Ludwig Feuerbach

Man has his highest being, his God, in himself; not in himself as an individual, but in his essential nature, his species. No individual is an adequate representation of his species, but only the human individual is conscious of the distinction between the species and the individual; in the sense of this distinction lies the root of religion. The yearning of man after something above himself is nothing else than the longing after the perfect type of his nature, the yearning to be free from himself, i.e., from the limits and defects of his individuality. Individuality is the self-conditionating, the self-limitation of the species. Thus man has cognisance of nothing above himself, of nothing beyond the nature of humanity; but to the individual man this nature presents itself under the form of an individual man. Thus, for example, the child sees the nature of man above itself in the form of its parents, the pupil in the form of his tutor. But all feelings which man experiences towards a superior man, nay, in general, all moral feelings which man has towards man, are of a religious nature.1 Man feels nothing towards God which he does not also feel towards man. Homo homini deus est. Want teaches prayer; but in misfortune, in sorrow, man kneels to entreat help of man also. Feeling makes God a man, but for the same reason it makes man a God. How often in deep emotion, which alone speaks genuine truth, man exclaims to man: Thou art, thou hast been my redeemer, my saviour, my protecting spirit, my God! We feel awe, reverence, humility, devout admiration, in thinking of a truly great, noble man; we feel ourselves worthless, we sink into nothing, even in the presence of human greatness. The purely, truly human emotions are religious; but for that reason the religious emotions are purely human: the only difference is, that the religious emotions are vague, indefinite; but even this is only the case when the object of them is indefinite. Where God is positively defined, is the object of positive religion, there God is also the object of positive, definite human feelings, the object of fear and love, and therefore he is a positively human being; for there is nothing more in God than what lies in feeling. If in the heart there is fear and terror, in God there is anger; if in the heart there is joy, hope, confidence, in God there is love. Fear makes itself objective in anger; joy in love, in mercy. “As it is with me in my heart, so is it with God.” “As my heart is, so is God.”—Luther (Th. i. p. 72). But a merciful and angry God—Deus vere irascitur (Melancthon)—is a God no longer distinguishable from the human feelings and nature. Thus even in religion man bows before the nature of man under the form of a personal human being; religion itself expressly declares—and all anthropomorphisms declare this in opposition to Pantheism.—quod supra nos nihil ad nos; that is, a God who inspires us with no human emotions, who does not reflect our own emotions, in a word, who is not a man,—such a God is nothing to us, has no interest for us, does not concern us. (See the passages cited in this work from Luther.)

Religion has thus no dispositions and emotions which are peculiar to itself; what it claims as belonging exclusively to its object, are simply the same dispositions and emotions that man experiences either in relation to himself (as, for example, to his conscience), or to his fellow-man, or to Nature. You must not fear men, but God; you must not love man,—i.e., not truly, for his own sake,—but God; you must not humble yourselves before human greatness, but only before the Lord; not believe and confide in man, but only in God. Hence comes the danger of worshipping false gods in distinction from the true God. Hence the “jealousy” of God. “Ego Jehova, Deus tuus, Deus sum zelotypus. Ut zelotypus vir dicitur, qui rivalem pati nequit: sic Deus socium in cultu, quem ab hominibus postulat, ferre non potest.” (Clericus, Comment. in Exod. c. 20, v. 5.) Jealousy arises because a being preferred and loved by me directs to another the feelings and dispositions which I claim for myself. But how could I be jealous if the impressions and emotions which I excite in the beloved being were altogether peculiar and apart, were essentially different from the impressions which another can make on him? If, therefore, the emotions of religion were objectively, essentially different from those which lie out of religion, there would be no possibility of idolatry in man or of jealousy in God. As the flute has another sound to me than the trumpet, and I cannot confound the impressions produced by the former with the impressions produced by the latter; so I could not transfer to a natural or human being the emotions of religion, if the object of religion, God, were specifically different from the natural or human being, and consequently the impressions which he produced on me were specific, peculiar.

Feeling alone is the object of feeling. Feeling is sympathy; feeling arises only in the love of man to man. Sensations man has in isolation; feelings only in community. Only in sympathy does sensation rise into feeling. Feeling is Æsthetic, human sensation; only what is human is the object of feeling. In feeling man is related to his fellow-man as to himself; he is alive to the sorrows, the joys of another as his own. Thus only by communication does man rise above merely egoistic sensation into feeling;—participated sensation is feeling. He who has no need of participating has no feeling. But what does the hand, the kiss, the glance, the voice, the tone, the word—as the expression of emotion—impart? Emotion. The very same thing which, pronounced or performed without the appropriate tone, without emotion, is only an object of indifferent perception, becomes, when uttered or performed with emotion, an object of feeling. To feel is to have a sense of sensations, to have emotion in the perception of emotion. Hence the brutes rise to feeling only in the sexual relation, and therefore only transiently; for here the being experiences sensation not in relation to itself taken alone, or to an object without sensation, but to a being having like emotions with itself,—not to another as a distinct object, but to an object which in species is identical. Hence Nature is an object of feeling to me only when I regard it as a being akin to me and in sympathy with me.

It is clear from what has been said, that only where in truth, if not according to the subjective conception, the distinction between the divine and human being is abolished, is the objective existence of God, the existence of God as an objective, distinct being, abolished:—only there, I say, is religion made a mere matter of feeling, or conversely, feeling the chief point in religion. The last refuge of theology therefore is feeling. God is renounced by the understanding; he has no longer the dignity of a real object, of a reality which imposes itself on the understanding; hence he is transferred to feeling; in feeling his existence is thought to be secure. And doubtless this is the safest refuge; for to make feeling the essence of religion is nothing else than to make feeling the essence of God. And as certainly as I exist, so certainly does my feeling exist; and as certainly as my feeling exists, so certainly does my God exist. The certainty of God is here nothing else than the self-certainty of human feeling, the yearning after God is the yearning after unlimited, uninterrupted, pure feeling. In life the feelings are interrupted; they collapse; they are followed by a state of void, of insensibility. The religious problem, therefore, is to give fixity to feeling in spite of the vicissitudes of life, and to separate it from repugnant disturbances and limitations: God himself is nothing else than undisturbed, uninterrupted feeling, feeling for which there exists no limits, no opposite. If God were a being distinct from thy feeling, he would be known to thee in some other way than simply in feeling; but just because thou perceivest him only by feeling, he exists only in feeling—he is himself only feeling.

God is man’s highest feeling of self, freed from all contrarieties or disagreeables. God is the highest being; therefore, to feel God is the highest feeling. But is not the highest feeling also the highest feeling of self? So long as I have not had the feeling of the highest, so long I have not exhausted my capacity of feeling, so long I do not yet fully know the nature of feeling. What, then, is an object to me in my feeling of the highest being? Nothing else than the highest nature of my power of feeling. So much as a man can feel, so much is (his) God. But the highest degree of the power of feeling is also the highest degree of the feeling of self. In the feeling of the low I feel myself lowered, in the feeling of the high I feel myself exalted. The feeling of self and feeling are inseparable, otherwise feeling would not belong to myself. Thus God, as an object of feeling, or what is the same thing, the feeling of God, is nothing else than man’s highest feeling of self. But God is the freest, or rather the absolutely only free being; thus God is man’s highest feeling of freedom. How couldst thou be conscious of the highest being as freedom, or freedom as the highest being, if thou didst not feel thyself free? But when dost thou feel thyself free? When thou feelest God. To feel God is to feel oneself free. For example, thou feelest desire, passion, the conditions of time and place, as limits. What thou feelest as a limit thou strugglest against, thou breakest loose from, thou deniest. The consciousness of a limit, as such, is already an anathema, a sentence of condemnation pronounced on this limit, for it is an oppressive, disagreeable, negative consciousness. Only the feeling of the good, of the positive, is itself good and positive—is joy. Joy alone is feeling in its element, its paradise, because it is unrestricted activity. The sense of pain in an organ is nothing else than the sense of a disturbed, obstructed, thwarted activity; in a word, the sense of something abnormal, anomalous. Hence thou strivest to escape from the sense of limitation into unlimited feeling. By means of the will, or the imagination, thou negativest limits, and thus obtainest the feeling of freedom. This feeling of freedom is God. God is exalted above desire and passion, above the limits of space and time. But this exaltation is thy own exaltation above that which appears to thee as a limit. Does not this exaltation of the divine being exalt thee? How could it do so, if it were external to thee? No; God is an exalted being only for him who himself has exalted thoughts and feelings. Hence the exaltation of the divine being varies according to that which different men or nations perceive as a limitation to the feeling of self, and which they consequently negative or eliminate from their ideal.

The distinction between the “heathen,” or philosophic, and the Christian God—the non-human, or pantheistic, and the human, personal God—reduces itself only to the distinction between the understanding or reason and the heart or feelings. Reason is the self-consciousness of the species, as such; feeling is the self-consciousness of individuality; the reason has relation to existences, as things; the heart to existences, as persons. I am is an expression of the heart; I think, of the reason. Cogito, ergo sum? No! Sentio, ergo sum. Feeling only is my existence; thinking is my non-existence, the negation of my individuality, the positing of the species; reason is the annihilation of personality. To think is an act of spiritual marriage. Only beings of the same species understand each other; the impulse to communicate thought is the intellectual impulse of sex. Reason is cold, because its maxim is, audiatur et altera pars, because it does not interest itself in man alone; but the heart is a partisan of man. Reason loves all impartiality, but the heart only what is like itself. It is true that the heart has pity also on the brutes, but only because it sees in the brute something more than the brute. The heart loves only what it identifies with itself. It says: Whatsoever thou dost to this being, thou dost to me. The heart loves only itself; does not get beyond itself, beyond man. The superhuman God is nothing else than the supernatural heart; the heart does not give us the idea of another, of a being different from ourselves. “For the heart, Nature is an echo, in which it hears only itself. Emotion, in the excess of its happiness, transfers itself to external things. It is the love which can withhold itself from no existence, which gives itself forth to all; but it only recognises as existing that which it knows to have emotion.”2 Reason, on the contrary, has pity on animals, not because it finds itself in them, or identifies them with man, but because it recognises them as beings distinct from man, not existing simply for the sake of man, but also as having rights of their own. The heart sacrifices the species to the individual, the reason sacrifices the individual to the species. The man without feeling has no home, no private hearth. Feeling, the heart, is the domestic life; the reason is the res publica of man. Reason is the truth of Nature, the heart is the truth of man. To speak popularly, reason is the God of Nature, the heart the God of man;—a distinction however which, drawn thus sharply, is, like the others, only admissible in antithesis. Everything which man wishes, but which reason, which Nature denies, the heart bestows. God, immortality, freedom, in the supranaturalistic sense, exist only in the heart. The heart is itself the existence of God, the existence of immortality. Satisfy yourselves with this existence! You do not understand your heart; therein lies the evil. You desire a real, external, objective immortality, a God out of yourselves. Here is the source of delusion.

But as the heart releases man from the limits, even the essential limits of Nature; reason, on the other hand, releases Nature from the limits of external finiteness. It is true that Nature is the light and measure of reason;—a truth which is opposed to abstract Idealism. Only what is naturally true is logically true; what has no basis in Nature has no basis at all. That which is not a physical law is not a metaphysical law. Every true law in metaphysics can and must be verified physically. But at the same time reason is also the light of Nature;—and this truth is the barrier against crude materialism. Reason is the nature of things come fully to itself, re-established in its entireness. Reason divests things of the disguises and transformations which they have undergone in the conflict and agitation of the external world, and reduces them to their true character. Most, indeed nearly all, crystals—to give an obvious illustration—appear in Nature under a form altogether different from their fundamental one; nay, many crystals never have appeared in their fundamental form. Nevertheless, the mineralogical reason has discovered that fundamental form. Hence nothing is more foolish than to place Nature in opposition to reason, as an essence in itself incomprehensible to reason. If reason reduces transformations and disguises to their fundamental forms, does it not effect that which lies in the idea of Nature itself, but which, prior to the operation of reason, could not be effected on account of external hindrances? What else then does reason do than remove external disturbances, influences, and obstructions, so as to present a thing as it ought to be, to make the existence correspond to the idea; for the fundamental form is the idea of the crystal. Another popular example. Granite consists of mica, quartz, and feldspar. But frequently other kinds of stone are mingled with it. If we had no other guide and tutor than the senses, we should without hesitation reckon as constituent parts of granite all the kinds of stone which we ever find in combination with it; we should say yes to everything the senses told us, and so never come to the true idea of granite. But reason says to the credulous senses: Quod non. It discriminates; it distinguishes the essential from the accidental elements. Reason is the midwife of Nature; it explains, enlightens, rectifies and completes Nature. Now that which separates the essential from the non-essential, the necessary from the accidental, what is proper to a thing from what is foreign, which restores what has been violently sundered to unity, and what has been forcibly united to freedom,—is not this divine? Is not such an agency as this the agency of the highest, of divine love? And how would it be possible that reason should exhibit the pure nature of things, the original text of the universe, if it were not itself the purest, most original essence? But reason has no partiality for this or that species of things. It embraces with equal interest the whole universe; it interests itself in all things and beings without distinction, without exception;—it bestows the same attention on the worm which human egoism tramples under its feet, as on man, as on the sun in the firmament. Reason is thus the all-embracing, all-compassionating being, the love of the universe to itself. To reason alone belongs the great work of the resurrection and restoration of all things and beings—universal redemption and reconciliation. Not even the unreasoning animal, the speechless plant, the unsentient stone, shall be excluded from this universal festival. But how would it be possible that reason should interest itself in all beings without exception, if reason were not itself universal and unlimited in its nature? Is a limited nature compatible with unlimited interest, or an unlimited interest with a limited nature? By what dost thou recognise the limitation of a being but by the limitation of his interest? As far as the interest extends, so far extends the nature. The desire of knowledge is infinite; reason then is infinite. Reason is the highest species of being;—hence it includes all species in the sphere of knowledge. Reason cannot content itself in the individual; it has its adequate existence only when it has the species for its object, and the species not as it has already developed itself in the past and present, but as it will develop itself in the unknown future. In the activity of reason I feel a distinction between myself and reason in me; this distinction is the limit of the individuality; in feeling I am conscious of no distinction between myself and feeling; and with this absence of distinction there is an absence also of the sense of limitation. Hence it arises that to so many men reason appears finite, and only feeling infinite. And, in fact, feeling, the heart of man as a rational being, is as infinite, as universal as reason; since man only truly perceives and understands that for which he has feeling.

