in suffering as well as in action. The death of Jesus was therefore not a
vicarious" atoning sacrifice to the divine punitive righteousness, but an occurrence " resulting from the historical position of affairs, and which became the deed of Jesus by virtue of his
? ? ? ? I 76 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
voluntary submission to But just as this thing which hap pened to him was not the suffering of what sinful humanity would have had to suffer, so the thing which he accomplished was not what humanity ought to have done, but was the obedience of the divinely ordained Saviour to his own voca tion. The abandonment of the Son by the Father to the hostile power of men and the devil brought the history trans acting between God and the second beginner of mankind to a conclusion, which was at the same time the conclusion
the previous history of mankind conditioned by sin. For his maintenance of the office of mediator in opposition to the enmity born of sin lay likewise his deed of satisfaction for the sin of Adamite humanity, that the actual realisation of the relation to God which had been desired and brought about God, a relation for which sin no longer exists, and which holi ness alone. This whole act of God we call the redemption of mankind, irrespective of its effects upon individuals, because
sanctified and glorified human nature in the person of Christ. Its sanctification was its salvation from sin its glorification its salvation from death. This glorification was accomplished by the raising of Christ from the dead, by which he entered upon a new kind of human life, in which his human nature
was the perfect instrument of his unconditional fellowship with the Father. Christ's work of salvation was an expiation of sin, not the sense that the Triune God had claimed some thing as a recompense for the wrong done him, but the sense that for the benefit of the human race he displayed his
? love, which seeks not its own, but what another's. The salvation of the world not based upon the
Triune God having been appeased, but upon the Son having
eternally holy
that relation to the Father which only the Holy One was able to accomplish, but not sinful mankind for itself. Only this sense can his work be called vicarious. The result of this history, commencing with Christ's incarna tion and completed by his death and resurrection, that the relation of the Father to the Son henceforth also the relation of God to the humanity beginning anew in the Son, a relation
which henceforth not determined by the sin of the race of
Adam, but by the righteousness of the Son. But participa tion in this new relation to God open to us only when, virtue of the working of the Holy Ghost, which makes us certain of this change accomplished once for all, we are re
accomplished
? ? is
is
is,
by
is
by inof
is
in
is
it
in
in
is
in
is
;
it
it.
? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 177
solved to belong to the humanity begun afresh in Christ, and therefore to make our own, not only the forgiveness of its sins, but also its life unto God. It is the righteousness of the Son which renders mankind the object of the divine approval; and it is by acting up to the relation to God existing in his person that the individual man becomes certain of its existence, and its existence for him. What he thus becomes certain of is the beginning of a new humanity, though this only becomes such for him by his attaching himself to it as soon as he is certain of its existence.
The near kinship of this theory of salvation to that of Schleiermacher will be at once perceived. The fundamental principles are the same as those recurring in all rationalistic theology since Kant, only here they are, by a somewhat arti ficial dialectic, so interwoven with Biblical supernaturalism as to appear to be the result of the Schriftbeweis. We may even admit that they have points of support in Biblical teaching, although not exactly in accord with true Pauline doctrine. At any rate, we must admit the theologian's right to em phasise some sides of Biblical teaching neglected by ecclesias
tical theology, and to make use of them for his own rational
conception of the dogma. But Hofmann's opponents were quite right in asserting the essential difference between his theory of the Atonement and that of Anselm and Luther ; and Hofmann's wish to represent his teaching as essentially in accordance with the dogma of the Confessions can only be called a piece of strange self-deception. But this want of honesty towards himself and others, this concealment of the heresy of which he was really guilty, is so general a weakness among theologians, that we must not press it too much in
his Dogmatik (1858-9), though he is a step further removed from ecclesiastical dogma. He starts from man's self-con sciousness as involving the three fundamental facts of man's need of salvation, the divine bestowal of salvation, and the completion of salvation in the Church, these facts being directly given in experience. He blames Schleiermacher for emphasising the subjective side of the truth of salvation, the
facts of the religious consciousness, to the detriment of the objective side, the facts of God's personal bestowal of salva tion. (Though how the " facts of salvation," which are only
? relation to individuals.
?
The lines of Hofmann are followed by Daniel Schenkel in
G. T. N
? ? ? 178
DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
historically known, can at the same time be directly given in the religious consciousness, Schenkel does not explain, and throughout his book we can trace the effects of this failure to distinguish between direct facts of the religious consciousness and their conditions, which are only indirectly inferred or historically knowable. ) The truth of the facts of salvation can be established in three ways : first, by their answering to a human need of salvation ; secondly, by their containing a fresh communication of himself by God to man ; thirdly, by their being the basis of a progressive develop ment of the Christian community with regard to salvation.
