Note 3 — THE RELIGIOUS PROBLEM OF THE PRESENT

If this is true of Protestant orthodoxy it is even more true of that form of Protestantism which thinks it can maintain Christianity apart from its metaphysical doctrine of redemption because this doctrine is “no longer suitable to the age.” Liberal Protestantism is and wishes to be nothing but a mere faith in the historical personality of a man who is supposed to have been born 1,900 years ago in Palestine, and through his exemplary life to have become the founder of a new religion; being crucified and dying in conflict with the authorities at Jerusalem, being raised up then as a God in the minds of his enthusiastic disciples. It is a faith in the “loving God the Father,” because Jesus is supposed to have believed in him; in the personal immortality of man, because this is supposed to have been the presupposition of Jesus’ appearance and doctrines; in the “incomparable” value of moral instructions, because they stand in a book which is supposed to have been produced under the immediate influence of the prophet of Nazareth. Liberal Protestantism supports morality on this, that Jesus was such a good man, and that for this reason it is necessary for each individual man to follow the call of Jesus. But it bases the faith in Jesus once and for all on the historical significance of the Gospels; though it cannot conceal from itself, after careful consideration, that the belief in their historical value rests on extremely weak grounds, and that we know nothing of that Jesus, not even that he ever lived. In any case we know nothing which could be of influential religious significance, and which could not be put together just as well or better from other less doubtful sources.3 It is pierced to the heart by the denial of the historical personality of Jesus, not, like Catholicism, merely as a Church, but in its very essence, as a Religion. And as to its real religious kernel it consists in a few fine-sounding phrases and some scattered references to a metaphysics which was once living, but which is now degraded into a mere ornament for modest minds. And after disposing of its would-be historical value there is left only a dimly smouldering spark of “homeless sentiments,” which would suit any style of religious faith. Liberal Protestantism proclaims itself as the really “modern” Christianity. Confronted by the philosophic spirit of our day, it lays stress upon having no philosophy. It sets aside all religious speculation as “Myth,” if possible with reference to Kant, as this is “modern,” without noticing that it is itself most deeply imbedded in mythology with its “historical” Jesus. It believes that, in its exclusive reverence for the man Jesus, it has brought Christianity to the “height of present culture.” As to this Stendel justly says: “Of the whole apologetic art with which the modern Jesus-theology undertakes to save Christianity for our time, it can be said that there is no historical religion which could not just as well be brought into accord with the modern mind as that of the New Testament.”4 We have no occasion to weep for the complete collapse of such a “religion.” This form of Christianity has already been proved by Hartmann to be worthless from the religious point of view;5 and it is only a proof of the fascinating power of phrases, of the laxity in our creeds, and the thoughtlessness of the mob in religious matters, that it is even yet alive. For such reasons it is even allowed, under the lead of the so-called critical theology, to proclaim itself as the pure Christianity, now known for the first time. Thus it finds sympathy. This unsystematic collection of thoughts, arbitrarily selected from the view of the world and of life given by the Gospels, which even so requires to be rhetorically puffed out and artistically modified before it is made acceptable to the present age,—this unspeculative doctrine of redemption, which at bottom is uncertain of itself,—this sentimental, æsthetic, Jesus-worship of a Harnack, Bousset, and the rest on whom W. v. Schnehen so pitilessly broke his lance;6 this whole so-called Christianity of cultured pastors and a laity in need of redemption, would have long since come to grief through its poverty of ideas, its sickening sweetness, if it were not considered necessary to maintain Christianity at all costs, were it even that of the complete deprivation of its spiritual content. The recognition of the fact that the “historical” Jesus has no religious interest at all, but at most concerns historians and philologists, is indeed at present commencing to make its way into wider circles.7 If one only knew a way out of the difficulty! If one were only not afraid of following a clear lead just because one might then possibly be forced beyond the existing religion in the course of his ideas—as the example of Kalthoff showed! If only one had not such a fearful respect for the past and such a tender “historic unconsciousness” and such immense respect for the “historical basis” of existing religion! The reference to history and the so-called “historical continuity of the religious development” is indeed on the face of it merely a way out of a difficulty, and another way of putting the fact that one is not desired to draw the consequences of his presuppositions. As if there can still be talk of a “historical basis” where there is no history, but pure myth! As if the “preservation of historical continuity” could consist in maintaining as history what are mythical fictions, just because they have hitherto passed for historic truth, though we have seen through their purely fictitious and unreal character! As if the difficulty of the redemption of present-day civilisation from the chaos of superstition, social deceit, cowardice, and intellectual servitude which are connected with the name of Christianity, lay in a purely spiritual sphere and not rather in the sentiment, in the slovenly piety, in the heavy weight of ancient tradition, above all in the economic, social, and practical relations which unite our churches with the past! Faith in the future of Christianity is still built not so much on the persuasive inner truth of its doctrine, but much more on the inborn religious feeling of the members of the community, on the religious education in school and home, and the consequent increasing store of metaphysical and ethical ideas, on protection by the State and—on the law of inertia in the spiritual life of the mob. For the rest, in pulpit, in parish papers, and in public life, a method of expression is used which is not essentially different from that of orthodoxy, but is so adapted as to allow every man to think what he deems best for himself. We are enthusiastically told that thus we are able to keep the rudderless ship of Protestantism still a while above water, and that we have “reconciled” faith with modern culture in “the further development of Christianity.”