No More Learning

? ? ? Ch. VI. ] HEGEL. 75
unity can we perceive their truth as phases of the one Spirit. Hence intuition is an inadequate form of truth, and must be
replaced by conceptual thought. But in thought Hegel again distinguishes the reflection of the understanding from truly rational or speculative thought. The former perpetuates the opposition of infinite and finite, nature and spirit, etc. , and cannot effect their union. But thereby the infinite, conceived as outside and beyond the finite, is itself limited and so made finite ; and the ego, conscious of itself as the author of this act of limitation, appears itself to be the Infinite ; the antitheses change places, the humble consciousness of finiteness becomes proud self-deification (comp. Feuerbach's anthropologism). But religion demands a point of view which shall be both the negation of the ego in its self-centred isolation and at the same time the affirmation of its true self in God. These conditions are fulfilled by speculative thought, which includes the finite, as an element of the divine life, and the infinite, as the living process by which it first becomes and then ceases to be finite. If the absolute self-conscious spirit thus appears from our finite point of view as a result which has been brought about by nature and finite spirit, in reality it is the Alpha, the
? basis of the finite world. God is the unity of the natural and the spiritual, yet not such a unity as to place the two on an equality, for the unity is spirit, not
some tertiumquid in which both are neutralised. God on the one hand (as finite) one side of the antithesis, and again (as absolute) that which includes the other side, and so the unity of both (nature and finite spirit). This clearly indicates the difference between Hegel's speculative idea of God and Schelling's Absolute as the identity of spirit and nature the latter the neutral identity in which both sides of the anti thesis are equally absorbed Hegel's Absolute the spiritual principle which creates and dominates the antithesis, not so as to be related in the same way to both sides, but so as to make nature, as its own correlate, an instrument for the pur pose of the spirit which reproduces itself. cannot be denied that this conception of God at least more allied to theism than to what generally understood by " pantheism. " So far undoubtedly Hegel was to some extent justified in maintaining that there was no material contradiction between his philosophy and Christian dogma though we cannot deny that he optimistically underrated the difference.
necessarily presupposed
^
? ? ;
is
in is
it
;
is It
is
;
is
is,
? 76
BASIS OF MODERN THEOLOGY. [Bk. I.
Hegel's Philosophy of Religion most nearly approaches Christian doctrine in the profound chapter on worship, which he regards as the active union of man with God by the
act,
speaks spiritually, for spirit reveals itself to spirit only. " The end and aim of worship is self-sacrifice, self-renunciation, and
the appropriation of the divine grace as the real strength of our own goodness, as the Holy Spirit. This inward senti ment then finds its expression in moral action also ; hence religious faith and worship have everywhere the profoundest influence upon the habits and laws of society ; want of freedom in religion leads to want of freedom in the State ; freedom in the State and not in religion leads to conflicts, such as have arisen between the modern State and the Catholic Church. In this recognition of the historical and social importance of re
ligion Hegel's religious philosophy compares favourably with
surrender of himself to the divine revelation ex
voluntary
perienced within him. Worship is primarily an inward
or faith, this living communion of the ego with God. It may begin from some external witness or authority, but then it is only formal faith ; true faith has as its basis and subject- matter nothing accidental or merely traditional, but the living witness of the spirit. " The non-spiritual cannot by its nature constitute the subject-matter of faith. If God speaks, he
? Schleiermacher's
After discussing, in the first part of his Philosophy of
subjective mysticism.
Religion, the nature of religion in general, Hegel proceeds in the second part to speak of " specific religion," i. e. , religion in its pre-Christian forms. These various positive religions are partial representations of special elements in the idea of re ligion, not indeed adequate to but necessary stages its evolution. Hegel distinguishes immediate religion, or the religion of nature, corresponding to the childhood of humanity then the religion of spiritual individuality, corresponding to the period of youth, or of growing spiritual freedom to this class belong the religion of the sublime (the Jewish), of the beautiful (the Greek), and of the expedient (the Roman). Finally comes " the absolute religion," or Christianity, in which the idea itself finds manifestation Hegel also calls
" the revealed religion," because in God known as He who reveals himself our spirit as truth and love and again " the religion of truth and freedom," because in the spirit re cognises itself in its true nature and thus at the same time
? ? in
is ; it ;
it
;
in it ;
it,
? Ch. VI. ] HEGEL. 77
attains its freedom. In his account of Christianity he treats
of God, firstly, per se, as He is in eternity (kingdom of the Father) ; then in His manifestation in history (kingdom of the Son); lastly, in His return from manifestation into Himself, in the process of reconciliation, or as the spirit of the Church, which is the eternal in time. We must look rather more closely at this philosophy of Christianity, as we shall often meet traces of it in the history of theology.
must not be taken literally, but as the figurative expression of the true thought --that God is not abstract unity, the identity without difference conceived by the understanding, or the supermundane omnipotence of the Jewish religion, but "eternal love," which is itself when in its correlative. This nature of God is a mystery to the sensuous mode of thought and to the understanding, clinging to differences as final, but not to the reason, which finds in all life a continual generation and destruction of contradiction, and therefore an analogy of the triune life of God. It is easy to see that this speculative interpretation of the Trinity is nearly identical with that given by Lessing and Schelling, according to which the Son is the world as an object of the divine thought, the intelligible world, called also in Philo the Son of God.
