With a view to this, it may be called to mind that, according to Dilthey’s convincing proofs,1 the view of the universe which dominates the speculative efforts of Schelling and Hegel originates with Goethe. The poetical power of intellectual intuition with which the philosopher Schelling sets forth the parallel double unfolding of the absolute in nature and the spirit’s history, has its original prototype in the scientific effort of the great poet to comprehend the universe as the graduated scale of all those orders of life into which nature differentiates itself with a view to the enjoyment of itself. It cannot be questioned what enrichment of the spirit’s manner of contemplation, and what fertilization of the intellectual life was gained by the educated classes of the German nation from this train of thought; nor can it be disputed that the intellectual horizon of the Illumination was successfully overstepped for the first time by means of this co-operation of aesthetic and scientific impulses. Nor yet can it be doubted that this view of the universe, in so far as it promoted a taste for history, brought an appreciative attention to bear upon Christianity. But that the specific peculiarity of Christianity could be exhausted by the speculative philosophy must a priori be doubted; for the schemata in which, in the first instance, Schelling’s construction of the course of the universe moved—the opposition of the real and the ideal, of being and knowing, of the infinite and the finite—were far too abstract and comprehensive to be able to arrive at what, in the strictest sense, is the problem of the Christian religion. Schleiermacher has certainly defined Christianity with historical correctness to the effect that it is the monotheistic mode of belief pertaining to the teleological school of piety, in which everything is brought into relation with the redemption accomplished by Jesus. In other words, this means that life in this religion moves in reciprocal relation between the ethical task of the kingdom of God and the religious assurance of redemption; and this implies that as the ethical normation of life necessarily has its ground in the historical Founder of the kingdom of God, so also the religious equipment of life is indispensably connected with Him, and the ethical conditionality of social effort and faith is precisely what guarantees the development of the individual’s peculiarity, and therewith the development of blessedness in the Christian fellowship.
In the Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums (1803),2 Schelling has assigned to theology and to Christianity a position in the highest degree distinguished. Philosophy is the science of the Absolute, regarded as the identity of the real and ideal, and of the ideal opposition of these unities, while the objective knowledge of the absolute Being, in so far as its immediate object is given in history as the ideal product of the Divine activity, belongs to theology. While thus theology, as the true centre in which philosophy becomes objective, consists mainly in speculative ideas, it is altogether the highest synthesis of philosophical and historical knowledge. For Christianity is not merely in general a tradition like all religion; its fundamental character is the intuition of the universe as history, as a moral kingdom. For in contradistinction from heathenism, where the infinite is contemplated in the finite, and so itself becomes finite in a multitude of shapes that stand side by side in space, Christianity goes to the infinite in itself, and therefore discerns it in the series of historical figures in which the Divine reveals itself only in a transient way, the fleeting apparition of which is held fast only by faith, but can never be transmuted into an absolute present. In this mode of contemplation of the world as history, every particular factor of time comes to be a revelation of a particular side of God. While now philosophy recognises absolute identity between nature and history, the same antithesis recurs also in the Christian view of the universe as history. The old world represents the nature-side of history inasmuch as the prevailing idea in it is the Being of the Infinite in the Finite. Above this the authentic shaping of history in Christianity is elevated by the idea of the Incarnation of God, which has not the heathenish meaning of deifying the finite, but the opposite one, that Christ offers to God the Finite in His own person, and thereby works reconciliation. As He was appointed thereto indeed from all eternity, yet passes by as a phenomenon in time, Christianity as history is founded upon that spirit which carries back the Finite to the Infinite. Reconciliation of the Finite that had fallen away from God by His own birth into Finitude, is the first thought of Christianity; and the completion of its entire view of the universe and its history is contained in the idea of the Trinity. In it the Son of God is the Finite itself (as that exists in the eternal intuition of God), which makes its appearance as a God who suffers and is subject to the inflictions of time, who, in the climax of His manifestation in Christ, closes the world of Finitude, and opens up that of Infinitude or of the dominion of the Spirit. The man Christ is the acme of the Incarnation of God, and so far also its beginning, for before Him no one revealed the Infinite in such a way as could continue to work among his successors as members of his body. But the incarnation of God in Christ is falsely viewed when it is viewed as an isolated, temporal, empirical fact. For as an Individual, Christ is a Person fully conceivable from the standpoint of Judaism, particularly of Essenism; and God, who is eternally outside of all time, cannot have become anything then. The incarnation of God, accordingly, is an incarnation from eternity; and when this idea is referred to Christ, He has in relation to it only the significance of a symbol. Christianity thus already existed previous to, and outside of, Christianity, in the religion of India, in the Greek mysteries, in the Orphic poetry, and in the philosophy of Plato. While the necessity of the Idea of Christianity results herefrom, it becomes at the same time clear that in this respect no absolute (he means qualitative) oppositions exist. And therefore the historical construction of Christianity cannot be separated in thought from the religious construction of all history, or rather it must issue in the solution of this last problem. The spirit of the new era advances with obvious consistency to the annihilation of all purely finite forms, and it is religion to recognise it in this also. In accordance with this law the state (which religion in Christianity had more or less attained) of being a universal and public life must have been a transitory one, for it exhibited as realized only a portion of the purposes of the spirit of the universe. This holds good of all Church-organizations, not excepting that of Protestantism; nor can it be doubted that even morality is no distinguishing feature of Christianity; for the sake of one or two ethical precepts, such as that of love of one’s neighbour, etc., it would never have existed in the world and in history. But the determining characteristics of Christianity which extend themselves to an unlimited time, may be clearly enough recognised in poetry and in philosophy. The former needs religion as the highest, yea, the sole possibility of poetical reconciliation also, the latter by means of a truly speculative standpoint has regained the standpoint of religion as well, and paved the way for the regeneration of esoteric Christianity as well as for the proclamation of the absolute gospel.
