For the designation of our task there remains only one other way of looking at it, namely this,—as a survey of the moral effects of the Life, Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ towards the founding of the Church. In this understanding of it, only the notions of justification and reconciliation, which we have already mentioned, are sufficient. This affirmation, however, proceeds upon such an understanding of the foundations of the doctrine in the New Testament, and of its progress in Church-theology, as cannot be had now except in hints and in a provisional way. Of course the New Testament itself, as well as the History of Dogmas, presents us with a rich abundance of conceptions that are closely connected with those already mentioned. Amongst these there occur in the New Testament the following: Sanctification, Bringing to God, Purchasing for God (ἀγοράζειν), Purification, Redemption. The last-mentioned of these seems especially to recommend itself, inasmuch as redemption expresses the whole compass of conceivable effects of the death of Christ, and is expressly used in this sense by Paul (Rom. iii. 24; Col. i. 14; Eph. i. 7). Moreover, the comprehensive personal title of Christ as the Redeemer has been sanctioned by the ordinary language of the Church. The word, however, is less suitable as a title on account of its purely negative meaning, and also from the circumstance, that in the period of Patristic theology (where the notion is an independent one) it received an erroneous, purely dramatic, thoroughly non-ethical application; while, on the other hand, in the doctrinal system of the middle ages and of the Reformation it comes up only in subordination to other notions; and finally, in modern usage, is not employed as an exhaustive designation of the thing we now wish to denote by it. It is well known that a number of Greek and Latin Church Fathers view the death of Christ as a transaction in which God (from the motive of His justice) delivered over the life of the God-man as a price to the devil, who is recognised as the rightful lord over sinful humanity, and who could be induced to make surrender of his rights only on condition of receiving that as an equivalent. In this theory sin is represented merely as a mechanical subjection to the devil, and the idea of redemption remains entirely out of relation to the notion of human will. Moreover, it is found in carrying out this thought, that the issue of the legal transaction comes into collision with the idea of God’s justice which had led to it: for the price paid to the devil as an equivalent for man cannot, from the very nature of the case, remain in his possession. The significance which in this connexion attaches to the resurrection of Christ from the dead is, that thereby the devil lost possession of the compensation which he had received. But while the supposition that the devil had been deceived as to the effects of the legal transaction he had entered into was inevitable, it was impossible to believe with regard to the other party to the transaction—the omniscient God—anything else than that He had intended the deception. But such an intention is inconsistent with the justice of God, which is presupposed; thus the theory is self-contradictory, and is therefore untrue.³ On this account even Gregory Nazianzen wandered away from the fundamental idea of the theory, because, regarding the devil as the despoiler and oppressor of mankind, he did not consider him entitled to claim any price for the surrender, much less one of infinite value. But this consideration falls short of its full effect with him, because he was not able consistently to explain from what necessity arising out of the very nature of God it was needful that He should receive the life of Christ by His death as a ransom.⁴ The theologians of the middle ages were the first who succeeded in thoroughly uprooting the theory we have mentioned, while they at the same time lifted the problem of the saving efficacy of the death of Christ to a higher sphere—that in which sin is viewed in its legal and moral aspects. Diverse as are the views of Anselm and Abelard on this question, it is at any rate conclusive as regards the position of the problem of the death of Christ in their theological discussions, that they wholly reject the idea that a redemption of mankind from the power of the devil was legally requisite. While Anselm represents man’s sin as an injury done to the honour of God, and explains the death of Christ as arising out of the need for satisfaction to be given to God, he denies that the devil has, as over against God, any independent sphere of right, from which alone any claim against God’s justice for an equivalent of his peculiar property could be inferred. While Abelard regards the death of Christ as that demonstration of the love of God whereby men are awakened to reciprocal love, and so reconciled with God and freed from the slavery of sin, he excludes every reference in this to the devil, inasmuch as neither at any time had he the elect in his power, nor could he by his seduction of mankind have acquired any rights over them. And even Bernard, although out of deference to theological traditionalism he brands as heresy Abelard’s repudiation of that theory, only so far gives adherence to it that he in the same breath superadds the altogether diverse thought of a satisfaction to God which Christ as the Head gave for the Body—the Church—when He bore its sins in His death.⁵ But it is decisive, so far as the theology of the middle ages is concerned, that Peter Lombard converted the mechanical idea of the devil’s power into the idea of an ethical attachment to sin on man’s part, and, following closely upon Abelard, explained the subjugation of the devil through the death of Christ, as meaning only that the reciprocal love of man to God, which is awakened by that death, cannot co-exist with a continuance in sin—the two being mutually exclusive.⁶ In the same sense Thomas Aquinas also recognises the redemption of men from sin and from the devil only as a consequence of the reconciliation of men with God, which was brought about by means of Christ’s death.⁷ The Reformation doctrine treats of the bearings of the redemption wrought in the death of Christ upon the wrath of God, as well as upon our sins, and upon the devil. But, as this combination is only placed alongside of the leading thought of the reconciliation of God with men, one sees that the notion of redemption is not treated in this quarter as an independent one. For, being a negative notion, it could not, at the time of the special scientific elucidation of the problem of the death of Christ, acquire any independent significance. If, accordingly, I shall appear to be justified in refraining from the use of this term to designate my work, I shall be only strengthened in my resolution by the contrary procedure of Schleiermacher. He distinguishes redemption and reconciliation, in the order in which I have placed them, as co-ordinate operations of Christ upon believers. By redemption he understands the taking up of believers into the powerful influence of Christ’s God-consciousness; by reconciliation, the taking up of believers into the participation of His uninterrupted blessedness.⁸ But, inasmuch as he does not succeed in carrying out the co-ordination of the two ideas, the choice of these designations appears, when more closely viewed, to be merely an arbitrary adoption of expressions which in the New Testament and in theological tradition had other meanings, and were placed in a different relation to each other.

