declaration of the Holy Scriptures, are given and imparted to the man Christ." "Therefore we believe, teach, and confess that the Son of Man...now not only as God, but also as man, knows all things, can do all things, is present with all creatures." "We reject and condemn the doctrine that he (the Son of God) is not capable according to his human nature of omnipotence and other attributes of the divine nature."--(Concordienb. Summar. Begr. u. Erklär. art. 8.) "Unde et sponte sua fluit, Christo etiam qua humanam naturam spectato cultum religiosum deberi."--Buddeus (l. c. l. iv. c. ii. § 17). The same is expressly taught by the Fathers and the Catholics, e.g., "Eadem adoratione adoranda in Christo est divinitas et humanitas...Divinitas intrinsece inest humanitati per unionem hypostaticam: ergo humanitas Christi seu Christus ut homo potest adorari absoluto cultu latriae."--Theol. Schol. (sec. Thomam Aq. P. Metzger. iv. p. 124). It is certainly said that it is not man, not flesh and blood by itself, which is worshipped, but the flesh united with God, so that the cultus applies not to the flesh, or man, but to God. But it is here as with the worship of saints and images. As the saint is adored in the image and God in the saint, only because the image and the saint are themselves adored, so God is worshipped in the human body only because the human flesh is itself worshipped. God becomes flesh, man, because man is in truth already God. How could it enter into thy mind to bring the human flesh into so close a relation and contact with God if it were something impure, degrading, unworthy of God? If the value, the dignity of the human flesh does not lie in itself, why dost thou not make other flesh--the flesh of brutes the habitation of the Divine Spirit? True it is said: Man is only the organ in, with, and by which the Godhead works, as the soul in the body. But this pretext also is refuted by what has been said above. God chose man as his organ, his body, because only in man did he find an organ worthy of him, suitable, pleasing to him. If the nature of man is indifferent, why did not God become incarnate in a brute? Thus God comes into man only out of man. The manifestation of God in man is only a manifestation of the divinity and glory of man. "Noscitur ex alio, qui non cognoscitur ex se"--this trivial saying is applicable here. God is known through man, whom he honours with his personal presence and indwelling, and known as a human being, for what any one prefers, selects, loves, in his objective nature; and man is known through God, and known as a divine being, for only that which is worthy of God, which is divine, can be the object, organ, and habitation of God. True it is further said: It is Jesus Christ alone, and no other man, who is worshipped as God. But this argument also is idle and empty. Christ is indeed one only, but he is one who represents all. He is a man as we are, "our brother, and we are flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone." "In Jesus Christ our Lord every one of us is a portion of flesh and blood. Therefore where my body is, there I believe that I myself reign. Where my flesh is glorified, there I believe that I am myself glorious. Where my blood rules, there I hold that I myself rule."--Luther (Th. xvi. p. 534). This then is an undeniable fact: Christians worship the human individual as the supreme being, as God. Not indeed consciously, for it is the unconsciousness of this fact which constitutes the illusion of the religious principle. But in this sense it may be said that the heathens did not worship the statues of the gods; for to them also the statue was not a statue, but God himself. Nevertheless they did worship the statue; just as Christians worship the human individual, though, naturally, they will not admit it.
§ 22.
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). [236] Or, briefly thus: in Catholicism, man exists for God; in Protestantism, God exists for man. [237] "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.
NOTES [1] The opening paragraphs of this Preface are omitted, as having too specific a reference to transient German polemics to interest the English reader.
[2] For example, in considering the sacraments, I limit myself to two; for in the strictest sense (see Luther, T. xvii. p. 558), there are no more.
[3] "Objectum intellectus esse illimitatum sive omne verum ac, ut loquuntur, omne ens ut ens, ex eo constat, quod ad nullum non genus rerum extenditur, nullumque est, cujus cognoscendi capax non sit, licet ob varia obstacula multa sint, quæ re ipsa non norit."--Gassendi (Opp. Omn. Phys.).