If Christianity is the contemplation of the universe as history, but in such a way that in its dogmas the eternal relations of the Infinite and the Finite are symbolically and obliquely expressed, and in the appreciation of the epoch-making figure of its Founder as the incarnate God, the eternal ideas are narrowed within the incogitable limits of a phenomenon cognisable by the senses; then it is very natural that in the last resort Christianity can assert its validity only as a standard of poetical justice, and as the leaven of a philosophy which itself is the play of the poetical faculty of imagination. That Christianity contains the intuition of a moral kingdom only in the degree in which it is at the same time the motive that impels the will to the realization of that kingdom, that it is not a historical series of phenomena running their course in time without these being drawn together in space also into a conscious fellowship of will—that in virtue of these conditions it represents a reality of the spirit-life which does not end in poetry and poetical philosophy, has been allowed to pass unobserved in this historical construction. And what value attaches to the allusions to the reconciliation of the Finite and the Infinite if this real practical significance of Christianity is entirely ignored? The Christian idea of reconciliation lies far removed from that field of vision, wherein the alternation of phenomena implied in the idea of Finitude is interpreted to be the reconciliation of the Finite with God and the proper truth of Christ’s personal sacrifice to God. For the conviction of this reconciliation, which, according to Schelling, should prevail in the kingdom of Infinitude or of spirit, which is derived from Christ, can be expressed only in the language of Mephistopheles,—Alles, was entsteht, ist werth dass es zu Grunde geht!3 Viewed in itself, accordingly, this “historical construction” of Christianity in the Lectures on the Method of Academical Study is simply comical. For the connexion of Schelling’s own subsequent development, however, it is worthy of notice that he still recognises this work in his Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (1809).4 In spite of the distance between the idea of God expressed in this later treatise and that of his earlier work, in spite of the precisely contrary view of the incarnation of God, this recognition is calculated to show that the mythology of Böhme, to which Schelling gave himself up, is not a correction but a completion of the Identity-philosophy.5 For the connexion of the speculative theology which followed, however, it is yet more significant that the contrast drawn by Schelling between the eternal incarnation of God and that made in the Person of Christ became the starting-point for the criticism of Strauss.
J. G. Fichte’s Anweisung zum seligen Leben (1806), betrays, as is well known, the influence of Schelling, in so far as the objective idea of God is recognised as that of the universal and in-itself-indifferent Being. But Fichte’s original standpoint is at the same time adhered to, inasmuch as the universe is deduced as multiplicity and diversity immediately from our knowing, which indeed (since the Divine Being embraces all) is really the being of God. The act in which knowing reflects upon itself produces the universe as multiplicity, for that act attains clearness not only in the oneness of knowing but also in the specialness and separateness of this and that. So far the universe is incongruous with the one Divine Being and Existence, and so also incongruous with knowing in the highest sense; and for truth and for happiness it is all-important that in thinking we should reach the unity of Being, and renouncing every degree of imaginary personal independence, that we should reach in love to God this standpoint of the blessed life. Regarded as a philosophical and religious theory this train of thought, as Baur (as above, p. 693) justly remarks, has closest affinity with Scotus Erigena. But for this very reason it stands altogether disconnected with the Christian thought of reconciliation, but maintains only the same analogy with it which Mysticism displays (see above, p. 106). Fichte, indeed, has introduced his view into the interpretation of the prologue of the Gospel according to John, as being the right expression of the self-consciousness of Jesus. That insight into the absolute oneness of human existence with the Divine (which Jesus never had), shows, according to Fichte, that He was that Logos of God which is God. For the existence of God, outside of which nothing Is, is consciousness; by consciousness the world is; and by this knowledge as it was in Jesus is the riddle of the world and of human life solved, in so far as He knew Himself to be one with God. Herewith it is only the Christological problem that is aimed at. Fichte certainly proceeds to argue that all those who since Jesus have come to be united with God, have attained this goal only in following Jesus and in dependence on Him. But even this assertion cannot be looked upon as a substitute for the doctrine of reconciliation,—for two reasons: In the first place, not merely does he declare himself against the usual doctrine that Christ made atonement for sin to an angry God; he also interprets the expression that Christ taketh away the sins of the world, as meaning that He took away and abolished the whole delusion of sin as well as dread of the injured Deity, that this imagined difficulty in the way of transmutation to Jesus and to God has disappeared. But moreover Fichte recognises it as the only normal fact, that in the imitation of Christ the thoughtful knowledge of the oneness of all things in God is completed; but he denies that this resting upon Christ is an indispensable condition of the attainment of that end. “Only the metaphysical, and by no means the historical, makes blessed—the latter makes us intelligent only.” If now one is really united with God, and incorporated into Him, it is indifferent what the path may have been by which this has been arrived at; and Jesus Himself, were He to return to the world, would be content were He only to find Christianity actually prevailing in the spirits of men; whether men praised or overlooked His merit must be indifferent to Him who did not seek His own honour, but the honour of Him who had sent Him. While Baur finds here (p. 709) a depreciation of the value of the historical and positive in Christianity, he is at the same time of opinion that Christianity had been acknowledged by Schelling in its true significance. This opinion is confuted by what has been said above. Christianity outside of its historical setting, which Schelling recognises in consequence of his doctrine of the incarnation of God in the eternal sense, and Fichte’s radical alteration of Christianity into a philosophy, fail to do justice to the historical conditionality and limitation of Christianity just in proportion as the two philosophers are unconcerned about the practical and ethical design of this religion.
Daub’s Theologumena (1806), however, appear to meet remarkably well Baur’s demand for the speculative construction of the doctrine of reconciliation.6 For this exhibition of the doctrine of God is of such a nature that the idea of reconciliation or satisfaction is at the outset taken up into the inmost relations of the Divine Essence. In the Being of God (which at the same time is His thought of Himself, His idea) are necessarily contained the attributes of aseity, eternity, self-sufficiency. He is thus the Being of whom, in whom, for whom, God exists. But herein is at the same time expressed His idea as of one who is of, in, and for God. In the former view God is thought as the Father, in the latter as the Son. The attributes of God the Son (which correspond to those of God the Father) are to create, preserve, and (in these activities) to give satisfaction. This knowledge of God as the Son is obtained from the analogy of this idea with the universe and the conditions of its existence. For as the universe produces itself, maintains itself, and therein gives satisfaction to itself, but yet has this power from God only, it mirrors God in its exercise of activity, i.e. God as the Son, who, although distinguished from the Father, yet is one with Him in the reflection of His attributes upon Him. This use of the notion of satisfaction has not indeed, in the first instance, any direct bearing on the thought of reconciliation; for satisfaction betokens merely the active correlate of the substantial self-sufficiency of God, which in the oneness of the Divine essence, mediated by self-distinction, is identical with the αὐταρκία of God Himself. But the relation which must subsist between God as the Son and the world is fixed by Daub by means of notions which throw another light also upon that attribute of God as the Son.