Thus reason is the essence of Nature and Man, released from non-essential limits, in their identity; it is the universal being, the universal God. The heart, considered in its difference from the reason, is the private God of man; the personal God is the heart of man, emancipated from the limits or laws of Nature.3

Nature, the world, has no value, no interest for Christians. The Christian thinks only of himself and the salvation of his soul. “A te incipiat cogitatio tua et in te finiatur, nec frustra in alia distendaris, te neglecto. Praeter salutem tuam nihil cogites. De inter. Domo. (Among the spurious writings of St. Bernard.) Si te vigilanter homo attendas, mirum est, si ad aliud unquam intendas.—Divus Bernardus. (Tract. de XII grad. humil. et sup.).... Orbe sit sol major, an pedis unius latitudine metiatur? alieno ex lumine an propriis luceat fulgoribus luna? quae neque scire compendium, neque ignorare detrimentum est ullum.... Res vestra in ancipiti sita est: salus dico animarum vestrarum.—Arnobius (adv. gentes, l. ii. c. 61). Quaero igitur ad quam rem scientia referenda sit; si ad causas rerum naturalium, quae beatitudo erit mihi proposita, si sciero unde Nilus oriatur, vel quicquid de coelo Physici delirant?—Lactantius (Instit. div. l. iii. c. 8). Etiam curiosi esse prohibemur.... Sunt enim qui desertis virtutibus et nescientes quid sit Deus ... magnum aliquid se agere putant, si universam istam corporis molem, quam mundum nuncupamus, curiosissime intentissimeque perquirant.... Reprimat igitur se anima ab hujusmodi vanae cognitionis cupiditate, si se castam Deo servare disposuit. Tali enim amore plerumque decipitur, ut (aut) nihil putet esse nisi corpus.—Augustinus (de Mor. Eccl. cath. l. i. c. 21). De terrae quoque vel qualitate vel positione tractare, nihil prosit ad spem futuri, cum satis sit ad scientiam, quod scripturarum divinarum series comprehendit, quod Deus suspendit terram in nihilo.—Ambrosius (Hexaemeron, l. i. c. 6). Longe utique praestantius est, nosse resurrecturam carnem ac sine fine victuram, quam quidquid in ea medici, scrutando discere potuerunt.—Augustinus (de Anima et ejus orig. l. iv. c. 10).” “Let natural science alone.... It is enough that thou knowest fire is hot, water cold and moist.... Know how thou oughtest to treat thy field, thy cow, thy house and child—that is enough of natural science for thee. Think how thou mayest learn Christ, who will show thee thyself, who thou art, and what is thy capability. Thus wilt thou learn God and thyself, which no natural master or natural science ever taught.”—Luther (Th. xiii. p. 264).

Such quotations as these, which might be multiplied indefinitely, show clearly enough that true, religious Christianity has within it no principle of scientific and material culture, no motive to it. The practical end and object of Christians is solely heaven, i.e., the realised salvation of the soul. The theoretical end and object of Christians is solely God, as the being identical with the salvation of the soul. He who knows God knows all things; and as God is infinitely more than the world, so theology is infinitely more than the knowledge of the world. Theology makes happy, for its object is personified happiness. Infelix homo, qui scit illa omnia (created things) te autem nescit, Beatus autem qui te scit, etiam si illa nesciat.—Augustin (Confess. l. v. c. 4). Who then would, who could exchange the blessed Divine Being for the unblessed worthless things of this world? It is true that God reveals himself in Nature, but only vaguely, dimly, only in his most general attributes; himself, his true personal nature, he reveals only in religion, in Christianity. The knowledge of God through Nature is heathenism; the knowledge of God through himself, through Christ, in whom dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily, is Christianity. What interest, therefore, should Christians have in occupying themselves with material, natural things? Occupation with Nature, culture in general, presupposes, or, at least, infallibly produces, a heathenish, mundane, anti-theological, anti-supranaturalistic sentiment and belief. Hence the culture of modern Christian nations is so little to be derived from Christianity, that it is only to be explained by the negation of Christianity, a negation which certainly was, in the first instance, only practical. It is indeed necessary to distinguish between what the Christians were as Christians and what they were as heathens, as natural men, and thus between that which they have said and done in agreement, and that which they have said and done in contradiction with their faith. (See on this subject the author’s P. Bayle.)

How frivolous, therefore, are modern Christians when they deck themselves in the arts and sciences of modern nations as products of Christianity! How striking is the contrast in this respect between these modern boasters and the Christians of older times! The latter knew of no other Christianity than that which is contained in the Christian faith, in faith in Christ; they did not reckon the treasures and riches, the arts and sciences of this world as part of Christianity. In all these points, they rather conceded the pre-eminence to the ancient heathens, the Greeks and Romans. “Why dost thou not also wonder, Erasmus, that from the beginning of the world there have always been among the heathens higher, rarer people, of greater, more exalted understanding, more excellent diligence and skill in all arts, than among Christians or the people of God? Christ himself says that the children of this world are wiser than the children of light. Yea, who among the Christians could we compare for understanding or application to Cicero (to say nothing of the Greeks, Demosthenes and others)?”—Luther (Th. xix. p. 37). Quid igitur nos antecellimus? Num ingenio, doctrina, morum moderatione illos superamus? Nequaquam. Sed vera Dei agnitione, invocatione et celebratione prÆstamus.—Melancthonis (et al. Declam. Th. iii. de vera invocat. Dei).

In religion man has in view himself alone, or, in regarding himself as the object of God, as the end of the divine activity, he is an object to himself, his own end and aim. The mystery of the incarnation is the mystery of the love of God to man, and the mystery of the love of God to man is the love of man to himself. God suffers—suffers for me—this is the highest self-enjoyment, the highest self-certainty of human feeling. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son.”—John iii. 16. “If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?”—Rom. viii. 31, 32. “God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”—Rom. v. 8. “The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”—Gal. ii. 20. See also Titus iii. 4; Heb. ii. 11. “Credimus in unum Deum patrem ... et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum filium Dei ... Deum ex Deo ... qui propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit et incarnatus et homo factus est passus.”—Fides Nicaenae Synodi. “Servator ... ex praeexcellenti in homines charitate non despexit carnis humanae imbecillitatem, sed ea indutus ad communem venit hominum salutem.”—Clemens Alex. (Stromata, l. vii. ed. Wirceb. 1779). “Christianos autem haec universa docent, providentiam esse, maxime vero divinissimum et propter excellentiam amoris erga homines incredibilissimum providentiae opus, dei incarnatio, quae propter nos facta est.”—Gregorii Nysseni (Philosophiae, l. viii. de Provid. c. i. 1512. B. Rhenanus. Jo. Cono interp.) “Venit siquidem universitatis creator et Dominus: venit ad homines, venit propter homines, venit homo.”—Divus Bernardus Clarev. (de Adventu Domini, Basil, 1552). “Videte, Fratres, quantum se humiliavit propter homines Deus.... Unde non se ipse homo despiciat, propter quem utique ista subire dignatus est Deus.”—Augustinus (Sermones ad pop. S. 371, c. 3). “O homo propter quem Deus factus est homo, aliquid magnum te credere debes.” (S. 380, c. 2). “Quis de se desperet pro quo tam humilis esse voluit Filius Dei?” Id. (de Agone Chr. c. 11). “Quis potest odire hominem cujus naturam et similitudinem videt in humanitate Dei? Revera qui odit illum, odit Deum.”—(Manuale, c. 26. Among the spurious writings of Augustine.) “Plus nos amat Deus quam filium pater.... Propter nos filio non pepercit. Et quid plus addo? et hoc filio justo et hoc filio unigenito et hoc filio Deo. Et quid dici amplius potest? et hoc pro nobis, i.e. pro malis, etc.”—Salvianus (de gubernatione Dei. Rittershusius, 1611, pp. 126, 127). “Quid enim mentes nostras tantum erigit et ab immortalitatis desperatione liberat, quam quod tanti nos fecit Deus, ut Dei filius ... dignatus nostrum inire consortium mala nostra moriendo perferret.”—Petrus Lomb. (lib. iii. dist. 20, c. 1). “Attamen si illa quae miseriam nescit, misericordia non praecessisset, ad hanc cujus mater est miseria, non accessisset.”—D. Bernardus (Tract. de XII. gradibus hum. et sup.) “Ecce omnia tua sunt, quae habeo et unde tibi servio. Verum tamen vice versa tu magis mihi servis, quam ego tibi. Ecce coelum et terra quae in ministerium hominis creasti, praesto sunt et faciunt quotidie quaecunque mandasti. Et hoc parum est: quin etiam Angelos in ministerium hominis ordinasti. Transcendit autem omnia, quia tu ipse homini servire dignatus es et te ipsum daturum ei promisisti.”—Thomas À Kempis (de Imit. l. iii. c. 10). “Ego omnipotens et altissimus, qui cuncta creavi ex nihilo me homini propter te humiliter subjeci.... Pepercit tibi oculus meus, quia pretiosa fuit anima tua in conspectu meo” (ibid. c. 13). “Fili ego descendi de coelo pro salute tua, suscepi tuas miserias, non necessitate, sed charitate trahente” (ibid. c. 18). “Si consilium rei tantae spectamus, quod totum pertinet, ut s. litterae demonstrant. ad salutem generis humani, quid potest esse dignius Deo, quam illa tanta hujus salutis cura, et ut ita dicamus, tantus in ea re sumptus?... Itaque Jesus Christus ipse cum omnibus Apostolis ... in hoc mysterio Filii Dei ?? sa??? fa?e?????t?? angelis hominibusque patefactam esse dicunt magnitudinem sapientis bonitatis divinae.”—J. A. Ernesti (Dignit. et verit. inc. Filii Dei asserta. Opusc. Theol. Lipsiae, 1773, pp. 404, 405. How feeble, how spiritless compared with the expressions of the ancient faith!) “Propter me Christus suscepit meas infirmitates, mei corporis subiit passiones, pro me peccatum h. e. pro omni homine, pro me maledictum factus est, etc. Ille flevit, ne tu homo diu fleres. Ille injurias passus est, ne tu injuriam tuam doleres.”—Ambrosius (de fide ad Gratianum, l. ii. c. 4). “God is not against us men. For if God had been against us and hostile to us, he would not assuredly have taken the poor wretched human nature on himself.” “How highly our Lord God has honoured us, that he has caused his own Son to become man! How could he have made himself nearer to us?”—Luther (Th. xvi. pp. 533, 574). “It is to be remarked that he (Stephen) is said to have seen not God himself but the man Christ, whose nature is the dearest and likest and most consoling to man, for a man would rather see a man than an angel or any other creature, especially in trouble.”—Id. (Th. xiii. p. 170). “It is not thy kingly rule which draws hearts to thee, O wonderful heart!—but thy having become a man in the fulness of time, and thy walk upon the earth, full of weariness.” “Though thou guidest the sceptre of the starry realm, thou art still our brother; flesh and blood never disowns itself.” “The most powerful charm that melts my heart is that my Lord died on the cross for me.” “That it is which moves me; I love thee for thy love, that thou, the creator, the supreme prince, becamest the Lamb of God for me.” “Thanks be to thee, dear Lamb of God, with thousands of sinners’ tears; thou didst die for me on the cross and didst seek me with yearning.” “Thy blood it is which has made me give myself up to thee, else I had never thought of thee through my whole life.” “If thou hadst not laid hold upon me, I should never have gone to seek thee.” “O how sweetly the soul feeds on the passion of Jesus! Shame and joy are stirred, O thou son of God and of man, when in spirit we see thee so willingly go to death on the cross for us, and each thinks: for me.” “The Father takes us under his care, the Son washes us with his blood, the Holy Spirit is always labouring that he may guide and teach us.” “Ah! King, great at all times, but never greater than in the blood-stained robe of the martyr.” “My friend is to me and I to him as the Cherubim over the mercy-seat: we look at each other continually. He seeks repose in my heart, and I ever hasten towards his: he wishes to be in my soul, and I in the wound in his side.” These quotations are taken from the Moravian hymn-book (Gesangbuch der Evangelischen BrÜdergemeine. Gnadau, 1824). We see clearly enough from the examples above given, that the deepest mystery of the Christian religion resolves itself into the mystery of human self-love, but that religious self-love is distinguished from natural in this, that it changes the active into the passive. It is true that the more profound, mystical religious sentiment abhors such naked, undisguised egoism as is exhibited in the Herrnhut hymns; it does not in God expressly have reference to itself; it rather forgets, denies itself, demands an unselfish, disinterested love of God, contemplates God in relation to God, not to itself. “Causa diligendi Deum, Deus est. Modus sine modo diligere.... Qui Domino confitetur, non quoniam sibi bonus est, sed quoniam bonus est, hic vere diligit Deum propter Deum et non propter seipsum. Te enim quodammodo perdere, tanquam qui non sis et omnino non sentire te ipsum et a temetipso exinaniri et pene annullari, coelestis est conversationis, non humanae affectionis” (thus the ideal of love, which, however, is first realised in heaven).—Bernhardus, Tract. de dilig. Deo (ad Haymericum). But this free, unselfish love is only the culmination of religious enthusiasm, in which the subject is merged in the object. As soon as the distinction presents itself—and it necessarily does so—so soon does the subject have reference to itself as the object of God. And even apart from this: the religious subject denies its ego, its personality, only because it has the enjoyment of blissful personality in God—God per se the realised salvation of the soul, God the highest self-contentment, the highest rapture of human feeling. Hence the saying: “Qui Deum non diligit, seipsum non diligit.”

