The Essence of Christianity 31 – Eliot · Verses Across
Freethought · Atheism
The Essence of Christianity 31Part 2 · Concluding Application (part 4)
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Freethought · Atheism
The Essence of Christianity 31
Part 2 · Concluding Application (part 4)
EliotEnglish
§ 20.
Faith separates man from man, puts in the place of the natural unity founded in Nature and Love a supernatural unity--the unity of Faith. "Inter Christianum et gentilem non fides tantum debet, sed etiam vita distinguere.... Nolite, ait Apostolus, jugum ducere cum infidelibus.... Sit ergo inter nos et illos maxima separatio."--Hieronymus (Epist. Caelantiæ matronae).... "Prope nihil gravius quam copulari alienigeniae.... Nam cum ipsum conjugium velamine sacerdotali et benedictione sanctificari oporteat: quomodo potest conjugium dici, ubi non est fidei concordia?... Saepe plerique capti amore feminarum fidem suam prodiderunt."--Ambrosius (Ep. 70, Lib. ix.). "Non enim licet christiano cum gentili vel judaeo inire conjugium."--Petrus L. (l. iv. dist. 39, c. 1). And this separation is by no means unbiblical. On the contrary, we find that, in support of it, the Fathers appeal directly to the Bible. The well-known passage of the Apostle Paul concerning marriage between heathens and Christians relates only to marriages which had taken place before conversion, not to those which were yet to be contracted. Let the reader refer to what Peter Lombard says in the book already cited. "The first Christians did not acknowledge, did not once listen to, all those relatives who sought to turn them away from the hope of the heavenly reward. This they did through the power of the Gospel, for the sake of which all love of kindred was to be despised; inasmuch as ... the brotherhood of Christ far surpassed natural brotherhood. To us the Fatherland and a common name is not so dear, but that we have a horror even of our parents, if they seek to advise something against the Lord."--G. Arnold (Wahre Abbild. der ersten Christen. B. iv. c. 2). "Qui amat patrem et matrem plus quam me, non est me dignus Matth. x. ... in hoc vos non agnosco parentes, sed hostes.... Alioquin quid mihi et vobis? Quid a vobis habeo nisi peccatum et miseriam?"--Bernardus (Epist. iii. Ex persona Heliae monachi ad parentes suos). "Etsi impium est, contemnere matrem, contemnere tamen propter Christum piissimum est."--Bernardus (Ep. 104. See also Ep. 351, ad Hugonem novitium). "Audi sententiam Isidori: multi canonicorum, monachorum ... temporali salute suorum parentum perdunt animas suas.... Servi Dei qui parentum suorum utilitatem procurant a Dei amore se separant."--De modo bene vivendi (S. vii.). "Omnem hominem fidelem judica tuum esse fratrem."--(Ibid. Sermo 13). "Ambrosius dicit, longe plus nos debere diligere filios quos de fonte levamus, quam quos carnaliter (genuimus."--Petrus L. (l. iv. dist. 6, c. 5, addit. Henr. ab Vurim.). "Infantes nascuntur cum peccato, nec fiunt haeredes vitae aeternae sine remissione peccati.... Cum igitur dubium non sit in infantibus esse peccatum, debet aliquod esse discrimen infantium Ethnicorum, qui manent rei, et infantium in Ecclesia, qui recipiuntur a Deo per ministerium."--Melancthon (Loci de bapt. inf. Argum. II. Compare with this the passage above cited from Buddeus, as a proof of the narrowness of the true believer's love). "Ut Episcopi vel Clerici in eos, qui Catholici Christiani non sunt, etiam si consanguinei fuerint, nec per donationes rerum suarum aliquid conferant."--Concil. Carthag. III. can. 13 (Summa Carranza). "Cum haereticis nec orandum, nec psallendum."--Concil. Carthag. IV. can. 72 (ibid.).
Faith has the significance of religion, love only that of morality. This has been declared very decidedly by Protestantism. The doctrine that love does not justify in the sight of God, but only faith, expresses nothing further than that love has no religious power and significance. (Apol. Augsb. Confess. art. 3. Of Love and the Fulfilment of the Law.) It is certainly here said: "What the scholastic writers teach concerning the love of God is a dream, and it is impossible to know and love God before we know and lay hold on mercy through faith. For then first does God become objectum amabile, a lovable, blissful object of contemplation." Thus here mercy, love is made the proper object of faith. And it is true that faith is immediately distinguished from love only in this, that faith places out of itself what love places in itself. "We believe that our justification, salvation, and consolation, lie out of ourselves."--Luther (Th. xvi. p. 497; see also Th. ix. p. 587). It is true that faith in the Protestant sense is faith in the forgiveness of sins, faith in mercy, faith in Christ, as the God who suffered and died for men, so that man, in order to attain everlasting salvation, has nothing further to do on his side than believingly to accept this sacrifice of God for him. But it is not as love only that God is an object of faith. On the contrary, the characteristic object of faith as faith is God as a subject, a person. And is a God who accords no merit to man, who claims all exclusively for himself, who watches jealously over his honour--is a self-interested, egoistic God like this a God of love?