Above all Schenkel, not without reason, maintains that
theology requires a thorough revision of the idea of religion, which lies at the root of all its propositions. In spite of Schleiermacher's great merit in distinguishing religion from knowledge and conduct, his definition of religion is unsatis factory, as confusing the religious and aesthetic functions by the identification of religion with emotion, and so overlooking its ethical character. Schenkel, for his part, thinks he has discovered a specifically religious organ in the conscience, quite distinct from reason, will, and emotion ; for while in the latter our self-consciousness involves only relation to the world, in the conscience we are conscious of ourselves in primal and direct relation to God. The primary religious function of conscience is the consciousness that God is personally present in us, but that our original normal relation to God is dis turbed by the distracting consciousness of the world, and that we therefore stand in need of the restoration by God of our normal relation to him. It is plain that this theory represents
? convictions of a very complicated origin as the content of conscience, and from the first substi
religious
original
tutes dogmatic presuppositions for a psychological analysis of facts ; but, setting aside his totally inadequate deduction, we must recognise the justice and value of Schenkel's attempt to show " the synthesis of the religious and ethical factors" from the nature of the religious spirit itself, and thus to secure from the first the indissoluble connexion of religious and moral truths.
In treating of revelation, Schenkel complains of the want of a distinction in the older dogmatic theologians between the act and the record of revelation ; for while the former is a direct working of God on the human conscience, this
? ? ? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 1 79 absolute divine act of communication becomes, by its incor
poration with human activity, a human and historically ditioned record of revelation, which on that very account
can never be absolutely perfect, nor completed in past history, since God's revelation of himself is always continued in the historical development of salvation. Of " miracles," Schenkel speaks very variously : on the one hand, he says, with Schleiermacher, that from the religious point of view all phenomena depend upon the divine causality, while from the rational point of view they are at the same time explic able from the uniformity of nature, thus doing away with miracles in the proper sense ; on the other hand, he main tains that specific miracles are creative modifications by God of the uniformity of finite nature, mysteriously introducing something new into the world, though it afterwards obeys natural laws, since, e. g. , the loaves miraculously multiplied stilled the people's hunger like ordinary bread. Schenkel was evidently not clear as to the essence of the question ; his objection to Schleiermacher is unmeaning. Of inspira
tion, Schenkel says that it originates directly from God, but is continued through human instrumentality, so that we must
admit the imperfection of the individual inspirations during the formation of the whole record of revelation. Still it is not enough to say that the Scriptures contain the word of God ; we must also say that they are the word of God, though not all the individual words of the Bible are this, but the
Bible as a whole. Schenkel's method of proof from Scripture corresponds to this conception of its authority ; he interprets the passages in the Bible so that they agree with the affir mations of his " conscience," and where that is impossible, he has recourse to the supposition of the Biblical teacher's
accommodating himself to the conceptions of the people, e. g. , in the doctrine of the devil; an unprejudiced historical estimate of the Bible is unknown to Schenkel.
Accordingly the historical truth of the whole Biblical his tory from the creation of the world onwards is maintained by Schenkel for conscience' sake. In speaking of the Fall he does indeed quote Nitzsch, to the effect that it is " a true but not an external history "; nevertheless it must be regarded as having taken place as an external fact at some time. In
con
? the belief in the historical trustworthiness of the Gospel narratives of miracles, from the supernatural Birth
particular
? ? ? l8o DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
to the Ascension, is represented as a demand of " conscience," and thus historical criticism is indirectly charged with want of conscience ! Schenkel does indeed, as a fact, allow himself several departures from Biblical statements of doctrine, but he always endeavours by artificial interpretations to produce the appearance of complete agreement {e. g. , in the case of the Johannine Christology, of the Pauline doctrine of sin and atonement). On the other hand, he in many points openly and expressly opposes ecclesiastical dogmas, and censures others, e. g. , Hofmann, for trying to conceal their heterodoxy, forgetting that he is himself in precisely the same position with regard to the Scriptures.
