One point, however, common to all forms of faith in so far as they all participate in the antithesis, may be adduced here. This, namely, that absolute facility in the development of the God-consciousness from any given stimulus and in every situation, which is proposed as the end, is equivalent to constant communion with God, while every retrograde movement is a turning away from God. Now if, religion being admittedly an essential element of life, only communion and not turning away can be willed, the latter can be received into consciousness only if it is what was originally in harmony with the divine will. In Christianity this proviso is enunciated in the most general and fruitful way by the postulation of redemption as the work and dispensation of God, and hence also of faith in redemption as conformity to the divine will.

3. Everything related to the Redeemer in the religious consciousness of the Christian is peculiar to the distinctively Christian articulation of the antithesis under discussion. No proposition, as we have already said, describing the feeling of absolute dependence apart from this antithesis, can be a description of a religious moment in its entire content, for in every such moment that feeling occurs only as a relative turning away from God or turning towards Him. From these two statements we must go on to assert that no proposition merely describing the condition of the individual life with reference to this antithesis is a description of the entire content of a religious moment, since in every such moment the condition described must needs manifest itself in the emergence of the feeling of absolute dependence. In the actual life of the Christian, therefore, the two are always found in combination: there is no general God-consciousness which has not bound up with it a relation to Christ, and no relationship with the Redeemer which has no bearing on the general God-consciousness. The propositions of the first part, which lay less direct stress on what is distinctively Christian, are on that account often treated as Natural Theology of an original and universally valid kind, and as such are overrated by those who are themselves less permeated by the distinctive element in Christianity. Others, again, underrate these propositions as attainable even apart from Christianity, and will only allow those propositions which express a relation to the Redeemer to rank as specifically Christian. Both parties are in error. For the former propositions are in no sense the reflection of a meagre and purely monotheistic God-consciousness, but are abstracted from one which has issued from fellowship with the Redeemer. Similarly, propositions expressing a relation to Christ are genuinely Christian propositions only in so far as they recognize no other criterion for relationship with the Redeemer than the measure in which the continuity of the God-consciousness is produced thereby; so that a relationship with Christ, which resulted in the God-consciousness losing its prominence or being, as it were, superseded (because Christ alone and not God had a place in self-consciousness), might indeed be a most intimate one, but strictly speaking it would not belong to the sphere of religion at all.

§ 63. While in general the manner in which the God-consciousness takes shape in and with the stimulated self-consciousness can be traced only to the action of the individual, the distinctive feature of Christian piety lies in the fact that whatever alienation from God there is in the phases of our experience, we are conscious of it as an action originating in ourselves, which we call Sin; but whatever fellowship with God there is, we are conscious of it as resting upon a communication from the Redeemer, which we call Grace. 1. Let us suppose an æsthetic form of faith.³ It will reduce both these arrestments and continued developments of the God-consciousness, as indeed every other change in man’s experience, to passive states, and represent them consequently as the effects of external influences in such a manner that they will appear simply to be appointed events, while the ideas of merit and guilt will really not apply to them at all. Accordingly, we may say that the controversy regarding freedom, as it is usually urged in this sphere, is just the controversy as to whether our passive states are to be regarded as subordinate to our active states or vice versa; and that freedom in the latter sense is the universal premiss of all teleological forms of faith, which alone, by starting as they do from the ascendency of spontaneous activity in man, are able to find guilt in all arrestments of the disposition to the God-consciousness, and merit in every progression of it. More precise determinations, however, of the ‘how’ of either are not to be found in the common nature of these forms of faith; this only is self-evident, namely, that if both arrestment of the impulse to the God-consciousness and quickened development of it are to be equally the act of one and the same individual, and consequently opposites are to be explained by the same cause, then, in relation to the doer, the two must cease to be opposed.