The morality which proceeds from faith has for its principle and criterion only the contradiction of Nature, of man. As the highest object of faith is that which most contradicts reason, the Eucharist, so necessarily the highest virtue of the morality which is true and obedient to faith is that which most contradicts Nature. Dogmatic miracles have therefore moral miracles as their consequence. Antinatural morality is the twin sister of supernatural faith. As faith vanquishes Nature outside of man, so the morality of faith vanquishes Nature within man. This practical supernaturalism, the summit of which is "virginity, the sister of the angels, the queen of virtues, the mother of all good" (see A. v. Buchers: Geistliches Suchverloren. (Sämmtl. W. B. vi. 151), has been specially developed by Catholicism; for Protestantism has held fast only the principle of Christianity, and has arbitrarily eliminated its logical consequences; it has embraced only Christian faith and not Christian morality. In faith, Protestantism has brought man back to the standpoint of primitive Christianity; but in life, in practice, in morality, it has restored him to the pre-Christian, the Old Testament, the heathen, Adamitic, natural standpoint. God instituted marriage in paradise; therefore even in the present day, even to Christians, the command Multiply! is valid. Christ advises those only not to marry who "can receive" this higher rule. Chastity is a supernatural gift; it cannot therefore be expected of every one. But is not faith also a supernatural gift, a special gift of God, a miracle, as Luther says innumerable times, and is it not nevertheless commanded to us all? Are not all men included in the command to mortify, blind, and contemn the natural reason? Is not the tendency to believe and accept nothing which contradicts reason as natural, as strong, as necessary in us, as the sexual impulse? If we ought to pray to God for faith because by ourselves we are too weak to believe, why should we not on the same ground entreat God for chastity? Will he deny us this gift if we earnestly implore him for it? Never!
Thus we may regard chastity as a universal command equally with faith, for what we cannot do of ourselves, we can do through God. What speaks against chastity speaks against faith also, and what speaks for faith speaks for chastity. One stands and falls with the other; with a supernatural faith is necessarily associated a supernatural morality. Protestantism tore this bond asunder: in faith it affirmed Christianity; in life, in practice, it denied Christianity, acknowledged the autonomy of natural reason, of man,--restored man to his original rights. Protestantism rejected celibacy, chastity, not because it contradicted the Bible, but because it contradicts man and nature. "He who will be single renounces the name of man, and proves or makes himself an angel or spirit.... It is pitiable folly to wonder that a man takes a wife, or for any one to be ashamed of doing so, since no one wonders that men are accustomed to eat and drink."--Luther (Th. xix. pp. 368, 369). Does this unbelief as to the possibility and reality of chastity accord with the Bible, where celibacy is eulogised as a laudable, and consequently a possible, attainable state? No! It is in direct contradiction with the Bible. Protestantism, in consequence of its practical spirit, and therefore by its own inherent force, repudiated Christian supranaturalism in the sphere of morality. Christianity exists for it only in faith--not in law, not in morality, not in the State. It is true that love (the compendium of morality) belongs essentially to the Christian, so that where there is no love, where faith does not attest itself by love, there is no faith, no Christianity. Nevertheless love is only the outward manifestation of faith, only a consequence, and only human. "Faith alone deals with God," "faith makes us gods;" love makes us merely men, and as faith alone is for God, so God is for faith alone, i.e., faith alone is the divine, the Christian in man. To faith belongs eternal life, to love only this temporal life. "Long before Christ came God gave this temporal, earthly life to the whole world, and said that man should love him and his neighbour.
After that he gave the world to his Son Christ, that we through and by him should have eternal life.... Moses and the law belong to this life, but for the other life we must have the Lord."--Luther (Th. xvi. p. 459). Thus although love belongs to the Christian, yet is the Christian a Christian only through this, that he believes in Christ. It is true that to serve one's neighbour, in whatever way, rank, or calling, is to serve God. But the God whom I serve in fulfilling a worldly or natural office is only the universal, mundane, natural, pre-Christian God. Government, the State, marriage, existed prior to Christianity, was an institution, an ordinance of God, in which he did not as yet reveal himself as the true God, as Christ. Christ has nothing to do with all these worldly things; they are external, indifferent to him. But for this very reason, every worldly calling and rank is compatible with Christianity; for the true, Christian service of God is faith alone, and this can be exercised everywhere. Protestantism binds men only in faith, all the rest it leaves free, but only because all the rest is external to faith.
