Since the etymology admits so many possibilities, the more accurate knowledge of the term “Theologia” should be gleaned from the usage of the word. With Lucian and Plutarch θεολόγος occurs in the general sense of one who treats of the gods, and Augustine declares in de Civ. Dei, XVIII., c. 14: “During the same period of time arose the poets, who were also called theologians, because they made hymns about the gods.” With Aristotle θεολογεῖν indicates, to be a theologian, or to act as a theologian. ᾿Επιστήμη θεολογική means with Aristotle (Metaph. X. 6) a knowledge concerning the divine; while with Plato, “theology” occurs as a speaking about the gods, and with Aristotle in the plural number, “Theologies” were investigations into divine things (Metereol. 2. 1). Thus far in all these combinations the general conception was implied of engaging oneself with the matter of the gods or deity, either in consultation with tradition, or in reflection for the sake of a more accurate understanding. With the name “Theology,” this general conception has been adopted by Christian writers, modified according to the requirements of their point of view, and carried out upon a large scale. He who reads the exhaustive explanation of Suicer, Thes. graec., under the words θεολόγος, θεολογία, and θεολογεῖν perceives at once how greatly the use of these words was increased and how much more deeply the thinking consciousness entered into the sense of these words, than with the classical writers. That the apostle John was early called the Theologian (ὁ θεολόγος), even in the title of the Apocalypse, cannot properly be explained from his reference to the Logos in the prologue to his Gospel and in his first Epistle; but indicates that John was esteemed to be more versed in the divine mysteries than any other apostle. This readily accounts for the fact that he is indicated as such in the title of the Apocalypse and not in the title of his Gospel. In a like sense all the writers of the Old and New Testaments, but more especially the prophets and apostles, are called theologians. Thus Athanasius says, Oratio de incarnatione Verbi, I., p. 62, ταῦτα δὲ καὶ παρὰ τῶν αὐτοῦ τοῦ Σωτῆρος θεολόγων ἀνδρῶν πιστεύσθαι τις δύναται, ἐντυγχάνων τοῖς ἐκείνων γράμμασιν; i.e. one thing and another concerning the Saviour you can also confirm by an appeal to the theologians if you turn to their writings. But shortly after this follows the significance of theological investigations of ecclesiastical questions. Thus Gregory of Nazianzus was called “the Theologian,” not to place him on a level with John, as though to him also divine mysteries had been revealed, but because in the treatment of dogma he always ascended to God, and thus, as Gregory the Presbyter writes, reached the height of dogma (ὕψος δογμάτων). (See Suicer, I., p. 1360.)

If thus the word “theologos” itself admitted of a twofold meaning, that of “a speaker in the name of God,” and that of “a thinker who in his thinking ascends to God,” the word “theologein” was still more pliable. This also signified at first to speak in the name of God; for instance, περὶ τούτων τῶν δογμάτων θεολογεῖ Ἡσαΐας, i.e. concerning these things Isaiah speaks as commanded by God. Secondly, to explain any point theologically; for instance, Λόγον εἶπεν ἵνα τὴν τελείαν ὑπαρξίν σοι τοῦ Ἰησοῦ θεολογήσῃ, i.e. he names Christ the Logos, in order to explain the absolute relation of Jesus to the very essence of God,— a use of this word which already with Justin Martyr obtained more general currency to indicate an investigation which was instituted with a certain dignity of form. Thus, for instance, in his Dial. c. Tr. (ed. von Otto, Jenæ, 1876, I. 400 B), “Do you inquire in the spirit of theological discussion why one ‘a’ was added to the name of Abraham, and ask with an air of importance why one ‘r’ was added to the name of Sarah?” (Διὰ τί μὲν ἐν ἄλφα πρώτῳ προσετέθη τῷ Ἀβραὰμ ὀνόματι, θεολογεῖς, καὶ διὰ τί ἐν ῥῷ τῷ Σάῤῥας ὀνόματι, ὁμοίως κομπολογεῖς); where from the coupling of κομπολογεῖν and θεολογεῖν it clearly appears, that in both cases a dignity, a gravity, and a rhetoric are implied, which did not correspond to the unimportance of the question. But besides these two meanings, which run parallel with those of “theologos,” the great Fathers of the Christological conflict also used, in the footsteps of Justin, the word “theologein” in the sense of proclaiming one to be God, of announcing one as God. Justin Martyr wrote in his Dial. c. Tryph. (ed. von Otto, Jenæ, 1876, I., p. 104 C), with the Messianic prophecy in Psalm xlv. 6 sq. in mind, “If, therefore, you say that the Holy Spirit calls any other God (θεολογεῖν) and Lord (κυριολογεῖν) except the Father of all the Universe and his Christ,“—which manner of speech, both by the sense and by the addition of κυριολογεῖν, leaves no doubt but that θεολογεῖν is taken in the sense of calling one God. Thus also we read in Athanasius (Tom. I., p. 1030): ᾿Εν ἅπασιν οἷς δοξάζεται ὁ πατὴρ θεολογούμενος, ἐν αὐτοῖς δοξάζεται καὶ ὁ υἱὸς καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον, i.e. “In all points in which the Father is glorified by being spoken of as God, the same also takes place with the Son and with the Holy Ghost.” For the sake of still greater clearness, the word θεόν is even added, θεολογεῖν τινα θεόν, as for instance, in Philostorgius, Hist. Eccl. XIV., p. 103, τὸ βιβλίον θεολογεῖ θεὸν τὸν … δημιουργὸν ἁπάντων, i.e. This book, the Gospel of John, calls the author of all things God. Thus also Cæsarius, Quest. 22, p. 44, says of the Christ, “also when he is incarnate, nevertheless ὑπὸ τῶν προφητῶν θεολογεῖται, i.e. is he called God by the prophets; the Latin praedicare Deum.” And finally there was developed from this the more general significance of deifying something or making it to be God. For instance, οὐ πάντα κατὰ φύσιν γίνεται, ἵνα μὴ θεολογηθῇ ἡ φύσις (Chrysostom, V., p. 891), i.e. “It is by Divine appointment that all things do not happen in accordance with nature, lest nature be taken for God.”

In this way only can we understand the history of the word “theology” in Patristic literature. If a theologian is one who speaks in the name of God, and theologein the act itself of speaking in the name of God, then we understand how “Theology” could mean the Old and the New Testament: Τῆς παλαιᾶς θεολογίας καὶ τῆς νέας θεολογίας τὴν συμφωνίαν ὁρῶν, θαυμάσεται τὴν ἀλήθειαν, i.e. “Seeing the harmony of the Old and New Testament, one marvels at the truth” (Theodor. Therap. See Suicer, I., p. 1359). For the word of God comes to us in these two Testaments. If in the second place the word theologein means to explain a point so fully as to trace it back to God, then it is clear how “Theology” could mean: reduction to the mystery of the essence of God. Thus says Theodoret (Quæst. in Genes. I., p. 3), τί δήποτε μὴ προτέταχε τῆς τῶν ὅλων δημιουργίας θεολογίαν; i.e. “Why did not Moses preface the creation-narrative with an introduction on the mystery of the essence of God?” If, in the third place, “theologein” was used in the sense of “to declare some one God,” then it follows also that “Theology” could signify: the divine appellation. Thus says Pachymeres in his note on Dionysius Areopagita (Suicer, I., p. 300), τὰ κοινῶς τῇ θείᾳ φύσει ἁρμοζόντα ὀνόματα ἡνωμένην ἐπιγράφει θεολογίαν, i.e. the names which in general belong to the divine nature, he calls theologia unita. And since in the bitter conflict against the Arians everything hinged on the point of proclaiming Christ as God, “Theology” in this sense became almost synonymous with the Deity of Christ. Thus Gregory of Nyssa speaks of a κηρύσσειν τὸ μυστήριον τῆς θεολογίας, with his eye on John i. 1, which thus means to say, “to announce the mystery of the Deity of Christ.” This Theologia was then placed over against οἰκονομία as the appellation for his human nature. Thus in Theodoret, Comm. in Heb. iv. 14, p. 414: we ought to know τίνα μὲν τῆς θεολογίας, τίνα δὲ τῆς οἰκονομίας ὀνόματα, i.e. what names belong to his divine, and what to his human, nature. In connection with this, “Theology” was also used in the sense of the “mystery of the Trinity.” The knowledge of God, which as such was the characteristic of Christianity, was contained just in this trinitarian mystery. Thus Athanasius, de Definitionibus, Tom. II., p. 44: ᾿Επὶ τῆς θεολογίας μίαν φύσιν ὁμολογοῦμεν τῆς ἁγίας Τριάδος, τρεῖς δ᾽ ὑποστάσεις, i.e. “Of the mystery of the Divine Being we confess that in the Holy Trinity there is only one nature, but a threefold hypostasis.” Photius, Epist. XXXIV., p. 95, ὥσπερ ἐπὶ τῆς θεολογίας τὸ τρεῖς ὁμολογεῖν οὐσίας πολύθεον, i.e. even as it is Polytheistic to confess three substances in the mystery of the Trinity. Theophylact, Comm. in Math., c. xxviii., p. 185, εἰπὼν ὅτι δεῖ βαπτίζειν εἰς τὸ ὄνομα τῆς τριάδος τὴν θεολογίαν ἡμῖν παρέδωκεν, i.e. by the command to baptize in the name of the Trinity, Christ has revealed to us the mystery of the Divine Being. And in like sense Gregory Nazianzen uses the word when in Oration I., p. 16, he writes, τρία ἔστι περὶ θεολογίας ἀρρωστήματα, i.e. there are three weaknesses with reference to the interpretation of the Divine mystery.

Thus the development of the term Theology is not doubtful. First the word was adopted from the pagan usage to indicate a speaking of the things that pertain to the gods or God, whether materially, as declarations of divine affairs, or simply formally, as a speaking with dignity and with a certain unction. In the conflict about the divine nature of Christ the still living Grecian language-consciousness began to use the term θεολογεῖν actively in the sense of calling one God, and thereby θεολογία obtained gradually the significance of the confession of the Deity of Christ. Since the Christological conflict speedily assumed a Trinitarian character, and the confession of the Trinity hinged upon the acknowledgment of the Deity of Christ, Theology began gradually to be interpreted in the sense of the mystery of the Divine Essence as Trinitarian. And finally, by Theology there began to be understood that which is revealed to us concerning this mystery, since to this extent only we can deal with this mystery. At the point of history when the supremacy of the Church was transferred from the East to the West, and the living word θεολογία was lost in the dead barbarism Theologia, this Latin term was understood to mean the revealed knowledge of the mystery of the Threefold Being of God, and by no means a prosecution of Theological departments of study.

§ 57. Theological Modality of the Conception of Theology

Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theol. I. 9, i., art. 7) already protested against the abuse of making the nature of Theology to consist, not in the knowledge of God, but in the knowledge of an entirely different object of investigation; and thus against those who assigned, not God, but “another subject for this science, for example, either things and signs, or the works of redemption, or else the whole Christ, that is, both head and members”; for, says he, “all these are treated in this science, but according to their order with respect to God” (“aliter assignaverunt huius scientiae subjectum, sc. vel res, et signa, vel opera reparationis, vel totum Christum, id est, caput et membra,” … “de omnibus istis tractatur in ista scientia, sed secundum ordinem ad Deum”).¹ So far as this protest directs itself against the soteriological or Christological interpretation of the science of Theology, it is equally pertinent to almost all definitions which in the course of this century have been given of the conception of Theology. What he says, on the other hand, of Theology as a study of the Signa et Res, refers in part to Peter Lombard’s Sententiae, but principally to Augustine, who, in his Libri IV. de doctrina Christiana, had followed the division into Signa et Res,—a division which Thomas does not reject, but which in his view does not define the “subject of Theology,” or what we would call the object of Theology.