In the Theologumena two points of view neutralize one another in forming an estimate of the universe. On the one side it is said that the universe, so far as the eternal reason makes itself objective therein, is not distinct from God the Son, its creator; but in so far as it falls under the senses and is distinct from God, it is as good as nothing. On the other side there is attributed to the universe an unwarranted but also inexplicable effort to become independent and to fall away from God, in so far as it is engaged in a process of Becoming. If now, in the first view of the universe (which is a Spinozistic one), is implied an exhortation to the human cognitive faculty to regard that world which seems to exist apart from God as null and beingless, there results from the second (which is borrowed from Schelling’s Philosophie und Religion, 1804) a necessity arising from the nature of God for annihilating the effort of the Finite after independence. But what is made by this expression to appear as a practical task in time, or as law of the universe for the human cognitive faculty, yet holds good only because in it the eternal harmony of the relations in God is mirrored. For so far as the world is anything, it is identical with God the Son. But in this sense He has the functions not merely of creating and preserving but also of giving satisfaction; and this, when the false independence of the finite world, is compared with its eternal existence, takes the form of the function of reconciliation. The Divine nature in the Son is reconciling inasmuch as it pledges the identity of the world with God, and that by its sacrifice and annihilation, in view of its effort after independence and its apostasy. Conspicua autem est natura mundi reconciliata in rerum omnium et singularum interitu, obitu, morte (p. 75). Herein Daub has given expression to that law of reconciliation which it was not difficult to discern even in Schelling’s earlier hints (p. 584). Only the circumstances of an identical conclusion are somewhat different in the two cases. Schelling’s thought admitted of being carried out to this expression because he took the Son of God, whose historical function is reconciliation, to be the principle of the Finite as a whole, which must be brought back to the Infinite in order to unity in the view of the universe. Daub conversely has taken the Son of God as the principle of satisfaction or harmony in the Godhead. If now the finitude of the universe, which in respect of its infinity is identical with the Son of God, was conceived as a mark of the false and so guilty independence of the universe, it followed at once on this condition that the name of reconciliation is to be applied to the annihilation of all that is finite. The deeper cause of this combination made by Daub appears, however, to lie in the connexion with the Christian religion of the two views of the universe, which are alternately insisted on by him. The Christian religion is based upon the idea of reconciliation; on the other side Daub carries out the religious view of the universe with a harshness that is equalled only by Spinoza, to the discernment of the nothingness of the universe (which admits of being distinguished from God). Consequently the experimental law of the annihilation of that finite, which has no right to be, passes with him as the reconciliation of the universe with God whereby its identity with God on the side of its actuality, and thereby the harmony and self-sufficiency of God were set up as the highest religious idea.7 Accordingly the way in which the destruction of the finite is explained away by Daub into the idea of reconciliation has in a certain degree the meaning that the assertion (made by the understanding) of the actuality of the finite is harmonized with the philosophically necessary negation thereof; and, at the same time, that the Christian religion as the religion of reconciliation can be identified with Spinoza’s view of the universe.
Although accordingly here, as in the case of Schelling, the idea of reconciliation is explained away into a cosmological law, it finds yet another application for the reason that the Theologumena are intended to present not a philosophical cosmology but the contents of the Christian religion. This is the reason why humanity, as the correlate of religion, is distinguished from the universe, of which in all other respects it forms a part, and why reconciliation for it does not consist simply in natural downfall as it does for other natural things. For the human race is that portion of the universe in which the universe has command of itself, is self-conscious and self-known. Thus the human race is impelled by the universe, in which it stands by birth, to become conscious of itself, to distinguish itself from itself, and to compare itself with itself; but hereby is it at the same time infected with the effort of the universe after independence as by an epidemic that necessarily extends to all portions of the universe, and is entangled in apostasy from God. In so far as, along with the universe, it has its origin from God, the human race is faultless and perfect. As accordingly the creating and sustaining nature of God, and the nature of the world as an object of Divine creation and preservation, are betokened by the symbol of the angels who, in conjunction with the eternal Being, enjoy a life of bliss, so, on the other hand, that propensity of the world to selfishness, whereby it becomes naught and vain, and which it conveys to the human race also, is fittingly figured forth by the notion of the prince of the evil spirits who, blinded with arrogance, incites to revolt. In this is not involved the assertion that the unwarranted tendency of the world towards independence is in itself full-blown sin; for, so far as the human race is concerned, reconciliation is not consummated in annihilation or death as a natural event. Referring to Schelling, Daub (p. 434) maintains that the highest goal of spirits is not that they should absolutely cease to be in themselves, but that this being-in-themselves should cease to be a negation for them. Blessedness for men thus consists in the religious consciousness which is indifferent to death and the fear of death, but also to life and the desire to live; by religion they ought, whether they live or die, to be freed from the nothingness of things and elevated to the discernment of absolute necessity. At the same time this definition of the purpose of religion makes it more clear that the ideas of the unwarrantable finitude of the world and of sin always threaten to overpass the distinction of grade that is designed to be drawn, and to coalesce. For this distinction of grade, which corresponds to the express distinction of level between the universe and humanity, its self-conscious portion, is not securely placed by the recognition of moral freedom; and therefore, on the one hand, the attribute of guilt cannot be maintained in relation to sin, and, on the other, that attribute always intrudes itself unintentionally where it has no right to be—into our view of the effort of the universe after independence.