It is true that we are bound by the commandments of Christian morality, as, for example, "Avenge not yourselves," &c., but they have validity for us only as private, not as public persons. The world is governed according to its own laws. Catholicism "mingled together the worldly and spiritual kingdoms," i.e., it sought to govern the world by Christianity. But "Christ did not come on earth to interfere in the government of the Emperor Augustus and teach him how to reign."--Luther (Th. xvi. p. 49). Where worldly government begins Christianity ends; there worldly justice, the sword, war, litigation, prevail. As a Christian I let my cloak be stolen from me without resistance, but as a citizen I seek to recover it by law. "Evangelium non abolet jus naturæ."--Melancthon (de Vindicta Loci. See also on this subject M. Chemnitii Loci Theol. de Vindicta). In fact, Protestantism is the practical negation of Christianity, the practical assertion of the natural man. It is true that Protestantism also commands the mortifying of the flesh, the negation of the natural man; but apart from the fact that this negation has for Protestantism no religious significance and efficacy, does not justify, i.e., make acceptable to God, procure salvation; the negation of the flesh in Protestantism is not distinguished from that limitation of the flesh which natural reason and morality enjoin on man. The necessary practical consequences of the Christian faith Protestantism has relegated to the other world, to heaven--in other words, has denied them. la heaven first ceases the worldly standpoint of Protestantism; there we no longer marry, there first we are new creatures; but here everything remains as of old "until that life; there the external life will be changed, for Christ did not come to change the creature."--Luther (Th. xv. p. 62). Here we are half heathens, half Christians; half citizens of the earth, half citizens of heaven. Of this division, this disunity, this chasm, Catholicism knows nothing. What it denies in heaven, i.e., in faith, it denies, also, as far as possible, on earth, i.e., in morality. "Grandis igitur virtutis est et sollicitate diligentiae, superare quod nata sis: in carne non carnaliter vivere, tecum pugnare quotidie."--Hieronymus (Ep. Furiae Rom. nobilique viduae). "Quanto igitur natura amplius vincitur et premitur, tanto major gratia infunditur."--Thomas à K. (Imit. l. iii. c. 54). "Esto robustus tam in agendo, quam in patiendo naturae contraria."--(Ibid. c. 49.) "Beatus ille homo, qui propter te, Domine, omnibus creaturis licentiam abeundi tribuit, qui naturae vim facit et concupiscentias carnis fervore spiritus crucifigit" (c. 48). "Adhuc proh dolor! vivit in me verus homo, non est totus crucifixus."--(Ibid. c. 34, l. iii. c. 19, l. ii. c. 12.) And these dicta by no means emanate simply from the pious individuality of the author of the work De Imitatione Christi; they express the genuine morality of Catholicism, that morality which the saints attested by their lives, and which was sanctioned even by the Head of the Church, otherwise so worldly. Thus it is said, for example, in the Canonizatio S. Bernhardi Abbatis per Alexandrum papam III. anno Ch. 1164. Litt. apost ... primo ad. Praelatos Eccles. Gallic.: "In afflictione vero corporis sui usque adeo sibi mundum, seque mundo reddidit crucifixum, ut confidamus martyrum quoque eum merita obtinere sanctorum, etc." It was owing to this purely negative moral principle that there could be enunciated within Catholicism itself the gross opinion that mere martyrdom, without the motive of love to God, obtains heavenly blessedness.
It is true that Catholicism also in practice denied the supranaturalistic morality of Christianity; but its negation has an essentially different significance from that of Protestantism; it is a negation de facto but not de jure. The Catholic denied in life what he ought to have affirmed in life,--as, for example, the vow of chastity,--what he desired to affirm, at least if he was a religious Catholic, but which in the nature of things he could not affirm. Thus he gave validity to the law of Nature, he gratified the flesh, in a word, he was a man, in contradiction with his essential character, his religious principle and conscience. Adhuc proh dolor! vivit in me verus homo. Catholicism has proved to the world that the supernatural principle of faith in Christianity, applied to life, made a principle of morals, has immoral, radically corrupting consequences. This experience Protestantism made use of, or rather this experience called forth Protestantism. It made the illegitimate, practical negation of Christianity--illegitimate in the sense of true Catholicism, though not in that of the degenerate Church--the law, the norm of life. You cannot in life, at least in this life, be Christians, peculiar, superhuman beings, therefore ye ought not to be such. And it legitimised this negation of Christianity before its still Christian conscience, by Christianity itself, pronounced it to be Christian;--no wonder, therefore, that now at last modern Christianity not only practically but theoretically represents the total negation of Christianity as Christianity. When, however, Protestantism is designated as the contradiction, Catholicism as the unity of faith and practice, it is obvious that in both cases we refer only to the essence, to the principle.
Faith sacrifices man to God. Human sacrifice belongs to the very idea of religion. Bloody human sacrifices only dramatise this idea. "By faith Abraham offered up Isaac."--Heb. xi. 17. "Quanto major Abraham, qui unicum filium voluntate jugulavit.... Jepte obtulit virginem filiam et idcirco in enumeratione sanctorum ab Apostolo ponitur."--Hieronymus (Epist. Juliano). On the human sacrifices in the Jewish religion we refer the reader to the works of Daumer and Ghillany. In the Christian religion also it is only blood, the sacrifice of the Son of Man, which allays God's anger and reconciles him to man. Therefore a pure, guiltless man must fall a sacrifice. Such blood alone is precious, such alone has reconciling power. And this blood, shed on the cross for the allaying of the divine anger, Christians partake in the Lord's Supper, for the strengthening and sealing of their faith. But why is the blood taken under the form of wine, the flesh under the form of bread? That it may not appear as if Christians ate real human flesh and drank human blood, that the natural man may not shrink from the mysteries of the Christian faith. "Etenim ne humana infirmitas esum carnis et potum sanguinis in sumptione horreret, Christus velari et palliari illa duo voluit speciebus panis et vini."--Bernard. (edit. cit. pp. 189-191). "Sub alia autem specie tribus de causis carnem et sanguinem tradit Christus et deinceps sumendum instituit. Ut fides scil. haberet meritum, quae est de his quae non videntur, quod fides non habet meritum, ubi humana ratio praebet experimentum. Et ideo etiam ne abhorreret animus quod cerneret oculus; quod non habemus in usu carnem crudam comedere et sanguinem bibere.... Et etiam ideo ne ab incredulis religioni christianae insultaretur. Unde Augustinus: Nihil rationabilius, quam ut sanguinis similitudinem sumamus, ut et ita veritas non desit et ridiculum nullum fiat a paganis, quod cruorem occisi hominis bibamus."--Petrus Lomb. (Sent. lib. iv. dist. ii. c. 4).