The important interest defended by Thomas in this protest, a protest to which all earlier Reformed theologians have lent their influence, lies in the requirement that the conception of Theology must not only be construed abstractly logically, but also theologically. Augustine already tried to do this, though he rarely used the word Theology to indicate the conception intended by us. What in the Western Church also was called Theology, he called Doctrina de Deo or Christian Doctrine; and however strange it may seem, by the word Theology Augustine understands the pagan rather than the Christian conceptions of the Divine. This appears prominently in his De Civitate Dei, in which he (Lib. VI., c. 5 sq., ed. Bened. Bass. Ven., 1797, pp. 179–255) discusses the system of Varro, as though there were three kinds of Theology: mythology (theologia fabulosa), which lived in tradition and in the theatre; natural theology (theologia naturalis), which is found in the writings of the philosophers; and State religion (theologia civilis), which was maintained by official public worship. And it is noteworthy that while continually quoting this threefold description of Theology, Augustine nowhere places theologia Christiana, or vera, over against it, but always speaks of Doctrina Christiana. Once only, in caput 8 (p. 203), does he take theologia in its general sense, but still not to express doctrina Christiana, but that after which the doctrina Christiana seeks. In refuting the physiological representations of the philosophers he says: “But all these things, they say, have certain physical, i.e. natural, interpretations, showing their natural meaning; as though in this disputation we were seeking physics and not theology, which is the account, not of nature, but of God.” From this we see, that by “Theology” Augustine did not understand the study of our science, nor that science itself; by him this was called doctrina; but much more the knowledge of God, as the aim of theological study.

Thus with Augustine already this deeper conception of Theology bore a decidedly theological character. This is seen in his Libri IV. de doctrina Christiana, where he goes back to God, as Himself the Wisdom (Sapientia), and calls Christ, as the Word of God (Verbum Dei), the first way to God (prima ad Deum via), and then by the side of the intellectual method of attaining the knowledge of God, he also emphasizes the way of contemplation (via contemplationis) and the seeing of God. Thomas Aquinas also occupies this point of view in the main, and in his footsteps also Calvin. Thomas’ chief work bears, indeed, the title of Summa theologica, but in his introduction he systematically treats of the sacra doctrina, which really is not Theology itself, but circa theologiam versatur. Only rarely does the word theologia occur with him, as, for instance, when in P. i. i. Qu. art. 7, ed. Neap., 1762, I., p. 12b, he says: “But in this science discourse is chiefly made about God, for it is called Theology, as being discourse about God” (“Sed in hac scientia fit sermo principaliter de Deo; dicitur enim theologia, quasi sermo de Deo”). Here, however, he gives us least of all a definition, but derives an argument from the etymology of the word to maintain “God” (ὁ θεός) as the object of the ‘sacred doctrine.’ The real conception which he attaches to Theology is therefore much more clearly seen from what he says concerning faith, hope and love as the three virtutes theologicae (see I., secundae, qu. 62, art. i. sq.). Let it be noted also that he did not write as the title of his work: Summa theologiae, but Summa theologica. De Moor, in his Comm. in Marck., Tom. I., p. 9, quotes these words of Thomas: “Theology is taught by God, teaches of God, and leads to God” (“Theologia a Deo docetur, Deum docet et ad Deum ducit”); since, however, he does not name the place where he found this citation, it is not to be verified. In like manner Calvin does not give to his dogmatics the title of Epitome Theologiae, but of Institutio religionis Christianae, and translates the word theologia, which he almost everywhere avoids, by notitia Dei (cf. Lib. I., c. i., § i. sq.). The indexes are not trustworthy with reference to this. The index to Thomas as well as to Calvin’s Institutes gives a meaning to the word Theology in which the word Theology itself was used neither by Thomas nor by Calvin.

This distinction, now, which maintained itself for a long time between theological science as sacred learning or instruction (sacra doctrina, institutio), etc., and Theology itself as knowledge of God (notitia Dei), was not trivial; but tended to interpret the conception of Theology theologically, as this theological conception is more precisely analyzed into the theologia archetypa and ectypa. And this must be maintained. The field of knowledge disclosed to us in Theology cannot logically be coördinated with the other fields that are investigated by our understanding. As soon as this is done, Theology is already robbed of its peculiar character, and cannot be interpreted except as a part of metaphysics, or as a science whose object of investigation is the empirical phenomenon of religion, or, more precisely, the Christian religion. If, on the other hand, Theology is a knowledge which, instead of dealing with created things, illumines our minds with respect to the Creator, and the “origin and end of all things,” it follows that this knowledge must be of a different nature, and must come to us in another way. The normae that are valid for our knowledge elsewhere have no use here; the way of knowledge must here be another one, and the character itself of this knowledge must differ from all other science. As within the boundaries of the finite you must follow a different way to knowledge for the spiritual than for the natural sciences, the way to the knowledge of that which transcends the finite and lies beyond its boundary cannot coincide with the Erkenntnisstheorie of the finite. Hence we have no warrant for making a logical division and saying: Science investigates nature, man, and God, and the science which does the latter is Theology, simply because the coördination of nature, God and man is false. He who views these three as coördinates, starts out logically from the denial of God as God. This was entirely correctly perceived by the Greek Fathers, and in the steps of Augustine by the Western Fathers, in consequence of which, even though without sufficient clearness of insight, they refused to place Theology in line with the other -logies or -nomies, and demanded a theological interpretation of the conception of Theology. The force of this theological interpretation was still felt in the second half of the eighteenth century, whenever the dogmatici described Dogmatics not as a subdivision of Theology or as one of the departments of theological study, but as the theologia propria, to which exegesis, church history, church polity, etc., were added as auxiliary studies. They had already lost the conception of Theology to such an extent that, although not theoretically, they practically applied the name of Theology to the human study which was devoted to this revealed knowledge of God; but from their limitation of this name to Dogmatics it was evident that they took this to be the study that leads to the right understanding of the real knowledge of God. They were not concerned about all kinds of learning, but about God Himself, and that alone which could bring us a closer knowledge of that God could claim in the more precise sense the name of Theology. It is indeed true, as is shown by the history of Encyclopedia, that the Encyclopedists gradually began to understand by Theology the complex of the several departments of theological study; but no one will contend that in doing this they contributed to an organic interpretation of the conception of Theology. Of Schleiermacher only it can really be said that, seeing the unskilfulness of the earlier Encyclopedists, he seriously tried to bring Theology, not as a knowledge of God, but taken as a theological science, to a unity of interpretation. It is too bad that he went to work at this so unhistorically; that he paid almost no attention to the development of the conception of Theology in former ages: and still more is it a pity that, mistaken in the idea of the object, he could not attain to an organic interpretation, and advanced no further than to explain it as an aggregate, united by the tendency of these several studies to aid in preparation for the sacred office. By this he cut off the theological understanding from the conception of Theology; and they who have come after him have no doubt superseded his aggregate by an organic conception, and his exceedingly limited object by a broader object, but have not removed the breach between what Theology was originally and what has since been understood by it. The rule continued to be derived exclusively from Logica by which to define the conception of Theology, and thus it was impossible to regain the theological conception of this science. This does by no means imply that repristination of the former conception would suffice. The very contrary will appear from our further exposition. All we intend to say, is that here also no progress is possible, unless we continue our work along the line of those threads that were spun for us in the past.

And in looking back upon this past we find that in the conception of Theology a characteristic theological modality exhibits itself almost constantly; by which we mean that the peculiar character of Theology has exerted an influence also upon the forming of this conception. How far this influence extended can only be shown in the following sections; but in order to place the significance of those sections in the desired light, it was specially necessary to refer to this point.

§ 58. The Idea of Theology

He who is called to the fifth story of a large building, and finds an elevator, which without any effort on his part brings him in a moment where he wants to be, will not climb the hundred or more steps on foot. Applied to our knowledge, this implies that common, slow investigation, with its inductions and deductions, is merely the stairs with its hundred steps by which we climb the heights of knowledge, while the attainment of knowledge is ever the aim in view. From which it follows that if that same height of knowledge can be reached by a shorter or less laborious way, the former stairs become worthless. This is true horizontally as well as vertically. Since now there are railways to all the corners of Europe, no one travels any longer by stage-coach. Though there may be a peculiar pleasure attached to that slow rate of progress, or rather to creeping along the way of knowledge, it is, nevertheless, somewhat morbid to abandon for the sake of this lower pleasure the much higher delight of the knowledge of the truth. Lessing’s proverb has led us astray on this point, and therefore the brief indication of the only true point of view was necessary. What surprises still await us of locomotion by electricity or through the air are not easily foretold; but this is certain, that every more rapid communication antiquates the less rapid. This compels us in Theology, also, to distinguish between the conception and the idea of Theology. The conception is bound to the way of knowledge which we travel. The idea, on the other hand, views the end, independently of the question of the way by which this end shall be reached. This was the distinction in view in the formerly generally current division of Theology into a theologia unionis, visionis and stadii. This supplied three conceptions, which found their unity in the idea of Theology. The theologia unionis was that highest knowledge of God, which Christ possessed in His human nature, by virtue of the union of this nature with the Divine nature. The theologia visionis, also called patriae, was the appellation of the knowledge of God which once the elect will obtain in the state of heavenly blessedness. And the theologia stadii, also called studii, or viatorum, expressed that knowledge of God which is acquired here upon earth by those who are known of the Lord. That which was common to them all, and which united these three conceptions, was the general idea of the knowledge of God. The aim of Theology, therefore, did not lie in the theological investigation, neither in all sorts of studies and learning, but exclusively in knowing God. All study and learning served only as scaffolds for erecting the palace of our knowledge; but as soon as the building was finished that scaffolding lost all its meaning, even became a hindrance, and had to be cleared away. And this was more clearly perceived in olden times, than by most theologians after Schleiermacher. The idea of Theology can be none other than the knowledge of God, and all activity impelled by Theology must in the last instance be bent upon the knowledge of God. This is not said in a metaphorical, but in a very exact sense. And this must be maintained as the idea of Theology, when you come to consider also the science of Theology, as it is studied and taught by the Theological faculty. By a different notion of the idea, and by lowering your ideal, you degrade theological science itself. According to its idea, Theology does not at first demonstrate that there is a God; but it springs out of the overwhelming impression which, as the only absolutely existing One, God Himself makes upon the human consciousness, and finds its motive in the admiration which of itself powerfully quickens the thirst to know God. Though Theology may be permitted to seek after proofs for the existence of God, by which it may open the eyes of those half-blind, it cannot itself start out from doubt, nor can it spend itself in the investigation of religious phenomena, or in the speculative development of the idea of the absolute. It may do all this when it is convenient and as a dialectic auxiliary, but all this is only secondary; at most, a temporary bridge, by which itself to reach the other side or bring others there, but its purpose, wading the mountain stream, remains to come to the mountain itself, and in the sweat of its brow to climb the mountain path, until at length the highest peak is reached, the top itself, where the panorama, the knowledge of God, unveils itself. Only when thus interpreted does Theology regain its necessary character, and otherwise it lapses into an accidental dilettantism. Thus only it regains its value, and, apart from every conception of utility or eudemonistic purpose, it recovers an absolute significance in itself. Thus in its very idea it advances beyond the boundary of our present existence, and extends itself into the eternal and the infinite.

The older Theologians derived this more accurate insight into the nature of Theology and this necessary distinction between the idea and the several conceptions of the one Theology from the Holy Scriptures. In the Scriptures “the knowledge of God” is clearly stated as the forma of “eternal life,” and of that knowledge of God several degrees are indicated. The distinction is evident at once between the knowledge of God disclosed to man before he sinned, and that modified knowledge of God given to the sinner. There was a knowledge of God for Him who said: “Neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him”; and a knowledge of God for those who could not attain this save by that Son. And finally in the Scriptures a very significant distinction is made between the knowledge of God of those who have been “enlightened” and of those who still “walk in darkness”; between the knowledge of God, already obtained here by those who have been enlightened, and that which shall sometime be their portion in the realm of glory. Hence a rich difference of form was found in the Scriptures, but still the same idea was common to all these forms, which idea was and is: to know God, and to know Him as men. For in the Scriptures a knowledge of God in the world of angels is also spoken of, which is not entirely lost even in fallen angels, so that “the devils also believe that there is one God”; but since this knowledge assumes another subject, we need not here take it into account. This treatise deals exclusively with human Theology (Theologia humana), and for the sake of clearness we leave the other distinctions alone, in order now to study the distinction between our knowledge of God here and in heaven (Theologia stadii and patriae).