Schenkel sees the fundamental error of the ecclesiastical Christology in the fact that it has never been able to acknow ledge the real humanity of Christ ; and the source of this error he holds to be that it assumed the personal Logos, the second Person of the Trinity, to have been the principle constituting the person of Christ. Hence he begins his reconstruction with the doctrine of the Trinity. It is not a triple personality in God which is testified to by conscience and Scripture, but a triple relationship of God to the world, and hence a triple consciousness of God in relation to the world. " God as the Father rests in the eternal source of creation ; as the Son he issues from his absolute source and enters the life of the world, without himself becoming finite, and reflects the eternal image of the world within himself; as the Holy Spirit he transforms the life of the finite back into his absolute source, in such a way that this life ceases to be solely for the finite and comes to be for God, i. e. , for divine and eternal
? The Logos is therefore not a person, but the idea of the world eternally thought in God's self-consciousness, reaching its highest form in the idea of a perfect man. Only in this ideal, not in a real personal, sense can we maintain Christ's pre-existence, and only in this sense must we under stand the Biblical statements with respect to it. " Christ had indeed an eternal pre-existence in God, in so far that the Father had chosen him from all eternity to represent the idea of man within the limits of the historical
of the human race. The Logos, as the eternal, conscious, divine idea of humanity, really became flesh, i. e. , had historical existence as a human person. " The perfected archetype of humanity and the complete image of the deity realised. them
purposes. "
development
? ? ? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. l8l
selves historically in Christ. In respect of his personal nature, Christ did not differ from other men, as would have been the case if he had had within him the personality of the Logos with absolute attributes. Still he is as an indi vidual different from others, in that he is the spiritual centre in which mankind is eternally one ; in him God conceives and contemplates mankind from all eternity as a whole, as a logical and ethical unity. Hence in the conception of Christ's true humanity is involved that of his true Deity. For just as it is the prerogative of every man to be historically in time related to God in his conscience, so it is Christ's pre rogative above all other men to be eternally directly related
to God, and to be conscious of himself as the man in whom the idea of humanity is realised as it was known and willed in God before all time. In this sense we may say that God himself, and nothing less, became man in Christ, because he is the self-revelation of the eternal God, that of his eternal will directed towards the world and humanity. As the self- revelation of God within the limits of a human life, he the representative of Deity to mankind as the personal exempli fication of a true and perfect man, he the representative of mankind relation to Deity conjunction with both, he the eternal mediator and surety, binding mankind to God and
? of salvation.
The atonement wrought by Christ consisted in the restora
tion of the fellowship mankind with God, disturbed by sin, and the cancelling of the effects of sin, guilt, and punishment. This result was only possible by the manifestation in his own person of the ethical perfection of human nature, and especi ally by his condemnation of sin in its weakness, and revealing his divine self-sacrificing love in all its glory by his suffering and death. God regards this ethically perfect sacrifice not simply as an individual act, but as the common deed of man
kind generally as represented in Christ, and hence looks
upon mankind general as the normal development begun in by Christ were already finished which the more natural as this atonement was eternally willed and historically accomplished by God himself. Thus Schenkel rejects, with
Hofmann and Schleiermacher, the ecclesiastical doctrine of vicarious satisfaction made to the punitive divine justice, and holds that the atoning element was rather that Christ by his holy life, attested by his death, made amends for the sin
assuring
? ? it
;
; is
is
in
if
; in
a is
of
it
in
is
is,
? 1 82 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
of mankind, i. e. , actually overcame it and destroyed it at its root, and thereby gave God the pledge of a life of humanity well-pleasing to him. This triumph over the supremacy of sin put an end to the cause of the discord between God and mankind, and rendered it possible for God to look upon mankind as if the new development of life, begun in principle, was already actually accomplished. Christ's deed was vica rious only in the sense that his suffering and action exempli fied by anticipation what we are bound to suffer and do in fellowship with him. But when the work of atonement has once been comprehended, "with the help of the conscience,"
as a truly ethical deed, salvation, i. e. , the individual appro priation of the effects of the atonement on the part of each individual, must necessarily also be ethically conceived. Salvation can no longer be supposed to consist in the impu tation to a man of another's merits, faith being merely the passive acceptance of this justifying sentence of God. On the contrary, the new life won, in principle, for mankind by Christ, must be practically realised in each individual ; and this is done by faith, inasmuch as faith is the central activity of man's conscience in relation to God. Faith is the subjective condition of justification, inasmuch as the man by virtue of this change in his conscience, participates in the atoning per sonal life of Christ, and has received into his heart the new
divine principle of life exemplified in Christ. This beginning of a new life in the believer, God imputes to him as if it were already completed ; he regards it on account of the perfection of the principle active in it (the personal life of Christ), proleptically, as if it were itself already perfect.