[4] The obtuse Materialist says: "Man is distinguished from the brute only by consciousness--he is an animal with consciousness superadded;" not reflecting, that in a being which awakes to consciousness, there takes place a qualitative change, a differentiation of the entire nature. For the rest, our words are by no means intended to depreciate the nature of the lower animals. This is not the place to enter further into that question.
[5] "Toute opinion est assez forte pour se faire exposer au prix de la vie."--Montaigne.
[6] Homini homine nihil pulchrius. (Cic. de Nat. D. l. i.) And this is no sign of limitation, for he regards other beings as beautiful besides himself; he delights in the beautiful forms of animals, in the beautiful forms of plants, in the beauty of nature in general. But only the absolute, the perfect form, can delight without envy in the forms of other beings.
[7] "The understanding is percipient only of understanding, and what proceeds thence."--Reimarus (Wahrh. der Natürl. Religion, iv. Abth. § 8).
[8] "Verisimile est, non minus quam geometriæ, etiam musicæ oblectationem ad plures quam ad nos pertinere. Positis enim aliis terris atque animalibus ratione et auditu pollentibus, cur tantum his nostris contigisset ea voluptas, quæ sola ex sono percipi potest?"--Christ. Hugenius (Cosmotheor., l. i.).
[10] "Unusquisque vestrum non cogitat, prius se debere Deum nosse, quam colere."--M. Minucii Felicis Octavianus, c. 24.
[11] The meaning of this parenthetic limitation will be clear in the sequel.
[12] "Les perfections de Dieu sont celles de nos âmes, mais il les possede sans bornes--il y a en nous quelque puissance, quelque connaissance quelque bonté, mais elles sont toutes entières en Dieu."--Leibnitz (Théod. Preface). "Nihil in anima esse putemus eximium, quod non etiam divinæ naturæ proprium sit--Quidquid a Deo alienum extra definitionem animæ"--St. Gregorius Nyss. "Est ergo, ut videtur, disciplinarum omnium pulcherrima et maxima se ipsum nosse; si quis enim se ipsum norit, Deum cognoscet."--Clemens Alex. (Pæd. 1. iii. c. 1).
[13] For religious faith there is no other distinction between the present and future God than that the former is an object of faith, of conception, of imagination, while the latter is to be an object of immediate, that is, personal, sensible perception. In this life and in the next he is the same God; but in the one he is incomprehensible, in the other comprehensible.
[14] Inter creatorem et creaturam non potest tanta similitudo notari, quin inter eos major sit dissimilitudo notanda.--Later. Conc. can. 2. (Summa Omn. Conc. Carranza. Antw. 1559. p. 326.) The last distinction between man and God, between the finite and infinite nature, to which the religious speculative imagination soars, is the distinction between Something and Nothing, Ens and Non-Ens; for only in Nothing is all community with other beings abolished.
[15] Gloriam suam plus amat Deus quam omnes creaturas. "God can only love himself, can only think of himself, can only work for himself. In creating man, God seeks his own ends, his own glory," &c.--Vide P. Bayle, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Philos. u. Menschh., pp. 104-107.
[16] Pelagianism denies God, religion--isti tantam tribuunt potestatem voluntati, ut pietati auferant orationem. (Augustin de Nat. et Grat. cont. Pelagium, c. 58.) It has only the Creator, i.e., Nature, as a basis, not the Saviour, the true God of the religious sentiment--in a word, it denies God; but, as a consequence of this, it elevates man into a God, since it makes him a being not needing God, self-sufficing, independent. (See on this subject Luther against Erasmus and Augustine, l. c. c. 33.) Augustinianism denies man; but, as a consequence of this, it reduces God to the level of man, even to the ignominy of the cross, for the sake of man. The former puts man in the place of God, the latter puts God in the place of man; both lead to the same result--the distinction is only apparent, a pious illusion. Augustinianism is only an inverted Pelagianism; what to the latter is a subject, is to the former an object.