The classical proof-text for this is 1 Cor. xiii. 8–13, where the holy apostle definitely declares, that the gnosis which we now have “shall be done away,” since now it is only a knowing “in part”; that in this matter of our knowledge of God there is a “perfect” contrasted to that which is now “in part”; that when that which is “perfect” is come, a seeing of “face to face” shall come into being; and that this seeing shall be a “knowing even as also I have been known.” Elsewhere also, in Matt. v. 8, in 1 John iii. 2, in Psalm xvii. 15, etc., a knowledge of God is mentioned, which shall consist in a seeing of God; but for brevity’s sake we confine ourselves to the utterance in 1 Cor. xiii. Two things are here included. First, a sharp dividing-line is drawn between the knowledge of God which is acquired on earth, and that other knowledge of God which is in prospect on the other side of the grave. But secondly, the relation is indicated which is sustained between these two forms of knowledge. Knowledge does not disappear in order to make room for sight. It is not a knowing here and a seeing of God there. No, it is a knowing both here and there; but with this difference, that here it is “in part” and there it shall be “perfect.” The seeing, on the other hand, is, here as well as there, the means by which to obtain that knowledge; here a seeing “through a glass darkly,” there a seeing “face to face.” The holy apostle treats even more exhaustively the relation between Theology here and in heaven by indicating the analogy of the child that becomes a man. The child and the man have both a certain knowledge, but the knowledge of the child dissolves in that of the man. By becoming a man he himself brings the putting away of that which belonged to the child. Thus the unity between the two forms of our knowledge of God is most firmly maintained, and both conceptions of knowledge emphasized as finding their higher unity in the idea of Theology, which is and always will be: the knowledge of God. That Paul speaks very expressly here of the knowledge of God, and not of “the knowledge of divine things” in general, appears clearly from the καθὼς ἐπεγνώσθην in vs. 12. “Knowing even as also I am known” cannot mean anything save knowing Him by whom I am known.

The objection also that this future seeing of God is merely mystical or contemplative, and that therefore it has nothing to do with our logical consciousness, but falls outside of Theology, is set aside by 1 Cor. xiii. The logical is not a temporal form of our human consciousness, fundamentally fictitious, and therefore bound to pass away. But God Himself is logical, for in Him also knowledge is assumed, and between our knowledge here and that which shall be ours in eternity, there is no essential, but only a proportional, difference: now in part, then perfect. Similarly the difference between the two modes of knowledge is merely that of the immediate and mediate. Then our knowledge will turn immediately on God Himself, while now we only observe the image of God in a glass, in which it is reflected. Thus the continuity of our knowledge of God is not broken by the passing away of present things. When the knowledge “in part” shall have passed away, the identity of our consciousness shall continue. That same ego, which now can only faintly discern the image of God in a glass, shall presently be conscious of the fact that it knows that selfsame God whose image it first saw “darkly,” and will recognize in the Divine face those very features which formerly it observed in the glass imperfectly and indirectly. From this, at least, we see that the so-called scientific investigation shall sometime fall away; that it bears no absolute character; and that it derives its temporal necessity merely from the condition brought about by sin, and its possibility logically from “common grace” and theologically from the “particular grace” of divine illumination. And if this is so, it follows of itself that scientific investigation can never be Theology, and is only an accidental activity amid present conditions and within given boundaries, impelled by the thirst after Theology, or rather by the thirst after the knowledge of God. Hence the higher idea of the knowledge of God determines Theological science and not Theological science the idea of Theology. There can, and there will hereafter, be a rich Theology without the aid of a Theological science; while on the other hand when Theological science withdraws itself from the knowledge of God, it loses all sufficient reason, and can lead no other than a nominal existence.

The naming of the animals by the original man in paradise presents a partial analogy. In the domain of zoölogy, also, the real end in view is not scientific study, but knowledge of the animal. In our present condition this knowledge cannot be acquired except by empirical investigation and the drawing of conclusions from the data obtained. But if we knew and understood the animal at once, this empirical investigation and this drawing of conclusions would be purposeless, and hence dispensable. And something like this is told us in the story of paradise. There was here really a knowledge of the animal by the “seeing of face to face.” To Adam the animals were no enigma as to us, but were known and understood by him; and therefore he could give them a name according to their nature. Had this capacity remained intact in us, zoölogy of course would have assumed an entirely different form; and not in a lesser but in a much higher sense it would still have been zoölogy. For the knowledge of animals in paradisaical man was not analogous to the vague perception which we now have immediately of the world of sounds or of moral phenomena, but it was logical; as is evident from the fact that it led to the giving of the name. And in this sense it presents an analogy for Theology in its two different phases. Just as now in zoölogy scientific study is indispensable if we would obtain a logical knowledge of the animal, in our present dispensation Theological study is equally indispensable to obtain the logical knowledge of God. But as in paradise knowledge of animals was at the disposal of man without this study, in the dispensation of glory man will similarly attain a much more complete and yet logical knowledge of God, without theological study. This is equally applicable to theologia paradisi and theologia unionis; but this we pass by because for the sake of clearness we are considering only the antithesis between our knowledge of God “in a glass” here and “face to face” in glory.

If it is now plain that the theological idea lies in the impulse of our human consciousness to know God, entirely independently of the way in which this knowledge is to be acquired, our object has been gained. The idea of Theology as such is imperishable, but, according to the demands of our condition, it leads us by different ways to our ideal. The way which we must travel is that of theological study, and the science which is born from this study can with entire propriety be called Theology, provided this is not done in an exclusive sense, and this science admits no other motive than to know or learn to know God. Every conception of Theology which is not subordinated to the idea of Theology must fail.

§ 59. The Dependent Character of Theology

If the idea of Theology lies in the knowledge of God, an entirely peculiar character flows from this for all Theology, which distinguishes it from all other knowledge or investigations of science. For in all other investigations the investigating subject places himself above the object to be investigated, is the active agent in the investigation, and directs his course in obedience to his own free judgment. And this is both possible and proper with created things, because among all these man ranks first. But when the thirst for knowledge directs itself to Him to whom man and all creation owe their origin, existence, and consciousness, the circumstances are materially changed. Then man stands no longer above, but beneath the object of his investigation, and over against this object he finds himself in a position of entire dependence. Our earlier Theologians explained this by distinguishing between archetypal Theology (Theologia archetypa) and ectypal Theology (Theologia ectypa) — a distinction which as it was finally defended could not be maintained, but which contains an element of truth that should not be abandoned. For the real thought fundamental to this distinction between archetypal and ectypal Theology is that all personal life remains a closed mystery to us as long as he whose life this is does not himself disclose it to us. And this thought must be maintained. We purposely limit ourselves to personal life in order to exclude the zoölogical question, even though we readily grant that in animals also a similar mystery presents itself; but this mystery need not detain us now, because the knowledge of man presents already the entirely sufficient analogy for the knowledge of God. With man also the rule applies to each individual that you cannot know him in his personal existence, except he himself disclose the mystery of his inner being.

And yet as far as man is concerned, appearance might readily deceive us. We quickly form an idea about the persons we meet in daily life, and some of us can form a fairly accurate idea of a man at the very moment of meeting. Let us observe however: first, that being human ourselves we have a means in our own existence by which measurably at least to understand a fellow-creature. Were we not ourselves man, we would not understand what man is; as it reads in 1 Cor. ii. 11: “For who among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man, which is in him?” In the second place, this knowledge which we owe to our mutual relationship, is strengthened by the fact, that as a rule we associate with fellow-citizens, congenial spirits, and those to whom we are united by a certain community of lot. Hence not only our common humanity, but the fact also that the modality of existence is largely common to us all, makes it easy from ourselves to form conclusions concerning others. How important this factor is, we perceive at once when we cross the boundaries of our native land, and especially when we come among other races and into entirely different countries. A Russ or Finn understands very little of the real inner nature of the Red man, and what does a Frenchman understand of the inner nature of a Lapp or Finn? In the third place, let it be noted that however much there may be something personal in every man, characters divide themselves into certain classes, which are recognized by certain combinations of phenomena, so that he who knows one or more of these kinds readily understands a great deal of a person, as soon as he perceives to what class he belongs. Fourthly, man is no spirit but a spiritual being, and exists simultaneously psychically and somatically, so that a great deal of his inner life manifests itself without the person being conscious of it; often indeed against his will and purpose. The look of the eye, feature and color of face, carriage and manners, composure or restlessness in the whole appearance, etc., betray much of what goes on in man. To which may be added, in the fifth place, that in conversation or in writing a man may say to us or to others, something of himself from which very important data may be gathered directly or by inference concerning the mystery of his person. No doubt there are “closed characters,” and also “characters that falsify themselves,” which you can never fathom, but as a rule you can obtain considerable knowledge of a man, even when he does not purposely disclose to you the mystery of his person.

If, now, on the other hand, you turn from the knowledge of man to the knowledge of God, you perceive at once that almost nothing of these five means of help is at your disposal. Standing before God you do not find an analogy in your own being to His Being, because He is God and you are man. The closer knowledge of your fellow-man which you acquire from your sharing his modality of existence falls entirely away, since the distance between you and the Eternal Being discovers itself the more overwhelmingly as your existence specifies itself. The division into kinds is of equally little service, because there is but one God, of whom therefore no conclusion can be drawn from the species to the individual. Unintentional somatic unveiling is equally impossible with God, since asomatic and only spiritual existence characterizes Him as God. And finally, the casual dropping of a remark does not occur with respect to the Eternal Being, since the casual and unconscious doing of a thing is not predicable of God.

The difficulty which the biographer encounters when he undertakes to sketch the development of a character that belongs to another age, land and surroundings, and of which almost no personal utterances are handed down in writing, repeats itself with the Theologian, only in an absolute measure. His aim and purpose is to acquire knowledge of a Being which is essentially distinguished from himself and from all other creatures; a Being which, by no amount of investigation, he can compel to give knowledge of itself; which as such falls entirely outside of his reach; and over against which he stands absolutely agnostically, in accordance with the true element of Spencer’s Agnosticism.

Let it not be said, that an infinite number of things are manifest and knowable of God, in the works of creation, in history, and in the experiences of our own inner life; for all this leads to a certain knowledge of God, only when God has begun to reveal Himself to me as a God, who exists and exists as God. Even though for the moment we do not reckon with the darkening of sin, all that is called “natural revelation” would not impart to us the least knowledge of God, if it were not willed by God, and as such make an intentional revelation, i.e. a disclosure in part of His Divine mystery. Suppose that on the fixed stars there lived a race of beings, of an entirely different type from what we have ever known; the simple report of what they had done would never advance our knowledge of them, as long as the idea, not to say every conception, of their kind of being were wanting. From the nature of the case this is much more forceful with reference to the knowledge of God, and the contemplation of visible things would avail us absolutely nothing, if the sense that there is a God, and of what a God is, were not imparted to us in an entirely different way.

In this sense we speak of a dependent character for Theology. When an absolute stranger falls into the hands of the police, which is no infrequent occurrence anywhere, and steadfastly refuses to utter a single syllable, the police face an enigma which they cannot solve. They are entirely dependent upon the will of that stranger either to reveal or not to reveal knowledge of himself. And this is true in an absolute sense of the Theologian over against his God. He cannot investigate God. There is nothing to analyze. There are no phenomena from which to draw conclusions. Only when that wondrous God will speak, can he listen. And thus the Theologian is absolutely dependent upon the pleasure of God, either to impart or not to impart knowledge of Himself. Even verification is here absolutely excluded. When a man reveals something of himself to me, I can verify this, and if necessary pass criticism upon it. But when the Theologian stands in the presence of God, and God gives him some explanation of His existence as God, every idea of testing this self-communication of God by something else is absurd; hence, in the absence of such a touchstone, there can be no verification, and consequently no room for criticism. This dependent character, therefore, is not something accidental, but essential to Theology. As soon as this character is lost, there is no more Theology, even though an investigation of an entirely different kind still adorns itself with the theological name. In his entire Theology the Theologian must stand in the presence of God as his God, and as soon as for a single instant he looks away from the living God, in order to engage himself with an idea about God over which he will sit as judge, he is lost in phraseology, because the object of his knowledge has already vanished from his view. As you cannot kneel in prayer before your God as worshipper, in any other way except as dependent upon Him, so also as Theologian you can receive no knowledge of God when you refuse to receive your knowledge of Him in absolute dependence upon Him.

