THE

E N G L IS H A N D F O R E IG N

PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY.

VOLUME XV.
 “ I confess that to .Feuerbach 'I owe a debt of inestimable gratitude.
Feeling about in uncertainty for the ground, and finding everywhere shiftiug
sands, Feuerbach cast a sudden blaze into the darkness, and disclosed to me
the way.”—From S. Baring-Gould’s “ The Origin and Development of
Religious Belief,” Part II., Preface, page xii.
 THE

ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

BY

LUDWIG FEUERBACH.

T R A N S L A T E D FROM T H E SECOND G E R M A N E D IT IO N

BY

M A R IA N EVAN S,
TRANSLATOR OP “ STRAUSS’S LIFE OF JES US. ”

Second Edition.

LONDON:
TRÜBNEE & CO., LUDGATE HI LL.
l88l.
[ AII rights reserved. ]
BALI.ANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.
EDINBURGH AN D LONDON
 PUBLISHERS* NOTE.

T he first edition of this work was published in 1854, and,

although a large one, has been long out of print. Many
inquiries having been made for it since the recent lamented
death of the translator, the publishers have determined to
offer a second edition to the public, and have been advised to
give it a place in their “ English and Foreign Philosophical
Library.” It is an exact reprint of the first edition, and
they trust it will be received with equal favour.

London, June 1881.

b
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.*

T h e clamour excited by the present work has not surprised

me, and hence it has. not in the least moved me from my
position. On the contrary, I have once more, in all calmness,
subjected my work to the severest scrutiny, both historical
and philosophical; I have, as far as possible, freed it from
its defects of form, and enriched it with new developments,
illustrations, and historical testimonies,— testimonies in the
highest degree striking and irrefragable. Now that I have
thus verified my analysis by historical proofs, it is to be
hoped that readers whose eyes are not sealed will be con­
vinced and will admit, even though reluctantly, that my
work contains a faithful, correct translation of the Christian
religion out of the Oriental language of imagery into plain
speech. And it has no pretension to be anything more than
a close translation, or, to speak literally, an empirical or
historico-philosophical analysis, a solution of the enigma
of the Christian religion. The general propositions which
I premise in the Introduction are no d priori, excogitated
propositions, no products of speculation; they have arisen
out of the analysis of religion; they are only, as indeed
are all the fundamental ideas of the work, generalisations
from the known manifestations of human nature, and in
particular of the religious consciousness,— facts converted
into thoughts, i.e., expressed in general terms, and thus made
the property of the understanding. The ideas of my work
are only conclusions, consequences, drawn from premisses
which are not themselves mere ideas, but objective facts
either actual or historical— facts which had not their place
* The opening paragraphs of this Preface are omitted, as having too
specific a reference to transient German polemics to interest the English
reader.
viii P R E FA C E .

in my head simply in virtue of their ponderous existence

in folio. I unconditionally repudiate absolute, immaterial,
self-sufficing speculation,— that speculation which draws its
material from within. I differ toto ccdo from those philo­
sophers who pluck out their eyes that they may see better;
for my thought I require the senses, especially sight; I
found my ideas on materials which can be appropriated
only through the activity of the senses. I do not gene­
rate the object from the thought, but the thought from the
object; and I hold that alone to be an object which has an
existence beyond one’s own brain. I am an idealist only in
the region of practical philosophy, that is, I do not regard
the limits of the past and present as the limits of humanity,
of the future; on the contrary, I firmly believe that many
things— yes, many things— which with the short-sighted,
pusillanimous practical men of to-day, pass for flights of
imagination, for ideas never to be realised, for mere chimeras,
will to-morrow, i.e.t in the next century,— centuries in indi­
vidual life are days in the life of humanity,— exist in full
reality. Briefly, the “ Idea” is to me only faith in the
historical future, in the triumph of truth and virtue; it has
for me only a political and moral significance; for in the
sphere of strictly theoretical philosophy, I attach myself, in
direct opposition to the Hegelian philosophy, only to realism,
to materialism in the sense above indicated. The maxim
hitherto adopted by speculative philosophy: A ll that is
mine I carry with me, the old omnia mea mecum porto, I
cannot, alas! appropriate. 1 have many things outside my­
self, which I cannot convey either in my pocket or my head,
but which nevertheless I look upon as belonging to me, not
indeed as a mere man— a view not now in question— but as a
philosopher. I am nothing but a natural philosopher in the
domain of mind; and the natural philosopher can do nothing
without instruments, without material means. In this
character I have written the present work, which con­
sequently contains nothing else than the principle of a new
philosophy verified practically, i.e., in concreto, in application
to a special object, but an object which has a universal
significance: namely, to religion, in which this principle is
exhibited, developed, and thoroughly carried out. This
philosophy is essentially distinguished from the systems
hitherto prevalent, in that it corresponds to the real, com­
 PREFACE. ix

plete nature of man; but for that very reason it is antagon­

istic to minds perverted and crippled by a superhuman, i.e.,
anti-human, anti-natural religion and speculation. It does
not, as I have already said elsewhere, regard the pen as the
only fit organ for the revelation of truth, but the eye and
ear, the hand and foot; it does not identify the idea of the
fact with the fact itself, so as to reduce real existence to an
existence on paper, but it separates the two, and precisely
by this separation attains to the fact itself; it recognises as
the true thing, not the thing as it is an object of the abstract
reason, but as it is an object of the real, complete man, and
hence as it is itself a real, complete thing. This philosophy
does not rest on an 'Understanding per se, on an absolute,
nameless understanding, belonging one knows not to whom,
but on the understanding of man;— though not, I grant, on
that of man enervated by speculation and dogma;— and it
speaks the language of men, not an empty, unknown tongue.
Yes, both in substance and in speech, it places philosophy
in the negation of philosophy, i.e., it declares that alone to
be the true philosophy which is converted in succum et
sangwinem, which is incarnate in M an; and hence it finds
its highest triumph in the fact that to all dull and pedantic
minds, which place the essence of philosophy in the show of
philosophy, it appears to be no philosophy at all.
This philosophy has for its principle, not the Substance
of Spinoza, not the ego of Kant and Fichte, not the Absolute
Identity of Schelling, not the Absolute Mind of Hegel, in
short, no abstract, merely coneeptional being, but a real
being, the true Ens realissimum— man; its principle, there­
fore, is in the highest degree positive and real. It generates
thought from the opposite of thought, from Matter, from
existence, from the senses; it has relation to its object first
through the senses, i.e., passively, before defining it in
thought. Hence my work, as a specimen of this philosophy,
so far from being a production to be placed in the category
of Speculation,— although in another point of view it is the
true, the incarnate result of prior philosophical systems,—
is the direct opposite of speculation, nay, puts an end to it
by explaining it. Speculation makes religion say only what
it has itself thought, and expressed far better than religion;
it assigns a meaning to religion without any reference to
the actual meaning of religion; it does not look beyond
X PREFACE.

itself. I, on the contrary, let religion itself speak; I

constitute myself only its listener and interpreter, not its
prompter. Not to invent, but to discover, “ to unveil
existence,” has been my sole object; to see correctly, my
sole endeavour. It is not I, but religion that worships
man, although religion, or rather theology, denies this; it
is not I, an insignificant individual, but religion itself that
says: God is man, man is God; it is not I, but religion
that denies the God who is not man, but only an ens
rationis,— since it makes God become man, and then
constitutes this God, not distinguished from man, having
a human form, human feelings, and human thoughts, the
object of its worship and veneration.' I have only found
the key to the cipher of the Christian religion, only extri­
cated its true meaning from the web of contradictions and
delusions called theology;— but in doing so I have certainly
committed a sacrilege. If therefore my work is negative,
irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered that atheism— at
least in the sense of this work— is the secret of religion
itself; that religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but
fundamentally, not in intention or according to its own
supposition, but in its heart, in its essence, believes in
nothing else than the truth and divinity of human nature.
Or let it be proved that the historical as well as the rational
arguments of my work are false; let them be refuted— not,
however, I entreat, by judicial denunciations, or theological
jeremiads, by the trite phrases of speculation, or other
pitiful expedients for which I have no name, but by
reasons, and such reasons as I have not already thoroughly
answered.
Certainly, my work is negative, destructive; but, be it
observed, only in relation to the inhuman, not to the human
elements of religion. It is therefore divided into two parts,
of which the first is, as to its main idea, positive, the second,
including the Appendix, not wholly, but in the main, negative;
in both, however, the same positions are proved, only in a
different or rather opposite manner. The first exhibits
religion in its essence, its truth, the second exhibits it in its
contradictions; the first is development, the second polemic;
thus the one is, according to the nature of the case, calmer,
the other more vehement. Development advances gently,
contest impetuously; for development is self-contented at

f
 PREFACE. xi

every stage, contest only at the last blpw. Development is

deliberate, but contest resolute. x Development is light, con­
test fire . Hence results a difference between the two parts
even as to their form. Thus in the first part I show that
the true sense of Theology is Anthropology, that there is
no distinction between the predicates of the divine and
human nature, and, consequently, no distinction between
the divine and human subject: I say consequently, for wher­
ever, as is especially the case in theology, the predicates
are not accidents, but express the essence of the sub­
ject, there is no distinction between subject and predicate,
the one can be put in the place of the other; on which
point I refer the reader to the Analytics of Aristotle, or
even merely to the Introduction of Porphyry. In the
second part, on the other hand, I show that the distinction
which is made, or rather supposed to be made, between the
theological and anthropological predicates resolves itself
into an absurdity. Here is a striking example. In the
first part I prove that the Son of God is in religion a real
son, the son of God in the same sense in which man is the
son of man, and I find therein the truth, the essence of religion,
that it conceives and affirms a profoundly human relation as
a divine relation; on the other hand, in the second part I
show that the Son of God— not indeed in religion, but in
theology, which is the reflection of religion upon itself,—
is not a son in the natural, human sense, but in an entirely
different manner, contradictory to Nature and reason, and
therefore absurd, and I find in this negation of human sense
and the human understanding, the negation of religion.
Accordingly the first part is the direct, the second the in­
direct proof, that theology is anthropology: hence the second
part necessarily has reference to the first; it has no inde­
pendent significance; its only aim is to show that the sense
in which religion is interpreted in the previous part of the
work must be the true one, because the contrary is absurd.
In brief, in the first part I am chiefly concerned with religion,
in the second with theology: I say chiefly, for it was impossible
to exclude theology from the first part, or religion from the
second. A mere glance will show that my investigation
includes speculative theology or philosophy, and not, as has
been here and there erroneously supposed, common theology
only, a kind of trash from which I rather keep as clear
xii PREFACE.

as possible, (though, for the rest, I am sufficiently well

acquainted with it), confining myself always to the most
essential, strict and necessary definition of the object,* and
hence to that definition which gives to an object the most
general interest, and raises it above the sphere of theology.
But it is with theology that I have to do, not with theo­
logians ; for I can only undertake to characterise what is
primary,— the original, not the copy, principles, not persons,
species, not individuals, objects of history, not objects of the
chronique scandaleuse.
If my work contained only the second part, it would be
perfectly just to accuse it of a negative tendency, to repre­
sent the proposition: Religion is nothing, is an absurdity,
as its essential purport. But I by no means say (that were
an easy task!): God is nothing, the Trinity is nothing, the
Word of God is nothing, &c. 1 only show that they are not
that which the illusions of theology make them,— not foreign,
but native mysteries, the mysteries of human nature; I show
that religion takes the apparent, the superficial in Nature
and humanity for the essential, and hence conceives their
true essence as a separate, special existence: that conse­
quently, religion, in the definitions which it gives of God,
e.g., of the Word of God,— at least in those definitions which
are not negative in the sense above alluded to,— only defines
or makes objective the true nature of the human word.
The reproach that according to my book religion is an
absurdity, a nullity, a pure illusion, would be well founded
only if, according to it, that into which I resolve religion,
which I prove to be its true object and substance, namely,
man,— anthropology, were an absurdity, a nullity, a pure
illusion. But so far from giving a trivial or even a sub­
ordinate significance to anthropology,— a significance which
is assigned to it only just so long as a theology stands above
it and in opposition to it,— I, on the contrary, while reducing
theology to anthropology, exalt anthropology into theology,
very much as Christianity, while lowering God into man,
made man into God; though, it is true, this human God was
by a further process made a transcendental, imaginary God,
remote from man. Hence it is obvious that I do not take
the word anthropology in the sense of the Hegelian or of any
* 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.
 PREFACE. xiii

other philosophy, but in an infinitely higher and more

general sense.
Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in
dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven,
but on earth, in the realm of reality; we only see real
things in the entrancing splendour of imagination and
caprice, instead of in the simple daylight of reality and
necessity. Hence I do nothing more to religion— and to
speculative philosophy and theology also— than to open its
eyes, or rather to turn its gaze from the internal towards
the external, i.e., I change the object as it is in the imagi­
nation into the object as it is in reality.
But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign
to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to
reality, the appearance to the essence, this change, inas­
much as it does away with illusion, is an absolute annihi­
lation, or at least a reckless profanation; for in these days
illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held
to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion
increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be
the highest degree of sacredness. Religion has disappeared,
and for it has been substituted, even among Protestants,
the appearance of religion— the Church— in order at least
that “ the faith ” may be imparted to the ignorant and in-
discriminating multitude; that faith being still the Chris­
tian, because the Christian churches stand now as they did
a thousand years ago, and now, as formerly, the external
signs of the faith are in vogue. That which has no longer
any existence in faith (the faith of the modern world is only
an ostensible faith, a faith which does not believe what it
fancies that it believes, and is only an undecided, pusillani­
mous unbelief) is still to pass current as opinion: that
which is no longer sacred in itself and in tnjth is still at
least to seem sacred. Hence the simulated religious indig­
nation of the present age, the age of shows and illusion,
concerning my analysis, especially-of the Sacraments. But
let it not be demanded of an author who proposes to him­
self as his goal not the favour of his contemporaries, but
only the truth, the unveiled, naked truth, that he should
have or feign respect towards an empty appearance, espe­
cially as the object which underlies this appearance is in
itself the culminating point of religion, i.e., the point at
xiv PREFACE.

which the religious slides into the irreligious. Thus much

in justification, not in excuse, of my analysis of the Sac­
raments.
With regard to the true bearing of my analysis of the
Sacraments, especially as presented in the concluding chap­
ter, I only remark, that I therein illustrate by a palpable
and visible example the essential purport, the peculiar theme
of my work; that I therein call upon the senses them­
selves to witness to the truth of my analysis and my ideas,
and demonstrate ad oculos, ad tactum, ad gustum, what I
have taught ad captum throughout the previous pages. As,
namely, the water of Baptism, the wine and bread of the
Lord's Supper, taken in their natural power and significance,
are and effect infinitely more than in a supernaturalistic,
illusory significance; so the object of religion in general,
conceived in the sense of this work, i.e., the anthropolo­
gical .sense, is infinitely more productive and real, both in
theory and practice, than when accepted in the sense of theo­
logy. For as that which is or is supposed to be imparted
in the water, bread, and wine, over and above these natural
substances themselves, is something in the imagination only,
but in truth, in reality, nothing; so also the object of re­
ligion in general, the Divine essence, in distinction from
the essence of Nature and rHumanity,— that is to say, if
its attributes, as understanding, love, &c., are and signify
something else than these attributes as they belong to man
and Nature,— is only something in the imagination, but in
truth and reality nothing. Therefore— this is the moral of
the fable— we should not, as is the case in theology and
speculative philosophy, make real beings and things into
arbitrary signs, vehicles, symbols, or predicates of a distinct,
transcendant, absolute, i.e., abstract being; but we should
accept and understand them in the significance which they
have in themselves, which is identical with their qualities,
with those conditions which make them what they are:—
thus only do we obtain the key to a real theory and practice.
I, in fact, put in the place of the barren baptismal water,
the beneficent effect of real water. How “ watery,” how
trivial! Yes, indeed, very trivial. But so Marriage, in its
time, was a very trivial truth, which Luther, on the ground
of his natural good sense, maintained in opposition to the
seemingly holy illusion of celibacy. But while I thus view
 PREFACE. xv

water a9 a real thing, I at the same time intend it as a

vehicle, an image, an example, a symbol, of the “ unholy ”
spirit of my work, just as the water of Baptism— the object
of my analysis— is at once literal and symbolical water.
I t is the same with bread and wine. Malignity has hence
drawn the conclusion that bathing, eating, and drinking are
the summa summarum, the positive result of my work. I
make no other reply than th is: If the whole of religion is
contained in the Sacraments, and there are consequently no
other religious acts than those which are performed in
Baptism and the Lord’s Supper; then I grant that the entire
purport and positive result of my work are bathing, eating,
and drinking, since this work is nothing but a faithful,
rigid, historico-philosophical analysis of religion— the re­
velation of religion to itself, the awakening of religion to
self-consciousness.
I say an historico-philosophical analysis, in distinction
from a merely historical analysis of Christianity. The
historical critic— such a one, for example, as Daumer or
Ghillany— shows that the Lord’s Supper is a rite lineally
descended from the ancient cnltus of human sacrifice ; that
once, instead of bread and wine, real human flesh and blood
were partaken. I, on the contrary, take as the object of
my analysis and reduction only the Christian significance
of the rite, that view of it which is sanctioned in Christianity,
and I proceed on the supposition that only that significance
which a dogma or institution has in Christianity (of course
in ancient Christianity, not in modern), whether it may
present itself in other religions or not, is also the true origin
of that dogma or institution in so fa r as it is Christian.
Again, the historical critic, as, for example, Lutzelberger,
shows that the narratives of the miracles of Christ resolve
themselves into contradictions and absurdities, that they
are later fabrications, and that consequently Christ was no
miracle-worker, nor, in general, that which he is represented
to be in the Bible. I, on the other hand, do not inquire
what the real, natural Christ was or may have been in dis­
tinction from what he has been made or has become in Super­
naturalism ; on the contrary, I accept the Christ of religion,
but I show that this superhuman being is nothing else
than a product and reflex of the supernatural human mind.
I do not ask whether this or that, or any miracle can happen
xvi PREFACE.

or not; I only show what miracle is, and I show it not d

priori, but by examples of miracles narrated in the Bible
as real events; in doing so, however, I answer or rather
preclude the question as to the possibility or reality of ne­
cessity of miracle. Thus much concerning the distinction
between me and the historical critics who have attacked
Christianity. As regards my relation to Strauss and Bruno
Bauer, in company with whom I am constantly named, I
merely point out here that the distinction between our
works is sufficiently indicated by the distinction between
their objects, which is implied even in the title-page. Bauer
takes for the object of his criticism the evangelical his­
tory, i.e., biblical Christianity, or rather biblical theology;
Strauss, the System of Christian Doctrine and the Life of
»163118 (which may also be included under the title of
Christian Doctrine), i.e., dogmatic Christianity, or rather
dogmatic theology; I, Christianity in general, i.e., the
Christian religion, and consequently only Christian philo­
sophy or theology. Hence I take my citations chiefly from
men in whom Christianity was not merely a theory or a
dogma, not merely theology, but religion. M y principal
theme is Christianity, is Religion, as it is the immediate
object, the immediate nature, of man. Erudition and philo­
sophy are to me only the means by which I bring to light
the treasure hid in man.
I must further mention that the circulation which my
work has had amongst the public at large was neither
desired nor expected by me. It is true that I have always
taken as the standard of the mode of teaching and writing,
not the abstract, particular, professional philosopher, but
universal man, that I have regarded man as the criterion of
truth, and not this or that founder of a system, and have
from the first placed the highest excellence of the philo­
sopher in this, that he abstains, both as a man and as an
author, from the ostentation of philosophy, i.e., that he is a
philosopher only in reality, not formally, that he is a quiet
philosopher, not a loud and still less a brawling one. Hence,
in all my works, as well as in the present one, I have made
the utmost clearness, simplicity, and definiteness a law to
myself, so that they may be understood, at least in the
main, by every cultivated and thinking man. But notwith­
standing this, my work can be appreciated and fully under­
 PREFACE.

stood only by the scholar, that is to say, by the scholar who

loves truth, who is capable of forming a judgment, who
is above the notions and prejudices of the learned and
unlearned vulgar; for although a thoroughly independent
production, it has yet its necessary logical basis in history.
I very frequently refer to this or that historical phenomenon
without expressly designating it, thinking this superfluous;
and such references can be understood by the scholar alone.
Thus, for example, in the very first chapter, where I develop
the necessary consequences of the standpoint of Feeling, I
allude to Jacobi and Schleiermacher; in the second chapter
I allude chiefly to Kantism, Scepticism, Theism, Material­
ism and Pantheism; in the chapter on the “ Standpoint of
Religion,” where I discuss the contradictions between the
religious or theological and the physical or natural-philo­
sophical view of Nature, I refer to philosophy in the age of
orthodoxy, and especially to the philosophy of DescaKes
and Leibnitz, in which this contradiction presents itself
in a peculiarly characteristic manner. The reader, therefore,
who is unacquainted with the historical facts and ideas
presupposed in my work, will fail to perceive on what my
arguments and ideas hinge; no wonder if my positions often
appear to him baseless, however firm the footing on which
they stand. It is true that the subject of my work is of
universal human interest; moreover, its fundamental ideas,
though not in the form in which they are here expressed, or
in which they could be expressed under existing circum­
stances, will one day become the common property of man­
kind : for nothing is opposed to them in the present day but
empty, powerless illusions and prejudices in contradiction
with the true nature of man. But in considering this
subject in the first instance, I was under the necessity of
treating it as a matter of science, of philosophy; and in
rectifying the aberrations of Religion, Theology, and Specu­
lation, I was naturally obliged to use their expressions, and
even to appear to speculate, or— which is the same thing—
to turn theologian myself, while I nevertheless only analyse
speculation, i.e., reduce theology to anthropology. My work,
as I said before, contains, and applies in the concrete, the
principle of a new philosophy suited— not to the schools,
but— to man. Yes, it contains that principle, but only by
evolving it out of the very core of religion; hence, be it said
xviii PREFACE.

in passing, the new philosophy can no longer, like the old

Catholic and modern Protestant scholasticism, fall into the
temptation to prove its agreement with religion by its agree­
ment with Christian dogmas; on the contrary, being evolved
from the nature of religion, it has in itself the true essence
of religion,— is, in its very quality as a philosophy, a religion
also. But a work which considers ideas in their genesis
and explains and demonstrates them in strict sequence, is,
by the very form which this purpose imposes upon it, un­
suited to popular reading.
Lastly, as a supplement to this work with regard to many
apparently unvindicated positions, I refer to my articles
in the Deutsches Jahrbuch, January and February 1842,
to my critiques and Charakteristiken des modernen After -
christenthums, in previous numbers of the same periodical,
and to my earlier works, especially the following: — P.
Bayle. Ein Beitrag zur Gesehichte der Philosophic und
Menschheit, Ausbach, 1838, and Philosophie und Christen-
thum, Mannheim, 1839. In these works I have sketched,
with a few sharp touches, the historical solution of Chris­
tianity, and have shown that Christianity has in fact long
vanished, not only from the reason but from the life of
mankind, that it is nothing more than a fixed idea, in
flagrant contradiction with our fire and life assurance
companies, our railroads and steam-carriages, our picture
and sculpture galleries, our military and industrial schools,
our theatres and scientific museums.

LUDWIG FEUERBACH.

B r u c k b e r g , Feb. 14, 1843.

 CONTENTS .

IN TR O D U CTIO N .
kFTER PAGE

I. § i. The Essential Nature of Ma n . . . . I

§ 2. The Essence of Religion Considered Generally 12

P art I.

T H E T R U E OR A N T H R O P O L O G IC A L E S S E N C E O F
RELIG IO N .

II. God as a Being of the Understanding . . . . 33

III. God as a Moral Being or L a w .................................. 44
IV . The Mystery of the Incarnation ; or, God as Love, as a
Being of the H e a r t ................................................... 50
Y. The Mystery of the Suffering God . . . . 59
♦ V I. The Mystery of the Trinity and the Mother of God 65
V II. The Mystery of the Logos and* Divine Image 74
V II I . The Mystery ofthe Cosmogonical Principle in God 8o
IX . The Mystery of Mysticism, or of Nature in God . 87
X. The Mystery of Providence and Creation out of Nothing io i

XI. The Significance of the Creation in Judaism 112

X II. The Omnipotence of Feeling, or the Mystery of Prayer 120
X III. The Mystery of Faith— The Mystery of Miracle . 126
X IV . The Mystery of the Resurrection and of the Miraculous
C o n c e p t i o n ........................................................... 135
X V . The Mystery of the Christian Christ, or the Personal God 140
X V I. The Distinction between Christianity and Heathenism 150
X V II. The Significance of Voluntary Celibacy and Monachism l6o
X V III. The Christian Heaven, or Personal Immortality 170
XX CONTENTS.

P art II.

T H E F A L S E OR T H E O L O G IC A L E S S E N C E OF R E LIG IO N .
CHAPTER PAGE
X IX . The Essential Standpoint of Religion . . . .185
XX. The Contradiction in the Existence of God . . . # 197
X X I. The Contradiction in the Revelation of God . . 204
X X II. The Contradiction in the Nature of God in General . 213
X X III. The Contradiction in the Speculative Doctrine of God 226
X X IV . The Contradiction in the T r in ity ..................................232
X X V . The Contradiction in the Sacraments . . . .236
X X V I. The Contradiction of Faith and Love . . . . 247
X X V II. Concluding A p p l i c a t i o n .......................................... 270

APPENDIX.
SECTION
1. The Religious Emotions Purely Human . . .281
2. God is Feeling Released from Limits . . . . 283
3. God|is the Highest Feeling of S e lf .................................. 284
4. Distinction between the Pantheistic and Personal God . 285
5. Nature without Interest for Christians . . . . 287
6. In God Man is his Own O b j e c t .................................. 289
7. Christianity the Religion of Suffering . . . . 292
8. Mystery of the Trinity . . . . . . 293
9. Creation out of N oth in g................................................... 297
10. Egoism of the Israelitish R eligio n .................................. 298
11. The Idea of Providence................................................... 299
12. Contradiction of Faith and Reason . . . . 304
13. The Resurrection of C h r i s t ...........................................306
14. The Christian a Supermundane Being . . . . 307
15. The Celibate and Monachism...........................................308
16. The Christian H e a v e n .......................................... - # . 3*5
17. What Faith Denies on Earth it Affirms in Heaven . 316
18. Contradictions in the S acra m en ts.................................. 317
19. Contradiction of Faith and Love . . . . 320
20. Results of the Principle of F a i t h .................................. 326
21. Contradiction of the G o d - M a n .................................. 332
22. Anthropology the Mystery of Theology . . . . 336
 TH E

ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

§ i. The Essential Nature of Man.