Were the designation of our task to be determined by regard to New Testament usages of language alone, then, of all the above-mentioned notions, that of sanctification would seem to be the simplest, and, at the same time, the most comprehensive to denote the salutary fruits of the death and resurrection of Christ (John xvii. 19; 1 Cor. i. 30; Eph. v. 26; Heb. x. 10, 14, 29; xiii. 12; ii. 11)—the others, on nearer view, being seen to be synonymous. But then, as the notion of sanctification has in the theology of the Evangelical Church found its place in another part of the system, it would lead to the utmost confusion and misunderstanding if in our title we were to adhere only to the purism of the New Testament idiom. And further, in speaking more explicitly of sanctification through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, I might seem to be giving my adherence precisely to a phase of doctrinal development which I purpose to put aside as altogether indifferent in the moral aspect of the problem. I refer to the period of the patristic theology, where, in close connexion with the theory of redemption from the power of the devil, there is to be found a series of suggestions and additions which Baur treats as “mystical doctrine of reconciliation” preparatory to a later mode of apprehending the problem.⁹ The defenders of the Divinity of Christ, Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, and others, lay stress upon this, that the Incarnate Word must needs have been like unto God, inasmuch as only a person of such dignity could have brought men to God, annihilated the death of men by His own death, and by His own resurrection raised mankind to immortal life. These designs in reference to man have really as little to do with the usual notion of reconciliation as, by Baur’s own confession,¹⁰ has the theory of redemption from the power of the devil. For a doctrine of reconciliation between man and God can be constructed only where a contrariety of will between the two, or on the part of the one against the other, is presupposed. The leading thought, in accordance with which the operations of the Divine Logos are estimated, and to which also the seemingly exaggerated expression of Athanasius is to be referred—that Christ has made man divine (θεοποιεῖν)—is only the thought of sanctification, i.e. the setting apart of men for God. On this account Cyril of Alexandria finds himself constrained to account for this influence of Christ upon men by the communication of the Holy Ghost.¹¹ Where, on the other hand, it is desired to make clear the immediate effect of the historical appearance of Christ in changing man and raising him up to God, then sanctification is carried back to the analogy of a chemical process of nature, while the human nature which undergoes it is regarded only as a natural unit. Hilary of Poictiers enables us to see this kernel of the “mystical atonement-doctrine,”¹² as, generally speaking, the so-called mystical form of religious ideas is wont to rest upon the reduction of relations which pertain to the will, to the forms of a natural process.