This deep sense of dependence has ever induced our real theologians, in the days of their power, to place all our knowledge of God as ectypal Theology, in absolute dependence upon the self-knowledge of God, which they called archetypal Theology. As the ectype is absolutely dependent upon the archetype, is governed and formed by it, thus, they would say, all our knowledge of God is absolutely governed by the knowledge which God has of Himself. Thus they taught that we of ourselves can never enter into the holy place of the Lord, to examine it and gather knowledge concerning it, but that it behooves us to take our stand on this side of the veil, and to wait for what God Himself will communicate to us from this holy place and from behind this veil. This revelation or communication, which is imparted to our knowledge, we may consider, analyze, systematize and cast into the form of our consciousness; but in all these operations all active investigation after what is God’s remains excluded, all knowledge remains received knowledge, and it is not God Himself, but the knowledge He has revealed to us concerning Himself which constitutes the material for theological investigation. Hence ectypal Theology.

The objection raised against this division and appellation cannot stand. It has been said, that in this way we can also speak of an ectypal zoölogy, botany, etc. For these parts of His creation are also known to God before they are known to us; and all our knowledge of the world of animals and plants, etc., is either in harmony with the knowledge God has of them and then true, or in antagonism with it and then false. This distinction between archetypal and ectypal knowledge is valid in every department, and therefore may not be claimed as something characteristic of Theology. But this objection is altogether inaccurate. For instance, I can order a sketch to be made of a gable-roof, which upon examination is seen to agree entirely with the original drawing of the architect; but does that prove that this last sketch has been copied from the original drawing? No, only if this sketch had not been made from the gable, but immediately from the original drawing, would it have been ectypal; but not now. It is not true, therefore, that our botanical and zoölogical knowledge can be called ectypal. It would be this, if we did not draw this knowledge from the world of animals and plants, but copied it apart of these realities from the decree of creation, as far as it referred to animals and plants. We will not stop to consider the question whether our knowledge of the world of angels, of the soul, of the other side of the grave, of the future, etc., is not ectypal; this question is in order in the section on the ambitus (circle) of Theology. It is enough if the essential difference is clear between a knowledge which is the result of the active investigation of an object, and that wholly different knowledge which we must first passively receive and then actively investigate. And with the old Theologians we maintain the ectypal character of the knowledge of God, since no man can investigate God Himself, and all the knowledge which we shall have of God can only be a copy of the knowledge God has of Himself, and is pleased to communicate to us.

Besides the strictly dependent character of Theology, there lie in this ectypal characteristic two suggestions, which must be emphasized. First, that there is no involuntary revelation. This refutes the idea that God may be more or less unconscious of Himself, or that He could be seen by us in His works, without His willing or knowing it. Since this ectypal Theology has its rise only from the fact that archetypal Theology imprints itself in it, there is nothing in the ectype which was not first in the archetype. Everything, therefore, from without that mingles itself with the ectype and does not come to it from the archetype, is contraband and must be excluded. A child may watch his father without his perceiving it or wanting to be watched; a precocious child can sometimes know his father better than he can know himself; but nothing of all this can ever take place with reference to God, because all this springs from the imperfection of the father or from the superiority of his child, and the very idea of God excludes every possibility both of incompleteness in God and of superiority in His creature. All representations of this sort, therefore, which have crept more and more into Theology, must be banished as impious, since they start out essentially from the exaltation of man above God. The second point, which must be emphasized in the ectypal character of our knowledge of God, is the truth of our knowledge of God. If the ectypal originates by the imprint of the archetypal, the ectypal image is no phantasy, no imagination, but an image in truth. Just as we saw in the antithesis between Theology here and hereafter, that our knowledge of God on earth shall then be done away, and rise again in a higher form of a knowledge “face to face”; but always such, that the truth of our knowledge “in part” shall be the more fully exhibited by the completer knowledge in heaven. Our given knowledge of God derives from this its absolute character, not as to its degree of completeness, but with reference to its connection with its object, i.e. with God. God who is, has knowledge of Himself; and from this self-knowledge God has taken the knowledge given to us. This excludes not only doubt, but also the dilution of subjectivism, as if our formulated statement of the knowledge of God in our confession were unimportant, and without loss of truth could be exchanged for every other confession or placed on a line with it.

Meanwhile we should guard against anthropomorphism in our representations of this archetypal knowledge of God. As human beings, we do not know ourselves at the beginning of our lives; gradually we obtain a certain consciousness of our own person, and we frame a certain representation of our personal existence and of our inner being. In intimate intercourse we can impart this representation of ourselves to others. And in this way it is also possible to speak of a certain archetypal and ectypal knowledge of our person. But if this were applied similarly to God, we would incur a very serious error. We cannot conceive of a gradually increasing self-consciousness in God, and consequently of an existence of God that preceded His consciousness. Consciousness in God covers His entire existence, and the word “eternal” is predicable of both in an intensive sense. Hence with God there can be no self-knowledge which has been formed in a human way by observation, analysis, inference, etc. The self-knowledge in God is sui generis, and therefore Divine. If this condemns the admission of all anthropomorphism in the archetypal knowledge, this mode of representation is equally inadmissible in our communication of this knowledge to man. When we communicate something concerning ourselves to another, it is man who imparts something to man, and thereby deals with analogies that are mutually present, and with similar representations which render the understanding of our communications possible. All this, however, falls away when God approaches man. Then it is not God revealing knowledge of Himself to a God, but God imparting His self-knowledge to man. Moreover, in our communications with others concerning ourselves, we are bound to the form of thought, and must take the capacity for knowledge as it is; but there is no such limitation with God, who Himself created the creature to whom He has determined to impart this self-knowledge, and thus was able to adapt this capacity for knowledge to His revelation. And, finally, it should be remembered that we can mutually come close to each other’s heart, but can never penetrate each other’s inner selves; while the door to the secret and innermost recesses of our being is open to God.

It was entirely correct, therefore, when in olden times it was additionally stated that ectypal Theology reveals to us the self-knowledge of God according to our human capacity; and that the necessity was felt in the eighteenth century (see De Moor, Comm. in Marck., Vol. I., p. 29) of limiting archetypal Theology to that self-knowledge of God, quam creaturae manifestare decreverat, i.e. “which he had decreed to reveal to the creature.” In itself this was correctly viewed; in order to preserve the image of the type, the ectypal must be equal in extent and form to the archetypal. And yet this further explanation has not made the matter itself more clear, but more confusing, — both mechanically and intellectually. In the self-knowledge of God there are not ten parts, six of which he has decided to reveal unto us; but, though only “as in a glass darkly,” the whole image has been reflected to us in Revelation. Neither will it do to interpret the revelation of God’s self-knowledge as a merely intellectual communication, independent of Creation and the Incarnation; for this would cut in Revelation itself the main artery of religion.

Rather, therefore, than lose ourselves in this intellectualistic abstraction, we adopt the names of Archetypal and Ectypal Theology in the originally fuller sense, i.e. as standing in immediate relation to the creation of man after the image of God. As man stands as ectype over against God, the archetype, man’s knowledge of God can therefore be only ectypal. This is what we meant when we called Theology a dependent knowledge — a knowledge which is not the result of an activity on our part, but the result of an action which goes out from God to us; and in its wider sense this action is God’s self-revelation to His creature.

§ 60. Ectypal Theology the Fruit of Revelation

The ectype does not arise unless there is a material that can receive the impression of the archetype, and the act of impressing it on this material has taken place. And though in the preceding section it was maintained that the ectypal knowledge of God did not arise from our observation of God but from self-communication on the part of God, and consequently bears a dependent character, we do not assert, that for the acquisition of this knowledge of God the nature and disposition of the subject are indifferent. On the contrary, all revelation assumes (1) one who reveals Himself; (2) one to whom he reveals Himself; and (3) the possibility of the required relation between these two. In revelation, therefore, man (and more especially sinful man), who is to receive it, must be taken into account. If, as was done formerly, we exclusively consider Him who reveals Himself and that which He reveals, this revelation lies outside of man; the actual perception and assimilation are wanting; and the whole end of revelation is lost. In the second place, it will not do to interpret revelation as an announcement or communication of the one subject to the other subject, without taking due account of the fact that the subject God created the subject man, and that God wholly maintains and governs man from moment to moment; the result of which is, that He does not follow a way of communication that happens accidentally to be present, but that He Himself lays out the way of communication in keeping with His purpose. In the third place, it must be kept in view that the revelation of God is not an act of a single moment, but a continuous process, which extends itself across the ages, and in this extension does not purposelessly swing back and forth, but propels itself according to the motive contained in its idea, according to the nature of its successive content, and according to the nature of the bed which its stream must form for itself. In the fourth place, this revelation may not be interpreted as an atomistical self-communication of God to the several individuals, but must be taken as a revelation to man in his generations, i.e. to the organic unity of humanity, and only in this organic unity to the single man. And finally, in the fifth place, account must be kept of the special character which this revelation had to assume, both with regard to the act of revelation and its content, and the forming of its channel in the human spirit, in order, in spite of the obstruction of sin, to accomplish its original plan and to realize the purpose implied in its tendency. Though it is thus unquestionably true that in our sinful state we could never attain to a true Theology, i.e. a true knowledge of God, unless the form of revelation were soteriological, it is nevertheless necessary that in our representation of revelation also the fact be emphasized that the soteriological element is ever accidental, bears merely an intervenient character, and remains dependent upon the fundamental conception of revelation which is given in creation itself, and which teleologically looks forward to a state of things in which there shall be no more sin, so that every soteriological act shall belong to a never-returning past.

The first proposition therefore reads: God reveals Himself for His own sake, and not in behalf of man.

This only true starting-point for the real study of Revelation has been too much lost from view, not only in recent times, but even in the more prosperous periods of sound Theology. Even in the treatment of the dogma of “the necessity of sacred Scripture,” the fact of sin was always taken as the point of departure, and thus the starting-point for Revelation was found in the soteriological necessity of causing light to arise in our darkness. A revelation before sin was, to be sure, recognized, but it was never successfully placed in relation to revelation in the theological sense; and this was especially noticeable in the mechanical placing side by side of natural and revealed Theology. To repair this omission is therefore a necessity. Every interpretation of Revelation as given for man’s sake, deforms it. You either reduce Revelation to the Creation, or cause it to occur only after the Creation. If you accept the latter view, you make it intellectualistic, and it can only consist, as the Socinian conceived, of an outward mechanical communication of certain data, commandments, and statutes. Thus, however, true revelation, which is rooted in religion itself, is destroyed. If for this reason you favor the other horn of the dilemma, viz. that Revelation goes back to Creation itself, then the motive for this Revelation cannot be found in man; simply because man was not yet in existence, and therefore could be no motive. For though it be asserted that, as the apostle Peter says, man was foreknown in the Divine decree before the creation, and that therefore Revelation could well point to this foreknown man, the argument is not valid. For in the decree a motive must have existed for the foreknowledge of man himself; and if it be allowed that this motive at least could lie only in God, it follows that Revelation also, even if it found its motive in man, merely tended to make man what he should be for the sake of God, so that in this way also Revelation finds its final end in God, and not in man.

But even this might grant too much. With a little thought one readily sees that Revelation is not merely founded in Creation, but that all creation itself is revelation. If we avoid the Origenistic and pantheistic error that the cosmos is coexistent with God; the pagan representation that God Himself labors under some higher necessity; and the Schleiermachian construction that God and the world were correlate, at least in the idea; and if, consequently, we stand firm in the sublime confession: “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth,” the motive for Creation cannot be looked for in anything outside of God, but only and alone in God Himself. Not in an eternal law (lex aeterna), a fate (μοῖρα) or necessity (ἀνάγκη), nor in some need of God nature, nor in the creature that was not yet created. He who does not worship God as self-sufficient and sovereign, misconceives and profanes His Being. Creation neither can nor may be conceived as anything but a sovereign act of God, for His own glorification. God cannot be glorified by anything that comes to Him from without. By His own perfections alone can He be glorified. Hence creation itself is primarily nothing else than a revelation of the power of God; of the God Almighty, who as such is the Creator of heaven and earth.

If this is true of creation, and of the self-revelation of God which was effected in the creation, this must be true of all revelation, simply because the cosmos, and every creature in the cosmos, and all that is creaturely, are given in the creation. If you deny this, you make an essential distinction between all further revelation and the revelation in creation; you place it as a second revelation mechanically alongside of the first; and lapse again into the irreligious, intellectualistic interpretation of revelation. If, on the other hand, further revelation is not taken except in organic relation to the revelation given in creation, and thus is postulated by it, the motive of creation becomes of itself the motive of its manifestation; and all later revelation must likewise be granted to have been given us, not for our sake, but in the last instance for God’s own sake. For though it is self-evident that the manner of operation of this revelation in every concrete case adapts itself to the disposition of the creature, and in this creature reaches its temporal end, yet in the last instance it only completes its course when in this operation upon or enriching of this creature it glorifies its Creator. When this revelation, therefore, leads to the creaturely knowledge of God, i.e. ectypal Theology, this knowledge of God is not given primarily for our benefit, but because God in His sovereignty takes pleasure in being known of His creature; which truth is thus formulated in Holy Scripture, — that God doeth all things for His Name’s sake; sometimes with the additional words: not for your sakes, O Israel.