R e l i g i o n has its basis in the essential difference between

man and the brute— the brutes have no religion. It is true
that the old uncritical writers on natural history attributed
to the elephant, among other laudable qualities, the virtue
of religiousness; but the religion of elephants belongs to
the realm of fable. Cuvier, one of the greatest authorities
on the animal kingdom, assigns, on the strength of his
personal observations, no higher grade of intelligence to
the elephant than to the dog.
But what is this essential difference between man and
the brute ? The most simple, general, and also the most
popular answer to this question is— consciousness:— but
consciousness in the strict sense; for the consciousness im­
plied in the feeling of self as an individual, in discrimination
by the senses, in the perception and even judgment of out­
ward things according to definite sensible signs, cannot be
denied to the brutes. Consciousness in the strictest sense
is present only in a being to whom his species, his essential
nature, is an object of thought. The brute is indeed con­
scious of himself as an individual— and he has accordingly
the feeling of self as the common centre of successive
sensations— but not as a species: hence, he is without that
consciousness which in its nature, as in its name, is akin to
2 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

science. Where there is this higher consciousness there is

a capability of science. Science is the cognisance of species.
In practical life we have to do with individuals; in science,
with species. But only a being to whom his own species,
his own nature, is an object of thought, can make the essential
nature of other things or beings an object of thought.
Hence the brute has only a simple, man a twofold life :
in the brute, the inner life is one with the outer; man has
both an inner and an outer life. The inner life of man is
the life which has relation to his species, to his general, as
distinguished from his individual, nature. Man thinks—
that is, he converses with himself. The brute can exercise
no function which has relation to its species without another
individual external to itself; but man can perform the
functions of thought and speech, which strictly imply such
a relation, apart from another individual Man is himself at
once I and thou; he can put himself in the place of another,
for this reason, that to him his species, his essential nature,
and not merely his individuality, is an object of thought.
Religion being identical with the distinctive characteristic
of man, is then identical with self-consciousness— with the
consciousness which man has of his nature. But religion,
expressed generally, is consciousness of the infinite; thus it
is and can be nothing else than the consciousness which
man has of his own— not finite and limited, but infinite
nature. A really finite being has not even the faintest
adumbration, still less consciousness, of an infinite being,
for the limit of the nature is also the limit of the conscious­
ness. The consciousness of the caterpillar, whose life is
confined to a particular species of plant, does not extend
itself beyond this narrow domain. It does, indeed, dis­
criminate between this plant and other plants, but more it
knows not. A consciousness so limited, but on account of
that very limitation so infallible, we do not call conscious­
ness, but instinct. Consciousness, in the strict or proper
sense, is identical with consciousness of the infinite; a
limited consciousness is no consciousness; consciousness is
essentially infinite in its nature.1 The consciousness of the
1 “ Objectum intellectus esse illimitatum sive omne verum ac, ut loquuntur,
omne ens ut ens, ex eo constat, quod ad nullum non genus rerum extenditur,
nullumo[ue est, cujus cognoscendi capax non sit, licet ob varia obstacula
multa sint, quae re ipsa non norit.”— Gassendi (Opp. Omn. Phys.).
 THE ES S EN TIA L N A T U R E OF MAN. *

infinite is nothing else than the consciousness of the infinity

of the consciousness; or, in the consciousness of the infinite,
the conscious subject has for his object the infinity of his
own nature.
What, then, is the nature of man, of which he is con­
scious, or what constitutes the specific distinction, the
proper humanity of man ?1 Reason, Will, Affection. To
a complete man belong the power of thought, the power of
will, the power of affection. The power of thought is the
light of the intellect, the power of will is energy of char­
acter, the power of affection is love. Reason, love, force
of will, are perfections— the perfections of the human
being-r-nay, more, they are absolute perfections of being.
To will, to love, to think, are the highest powers, are the
absolute nature of man as man, and the basis of his exist­
ence. Man exists to think, to love, to w ill Now that
which is the end, the ultimate aim, is also the true basis
and principle of a being. But what is the end of reason ?
Reason. Of love ? Love. Of will ? Freedom of the will.
We think for the sake of thinking; love for the sake of
loving; will for the sake of willing— i.e., that we may be
free. True existence is thinking, loving, willing existence.
That alone is true, perfect, divine, which exists for its own
sake. But such is love, such is reason, such is will. The
divine trinity in man, above the individual man, is the
unity of reason, love, will. Reason, Will, Love, are not
powers which man possesses, for he is nothing without
them, he is what he is only by them; they are the consti­
tuent elements of his nature, which he neither has nor makes,
the animating, determining, governing powers — divine,
absolute powers— to which he can oppose no resistance.2
How can the feeling man resist feeling, the^loving one
love, the rational one reason ? Who has not experienced
the overwhelming power of melody ? And what else is the
power of melody but the power of feeling ? Music is the
9

1 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.
* “ Toute opinion est assez forte pour se faire exposer au prix de la
Tie.”— Montaigne.
4 TH E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

language of feeling; melody is audible feeling— feeling

communicating itself. Who has not experienced the
power of love, or at least heard of it? Which is the
stronger— love or the individual man ? Is it man that
possesses love, or is it not much rather love that possesses
man ? When love impels a man to suffer death even joy­
fully for the beloved one, is this death-conquering power
his own individual power, or is it not rather the power
of love ? And who that ever truly thought has not ex­
perienced that quiet, subtle power— the power of thought ?
When thou sinkest into deep reflection, forgetting thyself
and what is around thee, dost thou govern reason, or is it
not reason which governs and absorbs thee ? Scientific
enthusiasm— is it not the most glorious triumph of intellect
over thee ? The desire of knowledge— is it not a simply
irresistible, and all-conquering power? And when thou
suppressest a passion, renouncest a habit, in short, achievest
a victory over thyself, is this victorious power thy own
personal power, or is it not rather the energy of will, the
force of morality, which seizes the mastery of thee, and
fills thee with indignation against thyself and thy indi­
vidual weaknesses ?
Man is nothing without an object. The great models of
humanity, such men as reveal to us what man is capable
of, have attested the truth of this proposition by their
lives. They had only one dominant passion— the realisa­
tion of the aim which was the essential object of their
activity. But the object to which a subject essentially,
necessarily relates, is nothing else than this subject’s own,
but objective, nature. If it be an object common to several
individuals of the same species, but under various con­
ditions, it is still, at least as to the form under which it
presents itself to each of them according to their respective
modifications, their own, but objective, nature.
Thus the Sun is the common object of the planets, but
it is an object to Mercury, to Venus, to Saturn, to Uranus,
under other conditions than to the Earth. Each planet
has its own suu. The Sun which lights and warms Uranus
has no physical (only an astronomical, scientific) existence
for the Earth; and not only does the Sun appear different,
hut it really is another sun on Uranus than on the Earth.
The relation of the Sun to the Earth is therefore at the
 TH E ESSÈN TIA L N A T U R E OF MAN. 5

same time a relation of the Earth to itself* or to its own

nature, for the measure of the size and of the intensity of
light which the Sun possesses as the object of the Earth is
the measure of the distance which determines the peculiar
nature of the Earth. Hence each planet has in its sun the
mirror of its own nature.
In the object which he contemplates, therefore, man
becomes acquainted with himself; consciousness of the
objective is the self-consciousness of man. W e know the
man by the object, by his conception of what is external to
him self; in it his nature becomes evident; this object is
his manifested nature, his true objective ego. And this is
true not merely of spiritual, but also of sensuous objects.
Even the objects which are the most remote from m&n,because
they are objects to him, and to the extent to which they
are so, are revelations of human nature. Even the moon,
the sun, the stars, call to man TvwOi aeavTov. That he
sees them, and so sees them, is an evidence of his own
nature. The animal is sensible only of the beam which
immediately affects life ; while man perceives the ray, to
him physically indifferent, of the remotest star. Man alone
has purely intellectual, disinterested joys and passions; the
eye of man alone keeps theoretic festivals. The eye which
looks into the starry heavens, which gazes at that light,
alike useless and harmless, having nothing in common with
the earth and its necessities— this eye sees in that light its
own nature, its own origin. The eye is heavenly in its
nature. Hence man elevates himself above the earth only
with the eye; hence theory begins with the contemplation
of the heavens. The first philosophers were astronomers.
It is the heavens that admonish man of his destination,
and remind him that he is destined not merely to action,
but also to contemplation.
The absolute to man is his own nature. The power of
the object over him is therefore the power of his own
nature. Thus the power of the object of feeling is the
power of feeling itself; the power of the object of the
intellect is the power of the intellect itself; the power of
the object of the will is the power of the will itself. The
man who is affected by musical sounds is governed by
feeling; by the feeling, that is, which finds its correspond­
ing element in musical sounds. But it is not melody as
6 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

such, it is only melody pregnant with meaning and emotion,

which has power over feeling. Feeling is only acted on by
that which conveys feeling, i.e., by itself, its own nature.
Thus also the w ill; thus, and infinitely more, the intellect.
Whatever kind of object, therefore, we are at any time
conscious of, we are always at the same time conscious of
our own nature; we can affirm nothing without affirming
ourselves. And since to will, to feel, to think, are per­
fections, essences, realities, it is impossible that intellect,
feeling, and will should feel or perceive themselves as
limited, finite powers, i.e., as worthless, as nothing. For
finiteness and nothingness are identical; finiteness is only
a euphemism for nothingness. Finiteness is the meta­
physical, the theoretical— nothingness the pathological,
practical expression. What is finite to the understanding
is nothing to the heart. But it is impossible that we
should be conscious of will, feeling, and intellect, as finite
powers, because every perfect existence, every original
power and essence, is the immediate verification and
affirmation of itself. It is impossible to love, will, or
think, without perceiving these activities to be perfections
— impossible to feel that one is a loving, willing, thinking
being, without experiencing an infinite joy therein. Con­
sciousness consists in a being becoming objective to itself;
hence it is nothing apart, nothing distinct from the being
which is conscious of itself. How could it otherwise
become conscious of itself ? It is therefore impossible to
be conscious of a perfection as an imperfection, impossible
to feel feeling limited, to think thought limited.
Consciousness is self-verification, self-affirmation, self-
love, joy in one's own perfection. Consciousness is the
characteristic mark of a perfect nature; it exists only in a
self-sufficing, complete being. Even human vanity attests
this truth. A man looks in the glass; he has complacency
in his appearance. This complacency is a necessary,
involuntary consequence of the completeness, the beauty
of his form. A beautiful form is satisfied in itself; it has
necessarily joy in itself— in self-contemplation. This com­
placency becomes vanity only when a man piques himself on
his form as being his individual form, not when he admires
it as a specimen of human beauty in general. It is fitting
that he should admire it thus: he can conceive no form
 THE ESSEN TIA L N A T U R E OF MAN. 7
more beautiful, more sublime than the human.1 Assuredly
every being loves itself, its existence— and fitly so. To
exist is a good. Quidquid essentia dignum est, sdentia dig-
num est Everything that exists has value, is a being of
distinction— at least this is true of the species: hence it
asserts, maintains itself. But the highest form of self-
assertion, the form which is itself a superiority, a perfec­
tion, a bliss, a good, is consciousness.
Every limitation of the reason, or in general of the nature
of man, rests on a delusion, an error. It is true that the
human being, as an individual, can and must— herein
consists his distinction from the brute— feel and recognise
himself to be limited; but he can become conscious of his
limits, his finiteness* only because the perfection, the infini­
tude of his species, is perceived by him, whether as an
object of feeling, of conscience, or of the thinking conscious­
ness. If he makes his own limitations the limitations of
the species, this arises from the mistake that he identifies
himself immediately with the species— a mistake which is
intimately connected with the individual's love of ease,
sloth, vanity, and egoism. For a limitation which I know
to be merely mine humiliates, shames, and perturbs me.
Hence to free myself from this feeling of shame, from
this state of dissatisfaction, I convert the limits of my
individuality into the limits of human nature in general.
What is incomprehensible to me is incomprehensible to
others; why should I trouble myself further? It is no
fault of mine; my understanding is not to blame, but the
understanding of the race. But it is a ludicrous and even
culpable error to define as finite and limited what consti­
tutes the essence of man, the nature of the species, which
is the absolute nature of the individual. Every being is
sufficient to itself. No being can deny itself, i.e.t its own
nature; no being is a limited one to itself. Rather, every
being is in and by itself infinite— has its God, its highest
conceivable being, in itself. Every limit of a being is
cognisable only by another being out of and above him.

1 Homini homine nihil pulchrius. (Cic. de Nat. D. 1. 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 per-
lect form, can delight without envy in the forms of other beings.
8 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

The life of the ephemera is extraordinarily short in com­

parison with that of longer-lived creatures; but neverthe­
less, for the ephemera this short life is as long as a life of
years to others. The leaf on which the caterpillar lives is
for it a world, an infinite space.
That which makes a being what it is, is its talent, its
power, its wealth, its adornment How can it possibly
hold its existence non-existence, its wealth poverty, its
talent incapacity? If the plants had eyes, taste, and
judgment, each plant would declare its own flower the
most beautiful; for its comprehension, its taste, would
reach no farther than its natural power of production.
What the productive power of its nature has brought forth
as the highest, that must also its taste, its judgment, recog­
nise and affirm as the highest. What the nature affirms,
the understanding, the taste, the judgment, cannot deny ;
otherwise the understanding, the judgment, would no longer
be the understanding and judgment of this particular being,
but of some other. The measure of the nature is also the
measure of the understanding. If the nature is limited, so
also is the feeling, so also is the understanding. But to a
limited being its limited understanding is not felt to be a
limitation; on the contrary, it is perfectly happy and con­
tented with this understanding; it regards it, praises and
values it, as a glorious, divine power; and thq limited
understanding, on its part, values the limited nature whose
understanding it is. Each is exactly adapted to the other;
how should they be at issue with each other ? A being’s
understanding is its sphere of vision. As far as thou
seest, so far extends thy nature; and conversely. The
eye of the brute reaches no farther than its needs, and its
nature no farther than its needs. And so far as thy nature
reaches, so far reaches thy unlimited self-consciousness, so
far art thou God. The discrepancy between the understand­
ing and the nature, between the power of conception and
the power of production in the human consciousness, on the
one hand, is merely of individual significance and has not
a universal application; and, on the other hand, it is only
apparent. He who, having written a bad poem, knows it
to be bad, is in his intelligence, and therefore in his nature,
not so limited as he who, having written a bad poem,
admires it and thinks it good.
 THE E SS EN TIA L N A T U R E OF MAN. 9

It follows that if thou thinkest the infinite, thou per-

ceivest and affirmest the infinitude of the power of thought;
if thou feelest the infinite, thou feelest and affirmest the
infinitude of the power of feeling. The object of the in­
tellect is intellect objective to itself; the object of feeling
is feeling objective to itself. If thou hast no sensibility,
no feeling for music, thou perceivest in the finest music
nothing more than in the wind that whistles by thy ear,
or than in the brook which rushes past thy feet. What,
then, is it which acts on thee when thou art affected by
melody? What dost thou perceive in it? What else
than the voice of thy own heart ? Feeling speaks only to
feeling; feeling is comprehensible only by feeling, that is,
by itself— for this reason, that the object of feeling is
nothing else than feeling. Music is a monologue of emo­
tion. But the dialogue of philosophy also is in truth only
a monologue of the intellect; thought speaks only to
thought. The splendours of the crystal charm the sense, but
the intellect is interested only in the laws of crystallisation.
The intellectual only is the object of the intellect.1
A ll therefore which, in the point of view of meta­
physical, transcendental speculation and religion, has the
significance only of the secondary, the subjective, the
medium, the organ— has in truth the significance of the
primary, of the essence, of the object itself. If, for ex­
ample, feeling is the essential organ of religion, the nature
of God is nothing else than an expression of the nature of
feeling. The true but latent sense of the phrase, “ Feeling
is the organ of the divine,” is, feeling is the noblest, the
most excellent, i.e., the divine, in man. How couldst thou
perceive the divine by feeling, if feeling were not itself
divine in its nature ? The divine assuredly is known only
by means of the divine— God is known only by himself.
The divine nature which is discerned by feeling is in truth
nothing else than feeling enraptured, in ecstasy with itself
— feeling intoxicated with joy, blissful in its own plenitude.
It is already clear from this that where feeling is held
to be the organ of the infinite, the subjective essence of
religion,— the external data of religion lose their objective
value. And thus, since feeling has been held the cardinal
1 “ The understanding is percipient only of understanding, and what
proceeds thence.”— Reimarus (Wahrh. der Nattirl. Religion, iv. Abth. § 8).
IO THE ESSENCE OF CH RISTIANITY.

principle in religion, the doctrines of Christianity, formerly

so sacred, have lost their importance. If, from this point
of view, some value is still conceded to Christian ideas, it
is a value springing entirely from the relation they bear to
feeling; if another object would excite the same emotions,
it would be just as welcome. But the object of religious
feeling is become a matter of indifference, only because
when once feeling has been pronounced to be the subjective
essence of religion, it in fact is also the objective essence
of religion, though it may not be declared, at least directly,
to be such. I say directly; for indirectly this is certainly
admitted, when it is declared that feeling, as such, is
religious, and thus the distinction between specifically
religious and irreligious, or at least non-religious, feelings
is abolished— a necessary consequence of the point of view'
in which feeling only is regarded as the organ of the divine.
For on what other ground than that of its essence, its
nature, dost thou hold feeling to be the organ of the infinite,
the divine being? And is not the nature of feeling in
general also the nature of every special feeling, be its object
what it may ? What, then, makes this feeling religious ?
A given object? Not at all; for this object is itself a
religious one only when it is not an object of the cold
understanding or memory, but of feeling. What then ?
The nature of feeling— a nature of which every special
feeling, without distinction of *objects, partakes. Thus,
feeling is pronounced to be religious, simply because it i§
feeling; the ground of its religiousness is its own nature—
lies in itself. But is not feeling thereby declared to be
itself the absolute, the divine ? If feeling in itself is good,
religious, i.e., holy, divine, has not feeling its God in itself ?
But if, notwithstanding, thou wilt posit an object of
feeling, but at the same time seekest to express thy feeling
truly, without introducing by thy reflection any foreign
element, what remains to thee but to distinguish between
thy individual feeling and the general nature of feeling;—
to separate the universal in feeling from the disturbing,
adulterating influences with which feeling is bound up in
thee, under thy individual conditions ? Hence what thou
canst alone contemplate, declare to be the infinite, and
define as its essence, is merely the nature of feeling. Thou
hast thus no other definition of God than this: God is pure,
 TH E ESSEN TIA L N A T U R E OF MAN. ii

unlimited, free Feeling. Every other God, whom thou

supposest, is a God thrust upon thy feeling from without.
Feeling is atheistic in the sense of the orthodox belief, which
attaches religion to an external object; it denies an
objective God— it is itself God. In this point of view
only the negation of feeling is the negation of God. Thou
art simply too cowardly or too narrow to confess in words
what thy feeling tacitly affirms. Fettered by outward
considerations, still in bondage to vulgar empiricism, in­
capable of comprehending the spiritual grandeur of feeling,
thou art terrified before the religious atheism of thy heart.
B y this fear thou destroyest the unity of thy feeling with
itself, in imagining to thyself an objective being distinct
from thy feeling, and thus necessarily sinking back into
the old questions and doubts— is there a God or not?—
questions and doubts which vanish, nay, are impossible,
where feeling is defined as the essence of religion. Feeling is
thy own inward power, but at the same time a power distinct
from thee, and independent of thee; it is in thee, above thee;
it is itself that which constitutes the objective in thee— thy
own being which impresses thee as another being; in short,
thy God. How wilt thou, then, distinguish from this ob­
jective being within thee another objective being ? how wilt
thou get beyond thy feeling ?
But feeling has here been adduced only as an example.
I t is the same with every other power, faculty, potentiality,
reality, activity— the name is indifferent— which is defined
as the essential organ of any object. Whatever is a sub­
jective expression of a nature is simultaneously also its
objective expression. Man cannot get beyond his true
nature. He may indeed by means of the imagination con­
ceive individuals of another so-called higher kind, but he
can never get loose from his species, his nature; the con­
ditions of being, the positive final predicates which he gives
to these other individuals, are always determinations or
qualities drawn from his own nature— qualities in which he
in truth only images and projects himself. There may cer­
tainly be thinking beings besides men on the other planets
of our solar system. But by the supposition of such beings
we do not change our standing point— we extend our con­
ceptions quantitatively not qualitatively. For as surely as
on the other planets there are the same laws of motion, so
12 TH E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

surely are there the same laws of perception and thought

as here. In fact, we people the other planets, not that we
may place there different beings from ourselves, but more
beings of our own or of a similar nature.1

§ 2. The Essence of Religion Considered Generally.

What we have hitherto been maintaining generally, even
with regard to sensational impressions, of the relation be­
tween subject and object, applies especially to the relation
between the subject and the religious object.
In the perceptions of the senses consciousness of the
object is distinguishable from consciousness of self; but in
religion, consciousness of the object and self-consciousness
coincide. The object of the senses is out of man, the
religious object is within him, and therefore as little for­
sakes him as his self-consciousness or his conscience; it is
the intimate, the closest object. “ God,” says Augustine,
for example, “ is nearer, more related to us, and therefore
more easily known by us, than sensible, corporeal things.” 2
The object of the senses is in itself indifferent— independent
of the disposition or of the judgment; but the object of
religion is a selected object; the most excellent, the first,
the supreme being; it essentially presupposes a critical
judgment, a discrimination between the divine and the non­
divine, between that which is worthy of adoration and that
which is not worthy.8 And here may be applied, without
any limitation, the proposition: the object of any subject
is nothing else than the subject’s own nature taken objec­
tively. Such as are a man’s thoughts and dispositions,
such is his God; so much worth as a man has, so much
and no more has his God. Consciousness of God is self-
consciousness, knowledge of God is self-knowledge. By his
God thou knowest the man, and by the man his God; the
two are identical. Whatever is God to a man, that is his heart
and soul; and conversely, God is the manifested inward
1 ‘ ‘ Verisimile est, non minus quam geometriee, etiam music® oblectationem
ad plures quam ad nos pertinere. Positis enim aliis terns atque animalibus
ratione et auditu jiollentibus, cur tantum his nostris contigisset ea voluptas,
quae sola ex sono percipi potest ?”— Christ. Hugenius (Cosmotheor., 1. l ).
2 De Genesi ad litteram, 1. v. c. 16.
* “ Unusquisque vestrum non cogitat, prius se debere Deum notse, quam
coUrt”— M. Minucii Felicis Octavianus, c. 24.
 T H E ESSEN CE OF RELIGION . 13
nature, the expressed self of a man,— religion the solemn
unveiling of a man’s hidden treasures, the revelation of hi3
intimate thoughts, the open confession of his love-secrets.
But when religion— consciousness of God— is designated
as the self-consciousness of man, this is not to be under­
stood as affirming that the religious man is directly aware
of this identity; for, on the contrary, ignorance of it is
fundamental to the peculiar nature of religion. To pre­
clude this misconception, it is better to say, religion is
man's earliest and also indirect form of self-knowledge.
Hence, religion everywhere precedes philosophy, as in the
history of the race, so also in that of the individual. Man
first of all sees his nature as if out of himself, before he
finds it in himself. His own nature is in the first instance
contemplated by him as that of another being. Religion
is the childlike condition of humanity; but the child sees
his nature— man— out of himself; in childhood a man is
an object to himself, under the form of another man.
Hence the historical progress of religion consists in th is:
that what by an earlier religion was regarded as objective,
is now recognised as subjective; that is, what was formerly
contemplated and worshipped as God is now perceived to
be something human. What was at first religion becomes
at a later period idolatry; man is seen to have adored his
own nature. Man has given objectivity to himself, but
has not recognised the object as his own nature: a later
religion takes this forward step; every advance in religion
is therefore a deeper self-knowledge. But every particular
religion, while it pronounces its predecessors idolatrous,
excepts itself— and necessarily so, otherwise it would no
longer be religion— from the fate, the common nature of
all religions: it imputes only to other religions what is the
fault, if fault it be, of religion in general. Because it has
a different object, a different tenor, because it has tran­
scended the ideas of preceding religions, it erroneously
supposes itself exalted above the necessary eternal laws
which constitute the essence of religion— it fancies its
object, its ideas, to be superhuman. But the essence of
religion, thus hidden from the religious, is evident to the
thinker, by whom religion is viewed objectively, which it
cannot be by its votaries. And it is our task to show that
the antithesis of divine and human is altogether illusory,
14 T H E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

that it is nothing else than the antithesis between the

human nature in general and the human individual ; that,
consequently, the object and contents of the Christian
religion are altogether human.
Religion, at least the Christian, is the relation of man to
himself, or more correctly to his own nature (i.e., his sub­
jective nature) ; 1 but a relation to it, viewed as a nature
apart from his own. The divine being is nothing else than
the human being, or, rather, the human nature purified,
freed from the limits of the individual man, made objective
— i.e., contemplated and revered as another, a distinct being.
All the- attributes of the divine nature are, therefore, attri­
butes of the human nature.2
In relation to the attributes, the predicates, of the Divine
Being, this is admitted without hesitation, but by no means
in relation to the subject of these predicates. The nega­
tion of the subject is held to be irréligion, nay, atheism ;
though not so the negation of the predicates. But that
which has no predicates or qualities, has no effect upon
me ; tliat which has no effect upon me has no existence
for me. To deny all the qualities of a being is equivalent
to denying the being himself. A being without qualities is
one which cannot become an object to the mind, and such
a being is virtually non-existent. Where man deprives
God of all qualities, God is no longer anything more to him
than a negative being. To the truly religious man, God is
not a being without qualities, because to him he is a posi­
tive, real being. The theory that God cannot be defined,
and consequently cannot be known by man, is therefore the
offspring of recent times, a product of modern unbelief.
As reason is and can be pronounced finite only where
man regards’ sensual enjoyment, or religious emotion, or
æsthetic contemplation, or moral sentiment, as the absolute,
the true ; so the proposition that God is unknowable or un-

1 The meaning of this parenthetic limitation will be clear in the sequel.

3 “ Les perfections de Dieu sont celles de nos âmes, mais il les possédé 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, utvidetur, disciplinarum omnium pulcherrima
et maxima se ipsum nosse ; si quis enim se ipsum norit, Deum cognoscet.”
—1Clemens Alex. (Pæd. 1. iiL c. i).
 T H E ESSEN CE OF RELIGION. 15

definable, can only be enunciated and become fixed as a

dogma, where this object has no longer any interest for the
intellect; where the real, the positive, alone has any hold
on man, where the real alone has for him the significance
of the essential, of the absolute, divine object, but where at
the same time, in contradiction with this purely worldly
tendency, there yet exist some old remains of religiousness.
On the ground that God is unknowable, man excuses him­
self to what is yet remaining of his religious conscience for
his forgetfulness of God, his absorption in the world: he
denies God practically by his conduct,— the world has pos­
session of all his thoughts and inclinations,— but he does
not deny him theoretically, he does not attack his existence;
he lets that rest. But this existence does not affect or in­
commode him; it is a merely negative existence, an existence
without existence, a self-contradictory existence,— a state of
being which, as to its effects, is not distinguishable from
non-being. The denial of determinate, positive predicates
concerning the divine nature is nothing else than a denial
of religion, with, however, an appearance of religion in its
favour, so that it is not recognised as a denial; it is simply
a subtle, disguised atheism. The alleged religious horror of
limiting God by positive predicates is only the irreligious
wish to know nothing more of God, to banish God from the
mind. Dread of limitation is dread of existence. A ll real
existence, i.e., all existence which is truly such, is qualita­
tive, determinative existence. He who earnestly believes
in the Divine existence is not shocked at the attributing
even of gross sensuous qualities to God. He who dreads
an existence that may give offence, who shrinks from the
grossness of a positive predicate, may as well renounce
existence altogether. A God who is injured by determinate
qualities has not the courage and the strength to exist.
Qualities are the fire, the vital breath, the oxygen, the salt
of existence. An existence in general, an existence without
qualities, is an insipidity, an absurdity. But there can be
no more in God than is supplied by religion. Only where
man loses his taste for religion, and thus religion itself
becomes insipid, does the existence of God become an
insipid existence— an existence without qualities.
There is, however, a still milder way of denying the
divine predicates than the direct one just described. It is
16 THE ESSENCE OF CH RISTIANITY.

admitted that the predicates of the divine nature are finite,

and, more particularly, human qualities, but their rejection
is rejected; they are even taken under protection, because it
is necessary to man to have a definite conception of God,
and since he is man he can form no other than a human
conception of him. In relation to God, it is said, these
predicates are certainly without any objective validity; but
to me, if he is to exist for me, he cannot appear otherwise
than as he does appear to me, namely, as a being with attri­
butes analogous to the human. But this distinction
between what God is in himself, and what he is for me
destroys the peace of religion, and is besides in itself an
unfounded and untenable distinction. I cannot know
whether God is something else in himself or for himself
than he is for m e; what he is to me is to me all that he is.
For me, there lies in these predicates under which he exists
for me, what he is in himself, his very nature; he is for me
what he can alone ever be for me. The religious man finds
perfect satisfaction in that which God is in relation to him­
self ; of any other relation he knows nothing, for God is to
him what he can alone be to man. In the distinction above
stated, man takes a point of view above himself, i.e., above
his nature, the absolute measure of his being; but this
transcendentalism is only an illusion; for I can make the
distinction between the object as it is in itself, and the
object as it is for me, only where an object can really
appear otherwise to me, not where it appears to me such
as the absolute measure of my nature determines it to
appear— such as it must appear to me. It is true that I
may have a merely subjective conception, i.e.y one which
does not arise out of the general constitution of my species;
but if my conception is determined by the constitution of
my species, the distinction between what an object is in
itself, and what it is for me ceases; for this conception is
itself an absolute one. The measure of the species is the
absolute measure, law, and criterion of man. And, indeed,
religion has the conviction that its conceptions, its predi­
cates of God, are such as every man ought to have, and
must have, if he would have the true ones— that they are
the conceptions necessary to human nature; nay, further,
that they are objectively true, representing God as he is.
To every religion the gods of other religions are only notions
 TH E ESSENCE OF R ELIG ION. 17
concerning God, but its own conception of God is to it God
himself, the true God — God such as he is in himself.
Religion is satisfied only with a complete Deity, a God
without reservation; it will not have a mere phantasm of
G o d ; it demands God himself. Religion gives up its own
existence when it gives -up the nature of God; it is no
longer a truth when it renounces the possession of the true
God. Scepticism is the arch-enemy of religion; but the
distinction between object and conception— between God
as he is in himself, and God as he is for me— is a sceptical
distinction, and therefore an irreligious one.
That which is to man the self-existent, the highest being,
to which he can conceive nothing higher— that is to him
the Divine Being. How then should he inquire concerning
this being, what he is in himself ? If God were an object
to the bird, he would be a winged being: the bird knows
nothing higher, nothing more blissful, than the winged
condition. How ludicrous would it be if this bird pro­
nounced : To me God appears as a bird, but what he is in
himself I know not. To the bird the highest nature is the
bird-nature; take from him the conception of this, and you
take from him the conception of the highest being. How,
then, could he ask whether God in himself were winged ?
To ask whether God is in himself what he is for me, is to
ask whether God is God, is to lift oneself above one's God,
to rise up against him.
Wherever, therefore, this idea, that the religious pre­
dicates are only anthropomorphisms, has taken possession
of a man, there has doubt, has unbelief, obtained the
mastery of faith. And it is only the inconsequence of
faint-heartedness and intellectual imbecility which does
not proceed from this idea to the formal negation of the
predicates, and from thence to the negation of the subject
to which they relate. If thou doubtest the objective truth
of the predicates, thou must also doubt the objective truth
of the subject whose predicates they are. If thy predicates
are anthropomorphisms, the subject of them is an an­
thropomorphism too. If love, goodness, personality, &c.,
are human attributes, so also is the subject which thou
presupposest, the existence of God, the belief that there
is a God, an anthropomorphism— a presupposition purely
human. Whence knowest thou that the belief in a God
18 T H E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

at all is not a limitation of man’s mode of conception ?