Because God suffers man must suffer. The Christian religion is the religion of suffering. “Videlicet vestigia Salvatoris sequimur in theatris. Tale nobis scilicet Christus reliquit exemplum, quem flerisse legimus, risisse non legimus.”—Salvianus (l. c. l. vi. § 181). “Christianorum ergo est pressuram pati in hoc saeculo et lugere, quorum est aeterna vita.”—Origenes (Explan. in Ep. Pauli ad Rom. l. ii. c. ii. interp. Hieronymo). “Nemo vitam aeternam, incorruptibilem, immortalemque desiderat, nisi eum vitae hujus temporalis, corruptibilis, mortalisque poeniteat.... Quid ergo cupimus, nisi ita non esse ut nunc sumus? Et quid ingemiscimus, nisi poenitendo, quia ita summus?”—Augustinus (Sermones ad pop. S. 351, c. 3). “Si quidem aliquid melius et utilius saluti hominum quam pati fuisset, Christus utique verbo et exemplo ostendisset.... Quoniam per multas tribulationes oportet nos intrare in regnum Dei.”—Thomas À Kempis (de Imit. l. ii. c. 12). When, however, the Christian religion is designated as the religion of suffering, this of course applies only to the Christianity of the “mistaken” Christians of old times. Protestantism, in its very beginning, denied the sufferings of Christ as constituting a principle of morality. It is precisely the distinction between Catholicism and Protestantism, in relation to this subject, that the latter, out of self-regard, attached itself only to the merits of Christ, while the former, out of sympathy, attached itself to his sufferings. “Formerly in Popery the sufferings of the Lord were so preached, that it was only pointed out how his example should be imitated. After that, the time was filled up with the sufferings and sorrows of Mary, and the compassion with which Christ and his mother were bewailed; and the only aim was how to make it piteous, and move the people to compassion and tears, and he who could do this well was held the best preacher for Passion-Week. But we preach the Lord’s sufferings as the Holy Scripture teaches us.... Christ suffered for the praise and glory of God ... but to me, and thee, and all of us, he suffered in order to bring redemption and blessedness.... The cause and end of the sufferings of Christ is comprised in this—he suffered for us. This honour is to be given to no other suffering.”—Luther (Th. xvi. p. 182). “Lamb! I weep only for joy over thy suffering; the suffering was thine, but thy merit is mine!” “I know of no joys but those which come from thy sufferings.” “It remains ever in my mind that it cost thee thy blood to redeem me.” “O my Immanuel! how sweet is it to my soul when thou permittest me to enjoy the outpouring of thy blood.” “Sinners are glad at heart that they have a Saviour ... it is wondrously beautiful to them to see Jesus on the Cross” (Moravian hymn-book). It is therefore not to be wondered at if Christians of the present day decline to know anything more of the sufferings of Christ. It is they, forsooth, who have first made out what true Christianity is—they rely solely on the divine word of the Holy Scriptures. And the Bible, as every one knows, has the valuable quality that everything may be found in it which it is desired to find. What once stood there, of course now stands there no longer. The principle of stability has long vanished from the Bible. Divine revelation is as changing as human opinion. Tempora mutantur.

The mystery of the Trinity is the mystery of participated, social life—the mystery of I and thou. “Unum Deum esse confitemur. Non sic unum Deum, quasi solitarium, nec eundem, qui ipse sibi pater, sit ipse filius, sed patrem verum, qui genuit filium verum, i.e. Deum ex Deo ... non creatum, sed genitum.”—Concil. Chalced. (Carranza Summa, 1559. p. 139). “Si quis quod scriptum est: Faciamus hominem, non patrem ad filium dicere, sed ipsum ad semetipsum asserit dixisse Deum, anathema sit.”—Concil. Syrmiense (ibid. p. 68). “Jubet autem his verbis: Faciamus hominem, prodeat herba. Ex quibus apparet, Deum cum aliquo sibi proximo sermones his de rebus conserere. Necesse est igitur aliquem ei adfuisse, cum quo universa condens, colloquium miscebat.”—Athanasius (Contra Gentes Orat. Ath. Opp. Parisiis, 1627, Th. i. p. 51). “Professio enim consortii sustulit intelligentiam singularitatis, quod consortium aliquid nec potest esse sibi ipsi solitario, neque rursum solitudo solitarii recipit: faciamus.... Non solitario convenit dicere: faciamus et nostram.”—Petrus Lomb. (l. i. dist. 2, c. 3, e.). The Protestants explain the passage in the same way. “Quod profecto aliter intelligi nequit, quam inter ipsas trinitatis personas quandam de creando homine institutam fuisse consultationem.”—Buddeus (comp. Inst. Theol. dog. cur. J. G. Walch. l. ii. c. i. § 45). “‘Let us make’ is the word of a deliberative council. And from these words it necessarily follows again, that in the Godhead there must be more than one person.... For the little word ‘us’ indicates that he who there speaks is not alone, though the Jews make the text ridiculous by saying that there is a way of speaking thus, even where there is only one person.”—Luther (Th. i. p. 19). Not only consultations, but compacts take place between the chief persons in the Trinity, precisely as in human society. “Nihil aliud superest, quam ut consensum quemdam patris ac filii adeoque quoddam velut pactum (in relation, namely, to the redemption of men) inde concludamus.”—Buddeus (Comp. l. iv. c. i. § 4, note 2). And as the essential bond of the Divine Persons is love, the Trinity is the heavenly type of the closest bond of love—marriage. “Nunc Filium Dei ... precemur, ut spiritu sancto suo, qui nexus est et vinculum mutui amoris inter aeternum patrem ac filium, sponsi et sponsÆ pectora conglutinet.”—Or. de Conjugio (Declam. Melancth. Th. iii. p. 453).

The distinctions in the Divine essence of the Trinity are natural, physical distinctions. “Jam de proprietatibus personarum videamus.... Et est proprium solius patris, non quod non est natus ipse, sed quod unum filium genuerit, propriumque solius filii, non quod ipse non genuit, sed quod de patris essentia natus est.”—Hylarius in l. iii. de Trinitate. “Nos filii Dei sumus, sed non talis hic filius. Hic enim verus et proprius est filius origine, non adoptione, veritate, non nuncupatione, nativitate, non creatione.”—Petrus L. (l. i. dist. 26, cc. 2, 4). “Quodsi dum eum aeternum confitemur, profitemur ipsum Filium ex Patre, quomodo is, qui genitus est, genitoris frater esse poterit?... Non enim ex aliquo principio praeexistente Pater et Filius procreati sunt, ut fratres existimari queant, sed Pater principium Filii et genitor est: et Pater Pater est neque ullius Filius fuit, et Filius Filius est et non frater.”—Athanasius (Contra Arianos. Orat. II. Ed. c. T. i. p. 320). “Qui (Deus) cum in rebus quae nascuntur in tempore, sua bonitate effecerit, ut suae substantiae prolem quaelibet res gignat, sicut homo gignit hominem, non alterius naturae, sed ejus cujus ipse est, vide quam impie dicatur ipse non gennisse id quod ipse est.”—Augustinus (Ep. 170, § 6. ed. Antwp. 1700). “Ut igitur in natura hominum filium dicimus genitum de substantia patris, similem patri: ita secunda persona Filius dicitur, quia de substantia Patris natus est et ejus est imago.”—Melancthon (Loci praecipui Theol. Witebergae, 1595, p. 30). “As a corporeal son has his flesh and blood and nature from his father, so also the Son of God, born of the Father, has his divine nature from the Father of Eternity.”—Luther (Th. ix. p. 408). H. A. Roel, a theologian of the school of Descartes and Coccejus, had advanced this thesis: “Filium Dei, Secundam Deitatis personam improprie dici genitam.” This was immediately opposed by his colleague, Camp. Vitringa, who declared it an unheard-of thesis, and maintained: “Generationem Filii Dei ab aeterno propriissime enunciari.” Other theologians also contended against Roel, and declared: “Generationem in Deo esse maxime veram et propriam.”—(Acta Erudit. Supplem. T. i. S. vii. p. 377, etc.). That in the Bible also the Filius Dei signifies a real son is unequivocally implied in this passage: “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son.” If the love of God, which this passage insists upon, is to be regarded as a truth, then the Son also must be a truth, and, in plain language, a physical truth. On this lies the emphasis that God gave his own Son for us—in this alone the proof of his great love. Hence the Herrnhut hymn-book correctly apprehends the sense of the Bible when it says of “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is also our Father:” “His Son is not too dear. No! he gives him up for me, that he may save me from the eternal fire by his dear blood. Thou hast so loved the world that thy heart consents to give up the Son, thy joy and life, to suffering and death.”

God is a threefold being, a trinity of persons, means: God is not only a metaphysical, abstract, spiritual, but a physical being. The central point of the Trinity is the Son, for the Father is Father only through the Son; but the mystery of the generation of the Son is the mystery of physical nature. The Son is the need of sensuousness, or of the heart, satisfied in God; for all wishes of the heart, even the wish for a personal God and for heavenly felicity, are sensuous wishes;—the heart is essentially materialistic, it contents itself only with an object which is seen and felt. This is especially evident in the conception that the Son, even in the midst of the Divine Trinity, has the human body as an essential, permanent attribute. Ambrosius: “Scriptum est Ephes. i.: Secundum carnem igitur omnia ipsi subjecta traduntur.” Chrysostomus: “Christum secundum carnem pater jussit a cunctis angelis adorari.” Theodoretus: “Corpus Dominicum surrexit quidem a mortuis, divina glorificata gloria ... corpus tamen est et habet, quam prius habuit, circumscriptionem.” (See Concordienbuchs-anhang. “Zeugnisse der h. Schrift und AltvÄter von Christo,” and Petrus L. l. iii. dist. 10, cc. 1, 2. See also on this subject Luther, Th. xix. pp. 464–468.) In accordance with this the United Brethren say: “I will ever embrace thee in love and faith, until, when at length my lips are pale in death, I shall see thee bodily.” “Thy eyes, thy mouth, the body wounded for us, on which we so firmly rely,—all that I shall behold.”

Hence the Son of God is the darling of the human heart, the bridegroom of the soul, the object of a formal, personal love. “O Domine Jesu, si adeo sunt dulces istae lachrymae, quae ex memoria et desiderio tui excitantur, quam dulce erit gaudium, quod ex manifesta tui visione capietur? Si adeo dulce est flere pro te, quam dulce erit gaudere de te. Sed quid hujusmodi secreta colloquia proferimus in publicum? Cur ineffabiles et innarrabiles affectus communibus verbis conamur exprimere? Inexperti talia non intelligunt. Zelotypus est sponsus iste.... Delicatus est sponsus iste.”—Scala Claustralium (sive de modo orandi. Among the spurious writings of St. Bernard). “Luge propter amorem Jesu Christi, sponsi tui, quosque eum videre possis.”—(De modo bene vivendi. Sermo x. id.) “Adspectum Christi, qui adhuc inadspectabilis et absens amorem nostrum meruit et exercuit, frequentius scripturae commemorant. Joh. xiv. 3; 1 Joh. iii. 1; 1 Pet. i. 8; 1 Thess. iv. 17. Ac quis non jucundum credat videre corpus illud, cujus velut instrumento usus est filius Dei ad expianda peccata, et absentem tandem amicum salutare?”—Doederlein (Inst. Theol. Chr. l. ii. P. ii. C. ii. Sect. ii. § 302. Obs. 3). “Quod oculis corporis Christum visuri simus, dubio caret.”—J. Fr. Buddeus (Comp. Inst. Theol. Dogm. l. ii. c. iii. § 10).

The distinction between God with the Son, or the sensuous God, and God without the Son, or God divested of sensuousness, is nothing further than the distinction between the mystical and the rational man. The rational man lives and thinks; with him life is the complement of thought, and thought the complement of life, both theoretically, inasmuch as he convinces himself of the reality of sensuousness through the reason itself, and practically, inasmuch as he combines activity of life with activity of thought. That which I have in life, I do not need to posit beyond life, in spirit, in metaphysical existence, in God; love, friendship, perception, the world in general, give me what thought does not, cannot give me, nor ought to give me. Therefore I dismiss the needs of the heart from the sphere of thought, that reason may not be clouded by desires;—in the demarcation of activities consists the wisdom of life and thought;—I do not need a God who supplies by a mystical, imaginary physicalness or sensuousness the absence of the real. My heart is satisfied before I enter into intellectual activity; hence my thought is cold, indifferent, abstract, i.e., free, in relation to the heart, which oversteps its limits, and improperly mixes itself with the affairs of the reason. Thus I do not think in order to satisfy my heart, but to satisfy my reason, which is not satisfied by the heart; I think only in the interest of reason, from pure desire of knowledge, I seek in God only the contentment of the pure, unmixed intelligence. Necessarily, therefore, the God of the rational thinker is another than the God of the heart, which in thought, in reason, only seeks its own satisfaction. And this is the aim of the mystic, who cannot endure the luminous fire of discriminating and limiting criticism; for his mind is always beclouded by the vapours which rise from the unextinguished ardour of his feelings. He never attains to abstract, i.e., disinterested, free thought, and for that reason he never attains to the perception of things in their naturalness, truth, and reality.

One more remark concerning the Trinity. The older theologians said that the essential attributes of God as God were made manifest by the light of natural reason. But how is it that reason can know the Divine Being, unless it be because the Divine Being is nothing else than the objective nature of the intelligence itself? Of the Trinity, on the other hand, they said that it could only be known through revelation. Why not through reason; because it contradicts reason, i.e., because it does not express a want of the reason, but a sensuous, emotional want. In general, the proposition that an idea springs from revelation means no more than that it has come to us by the way of tradition. The dogmas of religion have arisen at certain times out of definite wants, under definite relations and conceptions; for this reason, to the men of a later time, in which these relations, wants, conceptions, have disappeared, they are something unintelligible, incomprehensible, only traditional, i.e., revealed. The antithesis of revelation and reason reduces itself only to the antithesis of history and reason, only to this, that mankind at a given time is no longer capable of that which at another time it was quite capable of; just as the individual man does not unfold his powers at all times indifferently, but only in moments of special appeal from without or incitement from within. Thus the works of genius arise only under altogether special inward and outward conditions which cannot thus coincide more than once; they are ?pa? ?e??e?a. “Einmal ist alles wahre nur.” The true is born but once. Hence a man’s own works often appear to him in later years quite strange and incomprehensible. He no longer knows how he produced them or could produce them, i.e., he can no longer explain them out of himself, still less reproduce them. And just as it would be folly if, in riper years, because the productions of our youth have become strange and inexplicable to us in their tenor and origin, we were to refer them to a special inspiration from above; so it is folly, because the doctrines and ideas of a past age are no longer recognised by the reason of a subsequent age, to claim for them a supra- and extra-human, i.e., an imaginary, illusory origin.

The creation out of nothing expresses the non-divineness, non-essentiality, i.e., the nothingness of the world.