The element of difference, already implicit in the nature of God, comes into definite existence in nature, the correlative in which spirit alienates itself, and completes itself in man as conscious disunion. The orthodox doctrine of the original state and fall of the first man, Hegel says, must be taken as the symbol of what holds of man generally as such. The idea of man, his design and function, is to be spirit, to think and to will rationally, to learn to know God and nature ; but if this idea of man is imagined to be his original condition in time, this is a mythical notion. For by its very nature spirit cannot be actually existent from the beginning. At first it is still absorbed in nature, and must, therefore, in order actually to become rational thought and free will, withdraw itself from nature and come into conflict with it. An original direct union with nature, so far from being a condition of superiority,
the Church's doctrine of the Trinity as
Hegel regards
supplying the stages of the speculative idea of God ; the self- contained unity, self-differentiation, and the absorption of the difference into the concrete identity of the differentiated one. Of the three Persons, he expressly states that they
? ? ? ? 78 BASIS OF MODERN THEOLOGY. [Bit I.
is the condition of barbarism and wild desire, unworthy of
spirit, and diametrically opposed to its higher vocation. To this animal insensibility, to the want of moral consciousness, must be ascribed the innocence of man as the child of nature. The loss of this was therefore not at all an irremediable mis fortune, but a divine necessity. The ever-recurring history
of man's freedom is that of his progress from this insensibility of his earliest years to the light of consciousness, or more particularly, that he learns to know good and evil. This ad vance from naive consciousness to moral consciousness, with its contradiction between will and duty, its guilt and remorse, its discipline and labour, does indeed at first seem to be a calamity ; but this is only one side of the matter ; the other side that within this calamity lies the source of the remedy. Evil therefore did not spring from the accidental act of the first man, nor transmitted by inheritance to his descend
ants, but involved, without any mediation whatsoever, the freedom of each individual as the first mode of its appearance. For freedom arises solely through consciousness, and consciousness the act of the disunion of the ego, as dividual will, from the universal and rational will. In this dis union within, and in relation to everything else, both freedom and evil have their seat the source of moral disease and also of its cure, of the reconciliation of the contradiction.
Like the contradiction, the reconciliation can only take
place by process within the human spirit. Still Hegel finds sufficient reason for its being conceived in the creed of the
Christian Church as the external history of the incarnation God in Christ, as the atoning death of the God-man. For the reconciliation cannot be produced from within man himself, by his subjective will and action, which never gets
? the contradiction but the consciousness must be to look at and in faith appropriate the reconciliation
beyond
brought
as a supposition certain in itself, as the objective truth mankind's actual reconciliation with God and by God as
love. Man can feel himself reconciled with God and received into union with Him only when he sees God
being no longer foreign to himself and keeping mankind at a distance, but Spirit and Love, in which man's nature as spirit and free also affirmed. But this unity of the divine and human nature can become an immediate certainty the religious man only when takes the form of God appearing
reconciling
? ? is
a
is
aa
; it ; it is
in
in
of of in in
it is
is
is,
? Ch. VI. ] HEGEL.
79
to him as man and man as God, and indeed in the contempla tion of a concrete person in whom both are conjoined ; thus the orthodox conception of the deity and humanity of
Christ, is explained as an inner necessity of the religious con sciousness in its Christian stage. Still Hegel is by no means of opinion that the historical Christ was really a supernatural being in the sense of the dogma of the two natures, but he holds the historical Jesus to be essentially a man, who was conscious of being himself one with the divine will, and in this consciousness of union with God proclaimed, in the
language of inspiration, the highest religious truths ; by his teaching and life he brought home to men, as the truth and the necessary foundation of their religious consciousness, the doctrine that God is not supermundane and far off, but present in his kingdom, that He is love, and that the certainty of this must be realised in each man's own breast. But it was by faith only that the words of the man Jesus were rightly and spiritually understood ; and this spiritual faith was the fruit of Christ's death. His death was the crucial point
in the development of the Christian consciousness, when the great transition was effected from faith in a mere man to faith in the God-man, for it brought clearly before men's minds the truth of the unity of the divine and human natures. And
it was just because this consciousness of the reconciliation of God with the world, so fundamental to the Christian faith, dawned upon the Church in its full spiritual significance only after the death of Jesus, that Christians came to regard this death itself as the central point of the reconciliation, and beheld in it the absolute love, which in the finite itself over comes the finite -- death, and so negatives again this negation.
But though it was intelligible and, looked at historically, necessary, that the Christian Church should contemplate the idea of reconciliation in the form of a particular occurrence in history, it was nevertheless an incongruity to conceive what was really eternal and of universal validity as having happened once only and in the case of one individual. This incongruity
was in the first instance partially corrected by the two addi tional doctrines of Christ's second advent and of the mission and perpetual presence of the Holy Spirit. By these two conceptions the limitation to one external event put upon the idea of reconciliation in the history of Christ was removed, the reconciliation being made universal, perpetual, and inward,
? ? ? ? 80 BASIS OF MODERN THEOLOGY. [Bk. I.
just as the one fall of the first man was supplemented by the idea of all men's inheritance of Adam's sin. This addition was indeed only an external correction, one partial conception being added on to another equally partial. The essential thing, the real advance from the outward to the inward, can only come to pass by individual Christians personally going through this history or process, which they conceived at first as a divine history external to them and enacted for their sakes. By the enactment of the reconciliation as a subjective process in individuals themselves is realised the Christian Church. The Church is the institution having for its object that men come to the truth, and that the Holy Ghost become in them a living power, the knowledge and desire of the truth. The means of attaining this object is doctrine, in which the Church develops into conceptions (dogmas) the truth origin ally given as the direct witness of the spirit. Baptism declares that the world into which the child enters is not a hostile one, but the Church, in which evil as such, already overcome and God reconciled. only remains for the individual to form himself upon the Church, by education and practice, and to habituate himself to the goodness and truth already existing in This constitutes his regeneration. The spirit not directly and without mediation what designed to be the natural heart, by which man held captive, the foe to be striven against. The work of the Church this very education of the spirit, so that truth may become more and more inwardly one with the man, with his will, and so his own personal knowledge and volition. Here we have no mere naked obligation, progress without an end, endeavour never to be fulfilled, as in the Kantian philosophy. Here evil known to be in itself already overcome in the spirit (the Holy Spirit of the Church) and the individual only makes his own will good by means of this Spirit, by believing in the reconciliation already accomplished, evil has for him personally disappeared and sin felt to have been
This act on the one hand, the act of the individual, who sacrifices his self-will (dies with Christ), on the other, the act of the divine Spirit within him, which the spirit of the individual so far as he has faith. In the Lord's Supper the Church celebrates this presence of God the immediate self-consciousness of believers. But this reconcilia tion, accomplished worship, as an inward certainty the.
