Part 2 — EXPLANATIONS—REMARKS—ILLUSTRATIVE CITATIONS. (continued 2)

§ 16.

The Christian heaven is Christian truth. That which its excluded from heaven is excluded from true Christianity. In heaven the Christian is free from that which he wishes to be free from here—free from the sexual impulse, free from matter, free from Nature in general. “In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.”—Matt. xxii. 30. “Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats; but God shall destroy (καταργήσει, make useless) both it and them.”—1 Cor. vi. 13. “Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven, neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.”—Ib. xv. 50. “They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat.”—Rev. vii. 16. “And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun.”—Ib. xxii. 5. “Comedere, bibere, vigilare, dormire, quiescere, laborare et caeteris necessitatibus naturae subjacere, vere magna miseria est et afflictio homini devoto, qui libenter esset absolutus et liber ab omni peccato. Utinam non essent istae necessitates, sed solum spirituales animae refectiones, quas heu! satis raro degustamus.”—Thomas à K. (de Imit. 1. i. cc. 22, 25). See also on this subject S. Gregorii Nyss. de Anima et Resurr., Lipsiae, 1837, pp. 98, 144, 153). It is true that the Christian immortality, in distinction from the heathen, is not the immortality of the soul, but that of the flesh, that is, of the whole man. “Scientia immortalis visa est res illis (the heathen philosophers) atque incorruptibilis. Nos autem, quibus divina revelatio illuxit ... novimus, non solum mentem, sed affectus perpurgatos, neque animam tantum, sed etiam corpus ad immortalitatem assumptum iri suo tempore.”—Baco de Verul. (de Augm. Scien. 1. i.). On this account Celsus reproached the Christians with a desiderium corporis. But this immortal body is, as has been already remarked, an immaterial, i.e., a thoroughly fanciful, subjective body—a body which is the direct negation of the real, natural body. The ideal on which this faith hinges is not the recognition or glorification of nature, of matter as such, but rather the reality of the emotive imagination, the satisfaction of the unlimited, supranaturalistic desire of happiness, to which the actual, objective body is a limitation.

As to what the angels strictly are, whom heavenly souls will be like, the Bible is as far from giving us any definite information as on other weighty subjects; it only calls them πνεύματα, spirits, and declares them to be higher than men. The later Christians expressed themselves more definitely on this subject; more definitely, but variously. Some assigned bodies to the angels, others not; a difference which, however, is only apparent, since the angelic body is only a phantasmal one. But concerning the human body of the resurrection, they had not only different, but even opposite, conceptions; indeed, these contradictions lay in the nature of the case, necessarily resulted from the fundamental contradiction of the religious consciousness which, as we have shown, exhibits itself in the incompatible propositions that the body which is raised is the same individual body which we had before the resurrection, and that nevertheless it is another. It is the same body even to the hair, “cum nec periturus sit capillus, ut ait Dominus: Capillus de capite vestro non peribit.”—Augustinus und Petrus, L. l. iv. dist. 44, c. 1. Nevertheless it is the same in such a way that everything burdensome, everything contradictory to transcendental feeling, is removed. “Immo sicut dicit Augustinus: Detrahentur vitia et remanebit natura. Superexcrescentia autem capillorum et unguium est de superfluitate et vitio naturae. Si enim non peccasset homo, crescerent ungues et capilli ejus usque ad determinatam quantitatem, sicut in leonibus et avibus.”—(Addit. Henrici ab Vurimaria, ibid. edit. Basiliae, 1513.) What a specific, naïve, ingenuous, confident, harmonious faith! The risen body, as the same and yet another, a new body, has hair and nails, otherwise it would be a maimed body, deprived of an essential ornament, and consequently the resurrection would not be a restitutio in integrum; moreover they are the same hair and nails as before, but yet so modified that they are in accordance with the body. Why do not the believing theologians of modern times enter into such specialities as occupied the older theologians? Because their faith is itself only general, indefinite, i.e., a faith which they only suppose themselves to possess; because, from fear of their understanding, which has long been at issue with their faith, from fear of risking their feeble faith by bringing it to the light, that is, considering it in detail, they suppress the consequences, the necessary determinations of their faith, and conceal them from their understanding.

§ 17.