Now, in the selection of a title, I am led by this very consideration—that the bearing of Christ’s saving work on the mutual relations between the Divine and human will must be expressed. For this purpose the notions of justification and reconciliation at once present themselves as specially adapted. For justification removes the guilt, and reconciliation the enmity, of sin towards God: both notions thus include in themselves an effect upon the human will just as certainly as guilt and enmity towards God can only be understood as belonging to the human will. But now, since these effects must be conceived as proceeding from the Divine will through the instrumentality of the doing and suffering of Christ, our title does not preclude the view that Christ’s work can be regarded as efficacious in the justification and reconciliation of men only in so far as we at the same time recognise a reference of that work to God. Nay rather, His saving operations upon men cannot be understood except it be presupposed that His doing and suffering for that end had also a value for God, whether that be expressed in the notions of satisfaction, merit, propitiation, or somehow otherwise. Nevertheless, by this statement of the problem, I design to place myself in opposition to a certain way of shaping the doctrine which some may look for. It does not seem to me accurate theology to limit to God—to the satisfaction He receives or to the propitiation of His wrath—the direct saving efficacy of the action and passion of Christ: and to deduce the forgiveness of men’s sins, or their reconciliation with God, merely as consequences from that result, and so to make the saving efficacy of Christ’s work as regards man dependent only indirectly or secondarily upon His doing and suffering. This mode of putting the doctrine has indeed in its favour the weight of almost all the traditions of dogmatic theology; but it has against it the whole idiom and way of thinking of the New Testament. Moreover, it does not in the least degree suit the purpose which ought with peculiar distinctness to lead every theologian in his doctrine of Christ—this, namely, of setting forth Christ as the direct Revealer of God’s saving purpose towards men, not merely in His words, but also in all His works. We come short of this task, if we refer the value of Christ’s passion directly only to a pacification of God or change effected in His mind, and set forth in an altogether separate part of the system the saving graces of God which thereby were first made possible. Such a mode of procedure tends towards a mutilation of the character of the Person of Christ as Revealer. This method I renounce; and along with the Reformers, particularly with Melanchthon, I attach justification and reconciliation to the doing and suffering of Christ as His direct operations, which are necessarily presupposed in order to the awakening in us of our consciousness as believers.

It is true that since the beginning of the middle ages, history has for the most part treated of these doctrines in the reverse order—reconciliation of God and justification of men. But not invariably: for there is also tradition in favour of that manner of viewing the question which waives all inquiry as to a reconciliation of God, and finds in the manifestation, life, and obedient suffering of Christ the pledge of God’s self-subsistent grace towards men. And even though this view makes its appearance after the Reformation as the heterodox one, yet in the middle ages, for a much longer period, it had equal currency and equal recognition from the Church with that which alone finds place in the subsequent scheme of orthodox doctrine. Thus no well-founded objection to the title we have chosen can be derived, even from consideration of the way in which these doctrines have been presented in history. Their history, which we are just about to enter upon, would be too narrowly and therefore untruly apprehended were we to restrict it to the unfolding of the thoughts of reconciliation of God and justification of men.

2. The discharge of my historical task brings me into contact with the work of Baur—The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation in its Historical Development from the earliest to the latest times (1838). This work has naturally lightened my labour by pointing out to me the literature that has been brought under review in it; yet at no point have I been spared the necessity of thorough investigation of authorities. My willing recognition of the epoch-making importance of this book to the history of dogma, cannot prevent me from frankly saying that it has almost utterly failed to help me to an understanding of the historical course of the doctrine of reconciliation. I can very well appreciate the fact that it was Hegel’s Philosophy of History that gave Baur the impulse and ability to conceive and execute on so grand a scale his great undertaking; but I cannot doubt that such a standard for historical writing really involves failure of its end at the outset. And though it might be thought that, in spite of the untenableness of the general scheme of the work, its statements and judgments on particular matters would yet be found trustworthy, I can only say that my own expectation has not been realized in this, except in subordinate and comparatively unimportant parts of the work. In fact, even the grouping of its individual parts in the framework of the Philosophy of History not unfrequently falls short of the artistic style of division that might be expected from the writer.