That is created which once did not exist, which some time will exist no longer, to which, therefore, it is possible not to exist, which we can think of as not existing, in a word, which has not its existence in itself, is not necessary. “Cum enim res producantur ex suo non-esse, possunt ergo absolute non-esse, adeoque implicat, quod non sunt necessariÆ.”—Duns Scotus (ap. Rixner, B. ii. p. 78). But only necessary existence is existence. If I am not necessary, do not feel myself necessary, I feel that it is all one whether I exist or not, that thus my existence is worthless, nothing. “I am nothing,” and “I am not necessary,” is fundamentally the same thing. “Creatio non est motus, sed simplicis divinae voluntatis vocatio ad esse eorum, quae antea nihil fuerunt et secundum se ipsa et nihil sunt et ex nihilo sunt.”—Albertus M. (de. Mirab. Scient. Dei P. ii. Tr. i. Qu. 4, Art. 5, memb. ii.) But the position that the world is not necessary, has no other bearing than to prove that the extra- and supra-mundane being (i.e., in fact, the human being) is the only necessary, only real being. Since the one is non-essential and temporal, the other is necessarily the essential, existent, eternal. The creation is the proof that God is, that he is exclusively true and real. “Sanctus Dominus Deus omnipotens in principio, quod est in te, in sapientia tua, quae nata est de substantia tua, fecisti aliquid et de nihilo. Fecisti enim coelum et terram non de te, nam esset aequale unigenito tuo, ac per hoc et tibi, et nullo modo justum esset, ut aequale tibi esset, quod in te non esset. Et aliud praeter te non erat, unde faceres ea Deus.... Et ideo de nihilo fecisti coelum et terram.”—Augustinus (Confessionum l. xii c. 7). “Vere enim ipse est, quia incommutabilis est. Omnis enim mutatio facit non esse quod erat.... Ei ergo qui summe est, non potest esse contrarium nisi quod non est.—Si solus ipse incommutabilis, omnia quae fecit, quia ex nihilo id est ex eo quod omnino non est—fecit, mutabilia sunt.”—Augustin (de nat. boni adv. Manich. cc. 1, 19). “Creatura in nullo debet parificari Deo, si autem non habuisset initium durationis et esse, in hoc parificaretur Deo.”—(Albertus M. l. c. Quaest. incidens 1). The positive, the essential in the world is not that which makes it a world, which distinguishes it from God—this is precisely its finiteness and nothingness—but rather that in it which is not itself, which is God. “All creatures are a pure nothing ... they have no essential existence, for their existence hangs on the presence of God. If God turned himself away a moment, they would fall to nothing.”—(Predigten vor. u. zu. Tauleri Zeiten, ed. c. p. 29. See also Augustine, e.g. Confess. l. vii. c. 11). This is quite correctly said from the standpoint of religion, for God is the principle of existence, the being of the world, though he is represented as a personal being distinct from the world. The world lasts so long as God wills. The world is transient, but man eternal. “Quamdiu vult, omnia ejus virtute manent atque consistunt, et finis eorum in Dei voluntatem recurrit, et ejus arbitrio resolvuntur.”—Ambrosius (Hexaemeron. l. i. c. 5). “Spiritus enim a Deo creati nunquam esse desinunt.... Corpora coelestia tam diu conservantur, quamdiu Deus ea vult permanere.”—Buddeus (Comp. l. ii. c. ii. § 47). “The dear God does not alone create, but what he creates he keeps with his own being, until he wills that it shall be no longer. For the time will come when the sun, moon, and stars shall be no more.”—Luther (Th. ix. s. 418). “The end will come sooner than we think.”—Id. (Th. xi. s. 536). By means of the creation out of nothing man gives himself the certainty that the world is nothing, is powerless against man. “We have a Lord who is greater than the whole world; we have a Lord so powerful, that when he only speaks all things are born.... Wherefore should we fear, since he is favourable to us?”—Id. (Th. vi. p. 293). Identical with the belief in the creation out of nothing is the belief in the eternal life of man, in the victory over death, the last constraint which nature imposes on man—in the resurrection of the dead. “Six thousand years ago the world was nothing; and who has made the world?... The same God and Creator can also awake thee from the dead; he will do it, and can do it.”—Id. (Th. xi. p. 426. See also 421, &c.) “We Christians are greater and more than all creatures, not in or by ourselves, but through the gift of God in Christ, against whom the world is nothing, and can do nothing.”—Id. (Th. xi. p. 377).

The Creation in the Israelitish religion has only a particular, egoistic aim and purport. The Israelitish religion is the religion of the most narrow-hearted egoism. Even the later Israelites, scattered throughout the world, persecuted and oppressed, adhered with immovable firmness to the egoistic faith of their forefathers. “Every Israelitish soul by itself is, in the eyes of the blessed God, dearer and more precious than all the souls of a whole nation besides.” “The Israelites are among the nations what the heart is among the members.” “The end in the creation of the world was Israel alone. The world was created for the sake of the Israelites; they are the fruit, other nations are their husks.” “All the heathens are nothing for him (God); but for the Israelites God has a use.... They adore and bless the name of the holy and blessed God every day, therefore they are numbered every hour, and made as (numerous as) the grains of corn.” “If the Israelites were not, there would fall no rain on the world, and the sun would not rise but for their sakes.” “He (God) is our kinsman, and we are his kindred.... No power or angel is akin to us, for the Lord’s portion is his people” (Deut. xxxii. 9). “He who rises up against an Israelite (to injure him), does the same thing as if he rose up against God.” “If anyone smite an Israelite on the cheek, it is the same as if he smote the cheek of the divine majesty.”—Eisenmengers (Entdecktes Judenthum, T. i. Kap. 14). The Christians blamed the Jews for this arrogance, but only because the kingdom of God was taken from them and transferred to the Christians. Accordingly, we find the same thoughts and sentiments in the Christians as in the Israelites. “Know that God so takes thee unto himself that thy enemies are his enemies.”—Luther (T. vi. p. 99). “It is the Christians for whose sake God spares the whole world.... The Father makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. Yet this happens only for the sake of the pious and thankful.” (T. xvi. p. 506.) “He who despises me despises God.” (T. xi. p. 538.) “God suffers, and is despised and persecuted, in us.” (T. iv. p. 577.) Such declarations as these are, I should think, argumenta ad hominem for the identity of God and man.

The idea of Providence is the religious consciousness of man’s distinction from the brutes, from Nature in general. “Doth God take care for oxen?” (1 Cor. ix. 9.) “Nunquid curae est Deo bobus? inquit Paulus. Ad nos ea cura dirigitur, non ad boves, equos, asinos, qui in usum nostrum sunt conditi.”—J. L. Vivis Val. (de Veritate Fidei Chr. Bas. 1544, p. 108). “Providentia Dei in omnibus aliis creaturis respicit ad hominem tanquam ad metam suam. Multis passeribus vos pluris estis. Matth. x. 31. Propter peccatum hominis natura subjecta est vanitati. Rom. viii. 20.”—M. Chemnitii (Loci theol. Francof. 1608, P. i. p. 312). “Nunquid enim cura est Deo de bobus? Et sicut non est cura Deo de bobus, ita nec de aliis irrationalibus. Dicit tamen scriptura (Sapient. vi.) quia ipsi cura est de omnibus. Providentiam ergo et curam universaliter de cunctis, quae condidit, habet.... Sed specialem providentiam atque curam habet de rationalibus.”—Petrus L. (l. i. dist. 39, c. 3). Here we have again an example how Christian sophistry is a product of Christian faith, especially of faith in the Bible as the word of God. First we read that God cares not for oxen; then that God cares for everything, and therefore for oxen. That is a contradiction; but the word of God must not contradict itself. How does faith escape from this contradiction? By distinguishing between a general and a special providence. But general providence is illusory, is in truth no providence. Only special providence is providence in the sense of religion.

General providence—the providence which extends itself equally to irrational and rational beings, which makes no distinction between man and the lilies of the field or the fowls of the air, is nothing else than the idea of Nature—an idea which man may have without religion. The religious consciousness admits this when it says: he who denies providence abolishes religion, places man on a level with the brutes;—thus declaring that the providence in which the brutes have a share is in truth no providence. Providence partakes of the character of its object; hence the providence which has plants and animals for its object is in accordance with the qualities and relations of plants and animals. Providence is nothing else than the inward nature of a thing; this inward nature is its genius, its guardian spirit—the necessity of its existence. The higher, the more precious a being is,—the more ground of existence it has, the more necessary it is, the less is it open to annihilation. Every being is necessary only through that by which it is distinguished from other beings; its specific difference is the ground of its existence. So man is necessary only through that by which he is distinguished from the brutes; hence providence is nothing else than man’s consciousness of the necessity of his existence, of the distinction between his nature and that of other beings; consequently that alone is the true providence in which this specific difference of man becomes an object to him. But this providence is special, i.e., the providence of love, for only love interests itself in what is special to a being. Providence without love is a conception without basis, without reality. The truth of providence is love. God loves men, not brutes, not plants; for only for man’s sake does he perform extraordinary deeds, deeds of love—miracles. Where there is no community there is no love. But what bond can be supposed to unite brutes, or natural things in general, with God? God does not recognise himself in them, for they do not recognise him;—where I find nothing of myself, how can I love? “God who thus promises, does not speak with asses and oxen, as Paul says: Doth God take care for oxen? but with rational creatures made in his likeness, that they may live for ever with him.” Luther (Th. ii. s. 156). God is first with himself in man; in man first begins religion, providence; for the latter is not something different from the former, on the contrary, religion is itself the providence of man. He who loses religion, i.e., faith in himself, faith in man, in the infinite significance of his being, in the necessity of his existence, loses providence. He alone is forsaken who forsakes himself; he alone is lost who despairs; he alone is without God who is without faith, i.e., without courage. Wherein does religion place the true proof of providence? in the phenomena of Nature, as they are objects to us out of religion,—in astronomy, in physics, in natural history? No! In those appearances which are objects of religion, of faith only, which express only the faith of religion in itself, i.e., in the truth and reality of man,—in the religious events, means, and institutions which God has ordained exclusively for the salvation of man, in a word, in miracles; for the means of grace, the sacraments, belong to the class of providential miracles. “Quamquam autem haec consideratio universae naturae nos admonet de Deo ... tamen nos referamus initio mentem et oculos ad omnia testimonia, in quibus se Deus ecclesiae patefecit ad eductionem ex Aegypto, ad vocem sonantem in Sinai, ad Christum resuscitantem mortuos et resuscitatum, etc.... Ideo semper defixae sint mentes in horum testimoniorum cogitationem et his confirmatae articulum de Creatione meditentur, deinde considerent etiam vestigia Dei impressae naturae.”—Melancthon (Loci de Creat. p. 62, ed. cit.). “Mirentur alii creationem, mihi magis libet mirari redemptionem. Mirabile est, quod caro nostra et ossa nostra a Deo nobis sunt formata, mirabilius adhuc est, quod ipse Deus caro de carne nostra et os de ossibus nostris fieri voluit.”—J. Gerhard (Med. s. M. 15). “The heathens know God no further than that he is a Creator.”—Luther (T. ii. p. 327). That providence has only man for its essential object is evident from this, that to religious faith all things and beings are created for the sake of man. “We are lords not only of birds, but of all living creatures, and all things are given for our service, and are created only for our sake.”—Luther (T. ix. p. 281). But if things are created only for the sake of man, they are also preserved only for the sake of man. And if things are mere instruments of man, they stand under the protection of no law, they are, in relation to man, without rights. This outlawing of things explains miracle.

The negation of providence is the negation of God. “Qui ergo providentiam tollit, totum Dei substantiam tollit et quid dicit nisi Deum non esse?... Si non curat humana, sive nesciens, cessat omnis causa pietatis, cum sit spes nulla salutis.”—Joa. Trithemius (Tract. de Provid. Dei). “Nam qui nihil aspici a Deo affirmant prope est ut cui adspectum adimunt, etiam substantiam tollant.”—Salvianus (l. c. l. iv.). “Aristotle almost falls into the opinion that God—though he does not expressly name him a fool—is such a one that he knows nothing of our affairs, nothing of our designs, understands, sees, regards nothing but himself.... But what is such a God or Lord to us? of what use is he to us?”—Luther (in Walch’s Philos. Lexikon, art. Vorsehung). Providence is therefore the most undeniable, striking proof that in religion, in the nature of God himself, man is occupied only with himself, that the mystery of theology is anthropology, that the substance, the content of the infinite being, is the “finite” being. “God sees men,” means: in God man sees only himself; “God cares for man,” means: a God who is not active is no real God. But there is no activity without an object: it is the object which first converts activity from a mere power into real activity. This object is man. If man did not exist, God would have no cause for activity. Thus man is the motive principle, the soul of God. A God who does not see and hear man, who has not man in himself, is blind and deaf, i.e., inert, empty, unsubstantial. Thus the fulness of the divine nature is the fulness of the human; thus the Godhead of God is humanity. I for myself, is the comfortless mystery of epicureanism, stoicism, pantheism; God for me, this is the consolatory mystery of religion, of Christianity. Is man for God’s sake, or God for man’s? It is true that in religion man exists for God’s sake, but only because God exists for man’s sake. I am for God because God is for me.

Providence is identical with miraculous power, supernaturalistic freedom from Nature, the dominion of arbitrariness over law. “Etsi (sc. Deus) sustentat naturam, tamen contra ordinem jussit aliquando Solem regredi, etc.... Ut igitur invocatio vere fieri possit, cogitemus Deum sic adesse suo opificio, non, ut Stoici fingunt, alligatum secundis causis, sed sustentantem naturam et multa suo liberrimo consilio moderantem.... Multa facit prima causa praeter secundas, quia est agens liberum.”—Melancthon (Loci de Caus Peccati, pp. 82, 83, ed. cit.) “Scriptura vero tradit, Deum in actione providentiae esse agens liberum, qui ut plurimum quidem ordinem sui operis servet, illi tamen ordini non sit alligatus, sed 1) quicquid facit per causas secundas, illud possit etiam sine illis per se solum facere 2) quod ex causis secundis possit alium effectum producere, quam ipsarum dispositio et natura ferat 3) quod positis ausis secundis in actu, Deus tamen effectum possit impedire, mutare, mitigare, exasperare.... Non igitur est connexio causarum Stoica in actionibus providentiae Dei.”—M. Chemnitius (l. c. pp. 316, 317). “Liberrime Deus imperat naturae—Naturam saluti hominum attemperat propter Ecclesiam.... Omnino tribuendus est Deo hic honos, quod possit et velit opitulari nobis, etiam cum a tota natura destituimur, contra seriem omnium secundarum causarum.... Et multa accidunt plurimis hominibus, in quibus mirandi eventus fateri eos cogunt, se a Deo sine causis secundis servatos esse.”—C. Peucerus (de Praecip. Divinat. gen. Servestae, 1591, p. 44). “Ille tamen qui omnium est conditor, nullis instrumentis indiget. Nam si id continuo fit, quicquid ipse vult, velle illius erit author atque instrumentum; nec magis ad haec regenda astris indiget, quam cum luto aperuit oculos coeci, sicut refert historia Evangelica. Lutum enim magis videbatur obturaturum oculos, quam aperturum. Sed ipse ostendere nobis voluit omnem naturam esse sibi instrumentum ad quidvis, quantumcunque alienum.”—J. L. Vives (l. c. 102). “How is this to be reconciled? The air gives food and nourishment, and here stones or rocks flow with water; it is a marvellous gift. And it is also strange and marvellous that corn grows out of the earth. Who has this art and this power? God has it, who can do such unnatural things, that we may thence imagine what sort of a God he is and what sort of power he has, that we may not be terrified at him nor despair, but firmly believe and trust him, that he can make the leather in the pocket into gold, and can make dust into corn on the earth, and the air a cellar for me full of wine. He is to be trusted, as having such great power, and we may know that we have a God who can perform these deeds of skill, and that around him it rains and snows with miraculous works.”—Luther (T. iii. p. 594).