What faith denies on earth it affirms in heaven; what it renounces here it recovers a hundred-fold there. In this world, faith occupies itself with nullifying the body; in the other world, with establishing it. Here the main point is the separation of the soul from the body, there the main point is the reunion of the body with the soul. “I would live not only according to the soul, but according to the body also. I would have the corpus with me; I would that the body should return to the soul and be united with it.”—Luther (Th. vii. p. 90). In that which is sensuous, Christ is supersensuous; but for that reason, in the supersensuous he is sensuous. Heavenly bliss is therefore by no means merely spiritual, it is equally corporeal, sensuous—a state in which all wishes are fulfilled. “Whatever thy heart seeks joy and pleasure in, that shall be there in abundance. For it is said, God shall be all in all. And where God is, there must be all good things that can ever be desired.” “Dost thou desire to see acutely, and to hear through walls, and to be so light that thou mayst be wherever thou wilt in a moment, whether here below on the earth, or above in the clouds, that shall all be, and what more thou canst conceive, which thou couldst have in body and soul, thou shalt have abundantly if thou hast him.”—Luther (Th. x. pp. 380, 381). Certainly eating, drinking, and marriage find no place in the Christian heaven, as they do in the Mohammedan; but only because with these enjoyments want is associated, and with want matter, i.e., passion, dependence, unhappiness. “Illic ipsa indigentia morietur. Tunc vere dives eris, quando nullius indigens eris.”—Augustin. (Serm. ad Pop. p. 77, c. 9). The pleasures of this earth are only medicines, says the same writer; true health exists only in immortal life—“vera sanitas, nisi quando vera immortalitas.” The heavenly life, the heavenly body, is as free and unlimited as wishes, as omnipotent as imagination. “Futurae ergo resurrectionis corpus imperfectae felicitatis erit, si cibos sumere non potuerit, imperfectae felicitatis, si cibus eguerit.”—Augustin. (Epist. 102, § 6, edit. cit). Nevertheless, existence in a body without fatigue, without heaviness, without disagreeables, without disease, without mortality, is associated with the highest corporeal well-being. Even the knowledge of God in heaven is free from any effort of thought or faith, is sensational, immediate knowledge—intuition. The Christians are indeed not agreed whether God, as God, the essentia Dei, will be visible to bodily eyes. (See, for example, Augustin. Serm. ad Pop. p. 277, and Buddeus, Comp. Inst. Th. l. ii. c. 3, § 4.) But in this difference we again have only the contradiction between the abstract and the real God; the former is certainly not an object of vision, but the latter is so. “Flesh and blood is the wall between me and Christ, which will be torn away.... There everything will be certain. For in that life the eyes will see, the mouth taste, and the nose smell it; the treasure will shine into the soul and life.... Faith will cease, and I shall behold with my eyes.”—Luther (Th. ix. p. 595). It is clear from this again, that God, as he is an object of religious sentiment, is nothing else than a product of the imagination. The heavenly beings are supersensuous sensuous, immaterial material beings, i.e., beings of the imagination; but they are like God, nay, identical with God, consequently God also is a supersensuous sensuous, an immaterial material being.

§ 18.

The contradiction in the Sacraments is the contradiction of naturalism and supernaturalism. In the first place the natural qualities of water are pronounced essential to Baptism. “Si quis dixerit aquam veram et naturalem non esse de necessitate Baptismi atque ideo verba illa domini nostri Jesu Christi: Nisi quis renatus fuerit ex aqua et Spiritu sancto, ad metamorpham aliquam detorserit, anathema sit.—Concil. Trident. (Sessio vii. Can. ii. de Bapt.) De substantia hujus sacramenti sunt verbum et elementum.... Non ergo in alio liquore potest consecrari baptismus nisi in aqua.—Petrus Lomb. (l. iv. dist. 3, c. l. c. 5). Ad certitudinem baptismi requiritur major quam unius guttae quantitas.... Necesse est ad valorem baptismi fieri contactum physicum inter aquam et corpus baptizati, ita ut non sufficiat, vestes tantum ipsius aqua tingi.... Ad certitudinem baptismi requiritur, ut saltem talis pars corporis abluatur, ratione cujus homo solet dici vere ablutus, v. 6, collum, humeri, pectus et praesertim caput.—Theolog. Schol. (P. Mezger. Aug. Vind. 1695, Th. iv. pp. 230, 231). Aquam, eamque veram ac naturalem in baptismo adhibendam esse, exemplo Joannis ... non minus vero et Apostolorum Act. viii. 36, x. 47, patet.—F. Buddeus (Com. Inst. Th. dog. l. iv. c. i. § 5).” Thus water is essential. But now comes the negation of the natural qualities of water. The significance of Baptism is not the natural power of water, but the supernatural, almighty power of the Word of God, who instituted the use of water as a sacrament, and now by means of this element imparts himself to man in a supernatural, miraculous manner, but who could just as well have chosen any other element in order to produce the same effect. So Luther, for example, says: “Understand the distinction, that Baptism is quite another thing than all other water, not on account of its natural quality, but because here something more noble is added. For God himself brings hither his glory, power, and might ... as St. Augustine also hath taught: ‘accedat verbum ad elementum et fit sacramentum.’” “Baptize them in the name of the Father, &c. Water without these words is mere water.... Who will call the baptism of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost mere water? Do we not see what sort of spice God puts into this water? When sugar is thrown into water it is no longer water, but a costly claret or other beverage. Why then do we here separate the word from the water and say, it is mere water; as if the word of God, yea, God himself, were not with and in the water.... Therefore, the water of Baptism is such a water as takes away sin, death, and unhappiness, helps us in heaven and to everlasting life. It is become a precious sugared water, aromaticum, and restorative, since God has mingled himself therewith.”—Luther (Th. xvi. p. 105).