[17] The religious, the original mode in which man becomes objective to himself, is (as is clearly enough, explained in this work) to be distinguished from the mode in which this occurs in reflection and speculation; the latter is voluntary, the former involuntary, necessary--as necessary as art, as speech. With the progress of time, it is true; theology coincides with religion.
[19] See, for example, Gen. xxxv. 2; Levit. xi. 44; xx. 26; and the Commentary of Le Clerc on these passages.
[20] Augustine, in his work Contra Academicos, which he wrote when he was still in some measure a heathen, says (l. iii. c. 12) that the highest good of man consists in the mind or in the reason. On the other hand, in his Libr. Retractationum, which he wrote as a distinguished Christian and theologian, he revises (l. i. c. 1) this declaration as follows:--Verius dixissem in Deo. Ipso enim mens fruitur, ut beata sit, tanquam summo bono suo. But is there any distinction here? Where my highest good is, is not there my nature also?
[21] Kant, Vorles. über d. philos. Religionsl., Leipzig, 1817, p. 39.
[23] To guard against mistake, I observe that I do not apply to the understanding the expression self-subsistent essence, and other terms of a like character, in my own sense, but that I am here placing myself on the standpoint of onto-theology, of metaphysical theology in general, in order to show that metaphysics is resolvable into psychology, that the onto-theological predicates are merely predicates of the understanding.
[24] Malebranche. (See the author's Geschichte der Philos., 1 Bd. p. 322.) "Exstaretne alibi diversa ab hac ratio? censereturque injustum aut scelestum in Jove aut Marte, quod apud nos justum ac præclarum habetur? Certe nec verisimile nec omnino possibile."--Chr. Hugenii (Cosmotheoros, lib. i.).
[25] In religion, the representation or expression of the nothingness of man before God is the anger of God; for as the love of God is the affirmation, his anger is the negation of man. But even this anger is not taken in earnest. "God...is not really angry. He is not thoroughly in earnest even when we think that he is angry, and punishes."--Luther (Th. viii. p. 208).
[26] Luther, Concordienbuch, Art. 8, Erklär.
[27] Luther, Sämmtliche Schriften und Werke, Leipzig, 1729, fol. Th. iii. p. 589. It is according to this edition that references are given throughout the present work.
[28] Predigten etzlicher Lehrer vor und zu Tauleri Zeiten, Hamburg, 1621, p. 81.
[29] "That which, in our own judgment, derogates from our self-conceit, humiliates us. Thus the moral law inevitably humiliates every man when he compares with it the sensual tendency of his nature."--Kant, Kritik der prakt. Vernunft, 4th edition, p. 132.
[30] "Omnes peccavimus...Parricide cum lega cæperunt et illis facinus poena monstravit."--Seneca. "The law destroys us."--Luther (Th. xvi. s. 320).
[31] "Das Rechtsgefühl der Sinnlichkeit."
[32] "This, my God and Lord, has taken upon him my nature, flesh and blood such as I have, and has been tempted and has suffered in all things like me, but without sin; therefore he can have pity on my weakness.--Hebrews v. Luther (Th. xvi. s. 533). "The deeper we can bring Christ into the flesh the better."--(Ibid. s. 565.) "God himself, when he is dealt with out of Christ, is a terrible God, for no consolation is found in him, but pure anger and disfavour."--(Th. xv. s. 298.)
[33] "Such descriptions as those in which the Scriptures speak of God as of a man, and ascribe to him all that is human, are very sweet and comforting--namely, that he talks with us as a friend, and of such things as men are wont to talk of with each other; that he rejoices, sorrows, and suffers, like a man, for the sake of the mystery of the future humanity of Christ."--Luther (Th. ii. p. 334).
[34] "Deus homo factus est, ut homo Deus fieret."--Augustinus (Serm. ad Pop. p. 371, c. 1). In Luther, however (Th. i. p. 334), there is a passage which indicates the true relation. When Moses called man "the image of God, the likeness of God," he meant, says Luther, obscurely to intimate that "God was to become man." Thus here the incarnation of God is clearly enough represented as a consequence of the deification of man.