In particular, Baur has at times failed to take up the matters of which he has to treat in so exhaustive a way as is presupposed in his arrangement of them; and at other times he has included in his work and in his arrangement of subjects, matters which do not fall under his general title. The Christian notion of reconciliation can only be understood as a removal of the one-sided or mutual contrariety between the Divine and human will. Accordingly, the fancies of the Church Fathers (which we have already characterized) about the redemption of the human race from Satan, and about the deification of the human race as a natural unity, do not fall under that notion; and, therefore, these views, along with that of Scotus Erigena regarding the abolition through Christ of the distinction between Divine and created Being, ought at most to have been considered only by way of introduction to the history of the doctrine of reconciliation—not as particular parts of it. Taken by itself, this is precisely a part of the book which shows great learning and merit; but it mars its orderly unity.¹³ And unity ought to be guaranteed in the distribution of subjects. Baur founds his mode of dividing his work on the following consideration (p. 12):— “As the spirit throughout the whole of its development in time proceeds onwards from objectivity to subjectivity, and from subjectivity to objectivity, in order to raise itself, by means of the various tendencies by which its inner development is wrought out, from the unreflectiveness of natural being to true spiritual freedom, so the history of Christian dogma in general, and of each individual dogma in particular, divides itself into various periods, according as the tendency to objectivity or that to subjectivity is the prevailing one, or both in the higher unity of the notion include and mutually interpenetrate each other.” The Reformation and the practical philosophy of Kant accordingly are indicated as the turning-points respectively to a mere subjectivity, and to a subjectivity which embodies the object in itself; and three periods are supposed:—that of predominant objectivity of doctrine, that of gradually prevailing subjectivity, and that of subjectivity returning to objectivity. But, according to this scheme of history, Baur was able to base the significance of the Reformation only on this, that the Reformers took the doctrine of reconciliation into the service of the thought of justification by faith. It results from this that the doctrine of reconciliation could enter into such a scheme of distribution only on condition that the business of the historian should embrace at the same time the doctrine of justification. But, as no consideration is given to that doctrine in any direct or thoroughgoing way, the consequence is that the theme of the whole work is too narrow for the scheme proposed, and does not fill it up. Moreover, Baur cannot conceal, even from himself, the fact that the Reformation circle of ideas by no means bears the stamp of mere subjectivity, especially in reference to the idea of reconciliation. On the one hand, he cannot deny (p. 13) that the Reformation-theology defends the objective form of the atonement in a very energetic way; and, on the other hand, he confesses that faith, in the Reformation-sense, is indeed the spirit’s consciousness of its finitude and neediness, but also at the same time the expression of its infinite nature (p. 287). He might have discovered here, in the very heart of the development of thought which had to be surveyed, a manifestation of subjectivity interpenetrated with objectivity, on which the historical accuracy of his whole system breaks down. If he had further observed that the mediæval doctrines of Christ’s satisfaction and merit are also accompanied by a doctrine of subjective justification, he would then have been compelled to confess that even the period of prevailing objectivity in the doctrine of reconciliation presents an aspect of subjectivity interpenetrated with objectivity as the realization of the task of Christianity. If, on the other hand, the doctrine of reconciliation should, in accordance with Baur’s favourite principles of method, come to be expounded without regard to any doctrine of justification, then it is not the Reformation but Socinianism that forms an epoch; and that, too, just in so far as it comes most directly into conflict with the Reformation theology. But in that case it will be asked, whence is the material for our third period to be derived? For the distance of Kant and his school from the “Illumination” which Socinianism introduced into Lutheran theology, seems slight enough according to Baur’s own representation. Of Schleiermacher’s view again, he judges that it is not essentially superior to that of Kant; that it has its centre of gravity in the subjective consciousness, and only manifests an uncertain oscillation towards the pole of objectivity, by widening that consciousness into the spirit of church-fellowship; while the development of the necessary consequences of the Hegelian philosophy by Strauss, which is approved of by Baur, presents us with nothing other than the absorption of the objectivity of God, and so also of the objective factor of the idea of reconciliation, by the subjective self-consciousness in its elevation to absoluteness. These developments cannot properly be disjoined from the movement that originated with Socinianism, and therefore the principal contents of the “third period” fall under the second when that is rightly defined. Thus neither does the material of the book fit itself into the dialectical and ostensibly historical framework which Baur brings with him to the examination of details; nor can a justification for the method pursued be derived afterwards from the examination of the material.

