3. It is obvious that, as we are no longer moving outside the province of Christian piety, we do not here concern ourselves with the only partially developed and differentiated religious feeling which constitutes polytheistic types of belief; the Christian feeling can only exist side by side with monotheism. On the other hand, it may be objected that the foregoing statement is not pertinent to our subject, because it is not so much peculiarly Christian as characteristic of monotheism in general. The answer is that there is no purely monotheistic piety in which the God-consciousness alone and by itself forms the content of religious experiences. Just as there is always present in Christian piety a relation to Christ in conjunction with the God-consciousness,¹ so in Judaism there is always a relation to the Lawgiver, and in Mohammedanism to the revelation given through the Prophet. In our Holy Scriptures for this reason God is constantly referred to by the name of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The saying of Christ also (John 14⁷⁻⁹) implies that every relation to Christ includes also the God-consciousness.

§ 33. This feeling of absolute dependence, in which our self-consciousness in general represents the finitude of our being (cf. § 8, 2), is therefore not an accidental element, or a thing which varies from person to person, but is a universal element of life; and the recognition of this fact entirely takes the place, for the system of doctrine, of all the so-called proofs of the existence of God. 1. One cannot concede the postulated self-consciousness with the content we have already described, and yet maintain that it is something unessential, i.e. that it may or may not be present in a man’s life according to whether, in the course of his life, he meets with this or that experience. For its emergence does not depend at all upon the fact that something definite and objective is given in the experience of a partially developed subject, but only on the fact that in some way or other the sensory consciousness has been stimulated from without. But what is presupposed on the subjective side is only that which is common to all—the intelligence in its subjective function, in which the disposition towards God-consciousness is a constituent element.

That the feeling of absolute dependence as such is the same in all, and not different in different persons, follows from the fact that it does not rest upon any particular modification of human nature but upon the absolutely general nature of man, which contains in itself the potentiality of all those differences by which the particular content of the individual personality is determined.

Further, if a difference is admitted between perfection and imperfection as measured by greater or less development, this arises from the fact that the emergence of this feeling depends upon a contrast having been apprehended in consciousness; the lack of development is simply the lack of differentiation of functions. For when the objective consciousness and self-consciousness are not yet clearly differentiated in such a way as nevertheless to be distinctly connected together, in that case the consciousness as a whole has not yet become genuinely human. And if sensuous self-consciousness and the higher self-consciousness are not thus differentiated from one another and related to one another, development is incomplete.

2. We may conclude then that godlessness within the Christian community has its cause simply in defective or arrested development. Should it occur however in spite of a complete development, we can only regard this as illusion and appearance. It is nevertheless possible to distinguish in the main three types of godlessness.

The first is the childish complete lack of God-consciousness, which as a rule disappears in the course of the natural development of the individual, and only in exceptional cases degenerates into brutal godlessness in such as bitterly resist their own wider development. Both things are to be met with outside the Christian community for the most part among peoples that innocently or voluntarily remain on the lowest grade of development. The existence of this type, however, is hardly to be proved historically.

The second type of godlessness is the sensual. This occurs when a feeling of absolute dependence actually appears, but intimately associated with awareness of that on which there can be no absolute dependence; since what is conceived as capable of passion can give no absolute dependence, for it implies the possibility of self-initiated activity upon it. Face to face with this contradiction, it may be doubted whether the disposition towards God-consciousness has really been operative, the appearance merely being obscured by perverted reflexion, or whether the inner reflexion corresponds to the original, inner fact, so that the latter does not really belong to the province of piety. But a comparison of the way in which in childhood the God-consciousness at first manifests itself shows that here certainly the disposition to God-consciousness is already effective; it is only on account of the imperfect development of self-consciousness that the process cannot fully be carried to its conclusion. This condition is obviously akin to Polytheism,² for the same germ of multiplicity is there also, only it is restrained by opposing influences; further, this anthropomorphic conception is sometimes of a more pure and spiritual kind and sometimes verges on Fetichism.

