§ 72. Universality of this Principium

One who, himself of a sound mind, should have to live on some isolated island among insane people, would run a great risk of becoming himself insane; and in such a condition a very strong mind only could maintain the reality of its consciousness. Just because we do not exist atomically, but are bound together with others organically, also in our consciousness, in order to remain firm our own sense cannot afford to lose the support of a similar sense in others. The same applies to the special principium. With this also, as a rule, the communion in our own consciousness can be strong and permanent only when this communion finds a support in the similar conviction of others. This rule, however, does not always hold. As one sane person, because of a strong mind, might be able in entire isolation to maintain his self-consciousness, it is possible for one person to experience the inworking of the special principium, and live by it, even though in his entire surroundings there should operate nothing but the natural principium. At first, indeed, this had to be so, in order that the working of this special principium might become manifest. It could not begin its work except in single persons. As a rule those individuals were men of strong minds, and to support their isolated faith the Lord gave them signs, mostly in the material world, which kept them from falling away from the power which had taken hold of them. Heroism of spirit is here called into play. When Christ, forsaken of all, even of His disciples, battled alone in Gethsemane, this struggle in loneliness became so fearful, that angels came to break His isolation, in order to support Him. So long, then, as revelation is still in process of completion, we see again and again the manifestation of extraordinary powers, by which the maintenance of faith is rendered possible, and these signs only disappear when Revelation has reached its completion, and the special principium finds a circle, in which faith can assume such a communal character, that the conviction of one supports that of the other.

If thus, like the natural principium, the working of the special principium requires a broad circle in which to exert itself organically, this circle becomes still more indispensable when a scientific account is given of what this special principium is and offers. Science demands universality. Not in the sense, of course, that nothing is established scientifically in the natural world until every individual has agreed to it, but in the sense that all men of sound understanding can readily be brought to perceive the truth of it. The same applies to the special principium. The law of universality must prevail here also, and must always be well understood by those who live by this principium. These only are taken into account, just as in natural science we reckon with those alone who are men of sound sense, i.e. who live by the natural principium. All these, then, must be able, if they follow your demonstration, to perceive the correctness of it. This accounts for the fact that in later ages only the question arose of a science of theology. Before that time there was theology as knowledge of God; even measurably in a dogmatic sense; but as yet no theological science. This could only originate when the Revelation was completed, and liberated from the restrictions peculiar to Israel. Then there arose that universal circle among all nations, that circle of confessors in their general human character, who live by this special principium.

This communal character, which, along with every other principium, is common to the special principium, received no sufficient recognition in the conflict of the Reformation. From our side, the line of personal faith was ever drawn too tightly; while Rome, from her side, substituted the institutional Church too largely for the organic communion. Each of the two parties defended thereby an element of truth, but it was done by both in an insufficient and one-sided manner. Very properly did our Reformers maintain the personal character of faith, which does not reach its full unfolding, until it places our inner life in direct communion with the Eternal Being; but they lost sight of the fact that this is the fullest development of the faith, not its beginning, and that in its maturity it cannot flourish as it should, except in the communion of saints. Rome, on the other hand, defended very rightly the common feature, which marks faith, but committed a double mistake, — first, that it did not allow the personal character of faith to assert itself, and made it amount to nothing more than communion with God through the intermediation of the Church, and secondly, that it substituted the ecclesiastical institution for organic communion. This might, perhaps, have been more clearly seen if in their dogmatic exposition our Reformers had added, at once, to their distinction between the Church as a visible body and at the same time invisible, the more careful distinction between the visible Church as composed of believers (ecclesia visibilis in fidelibus) and the visible church as an institution (ecclesia visibilis in instituto). They did this, indeed, in their ecclesiastical law; observing thereby that the Church of Christ may be visible in a city or village, because of the believers who live there, even while no Church organization is established by these believers, and that the ecclesia instituta only originates by this organization. But in their dogmatics they referred almost exclusively to the general antithesis between visible and invisible, and thereby could not fail to convey the impression, that by visible Church they merely understood the Church as an institution. Since Rome outdid this, and wholly identified the visible Church with the Church as an institution, the problem could not be solved; since the Church as an institution was certainly subjected to the rule of the Word of God; and therefore our Reformers observed correctly, that the institute must borrow its guarantee from the Scripture, and not the Scripture its proof from the institute. Transfer this difference to the life of the world, and it will at once be understood. In society at large the natural principium is in force and the institute is the government, which, to be sure, is in the community, but is ever sharply distinguished from it. Can the assertion now be made that the truth of this natural principium is to be determined by the State? Of course not; simply because the State, so far as it is constituted by man, is an outcome of the natural principium. Undoubtedly, therefore, this natural principium can support the State, but not lean upon the State. On the other hand, by general conceptions, and public opinion derived from these, this natural principium finds its point of support in human society. And this is the case here. The Church is to the special principium what the State is to the natural principium. The Church as an institute, founded by man, is built after the rule of the special principium, as this speaks to us from the Holy Scripture. Hence the churchly institute can borrow support from the special principium, but not the special principium from the churchly institute. But what is true on the other hand — and this is the position which we defend — is, that faith in this special principium is supported and maintained by the churchly community, i.e. by the non-instituted but organically present communion mutual among believers.

It is unhistorical, therefore, to imagine that every person, taking the Bible in hand from his own impulse, should formulate the truth from it for himself. This is simply absurd, for actual experience shows that one either grows up in, or in later life enters, a circle in which confessions of the truth already exist; and that, in vital communion with this circle, clearness is reached in his consciousness of what was potentially given in regeneration, but which only from this communion can draw the life-sap needed for its development. As one tree of the forest protects another against the violence of the storm, so in the communion of saints does one protect the other against the storm-wind of doubt.

This fellowship of believers, carefully distinguished from instituted Churches, exhibits its universal human character in the fact that it continues its life in successive generations and extends itself to all peoples and nations. So far as the first is concerned, it has a history back of it which extends across many centuries, and by its confession it ever preserves communion with the past. Not merely in the sense in which a nation holds its ancestors in sacred memory, for in national life the dead are gone. He who dies loses his nationality, and belongs no more to his people. This fellowship of believers, on the other hand, knows that its departed ancestors still live and always stand in organic connection with it. Moreover, while a people changes its public opinion from age to age, in this ecclesiastical fellowship the same world of thought remains constant for all time. Hence the tie to the special principium is not maintained by those alone who are now alive with us and subscribe to the same confession as ourselves, but much more by those millions upon millions who now rejoice before the throne. And so far as the second is concerned, the outcome shows that the Christian religion, originating in Asia, passed over from the Semitic to the Indo-Germanic race, presently conquered the Northern Coast of Africa and the entire south of Europe, and never allowed itself to be nationalized. Christ had humanized his confession, by breaking down every partition wall (μεσότοιχον); and this universal human character stands in immediate connection with the possession of a special principium of knowledge. That which is national may give tradition, but cannot provide a special principium for our consciousness. It is seen, therefore, that every effort, applied outside of this principium, has merely led to national forms of religion; and even Buddhism — which, by the chameleon character of its pantheism, lent itself to stealthy invasions among many nations — remains in principle, nevertheless, an Indian world of thought. Islam alone — and this is worthy of notice — still exhibits, to a certain extent, an œcumenic character, which is attributable to the fact that Mohammedanism is grafted upon the special principium, such as it flourished, thanks to the Scripture, in the Christian life-circle. Even thus Islam has never taken root in the finer branches of the human tree. Islam is and remains Arabic, and outside of Arabia has gained an entrance only among those nations, which either have taken no part in the general human development, or have stood at a much lower level. Even the accession of Persia to Islam is attended with the disappearance of this nation, once so great, from the world stage.

If thus we leave out of account for a moment the working of this special principium before Golgotha, we face the fact that for almost twenty centuries a separate human life has developed itself in our human race; principally in the nobler branches of the human tree and among the more finely organized nations; and that the development of this separate life has not taken place with isolated nations such as China and India, but even now in five parts of the world, and chiefly in that current of our human life which has carried the hegemony, and caused the development of our human race to ascend to its present heights. We see that this separate life has been characterized everywhere by the action, in addition to that of the natural principium, of another principium of knowledge, and that wherever the Christian religion has withdrawn, as in West-Asia and North-Africa, all human life has sunk back again to a much lower level. We see that in this broad life-circle, which has extended itself across many ages and among many people, there has arisen a special world of thought; modified universal conceptions have begun to prevail; and in this genuinely human circle the human consciousness has assumed an entirely peculiar form. In this way have originated that universal life and that universal thought, which have certainly clashed with the other circle, that rejected the special principium, but which have possessed, nevertheless, entirely sufficient consistency to invite and to render possible scientific construction upon the foundation of that principle which, in this circle, is universal. It will not do, therefore, to represent this special principium as an idiosyncrasy of a few enthusiasts. The melancholy decline of all mystic fanaticism shows what the profound difference is between the parasite, that springs from fanatic imagination, and the cedar, that has struck its roots in the fertile soil of this real principle. This special principium is as universally human as the natural principium, with this difference only, that it is not given to each individual, but is organically grafted upon the tree of humanity. The life-circle, indeed, which finds its centrum in Christ as the bearer of the new life-principle, is not a branch of our race that is set apart; but this body of Christ is the real trunk of our human race, and what is not incorporated into this body, falls away from that trunk as a useless branch. He is, and remains, the second Adam.