As with the water in Baptism, which sacrament is nothing without water, though this water is nevertheless in itself indifferent, so is it with the wine and bread in the Eucharist, even in Catholicism, where the substance of bread and wine is destroyed by the power of the Almighty. “Accidentia eucharistica tamdiu continent Christum, quamdiu retinent illud temperamentum, cum quo connaturaliter panis et vini substantia permaneret: ut econtra, quando tanta fit temperamenti dissolutio, illorumque corruptio, ut sub iis substantia panis et vini naturaliter remanere non posset, desinunt continere Christum.”—Theol. Schol. (Mezger. l. c. p. 292). That is to say: so long as the bread remains bread, so long does the bread remain flesh; when the bread is gone, the flesh is gone. Therefore a due portion of bread, at least enough to render bread recognisable as such, must be present, for consecration to be possible.—(Ib. p. 284.) For the rest, Catholic transubstantiation, the conversio realis et physica totius panis in corpus Christi, is only a consistent continuation of the miracles of the Old and New Testaments. By the transformation of water into wine, of a staff into a serpent, of stones into brooks (Ps. cxiv.) by these biblical transubstantiations the Catholics explained and proved the turning of bread into flesh. He who does not stumble at those transformations, has no right, no reason to hesitate at accepting this. The Protestant doctrine of the Lord’s Supper is not less in contradiction with reason than the Catholic. “The body of Christ cannot be partaken otherwise than in two ways, spiritually or bodily. Again, this bodily partaking cannot be visible or perceptible,” i.e., is not bodily, “else no bread would remain. Again, it cannot be mere bread; otherwise it would not be a bodily communion of the body of Christ, but of bread. Therefore the bread broken must also be truly and corporeally the body of Christ, although invisibly” (i.e., incorporeally).—Luther (Th. xix. p. 203). The difference is, that the Protestant gives no explanation concerning the mode in which bread can be flesh and wine blood. “Thereupon we stand, believe, and teach, that the body of Christ is truly and corporeally taken and eaten in the Lord’s Supper. But how this takes place, or how he is in the bread, we know not, and are not bound to know.”—Id. (ut sup. p. 393). “He who will be a Christian must not ask, as our fanatics and factionaries do, how it can be that bread is the body of Christ and wine the blood of Christ.”—Id. (Th. xvi. p. 220). “Cum retineamus doctrinam de praesentia corporis Christi, quid opus est quaerere de modo?”—Melancthon (Vita Mel. Camerarius, ed. Strobel, Halae, 1777, p. 446). Hence the Protestants as well as the Catholics took refuge in Omnipotence, the grand source of ideas contradictory to reason.—(Concord. Summ. Beg. Art. 7, Aff. 3, Negat. 13. See also Luther, e.g., Th. xix. p. 400.)

An instructive example of theological incomprehensibleness and supernaturalness is afforded by the distinction, in relation to the Eucharist (Concordienb. Summ. Beg. art. 7), between partaking with the mouth and partaking in a fleshly or natural manner. “We believe, teach, and confess that the body of Christ is taken in the bread and wine, not alone spiritually by faith, but also with the mouth, yet not in a Capernaitic, but a supernatural heavenly manner, for the sake of sacramental union.” “Probe namque discrimen inter manducationem oralem et naturalem tenendum est. Etsi enim oralem manducationem adseramus atque propugnemus, naturalem tamen non admittimus.... Omnis equidem manducatio naturalis etiam oralis est, sed non vicissim oralis manducatio statim est naturalis.... Unicus itaque licet sit actus, unicumque organum, quo panem et corpus Christi, itemque vinum et sanguinem Christi accipimus, modus (yes, truly, the mode) nihilominus maximopere differt, cum panem et vinum modo naturali et sensibili, corpus et sanguinem Christi simul equidem cum pane et vino, at modo supernaturali et insensibili, qui adeo etiam a nemine mortalium (nor, assuredly, by any God) explicare potest, revera interim et ore corporis accipiamus.”—Jo. Fr. Buddeus (l. c. Lib. v. c. i. § 15).

§ 19.

Dogma and Morality, Faith and Love, contradict each other in Christianity. It is true that God, the object of faith, is in himself the idea of the species in a mystical garb—the common Father of men—and so far love to God is mystical love to man. But God is not only the universal being; he is also a peculiar, personal being, distinguished from love. Where the being is distinguished from love arises arbitrariness. Love acts from necessity, personality from will. Personality proves itself as such only by arbitrariness; personality seeks dominion, is greedy of glory; it desires only to assert itself, to enforce its own authority. The highest worship of God as a personal being is therefore the worship of God as an absolutely unlimited, arbitrary being. Personality, as such, is indifferent to all substantial determinations which lie in the nature of things; inherent necessity, the coercion of natural qualities, appears to it a constraint. Here we have the mystery of Christian love. The love of God, as the predicate of a personal being, has here the significance of grace, favour: God is a gracious master, as in Judaism he was a severe master. Grace is arbitrary love,—love which does not act from an inward necessity of the nature, but which is equally capable of not doing what it does, which could, if it would, condemn its object; thus it is a groundless, unessential, arbitrary, absolutely subjective, merely personal love. “He hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth (Rom. ix. 18).... The king does what he will. So is it with the will of God. He has perfect right and full power to do with us and all creatures as he will. And no wrong is done to us. If his will had a measure or rule, a law, ground, or cause, it would not be the divine will. For what he wills is right, because he wills it. Where there is faith and the Holy Spirit ... it is believed that God would be good and kind even if he consigned all men to damnation. ‘Is not Esau Jacob’s brother? said the Lord. Yet I have loved Jacob and hated Esau.’”—Luther (Th. xix. pp. 83, 87, 90, 91, 97). Where love is understood in this sense, jealous watch is kept that man attribute nothing to himself as merit, that the merit may lie with the divine personality alone; there every idea of necessity is carefully dismissed, in order, through the feeling of obligation and gratitude, to be able to adore and glorify the personality exclusively. The Jews deified the pride of ancestry; the Christians, on the other hand, interpreted and transformed the Jewish aristocratic principle of hereditary nobility into the democratic principle of nobility of merit. The Jew makes salvation depend on birth, the Catholic on the merit of works, the Protestant on the merit of faith. But the idea of obligation and meritoriousness allies itself only with a deed, a work, which cannot be demanded of me, or which does not necessarily proceed from my nature. The works of the poet, of the philosopher, can be regarded in the light of merit only as considered externally. They are works of genius—inevitable products: the poet must bring forth poetry, the philosopher must philosophise. They have the highest satisfaction in the activity of creation, apart from any collateral or ulterior purpose. And it is just so with a truly noble moral action. To the man of noble feeling, the noble action is natural: he does not hesitate whether he should do it or not, he does not place it in the scales of choice; he must do it. Only he who so acts is a man to be confided in. Meritoriousness always involves the notion that a thing is done, so to speak, out of luxury, not out of necessity. The Christians indeed celebrated the highest act in their religion, the act of God becoming man, as a work of love. But Christian love in so far as it reposes on faith, on the idea of God as a master, a Dominus, has the significance of an act of grace, of a love in itself superfluous. A gracious master is one who foregoes his rights, a master who does out of graciousness what, as a master, he is not bound to do—what goes beyond the strict idea of a master. To God, as a master, it is not even a duty to do good to man; he has even the right—for he is a master bound by no law—to annihilate man if he will. In fact, mercy is optional, non-necessary love, love in contradiction with the essence of love, love which is not an inevitable manifestation of the nature, love which the master, the subject, the person (personality is only an abstract, modern expression for sovereignty) distinguishes from himself as a predicate which he can either have or not have without ceasing to be himself. This internal contradiction necessarily manifested itself in the life, in the practice of Christianity; it gave rise to the practical separation of the subject from the predicate, of faith from love. As the love of God to man was only an act of grace, so also the love of man to man was only an act of favour or grace on the part of faith. Christian love is the graciousness of faith, as the love of God is the graciousness of personality or supremacy. (On the divine arbitrariness, see also J. A. Ernesti’s treatise previously cited: “Vindiciæ arbitrii divini.”)