But as the bloody human sacrifice, while it expresses the utmost abnegation of man, is at the same time the highest assertion of his value;--for only because human life is regarded as the highest, because the sacrifice of it is the most painful, costs the greatest conquest over feeling, is it offered to God;--so the contradiction of the Eucharist with human nature is only apparent. Apart from the fact that flesh and blood are, as St. Bernard says, clothed with bread and wine, i.e., that in truth it is not flesh but bread, not blood but wine, which is partaken,--the mystery of the Eucharist resolves itself into the mystery of eating and drinking. "All ancient Christian doctors ... teach that the body of Christ is not taken spiritually alone by faith, which happens also out of the Sacraments, but also corporeally; not alone by believers, by the pious, but also by unworthy, unbelieving, false and wicked Christians." "There are thus two ways of eating Christ's flesh, one spiritual ... such spiritual eating however is nothing else than faith.... The other way of eating the body of Christ is to eat it corporeally or sacramentally."--(Concordienb. Erkl. art. 7). "The mouth eats the body of Christ bodily."--Luther (against the "fanatics." Th. xix. p. 417). What then forms the specific difference of the Eucharist? Eating and drinking. Apart from the Sacrament, God is partaken of spiritually; in the Sacrament he is partaken of materially, i.e., he is eaten and drunken, assimilated by the body. But how couldst thou receive God into thy body, if it were in thy esteem an organ unworthy of God? Dost thou pour wine into a water-cask? Dost thou not declare thy hands and lips holy when by means of them thou comest in contact with the Holy One? Thus if God is eaten and drunken, eating and drinking is declared to be a divine act; and this is what the Eucharist expresses, though in a self-contradictory, mystical, covert manner. But it is our task to express the mystery of religion, openly and honourably, clearly and definitely. Life is God; the enjoyment of life is the enjoyment of God; true bliss in life is true religion. But to the enjoyment of life belongs the enjoyment of eating and drinking. If therefore life in general is holy, eating and drinking must be holy. Is this an irreligious creed? Let it be remembered that this irreligion is the analysed, unfolded, unequivocally expressed mystery of religion itself. All the mysteries of religion ultimately resolve themselves, as we have shown, into the mystery of heavenly bliss. But heavenly bliss is nothing else than happiness freed from the limits of reality. The Christians have happiness for their object just as much as the heathens; the only difference is, that the heathens place heaven on earth, the Christians place earth in heaven. Whatever is, whatever is really enjoyed, is finite; that which is not, which is believed in and hoped for, is infinite.
§ 21.
The Christian religion is a contradiction. It is at once the reconciliation and the disunion, the unity and the opposition, of God and man. This contradiction is personified in the God-man. The unity of the Godhead and manhood is at once a truth and an untruth. We have already maintained that if Christ was God, if he was at once man and another being conceived as incapable of suffering, his suffering was an illusion. For his suffering as man was no suffering to him as God. No! what he acknowledged as man he denied as God. He suffered only outwardly, not inwardly, i.e., he suffered only apparently, not really; for he was man only in appearance, in form, in the external; in truth, in essence, in which alone he was an object to the believer, he was God. It would have been true suffering only if he had suffered as God also. What he did not experience in his nature as God, he did not experience in truth, in substance. And, incredible as it is, the Christians themselves half directly, half indirectly, admit that their highest, holiest mystery is only an illusion, a simulation. This simulation indeed lies at the foundation of the thoroughly unhistorical, theatrical, illusory Gospel of John. One instance, among others, in which this is especially evident, is the resurrection of Lazarus, where the omnipotent arbiter of life and death evidently sheds tears only in ostentation of his manhood, and expressly says: "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me, and I know that thou hearest me always, but for the sake of the people who stand round I said it, that they may believe in thee." The simulation thus indicated in the Gospel has been developed by the Church into avowed delusion. "Si credas susceptionem corporis, adjungas divinitatis compassionem, portionem utique perfidiae, non perfidiam declinasti. Credis enim, quod tibi prodesse praesumis, non credis quod Deo dignum est.... Idem enim patiebatur et non patiebatur.... Patiebatur secundum corporis susceptionem, ut suscepti corporis veritas crederetur et non patiebatur secundum verbi impassibilem divinitatem.... Erat igitur immortalis in morte, impassibilis in passione....