Moreover, the peoples and nations that have stood or still stand outside of this life-circle, involuntarily bear witness to the insufficiency of the natural principium in its present working. When in Deut. xviii. inspiration is announced by God as the peculiar working of the special principium, He says: “I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee; and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.” An important thought, however, precedes the announcement of this rich inspiration, which in all its fullness is given in Christ as “Prophet.” In the tenth verse, reference is made to divination and necromancy, which were common among the nations, and toward which Israel betrayed strong tendencies; and now they are told that the satisfaction of the need which spoke in this desire was not to be sought in the way of this enchantment, but that God alone is able to grant them the aspirations of their hearts. This impulse after necromancy, taken in its deepest significance, can be no other than the desire to find, in addition to the natural principium, another principium of knowledge for all those profound questions of life upon which the natural principium can cast no light. From this it appears, that the insufficiency of the natural principium declares itself in the universal human sense, so long as this still expresses itself in an unconstrained and natural way. The appearance, therefore, of another principium of knowledge in the Christian religion does not enter the present state of things as something foreign, but fits on it as a new spire upon a steeple, the former spire of which has fallen into ruin. We grant that afterwards, in philosophy, the natural principium has tried to show the superfluousness of such an auxiliary-principium. However, we must not fail to observe that these efforts of the philosophic spirit, so long as they were religiously colored, never occasioned in the religious world anything but endless confusion of speech; that they have never resulted in the founding of a religious life-circle of universal significance; and that these systems, drawn from the natural principium, have more and more abandoned eternal concerns in order in materialism to deny their existence, or in agnosticism to postulate the special principium. It is noteworthy, therefore, that since the apostasy, which began in the latter part of the last century, a broad life-circle has been formed in Europe and America, which has abandoned the special principium, in order, in Spiritualism, to revive the ancient effort after necromancy. This Spiritualism now counts its followers by the millions, and its main desire is to obtain an answer to the questions which force themselves upon our human mind, in another way than that which comes from the natural principium. While in other circles, where this Spiritualism has gained no entrance, the effort is certainly manifest, to obtain knowledge from the mysticism of the emotions, of what “common sense” has left uncertain. Every philosophical tendency, which, for the sake of defending itself against intellectualism, seeks another source of knowledge, pleads at heart for the necessity of a special principium. Pure intellectualists alone maintain to this day the sufficiency of the principium of rational knowledge; and this is even in opposition to Kant, who, in his “praktische Vernunft,” placed a second something dualistically over against the “reine Vernunft.” But the barrenness of such intellectualism is sufficiently evident.

We refuse, therefore, to allow the charge, that the special principium, as an invention of fanaticism, floats like a drop of oil upon the waters of our human life, and we maintain, on the contrary, that the need of such an auxiliary principium is universally human; that in its organic working this principium bears an universally human character; and that in the final result towards which it directs itself, it has an universally human significance.

§ 73. This Principium and the Holy Scripture

That the sphere of the special principium is wider than the compass of the Holy Scripture, needs no separate demonstration. Even though you firmly maintain that here you deal with a principium of knowing, it is here as impossible as elsewhere to ignore the principium of being (essendi). It is for this reason that in special revelation also fact and word run parallel and stand in connection with each other. There is not simply an inspiration that kindles light in our consciousness, but there is also a manifestation in miracles which operates upon the reality of being; and both flow naturally from that same principium in God, by which He works re-creatively in His deranged creation. The representation as though a way of life could have been disclosed for us by a book descended from heaven or by a Bible dictated from heaven, rests upon an intellectualistic abstraction, which interprets altogether incorrectly the relation between being and thought, between fact and word. If it is entirely true, that God created by speaking, so that the creatural being originated by the word, it must not be forgotten that this word went out from Him who carries the τὸ esse in Himself. In the creation therefore there is no question of an abstract word, but of a word that carries in itself the full reality of life; and that the Scripture-word does not meet this requirement, appears from the fact, that without concomitants it is inert, even as the most glittering diamond without inshining light and admiring eyes differs in no particular from a dull piece of carbon. Protest therefore has ever been entered from the side of the Reformed against Luther’s effort to place Word and Sacrament on a line, as though an active power lay concealed in the Scripture as such. Even though Luther’s representation of an “eingepredigter” Christ allows defence to a certain extent, the Bible, as book, may never be accredited with a kind of sacramental power. By itself the Bible is nothing but a carrier and vehicle, or, if you please, the instrument prepared by God, by which to attain His spiritual purpose, but always through the ever-present working of the Holy Spirit.

If thus we take the sphere of action which belongs to this special principium in its entire compass, we find that it embraces everything that has taken place from the side of God, either immediately or mediately, and that has not proceeded from the natural principium, i.e. the whole plan of redemption; everything that has tended to realize this plan; all the special leadings, signs, and wonders; and in this connection the entire inspiration and the formation of the Scripture; and also all palingenesis, all illumination, all revelation of the Church of Christ; while from this same principium there shall yet come forth the palingenesis of heaven and earth, until the kingdom of glory is begun. The Bible, therefore, instead of being identical with this principium so far as its activity is concerned, is itself a product of this activity. Neither can it be said, that the Bible at least is identical with the fruit of the principium of knowledge, as such, for this also invites two objections: First, that many histories are contained in the Bible, so that it resembles in nothing a text- or law-book; and secondly, that this principium of knowing (cognoscendi) has produced by no means the Scripture only, but from it proceeds even now the working of the Holy Ghost, which maintains, applies and vitalizes the knowledge of God, partly by illumination in the consciousness of individuals, and partly by the work of the sacred ministry.

To understand the just relation between this special principium in God and the Holy Scripture, a more accurate definition is demanded, and this is only obtained by a double distinction. First, by the distinction between that which concerns our race as an organic unit and the knowledge of God in the single individual; and secondly, by the distinction between the content of the material of our knowledge and the way in which our knowledge takes this material up into itself. Both these distinctions demand a brief explanation. The Romish dogmaticians very properly observed, that the Holy Scripture could not be the instrument of salvation in the absolute sense, for the reason that many centuries elapsed before it was completed, and that there were nevertheless not a few who in the meantime, and without Scripture, were saved. This admits no rejoinder. It is simply true. But this objection loses its force at once, when we consider the great mystery. In Rom. xvi. 25; in Ephes. i. 9, iii. 9; Col. i. 26; 1 Tim. iii. 9; Tit. i. 2; and 1 Pet. i. 20, this mystery is referred to again and again as the key which unlocks for us insight into the course of revelation. This involves no secondary point, but a main point, and this main point, as we read in Col. i. 26, amounts to this: that there is the “mystery which hath been hid from all ages and generations,” which eighteen centuries ago has been revealed to the saints of God, “to whom God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” By this falls away every conception as though revelation after the fall had progressed aphoristically or atomistically; and we get the conception of a revelation which goes through its definite stages, and thus moves along towards its final goal; which goal has been reached only when the whole earth unlocks itself for the reception of this revelation, and this directs itself, not to single persons, nor yet to a single nation, but to our human race as a whole. If thus lesser or greater parts of the Holy Scripture, and finally even the whole Old Testament, may have rendered provisional service in Israel, the Holy Scripture as such obtains its full significance only when special grace directs itself to our race as an organic whole and causes the Catholic Church to appear in humanity. The holy apostle Paul expresses this most pertinently, when of the Old Testament he declares in Rom. xv. 4, “For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning”; a thought which he repeats in 1 Cor. ix. 10 and in 1 Cor. x. 11, and in the latter especially emphasizes very strongly. There he does not only say that “all these things are written for our admonition,” but even prefaces this by saying that all these things happened unto Israel, “by way of example.” Entirely apart therefore from the question, how God saved individual persons in the times when the revelation had not yet been placed in the centrum of our human race, the fact must be held fast, that the Holy Scripture was intended to discharge its full task from that moment only when our race, taken as a whole, in its heart and centre, was apprehended with a view to salvation. Only when the saving hand was extended to the cosmos, and God “so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,” had the moment come, when the Holy Scripture also would attain its entirely exceptional significance. All that lies back of this is merely preparation, and now for the first time, when in Christ the divine esse has been brought into our race, in the Holy Scripture also the divine word goes out not to one nation, but to all nations, and to those nations as an organic unity, as cosmos. All true understanding of the significance of the Holy Scripture is lost, therefore, when this important incision in the course of revelation is lost from view. He who does not understand, that even as the Christ, the Holy Scripture also is given to the world, cannot tolerate it. It is the one Logos which in Christ by incarnation, and in the Scripture by inscripturation goes out to humanity at large, as it is being saved by God and shall hereafter shine in glory. If thus the question is put what goes out to our human race as such from the special principium as matter of Divine knowledge, the answer reads: The Scripture and nothing but the Scripture; and in this sense the Scripture is identical in its working with the principium.

The second distinction, referred to above, between the material of the knowledge of God which is imparted to us and the way in which that material becomes our own, is no less important. After the unveiling of the mystery, indicated by the former distinction, it lies in the nature of the case that the individual obtains no part in this salvation except as member of the organic whole. Noah, Moses and Samuel received separate revelations, simply because humanity as such did not yet possess its revelation. But when once humanity as a whole had received its revelation, and this was completed, the need for all separate revelation fell away; and all mysticism, which even after this still pretends to receive separate personal revelation, frustrates thereby the organic ministration of the Lord. He who has lived, lives, or shall live, after our race in its unity has received its Christ and its Scripture, has no other way at his disposal, by which to come to the knowledge of God, except in union with this central revelation; and in so far as the life-stream of the Christ propels itself in the Church, and the Scripture is borne by her as “the pillar and ground of the truth,” the Church of Christ (provided it be not taken as institute) is the only means of salvation. There is no salvation outside of her. But however firmly the organic relation both of our race and of revelation must be maintained, it is not asserted that the Holy Scripture by itself is enough for the individual. This is not the case at all, and he who thinks that the Holy Spirit really gave the Scripture, but now leaves its appropriation to our natural reason, is wofully mistaken. On the contrary, the Holy Spirit, who gave the Scriptures, is Himself the perpetual author (auctor perpetuus) of all appropriation of their contents by and of all application to the individual. It is the Holy Spirit who, by illumination, enables the human consciousness to take up into itself the substance of the Scripture; in the course of ages leads our human consciousness to ever richer insights into its content; and who, while this process continues, imparts to the elect of God, as they reach the years of discretion, that personal application of the Word, which, after the Divine counsel, is both intended and indispensable for them. Only, however many-sided and incisive this constant working of the Holy Spirit may be, it brings no new content (and herein lies the nerve of this second distinction), no increased supply of material, no enlargement of the substance of the knowledge of God. A believer of the nineteenth century knows much more than a believer of the tenth or third century could know, but that additional knowledge is ever dug from the selfsame gold mine; and that former generations stood behind in wealth of knowledge, can only be explained by the fact, that in those times the working of the mine was not so far advanced. This, of course, does not imply that the former generations fell short in knowledge of God, but simply, that the development of the human consciousness in those times did not make such demands on our knowledge of God. A child can be equally rich in his God as the full-grown man, but because the consciousness of the adult is more richly unfolded, he holds the knowledge of God likewise in a more richly unfolded form. With the fuller development of the consciousness of humanity the increase of insight into the contents of the Scriptures keeps equal step. But however far this increase of knowledge may proceed in the future, it will never be able to draw its material from any other source than from the Holy Scripture. And it is for this reason, that for the several nations also, and for the individuals among these nations, the rule remains valid that the substance of the knowledge of God, which comes to us from the special principium, is identical with the Holy Scripture.