The command to love enemies extends only to personal enemies, not to the enemies of God, the enemies of faith. “Does not the Lord Christ command that we should love even our enemies? How then does David here boast that he hates the assembly of the wicked, and sits not with the ungodly?... For the sake of the person I should love them; but for the sake of the doctrine I should hate them. And thus I must hate them or hate God, who commands and wills that we should cleave to his word alone.... What I cannot love with God, I must hate; if they only preach something which is against God, all love and friendship is destroyed;—thereupon I hate thee, and do thee no good. For faith must be uppermost, and where the word of God is attacked, hate takes the place of love.... And so David means to say: I hate them, not because they have done injury and evil to me and led a bad and wicked life, but because they despise, revile, blaspheme, falsify, and persecute the word of God.” “Faith and love are two things. Faith endures nothing, love endures all things. Faith curses, love blesses: faith seeks vengeance and punishment, love seeks forbearance and forgiveness.” “Rather than God’s word should fall and heresy stand, faith would wish all creatures to be destroyed; for through heresy men lose God himself.”—Luther (Th. vi. p. 94; Th. v. pp. 624, 630). See also, on this subject, my treatise in the Deutsches Jahrb. and Augustini Enarrat. in Psalm cxxxviii. (cxxxix.). As Luther distinguishes the person from the enemy of God, so Augustine here distinguishes the man from the enemy of God, from the unbeliever, and says: We should hate the ungodliness in the man, but love the humanity in him. But what, then, in the eyes of faith, is the man in distinction from faith, man without faith, i.e., without God? Nothing: for the sum of all realities, of all that is worthy of love, of all that is good and essential, is faith, as that which alone apprehends and possesses God. It is true that man as man is the image of God, but only of the natural God, of God as the Creator of Nature. But the Creator is only God as he manifests himself outwardly; the true God, God as he is in himself, the inward essence of God, is the triune God, is especially Christ. (See Luther, Th. xiv. pp. 2, 3, and Th. xvi. p. 581.) And the image of this true, essential, Christian God, is only the believer, the Christian. Moreover, man is not to be loved for his own sake, but for God’s. “Diligendus est propter Deum, Deus vero propter se ipsum.”—Augustinus (de Doctrina Chr. 1. i. cc. 22, 27). How, then, should the unbelieving man, who has no resemblance to the true God, be an object of love?

§ 20.