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it
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it.
is
if
;
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is,
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is
;
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? Ch. VI. ] HEGEL. 8 1
depths of the soul, must make itself felt in the world of nature and society. Moreover, the freedom of the spirit reconciled to God must be active, not merely a negative, monkish re nunciation of the world, but must work positively, in permeating all secular interests with the Holy Spirit, and in moulding the world after the pattern of eternal truth. The harmonising of true religion with true secularity is effected in morals and science, which are the realisation of reason in the will and knowledge of society.
Thus the Hegelian philosophy of religion ends as it began, with the conviction that religion and Christianity, if taken in
a deep and free spiritual sense, so far from being antagonistic to secular culture and knowledge, really form their source, foundation, and motive power, and, on the other hand, find in them their consummation, confirmation, and choicest fruit. Kant's idealistic philosophy had started with the emancipation of thought from the fetters of external authority, demanded by the Aufkldrung, and with his sketch of " a religion within the limits of pure reason. " But even Kant, bold critic as he was, had warned men not to confound Aufkldrung with radical revolution, but to seek it in a just and orderly use of the understanding ; and he had arrived by his investigation of the laws of reason at a point of view which was so far superior in ethical depth to the popular philosophy, and so essentially in touch with the Christian view of the world, that he was even able in his theory of religion to undertake what was really a defence of Christian doctrines, at any rate in respect of their ethical contents. Herder and Schleiermacher did justice to religious emotion and intuitive imagination, which Kant had slighted, and at the same time attempted to connect ideal religion more closely with the historical facts and the Biblical records of Christianity ; still these thinkers (we are
here speaking only of Schleiermacher's early period of
? were too much shut in by the horizon of a subjective piety to attain to a full appreciation of the historical development of Christianity. This was the side from which Schelling attacked the problem ; like the ancient Gnostics, he tried to explain Christianity, from the most comprehensive point of view, as a phase of the general development of the world, not however without falling again into the Gnostics' error of resolving religion into cosmo-mythological processes.
Hegel carefully avoided everything like Gnostic mythology, c. t. G
Romanticism)
? ? ? 82 BASIS OF MODERN THEOLOGY. [Bk. I.
but carried on the great task of applying an objective historical method to the study of religion. Herein lay his strength and his lasting importance, while he was weak in the psychological analysis of the religious consciousness and the emotions in fluencing But though his theology, and even more that of his disciples, needed to be supplemented in this respect by the school of Schleiermacher, was of great importance that Hegel clearly pointed out that the history of religion a development of the rational spirit, under the guidance of ideas, and a development in closest connection with all other sides of social life. He thus accomplished what Herder had demanded, and an advance of the abstract subjectivity and
the poor external pragmatism of the Aufkldrung was thereby finally checked.
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it
it.
? ? BOOK II.
THE EVOLUTION OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY.
? ? ? CHAPTER I.
THE THEOLOGY OF THE SCHOOL OF KANT.
The Kantian philosophy influenced the whole theology of its time, but in very various ways, according as the one or the other of the tendencies of thought involved in it was followed by theologians, -- whether it happened to be the sceptical, or the moral and rationalistic, or the theological utilitarian side of the system. The theological postulates based on utilitarian considerations, in which Kant, sceptic and rigorous moralist as he was, made conciliatory advances to popular thought, offered both to the conservative supernaturalists and the Wolfian neologists of the Aufkldrung a welcome means of approach ing this new philosophy and connecting themselves with it. In other respects the former of these parties adopted the scepticism of Kant's theoretical critique, and made it the foundation of their historical dogmatism, while they either simply rejected or else greatly limited the autonomous rational ism of the practical reason ; the neologists, on the contrary, adopted Kant's rational ethics and ethical theory of religion, though they toned down the rigour of his ethics, on the lines of theological and philosophical utilitarianism, and tried, with more or less success, to bring the rationalism of his religious system into closer connection with historical Christianity.
Hence originated the various shades of the Rationalistic theo logy derived from the school of Kant. It alone concerns us here; while the use made of the Kantian criticism in the cause of ecclesiastical and Biblical orthodoxy was so foreign to the spirit of this philosophy, and had so little influence on the development of theology, that we are justified in dismissing it with a passing mention.
We may notice as a curiosity that many theologians, both Protestant and Catholic, beheld in Kant's distinction between phenomena and noumena and his limitation of knowledge to the former, the means of rescuing the orthodox system from
the onslaughts of neological doubt. Though in the world of 85
? ? ? ? 86 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC TIIEOLOGV. [Bk. II.