This would not be so if the Holy Scripture were merely a collection of inspired utterances concerning the Being of God, His attributes, His will and counsel of grace. Then, indeed, by the side of the realm of the Scripture there would also lie the realm of facts, both of the leadings of the Lord and of His miracles, and the knowledge of these facts could only come to us by tradition. But this is not the character of the Holy Scripture; and it is to be deplored that the Methodistic tendency in particular has degraded it so much to such a volume of inspired utterances. The Holy Scripture offers us a photograph of the entire sphere of life, in which the action of God from the special principium has appeared, with His activity out of the natural principium as its natural and indispensable background. The logical revelation, which directs itself immediately to our consciousness, does not stand independently by the side of this photograph, neither is it woven through it, but belongs to it, and constitutes a part of it. More than or anything else than this photograph could not be offered us, simply because facts that lie in the past cannot be alive except in the memory or in the imagination. For though there is also a real after-effect of past events in the actual conditions in which we live, which is, moreover, the no less real activity which uninterruptedly goes forth from Christ out of heaven upon His Church, yet the presentation of this double, real activity and correct insight into it is possible only by a thorough study of the photograph offered us in the Holy Scripture. Not as though we would deny that the rich past, which lies back of the completion of the Holy Scriptures, does contain an innumerable multitude of facts which you do not find in this photograph, but for this the answer from John xx. 30 is ever conclusive: that many other signs therefore did Jesus, but these are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in His name. Not a hundredth part of course is told us of what happened or was spoken in former times, but here also there was light and shadow, there was perspective, and even as you take the fruit from the tree, but not the leaves which presently wither, so also the ripened fruit of Revelation is offered us in the Holy Scripture, while all that aided that fruit to ripen has disappeared in the shade and sunk away in forgetfulness. This is incomprehensible to him who thinks that the Scripture originated by way of accident, but agrees entirely with the nature of the case for him who believes that the origin of the Scripture was determined and foreseen in the counsel of God, and that the distinction between the fruit that was to be plucked and the leaf that was to wither was given in the facts themselves in keeping with this purpose of the Holy Scripture. Hence the reason that we reject tradition, in which Rome seeks a complement for the Holy Scripture, is not because we deny that there is an abundance of material for a very interesting tradition, nor yet alone because we foster a just doubt concerning the reliability of this tradition, but rather because such a complement by tradition is antagonistic to the entire conception of the Scripture. In that case the Holy Scripture would attain no higher value than of being itself a part of tradition. Then it no longer would form a completed whole, an organic unity. Suppose that after a while letters were to be found of Thomas or of Philip, or a gospel according to Andrew, you would be bound to let these parts be added to your Bible. The Bible would then become an incomplete, contingent fragment of a whole, and would need to postulate its complement from elsewhere; and so the theologic, and therefore the organic and teleologic, view of the Holy Scripture would pass away in the historic-accidental. Since this view is in direct conflict with the view given concerning the Old Testament in Rom. xv. 4, etc., upon Scriptural ground this preposterous view of the Holy Scripture may not be tolerated for a single moment, but the confession must be maintained that so far as the substance of the knowledge of God is concerned, which is given to humanity as such, the Holy Bible itself is the proximate and sole cause (principium proximum et unicum) for our knowledge of God.

§ 74. The Special Principium and the Written Word

The indispensableness of the Holy Scripture, therefore, rests: (1) upon the necessity that a special principium should be actively introduced, inasmuch as the working of the natural principium is weakened or broken; and (2) upon the necessity that this special principium should not direct itself atomistically to the individual, but organically to the human race. From these two considerations it follows that an auxiliary-principium is needed, and that a revelation must be given to humanity as such (i.e. τῷ κόσμῳ); but it does not follow directly from this that “this special Word of God to the world” should assume the form of the written word. It is necessary, therefore, that we inquire into the peculiar character of the written word, and ask ourselves why the special Revelation of God to the world needed this form.

To this we reply with emphasis, that in comparison with the spoken word the written word is entitled to claim the four characteristics of durability, catholicity, fixedness and purity, — four attributes, the first two of which impart something of the Divine stamp to our human word, and the last two of which form a corrective against the imperfection of our sinful condition.

Writing by itself is nothing but an auxiliary. If the power of our memory were not limited, and if our capacity for communication were universal, the need of writing would never have been known. The sense of shortness of memory and our limited ability of communicating our thoughts personally, strengthened by the need of guarding that which has been spoken or agreed upon from being misrepresented, has, through a series of gradations, called into life, first, pictographic writing, then idiographic writing, then phonographic writing, after that syllabic writing, and finally, alphabetic writing. Hence writing bears almost entirely a conventional and arbitrary character. Only as pure idiographs did it escape from the conventional, and then only upon the condition of being delineation instead of writing. Writing, in the real sense of the word, tries to photograph the somatic part of our human language, in order that by seeing these photographed signs one person may understand psychically what has gone on psychically in another person, or has gone out from his lips. Writing tries to do the same thing that the phonograph does, but by attaching a meaning, not to sound, but to root-forms. When we have our picture taken, it is our own face that, with the aid of the light, draws its counterfeit upon the collodion plate. If, now, it were possible for our human voice to delineate itself immediately in all its inflexions upon paper, we should have absolute and organic writing. Since, however, thus far this is not possible, we must content ourselves with conventional writing, which is not produced by the voice itself, but by our thinking mind. It is our thinking mind which watches the sound and the inflexion of the voice in connection with the movement of the visible organs of speech, and now indicates either the voice-action itself or the content of that voice-action, by signs, in such a way that when another person sees these signs he is able to reproduce that same inflexion of voice and impart to it the same content. The question whether, with a sinless development, writing would have run the same course cannot possibly be answered; but it is evident that then also something similar would have taken its place. For then also memory would have been limited in its power, and the need of communication would have originated with the sense of distance. Only for the realm of glory the question can arise whether, in that exalted state of the life of our spirits, and with its finer organisms, all such auxiliaries will not fall away. By itself, therefore, it cannot be said that writing is a need which has only come as a consequence of sin; even though it is certain, as will appear from the last two of the four characteristics mentioned above, that the need of writing has been intensified in every way by sin.

With reference to the first of these characteristics, it is readily seen, that writing first of all relieves the spoken word of its transitoriness. “The word that is heard passes away, the letter that is written remains.” (Verba volant, littera scripta manet.) Our voice creates words, but lacks the ability to hold them fast. One word drives the other on. The spoken word, therefore, bears the character of the transitory and the changeable, which are the marks of our mortality. It comes in order to go, and lacks the ability to maintain itself. It is a πάντα ῥεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει (everything flows and nothing remains) in the most mournful sense. And even when, by the phonograph, it is secured that the flowing word congeals and is presently liquefied, it gives us at most a repetition of what was spoken or sung, and no more. But this very imperfection is met by the mighty invention of human writing. By writing, in its present state of perfection, the word or thought spoken is lifted above transitoriness. It is taken out of the stream of time and cast upon the shore, there to take on a stable form, and after many ages to do the same service still which it performed immediately upon its first appearing. The correspondence, which is discovered by a fellah in a forgotten nook of Egypt and presents us with the interchange of thought between the then Eastern princes and the court of Egypt, speaks now as accurately as three thousand years ago; and if, after the fall into sin, the bitter emotions of his soul could have been written down by Adam, our hearts could sympathize to the last minutiæ with what went on in Adam so many thousand years ago. Writing, indeed, is human thought set free from the process of time. By writing, human thought approaches the eternal, the enduring, and, to a certain extent, impresses upon itself a Divine stamp. It is noteworthy, therefore, how in the Holy Scripture the durability and permanence of the thoughts of God are expressed by the figure of the Book of Life, the Book of the Seven Seals, etc. Nor is this all. Not only, thanks to writing, does human thought approach in a measure the eternal, but also by writing only, on the other hand, does it meet the demand raised by the unity of our human race. The whole human race does not live upon the earth at once. It appears on earth in a succession of generations, one of which comes and the other passes away. If the means, therefore, are wanting to perpetuate the thought of one generation for the others, then thinking becomes aphoristic, and the unity of the human consciousness in our whole race is not established. Tradition might lend some aid so long as those thoughts are few and bear a little-complicated character, and the restricted form of poetry might offer assistance so long as those thoughts preferred the form of images; but in the course of centuries no question of unity for our human consciousness could have been permanent, if Aristotle had had to entrust his word to memory, or Plato his thesaurus of ideas to memoriter poetry. Thus, writing alone has created the possibility of collecting human thought, of congealing it, of handing it down from age to age, and of maintaining the unity of our human consciousness in the continuity of the generations. If, now, the special revelation from God is not destined for the one generation to which a certain part of the revelation was given, but for the world, and hence for the generations of all ages until the end is come, it is evident that it was necessary for this special revelation to take the form of writing. Only by this written form could it be a revelation to our race as a whole.

In connection with this stands the second characteristic which we mentioned; viz. writing is catholic, i.e. universal, in the sense that, bound by neither place nor nation it overcomes the limitation of the local. Even the most stentorian voice does not carry a single spoken word beyond the distance of one kilometer, and a more extended expression of thought cannot reach across one-tenth part of this; but so soon as the word has been committed to writing, no distance can resist or break its power. The written word travels around the world. He who speaks, may communicate his thoughts to ten thousand persons at most; he who writes, to ten millions and more. In the mystery of writing lies, thus, the wonderful power of overcoming at the same time the two mighty limitations of our human existence, those of time and place. An important statement by Gladstone, spoken in the English Parliament after sundown, is printed before the sun rises again, and in a million copies spread among the masses, in Europe and America. Dislocation, no less than time, is a mighty factor that resists the unit-life of our race. In olden times, when this dislocation was not modified in its fatal effects by quicker means of communication, the sense of the sodality of the nations, and in connection with this the idea of a common humanity, were in consequence very little alive; and it is only by these quickened means of communication, which greatly augment the effect of the written word, that now a feeling of international communion has mastered the nations, and a sense of organic unity permeates all the articulations of our human race. If now, as was shown before, the mystery of Revelation consists in this: that our race, even as it was created of one blood, shall sometime shine in the realm of glory as one body under Christ as its head, then it needs no further proof that this catholic characteristic of writing agrees entirely with the catholic character of the whole Revelation and the catholic character of the Church. As writing sets thought free from every local restriction, special Revelation in like manner, released from all local and national restrictions, seeks the human race in the whole world as one organic whole. God has loved not individuals nor nations, but the world. Only by writing, therefore, can special Revelation attain its end; and in proportion as the development of human consciousness has made higher demands, printing and afterward more rapid communication have augmented this dispersing power of writing. Writing, therefore, is the means of perpetuating thought and at the same time of dispersing it, i.e. of making it universal in the highest sense, and of bringing it within the reach of all. Writing lends wings to thought. It neutralizes distance of time and place, and thereby puts upon thought the stamp of the eternity and of omnipresence. So far as human thought can formally approach the divine, it owes to writing alone this higher nobility. For this reason, therefore, when divine thoughts take pleasure in the garment of human words, the Scripture is the only form in which they can rest.