Faith separates man from man, puts in the place of the natural unity founded in Nature and Love a supernatural unity—the unity of Faith. “Inter Christianum et gentilem non fides tantum debet, sed etiam vita distinguere.... Nolite, ait Apostolus, jugum ducere cum infidelibus.... Sit ergo inter nos et illos maxima separatio.”—Hieronymus (Epist. Caelantiæ matronae).... “Prope nihil gravius quam copulari alienigeniae.... Nam cum ipsum conjugium velamine sacerdotali et benedictione sanctificari oporteat: quomodo potest conjugium dici, ubi non est fidei concordia?... Saepe plerique capti amore feminarum fidem suam prodiderunt.”—Ambrosius (Ep. 70, Lib. ix.). “Non enim licet christiano cum gentili vel judaeo inire conjugium.”—Petrus L. (l. iv. dist. 39, c. 1). And this separation is by no means unbiblical. On the contrary, we find that, in support of it, the Fathers appeal directly to the Bible. The well-known passage of the Apostle Paul concerning marriage between heathens and Christians relates only to marriages which had taken place before conversion, not to those which were yet to be contracted. Let the reader refer to what Peter Lombard says in the book already cited. “The first Christians did not acknowledge, did not once listen to, all those relatives who sought to turn them away from the hope of the heavenly reward. This they did through the power of the Gospel, for the sake of which all love of kindred was to be despised; inasmuch as ... the brotherhood of Christ far surpassed natural brotherhood. To us the Fatherland and a common name is not so dear, but that we have a horror even of our parents, if they seek to advise something against the Lord.”—G. Arnold (Wahre Abbild. der ersten Christen. B. iv. c. 2). “Qui amat patrem et matrem plus quam me, non est me dignus Matth. x. ... in hoc vos non agnosco parentes, sed hostes.... Alioquin quid mihi et vobis? Quid a vobis habeo nisi peccatum et miseriam?”—Bernardus (Epist. iii. Ex persona Heliae monachi ad parentes suos). “Etsi impium est, contemnere matrem, contemnere tamen propter Christum piissimum est.”—Bernardus (Ep. 104. See also Ep. 351, ad Hugonem novitium). “Audi sententiam Isidori: multi canonicorum, monachorum ... temporali salute suorum parentum perdunt animas suas.... Servi Dei qui parentum suorum utilitatem procurant a Dei amore se separant.”—De modo bene vivendi (S. vii.). “Omnem hominem fidelem judica tuum esse fratrem.”—(Ibid. Sermo 13). “Ambrosius dicit, longe plus nos debere diligere filios quos de fonte levamus, quam quos carnaliter (genuimus.”—Petrus L. (l. iv. dist. 6, c. 5, addit. Henr. ab Vurim.). “Infantes nascuntur cum peccato, nec fiunt haeredes vitae aeternae sine remissione peccati.... Cum igitur dubium non sit in infantibus esse peccatum, debet aliquod esse discrimen infantium Ethnicorum, qui manent rei, et infantium in Ecclesia, qui recipiuntur a Deo per ministerium.”—Melancthon (Loci de bapt. inf. Argum. II. Compare with this the passage above cited from Buddeus, as a proof of the narrowness of the true believer’s love). “Ut Episcopi vel Clerici in eos, qui Catholici Christiani non sunt, etiam si consanguinei fuerint, nec per donationes rerum suarum aliquid conferant.”—Concil. Carthag. III. can. 13 (Summa Carranza). “Cum haereticis nec orandum, nec psallendum.”—Concil. Carthag. IV. can. 72 (ibid.).

Faith has the significance of religion, love only that of morality. This has been declared very decidedly by Protestantism. The doctrine that love does not justify in the sight of God, but only faith, expresses nothing further than that love has no religious power and significance. (Apol. Augsb. Confess. art. 3. Of Love and the Fulfilment of the Law.) It is certainly here said: “What the scholastic writers teach concerning the love of God is a dream, and it is impossible to know and love God before we know and lay hold on mercy through faith. For then first does God become objectum amabile, a lovable, blissful object of contemplation.” Thus here mercy, love is made the proper object of faith. And it is true that faith is immediately distinguished from love only in this, that faith places out of itself what love places in itself. “We believe that our justification, salvation, and consolation, lie out of ourselves.”—Luther (Th. xvi. p. 497; see also Th. ix. p. 587). It is true that faith in the Protestant sense is faith in the forgiveness of sins, faith in mercy, faith in Christ, as the God who suffered and died for men, so that man, in order to attain everlasting salvation, has nothing further to do on his side than believingly to accept this sacrifice of God for him. But it is not as love only that God is an object of faith. On the contrary, the characteristic object of faith as faith is God as a subject, a person. And is a God who accords no merit to man, who claims all exclusively for himself, who watches jealously over his honour—is a self-interested, egoistic God like this a God of love?

The morality which proceeds from faith has for its principle and criterion only the contradiction of Nature, of man. As the highest object of faith is that which most contradicts reason, the Eucharist, so necessarily the highest virtue of the morality which is true and obedient to faith is that which most contradicts Nature. Dogmatic miracles have therefore moral miracles as their consequence. Antinatural morality is the twin sister of supernatural faith. As faith vanquishes Nature outside of man, so the morality of faith vanquishes Nature within man. This practical supernaturalism, the summit of which is “virginity, the sister of the angels, the queen of virtues, the mother of all good” (see A. v. Buchers: Geistliches Suchverloren. (Sämmtl. W. B. vi. 151), has been specially developed by Catholicism; for Protestantism has held fast only the principle of Christianity, and has arbitrarily eliminated its logical consequences; it has embraced only Christian faith and not Christian morality. In faith, Protestantism has brought man back to the standpoint of primitive Christianity; but in life, in practice, in morality, it has restored him to the pre-Christian, the Old Testament, the heathen, Adamitic, natural standpoint. God instituted marriage in paradise; therefore even in the present day, even to Christians, the command Multiply! is valid. Christ advises those only not to marry who “can receive” this higher rule. Chastity is a supernatural gift; it cannot therefore be expected of every one. But is not faith also a supernatural gift, a special gift of God, a miracle, as Luther says innumerable times, and is it not nevertheless commanded to us all? Are not all men included in the command to mortify, blind, and contemn the natural reason? Is not the tendency to believe and accept nothing which contradicts reason as natural, as strong, as necessary in us, as the sexual impulse? If we ought to pray to God for faith because by ourselves we are too weak to believe, why should we not on the same ground entreat God for chastity? Will he deny us this gift if we earnestly implore him for it? Never! Thus we may regard chastity as a universal command equally with faith, for what we cannot do of ourselves, we can do through God. What speaks against chastity speaks against faith also, and what speaks for faith speaks for chastity. One stands and falls with the other; with a supernatural faith is necessarily associated a supernatural morality. Protestantism tore this bond asunder: in faith it affirmed Christianity; in life, in practice, it denied Christianity, acknowledged the autonomy of natural reason, of man,—restored man to his original rights. Protestantism rejected celibacy, chastity, not because it contradicted the Bible, but because it contradicts man and nature. “He who will be single renounces the name of man, and proves or makes himself an angel or spirit.... It is pitiable folly to wonder that a man takes a wife, or for any one to be ashamed of doing so, since no one wonders that men are accustomed to eat and drink.”—Luther (Th. xix. pp. 368, 369). Does this unbelief as to the possibility and reality of chastity accord with the Bible, where celibacy is eulogised as a laudable, and consequently a possible, attainable state? No! It is in direct contradiction with the Bible. Protestantism, in consequence of its practical spirit, and therefore by its own inherent force, repudiated Christian supranaturalism in the sphere of morality. Christianity exists for it only in faith—not in law, not in morality, not in the State. It is true that love (the compendium of morality) belongs essentially to the Christian, so that where there is no love, where faith does not attest itself by love, there is no faith, no Christianity. Nevertheless love is only the outward manifestation of faith, only a consequence, and only human. “Faith alone deals with God,” “faith makes us gods;” love makes us merely men, and as faith alone is for God, so God is for faith alone, i.e., faith alone is the divine, the Christian in man. To faith belongs eternal life, to love only this temporal life. “Long before Christ came God gave this temporal, earthly life to the whole world, and said that man should love him and his neighbour. After that he gave the world to his Son Christ, that we through and by him should have eternal life.... Moses and the law belong to this life, but for the other life we must have the Lord.”—Luther (Th. xvi. p. 459). Thus although love belongs to the Christian, yet is the Christian a Christian only through this, that he believes in Christ. It is true that to serve one’s neighbour, in whatever way, rank, or calling, is to serve God. But the God whom I serve in fulfilling a worldly or natural office is only the universal, mundane, natural, pre-Christian God. Government, the State, marriage, existed prior to Christianity, was an institution, an ordinance of God, in which he did not as yet reveal himself as the true God, as Christ. Christ has nothing to do with all these worldly things; they are external, indifferent to him. But for this very reason, every worldly calling and rank is compatible with Christianity; for the true, Christian service of God is faith alone, and this can be exercised everywhere. Protestantism binds men only in faith, all the rest it leaves free, but only because all the rest is external to faith.