The historical presentation of this doctrine demands that the change or progression which is brought about in the mode of viewing Christ’s atoning work by the taking up of new matter, or by the influence of new ideas, should in every case be established by means of a strict comparison of the successive schools of thought. This task also is for the most part unsatisfactorily performed by Baur. I call attention, for example, to his whole investigation of the Reformation-doctrine of reconciliation especially as laid down in the Formula Concordiæ, as compared with the doctrine of the Schoolmen, pp. 291-304. Not only is Baur satisfied with bringing forward for direct comparison only Anselm’s theory, altogether disregarding the historically much more important teachings of Thomas and of Duns (although he again and again speaks in a general way of Anselm and the Scholastics), but he also contents himself with the utterly unmeaning phrase that the theory of satisfaction in the Formula Concordiæ is in one of its most essential conceptions the “natural climax and completion” of the theory of Anselm (p. 291). Besides, the “sharper and more many-sided” definition which the idea of Satisfaction receives in the Formula Concordiæ, as compared with that of Anselm, is only hinted at in p. 296, and is not given till we come to the end of the whole excursus; nay rather, attention is diverted from the discrepancy in the conceptions of satisfaction to the consideration of a difference between the things to which expiatory value is attached—in that Anselm gives weight only to the suffering of Christ, while the Formula Concordiæ brings into consideration, as contributing to this end, not only His suffering but also His active obedience as well. One could never learn from Baur’s book that the satisfaction of Christ was regarded by the Schoolmen as a necessity arising from the arbitrary will of a mighty possessor of private rights, while the Reformers sought its explanation in the Public Law of the law-ordered community in which God and man are constituent parts,—that in the one case it is regarded as the arbitrary compensation for a personal injury, and in the other as the necessary punishment of a violation of law. The great critic, moreover, has in this work fallen short of the composure and clearness of view which are needful for the analysis of any set of ideas foreign to one’s-self. His analyses are never directed towards the reconstruction of another man’s train of thought out of its fundamental ideas. He never has patience to allow any inconsistencies that may exist in a theory to come to light in the course of such a reconstruction; but he lays hold of every doctrinal statement at any point which seems to present a self-contradiction, and carries out his criticism in a line of argumentation which almost never bears with it the evidence of justice.

Neither does the grouping of subjects in his intermediate divisions present so favourable a specimen of the art of exposition as one might fairly expect. If in the mediæval period it is right to embrace in one chapter the two antipodes—Thomas and Duns,—then Abelard ought not to have been separated from Anselm, and classified with other teachers who came far short of his position as a leader in the theology of our subject. Piscator’s controversion of the value of the active obedience of Christ as a satisfaction for sin does not deserve the honour of a special chapter,—an honour which is given to it, apparently because it is the only episode known to Baur in all the rich development of the doctrine of the atonement in the Reformed theology. Of course, when violently separated from that connexion, Piscator’s peculiar teaching could not be introduced anywhere else as a secondary matter. Further, it is impossible to see why the theory of Grotius regarding the death of Christ as a penal example should be separated from the views of the other Arminians. But the chapter that follows, in which the philosophy of Leibnitz and Wolf, and also incidentally the Mystics, are considered, presents a collocation which can be explained only by supposing that Baur was utterly at a loss what to do with these appearances in the course of history. The Mystics really belong to the same school as the Socinians; the influences of Leibnitz and Wolf, on the contrary, ought to be connected with the theology of the “Illumination.”

It is impossible to understand either the history of man’s spiritual life as a whole, or the history of the doctrine of the atonement, by means of the change of relation between the logical determinations of subject and object. The history of any single Christian doctrine must be based upon the history of Christian theology; but this is influenced in its course just as much by the turns that are taken in the practical development of the Church, as by the influences which originate in the development of the general ethical tone of society and in free scientific culture,—particularly in the variety of philosophical systems. Thus one cannot carry through a history of the isolated doctrines of justification and reconciliation, without having a general understanding of the changing conditions of theology at each of the separate steps in the development. Now it betokens no very encouraging condition of our science, that I am not able to borrow from anybody the general points d’appui which the history of theology ought to have afforded me for the discharge of my special task, and find myself compelled, when they must be found, to seek them for myself. It is hard upon my esprit de corps as a theologian to be compelled to say that one is left in the lurch by everybody when one tries to ascertain, in a plain and intelligible way, how it is that the Reformation, notwithstanding its antagonism to the mediæval Church, is rooted in mediæval Christianity; or to find out who was intellectually the author of the theological scholasticism and of the ecclesiastical particularism to which the Reformation so soon fell a prey; to discover what were the causes which led to the so-called “Illumination,” or why again the magnificent impulse given by Kant spent itself in “Illumination” philosophy and theology; and finally, on what it is that Schleiermacher rests his claim to be leader of the German evangelical theology of this century, which is now being aimlessly frittered away and so threatened with extinction.