The close connexion of this doctrine of atonement and of justification with the fundamental principles of Kant's philo
sophy of religion is very plain ; the difference is only that what Kant called the ideal of a humanity pleasing to God, Jesus being the conspicuous example of here identified with the ideal person of Christ but both cases by receiving this ideal into his own heart that the man becomes good in principle, and thus righteous before God, in spite of his asting empirical imperfection. That Jesus was not only the model but also the creative cause of this ethical and religious
process, while the society which he founded was its social mediate cause, the theological addition to the Kantian theory made as early as Schleiermacher, and which we have
? ? ? is
;
in
it is
it, is
? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 1 8 J
met with in various phases in the discussion of this group of
theologians.
Most nearly akin to Hofmann and Schenkel is the theo
logian AlbreCht R1tsChl ; with Schenkel he lays special stress on the ethical element, with Hofmann he emphasises the historical and social element, and claims with him to be a true Lutheran ; he is distinguished from both by the peculi arity of his epistemology and his method, which he eclectically derived from Kant and Lotze. In his book, "Metaphysik tind Theologie, he very emphatically opposed the bad episte mology and metaphysics" of previous theology, and offered his own as the foundation of an altogether new theology.
On a closer inspection, however, this, his famous theory of cognition, is seen to be only a dilettante confusion of the irreconcilable views of subjective idealism, which resolves things into phenomena of consciousness, and common-sense realism, which looks upon the phenomena of consciousness as things themselves, admitting no distinction between phenomena as perceived by us and the being of things in themselves ; a confusion to which the nearest parallel is the semi-idealistic, semi-materialistic theory of the Neo-Kantian
? author of the Geschichte des Materialismus (2nd ed. 1873), which enjoyed a brief celebrity as having supplied, it was
thought, a justification of the sceptical tendencies of the time. We may, moreover, conjecture that Ritschl did not make this theory of cognition the basis of his theology from the first, but rather propounded it subsequently, in its defence. In spite of its intrinsic worthlessness, it is well calculated to furnish this theology, in its wavering between the subjective dissolution of the objects of theology and the affirmation of their objective reality, with an appearance of scientific justifi cation having a certain attraction at least for amateurs in these questions.
Ritschl expounded his theological system in the third volume of his principal work, Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, of which the first and second volumes had contained the
history of the dogma and its Biblical-theological premises respectively.
The third volume appeared in three editions, between 1874 and 1888, differing in some points from each other. Indeed, a careful comparison of the later presenta tions with the earlier shows an increasing advance in the direction of speculative scepticism and historical dogmatism.
Lange,
? ? ? 184 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
" Religion was defined by Ritschl in the first edition as the common recognition of the dependence of man on God," or, more precisely, " as our view of the world from the basis of the idea of God and our estimate of ourselves from
our sense of dependence upon God in relation to the world. " The peculiarity of the religious view of the world he holds to be that it involves the conception of a whole, while theoretical knowledge in philosophy and the special sciences is limited to the general and particular laws of nature and spirit, and cannot by its methods of experience and observation attain to the conception of the world as a unity and a whole. Wherever philosophy has claimed by its methods to construct a view of the universe, we should rather discern an impulse of religion, which philosophy must distinguish as specifically different from its own object of systematic know ledge. Conflicts between religion and science are to be avoided by religion retaining as its privilege the right of viewing the world in its unity, and by science limiting itself to the particular phenomena of the world. Afterwards, on the other hand, Ritschl admitted that philosophy also treated of the world as a whole, with the object of comprehending it under one supreme law. Hence the distinction between religious and scientific knowledge is not to be sought in its object, but in the sphere of the subject, viz. , in the difference in the attitude of the subject towards the object. For religion, he now states, " is occupied with judgments of value ( Werthurtheile)" i. e. , with conceptions of our relation to the world which are of moment solely according to their value in awakening feelings of pleasure or pain as our dominion over the world is furthered or checked. "In all religion, by the help of the sublime spiritual Power which man adores, the solution is attempted of the contradiction in which man finds himselt placed as a part of the natural world and as a spiritual person
For in his
? ality with its claim to sovereignty over nature.