It is true that we are bound by the commandments of Christian morality, as, for example, “Avenge not yourselves,” &c., but they have validity for us only as private, not as public persons. The world is governed according to its own laws. Catholicism “mingled together the worldly and spiritual kingdoms,” i.e., it sought to govern the world by Christianity. But “Christ did not come on earth to interfere in the government of the Emperor Augustus and teach him how to reign.”—Luther (Th. xvi. p. 49). Where worldly government begins Christianity ends; there worldly justice, the sword, war, litigation, prevail. As a Christian I let my cloak be stolen from me without resistance, but as a citizen I seek to recover it by law. “Evangelium non abolet jus naturæ.”—Melancthon (de Vindicta Loci. See also on this subject M. Chemnitii Loci Theol. de Vindicta). In fact, Protestantism is the practical negation of Christianity, the practical assertion of the natural man. It is true that Protestantism also commands the mortifying of the flesh, the negation of the natural man; but apart from the fact that this negation has for Protestantism no religious significance and efficacy, does not justify, i.e., make acceptable to God, procure salvation; the negation of the flesh in Protestantism is not distinguished from that limitation of the flesh which natural reason and morality enjoin on man. The necessary practical consequences of the Christian faith Protestantism has relegated to the other world, to heaven—in other words, has denied them. la heaven first ceases the worldly standpoint of Protestantism; there we no longer marry, there first we are new creatures; but here everything remains as of old “until that life; there the external life will be changed, for Christ did not come to change the creature.”—Luther (Th. xv. p. 62). Here we are half heathens, half Christians; half citizens of the earth, half citizens of heaven. Of this division, this disunity, this chasm, Catholicism knows nothing. What it denies in heaven, i.e., in faith, it denies, also, as far as possible, on earth, i.e., in morality. “Grandis igitur virtutis est et sollicitate diligentiae, superare quod nata sis: in carne non carnaliter vivere, tecum pugnare quotidie.”—Hieronymus (Ep. Furiae Rom. nobilique viduae). “Quanto igitur natura amplius vincitur et premitur, tanto major gratia infunditur.”—Thomas à K. (Imit. l. iii. c. 54). “Esto robustus tam in agendo, quam in patiendo naturae contraria.”—(Ibid. c. 49.) “Beatus ille homo, qui propter te, Domine, omnibus creaturis licentiam abeundi tribuit, qui naturae vim facit et concupiscentias carnis fervore spiritus crucifigit” (c. 48). “Adhuc proh dolor! vivit in me verus homo, non est totus crucifixus.”—(Ibid. c. 34, l. iii. c. 19, l. ii. c. 12.) And these dicta by no means emanate simply from the pious individuality of the author of the work De Imitatione Christi; they express the genuine morality of Catholicism, that morality which the saints attested by their lives, and which was sanctioned even by the Head of the Church, otherwise so worldly. Thus it is said, for example, in the Canonizatio S. Bernhardi Abbatis per Alexandrum papam III. anno Ch. 1164. Litt. apost ... primo ad. Praelatos Eccles. Gallic.: “In afflictione vero corporis sui usque adeo sibi mundum, seque mundo reddidit crucifixum, ut confidamus martyrum quoque eum merita obtinere sanctorum, etc.” It was owing to this purely negative moral principle that there could be enunciated within Catholicism itself the gross opinion that mere martyrdom, without the motive of love to God, obtains heavenly blessedness.