From this the second proposition follows of itself, that Divine Revelation assumes a creature capable of transposing this Revelation into subjective knowledge of God.

Revelation by itself would not be able to realize its aim. Imagine that there were no reasonable creatures, and that the creation consisted of nothing but entirely unconscious creatures, incapable of consciousness, the perfections of God revealed in His creation could not be evident to any one but God Himself. This, however, would be a contradiction in terms. He who is Himself the Author of revelation, knows the entire content of His revelation before He reveals it. Hence nothing can become known to Him by His revelation, which at first He did not know. This is possible in part with us. When by the grace of God a poet first carries a poetical creation in his mind, and afterwards reveals it in his poem, many things become known to him in this poem which at first were hid from him. This is accounted for by the fact that this poet was inspired in his poetic creation by a higher power, so that he himself did not know all the obscure contents of his imagination. With God, on the other hand, such cannot be the case, simply because God cannot be inspired by one higher than Himself, and because there is nothing in His Being which He does not see with fullest clearness of vision. This implies that there can be no mystery for God, either in His Essence, counsel, or plan of creation; and hence nothing can become revealed or known to God by creation. By creation the contents of His virtues are in nothing enriched; in no particular do they become more glorious to Himself; hence there would be no revelation in creation or in any later activity of God, if there were no creature to whom all this could become the revelation of a mystery. For though we grant that God Himself sees and hears the beautiful in His creation; we deny that this display in creation is a greater joy to God than the view of His perfections in Himself. Every effort to seek a necessary ground in this sense for the creation of the cosmos results in cancelling the self-sufficiency of the Eternal Being, and in making God, by His creation, come to the knowledge and possession of His own divine riches; and by a little deeper thought this of itself leads back again to the theory of the world’s coexistence with God.

The proposition of an unintentional revelation is equally untenable. This often happens with us, because the revelation of our person or of our disposition is not always under our control. Not only unintentionally, but sometimes against our intention and in spite of our purpose to the contrary, all sorts of things are constantly heard and seen of us, which it was by no means our desire to reveal. But this again you cannot apply to the Eternal Being, without lapsing into the anthropopathic representation of His existence. Such unintentional discovery of self to others results from a lack of power or insight, and from a consequent dependence upon many human data. Thus the omnipotence and absolute independence of God would be impaired, if in Him you assumed this unconscious, unintentional, and in so far accidental, revelation. His revelation postulates both the will and the purpose to reveal Himself, and this is inconceivable, unless there is at the same time a conscious being outside of God, which is able to appropriate what is revealed, and for which this revelation is intended. Though a star is praised for sparkling, which it does without knowing it, and a flower for the aroma that flows from its cup without this cup perceiving it, and though, in a similar strain, we praise the native simplicity of a beautiful character that radiates without effort and conscious aim, yet with no such conception can we approach the Lord our God, for He has nothing that He does not owe to Himself, and in no single particular is He a mystery to Himself. In Him whose is the highest and the most complete consciousness, there is no room for the conditions of semi- or total-unconsciousness. What the Confessio Belgica states in Art. 12, that all created things are “for the service of man, to the end that man may serve his God,” applies also to the realm of revelation, since man is the creature, by whom whatever is creaturely on earth becomes the instrument of revelation of the attributes of God.

Our second proposition, however, implies more than this. The conscious creature is not only indispensable in order that revelation can be revelation, but that which is revealed must also be transposed by man into subjective knowledge of God and of His perfections. That which God reveals is conscious knowledge of Himself, before He reveals it. He is not a Light from which effulgence radiates, while He Himself does not know that light. His self-knowledge is absolute, and the impulse to reveal His perfections arises from His knowledge of them. And therefore this revelation of His perfections does not reach its aim nor point of rest until God is known. Hence, without ever giving themselves to intellectualism, the Holy Scriptures always put this knowledge of God in the foreground, and stand in prospect a “knowing of God as we are known.” If Mozart had been a completely self-conscious musician, he would not have been able to develop his compositions otherwise than with the will and aim of finding performers and hearers who would not only hear his compositions and perform them, but would also understand them. And in like manner revelation flows from the archetypal knowledge of God and strives to become ectypal knowledge of God in man. Thus revelation itself is properly no Theology, but flows from the auto-Theology in God Himself and has Theology, i.e. knowledge of God in man, for its result.

This leads to our third proposition, viz. that man, in order to do this, must be adapted by nature, relation and process to interpret what has been revealed as a revelation of God and to reduce it to subjective knowledge of God.

It was the aim of propositions one and two to show that man did not come into being indifferent as to the manner how, and only afterwards revelation was added to him as an auxiliary, and was therefore adapted to his need; but that, on the contrary, revelation finds its end in God, and our human race was in its creation entirely adapted to this revelation. In this third proposition examine this original and necessary relation between revelation on the one side and the nature, relation and development process of our race on the other. And we point at once to the twofold office of man in revelation. He is not only to appropriate that which has been revealed, but he is himself a link in that revelation. This is exhibited most strongly in his logos, since by his logos he appropriates revelation to himself, and in his logos reflectively (abbildlich) reveals something of the eternal logos. If the cosmos is the theatre of revelation, in this theatre man is both actor and spectator. This should not be taken in the sense that, in what is revealed in him, he adds one single drop to the ocean of cosmical revelation, but rather, that man himself is the richest instrument in which and by which God reveals Himself. And he is this not so much on account of his body and his general psychical organization, but chiefly on account of that deepest and most hidden part of his being, in which the creaturely reaches its finest and noblest formation. And if, without lapsing into trichotomy, we may call this finest element in our human being the pneumatical, we define it as being both the choicest jewel in the diadem of revelation and the instrument by which man transmutes all revelation into knowledge of God. Both are expressed in the creation of man after the image of God. On one hand, one’s image is his completest revelation, and on the other hand, from just that creation after God’s image originates that higher consciousness of man, by which in him also the logos operates. This is what the older Theology called innate or concreate Theology (theologia innata or concreata), and to which the doctrine of faith must be immediately related.

To make this clear we must go back a moment to the first man, who, in so far as he represented our entire race, was no individual, and in whose case we do not yet need to reckon with the relation in which we stand to other men. It is evident that, when thus taken, Adam possessed in himself, apart from the cosmos, everything that was necessary to have knowledge of God.

Undoubtedly many things concerning God were manifest to him in the cosmos also; without sin a great deal of God would have become manifest to him from his fellow-men; and through the process of his development, in connection with the cosmos, he would have obtained an ever richer revelation of God. But apart from all this acquired knowledge of God, he had in himself the capacity to draw knowledge of God from what had been revealed, as well as a rich revelation from which to draw that knowledge. Our older theologians called these two together the “concreate knowledge of God”; and correctly so, because here there was no logical activity which led to this knowledge of God, but this knowledge of God coincided with man’s own self-knowledge. This knowledge of God was given eo ipso in his own self-consciousness; it was not given as discursive knowledge, but as the immediate content of self-consciousness. Even in our present degenerate condition, when much of ourselves can only be learned by observation, there is always a background of self-knowledge and of knowledge of our own existence, which is given immediately with our self-consciousness. Before the fall, when no darkening had yet taken place, this immediate self-knowledge must have been much more potent and clear. And thus it could not be otherwise but that in this clear and immediate self-knowledge there was, without any further action of the logos in us, an equally immediate knowledge of God, the consciousness of which, from that very image itself, accompanied him who had been created in the image of God. Thus the first man lived in an innate knowledge of God, which was not yet understood, and much less expressed in words, just as our human heart in its first unfoldings has a knowledge of ideals, which, however, we are unable to explain or give a form to. Calvin called this the seed of religion (semen religionis), by which he indicated that this innate knowledge of God is an ineradicable property of human nature, a spiritual eye in us, the lens of which may be dimmed, but always so that the lens, and consequently the eye, remains.

In connection with this, now, stands faith, that wonderful πίστις, the right understanding of which has been more and more lost by the exclusively soteriological conception of our times. Of course as a consequence of the fall faith also was modified, and became faith in the Saviour of the world. But the form which anything has received as a consequence of sin can never be its proper or original form; and it is equally absurd to look upon saving faith as a new spiritual sense implanted for the first time by regeneration. Nothing can ever be added to man by regeneration which does not essentially belong to human nature. Hence regeneration cannot put anything around us as a cloak, or place anything on our head as a crown. If faith is to be a human reality in the regenerate, it must be an attitude (habitus) of our human nature as such; consequently it must have been present in the first man; and it must still be discernible in the sinner. To prove the latter is not difficult, provided it is acknowledged that ethical powers (sensu neutro) operate in the sinner also, even though in him they appear exclusively in the privative, i.e. sinful form. Taken this way, the pistic element is present in all that is called man; only in the sinner this pistic element assumes the privative form, and becomes unfaith (ἀπιστία). If sin is not merely the absence of good (carentia boni), but positive privation (actuosa privatio), ἀπιστία also is not only the absence of faith (absentia fidei), but the positive privation of faith (actuosa fidei privatio), and as such sin. By overlooking this distinction our earlier theologians came to speak of the innate knowledge of God (cognitio Dei innata) as an attitude (habitus), which properly invited criticism. Cognitio can be no habitus. But while they expressed themselves incorrectly, they were not mistaken in the matter itself; they simply failed to distinguish between concreate theology (concreata), and faith which is inseparable from human nature. Faith indeed is in our human consciousness the deepest fundamental law that governs every form of distinction, by which alone all higher “Differentiation” becomes established in our consciousness. It is the daring breaking of our unity into a duality; placing of another ego over against our own ego; and the courage to face that distinction because our own ego finds its point of support and of rest only in that other ego. This general better knowledge of faith renders it possible to speak of faith in every domain; and also shows that faith originates primordially from the fact that our ego places God over against itself as the eternal and infinite Being, and that it dares to do this, because in this only it finds its eternal point of support. Since we did not manufacture this faith ourselves, but God created it in our human nature, this faith is but the opening of our spiritual eye and the consequent perception of another Being, excelling us in everything, that manifests itself in our own being. Thus it does not originate after the Cartesian style from an imprinted idea of God, but from the manifestation of God in our own being to that spiritual eye which has been formed in order, as soon as it opens, to perceive Him and in ecstasy of admiration to be bound to Him. By faith we perceive that an eternal Being manifests Himself in us, in order to place Himself over against our ego, in the same way in which we discover the presence of light by our eye; but what this eternal Being is and what it demands of us, is not told us by faith, but by the innate knowledge of God, presently enriched by the acquired.

The discovery, the perception of a mightier Ego, which is above and distinct from our own ego, is therefore the starting-point of all religion and of all knowledge of God. If we were not created after God’s image, this manifestation would affect us strangely and cause us fear; but since in virtue of our creation there is an affinity between our own ego and that other Ego revealing itself to us, the manifestation of that mighty Ego affects us pleasantly, it fascinates and satisfies us with a feeling of infinite rest. It appeals to us. And as all revelation finds its completion only in this, this appeal becomes at length a speaking to us. There is fellowship between that peace-bringing Being, that reveals itself to us, and our own ego. He is the heavenly Friend, who does not merely reveal himself as a silent presence, but who, asking for our word in prayer, addresses us in the highest utterances of spirit, i.e. in the transparent word, and only in thus speaking to us becomes our God, unto whom goes out the worship of our hearts. In this way only does man know his God; not with a knowledge of Him or concerning Him, but in such a way that with the deepest utterance of the soul he knows his God personally; not yet with the full vision, but with something already of the seeing of face to face lost by sin, and only to be perfected in the full unfolding of our nature. Thus there is a revelation of God about us and within us, and the latter culminates in the personal knowledge of the living God, as a God who dwells among and associates with us, and allows us to associate with Him. He who understands it differently from this separates Revelation from religion, and degrades it to an intellectualistic communication of certain facts or statutes. For the fact must not be abandoned that religion germinates only when it attains unto that which is written of Enoch, viz. that he walked with God. Neither knowledge nor pious feeling by themselves can ever be called religion. Only when your God and you have met each other and associate and walk together, does religion live in your heart.