position he is a part of nature, in subjection to
upon and checked by other things, but as spirit he
by the impulse to maintain his independence against external things. In these circumstances arises religion as a belief in superior spiritual powers by whose help the deficiencies in man's own power are supplied. " All religion seeks to supple ment, by means of the idea of God, man's sense of personal dignity in the face of the hindrances of the world this idea
dependent moved
? ? ;
it, is
? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 1 85
of God is " the ideal bond between the particular view of the world and the vocation of"man to attain goods (Giiter) or the
highest good (happiness. ) ' The thought of God must be treated in Christian theology solely as a judgment of value, or as a conception valuable for the attainment of goods. This is the same theory of religion as the well-known one of Feuer- bach: the gods are the " Wunschwesen," invented by man from his practical need of a supplement to his own powerlessness over nature. But while the pathological explanation of the idea of God by motives of human feeling was intended by Feuer- bach to deny the truth of this idea in an objective sense, and to affirm its purely imaginary character, the theory is directed by Ritschl to the exactly opposite conclusion, that the emotional value of the conception of God for the preservation of man's sense of personal dignity is also the warrant of its truth. That this warrant is not sufficient to insure to theology a knowledge of speculative truth and the character of a science, had indeed been
? formerly fully recognised by Ritschl himself, who had therefore in his first edition still
held the necessity and possibility of an independent proof of the existence of God, founded upon the general data of the human mind ; as such he had regarded the ethical proof as stated in Kant's Critique ofJudgment, and had expressly declared that the "acceptance of the idea of God on that proof was no practical belief (as Kant had thought), but an act of speculative cognition," by which the general rationality of the Christian view of the world is established and thereby the possibility of a scientific theology secured, while such a theo logy would be impossible if the idea of God could not be established to the satisfaction of speculative knowledge also as its necessary basis. In the third edition, on the other hand, this position is altogether abandoned ; we now read " this acceptance of the idea of God as Kant remarks, a practical belief, and not an act of speculative cognition. " In
justification of this change of view, alleged that
the work of theology to preserve the distinctive character of the idea of God, that allowable to use only in judgments of value. Hence theoretical proofs of the idea of God are doomed to failure, "because their professed results, even true, do not accord with the Christian thought of God, that
Seligkeit.
? ? 1
in
it is
if
it is
it is
is, it
? 1 86 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
they fail to express its value for men, in particular for men as sinners. " Thus while Ritschl formerly recognised that a scientific and universally valid justification of the belief in God, and consequently of theology, cannot consist merely in an inference from the religious view of the world to its inner coherence, but must be based upon independent and univer sal data of the human mind, he now, on the contrary, pro nounces the theoretical method of proof objectionable in not being confined to Christian judgments of value, or in aiming to be not only simple practical belief, but also independent theoretical knowledge. We see from this how, from the sub
jective conception of religion, is deduced the limitation of the
science of religion, or theology, to the sphere of judgments of value, or subjective truth, and the abandonment on principle of all attempts to attain objective truth valid for the knowing mind in general.
In accordance with his principle that the Christian thought of God must be put forward only in judgments of value, Ritschl teaches that God should be thought of only as love.
All metaphysical statements regarding God's absoluteness, his existence through himself, in himself, and for himself, must be rejected as "heathenish metaphysics," connected with the false theory of knowledge which maintains the existence of things irrespective of our conception of them. The idealistic subjec- tification of the idea of God on the lines of Feuerbach seems a necessary consequence of this. Such is not, however,
Ritschl's intention ; on the contrary, he seeks to conceive of the personality of God as objectively real. That this involves the assertion of an absolute existence of God in himself, as
from his existence in relation to us, or his love, is plain, but is not admitted by Ritschl. He says that the attribute of personality is only the form for God's love. If this proposition were taken strictly, it would finally come to mean that our conception of the personality of God is the form under which we personify love as " God," which is the view of Feuerbach and the Positivists. But Ritschl does not mean ' this ; indeed, he speaks also of an " intrinsic purpose of God," into which God takes up the purpose of the world, or which he realises in the education of the human race for the kingdom of God. But such a purpose is a relation of the
1 Selbstzweck Gottes.
? distinguished
? ? ? Ch. IV] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 187
will to itself, and therefore presupposes a being which is not solely love, that existing for others, but exists also as a
in and for itself. This inner self-subsistence of God,
with his loving communication of himself, not merely a
necessary metaphysical conception, but also of great religious
since the foundation, as Dorner has well remarked, of the Biblical conception of God's holiness and righteousness, which in the teaching of the Bible and the Church inseparable from that of his love. But this side of the idea of God altogether neglected by Ritschl. He says " In comparison with the conception of love there
no other of equal value. In particular this holds of the con ception of holiness, which its Old Testament sense for several reasons, not valid in Christianity, and the use of which in the New Testament obscure. " And with regard to God's righteousness, which, according to Biblical doctrine, his holiness " actively shown, Ritschl (like Hofmann) considers that his action for the salvation of the members of his religious community, and identical fact with grace. "
This connected with Ritschl's peculiar doctrine of sin.