The distinction of grade between the unconscious universe and the self-conscious human race is accordingly made good herein—that the same magnitude, which to the universe is reconciliation, i.e. the ground of the abolition of its finitude, comes in as religion so far as man is concerned. For if religion is to men the power that reconciles and at the same time spiritually creates and upholds, it is nothing different from the Son of God. Religion, in the first instance, is not subjective piety, nor yet objective ordinances of worship, but an absolute idea; so far as the eternal reconciliation of the human race is expressed in it, it is identical with the reconciling Being of God Himself, i.e. with God the Son. In relation to men it is subjective and objective, and divides itself into various kinds; but in the absolute religion of Christianity religion as the absolute idea comes into consciousness. And in fact this is contained in the thought of Christ as the Reconciler of the human race. But now, while Daub presents religion as an absolute idea under the title de expiatione, he develops no other thought than what is expressed in the relation of the notion of reconciliation to the world. Religion, as correlate of the human race, has thus only the meaning that the eternal state of reconciliation of the universe with God comes, through God, into the consciousness of the human race, which belongs to the universe, as its self-conscious portion. This issue is also quite intelligible if, after the manner of Spinoza, blessedness is made to consist in liberation from individual sense of life and effort (qui beantur, a se suaque indole et natura liberantur, p. 249), and in the recognition of unconditional necessity. For the removal of selfishness and independence is the eternal reconciliation of the world with God through God as Son. Therefore, in this examination of religion, it is always only the eternal reconciliation of the universe that is spoken of—a reconciliation which also is the ground of its creation, maintenance, and guidance by God. From this it results that the completion of reconciliation in time, spoken of in the records of Christianity, only means that men at some definite time required to apprehend the truth that through God the universe is eternally reconciled with God. The offering of the universe to God which is implied in the eternal satisfaction of the Son to the Father, and the thought of which is expressed in the active and passive vicarious satisfaction of Christ, thus means to the Christian religious consciousness nothing but that universal law of the transitoriness of the finite which subserves the purpose that the eternal identity of the true world with God be inculcated and experienced in the blessed indifference of men to living or dying. In particular, Daub takes in hand to change the meaning of the traditionary functions of the active and passive obedience of Christ, and apply them to the relation within the Godhead of the Son’s satisfaction to the Father, in so far as this relation of the Son, who is identical with the eternally actual world, and who represents it, guarantees the eternal doing-away of its finitude. That is to say, the active obedience is only another expression for the absolute reality in which the Son stands related to the Father, and thereby brings the true universe into relation to Him also. This is at the same time the Divine love to the universe and to the human race. The passive satisfaction is only another expression for absolute freedom, inasmuch as he who by absolute will is determined by himself, suffers absolutely. Now, the absolute freedom of the Son, which is identical with His reality, accomplishes itself in this, that He refuses to be the principle of the universe apart from God. His identity with the world thus secures to it its true freedom, for He frees it from itself (i.e. from its effort after independence). But, if now the active exercise of His freedom and reality in this respect is absolute suffering, then the eternal leading-back of the world through the Son to God is achieved in the form of passive satisfaction, for which, it must be admitted, the application of the figure of mors voluntaria continues unintelligible. This passive satisfaction is the meaning of God’s mercy. The doing and suffering of God as the Son—which He yields in the room of the universe—betoken finally His obedience, whereby He, in reconciling the world, subordinates Himself to God the Father.
This then is what is contained in religion as an absolute idea. In accordance herewith, its subjective and objective references to men are determined as pietas and as cultus Dei publicus. For piety is the knowing and honouring of God, but the contents of that knowledge are, as above specified, that we are eternally reconciled by God, and by His love and mercy made blessed; that by Him we are truly created, i.e., placed in the enjoyment of Divine freedom, and by Him sustained and guided in accordance with His providence. Piety is elicited by objective religion or the public worship of God, the common prevalence of which constitutes the kingdom of God. Hereto belongs the incarnation of God as a form of God’s kingship, the training of men in the way of God’s prophetic activity, and the public setting-apart of men by their consecration and by the sacraments in the way of His priestly activity. This distribution of the material, by altering the meaning of the traditional forms of the Christian doctrine of salvation, means nothing else than that the consciousness of the eternal state of reconciliation of the universe is elicited. And the thought of God’s incarnation has quite the same meaning. The validity of that thought is based upon the assumption that the Divine nature, as being the identity of the real and the ideal, finds an analogy in human nature regarded as the indifference of the universe and reason. That indifference is in childhood presented as an undisturbed state of innocence; in mature old age as a free, re-discovered norm in wisdom. What herein is laid down as possible—the union of the Divine and human natures in innocence and wisdom—is immediately laid down as necessary, and from eternity actual in the Son of God; but at the same time as actual in the Person of Christ, in whom we are conscious of that eternal relation, so as to accomplish our adoption as children of God, and whose piety and obedience we imitate so as to consecrate ourselves to God.
In so far as this circle of thoughts (which rests directly on Schelling) touches upon the historical limitation of the idea of reconciliation, it is under the guidance of a Kantian principle; and from that it becomes intelligible. When Schelling denied that the Incarnation of God may be thought of as an empirical fact in time (p. 582), he followed Kant’s dictum that God is out of time; and the correlate thought that the incarnation of God is eternal, has only the negative meaning that it is not temporal, —that the thought is an idea. Now Daub’s similar declaration is indeed so conditioned that the historical figure of Christ and the notion of the Son who reconciles the world with God and the idea of religion always glide into each other; the tendency however of this procedure is clear enough—that it finds its right expression when we conclude in Tieftrunk’s formula (p. 424) adopted by Schelling also, that the God-manhood of Christ and His reconciling obedience are for Daub symbols of the timeless and so eternal relation, within the Godhead, of God to the universe and of the universe to God. It may certainly be added that the vacillating way in which, throughout the Theologumena, the eternal relations of the Divine Being and the biblico-historical utterances regarding Christ are brought to bear on one another, is partly attributable to the fact that Daub has not availed himself of that formula. But Baur’s objection, that Daub has not allowed the historical side of reconciliation to come to its rights as well as the metaphysical (as above, p. 708) finds its explanation when hereby the analogy of Daub to Kant’s standpoint is made to appear. For the rest, however, the discussion of the thought of reconciliation as a cosmological problem falls far below the field of vision occupied by Kant; and as Baur justly compares with Scotus Erigena the lucubrations of Fichte and Daub, this speculation reverts to a pattern which has not yet attained to the formal apprehension of reconciliation as an ethical idea.