But even this does not fully construe the conception of innate theology. The distinction between the seed of religion and faith, both of which are increated in our human nature, explains how from the side of God a revelation takes place in us, and how our ego is disposed to observe this revelation in us, but this by itself does not give us any theology yet, i.e. knowledge of God. Even though revelation in us on the one hand, and the working of our faith on the other hand, have so far advanced that at length we have perceived God in us and consequently know God, we have as yet no knowledge of God, and hence no theology. I may know a number of persons in the world whom I have met, whose existence has been discovered to me, and of whom I have received general impressions, while yet I have no knowledge of them. That I may have knowledge of him whom I have met, the logical action must first take place. When I have met some one and thus know him, I inquire about him, or seek an interview with him, that I may obtain knowledge of his person. And such is the case here. Though God works and manifests Himself in our being, and though I have the power of faith to perceive this inworking and this manifestation, this produces nothing in me beyond perceptions, impressions and feelings; while I am left to the mysticism of my emotions. If from this mysticism I want to advance to knowledge, and transform revelation into theology, the logical action must enter in between; perception must pass over into thought; impression must sublimate itself into a conception; and thus the seed of religion must unfold the flower-bud in the word; viz. the word of adoration. Hence this logical action also was included in innate theology; simply because otherwise it could have been no theology. This, however, should not be taken in the sense that Adam was created with some sort of a catechism in his head; for logical action presumes subjective action of the human mind. If, therefore, we should speak with entire accuracy, we should say that there was no increated theology in Adam, but that he was so created, that, in his awakening to self-consciousness, he arrived of necessity at this original theology from the data that were present in him. In a literal sense respiration was not increated in Adam, for the first inhalation only came when the creation was completed, while before the creation was ended he could not draw breath. Breathing is an action of the person which comes only when the person exists. Since all the conditions for breathing are given in our nature, and every person born in this nature breathes of himself and from necessity, no one hesitates to acknowledge that respiration is inborn with us all. It were mere prudery, therefore, to object to the expression of innate or concreate theology; for though theology is the result of a logical action in the subject, with Adam this logical action took place immediately and from necessity; and it was by this alone that the receiving of an oral revelation was already possible in paradise. For it is plain that the entire representation which the Scripture gives us of the intercourse with God in paradise, of the fall and subsequent promise, becomes unintelligible and falls away, if we assume in Adam exclusively the sense of the eternal, and deny him all conscious knowledge of God.

Language itself decides the case. Speech without language is inconceivable, and he who in contradiction to the Scriptures declares that the first man could utter at most a few vague sounds, but was not in possession of language, wholly denies thereby the Christian doctrine of creation and the fall, and consequently of the Salvation in Christ. If, on the other hand the original man, to speak with Heraclitus, possessed a language by φύσις,² the very possession of that language assumes a logical action which is immediate, regular and pure equally with our respiration. And if from the nature of the case this logical action was originally limited with reference to its content to what man perceived in himself, and, in his inner perceptions, the perception of God stood majestically in the foreground, it is evident that the first natural action of the human consciousness could have been no other than the necessary translating into knowledge of God of the inner sensibilities and perception effected in him by God Himself. And on this ground we hold that innate or concreate theology presumes three factors: (1) the inworking and manifestation of God Himself in Adam’s inner being; (2) faith, by which the subject perceives and grasps this inworking and manifestation; and (3) the logical action, by which of himself and of necessity he reduces this content in his heart to knowledge of God, in the form of thought and word.

From this it does not follow that one of these three factors should fall outside of Revelation. With none of these three factors do we overstep the boundary of creation, and all creation as such belongs to the domain of revelation. This does not need to be shown of the first factor. The action of God in our being is of itself revelation. But this same thing is true also of the second factor: faith. For what is faith but the sympathetic drawing of the image (Abbild) to the original (Urbild); and what is there revealed in this faith but that God has created us after Himself, for Himself, and to Himself? And concerning the third factor, viz. the knowledge which is the result of the logical action, what expresses itself in this but the reflective (abbildliche) working in us of that Logos, which is in God and itself is God? The whole man, therefore, in his existence, in his relation to God, in his communion with, and his knowledge of, God, is originally but one rich revelation of God to man. At a later period revelation may also come to him from without; but it begins by being in him, as an immediate result of his creation.

This innate or connate theology was destined to be enriched by acquired (acquisita) theology. Not in the sense of addition, as though this increated knowledge would gradually increase by such and such a per cent. Innate theology was rather a completed whole by itself. It constituted all that knowledge of God, which was to be obtained from the immediate communion of God with the individual soul. It completed that knowledge of God, whose principium lies in the mystery of the emotions. But since the creation did not consist of that single soul but of a human race, and of a cosmos as the basis of this entire human race, a revelation of God was also necessary in that cosmos and in that organic unit of humanity; and since the individual soul stands in organic relation to humanity and to the cosmos, its knowledge of God had to include both these other spheres of revelation. Even though you conceive a development apart from sin, acquired theology would of itself have been joined to innate theology, as soon as man entered into conscious relation to the cosmos and humanity as an organic unit. Not for the sake of filling out what was incomplete, but of enriching the knowledge complete in itself with the revelation in both these other spheres. Thus, for instance, to enlarge upon this with a single word, the idea of God’s Omnipotence, Wisdom, etc., would never have entered into the consciousness of the soul from the cosmos nor from the universal human life. These ideas lie in innate theology, and are given in the idea of God as such. Nevertheless the significance and tendency of these ideas are only clearly seen “ since the creation of the world, being perceived through the things that are made.” And as to the acquired theology which comes to the individual soul from its relation to the organic unity of humanity, it is evident at once that the Divine is too potent and overwhelming to reveal itself in one human soul. Only in the combination of the whole race of man does this revelation reach its creaturely completeness. Which could not be so if one man were merely a repetition of another, but which leads to that completeness since every individual is a specific variation. Herein also lies the ground for the social character of all religion. The knowledge of God is a common possession, all the riches of which can only be enjoyed in the communion of our race. Not, indeed, as if even outside of religion man is a social being, so that of necessity his religion also is of a social character, for this would reverse the case; but because humanity is adapted to reveal God, and from that revelation to attain unto His knowledge, does one complement another, and only by the organic unity, and by the individual in communion with that unity, can the knowledge of God be obtained in a completer and clearer sense.

For this reason reference was made not merely to our nature, and to the relation we sustain to one another, but also to the process or course run of necessity by human development. Without sin Adam would not have remained what he was, but he and his race would have developed themselves into a higher condition. The process as known in reality may be dominated by sin, but even with a sinless existence there would have been a process of development; and this element must be reckoned with in theologia acquisita. Of course we cannot enter into the particulars of a supposed possibility cut off by sin. This were to lose ourselves in fiction. But in general it may be affirmed, (1) that even without sin human existence would have been a successive existence in time, and consequently an existence in the form of a process; (2) that the entire human race was not in existence at once, but could only come successively to life; and (3), as is seen from the paradise narrative itself, the study of the cosmos would have borne a successive character. Hence in this process there would have been progress, and not simple repetition. Difference of relation to the Eternal Being would have resulted from difference of conditions. The relations among these several conditions would have been organic. Hence in this process of human development there would of itself have appeared a process of development of the knowledge of God. Yea, this process itself, as history foreordained and ruled by God from step to step, would in turn have become a revelation sui generis. In this development of the human race the logical consciousness in man would likewise have obtained a development of its own. Thus parallel to the process of history there would have run a history of man as a logical being. In proportion as revelation enriched itself, the instrument would thus have become more potent by which man transmuted the treasures of this revelation into Theology. We do not say that this would have taken place in the form of our present science. In our human existence everything is so intimately connected, that the modification which our entire existence experienced by sin and by sin-restraining grace, both “common” and “particular,” impresses its stamp upon our science also. Abstraction, which at present is absolutely indispensable to our science, would certainly not have exercised so strong an influence without sin as it does now. But in whatever form common human consciousness might have developed itself without sin, Theology, i.e. the knowledge of God, would have occupied a sphere of its own in the world of thought, and would by no means have been restricted to the secret reverie of individuals upon the sensations of their inmost soul. All revelation proceeds from the Logos (John i. 1-8), and therefore cannot rest content as long as it is not grasped and reflected back by the logical consciousness of individuals and of the whole of humanity, i.e. by the “logos in humanity.” In this way knowledge of God would have proceeded immediately from revelation, and in virtue of the organic relation and development of our race this knowledge of God eo ipso would have assumed a scientific form, even if by another effort of the mind than that from which at present the science of Theology is born. Theology as a science would then have proceeded immediately and of necessity from Theology as the personal and universal knowledge of God, and it would never have entered the mind of any one to understand by the name of Theology anything but that God-knowledge itself. Scientific Theology also would rigorously have maintained its character as knowledge of God. The three above-mentioned factors — revelation, faith and the logical action — are and ever will be with acquired Theology also, which develops of itself into scientific Theology, the three constituent elements of ectypal Theology. Without revelation nothing is known; without faith there is no apprehension nor appropriation of that revelation; and without the logical action, that which has been perceived cannot be transmuted into subjective knowledge of God.

We, however, may not rest content with this supposition of a sinless development. The development is a sinful one, and all closer insight into the nature of Theology must therefore deal with this fact. And yet we do not deem the exposition superfluous of the relation which would have arisen in the case of a sinless development. It is rather a significant fault that in later theological studies this has been too much neglected. We understand what darkness is only from the antithesis of light. Pathology assumes the knowledge of the normal body. And so too the sinful development of our race and of its world of thought, in relation to intervenient grace, can never be understood except we first leave sin out of account. He only who has before his eyes the straight line understands the crooked line. To note a deviation, I must know where the right path runs. And the negative or privative character of sin makes this also necessary with the study of Theology. By the too exclusively soteriological interpretation of Theology we have become unaccustomed to this; while the theologians, who avoided this danger, weakened the fact of sin, and so lost more or less the whole antithesis. Formerly, however, in the days when Theology was still taken theologically, this distinction was rigorously maintained; and every one who, as theologian, aims again at Theology in its real sense, must return with us to this distinction.

But neither in this discussion of the Revelation of God to the sinner, any more than in the first part of this section in our explanation of the Revelation of God to man, will we describe the content and form of that Revelation itself. For so far as the form of this revelation is in order in Encyclopedia, it falls to be treated in the chapter on the Principium of Theology. Since now, however, we have only just begun to develop the conception of Theology from its idea and history, we cannot concern ourselves with that content and form, but must confine ourselves here to its general character.

In view of this our fourth proposition reads, that the revelation of God to the sinner remains the same as the revelation of God to man without sin, only with this twofold necessary difference, that formally the disorder in the sinner must be neutralized, and materially the knowledge of God must be extended so as to include the knowledge of God’s relation to the sinner. In this connection we need not concern ourselves with the fact that it is grace that speaks in the so-called soteriological Revelation. This belongs properly to Dogmatics and not to Encyclopedia. In passing, however, we suggest that the possibility is conceivable, that after man had become a sinner, God might have continued to reveal Himself as before. The result of this would not have been, as is commonly asserted, that the natural knowledge of God alone would have survived; for, as will be shown later on, this natural knowledge of God also is a fruit of grace, and more particularly of “common grace.” Imagine that all grace had been withdrawn, so that sin would have been able to develop its deepest energies in the sinner all at once, without any check or opposition, nothing would have remained but spiritual darkness, and all “knowledge of God” would have turned into its opposite. Hence to obtain a clear insight into the modification suffered by the original revelation on account of sin, we must go back to this hypothesis and put the question, in what condition the three factors of the knowledge of God — revelation, faith and the logical action of the human mind — would exhibit themselves under this constellation.

Revelation, taken as limited to man and interpreted as the inworking and manifestation of God in man’s hidden being, does not cease with sin; nothing can annihilate the omnipresence of God, not even sin; nor can man’s dependence as image upon the archetype be destroyed, neither can the mystical contact of the infinite and the finite in the human soul be abolished. Thus revelation is continued in the heart of man. That which in his hellish terror drove Judas to despair and suicide, was but the perception of this fearful manifestation of God in the deepest centre of his person. Only this revelation, which was originally sympathetic, turns into its opposite and becomes antipathetic. It becomes the revelation of a God who sends out His wrath and punishes the sinner. Even in hell the sinner continues to carry in himself this inworking of God’s omnipresence. Because as sinner also he remains forever man and must remain such, he can never escape from that revelation. “If I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there.”