But this does not exhibit in full the excellency of the Scripture as such, and therefore we mentioned the two other characteristics of fixedness and purity, which protect the word of thought against the dangers that threaten from the results of sin. With respect to tradition we have to contend not merely with the limitation of the human memory, by which so much becomes lost, broken, and impaired, but almost more still with its multiformity and untrustworthiness; and it is against these two dangers that the spoken word is shielded in the fixedness and accuracy of the written or printed word.

Every religious sense from its very nature is in need of fixedness. As long as the divine reflects itself only in the changing stream of the human, it fails to take hold of us, simply because this trait of changeableness and movability is in conflict with the idea of the divinely majestic. The quod ubique, quod semper may have been pushed too far by Rome, on the ground of hierarchical by-views, but in the realm of religion antiquity is of so much more value than the new and constantly changing idea, simply because the old makes the impression of fixedness and of being grounded in itself. So far now as the sinful mind of man chafes against the divine revelation, he will always be bound to break this fixedness. Hence the injurious multiformity in tradition. A little liberty, which each successive transmitter allows himself, brings it to pass that in the course of two or three centuries tradition is wrenched entirely away from the grooves of its fixedness. This may occur unconsciously or without ill intent, but in every case it breaks the working power of the transmitted revelation. This is seen in the unwritten tradition, which from paradise spread among all nations, becoming almost irrecognizable; this is seen in the traditions committed to writing at a later date in the apocryphal gospels; this is seen in the different authority of tradition in the Eastern and Western churches. It is this same infatuation against the fixedness of the truth, which now appears again in the opposition against every confessional tie, and no less in the loud protest against the written character of revelation, and this in a time which otherwise emphasizes so strongly the written for the entire Cultur. On the other hand, it is seen in the holy books, which every more highly developed form of religion has created for itself, in India, China, among the Persians and Islam, etc., how the pious sense which, from the ever changing, seeks after a basis of fixedness, applies writing, as soon as found, as a means of resistance against the destructive power of what is individual and multiform in tradition. What Paul wrote to the church at Phil. iii. 16, “whereunto we have already attained, by that same rule let us walk,” is unchangeably the fundamental trait of all religion, which does not end in individual wisdom or fanaticism, but organically works in upon our human life as such. And since writing only, and in a more telling sense, the press, is able to guarantee to the Divine thoughts which are revealed to us that fixed form, it is not by chance, but of necessity, that special Revelation did not come to us by way of oral tradition, but in the form of the Scripture.

This brings with it the purity, which likewise can be guaranteed by writing only, among sinful men, and this only in a limited sense. Since Divine revelation directs itself against the mind and inclination of the sinner, sinful tendency could not be wanting, to represent that revelation differently from what it was given. Not merely did forgetfulness and individualism threaten the purity of tradition, but the direct effort also wilfully to modify what was revealed according to one’s own idea and need; which psychologically is done the sooner, if one knows the revelation only from tradition, and thus thinks himself entitled to mistrust its certainty. One begins by asking whether the revelation might not have been different, and ends in the belief that it was different. If printing in its present completeness had been in existence from the times of the beginning of revelation, it would have been the surest safeguard against such falsification. If what was spoken at the time had been taken down by stenography and been circulated at once in thousands of copies by the press, we would have been so much more certain than now of the authenticity of what is handed down. Since, however, printing, as a strengthened form of writing, did not exist at that time, handwriting alone could guard against falsification. And though we must grant that this safeguard is far from being absolute, yet it is certain that the written tradition has a preference above the oral, which defies all comparison, and thus, in order to come down to us in the least possibly falsified form, the Divine revelation had to be written.

To him who thinks that the Revelation came from God, but that the writing was invented by man, the relation between that Revelation and its written form is of course purely accidental. He, on the other hand, who understands and confesses that writing indeed is a human invention, but one which God has thought out for us and in His own time has caused us to find, will arrive at the same conclusion with ourselves, that also in His high counsel the Divine revelation is adapted to writing, and writing to the revelation. We do not hesitate to assert that human writing has reached its highest destiny in the Scripture, even as the art of printing can attain no higher end than to spread the Word of God among all peoples and nations, and among those nations to put it within the reach of every individual. To this still another and no less important spiritual benefit attaches itself, in so far as printing (and writing in part) liberates men from men and binds them to God. So long as the revelation is handed down by oral tradition only, the great multitude was and ever remained dependent upon a priestly order or hierarchy to impart to them the knowledge of this revelation. Hence there ever stood a man between us and God. For which reason it is entirely natural that the Roman hierarchy opposes rather than favors the spread of the printed Bible. And it behooves us, in the very opposite sense, to confess, that the Divine revelation, in order to reach immediately those who were called to life, had to assume the form of writing, and that only by printed writing could it enter upon its fullest mission of power.

§ 75. Inspiration. Its Relation to the Principium Essendi

If we have not failed entirely in our endeavor to apprehend the special principium in its full significance, and if thereby we intend to maintain the confession of the theology of the sixteenth century, that the only principium of theology is the Holy Scripture, the question now arises, — by what action the Holy Scripture came forth from this principium in such a way that at length the principium and the product of this principium (i.e. the Holy Scripture) could be interchanged. Theologically taken, this action lies in inspiration, and therefore in this section we proceed to the study of this majestic act of God, to which we owe the Holy Scripture. It is not enough for Encyclopedia to declare apodictically that the Holy Bible is the principium of theology. Such a declaration is sufficient, when one writes an Encyclopedia of a science whose principium is self-evident. A medical Encyclopedia does not need to give an account in the first place of the fact that pathological conditions appear in the human body, nor of the fact that in nature there are reagents against these conditions. But for theological Encyclopedia the matter stands differently. It has to investigate a matter as its object, whose principium is not given normally in the creation, but has abnormally entered into what was created. The right understanding, therefore, of this science demands an explanation of this principium, its action and its product, in their mutual connection. This principium is the energy in God by which, notwithstanding the ruin worked in the cosmos by sin, He carries out His will with reference to that cosmos; and more properly as a principium of knowledge it is that energy in God, by which He introduces His theodicy into the human consciousness of the sinner. The product of this principium, which is placed objectively before the human consciousness, is the Holy Scripture. And finally the action by which this product comes forth from this Divine energy is inspiration. Hence this inspiration also must be explained.

It should, however, not be lost from view, that this inspiration is no isolated fact, which stands by itself. He who takes it in this sense arrives at some sort of Koran, but not at the Holy Scripture. In that case the principium of knowing (cognoscendi) is taken entirely apart from the principium of being (essendi), and causes the appearance of an exclusively intellectual product which is outside of reality. We then would have an inspiration which dictated intellectually, and could not communicate to us anything but a doctrine and a law. Entirely different, on the other hand, is the action of this Divine energy, which, in spite of sin, carries out the plan of the Lord in and by the cosmos. Since indeed sin is not merely intellectual in its character, but has corrupted the whole nature of man and brought the curse and disorder even upon nature outside of man, this Divine energy could not overcome the opposition of sin, except it directed itself to the whole reality of our human existence, including nature round about us. Hence this Divine energy constitutes in part (see § 67) the principium essendi, and from it comes miracle, — not miracle taken as an isolated phenomenon, which appears without causal connection with the existing world; but miracle, as the overcoming, penetrating working of the Divine energy, by which God breaks all opposition, and in the face of disorder brings His cosmos to realize that end which was determined upon in His counsel. It is from the deeper basis of God’s will, on which the whole cosmos rests, that this mysterious power works in the cosmos; breaks the bands of sin and disorder, which hold the cosmos in their embrace; and centrally from man so influences the entire life of the cosmos, that at length it must realize the glory intended for it by God, in order in that glory to render unto God what was the end of the entire creation of the cosmos. Every interpretation of the miracle as a magical incident without connection with the palingenesis of the whole cosmos, which Jesus refers to in Matt. xix. 28, and therefore without relation to the entire metamorphosis which awaits the cosmos after the last judgment, does not enhance the glory of God, but debases the Recreator of heaven and earth to a juggler (γόης). This entire recreative action of the Divine energy is one continuous miracle, which shows itself in the radical renewal of the life of man by regeneration, in the radical renewal of the life of humanity by the new Head which it receives in Christ, and which finally shall bring to pass a similar radical renewal of life in nature. And because these three do not run loosely side by side, but are bound together organically, so that the mystery of regeneration, incarnation and of the final restitution forms one whole, this wondrous energy of re-creation exhibits itself in a broad history, in which what used to be interpreted as incidental miracles, could not be wanting. Because our soul is organically connected with our body, and this body unites us organically to nature, a palingenesis, which should limit itself to the psychic domain, without at the same time working an effect upon the body and upon the cosmos, is simply unthinkable. The fuller explanation of this belongs from the nature of the case to dogmatics. Here it is sufficient that the attention is directed to the significance, which the recreative Divine energy, also in so far as it appears as the principium of being(essendi), has for the life of our consciousness, and therefore for the principium of knowing (cognoscendi). The tie that binds thought to being and being to thought operates also here. There is not a revelation by the dictation of a doctrine and law, and by its side a revelation by what is called miracle; but the revelation in the world of reality and the revelation in the world of thought are interwoven. The thought explains the reality (as, for instance, prophecy the Messiah), and again from the reality the thought receives its content (for instance, in the gospels). The preparation of the consciousness for the thought (illuminatio) proceeds from the reality of the palingenesis, and again in faith (as the act of the consciousness) the reality of the new life finds its utterance. In a like sense inspiration does not lie isolated by the side of the Divine energy in history, but is organically united to it and forms a part of it. If in the meantime it is demanded, that theology as science indicate its principium, it has to deal from the nature of the case as such with the principium of knowing only, and cannot reckon with the reality, and therefore with the principium of being, except so far as the facts and events have been transformed beforehand into a thought, i.e. have become a narrative. It is in the glass of our human consciousness that reality reflects its image; by the human word this image becomes fixed; and it is from this word that the image of the reality is called up in the individual consciousness of him who hears or reads this word. A reality, such as the recreative Divine energy has woven through the past as a golden thread, was not intended only for the few persons who were then alive, and whom it affected by an immediate impression, but was of central and permanent significance to humanity. It could not be satisfied with simply having happened; it only effected its purpose when, transformed into an idea, it obtained permanence, and even as the Divine word, that accompanied it, and in the unity which joined this word to the facts of history, it could be extended from generation to generation. If now our human consciousness had stood above these facts and these Divine utterances, the common communication by human tradition would have been enough. But since our human consciousness stood beneath them, and, left to itself, was bound to misunderstand them, and was thus incapable of interpreting the correct sense of them, it was necessary for the Divine energy to provide not only these facts and utterances, but also the image of this reality so as to insure re-creation likewise in the world of our consciousness. This provision was brought about by the Divine energy from the special principium in inspiration in a twofold way: (1) by means of the word in the past transforming the Divine doing into thought, and thus introducing it into the consciousness of those who were then alive; and (2) by bringing to us this entire past, together with these Divine utterances, as one rich idea, in the Holy Scripture.