Finally, the third type of godlessness is the so-called definite denial of God—Atheism, which is propounded as a speculative theory in the midst of a Christian society, in a condition of full development and even in the highest stage of culture. This again is twofold. In part it is a wicked fear of the sternness of the God-consciousness, and hence, though moments of enlightenment intervene, clearly a product of licentiousness and thus a sickness of the soul usually accompanied by contempt of everything intellectual; and of this (godlessness) it can be said that it is naught, because it entirely lacks inner truth. And in part it is simply a reasoned opposition to the current and more or less inadequate representations of the religious consciousness. Moreover, the atheism of the eighteenth century was, for the most part, a struggle against the petrified, “anthropomorphic presentations of doctrine, a struggle provoked by the tyranny of the Church. But when, over and above the defects of representation, the inner facts of self-consciousness themselves are thus wholly misconstrued, this serious misunderstanding is none the less merely a disease of the understanding which may revive sporadically and from time to time, but never produces anything that is historically permanent. This fact cannot therefore be pled against our assertion that the feeling of absolute dependence, as here expounded, and the God-consciousness contained in it are a fundamental moment of human life.

3. But even supposing its universality could be disputed, still no obligation would arise for the system of doctrine to prove the existence of God; that would be an entirely superfluous task. For since in the Christian Church the God-consciousness should be developed in youth, proofs, even if youth were capable of understanding them, could only produce an objective consciousness, which is not the aim here, nor would it in any way generate piety. We are not concerned here with the question whether there are such proofs, and whether, if we have no immediate certitude of God, then that of which we do have immediate certitude, and by which God could be proved, must not itself be God. Our point simply is that these proofs can never be a component part of the system of doctrine; for that is only for those who have the inner certainty of God, as we have already described it, and of that they can be directly conscious at every moment. On our interpretation of Christian doctrine it would be quite unnecessary to enlarge on this point did it not seem essential to protest against the general custom of furnishing Dogmatics at this point with such proofs, or at least of referring to them as already familiar from other sciences. It is obvious that for the purpose of Dogmatics this reference is quite useless: for neither in catechetical nor in homiletical nor in missionary work can such proofs be of any value. Experience, too, shows how little can be accomplished by such a polemic against theoretical atheism as above described. Dogmatics must therefore presuppose intuitive certainty or faith; and thus, as far as the God-consciousness in general is concerned, what it has to do is not to effect its recognition but to explicate its content. That such proofs are not the concern of Dogmatics is obvious also from the fact that it is impossible to give them dogmatic form; for we cannot go back to Scripture and symbolical books, since they themselves do not prove, but simply assert. Moreover, he for whom such assertion is authoritative needs no further proof.

The prevalent method of inflating Christian doctrine with rational proofs and criticism had its origin in the confusion of Dogmatics and philosophy in old Patristic times.³ Closely related to this, and therefore to be named here, is the equally erroneous view that Christian theology, to which Dogmatics also belongs, is differentiated from Christian religion by its sources of knowledge. Religion, for instance, it is argued, draws from Scripture only, but theology draws also from the Fathers, reason and philosophy. But as theology itself draws from Scripture, and the Scriptures themselves have arisen out of the Christian religion, what originates in reason and philosophy cannot be Christian theology. It is certainly a great gain here, and elsewhere, to banish all material of this kind from the Christian system of doctrine, for only thus is a uniformity of method to be established. Such a difficult choice as that between moral proofs, geometrical proofs, and probable proofs⁴ is not a task for any dogmatic theologian to take up, even if it be only for his own personal satisfaction.

Postscript.—Though it lies outside our present scheme we may remark here that there can be a precisely similar awareness of God in the objective consciousness, an awareness which in itself does not take the form of a temporal consciousness, but which in a like manner can be aroused and brought into existence through sense-perception; and in fact all scientific construction, whether in the sphere of nature or of history, is based upon it. But just as it could only injure science to employ expressions belonging to the religious consciousness or to mingle with science anything belonging to that sphere, so it can only be harmful to faith and the system of doctrine to intersperse them with scientific propositions or to make them dependent on scientific foundations. For the system of doctrine has as little to do immediately with the objective consciousness as pure science with the subjective.