The same is true of the second factor, πίστις. Faith also belongs to human nature, consequently the sinner can never rid himself of it; it also turns into its opposite and becomes unfaith (ἀπιστία); which must not be understood as a mere want or defect of faith, but always as an active deprivation (actuosa privatio). The energy which by nature operates in faith remains the same, but turns itself away from God and with all the passion at its command attaches itself to something else. This is accounted for by the fact that revelation can no longer reach its highest point in the sinner, viz. the personal manifestation of God to the sinner. So that it is limited to the internal operations of God in His anger, and thus to perceptions in the subject of an awful power that terrifies him. This perception can affect faith in two ways: the sinner to whom God can no longer appear personally can either attribute this inworking to some powerful, terrible creature, and for that reason direct his faith to this monstrous creature itself; or, against this terrifying power in his inmost soul he can seek protection elsewhere, and thus centre his faith upon a creature that is sympathetic to him. After he has become a sinner, man still continues to seek after a something to which to cleave with his faith; even though, in Diabolism, Satan himself became this to him.

And finally the third factor, the logical action by which that which faith receives by revelation is raised to subjective knowledge, remains also operative in the sinner, and, cases of idiocy and lunacy excepted, maintains itself in him. The sinner also is impelled to reflect in his consciousness the perceptions which by means of faith he has grasped as real, and placed in relation to an author. Though the stimulus of the logical activity generally operates less strongly in the sinner, since it is the tendency of sin to slacken all activity, yet this is by no means the case with all individuals, and so far as faith has turned into unfaith it can strongly stimulate this activity from sheer enmity against God. Even then, this logical activity does not lead to the knowledge of God, but simply to the erroneous effort to explain the potent and terrible perceptions, actually received in one’s being by the inworking of God, in such a way that God is denied by the intellect, and all such inworking is either explained away or explained from the creature. That which is written of Satan: “The devils also believe and tremble,” expresses the condition of the sinner under the perception of the inworking of God in his soul; only with this difference, that the demons, as non-somatic, cannot deceive themselves with reference to the reality of the existence of God, and can work no eclipse of His existence by the substitution of a creature, which is the very thing that man as sinner can do; at least so long as he is upon earth, and especially in connection with the restraint of sin by common grace.

In case, therefore, that revelation had not been modified on the part of God, by way of accommodation to the sinner, revelation would have worked nothing in man beyond the sense of the presence of a terrible power that makes him tremble; faith would have turned into unfaith toward God, and would have attached itself to an antipathetic or sympathetic creature; and the logical activity would have sought an explanation of that perception, but would never have achieved any knowledge of God. There would have been no Theology; and nothing could have been done on the part of the sinner to create light in this darkness. This light could only come from the side of God.

This implies, as the facts of history show, that there was in fact a modification introduced in the original plan of revelation and of the construction from this revelation of a knowledge of God. It was changed, but not by the addition of something new and foreign. This would have worked magically; it would have stood mechanically by the side of man, and would have been incapable of assimilation. That which is to be knowable to man and is to be known by man must correspond to the disposition of human nature. That which does not approach us in a human perceptible form has no existence for us, and that which is not adjusted to our subjective logos can never become the content of our knowledge. Hence revelation to the sinner must continue to exhibit that same type to which man is adjusted in his creation. This first, and in the second place there must occur such a modification in revelation as will make it correspond to the modification which took place in man. The nature of the change worked in man by sin governs the change which must follow in revelation. This also affords no room for arbitrariness or whim. The fundamental type remains what it is in original revelation, and modification in this type must entirely agree with the modification occasioned by sin. In the third place, it must not be lost from view that immediate restraint of the deadly operation of sin was necessary, in order that such a modified revelation might still be of use. If sin had once worked its absolute effect, there could be no more help against it by revelation. All they who have once received the hellish character, lie in a darkness which no ray of light can penetrate. And in that case all contact with the light of revelation but leads to sin against the Holy Ghost. All “special” revelation, as it is commonly though not altogether correctly called, postulates common grace, i.e. that act of God by which negatively He curbs the operations of Satan, death, and sin, and by which positively He creates an intermediate state for this cosmos, as well as for our human race, which is and continues to be deeply and radically sinful, but in which sin cannot work out its end (τέλος). In the covenant with Noah especially, which embraced the whole earth and all that has life upon it, this “common grace” assumed a more definite form; and human life, as we know it, is not life in paradise, nor life as it would be if sin had been allowed to work out its final effects, but life in which evil truly predominates and works its corruption, but always in such a way that what is human as such is not destroyed. The wheel of sin is certainly revolving, but the brakes are on. This is what our churches confessed when they spoke of sparks (scintillae) or remnants (rudera) which still remained of the image of God, which did not mean that they have remained of themselves, as though sin would not have extinguished those sparks or destroyed those remnants had it been able to do so; but that by “common grace” God has restrained and curbed for a time the destructive power of sin. In virtue of the Noachic covenant this restraint continues to be applied till the Parousia. Then the brake is taken from the wheel and those sparks also go out into entire darkness.

The so-called “special” revelation, therefore, does not adapt itself to the sinner, as he would have been, if sin had worked in him its destruction to the end. Such a sinner would have become satanic, and consequently have passed beyond all possibility of salvation. But special revelation is intended for the sinner who stands in common grace. This is not said in order to postulate in the sinner anything positive, that could ever produce regeneration. Even while standing in common grace the sinner is “dead in trespasses and sin,” and in regeneration is absolutely passive; only under common grace palingenesis is still possible, while it has become an entire impossibility in the angel absolutely fallen and will be impossible in man when he shall have become absolutely satanic. This refutes the representation that the sinner is a “stock or block,” and what we maintain is but the antithesis of the Reformed against the Lutheran representation, in which it was objected to on our part, that every point of connection for grace was wanting in the sinner. Re-creation may never be interpreted as an absolute creation.

With reference now to the modifications which of necessity must occur in the fundamental type of revelation, it is evident that these must take place in each of the three factors which lead to the knowledge of God.

Since God in revelation could no longer appear to the spiritual vision of man, after it had been darkened by sin, that self-manifestation had to be transferred from the mystery of soul-life to the outer world, with the incarnation as its central point, which is by no means the necessary complement of the normal human development, but was demanded only and alone by sin. From this it follows of itself that the method of revelation became inverted. If it began originally in the mystical nature of the individual, that so it might grow into a common revelation to our race, this was no longer possible after the fall. All knowledge, which as a connected whole directs itself from the external to the internal, is bound to the method of first establishing itself in the common consciousness, and from this only can it enter the consciousness of the individuals. And formally it is by these two data that special Revelation is entirely governed; while its material modification could consist in nothing else than that God should no longer reveal Himself to the sinner antipathetically in His anger, but sympathetically, i.e. in His pitying grace.

So much for revelation itself. On the other hand, the modification effected in the second factor — faith — bears an entirely different character. The faith life of the sinner is turned away from God in ἀπιστία, and attaches itself to something creaturely, in which it seeks support against God. If, now, this turning of faith into its opposite stood as a psychical phenomenon by itself, this faith could only again be made right. But such is not the case. That faith turned into its opposite took place in connection with the entire change occasioned in the psychical existence of man, and extended not only to the outward act but even to the root. Recovery of the original working of faith is, therefore, only possible by palingenesis, i.e. by bending right again, from the root up, the direction of his psychical life. Potentially, in order from the potential to become actual. In the second place this faith, which was originally directed only to the manifestation of God in the soul, was now to be directed to the manifestation of God in the flesh, and thus become faith in Christ. And in the third place this faith, which originally could turn to unfaith, was now to obtain such a character, that, once grasping God in Christ, it should hold fast forever, and so far as its fundamental tendency is concerned, would not again turn back.

It is not so easy to lay hand on the change, necessitated by sin in the entire scheme of revelation, with reference to the third factor: the logical action. Here, confusion has sprung from the almost exclusively soteriological interpretation of the knowledge of God. It was thought that Revelation was exclusively intended to save the elect; consequently Revelation could not be understood except as directed to the individual person; and this has prevented every collective view of special Revelation as a whole. In this way one becomes at once involved in the insoluble antinomy, that in order to be saved the first fallen man in paradise must already have had this Revelation in a state of sufficient completeness, and that therefore all that came afterward was really superfluous, since that which was sufficient to save Adam ought also to suffice for Isaiah, Augustine and Luther. From this point of view an historical, progressive and an ever increasingly rich revelation is inconceivable. Already in its first form it must be complete; and what is added at a later date is superfluous luxury. If meanwhile you face the fact, that this Revelation has a history, and in part still progresses, and that from this long process a broadly ramified and organic whole is born, you incur the other danger, that in this Revelation the saving germ is distinguished from that which has grown around it; in which way a retreat is suggested from the clearly conscious to the less clearly conscious; which opens the door to boundless arbitrariness; and ends in a return to mysticism, and in viewing all logical action as accidental. Which evil is still more aggravated by the consideration that the humblest-minded people should have the full offer of salvation, and that even children, who die before they have awakened to any consciousness, should not be excluded. And this obliges you to conceive the germ to be so small that even the simplest mind can grasp it, and to place the degree of consciousness so low, yea, even below zero, as not to exclude the infant that dies at its very birth. Thus you see that this exclusively soteriological interpretation of special Revelation tends directly to its destruction; for from the nature of the case nothing whatever remains of an external revelation as the means of salvation for the young dying child. Hence it is no help to you, that along with the logical action you point to divine illumination. This may be added to it, but soteriologically can never be the essential condition. And the fact is well known, that this soteriological interpretation of revelation as a revelation of salvation has of necessity led many minds to seek refuge again in the tents of mysticism; and to deem themselves accordingly authorized to try to their heart’s content their anatomical skill upon the Holy Scriptures as upon a corpus vile.

From this difficulty there is no escape, until special Revelation is no longer viewed as directed soteriologically to individual man. Revelation goes out to humanity taken as a whole. Since humanity unfolds itself historically, this Revelation also bears an historic character. Since this humanity exists organically, having a centrum of action, this Revelation also had to be organic, with a centrum of its own. And as individuals partake of this human life only in relation to humanity as a whole, so also in relation to this whole alone is Revelation of any significance to individual man. By this we do not deny the soteriological aim of special Revelation, but merely assert that salvation of the individual soul is not its rule. Its standard is and will be theological; its first aim is theodicy. Surely whosoever believes on Christ shall be saved; this is possible first and only because God has sent His Son; but the aim, and therefore also end, of all this is, to make us see how God has loved His world, and that therefore the creation of this cosmos, even in the face of sin, has been no failure. Hence Revelation taken as a whole aims at three things: (1) the actual triumph over sin, guilt and death, — a triumph which for the sake of Theology could not be limited to God’s plan or counsel, but was bound to go out into the cosmical reality; (2) the clear reflection of the manifold wisdom of God in the logical consciousness of man; and (3) such a dioramic procedure, that at every given moment of its career it offers all that is necessary for the salvation of the contemporaneous generation and of all persons in that generation. Passing by the first and the third for a moment, we consider the second alone as touching directly upon the logical action. The realization of the triumph over sin, guilt and death belongs in revelation to life itself; the salvation of individuals does not depend in principle upon the logical action, but upon the rectification of faith; and with the logical action, which is the point in hand, the main point is what we called, in the second place, the reflection of the wisdom of God in the logical consciousness of humanity. The subject of this action is not the individual person, but the general Ego of believing humanity — a limitation in which the additional term of “believing” is no contradiction, if only it is understood how wrong it is to suppose that the real stem of humanity shall be lost, and that merely an aggregate of elect individuals shall be saved. On the contrary, it should be confessed that in hell there is only an aggregate of lost individuals, who were cut off from the stem of humanity, while humanity as an organic whole is saved, and as such forms the “body of Christ.” By “believing humanity,” therefore, we understand the human race as an organic whole, so far as it lives, i.e. so far as unbelief has turned again to faith or shall turn.