Thus inspiration is not added to this wondrous working of the Divine energy, but flows, and is inseparable, from it. It does not come from the principium of creation, but from that of re-creation. Though, indeed, it finds an analogy in the communion of paradisiacal man with his Creator, and its connecting-point in the capacity of paradisiacal man for that communion, inspiration, in the narrower sense, may never be confounded with this communion. Inspiration, as it here appears, is not the working of the general “consciousness of the divinity” (Gottesbewusstsein). It does not rise from the seed of religion. It may not be confounded with the utterance of the mystically disposed mind. Neither may it be placed on a line of equality with the way in which God will reveal Himself to the blessed in the realm of glory. Appearing as an abnormal factor in the work of re-creation, it bears a specific character, belongs to the category of the miraculous, and is consequently of a transient nature. As soon as the object for which it appears has been attained, it loses its reason for being, and ceases to exist. Though it must be granted that the illumination, and very much more, was indispensable, in order that the fruit of inspiration might ripen to the full; yea, though from everything it appears that the Holy Spirit ever continues to this day more fully to explain the rich content of the fruit of inspiration in the confession of believers and in the development of theology; yet in principle all these operations of the Spirit are to be distinguished from inspiration in its proper sense. In the counsel of God before the creation of the world, there was a provision for the carrying out of His plan concerning the cosmos, in spite of the outbreak of sin. In that counsel of God, all things were predestined in organic relation, which to this end were to be done by the Divine energy, and this, indeed, severally: on the one hand, what was to be done centrally in and for our entire race, and, on the other hand, what was to be done in order that this central means might realize its purpose with the individual elect. Inspiration directs itself to this central means; the individual is left to illumination. This central means is to be taken in this threefold way: First, as an idea in Divine completeness, lying predestined in the counsel of God; secondly, as from that counsel it entered into the reality of this cosmos and was ever more fully executed; and thirdly, as it was offered to the human consciousness, as tradition under the Divine guarantee, and by inspiration as the human idea.

Hence the thought, that it comes to an end, is not foreign, but lies in the nature of inspiration. This is not arbitrary, but flows from the fact that our human race forms an organism, and that, therefore, here, as with all organisms, distinction must be made between that which centrally directs itself to all and that which individually limits itself to single persons. And if this distinction is noted, then it follows from this with equal force, that that which centrally goes out to all must appear in that objective form in which it could continue from age to age and spread from nation to nation. That which is individual in its character may remain subjective-mystic in its form, but not that which is intended to be centrally of force for all times and nations. In order to exist objectively for all, this revelation of necessity had to be completed. As long as it was not finished, it missed its objective character, since it still remained attached to the persons and the life-sphere in which it had its rise. Only when it is completed, does it become independent of those persons and of that special life-circle, and obtain its absolute character. An ever-continuous inspiration is therefore only conceivable, when one mistakenly understands by it mystical inworking upon the individual, and thus takes the work of re-creation atomistically. Then, however, inspiration fails of all specific character and loses itself in the general “est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo (Lo, God is in our soul, we kindle when He stirs us);” while re-creation is then imagined as coming from phantasy, and is no longer suitable for humanity, which only exists organically. In all organic development there are two periods, — the first, which brings the organism to its measure or limit, and the second, which allows it, once come to its measure, to do its functional work. The plant, animal and man first grow, till the state of maturity has been reached, and then that growth ceases. An organic action which restlessly continues in the same way, is a contradiction in terms. Considered, therefore, from this point of view, it lies entirely in the organic character of revelation, that it passes through two periods, the first of which brings it to its complete measure, and the second of which allows it, having reached its measure, to perform its work. And this is what we face in the difference between inspiration and illumination. Inspiration completed the revelation, and, appearing in this completed form, the Revelation now performs its work.

This first period (that in which Revelation attained its measure by inspiration, and which lasted so many centuries) does not flow by itself from the principium of knowledge. If you think that revelation consisted merely in a communication by inspiration of doctrine and law, nothing would have prevented its being finished in a short time. Since, on the other hand, revelation did not merely make its appearance intellectually, but in life itself, and therefore dramatically, the inspiration, which only at the end of this drama could complete its action, was eo ipso linked to that process of time which was necessary for this drama. This would not have been so if the special principium had merely been a principium of knowing, but must be so since simultaneously it took in life. The long duration of the first period of Revelation has nothing, therefore, to surprise us; but this long duration should never tempt us to allow that first period to pass unmarked into the second. However many the ages were that passed by before the incarnation, that incarnation came at one moment of time. The new drama which began with this incarnation is relatively of short duration; and when this drama with its apostolic postlude is ended, the Revelation acquires at once its œcumenic working, and thereby shows, that its first period of its becoming, is now completed. Thus inspiration obtains a sphere of its own, in which it appears; a definite course which it has to run; a boundary of its own, which it cannot stride across. As the fruit of its completion, a new condition enters in, which shows itself in the œcumenic appearance of the Church, and this condition not only does not demand the continuance of inspiration, but excludes it. Not, of course, as if a sudden transition took place which may be indicated to the very day and hour. Such transitions are not known in spiritual things. But if the exact moment escapes our observation in which a child ceases its growth and begins its life as an adult, there is, nevertheless, a moment, known to God, in which that growth performed its last act. In like manner, we may assert that these two periods of revelation lie, indeed, separated from each other by a point of transition known to God, even though we can only approximately indicate the beginning of the second period.

§ 76. Inspiration in Connection with Miracles

So far as the special principium in God directs itself as principium of knowledge to the consciousness of the sinner, it brings about inspiration (with its concomitant illumination); on the other hand, as principium of being (essendi), the spiritual and material acts of re-creation commonly called miracles (נִפְלָאוֹת and τέρατα). Since, however, the world of thought and the world of being do not lie side by side as two separate existences, but are organically connected, inspiration formally has in common with the wonderful (פֶּלֶא) that which to us constitutes the characteristic of the miracle. Consequently the formal side of the miracle need not be considered here.

Very unjustly at the mention of miracles one thinks almost exclusively of those in the material domain, and almost without a thought passes by the spiritual miracles. This of course is absurd. The creation (if we may so call it) of a mind, such as shone forth in the holy apostle John, or such as in the secular world sparkled in a Plato, is, if we make comparison, far more majestic than even the creation of a comet in the heavens; and in the same way the re-creation of a person inimical to God into a child of God is a profounder work of art than the healing of a leper or the feeding of the five thousand. That nevertheless the material miracle captivates us more, is exclusively accounted for by the fact, that the spiritual miracle is gradually observed after it is ended, and only in its effects, while the material miracle, as a phenomenon, is immediately visible to the spectator. In order not to be misled by this one-sided appearing in the foreground of the material miracle, it is necessary that we first explain the connection between the spiritual and the material miracle. The undeniable fact, which in this connection appears most prominently, is, that from the days of paradise till now the spiritual miracle of palingenesis is ever unceasingly continued, and occurs in every land and among all people, while the sphere of the material miracle is limited and confined to time and place. The question of psychico-physical processes, which are often spoken of as miracles, is here passed by. Whether the study of hypnotism will succeed in lifting the veil which still withholds from our sight the working of soul upon soul, and of the soul upon the body, time will tell; but in any case it appears that in this domain, under definite circumstances, there are forces at work which find their causa causans in our nature, and therefore do not belong to the category of the miracle. With reference to the real miracle, on the other hand, the Holy Scripture reveals to us that there is a palingenesis, not only of things invisible but also of things seen. The Scripture nowhere separates the soul from the body, nor the body from the cosmos. Psyche, body and world form together one organic whole. The body belongs to the real existence of man as truly as his psyche, and for human existence the cosmos is an inseparable postulate. To the state of innocence, i.e. to that existence of man, which was the immediate product of creation, there belonged not only a holy soul, but also a sound body and a glorious paradise. In the state of sin the unholiness of the psyche entails therefore the corruption of the body, and likewise brings the curse upon the cosmos. Even as this organic connection of these three elements appears both in the original creation and in the state of sin, it continues to work its effect also in the re-creation. Here also the effect begins with the psyche in regeneration, but will continue to operate to the end in the palingenesis of the body, and this body will see itself placed in a re-created cosmos delivered from the curse. If now regeneration consisted in a sudden cutting loose of our psyche from every connection with sin, so that it were transformed at once into an absolutely holy psyche, not merely potentially, but actually, the palingenesis of the body would enter in at once, and if this took place simultaneously in all respects, the palingenesis of the cosmos would immediately follow. This, however, is not so. Since our race does not enter life at one moment, but in the course of many centuries, and exists, not individualistically as an aggregate of atoms, but in organic unity, the transition from potentia to actus cannot take place except gradually and in the course of many centuries; and since each man has no cosmos of his own, but all men together have only one and the same cosmos, our ancestors (see Heb. xi. 40) could not be perfect without us, i.e. without us they could not attain unto the end of their palingenesis, and therefore the apostle Paul does by no means expect his crown at present, nor yet immediately after his death, but only at the last day, and then simultaneously with all them also that love the appearing of Christ (2 Tim. iv. 8).