He altogether rejects the idea of original sin, because assumes that there will previous to its individual acts an assumption related to the false doctrine of things in them selves, and because the hypothesis of an innate evil tendency makes both responsibility and education impossible. The latter demands the exactly opposite hypothesis, " that the general though still indefinite impulse towards good exists in the child, although not guided by a general insight into the good, and not yet tested by the various relations of life. "
For the conception of original sin we must, therefore, substi tute that of the " kingdom of sin," i. e. , of the collective unity of free actions opposed to the purpose of the kingdom of God, and of the inclinations acquired thereby. The law of sin the will not natural loss of its freedom, but a consequence of the necessary reaction of every act of the will upon the direction of the power of volition. Accordingly the unchecked repetition of selfish determinations of the will produces ten dency to selfishness, and the sin then transmitted from one individual to another by the interaction of their conduct in
subject
importance,
? Ritschl has not indeed shown how any selfish deter minations of the will at all can be explained, there exists in the child by nature only an indefinite impulse towards good
society.
? ? ;
is
if is a
is
is a
is
in
is
it is
is
is,
in it is
;
it is is
:
is
a is
is is
in
in
it
is,
? 1 88 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
for the attempt to explain it from ignorance is certainly un satisfactory. Ritschl holds, namely, that ignorance, as ex perience proves in the case of children, is "a very momentous factor in the origination and development of sin ; " and further, that it is " the essential condition of the conflicts of the will with the order of society as the rule of goodness, and also the condition of the fixity of the will in its resistance to this order. "
It may easily be seen how little this explanation accords with experience, of which a very different account is given even by the heathen poet (Nitimur in vetitum), and above all by the Apostle Paul (Rom. vii. ). In Ritschl's case also, this treat ment of sin as ignorance is not so much the result of actual observation as a postulate of his doctrine of God and recon ciliation. To the regulative conception of God corresponds, he says, the distinction between the two stages of sin -- an im perfect stage, not excluding the capability for redemption, and a completed stage, consisting in a final purpose of opposition to the known will of God. Since the latter is only a hypo thetical possibility, of which we can nowhere assume the reality, all actual sin of mankind is confined to the former stage, and this is regarded by God as " the relative stage of ignorance. " The artificial method by which Ritschl tries to harmonise his theory with the statements of the Bible, may be here passed over as valueless.
The correlative to the love of God is the kingdom of God, inasmuch as it is the union of men for mutual and common action from the motive of love, which action, as correlative to the purpose of God himself, and as the specific operation of God, is the perfect revelation of the fact that God is love. In the precise development of this thought there is again a noticeable difference between the first and the later editions of Ritschl's work. In the first the Christian idea of the king dom of God is the highest stage of ethical society among men, though removed from the earlier preparatory stages to no greater degree than these from each other. It is more perfect in virtue of its greater extent, but is not essentially different in kind, since the pre-Christian forms of society (family, friend ship, nationality) originated in love. And since, as is then stated, this union of men, wherever realised, must always be regarded as dependent upon God, and as the effect and reve lation of His love, the conception of a universal revelation of God throughout all human history is evidently presupposed,
? ? ? ? Ch. IV] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. 1 89
since this history has never been without ethical fellowship and love. In the later editions, on the other hand, the com parison of the Christian kingdom of God with the preparatory stages of ethical society in history is omitted, and the love of God is exclusively confined to the historical Christian Church, which, by acknowledging Christ as its Lord, itself comes to stand in the same relation as he to God. Whereas it was formerly maintained that " God loves the human race from the point of view of its vocation to the kingdom of God," we are now told that " God is love as revealing himself through his Son to the Church founded by the latter in order to educate it for the kingdom of God " ; and whereas we were then told that all ethical union originated in love, and that all action from love must always and everywhere be regarded as de pendent on God, and as the effect of the revelation of his love, it is now stated that " All love of man originates accord ing to Christian ideas in the revelation of God in Christ. "
From these statements it would directly follow that before Christ there was neither a revelation of God nor an ethical association of men. If that be so, from what source were religion and morality in pre-Christian humanity derived ? This
Ritschl has never explained. Simply to deny that it had any religion or morality, would lead to a pessimism more extreme than that of Augustine, and would strangely contradict Rit- schl's optimistic view of the goodness of human nature.
Finally, it is evident that the limitation of the divine revela tion solely to the person of Jesus, whose historical connection with the religion of Israel is undeniable, verges close upon the denial of revelation altogether. Thus ultra dogmatism in the end leads to the opposite extreme, as has actually been
? in Ritschl's disciple, Bender.