Here it ought to be remembered that while these instaurators of the philosophical theology of the nineteenth century ally themselves with Scotus Erigena without knowing it, the talented instaurators of modern Pietism (p. 524) lay hold of those equally elementary forms of representation for the conception of reconciliation which pertain to the patristic period. What is implied in these manifestations is aversion to the Illumination, the narrow individual interest of which was exchanged for a view of reconciliation of the utmost possible universality. But as only a physical or even cosmical interpretation of the idea was gained, men lost the ability to rectify and inwardly to overcome that restriction of the thought which it had experienced in the Illumination. For the effort displayed by this last school to bring together the Christian thought of reconciliation with the conciliation of men to the evils of earthly life considered as Divine punishments, is not only entirely justifiable, but in fact betrays an originality of religious perception which we ought not to overlook on account of the defective solution of the problem reached by it. If it is true that want teaches to pray, then one ought to pay very attentive heed to the fact that contentment in the midst of evils is the most immediate and the direct proof that the Spirit has been reconciled with the providence of God. Now, though the Illumination formula, that all evils as penal visitations of God are means of amelioration, has already been shown to be uncertain by the fact that men at the same time lost hold of the principle for determining how evils are to be recognised as divine punishments (p. 360), it is yet impossible to regard the magniloquent interpretations of the Christian idea of reconciliation, which are given either by the talented Pietists or by the first representatives of philosophical speculation, as having even so much as understood the religious and moral needs of the preponderant mass of their contemporaries. The premisses of a right answer to the religious and moral question on which the Illumination turned are indeed supplied by Kant and by Schleiermacher—by Kant in his sharpening of the consciousness of personal guilt by the absolute notion of the moral law (p. 394); by Schleiermacher, in referring evils to the fact of the actual joint-guilt of the human race (p. 463). Compared with this sphere of vision the interpretations of the doctrine of reconciliation which are set up by the Pietistic as well as the speculative antipodes of the Illumination, are seen to be just as unpractical as they are speculatively unsatisfactory. Can it be wondered at that the Illumination has propagated itself as it has done, or developed itself into an entire indifference towards Christianity, when what gave itself out to be the highest culture gave up all feeling for its religious need, and simply ignored it; and when the renovation of the Church-tradition in the doctrine of reconciliation showed itself equally indifferent to the problem which had emerged from the previous collapse of that tradition in the eighteenth century?
- By Hegel8 the Christian religion is regarded as the perfect religion, the idea of religion realized. Religion is the self-consciousness of God which He has in a finite consciousness distinct from Himself, which in itself is the consciousness of God, but also is so for itself, knowing its identity with God. In this mediation God is Spirit; i.e., if the finite consciousness knows God in so far as God knows Himself in it, then God is Spirit in the community which honours God. And in fact hereby is the Christian community denoted, in which self-subsistent oneness of the divine and human natures is so realized that the Divine idea comes to be appropriated in the way of individuality. The specific contents of the Christian religion, which, from this point of view, are at the same time recognised to be the highest philosophical knowledge, have been developed by Hegel under the formula of the doctrine of the Trinity, so that the kingdom of the Father represents the eternal idea of God as abstract, the kingdom of the Son the idea of God as differentiated from itself in the universe and the finite consciousness of man, the kingdom of the Spirit the idea of God in its concrete fulfilment. Just as in the doctrine of the old Church the reservation is made that the thought of the Father, the idea that through itself is real, embraces the whole. And, in so far as this reservation comes up in the course of the doctrinal presentation, there result echoes of Daub’s manner of viewing the subject. But with Hegel another apprehension of the matter is the prevailing one. Although the metaphysical definition of God as the Father is, that the notion of God is real through itself, that He is the absolute idea, that He is spirit, that He in His eternal self-distinction (while as eternal love He knows Himself in the other), is identical with Himself, yet is it established that God, apart from any relation to the universe, is first apprehended as the abstract idea which is not yet posited in its reality. For the reality of the idea is its revelation through the universe to the finite spirit; and completed revelation—in other words, the concrete reality of God—is given in the spirit of the Christian Church when the finite spirit knows itself to be one with God, or conversely, when God Himself in the absolute knowledge of the finite spirit is manifest to Himself and identical with Himself. The idea of God as spirit is thus “the living process whereby the self-subsistent unity of Divine and human nature is elicited for itself.” The alternation between the former point of view, which is, properly speaking, Schelling’s, and the latter, which is properly Hegelian, evinces itself always in the vacillating meaning of the phrase In itself, which denotes at one time the eternal actuality of the idea that holds good in God, at another time the possibility (founded in God) of the unification or reconciliation of Divine and human being. In a quite analogous way does the use of the word eternity vary, sometimes being made to mean the negation of time as an attribute of the idea of God; at other times denoting the totality of endless time as attribute of God’s revelation.