The very order, which is founded in the nature of our race, brings it to pass, that the re-creation of the body and of the cosmos tarries till the end. If thus the miracle as such, in that special sense in which we here consider it, had not appeared until the parousia, the saving power would have brought about none other but a spiritual effect. There would have been regeneration, i.e. palingenesis of the psyche; but no more. A power would have become manifest capable of breaking psychically the dominion of sin; but that the same power would be able to abolish the misery, which is the result of sin, would have been promised in the word, but would never have been manifested in the deed, and as an unknown x would have been a stone of offence upon which faith would have stumbled. The entire domain of the Christian hope would have remained lying outside of us as incapable of assimilation. This is only prevented by the fact, that already in this present dispensation, by way of model or sample, the power of palingenesis is shown within the domain of matter. In that sense they are called “signs.” As such we are shown that there is a power able to check every result of sin in the material world. Hence the rebuke of the elements, the feeding without labor, the healing of the sick, the raising of the dead, etc.; altogether manifestations of power, which were not exhausted in the effort at that given moment to save those individuals, for this all ratio sufficiens was wanting; but which once having taken place, were perpetuated by the tradition of the Scripture for all people and every generation, in order to furnish a permanent foundation to the hope of all generations. For this purpose they could not create a new reality (Lazarus indeed dies again), but tended merely to prove the possibility of redemption in facts; and this they had to do under two conditions: (1) that successively they should overcome every effect of sin in our human misery; and (2) that they should be a model, a proof, a σημεῖον, and therefore be limited to one period of time and to one circle. Otherwise it would have become a real palingenesis, and they would have forfeited their character of signs. There were hundreds in and about Jerusalem whom Jesus might have raised from the dead. That Lazarus should be raised is no peculiar favor to him; for after once having died in peace, who would ever wish to return to this life in sin? but it was to glorify God, i.e. to exhibit that power of God which is also able to abolish death. This is what must be shown in order that both psychically and physically salvation shall be fully revealed. Thus only does hope receive its indispensable support. And in this way also by these signs is regeneration immediately bound into one whole with the palingenesis of the body and of the cosmos as object of faith. What Paul writes of the experiences in the wilderness: “All these things happened unto them by way of example; and they were written for our admonition” (1 Cor. x. 11), is true of all this kind of miracles, of which with equal authority we may say: “Now all these things happened by way of example; and they were written for our admonition.”

The destructive and rebuking miracles are entirely in line with this. With the parousia belongs the judgment. The misery, which as the result of sin now weighs us down, is yet by no means the consummation of the ruin. If now that same power of God, by which the palingenesis of soul, body and of cosmos shall hereafter be established, will simultaneously, and as result of the judgment, bring about the destruction as well of soul, body and cosmos in hell, then it follows that the signs of salvation must run parallel with the signs of the destruction, which merely form the shadow alongside of the light.

If both these kinds of miracles, however strongly contrasted with each other, bear one and the same character at heart, it is entirely different with the real miracles, which do not take place as ensamples (τυπικῶς), but invade the world of reality. Only think of the birth of Isaac, of the birth of Christ, of his resurrection, of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, etc. The motive of these miracles, which form an entire class by themselves, lies elsewhere, even in this, that the re-creation of our race could not be wrought simply by the individual regeneration and illumination of the several elect, but must take place in the centrum of the organism of humanity. And since this organism in its centrum also does not exist psychically only, but at the same time physically, the re-creation of this centrum could not be effected, except by the working being both psychical and physical, which is most vividly felt in the mystery of the incarnation. The incarnation is the centrum of this entire central action, and all miracles which belong to this category tend to inaugurate this incarnation, or are immediate results of it, like the resurrection. All clearness in our view of the miracles must be lost, if one neglects to distinguish between this category of the real-central miracles and the category of the typical miracles in the periphery; or if it be lost from sight, that both these real as well as these typical miracles stand in immediate connection with the all-embracing miracle that shall sometime make an end of this existing order of things.

If, now, it is asked to what category inspiration belongs, it is evident at once that inspiration bears no typical, but a real, character, and belongs not to the periphery but to the centrum. Itself psychical by nature, it must, meanwhile, reveal its working in the physical domain as well: (1) because the persons whom it chose as its instruments existed physically also; (2) because it sought its physical crystallization in the Scripture; and (3) because its content embraced the physical also, and, therefore, often could not do without the manifestation. Nevertheless the psychical remains its fundamental tone, and as the incarnation brought life into the centrum of human being, inspiration brings the knowledge of God into human knowledge, i.e. into the central consciousness of our human race. From this special principium in God the saving power is extended centrally to our race, both by the ways of being and of thought, by incarnation and inspiration.

From this it appears that formally the miracle bears the characteristic of proceeding forth from the special, and not from the natural principium, in God. The miracle is no isolated fact, but a mighty movement of life, which, whether really or typically or, perhaps, in the parousia teleologically, goes out from God into this cosmos, groaning under sin and the curse; and that centrally as well as peripherally, in order organically to recreate that cosmos and to lead it upward to its final consummation. Are we now justified in saying that miracle antagonizes nature, violates natural law, or transcends nature? We take it, that all these representations are deistic and take no account of the ethical element. If you take the cosmos as a product wrought by God, which henceforth stands outside of Him, has become disordered, and now is being restored by Him from without, with such a mechanical-deistical representation you must make mention of something that is against or above nature; but at the penalty of never understanding miracle. This is the way the watchmaker does, who makes the watch and winds it, and, when it is out of order, repairs it with his instruments; but such is not the method pursued in the re-creation. God does not stand deistically over against the world, but by immanent power He bears and holds it in existence. That which you call natural power or natural law is nothing but the immanent power of God and the will of God immanently upholding this power, while both of these depend upon His transcendent counsel. It will not do, therefore, to represent it as though the world once created miscarried against the expectation of God, and as though, after that, God were bent upon the invention of means by which to make good the loss He had suffered. He who reasons like this is no theologian; i.e. he does not go to work theologically, but starts out from the human representation, viz. that as we are accustomed to manufacture something, and after we see it fail try to repair it, so he carries this representation over upon God. And so you derive the archetype from man and make God’s doing ectypal; and this is not justifiable in any circumstance, since thereby you deny the creatorship in God. Our Reformed theologians, therefore, have always placed the counsel of God in the foreground, and from the same counsel from which the re-creation was to dawn they have explained the issue of creation itself. Even the infra-lapsarian Reformed theologians readily acknowledged that the re-creation existed ideally, i.e. already completely in the counsel of God, before the creation itself took place. What they called the appointment of a Mediator (constitutio mediatoris) preceded the first actual revelation of sin. Hence there is no twofold counsel, so that on the one hand the decree of creation stands by itself, to which, at a later period, the decree of salvation is mechanically added; but in the deepest root of the consciousness of God both are one. Interpreted to our human consciousness, this means to say, that the creation took place in such a way, that in itself it carried the possibility of re-creation; or, to state it more concretely still, man is not first created as a unity that cannot be broken, then by sin and death disjointed into parts of soul and corpse, and now, by an act of power mechanically applied from without, restored to unity; but in the creation of man itself lay both the possibility of this break and the possibility of the reunion of our nature. Without sin, soul and body would never have been disjoined by death; yet in the creation of man in two parts (dichotomy) lay the possibility of this breach. But, in like manner, if our body had merely a mechanical use in actuality, and did not develop organically from a potentia or germ, reunion of what was once torn apart would have been impossible. Just because, in the creation, this potential-organical was characteristic of our body, the redemption also of the body is possible and its reunion with the separated soul.

Thus one needs merely to return to the counsel of God, which lies back of creation and re-creation, and embraces both in unity, in order once for all to escape from the mechanical representation of a Divine interference in an independently existing nature. Sin and misery will, without doubt, continue to bear the character of a disturbance, and consequently all re-creation the character of providence and restoration, but both creation and re-creation flow forth from the selfsame counsel of God. This is most clearly apparent from the fact, that re-creation is by no means merely the healing of the breach or the repairing of what was broken and disturbed. Spiritually, regeneration does by no means restore the sinner to the state of original righteousness (justitia originalis). He who has been regenerated stands both lower, so far as he still carries the tendrils of sin inwoven in his heart, and higher, so far as potentially he can no more fall. Likewise physically, the resurrection of our body does by no means return to us an Adamic body, but a glorified body. Neither will the parousia bring back to us the old paradise, but a new earth under a new heaven. Hence the matter stands thus, that in the counsel of God there were two ways marked out, by which to lead soul, body and world to their organic consummation in the state of glory: one apart from sin, by gradual development, and the other, through sin, by a potentially absolute re-creation; and that, furthermore, in creation everything was disposed to both these possibilities. If nature is taken in its concrete appearance, it is no longer what it was in the creation, but its ordinance is disturbed; and if this disturbed ordinance is accepted as its real and permanent one, then indeed, its re-creation, in us as well as about us, must appear to us as a violence brought upon it, for the sake of destroying the violence which we inflicted upon it by sin. If, on the other hand, you take nature as it appears in creation itself, and with its foundations lies in the counsel of God, then its original ordinance demands that this disturbance be reacted against, and it be brought to realize its end (τέλος); and for this purpose the action goes out from the selfsame counsel of God, from which its ordinance came forth. In God and in His counsel there is but one principium, and if we distinguish between a special principium or one of grace, which presently works in upon the natural principium, we only do this in view of the twofold providence, which must have been given, in the one decree of creation, just because the cosmos was ethically founded. That the working of these two principia form a twofold sphere for our consciousness, cannot be avoided, because the higher consciousness, which reduces both to unity, will only be our portion in the state of glory. This antithesis, however, is not present with God for a moment. He indeed works all miracles from the deeper lying powers, which were fundamental to the creation itself, without at a single point placing a second creation by the side of the first. Wherever the Scripture speaks of a renewal, it is never meant that a new power should originate, or a new state of being should arise, but simply that a new shoot springs from the root of creation itself, that of this new shoot a graft is entered upon the old tree, and that in this way the entire plant is renewed and completed. Creation and re-creation, nature and grace, separate, so far as the concrete appearance in the practical application is concerned, but both in the counsel of God and in the potentialities of being they have one root. The miracle, therefore, in its concrete form is not from nature, but from the root from which nature sprang. It is not mechanically added to nature, but is organically united to it. This is the reason why, after the parousia, all action of the principium of grace flows back into the natural principium, brings this to its consummation, and thus, as such, itself disappears.