phenomena three persons are not equal to one person, and one person cannot have two natures, still, they argued, the possibility of this cannot be disputed in the case of the Divine Persons, since they belong to the noumena, of which we know nothing except that in this realm everything is in all respects different from what prevails in the case of phenomena. A similar position was held by Storr and his colleagues and disciples, the so-called older Tubingen school, who exercised greater freedom with regard to ecclesiastical dogmas, but held all the more strictly to Biblical supernaturalism, which they rested upon the traditional theory of inspiration. They main tained their Biblical system against all the objections and doubts of the Aufkldrung by an appeal to the Kantian philo sophy ; since, according to the critical philosophy, reason itself admits its inability to know anything of the supersensible, it has logically no right to protest against what has been made known to us concerning supersensible things by historical revelation ; with regard to the practical reason, Kant himself allows that it demands a requiting Deity for the satisfaction of our desire for happiness, and is therefore in its own interest called upon to receive upon authority the historical revelation
concerning God and his government of the world. Hence the truth of the Biblical doctrines stands higher than the critique of the speculative reason which confesses its own incompetence, and accords with the demands of the practical reason ; it has therefore nothing to fear and nothing to expect from philosophy, but rests entirely upon the positive authority of a supernatural revelation, which has only to be first histori cally proved and then reduced to a system. Storr did this by putting together a dogmatic system, in the fashion of a mosaic, from detached Biblical texts, without caring for any other proof of his propositions, either by appealing to philosophy or to the religious consciousness. We cannot but recognise the strength of this position, which meets all rationalistic objections by a sceptical depreciation of reason ; in all periods this standpoint of faith, founded purely upon authority, has been popular, but especially in those when philosophic thought was at a low ebb owing to the overweening flights of previous speculation. Its weak point is the unhistorical arbitrariness with which individual passages of Scripture, torn from their context, are used in proof of a system which is foreign to them, because unknown to any of the Biblical writers. This
? ? ? ? Ch. KANTIAN RATIONALISTS.
87
method of using the Scriptures as one uniform code of doc
trine quite ignores the peculiarities and variety of the religious habit of thought of the Biblical authors, so different in point of time, place, and character. Hence this Biblical dogmatism could not survive a really historical examination of the Scrip tures, such as was undertaken by the later Tubingen school. History had been the sole basis of the system of the older Tubingen school, and by means of history was overthrown
the younger Tubingen school. Profound thinkers, like the youthful Schelling, had, indeed, before this clearly perceived how little this application of the Kantian philosophy to the service of theological dogmatism accorded with its real mean ing and spirit his ridicule of these pseudo-Kantians was not undeserved and dislike of this movement may well have been one of the motives which soon began to lead Schelling himself to subordinate, and this too absolutely, the critical to the speculative side of Kant's system.
The thinker whose position was nearest that of Kant's
philosophy of religion was the theologian and philosopher T1eftrunk. He held that the only possible foundation for a religion with any claim to universal truth the consciousness of unconditional freedom and autonomy, by which we raise ourselves above the world of sense and become members of a world of spirits, or, indeed, even gods, as he says in the hyperbolical language of the then prevalent idealism, and differ from God, the supreme head of all intelligences, only in degree, not kind we have the same will and the same law as God, our existence and independent activity are alike un conditional, and we have by our own will an infinite object in our holiness, wisdom, and blessedness, which also the object
God. But whilst God pure intelligence and therefore his power of good equal to his will of we are at the same time creatures of sense, and our power of execution on that account falls short of our autonomous reason. Thus the law of reason becomes a command to which both our sensuous inclination and the external world of sense are often opposed. Hence as intelligences we are supreme, and have no other reason for obeying the moral law than the demands of the dignity of our own personality. If we could satisfy this law
its infinitude, we should be all-sufficient in ourselves and have no need of a God. But as in reality our personal worth only that wholly depends upon our own will, while our
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it,
is
in
of
by
is
is
in ;
;
;
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? 88 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
circumstantial well-being is not in our own power, inasmuch as though we ought by merit to claim happiness we cannot accord it to ourselves, we are led to acknowledge God, who solves the contradiction between our ethical sovereignty and our natural dependence by making all things subsidiary to the end of created spirits and assigning them a natural condition corresponding to their personal merit.
Here, just as in Kant, the existence of God and his government of the world are postulated to make up for our want of power over nature, while our moral nature, taken in itself, is conceived as so abso lute as in its self-sufficiency to have no need of God. It is true that from this point of view faith in God, as thus estab lished, our reason itself, and its autonomy, are traced back to a divine origin, but still the relation of the pre-supposed sovereign autonomy to the divine legislation is not made clear ; ethical idealism and the religious mode of thought have no necessary connection, but move in parallel lines, sometimes supplementing and sometimes restricting each other. -- Though the idea of God cannot be established by speculation, its certainty is grounded on ethical necessities of thought, for it forms the condition of the possibility of the supreme good, in which we are by our moral nature compelled to believe.
Nor, again, is the further determination of our idea of God possible by the methods of ontology, but by those of ethical analogy --by our reasoning analogically from our own moral causality to the relation of the divine causality to the world, whereby we are able, at any rate symbolically, to describe the action though not the nature of God, his moral attributes, holiness, justice, goodness, and wisdom being first inferred, and then the ontological ones deduced. The doctrine of the Trinity is interpreted, with Kant, of the threefold relation of God -- as Creator and Lawgiver, as Ruler, and as Judge. Further, the belief in immortality is rested, in Kantian fashion, upon its being the condition of the possibility of endless moral
progress.
These doctrines, according to Tieftrunk, make up the
essential contents of every religion, no religion being univer sally valid save as it rests upon the principle, cognisable by reason, of freedom and the moral law. From this he infers that Rationalism alone meets the requirements of religion ;
for religion does not originate in feeling, but solely in the spontaneity of the knowing faculty, and is therefore valuable
? ? ? ? Ch. KANTIAN RATIONALISTS.