Dorner’s History of Protestant Theology (1857) has also failed to present me with an answer to these questions. The course of his exposition follows in every essential point the same method as that of which Baur makes use. He tries to make us understand the history, in its changes and its oneness, by showing how two very thin threads of thought unloose themselves from their original connexion, and find it again in such a way as to acquire a peculiar strength. The logical regularity of this course is taken for a discovery of the law of the history,—in the recognition of which, therefore, the history comes to be understood. The difference, however, between the two theologians (related though they be) seems to be very strongly marked by this, that Dorner does not, like Baur, find the key to the history of theology in the logical scheme of subject and object, but in the theological principles of the Reformation. Besides, he vindicates for the beginning of the development, that is, for a standpoint of the Reformers, a character of completeness, and not one of elementary onesidedness. According to Dorner, the conception of justification by faith, and the exclusive authority of Scripture (the two principles with which he has to do), were linked together by the Reformers with delicate tact as principles of their theology, placed in a position where they mutually supported each other, and held with equal regard to the importance of both. But further, he continues, these mutually connected elements of a sound theology were separated again, from the beginning of the seventeenth century; and by this separation a second period of development was introduced. This breaking up of the Reformation synthesis was, according to him, brought about “unwittingly” by what appeared to be a strengthening of the principle on its intellectual side. The consequence was a preponderance of the doctrinal element in theological scholastics, as in the school of Calixtus: and the reaction of Christianity on its practical side, in Pietism and Mysticism, does not restore the synthesis, but is only a testimony to the unfortunate consequences of its ever having been broken. Now, in order that the synthesis of Reformation principles might be accomplished in free self-conscious command over the means employed—that is to say, in scientific perfection—it was still necessary that special conditions should be matured—namely, historical criticism and philosophical speculation. But these, in the first instance, ran their course in the eighteenth century with such a preponderance of subjectivity over the historical grounds of Christianity, that in the period of the “Illumination” there appeared points of resemblance to Pagan naturalism and Jewish legalism. Since, however, theology of this description does not claim to stand in any positive relation towards the principles of the Reformation, the consequence is either that it must be cut out from the history of Protestant theology as a heresy, or else that it proves the point of view which determined the distribution of periods to have been too narrow. This dilemma is resolved in favour of the second alternative by Dorner’s own declaration that the problem how scientifically to unite the material and the formal, the subjective and objective principle of theology, is only a more concrete expression, in reference to the sphere of Christian religion, for the philosophical problem of subject and object, of thinking and being. In accordance with this, we find that in estimating Schleiermacher (whom Dorner considers to be the person who scientifically revived the Reformation synthesis) no further thought is given to the question how he traced out the idea of justification by faith and the exclusive authority of Scripture in their relations of mutual dependence, and on this foundation built his system. On the contrary, in virtue of the very elastic interpretation which he puts upon the principles of the Reformation, it becomes possible for the historian to be content with the following statement, in order to justify himself in recognising Schleiermacher as the finished theologian of his scheme:—“By his return to the fundamental views of the Reformation he reconciles freedom with authority, personal appropriation with tradition, the ideal with the historical, upon the foundation of religion or faith in the evangelical sense of the word” (p. 790 [vol. ii. p. 376, Eng. transl.]). And again, “The actual experience of redemption through Christ accredits the authority of Holy Scripture, so that by the help of Scripture we believe in Christ, and again for Christ’s sake believe in the divine authority of Holy Scripture” (p. 807 [vol. ii. p. 387, Eng. transl.]).