§ 77. Inspiration according to the Self-Testimony of the Scripture

The naive catechetical method of proving the inspiration of the Holy Scripture from 2 Tim. iii. 16 or 2 Pet. i. 21, cannot be laid to the charge of our Reformed theologians. They did not hesitate to expose the inconclusiveness of such circle-reasoning. They appeal indeed to this and similar utterances, when it concerned the question, what interpretation of inspiration the Holy Scripture itself gives us. And that was right. As the botanist cannot learn to know the nature of the life of the plant except from the plant itself, the theologian also has no other way at command, by which to learn to understand the nature of inspiration, except the interrogating of the Scripture itself. Meanwhile, there is this difference between a plant and the Scripture, that the plant does not speak concerning itself, and the Scripture does. In the Scripture dominates a conscious life. In the Scripture the Scripture itself is spoken about. Hence, two ways present themselves to us by which to obtain an insight into the matter: (1) that we, as with every other object which one investigates, watch for ourselves, where in the Scripture the track of inspiration becomes visible; but likewise (2) that we interrogate those, who in the Scripture declare themselves concerning the Scripture. And, of course, we must begin with the latter. Inspiration is a specific phenomenon, strange to us, but which was not strange to those holy persons, called of God, who were themselves its organs. From them, in the first place, we must learn what they taught concerning inspiration. In them the spirit, which animates the entire Scripture, consciously expresses itself. Not with equal clearness in all. Here also we find a gradual difference. In the absolute sense it can be said of the Christ only, that the self-consciousness of the Scripture expressed itself completely in Him. When Christ was on earth the entire Scripture of the Old Testament was already in existence; which renders it of the utmost importance to us to know what character Jesus attributed to the inspiration of the Old Covenant. If it appears that Christ attributed absolute authority to the Old Covenant, as an organic whole, then the matter is settled for every one who worships Him as his Lord and his God, and confesses that He can not err. This proof, however, from the nature of the case, is without force to him who does not thus believe in his Saviour, and for him there is no demonstration possible. He who stands outside of the palingenesis cannot entertain any other demonstration but that which is derived from nature and reason in their actual form; and how would you ever be able from these to reach your conclusions concerning the reality of that which does not pretend to spring either from nature or from reason? Hence they only, who stand in conscious life-contact with the life-sphere of Christ can accept the force of demonstration, which lies in the testimony concerning the Scripture by Jesus, as its highest organ. Even then, however, it must be clearly held in view, that the reports of the Gospels concerning what Jesus said about the Old Testament, appear at this point of our argument as reports only, and not as testimony already authenticated. The value to be attached to this tradition concerning the utterances of Jesus, springs (while taken as yet outside of faith in inspiration) not from the bare communication of these utterances, but (1) from their multiformity; (2) from the stamp of originality which these utterances bear; (3) from their being interwoven with the events described; and (4) from their agreement with the utterances of Jesus’ disciples, whose epistles have come to us. If such reports of Jesus’ ideas about the Scripture were very rare, if they appeared for their own purposes only, or if it was their aim to formulate a certain theory of inspiration, then (always reckoning without faith in the Scriptures) they would not possess such a historic value to us; but since there is no trace of such a design, and no insertion of a system is thought of, and only the use is shown which Jesus made of the Scripture amid the most varied circumstances and with all sorts of applications, from these reports it is historically certain, for him also who does not reckon with inspiration, that Jesus judged the Scripture thus, and not otherwise.

(This value, moreover, rises in importance by the fact, that that which Jesus appears to have thought about the Old Testament, agrees with the conception which, before his appearing, was prevalent concerning the Old Covenant.) He introduces no new way of viewing it, but seals the conception that was current, and characterizes himself only by the original, i.e. not borrowed, application of the dominant manner of view. It was but natural, therefore, that the theory of accommodation became current a century ago, and that on the ground of these accommodations all value was disputed to these utterances of Jesus. But by accepting the possibility of accommodation with Christ, He eo ipso is already forsaken as the Christ; which is the more apparent, when one hears how the inspiration-theory, which was current at the time and which still forms an essential part of the confession in all Christian Churches, was execrated as being unworthy of God, antagonistic to the character of the spiritual, and as barren and mechanical. At present, therefore, the opponents of this theory themselves acknowledge that they would do violence to their consciences and commit sin, if for the sake of the masses they carried themselves as though they put faith in this theory. This they deem themselves not warranted in doing. (How, then, will you accept such a sinful accommodation of what is unworthy of God and in conflict with the character of spiritual life, in Him whom you worship as the incarnate Word?) The accommodation-theory, still tenable in days when the diverging theologians themselves accommodated, and considered it no evil but duty, became untenable with the Christ from the moment when all such accommodation was rejected as moral weakness. He who perseveres, nevertheless, in his application of this theory to what Jesus said concerning the Scripture, attacks not the Scripture, but the Deity of Jesus and even His moral character. Even the pretence that Jesus accommodated in good faith, while this would be bad faith for us, does not help matters. If Jesus did not know that the conception which He accepted was untrue, there was no accommodation; if Jesus did know this, then all such accommodation, in spite of better knowledge, was sin also in Him.

To come to the point, we emphasize in the first place, that Jesus looked upon the several writings of the Old Testament as forming one organic whole. To Him they did not constitute a collection of products of Hebrew literature, but He valued them as a holy unity of a peculiar sort.

For this we refer in the first place to John x. 34, 35: the Scripture cannot be broken. This utterance is of threefold importance. First, the whole Old Testament, from which Psalm lxxxii. 6 is here quoted, is entitled by the singular γραφή, by the article ἡ is indicated as a whole of a peculiar sort, and to this whole an absolute character is attributed by the “cannot be broken.” Secondly, it is out of the question that by ἡ γραφή can have been meant not Scripture, but spiritual revelation, because the “word of God” in what immediately precedes is clearly distinguished from the γραφή. And thirdly, it is impossible that γραφή should indicate the quotation in hand, and not the Old Testament, since a conclusion a generali ad particulare follows, and just in this form: The Scripture cannot be broken; this saying from Psalm lxxxii. 6 occurs in the Scripture; hence Psalm lxxxii. 6 also cannot be broken. Which, moreover, is confirmed by the expression “in your Law.” He who quotes from the Psalms, and then declares that it is found in the Law, shows that he uses the name Law for the entire Old Testament, and thus views this Testament as one organic whole.

This unity appears likewise from Matt. xxi. 42, where Jesus asks: “Did ye never read in the Scriptures?” and then quotes Psalm cxviii. 22, 23. No citation, therefore, from two different books, but a citation from one book, that of the Psalms, even two verses from the same Psalm. This shows that “the Scriptures” here does not refer to the Psalms, but to the whole Old Testament, in which the Psalms occur, and likewise that Jesus comprehends this Old Testament under the name of γραφαί as a unity, and by the article αἱ isolates it from all other γραφαί. The same we find in Matt. xxii. 29, in the words: “Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God.” Here, also, αἱ γραφαί appears absolutely as the designation of the entire Holy Scripture then in existence. Keeping no count with those Scriptures is indicated as the cause of their erring, and the Scripture, i.e. the Old Testament, is here coördinated with “the power of God.” In like manner we read in Matt. xxvi. 54: “How then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?” Here also the Scriptures of the Old Testament appear as one whole, which is called αἱ γραφαί, and it is a Scripture, such as offers the program of what was to come, and gives that program with such authority, that the fulfilment of it could not fail. This program was not contained in this word or that, but in the whole Scripture, which here appears as organically one. Compare with this the similar utterance in Mark xiv. 49: “But this is done that the Scriptures might be fulfilled.” That at another time Jesus indicated the same unity by the law, appears from John x. 34, and appears likewise from John xv. 25, where the Lord quotes from Psalms xxxv. and lxix., and declares concerning this, that that is written “in their law.” And if proof is called for, that Jesus viewed this unit not only as organically one, but represented to Himself the groups also in this unit as organically related, then look in John vi. 45, where He quotes from Isaiah liv. and from Jeremiah xxxi., and affirms, not that this occurs as such in Isaiah and Jeremiah, but in the prophets. This subdivision also of the Scripture, which is called “the prophets,” is thus indicated by the article as one organic whole, which as such offers us the program of the future.

In the second place, it appears that Jesus recognized of the Scriptures of the Old Testament in the sense of a single whole of authoritative writing, that a word, or a fragment of it was authoritative, and that as γραφή, or γεγραμμένον, or γέγραπται it possessed that high condition, that men could make their appeal to it. The use of these expressions does not point to a citation but to an authority in the sense in which Pilate exclaimed: “What I have written I have written,” which he did not say as author but as governor, clothed with discretionary authority. Neither the γέγραπται nor the γεγραμμένον can be thought without a subject from whom it goes forth, and this subject must have authority to determine something, simply because he writes. If now γέγραπται, as in this instance, is used in an entirely absolute sense, and without the least indication of this subject, it implies that this subject is the absolute subject in that circle. In the state γέγραπται expresses that something is law; and in the spiritual domain γέγραπται indicates that here God speaks, prophesies, or commands. Since in this sense Jesus again and again uses all sorts of utterances from the Old Testament as decisive arguments in His reasoning, it appears that Jesus viewed the Old Testament as having gone forth from this absolute subject, and therefore as being of imperial authority. That Jesus really uses the Scripture of the Old Testament in this way, as “judge of the cause” (iudex litis) appears, for instance, from Mark xii. 10: “And have ye not read even this Scripture?” and then there follows a citation from Psalm cxviii. By Scripture here the Old Testament is not meant; but to this definite utterance from Psalm cxviii. 23 the character is attributed of being a Scripture. Likewise in Luke iv. 21, where, after having read a portion from Isaiah lxi., He said to the people in the synagogue at Nazareth, “To-day hath this Scripture been fulfilled in your ears,” by Scripture He does not refer to the Book, but to this particular utterance, and honors this utterance itself as γραφή. Whether, in John vii. 38, γραφή refers to the entire Scripture or to a given text, cannot be determined; but we meet with a similar use of Scripture in John xiii. 18, where, in view of the coming betrayal by Judas, Jesus says: “That the Scripture may be fulfilled,” and then adds: “He that eateth my bread lifted up his heel against me.” Even though it does not read here ἡ γραφὴ αὕτη, it is very clear that here again the utterance itself is called γραφή, otherwise it would need to read, ἡ γραφὴ ἥτις λέγει. Then γραφή would refer to the Scripture; but not now; now it must refer to the text quoted. Of γέγραπται or of γεγραμμένον this needs no separate proof, since these expressions admit of no doubt. When, in Matt. iv. 4 and the following verses, Jesus places each time His “it is written” over against the temptation, it implies of itself that Jesus not merely quotes, but appeals to an authority which puts an end to all contradiction. Without this supposition the appeal to Deut. viii. 3, etc., has no meaning. When such an appeal is introduced, not by saying: Thus spake Moses, but by the formula “It is written,” it admits no other interpretation than that, according to the judgment of Jesus, this word derived its Divine authority from the fact that it is written; in the same way in which an article of law has authority among us, because it is in the law. To attribute a weaker significance to this is simply illogical and subverts the truth. Even though one may refuse to attribute such an authority to the Old Testament Scripture, it may never be asserted that Jesus did not attribute this to them; at least so long as it is not affirmed that none of these utterances of Jesus are original with Him; which even the most stringent criticism has not as yet asserted.