This inner insecurity of the Hegelian view of the universe comes to light particularly in his delineation of the kingdom of the Son, because here those conditions re-assert themselves by which Daub’s circle of thought was unbounded. If it belongs to the absolute idea to posit itself, as distinguished from itself, as the Son, this distinction is taken up into the identity of the idea with itself no less eternally. The full distinction consists indeed herein, that the things distinguished have a diverse destiny; that accordingly the Son, whom God distinguishes from Himself, and in Whom He distinguishes Himself from Himself, possesses independence and freedom. But according to the self-subsistent identity which still continues to hold good, it follows from this, only that the Son, as the universe, appears as something actual outside of God. “The truth of the universe is only its ideality, not that it should have genuine actuality.” “The being of the universe is this—to have a moment of being; but to do away with this separation or parting from God, to be only this to return to its origin.” But this cannot be understood otherwise than as meaning that the actuality of the finite world as such is mere seeming, and must be denied in accordance with the identity that is laid down in the eternal idea. But, on the other hand, Hegel thinks it necessary, for the sake of the reality of the idea, to take seriously the independent actuality of the universe as what is distinguished from God. In this view he apprehends it in common with Jacob Böhme, as resulting from an apostasy from God. Herein results the distinction of the universe from the eternal Son of God, who perseveres in identity with the Father. But here again the other consideration obtrudes itself: while the finite universe divides itself into the world of nature and the world of finite spirit, only the latter as knowledge has a relation to God. Nature thus comes into relation with God only in accordance with its relation to man and not for itself. In divergence from Schelling, and with approximation to Fichte, it is accordingly asserted that the universe possesses that sort of independence only in the judgment of the finite spirit; in God Himself that is only the vanishing element of the phenomenon. In disagreement with Daub, therefore, the idea of reconciliation is restricted to the return of the finite spirit to God, but not brought to bear upon the universe as a whole. But now, since without any occasion the self-distinction, which God is said to have accomplished in positing the world, is posited as logical contrariety, yea, as contradiction, as that which must not be, the finite quality of the spirit, its life of instinct is posited as at once good in itself, and as bad because it ought not to continue as it is in its immediate naturalness. The same logical contradiction emerges, moreover, in the doctrine that knowledge, reflexion on self, as the legend of the fall is intended to show, is the fountain of evil, and yet at the same time the ground of reconciliation.
This self-contradiction, which the finite spirit experiences with infinite pain, demands to be resolved in reconciliation. This last implies two things: “There must arise in the subject the consciousness that this opposition (contradiction) is not in itself, that truth is the state in which this opposition is taken away; then when it has been taken away in itself, according to truth, the subject as such can attain unto peace in its self-activity.” The latter subjective activity must presuppose the resolution of that contradiction in God, i.e. the self-subsistent unity of the divine and human nature in God, as the idea of the absolute spirit subsisting in and for itself must be recognised to be the possibility of reconciliation. But the actuality of reconciliation is not achieved in this general act of knowledge; for not every one is fitted thereto without special culture. If now it is all-important that the absolute idea should be universally accessible or certain to the immediate consciousness, then must the unity of Divine and human nature be seen and experienced in the form of sensible intuition, external existence. This unity must be exhibited to the consciousness in the appearance in time of an individual as the Son of God. The deduction of the necessity of the historical Person of Christ and of His value as the Son of God is by no means guided either by the question of metaphysical possibility or by regard to the full compass of the self-consciousness of the God-man as expressed by Himself. The judgment that Christ is the God-man is founded rather only upon the need for a finite mode of representation felt by the men who are to be reconciled. Hegel neither considers whether the eternity of God admits of incarnation in time, nor does he pay any regard to the fact that the man Christ Himself, on His own behalf, declared His specific oneness with God. Rather is this individual posited as a divine nature by faith; in Him is the oneness of the divine and human natures brought to the consciousness of man,—thus always in relation to a judgment of the finite spirit who has not yet been raised to the absolute idea. Hegel, moreover, suggests as a requisite which he finds to be met in Christ, that the chief contents of His doctrine should be general and abstract; he therefore by no means brings the idea of the kingdom of God as the kingdom of reconciliation into relation to Christ’s dominant position as the proper founder and Head of the kingdom of God, and as the specific reconciler. Neither does he pay any regard to the purpose of Christ in His voluntary and obedient dying at the outset to destroy all appearance of the annihilation of His Person and Work, but leaves this judgment, which goes against the outward seeming and catches sight of glorification in the annihilation of life, to the faith of the Church. All this arises from the fact that Hegel too sets before us in the figure of the God-man only a symbol of the universal truth that the divine and the human nature in themselves, according to the divine actuality, are eternally one. And on this point there is left no possibility of mistake even if between times it is again asserted that the idea comes into actuality by this individual; so that those who should attain to the kingdom of God can do so only by means of that one individual; or that the faith which discerns in Christ the God-man is the consciousness of the truth or of that which God is in and for Himself. What is, properly speaking, decisive is to be found accordingly in the line of representation which sets forth that the Church receives from the death of Christ the impression of His glorification, but this connects itself with the resurrection, of which death is only the condition. Herein accordingly Hegel approximates to the similar views of Oetinger (p. 533) and other adherents of the school of Bengel; and in so far as the actual reconciliation of the individual demands that conversion and surrender of the natural will which, as imitation of the self-abnegation of Christ, recognises that postulate of the idea of God-manhood on the validity of which Hegel insists—so far as this view is urged, the same thought was contemporaneously maintained by Klaiber (p. 501) and others.
This representation of Hegel’s course of thought does not show that the normal adjustment (announced by Baur) between the speculative and the historical element of the idea of reconciliation has been accomplished by him. For, after all, the historical element is, without a doubt, expressed in the faith of the Christian Church in the God-manhood of Christ; accordingly it does not come by the rights which belong to it when to this faith is attributed only the position of a subjectively necessary symbol, but no objective necessity arising from the idea of God. On the other hand, if the process of the Divine life is grounded upon the self-distinction of God and upon the resumption of that into identity with Himself, and if reconciliation is included in the idea of God as an expression of the latter element, then the reconciliation of the finite spirit with God is not covered by this schema. For the world which, including the finite spirit, is deduced from an apostasy from God is hereby not set forth as the counterpart of God in which He distinguishes Himself from Himself in such a way that in itself (in actuality) it is identical with Him. Hegel only deludes himself with this conception, allowing the ideas of distinction, opposition, contradiction, to interchange at will with each other in characterizing the relation of the world to God. If, finally, the members of the Christian Church, in the knowledge of the self-subsistent (thus possible and suitable) oneness of the divine and human spirit, find the presupposition under which their will undertakes, in correspondence with Christ as a type, to break their self-seeking, and reconcile itself with God, there comes into consideration, with regard to the will, a factor upon which the logical elaboration of the idea of God in the revelation of God did not reckon. For the will is the pledge of a self-consciousness which exerts itself exclusively within itself, in which accordingly a man is not conscious that therein another—even God Himself—is specifically conscious of Himself. If now the Christian idea of reconciliation always and entirely refers to a contrariety or rather contradiction between the Divine and human will, the inadequacy to the problem of Hegel’s elaboration of it is obvious.