[35] It was in this sense that the old uncompromising enthusiastic faith celebrated the Incarnation. "Amor triumphat de Deo," says St. Bernard. And only in the sense of a real self-renunciation, self-negation of the Godhead, lies the reality, the vis of the Incarnation; although this self-negation is in itself merely a conception of the imagination, for, looked at in broad daylight, God does not negative himself in the Incarnation, but he shows himself as that which he is, as a human being. The fabrications which modern rationalistic orthodoxy and pietistic rationalism have advanced concerning the Incarnation, in opposition to the rapturous conceptions and expressions of ancient faith, do not deserve to be mentioned, still less controverted.
[36] "Nos scimus affici Deum misericordia nostri et non solum respicere lacrymas nostras, sed etiam numerare stillulas, sicut scriptum in Psalmo LVI. Filius Dei vere afficitur sensu miseriarum nostrarum."--Melancthonis et aliorum (Declam. Th. iii. p. 286, p. 450).
[37] St. Bernard resorts to a charmingly sophistical play of words:--"Impassibilis est Deus, sed non incompassibilis, cui proprium est misereri semper et parcere."--(Sup. Cant. Sermo 26.) As if compassion were not suffering--the suffering of love, it is true, the suffering of the heart. But what does suffer if not thy sympathising heart? No love, no suffering. The material, the source of suffering, is the universal heart, the common bond of all beings.
[38] Religion speaks by example. Example is the law of religion. What Christ did is law. Christ suffered for others; therefore, we should do likewise. "Quæ necessitas fuit ut sic exinaniret se, sic humiliaret se, sic abbreviaret se Dominus majestatis; nisi ut vos similiter faciatis?"--Bernardus (in Die nat. Domini). "We ought studiously to consider the example of Christ...That would move us and incite us, so that we from our hearts should willingly help and serve other people, even though it might be hard, and we must suffer on account of it."--Luther (Th. xv. p. 40).
[39] "Hærent plerique hoc loco. Ego autem non solum excusandum non puto, sed etiam nusquam magis pietatem ejus majestatemque demiror. Minus enim contulerat mihi, nisi meum suscepisset affectum. Ergo pro me doluit, qui pro se nihil habuit, quod doleret."--Ambrosius (Exposit. in Lucæ Ev. l. x. c. 22).
[40] "Quando enim illi (Deo) appropinquare auderemus in sua impassibilitate manenti?"--Bernardus (Tract. de xii. Grad. Humil. et Superb.).
[41] "Deus meus pendet in patibulo et ego voluptati operam dabo?"--(Form. Hon. Vitæ. Among the spurious writings of St. Bernard.) "Memoria crucifixi crucifigat in te carnem tuam."--Joh. Gerhard (Medit. Sacræ, M. 37).
[42] "It is better to suffer evil than to do good."--Luther (Th. iv. s. 15).
[43] "Pati voluit, ut compati disceret, miser fieri, ut misereri disceret."--Bernhard (de Grad.). "Miserere nostri, quoniam carnis imbecillitatem, tu ipse eam passus, expertus es."--Clemens Alex. Pædag. l. i. c. 8.
[44] "Dei essentia est extra omnes creaturas, sicut ab æterno fuit Deus in se ipso; ab omnibus ergo creaturis amorem tuum abstrahas."--John Gerhard (Medit. Sacræ, M. 31). "If thou wouldst have the Creator, thou must do without the creature. The less of the creature, the more of God. Therefore, abjure all creatures, with all their consolations."--J. Tauler (Postilla. Hamburg, 1621, p. 312). "If a man cannot say in his heart with truth: God and I are alone in the world--there is nothing else,--he has no peace in himself."--G. Arnold (Von Verschmähung der Welt. Wahre Abbild der Ersten Christen, L. 4, c. 2, § 7).
[45] "Exigit ergo Deus timeri ut Dominus, honorari ut pater, ut sponsus amari. Quid in his præstat, quid eminet?--Amor." Bernardus (Sup. Cant. Serm. 83).