But Jesus goes farther. It is not simply that He attributes such an authority to this and other utterances of the Old Testament, but in these utterances He attributes that authority even to single words. This we learn from His argument with the Sadducees concerning the resurrection from the dead, Matt. xxii. 32. From the fact that God, centuries after the death of the patriarchs, still reveals Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Jesus concludes that these three patriarchs were still in existence, since God could not call Himself their God if they were no more alive. This demonstration would have no ground if by a little addition or modification in the construction, “I am the God of thy father,” were intended in the preterite. Then God would have been their God. This expression, in its very form, is nevertheless so authoritative for Jesus, that from this form of the saying He concludes the resurrection of the dead. Jesus extends this authority even to a letter, when, in Luke xvi. 17, He says that it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one tittle of the law to fail; which, as appears from the preceding verse, does not refer to the ten commandments, nor even to the laws adduced, but to the law and the prophets, i.e. to the entire Scripture. This tittle, which referred to the apostrophized iod, was the smallest letter in the apographa, and the saying that even no tittle shall fail, vindicates the authority even to the letter. In Matt. xxii. 41, the strength of Jesus’ argument hangs on the single word Lord. “The Lord said unto my Lord;” yea, even more precisely, on the single iod. The emphasis falls on the “my Lord.” In John x. 35 the entire argument falls to the ground, except the one word “gods” have absolute authority. In the same way it can be shown, in a number of Jesus’ arguments from the Scripture, that in the main they do not rest upon the general contents, but often upon a single word or a single letter. The theory therefore of a general tendency in the spiritual domain, which in the Old Testament should merely have an advisory authority, finds no support in Jesus.

The same result is reached when notice is taken of Jesus’ judgment concerning the contents of Old Testament Scripture. Without the spur of any necessity, entirely voluntarily, in Luke xvi. 29 Jesus puts the words upon Abraham’s lips to the rich man: “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.” This is said in answer to the prayer that some one might be sent to earth in the name of God to proclaim the will of God. This is denied by the remark, that in the earth they already are in possession of a Divine authority, even the Old Testament. The “hear them” here has the same significance as the “hear him” at the baptism of Jesus; it means, to subject oneself to Divine authority. Jesus appears to attribute entirely the same character to the content of the Old Testament as often as He refers to the fact that the Scripture “must be fulfilled,” and “cannot be broken.” All that men have thought out or invented can be corrected by the result, can be seen from the outcome to have been mistakenly surmised, and is therefore susceptible to being broken. The only thing not susceptible to this is the program God Himself has given, and given in a definite form. The need, the must, which Jesus again and again applies to His passion, and applies to particulars, is only in place with the supposition of such a program for His passion given by God. Not to see this is to be unwise, and shows that one is “slow of heart to believe,” Luke xxiv. 25. It needs scarcely a reminder that this need of fulfilment is by no means exhausted in a general sense, as though there were merely a certain necessity and, in a certain sense, a typical parallelism between that which befell the faithful of the past and of the present, but that Jesus applies His rule with equal decision to that which is apparently accidental. Thus in Luke xxii. 37, when He says: “I say unto you, that this which is written must be fulfilled in me, And he was reckoned with transgressors: for that which concerneth me hath fulfilment,” here, indeed, Jesus points to a concrete and very special γεγραμμένον, which except in a very rare instance did not intensify the bitterness of the martyr’s death. The simultaneous crucifixion with Jesus of two malefactors lacks, therefore, all inward necessity. And yet of this very definite γεγραμμένον Jesus purposely declares that it must be fulfilled in Him, and as a motive of thought He adds, that what has been prophesied concerning Him cannot rest before it has accomplished its end.¹ In Matt. xxvi. 54 Jesus declares that He does not exercise His omnipotence, nor invoke the legions of angels to save Him from His passion, since the prophecy of the Old Testament forbids Him doing this. Beyond all doubt it is certain that the prophetic program must be carried out, and in case He were to oppose it, “how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?” Thus Jesus acknowledges that in prophecy there lies before us a copy of the counsel of God concerning Him, and for this reason the realization of this program could not remain wanting. Jesus expresses this same thought even more strongly in John xiii. 18, where He characterizes the betrayal by Judas not only as unavoidable that the Scripture may be fulfilled, that he who ate bread with Him should lift up his heel against Him, but even adds: “From henceforth I tell you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I am he,” and thus imposed upon them His insight, that this prophecy referred to Him, as Divine authority.

This, however, may not be taken as though in the Old Testament Jesus had merely seen a mosaic from which He took a separate Scripture according to the occasion. On the contrary, the Old Testament is one whole to Him, which as a whole refers to Him. “Ye search the Scriptures,” said He (John 5: 39) to the Scribes, “because ye think that in them ye have eternal life; and they are they which bear witness of me.” As a whole the Scripture points thus concentrically to Him. Hence His citation of two utterances of the Old Testament in one dictum, as for instance in Matt. ix. 13, from Hosea vi. 6 and from Micah vi. 8; which is only explicable from the point of view that back of the secondary authors (auctores secundarii) of each book you recognize one first author (auctor primarius), in whose plan and utterance of thought lies the organic unity of the several Scriptures. The secondary author is sometimes named, but only with the quotations of those utterances which did not come forth from them, but which were directed to them, as for instance in Matt. xiii. 14, where we read: “And unto them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah,” and then follows Isaiah vi. 9, “concerning those who seeing do not perceive,” which was spoken by God to Isaiah in the vision of his call. We find the same in Matt. xv. 7, 8, where Jesus says: “Ye hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying: This people honoreth me with their lips, etc.,” in which the “Me” itself indicates that Isaiah did not speak these words, but God. That this conception embraced not merely the prophetical, but likewise the historical, books appears from the constant reference to what occurs in the Old Testament concerning Noah, Abel, Abraham, Sodom, Lot, the queen of Sheba, Solomon, Jonah, etc., all of which are historic references which show that the reality of these events was a certainty to Jesus, even as they were a certainty to those to whom He spake. If it be true, therefore, that in no given instance Jesus utters an express declaration concerning inspiration, it appears sufficiently clearly, that He considered the Scriptures of the Old Covenant to be the result of a Divine act of revelation, the original and real subject of which was “God” or “the Spirit.”

But there is more; it can be shown that Jesus Himself has given utterance to the idea of inspiration, and, on the other hand, that He, by no single word, has opposed the ideas which at that time existed concerning inspiration. The idea of inspiration is, that God by His Spirit enters into the spirit of man, and introduces into his spirit, i.e. into his consciousness, a concrete thought, which this man could not derive from himself nor from other men. This very idea we find even put antithetically, in Matt. xvi. 17, where Jesus says to Peter that his confession of Him as the Christ, the Son of the living God, is no product of what he himself has thought or other people had whispered in his ear; flesh and blood taken here as the human, in antithesis to God, have not imparted this knowledge to him; it has come to him by revelation, even from the Father who is in heaven. That this idea of inspiration did not limit itself to the quickening of a certain disposition or perception, but in the conception of Jesus implied also the inspiration of conscious thoughts, appears sufficiently clearly from Luke xii. 12, where Jesus says: “For the Holy Spirit shall teach you in that very hour what ye ought to say.” This does not prove that Jesus explains the Old Testament to have originated in this same way, but it shows that there was nothing strange to Jesus in the idea of such an inspiration, that He considered it by no means unworthy of God, and that He raised its reality above all doubt. And if we connect with this the fact, that the contemporaries of Jesus explained the Scriptures of the Old Covenant from such an inspiration, and that Jesus nowhere contradicted this representation, but rather confirmed it by His use of the Old Testament, then no one has the right to combat, by an appeal to Jesus, such an inspiration of the Old Testament as one less worthy of God. From the above it rather appears that Jesus viewed the Old Testament in the same way as His contemporaries and as the Christian Church has done throughout all ages in all its official confessions, and views it to this day. By which we do not mean to say that the later outworking of this conception may not become open to severe criticism, but from it, nevertheless, the result may and must be drawn that to appeal to the Old Testament as to a decisive Divine authority, as is still done this day by those who hold fast to the Scripture, finds not merely a support in the example of Jesus, but became prevalent in the Christian Churches by His example and upon the authority of His name, and by His example is ever yet maintained in the face of all dissolving criticism; not as the result of scientific investigation, but as the fruit of a higher inworking in the spiritual consciousness.

The objection to this, derived from Matt. v. 21—45, scarcely needs a refutation. In this pericope, the Lord declares very emphatically that the ancients have said thus and so, and that He puts His sayings over against these. But this does not form an antithesis between Jesus and the Old Testament; on the contrary by His accurate exegesis He but maintains the Old Testament over against the false exegeses of the Sanhedrin of His day. In this connection Jesus speaks nowhere of a Scripture, but of an oral tradition, and of sayings; and in this oral tradition of the ancients the commandment had either been limited to its letter, or weakened by addition, or falsified by an incorrect antithesis, and what was a Divine dispensation had been made to be a fixed rule. Against this Jesus ranges Himself with the spiritual interpretation of the law. That a man must not look upon a woman to desire her was the simple application of the tenth commandment to the seventh, in connection with Job xxxi. 1 and Psalm cxix. 37. Likewise, the love of an enemy is not put by Jesus as something new above or against the Old Testament, but the narrow and pregnant meaning given by the Sanhedrin to the expression neighbor is combated by Jesus in the spirit of Proverbs xxv. 21. It is, indeed, entirely inconceivable how the absurd idea that Jesus here placed Himself in opposition to the Old Testament, could be entertained for a single moment, by those who have studied the connection. Just before this pericope, in this same address of our Lord, it is said that he who had broken one of these least commandments stood guilty; and that He was come, not to destroy the Scripture of the Old Covenant, but to fulfil these by “His doctrines, life and passion.” The warning, not to think that Jesus draws the sword against the Old Testament, is expressly added here.

In closing let it be noted, that for three years Jesus had been most narrowly watched by the Sanhedrin, and every word He spoke had been carefully sifted. At that time there were two holy things in Israel: their Scripture and their temple. Of these two Jesus gave up the temple, of which He said that not one stone would be left upon the other; while, on the contrary, of the Scripture He declared, that no jot or tittle of it shall pass till all shall be fulfiled. Concerning His speech against the temple, complaint was made against Him, though the form of the charge was unjust. If He had uttered a single word against the Scripture of the Old Testament, He would certainly have been similarly accused. With reference to this, however, you observe no charge, not even a weak reproach, and from this it may be inferred, that in this matter of the Scripture His enemies had no fault to find with Him.