The omnipotence of Providence is the omnipotence of human feeling releasing itself from all conditions and laws of Nature. This omnipotence is realised by prayer. Prayer is Almighty. “The prayer of faith shall save the sick.... The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain; and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heavens gave rain and the earth brought forth her fruit.”—James v. 15–18. “If ye have faith and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig-tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea, it shall be done, and all things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.”—Matt. xxi. 21, 22. That under this mountain which the power of faith is to overcome are to be understood not only very difficult things—res difficillimae, as the exegetists say, who explain this passage as a proverbial, hyperbolical mode of speech among the Jews, but rather things which according to Nature and reason are impossible, is proved by the case of the instantaneously withered fig-tree, to which the passage in question refers. Here indubitably is declared the omnipotence of prayer, of faith, before which the power of Nature vanishes into nothing. “Mutanturquoque ad preces ea quae ex naturae causis erant sequutura, quemadmodum in Ezechia contigit, rege Juda, cui, quod naturales causarum progressus mortem minabantur, dictum est a propheta Dei: Morieris et non vives; sed is decursus naturae ad regis preces mutatus est et mutaturum se Deus praeviderat.”—J. L. Vives (l. c. p. 132). “Saepe fatorum saevitiam lenit Deus, placatus piorum votis.”—Melancthon (Epist. Sim. Grynaeo). “Cedit natura rerum precibus Moysi. Eliae, Elisaei, Jesaiae et omnium piorum, sicut Christus inquit Matt. 21: Omnia quae petetis, credentes accipietis.”—Id. (Loci de Creat. p. 64, ed. cit.). Celsus calls on the Christians to aid the Emperor and not to decline military service. Whereupon Origen answers. “Precibus nostris profligantes omnes bellorum excitatores daemonas et perturbatores pacis ac foederum plus conferimus regibus, quam qui arma gestant pro Republica.”—Origenes (adv. Celsum. S. Glenio int. l. viii.). Human need is the necessity of the Divine Will. In prayer man is the active, the determining, God the passive, the determined. God does the will of man. “God does the will of those that fear him, and he gives his will up to ours.... For the text says clearly enough, that Lot was not to stay in all the plain, but to escape to the mountain. But this his wish God changes, because Lot fears him and prays to him.” “And we have other testimonies in the Scriptures which prove that God allows himself to be turned and subjects his will to our wish.” “Thus it was according to the regular order of God’s power that the sun should maintain its revolution and wonted course; but when Joshua in his need called on the Lord and commanded the sun that it should stand still, it stood still at Joshua’s word. How great a miracle this was, ask the astronomers.”—Luther (T. ii. p. 226). “Lord, I am here and there in great need and danger of body and soul, and therefore want thy help and comfort. Item: I must have this and that; therefore I entreat thee that thou give it me.” “He who so prays and perseveres unabashed does right, and our Lord God is well pleased with him, for he is not so squeamish as we men.”—Id. (T. xvi. p. 150).

Faith is the freedom and blessedness which feeling finds in itself. Feeling objective to itself and active in this freedom, the reaction of feeling against Nature, is the arbitrariness of the imagination. The objects of faith therefore necessarily contradict Nature, necessarily contradict Reason, as that which represents the nature of things. “Quid magis contra fidem, quam credere nolle, quidquid non possit ratione attingere?... Nam illam quae in Deum est fides, beatus papa Gregorius negat plane habere meritum, si ei humana ratio praebeat experimentum.”—Bernardus (contr. Abelard. Ep. ad. Dom. Papam Innocentium). “Partus virginis nec ratione colligitur, nec exemplo monstratur. Quodsi ratione colligitur non erit mirabile.”—Conc. Toletan. XI. Art. IV. (Summa. Carranza.) “Quid autem incredibile, si contra usum originis naturalis peperit Maria et virgo permanet: quando contra usum naturae mare vidit et fugit atque in fontem suum Jordanis fluenta remearunt? Non ergo excedit fidem, quod virgo peperit, quando legimus, quod petra vomuit aquas et in montis speciem maris unda solidata est. Non ergo excedit fidem, quod homo exivit de virgine, quando petra profluit, scaturivit ferrum supra aquas, ambulavit homo supra aquas.”—Ambrosius (Epist. L. x. Ep. 81. edit. Basil. Amerbach. 1492 et 1516). “Mira sunt fratres, quae de isto sacramento dicuntur.... Haec sunt quae fidem necessario exigunt, rationem omnino non admittunt.”—Bernardus (de Coena Dom.). “Quid ergo hic quaeris naturae ordinem in Christi corpore, cum praeter naturam sit ipse partus ex virgine.”—Petrus Lomb. (l. iv. dist. 10, c. 2). “Laus fidei est credere quod est supra rationem, ubi homo abnegat intellectum et omnes sensus.” (Addit. Henrici de Vurimaria. ibid. dist. 12, c. 5.) “All the articles of our faith appear foolish and ridiculous to reason.” ... “We Christians seem fools to the world for believing that Mary was the true mother of this child, and was nevertheless a pure virgin. For this is not only against all reason, but also against the creation of God, who said to Adam and Eve, ‘Be fruitful and multiply.’” “We ought not to inquire whether a thing be possible, but we should say, God has said it, therefore it will happen, even if it be impossible. For although I cannot see or understand it, yet the Lord can make the impossible possible, and out of nothing can make all things.”—Luther (T. xvi. pp. 148, 149, 570). “What is more miraculous than that God and man is one Person? that he is the Son of God and the Son of Mary, and yet only one Son? Who will comprehend this mystery in all eternity, that God is man, that a creature is the Creator, and the Creator a creature?”—Id. (T. vii. p. 128). The essential object of faith, therefore, is miracle; but not common, visible miracle, which is an object even to the bold eye of curiosity and unbelief in general; not the appearance, but the essence of miracle; not the fact, but the miraculous power, the Being who works miracles, who attests and reveals himself in miracle. And this miraculous power is to faith always present; even Protestantism believes in the uninterrupted perpetuation of miraculous power; it only denies the necessity that it should still manifest itself in special visible signs, for the furtherance of dogmatic ends. “Some have said that signs were the revelation of the Spirit in the commencement of Christianity and have now ceased. That is not correct; for there is even now such a power, and though it is not used, that is of no importance. For we have still the power to perform such signs.” “Now, however, that Christianity is spread abroad and made known to all the world, there is no need to work miracles, as in the times of the apostles. But if there were need for it, if the Gospel were oppressed and persecuted, we must truly apply ourselves to this, and must also work miracles.”—Luther (Th. xiii. pp. 642, 648). Miracle is so essential, so natural to faith, that to it even natural phenomena are miracles, and not in the physical sense, but in the theological, supranaturalistic sense. “God, in the beginning, said: Let the earth bring forth grass and herbs, &c. That same word which the Creator spoke brings the cherry out of the dry bough and the cherry-tree out of the little kernel. It is the omnipotence of God which makes young fowls and geese come out of the eggs. Thus God preaches to us daily of the resurrection of the dead, and has given us as many examples and experiences of this article as there are creatures.”—Luther (Th. x. p. 432. See also Th. iii. pp. 586, 592, and Augustine, e.g., Enarr. in Ps. 90, Sermo ii. c. 6). If, therefore, faith desires and needs no special miracle, this is only because to it everything is fundamentally miracle, everything an effect of divine, miraculous power. Religious faith has no sense, no perception for Nature. Nature, as it exists for us, has no existence for faith. To it the will of God is alone the ground, the bond, the necessity of things. “God ... could indeed have made us men, as he did Adam and Eve, by himself, without father and mother, as he could reign without princes, as he could give light without sun and stars, and bread without fields and ploughs and labour. But it is not his will to do thus.”—Luther (Th. xvi. p. 614). It is true “God employs certain means, and so conducts his miraculous works as to use the service of Nature and instruments.” Therefore we ought—truly on very natural grounds—“not to despise the means and instruments of Nature.” “Thus it is allowable to use medicine, nay, it ought to be used, for it is a means created in order to preserve health.”—Luther (Th. i. p. 508). But—and that alone is decisive—it is not necessary that I should use natural means in order to be cured; I can be cured immediately by God. What God ordinarily does by means of Nature, he can also do without, nay, in opposition to Nature, and actually does it thus, in extraordinary cases, when he will. “God,” says Luther in the same place, “could indeed easily have preserved Noah and the animals through a whole year without food, as he preserved Moses, Elijah, and Christ forty days without any food.” Whether he does it often or seldom is indifferent; it is enough if he only does it once; what happens once can happen innumerable times. A single miracle has universal significance—the significance of an example. “This deed, the passage through the Red Sea, happened as a figure and example, to show us that it will be so with us.”—Luther (Th. iii. p. 596). “These miracles are written for us, who are chosen.”—Ib. (Th. ix. p. 142). The natural means which God employs when he does no miracle, have no more significance than those which he employs when he performs miracles. If the animals, God so willing it, can live as well without food as with it, food is in itself as unnecessary for the preservation of life, as indifferent, as non-essential, as arbitrary, as the clay with which Christ anointed the eyes of the blind man to whom he restored sight, as the staff with which Moses divided the sea (“God could have done it just as well without the staff”). “Faith is stronger than heaven and earth, or all creatures.” “Faith turns water into stones; out of fire it can bring water, and out of water fire.”—Luther (Th. iii. pp. 564, 565). That is to say, for faith there exists no limit, no law, no necessity, no Nature; there exists only the will of God, against which all things and powers are nothing. If therefore the believer, when in sickness and distress, has recourse notwithstanding to natural means, he only follows the voice of his natural reason. The one means of cure which is congruous with faith, which does not contradict faith, which is not thrust upon it, whether consciously and voluntarily or not, from without,—the one remedy for all evil and misery is prayer; for “prayer is almighty.”—Luther (Th. iv. p. 27). Why then use a natural means also? For even in case of its application, the effect which follows is by no means its own, but the effect of the supernatural will of God, or rather the effect of faith, of prayer; for prayer, faith determines the will of God. “Thy faith hath saved thee.” Thus the natural means which faith recognises in practice it nullifies in theory, since it makes the effect of such means an effect of God,—i.e., an effect which could have taken place just as well without this means. The natural effect is therefore nothing else than a circumstantial, covert, concealed miracle; a miracle however which has not the appearance of a miracle, but can only be perceived as such by the eyes of faith. Only in expression, not in fact, is there any difference between an immediate and mediate, a miraculous and natural operation of God. When faith makes use of a natural means, it speaks otherwise than it thinks; when it supposes a miracle it speaks as it thinks, but in both cases it thinks the same. In the mediate agency of God faith is in disunion with itself, for the senses here deny what faith affirms; in miracle, on the contrary, it is at one with itself, for there the appearance coincides with the reality, the senses with faith, the expression with the fact. Miracle is the terminus technicus of faith.

The Resurrection of Christ is bodily, i.e., personal immortality, presented as a sensible indubitable fact.

“Resurrexit Christus, absoluta res est.—Ostendit se ipsum discipulis et fidelibus suis, contrectata est soliditas corporis.... Confirmata fides est non solum in cordibus, sed etiam in oculis hominum.”—Augustinus (Sermones ad Pop. S. 242, c. I. S. 361, c. S. See also on this subject Melancthon, Loci: de Resurr. Mort.). “The philosophers ... held that by death the soul was released from the body, and that after it was thus set free from the body, as from a prison, it came into the assembly of the gods, and was relieved from all corporeal burthens. Of such an immortality the philosophers allowed men to dream, though they did not hold it to be certain, nor could defend it. But the Holy Scriptures teach of the resurrection and eternal life in another manner, and place the hope of it so certainly before our eyes, that we cannot doubt it.”—Luther (Th. i. p. 549).

Christianity made man an extramundane, supernatural being. “We have here no abiding city, but we seek one to come.”—Heb. xiii. 14. “Whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord.”—2 Cor. v. 6. “If in this body, which is properly our own, we are strangers, and our life in this body is nothing else than a pilgrimage; how much more then are the possessions which we have for the sake of the body, such as fields, houses, gold, &c., nothing else than idle, strange things, to be used as if we were on a pilgrimage?” “Therefore we must in this life live like strangers until we reach the true fatherland, and receive a better life which is eternal.”—Luther (Th. ii. pp. 240, 370 a). “Our conversation (p???te?a, civitas aut jus civitatis) is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body that it may be like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.”—Phil. iii. 20, 21. “Neque mundus generat hominem, neque mundi homo pars est.”—Lactantius (Div. Inst. l. ii. c. 6). “Coelum de mundo: homo supra mundum.”—Ambrosius (Epist. l. vi. Ep. 38, ed. cit.). “Agnosce o homo dignitatem tuam, agnosce gloriam conditionis humanae. Est enim tibi cum mundo corpus ... sed est tibi etiam sublimius aliquid, nec omnino comparandus es caeteris creaturis.”—Bernardus (Opp. Basil. 1552, p. 79). “At Christianus ... ita supra totum mundum ascendit, nec consistit in coeli convexis, sed transcensis mente locis supercoelestibus ductu divini spiritus velut jam extra mundum raptus offert Deo preces.”—Origenes (contra Celspum. ed. Hoeschelio, p. 370). “Totus quidem iste mundus ad unius animae pretium aestimari non potest. Non enim pro toto mundo Deus animam suam dare voluit, quam pro anima humana dedit. Sublimius est ergo animae pretium, quae non nisi sanguine Christi redimi potest.”—Medit. devotiss. c. ii. (Among the spurious writings of St. Bernard.) “Sapiens anima ... Deum tantummodo sapiens hominem in homine exuit, Deoque plene et in omnibus affecta, omnem infra Deum creaturam non aliter quam Deus attendit. Relicto ergo corpore et corporeis omnibus curis et impedimentis omnium quae sunt praeter Deum obliviscitur, nihilque praeter Deum attendens quasi se solam, solumque Deum existimans,” etc.—De Nat. et Dign. Amoris Divini, cc. 14, 15. (Ib.) “Quid agis frater in saeculo, qui major es mundo?”—Hieronymus (ad Heliod. de Laude Vitae solit.).