89
only when the product of perfect insight and thorough convic tion. " Religious feelings must be produced by knowledge, and not vice versa the perception of the moral law, of the existence of God, and of our own immortality, the first step, and pro duces in us an interest, which, as resulting from our recogni tion of these truths, we can call a religious emotion. " But the theologian Tieftrunk could not rest satisfied with this
formal and self-sufficient Rationalism. He endeavoured to find an opening for historical religion and its claim to revelation. In the first place, he showed in general that a revelation logically conceivable and morally probable on the supposition of a declension of human morality so profound as to be remediable only by a direct divine proclamation of the moral law, together with the necessary outward means of securing its observance. Among the latter he includes mira cles wrought on nature, which are considered quite possible, as the sensible effects of a supersensible cause, as our own free will operates the world of sense as intelligible causality. When once supernaturalism, after its repulse at the hands of arrogant Rationalism, had thus been re-admitted by a back door, maintained its position, at any rate so far as the Christian religion based, upon the historical testimony of the Biblical writings. Since these satisfy the moral criteria, a priori necessary, of a divine revelation, their acceptance may be regarded as rationally justified. Still, Tieftrunk far from constructing upon this foundation a positive system of Biblical dogmas after the manner of Storr's. On the
contrary, he holds that the content of revealed religion the same as that of natural religion, inasmuch as the essence of the teaching of Jesus consists the love of God and of our neighbour, which equivalent to Kant's "joyful recognition and observance of the moral law as divine command. " He cannot however but see that even the revealed religion of the Bible (not to speak of the theology of the Church) contains some things beyond natural religion. Though what this addition consists, and what its value
and importance for us, are questions to which this Rationalism can give only confused and indefinite answers.
The Rationalists Ammon, Bretschneidek, Wegscheider, and Rohr sought to keep closer touch, to some extent, with the historical theology of the Protestant churches, and were thus enabled to exercise more widespread influence on the
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in
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;
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? 90 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
thought of the churches. In their theological manuals it was their custom to begin with an historical sketch of the develop ment of the various doctrines in the Bible, the Fathers, and the Protestant creeds, and only then to state their own view in the form of a final judgment. This method had several advantages : in the first place, it involved a full historical statement of the facts of the case, and thus put the student in a position to form an independent opinion from his knowledge of the actual materials ; and secondly, it brought clearly out the mutability of dogmatic conceptions, and their dependence in every case upon contemporary thought, and thus destroyed a naive faith in the infallible authority of a particular form of doctrine, and established the right of the present to form an opinion, from its own point of view, on the dogmatic decisions of past ages, and to restate them in more adequate forms. This procedure constitutes both the justification and the his torical merit of these theologians, who have been too uncere moniously and disdainfully dismissed by the later conservative theology. By their learned and impartial presentation of the history of dogmas they trained up a generation of scientific and liberal-minded theologians such as we do not afterwards meet with in equal numbers. And with regard to the conclu sions they themselves drew from the history of doctrine, we must recognise not only their intelligent clearness and manly honesty, but also their profound moral earnestness, their sin cere piety, and their living trust in God ; in other words, a disposition of mind which could justly claim to be Christian piety, even though it did not adequately represent the specifi cally Christian doctrines of salvation, and on that account could not satisfy profounder religious needs. In any case this theological school has as much historical justification as any other, and it is undeniable that its representatives in the first half of our century presented Christianity to the great majority of the German people in the form most intelligible to them, and did better work in the cause of quiet, practical Christi anity than many of those who from the proud position of a reactionary theology, artificially conformed to the creeds, assumed the right to condemn these men.
By its juster appreciation of the importance of the historical element in religion, this post-Kantian Rationalism contrasts favourably with Kant's unhistorical Rationalism. While Kant had held everything positive which goes beyond the moral
? ? ? ? Ch. KANTIAN RATIONALISTS.
faith of reason to be simply " statutory," the product of man's imagination and caprice, Ammon pronounced the positive re
of the Bible divinely revealed, inasmuch as, while not
ligion
contradicting natural religion, still did not originate solely
the reason common to all men, but was imparted by divine Providence througrr "definite historical persons and events to supplement and confirm the truths of natural religion. Hence the relation of natural to positive religion resembles that of the universal moral consciousness to the definite morals and laws of individual nations, or that of the common constitution of men as men to the special unfolding of history. From this very useful point of view Bretschneider explained the relation of a general and a special revelation the former lays the foundation of religious knowledge in the constitution of the world and of our nature, the latter extends and de velops this foundation by gradually educating us to a higher wisdom. The need of special revelation owing to the
mind's need of education, or to the fact that our knowledge of God, as well as our knowledge of the world, can only gradu ally arise and be made perfect. Revelation and reason come from the same source--the divine Logos, and hence cannot contradict each other. But revelation related to reason as religious education to the individual does not give religious ideas all at once in their complete form, but at first only general outlines and without a clear perception of their foundations, as truths to be received on authority but by de grees reason, led and growing strong in the leading strings of authority, attains to a clearer and purer comprehension of religious ideas, and to a perception of their inward truth and agreement with the nature of the world and of man. The very fact that immediate revelation harmonises with the uni versal revelation, and really develops further religious ideas,
the final proof of its divine origin while its possibility cannot, according to Bretschneider, be denied, since the Spirit of God pervades all creation, including therefore the human spirit, and hence able to impart illumination to though this always conditioned by men's general culture and knowledge of the world.