I may refrain from going more fully into Marheineke’s9 doctrine of reconciliation. For his doctrine of Christ’s Person and redeeming Work is, indeed, saturated with the forms of the Hegelian notions, but it is essentially orthodox. It shows itself to be so in the first edition also of his “Christian Dogmatic,” which is still entirely free from the influence of Hegel, so that one sees that the formulæ of the philosophical notions are merely accommodated to the orthodox tradition, at least in the above-mentioned doctrines, and that the converse task has not been undertaken—a remodelling of the Christian material of thought in accordance with the principles of the Hegelian philosophy. Only it deserves to be specially mentioned that Marheineke was the first to give expression to a thought which has found utterance in a multitude of theologians of the most diverse schools, and which, as I have repeatedly had occasion to mention, had already found more correct expression in the Reformed doctrine,—namely, that Christ is the representative of humanity, insomuch as he is humanity itself, and presents that which is alike in all individuals united in Himself (sec. 398). The deduction, indeed, passes away from the sequence of the doctrine of satisfaction to the application of example. For if Christ, according to Marheineke, suffers for all, it is not in order that the others may not suffer and die any longer; but that in Him the suffering and dying of all may concentrate itself, and that they may learn only how to suffer and die as He did.
The consequence of Hegel’s philosophy of religion, and at the same time of that philosophical view of the universe with which Schleiermacher in the Glaubenslehre had connected the recognition of the specific dignity of Christ only in an artificial or violent way, has been drawn by Strauss in the closing dissertation of his first “Life of Jesus” (1835).10 But this further development rather led back to the line originally taken by Schelling. For if we give up the specific God-manhood of Christ, because really it was not proved and did not admit of being proved from the principles of Hegel, and if, therefore, we set aside the accommodation Hegel made in that respect to the need of finite knowledge,—then the Church of the Holy (Christian) Spirit seems in the first instance as the organ of the absolute divine self-consciousness, as the subject of the incarnation of God, to elevate itself above the natural connexion of the race. That Strauss, while attaching himself to Hegel, should yet never have taken this possibility into consideration, befits the rhetorical violence with which he hastens to a close in the concluding dissertation. But it is also easily understood why his fancy soared over this stopping-place, which logical regard to Hegel’s line of deduction could not have avoided recognising. For just as the specific dignity of the founder of the Christian Church fell away, so also did the security disappear for the specific difference of degree between the fellowship of the Christian religion and all previous grades of culture and religion. The incarnation of God was then of necessity referred to the advancing progress in culture of all humanity, and thus as eternal and all-comprehensive set over against the view which regarded it as an isolated individual fact. With the formula of the Incarnation of God from all eternity Schelling’s expression is simply resumed (p. 582). In the genus, says Strauss, the course of the development of which is blameless and sinless (for impurity always attaches only to the individual), there is produced from the negation of its naturalness an ever higher spiritual life, from the removal of its finitude as a personal, national, world-spirit arises its oneness with the infinite spirit of heaven. Thus is this God-man also recognised under the attributes of dying, resurrection, and ascension; and by faith in Him is man made just before God, i.e., by the quickening of the idea of humanity in Him, and by the negation of naturalness and sensuousness expressed therein, the individual becomes partaker of the divine-human life of the genus.
This surrogate of the idea of reconciliation required to be taken note of; the criticism of it, however, would lead us deeper into the whole controverted christological question than suits my present purpose. I therefore simply make the remark that Strauss himself has long ago rejected the phrase of his closing dissertation, “this Christ;” and that it is not his Leben Jesu für das deutsche Volk (1864) but his Glaubenslehre (1841) that for the first time gives up any standpoint which might be called philosophical. As Schwarz11 justly judges, Spinozism and Deistic moralism, the former in cosmology, the latter in anthropology, divide between them the positive contents of the dogmatic of Strauss, without so much as even an attempt being made to bring together these two contrarieties into inward unity. But in the Leben Jesu für das deutsche Volk nature is deistically treated according to an inviolable necessity, while freedom is at the same time regarded as the form of the spirit-life; but then as the thought of God is rendered inoperative, we want that adjustment of these principles which Deism offers. The closing dissertation of 1835, accordingly, as this result shows, was for its celebrated author the transition into non-theology, not to say atheism; and that because under the guise of philosophy it pursues in rhetorical tones an altogether fanciful course of procedure. And herein is this dissertation quite of a piece with the original poetical philosophizing of Schelling. Its fundamental mistake in the question before us lies quite on the surface herein that the negative and affirmative judgments regarding the incarnation—however immediately they follow upon each other—yet require two separate notions of eternity. God, according to Schelling, is not man exclusively in Christ, because He is timeless, because, according to Kant, eternity is the negation of time. Of quite analogous import is the formula of Strauss, that it is not the nature of an idea to discharge its fulness into one individual being; for the idea is the negation of individualness. But the affirmative judgment common to both—that God accomplishes His incarnation from eternity through the entire human race is based upon the Socinian notion of eternity as being the whole of beginningless and endless time. It is difficult to contend with such dialectic, especially when it is accompanied with the pretension of absolute knowledge.