Cur divinitati attribuis aerumnas corporis et infirmum doloris humani divinae connectis naturae?"--Ambrosius (de incarnat. domin. sacr. cc. 4, 5). "Juxta hominis naturam proficiebat sapientia, non quod ipse sapientior esset ex tempore ... sed eandem, qua plenus erat, sapientiam caeteris ex tempore paulatim demonstrabat.... In aliis ergo non in se proficiebat sapientia et gratia."--Gregorius in homil. quadam (ap. Petrus Lomb. l. iii. dist. 13, c. 1). "Proficiebat ergo humanus sensus in eo secundum ostensionem et aliorum hominum opinionem. Ita enim patrem et matrem dicitur ignorasse in infantia, quia ita se gerebat et habebat ac si agnitionis expers esset."--Petrus L. (ibid. c. 2). "Ut homo ergo dubitat, ut homo locutus est."--Ambrosius. "His verbis innui videtur, quod Christus non inquantum Deus vel Dei filius, sed inquantum homo dubitaverit affectu humano. Quod ea ratione dictum accipi potest: non quod ipse dubitaverit, sed quod modum gessit dubitantis et hominibus dubitare videbatur."--Petrus L. (ibid. dist. 17, c. 2). In the first part of the present work we have exhibited the truth, in the second part the untruth of religion, or rather of theology. The truth is only the identity of God and man. Religion is truth only when it affirms human attributes as divine, falsehood when, in the form of theology, it denies these attributes, separating God from man as a different being. Thus, in the first part we had to show the truth of God's suffering; here we have the proof of its untruth, and not a proof which lies in our own subjective view, but an objective proof--the admission of theology itself, that its highest mystery, the Passion of God, is only a deception, an illusion. It is therefore in the highest degree uncritical, untruthful, and arbitrary to explain the Christian religion, as speculative philosophy has done, only as the religion of reconciliation between God and man, and not also as the religion of disunion between the divine and human nature,--to find in the God-man only the unity, and not also the contradiction of the divine and human nature. Christ suffered only as man, not as God. Capability of suffering is the sign of real humanity.
It was not as God that he was born, that he increased in wisdom, and was crucified; i.e., all human conditions remained foreign to him as God. "Si quis non confitetur proprie et vere substantialem differentiam naturarum post ineffabilem unionem, ex quibus unus et solus extitit Christus, in ea salvatum, sit condemnatus."--Concil. Later. I. can. 7 (Carranza). The divine nature, notwithstanding the position that Christ was at once God and man, is just as much dissevered from the human nature in the incarnation as before it, since each nature excludes the conditions of the other, although both are united in one personality, in an incomprehensible, miraculous, i.e., untrue manner, in contradiction with the relation in which, according to their definition, they stand to each other. Even the Lutherans, nay, Luther himself, however strongly he expresses himself concerning the community and union of the human and divine nature in Christ, does not escape from the irreconcilable division between them. "God is man, and man is God, but thereby neither the natures nor their attributes are confounded, but each nature retains its essence and attributes." "The Son of God himself has truly suffered and truly died, but according to the human nature which he had assumed; for the divine nature can neither suffer nor die." "It is truly said, the Son of God suffers. For although the one part (so to speak), as the Godhead, does not suffer, still the person who is God suffers in the other half, the manhood; for in truth the Son of God was crucified for us, that is, the person who is God; for the person is crucified according to his manhood." "It is the person that does and suffers all, one thing according to this nature, another according to that nature, all which the learned well know."--(Concordienb. Erklär. art. 8.) "The Son of God and God himself is killed and murdered, for God and man is one person. Therefore God was crucified, and died, and became man; not God apart from humanity, but united with it; not according to the Godhead, but according to the human nature which he had assumed."--Luther (Th. iii. p. 502). Thus only in the person, i.e.
, only in a nomen proprium, not in essence, not in truth, are the two natures united. "Quando dicitur: Deus est homo vel homo est Deus, propositio ejusmodi vocatur personalis. Ratio est, quia unionem personalem in Christo supponit. Sine tali enim naturarum in Christo unione nunquam dicere potuissem, Deum esse hominem aut hominem esse Deum.... Abstracta autem naturae de se invicem enuntiari non posse, longe est manifestissimum.... Dicere itaque non licet, divina natura est humana aut deitas est humanitas et vice versa."--J. F. Buddeus (Comp. Inst. Theol. Dogm. l. iv. c. ii. § 11). Thus the union of the divine and human natures in the incarnation is only a deception, an illusion. The old dissidence of God and man lies at the foundation of this dogma also, and operates all the more injuriously, is all the more odious, that it conceals itself behind the appearance, the imagination of unity. Hence Socinianism, far from being superficial when it denied the Trinity and the God-man, was only consistent, only truthful. God was a triune being, and yet he was to be held purely simple, absolute unity, an ens simplicissimum; thus the Unity contradicted the Trinity. God was God-man, and yet the Godhead was not to be touched or annulled by the manhood, i.e., it was to be essentially distinct; thus the incompatibility of the divine and human attributes contradicted the unity of the two natures. According to this, we have in the very idea of the God-man the arch-enemy of the God-man,--rationalism, blended, however, with its opposite--mysticism. Thus Socinianism only denied what faith itself denied, and yet, in contradiction with itself, at the same time affirmed; it only denied a contradiction, an untruth.