2. In Christian piety as described here there is no such initial difficulty to be surmounted. The description given here, however, is identical with the general exposition put forward above.⁴ For if the feeling of absolute dependence, which was previously in bondage, has been set free only by redemption, the facility with which we are able to graft the God-consciousness on the various sensuous excitations of our self-consciousness also springs solely from the facts of redemption, and is therefore a communicated facility. And if the bondage of the feeling of absolute dependence did not betoken its real absence (for absence would imply the impossibility of such an act as is here designated sin), then in every portion of life that could be regarded as a whole in itself, the God-consciousness too was present in degree even if only as something infinitely small, and thus whenever such a portion of life came to an end there took place an act having relation to the God-consciousness. Not, however, an act involving the evocation of the God-consciousness as a co-determinant of the moment, i.e. not a turning to God (from which an experience of communion with God always arises of itself), but a turning away from God,⁵ so that with the acceptance of such a redemption there is always conjoined a backward look to sin as prior to it. Now the fact that here communion with God rests on an act extraneous to it by no means prevents our bringing Christianity under the general category of teleological forms of faith. For, on the one hand, communication and action are not mutually exclusive, for corporate acts, e.g., have their origin for the most part in a single person, and yet are acts also on the part of the rest; while, on the other hand, appropriation of redemption is always represented as action, as a laying hold of Christ, or the like.⁶ In the case, however, of a religious consciousness contrariwise regarding its derangements as coming from elsewhere, but communion with God (into which these do not enter) as proceeding from the individual’s own spiritual vitality, the term redemption could be applied (and even that in a very subordinate sense) only to that which sealed up the external sources of the derangements. Redemption through Jesus, however, has never been thought of in this way. And the further we carry the way of looking at things just indicated, then the more the lack of communion with God is taken to be merely fortuitous, the less definitely are sin and grace as such (and as earlier and later) differentiated from each other, and the more does the conception of redemption recede into the distance, till all three disappear together. This disappearance actually occurs when it is assumed that the unity of the sensuous and the higher self-consciousness is the natural basic condition of the individual—a condition in which the absence of the God-consciousness in any particular moment remains merely accidental, something which at once cancels itself out in corporate life, inasmuch as all do not suffer from the same accident at once. This, taken strictly, is the non-Christian view which recognizes no need of redemption; for in Christianity these two, sin and grace, are valid ideas only on the basis of redemption and on the assumption that it has been appropriated.

3. Moreover, the proposition cannot be taken as implying that in the immediate Christian self-consciousness sin and grace are to be referred to separate moments and to be kept absolutely apart from each other as mutually incompatible. On the contrary, as the energy of the God-consciousness is never at its absolutely highest any more than the engrafting of the God-consciousness on the excitations of the sensuous self-consciousness is ever absolutely constant, there is involved in this circumstance a limiting deficiency of the God-consciousness, which is certainly sinful. Just as little, however, in a truly Christian consciousness can the connexion with redemption be utterly null, for in that case the Christian consciousness would, until the connexion was re-established, be, contrary to what is assumed, non-Christian. And as this connexion proceeds originally from the Redeemer, so His communicated action is implied throughout. Here, accordingly, while the elements we are discussing are antithetic they are only such as in the religious life of the Christian are conjoined in every moment, though always in varied measure.

§ 64. For the purpose of our exposition, it is necessary to separate the two subjects, so as to treat first of Sin and then of Grace; and of each in accordance with all the three forms of dogmatic propositions. 1. In our exposition all doctrines properly so called must be extracted from the Christian religious self-consciousness, i.e. the inward experience of Christian people. Since, however, it is the case that every Christian is conscious both of sin and of grace as always combined with each other and never dissociated, we may well be asked what warrant we have for separating them, seeing that if either be described by itself alone what results will not be the description of a Christian consciousness. A description of the sense of sin as the exclusive content even of merely detached portions of life would only amount to a historical sketch, the accuracy of which would require some sort of proof, but could find no verification in the Christian consciousness itself; such a description would therefore be no doctrine of the faith. Similarly the description of an inherently absolute and continuous efficacy of the God-consciousness would only be an anticipation; no one could point to such a state as actually brought about in him by redemption; so that this again would be no doctrine of the faith. Granting both positions (on the understanding that in each case one of the two elements is absolutely excluded), the separation of the two is nevertheless necessary to our exposition; only we must recognize that it is not met with in any Christian consciousness, but is an arbitrary expedient adopted here with a view simply to greater clarity of thought. For although our dogmatic propositions as a whole represent only the doctrine held to be valid in the Evangelical Church of our time, yet the Christian self-consciousness which they are meant to articulate with the utmost precision is not really confined to any definite period, but is the universal, the always and everywhere self-identical element in the Christian Church—so far, that is to say, as dogmatic propositions do not relate to the differentiæ of the Christian communions, as they do not wherever the antithesis of sin and grace is in question. We must accordingly describe the Christian consciousness with reference to its content, composed of these antithetic elements, in such a way that even the first moment of the genesis of the Christian consciousness and everything that in later moments represents the first, may be comprised in our description. Now, in the case of those who are not born in Christianity but come to accept it, it is obvious that their appropriation of redemption, and therefore of grace, must be preceded by a recognition of their need of redemption; and this emerges only in connexion with the consciousness of sin. In such persons, accordingly, there is a consciousness of sin anterior to the consciousness of grace; and since everything sinful in their later life is connected with the sin that was present prior to grace, they have in every moment of their later life the consciousness of sin as of something present in them before grace was there. Nay, this consciousness must be shared without exception even by those who are born within Christendom, were it only in virtue of their corporate feeling, the formula that sin is anterior to grace being simply the expression of the human race’s need for redemption and of its relation to Christ. Hence to vindicate our proposition we do not even need to decide whether or not each individual born in Christendom was at first outside of grace for a time, and, like those not so born, attained to grace only after passing through a state characterized exclusively by the consciousness of sin.