[46] Just as the feminine spirit of Catholicism--in distinction from Protestantism, whose principle is the masculine God, the masculine spirit--is the Mother of God.
[47] "Dum Patris et Filii proprietates communionemque delectabilem intueor, nihil delectabilius in illis invenio, quam mutuum amoris affectum."--Anselmus (in Rixner's Gesch. d. Phil. II. B. Anh. p. 18).
[48] "Natus est de Patre semper et matre semel; de Patre sine sexu, de matre sine usu. Apud patrem quippe defuit concipientis uterus; apud matrem defuit seminantis amplexus."--Augustinus (Serm. ad Pop. p. 372, c. 1, ed. Bened. Antw. 1701).
[49] In Jewish mysticism, God, according to one school, is a masculine, the Holy Spirit a feminine principle, out of whose intermixture arose the Son, and with him the world. Gfrörer, Jahrb. d. H. i. Abth. pp. 332-334. The Herrnhuters also called the Holy Spirit the mother of the Saviour.
[50] "For it could not have been difficult or impossible to God to bring his Son into the world without a mother; but it was his will to use the woman for that end."--Luther (Th. ii. p. 348).
[51] In the Concordienbuch, Erklär. Art. 8, and in the Apol. of the Augsburg Confession, Mary is nevertheless still called the "Blessed Virgin, who was truly the Mother of God, and yet remained a virgin,"--"worthy of all honour."
[52] "Sit monachus quasi Melchisedec sine patre, sine matre, sine genealogia: neque patrem sibi vocet super terram. Imo sic existimet, quasi ipse sit solus et Deus. (Specul. Monach. Pseudo-Bernard.) Melchisedec...refertur ad exemplum, ut tanquam sine patre et sine matre sacerdos esse debeat."--Ambrosius.
[53] "Negas ergo Deum, si non omnia filio, quæ Dei sunt, deferentur."--Ambrosius de Fide ad Gratianum, l. iii. c. 7. On the same ground the Latin Church adhered so tenaciously to the dogma that the Holy Spirit proceeded not from the Father alone, as the Greek Church maintained, but from the Son also. See on this subject J. G. Walchii, Hist. Contr. Gr. et Lat. de Proc. Spir. S. Jenæ, 1751.
[54] This is expressed very significantly in the Incarnation. God renounces, denies his majesty, power, and affinity, in order to become a man; i.e., man denies the God who is not himself a man, and only affirms the God who affirms man. Exinanivit, says St. Bernard, majestate et potentia, non bonitate et misericordia. That which cannot be renounced, cannot be denied, is thus the Divine goodness and mercy, i.e., the self-affirmation of the human heart.
[55] It is obvious that the Image of God has also another signification, namely, that the personal, visible man is God himself. But here the image is considered simply as an image.
[56] Let the reader only consider, for example, the Transfiguration, the Resurrection, and the Ascension of Christ.
[57] "Sacram imaginem Domini nostri Jesu Christi et omnium Salvatoris æquo honore cum libro sanctorum evangeliorum adorari decernimus...Dignum est enim ut...propter honorem qui ad principia refertur, etiam derivative imagines honorentur et adorentur."--Gener. Const. Conc. viii. Art. 10, Can. 3.
[58] "Tanta certe vis nomini Jesu inest contra dæmones, ut nonnunquam etiam a malis nominatum sit efficax."--Origenes adv. Celsum, l. i; see also l. iii.
[59] "God reveals himself to us, as the Speaker, who has, in himself, an eternal uncreated Word, whereby he created the world and all things, with slight labour, namely, with speech, so that to God it is not more difficult to create than it is to us to name."--Luther, Th. i. p. 302.
[60] "Hylarius...Si quis innascibilem et sine initio dicat filium, quasi duo sine principio et duo innascibilia, et duo innata dicens, duos faciat Deos, anathema sit. Caput autem quod est principium Christi, Deus...Filium innascibilem confiteri impiissimum est."--Petrus Lomb. Sent. l. i. dist. 31, c. 4.