Nevertheless the Christians have celebrated the incarnation as a work of love, as a self-renunciation of God, an abnegation of his majesty--Amor triumphat de Deo; for the love of God is an empty word if it is understood as a real abolition of the distinction between him and man. Thus we have, in the very central point of Christianity, the contradiction of Faith and Love developed in the close of the present work. Faith makes the suffering of God a mere appearance, love makes it a truth. Only on the truth of the suffering rests the true positive impression of the incarnation. Strongly, then, as we have insisted on the contradiction and division between the divine and the human nature in the God-man, we must equally insist on their community and unity, in virtue of which God is really man and man is really God. Here then we have the irrefragable and striking proof that the central point, the supreme object of Christianity, is nothing else than man, that Christians adore the human individual as God, and God as the human individual. "This man born of the Virgin Mary is God himself, who has created heaven and earth."--Luther (Th. ii. p. 671). "I point to the man Christ and say: That is the Son of God."--(Th. xix. p. 594.) "To give life, to have all power in heaven and earth, to have all things in his hands, all things put under his feet, to purify from sin, and so on, are divine, infinite attributes, which, according to the declaration of the Holy Scriptures, are given and imparted to the man Christ." "Therefore we believe, teach, and confess that the Son of Man ... now not only as God, but also as man, knows all things, can do all things, is present with all creatures." "We reject and condemn the doctrine that he (the Son of God) is not capable according to his human nature of omnipotence and other attributes of the divine nature."--(Concordienb. Summar. Begr. u. Erklär. art. 8.) "Unde et sponte sua fluit, Christo etiam qua humanam naturam spectato cultum religiosum deberi."--Buddeus (l. c. l. iv. c. ii. § 17). The same is expressly taught by the Fathers and the Catholics, e.g., "Eadem adoratione adoranda in Christo est divinitas et humanitas....
Divinitas intrinsece inest humanitati per unionem hypostaticam: ergo humanitas Christi seu Christus ut homo potest adorari absoluto cultu latriae."--Theol. Schol. (sec. Thomam Aq. P. Metzger. iv. p. 124). It is certainly said that it is not man, not flesh and blood by itself, which is worshipped, but the flesh united with God, so that the cultus applies not to the flesh, or man, but to God. But it is here as with the worship of saints and images. As the saint is adored in the image and God in the saint, only because the image and the saint are themselves adored, so God is worshipped in the human body only because the human flesh is itself worshipped. God becomes flesh, man, because man is in truth already God. How could it enter into thy mind to bring the human flesh into so close a relation and contact with God if it were something impure, degrading, unworthy of God? If the value, the dignity of the human flesh does not lie in itself, why dost thou not make other flesh--the flesh of brutes the habitation of the Divine Spirit? True it is said: Man is only the organ in, with, and by which the Godhead works, as the soul in the body. But this pretext also is refuted by what has been said above. God chose man as his organ, his body, because only in man did he find an organ worthy of him, suitable, pleasing to him. If the nature of man is indifferent, why did not God become incarnate in a brute? Thus God comes into man only out of man. The manifestation of God in man is only a manifestation of the divinity and glory of man. "Noscitur ex alio, qui non cognoscitur ex se"--this trivial saying is applicable here. God is known through man, whom he honours with his personal presence and indwelling, and known as a human being, for what any one prefers, selects, loves, in his objective nature; and man is known through God, and known as a divine being, for only that which is worthy of God, which is divine, can be the object, organ, and habitation of God. True it is further said: It is Jesus Christ alone, and no other man, who is worshipped as God. But this argument also is idle and empty. Christ is indeed one only, but he is one who represents all.
He is a man as we are, "our brother, and we are flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone." "In Jesus Christ our Lord every one of us is a portion of flesh and blood. Therefore where my body is, there I believe that I myself reign. Where my flesh is glorified, there I believe that I am myself glorious. Where my blood rules, there I hold that I myself rule."--Luther (Th. xvi. p. 534). This then is an undeniable fact: Christians worship the human individual as the supreme being, as God. Not indeed consciously, for it is the unconsciousness of this fact which constitutes the illusion of the religious principle. But in this sense it may be said that the heathens did not worship the statues of the gods; for to them also the statue was not a statue, but God himself. Nevertheless they did worship the statue; just as Christians worship the human individual, though, naturally, they will not admit it.
§ 22.
Man is the God of Christianity, Anthropology the mystery of Christian Theology. The history of Christianity has had for its grand result the unveiling of this mystery--the realisation and recognition of theology as anthropology. The distinction between Protestantism and Catholicism--the old Catholicism, which now exists only in books, not in actuality--consists only in this, that the latter is Theology, the former Christology, i.e., (religious) Anthropology. Catholicism has a supranaturalistic, abstract God, a God who is other than human, a not human, a superhuman being. The goal of Catholic morality, likeness to God, consists therefore in this, to be not a man, but more than a man--a heavenly abstract being, an angel. Only in its morality does the essence of a religion realise, reveal itself: morality alone is the criterion, whether a religious dogma is felt as a truth or is a mere chimera. Thus the doctrine of a superhuman, supernatural God is a truth only where it has as its consequence a superhuman, supernatural, or rather antinatural morality. Protestantism, on the contrary, has not a supranaturalistic but a human morality, a morality of and for flesh and blood; consequently its God, at least its true, real God, is no longer an abstract, supranaturalistic being, but a being of flesh and blood. "This defiance the devil hears unwillingly, that our flesh and blood is the Son of God, yea, God himself, and reigns in heaven over all."--Luther (Th. xvi. p. 573). "Out of Christ there is no God, and where Christ is, there is the whole Godhead."--Id. (Th. xix. p. 403). Catholicism has, both in theory and practice, a God who, in spite of the predicate of love, exists for himself, to whom therefore man only comes by being against himself, denying himself, renouncing his existence for self; Protestantism, on the contrary, has a God who, at least practically, virtually, has not an existence for himself, but exists only for man, for the welfare of man.