§ 34. The feeling of absolute dependence is contained in every Christian religious affection, in proportion as in the latter, through its co-determining stimuli, we become conscious that we are placed in a universal nature-system, i.e. in proportion as we are conscious of ourselves as part of the world. 1. To be conscious of oneself as part of the world is the same thing as to find oneself placed in a universal nature-system. In every actual self-consciousness there is either an awareness of a relation of our being to some object opposed to it or the comprehension at one and the same time of a being and a having. That which is set in opposition to us must naturally decrease as our self-consciousness widens. Whether we widen it to the self-consciousness of the human race or are simply aware of ourselves as finite spirit, in either case there is nothing set over against us except what the spirit does not possess. The expansion takes place only in virtue of a partial identity (between subject and object), and hence in virtue of a system of nature; thus in every such process we discover ourselves to be in a nature-system of spiritual being.

But though in our self-consciousness we constantly distinguish the system of relations from the spirit in ourselves, nevertheless the system is seated in the spirit as its original possession, original just because there is a system of nature. It exists in our self-consciousness always as influenced by being other than itself and thus as co-existent with such being in the system of nature. This system, however, is not posited as having limits; hence it contains within itself all finite being, only in undeveloped form. If we extend our self-consciousness to that of the human species, then the whole earth co-posited with its external relations is equally undeveloped, partly as that which is possessed by us and partly as that which stands over against us. But that which stands over against us is only in self-consciousness so far as it affects us, and consequently exists along with us in a nature-system; and thus also the whole system of nature or the world exists in our self-consciousness in so far as we recognize ourselves to be a part of the world. But this must be the case in every Christian and religious emotion because it is (at each moment) accompanied by the sensuous self-consciousness. Even if we were known to ourselves only as presentational activity (vorstellende Thätigkeit)—that is to say, as being centres for ideas—even so the self-consciousness is a centre for truth; and that implies a relation of being in the self-consciousness, corresponding to the relation of ideas in the objective consciousness.

It is true, one frequently encounters the view that the more prominent the system of nature is in self-consciousness, the more the feeling of absolute dependence recedes; and that, on the other hand, the latter is most in evidence when something is posited which abrogates the systematic connexion of nature, i.e. something miraculous. This we can only regard as an error. The real fact is that we most abrogate the systematic connexion of nature when we posit either a dead mechanism or chance and arbitrariness; and in both cases the God-consciousness recedes—a clear proof that it does not exist in inverse proportion to our consciousness of the relatedness of nature. But the miraculous obviously presupposes the system of nature: for universal chance excludes everything miraculous. If, then, the miraculous really aroused the God-consciousness in a special degree, we should have to find the cause in the fact that many people only become aware of the rule through the exception. But this view in itself would justify the conclusion that this universal God-consciousness emerges more strongly and frequently in the religious experience of the Roman Church than in ours: because its adherents, properly speaking, are all immersed in the miraculous and may expect it at any moment. The proportion in which the God-consciousness appears is in fact the reverse of this.

Our proposition can be verified also in detail. The daily revolution of the atmospheric changes frequently appears to us as a mechanism; on the other hand, it is pre-eminently the abode of the seemingly contingent; whereas the periodical renewing of life’s functions gives us the most vivid feeling of nature, but obviously the God-consciousness is more clearly posited in the latter than in the former.

3. Moreover, no Christian religious emotion can be imagined in experiencing which we do not find ourselves placed in a nature-system. Whatever the emotion may express, and whether it issue in action or in speculation, we must always be conscious of ourselves in this manner, and this consciousness must also be united to the God-consciousness; because otherwise the moment would be at one and the same time religious and non-religious. The only thing to which we ought still to call attention is that this element of our pious moments, so far as their content is concerned, is the same at each stage of Christian development. It will certainly occur more frequently when a soul in fellowship with Christ has already attained a very marked facility in the development of the God-consciousness; and will occur very little in one whom the sensuous impulse sways so quickly from moment to moment that such a development can rarely follow. The content, however, is always the same, for it does not at all depend on any definite relation or condition, but the individual regards his absolute dependence as exactly the same as that of every other finite being.