It is true that Catholicism also in practice denied the supranaturalistic morality of Christianity; but its negation has an essentially different significance from that of Protestantism; it is a negation de facto but not de jure. The Catholic denied in life what he ought to have affirmed in life,—as, for example, the vow of chastity,—what he desired to affirm, at least if he was a religious Catholic, but which in the nature of things he could not affirm. Thus he gave validity to the law of Nature, he gratified the flesh, in a word, he was a man, in contradiction with his essential character, his religious principle and conscience. Adhuc proh dolor! vivit in me verus homo. Catholicism has proved to the world that the supernatural principle of faith in Christianity, applied to life, made a principle of morals, has immoral, radically corrupting consequences. This experience Protestantism made use of, or rather this experience called forth Protestantism. It made the illegitimate, practical negation of Christianity—illegitimate in the sense of true Catholicism, though not in that of the degenerate Church—the law, the norm of life. You cannot in life, at least in this life, be Christians, peculiar, superhuman beings, therefore ye ought not to be such. And it legitimised this negation of Christianity before its still Christian conscience, by Christianity itself, pronounced it to be Christian;—no wonder, therefore, that now at last modern Christianity not only practically but theoretically represents the total negation of Christianity as Christianity. When, however, Protestantism is designated as the contradiction, Catholicism as the unity of faith and practice, it is obvious that in both cases we refer only to the essence, to the principle.

Faith sacrifices man to God. Human sacrifice belongs to the very idea of religion. Bloody human sacrifices only dramatise this idea. “By faith Abraham offered up Isaac.”—Heb. xi. 17. “Quanto major Abraham, qui unicum filium voluntate jugulavit.... Jepte obtulit virginem filiam et idcirco in enumeratione sanctorum ab Apostolo ponitur.”—Hieronymus (Epist. Juliano). On the human sacrifices in the Jewish religion we refer the reader to the works of Daumer and Ghillany. In the Christian religion also it is only blood, the sacrifice of the Son of Man, which allays God’s anger and reconciles him to man. Therefore a pure, guiltless man must fall a sacrifice. Such blood alone is precious, such alone has reconciling power. And this blood, shed on the cross for the allaying of the divine anger, Christians partake in the Lord’s Supper, for the strengthening and sealing of their faith. But why is the blood taken under the form of wine, the flesh under the form of bread? That it may not appear as if Christians ate real human flesh and drank human blood, that the natural man may not shrink from the mysteries of the Christian faith. “Etenim ne humana infirmitas esum carnis et potum sanguinis in sumptione horreret, Christus velari et palliari illa duo voluit speciebus panis et vini.”—Bernard. (edit. cit. pp. 189–191). “Sub alia autem specie tribus de causis carnem et sanguinem tradit Christus et deinceps sumendum instituit. Ut fides scil. haberet meritum, quae est de his quae non videntur, quod fides non habet meritum, ubi humana ratio praebet experimentum. Et ideo etiam ne abhorreret animus quod cerneret oculus; quod non habemus in usu carnem crudam comedere et sanguinem bibere.... Et etiam ideo ne ab incredulis religioni christianae insultaretur. Unde Augustinus: Nihil rationabilius, quam ut sanguinis similitudinem sumamus, ut et ita veritas non desit et ridiculum nullum fiat a paganis, quod cruorem occisi hominis bibamus.”—Petrus Lomb. (Sent. lib. iv. dist. ii. c. 4).

But as the bloody human sacrifice, while it expresses the utmost abnegation of man, is at the same time the highest assertion of his value;—for only because human life is regarded as the highest, because the sacrifice of it is the most painful, costs the greatest conquest over feeling, is it offered to God;—so the contradiction of the Eucharist with human nature is only apparent. Apart from the fact that flesh and blood are, as St. Bernard says, clothed with bread and wine, i.e., that in truth it is not flesh but bread, not blood but wine, which is partaken,—the mystery of the Eucharist resolves itself into the mystery of eating and drinking. “All ancient Christian doctors ... teach that the body of Christ is not taken spiritually alone by faith, which happens also out of the Sacraments, but also corporeally; not alone by believers, by the pious, but also by unworthy, unbelieving, false and wicked Christians.” “There are thus two ways of eating Christ’s flesh, one spiritual ... such spiritual eating however is nothing else than faith.... The other way of eating the body of Christ is to eat it corporeally or sacramentally.”—(Concordienb. Erkl. art. 7). “The mouth eats the body of Christ bodily.”—Luther (against the “fanatics.” Th. xix. p. 417). What then forms the specific difference of the Eucharist? Eating and drinking. Apart from the Sacrament, God is partaken of spiritually; in the Sacrament he is partaken of materially, i.e., he is eaten and drunken, assimilated by the body. But how couldst thou receive God into thy body, if it were in thy esteem an organ unworthy of God? Dost thou pour wine into a water-cask? Dost thou not declare thy hands and lips holy when by means of them thou comest in contact with the Holy One? Thus if God is eaten and drunken, eating and drinking is declared to be a divine act; and this is what the Eucharist expresses, though in a self-contradictory, mystical, covert manner. But it is our task to express the mystery of religion, openly and honourably, clearly and definitely. Life is God; the enjoyment of life is the enjoyment of God; true bliss in life is true religion. But to the enjoyment of life belongs the enjoyment of eating and drinking. If therefore life in general is holy, eating and drinking must be holy. Is this an irreligious creed? Let it be remembered that this irreligion is the analysed, unfolded, unequivocally expressed mystery of religion itself. All the mysteries of religion ultimately resolve themselves, as we have shown, into the mystery of heavenly bliss. But heavenly bliss is nothing else than happiness freed from the limits of reality. The Christians have happiness for their object just as much as the heathens; the only difference is, that the heathens place heaven on earth, the Christians place earth in heaven. Whatever is, whatever is really enjoyed, is finite; that which is not, which is believed in and hoped for, is infinite.