Hence in Catholicism the highest act of the cultus, "the mass of Christ," is a sacrifice of man,--the same Christ, the same flesh and blood, is sacrificed to God in the Host as on the cross; in Protestantism, on the contrary, it is a sacrifice, a gift of God: God sacrifices himself, surrenders himself to be partaken by man. (See Luther, e.g., Th. xx. p. 259; Th. xvii. p. 529.) In Catholicism manhood is the property, the predicate of the Godhead (of Christ)--God is man; in Protestantism, on the contrary, Godhead is the property, the predicate of manhood (Christ)--man is God. "This, in time past, the greatest theologians have done--they have fled from the manhood of Christ to his Godhead, and attached themselves to that alone, and thought that we should not know the manhood of Christ. But we must so rise to the Godhead of Christ, and hold by it in such a way, as not to forsake the manhood of Christ and come to the Godhead alone. Thou shouldst know of no God, nor Son of God, save him who was born of the Virgin Mary and became man. He who receives his manhood has also his Godhead."--Luther (Th. ix. pp. 592, 598). Or, briefly thus: in Catholicism, man exists for God; in Protestantism, God exists for man. "Jesus Christ our Lord was conceived for us, born for us, suffered for us, was crucified, died, and was buried for us. Our Lord rose from the dead for our consolation, sits for our good at the right hand of the Almighty Father, and is to judge the living and the dead for our comfort. This the holy Apostles and beloved Fathers intended to intimate in their confession by the words: Us and our Lord--namely, that Jesus Christ is ours, whose office and will it is to help us ... so that we should not read or speak the words coldly, and interpret them only of Christ, but of ourselves also."--Luther (Th. xvi. p. 538). "I know of no God but him who gave himself for me. Is not that a great thing that God is man, that God gives himself to man and will be his, as man gives himself to his wife and is hers? But if God is ours, all things are ours."--(Th. xii. p. 283.) "God cannot be a God of the dead, who are nothing, but is a God of the living.
If God were a God of the dead, he would be as a husband who had no wife, or as a father who had no son, or as a master who had no servant. For if he is a husband, he must have a wife. If he is a father, he must have a son. If he is a master, he must have a servant. Or he would be a fictitious father, a fictitious master, that is, nothing. God is not a God like the idols of the heathens, neither is he an imaginary God, who exists for himself alone, and has none who call upon him and worship him. A God is he from whom everything is to be expected and received.... If he were God for himself alone in heaven, and we had no good to rely on from him, he would be a God of stone or straw.... If he sat alone in heaven like a clod, he would not be God."--(Th. xvi. p. 465). "God says: I the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth am thy God.... To be a God means to redeem us from all evil and trouble that oppresses us, as sin, hell, death, &c."--(Th. ii. p. 327.) "All the world calls that a God in whom man trusts in need and danger, on whom he relies, from whom all good is to be had and who can help. Thus reason describes God, that he affords help to man, and does good to him, bestows benefits upon him. This thou seest also in this text: 'I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt.' There we are taught what God is, what is his nature, and what are his attributes,--namely, that he does good, delivers from dangers, and helps out of trouble and all calamities."--(Th. iv. pp. 236, 237.) But if God is a living, i.e., real God, is God in general, only in virtue of this--that he is a God to man, a being who is useful, good, beneficent to man; then, in truth, man is the criterion, the measure of God, man is the absolute, divine being. The proposition: A God existing only for himself is no God--means nothing else than that God without man is not God; where there is no man there is no God; if thou takest from God the predicate of humanity, thou takest from him the predicate of deity; if his relation to man is done away with, so also is his existence.
Nevertheless Protestantism, at least in theory, has retained in the background of this human God the old supranaturalistic God. Protestantism is the contradiction of theory and practice; it has emancipated the flesh, but not the reason. According to Protestantism, Christianity, i.e., God, does not contradict the natural impulses of man:--"Therefore we ought now to know that God does not condemn or abolish the natural tendency in man which was implanted in Nature at the creation, but that he awakens and preserves it."--Luther (Th. iii. p. 290). But it contradicts reason, and is therefore, theoretically, only an object of faith. We have shown, however, that the nature of faith, the nature of God, is itself nothing else than the nature of man placed out of man, conceived as external to man. The reduction of the extrahuman, supernatural, and antirational nature of God to the natural, immanent, inborn nature of man, is therefore the liberation of Protestantism, of Christianity in general, from its fundamental contradiction, the reduction of it to its truth,--the result, the necessary, irrepressible, irrefragable result of Christianity.
THE END.
NOTES
The meaning of this parenthetic limitation will be clear in the sequel.