All we have to do in the first part of our exposition is, to the best of our ability, to describe this religious feeling of nature in general, apart from the specifically Christian content which is always attached to it.

§ 35. According to the criterion of the three forms established in § 30 we shall have to treat, first, the relation present in the religious self-consciousness between the finite being of the world and the infinite Being of God; then, in the second section, the attributes of God in relation to the world as they appear in that self-consciousness; and lastly, in the third section, the constitution of the world as therein conceived in virtue of its absolute dependence on God.

1. Considered as finite being and hence as representing all finite being, this consciousness of the absolute dependence of the self as an inward permanent datum which can be made apparent at any moment, is a state of our heart or soul (Gemüthszustand): so that the first part of our proposition entirely corresponds with what we expect of the dogmatic basal form. In it must be expressed the relation of the world (regarded as absolutely dependent on God) and God (regarded as the Being on Whom the world absolutely depends), and if the propositions still to be established keep within these limits it cannot be said that they go outside the real province of Dogmatics.

2. But that danger certainly does exist in the other two forms. For these do not immediately reflect the religious self-consciousness, in which are given only the antithesis and the relation of the antithetic entities to each other; but since the one makes God the subject of its thesis, and the other the world, great discrimination must be used lest either of them should express concerning their subject anything in excess of the immediate content of that self-consciousness.

The second dogmatic form, which treats of the divine attributes, is based proximately on the poetical and theoretical expressions which occur in hymns and sermons. Since it does not sufficiently conform these expressions to dialectical usage, it may easily be led into saying something about the Infinite Being which would contradict the antithesis contained in self-consciousness and represent the Infinite Being as dependent on the finite, while in fact the latter was posited as absolutely dependent on the Infinite. Those expressions would then not correspond to the religious self-consciousness which they ought to set forth.

From another point of view the third form needs careful thought. For here the world is made the subject of dogmatic propositions; and for various reasons—partly on account of the customary confusion between speculative thought and dogmatic, and partly because those who are ignorant of science like to borrow from it those general conceptions which they think desirable and which make clearer their own higher self-consciousness—for such reasons it can easily occur that, through weak compliance with these mistaken demands, objective statements should find their way into catechetical and homiletic utterances, and that these again should pass, in a slightly different form, into Dogmatics.

3. If, then, the statements of these two latter forms have gone beyond the sphere of Dogmatics, and if in practice they have come to predominate, it is only too natural that statements of the first form should be more and more assimilated to them, and in this manner should partake of errors which by themselves they would have escaped. How far this has occurred up to the present time in the development of Dogmatics the following argument will show.

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Footnotes

1. Quare in omni cogitatione de Deo et omni invocatione mentes intueantur Christum, etc. Melanchthon, Loc. de Deo. Melanchth., loc. de Deo: Esse Deum et praecipere obedientiam juxta discrimen honestorum et turpium impressum humanis mentibus.—Zwingl., d. ver. et fals. rel., p. 9. Fucus ergo est et falsa religio, quicquid a Theologis ex philosophia, quid sit Deus, allatum est.—Clem., Strom. vii. p. 864, πίστις μὲν οὖν ἐνδιάθετόν τί ἐστιν ἀγαθὸν, καὶ ἄνευ τοῦ ζητεῖν τὸν θεὸν ὁμολογοῦσα τοῦτον εἶναι καὶ δοξάζουσα ὡς ὄντα· ὅθεν χρὴ ἀπὸ ταύτης ἀναγόμενον τῆς πίστεως, καὶ αὐξηθέντα ἐν αὐτῇ χάριτι θεοῦ τὴν περὶ αὐτοῦ κομίσασθαι ὡς οἷόν τέ ἐστι γνῶσιν. ↩

2. 8, 2. ↩

3. Augustin., d. ver. rel. 8: Sic enim creditur et docetur, quod est humanae salutis caput, non aliam esse philosophiam, id est sapientiae studium, et aliam religionem. ↩

4. Reinhard’s Dogmatik, § 7 and § 30. ↩