I do not at present discuss the questions whether it be historically accurate to assume the above-mentioned material and formal principles of the Reformation, and whether Schleiermacher’s importance as a theologian depends on the conformity of his theology with them. I venture simply to point out that the divergence as to historical method between Dorner and Baur, which I have spoken of above, is only seeming and superficial. Were it the case that the theological principles, of which Dorner speaks, are only equivalent to more concrete expressions for the logical scheme of subject and object, of thinking and being, the unification of which is the aim and issue of philosophical knowledge, then theology loses all its independence, and the unquestionable fact, that religion is a thing quite by itself, is denied in this estimate of the theological knowledge which has religion for its foundation and object. But this is just Baur’s standpoint, and that of the Hegelian philosophy of religion! And although it may be useful for finding one’s bearings at the beginning of the investigation to assume in the alternation of periods such variations as that in the seventeenth century the factor of the authority of Scripture has a preponderating weight over the doctrine of justification by faith, which had previously stood in equipoise with it, yet it is the task of the historian to trace to all its sources the error into which people at that time universally and “unwittingly” fell, and which assuredly is not sufficiently accounted for by the intellectual striving after a firm basis for systematic theology; for certainly every change in theology presupposes changes in the religious and church consciousness. Although these influences may have been hidden from people then, it is the business of history to reveal them to us now. On this point Dorner has altogether neglected his task; and his contributions towards an explanation of the other important turning-point in theology—the appearance of the theological “Illumination”—again by no means exhaust the historian’s task. The Wolfian philosophy is responsible for this phase of thought in virtue not of its logic, but of its individualistic ethics: but Leibnitz in his Theodicée gave the first impulse in that direction. When, then, Dorner says no more of this philosopher than that he took a very friendly attitude towards theology, it is clear that he must have read that work with an artlessness of which every historian ought at the very outset to divest himself. But he utterly abandons the procedure proper to a writer of history, when at the outset he teleologically heralds in the historical and philosophical tendencies of that epoch of theology as the preliminary conditions of a happy solution of the theological problem, yet all the while gives no explanation whatever of that subjective tendency in which the peculiar defect of the “Illumination” lay. Historical investigation is one thing, philosophy of history is another.

3. The history of the doctrines of justification and reconciliation has its sphere within the Western Church alone. The theology of the Greek Church has not, as a whole, set before itself the problem which is involved in these ideas. In particular, John of Damascus contents himself with stringing together the results of patristic theology, upon which we have already touched—namely, the so-called mystical atonement theory, and the theory of redemption as modified by putting death in the place of the devil.

In common with Gregory Nazianzen, John strongly repudiates the customary reference to the devil, the unlawful lord of men. of the redemption price that was paid on the death of Christ; and explains that death, in so far as it had the character of an offering and ransom, to have related to the Father, against whom men had sinned, and from whose condemnation they needed deliverance. But he gives no further grounding whatever to this connexion of ideas. He rather supplements it off-hand by a mythical mode of representation, borrowed from Cyril of Alexandria,¹⁴ and presenting features derived from the theory of a fraud practised on the devil, to the effect that death, as he eagerly seized the body of Christ, was caught as by a bait upon the hook of God, and in tasting the sinless and life-giving body was destroyed, whereupon he again gave up all those whom formerly he had devoured.¹⁵ Moreover, John carries out in all rhetorical fulness of detail the thought that the Son of God became man in order by grace to restore man to that destiny unto which he had been created, namely, the image of God, that had been lost by sin. The Son of God, by His participation of human nature, has raised men to the sphere of the incorruptible and abiding; by and in Himself has renewed in them the image of God; has, by His resurrection, delivered us from the realm of the transitory; and finally, by awakening the knowledge of God in us, as well as by His discipline and patience and meekness has redeemed us from the power of the devil.¹⁶