In his Christology, Ritschl starts from the principle that in
a personal life what is real and actual consists of spiritual effects and nothing else. By this means the Christological problem is much simplified. Not only the dogma of the two natures, but the whole metaphysical background of ecclesias tical Christology is thus got rid of, even more decisively than in Schleiermacher's theology, and replaced by an historical view of the subject. In strange contrast with this, Ritschl nevertheless continues to speak with orthodox theology of the deity of Christ. It is true this term has for him an altogether different meaning. It is the expression of our estimate of
exemplified
? ? ? 190 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
Jesus, of our trustful acknowledgment of the unique value of what his life effected for our salvation, but is not meant to predicate any metaphysical characteristic of his nature what ever, or any transcendental unity of his nature with God. The predication of the deity of Christ sums up his unmistakable importance as the perfect revealer of God and as the manifest type of spiritual supremacy over the world. Our religious estimate of Christ must be tested by the connection of his action in the world with his religious convictions and with his ethical motives. It has no direct reference to his presumptive possession of innate qualifications and capacities, for Christ does not influence us thus, but morally and religiously only. Jesus is the representative of the perfect spiritual religion, standing in a reciprocal relation of union with the God who is the originator and final end of the world. This involved his re cognition of God's divinest purpose, the union of men by love, as the task of his own life, whereby he experienced that in dependence of the world which the members of his Church ought to come to share with him. The peculiar value of his life on earth gains the character of a permanent rule by serving as a pattern for our religious and ethical vocation. This authority, which either excludes all other standards or else subordinates them to itself, and which is also the ultimate regu lative principle of all human trust in God, is equivalent in value to his deity. On the other hand, metaphysical attributes of deity cannot be ascribed to him for the simple reason that they
are altogether outside the religious method of cognition, which is concerned only with j udgments of value. So too the passages
of Scripture from which Christ's personal pre-existence has been inferred, are only to be understood in the sense that, in the thought and will of God, Christ from the beginning was the head of the community of the kingdom of God, which is the object of the world. The Johannine formula of the Word becoming flesh, means that the Word, which is the general form of divine revelation, became in him a human person, i. e. , that he is the perfect revelation of God.
While it follows from this that the doctrine of Christ's work must not be separated from that of his person, Ritschl further rejects the usual dogmatic distinction of his threefold office as prophet, priest, and king. In order to form a single compre hensive conception of Christ's work, we must regard it from the point of view of his vocation. Now, this vocation was the
? ? ? ? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS. I9I
foundation of the kingdom of God, or of the universal ethical association of men as the divine object of the world. But since, as the founder of the kingdom of God in the world, or the representative of God's moral sovereignty over men, he is unique in comparison with all other men who have received from him the same purpose, he is the factor in the world in whose intrinsic purpose God, in a creative way, gives effect to, and manifests his own intrinsic purpose, so that all his actions in fulfilment of his vocation constitute the revelation of God, present and perfect, in him ; or, in other words, he is one in whom the Word of God is a human person. This theory gives the consistent ethical and religious estimate of Christ, and thus the christological problem of theology is solved. It is not the business of theology to inquire how the person of Christ came from God, and came to be that which is the sub
ject of our ethical and religious estimate, especially as the problem lies beyond the possible range of inquiry. The grace and faithfulness of Christ in the fulfilment of his voca tion, and the elevation of his spiritual aims beyond the limited and natural motives of the world, constitute the elements of his historical appearance which are comprehended in the attribute of his deity. Looked at with reference to man, this patience and faithfulness of Christ is the result of his devotion to his calling of realising the kingdom of God among men as their supermundane destination, supported by his special knowledge of God ; with reference to the divine Being, this human life appears as the completed revelation of God, since the final purpose of the world, to which Christ's life is de voted, is founded in God's inner purpose, or in his will of love.
For the complete definition of Christ's deity the further sup position is required that his grace and faithfulness and world- subduing patience have produced as their effect the society of the kingdom of God, with analogous attributes. This is evidently equivalent to saying that the "deity " of Christ con sists in the original exemplification and communication of the same true piety and morality in which consists also the
? " deity," or better, the fellowship with God, the divine son-
and divine likeness of Christians. This is the same
ship
thought as that found in the whole of Schleiermacher's
except that the latter usually express it more simply, being less painfully anxious to keep to the ecclesiastical term, to which from this position, really no just claim can be made.
school,
? ? ? 192
DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [BV. II.