§ 21.

Nevertheless the Christians have celebrated the incarnation as a work of love, as a self-renunciation of God, an abnegation of his majesty—Amor triumphat de Deo; for the love of God is an empty word if it is understood as a real abolition of the distinction between him and man. Thus we have, in the very central point of Christianity, the contradiction of Faith and Love developed in the close of the present work. Faith makes the suffering of God a mere appearance, love makes it a truth. Only on the truth of the suffering rests the true positive impression of the incarnation. Strongly, then, as we have insisted on the contradiction and division between the divine and the human nature in the God-man, we must equally insist on their community and unity, in virtue of which God is really man and man is really God. Here then we have the irrefragable and striking proof that the central point, the supreme object of Christianity, is nothing else than man, that Christians adore the human individual as God, and God as the human individual. “This man born of the Virgin Mary is God himself, who has created heaven and earth.”—Luther (Th. ii. p. 671). “I point to the man Christ and say: That is the Son of God.”—(Th. xix. p. 594.) “To give life, to have all power in heaven and earth, to have all things in his hands, all things put under his feet, to purify from sin, and so on, are divine, infinite attributes, which, according to the declaration of the Holy Scriptures, are given and imparted to the man Christ.” “Therefore we believe, teach, and confess that the Son of Man ... now not only as God, but also as man, knows all things, can do all things, is present with all creatures.” “We reject and condemn the doctrine that he (the Son of God) is not capable according to his human nature of omnipotence and other attributes of the divine nature.”—(Concordienb. Summar. Begr. u. Erklär. art. 8.) “Unde et sponte sua fluit, Christo etiam qua humanam naturam spectato cultum religiosum deberi.”—Buddeus (l. c. l. iv. c. ii. § 17). The same is expressly taught by the Fathers and the Catholics, e.g., “Eadem adoratione adoranda in Christo est divinitas et humanitas.... Divinitas intrinsece inest humanitati per unionem hypostaticam: ergo humanitas Christi seu Christus ut homo potest adorari absoluto cultu latriae.”—Theol. Schol. (sec. Thomam Aq. P. Metzger. iv. p. 124). It is certainly said that it is not man, not flesh and blood by itself, which is worshipped, but the flesh united with God, so that the cultus applies not to the flesh, or man, but to God. But it is here as with the worship of saints and images. As the saint is adored in the image and God in the saint, only because the image and the saint are themselves adored, so God is worshipped in the human body only because the human flesh is itself worshipped. God becomes flesh, man, because man is in truth already God. How could it enter into thy mind to bring the human flesh into so close a relation and contact with God if it were something impure, degrading, unworthy of God? If the value, the dignity of the human flesh does not lie in itself, why dost thou not make other flesh—the flesh of brutes the habitation of the Divine Spirit? True it is said: Man is only the organ in, with, and by which the Godhead works, as the soul in the body. But this pretext also is refuted by what has been said above. God chose man as his organ, his body, because only in man did he find an organ worthy of him, suitable, pleasing to him. If the nature of man is indifferent, why did not God become incarnate in a brute? Thus God comes into man only out of man. The manifestation of God in man is only a manifestation of the divinity and glory of man. “Noscitur ex alio, qui non cognoscitur ex se”—this trivial saying is applicable here. God is known through man, whom he honours with his personal presence and indwelling, and known as a human being, for what any one prefers, selects, loves, in his objective nature; and man is known through God, and known as a divine being, for only that which is worthy of God, which is divine, can be the object, organ, and habitation of God. True it is further said: It is Jesus Christ alone, and no other man, who is worshipped as God. But this argument also is idle and empty. Christ is indeed one only, but he is one who represents all. He is a man as we are, “our brother, and we are flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone.” “In Jesus Christ our Lord every one of us is a portion of flesh and blood. Therefore where my body is, there I believe that I myself reign. Where my flesh is glorified, there I believe that I am myself glorious. Where my blood rules, there I hold that I myself rule.”—Luther (Th. xvi. p. 534). This then is an undeniable fact: Christians worship the human individual as the supreme being, as God. Not indeed consciously, for it is the unconsciousness of this fact which constitutes the illusion of the religious principle. But in this sense it may be said that the heathens did not worship the statues of the gods; for to them also the statue was not a statue, but God himself. Nevertheless they did worship the statue; just as Christians worship the human individual, though, naturally, they will not admit it.

§ 22.

Nevertheless Protestantism, at least in theory, has retained in the background of this human God the old supranaturalistic God. Protestantism is the contradiction of theory and practice; it has emancipated the flesh, but not the reason. According to Protestantism, Christianity, i.e., God, does not contradict the natural impulses of man:—“Therefore we ought now to know that God does not condemn or abolish the natural tendency in man which was implanted in Nature at the creation, but that he awakens and preserves it.”—Luther (Th. iii. p. 290). But it contradicts reason, and is therefore, theoretically, only an object of faith. We have shown, however, that the nature of faith, the nature of God, is itself nothing else than the nature of man placed out of man, conceived as external to man. The reduction of the extrahuman, supernatural, and antirational nature of God to the natural, immanent, inborn nature of man, is therefore the liberation of Protestantism, of Christianity in general, from its fundamental contradiction, the reduction of it to its truth,—the result, the necessary, irrepressible, irrefragable result of Christianity.

THE END.

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. EDINBURGH AND LONDON