In the circle of the Greek theology of the middle ages, we certainly find indications that men were not altogether secluded from the influence of the ideas which the theologians of the West were engaged in working out in reference to the problem now before us. Nicolaos Kabasilas, archbishop of Thessalonica in the fourteenth century, interprets the significance of Christ’s suffering unto death for the deliverance of men at one time as a satisfaction due to the honour of God, and, at another time, also as a vicarious punishment—that is, under points of view which could hardly have been derived from any others than Anselm of Canterbury and Peter the Lombard. Of course we must not expect to find incorporated with the rhetorical representations of Nicolaos’ book περὶ τῆς ἐν Χριστῷ ζωῆς, that process of proof in which more particularly the first-mentioned thought is worked out by Anselm. Nevertheless, from two passages of this work (i. 78, et seq., iv. 18, et seq.) we gather the following train of reasoning:—That men by themselves were neither able to do away with their guilt before God, nor yet to make reparation to His injured honour. Men had no power to do so: God, who had the power, did not as God lie under the obligation that fell on men, for which cause it fell to Him in whom both natures met to discharge these functions towards God.¹⁷ But the following sequence of thoughts (unnoticed by Gass) is more closely thought out (i. 57-59): “We have been declared just in the first place as having been freed from prison and accusation, inasmuch as He who had done no wrong vindicated us by His death on the cross, whereon He bore the punishment for our violation of the law: in the second place we are represented as friends of God and as righteous persons on account of that death. For not only did the Saviour free us, and reconcile us with the Father when He died; but He also imparted to us the power of becoming children of God—the former, inasmuch as He united our nature to Himself through the flesh which He destroyed,—the latter, inasmuch as He unites each one of us to His own flesh through the power of the sacraments.” The latter part of this paragraph certainly has a thoroughly catholic ring. But the justification of individuals through the sacraments is here grounded on a justification and reconciliation of the Church with God, which justification is immediately connected with the bearing of punishment by Christ in His death. To be sure, the course of thought is by no means clear and unambiguous, for it is not dialectically arranged. Nevertheless, in the Byzantine’s apprehension of the matter, a tendency which goes beyond the mediæval development of the doctrine finds expression.

In my historical studies, preparatory to the particular investigation I have in hand, however, I do not occupy myself with such casual and rhetorical formulæ as have not been thought out in an independent manner, even although they should have an appearance of riper development. I take up only those trains of thought which have been actually worked out in a methodical way, and which strive after conclusions which are logically necessary. But such trains of thought have been constructed only by the theologians of the West. The doctrines of reconciliation and justification are precisely those which have found their development exclusively in this portion of the Church. Whereby we may discern—what indeed is a conclusion warranted by everything else—that Western Christianity in general stands on a different niveau from that of the East, and that the separation of fellowship between the two groups has not its explanation in politics alone.

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Footnotes

1. Der Christliche Glaube, 3d Ed. § 102. ↩

2. Eusebius, it is true, had already referred the three types to Christ.—Hist. Eccl. i. 3. ↩

3. Compare Baur, Lehre von der Versöhnung, pp. 30-87. ↩

4. As above, pp. 87-90. ↩

5. Ut supra, pp. 155, 191-194, 202. ↩

6. Ut supra, p. 209, et seq. ↩

7. Summa Theol. P. III. qu. 49, art. 2. ↩

8. Der Christliche Glaube, 2d Ed. § 100, 101. ↩

9. Ut supra, p. 111. ↩

10. Ut supra, p. 89. ↩

11. Ut supra, p. 117. ↩

12. De Trinitate, ii. 24. Humani generis causa Dei filius natus ex virgine est et Spiritu sancto,—ut homo factus ex virgine naturam in se carnis acciperet perque hujus admixtionis societatem sanctificatum in eo universi generis humani corpus existeret. Compare Baur, as above, p. 116. ↩

13. Baur himself half confesses this when he says that the first section contains, properly speaking, only the preparation and transition to the Theory of satisfaction. ↩

14. Baur, ut supra, p. 102. ↩

15. Περὶ τῆς ὀρθοδόξου πίστεως, iii. 27. ↩

16. Ut supra, iii. 31. ↩

17. Compare Gass: Die Mystik des Nikolaos Kabasilas, p. 77.—Gass (l.c.) in agreement with Ullmann (Die Dogmatik der griechischen Kirche im 12. Jahrhundert.—Stud. u. Kr. 1833, Part 3, p. 736, seq.) finds also in Nicolaos of Methone coincidences with the theory of Anselm, which however Ullmann limits to this point, that the necessity of the Incarnation in reference to the atonement is indicated, while the Greek is thinking not of a satisfaction rendered to God, but of a redemption out of the power of death. But this theory has no historical connexion with Anselm, but is derived from the tract (attributed to Athanasius) De incarnatione Verbi Dei: compare Baur, p. 94, f. ↩