The celibate and monachism—of course only in their original, religious significance and form—are sensible manifestations, necessary consequences, of the supranaturalistic, extramundane character of Christianity. It is true that they also contradict Christianity; the reason of this is shown by implication in the present work; but only because Christianity is itself a contradiction. They contradict exoteric, practical, but not esoteric, theoretical Christianity; they contradict Christian love so far as this love relates to man, but not Christian faith, not Christian love so far as it loves man only for God’s sake. There is certainly nothing concerning celibacy and monachism in the Bible; and that is very natural. In the beginning of Christianity the great matter was the recognition of Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah—the conversion of the heathens and Jews. And this conversion was the more pressing, the nearer the Christians supposed the day of judgment and the destruction of the world;—periculum in mora. There was not time or opportunity for a life of quietude, for the contemplation of monachism. Hence there necessarily reigned at that time a more practical and even liberal sentiment than at a later period, when Christianity had attained to worldly dominion, and thus the enthusiasm of proselytism was extinguished. “Apostoli (says the Church, quite correctly: Carranza, l. c. p. 256) cum fides inciperet, ad fidelium imbecillitatem se magis demittebant, cum autem evangelii praedicatio sit magis ampliata, oportet et Pontifices ad perfectam continentiam vitam suam dirigere.” When once Christianity realised itself in a worldly form, it must also necessarily develop the supranaturalistic, supramundane tendency of Christianity into a literal separation from the world. And this disposition to separation from life, from the body, from the world,—this first hyper-cosmic then anti-cosmic tendency, is a genuinely biblical disposition and spirit. In addition to the passages already cited, and others universally known, the following may stand as examples: “He that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.” “I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing.”—Rom. vii. 18. (“Veteres enim omnis vitiositatis in agendo origenes ad corpus referebant.”—J. G. RosenmÜller Scholia.) “Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind; for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin.”—1 Pet. iv. 1. “I have a desire to depart, and to be with Christ.”—Phil. i. 23. “We are confident and willing rather to be absent from the body and present with the Lord.”—2 Cor. v. 8. Thus, according to these passages, the partition-wall between God and man is the body (at least the fleshly, actual body); thus the body as a hindrance to union with God is something worthless, to be denied. That by the world, which is denied in Christianity, is by no means to be understood a life of mere sensuality, but the real objective world, is to be inferred in a popular manner from the belief that at the advent of the Lord, i.e., the consummation of the Christian religion, heaven and earth will pass away.

The difference between the belief of the Christians and that of the heathen philosophers as to the destruction of the world is not to be overlooked. The Christian destruction of the world is only a crisis of faith,—the separation of the Christian from all that is anti-christian, the triumph of faith over the world, a judgment of God, an anti-cosmical, supernaturalistic act. “But the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.”—2 Pet. iii. 7. The heathen destruction of the world is a crisis of the cosmos itself, a process which takes place according to law, which is founded in the constitution of Nature. “Sic origo mundi, non minus solem et lunam et vices siderum et animalium ortus, quam quibus mutarentur terrena, continuit. In his fuit inundatio, quae non secus quam hiems, quam aestas, lege mundi venit.”—Seneca (Nat. Qu. l. iii. c. 29). It is the principle of life immanent in the world, the essence of the world itself, which evolves this crisis out of itself. “Aqua et ignis terrenis dominantur. Ex his ortus et ex his interitus est.”—(Ibid. c. 28.) “Quidquid est, non erit; nec peribit, sed resolvetur.”—(Idem. Epist. 71.) The Christians excluded themselves from the destruction of the world. “And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet; and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”—Matt. xxiv. 31. “But there shall not a hair of your head perish.... And then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.”—Luke xxi. 18, 27, 28. “Watch ye therefore and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.”—Ib. 36. The heathens, on the contrary, identified their fate with the fate of the world. “Hoc universum, quod omnia divina humanaque complectitur ... dies aliquis dissipabit et in confusionem veterem tenebrasque demerget. Eat nunc aliquis et singulas comploret animas. Quis tam superbae impotentisque arrogantiae est, ut in hac naturae necessitate, omnia ad eundem finem revocantis, se unum ac suos seponi velit.”—Seneca (Cons. ad Polyb. cc. 20, 21). “Ergo quandoque erit terminus rebus humanis.... Non muri quenquam, non turres tuebuntur. Non proderunt templa supplicibus.”—(Nat. Qu. L. iii. c. 29.) Thus here we have again the characteristic distinction between heathenism and Christianity. The heathen forgot himself in the world, the Christian forgot the world in himself. And as the heathen identified his destruction with the destruction of the world, so he identified his immortality with the immortality of the world. To the heathen, man was a common, to the Christian, a select being; to the latter immortality was a privilege of man, to the former a common good which he vindicated to himself only because, and in so far as, he assigned to other beings a share in it also. The Christians expected the destruction of the world immediately, because the Christian religion has in it no cosmical principle of development:—all which developed itself in Christendom developed itself only in contradiction with the original nature of Christianity;—because by the existence of God in the flesh, i.e., by the immediate identity of the species with the individual, everything was attained, the thread of history was cut short, no other thought of the future remained than the thought of a repetition of the second coming of the Lord. The heathens, on the contrary, placed the destruction of the world in the distant future, because, living in the contemplation of the universe, they did not set heaven and earth in motion on their own account,—because they extended and freed their self-consciousness by the consciousness of the species, placed immortality only in the perpetuation of the species, and thus did not reserve the future to themselves, but left it to the coming generations. “Veniet tempus quo posteri nostri tam aperta nos nescisse mirentur.”—Seneca (Nat. Qu. l. vii. c. 25). He who places immortality in himself abolishes the principle of historical development. The Christians did indeed, according to Peter, expect a new heaven and a new earth. But with this Christian, i.e., superterrestrial earth, the theatre of history is for ever closed, the end of the actual world is come. The heathens, on the contrary, set no limits to the development of the cosmos; they supposed the world to be destroyed only to arise again renovated as a real world; they granted it eternal life. The Christian destruction of the world was a matter of feeling, an object of fear and longing; the heathen, a matter of reason, an inference from the contemplation of nature.

Unspotted Virginity is the principle of Salvation, the principle of the regenerate Christian world. “Virgo genuit mundi salutem; virgo peperit vitam universorum.... Virgo portavit, quem mundus iste capere aut sustinere non potest.... Per virum autem et mulierem caro ejecta de paradiso: per virginem juncta est Deo.”—Ambrosius (Ep. L. x. Ep. 82). “Jure laudatur bona uxor, sed melius pia virgo praefertur, dicente Apostolo (1 Cor. vii.). Bonum conjugium, per quod est inventa posteritas successionis humanae; sed melius virginitas, per quam regni coelestis haereditas acquisita et coelestium meritorum reperta successio. Per mulierem cura successit: per virginem salus evenit.”—(Id. Ep. 81.) “Castitas jungit hominem coelo.... Bona est castitas conjugalis, sed melior est continentia vidualis. Optima vero integritas virginalis.”—De modo bene vivendi, Sermo 22. (Among the spurious writings of Bernard.) “Pulchritudinem hominis non concupiscas.”—(Ibid. S. 23.) “Fornicatio major est omnibus peccatis.... Audi beati Isidori verba: Fornicatione coinquinari deterius est omni peccato.”—(Ibid.) “Virginitas cui gloriae merito non praefertur? Angelicae? Angelus habet virginitatem, sed non carnem, sane felicior, quam fortior in hac parte.”—Bernardus (Ep. 113, ad Sophiam Virginem). “Memento semper, quod paradisi colonum de possessione sua mulier ejecerit.”—Hieronymus (Ep. Nepotiano). “In paradiso virginitas conversabatur.... Ipse Christus virginitatis gloria non modo ex patre sine initio et sine duorum concursu genitus, sed et homo secundum nos factus, super nos ex virgine sine alieno consortio incarnatus est. Et ipse virginitatem veram et perfectam esse, in se ipso demonstravit. Unde hanc nobis legem non statuit (non enim omnes capiunt verbum hoc, ut ipse dixit) sed opere nos erudivit.”—Joan. Damasc. (Orthod. Fidei, l. iv. c. 25).

Now if abstinence from the satisfaction of the sensual impulse, the negation of difference of sex and consequently of sexual love,—for what is this without the other?—is the principle of the Christian heaven and salvation; then necessarily the satisfaction of the sexual impulse, sexual love, on which marriage is founded, is the source of sin and evil. And so it is held. The mystery of original sin is the mystery of sexual desire. All men are conceived in sin because they were conceived with sensual, i.e., natural pleasure. The act of generation, as an act of sensual enjoyment, is sinful. Sin is propagated from Adam down to us, simply because its propagation is the natural act of generation. This is the mystery of Christian original sin. “Atque hic quam alienus a vero sit, etiam hic reprehenditur, quod voluptatem in homine Deo authore creatam asserit principaliter. Sed hoc divinae scriptura redarguit, quae serpentis insidiis atque illecebris infusam Adae atque Evae voluptatem docet, siquidem ipse serpens voluptas sit.... Quomodo igitur voluptas ad paradisum revocare nos potest, quae sola nos paradiso exuit?”—Ambrosius (Ep. L. x. Ep. 82). “Voluptas ipsa sine culpa nullatenus esse potest.”—Petrus L. (l. iv. dist. 31, c. 5). “Omnes in peccatis nati sumus, et ex carnis delectatione concepti culpam originalem nobiscum traximus.”—Gregorius (Petrus L. l. ii. dist. 30, c. 2). “Firmissime tene et nullatenus dubites, omnem hominem, qui per concubitum viri et mulieris concipitur, cum originali peccato nasci.... Ex his datur intelligi, quid sit originale peccatum, scl. vitium concupiscentiae, quod in omnes concupiscentialiter natos per Adam intravit.”—(Ibid. c. 3, see also dist. 31, c. 1.) “Peccati causa ex carne est.”—Ambrosius (ibid.) “Christus peccatum non habet, nec originale traxit, nec suum addidit: extra voluptatem carnalis libidinis venit, non ibi fuit complexus maritalis.... Omnis generatus, damnatus.”—Augustinus (Serm. ad Pop. S. 294, cc. 10, 16). “Homo natus de muliere et ob hoc cum reatu.”—Bernardus (de Consid. l. ii.). “Peccatum quomodo non fuit, ubi libido non defuit?... Quo pacto, inquam, aut sanctus asseretur conceptus, qui de spiritus non est, ne dicam de peccato est?”—Id. (Epist. 174, edit. cit.). “All that is born into the world of man and woman is sinful, under God’s anger and curse, condemned to death.” “All men born of a father and mother are children of wrath by nature, as St. Paul testifies, Ephes. ii.” “We have by nature a tainted, sinful conception and birth.”—Luther (Th. xvi. 246, 573). It is clear from these examples, that “carnal intercourse”—even a kiss is carnal intercourse—is the radical sin, the radical evil of mankind; and consequently the basis of marriage, the sexual impulse, honestly outspoken, is a product of the devil. It is true that the creature as the work of God is good, but it has long ceased to exist as it was created. The devil has alienated the creature from God and corrupted it to the very foundation. “Cursed be the ground for thy sake.” The fall of the creature, however, is only an hypothesis by which faith drives from its mind the burdensome, disquieting contradiction, that Nature is a product of God, and yet, as it actually is, does not harmonise with God, i.e., with the Christian sentiment.

Christianity certainly did not pronounce the flesh as flesh, matter as matter, to be something sinful, impure; on the contrary, it contended vehemently against the heretics who held this opinion and rejected marriage. (See for example Augustin. contra Faustum, l. 29, c. 4, l. 30, c. 6. Clemens Alex. Stromata, lib. iii. and Bernard. Super Cantica, Sermo 66.) But quite apart from the hatred to heretics which so inspired the holy Christian Church and made it so politic, this protest rested on grounds which by no means involved the recognition of Nature as such, and under limitations, i.e., negations, which make the recognition of Nature merely apparent and illusory. The distinction between the heretics and the orthodox is only this, that the latter said indirectly, covertly, secretly, what the former declared plainly, directly, but for that very reason offensively. Pleasure is not separable from matter. Material pleasure is nothing further, so to speak, than the joy of matter in itself, matter proving itself by activity. Every joy is self-activity, every pleasure a manifestation of force, energy. Every organic function is, in a normal condition, united with enjoyment; even breathing is a pleasurable act, which is not perceived as such only because it is an uninterrupted process. He therefore who declares generation, fleshly intercourse, as such, to be pure, but fleshly intercourse united with sensual pleasure to be a consequence of original sin and consequently itself a sin, acknowledges only the dead, not the living flesh—he raises a mist before us, he condemns, rejects the act of generation, and matter in general, though under the appearance of not rejecting it, of acknowledging it. The unhypocritical, honest acknowledgment of sensual life is the acknowledgment of sensual pleasure. In brief, he who, like the Bible, like the Church, does not acknowledge fleshly pleasure—that, be it understood, which is natural, normal, inseparable from life—does not acknowledge the flesh. That which is not recognised as an end in itself (it by no means follows that it should be the ultimate end) is in truth not recognised at all. Thus he who allows me wine only as medicine forbids me the enjoyment of wine. Let not the liberal supply of wine at the wedding at Cana be urged. For that scene transports us, by the metamorphosis of water into wine, beyond Nature into the region of supernaturalism. Where, as in Christianity, a supernatural, spiritual body is regarded as the true, eternal body, i.e., a body from which all objective, sensual impulses, all flesh, all nature, is removed, there real, i.e., sensual fleshly matter is denied, is regarded as worthless, nothing.