Higher beings— and thou supposest such— are perhaps so
blest in themselves, so at unity with themselves, that they
are not hung in suspense between themselves and a yet
higher being. To know God and not oneself to be God, to
know blessedness and not oneself to enjoy it, is a state of
disunity, of unhappiness. Higher beings know nothing of
this unhappiness; they have no conception of that which
they are not.
Thou believest in love as a divine attribute because thou
thyself lovest; thou believest that God is a wise, bene­
volent being because thou knowest nothing better in thy­
self than benevolence and wisdom; and thou believest that
God exists, that therefore he is a subject— whatever exists
is a subject, whether it be defined as substance, person,
essence, or otherwise— because thou thyself existest, art
thyself a subject. Thou knowest no higher human good
than to love, than to be good and wise ; and even so thou
knowest no higher happiness than to exist, to be a subject;
for the consciousness of all reality, of all bliss, is for thee
bound up in the consciousness of being a subject, of exist­
ing. God is an existence, a subject to thee, for the same
reason that he is to thee a wise, a blessed, a personal being.
The distinction between the divine predicates and the
divine subject is only this, that to thee the subject, the
existence, does not appear an anthropomorphism, because
the conception of it is necessarily involved in thy own
existence as a subject, whereas the predicates do appear
anthropomorphisms, because their necessity— the necessity
that God should be conscious, wise, good* &c.,— is not an
immediate necessity, identical with the being of man, but
is evolved by his self-consciousness, by the activity of his
thought. I am a subject, I exist, whether I be wise or
unwise, good or bad. To exist is to man the first datum;
it constitutes the very idea of the subject; it is presup­
posed by the predicates. Hence man relinquishes the
predicates, but the existence of God is to him a settled,
irrefragable, absolutely certain, objective truth. But,
nevertheless, this distinction is merely an apparent one.
The necessity of the subject lies only in the necessity of
the predicate. Thou art a subject only in so far as thou
art a human subject; the certainty and reality.of thy
 TH E ESSENCE OF R ELIGION. 19

existence lie only in the certainty and reality of thy human

attributes. What the subject is lies only in the predicate;
the predicate is the truth of the subject— the subject only
the personified, existing predicate, the predicate conceived
as existing. Subject and predicate are distinguished only
as existence and essence. The negation of the predicates
is therefore the negation of the subject. What remains of
the human subject when abstracted from the human attri­
butes ? Even in the language of common life the divine
predicates— Providence, Omniscience, Omnipotence — are
put for the divine subject.
The certainty of the existence of God, of which it has
been said that it is as certain, nay, more certain to man
than his own existence, depends only on the certainty of the
qualities of God— it is in itself no immediate certainty.
To the Christian the existence of the Christian God only
is a certainty; to the heathen that of the heathen God
only. The heathen did not doubt the existence of Jupiter,
because he took no offence at the nature of Jupiter, be­
cause he could conceive of God under no other qualities,
because to him these qualities were a certainty, a divine
reality. The reality of the predicate is the sole guarantee
of existence.
Whatever man conceives to be true, he immediately
conceives to be real (that is, to have an objective exist­
ence), because, originally, only the real is true to him—
true in opposition to what is merely conceived, dreamed,
imagined. The idea of being, of existence, is the original
idea of truth; or, originally, man makes truth dependent
on existence, subsequently, existence dependent on truth.
Now God is the nature of man regarded as absolute truth,
— the truth of man; but God, or, what is the same thing,
religion, is as various as are the conditions under which
man conceives this his nature, regards it as the highest
being. These conditions, then, under which man con­
ceives God, are to him the truth, and for that reason
they are also the highest existence, or rather they are
existence itself; for only the emphatic, the highest exist­
ence, is existence, and deserves this name. Therefore,
God is an existent, real being, on the very same ground
that he is a particular, definite being; for the qualities of
God are nothing else than the* essential qualities of man
20 TH E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

himself, and a particular man is what he is, has his exist­

ence, his reality, only in his particular conditions. Take
away from the Greek the quality of being Greek, and you
take away his existence. On this ground it is true that
for a definite positive religion— that is, relatively— the
certainty of the existence of God is immediate; for just as
involuntarily, as necessarily, as the Greek was a Greek, so
necessarily were his gods Greek beings, so necessarily were
they real, existent beings. Religion is that conception of
the nature of the world and of man which is essential to,
i.e., identical with; a man’s nature. But man does not
stand above this his necessary conception; on the contrary,
it stands above him; it animates, determines, governs him.
The necessity of a proof, of a middle term to unite qualities
with existence, the possibility of a doubt, is abolished.
Only that which is apart from my own being is capable of
being doubted by me. How then can I doubt of God, who
is my being? To doubt of God is to doubt of myself.
Only when God is thought of abstractly, when his predi­
cates are the result of philosophic abstraction, arises the
distinction or separation between subject and predicate,
existence and nature— arises the fiction that the existence
or the subject is something else than the predicate, some­
thing immediate, indubitable, in distinction from the pre­
dicate, which is held to be doubtful. But this is only a
fiction. A God who has abstract predicates has also an
abstract existence. Existence, being, varies with varying
qualities.
The identity of the subject and predicate is clearly evi­
denced by the progressive development of religion, which
is identical with the progressive development of human
culture. So long as man is in a mere state of nature,
so long is his god a mere nature-god— a personification
of some natural force. Where man inhabits houses, he
also encloses his gods in temples. The temple is only a
manifestation of the value which man attaches to beauti­
ful buildings. Temples in honour of religion are in truth
temples in honour of architecture. With the emerging of
man from a state of savagery and wildness to one of culture,
with the distinction between what is fitting for man and
what is not fitting, arises simultaneously the distinction
between that which is fitting and that which is not fitting
 THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 21

for God. God is the idea of majesty, of the highest dignity:

the religious sentiment is the sentiment of supreme fitness.
The later more cultured artists of Greece were the first to
embody in the statues of the gods the ideas of dignity, of
spiritual grandeur, of imperturbable repose and serenity.
But why were these qualities in their view attributes,
predicates of God ? Because they were in themselves
regarded by the Greeks as divinities. Why did those
artists exclude all disgusting and low passions ? Because
they perceived them to be unbecoming, unworthy, un­
human, and consequently ungodlike. The Homeric gods
eat and drink;— that implies eating and drinking is a
divine pleasure. Physical strength is an attribute of the
Homeric gods: Zeus is the strongest of the gods. Why ?
Because physical strength, in and by itself, was regarded as
something glorious, divine. To the ancient Germans the
highest virtues were those of the warrior; therefore their
supreme god was the god of war, Odin,— war, “ the original
or oldest law.” Not the attribute of the divinity, but the
divineness or deity of the attribute, is the first true Divine
Being. Thus what theology and philosophy have held to be
God, the Absolute, the Infinite, is not God; but that which
they have held not to be God is God: namely, the attribute,
the quality, whatever has reality. Hence he alone is the
true atheist to whom the predicates of the Divine Being,—
for example, love, wisdom, justice,— are nothing; not he to
whom merely the subject of these predicates is nothing.
A nd in'no wise is the negation of the subject necessarily
also a negation of the predicates considered in themselves.
These have an intrinsic, independent reality; they force
their recognition upon man by their very nature; they are
self-evident truths to him; they prove, they attest them­
selves. It does not follow that goodness, justice, wisdom,
are chimaeras because the existence of God is a chimsera,
nor truths because this is a truth. The idea of God is
dependent on the idea of justice, of benevolence; a God
who is not benevolent, not just, not wise, is no God; but
the converse does not hold. The fact is not that a quality
is divine because God has it, but that God has it because
it is in itself divine: because without it God would be a
defective being. Justice, wisdom, in general every quality
which constitutes the divinity of God, is determined and
22 T H E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

known by itself independently, but the idea of God is

determined by the qualities which have thus been pre­
viously judged to be worthy of the divine nature; only in
the case in which I identify God and justice, in which I
think of God immediately as the reality of the idea of
justice, is the idea of God self-determined. But if God as
a subject is the determined, while the quality, the predicate,
is the determining, then in truth the rank of the godhead is
due not to the subject, but to the predicate.
Not until several, and those contradictory, attributes are
united in one being, and this being is conceived as personal
— the personality being thus brought into especial promi­
nence— not until then is the origin of religion lost sight of,
is it forgotten that what the activity of the reflective power
has converted into a predicate distinguishable or separable
from the subject, was originally the true subject. Thus the
Greeks and Romans deified accidents as substances; virtues,
states of mind, passions, as independent beings. Man,
especially the religious man, is to himself the measure of
all things, of all reality. Whatever strongly impresses a
man, whatever produces an unusual effect on his mind, if
it be only a peculiar, inexplicable sound or note, he per­
sonifies as a divine being. Religion embraces all the
objects of the world: everything existing has been an
object of religious reverence; in the nature and conscious­
ness of religion there is nothing else than what lies in the
nature of man and in his consciousness of himself and of the
world. Religion has no material exclusively its own. In
Rome even the passions of fear and terror had their
temples. The Christians also made mental phenomena into
independent beings, their own feelings into qualities of
things, the passions which governed them into powers
which governed the world, in short, predicates of their own
nature, whether recognised as such or not, into independent
subjective existences. Devils, cobolds, witches, ghosts,
angels, were sacred truths as long as the religious spirit
held undivided sway over mankind.
In order to banish from the mind the identity of the
divine and human predicates, and the consequent identity
of the divine and human nature, recourse is had to the
idea that God, as the absolute, real Being, has an infinite
fulness of various predicates, of which we here know only
 TH E ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 23
a part, and those such as are analogous to our own; while
the rest, by virtue of which God must thus have quite a
different nature from the human or that which is analogous
to the human, we shall only know in the future— that is,
after death. But an infinite plenitude or multitude of
predicates which are really different, so different that the
one does not immediately involve the other, is realised
only in an infinite plenitude or multitude of different
beings or individuals. Thus the human nature presents
an infinite abundance of different predicates, and for that
very reason it presents an infinite abundance of different
individuals. Each new man is a new predicate, a new
phasis of humanity. As many as are the men, so many are
the powers, the properties of humanity. It is true that
there are the same elements in every individual, but under
such various conditions and modifications that they ap­
pear new and peculiar. The mystery of the inexhaustible
fulness of the divine predicates is therefore nothing else
than the mystery of human nature considered as an
infinitely varied, infinitely modifiable, but, consequently,
phenomenal being. Only in the realm of the senses, only
in space and time, does there exist a being of really infinite
qualities or predicates. Where there are really different
predicates there are different times. One man is a distin­
guished musician, a distinguished author, a distinguished
physician; but he cannot compose music, write books,
and perform cures in the same moment of time. Time,
and not the Hegelian dialectic, is the medium of uniting
opposites, contradictories, in one and the same subject. But
distinguished and detached from the nature of man, and
combined with the idea of God, the infinite fulness of
various predicates is a conception without reality, a mere
phantasy, a conception derived from the sensible world, but
without the essential conditions, without the truth of sen­
sible existence, a conception which stands in direct con­
tradiction with the Divine Being considered as a spiritual,
i.e., an abstract, simple, single being; for the predicates of
God are precisely of this character, that one involves all the
others, because there is no real difference between them.
If, therefore, in the present predicates I have not the future,
in the present God not the future God, then the future God
24 the ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

is not the present, but they are two distinct beings.1 B u t

this distinction is in contradiction with the unity and sim­
plicity of the theological God. W hy is a given predicate
a predicate of God? Because it is divine in its nature, i.e.,
because it expresses no limitation, no defect Why are other
predicates applied to him ? Because, however various in
themselves, they agree in this, that they all alike express
perfection, unlimitedness. Hence I can conceive innumer­
able predicates of God, because they must all agree with
the abstract idea of the Godhead, and must have in common
that which constitutes every single predicate a divine attri­
bute. Thus it is in the system of Spinoza. He speaks of
an infinite number of attributes of the divine substance, but
he specifies none except Thought and Extension. Why ?
Because it is a matter of indifference to know them ; nay,
Because they are in themselves indifferent, superfluous; for
with all these innumerable predicates, I yet always mean
to say the same thing as when I speak of Thought and
Extension. W hy is Thought an attribute of substance ?
Because, according to Spinoza, it is capable of being con­
ceived by itself, because it expresses something indivisible,
perfect, infinite. W hy Extension or Matter? For the
same reason. Thus, substance can have an indefinite
number of predicates, because it is not their specific
definition, their difference, but their identity, their equi­
valence, which makes them attributes of substance. Or
rather, substance has innumerable predicates only because
(how strange!) it has properly no predicate; that is, no
definite, real predicate. The indefinite unity which is
the product of thought, completes itself by the indefinite
multiplicity which is the product of the imagination.
Because the predicate is not multum, it is vrndta. In
truth, the positive predicates are Thought and Extension.
In these two infinitely more is said than in the nameless
innumerable predicates; for they express something de­
finite— in them I have something. But substance is too
indifferent, too apathetic to be something ; that is, to have

1 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, per­
sonal, sensible perception. In this life and in the next he is the same
God j but in the one he is incomprehensible, in the other comprehensible.
 T H E ESSENCE OF R ELIGION. 25

qualities and passions; that it may not be something, it is

rather nothing.
Now, when it is shown that what the subject is lies
entirely in the attributes of the subject; that is, that the
predicate is the true subject; it is also proved that if the
divine predicates are attributes of the human nature, the
subject of those predicates is also of the human nature. But
the divine predicates are. partly general, partly personal.
The general predicates are the metaphysical, but these serve
only as external points of support to religion; they are not
the characteristic definitions of religion. It is the personal
predicates alone which constitute the essence of religion—
in which the Divine Being is the object of religion. Such
are, for example, that God is a Person, that he is the moral
Lawgiver, the Father Qf mankind, the Holy One, the Just,
the Good, the Merciful. It is, however, at once clear, or it
will at least be clear in the sequel, with regard to these and
other definitions, that, especially as applied to a personality,
they are purely human definitions, and that consequently
man in religion— in his relation to God— is in relation to
his own nature; for to the religious sentiment these predi­
cates are not mere conceptions, mere images, which man
forms of God, to be distinguished from that which God
is in himself, but truths, facts, realities. Religion knows
nothing of anthropomorphisms; to it they are not anthropo­
morphisms. It is the very essence of religion, that to it
these definitions express the nature of God. They are pro­
nounced to be images only by the understanding, which
reflects on religion, and which while defending them yet
before its own tribunal denies them. But to the religious
sentiment God is a real Father, real Love and M ercy; for
to it he is a real, living, personal being, and therefore his attri­
butes are also living and personal Nay, the definitions which
are the most sufficing to the religious sentiment are precisely
those which give the most offence to the understanding,
and which in the process of reflection on religion it denies.
Religion is essentially emotion; hence, objectively also,
emotion is to it necessarily of a divine nature. Even anger
appears to it an emotion not unworthy of God, provided only
there be a religious motive at the foundation of this anger.
But here it is also essential to observe, and this pheno­
menon is an extremely remarkable one, characterising the
25 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

very core of religion, that in proportion as the divine

subject is in reality human, the greater is the apparent
difference between God and man; that is, the more, by
reflection on religion, by theology, is the identity of the
divine and human denied, and the human, considered as
such, is depreciated.1 The reason of this is, that as what is
positive in the conception of the divine being can only be
human, the conception of man, as an object of consciousness,
can only be negative. To enrich God, man must become
poor; that God may be all, man must be nothing. But he
desires to be nothing in himself, because what he takes
from himself is not lost to him, since it is preserved in God.
Man has his being in G od; why then should he have it
in himself ? Where is the necessity of positing the same
thing twice, of having it twice ? What man withdraws
from himself, what he renounces in himself, he only enjoys
in an incomparably higher and fuller measure in God.
The monks made a vow of chastity to God; they morti­
fied the sexual passion in themselves, but therefore they
had in heaven, in the Virgin Mary, the image of woman
— an image of love. They could the more easily dispense
with real woman in proportion as an ideal woman was an
object of love to them. The greater the importance they
attached to the denial of sensuality, the greater the import­
ance of the heavenly virgin for them : she was to them in
the place of Christ, in the stead of God. The more the
sensual tendencies are renounced, the more sensual is the
God to whom they are sacrificed. For whatever is made
an offering to God has an especial value attached to i t ; in
it God is supposed to have especial pleasure. That which
is the highest in the estimation of man is naturally
the highest in the estimation of his God; what pleases
man pleases God also. The Hebrews did not offer to
Jehovah unclean, ill-conditioned animals; on the contrary,
those which they most highly prized, which they them­
selves ate, were also the food of God (Cibus Dei, Lev. iii.
1 Inter creatorem et creaturam non potest tanta similitudo notari, quin
inter eos major sit dissimilitudo notanda.— Later. Cone. can. 2. (Summa
Omn. Cone. 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.
 THE ESSENCE OF R EL IGIO N . 27

2). Wherever, therefore, the denial of the sensual delights

is made a special offering, a sacrifice well-pleasing to God,
there the highest value is attached to the senses, and the
sensuality which has been renounced is unconsciously re­
stored, in the fact that God takes the place of the material
delights which have been renounced. The nun weds her­
self to G od; she has a heavenly bridegroom, the monk a
heavenly bride. But the heavenly virgin is only a sensible
presentation of a general truth, having relation to the
essence of religion. Man denies as to himself only what he
attributes to God. Religion abstracts from man, from the
w orld; but it can only abstract from the limitations, from
the phenomena; in short, from the negative, not from the
essence, the positive, of the world and humanity: hence, in
the very abstraction and negation it must recover that
from winch it abstracts, or believes itself to abstract. And
thus, in reality, whatever religion consciously denies—
always supposing that what is denied by it is something
essential, true, and consequently incapable of being ulti­
mately denied— it unconsciously restores in God. Thus, in
religion man denies his reason; of himself he knows nothing
of God, his thoughts are only worldly, earthly; he can only
believe what God reveals to him. But on this account the
thoughts of God are human, earthly thoughts: like man,
he has plans in his mind, he accommodates himself to
circumstances and grades of intelligence, like a tutor with
his pupils; he calculates closely the effect of his gifts and
revelations; he observes man in all his doings; he knows
all things, even the most earthly, the commonest, the most
trivial. In brief, man in relation to God denies his own
knowledge, his own thoughts, that he may place them in God.
Man gives up his personality; but in return, God, the A l­
mighty, infinite, unlimited being, is a person; he denies
human dignity, the human ego ; but in return God is to him
a selfish, egoistical being, who in all things seeks only him­
self, his own honour, his own ends; he represents God as
simply seeking the satisfaction of his own selfishness, while
yet he frowns on that of every other being; his God is the
very luxury of egoism.1 Religion further denies goodness
1 Gloriam suam plus amat Deus quam onmes 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.
28 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

as a quality of human nature; man is wicked, corrupt,

incapable of good; but, on the other hand, God is only good
— the Good Being. Man’s nature demands as an object
goodness, personified as God; but is it not hereby declared
that goodness is an essential tendency of man? If my
heart is wicked, my understanding perverted, how can I
perceive and feel the holy to be holy, the good to be good ?
Could I perceive the beauty of a fine picture if my mind
were aesthetically an absolute piece of perversion ? Though
I may not be a painter, though I may not have the power
of producing what is beautiful myself, I must yet have
aesthetic feeling, aesthetic comprehension, since I perceive
the beauty that is presented to me externally. Either
goodness does not exist at all for man, or, if it does exist,
therein is revealed to the individual man the holiness and
goodness of human nature. That which is absolutely
opposed to my nature, to which I am united by no bond
of sympathy, is not even conceivable or perceptible by me.
The holy is in opposition to me only as regards the modi­
fications of my personality, but as regards my fundamental
nature it is in unity with me. The holy is a reproach to
my sinfulness; in it I recognise myself as a sinner; but in
so doing, while I blame myself, I acknowledge what I am
not, but ought to be, and what, for that very reason, I,
according to my destination, can b e ; for an “ ought ” which
has no corresponding capability does not affect me, is a
ludicrous chimaera without any true relation to my mental
constitution. But when I acknowledge goodness as my
destination, as my law, I acknowledge it, whether con­
sciously or unconsciously, as my own nature. Another
nature than my own, one different in quality, cannot touch
me. I can perceive sin as sin, only when I perceive it to
be a contradiction of myself with myself— that is, of my
personality with my fundamental nature. As a contradic­
tion of the absolute, considered as another being, the feel­
ing of sin is inexplicable, unmeaning.
The distinction between Augustinianism and Pelagianism
consists only in this, that the former expresses after the
manner of religion what the latter expresses after the
manner of Rationalism. Both say the same thing, both
vindicate the goodness of man; but Pelagianism does it
directly, in a rationalistic and moral form; Augustinianism
 T H E ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 29

indirectly, in a mystical, that is, a religious form.1 For

that which is given to man's God is in truth given to man
himself; what a man declares concerning God, he in truth
declares concerning himself. Augustinianism would be a
truth, and a truth opposed to Pelagianism, only if man had
the devil for his God, and, with the consciousness that he
was the devil, honoured, reverenced, and worshipped him
as the highest being. But so long as man adores a good
being as his God, so long does he contemplate in God the
goodness of his own nature.
As with the doctrine of the radical corruption of human
nature, so is it with the identical doctrine, that man can
do nothing good, i.e., in truth, nothing of himself— by his
own strength. For the denial of human strength and
spontaneous moral activity to be true, the moral activity
of God must also be denied; and we must say, with the
Oriental nihilist or pantheist: the Divine being is absolutely
without will or action, indifferent, knowing nothing of the
discrimination between evil an£ good. But he who defines
God as an active being, and not only so, but as morally
active and morally critical,— as a being who loves, works,
and rewards good, punishes, rejects, and condemns evil,—
he who thus defines God only in appearance denies human
activity, in fact, making it the highest, the most real activity.
He who makes God act humanly, declares human activity
to be divine; he says: A god who is not active, and not
morally or humanly active, is no god; and thus he makes
the idea of the Godhead dependent on the idea of activity,
that is, of human activity, for a higher he knows not.
Man— this is the mystery of religion— projects his being

1 Pelagianism denies God, religion— isti tantarn 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, 1. c. c. 33.) Augustinian­
ism denies man; but, as a consequence of this, it reduces God to the level
of man, even to the ignominy of tne 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.
30 TH E ESSENCE OF CH RISTIANITY.

into objectivity,1 and then again makes himself an object

to this projected image of himself thus converted into a
subject; he thinks of himself is an object to himself, but
as the object of an object, of another being than himself.
Thus here. Man is an object to God. That man is good
or evil is not indifferent to God; n o ! He has a lively,
profound interest in man’s being good; he wills that man
should be good, happy— for without goodness there is no
happiness. Thus the religious man virtually retracts the
nothingness of human activity, by making his dispositions
and actions an object to God, by making man the end of
God— for that which is an object to the mind is an end in
action; by making the divine activity a means of human
salvation. God acts, that man may be good and happy.
Thus man, while he is apparently humiliated to the lowest
degree, is in truth exalted to the highest. Thus, in and
through God, man has in view himself alone. It is true
that man places the aim of his action in God, but God has
no other aim of action than the moral and eternal salvation
of man: thus man has in fact no other aim than himself.
The divine activity is not distinct from the human.
How could the divine activity work on me as its object,
nay, work in me, if it were essentially different from me;
how could it have a human aim, the aim of ameliorating
and blessing man, if it were not itself human ? Does not
the purpose determine the nature of the act ? When man
makes his moral improvement an aim to himself, he has
divine resolutions, divine projects; but also, when God
seeks the salvation of man, he has human ends and a
human mode of activity corresponding to these ends.
Thus in God man has only his own activity as an object.
But for the very reason that he regards his own activity
as objective, goodness only as an object, he necessarily
receives the impulse, the motive not from himself, but
from this object. He contemplates his nature as external
to himself, and this nature as goodness; thus it is self-

1 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.
 TH E ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 31
evident, it is mere tautology to say that the impulse to
good comes only from thence where he places the good.
God is the highest subjectivity of man abstracted from
himself ; hence man can do nothing of himself, all good­
ness comes from God. The more subjective God is, the
more completely. does man divest himself of his subjec­
tivity, because God is, per se, his relinquished'self, the
possession of which he however again vindicates to himself.
A s the action of the arteries drives the blood into the ex­
tremities, and the action of the veins brings it back again,
as life in general consists in a perpetual systole and diastole;
so is it in religion. In the religious systole man propels his
own nature from himself, he throws himself outward ; in the
religious diastole he receives the rejected nature into his
heart again. God alone is the being who acts of himself,—
this is the force of repulsion in religion ; God is the being
who acts in me, with me, through me, upon me, for me, is
the principle of my salvation, of my good dispositions and
actions, consequently my own good principle and nature,^
this is the force of attraction in religion.
The course of religious development which has been gene­
rally indicated consists specifically in this, that man abstracts
more and more from God, and attributes more and more to
himself. This is especially apparent in the belief in reve­
lation. That which to a later age or a cultured people is
given by nature or reason, is to an earlier age, or to a yet
uncultured people, given by God. Every tendency of man,
however natural— even the impulse to cleanliness, was
conceived by the Israelites as a positive divine ordinance.
From this example we again see that God is lowered, is
conceived more entirely on the type of ordinary humanity,
in proportion as man detracts from himself. How can the
self-humiliation of man go further than when he disclaims
the capability of fulfilling spontaneously the requirements
of common decency ?1 The Christian religion, on the other
hand, distinguished the impulses and passions of man
according to their quality, their character; it represented
only good emotions, good dispositions, good thoughts, as
revelations, operations— that is, as dispositions, feelings,
thoughts,— of God; for what God reveals is a quality of
God himself : that of which the heart is full overflows the
1 Deut. xxiii. 12, 13.
32 TH E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

lip s; as is the effect such is the cause; as the revelation,

such the being who reveals himself. A God who reveals
himself in good dispositions is a God whose essential attri­
bute is only moral perfection. The Christian religion
distinguishes inward moral purity from external physical
purity; the Israelites identified the two.1 In relation to
the Israelitish religion, the Christian religion is one of criti­
cism and freedom. The Israelite trusted himself to do
nothing except what was commanded by God; he was with­
out will even in external things; the authority of religion
extended itself even to his food. The Christian religion,
on the other hand, in all these external things made man
dependent on himself, i.e., placed in man what the Israelite
placed out of himself in God. Israel is the most complete
presentation of Positivism in religion. In relation to the
Israelite, the Christian is an esprit fort, a free-thinker.
Thus do things change. What yesterday was still religion
is no longer such to-day; and what to-day is atheism, to­
morrow will be religion.

1 See, for example, Gen. xxxv. 2; Levit. xi. 44; xx. 26; and the Com­
mentary of Le Clerc on these passages.
 ( 33 )

PART I.

T H E TR U E OR A N TH R O PO LO G ICAL E SSE N C E
O F R E L IG IO N .

CHAPTER II.

GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING.

R e lig io nis the disuniting of man from himself; he sets

God before him as the antithesis of himself. God is not
what man is— man is not what God is. God is the infinite,
man the finite being; God is perfect, man imperfect; God
eternal, man temporal; God almighty, man weak; God
holy, man sinfuL God and man are extremes: God is
the absolutely positive, the sum of all realities; man the
absolutely negative, comprehending all negations.
But in religion man contemplates his own latent nature.
Hence it must be shown that this antithesis, this differ­
encing of God and man, with which religion begins, is a
differencing of man with his own nature.
The inherent necessity of this proof is at once apparent
from this,— that if the divine nature, which is the object of
religion, were really different from the nature of man, a
4 ivision, a disunion could not take place. If God is really
a different being from myself, why should his perfection
trouble me ? Disunion exists only between beings who are
at variance, but who ought to be one, who can be one,
and who consequently in nature, in truth, are one. On
this general ground, then, the nature with which man feels
himself in disunion must be inborn, immanent in himself,
but at the same time it must be of a different character
from that nature or power which gives him the feeling, the
consciousness of reconciliation, of union with God, or, what
is the same thing, with himself.
C
 34 * T H E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

This nature is nothing else than the intelligence— the

reason or the understanding. God as the antithesis of man,
as a being not human, i.e., not personally human, is the
objective nature of the understanding. The pure, perfect
divine nature is the self-consciousness of the understanding,
the consciousness which the understanding has of its own
perfection. The understanding knows nothing of the suffer­
ings of the heart; it has no desires, no passions, no wants,
and, for that reason, no deficiencies and weaknesses, as the
heart has. Men in whom the intellect predominates, who,
•with one-sided but all the more characteristic definiteness,
embody and personify for us the nature of the understanding,
are free from the anguish of the heart, from the passions,
the excesses of the man who has strong emotions; they are
not passionately interested in any finite, i.e.yparticular object;
they do not give themselves in pledge; they are free. “ To
want nothing, and by this freedom from wants to become
like the immortal gods;”— “ not to subject ourselves to
things, but things to u s ; ”— “ all is vanity; ”— these and
similar sayings are the mottoes of the men who are governed
by abstract understanding. The understanding is that part
of our nature which is neutral, impassible, not to bribed, not
subject to illusions— the pure, passionless light of the intelli­
gence. It is the categorical, impartial consciousness of the
fact as fact, because it is itself of an objective nature. It is
the consciousness of the uncontradictory, because it is itself
the uncontradictory unity, the source of logical identity. It
is the consciousness of law, necessity, rule, measure, because
it is itself the activity of law, the necessity of the nature of
things under the form of spontaneous activity, the rule of
rules, the absolute measure, the measure of measures. Only
by the understanding can man judge and act in contradic­
tion with his dearest human, that is, personal feelings, when
the God of the understanding,— law, necessity, right,— com­
mands it. The father who, as a judge, condemns his own
son to death because he knows him to be guilty, can do this
only as a rational, not as an emotional being. The under­
standing shows us the faults and weaknesses even of our
beloved ones; it shows us even our own. It is for this
reason that it so often throws us into painful collision with
ourselves, with our own hearts. We do not like to give
reason the upper hand: we are too tender to ourselves to
 GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 35

carry out the true, but hard, relentless verdict of the under­
standing. The understanding is the power which has rela­
tion to species: the heart represents particular circumstances,
individuals,— the understanding, general circumstances, uni­
versal ; it is the superhuman, i.e., the impersonal power
in man. Only by and in the understanding has man the
power of abstraction from himself, from his subjective being,
— of exalting himself to general ideas and relations, of
distinguishing the object from the impressions which it
produces on his feelings, of regarding it in and by itself
without reference to human personality. Philosophy, mathe­
matics, astronomy, physics, in short, science in general, is
the practical proof, because it is the product of this truly
infinite and divine activity. Religious anthropomorphisms,
therefore, are in contradiction with the understanding; it
repudiates their application to God; it denies them. But
this God, free from anthropomorphisms, impartial, passion­
less, is nothing else than the nature of the understanding
itself regarded as objective.
God as God, that is, as a being not finite, not human, not
materially conditioned, not phenomenal, is only an object
of thought. He is the incorporeal, formless, incomprehen­
sible— the abstract, negative being: he is known, i.e., becomes
an object, only by abstraction and negation (yid negationis).
W hy ? Because he is nothing but the objective nature of
the thinking power, or in general of the power or activity,
name it what you will, whereby man is conscious of reason,
of mind, of intelligence. There is no other spirit, that is
(for the idea of spirit is simply the idea of thought, of intelli­
gence, of understanding, every other spirit being a spectre
of the imagination), no other intelligence which man can
believe in or conceive than that intelligence which enlightens
him, which is active in him. He can do nothing more than
separate the intelligence from the limitations of his own
individuality. The “ infinite spirit,” in distinction from
the finite, is therefore nothing else than the intelligence
disengaged from the limits of individuality and corporeality,
— for individuality and corporeality are inseparable,— intel­
ligence posited in and by itself. God, said the schoolmen,
the Christian fathers, and long before them the heathen
philosophers,— God is immaterial essence, intelligence, spirit,
' pure understanding. Of God as God no image can be made;
36 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

but canst thou frame an image of mind ? Has mind a

form ? Is not its activity the most inexplicable, the most
incapable of representation? God is incomprehensible;
but knowest thou the nature of the intelligence ? Hast thou
searched out the mysterious operation of thought, the hidden
nature of self-consciousness ? Is not self-consciousness the
enigma of enigmas ? Did not the old mystics, schoolmen,
and fathers, long ago compare the incomprehensibility of the
divine nature with that of the human intelligence, and thus,
in truth, identify the nature of God with the nature of
man ? * God as God— as a purely thinkable being, an object
of the intellect— is thus nothing else than the reason in its
utmost intensification become objective to itself. It is asked
what is the understanding or the reason ? The answer is
found in the idea of God. Everything must express itself,
reveal itself, make itself objective, affirm itself. God is the
reason expressing, affirming itself as the highest existence.
To the imagination, the reason is the revelation of God; but
to the reason, God is the revelation of the reason; since
what reason is, what it can do, is first made objective in
God. God is a need of the intelligence, a necessary thought
— the highest degree of the thinking power. “ The reason
cannot rest in sensuous things;” it can find contentment only
when it penetrates to the highest, first necessary being, which
can be an object to the reason alone. Why ? Because with
the conception of this being it first completes itself, because
only in the idea of the highest nature is the highest nature
of reason existent, the highest step of the thinking power
attained: and it is a general truth, that we feel a blank, a
void, a waut in ourselves, and are consequently unhappy and
unsatisfied, so long as we have not come to the last degree
of a power, to that quo nihil majus cogitari potest,— so long
as we cannot bring our inborn capacity for this or that art,
this or that science, to the utmost proficiency. For only in
the highest proficiency is art truly art; only in its highest
degree is thought truly thought, reason. Only when thy
* Augustine, in his work Contra Académicos, which he wrote when he was
still in some measure a heathen, says (1. iii. c. 12) that the highest good of
man consists in the mind or in the reason. On the other hand, in his Libr.
RetractMionum, which he wrote as a distinguished Christian and theologian, he
revises (1. i. c. 1) this declaration as follows :— Yerius dixissem in Deo. Ipso
enim mens fruitur, ut beatp sit, tanquam summo bono suo. But is there any
distinction here ? Where my highest good is, is npt there my nature also ?
 GOD A S A BEING OF TH E UNDERSTANDING. 37

thought is God dost thou truly think, rigorously speaking;

for only God is the realised, consummate, exhausted thinking
power. Thus in conceiving God, man first conceives reason as
it truly is, though by means of the imagination he conceives
this divine nature as distinct from reason, because as a being
affected by external things he is accustomed always to dis­
tinguish the object from the conception of it. And here he
applies the same process to the conception of the reason, thus
for an existence in reason, in thought, substituting an exis­
tence in space and time, from which he had, nevertheless,
previously abstracted it. God, as a metaphysical being, is
the intelligence satisfied in itself, or rather, conversely, the
intelligence, satisfied in itself, thinking itself as the absolute
being, is God as a metaphysical being. Hence all meta­
physical predicates of God are real predicates only when
they are recognised as belonging to thought, to intelligence,
to the understanding.
The understanding is that which conditionates and co-ordi­
nates all things, that which places all things in reciprocal
dependence and connection, because it is itself immediate
and unconditioned; it inquires for the cause of all things,
because it has its own ground and end in itself. Only that
which itself is nothing deduced, nothing derived, can deduce
and construct, can regard all besides itself as derived; just as
only that which exists for its own sake can view and treat other
things as means and instruments. The understanding is thus
the original, primitive being. The understanding derives all
things from God as the first cause; it finds the world, without
an intelligent cause, given over to senseless, aimless chance;
that is, it finds only in itself, in its own nature, the efficient
and the final cause of the world— the existence of the world
is only then clear and comprehensible when it sees the expla­
nation of that existence in the source of all clear and intelli­
gible ideas, i.e., in itself. The being that works with design
towards certain ends, i.e.} with understanding, is alone the
being that to the understanding has immediate certitude,
self-evidence. Hence that which of itself has no designs,
no purpose, must have the cause of its existence in the
design of another, and that an intelligent being. And thus
the understanding posits its own nature as the causal, first,
premundane existence— i.e., being in rank the first but in
time the last, it makes itself the first in time also.
The understanding is to itself the criterion of all reality.
38 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

That which is opposed to the understanding, that which is

self-contradictory, is nothing; that which contradicts reason
contradicts God. For example, it is a contradiction of
reason to connect with the idea of the highest reality the
limitations of definite time and place; and hence reason
denies these of God as contradicting his nature. The reason
can only believe in a Qod who is accordant with its own
nature, in a God who is not beneath its own dignity, who,
on the contrary, is a realisation of its own nature: i.e., the
reason believes only in itself, in the absolute reality of its
own nature. The reason is not dependent on God, but God
on the reason. Even in the age of miracles and faith in
authority, the understanding constitutes itself, at least for­
mally, the criterion of divinity. God is all and can do all,
it was said, by virtue of his omnipotence; but nevertheless
he is nothing and he can do nothing which contradicts
himself, i.e., reason. Even omnipotence cannot do what is
contrary to reason. Thus above the divine omnipotence
stands the higher power of reason; above the nature of God
the nature of the understanding, as the criterion of that which
is to be affirmed and denied of God, the criterion of the posi­
tive and negative. Canst thou believe in a God who is an
unreasonable and wicked being ? No, indeed; but why not ?
Because it is in contradiction with thy understanding to
accept a wicked and unreasonable being as divine. What
then dost thou affirm, what is an object to thee, in God ?
Thy own understanding. God is thy highest idea, the
supreme effort of thy understanding, thy highest power of
thought. God is the sum of all realities, i.e., the sum of all
affirmations of the understanding. That which I recognise
in the understanding as essential I place in God as existent:
God is what the understanding thinks as the highest. But in
what I perceive to be essential is revealed the nature of my
understanding, is shown the power of my thinking faculty.
Thus the understanding is the ens realissimum, the most
real being of the old onto-theology. “ Fundamentally,” says
onto-theology, “ we cannot conceive God otherwise than by
attributing to him without limit all the real qualities which
we find in ourselves.” * Our positive, essential qualities, our
realities, are therefore the realities of God, but in us they
exist with, in God without, limits. But what then withdraws

* Kant, Vorles. über d. philos. Religionsl., Leipzig, 1817, p. 39.