2. In pursuance, then, of this course of separating the consciousness of sin and the consciousness of grace in our exposition, we shall first describe by itself that element of the Christian self-consciousness, which is more and more to disappear through the action of the other, and which, arising out of man’s common condition anterior to the entrance of redemption, likewise represents that condition. Thereafter we shall describe by itself that element which is ever to be less and less limited by the other, and which, arising out of redemption, likewise represents the total efficacy thereof. The separation of these two elements common to all Christian states of mind into which the antithesis has developed is an obvious possibility for the simple reason that otherwise there can scarcely be a full perception of the two implied relations. It is more difficult, however, to show that, and how, the separation can be managed in the other two types of dogmatic propositions without disadvantage to their content. Thus, if, to begin with, we were to speak of the world by itself and not in relation to man, then, first, whether the antithesis in question had unfolded itself in man or not, whatever in the world influences man would always be the same, and there could accordingly be no special relationship between the world and either member of the antithesis. But again, such change as has been wrought in the world by human activity is always as regards the world simply the work of the whole man, and there least of all differences relating to the God-consciousness would have to be taken into account. But what we have to deal with in this connexion is always simply states of the world in relation to man, and there it is evident that the world will be a different thing to a man according as he apprehends it from the standpoint of a God-consciousness completely paralysed or of one absolutely paramount. It will accordingly be possible to distinguish in the Christian life itself between what in our conception of the world is to be placed to the account of sin, and what to the account of grace. The like holds good also of the results of man’s action upon the world as far as these are realities to himself and come within his consciousness. For the more significance he attaches to the antithesis, the more apparent will be to him the homogeneous and self-coherent character of what has proceeded from him because of sin and without the prompting of the God-consciousness, and on the other hand of what, as resulting from the operation of redemption, must bear the impress thereof. Finally, as regards the divine attributes, it is of course evident that statements concerning God cannot issue from a condition of alienation from God, but are only possible when a man is in some sense turned again towards Him; for all statements concerning God presuppose a turning towards Him. But not even where sin is viewed from the standpoint of a paramount God-consciousness can we conceive of divine attributes that have to do with sin apart from its disappearance as a result of redemption. For since all divine attributes are activities, attributes of the kind in question must be activities making for the maintenance and confirmation of sin; but to admit such attributes would be to run counter to Christian piety. Similarly, should we assume a divine agency as the source of the God-consciousness but not as developing out of sin and limited by sin, it too could only be formulated in terms of concepts of the divine attributes from which the distinctively Christian character had completely vanished; so that within the range of this particular type of concept that character would never appear at all. Surely, however, it is natural for Christian piety, seeing as it certainly does in redemption a divine measure, to make statements concerning God that relate to the God-consciousness; and in fact it will be these very statements which set forth the trend and aim of the divine causality, as reflected in our feeling of absolute dependence in general, so that it is only in combination with them that the ideas underlying our First Part attain to perfect precision and vivid clearness. In order to discover these statements it is certainly quite unnecessary to separate the two members of our antithesis from each other; yet a correct, and, in view of what has already been said, perhaps a preferable, way of describing the divine activity by means of which the God-consciousness attains to supremacy, will be to ask, first, what divine attributes are to be discerned in the state of sin—though, of course, only in as far as there is therein an expectation of and preparation for redemption; and then, secondly, to what attributes the growing dominion of the God-consciousness points back, as it comes to be formed out of the state of sin through redemption. Even were these attributes mere abstractions (as would obviously be less true of the latter than of the former), yet, when viewed in combination—just as it is the fusion of the two elements that constitutes the reality of the Christian life—they would yield a truly living representation; and if we then view them in combination with the divine attributes set forth in our First Part, the exposition of our God-consciousness under this form will be complete.

3. This Second Part of Dogmatics might accordingly be arranged in two ways. Thus we might take the three forms of dogmatic proposition as our primary division, and then under each of them treat first of what relates to sin, and secondly of what relates to grace. Or, again, we might set forth these two elements of our self-consciousness as the main heads, and treat first of sin under all the three forms of proposition, and next of grace in the same way. The latter scheme seems preferable inasmuch as the main division will then be formed by what is found already divided in the immediate Christian self-consciousness. This part of our work will therefore have two aspects, in one of which we shall deal with the consciousness of sin under all the three dogmatic forms, in the other with grace on similar lines.

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Footnotes

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4. 11, 2 and 3. ↩

5. Cf. Rom. 3²³. Conf. Aug. xix.: Voluntas … avertit se a Deo. ↩

6. Augsb. Conf. xx.: ‘He therefore desires that we should embrace the promise of God by faith.’ Melanchthon, Loci Comm. Theol. De Vocabulo Fidei: ‘Si fides non est fiducia intuens Christum … non applicamus nobis eius beneficium.’ De Fide: ‘Pia mens … intelligit hanc misericordiam fide id est fiducia apprehendandam esse.’ ↩