Certainly Christianity did not make celibacy a law (save at a later period for the priests). But for the very reason that chastity, or rather privation of marriage, of sex, is the highest, the most transcendent, supernaturalistic, heavenly virtue, it cannot and must not be lowered into a common object of duty; it stands above the law, it is the virtue of Christian grace and freedom. “Christus hortatur idoneos ad coelibatum, ut donum recte tueantur; idem Christus iis, qui puritatem extra conjugium non, retinent, praecipit, ut pure in conjugio vivant.”—Melancthon. (Responsio ad Colonienses. Declam. T. iii.). “Virginitas non est jussa, sed admonita, quia nimis est excelsa.”—De modo bene viv. (Sermo 21). “Et qui matrimonio jungit virginem suam, benefacit, et qui non jungit, melius facit. Quod igitur bonum est, non vitandum est, et quod est melius eligendum est. Itaque non imponitur, sed proponitur. Et ideo bene Apostolus dixit: De virginibus autem praeceptum non habeo, consilium autem do. Ubi praeceptum est, ibi lex est, ubi consilium, ibi gratia est.... Praeceptum enim castitatis est, consilium integritatis.... Sed nec vidua praeceptum accipit, sed consilium. Consilium autem non semel datum, sed saepe repetitum.”—Ambrosius (Liber. de viduis). That is to say: celibacy, abstinence from marriage, is no law in the common or Jewish sense, but a law in the Christian sense, or for the Christian sentiment, which takes Christian virtue and perfection as the rule of conscience, as the ideal of feeling,—no despotic but a friendly law, no public but a secret, esoteric law—a mere counsel, i.e., a law which does not venture to express itself as a law, a law for those of finer feelings, not for the great mass. Thou mayst marry; yes indeed! without any fear of committing a sin, i.e., a public, express, plebeian sin; but thou dost all the better if thou dost not marry; meanwhile this is only my undictatorial, friendly advice. Omnia licent, sed omnia non expediunt. What is allowed in the first member of the sentence is retracted in the second. Licet, says the man; non expedit, says the Christian. But only that which is good for the Christian is for the man, so far as he desires to be a Christian, the standard of doing and abstaining. “Quae non expediunt, nec licent,” such is the conclusion arrived at by the sentiment of Christian nobility. Marriage is therefore only an indulgence to the weakness, or rather the strength of the flesh, a taint of nature in Christianity, a falling short of the genuine, perfect Christian sentiment; being, however, nevertheless good, laudable, even holy, in so far as it is the best antidote to fornication. For its own sake, as the self-enjoyment of sexual love, it is not acknowledged, not consecrated; thus the holiness of marriage in Christianity is only an ostensible holiness, only illusion, for that which is not acknowledged for its own sake is not acknowledged at all, while yet there is a deceitful show of acknowledgment. Marriage is sanctioned not in order to hallow and satisfy the flesh, but to restrict the flesh, to repress it, to kill it—to drive Beelzebub out by Beelzebub. “Quae res et viris et feminis omnibus adest ad matrimonium et stuprum? Commixtio carnis scilicet, cujus concupiscentiam Dominus stupro adaequavit.... Ideo virginis principalis sanctitas, quia caret stupri affinitati.”—Tertullianus (de Exhort. Cast. c. 9). “Et de ipso conjugis melius aliquid, quam concessisti, monuisti.”—Augustinus (Confess. x. c. 30). “It is better to marry than to burn.”—I Cor. vii. 9. But how much better is it, says Tertullian, developing this text, neither to marry nor to burn.... “Possum dicere, quod permittitur bonum non est.”—(Ad Uxorem, l. i. c. 3.) “De minoribus bonis est conjugiam, quod non meretur palmam, sed est in remedium.... Prima institutio habuit praeceptum, secunda indulgentiam. Didicimus enim ab Apostolo, humano generi propter vitandam fornicationem indultum esse conjugium.”—Petrus Lomb. (l. iv. dist. 26, c. 2). “The Master of the Sentences says rightly, that in Paradise marriage was ordained as service, but after sin as medicine.”—Luther (Th. i. p. 349). “Where marriage and virginity are compared, certainly chastity is a nobler gift than marriage.”—Id. (Th. i. p. 319). “Those whom the weakness of nature does not compel to marriage, but who are such that they can dispense with marriage, these do rightly to abstain from marriage.”—Id. (Th. v. p. 538). Christian sophistry will reply to this, that only marriage which is not Christian, only that which is not consecrated by the spirit of Christianity, i.e., in which Nature is not veiled in pious images, is unholy. But if marriage, if Nature is first made holy by relation to Christ, it is not the holiness of marriage which is declared, but of Christianity; and marriage, Nature, in and by itself, is unholy. And what is the semblance of holiness with which Christianity invests marriage, in order to becloud the understanding, but a pious illusion? Can the Christian fulfil his marriage duties without surrendering himself, willingly or not, to the passion of love? Yes indeed. The Christian has for his object the replenishing of the Christian Church, not the satisfaction of love. The end is holy, but the means in itself unholy. And the end sanctifies, exculpates the means. “Conjugalis concubitus generandi gratia non habet culpam.” Thus the Christian, at least the true Christian, denies, or at least is bound to deny Nature, while he satisfies it; he does not wish for, he rather contemns the means in itself; he seeks only the end in abstracto; he does with religious, supranaturalistic horror what he does, though against his will, with natural, sensual pleasure. The Christian does not candidly confess his sensuality, he denies Nature before his faith, and his faith before Nature, i.e., he publicly disavows what he privately does. Oh, how much better, truer, purer-hearted in this respect were the heathens, who made no secret of their sensuality, than the Christians, who, while gratifying the flesh, at the same time deny that they gratify it! To this day the Christians adhere theoretically to their heavenly origin and destination; to this day, out of supranaturalistic affectation, they deny their sex, and turn away with mock modesty from every sensuous picture, every naked statue, as if they were angels; to this day they repress, even by legal force, every open-hearted, ingenuous self-confession even of the most uncorrupt sensuality, only stimulating by this public prohibition the secret enjoyment of sensuality. What then, speaking briefly and plainly, is the distinction between Christians and heathens in this matter? The heathens confirmed, the Christians contradicted their faith by their lives. The heathens do what they mean to do, the Christians what they do not mean: the former, where they sin, sin with their conscience, the latter against their conscience; the former sin simply, the latter doubly; the former from hypertrophy, the latter from atrophy of the flesh. The specific crime of the heathens is the ponderable, palpable crime of licentiousness, that of the Christians is the imponderable, theological crime of hypocrisy,—that hypocrisy of which Jesuitism is indeed the most striking, world-historical, but nevertheless only a particular manifestation. “Theology makes sinners,” says Luther—Luther, whose positive qualities, his heart and understanding, so far as they applied themselves to natural things, were not perverted by theology. And Montesquieu gives the best commentary on this saying of Luther’s when he says: “La dÉvotion trouve, pour faire de mauvaises actions, des raisons, qu’un simple honnÊte homme ne saurait trouver.”—(PensÉes Diverses.)

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 (?ata???se?, 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 p?e?ata, 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.

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.

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).

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.”)

Faith has within it a malignant principle. Christian faith, and nothing else, is the ultimate ground of Christian persecution and destruction of heretics. Faith recognises man only on condition that he recognises God, i.e., faith itself. Faith is the honour which man renders to God. And this honour is due unconditionally. To faith the basis of all duties is faith in God: faith is the absolute duty; duties to men are only derivative, subordinate. The unbeliever is thus an outlaw4—a man worthy of extermination. That which denies God must be itself denied. The highest crime is the crime laesae majestatis Dei. To faith God is a personal being—the supremely personal, inviolable, privileged being. The acme of personality is honour; hence an injury towards the highest personality is necessarily the highest crime. The honour of God cannot be disavowed as an accidental, rude, anthropomorphic conception. For is not the personality, even the existence of God, a sensuous, anthropomorphic conception? Let those who renounce the honour be consistent enough to renounce the personality. From the idea of personality results the idea of honour, and from this again the idea of religious offences. “Quicunque Magistratibus male precatus fuerit, pro eorum arbitrio poenas luito; quicunque vero idem scelus erga Deum admiserit ... lapidibus blasphemiae causa obruitur.”—(Lev. xxiv. 15, 16. See also Deut. xii., whence the Catholics deduce the right to kill heretics. Boehmer, l. c. l. v. Th. vii. § 44.) “Eos autem merito torqueri, qui Deum nesciunt, ut impios, ut injustos, nisi profanus nemo deliberat: quum parentem omnium et dominum omnium non minus sceleris sit ignorare, quam laedere.”—Minucii Fel. Oct. c. 35. “Ubi erunt legis praecepta divinae, quae dicunt: honora patrem et matrem, si vocabulum patris, quod in homine honorari praecipitur, in Deo impune violatur?”—Cypriani Epist. 73 (ed. Gersdorf). “Cur enim, cum datum sit divinitus homini liberum arbitrium, adulteria legibus puniantur et sacrilegia permittantur? An fidem non servare levius est animam Deo, quam feminam viro?”—Augustinus (de Correct. Donatist. lib. ad Bonifacium, c. 5). “Si hi qui nummos adulterant morte mulctantur, quid de illis statuendum censemus, qui fidem pervertere conantur?”—Paulus Cortesius (in Sententias (Petri L.) iii. l. dist. vii.). “Si enim illustrem ac praepotentem virum nequaquam exhonorari a quoquam licet, et si quisquam exhonoraverit, decretis legalibus reus sistitur et injuriarum auctor jure damnatur: quanto utique majoris piaculi crimen est, injuriosum quempiam Deo esse? Semper enim per dignitatem injuriam perferentis crescit culpa facientis, quia necesse est, quanto major est persona ejus qui contumeliam patitur, tanto major sit noxa ejus, qui facit.” Thus speaks Salvianus (de Gubernat. Dei, l. vi. p. 218, edit. cit.)—Salvianus, who is called Magistrum Episcoporum, sui saeculi Jeremiam, Scriptorem Christianissimum, Orbis christiani magistrum. But heresy, unbelief in general—heresy is only a definite, limited unbelief—is blasphemy, and thus is the highest, the most flagitious crime. Thus to cite only one among innumerable examples, J. Oecolampadius writes to Servetus: “Dum non summam patientiam prae me fero, dolens Jesum Christum filium Dei sic dehonestari, parum christiane tibi agere videor. In aliis mansuetus ero: in blasphemiis quae in Christum, non item.”—(Historia Mich. Serveti. H. ab Allwoerden Helmstadii, 1737, p. 13). For what is blasphemy? Every negation of an idea, of a definition, in which the honour of God, the honour of faith is concerned. Servetus fell as a sacrifice to Christian faith. Calvin said to Servetus two hours before his death: “Ego vero ingenue praefatus, me nunquam privatus injurias fuisse persecutum,” and parted from him with a sense of being thoroughly sustained by the Bible: “Ab haeretico homine, qui a?t??at????t?? peccabat, secundum Pauli praeceptum discessi.”—(Ibid. p. 120.) Thus it was by no means a personal hatred, though this may have been conjoined,—it was a religious hatred which brought Servetus to the stake—the hatred which springs from the nature of unchecked faith. Even Melancthon is known to have approved the execution of Servetus. The Swiss theologians, whose opinion was asked by the Genevans, very subtilely abstained, in their answer, from mentioning the punishment of death,5 but agreed with the Genevans in this—“Horrendos Serveti errores detestandos esse, severiusque idcirco in Servetum animadvertendum.” Thus there is no difference as to the principle, only as to the mode of punishment. Even Calvin himself was so Christian as to desire to alleviate the horrible mode of death to which the Senate of Geneva condemned Servetus. (See on this subject, e.g., M. Adami, Vita Calvini, p. 90; Vita Bezae, p. 207; Vitae Theol. Exter. Francof. 1618.) We have, therefore, to consider this execution as an act of general significance—as a work of faith, and that not of Roman Catholic, but of reformed, biblical, evangelical faith. That heretics must not be compelled to a profession of the faith by force was certainly maintained by most of the lights of the Church, but there nevertheless lived in them the most malignant hatred of heretics. Thus, for example, St. Bernard says (Super Cantica, § 66) in relation to heretics: “Fides suadenda est, non imponenda,” but he immediately adds: “Quamquam melius procul dubio gladio coercerentur, illius videlicet, qui non sine causa gladium portat, quam in suum errorem multos trajicere permittantur.” If the faith of the present day no longer produces such flagrant deeds of horror, this is due only to the fact that the faith of this age is not an uncompromising, living faith, but a sceptical, eclectic, unbelieving faith, curtailed and maimed by the power of art and science. Where heretics are no longer burned either in the fires of this world or of the other, there faith itself has no longer any fire, any vitality. The faith which allows variety of belief renounces its divine origin and rank, degrades itself to a subjective opinion. It is not to Christian faith, not to Christian love (i.e., love limited by faith); no! it is to doubt of Christian faith, to the victory of religious scepticism, to free-thinkers, to heretics, that we owe tolerance, freedom of opinion. It was the heretics, persecuted by the Christian Church, who alone fought for freedom of conscience. Christian freedom is freedom in non-essentials only: on the fundamental articles of faith freedom is not allowed. When, however, Christian faith—faith considered in distinction from love, for faith is not one with love, “potestis habere fidem sine caritate” (Augustinus, Serm. ad Pop. § 90)—is pronounced to be the principle, the ultimate ground of the violent deeds of Christians towards heretics (that is, such deeds as arose from real believing zeal), it is obviously not meant that faith could have these consequences immediately and originally, but only in its historical development. Still, even to the earliest Christians the heretic was an antichrist, and necessarily so—“adversus Christum sunt haeretici” (Cyprianus, Epist. 76, § 14, edit. cit.)—accursed—“apostoli ... in epistolis haereticos exsecrati sunt” (Cyprianus, ib. § 6)—a lost being, doomed by God to hell and everlasting death. “Thou hearest that the tares are already condemned and sentenced to the fire. Why then wilt thou lay many sufferings on a heretic? Dost thou not hear that he is already judged to a punishment heavier than he can bear? Who art thou, that thou wilt interfere and punish him who has already fallen under the punishment of a more powerful master? What would I do against a thief already sentenced to the gallows?... God has already commanded his angels, who in his own time will be the executioners of heretics.”—Luther (Th. xvi. p. 132). When therefore the State, the world, became Christian, and also, for that reason, Christianity became worldly, the Christian religion a State religion; then it was a necessary consequence that the condemnation of heretics, which was at first only religious or dogmatic, became a political, practical condemnation, and the eternal punishment of hell was anticipated by temporal punishment. If, therefore, the definition and treatment of heresy as a punishable crime is in contradiction with the Christian faith, it follows that a Christian king, a Christian State, is in contradiction with it; for a Christian State is that which executes the Divine judgments of faith with the sword, which makes earth a heaven to believers, a hell to unbelievers. “Docuimus ... pertinere ad reges religiosos, non solum adulteria vel homicidia vel hujusmodi alia flagitia seu facinora, verum etiam sacrilegia severitate congrua cohibere.”—Augustinus (Epist. ad Dulcitium). “Kings ought thus to serve the Lord Christ by helping with laws that his honour be furthered. Now when the temporal magistracy finds scandalous errors, whereby the honour of the Lord Christ is blasphemed and men’s salvation hindered, and a schism arises among the people ... where such false teachers will not be admonished and cease from preaching, there ought the temporal magistracy confidently to arm itself, and know that nothing else befits its office but to apply the sword and all force, that doctrine may be pure and God’s service genuine and unperverted, and also that peace and unity may be preserved.”—Luther (Th. xv. pp. 110, 111). Let it be further remarked here, that Augustine justifies the application of coercive measures for the awaking of Christian faith by urging that the Apostle Paul was converted to Christianity by a deed of force—a miracle. (De Correct. Donat. c. 6.) The intrinsic connection between temporal and eternal, i.e., political and spiritual punishment, is clear from this, that the same reasons which have been urged against the temporal punishment of heresy are equally valid against the punishment of hell. If heresy or unbelief cannot be punished here because it is a mere mistake, neither can it be punished by God in hell. If coercion is in contradiction with the nature of faith, so is hell; for the fear of the terrible consequence of unbelief, the torments of hell, urge to belief against knowledge and will. Boehmer, in his Jus. Eccl., argues that heresy and unbelief should be struck out of the category of crimes, that unbelief is only a vitium theologicum, a peccatum in Deum. But God, in the view of faith, is not only a religious, but a political, juridical being, the King of kings, the true head of the State. “There is no power but of God ... it is the minister of God”—Rom. xiii. 1, 4. If, therefore, the juridical idea of majesty, of kingly dignity and honour, applies to God, sin against God, unbelief, must by consequence come under the definition of crime. And as with God, so with faith. Where faith is still a truth, and a public truth, there no doubt is entertained that it can be demanded of every one, that every one is bound to believe. Be it further observed, that the Christian Church has gone so far in its hatred against heretics, that according to the canon law even the suspicion of heresy is a crime, “ita ut de jure canonico revera crimen suspecti detur, cujus existentiam frustra in jure civili quaerimus.”—Boehmer (l. c. v. Tit. vii. §§ 23–42).