[61] It is therefore mere self-delusion to suppose that the hypothesis of a creation explains the existence of the world.
[62] It is beside our purpose to criticise this crass mystical theory. We merely remark here, that darkness can be explained only when it is derived from light; that the derivation of the darkness in Nature from light appears an impossibility only when it is not perceived that even in darkness there is a residue of light, that the darkness in Nature is not an absolute, but a modified darkness, tempered by light.
[63] Schelling, Ueber das Wesen der Menschlichen Freiheit, 429, 432, 427. Denkmal Jacobi's, s. 82, 97-99.
[66] The Philosophus teutonicus walked physically as well as mentally on volcanic ground. "The town of Görlitz is paved throughout with pure basalt."--Charpentier, Mineral. Geographie der Chursächsischen Lande, p. 19.
[68] According to Swedenborg, the angels in heaven have clothes and dwellings. "Their dwellings are altogether such as the dwellings or houses on earth, but far more beautiful; there are apartments, rooms, and sleeping chambers therein in great number, and entrance-courts, and round about gardens, flowers, meadows, and fields." (E. v. S. Auserlesene Schriften, 1 Th. Frankf. a. M. 1776, p. 190, and 96.) Thus to the mystic this world is the other world; but for that reason the other world is this world.
[70] "Quidquid enim unus quisque super cætera colit: hoc illi Deus est."--Origines Explan. in Epist. Pauli ad Rom. c. l.
[71] "Quare fecit Deus coelum et terram? Quia voluit. Voluntas enim Dei causa est coeli et terræ et ideo major est voluntas Dei quam coelum et terra. Qui autem dicit: quare voluit facere coelum et terram? majus aliquid quærit, quam est voluntas Dei, nihil enim majus invenire potest."--Augustinus (de Genesi adv. Manich. l. i. c. 2).
[72] A more profound origin of the creation out of nothing lies in the emotional nature, as is both directly and indirectly declared in this work. But arbitrariness is, in fact, the will of the emotions, their external manifestation of force.
[73] "Certissimum divinæ providentiæ; testimonium præbent miracula."--H. Grotius (de Verit. Rel. Christ. l. i. § 13).
[74] It is true that religious naturalism, or the acknowledgment of the Divine in Nature, is also an element of the Christian religion, and yet more of the Mosaic, which was so friendly to animals. But it is by no means the characteristic, the Christian tendency of the Christian religion. The Christian, the religious Providence, is quite another than that which clothes the lilies and feeds the ravens. The natural Providence lets a man sink in the water, if he has not learned to swim; but the Christian, the religious Providence, leads him with the hand of omnipotence over the water unharmed.
[75] In this contrast of the religious, or biblical, and the natural Providence, the author had especially in view the vapid, narrow theology of the English natural philosophers.
[76] "Qui Deos negant, nobilitatem generis humani destruunt."--Bacon (Serm. Fidel. 16).
[77] In Clemens Alex. (Coh. ad Gentes) there is an interesting passage. It runs in the Latin translation (the bad Augsburg edition, 1778) thus:--"At nos ante mundi constitutionem fuimus, ratione futuræ nostræ productionis, in ipso Deo quodammodo tum præexistentes. Divini igitur Verbi sive Rationis, nos creaturæ rationales sumus, et per eum primi esse dicimur, quoniam in principio erat verbum." Yet more decidedly, however, has Christian mysticism declared the human nature to be the creative principle, the ground of the world. "Man, who, before time was, existed in eternity, works with God all the works that God wrought a thousand years ago, and now, after a thousand years, still works." "All creatures have sprung forth through man."--Predigten, vor u. zu Tauleri Zeiten (Ed. c. p. 5, p. 119).
[78] Hence is explained why all attempts of speculative theology and of its kindred philosophy to make the transition from God to the world, or to derive the world from God, have failed and must fail. Namely, because they are fundamentally false, from being made in ignorance of the idea on which the Creation really turns.