In the general consciousness of humanity thus taken, the content, according to the original disposition of our creation, should be formed by individual accretion. Bud by bud unfolds, and thus only is the foliage of the bush gradually adorned with flowers. Without sin the logical action, which translates the content of faith into a clear conception, and thus into knowledge of God, would have gone out from the individuals, and from these single rills the stream would have been formed. Here, also, the way would have led from within outward. This, however, was cut off by sin. As soon as sin had entered in, revelation had to work from without inward, since sin had fast bolted the door which gave access to the manifestation of God in the soul. No sooner had sin gained an entrance than Adam discerned and perceived the presence of the Lord approaching him from without in the cool of the day. And thus the problem arises, in what way the logical action, which is to transmute the content of faith into knowledge of God, can come from without, in order now inversely, from the general consciousness, to reach the consciousness of the individual. And from the nature of the case there is no simple solution for this very complicated problem, but a very complex one, which can only be fully explained in the chapter on the principium of Theology. The lines alone can here be indicated, whose combination and crossing offer the figure for this solution.

In the first place, then, let us observe that the general subject of the essential ego of restored humanity can be no abstraction, simply because an abstraction is incapable of any logical action. Agreeably to this the Scripture teaches that this general subject is the Christ. As we commonly say that there is a thinking head in an association, group, or party, or that he who forms a school is the essentially thinking head for all his school, so in a much more rigorous sense is Christ the thinking subject of our restored humanity, in whose common consciousness “the manifold wisdom of God” is to reflect itself. The Church confesses this by honoring him as prophet, and Paul expresses it by saying that Christ is first given us as wisdom (1 Cor. i. 30). Even though it is the Holy Spirit who executes the logical action, it is Christ himself who said: “He shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you.” He is not only the light and the life and the way, but He is also the truth. And Christ can be this, because he is himself the Logos, as the Evangelist emphasizes so strongly, and because the logos in man exhibits the image of this Logos of God. If now there were no causal relation between these two, Christ would be inconceivable as subject of the new humanity. Since, however, our logos is reflectively (abbildlich) the counterpart of the divine Logos, and since this Logos is in consequence, also independently of sin, “the Light of the world,” thus supporting and animating the logical existence of man, it is in every way conceivable that this Logos should approach individual man from without, for the sake of executing for him and in his stead the logical action, for which he himself had become disabled, and thus by indoctrination in the literal sense to bring him back again to that logical action.

This was implied in the saying of the older theologians, that the Logos had revealed himself to us in a twofold way, viz. in the reality of being by incarnation, and in the world of our consciousness by what, for brevity’s sake, we will call inscripturation, without emphasizing for the present the scriptural part. There was a revelation of the Logos, they said, in the flesh, and a revelation of the Logos in the word, or, if you please, in being and thought. And because both these revelations were revelations of the one Logos, they were organically united in him, and together formed one whole. If the incarnation were nothing but a physical fact, without a logical content, this fact could not be taken up into our consciousness as far as its content is concerned. And, on the other hand, if the revelation by the word had no background in reality, and no central motive in the incarnation, it were nothing but an abstraction. Since, however, the subject of the incarnation is one with the subject of the revealed word, there is not merely harmony between the two, but organic relation; and this organic relation is most strongly evident when the incarnate Logos utters even as man the oracles of God. To be sure the Logos is not bound to the organ of his own human nature for revelation by the word; as organic head of the new humanity he can also speak through the organ of other human persons; so Peter affirms of the prophets (1 Pet. i. 11, what the spirit of Christ which was in them did signify) and Jesus himself declares of the apostles; yet the coincidence of the two lines, that of the incarnation (ἐνσάρκωσις) and of the words (λαλία), in Christ’s own manifestation, lends an entirely unique majesty to his word, which does not appear to this extent either before or after him.

Thus, if it is true of sinless humanity that the “knowledge of God ” could gradually ripen in individual persons and from the few enter into the general human consciousness, it is the opposite of this that takes place with sinful, and therefore to be restored, humanity. Christ, as the Head of the Body, is the general subject of restored humanity; and the knowledge of God is not only complete in him, but from him it descends to individual believers. It is the same difference that is found in the domain of ethics between the dispensations of paradise and Golgotha. In paradise ethical life is first personal, and then common, and is intended to progress toward perfection. In Christ, on the other hand, holiness is centrally given for his entire mystical body, from him to communicate itself to his members; while in Christ also an ethical perfection is offered to us which is no more to be acquired, but is now finished. And the same is true of the knowledge of God. This also is first in Christ as our common head and centrum, and descends from him to individual believers (“Neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.” Matt. xi. 27); and again this knowledge of God in Christ is perfect (“As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father.” John x. 15). Our older theologians expressed this entirely exceptional position of Christ as our prophet by attributing to him the Theologia Unionis, i.e. that “knowledge of God ” which resulted from what he himself described by saying: I and the Father are one. The Christological explanation of this is not in order here, but in Dogmatics. But to show the significance of this fact to special revelation, we here indicate these three points: (1) that the theologia unionis is not taken as an adequate divine self-knowledge, but always as a human knowledge of God, i.e. a knowledge as complete as the measure of human capacity will allow, but nevertheless ever bound to this measure. Our eye can only take in light to a limited degree of intensity; stronger light does not lighten us, but blinds our eye, and that degree of light only which is adjusted to our eye gives us entire clearness. In the same way a knowledge of God which exceeds our human limitations would throw no light into our darkness, but cause us to see still less. (2) Let it be observed that this knowledge of God as the fruit of Christ’s union with the Father was not the result of a dialectical analysis, but was intuitive, and therefore was not acceptable “to the wise and the learned,” but intelligible to babes. It is not said, therefore, that Christ is our knowledge (γνῶσις), much less that he is our understanding (σύνεσις), but that he is our wisdom (σοφία). Christ does not argue, he declares; he does not demonstrate, he shows and illustrates; he does not analyze, but with enrapturing symbolism unveils the truth. The statement that Christ “increased in wisdom ” cannot detain us here; in this instance we merely deal with Christ after his baptism, when the “hear him ” had been proclaimed of him. And the objection that Christ consulted the Holy Scriptures of Israel has no weight with those who confess, with the apostle Peter, that Christ is also the subject of prophecy. But in whatever way this may be taken, the result remains the same. The Son, who was in the bosom of the Father, has declared Him unto us, and this implies what we postulated: (1) that the knowledge of God of restored humanity was first in its general subject, i.e. in Christ; and (2) that in this general subject it was perfect.

If this is the beginning of the logical action by which regenerated humanity turns into knowledge the content of revelation received by faith, it is at once evident that this does not end the logical action. First, there is still wanting the logical action of the individual, by which he comes to a personal knowledge of God; and, in the second place, the central and complete knowledge of God, which the whole body of Christ possesses in Him who has been given it of God for wisdom, must be radiated from all the combining articulations of regenerated humanity, and must become “understanding ” in its dialectical consciousness.

With reference to the first it is necessary that the organ or instrument for this logical action in the sinner shall regain the power which it has lost by sin. Although we are not deprived by sin of the power of thought, and though our law of thought is not broken, the pivot of our thought has become displaced, and thereby our activity of thought, applied to divine things, has a wrong effect. This is restored by divine illumination, which does not imply that he who has thus been enlightened is to think more acutely. Greater or lesser acuteness of thought depends upon personal conditions which are entirely different. Paul is a more acute thinker than James, and in acuteness of thought Aristotle and Kant excel by far the majority of Christians. If I put a sharp knife in a mowing-machine, but place it too high, so that it cannot touch the grass, all action of the machine is in vain; and with a duller knife, which touches the grass, I will produce ten times as much effect. And such is the case here. As long as the divine illumination remains wanting, the logical instrument in the sinner is out of relation to divine things. It does not touch them, and therefore its action is in vain. The instrument of the logical action is not repaired mechanically; this postulates the palingenesis of our person, which is only effected by the Holy Spirit in the regenerate. When, however, this divine illumination has once become actual, at least in its beginnings, our consciousness is able to appropriate to itself logically also the content taken up by faith. Not in the sense that every believer is able to think out in a clear way the entire content of revelation. This is only done by all believers together. After these many centuries, this task is still by no means completed. Personally this enlightening simply means that, according to the peculiarities of his person, according to his needs and the measure of his gifts, every believer understands everything that is necessary for confession. Under the influence of divine illumination, this logical action therefore does not direct itself to the entire field of revelation, but to its central content, while the knowledge which extends itself also to a part at least of the periphery is only the possession of a very few. Moreover, this logical action does by no means effect a clear understanding with all, but gives each the insight suited to the peculiar susceptibility of his person, which is entirely different with a humble day-laborer from what it is with the scholar. But as a result so much knowledge of God in each case is obtained as corresponds to the clearness of each consciousness.

Next to this individual insight into the content of revelation, no less attention should be paid to the logical action which brings the content of revelation to clearness in that general understanding, which in turn serves and enriches personal knowledge. The foundation for this is laid by apostolic revelation, which affords us a more varied and distinguishing look into the wisdom of Christ. This does not imply that the apostles offered us anything that falls under the conception of scientific Theology. He who makes this assertion totally underestimates their authority. But in their writings the lines are indicated along which the logical activity of the so-called scientific Theology must conduct itself through all ages. Thus they indicate what the content of revelation is, as well as the relation in which this content as a whole stands to the past, to the antithetical powers, and to personal faith and practice. This apostolic knowledge is, therefore, the complement of revelation itself, since this revelation would be incomplete if it did not itself produce the roots from which the understanding must develop itself. This development can only follow when it finds its point of departure in revelation itself. Even then this development is not left to abstract and independent thought, but remains dependent upon the inworking and guidance of the Holy Spirit. The human logos, as weakened by sin, can certainly deal with the content of this revelation, as has been the case in all ages; but as soon as this movement has reached out after something more than a mere superficiality, it has become at once antithetical, has placed itself in opposition to revelation, and has sought, and still seeks, logically to destroy it. Hence the development we referred to can only come from that circle in which the divine illumination operates, and the logical action of the circle outside of this can only serve to stimulate the action of those who have been enlightened and to make them careful of mistakes. Since in the circle of the “enlightened ” the Holy Spirit operates not merely in individuals, but also in groups and in the whole circle, it is actually the Holy Spirit who, as “the teacher of the Church,” interprets the content of revelation, and so enriches and purifies the knowledge of God; not, however, by the suppression of logical action, but by stimulating and by employing it as its instrument. The necessary outcome of this is that this working is not perfect; that it propels itself by all sorts of vibrations between truth and error; that it only gradually obtains more firmness, and finally results in the dogma of the Church.

But even this does not end the task of the logical action. The understanding of Revelation must be taken up into the general understanding, from which of itself the need arises of giving an organic place in the unit of our knowledge to that knowledge of God lodged in the regenerate, and which under the guidance of the Holy Spirit the Church, in deadly conflict, has formulated into dogma. Our knowledge of the cosmos and of revelation must not merely be brought into practical harmony for the sake of the life of faith, but in the human consciousness as such it must also become an organic whole, and thus Theology rise as a science: first, in the scholastic sense, so long as it serves no other purpose than the justification of the content of Theology at the tribunal of thought; after that, polyhistorically, when it swarms upon every sort of flower-bed that stands in less or more relation to Theology; and finally, in the organic sense, when it places its subjective action, as well as its given object, in their relation to our world of thought and the world of other objects. Thus only can that which is at first potential knowledge unfold itself to a complete and actual science.

But in this process, from start to finish, it is ever and always Theology in its proper sense, i.e. the knowledge of God divinely given, that is taken up into our consciousness, and is reflected from our consciousness (personal as well as general). Hence nothing is significant to Theology, because nothing belongs to it organically, but that which interprets this “knowledge of God ” in its origin, content, significance, working and tendency.

By way of recapitulation, therefore, we arrive at what was stated in our fourth proposition, viz. that ectypal Theology, as revealed by God Himself, is the same in all its stages; and that special revelation, i.e. revelation to the sinner, is only modified to the extent that now it can also be known what God is willing to be to the sinner. That, further, this development of revelation goes hand in hand with an accommodation to the lost condition of the sinner, so that now revelation does not work from within outward, but makes its approach from the outer world to the inner life of man, and that the logical action goes out from the central ego of Christ, and thus only benefits the individual subject in the personal believer. And that finally, for the sake of the assimilation of this knowledge of God by the sinner, his unbelief must be changed to a faith in Christ, which is only possible through, at least a potential, palingenesis of his whole being.

And thus we reach the point which renders the forming of the conception of Theology as science, possible, and which will be considered in the following section.