 GOD AS A B EING OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 39

the limits from the realities, what does away with the limits ?
The understanding. What, according to this, is the nature
conceived without limits, but the nature of the understand­
ing releasing, abstracting itself from all limits ? As thou
thinkest God, such is thy thought ;— the measure of thy God
is the measure of thy understanding. If thou conceivest
God as limited, thy understanding is limited ; if thou con­
ceivest God as unlimited, thy understanding is unlimited ;
If, for example, thou conceivest God as a corporeal being,
corporeality is the boundary, the limit of thy understanding ;
thou canst conceive nothing without a body. If, on the con­
trary, thou deniest corporeality of God, this is a corroboration
and proof of the freedom of thy understanding from the limi­
tation of corporeality. In the unlimited divine nature thou
representest only thy unlimited understanding. And when
thou declarest this unlimited being the ultimate essence, the
highest being, thou sayest in reality nothing else than this :
the être suprême, the highest being, is the understanding.
The understanding is further the self-subsistent and inde­
pendent being. That which has no understanding is not
self-subsistent, is dependent. A man without understand­
ing is a man without will. He who has no understanding
allows himself to be deceived, imposed upon, used as an
instrument by others. How shall he whose understanding
is the tool of another have an independent will ? Only he
who thinks is free and independent. It is only by the
understanding that man reduces the things around and
beneath him to mere means of his own existence. In general,
that only is self-subsistent and independent which is an end
to itself, an object to itself. That which is an end and object
to itself is for that very reason— in so far as it is an object
to itself— no longer a means and object for another being.
To be without understanding is, in one word, to exist for
another,— to be an object : to have understanding is to exist
for oneself,— to be a subject. But that which no longer exists
for another, but for itself, rejects all dependence on another
being. It is true we, as physical beings, depend on the beings
external to us, even as to the modifications of thought ; but
in so far as we think, in the activity of the understanding
as such, we are dependent on no other being. Activity of
thought is spontaneous activity. “ When I think, I am con­
scious that my ego in me thinks, and not some other thing.
4o T H E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

I conclude, therefore, that this thinking in me does not inhere

in another thing outside of me, but in myself, consequently
that I am a substance, i.e., that I exist by myself, without
being a predicate of another being/’ * Although we always
need the air, yet as natural philosophers we convert the air
from an object of our physical need into an object of the
self-sufficing activity of thought, i.e., into a mere thing for
us. In breathing I am the object of the air, the air the
subject; but when I make the air an object of thought, of
investigation, when I analyse it, I reverse this relation,— I
make myself the subject, the air an object. But that which
is the object of another being is dependent. Thus the plant
is dependent on air and light, that is, it is an object for air,
and light, not for itself. It is true that air and light are
reciprocally an object for the plant. Physical life in general
is nothing else than this perpetual interchange of the objec­
tive and subjective relation. We consume the air and are
consumed by i t ; we enjoy and are enjoyed. The under­
standing alone enjoys all things without being itself enjoyed;
it is the self-enjoying, self-sufficing existence-— the absolute
subject— the subject which cannot be reduced to the object
of another being, because it makes all things objects, predi­
cates of itself,— which comprehends all things in itself, be­
cause it is itself not a thing, because it is free from all things.
That is dependent the possibility of whose existence lies
out of itself; that is independent which has the possibility of
its existence in itself. Life therefore involves the contra­
diction of an existence at once dependent and independent,—
the contradiction that its possibility lies both in itself and
out of itself. The understanding alone is free from this and
other contradictions of life ; it is the essence perfectly self-
subsistent, perfectly at one with itself, perfectly self-exis-
tent.f Thinking is existence in self; life, as differenced
from thought, existence out of self: life is to give from one­
self ; thought is to take into oneself. Existence out of self is
the world; existence in self is God. To think is to be God.
*]Kant, 1. c., p. 80.
+ To guard against mistake, I observe that I do not apply to the under­
standing 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.]
 GOD A S A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 41

The act of thought, as such, is the freedom of the immortal

gods from all external limitations and necessities of life.
The unity of the understanding is the unity of God. To
the understanding the consciousness of its unity and univer­
sality is essential; the understanding is itself nothing else
than the consciousness of itself as absolute identity, i.e.,
that which is accordant with the understanding is to it an
absolute, universally valid, law ; it is impossible to the un­
derstanding to think that what is self-contradictory, false,
irrational, can anywhere be true, and, conversely, that what is
true, rational, can anywhere be false and irrational. “ There
may be intelligent beings who are not like me, and yet I am
certain that there are no intelligent beings who know laws
and truths different from those which I recognise; for every
mind necessarily sees that two and two make four, and that
one must prefer one’s friend to one’s dog.* Of an essentially
different understanding from thatwhich affirms itself in man,
I have not the remotest conception, the faintest adumbration.
On the contrary, every understanding which I posit as dif­
ferent from my own, is only a position of my own under­
standing, i.e., an idea of my own, a conception which falls
within my power of. thought, and thus expresses my under­
standing. What I think, that I myself do, of course only
in purely intellectual matters; what I think of as united, I
unite; what I think of as distinct, I distinguish; what I
think of as abolished, as negatived, that I myself abolish and
negative. For example, if I conceive an understanding in
which the intuition or reality of the object is immediately
united with the thought of it, I actually unite i t ; my un­
derstanding or my imagination is itself the power of uniting
these distinct or opposite ideas. How would it be possible
for me to conceive them united— whether this conception be
clear or confused— if I did not unite them in myself ? But
whatever may be the conditions of the understanding which
a given human individual may suppose as distinguished
from his own, this other understanding is only the under­
standing which exists in man in general— the understand­
ing conceived apart from the limits of this particular indi-

* 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 praeclarum habetur ? Certe
nec verisimile nec omnino possibile.”— Chr. Hugenii (Cosmotheoros, lib. i.).
42 T H E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

vidual. Unity is involved in the idea of the understand­

ing. The impossibility for the understanding to think two
supreme beings, two infinite substances, two Gods, is the
impossibility for the understanding to contradict itself, to
deny its own nature, to think of itself as divided.
The understanding is the infinite being. Infinitude is
immediately involved in unity, and finiteness in plurality.
Finite ness— in the metaphysical sense— rests on the dis­
tinction of the existence from the essence, of the individual
from the species; infinitude, on the unity of existence and
essence. Hence, that is finite which can be compared with
other beings of the same species; that is infinite which has
nothing like itself, which consequently does not stand as
an individual under a species, but is species and individual
in one, essence and existence in one. But such is the under­
standing; it has its essence in itself, consequently it has
nothing, together with or external to itself, which can be
ranged beside i t ; it is incapable of being compared, because
it is itself the source of all combinations and comparisons;
immeasurable, because it is the measure of all measures,—
we measure all things by the understanding alone; it can
be circumscribed by no higher generalisation, it can be
ranged under no species, because it is itself the principle of
all generalising, of all classification, because it circumscribes
all things and beings. The definitions which the speculative
philosophers and theologians give of God, as the being in
whom existence and essence are not separable, who himself
is all the attributes which he has, so that predicate and
subject are with him identical,— all these definitions are
thus ideas drawn solely from the nature of the under­
standing.
Lastly, the understanding or the reason is the necessary
being. Reason exists because only the existence of the
reason is reason; because, if there were no reason, no con­
sciousness, all would be nothing; existence would be equi­
valent to non-existence. Consciousness first founds the dis­
tinction between existence and non-existence. In con­
sciousness is first revealed the value of existence, the value
of nature. Why, in general, does something exist? why
does the world exist ? on the simple ground that if some­
thing did not exist, nothing would exist; if reason did not
exist, there would be only unreason; thus the world exists
 GOD AS A B EIN G OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 43

because it is an absurdity that the world should not exist.

In the absurdity of its non-existence is found the true
reason of its existence, in the groundlessness of the supposi­
tion that it were not the reason that it is. Nothing, non­
existence, is aimless, nonsensical, irrational. Existence
alone has an aim, a foundation, rationality; existence is,
because only existence is reason and truth; existence is
the absolute necessity. What is the cause of conscious
existence, of life ? The need of life. But to whom is it a
need ? To that which does not live. It is not a being who
saw that made the eye: to one who saw already, to what
purpose would be the eye ? N o ! only the being who saw
not needed the eye. We are all come into the world with­
out the operation of knowledge and w ill; but we are come
that knowledge and will may exist. Whence, then, came
the world ? Out of necessity; not out of a necessity which
lies in another being distinct from itself— that is a pure
contradiction,— but out of its own inherent necessity; out
of the necessity of necessity; because without the world
there would be no necessity; without necessity, no reason,
no understanding. The nothing, out of which the world
came, is nothing without the world. It is true that thus,
negativity, as the speculative philosophers express them­
selves— nothing is the cause of the world;— but a nothing
which abolishes itself, i.e., a nothing which could not have
existed if there had been no world. It is true that the
world springs out of a want, out of privation, but it is false
speculation to make this privation an ontological being:
this want is simply the want which lies in the supposed
non-existence of the world. Thus the world is only neces­
sary out of itself and through itself. But the necessity of
the world is the necessity of reason. The reason, as the
sum of all realities,— for what are all the glories of the
world without light, much more external light without
internal light ?— the reason is the most indispensable being
— the profoundest and most essential necessity. In the
reason first lies the self-consciousness of existence, self-
conscious existence; in the reason is first revealed the end,
the meaning of existence. Reason is existence objective
to itself as its own end; the ultimate tendency of things.
That which is an object to itself is the highest, the final
being; that which has power over itself is almighty.
44 T H E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER III.

GOD AS A MORAL BEING, OR LAW.

G o d as God— the infinite, universal, non-anthropomorphic

being of the understanding, has no more significance for
religion than a fundamental general principle has for a
special science; it is merely the ultimate point of support,—
as it were, the mathematical point of religion. The conscious­
ness of human limitation or nothingness which is united with
the idea of this being, is by no means a religious consciousness;
on the contrary, it characterises sceptics, materialists, and
pantheists. The belief in God— at least in the God of reli­
gion— is only lost where, as in scepticism, pantheism, and
materialism, the belief in man is lost, at least in man such
as he is presupposed in religion. As little then as religion
has any influential belief in the nothingness of man,* so
little has it any influential belief in that abstract being with
which the consciousness of this nothingness is united. The
vital elements of religion are those only which make man an
object to man. To deny man is to deny religion.
It certainly is the interest of religion that its object should
be distinct from man; but it is also, nay, yet more, its in­
terest that this object should have human attributes. That
he should be a distinct being concerns his existence only;
but that he should be human concerns his essence. If he
be of a different nature, how can his existence or non­
existence be of any importance to man ? How can he take
so profound an interest in an existence in which his own
nature has no participation ?
To give an example. “ When I believe that the human
nature alone has suffered for me, Christ is a poor Saviour to
* In religion, the representation or expression of the nothingness of man
before God is the anger of God ; for as tne 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).
 GOD AS A MORAL B E I N G , OR LAW . * 45

m e : in that case, he needs a Saviour himself.” And thus, out

of the need for salvation is postulated something transcend­
ing human nature, a being different from man. But no
sooner is this being postulated than there arises the yearning
of man after himself, after his own nature, and man is im­
mediately re-established. “ Here is God, who is not man
and never yet became man. But this is not a God for me.
. . . That would be a miserable Christ to me, who . . .
should be nothing but a purely separate God and divine
person . . . without humanity. No, my friend; where thou
givest me God, thou must give me humanity too.” *
In religion man seeks contentment; religion is his highest
good. But how could he find consolation and peace in God
if God were an essentially different being ? How can I share
the peace of a being if I am not of the same nature with him ?
I f his nature is different from mine, his peace is essentially
different,— it is no peace for me. How then can I become a
partaker of his peace if I am not a partaker of his nature ?
but how can I be a partaker of his nature if I am really of a
different nature ? Every being experiences peace only in its
own element, only in the conditions of its own nature. Thus,
if man feels peace in God, he feels it only because in God he
first attains his true nature, because here, for the first time,
he is with himself, because everything in which he hitherto
sought peace, and which he hitherto mistook for his nature,
was alien to him. Hence, if man is to find contentment in
God, he must find himself in God. “ No one will taste of
God but as he wills, namely— in the humanity of Christ;
and if thou dost not find God thus, thoti wilt never have
rest.” f “ Everything finds rest on the place in which it was
born. The place where I was bom is God. God is my
fatherland. Have I a father in God ? Yes, I have not only
a father, but I have myself in him; before I lived in myself,
I lived already in God.” J
A God, therefore, who expresses only the nature of the un­
derstanding does not satisfy religion, is not the God of religion.
The understanding is interested not only in man, but in the
* Luther, Concordienbuch, Art. 8, Erklär.
+ 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.
X Predigten etzücher Lehrer vor und zu Tauleri Zeiten, Hamburg, 1621,
p. 81.
46 TH E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

things out of man, in universal nature. The intellectual

man forgets even himself in the contemplation of nature.
The Christians scorned the pagan philosophers because,
instead of thinking of themselves, of their own salvation,
they had thought only of things out of themselves. The
Christian thinks only of himself. By the understanding an
insect is contemplated with as much enthusiasm as the image
of God— man. The understanding is the absolute indiffer­
ence and identity of all things and beings. It is not Chris­
tianity, not religious enthusiasm, but the enthusiasm of the
understanding that we have to thank for botany, mineralogy,
zoology, physics, and astronomy. The understanding is
universal, pantheistic, the love of the universe; but the
grand characteristic of religion, and of the Christian reli­
gion especially, is that it is thoroughly anthropotheistic,
the exclusive love of man for himself, the exclusive self-
affirmation of the human nature, that is, of subjective
human nature; for it is true that the understanding also
affirms the nature of man, but it is his objective nature,
which has reference to the object for the sake of the object,
and the manifestation of which is science. Hence it must
be something entirely different from the nature of the under­
standing which is an object to man in religion, if he is to find
contentment therein, and this something will necessarily be
the very kernel of religion.
Of all the attributes which the understanding assigns to
God, that which in religion, and especially in the Christian
religion, has the pre-eminence, is moral perfection. But God
as a morally perfect being is nothing else than the realised
idea, the fulfilled law of morality, the moral nature of man
posited as the absolute being; man's own nature, for the
moral God requires man to be as he himself is : Be ye holy
for I am holy; man's own conscience, for how could he other­
wise tremble before the Divine Being, accuse himself before
him, and make him the judge of his inmost thoughts and
f eelings ?
But the consciousness of the absolutely perfect moral
nature, especially as an abstract being separate from man,
leaves us cold and empty, because we feel the distance, the
chasm between ourselves and this being;— it is a dispiriting
consciousness, for it is the consciousness of our personal
nothingness, and of the kind which is the most acutely felt
 GOD AS A MORAL B E IN G , OR LAW . 47

— moral nothingness. The consciousness of the divine omni­

potence and eternity in opposition to my limitation in space
and time does not afflict m e: for omnipotence does not com­
mand me to be myself omnipotent, eternity, to be myself
eternal. But I cannot have the idea of moral perfection
without at the same time being conscious of it as a law
for me. Moral perfection depends, at least for the moral
consciousness, not on the nature, but on the will— it is a
perfection of will, perfect will. I cannot conceive perfect
will, the will which is in unison with law, which is itself
law, without at the same time regarding it is an object of
will, i.e., as an obligation for myself. The conception of the
morally perfect being is no merely theoretical, inert con­
ception, but a practical one, calling me to action, to imita­
tion, throwing me into strife, into disunion with myself;
for while it proclaims to me what I ought to be, it also tells
me to my face, without any flattery, what I am not.* And
religion renders this disunion all the more painful, all the
more terrible, that it sets man’s own nature before him as a
separate nature, and moreover as a personal being, who hates
and curses sinners, and excludes them from his grace, the
source of all salvation and happiness.
Now, by what means does man deliver himself from this
state of disunion between himself and the perfect being,
from the painful consciousness of sin, from the distressing
sense of his own nothingness ? How does he blunt the fatal
sting of sin ? Only by this; that he is conscious of love as
the highest, the absolute power and truth, that he regards
the Divine Being not only as a law, as a moral being, as a
being of the understanding; but also as a loving, tender, even
subjective human being (that is, as having sympathy with
individual man).
The understanding judges only according to the stringency
of law ; the heart accommodates itself, is considerate, lenient,
relenting, acar avdptoirov. No man is sufficient for the law
which moral perfection sets before us; but, for that reason,
neither is the law sufficient for man, for the heart. The law
condemns; the heart has compassion even on the sinner. The

* “ That which, in our own judgment, derogates from our self-conceit,

humiliates us. Thus the moral law inevitably numiliates every man when
he compares with it the sensual tendency of his nature.”— Eant, Kritik der
prakt Vemunft, 4th edition, p. 132.
48 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

law affirms me only as an abstract being,— love, as a real

being. Love gives me the consciousness that I am a man;
the law only the consciousness that I am a sinner, that I am
worthless.* The law holds man in bondage; love makes
him free.
Love is the middle term, the substantial bond, the prin­
ciple of reconciliation between the perfect and the imperfect,
the sinless and sinful being, the universal and the individual,
the divine and the human. Love is God himself, and apart
from it there is no God. Love makes man God and God man.
Love strengthens the weak and weakens the strong, abases
the high and raises the lowly, idealises matter and material­
ises spirit. Love it the true unity of God and man, of spirit
and nature. In love common nature is spirit, and the pre­
eminent spirit is nature. Love is to deny spirit from the
point of view of spirit, to deny matter from the point of
view of matter. l i v e is materialism; immaterial love is a
chimsera. In the longing of love after the distant object,
the abstract idealist involuntarily confirms the truth of sen­
suousness. But love is also the idealism of nature— love is
also spirit, esprit. Love alone makes the nightingale a song­
stress ; love alone gives the plant its corolla. And what
wonders does not love work in our social life ! What faith,
creed, opinion separates, love unites. Love even, humorously
enough, identifies the high noblesse with the people. What
the old mystics said of God, that he is the highest and yet
the commonest being, applies in truth to love, and that not
a visionary, imaginary love— no! a real love, a love which
has flesh and blood, which vibrates as an almighty force
through all living.
Yes, it applies only to the love which has flesh and blood,
for only this can absolve from the sins which flesh and blood
commit. A merely moral being cannot forgive what is con­
trary to the law of morality. That which denies the law is
denied by the law. The moral judge, who does not infuse
human blood into his judgment judges the sinner relent­
lessly, inexorably. Since, then, God is regarded as a sin-
pardoning being, he is posited, not indeed as an unmoral,
but as more than a moral being— in a word, as a human
* “ Omnes peccavimus. . . . Parricide cum lega cseperunt et illis facinus
poena monstravit.”— Seneca. “ The law destroys us.”— Luther (Th. xvi. s.
320). ' '
 GOD AS A MORAL B E IN G , OR L AW . 49

being. The negation or annulling of sin is the negation of

abstract moral rectitude,— the positing of love, mercy, sen­
suous life. Not abstract beings— n o! only sensuous, living
beings are merciful. Mercy is the justice of sensuous life *
Hence God does not forgive the sins of men as the abstract
God of the understanding, but as man, as the God made
flesh, the visible God. God as man sins not, it is true, but
lie knows, he takes on himself, the sufferings, the wants, the
needs of sensuous beings. The blood of Christ cleanses us
from our sins in the eyes of G od; it is only his human
blood that makes God merciful, allays his anger; that is,
our sins are forgiven us because we are no abstract beings,
but creatures of flesh and blood.f

* “ Das Rechtsgefiihl der Sinnlichkeit.”

+ “ 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.)

D
50 THE ESSENCE Ob' CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION; OR, GOD AS LOVE, AS A

BEING OF THE HEART.

I t is the consciousness of love by which man reconciles him­

self with God, or rather with, his own nature as represented
in the moral law. The consciousness of the divine love, or
what is the same thing, the contemplation of God as human,
is the mystery of the Incarnation. The Incarnation is
nothing else than the practical, material manifestation of the
human nature of God. God did not become man for his
own sake; the,need, the want of man— a want which still
exists in the religious sentiment— was the cause of the
Incarnation. God became man out of mercy: thus he was
in himself already a human God before he became an actual
m an; for human want, human misery, went to his heart.
The Incarnation was a tear of the divine compassion, and
hence it was only the visible advent of a Being having
human feelings, and therefore essentially human.
If in the Incarnation we stop short at the fact of God
becoming man, it certainly appears a surprising, inexplicable,
marvellous event. But the incarnate God is only the apparent
manifestation of deified man; for the descent of God to man
is necessarily preceded by the exaltation of man to God.
Man was already in God, was already God himself, before
God became man,i.e.}showed himself as man* How other­
wise could God have become man ? The old maxim, ex
nihüo nihil Jit, is applicable here also. A king who has not
the welfare of his subjects at heart, who, while seated on his
throne, does not mentally live with them in their dwellings,
who, in feeling, is not, as the people say, “ a common man,”
* “ 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 tálk 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).
 T H E MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION. 51

such a king will not descend bodily from his throne to make
his people happy by his personal presence. Thus, has not
the subject risen to be a king before the king descends to
be a subject ? And if the subject feels himself honoured and
made happy by the personal presence of his king, does this
feeling refer merely to the bodily presence, and not rather
to the manifestation of the disposition, of the philanthropic
nature which is the cause of the appearance ? But that
which in the truth of religion is the cause, takes in the con­
sciousness of religion the form of a consequence; and so
here the raising of man to God is made a consequence of the
humiliation or descent of God to man. God, says religion,
made himself human that he might make man divine.*
That which is mysterious and incomprehensible, i.e., con­
tradictory, in the proposition, “ God is or becomes a man,”
arises only from the mingling or confusion of the idea or
definitions of the universal, unlimited, metaphysical being
with the idea of the religious God, i.e.> the conditions of the
understanding with the conditions of the heart, the emotive
nature; a confusion which is the greatest hindrance to the
correct knowledge of religion. But, in fact, the idea of the
Incarnation is nothing more than the human form of a God,
who already in his nature, in the profoundest depths of his
soul, is a merciful and therefore a human God.
The form given to this truth in the doctrine of the Church
is, that it was not the first person of the Godhead who was
incarnate, but the second, who is the representative of man in
and before God ; the second person being however in reality,
as will be shown, the sole, true, first person in religion. And
it is only apart from this distinction of persons that the God-
man appears mysterious, incomprehensible, “ speculative; ”
for, considered in connection with it, the Incarnation is a
necessary, nay, a self-evident consequence. The allegation,
therefore, that the Incarnation is a purely empirical fact,
which could be made known only by means of a revelation
in the theological sense, betrays the most crass Teligious
materialism; for the Incarnation is a conclusion which rests
* *‘ Deus homo factus est, ut homo Deus fieret.”— Augustinus (Serm. ad
Pop. p. 371, c. 1). In Luther, however (Th. L 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.
52 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

on a very comprehensible premiss. But it is equally perverse

to attempt to deduce the Incarnation from purely specula­
tive, i.e., metaphysical, abstract grounds; for metaphysics
apply only to the first person of the Godhead, who does not
become incarnate, who is not a dramatic person. Such a
deduction would at the utmost be justifiable if it were
meant consciously to deduce from metaphysics the negation
of metaphysics.
This example clearly exhibits the distinction between the
method of our philosophy and that of the old speculative
philosophy. The former does not philosophise concerning
the Incarnation, as a peculiar, stupendous mystery, after the
manner of speculation dazzled by mystical splendour; on
the contrary, it destroys the illusive supposition of a peculiar
supernatural mystery; it criticises the dogma and reduces
it to its natural elements, immanent in man, to its originat­
ing principle and central point— love.
The dogma presents to us two things— God and love.
God is love: but what does that mean ? Is God something
besides love ? a being distinct from love ? Is it as if I said
of an affectionate human being, he is love itself ? Certainly;
otherwise I must give up the name God, which expresses a
special personal being, a subject in distinction from the pre­
dicate. Thus, love is made something apart. God out of
love sent his only-begotten Son. Here love recedes and
sinks into insignificance in the dark background— God. It
becomes merely a personal, though an essential, attribute;
hence it receives both in theory and in feeling, both objec­
tively and subjectively, the rank simply of a predicate, not
that of a subject, of the substance; it shrinks out of obser­
vation as a collateral, an accident; at one moment it pre­
sents itself to me as something essential, at another, it
vanishes again. God appears to me in another form besides
that of love; in the form of omnipotence, of a severe power
not bound by love; a power in which, though in a smaller
degree, the devils participate.
So long as love is not exalted into a substance, into an
essence, so long there lurks in the background of love a
subject who even without love is something by himself, an
unloving monster, a diabolical being, whose personality,
separable and actually separated from love, delights in the
blood of heretics and unbelievers,— the phantom of religious
 THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION. 53
fanaticism. Nevertheless the essential idea of the Incarna­
tion, though enveloped in the night of the religious conscious*
ness, is love. Love determined God to the renunciation of
his divinity.* Not because of his Godhead as such, accord­
ing to which he is the subject in the proposition, God is
love, but because of his love, of the predicate, is it that he re­
nounced his Godhead; thus love is a higher power and truth
than deity. Love conquers God. It was love to- which
God sacrificed his divine majesty. And what sort of love
was that ? another than ours ? than that to which we sacri­
fice life and fortune ? Was it the love of himself ? of himself
as God ? No ! it was love to man. But is not love to man
human love ? Can I love man without loving him humanly,
without loving him as he himself loves, if he truly loves ?
Would not love be otherwise a devilish love ? The devil
too loves man, but not for man’s sake— for his own; thus
he loves man out of egotism, to aggrandise himself, to extend
his power. But God loves man for man’s sake, i.e., that he
may make him good, happy, blessed. Does he not then
love man as the true man loves his fellow ? Has love a
plural ? Is it not everywhere like itself ? What then is
the true unfalsified import of the Incarnation but absolute,
pure love, without adjunct, without a distinction between
divine and human love ? For though there is also a self-
interested love among men, still the true human love, which
is alone worthy of this name, is that which impels the
sacrifice of self to another. Who then is our Saviour and
Redeemer ? God or Love ? Love; for God as God has not
saved us, but Love, which transcends the difference between
the divine and human personality. As God has renounced
himself out of love, so we, out of love, should renounce
G od; for if we do not sacrifice God to love, we sacrifice love
to God, and, in spite of the predicate of love, we have the
God— the evil being— of religious fanaticism.
* 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 God­
head, lies the reality, the vi* of the Incarnation ; although this self-nega­
tion 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 ad­
vanced concerning the Incarnation, in opposition to the rapturous concep­
tions and expressions of ancient faith, do not deserve to be mentioned, still
less controverted.
54 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