Just as the feminine spirit of Catholicism--in distinction from Protestantism, whose principle is the masculine God, the masculine spirit--is the Mother of God.
"Natus est de Patre semper et matre semel; de Patre sine sexu, de matre sine usu. Apud patrem quippe defuit concipientis uterus; apud matrem defuit seminantis amplexus."--Augustinus (Serm. ad Pop. p. 372, c. 1, ed. Bened. Antw. 1701).
The Philosophus teutonicus walked physically as well as mentally on volcanic ground. "The town of Görlitz is paved throughout with pure basalt."--Charpentier, Mineral. Geographie der Chursächsischen Lande, p. 19.
"Qui Deos negant, nobilitatem generis humani destruunt."--Bacon (Serm. Fidel. 16).
Theol. Schol. Mezger. t. iv. p. 132.
It is true that the heathen philosophers also, as Plato, Socrates, the Stoics (see e.g. J. Lipsius, Physiol. Stoic. l. i. diss. xi.), believed that the divine providence extended not merely to the general, but also to the particular, the individual; but they identified providence with Nature, law, necessity. The Stoics, who were the orthodox speculatists of heathenism, did indeed believe in miracles wrought by providence (Cic. de Nat. Deor. l. ii. and De Divinat. l. i.); but their miracles had no such supranaturalistic significance as those of Christianity, though they also appealed to the supranaturalistic axiom: "Nihil est quod Deus efficere non possit."
"Ibi nostra spes erit res."--Augustin. "Therefore we have the first fruits of immortal life in hope, until perfection comes at the last day, wherein we shall see and feel the life we have believed in and hoped for."--Luther (Th. i. s. 459).
"Ipsum (corpus) erit et non ipsum erit."--Augustinus (v. J. Ch. Doederlein, Inst. Theol. Christ. Altorf, 1781, § 280).
The denial of a fact is not a matter of indifference; it is something morally evil,--a disowning of what is known to be true. Christianity made its articles of faith objective, i.e., undeniable, unassailable facts, thus overpowering the reason, and taking the mind prisoner by the force of external reality: herein we have the true explanation why and how Christianity, Protestant as well as Catholic, enunciated and enforced with all solemnity the principle, that heresy--the denial of an idea or a fact which forms an article of faith--is an object of punishment by the temporal power, i.e., a crime. What in theory is an external fact becomes in practice an external force. In this respect Christianity is far below Mohammedanism, to which the crime of heresy is unknown.
"Quia ergo pater Deus et filius Deus et spiritus s. Deus cur non dicuntur tres Dii? Ecce proposuit hanc propositionem (Augustinus) attende quid respondeat ... Si autem dicerem: tres Deos, contradiceret scriptura dicens: Audi Israel: Deus tuus unus est. Ecce absolutio quæstionis: quare potius dicamus tres personas quam tres Deos, quia scil. illud non contradicit scriptura."--Petrus L. (l. i. dist. 23, c. 3). How much did even Catholicism repose upon Holy Writ!
Even the Catholics also. "Hujus sacramenti effectus, quem in anima operatur digne sumentis, est adunatio hominis ad Christum."--Concil. Florent. de S. Euchar.
The passage Luke ix. 56, as the parallel of which is cited John iii. 17, receives its completion and rectification in the immediately following v. 18: "He that believeth in him is not condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God."
"Placetta de Fide, ii. Il ne faut pas chercher dans la nature des choses mêmes la veritable cause de l'inseparabilité de la foi et de la pieté. Il faut, si je ne me trompe, la chercher uniquement dans la volonté de Dieu.... Bene facit et nobiscum sentit, cum illam conjunctionem (i.e., of sanctity or virtue with faith) a benifica Dei voluntate et dispositione repetit; nec id novum est ejus inventum, sed cum antiquioribus Theologis nostris commune."--J. A. Ernesti. (Vindiciæ arbitrii divini. Opusc. theol. p. 297.) "Si quis dixerit ... qui fidem sine charitate habet, Christianum non esse, anathema sit."--Concil. Trid. (Sess. vi. de Justif. can. 28).
The Peripatetics also; who founded love, even that towards all men, not on a particular, religious, but a natural principle.
Active love is and must of course always be particular and limited, i.e., directed to one's neighbour. But it is yet in its nature universal, since it loves man for man's sake, in the name of the race. Christian love, on the contrary, is in its nature exclusive.
Yes, only as the free bond of love; for a marriage the bond of which is merely an external restriction, not the voluntary, contented self-restriction of love, in short, a marriage which is not spontaneously concluded, spontaneously willed, self-sufficing, is not a true marriage, and therefore not a truly moral marriage.
"The Lord spake to Gideon: The people are too many that are with thee, that I should give Midian into their hands; Israel might glorify itself against me and say: My hand has delivered me,"--i.e., "Ne Israel sibi tribuat, quæ mihi debentur." Judges vii. 2. "Thus saith the Lord: Cursed is the man that trusteth in man. But blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord and whose hope is in the Lord."--Jer. xvii. 5. "God desires not our gold, body and possessions, but has given these to the emperor (that is, to the representative of the world, of the state), and to us through the emperor. But the heart, which is the greatest and best in man, he has reserved for himself;--this must be our offering to God--that we believe in him."--Luther (xvi. p. 505).