Whilst therefore Ammon and Bretschneider, neither of whom remained uninfluenced by the advanced thought of their time, held the idea of revelation in such a way as to avoid an absolute antithesis between the divine immediateness and the
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DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
historical medium, and so between the supernatural and the natural, Wegscheider and Rohr, who were unable to escape from the narrowing abstract rationalistic habit of thought of the 1 8th century, pressed the antithesis to the point of direct contradiction, denying altogether supernatural revelation. Their reasons were psychological and metaphysical : man possesses in his reason a power adequate for the knowledge of everything required by his vocation. It is the renunciation of the true dignity of man to suppose, with a denial of that rational power, a foreign and supernatural authority. To call in a supernatural cause contradicts the laws of our thought, according to which we are compelled to trace all phenomena to a cause within the natural connection of things, and are unable to state any indications whatever of any other cause. Any supernatural interference would be a magical disturbance of the rational connection of our thought and of our mental life generally, would expose us to all kinds of fanaticism, and also in particular lame or destroy our moral activities, which
are based upon rational conviction. Finally, the supposition of supernatural interference, by which the orderly course of nature would be interrupted, is opposed to the true idea of God --his unchangeable omnipotence and infinite wisdom, which have so arranged the world that it needs no miraculous interventions and improvements. The notion of a super natural and direct revelation must be ascribed therefore to men's way of regarding things, when they do not know the natural causes of certain occurrences, and on that account deny their existence, whilst improved knowledge shows in every case that what was supposed to be supernatural can be quite well explained from natural causes. The idea of revela tion is nevertheless retained, but it must be conceived as
mediate and natural, being founded in the constitution and government of the world, in creation and providence. Thus
the true religion, Christianity, in particular, is based upon an historical arrangement of divine Providence, under which
Jesus preached the idea of a reason inspired by true religion, and personally represented, as it were in a mirror, the divine reason. Accordingly between Christianity and Rationalism there exists complete accord,
It cannot be questioned that these reasons for Rationalism, if the antithesis between it and supernaturalism is once ac cepted in this absolute form, have been logically thought out,
? ? ? ? Ch. KANTIAN RATIONALISTS.
93
and they retain at all events their validity in opposition to abstract supernaturalism, which sets aside the laws of reason and the creation. The only question whether that exclusive conception of the relation of the natural and the supernatural
required, and whether in the characteristic experiences of the religious life are taken into account. Or whether these facts, when conceived as they are, do not rather point to a view of God's relation to man and the world such as allows man to experience the action of God within the natural and spiritual order of the world, the supernatural and the natural thus ceasing to be exclusive, and only different and comple mentary aspects of the religious relation. But the unyielding
intellectuality of Wegscheider and Rohr was in its self-satis faction impervious to this deeper view of the matter which might have reconciled the antitheses. And the unyielding intolerance of the two men toward new and deeper tendencies
? Marheinike, Hase) has done much to discredit Rationalism the public view, and to give currency to an opinion of which really did injustice by
superciliously failing to recognise its relative truth. In this conveyed the lesson, which well to lay to heart, that the religious consciousness of the churches has no sympathy what ever with the domineering arrogance of any heresy which seeks to proclaim its own frigid intellectuality as the one valid canon and the infallible authority in matters of faith. This will be repeated in every period when a doctrinaire pedantry tries, with the ridiculous claim of possessing the only true system of doctrine, to force itself upon the churches. And we must add that precisely true theological science which, perceiv ing the irreconcilability of any such claim with the proper nature of theology, must most thoroughly justify the protest and the practical consciousness of the churches.
The inspiration of the Scriptures Wegscheider finds in the fact that their authors, under Divine guidance, committed to
writing their teaching on religion, which, like their good thoughts generally, they traced back with devout feeling to
God's will and operation and these their writings, although designed only for the readers of their day, are of such a nature that the doctrines of the Christian religion can still be drawn from them, even though they must be adapted to the en lightenment of a more educated age. Jesus himself (John vii.
17) declared that the doctrine communicated by him was
theology (Schleiermacher,
? ? ;
it is
it is
it
in
it
is
is
it
in
is
a
I. ]
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DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bit II.
divine, in so far as its divine nature can be readily perceived and understood by the truly devout and upright. It how ever, divine also because was first discovered and handed down non sine numine. For the Omnipresent God far from no one who earnestly seeks him and prepared to carry out his counsels. And who was ever more deserving of his help, or ever enjoyed more marked proofs of the favour of divine Providence, than the founder of the Christian religion As regards the person of Jesus, the Gospel story of his supernatural birth must be considered a pious legend of Jew ish origin, having also its parallels in many other nations and
with all assertions of the miraculous nature of Jesus fall to the ground but this not the case with the conviction that his remarkable endowments and powers, as well as the con ditions of the age favourable to their development and em
must be ascribed to God as their cause. Of the ecclesiastical doctrine of the two natures in Christ, there are, Wegscheider does not wish to deny, some germs in the Bibli cal writings but since in its developed form the doctrine gives no assistance to virtue, and in fact in the highest degree detrimental to the influence of the example of Jesus, which was given for our imitation, besides wholly contra
sound reason and some plain passages of Scripture, best to adhere to the more simple form of doctrine
revering and imitating Jesus as truly a Divine delegate, terpreter of the Divine will, prototype of men destined to be filled with true religion and virtue, who was himself full of the Divine (numen, Oeiov), and placed before us in this capa
city a dignity not without God. Against the ecclesiastical doctrine of the substitutionary satisfaction of the death of Christ, the objections of a theological and moral character which had been urged from the time of the Socinians are brought forward, and to them others are added of a cosmo-
nature difficult to suppose, he holds, that in the second person of the Trinity God himself, the Governor of innumerable sidereal systems, should have determined to descend in a human form to this earth, such tiny part of the universe, to suffer death at the hands of the Jews, and there by to offer himself as a propitiatory sacrifice to himself. A
thought which gives expression to the undoubtedly just feel ing that the Christian consciousness has not remained unin fluenced by the Copernican theory, and must abandon anti-
? ployment,
dicting
logical
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is
:
it is
in by
?
it is
;
it ;
is
;
is
is,
is
it
? Ch. KANTIAN RATIONALISTS.