While, however, we have laid open this nucleus of truth in

the Incarnation, we have at the same time exhibited the
dogma in its falsity; we have reduced the apparently super­
natural and super-rational mystery to a simple truth inhe­
rent in human nature:— a truth which does not belong to
the Christian religion alone, but which, implicitly at least,
belongs more or less to every religion as such. For every
religion which has any claim to the name presupposes that
God is not indifferent to the beings who worship him,
that therefore what is human is not alien to him, that,
as an object of human veneration, he is a human God.
Every prayer discloses the secret of the Incarnation, every
prayer is in fact an incarnation of God. In prayer I involve
God in human distress, I make him a participator in my
sorrows and wants. God is not deaf to my complaints;
he has compassion on me; hence he renounces his divine
majesty, his exaltation above all that is finite and human;
he becomes a man with man; for if he listens to me, and
pities me, he is affected by my sufferings. God loves man
— i.e., God suffers from man. Love does not exist without
sympathy, sympathy does not exist without suffering in
common. Have I any sympathy for a being without feel­
ing ? N o ! I feel only for that which has feeling, only for
that which partakes of my nature, for that in which I feel my­
self, whose sufferings I myself suffer. Sympathy presupposes
a like nature. The Incarnation, Providence, prayer, are the
expression of this identity of nature in God and man.*
It is true that theology, which is pre-occupied with the
metaphysical attributes of eternity, unconditionedness, un­
changeableness, and the like abstractions, which express
the nature of the understanding,— theology denies the pos­
sibility that God should suffer, but in so doing it denies the
truth of religion.f For religion— the religious man in the
* “ 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).
+ St. Bernard resorts to a charmingly sophistical play of words:—
“ Impagsibilis 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.
 THE MYSTERY OF TH E INCARNATION. 55

act of devotion believes in a real sympathy of the divine

being in his sufferings and wants, believes that the will of
God can be determined by the fervour of prayer, i.e., by the
force of feeling, believes in a real, present fulfilment of his
desire, wrought by prayer. The truly religious man un­
hesitatingly assigns his own feelings to God; Godjis to him
a heart susceptible to all that is human. The heart can
betake itself only to the heart; feeling can appeal only to
feeling; it finds consolation in itself, in its own nature alone.
The notion that the fulfilment of prayer has been deter­
mined from eternity, that it was originally included in the
plan of creation, is the empty, absurd fiction of a mechanical
mode of thought, which is in absolute contradiction with the
nature of religion. "W e need,” says Lavater somewhere,
and quite correctly according to the religious sentiment, “ an
arbitrary God.” Besides, even according to this fiction, God
is just as much a being determined by man, as in the real,
present fulfilment consequent on the power of prayer; the
only difference is, that the contradiction with the unchange-
■ableness and unconditionedness of God— that which con­
stitutes the difficulty— is thrown back into the deceptive
distance of the past or of eternity. Whether God decides
on the fulfilment of my prayer now, on the immediate occa­
sion of my offering it, or whether he did decide on it long
ago, is fundamentally the same thing.
It is the greatest inconsequence to reject the idea of a God
who can be determined by prayer, that is, by the force of
feeling, as an unworthy anthropomorphic idea. If we once
believe in a being who is an object of veneration, an object
of prayer, an object of affection, who is providential, who
takes care of man,-~in a Providence, which is not conceiv­
able without love,— in a being, therefore, who is loving,
whose motive of action is love; we also believe in a being,
who has, if not an anatomical, yet a psychical human heart.
The religious mind, as has been said, places everything in
God, excepting that alone which it despises. The Chris­
tians certainly gave their God no attributes which con­
tradicted their own moral ideas, but they gave him without
hesitation, and of necessity, the emotions of love, of compas­
sion. And the love which the religious mind places in God
is not an illusory, imaginary love, but a real, true love. God
is loved and loves again; the divine love is only human love
 56 THE ESSENCE O F CHRISTIANITY.

made objective, affirming itself. In God love is absorbed in

itself as its own ultimate truth.
It may be objected to the import here assigned to the
Incarnation, that the Christian Incarnation is altogether
peculiar, that at least it is different (which is quite true in
certain respects, as will hereafter be apparent) from the
incarnations of the heathen deities, whether Greek or
Indian. These latter are mere products of men or deified
men; but in Christianity is given the idea of the true God;
here the union of the divine nature with the human is first
significant and “ speculative.” Jupiter transforms himself
into a bull; the heathen incarnations are mere fancies. In
paganism there is no more in the nature of God than in his
incarnate manifestation; in Christianity, on the contrary,
it is God, a separate, superhuman being, who appears as
man. But this objection is refuted by the remark already
made, that even the premiss of the Christian Incarnation
contains the human nature. God loves man; moreover
God has a Son; God is a father; the relations of humanity
are not excluded from God; the human is not remote from
God, not unknown to him. Thus here also there is nothing
more in the nature of God than in the incarnate manifesta­
tion of God. In the Incarnation religion only confesses,
what in reflection on itself, as theology, it will not admit;
namely, that God is an altogether human being. The
Incarnation, the mystery of the “ God-man,” is therefore
no mysterious composition of contraries, no synthetic fact,
as it is regarded by the speculative religious philosophy,
which has a particular delight in contradiction; it is an
analytic fact,— a human word with a human meaning. If
there be a contradiction here, it lies before the incarnation
and out of it; in the union of providence, of love, with
deity; for if this love is a real love, it is not essentially
different from our love,— there are only our limitations to
be abstracted from i t ; and thus the Incarnation is only the
strongest, deepest, most palpable, open-hearted expression
of this providence, this love. Love knows not how to make
its object happier than by rejoicing it with its personal
presence, by letting itself be seen. To see the invisible
benefactor face to face is the most ardent desire of love.
To see is a divine act. Happiness lies in the mere sight of
the beloved one. The glance is the certainty of love. And
 THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION. 57
the Incarnation has no other significance, no other effect,
than.the indubitable certitude of the love of God to man.
Love remains, but the Incarnation upon the earth passes
away: the appearance was limited by time and place,
accessible to few; but the essence, the nature which was
manifested, is eternal and universal. We can no longer
believe in the manifestation for its own sake, but only for
the sake of the thing manifested; for to us there remains no
immediate presence but that of love.
The clearest, most irrefragable proof that man in religion
contemplates himself as the object of the Divine Being, as
the end of the divine activity, that thus in religion he has
relation only to his own nature, only to himself,— the
clearest, most irrefragable •proof of this is the love of God
to man, the basis and central point of religion. God, for
the sake of man, empties himself of his Godhead, lays aside
his Godhead. Herein lies the elevating influence of the
Incarnation; the highest, the perfect being humiliates,
lowers himself for the sake of man. Hence in God I learn
to estimate my own nature; I have value in the sight of
G od ; the divine significance of my nature is become evident
to me. How can the worth of man be more strongly
expressed than when God, for man’s sake, becomes a man,
when man is the end, the object of the divine love ? The
love of God to man is an essential condition of the Divine
Being: God is a God who loves me— who loves man in
general. Here lies the emphasis, the fundamental feeling
of religion. The love of God makes me loving; the love
of God to man is the cause of man's love to God; the divine
love causes, awakens human love. “ We love God because
he first loved us.” What, then, is it that I love in God ?
L ove: love to man. But when I love and worship the love
with which God loves man, do I not love man; is not my
love of God, though indirectly, love of man ? If God loves
man, is not man, then, the very substance of God ? That
which I love, is it not my inmost being ? Have I a heart
when I do not love ? N o ! love only is the heart of man.
But what is love without the thing loved ? Thus what I
love is my heart, the substance of my being, my nature.
W hy does man grieve, why does he lose pleasure in life
when he has lost the beloved object ? Why ? because with
the beloved object he has lost his heart, the activity of his
53 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

affections, the principle of life. Thus if God loves man,

man is the heart of God— the welfare of man his deepest
anxiety. If man, then, is the object of God, is not man, in
God, an object to himself ? is not the content of the divine
nature the human nature? If God is love, is not the
essential content of this love man ? Is not the love of God
to man— the basis and central point of religion— the love
of man to himself made an object, contemplated as the
highest objective truth, as the highest being to man ? Is
not then the proposition, “ God loves man ” an orientalism
(religion is essentially oriental), which in plain speech
means, the highest is the love of man ?
The truth to which, by means of analysis, we have here
reduced the mystery of the Incarnation, has also been re­
cognised even in the religious consciousness. Thus Luther,
for example, says, “ He who can truly conceive such a thing
(namely, the incarnation of God) in his heart, should, for the
sake of the flesh and blood which sits at the right hand of
God, bear love to all flesh and blood here upon the earth,
and never more be able to be angry with any man. The
gentle manhood of Christ our God should at a glance fill all
hearts with joy, so that never more could an angry, unfriendly
thought come therein— yea, every man ought, out of great
joy, to be tender to his fellow-man for the sake of that our
flesh and blood.” This is a fact which should move us to
great joy and blissful hope that we are thus honoured above
all creatures, even above the angels, so that we can with
truth| boast, M y own flesh and blood sits at the right hand
of God and reigns over all. Such honour has no creature,
not even an angel. This ought to be a furnace that should
melt us all into one heart, and should create such a fervour
in us men that we should heartily love each other.” But
that which in the truth of religion is the essence of the
fable, the chief thing, is to the religious consciousness only
the moral of the fable, a collateral thing.
 THE MYSTERY OF THE S U FFE RING GOD. 59

CHAPTER Y.

THE MYSTERY OF THE SUFFERING GOD.

An essential condition of the incarnate, or, what is the same

thing, the human God, namely, Christ, is the Passion. Love
attests itself by suffering. A ll thoughts and feelings which
are immediately associated with Christ concentrate them­
selves in the idea of the Passion. God as God is the sum of
all human perfection ; God as Christ is the sum of all human
misery. The heathen philosophers celebrated activity, espe­
cially the spontaneous activity of the intelligence, as the
highest, the divine ; the Christians consecrated passivity,
even placing it in God. If God as actus purus, as pure
activity, is the God of abstract philosophy ; so, on the other
hand, Christ, the God of the Christians, is the passio pura,
pure suffering— the highest metaphysical thought, the être
suprême of the heart. For what makes more impression on
the heart than suffering? especially the suffering of one
who considered in himself is free from suffering, exalted
above it ;— the suffering of the innocent, endured purely for
the good of others, the suffering of love,— self-sacrifice ? But
for the very reason that the history of the Passion is the
history which most deeply affects the human heart, or
let us rather say the heart in general— for it would
be a ludicrous mistake in man to attempt to conceive
any other heart than the human,— it follows undeniably
that nothing else is expressed in that history, nothing else is
made an object in it, but the nature of the heart,— that it
is not an invention of the understanding or the poetic
faculty, but of the heart. The heart, however, does not
invent in the same way as the free imagination or intelli­
gence ; it has a passive, receptive relation to what it pro­
duces ; all that proceeds from it seems to it given from
without, takes it by violence, works with the force of irre­
sistible necessity. The heart overcomes, masters man ; he
who is once in its power is possessed as it were by his
demon, by his God. The heart knows no other God, no
6o T H E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

more excellent being than itself, than a God whose name

may indeed be another, but whose nature, whose substance
is the nature of the heart. And out of the heart, out of the
inward impulse to do good, to live and die for man, out of
the divine instinct of benevolence which desires to make
all happy, and excludes none, not even the most abandoned
and abject, out of the moral duty of benevolence in the
highest sense, as having become an inward necessity, i.e., a
movement of the heart,— out of the human nature, there­
fore, as it reveals itself through the heart, has sprung what
is best, what is true in Christianity— its essence purified
from theological dogmas and contradictions.
For, according to the principles which we have already
developed, that which in religion is the predicate we must
make the subject, and that .which in religion is a subject
we must make a predicate, thus inverting the oracles of
religion; and by this means we arrive at the truth. God
suffers— suffering is the predicate— but for men, for others,
not for himself. What does that mean in plain speech ?
Nothing else than this: to suffer for others is divine; he
who suffers for others, who lays down his life for them, acts
divinely, is a God to men.*
The Passion of Christ, however, represents not only moral,
voluntary suffering, the suffering of love, the power of sacri­
ficing self for the good of others; it represents also suffering
as such, suffering in so far as it is an expression of passibility
in general. The Christian religion is so little superhuman
that it even sanctions human weakness. The heathen
philosopher, on hearing tidings of the death of his child
exclaims: “ I knew that he was mortal.” Christ, on the
contrary,— at least in the Bible,— sheds tears over the death
of Lazarus, a death which he nevertheless knew to be only
an apparent one. While Socrates empties the cup of poison
with unshaken soul, Christ exclaims, “ If it be possible,

* Religion speaks by example. Example is the law of religion. What

Christ did is law. Christ suffered for others; therefore, we should do
likewise. “ Quae necessitas fuit ut sic exinaniret se, sic humiliaret se, sic
abbreviaret se Dominus majestatis; nisi nt vos similiter faciatis ?”— Bemardus
(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).
 TH E MYSTERY OF TH E SUFFERING GOD. 61

let this cup pass from me.” * Christ is in this respect the
self-confession of human sensibility. In opposition to the
heathen, and in particular the stoical principle, with its
rigorous energy of will and self-sustainedness, the Christian
involves the consciousness of his own sensitiveness and
susceptibility in the consciousness of God; he finds it, if
on ly it be no sinful weakness, not denied, not condemned
in God.
To suffer is the highest command of Christianity— the
history of Christianity is the history of the Passion of
Humanity. While amongst the heathens the shout of sensual
pleasure mingled itself in the worship of the gods, amongst
the Christians, we mean of course the ancient Christians,
God is served with sighs and tears.t But as where sounds
of sensual pleasure make a part of the cultus, it is a sensual
God, a God of life, who is worshipped, as indeed these shouts
of jo y are only a symbolical definition of the nature of the
gods to whom this jubilation is acceptable; so also the
sighs of Christians are tones which proceed from the inmost
soul, the inmost nature of their God. The God expressed
by the cultus, whether this be an external, or, as with the
Christians, an inward .spiritual worship,— not the God of
sophistical theology,— is the true God of man. But the
Christians, we mean of course the ancient Christians, be­
lieved that they rendered the highest honour to their God
by tears, the tears of repentance and yearning. Thus tears''
are the light-reflecting drops which mirror the nature of
the Christian's God. But a God who has pleasure in tears,
expresses nothing else than the nature of the heart. It is
true that the theory of the Christian religion says: Christ
has done all for us, has redeemed us, has reconciled us with
God; and from hence the inference may be drawn: Let us
be of a joyful mind and disposition; what need have we
to trouble ourselves as to how we shall reconcile ourselves
with God ? we are reconciled already. But the imperfect
tense in which the fact of suffering is expressed makes a
* “ Hserent plerique hoc loco. Ego autem non solum excusandum non
puto, sed etiam nusquam magis pietatem ejus majestatemque demiror.
Minos enim contulerat mihi, nisi meum suscepisset affectum. Ergo pro
me doluit, qui pro se nihil habuit, quod doleret.”— Ambrosius (Exposit. in
Lucte Ev. 1. x. c. 22).
+ “ Quando enim illi (Deo) appropinquare auderemus in sua impassi-
bilitate manenti ? ”— Bemardus (Tract, de xii. Grad. Humil. et Superb.).
62 THE ESSEN CE OF CHRISTIANITY.

deeper, a more enduring impression, than the perfect tense

which expresses the fact of redemption. The redemption
is only the result of the suffering; the suffering is the cause
of the redemption. Hence the suffering takes deeper root
in the feelings; the suffering makes itself an object of
imitation;— not so the redemption. If God himself suffered
for my sake, how can I be joyful, how can I allow myself
any gladness, at least on this corrupt earth, which was the
theatre of his suffering?* Ought I to fare better than
God ? Ought I not, then, to make his sufferings my own ?
Is not what God my Lord does my model ? Or shall I
share only the gain and not the cost also ? Do I know
merely that he has redeemed me ? Do I not also know the
history of his suffering? Should it be an object of cold
remembrance to me, or even an object of rejoicing, because
it has purchased my salvation ? Who can think so— who
can wish to be exempt from the sufferings of his God ?
The Christian religion is the religion of suffering.^ The
images of the crucified one which we still meet with in all
churches, represent not the Saviour, but only the crucified,
the suffering Christ. Even the self-crucifixions among the
Christians are, psychologically, a deep-rooted consequence of
their religious views. How should not he who has always
the image of the crucified one in his mind, at length con­
tract the desire to crucify either himself or another ? A t
least we have as good a warrant for this conclusion as
Augustine and other fathers of the Church for their reproach
against the heathen religion, that the licentious religious
images of the heathens provoked and authorised licen­
tiousness.
God suffers, means in truth nothing else than: God is a "
heart. The heart is the source, the centre of all suffering.
A being without suffering is a being without a heart. The
mystery of the suffering God is therefore the mystery of
feeling, sensibility. A suffering God is a feeling, sensitive
God.J But the proposition: God is a feeling Being, is only
* “ Deus meus pendet in patíbulo et ego voluptati operam dabo?”—
(Form. Hon. Vitae. Among the spurious writings of St. Bernard.) “ Me­
moria crucifixi crucifigat in te caraem tuam.”— Joh. Gerhard (Medit. Sacrae,
M. 37).
t “ It is better to suffer evil than to do good.”— Luther (Th. iv. s. 15).
X “ Pati voluit, ut compati disceret, miser fieri, ut misereri disceret.”—
Bernhard (de Grad.). “ Misererenostri, quoniam camis imbecillitatem, tu
p86 earn passus, expertus es.”— Clemens Alex. Psedag. 1. i. c. 8.
 THE MYSTERY OF THE SUFFERING GOD. 63
the religious periphrase of the proposition : feeling is abso­
lute, divine in its nature.
M an has the consciousness not only of a spring of ac­
tivity, but also of a spring of suffering in himself. I feel;
and I feel feeling (not merely will and thought, which are
o n ly too often in opposition to me and my feelings), as
belonging to my essential being, and, though the source of'
a ll sufferings and sorrows, as a glorious, divine power and
perfection. What would man be without feeling? It is
the musical power in man. But what would man be with­
out music ? Just as man has a musical faculty and feels
an inward necessity to breathe out his feelings in song; so,
b y a like necessity, he in religious sighs and tears streams
forth the nature of feeling as an objective, divine nature.
Religion is human nature reflected, mirrored in itself.
That which exists has necessarily a pleasure, a joy in itself,
loves itself, and loves itself justly; to blame it because it
loves itself is to reproach it because it exists. To exist is
to assert oneself, to affirm oneself, to love oneself; he to
whom life is a burthen rids himself of it. Where, there­
fore, feeling is not depreciated and repressed, as with the
Stoics, where existence is awarded to it, there also is reli­
gious power and significance already conceded to it, there
also is it already exalted to that stage in which it can
mirror and reflect itself, in which it can project its own
image as God. God is the mirror of man.
That which has essential value for man, which he esteems
the perfect, the excellent, in Which he has true delight,—
that alone is God to him. If feeling seems to thee a glorious
attribute, it is then, per se, a divine attribute to thee. There­
fore, the feeling, sensitive man believes only in a feeling,
sensitive God, i.e., he believes only in the truth of his own
existence and nature, for he can believe in nothing else than
that which is involved in his own nature. His faith is the
consciousness of that which is holy to him; but that alone
is holy to man which lies deepest within him, which is
most peculiarly his own, the basis, the essence of his indi­
viduality. To the feeling man a God without feeling is an
empty, abstract, negative God, i.e., nothing; because that
is wanting to him which is precious and sacred to man,
Godj is for man the commonplace book where he registers
his highest feelings and thoughts, the genealogical4tree on
64 TH E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

which are entered the names that are dearest and most
sacred to him.
It is a sign of an undiscriminating good-nature, a woman­
ish instinct, to gather together and then to preserve tena­
ciously all that we have gathered, not to trust anything to
the waves of forgetfulness, to the chance of memory, in short
not to trust ourselves and learn to know what really has
value for us. The freethinker is liable to the danger of an
unregulated, dissolute life. The religious man who binds
together all things in one, does not lose himself in sensu­
ality ; but for that reason he is exposed to the danger of
illiberality, of spiritual selfishness and greed. Therefore,
to the religious man at least, the irreligious or un-religious
man appears lawless, arbitrary, haughty, frivolous; not be­
cause that which is sacred to the former is not also in itself
sacred to the latter, but only because that which the un­
religious man holds in his head merely, the religious man
places out of and above himself as an object, and hence
recognises in himself the relation of a formal subordination.
The religious man having a commonplace book, a nucleus
of aggregation, has an aim, and having an aim he has firm
standing-ground. Not mere will as such, not vague know­
ledge— only activity with a purpose, which is the union of
theoretic and practical activity, gives man a moral basis and
support, i.e., character. Every man, therefore, must place
before himself a God, i.e., an aim, a purpose. The aim is
the conscious,voluntary, essential impulse of life, the glance
of genius, the focus of self-knowledge,— the unity of the
material and spiritual in the individual man. He who has
an aim has a law over h im ; he does not merely guide him­
self ; he is guided. He who has no aim, has no home, no
sanctuary; aimlessness is the greatest unhappiness. Even
he who has only common aims gets on better, though he
may not be better, than he who has no aim. An aim sets
lim its; but limits are the mentors of virtue. He who has
an aim, an aim which is in itself true and essential, has,
eo ipso, a religion, if not in the narrow sense of common
pietism, yet— and this is the only point to be considered—
in the sense of reason, in the sense of the universal, the only
true love.
 THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY. 65

CHAPTER VI.

THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY AND THE MOTHER OF GOD.

I f a God without feeling, without a capability of suffering,

will not suffice to man as a feeling, suffering being, neither
will a God with feeling only, a God without intelligence and
will. Only a being who comprises in himself the whole
man can satisfy the whole man. Man’s consciousness of him­
self in his totality is the consciousness of the Trinity. The
Trinity knits together the qualities or powers which were
before regarded separately into unity, and thereby reduces
the universal being of the understanding, i.e., God as God,
to a special being, a special faculty.
That which theology designates as the image, the simili­
tude of the Trinity, we must take as the thing itself, the
essence, the archetype, the original; by this means we shall
solve the enigma. The so-called images by which it has been
sought to illustrate the Trinity, and make it comprehensible,
are principally: mind, understanding, memory, will, love—
mens, intelleetus, memoria, voluntas, amor or caritas.
God thinks, God loves; and, moreover, he thinks, he loves
himself ; the object thought, known, loved, is God himself.
The objectivity of self-consciousness is the first thing we
meet with in the Trinity. Self-consciousness necessarily
urges itself upon man as something absolute. Existence is
for him one with self-consciousness; existence with self-
consciousness is for him existence simply. If I do not know
that I exist, it is all one whether I exist or not. Self-con-
sciousness is for man— is, in fact, in itself— absolute. A
God who knows not his own existence, a God without con­
sciousness, is no God. Man cannot conceive himself as
without consciousness; hence he cannot conceive God as
without it. The divine self-consciousness is nothing else
than the consciousness of consciousness as an absolute or
divine essence.
65 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

But this explanation is by no means exhaustive. On

the contrary, we should be proceeding very arbitrarily if we
sought to reduce and limit the mystery of the Trinity to
the proposition just laid down. Consciousness, understand­
ing, wiU, love, in the sense of abstract essences or qualities,
belong only to abstract philosophy. But religion is man’s
consciousness of himself in his concrete or living totality,
in which the identity of self-consciousness exists only as
the pregnant, complete unity of I and thou.
Keligion, at least the Christian, is abstraction from the
world; it is essentially inward. The religious man leads a
life withdrawn from the world, hidden in God, still, void of
worldly joy. He separates himself from the world, not only
in the ordinary sense, according to which the renunciation
of the world belongs to every true, earnest man, but also in
that wider sense which science gives to the word, when
it calls itself world-wisdom (wdt-weisheit) ; but he thus
separates himself only because God is a being separate
from the world, an extra and supramundane being,— i.e.,
abstractly and philosophically expressed, the non-existence
of the world. God, as an extramundane being, is however
nothing else than the nature of man withdrawn from the
world and concentrated in itself, freed from all worldly ties
and entanglements, transporting itself above the world, and
positing itself in this condition as a real objective being;
or, nothing else than the consciousness of the power to
abstract oneself from all that is external, and to live for
and with oneself alone, under the form which this power
takes in religion, namely, that of a being distinct, apart
from man.* God as God, as a simple being, is the being
absolutely alone, solitary— absolute solitude and Self-suffi­
cingness; for that only can be solitary which is self-
sufficing. To be able to be solitary is a sign of character
and thinking power. Solitude is the want of the thinker,

* “ Dei essentia est extra omnes creaturas, sicut ab setemo firit Deus in
se ipso ; ab omnibus ergo creaturis amorem tuum abstrahas.”— John Ger­
hard (Medit. Sacra, 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 Verschmahung der Welt. Wahre
Abbild der Ersten Christen, L. 4, c. 2, § 7).
 T H E MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY. 67
society the want of the heart. We can think alone, but we
can love only with another. In love we are dependent, for
i t is the need of another being; we are independent only
in the solitary act of thought. Solitude is self-sufficingness.
But from a solitary God the essential need of duality, of
love, of community, of the real, completed self-consciousness,
of the alter ego, is excluded. This want is therefore satisfied
b y religion thus: in the still solitude of the Divine Being is
placed another, a second, different from God as to personality,
bu t identical with him in essence,— God the Son, in distinc­
tion from God the Father. God the Father is I, God the
Son Thou. The I is understanding, the Thou love. But love
with understanding and understanding with love is mind,
and mind is the totality of man as such— the total man.
Participated life is alone true, self-satisfying, divine life :
— this simple thought, this truth, natural, immanent in
man, is the secret, the supernatural mystery of the Trinity.
B ut religion expresses this truth, as it does every other,
in an indirect manner, i.e., inversely, for it here makes a
general truth into a particular one, the true subject into a
predicate, when it says: God is a participated life, a life of
love and friendship. The third Person in the Trinity
expresses nothing further than the love of the two divine
Persons towards each other; it is the unity of the Son and
the Father, the idea of community, strangely enough re­
garded in its turn as a special personal being.
The Holy Spirit owes its personal existence only to a
name, a word. The earliest Fathers of the Church are well
known to have identified the Spirit with the Son. Even
later, its dogmatic personality wants consistency. He is
the love with which God loves himself and man, and, on
the other hand, he is the love with which man loves God
and men. Thus he is the identity of God and man, made
objective according to the usual mode of thought in religion,
namely, as in itself a distinct being. But for us this unity
or identity is already involved in the idea of the Father,
and yet more in that of the Son. Hence we need not make
the Holy Spirit a separate object of our analysis.* Only
this one remark further. In so far as the Holy Spirit
represents the subjective phase, he is properly the repre­
sentation of the religious sentiment to itself, the represen­
tation of religious emotion, of religious enthusiasm, or the
68 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

personification, the rendering objective of religion in reli­

gion. The Holy Spirit is therefore the sighing creature, the
yearning of the creature after God.
But that there are in fact only two Persons in the Trinity,
the third representing, as has been said, only love, is involved
in this, that to the strict idea of love two suffice. With two
we have the principle of multiplicity and all its essential
results. Two is the principle of multiplicity, and can there­
fore stand as its complete substitute. If several Persons
were posited, the force of love would only be weakened— it
would be dispersed. But love and the heart are identical;
the heart is no special power; it is the man who loves, and
in so far as he loves. The second Person is therefore the
self-assertion of the human heart as the principle of duality,
of participated life,— it is warmth; the Father is light,
although light was chiefly a predicate of the Son, because
in him the Godhead first became clear, comprehensible.
But notwithstanding this, light as a superterrestrial ele­
ment may be ascribed to the Father, the representative of
the Godhead as such, the cold being of the intelligence;
and warmth, as a terrestrial element, to the Son. God as the
Son first gives warmth to man; here God, from an object of
the intellectual eye, of the indifferent sense of light, becomes
an object of feeling, of affection, of enthusiasm, of rapture;
but only because the Son is himself nothing else than the
glow of love, enthusiasm.* God as the Son is the primi­
tive incarnation, the primitive self-renunciation of God, the
negation of God in God; for as the Son he is a finite being,
because he exists ab alio, he has a source, whereas the Father
has no source, he exists & se. Thus in the second Person the
essential attribute of the Godhead, the attribute of self­
existence, is given up. But God the Father himself begets
the Son; thus he renounces his rigorous, exclusive divinity;
he humiliates, lowers himself, evolves within himself the
principle of finiteness, of dependent existence; in the Son
he becomes man, not indeed, in the first instance, as to the
outward form, but as to the inward nature. And for this
reason it is as the Son that God first becomes the object of
man, the object of feeling, of the heart.
* “ Exigit ergo Deus timeri ut Dominus, honorari ut pater, ut sponsus
amari. Quid in his praestat, quid eminet?— Amor.” Bemardus (Sup.
Cant. Serm. 83).
 TH E MYSTERY OF T H E TRINITY. 69

The heart comprehends only what springs from the heart.