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?

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.

The Christian religion is a contradiction. It is at once the reconciliation and the disunion, the unity and the opposition, of God and man. This contradiction is personified in the God-man. The unity of the Godhead and manhood is at once a truth and an untruth. We have already maintained that if Christ was God, if he was at once man and another being conceived as incapable of suffering, his suffering was an illusion. For his suffering as man was no suffering to him as God. No! what he acknowledged as man he denied as God. He suffered only outwardly, not inwardly, i.e., he suffered only apparently, not really; for he was man only in appearance, in form, in the external; in truth, in essence, in which alone he was an object to the believer, he was God. It would have been true suffering only if he had suffered as God also. What he did not experience in his nature as God, he did not experience in truth, in substance. And, incredible as it is, the Christians themselves half directly, half indirectly, admit that their highest, holiest mystery is only an illusion, a simulation. This simulation indeed lies at the foundation of the thoroughly unhistorical,6 theatrical, illusory Gospel of John. One instance, among others, in which this is especially evident, is the resurrection of Lazarus, where the omnipotent arbiter of life and death evidently sheds tears only in ostentation of his manhood, and expressly says: “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me, and I know that thou hearest me always, but for the sake of the people who stand round I said it, that they may believe in thee.” The simulation thus indicated in the Gospel has been developed by the Church into avowed delusion. “Si credas susceptionem corporis, adjungas divinitatis compassionem, portionem utique perfidiae, non perfidiam declinasti. Credis enim, quod tibi prodesse praesumis, non credis quod Deo dignum est.... Idem enim patiebatur et non patiebatur.... Patiebatur secundum corporis susceptionem, ut suscepti corporis veritas crederetur et non patiebatur secundum verbi impassibilem divinitatem.... Erat igitur immortalis in morte, impassibilis in passione.... Cur divinitati attribuis aerumnas corporis et infirmum doloris humani divinae connectis naturae?”—Ambrosius (de incarnat. domin. sacr. cc. 4, 5). “Juxta hominis naturam proficiebat sapientia, non quod ipse sapientior esset ex tempore ... sed eandem, qua plenus erat, sapientiam caeteris ex tempore paulatim demonstrabat.... In aliis ergo non in se proficiebat sapientia et gratia.”—Gregorius in homil. quadam (ap. Petrus Lomb. l. iii. dist. 13, c. 1). “Proficiebat ergo humanus sensus in eo secundum ostensionem et aliorum hominum opinionem. Ita enim patrem et matrem dicitur ignorasse in infantia, quia ita se gerebat et habebat ac si agnitionis expers esset.”—Petrus L. (ibid. c. 2). “Ut homo ergo dubitat, ut homo locutus est.”—Ambrosius. “His verbis innui videtur, quod Christus non inquantum Deus vel Dei filius, sed inquantum homo dubitaverit affectu humano. Quod ea ratione dictum accipi potest: non quod ipse dubitaverit, sed quod modum gessit dubitantis et hominibus dubitare videbatur.”—Petrus L. (ibid. dist. 17, c. 2). In the first part of the present work we have exhibited the truth, in the second part the untruth of religion, or rather of theology. The truth is only the identity of God and man. Religion is truth only when it affirms human attributes as divine, falsehood when, in the form of theology, it denies these attributes, separating God from man as a different being. Thus, in the first part we had to show the truth of God’s suffering; here we have the proof of its untruth, and not a proof which lies in our own subjective view, but an objective proof—the admission of theology itself, that its highest mystery, the Passion of God, is only a deception, an illusion. It is therefore in the highest degree uncritical, untruthful, and arbitrary to explain the Christian religion, as speculative philosophy has done, only as the religion of reconciliation between God and man, and not also as the religion of disunion between the divine and human nature,—to find in the God-man only the unity, and not also the contradiction of the divine and human nature. Christ suffered only as man, not as God. Capability of suffering is the sign of real humanity. It was not as God that he was born, that he increased in wisdom, and was crucified; i.e., all human conditions remained foreign to him as God. “Si quis non confitetur proprie et vere substantialem differentiam naturarum post ineffabilem unionem, ex quibus unus et solus extitit Christus, in ea salvatum, sit condemnatus.”—Concil. Later. I. can. 7 (Carranza). The divine nature, notwithstanding the position that Christ was at once God and man, is just as much dissevered from the human nature in the incarnation as before it, since each nature excludes the conditions of the other, although both are united in one personality, in an incomprehensible, miraculous, i.e., untrue manner, in contradiction with the relation in which, according to their definition, they stand to each other. Even the Lutherans, nay, Luther himself, however strongly he expresses himself concerning the community and union of the human and divine nature in Christ, does not escape from the irreconcilable division between them. “God is man, and man is God, but thereby neither the natures nor their attributes are confounded, but each nature retains its essence and attributes.” “The Son of God himself has truly suffered and truly died, but according to the human nature which he had assumed; for the divine nature can neither suffer nor die.” “It is truly said, the Son of God suffers. For although the one part (so to speak), as the Godhead, does not suffer, still the person who is God suffers in the other half, the manhood; for in truth the Son of God was crucified for us, that is, the person who is God; for the person is crucified according to his manhood.” “It is the person that does and suffers all, one thing according to this nature, another according to that nature, all which the learned well know.”—(Concordienb. ErklÄr. art. 8.) “The Son of God and God himself is killed and murdered, for God and man is one person. Therefore God was crucified, and died, and became man; not God apart from humanity, but united with it; not according to the Godhead, but according to the human nature which he had assumed.”—Luther (Th. iii. p. 502). Thus only in the person, i.e., only in a nomen proprium, not in essence, not in truth, are the two natures united. “Quando dicitur: Deus est homo vel homo est Deus, propositio ejusmodi vocatur personalis. Ratio est, quia unionem personalem in Christo supponit. Sine tali enim naturarum in Christo unione nunquam dicere potuissem, Deum esse hominem aut hominem esse Deum.... Abstracta autem naturae de se invicem enuntiari non posse, longe est manifestissimum.... Dicere itaque non licet, divina natura est humana aut deitas est humanitas et vice versa.”—J. F. Buddeus (Comp. Inst. Theol. Dogm. l. iv. c. ii. § 11). Thus the union of the divine and human natures in the incarnation is only a deception, an illusion. The old dissidence of God and man lies at the foundation of this dogma also, and operates all the more injuriously, is all the more odious, that it conceals itself behind the appearance, the imagination of unity. Hence Socinianism, far from being superficial when it denied the Trinity and the God-man, was only consistent, only truthful. God was a triune being, and yet he was to be held purely simple, absolute unity, an ens simplicissimum; thus the Unity contradicted the Trinity. God was God-man, and yet the Godhead was not to be touched or annulled by the manhood, i.e., it was to be essentially distinct; thus the incompatibility of the divine and human attributes contradicted the unity of the two natures. According to this, we have in the very idea of the God-man the arch-enemy of the God-man,—rationalism, blended, however, with its opposite—mysticism. Thus Socinianism only denied what faith itself denied, and yet, in contradiction with itself, at the same time affirmed; it only denied a contradiction, an untruth.

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.

Man is the God of Christianity, Anthropology the mystery of Christian Theology. The history of Christianity has had for its grand result the unveiling of this mystery—the realisation and recognition of theology as anthropology. The distinction between Protestantism and Catholicism—the old Catholicism, which now exists only in books, not in actuality—consists only in this, that the latter is Theology, the former Christology, i.e., (religious) Anthropology. Catholicism has a supranaturalistic, abstract God, a God who is other than human, a not human, a superhuman being. The goal of Catholic morality, likeness to God, consists therefore in this, to be not a man, but more than a man—a heavenly abstract being, an angel. Only in its morality does the essence of a religion realise, reveal itself: morality alone is the criterion, whether a religious dogma is felt as a truth or is a mere chimera. Thus the doctrine of a superhuman, supernatural God is a truth only where it has as its consequence a superhuman, supernatural, or rather antinatural morality. Protestantism, on the contrary, has not a supranaturalistic but a human morality, a morality of and for flesh and blood; consequently its God, at least its true, real God, is no longer an abstract, supranaturalistic being, but a being of flesh and blood. “This defiance the devil hears unwillingly, that our flesh and blood is the Son of God, yea, God himself, and reigns in heaven over all.”—Luther (Th. xvi. p. 573). “Out of Christ there is no God, and where Christ is, there is the whole Godhead.”—Id. (Th. xix. p. 403). Catholicism has, both in theory and practice, a God who, in spite of the predicate of love, exists for himself, to whom therefore man only comes by being against himself, denying himself, renouncing his existence for self; Protestantism, on the contrary, has a God who, at least practically, virtually, has not an existence for himself, but exists only for man, for the welfare of man. Hence in Catholicism the highest act of the cultus, “the mass of Christ,” is a sacrifice of man,—the same Christ, the same flesh and blood, is sacrificed to God in the Host as on the cross; in Protestantism, on the contrary, it is a sacrifice, a gift of God: God sacrifices himself, surrenders himself to be partaken by man. (See Luther, e.g., Th. xx. p. 259; Th. xvii. p. 529.) In Catholicism manhood is the property, the predicate of the Godhead (of Christ)—God is man; in Protestantism, on the contrary, Godhead is the property, the predicate of manhood (Christ)—man is God. “This, in time past, the greatest theologians have done—they have fled from the manhood of Christ to his Godhead, and attached themselves to that alone, and thought that we should not know the manhood of Christ. But we must so rise to the Godhead of Christ, and hold by it in such a way, as not to forsake the manhood of Christ and come to the Godhead alone. Thou shouldst know of no God, nor Son of God, save him who was born of the Virgin Mary and became man. He who receives his manhood has also his Godhead.”—Luther (Th. ix. pp. 592, 598).7 Or, briefly thus: in Catholicism, man exists for God; in Protestantism, God exists for man.8 “Jesus Christ our Lord was conceived for us, born for us, suffered for us, was crucified, died, and was buried for us. Our Lord rose from the dead for our consolation, sits for our good at the right hand of the Almighty Father, and is to judge the living and the dead for our comfort. This the holy Apostles and beloved Fathers intended to intimate in their confession by the words: Us and our Lord—namely, that Jesus Christ is ours, whose office and will it is to help us ... so that we should not read or speak the words coldly, and interpret them only of Christ, but of ourselves also.”—Luther (Th. xvi. p. 538). “I know of no God but him who gave himself for me. Is not that a great thing that God is man, that God gives himself to man and will be his, as man gives himself to his wife and is hers? But if God is ours, all things are ours.”—(Th. xii. p. 283.) “God cannot be a God of the dead, who are nothing, but is a God of the living. If God were a God of the dead, he would be as a husband who had no wife, or as a father who had no son, or as a master who had no servant. For if he is a husband, he must have a wife. If he is a father, he must have a son. If he is a master, he must have a servant. Or he would be a fictitious father, a fictitious master, that is, nothing. God is not a God like the idols of the heathens, neither is he an imaginary God, who exists for himself alone, and has none who call upon him and worship him. A God is he from whom everything is to be expected and received.... If he were God for himself alone in heaven, and we had no good to rely on from him, he would be a God of stone or straw.... If he sat alone in heaven like a clod, he would not be God.”—(Th. xvi. p. 465). “God says: I the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth am thy God.... To be a God means to redeem us from all evil and trouble that oppresses us, as sin, hell, death, &c.”—(Th. ii. p. 327.) “All the world calls that a God in whom man trusts in need and danger, on whom he relies, from whom all good is to be had and who can help. Thus reason describes God, that he affords help to man, and does good to him, bestows benefits upon him. This thou seest also in this text: ‘I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt.’ There we are taught what God is, what is his nature, and what are his attributes,—namely, that he does good, delivers from dangers, and helps out of trouble and all calamities.”—(Th. iv. pp. 236, 237.) But if God is a living, i.e., real God, is God in general, only in virtue of this—that he is a God to man, a being who is useful, good, beneficent to man; then, in truth, man is the criterion, the measure of God, man is the absolute, divine being. The proposition: A God existing only for himself is no God—means nothing else than that God without man is not God; where there is no man there is no God; if thou takest from God the predicate of humanity, thou takest from him the predicate of deity; if his relation to man is done away with, so also is his existence.

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.

1 “Manifestum igitur est tantum religionis sanguini et affinitati, quantum ipsis Diis immortalibus tributum: quia inter ista tam sancta vincula non magis, quam in aliquo loco sacrato nudare se, nefas esse credebatur.”—Valer. Max. (l. ii. c. i.)?

2 See the author’s “Leibnitz.”?

3 [Here follows in the original a distinction between Herz, or feeling directed towards real objects, and therefore practically sympathetic; and GemÜth, or feeling directed towards imaginary objects, and therefore practically unsympathetic, self-absorbed. But the verbal distinction is not adhered to in the ordinary use of the language, or, indeed, by Feuerbach himself; and the psychological distinction is sufficiently indicated in other parts of the present work. The passage is therefore omitted, as likely to confuse the reader.—Tr.]?

4 “Haereticus usu omnium jurium destitutus est, ut deportatus.”—J. H. Boehmer (l. c. l. v. Tit. vii. § 223. See also Tit. vi.)?

5 Very many Christians rejected the punishment of death, but other criminal punishments of heretics, such as banishment, confiscation—punishments which deprive of life indirectly—they did not find in contradiction with their Christian faith. See on this subject J. H. Boehmer, Jus. Eccl. Protest. l. v. Tit. vii. e.g. §§ i. 155, 157, 162, 163.?

6 On this subject I refer to LÜtzelberger’s work: “Die Kirchliche Tradition Über den Apostel Johannes und seine Schriften in ihrer Grundlosigkeit nachgewiesen,” and to Bruno Bauer’s “Kritik der Evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker und des Johannes” (B. iii.).?

7 In another place Luther praises St. Bernard and Bonaventura because they laid so much stress on the manhood of Christ.?

8 It is true that in Catholicism also—in Christianity generally, God exists for man; but it was Protestantism which first drew from this relativity of God its true result—the absoluteness of man.?

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