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quated mythological ideas. Moreover, Wegscheider suffi ciently unprejudiced to perceive that the doctrine of satisfaction cannot by fair exegesis be wholly eliminated from the Scrip tures he looks upon as conveying Christian truth in form suited to the times of the apostles, and to which a certain
pedagogical value still attaches for some minds, while on the other hand more advanced minds are entitled, on the ground of other forms of Scriptural teaching, to regard the doctrine as a mere symbol, intended to indicate that by a faithful ob servance of the religion taught by Jesus and attested by his death, we shall be pleasing to God without any further sacri fices and ceremonies. The doctrine of the atonement may also be interpreted as a symbol of the love of God and Christ
to men, or of the consecration of a new religion as a new covenant between God and men. With regard to these criticisms of the doctrine of the atoning work of Christ, we must allow, as undoubtedly just, that various religious motives are represented in which we can accept as valuable, though we are able to give expression to them in another form. Moreover, precisely the deepest religious element in the doc trine, which was also adumbrated in the Pauline germs of had
been previously much better expressed by Kant his ethical
idealistic version of the dogma, than by any of his successors
amongst the theologians, who none of them penetrated so far as he beneath the mere surface of the matter. The same was the case with respect to the doctrine of salvation. Presup posing the fact of a "radical evil," Kant had pronounced not
merely a reformation of morals, but a change of mind and principle, or a "regeneration" of the entire man, the condi tion under which we may hope to be regarded by God as good, the Searcher of hearts accepting the good principles instead of the actual perfect goodness which can never exist and with this Kant had connected the Protestant doctrine of
justification by faith. The theologians of the school under consideration continued, true, to lay great stress upon feeling and disposition as opposed to external and individual acts, and looked upon this as the pivot of Protestant soterio- logy but that this good disposition something profoundly different from the natural selfish mind, and based upon a radical transformation of the mind, they did not teach, because, unlike Kant, they regarded men as by nature essentially good and only in part morally enfeebled and impeded by sensuous
? ? ? is
;
;
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is
it is
:
in
it,
a
is
it
it
? 96 DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
ness or bad example. By this view the Biblical and ecclesi astical distinction between the natural and the new man was in their case softened down to a gradual moral reformation, under which a man may feel assured of the Divine approba tion according to the measure of his worthiness. And it can hardly be disputed that but poor provision is thereby made to meet either the moral earnestness of ideal requirements or the religious need of an assured salvation and a quieted con science--two objects which the Protestant doctrine of justifi cation by faith is intended to secure. Kant's teaching was more profound and was in closer touch with the Protestant soteriology than the post- Kantian Rationalism ; as Fichte and Schleiermacher show, a development of Kant's moral and re ligious philosophy in the direction of religious mysticism was possible ; but from the Kantian Rationalists it was rather a retrogressive turn in the direction of the popular philosophy that it actually received.
This school could not for long satisfy the newly awakened
and deeper religious feeling, and had accordingly to make room for a more profound mode of thought. At the same time, it had not merely done good service in its day in freeing the churches from the curse of an intolerant dogmatism, but there is conveyed a lasting lesson, worthy to be laid to heart now not less than then, in the words of Wegscheider, in the preface of his Institutiones Theologies: "In the interpre tation and criticism of the opinions and doctrines of early times, theologians ought to take greatest care to combine the use of sound reason with the results of the learning of so many centuries. Then only will they follow in the footsteps of the great Reformers, who in their noble struggle against so many injurious errors never claimed themselves to have made an end of all inquiry, and never grudged to their successors progress in religious knowledge. The teachers of the Church ought particularly to endeavour to communi cate to the people the teaching of Christ and his Apostles regarding God and duty in all its purity ; to show that the truth of this teaching does not depend on ancient dogmatic formulas and pedantic interpretations of Biblical
? passages, but is borne out by the properly developed nature of our own mind ; to no longer try to defend forms of doctrine which were adapted only for the thought of certain people and times, but gradually to lay them aside and adopt a simple
? ? ? Ch. THE THEOLOGY OF DE WETTE.
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form of teaching, such as indicated in the New Testament itself to permit the sparks of true morality and piety to flash from the light of genuine Christian doctrine, instead of offering the smoke of ancient opinions as the light of know ledge " We honour the genuine Protestant love of truth which finds utterance in such words we still acknowledge the vocation proposed to theology by those men but, certainly, in the meantime we have learnt that the fulfilment of this vocation far more difficult than they thought, that presupposes both more thorough historical inquiry and more profound insight into the facts and laws of the religious and moral life than they could command. For this reason we have not only grown more cautious in our criticisms of what
old, but also more patient with its adherents, than was the habit of the Rationalism of the Kantian school.
The transition from the rationalistic theology of the Kantian school to the theology of Schleiermacher was made De Wette, who adopted the philosophic standpoint of the semi-
Kantian Fries, who desired to complete the Kantian critical system in an anthropological direction. All our knowledge,
? Fries and De Wette taught, limited to the world of phenomena, which directly perceived in space and time, and has to be reduced to concepts by the understanding.
But this " philosophy of the understanding " not the true one, for beyond the world of ideas demanded by the reason these ideas are not objects of knowledge, but of faith: namely, the idea of imperishable being, or of the soul, of absolute independent power, or of freedom, and of the unity of the absolute Whole, or of all-conditioning cause -- God. These ideas have no connection which can be philosophically proved with the phenomenal world which the object of our knowledge, but they are in complete contradiction to
since our experience presents everywhere only the finite and incomplete, nowhere the eternal and infinite. Nevertheless we feel that these ideas have full truth and unconditional certainty. true they must never be assigned a place
our philosophy of the understanding, which has to do solely with the mechanism of finite causes and effects but they form the foundation of our higher or " ideal philosophy," which arises when we, by means of emotional presentiment, bring those ideas to bear upon the world, and judge of the
world aesthetically and religiously their light. The religious g. t.
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in
is
in
is
It is
is
is
is
; by it,
;
;
it is
is
it
;
!