From the character of the subjective disposition and impress
sions the conclusion is infallible as to the character of the
object. The pure, free understanding denies the Son,— not
so the understanding determined by feeling, overshadowed
by the heart; on the contrary, it finds in the Son the depths
of the Godhead, because in him it finds feeling, which in and
by itself is something dark, obscure, and therefore appears
to man a mystery. The Son lays hold on the heart, because
the true Father of the Divine Son is the human heart,* and
the Son himself nothing else than the divine heart, i.e., the
human heart become objective to itself as a Divine Being.
A God who has not in himself the quality of finiteness,
the principle of concrete existence, the essence of the feel­
ing of dependence, is no God for a finite, concrete being.
The religious man cannot love a God who has not the
essence of love in himself, neither can man, or, in general,
any finite being, be an object to a God who has not in him­
self the ground, the principle of finiteness. To such a God
thereis wanting the sense, the understanding, the sympathy
for finiteness. How can God be the Father of men, how
«an he love other beings subordinate to himself, if he has
not in himself a subordinate being, a Son, if he does not
know what love is, so to speak, from his own experience,
in relation to himself ? The single man takes far less interest
in the family sorrows of another than he who himself has
family ties. Thus God the Father loves men only in the
Son and for the sake of the Son. The love to man is derived
from the love to the Son.
The Father and Son in the Trinity are therefore father
and son not in a figurative sense, but in a strictly literal
sense. The Father is a real father in relation to the Son,
the Son is a real son in relation to the Father, or to God as
the Father. The essential personal distinction between
them consists only in this, that the one begets, the other is
begotten. If this natural empirical condition is taken away,
their personal existence and reality are annihilated. The
Christians— we mean of course the Christians of former
days, who would with difficulty recognise the worldly,
* Just as the feminine spirit of Catholicism— in distinction from Pro­
testantism, whose principle is the masculine God, the masculine spirit— is
the Mother of God.
70 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

frivolous, pagan Christians of the modem world as their

brethren in Christ— substituted for the natural love and
unity immanent in man a purely religious love and unity;
they rejected the real life of the family, the intimate bond
of love which is naturally moral, as an undivine, unheavenly,
i.e., in truth, a worthless thing. But in compensation they
had a Father and Son in God, who embraced each other
with heartfelt love, with that intense love which natural
relationship alone inspires. On this account the mystery
of the Trinity was to the ancient Christians an object of
unbounded wonder, enthusiasm, and rapture, because here
the satisfaction of those profoundest human wants which
in reality, in life, they denied, became to them an object of
contemplation in God*
It was therefore quite in order that, to complete the
divine family, the bond of love between Father and Son, a
third, and that a feminine person, was received into heaven;
for the personality of the Holy Spirit is a too vague and
precarious, a too obviously poetic personification of the
mutual love of the Father and Son, to serve as the third
complementary being. It is true that the Virgin Mary was
not so placed between the Father and Son as to imply that
the Father had begotten the Son through her, because the
sexual relation was regarded by the Christians as something
unholy and sinful; but it is enough that the maternal prin­
ciple was associated with the Father and Son.
It is, in fact, difficult to perceive why the Mother should
be something unholy, i.e., unworthy of God, when once God
is Father and Son. Though it is held that the Father is
not a father in the natural sense— that, on the contrary, the
divine generation is quite different from the natural and
human— still he remains a Father, and a real, not a nominal
or symbolical Father in relation to the Son. And the idea
of the Mother of God, which now appears so strange to us,
is therefore not really more strange or paradoxical, than the
idea of the Son of God, is not more in contradiction with the
general, abstract definition of God than the Sonship. On
the contrary, the Virgin Mary fits in perfectly with the
relations of the Trinity, since she conceives without man the
* “ 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).
 THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY. 71

Son whom the Father begets without woman; * so that

thus the Holy Virgin is a necessary, inherently requisite
antithesis to the Father in the bosom of the Trinity. More­
over we have, if not in concreto and explicitly, yet in dbstracto
and implicitly, the feminine principle already in the Son.
The Son is the mild, gentle, forgiving, conciliating being—
the womanly sentiment of God. God, as the Father, is the
generator, the active, the principle of masculine spontaneity;
but the Son is begotten without himself begetting, Dem
genitus, the passive, suffering, receptive being; he receives
his existence from the Father. The Son, as a son, of course
not as God, is dependent on the Father, subject to his
authority. The Son is thus the feminine feeling of depend­
ence in the Godhead; the Son implicity urges upon us the
need of a real feminine being.-f“
The son— I mean the natural, human son— considered as
such, is an intermediate being between the masculine nature
of the father and the feminine nature of the mother \ he is,
as it were, still half a man, half a woman, inasmuch as he
has not the full, rigorous consciousness of independence
which characterises the man, and feels himself drawn rather
to the mother than to the father. The love of the son to
the mother is the first love of the masculine being for the
feminine. The love of man to woman, the love of the youth
for the maiden, receives its religious— its sole truly religious
consecration in the love of the son to the mother; the son’s
love for his mother is the first yearning of man towards
woman— his first humbling of himself before her.
Necessarily, therefore, the idea of the Mother of God is
associated with the idea of the Son of God,— the same
heart that needed the one needed the other also. Where
the Son is, the Mother cannot be absent; the Son is
the only-begotten of the Father, but the Mother is the con­
comitant of the Son. The Son is a substitute for the Mother
to the Father, but not so the Father to the Son. To the

* “ 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).
t 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. Gfrorer, Jahrb. d. H. i. Abth. pp. 332-334. The
Hermhuters also called the Holy Spirit the mother of the Saviour.
72 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

Son the Mother is indispensable; the heart of the Son is

the heart of the Mother. Why did God become man only
through woman ? Could not the Almighty have appeared
as a man amongst men in another manner— immediately ?
W hy did the Son betake himself to the bosom of the
Mother?* For what other reason than because the Son is
the yearning after the Mother, because his womanly, tender
heart found a corresponding expression'only in a feminine
body ? It is true that the Son, as a natural man, dwells
only temporarily in the shrine of this body, but the impres­
sions which he here receives are inextinguishable; the
Mother is never out of the mind and heart of the Son. If
then the worship of the Son of God is no idolatry, the
worship of the Mother of God is no idolatry. If herein
we perceive the love of God to us, that he gave us his
only-begotten Son, i.e., that which was dearest to him, for
our salvation,— we can perceive this love still better when
we find in God the beating of a mother’s heart. The highest
and deepest love is the mother’s love. The father consoles
himself for the loss of his son; he has a stoical principle
within him. The mother, on the contrary, is inconsolable;
she is the sorrowing element, that which cannot be indem­
nified— the true in love.
Where faith in the Mother of God sinks, there also sinks
faith in the Son of God, and in God as the Father. The
Father is a truth only where the Mother is a truth. Love
is in and by itself essentially feminine in its nature. The
belief in the love of God is the belief in the feminine prin­
ciple as divine.* Love apart from living nature is an
anomaly, a phantom.* Behold in love the holy necessity
and depth of Nature !
Protestantism has set aside the Mother of God; but this
deposition of woman has been severely avenged, f The
arms which it has used against the Mother of God have
turned against itself, against the Son of God, against the
whole Trinity. He who has once offered up the Mother of

* “ 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).
+ In the Concordienbuch, Erklär. Art. 8, and in the Apol. of the Augs­
burg 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.”
 THE MYSTERY OF T H E TRINITY. 73
God to the understanding, is not far from sacrificing the
mystery of the Son of God as an anthropomorphism. The
anthropomorphism is certainly veiled when the feminine
being is excluded, but only veiled— not removed. It is
true that Protestantism had no need of the heavenly bride,
because it received with open arms the earthly bride. But
for that very reason it ought to have been consequent and
courageous enough to give up not only the Mother, but the
Son and the Father. Only he who has no earthly parents
needs heavenly ones. The triune God is the God of Catholi­
cism ; he has a profound, heartfelt, necessary, truly religious
significance, only in antithesis to the negation of all sub­
stantial bonds, in antithesis to the life of the anchorite, the
monk, and the nun.* The triune God has a substantial
meaning only where there is an abstraction from the sub­
stance of read life. The more empty life is, the fuller, the
more concrete is God. The impoverishing of the real world
and the enriching of God is one act Only the poor man
has a rich God. God springs out of the feeling of a want;
what man is in need of, whether this be a definite and
therefore conscious, or an unconscious need,— that is God.
Thus the disconsolate feeling of a void, of loneliness, needed
a God in whom there is society, a union of beings fervently
loving each other.
Here we have the true explanation of the fact that the
Trinity has in modem times lost first its practical, and ulti­
mately its theoretical significance.
* “ Sit monachus quasi Melchisedec sine patre, sine matre, sine genea-
losjia : 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.
74 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER VII.

THE MYSTERY OF THE LOGOS AND DIVINE IMAGE.

T h e essential significance of the Trinity is, however, concen­

trated in the idea of the second Person. The warm interest
of Christians in the Trinity has been, in the main, only an
interest in the Son of God* The fierce contention con­
cerning the Homousios and Homoiousios was not an empty
one, although it turned upon a letter. The point in question
was the co-equality and divine dignity of the second Person,
and therefore the honour of the Christian religion itself; for
its essential, characteristic object is the second Person; and
that which is essentially the object of a religion is truly,
essentially its God. The real God of any religion is the
so-called Mediator, because he alone is the immediate object
of religion. He who, instead of applying to Go(l, applies to
a saint, does so only on the assumption that the saint has
all power with God, that what he prays for, i.e.f wishes and
wills, God readily performs; that thus God is entirely in
the hands of the saint. Supplication is the means, under
the guise of humility and submission, of exercising one’s
power and superiority over another being. That to which
my mind first turns is also, in truth, the first being to me.
I turn to the saint, not because the saint is dependent on
God, but because God is dependent on the saint, because
God is determined and ruled by the prayers, i.e., by the
wish or heart of the saint. The distinctions which the
Catholic theologians made between latreia, doulia, and
hyperdoulia, are absurd, groundless sophisms. The God in
the background of the Mediator is only an abstract, inert
conception, the conception or idea of the Godhead in
general; and it is not to reconcile us with this idea, but to
remove it to a distance, to negative it, because it is no
* “ Negas ergo Deum, si non omnia filio, quae Dei sunt, deferentur.”—
Ambrosius de Fide ad Gratianum, 1. 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. Walcliii, Hist. Contr. Gr. et
Lat. de Proc. Spir. S. Jenae, 1751.
 TH E MYSTERY OF TH E LOGOS. 75

object for religion, that the Mediator interposes.* God

above the Mediator is nothing else than the cold under­
standing above the heart, like Fate above the Olympic gods.
Man, as an emotional and sensuous being, is governed and
made happy only by images, by sensible representations.
M ind presenting itself as at once type-creating, emotional,
and sensuous, is the imagination. The second Person in
God, who is in truth the first person in religion, is the
nature of the imagination made objective. The definitions
of the second Person are principally images or symbols;
and these images do not proceed from man’s incapability of
conceiving the object otherwise than symbolically,— which
is an altogether false interpretation,— but the thing cannot
be conceived otherwise than symbolically because the thing
itself is a symbol or image. The Son is, therefore, expressly
called the Image of God; his essence is that he is an image
— the representation of God, the visible glory of the invi­
sible God. The Son is the satisfaction of the need for mental
images, the nature of the imaginative activity in man
made objective as an absolute, divine activity. Man makes
to himself an image of God, i.e., he converts the abstract
being of the reason, the being of the thinking power, into
an object of sense or imagination.*!’ But he places this
image in God himself, because his want would not be satis­
fied if he did not regard this image as an objective reality,
if it were nothing more for him than a subjective image,
separate from God,— a mere figment devised by man. And
it is in fact no devised, no arbitrary image; for it expresses
the necessity of the imagination, the necessity of affirming the
imagination as a divine power. The Son is the reflected splen­
dour of the imagination, the image dearest to the heart; but
for the very reason that he is only an object of the imagina­
tion, he is only the nature of the imagination made objective.]:
* 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, majestateet 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.
+ 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.
i Let the reader only consider, for example, the Transfiguration, the
Resurrection, and the Ascension of Christ.
76 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

It is clear from this how blinded by prejudice dogmatic

speculation is, when, entirely overlooking the inward genesis
of the Son of God as the Image of God, it demonstrates the
Son as a metaphysical ens, as an object of thought, whereas
the Son is a declension, a falling off from the metaphysical
idea of the Godhead;— a falling off, however, which religion
naturally places in God himself, in order to justify it, and not
to feel it as a falling off. The Son is the chief and ultimate
principle of image-worship, for he is the image of God; and
the image necessarily takes the place of the thing. The adora­
tion of the saint in his image is the adoration of the image
as the saint. Wherever the image is the essential expression,
the organ of religion, there also it is the essence of religion.
The Council of Nice adduced, amongst other grounds for
the religious use of images, the authority of Gregory of
Nyssa, who said that he could never look at an image
which represented the sacrifice of Isaac without being
moved to tears, because it so vividly brought before him
that event in sacred history. But the effect of the repre­
sented object is not the effect of the object as such, but the
effect of the representation. The holy object is simply the
haze of holiness in which the image veils its mysterious
power. The religious object is only a pretext, by means of
which art or imagination can exercise its dominion over
men unhindered. For the religious consciousness, it is
true, the sacredness of the image is associated, and neces­
sarily so, only with the sacredness of the object; but the
religious consciousness is not the measure of truth. Indeed,
the Church itself, while insisting on the distinction between
the image and the object of the image, and denying that the
worship is paid to the image, has at the same time made at
least an indirect admission of the truth, by itself declaring
the sacredness of the image.*
But the ultimate, highest principle of image-worship is
the worship of the Image of God in God. The Son, who is
the “ brightness of his glory, the express image of his
person,” is the entrancing splendour of the imagination,
which only manifests itself in visible images. Both to
inward and outward contemplation the representation of
* “ Sacram imaginem Domini nostri Jesu Christi et omnium Salvatoris
se<juo honore cum libro sanctorum evangeliorum adorari decemimus . . .
Dignum est enim ut . . . propter honorem qui ad principia refertur,
etiam derivative imagines honorentur et adorentur.”— Gener. Const. Cone,
viii. Art. 10, Can. 3.
 THE MYSTERY OF TH E LOGOS. 77

Christ, the Image of God, was the image of images. The

images of the saints are only optical multiplications of one
and the same image. The speculative deduction of the
Im age of God is therefore nothing more than an uncon­
scious deduction and establishing of image-worship: for
th e sanction of the principle is also the sanction of its
necessary consequences; the sanction of the archetype is
the sanction of its semblance. If God has an image of
himself, why should not I have an image of God ? If God
loves his Image as himself, why should not I also love the
Image of God as I love God himself ? If the Image of
God is God himself, why should not the image of the saint
he the saint himself? If it is no superstition to believe
that the image which God makes of himself is no image,
no mere conception, but a substance, a person, why should
it be a superstition to believe that the image of the saint is
the sensitive substance of the saint ? The Image of God
weeps and bleeds; why then should not the image of a
saint also weep and bleed ? Does the distinction he in the
fact that the image of the saint is a product of the hands ?
Why, the hands did not make this image, but the mind
which animated the hands, the imagination; and if God
makes an image of himself, that also is only a product of the
imagination. Or does the distinction proceed from this, that
the Image of God is produced by God himself, whereas the
image of the saint is made by another ? Why, the image *of
the saint is also a product of the saint himself: for he appears
to the artist; the artist only represents him as he appears.
Connected with the nature of the image is another definition
of the second Person, namely, that he is the Word of God.
A word is an abstract image, the imaginary thing, or, in
so far as everything is ultimately an object of the thinking
power, it is the imagined thought: hence men, when they
know the word, the name for a thing, fancy that they know
the thing also. Words are a result of the imagination.
Sleepers who dream vividly and invalids who are deli­
rious speak. The power of speech is a poetic talent.
Brutes do not speak because they have no poetic faculty.
Thought expresses itself only by images; the power by
which thought expresses itself is the imagination; the
imagination expressing itself is speech. He who speaks,
lays under a spell, fascinates those to whom he speaks;
but the power of words is the power of the imagination.
78 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

Therefore to the ancients, as children of the imagination,

the Word was a being— a mysterious, magically powerful
being. Even the Christians, and not only the vulgar among
them, but also the learned, the Fathers of the Church,
attached to the mere name Christ, mysterious powers of
healing* And in the present day the common people still
believe that it is possible to bewitch men by mere words.
Whence comes this ascription of imaginary influences to
words ? Simply from this, that words themselves are only
a result of the imagination, and hence have the effect of
a narcotic on man, imprison him under the power of the
imagination. Words possess a revolutionising force; words
govern mankind. Words are held sacred; while the things
of reason and truth are decried.
The affirming or making objective of the nature of the
imagination is therefore directly connected with the affirm­
ing or making objective of the nature of speech, of the word.
Man has not only an instinct, an internal necessity, which
impels him to think, to perceive, to imagine; he has also
the impulse to speak, to utter, impart his thoughts. A
divine impulse this— a divine power, the power of words.
The word is the imaged, revealed, radiating, lustrous, en­
lightening thought. The word is the light of the world.
The word guides to all truth, unfolds all mysteries, reveals
the unseen, makes present the past and the future, defines
the infinite, perpetuates the transient. Men pass away, the
word remains; the word is life and truth. A ll power is
given to the word: the word makes the blind see and the
lame walk, heals the sick, and brings the dead to life;—
the word works miracles, and the only rational miracles.
The word is the gospel, the paraclete of mankind. To con­
vince thyself of the divine nature of speech, imagine thyself
alone and forsaken, yet acquainted with language; and
imagine thyself further hearing for the first time the word
of a human being: would not this word seem to thee an­
gelic ? would it not sound like the voice of God himself,
like heavenly music ? Words are not really less rich, less
pregnant than music, though music seems to say more, and
appears deeper and richer than words, for this reason simply,
that it is invested with that prepossession, that illusion.
* “ Tanta certe vis nomini Jesu inest contra daemones, ut nonnunquam

1. iii.
etiam a malis nominatum sit efficax.”— Orígenes adv. Celsum, 1. i . ; .see also,
 THE MYSTERY O F THE LOGOS. %79

The word has power to redeem, to reconcile, to bless, to

make free. The sins which we confess are forgiven us by
virtue of the divine power of the word. The dying man
who gives forth in speech his long-concealed sins departs
reconciled. The forgiveness of sins lies in the confession
of sins. The sorrows which we confide to our friend are
already half healed. Whenever we speak of a subject, the
passions which it has excited in us are allayed; we see more
clearly; thfe object of anger, of vexation, of sorrow, appears
to us in a light in which we perceive the unworthiness of
those passions. If we are in darkness and doubt on any
matter, we need only speak of i t ;— often in the very moment
in which we open our lips to consult a friend, the doubts and
difficulties disappear. The word makes man free. He who
cannot express himself is a slave. Hence, excessive pas­
sion, excessive joy, excessive grief, are speechless. To speak
is an act of freedom; the word is freedom. Justly therefore
is language held to be the root of culture; where language
is cultivated,man is cultivated. The barbarism of the Middle
Ages disappeared before the revival of language.
A s we can conceive nothing else as a Divine Being than
the Eational which we think, the Good which we love, the
Beautiful which we perceive; so we know no higher spiri­
tually operative power and expression of power than the
power of the Word.* God is the sum of all reality. A ll
that man feels or knows as a reality he must place in God
or regard as God. Beligion must therefore be conscious of
the power of the word as a divine power. The Word of God
is the divinity of the word, as it becomes an object to man
within the sphere of religion,— the true nature of the human
word. The Word of God is supposed to be distinguished
from the human word in that it is no transient breath, but
an imparted being. But does not the word of man also con­
tain the being of man, his imparted self,— at least when it
is a true word ? Thus religion takes the appearance of the
human word for its essence; hence it necessarily conceives
the true nature of the Word to be a special being, distinct
from the human word.
* “ 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.
8o THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER V III.

THE MYSTERY OF THE COSMOGONICAL PRINCIPLE IN GOD.

T h e second Person, as God revealing, manifesting, declaring

himself {Bens se dicit), is the world-creating principle in
God. But this means nothing else than that the second
Person is intermediate between the noumenal nature of
God and the phenomenal nature of the world, that he is the
divine principle of the finite, of that which is distinguished
from God. The second Person as begotten, as not & se, not
existing of himself, has the fundamental condition of the
finite in himself.* But at the same time, he is not y et a
real finite Being, posited out of God; on the contrary, he is
still identical with God,— as identical as the son is with
the father, the son being indeed another person, but still
of like nature with the father. The second Person, there­
fore, does not represent to us the pure idea of the Godhead,
but neither does he represent the pure idea of humanity,
or of reality in general: he is an intermediate Being be­
tween the two opposites. The opposition of the noumenal or
invisible divine nature and the phenomenal or visible nature
of the world, is, however, nothing else than the opposition
between the nature of abstraction and the nature of per­
ception ; but that which connects abstraction with percep­
tion is the imagination: consequently, the transition from
God to the world by means of the second Person, is only
the form in which religion makes objective the transition
from abstraction to perception by means of the imagination.
It is the imagination alone by which man neutralises the
opposition between God and the world. A ll religious cos­
mogonies are products of the imagination. Every being,
intermediate between God and the world, let it be defined
* “ 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 connteri impiissimum eat.”— Petrus Lomb. Sent. L i.
dist. 31, c. 4.
 MYSTERY OF THE COSMOGONICAL PRIN CIP LE. 81

how It may, is a being of the imagination. The psychological

truth and necessity which lies at the foundation of all these
theogonies and cosmogonies is the truth and necessity of
the imagination as a middle term between the abstract and
concrete. And the task of philosophy in investigating this
subject is to comprehend the relation of the imagination to
the reason,— the genesis of the image by means of which an
object of thought becomes an object of sense, of feeling.
But the nature of the imagination is the complete, ex­
haustive truth of the cosmogonic principle, only where the
antithesis of God and the world expresses nothing but the
indefinite antithesis of the noumenal, invisible, incompre­
hensible being, God, and the visible, tangible existence of
the world. If, on the other hand, the cosmogonic being is
conceived and expressed abstractly, as is the case in religious
speculation, we have also to recognise a more abstract psy­
chological truth as its foundation.
The world is not God; it is other than God, the opposite
of God, or at least that which is different from God. But
that which is different from God cannot have come im­
mediately from God, but only from a distinction of God in
God. The second Person is God distinguishing himself
from himself in himself, setting himself opposite to himself,
hence being an object to himself. The self-distinguishing
of God from himself is the ground of that which is different
from himself, and thus self-consciousness is the origin of the
world. God first thinks the world in thinking himself: to
think oneself is to beget oneself, to think the world is to
create the world. Begetting precedes creating. The idea
of the production of the world, of another being who is
not God, is attained through the idea of the production of
another being who is like God.
This cosmogonical process is nothing else than the mystic
paraphrase of a psychological process, nothing else than the
unity of consciousness and self-consciousness made objec­
tive. God thinks himself:— thus he is self-conscious. God
is self-consciousness posited as an object, as a being; but
inasmuch as he knows himself, thinks himself, he also
thinks another than - himself; for to know oneself is to
distinguish oneself from another, whether this be a possible,
merely conceptional, or a real being. Thus the world— at
least the possibility, the idea of the world— is posited with
82 TH E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

consciousness, or rather conveyed in it. The Son, i.e., God

thought by himself, objective to himself, the original reflec­
tion of God, the other God, is the principle of creation. The
truth which lies at the foundation of this is the nature of m an:
the identity of his self-consciousness with his consciousness
of another who is identical with himself, and of another
who is not identical with himself. And the second, the
other who is of like nature, is necessarily the middle term
between the first and third. The idea of another in general,
of one who is essentially different from me, arises to me first
through the idea of one who is essentially like me.
Consciousness of the world is the consciousness of my
limitation : if I knew nothing of a world, I should know
nothing of limits; but the consciousness of my limitation
stands in contradiction with the impulse of my egoism
towards unlimitedness. Thus from egoism conceived as
absolute (God is the absolute Self) I cannot pass imme­
diately to its opposite; I must introduce, prelude, mode­
rate this contradiction by the consciousness of a being who
is indeed another, and in so far gives me the perception
of my limitation, but in such a way as at the §ame time
to affirm my own nature, make my nature objective to me.
The consciousness of the world is a humiliating conscious­
ness ; the creation was an “ act of humility;” but the first
stone against which the pride of egoism stumbles is the
thou, the alter ego. The ego first steels its glance in the eye
of a thou before it endures the contemplation of a being
which does not reflect its own image. M y fellow-man is
the bond between me and the world. I am, and I feel
myself, dependent on the world, because I first feel myself
dependent on other men. If I did not need man, I should
not need the world. I reconcile myself with the world only
through my fellow-man. Without other men, the world
would be for me not only dead and empty, but meaningless.
Only through his fellow does man become clear to himself
and self-conscious; but only when I am clear to myself
does the world become clear to me. A man existing
absolutely alone would lose himself without any sense of
his individuality in the ocean of Nature; he would neither
comprehend himself as man nor Nature as Nature. The
first object of man is man. The sense of Nature, which
opens to us the consciousness of the world as a world, is a
 MYSTERY OF THE COSMOGONICAL PRINCIPLE. 8$

later product; for it first arises through the distinction of

m an from himself. The natural philosophers of Greece were
preceded'by the so-called seven Sages, whose wisdom had
immediate reference to human life only.
The ego, then, attains to consciousness of the world through
consciousness of the thou. Thus man is the God of man. That
lie is, he has to thank Nature; that he is man, he has to
thank man; spiritually as well as physically he can achieve
nothing without his fellow-man. Four hands can do more
than two, but also four eyes can see more than two. And
this combined power is distinguished not only in quantity
but also in quality from that which is solitary. In isolation
human power is limited, in combination it is infinite. The
knowledge of a single man is limited, but reason, science, is
unlimited, for it is a common act of mankind; and it is so,
not only because innumerable men co-operate in the con­
struction of science, but also in the more profound sense,
that the scientific genius of a particular age comprehends
in itself the thinking powers of the preceding age, though
it modifies them in accordance with its own special charac­
ter. Wit, acumen, imagination, feeling as distinguished
from sensation, reason as a subjective faculty,— all these
so-called powers of the soul are powers of humanity, not
of man as an individual; they are products of culture, pro­
ducts of human society. Only where man has contact and
friction with his fellow-man are wit and sagacity kindled;
hence there is more wit in the town than in the country,
more in great towns than in small ones. Only where man
suns and warms himself in the proximity of man arise
feeling and imagination. Love, which requires mutuality,
is the spring of poetry; and only where man communicates
with man, only in speech, a social act, awakes reason. To
ask a question and to answer are the first acts of thought.
Thought originally demands two. It is not until man has
reached an advanced stage of culture that he can double
himself, so as to play the part of another within himself.
To think and to speak are therefore, with all ancient and
sensuous nations, identical; they think only in speaking;
their thought is only conversation. The common people,
i.e., people in whom the power of abstraction has not been
developed, are still incapable of understanding what is writ­
ten if they do not read it audibly, if they do not pronounce
84 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

what they read. In this point of view Hobbes correctly

enough derives the understanding of man from his ears !
Keduced to abstract logical categories, the creative prin­
ciple in God expresses nothing further than the tautolo­
gical proposition: the different can only proceed from a
principle of difference, not from a simple being. However
the Christian philosophers and theologians insisted on the
creation of the world out of nothing, they were unable
altogether to evade the old axiom— “ Nothing comes from
nothing,” because it expresses a law of thought. It is true
that they supposed no real matter as the principle of the
diversity of material things, but they made the divine
understanding (and the Son is the wisdom, the science, the
understanding of the Father)— as that which comprehends
within itself all things as spiritual matter— the principle of
real matter. The distinction between the heathen eternity
of matter and the Christian creation in this respect is only
that the heathens ascribed to the world a real, objective
eternity, whereas the Christians gave it an invisible, imma­
terial eternity. Things were before they existed positively,
— not, indeed, as an object of sense, but of the subjective
understanding. The Christians, whose principle is that of
absolute subjectivity, conceive all things as effected only
through this principle. The matter posited by their subjec­
tive thought, conceptional, subjective matter, is therefore to
them the first matter,— far more excellent than real, objective
matter. Nevertheless, this distinction is only a distinction
in the mode of existence. The world is eternal in God.
Or did it spring up in him as a sudden idea, a caprice ?
Certainly man can conceive this too; but, in doing so, he
deifies nothing but his own irrationality. If, on the con­
trary, I abide by reason, I can only derive the world from its
essence, its idea, i.e., one mode of its existence from another
mode; in other words, I can derive the world only from
itself. The world has its basis in itself, as has everything in
the world which has a claim to the name of species. The
differentia specifica, the peculiar character, that by which a
given being is what it is, is always in the ordinary sense inex­
plicable, undeducible, is through itself, has its cause in itself.
The distinction between the world and God as the creator
of the world is therefore only a formal one. The nature of
God— for the divine understanding, that which comprehends
 MYSTERY OF TH E COSMOGONICAL P R IN CIPLE. 85

within itself all things, is the divine nature itself; hence

God, inasmuch as he thinks and knows himself, thinks and
knows at the same time the world and all things— the
nature of God is nothing else than the abstract, thought
nature of the world ; the nature of the world nothing else
than the real, concrete, perceptible nature of God. Hence
creation is nothing more than a formal act; for that which,
before the creation, was an object of thought, of the under­
standing, is by creation simply made* am object of sense, its
ideal contents continuing the same; although it remains
absolutely inexplicable how a real material thing can spring
out of a pure thought*
' So it is with plurality and difference— if we reduce the
world to these abstract categories— in opposition to the
unity and identity of the Divine nature. Eeal difference
can be derived only from a being which has a principle of
difference in itself. But I posit difference in the original
being, because I have originally found difference as a positive
reality. Wherever difference is in itself nothing, there also
no difference is conceived in the principle of-things. I posit
difference as an essential category, as a truth, where I derive
it from the original being, and vice versd: the two proposi­
tions are identical. The rational expression is this: Differ­
ence lies as necessarily in the reason as identity.
But as difference is a positive condition of the reason, I
cannot deduce it without presupposing i t ; I cannot explain
it except by itself, because it is an original, self-luminous,
self-attesting reality. Through what means arises the
world, that which is distinguished from God ? through the
distinguishing of God from himself in himself. God thinks
himself, he is an object to himself; he distinguishes himself
from himself. Hence this distinction, the world, arises
only from a distinction of another kind, the external dis­
tinction from an internal one, the static distinction from a
dynamic one,— from an act of distinction : thus I establish
difference only through itself, i.e., it is an original concept,
a ne plus ultra of my thought, a law, a necessity, a truth.
The last distinction that I can think is the distinction of a
being from and in itself. The distinction of one being from

* It is therefore mere self-delusion to suppose that the hypothesis of a

creation explains the existence of the world.
86 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

another is self-evident, is already implied in their existence,

is a palpable tru th : they are two. But I first establish
difference for thought when I discern it in one and the
same being, when I unite it with the law of identity.
Herein lies the ultimate truth of difference. The cosmo­
gonic principle in God, reduced to its last elements, is
nothing else than the act of thought in its simplest forms
made objective. If I remove difference from God, he gives
me no material for thought; he ceases to be an object of
thought; for difference is an essential principle of thought.
And if I consequently place difference in God, what else do
I establish, what else do I make an object, than the truth
and necessity of this principle of thought ?
 THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 87

CHAPTER IX.

THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM, OR OF NATURE IN GOD.