There can be no such thing as special priestly functions on the part of Christ which are not included in those of his general vocation. If Christ is to be conceived as priest, he is so fundamentally because as the Son of God he stood in the closest communion of purpose with God, and carried this out in every moment of his life, since every act and word in his life's work, until his voluntary and patient suffering of death, sprang from his religious relation to God. The juridical conception of a satisfaction of God's punitive righteousness offends against the design of religion, since law and religion are contradictory standards of action, and the assumption that in God righteousness and grace tend in opposite directions, is irreligious, the unity of the divine will being the inviolable condition of all trust in God. Even if we agree with Ritschl's rejection of the theory of satisfaction, we cannot approve of his unsympathetic judgment of the Pauline and orthodox doctrine of the atonement ; we cannot but see in this an illustration of that Rationalistic dogmatism which is neither able nor willing to appreciate objectively, from a given religious point of view, the historical and psychological conditions of dogmatic con ceptions, or to admit their relative validity for such a point of view. In respect of this intolerant dogmatism, Ritschl's theology marks a return to the weakest side of that Rational ism which he has so severely censured.
Not specially the death of Christ, which is only the com prehensive term to express his religious union with God, as
of the Christian society in the sense that in it there exists a union of men with God, in spite of their sins and of the accentuation of their feeling of guilt. The standard and historical source of this union is Christ's union with God, which he preserved in the faithful execution of his vocation to found the kingdom of God. For the grace and faithfulness of God, which is the ultimate efficient cause of the forgiveness of sin, is made manifest solely by the purpose which controlled all Christ's work of conducting men into such a relation to God as should save them from sin and gather them under the moral rule of God. From this point is first deduced the formula, that God makes the union of the members of Christ's Church with Christ the condition of admitting them
? predicable
his life, but his work in his vocation
preserved throughout
generally, brings about the forgiveness of sins, or justifica tion, or atonement. These synonymous conceptions are
? ? ? Ch. IV. ] ECLECTIC MEDIATING THEOLOGIANS.
to a union with himself. But this proposition
with Schleiermacher's doctrine of salvation) receives forthwith in Ritschl an important modification. He maintains (though on the basis of very arbitrary exegesis) that it is historically certain that Christ conceived not individuals but the society to be founded by him and represented in the twelve apostles, as the direct object of the forgiveness of sins which he was to grant. Hence he pronounces Schleiermacher's formula wrong, that in Protestantism the relation of the individual to the Church depends on his relation to Christ, while in Catholic ism the converse holds good ; for in the case of Protestant Christians also the right relation to Christ is conditioned, not only historically (which is self-evident) but ideally, by the fellowship of believers, since no action of Christ upon men is conceivable except in accordance with the antecedent purpose of Christ to found a society. Schleiermacher's formula is only the reflection of the pietistical disintegration of the idea of a church, which dated from the individualistic theory of salvation in the Lutheran theology, but was not in harmony with Luther's own view (according to his Short Catechism). As in the pur pose of Christ the guarantee of a universal forgiveness of sins and the foundation of his Church were equivalent ideas, so in
the result of his work it is the same thing to be certain ot having one's sins forgiven and to belong to Christ's commu nity. The forgiveness of sins or reconciliation is possessed by the individual only as a member of the religious society ot Christ, in consequence of the immeasurable interaction of his own personal freedom and the determining influence of the
society. It is not by an individual imitation of Christ that we become assured of salvation, as pietists and mystics held, including Schleiermacher and his followers, for all
imitation of Christ in the proper sense is rendered impos sible by the difference of the special conditions of his life from those of the members of his Church ; but we are warranted
in the assurance of being children of God by belonging to the society founded by Christ. Moreover, love to God and Christ is not an apt description of the religious function of the individual, for we might understand by it " an imagi nary private relation to God and Christ," bearing the char acter of indifference to the world or of fleeing from In
these statements Ritschl's social positivism and his dislike of the mystical element religion carried to such extremes
(which
agrees
1 93
? o. t.
? ? in
is
o
it.
? 194 DEVELOPMENT OK DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
as plainly to do violence to essential interests of Christian
piety.
The justification possessed by the Christian as a member of
Christ's community is attested practically by his freedom or dominion over the world. This is not to be understood in the empirical sense but ideally, though not therefore any the
less a reality. It in general, faith in God's providence that the religious dominion over the world exercised for in the view of the world as a unity, under the idea of God as our Father, and in the corresponding estimate of ourselves, all things and events are regarded as means to our good. Under this Christian belief in" providence Ritschl appears to include also the hypothesis of miracles. " He puts both in contrast, as the general teleological and the miraculous view of the uni verse, with the scientific view, and he seeks to deprive the oppo sition of the latter (which however not directed against the teleological, but only against the miraculous view) of its force by reference to the incompleteness of our scientific knowledge
of the world and to the immediate certainty of the feeling personal worth expressing itself in the belief in providence.
He warmly opposes the view of the theology of the Aufkl'dr- ung, that the belief in providence a part of natural religion
?