;
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is
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DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
ideas are of themselves, when conceived by the speculative faculty, without life, inasmuch as they arise only by the nega tion of finite limitations, that by means of the abstraction of reality but they obtain their positive significance, and become of value in life when they are taken up by the emotions, and clothed the picture-language of the poetic and symbolising imagination. All religious propositions with which theology occupied must therefore be carefully distinguished from intellectual knowledge, as they are part of the ideal view of the world, and only the symbolical expression of
be set at rest only both are completely separated, --know ledge being confined to the world of experience, faith being directed to the ideal world, and comprehended under the aesthetic view of things. In particular three kinds of aesthetico- religious feeling must be distinguished enthusiasm, kindled by the idea of the personal dignity and immortal destination of man, and also by the view of the beauty of nature, and the reign of purpose in history submission, which, under the feeling of one's own imperfection, rises above the evils of the world to faith in the higher spiritual realm of things, which blooms in eternal undimmed beauty beyond the imperfections
and fragments of terrestrial things lastly, the feeling of
which quickens the idea of God into the idea of eternal Goodness, guiding all things for the best, and recti fying all confusion while for the understanding the idea of God nothing more than the empty form of absolute Unity. To these three religious feelings, to which correspond, De Wette holds, the aesthetic ideas of the epic, the drama, and the lyric, all religious statements must be referred, in such a way as to be symbols of the feelings, and find in them the test of their truth. In this consists the true function theology. not its business to substitute for dogmas its own speculations or mere moral doctrine (after the manner of the Kantians), but in the first instance to give an historical account of them, and then to interpret them in accordance with their religious symbolism. Figures and symbols must
to the erroneous confusion of this
surmising feeling.
ideal philosophy, expressing itself in symbols, with intellectual knowledge, that all dogmatism and scholasticism must be ascribed. And dogmatism misunderstands as much the
? nature of religious feeling as of knowledge, whilst to owing the endless conflict between faith and knowledge, which can
worship,
? ? It is
ot
of
is
;
;
;
is,
:
if
It is
it is
is
;
in
? Ch. THE THEOLOGY OF DE WETTE.
99
not be dispensed with, for we always want them in the repre sentation of religious feelings, and do best to adhere to the figurative language which we have inherited. But must be set free from the fetters of intellectual abstractions, and re stored to aesthetic intuition. This the goal at which Pro testantism must finally arrive. When scientific criticism has succeeded in releasing religion from the misleading influence of the understanding, leaves to the rule of religious feeling and its handmaid --art.
De Wette has laboured to recast dogmatic theology from this point of view such way that we cannot withhold from him the praise of having done his best to reconcile the just claims of religious feeling with those of rational thought, although must be confessed that his attempted reconcilia tion was led too much by subjective considerations of taste, without the needed objective foundation, to hold its place beside the theology of Schleiermacher, with its profounder structure. At the same time, well worth while even now to take a glance at his mode of treating the leading ideas of dogmatic theology. 1
Divine revelation we find in every religious phenomenon which so impresses us with the power of the religious truth and beauty conveyed in as to make us feel ourselves lifted beyond ourselves and our own spiritual capacity. That Chris tianity a divine revelation, an ideal judgment, which cannot be proved by evidence of the understanding, though theological reflection has to show its general necessity just as a judgment of taste regarding the beauty of work of art cannot be proved, though can be so far established as to be shown to satisfy the requirements of art. In doing this the content of this revelation must be first examined, to see what relation holds to reason, with which nothing good and beautiful can be in opposition, as otherwise man would come
into collision with himself. Inasmuch, therefore, as will be found that nothing has been prescribed Christianity but the eternal ideas of reason in their greatest purity and fulness, the belief in as a revelation thereby justified. Rationalism
accordingly itself nothing else than the philosophical view of faith in revelation, so far that we must acknowledge a revelation whatever furthers an important degree the
We follow his work, Ueber Religion und Theologic, and ed. , 1821.
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? IOO DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Bk. II.
historical development of the religious mind, such as has been the case with Christianity in the very highest degree. The
doctrine of inspiration is likewise only a form of expressing
the fact that the Biblical writers were animated enthusiasm, without however possessing infallible wisdom, which, moreover, is a matter belonging to the understanding. Canonicity, in the religious sense, may be ascribed to those writings which contain divine truth, and is therefore indepen dent of the historical view of the Biblical books.
The part of dogmatics which deals with general principles must be criticised strictly in accordance with the speculative and ethical ideas of philosophy. Definitions of the Divine attributes must be referred to the philosophical ideas of God, without sacrificing their virtue as popular symbols. The Mosaic myth of the creation may pass as a figurative repre
sentation of the truth that the world is eternally postulated by the divine omnipotence. Angels and devils are mytho logical figures which may be retained in sacred symbolism and art, though neither historical nor metaphysical truth may be looked for in them. The doctrine of the Trinity must be
interpreted
exaggeration to deny that man has any power to do good ; such a doctrine
overlooks the fact that there is in man an inward moral power, which, it is true, requires to be aroused from without in order to act. In so far, therefore, man stands in need of salvation, of divine grace. Yet the Holy Spirit and human reason must not be conceived as opposed to each other, but the latter subordinated to the former ; grace and freedom are two views taken from different standpoints, the
by holy
? as the forms of the revelation of God, whether in the world generally, when Son and Spirit can be referred respectively to the formal and the real principle of the universe, or in the Christian revelation in particular, the doctrine then containing the truth of the different views of God (though in the false scholastic conception of these views
as persons), giving expression to the superiority of Christi anity to Judaism and Heathenism. Of the anthropological doctrines, the myth of the Fall must be regarded as a symbol of what is always taking place in each man. On the one hand, it is correct that we must look upon our propensity to evil as guilt, and that we are unable, with all our moral effort, to attain to inward peace, inasmuch as we cannot rise to true holiness.