I n t e r e s t i n g material for the criticism of cosmogonic and

theogonic fancies is furnished in the doctrine— revived by
Schelling and drawn from Jacob Bohme— of eternal Nature
in God.
God is pure spirit, clear self-consciousness, moral person­
ality ; Nature, on the contrary, is, at least partially, confused,
dark, desolate, immoral, or to say no more, unmoral. But
it is self-contradictory that the impure should proceed from
the pure, darkness from light. How then can we remove
these obvious difficulties in the way of assigning a divine
origin to Nature ? Only by positing this impurity, this dark­
ness in God, by distinguishing in God himself a principle
of light and a principle of darkness. In other words, we
can only explain the origin of darkness by renouncing
the idea of origin, and presupposing darkness as existing
from the beginning.*
But that which is dark in Nature is the irrational, the
material, Nature strictly, as distinguished from intelligence.
Hence the simple meaning of this doctrine is, that Nature,
Matter, cannot be explained as a result of intelligence; on
the contrary, it is the basis of intelligence, the basis of
personality, without itself having any basis; spirit without
Nature is an unreal abstraction; consciousness develops
itself only out of Nature. But this materialistic doctrine
is veiled in a mystical yet attractive obscurity, inasmuch as
it is not expressed in the clear, simple language of reason,
but emphatically enunciated in that consecrated word of
the emotions— God. If the light in God springs out of the
* 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.
88 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

darkness in God, this is only because it is involved in the

idea of light in general, that it illuminates darkness, thus
presupposing darkness, not making it. If then God is once
subjected to a general law,— as he must necessarily be un­
less he be made the arena of conflict for the most senseless
notions,— if self-consciousness in God as well as in itself,
as in general, is evolved from a principle in Nature, why
is not this natural principle abstracted from God ? That
which is a law of consciousness in itself is a law for
the consciousness of every personal being, whether man,
angel, demon, God, or whatever else thou mayest con­
ceive to thyself as a being. To what then, seen in their
true light, do the two principles in God reduce themselves ?
The one to Nature, at least to Nature as it exists in the
conception, abstracted from its reality; the other to mind,
consciousness, personality. The one half, the reverse side,
thou dost not name God, but only the obverse side, on
which he presents to thee mind, consciousness: thus his
specific essence, that whereby he is God, is mind, intelli­
gence, consciousness. Why then dost thou make that
which is properly the subject in God as God, i.e., as mind,
into a mere predicate, as if God existed as God apart from
mind, from consciousness ? Why, but because thou art
enslaved by mystical religious speculation, because the
primary principle in thee is the imagination, thought being
only secondary and serving but to throw into formulae the
products of the imagination,— because thou feelest at ease
and at home only in the deceptive twilight of mysticism.
Mysticism is deuteroscopy— a fabrication of phrases
having a double meaning. The mystic speculates con­
cerning the essence of Nature or of man, but under, and
by means of, the supposition that he is speculating con­
cerning another, a personal being, distinct from both. The
mystic has the same objects as the plain, self-conscious
thinker ; but the real object is regarded by the mystic, not
as itself, but as an imaginary being, and hence the imagi­
nary object is to him the real object. Thus here, .in the
mystical doctrine of the two principles in God, the real
object is pathology, the imaginary one, theology; i.e.,
pathology is converted into theology. There would be
nothing to urge against this, if consciously real pathology
were recognised and expressed as theology; indeed, it is
 THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 89

precisely our task to show that theology is nothing else

than an unconscious, esoteric pathology, anthropology, and
psychology, and that therefore real anthropology, real patho­
logy, and real psychology have far more claim to the name
of theology than has theology itself, because this is nothing
more than an imaginary psychology and anthropology.
B ut this doctrine or theory is supposed— and for this reason
it is mystical and fantastic— to be not pathology, but theo­
logy, in the old or ordinary sense of the word ; it is sup­
posed that we have here unfolded to us the life of a Being
distinct from us, while nevertheless it is only our own nature
•which is unfolded, though at the same time again shut up
from us by the fact that this nature is represented as inher­
ing in another being. The mystic philosopher supposes
that in God, not in us human individuals,— that would be
far too trivial a truth,— reason first appears after the Passion
of Nature ;— that not man, but God, has wrestled himself out
of the obscurity of confused feelings and impulses into the
clearness of knowledge ; that not in our subjective, limited
mode of conception, but in God himself, the nervous tremors
of darkness precede the joyful consciousness of light ; in
short, he supposes that his theory presents not a history of
human throes, but a history of the development, ie ., the
throes of God— for developments (or transitions) are birth-
struggles. But, alas ! this supposition itself belongs only to
the pathological element.
If, therefore, the cosmogonic process presents to us the
Light of the power of distinction as belonging to the divine
essence ; so, on the other hand, the Night or Nature in God
represents to us the Pensées confuses of Leibnitz as divine
powers. But the Pensées confuses— confused, obscure con­
ceptions and thoughts, or more correctly images— represent
the flesh, matter ;— a pure intelligence, separate from matter,
has only clear, free thoughts, no obscure, i.e:, fleshly ideas,
no material images, exciting the imagination and setting the
blood in commotion. The Night in God, therefore, implies
nothing else than this : God is not only a spiritual, but also
a material, corporeal, fleshly being ; but as man is man, and
receives his designation, in virtue not of his fleshly nature,
but of his mind, so is it with God.
But the mystic philosopher expresses this only in obscure,
mystical,indefinite, dissembling images. Instead of the rude,
90 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

but hence all the more precise and striking expression, flesh,
it substitutes the equivocal, abstract words nature and
ground. “ As nothing is before or out of God, he must have
the ground of his existence in himself. This all philoso­
phies say, but they speak of this ground as a mere idea,
without making it something real. This ground of his
existence which God has in himself, is not God considered
absolutely, i.e., in so far as he exists; it is only the ground
of his existence. It is Nature— in God; an existence
inseparable from him, it is true, but still distinct. Ana­
logically (?), this relation may be illustrated by gravitation
and light in Nature.” But this ground is the non-intelligent
in God. “ That which is the commencement of an intelli­
gence (in itself) cannot also be intelligent.” “ In the strict
sense, intelligence is born of this unintelligent principle.
Without this antecedent darkness there is no reality of the
Creator.” “ With abstract ideas of God as actus purissimus,
such as were laid down by the older philosophy, or such as
the modern, out of anxiety to remove God far from Nature,
is always reproducing, we can effect nothing. God is some­
thing more real than a mere moral order of the world, and
has quite another and a more living motive power in him­
self than is ascribed to him by the jejune subtflty of abstract
idealists. Idealism, if it has not a living realism as its
basis, is as empty and abstract a system as that of Leibnitz
or Spinoza, or as any other dogmatic system.” “ So long as
the God of modern theism remains the simple, supposed
purely essential, but in fact non-essential Being that all
modern systems make him, so long as a real duality is not
recognised in God, and a limiting, negativing force, opposed
to the expansive affirming force, so long will the denial of
a personal God be scientific honesty.” “ A ll consciousness
is concentration, is a gathering together, a collecting of one­
self. This negativing force, by which a being turns back
upon itself, is the true force of personality, the force of
egoism.” “ How should there be a fear of God if there
were no strength in him ? But that there should be some­
thing in God which is mere force and strength cannot be
held astonishing if only it be not maintained that he is this
alone and nothing besides.” *
# Schelling, TJeber das Wesen der Menschlichen Freiheit, 429, 432, 427.
Denkmal Jacobi’s, s. 82, 97-99.
 THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 91
But what then is force and strength which is merely such,
if not corporeal force and strength ? Dost thou know any
power which stands at thy command, in distinction from the
power of kindness and reason, besides muscular power ? If
thou canst effect nothing through kindness and the argu­
ments of reason, force is what thou must take refuge in.
B ut canst thou “ effect ” anything without strong arms and
fists? Is there known to thee, in distinction from the
power of the moral order of the world, “ another and more
living motive power ” than the lever of the criminal court ?
Is not Nature without body also an “ empty, abstract”
idea, a “ jejune subtilty” ? Is not the mystery of Nature
the mystery of corporeality? Is not the system of a
“ living realism ” the system of the organised body ? Is
there, in general, any other force, the opposite of intelli­
gence, than the force of flesh and blood,— any other strength
of Nature than the strength of the fleshly impulses ? And
the strongest of the impulses of Nature, is it not the sexual
feeling ? Who does not remember the old proverb: “ Am-
are et sapere vix Deo competitV* So that if we would
posit in God a nature, an existence opposed to the light of
intelligence,— can we think of a more living, a more real
antithesis, than that of amare and sapere, of spirit and flesh,
of freedom and the sexual impulse ?
Personality, individuality, consciousness, without Nature,
is nothing; or, which is the same thing, an empty, unsub­
stantial abstraction. But Nature, as has been shown and
is obvious, is nothing without corporeality. The body
alone is that negativing, limiting, concentrating, circum­
scribing force, without which no personality is conceivable.
Take away from thy personality its body, and thou takest
away that which holds it together. The body is the basis,
the subject of personality. Only by the body is.a real per­
sonality distinguished from the imaginary one of a spectre.
W hat sort of abstract, vague, empty personalities should we
be, if we had not the property of impenetrability,— if in the
same place, in the same form in which we are, others might
stand at the same time ? Only by the exclusion of others
from the space it occupies does personality prove itself to
be real. But a body does not exist without flesh and blood.
Flesh and blood is life, and life alone is corporeal reality.
B u t flesh and blood is nothing without the oxygen of sexual
92‘ TH E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

distinction. The distinction of sex is not superficial, or

limited to certain parts of the body; it is an essential one:
it penetrates bones and marrow. The substance of man is
manhood; that of woman, womanhood. However spiritual
and supersensual the man may be, he remains always
a m an; and it is the same with the woman. Hence per­
sonality is nothing without distinction of sex; personality
is essentially distinguished into masculine and feminine.
Where there is no thou, there is no I ; but the distinction
between I and thou, the fundamental condition of all per­
sonality, of all consciousness, is only real, living, ardent,
when felt as the distinction between man and woman.
The thou between man and woman has quite another
sound than the monotonous thou between friends.
Nature in distinction from personality can signify nothing
else than difference of sex. A personal being apart from
Nature is nothing else than a being without sex, and con­
versely. Nature is said to be predicated of God, “ in the
sense in which it is said of a man that he is of a strong,
healthy nature.” But what is more feeble, what more in­
supportable, what more contrary to Nature, than a person
without sex, or a person who in character, manners, or
feelings denies sex? What is virtue, the excellence of
man as man? Manhood. Of man as woman? Woman­
hood. But man exists only as man and woman. The
strength, the healthiness of man consists therefore in
th is: that as a woman, he be truly woman; as man, truly
man. Thou repudiatest “ the horror of all that is real,
which supposes the spiritual to be polluted by contact
with the real.” Repudiate then, before all, thy own horror
for the distinction of sex. If God is not polluted by Nature,
neither is he polluted by being associated with the idea of
sex. In renouncing sex, thou renouncest thy whole prin­
ciple. A moral God apart from Nature is without basis ;
but the basis of morality is the distinction of sex. Even
the brute is capable of self-sacrificing love in virtue of the
sexual distinction. A ll the glory of Nature, all its power,
all its wisdom and profundity, concentrates and individual­
ises itself in distinction of sex. Why then dost thou shrink
from naming the nature of God by its true name ? Evidently,
only because thou hast a general horror of things in their
truth and reality; because thou lookest at all things through
 T H E MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 93
the deceptive vapours of mysticism. For this very reason
then, because Nature in God is only a delusive, unsub­
stantial appearance, a fantastic ghost of Nature,— for it is
based, as we have said, not on flesh and blood, not on areal
ground,— this attempt to establish a personal God is once
more a failure, and I, too, conclude with the words, “ The
denial of a personal God will be scientific honesty: ”— and,
I add, scientific truth, so long as it is not declared and shown
in unequivocal terms, first ä priori, on speculative grounds,
that form, place, corporeality, and sex do not contradict the
idea of the Godhead; and secondly, d posteriori,— for the
reality of a personal being is sustained only on empirical
grounds,— what sort of form God has, where he exists,— in
heaven,— and lastly, of what sex he is.
Let the profound, speculative religious philosophers of
Germany courageously shake off the embarrassing remnant
of rationalism which yet clings to them, in flagrant contra­
diction with their true character; and let them complete
their system, by converting the mystical “ potence ” of
Nature in God into a really powerful, generating God.

The doctrine of Nature in God is borrowed from Jacob

•Böhme. But in the original it has a far deeper and more
interesting significance than in its second modernised and
emasculated edition. Jacob Böhme has a profoundly reli­
gious mind. Religion is the centre of his life and thought.
But at the same time, the significance which has been given
to Nature in modern times— by the study of natural science,
by Spinozism, materialism, empiricism— has taken posses­
sion of his religious sentiment. He has opened his senses
to Nature, thrown a glance into her mysterious being; but
it alarms him, and he cannot harmonise this terror at Nature
with his religious conceptions. “ When I looked into the
great depths of this world, and at the sun and stars, also at
the clouds, also at the rain and snow, and considered in
m y mind the whole creation of this world; then I found
in all things evil and good, love and anger,— in unreason­
ing things, such as wood, stone, earth, and the elements, as
well as in men and beasts. . . . But because I found that
in all things there was good and evil, in the elements as
well as in the creatures, and that it goes as well in the world
with the godless as with the pious* also that the barbarous
94 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
nations possess the best lands, and have more prosperity than
the godly; I was therefore altogether melancholy and ex­
tremely troubled, and the Scriptures could not console me,
though almost all well known to me; and therewith assuredly
the devil was not idle, for he often thrust upon me heathenish
thoughts, of which I will here be silent.” * But while his
mind seized with fearful earnestness the dark side of Nature,
which did not harmonise with the religious idea of a hea­
venly Creator, he was on the other hand rapturously affec­
ted by her resplendent aspects. Jacob Böhme has a sense
for Nature. He preconceives, nay, he feels the joys of the
mineralogist, of the botanist, of the chemist— the joys of
“ godless natural science.” He is enraptured by the splen­
dour of jewels, the tones of metals, the hues and odours of
plants, the beauty and'gentleness of many animals. In another
place, speaking of the revelation of God in the phenomena
of light, the process by which “ there arises in the Godhead
the wondrous and beautiful structure of the heavens in
various colours and kinds, and every spirit shows itself in its
form specially,” he says, “ I can compare it with nothing but
with the noblest precious stones, such as the ruby, emerald,
epidote, onyx, sapphire, diamond, jasper, hyacinth, amethyst,
beryl, sardine, carbuncle, and the like.” Elsewhere: “ But
regarding the precious stones, such as the carbuncle, ruby,
emerald, epidote, onyx, and the like, which are the very
best, these have the very same origin— the flash of light in
love. For that flash is born in tenderness, and is the heart
in the centre of the Fountain-spirit, wherefore those stones
also are mild, powerful, and lovely.” It is evident that
Jacob Böhme had no bad taste in mineralogy; that he had
delight in flowers also, and consequently a faculty for
botany, is proved' by the following passages among others:
— “ The heavenly powers gave birth to heavenly joy-giving
fruits and colours, to all sorts of trees and shrubs, where­
upon grows the beauteous and lovely fruit of life: also
there spring up in these powers all sorts of flowers with
beauteous heavenly colours and scents. Their taste is
various, in each according to its quality and kind, altogether
holy, divine, and joy-giving.” “ If thou desirest to contem­
plate the heavenly, divine pomp and glory, as they are, and
to know what sort of products, pleasure, or joys there are
# Kemhafter Auszug . * . J. Böhme : Amsterdam, 1718, p. 58.
 THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 95

above: look diligently at this world, at the varieties of

fruits and plants that grow upon the earth,— trees, shrubs,
vegetables, roots, flowers, oils, wines, corn, and everything
th a t is there, and that thy heart can search out. A ll this
is an image of the heavenly pomp.” *
A despotic fiat could not suffice as an explanation of the
origin of Nature to Jacob Bohme; Nature appealed too
strongly to his senses, and lay too near his heart; hence
he sought for a natural explanation of Nature; but he
necessarily found no other ground of explanation than
those qualities of Nature which made the strongest im­
pression on him. Jacob Bohme— this is his essential
character— is a mystical natural philosopher, a theosophic
Vulcanist and Neptunist/j* for according to him “ all things
had their origin in fire and water.” Nature had fascinated
Jacob’s religious sentiments,— not in vain did he receive
his mystical light from the shining of tin utensils; but the
religious sentiment works only within itself; it has not the
force, not the courage, to press forward to the examination
of things in their reality; it looks at all things through the
medium of religion, it sees all in God, i.e., in the entrancing,
soul-possessing splendour of the imagination, it sees all in
images and as an image. But Nature affected his mind in
an opposite manner; hence he must place this opposition
in God himself,— for the supposition of two independently
existing, opposite, original principles would have afflicted
his religious sentiment;— he must distinguish in God him­
self a gentle, beneficent element, and a fierce consuming one.
Everything fiery, bitter, harsh, contracting, dark, cold, comes
from a divine harshness and bitterness; everything mild,
lustrous, /warming, tender, soft, yielding, from a mild, soft,
luminous quality in God. " Thus are the creatures on the
earth, in the water, and in the air, each creature out of its
own science, out of good and evil. . . . As one sees before
one’s eyes that there are good and evil creatures; as
venomous beasts and serpents from the centre of the nature
of darkness, from the power of the fierce quality, which
only want to dwell in darkness, abiding in caves and hiding
*, L. c. pp. 480, 338, 340, 323.
t The PhUosophtis teutonicus walked physically as well as mentally on
volcanic ground. “ The town of Gorlitz is paved throughout with pure
basalt.”— Charpentier, Mineral. Geographie der .Chursachsischen Lande,
p. 19.
96 THE ESSENCE OF CH R ISTIAN ITY.

themselves from the sun. By each animal’s food and dwelling

we see whence they have sprung, for every creature needs
to dwell with its mother, and yearns after her, as is plain
to the sight.” “ Gold, silver, precious stones, and all bright
metal, has its origin in the light, which appeared before the
times of anger,” &c. “ Everything which in the substance
of this world is yielding, soft, and thin, is flowing, and
gives itself forth, and the ground and origin of it is in the
eternal Unity, for unity ever flows forth from itself; for
in the nature of things not dense, as water and air, we can
understand no susceptibility or pain, they being one in
themselves* In short, heaven is as rich as the earth.
Everything that is on this earth is in heaven,f all that is
in Nature is in God. But in the latter it is divine, heavenly;
in the former, earthly, visible, external, material, but yet
the same.” “ When I write of trees, shrubs and fruits, thou
must not understand me of earthly things, such as are in
this world ; for it is not my meaning that in heaven there
grows a dead, hard, wooden tree, or a stone of earthly
qualities. N o : my meaning is heavenly and spiritual, but
yet truthful and literal; thus, I mean no other things than
what I write in the letters of the alphabet; ” i.e., in heaven
there are the same trees and flowers, but the trees in heaven
are the trees which bloom and exhale in my imagination,
without making coarse material impressions upon m e; the
trees on earth are the trees which I perceive through my
senses. The distinction is the distinction between imagina­
tion and perception. “ It is not my undertaking,” says
Jacob Bohme himself, “ to describe the course of all stars,
their place and name, or how they have yearly their con­
junction or opposition, or quadrate, or the like,— what they
do yearly and hourly,— which through long years has been
discovered by wise, skilful, ingenious men, by diligent con­
templation and observation, and deep thought and calcula­
tion. I have not learned and studied these things, and
leave scholars to treat of them, but my undertaking is to
* L. c. pp. 468, 617, 618.
t 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.
 TH E MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 97

write according to the spirit and thought, not according to

sight.” *
The doctrine of Nature in God aims, by naturalism, to
establish theism, especially the theism which regards the
Supreme Being as a personal being. But personal theism
conceives God as a personal being, separate from all material
thin gs; it excludes from him all development, because that
is nothing else than the self-separation of a being from
circumstances and conditions which do not correspond to its
true idea. And this does not take place in God, because in
him beginning, end, middle, are not to be distinguished,—
"because he is at once what he is, is from the beginning what
he is to be, what he can b e ; he is the pure unity of exist­
ence and essence, reality and idea, act and will. Deus
suurn Esse est. Herein theism accords with the essence of
religion. A ll religions, however positive they may be, rest
on abstraction; they are distinguished only in that from
which the abstraction is made. Even the Homeric gods,
with all their living strength and likeness to man, are
abstract forms; they have bodies, like men, but bodies from
which the limitations and difficulties of the human body
are eliminated. The idea of a divine being is essentially
an abstracted, distilled idea. It is obvious that this
abstraction is no arbitrary one, but is determined by the
essential stand-point of man. As he is, as he thinks, so
does he make his abstraction.
The abstraction expresses a judgment,— an affirmative
and a negative one at the same time, praise and blame.
What man praises and approves, that is God to him ;f what
he blames, condemns, is the non-divine. Religion is &judg­
ment. The most essential condition in religion— in the idea
of the divine being— is accordingly the discrimination of
the praiseworthy from the blameworthy, of the perfect from
the imperfect; in a word, of the positive from the negative.
The cultus itself consists in nothing else than in the con­
tinual renewal of the origin of religion— a solemnising of
the critical discrimination between the divine and the non­
divine.
The Divine Being is the human being glorified by the

* L. c. p. 339, p. 69.
t “ Quidquid enim unus quisque super ccetera colit: hoc illi Deus est.”—
Origines Explan, in Epist. rauli ad Rom. c. 1.
98 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

death of abstraction; it is the departed spirit of man. In

religion man frees himself from the limits of life ; he here
lets fall what oppresses him, obstructs him, affects him
repulsively; God is the self-consciousness of man freed
from all discordant elements; man feels himself free, happy,
blessed in his religion,* because he only here lives the life of
genius, and keeps holiday. The basis of the divine idea lies
for him outside of that idea itself; its truth lies in the prior
judgment, in the fact that all which he excludes from God
is previously judged by him to be non-divine, and what is
non-divine to be worthless, nothing. If he were to include
the attaining of this idea in the idea itself, it would lose its
most essential significance, its true value, its beatifying
charm. The divine being is the pure subjectivity of man,
freed from all else, from everything objective, having
relation only to itself, enjoying only itself, reverencing only
itself— his most subjective, his inmost self. The process of
discrimination, the separating of the intelligent from the
non-intelligent, of personality from Nature, of the perfect
from the imperfect, necessarily therefore takes place in the
subject, not in the object, and the idea of God lies not at the
beginning but at the end of sensible existence, of the world,
of Nature. “ Where Nature ceases, God begins,” because
God is the ne plus ultra, the last limit of abstraction. That
from which I can no longer abstract is God, the last thought
which I am capable of grasping— the last, i.e., the highest.
Id quo nihil majus cogitari potest, Bens est. That this Omega
of sensible existence becomes an Alpha also, is easily com­
prehensible ; but the essential point is, that he is the Omega.
The Alpha is primarily a consequence; because God is the
last or highest, he is also the first. And this predicate—
the first Being, has by no means immediately a cosmogonic
significance, but only implies the highest rank. The creation
in the Mosaic religion has for its end to secure to Jehovah
the predicate of the highest and first, the true and exclusive
God in opposition to idols.
The effort to establish the personality of God through
Nature has therefore at its foundation an illegitimate, pro­
fane mingling of philosophy and religion, a complete absence
of criticism and knowledge concerning the genesis of the
personal God. Where personality is held the essential
attribute of God, where it is said— an impersonal God is no
 THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 99
G o d ; there personality is held to be in and by itself the
highest and most real thing, there it is presupposed that
everything which is not a person is dead, is nothing, that
only personal existence is real, absolute existence, is life
and truth— but Nature is impersonal, and is therefore a
trivial thing. The truth of personality rests only on the
untruth, of Nature. To predicate personality of God is
nothing else than to declare personality as the absolute
essence; but personality is only conceived in distinction,
in abstraction from Nature. Certainly a merely personal
God is an abstract G od; but so he ought to be— that is
involved in the idea of him ; for he is nothing else than the
personal nature of man positing itself out of all connection
with the world, making itself free from all dependence on
nature. In the personality of God man consecrates the
supernaturalness, immortality, independence, unlimitedness
of his own personality.
In general, the need of a personal God has its foundation
in this, that only in the attribute of personality does the
personal man meet with himself, find himself. Substance,
pure spirit, mere reason, does not satisfy him, is too abstract
for him, i.e., does not express himself, does not lead him
back to himself. And man is content, happy, only when
he is with himself, with his own nature. Hence, the more
personal a man is, the stronger is his need of a personal
God. The free, abstract thinker knows nothing higher than
freedom; he does not need to attach it to a personal
being; for him freedom in itself, as such, is a real positive
thing. A mathematical, astronomical mind, a man of pure
understanding, an objective man, who is not shut up in
himself, who feels free and happy only in the contemplation
of objective rational relations, in the reason which lies in
things in themselves— such a man will regard the substance
of Spinoza, or some similar idea, as his highest being, and
be full of antipathy towards a personal, i.e., subjective God.
Jacobi therefore was a classic philosopher, because (in this
respect, at least) he was consistent, he was at unity with
him self; as was his God, so was his philosophy— personal,
subjective. The personal God cannot be established other­
wise than as he is established by Jacobi and his disciples.
Personality is proved only in a personal manner.
Personality may be, nay, must be, founded on a natural
lo o T H E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

basis; but this natural basis is attained only when I cease

to grope in the darkness of mysticism, when I step forth
into the clear daylight of real Nature, and exchange the idea
of the personal God for the idea of personality in general.
But into the idea of the personal God, the positive idea of
whom is liberated, disembodied personality, released from
the limiting force of Nature, to smuggle again this very
Nature, is as perverse as if I were to mix Brunswick mum
with the nectar of the gods, in order to give the ethereal
beverage a solid foundation. Certainly the ingredients of
animal blood are not to be derived from the celestial juice
which nourishes the gods. But the flower of sublimation
arises only through the evaporation of matter; why, then,
wilt thou mix with the sublimate that very matter from
which thou hast disengaged it ? Certainly, the impersonal
existence of Nature is not to be explained by the idea of
personality; but where personality is a truth, or, rather,
the absolute truth, Nature has no positive significance, and
consequently no positive basis. The literal creation out of
nothing is here the only sufficient ground of explanation;
for it simply says this: Nature is nothing;— and this
precisely expresses the significance which Nature has for
absolute personality.
 T H E MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. 101

CHAPTER X.

THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE, AND CREATION OUT OF

NOTHING.

C r e a t io n is the spoken word of G od; the creative, cosmo­

gonic fiat is the tacit word, identical with the thought. To
speak is an act of the w ill; thus, creation is a product of
the W ill: as in the Word of God man affirms the divinity
of the human word, so in creation he affirms the divinity
of the W ill: not, however, the will of the reason, but the
will of the imagination— the absolutely subjective, unlimited
will. The culminating point of the principle of sub­
jectivity is creation out of nothing.* As the eternity of
the world or of matter imports nothing further than the
essentiality of matter, so the creation of the world out of
nothing imports simply the non-essentiality, the nothingness
of the world. The commencement of a thing is immediately
connected, in idea if not in time, with its end. “ Lightly
come, lightly go.” The will has called it into existence—
the will calls it back again into nothing. When? The
time is indifferent: its existence or non-existence depends
only on the will. But this will is not its own w ill:— not only
because a thing cannot will its non-existence, but for the
prior reason that the world is itself destitute of will. Thus
the nothingness of the world expresses the power of the will.
The will that it should exist is, at the same time, the will
— at least the possible will— that it should not exist. The
existence of the world is therefore a momentary, arbitrary,
unreliable, i.e., unreal existence.
Creation out of nothing is the highest expression of omni­
potence : but omnipotence is nothing else than subjectivity
exempting itself from all objective conditions and limita-
* “ Quare fecit Deus ccelum et terrain ? Quia voluit. Voluntas enim Dei
causa est cceli et terra et ideo major est vohintas Dei quam ccelum et terra.
Qui autem dicit: quare voluit facere ccelum et terram ? majus aliquid cjuae«
rit, quam est voluntas Dei, nihil enim majus invenire potest.”— Augustinus
(de Genesi adv. Manich. 1. i. c. 2).
102 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

tions, and consecrating this exemption as the highest power

and reality: nothing else than the ability to posit every­
thing real as unreal— everything conceivable as possible:
nothing else than the power of the imagination, or of the
will as identical with the imagination, the power of self-
will.* The strongest and most characteristic expression of
subjective arbitrariness is, “ it has pleased; ”— the phrase,
" it has pleased God to call the world of bodies and spirits
into existence,” is the most undeniable proof that individual
subjectivity, individual arbitrariness, is regarded as the
highest essence— the omnipotent world-principle. On this
ground, creation out of nothing as a work of the Almighty
W ill falls into the same category with miracle, or rather it
is the first miracle, not only in time but in rank also;— the
principle of which all further miracles are the spontaneous
result. The proof of this is history itself; all miracles have
been vindicated, explained, and illustrated by appeal to the
omnipotence which created the world out of nothing. Why
should not He who made the world out of nothing, make
wine out of water, bring human speech from the mouth of
an ass, and charm water out of a rock ? But miracle is,
as we shall see further on, only a product and object of
the imagination, and hence creation out of nothing, as the
primitive miracle, is of the same character. For this reason
the doctrine of creation out of nothing has been pronounced
a supernatural one, to which reason of itself could not have
attained; and in proof of this, appeal has been made to the
fact that the pagan philosophers represented the world to
have been formed by the Divine Reason out of already
existing matter. But this supernatural principle is no
other than the principle of subjectivity, which in Chris­
tianity exalted itself to an unlimited, universal monarchy;
whereas the ancient philosophers were not subjective
enough to regard the absolutely subjective being as the
exclusively absolute being, because they limited subjectivity
by the contemplation of the world or reality— because to
them the world was a truth.
Creation out of nothing, as identical with miracle, is one
* A more profound origin o£ 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 mani­
festation of force, j
 T HE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. 103

with Providence; for the idea of Providence— originally, in

its true religious significance, in which it is not yet infringed
upon and limited by the unbelieving understanding— is
one with the idea of miracle. The proof of Providence is
miracle.* Belief in Providence is belief in a power to
which all things stand at command to be used according
to its pleasure, in opposition to which all the power of
reality is nothing. Providence cancels the laws of Nature;
it interrupts the course of necessity, the iron bond which
inevitably binds effects to causes; in short, it is the same
unlimited, all-powerful will, that called the world into
existence out of nothing. Miracle is a creatio ex nihilo.
H e who turns water into wine, makes wine out of nothing,
for the constituents of wine are not found in water; other­
wise, the production of wine would not be a miraculous, but
a natural act. The only attestation, the only proof of Provi­
dence is miracle. Thus Providence is an expression of the
same idea as creation out of nothing. Creation out of
nothing can only be understood and explained in connection
with Providence; for miracle properly implies nothing
more than that the miracle worker is the same as he who
brought forth all things by his mere will— God the Creator.
But Providence has relation essentially to man. It is
for man’s sake that Providence makes of things whatever it
pleases: it is for man’s sake that it supersedes the authority
and reality of a law otherwise omnipotent. The admiration
of Providence in Nature, especially in the animal kingdom,
is nothing else than an admiration of Nature, and therefore
belongs merely to naturalism, though to a religious natural­
ism ; f for in Nature is revealed only natural, not divine
Providence— not Providence as it is an object to religion.
Keligious Providence reveals itself only in miracles— especi­
ally in the miracle of the Incarnation, the central point of
religion. But we nowhere read that God, for the sake of
* “ Certissimum divinse providenti® testimonium prsebent miracula.”—
H. Grotius (de Verit. Rel. Christ. 1. i. § 13).
t 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.
104 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTI ANITY.