It is upon the ground of the Hegelian idea of God that Biedermann12 opens up the prospect of another conclusion regarding the Person of Christ. For the self-revelation of God which includes in itself three unseparated factors (which yet admit of being distinguished by us as distinct steps) is, first, the positing of the world as a natural process outside of God; second, self-revelation to the finite spirit in the world; third, the self-realization of absolute being in the finite spirit in the arena of the world. But this third step is gained when the self-consciousness of the finite spirit is realized by the absoluteness of the Spirit as absolute religious self-consciousness or as the love-fellowship, in which God appears in the relation of Father of men,—men, as children of God. Herein is the religious principle of Christianity expressed. And it is submitted to a moral judgment to say that the significance of Christ for Christianity as a whole is no external and accidental one, but rather inner and abiding. The former would be the case if the principle had consisted merely of a new doctrine taught by Jesus, or if its entrance upon the stage of history had received only a mediate impulse from the Person of Jesus. But the personal life of Jesus was the first self-realization of that principle into a personality pertaining to the history of the world; and this fact is the fountain-head of the activity of this principle in history; Jesus as the historical revelation of the redemption-principle is the historical Redeemer (secs. 718, 799, 800, 815).13 As Biedermann in reference to this contents himself with proposing problems, he has accordingly only hinted at the way in which he understands redemption by Christ. In this regard he understands by the Person of Christ the prototype (holding its place for all time in the history of the universe) that guarantees the activity of the redemption-principle (sec. 816), in accordance wherewith the absoluteness of the Spirit becomes the religious self-consciousness of man, and also evinces itself in him as the power which is able to take away the contradiction between the natural ego and its destiny, and also as the active principle of continuing dominion over nature, and the glorification of natural humanity into a kingdom of God (secs. 831, 832, 835). By this, he thinks, is expressed what is meant by the three offices of Christ. I find now that this train of thought does not overpass the limits of Socinianism. But it appears to me that if Biedermann (as properly might have been expected of him) had regulated his historical presentation of the doctrine of the Church by reference to the Reformed and not to the Lutheran tradition, he would have found opportunity, by means of the strict reciprocity of relation between the redeeming work of Christ and the notion of the Church, which is insisted on by Reformed divines and has been rediscovered by many moderns, for teaching a doctrine of a different sort. In this respect Weisse14 establishes points of view of a complementary sort, bringing forward into prominence that the goal of Christ’s life-calling was the building-up of His disciples into a Church of believers, that accordingly He could accomplish the manifestation of His moral majesty only in the death to which He yielded Himself with free consent in pursuit of His calling to bring about the establishment of the new covenant. But as these remarks take the form only of historical reflection, Weisse associates with them with special preference the idea (embraced by him) which Augustine and Luther held (see above, p. 202), that the death of Christ has the meaning of victory over sin and death. But all this is not brought into scientific shape—rather is the suitability of such a mode of treatment of the last point expressly denied. At all events, these functions of redemption are not brought into any necessary relation to the speculative Christology of Weisse; they do not require, therefore, to be more thoroughly gone into.
Baur, in siding with Strauss in his Geschichte der christlichen Lehre von der Versöhnung, has declared that he does not thereby intend to assert that the Christology and reconciliation-doctrine of the latter offer the final and in every way satisfactory solution of the problem. He believes, on the other hand, that he has clearly shown how the dogma, by the immanent agitation of its idea, is pushed on from one form to another, until at last the latest theory attaches itself as a new link in the chain of the momenta of its development. In the negative character that attaches to every representation lies, according to him, the impulse to an always advancing progress; the march of the Spirit goes forwards only; and what once has been recognised in its negative character remains for ever a vanquished and eliminated factor. I may now appeal to the delineation of the history of the doctrines of reconciliation and justification, which here closes, to test whether or not this belief in the progress of knowledge in a direct line is one to which we are of necessity driven by facts. At all events, the last link recognised by my predecessor in the history unfolded by him—and that too by a follower of the speculative theology itself—has been so surpassed that an older position has again been taken up.
← Chapter X. The Course of Pietism till the Repristination of Lutheran Orthodoxy · Contents
Footnotes
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Leben Schleiermacher’s, i. p. 168 sqq. ↩
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“Lectures on the Method of Academic Study,” cf. Lectures, 7, 8, 9. ↩
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“All that arises deserves to come to an end.” ↩
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“Philosophical researches into the nature of human freedom.” In his Philosophische Schriften, vol. i. p. 461. ↩
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The Philosophie der Offenbarung in fact carries out to its consequences the idea of God set forth in the researches on freedom. As in these the incarnation of God in Christ was recognised, so in the first-mentioned work the church tradition regarding Christ’s sacrifice—to wit, the idea of penal satisfaction—is appropriated, whereby the discord of potences in God required to be removed (Sämmtl. Werke, 2d Div., vol. iv. p. 79). I do not understand this mythology; yet nevertheless believe that it is very superfluous here to investigate more strictly the interlacement of this church tradition with the metaphysic of Schelling. ↩
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With regard to what follows, compare Strauss: Charakteristiken u. Kritiken (the papers on Schleiermacher and Daub), p. 82 sqq. ↩
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Theologumena, p. 75: Rerum interitus, dum docet, vanam esse ipsarum naturam, quippe quae evanescunt omnes, ea simul valet dignitate et auctoritate ut significet singulas quasque principio illi reconciliatas esse, cui suam, quatenus est divina, debent et acceptam referunt naturam. Principem contra naturæ Dei reconciliatricis et Dei reconciliantis indicem ac testem habemus religionem, vitæ omni tempore superioris fontem æternum, cujus hancce virtutem et majestatem infra contemplabimur. ↩
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Compare Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion (2d ed. 1840), part second, from p. 191 onwards. The lectures date from the years 1821 to 1831. ↩
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Die Grundlehren der christlichen Dogmatik als Wissenschaft, 2d and entirely new edition (1827). The first edition is dated 1819. ↩
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With the proof, given above, that Hegel has grounded the judgment of faith, concerning the value of Christ’s Person, not metaphysically in the idea of God but only phenomenally in the need of finite knowledge, compare Strauss: Streitschriften (1841), Heft 3, p. 76 sqq. ↩
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Das Wesen der Religion (1847), Part ii. p. 165. ↩
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Christliche Dogmatik (1869). ↩
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As Biedermann in this goes directly in the teeth of an expression by Strauss (Der Christus des Glaubens und der Jesus der Geschichte, p. 214), his position approximates what has been brought forward above (p. 509), as conspicuous in Schweizer’s Christliche Glaubenslehre. ↩
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Philosophische Dogmatik oder Philosophie des Christenthums, vol iii. (1862), pp. 342, 396, 351. ↩