brutes, became a brute— the very idea of this is, in the eyes of
religion, impious and ungodly; or that God ever performed
a miracle for the sake of animals or plants. On the contrary,
we read that a poor fig-tree, because it bore no fruit at a time
when it could not bear it, was cursed, purely in order to
give men an example of the power of faith over Nature;—
and again, that when the tormenting devils were driven out
of men, they were driven into brutes. It is true we also
read: “ No sparrow falls to the ground without your
Father;” but these sparrows have no more worth and im­
portance than the hairs on the head of a man, which are
all numbered.
Apart from instinct, the brute has no other guardian spirit,
no other Providence, than its senses or its organs in general.
A bird which loses its eyes has lost its guardian angel; it
necessarily goes to destruction if no miracle happens. We
read indeed that a raven brought food to the prophet Elijah,
but not (at least to my knowledge) that an animal was sup­
ported by other than natural means. But if a man believes
that he also has no other Providence than the powers of his
race— his senses and understanding,— he is in the eyes of
religion, and of all those who speak the language of religion,
an irreligious man; because he believes only in a natural
Providence, and a natural Providence is in the eyes of reli­
gion as good as none. Hence Providence has relation essen­
tially to men, and even among men only to the religious.
“ God is the Saviour of all men, but especially of them that
believe.” It belongs, like religion, only to man; it is in­
tended to express the essential distinction of man from the
brute, to rescue man from the tyranny of the forces of
Nature. Jonah in the whale, Daniel in the den of lions, are
examples of the manner in which Providence distinguishes
(religious) men from brutes. If therefore the Providence
which manifests itself in the organs with which animals
catch and devour their prey, and which is so greatly admired
by Christian naturalists, is a truth, the Providence of the
Bible, the Providence of religion, is a falsehood; and vice
versd. What pitiable and at the same time ludicrous hypo­
crisy is the attempt to do homage to both, to Nature, and
the Bible at once! How does Nature contradict the Bible I
How does the Bible contradict Nature! The God of Nature
reveals himself by giving to the lion strength and appropriate
 T HE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. 105

organs in order that, for the preservation of his life, he may

in case of necessity kill and devour even a human being;
the God of the Bible reveals himself by interposing his own
aid to rescue the human being from the jaws of the lion! *
Providence is a privilege of man. It expresses the value
of man, in distinction from other natural beings and things;
it exempts him from the connection of the universe. Pro­
vidence is the conviction of man of the infinite value of his
existence,— a conviction in which he renounces faith in the
reality of external things; it is the idealism of religion.
Faith in Providence is therefore identical with faith in per­
sonal immortality; save only, that in the latter the infinite
value of existence is expressed in relation to time, as infinite
duration. He who prefers no special claims, who is indif­
ferent about himself, who identifies himself with the world,
who sees himself as a part merged in the whole,— such a one
believes in no Providence, i.e.t in no special Providence; but
only special Providence is Providence in the sense of religion.
Faith in Providence is faith in one’s own worth, the faith
of man in himself; hence the beneficent consequences of
this faith, but hence also false humility, religious arrogance,
which, it is true, does not rely on itself, but only because it
commits the care of itself to the blessed God God concerns
himself about me; he has in view my happiness, my salva­
tion; he wills that I shall be blest; but that is my will also:
thus, my interest is God’s interest, my own will is God’s
will, my own aim is God’s aim,— God’s love for me nothing
else than my self-love deified. Thus when I believe in Pro­
vidence, in what do I believe but in the divine reality and
significance of my own being ?
But where Providence is believed in, belief in God is made
dependent on belief in Providence. He who denies that there
is a Providence, denies that there is a God, or— what is the
same thing— that God is God; for a God who is not the
Providence of man, is a contemptible God, a God who is
wanting in the divinest, most adorable attribute. Conse­
quently, the belief in God is nothing but the belief in
human dignity,f the belief in the absolute reality and signi-
* In this contrast of the religious, or biblical, and the natural Provi­
dence, the author had especially in view the vapid, narrow theology of the
English natural philosophers.
t “ Qui Deos negant, nobilitatem generis humani destruunt.”— Bacon
(Serin. Fidel. 16).
io6 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

ficance of the human nature. But belief in a (religious) Pro­

vidence is belief in creation out of nothing, and vice versd ;
the latter, therefore, can have no other significance than
that of Providence as just developed, and it has actually no
other. Religion sufficiently expresses this by making man
the end of creation. All things exist, not for their own
sake, but for the sake of man. He who, like the pious
Christian naturalists, pronounces this to be pride, declares
Christianity itself to be pride; for to say that the material
world exists for the sake of man, implies infinitely less than
to say that God— or at least, if we follow Paul, a being who
is almost God, scarcely to be distinguished from God— be­
comes man for the sake of men.
But if man is the end of creation, he is also the true cause
of creation, for the end is the principle of action. The dis­
tinction between man as the end of creation, and man as its
cause, is only that the cause is the latent, inner man, the
essential man, whereas the end is the self-evident, empirical,
individual man,— that man recognises himself as the end of
creation, but not as the cause, because he distinguishes the
cause, the essence from himself as another personal being.*
But this other being, this creative principle, is in fact
nothing else than his subjective nature separated from the
limits of individuality and materiality, i.e., of objectivity,
unlimited will, personality posited out of all connection
with the world,— which by creation, i.e., the positing of the
world, of objectivity, of another, as a dependent, finite, non-
essential existence, gives itself the certainty of its exclusive
reality. The point in question in the Creation is not the truth
and reality of the world, but the truth and reality of person­
ality, of subjectivity in distinction from the world. The point
in question is the personality of God; but the personality of

* 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 futurse nostrse productionis,
in ipso Deo quodammodo turn praeexistentes. Divini igitur Yerbi sive
Rationis, nos creaturae 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).
 T HE MYSTERY O F PROVIDENCE. 107

God is the personality of man freed from all the conditions

and limitations of Nature. Hence the fervent interest in
the Creation, the horror of all pantheistic cosmogonies.
T he Creation, like the idea of a personal God in general,
is not a scientific, but a personal matter; not an object of
th e free intelligence, but of the feelings; for the point on
which it hinges is only the guarantee, the last conceivable
proof and demonstration of personality or subjectivity as
an essence quite apart, having nothing in common with
Nature, a supra- and extra-mundane entity.*
Man distinguishes himself from Nature. This distinction
of his is his G od: the distinguishing of God from Nature
is nothing else than the distinguishing of man from Nature.
The antithesis of pantheism and personalism resolves itself
into the question: Is the nature of man transcendental or
immanent, supranaturalistic or naturalistic ? The specu­
lations and controversies concerning the personality or
impersonality of God are therefore fruitless, idle, uncritical,
and odious; for the speculatists, especially those who main­
tain the personality, do not call the thing by the right
nam e; they put the light under a bushel. While they
in truth speculate only concerning themselves, only in the
interest of their own instinct of self-preservation; they yet
w ill not allow that they are splitting their brains only about
themselves; they speculate under the delusion that they
are searching out the mysteries of another being. Pantheism
identifies man with Nature, whether with its visible appear­
ance, or its abstract essence. Personalism isolates, separates,
him from Nature; converts him from a part into the whole,
into an absolute essence by himself. This is the distinction.
If, therefore, you would be clear on these subjects, exchange
your mystical, perverted anthropology, which you call
theology, for real anthropology, and speculate in the light
of consciousness and Nature concerning the difference or
identity of tlie human essence with the essence of Nature.
Y ou yourselves admit that the essence of the pantheistical
God is nothing but the essence of Nature. Why, then, will

* 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
th ey are fundamentally false, from being made in ignorance of the idea on
which the Creation really turns.
108 T HE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

you only see the mote in the eyes of your opponents, and not
observe the very obvious beam in your own eyes ? why make
yourselves an exception to a universally valid law? Admit
that your personal God is nothing else than your own
personal nature, that while you believe in and construct
your supra- and extra-natural God, you believe in and
construct nothing else than the supra- and extra-naturalism
of your own self.
In the Creation, as everywhere else, the true principle is
concealed by the intermingling of universal, metaphysical,
and even pantheistic definitions. But one need only be
attentive to the closer definitions to convince oneself that
the true principle of creation is the self-affirmation of sub­
jectivity in distinction from Nature. God produces the
world outside himself; at first it is only an id^a, a plan,
a resolve; now it becomes an act, and therewith it steps
forth out of God as a distinct and, relatively at least, a self-
subsistent object. But just so subjectivity in general,
which distinguishes itself from the world, which takes itself
for an essence distinct from the world, posits the world out
of itself as a separate existence, indeed, this positing out
of self, and the distinguishing of self, is one act. When
therefore the world is posited outside of God, God is posited
by himself, is distinguished from the world. What else
then is God but your subjective nature, when the world is
separated from it ? * It is true that when astute reflection
intervenes, the distinction between extra and intra is dis­
avowed as a finite and human (?) distinction. But to the
disavowal by the understanding, which in relation to reli­
gion is pure misunderstanding, no credit is due. If it is
meant seriously, it destroys the foundation of the religious
consciousness; it does away with the possibility, the very
principle of the creation, for this rests solely on the reality
* It ia not admissible to urge against this the omnipresence of God, the
existence of God in all things, or the existence of things in God. For,
apart from the consideration that the future destruction of the world
expresses «learly enough its existence outside of God, t.e., its non-divineness,
God is in &»pedal manner only in man ; but I am at home only where I am
specially at home. “ Nowhere is God properly God, but in the souL In
all creatures there is something of God ; but in the soul God exists com­
pletely, for it is his resting-place.”— Predigten etzlicher Lehrer, &c., p. 19.
And the existence of things in God, especially where it has no pantheistic
significance, and any such ia here excluded, is equally an idea without reality,
and does not express the special sentiments of religion.
 T HE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. 109

of the above-mentioned distinction. Moreover, the effect

of the creation, all its majesty for the feelings and the ima­
gination, is quite lost, if the production of the world out of
God is not taken in the real sense. What is it to make, to
create, to produce, but to make that which in the first in­
stance is only subjective, and so far invisible, non-existent,
into something objective, perceptible, so that other beings
besides me may know and enjoy it, and thus to put some­
thing out of myself, to make it distinct from myself ? Where
there is no reality or possibility of an existence external to
me, there can be no question of making or creating. God
is eternal, but the world had a commencement; God was,
when as yet the world was not; God is invisible, not cog­
nisable by the senses, but the world is visible, palpable,
material, and therefore outside of God; for how can
the material as such, body, matter, be in God? The
world exists outside of God, in the same sense in which
a tree, an animal, the world in general, exists outside of
my conception, outside of myself, is an existence distinct
from subjectivity.. Hence, only when such an external
existence is admitted, as it was by the older philosophers
and theologians, have we the genuine, unmixed doctrine of
the religious consciousness. The speculative theologians
and philosophers of modern times, on the contrary, foist in
all sorts of pantheistic definitions, although they deny the
principle of pantheism; and the result of this process is
simply an absolutely self-contradictory, insupportable fabri­
cation of their own.
Thus the creation of the world expresses nothing else
than subjectivity, assuring itself of its own reality and
infinity through the consciousness that the world is created,
is a product of will, i.e., a dependent, powerless, unsubstan­
tial existence. The “ nothing ” out of which the world was
produced, is a still inherent nothingness. When thou
sayest the world was made out of nothing, thou conceivest
the world itself as nothing, thou clearest away from thy
head all the limits to thy imagination, to thy feelings, to
th y will, for the world is the limitation of thy will, of thy
desire; the world alone obstructs thy soul; it alone is the
w all of separation between thee and God,— thy beatified,
perfected nature. Thus, subjectively, thou annihilatest the
world; thou thinkest God by himself, i.e., absolutely un-
no THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

limited subjectivity, the subjectivity or soul which enjoys

itself alone, which needs not the world, which knows no­
thing of the painful bonds of matter. In the inmost depths
of thy soul thou wouldest rather there were no world, for
where the world is, there is matter, and where there is
matter there is weight and resistance, space and time,
limitation and necessity. Nevertheless, there is a world,
there is matter. How dost thou escape from the dilemma
of this contradiction ? How dost thou expel the world from
thy consciousness, that it may not disturb thee in the beati­
tude of the unlimited soul? Only by making the world
itself a product of will, by giving it an arbitrary existence
always hovering between existence and non-existence, always
awaiting its annihilation. Certainly the act of creation does
not suffice to explain the existence of the world or matter
(the two are not separable), but it is a total misconception
to demand this of it, for the fundamental idea of the creation
is this: there is to be no world, no matter; and hence its
end is daily looked forward to with longing. The world in
its truth does not here exist at all, it is regarded only as
the obstruction, the limitation of subjectivity; how could
the world in its truth and reality be deduced from a principle
which denies the world ?
In order to recognise the above developed significance of
the creation as the true one, it is only necessary seriously
to consider the fact, that the chief point in the creation is
not the production of earth and water, plants and animals,
for which indeed there is no God, but the production of
personal beings— of spirits, according to the ordinary phrase.
God is the idea of personality as itself a person, subjectivity
existing in itself apart from the world, existing for self
alone, without wants, posited as absolute existence, the me
without a thee. But as absolute existence for self alone
contradicts the idea of true life, the idea of love; as self-
consciousness is essentially united with the consciousness
of a theeJ as solitude cannot, at least in perpetuity, preserve,
itself from tedium and uniformity; thought immediately
proceeds from the divine Being to other conscious beings,
and expands the idea of personality which was at first
condensed in one being to a plurality of persons.* If the
* Here is also the point where the Creation represents to ns not only the
Divine power, but also the Divine love. “ Quia bonus est (Deus), sumus ”
 T HE MYSTERY OF P ROVI DENCE. m

person is conceived physically, as a real man, in which form

he is a being with wants, he appears first at the end of the
physical world, when the conditions of his existence are
present,— as the goal of creation. If, on the other hand,
man is conceived abstractly as a person, as is the case in
religious speculation, this circuit is dispensed with, and the
task is the direct deduction of the person, i.e., the self-
demonstration, the ultimate self-verification of the human
personality. It is true that the divine personality is dis­
tinguished in every possible way from the human in order
to veil their identity; but these distinctions are either
purely fantastic, or they are mere assertions, devices which
exhibit the invalidity of the attempted deduction. A ll
positive grounds of the creation reduce themselves only to
the conditions, to the grounds, which urge upon the me the
consciousness of the necessity of another personal being.
Speculate as much as you will, you will never derive your
personality from God, if you have not beforehand introduced
it, if God himself be not already the idea of your person­
ality, your own subjective nature.

(Augustin). In the beginning, before the world, God was alone. “ Ante
omnia Deus erat solus, ipsi sibi et mundus et locus et omnia. Solus autem;
quia nihil extrinsecus prater ipsum ” (Tertullian). But there is no higher
happiness than to make another happy, bliss lies in the act of imparting.
And only joy, only love imparts. Hence man conceives iiy parting love as the
principle of existence. “ Extasis bono non sinit ipsum manere in se ipso”
(Dionysius A.). Everything positive establishes, attests itself, only by itself.
The divine love is the joy of life, establishing itself, affirming itself. But
the highest self-consciousness of life, the supreme joy of life is the love which
confers happiness. God is the bliss of existence.
112 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER XI.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATION IN JUDAISM.

T he doctrine of the Creation sprang out of Judaism; in ­

deed, it is the characteristic, the fundamental doctrine of
the Jewish religion. The principle which lies at its foun­
dation is, however, not so much the principle of subjectivity
as of egoism. The doctrine of the Creation in its charac­
teristic significance arises only on that stand-point where
man in practice makes Nature merely the servant of his
will and needs, and hence in thought also degrades it to a
mere machine, a product of the will. Now its existence is
intelligible to him, since he explains and interprets it out
of himself, in accordance with his own feelings and notions.
The question, Whence is Nature or the world ? presupposes
wonder that it exists, or the question, Why does it exist ?
But this wonder, this question, arises only where man has
separated himself from Nature and made it a mere object
of will. The author of the Book of Wisdom says truly of
the heathens, that, “ for admiration of the beauty of the
world they did not raise themselves to the idea of the
Creator.” To him who feels that Nature is lovely, it appears
an end in itself, it has the ground of its existence in itself :
in him the question, W hy does it exist ? does not arise.
Nature and God are identified in his consciousness, his
perception, of the world. Nature, as it impresses his senses,
has indeed had an origin, has been produced, but not created
in the religious sense, is not an arbitrary product. And
by this origin he implies nothing evil; originating involves
for him nothing impure, undivine; he conceives his gods
themselves as having had an origin. The generative force
is to him the primal force: he posits, therefore, as the
ground of Nature, a force of Nature,— a real, present, visibly
active force, as the ground of reality. Thus does man think
where his relation to the world is aesthetic or theoretic (for
the theoretic view was originally the aesthetic view, th e
 T H E SIGNIFICANCE OF T HE CREATION. ii3
prim a philosophia), where the idea of the world is to him
the idea of the cosmos, of majesty, of deity itself. Only
where such a theory was the fundamental principle could
there be conceived and expressed such a thought as that
of Anaxagoras :— Man is born to behold the world.* The
standpoint of theory is the standpoint of harmony with
the world. The subjective activity, that in which man
contents himself, allows himself free play, is here the
sensuous imagination alone. Satisfied with this, he lets
Nature subsist in peace, and constructs his castles in the
air, his poetical cosmogonies, only out of natural materials.
When, on the contrary, man places himself only on the
practical standpoint and looks at the world from thence,
making the practical standpoint the theoretical one also, he
is in disunion with Nature; he makes Nature the abject
vassal of his selfish interest, of his practical egoism. The
theoretic expression of this egoistical, practical view, accord­
ing to which Nature is in itself nothing, is th is: Nature
or the world is made, created, the product of a command.
God said, Let the world be, and straightway the world pre­
sented itself at his bidding.*!*
Utilism is the essential theory of Judaism. The belief
in a special Divine Providence is the characteristic belief
of Judaism; belief in Providence is belief in miracle ; but
belief in miracle exists where Nature is regarded only as
an object of arbitrariness, of egoism, which uses Nature only
as an instrument of its own will and pleasure. Water
divides or rolls itself together like a firqa mass, dust is
changed into lice, a staff into a serpent, rivers into blood, a
rock into a fountain; in the same place it is both light and
dark at once, the sun now stands still, now goes backward.
And all these contradictions of Nature happen for the
welfare of Israel, purely at the command of Jehovah, who
troubles himself about nothing but Israel, who is nothing

* In Diogenes (L. 1. ii. c. iii. § 6), it is literally, “ for the contemplation

of the sun, the moon and the heavens.” Similar ideas were held by other
philosophers. Thus the Stoics also said :— “ Ipse autem homo ortus est ad
mundum contemplandum et imitandum.”— Cic. (de Nat.).
t “ Hebraei numen verbo quidquid videtur efficiens describunt et quasi
imperio omnia creata tradunt, ut facilitatem in eo quod yult efficiendo,
summamque ejus in omnia potentiam ostendant.”— Ps. xxxiii. 6. “ Verbo
Jehovae cceli facti sunt.”— Ps. cxlviii. 5. “ Ille jussit eaque creata sunt.”—
J. Clericus (Comment, in Mosem. Genes, i. 3).
H4 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

but the personified selfishness of the Israelitish people, to

the exclusion of all other nations,— absolute intolerance, the
secret essence of monotheism.
The Greeks looked at Nature with the theoretic sense;
they heard heavenly music in the harmonious course of the
stars; they saw Nature rise from the foam of the all-pro­
ducing ocean as Yenus Anadyomene. The Israelites, on the
contrary, opened to Nature only the gastric sense; their
taste for Nature lay only in the palate; their consciousness
of God in eating manna. The Greek addicted himself to
polite studies, to the fine arts, to philosophy; the Israelite
did not rise above the alimentary view of theology. “ A t
even ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be
filled with bread; and ye shall know that I am the Lord
your God.” * “ And Jacob vowed avow, saying, If God
will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and
will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on, so that I
come again to my father’s house in peace, then shall the
Lord be my God.” f Eating is the most solemn act or the
initiation of the Jewish religion. In eating, the Israelite
celebrates and renews the act of creation; in eating, man
declares Nature to be an insignificant object. When the
seventy elders ascended the mountain with Moses, “ they
saw God; and when they had seen God, they ate and
drank.” + Thus with them what the sight of the Supreme
Being heightened was the appetite for food.
The Jews have maintained their peculiarity to this day.
Their principle, their God, is the most practical principle in
the world,— namely, egoism; and moreover egoism in the
form of religion. Egoism is the God who will not let his
servants come to shame. Egoism is essentially monotheistic,
for it has only one, only self, as its end. Egoism strengthens
cohesion, concentrates man on himself, gives him a consis­
tent principle of life ; but it makes him theoretically narrow,
because indifferent to all which does not relate to the well­
being of self. Hence science, like art, arises only out of
polytheism, for polytheism is the frank, open, unenvying
sense of all that is beautiful and good without distinction,
the sense of the world, of the universe. The Greeks looked
* Exod. xvL 12. t Gen. xxviii. 20.
t Exod. xxiv. 10, 11. “ Tantum abest ut mortui sint, ut contra con-
vivium hilares celebrarint.”— Clericus.
 THE SI GNIFICANCE OF THE CREATION. 115

abroad into the wide world that they might extend their
sphere of vision; the Jews to this day pray with their faces
turned towards Jerusalem. In the Israelites, monotheistic
egoism excluded the free theoretic tendency. Solomon, it is
true, surpassed “ all the children of the East ” in understand­
ing and wisdom, and spoke (treated, agebat) moreover “ of
trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon, even unto the
hyssop that springeth out of the wall,” and also of “ beasts
and of fowl, and of creeping things and of fishes ” (1 Kings
30» 34)* But it must be added that Solomon did not
serve Jehovah with his whole heart; he did homage to
strange gods and strange women; and thus he had the
polytheistic sentiment and taste. The polytheistic senti­
ment, I repeat, is the foundation of science and art.
The significance which Nature in general had for the
Hebrews is one with their idea of its origin. The mode in
which the genesis of a thing is explained is the candid
expression of opinion, of sentiment respecting it. If it be
thought meanly of, so also is its origin. Men used to sup­
pose that insects, vermin, sprang from carrion and other
rubbish. It was not because they derived vermin from so
uninviting a source that they thought contemptuously of
them, but, on the contrary, because they thought thus,
because the nature of vermin appeared to them so vile, they
imagined an origin corresponding to this nature, a vile origin.
To the Jews Nature was a mere means towards achieving
the end of egoism, a mere object of will. But the ideal, the
idol of the egoistic will is that W ill which has unlimited
command, which requires no means in order to attain its
end, to realise its object, which immediately by itself, i.e.,
by pure will, calls into existence whatever it pleases. It
pains the egoist that the satisfaction of his wishes and need
is only to be attained immediately, that for him there is a
chasm between the wish and its realisation, between the
object in the imagination and the object in reality. Hence,
in order to relieve this pain, to make himself free from the
limits of reality, he supposes as the true, the highest being,
One who brings forth an object by the mere I w i l l . For
this reason, Nature, the world, was to the Hebrews the pro­
duct of a dictatorial word, of a categorical imperative, of a
magic fiat.
To that which has no essential existence for me in theory
n6 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

I assign no theoretic, no positive ground. By referring it to

W ill I only enforce its theoretic nullity. What we despise
we do not honour with a glance: that which is observed has
importance: contemplation is respect. Whatever is looked
at fetters by secret forces of attraction, overpowers by the
spell which it exercises upon the eye, the criminal arrogance
of that Will which seeks only to subject all things to itself.
Whatever makes an impression on the theoretic sense, on
the reason, withdraws itself from the dominion of the egois­
tic W ill: it reacts, it presents resistance. That which devas­
tating egoism devotes to death, benignant theory restores
to life.
The much-belied doctrine of the heathen philosophers
concerning the eternity of matter, or the world, thus implies
nothing more than that Nature was to them a theoretic
reality.* The heathens were idolaters, that is, they con­
templated Nature; they did nothing else than what the
profoundly Christian nations do at this day when they
make Nature an object of their admiration, of their inde­
fatigable investigation. “ But the heathens actually wor­
shipped natural objects.” Certainly; for worship is only
the childish, the religious form of contemplation. Contem­
plation and worship are not essentially distinguished. That
which I contemplate I humble myself before, I consecrate
to it my noblest possession, my heart, my intelligence, as
an offering. The natural philosopher also falls on his knees
before Nature when, at the risk of his life, he snatches from
some precipice a lichen, an insect, or a stone, to glorify it
in the light of contemplation, and give it an eternal exist­
ence in the memory of scientific humanity. The study of
Nature is the worship of Nature— idolatry in the sense of
the Israelitish and Christian God; and idolatry is simply
man’s primitive contemplation of Nature; for religion is
nothing else than man’s primitive, and therefore childish,
popular, but prejudiced, unemancipated consciousness of
himself and of Nature. The Hebrews, on the other hand,
raised themselves from the worship of idols to the worship
of God, from the creature to the Creator; i.e., they raised

* It is well known, however, that their opinions on this point were

various. (See e.g. Aristoteles de Coelo, l . i c . 10.) But their difference is
a subordinate one, since the creative agency itself is with_them a more or
less cosmical being.
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATI ON. 117

themselves from the theoretic view of Nature, which fasci­

nated the idolaters, to the purely practical view which sub­
jects Nature only to the ends of egoism. “ And lest thou
lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the
sun, the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven,
shouldst be driven to worship them and serve them, which
the Lord thy God hath divided unto (i.e., bestowed upon,
largitics est) all nations under the whole heaven/’ * Thus
the creation out of nothing, i.e.} the creation as a purely
imperious act, had its origin only in the unfathomable depth
of Hebrew egoism.
On this ground, also, the creation out of nothing is no
object of philosophy;— at least in any other way than it is
so here;— for it cuts away the root of all true speculation,
presents no grappling-point to thought, to theory; theoreti­
cally considered, it is a baseless air-built doctrine, which
originated solely in the need to give a warrant to utilism,
to egoism, which contains and expresses nothing but the
command to make Nature— not an object of thought, of
contemplation, but— an object of utilisation. The more
empty it is, however, for natural philosophy, the more pro­
found is its " speculative ” significance; for just because it
has no theoretic fulcrum, it allows to the speculatist infinite
room for the play of arbitrary, groundless interpretation.
It is in the history of dogma and speculation as in the
history of states. World-old usages, laws, and institutions
continue to drag out their existence long after they have
lost their true meaning. What has once existed will not
be denied the right to exist for ever; what was once good,
claims to be good for all times. A t this period of super­
annuation come the interpreters, the speculatists, and talk
of the profound sense, because they no longer know the
true one.f Thus religious speculation deals with the dog­
mas tom from the connection in which alone they have any
* Deut. iv. 19. “ Licet enim ea, quae sunt in ccelo, non sint hominum
artificia, at hominum tamen gratia condita fuerunt. Ne quis igitur solem
adoret, sed solis effectorem desideret. ”— Clemens Alex. (Con. ad Gentes).
t But of course they only do this in the case of the “ absolute religion
for with regard to other religions they hold up the ideas and customs which
are foreign to us, and of which we do not know the original meaning and
purpose, as senseless and ludicrous. And yet, in fact, to worship the urine
o f cows, which the Parsees and Hindoos drink that they may obtain for­
giveness of sins, is not more ludicrous than to worship the comb or a shred
of the garment of the Mother of God.
11 8 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

true meaning; instead of tracing them back critically to

their true origin, it makes the secondary primitive, and the
primitive secondary. To it God is the first, man the second.
Thus it inverts the natural order of things. In reality, the
first is man, the second the nature of man made objective,
namely, God. Only in later times, in which religion is
already become flesh and blood, can it be said— As God is, so
is man; although, indeed, this proposition never amounts to
anything more than tautology. But in the origin of religion
it is otherwise; and it is only in the origin of a thing that
we c&n discern its true nature. Man first unconsciously and
involuntarily creates God in his own image, and after this
God consciously and voluntarily creates man in his own
image. This is especially confirmed by the development of
the Israelitish religion. Hence the position of theological
one-sidedness, that the revelation of God holds an even pace
with the development of the human race. Naturally; for
the revelation of God is nothing else than the revelation,
the self-unfolding of human nature. The supranaturalistic
egoism of the Jews did not proceed from the Creator, but
conversely, the latter from the former; in the creation the
Israelite justified his egoism at the bar of his reason.
It is true, and it may be readily understood on simply
practical grounds, that even the Israelite could not, as a
man, withdraw himself from the theoretic contemplation
and admiration of Nature. But in celebrating the power
and greatness of Nature, he celebrates only the power and
greatness of Jehovah. And the power of Jehovah has exhi­
bited itself with the most glory in the miracles which it
has wrought in favour of Israel Hence, in the celebration
of this power, the Israelite has always reference ultimately
to himself; he extols the greatness of Nature only for the
same reason that the conqueror magnifies the strength of
his opponent, in order thereby to heighten his own self-
complacency, to make his own fame more illustrious. Great
and mighty is Nature, which Jehovah has created, but yet
mightier, yet greater, is Israel’s self-estimation. For his sake
the sun stands still; for his sake, according to Philo, the
earth quaked at the delivery of the law ; in short, for hi3
sake all Nature alters its course. “ For the whole creature
in his proper kind was fashioned again anew, serving the
peculiar commandments that were given unto them, that
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATION. 119

thy children might be kept without hurt.” * According to

Philo, God gave Moses power over the whole of Nature; all
the elements obeyed him as the Lord of Nature.*)* Israel’s
requirement is the omnipotent law of the world, Israel’s
need the fate of the universe. Jehovah is Israel’s conscious­
ness of the sacredness and necessity of his own existence,—
a necessity before which the existence of Nature, the exist­
ence of other nations, vanishes into nothing; Jehovah is the
salus populi, the salvation of Israel, to which everything that
stands in its way must be sacrificed; Jehovah is exclusive,
monarchical arrogance, the annihilating flash of anger in the
vindictive glance of destroying Israel; in a word, Jehovah
is the ego of Israel, which regards itself as the end and aim,
the Lord of Nature. Thus, in the power of Nature the
Israelite celebrates the power of Jehovah, and in the power
of Jehovah the power of his own self-consciousness.
“ Blessed be G od! God is our help, God is our salvation.”—
“ Jehovah is my strength.”— “ God himself hearkened to the
word of Joshua, for Jehovah himself fought for Israel.”—
“ Jehovah is a God of war.”
If, in the course of time, the idea of Jehovah expanded
itself in individual minds, and his love was extended, as by
the writer of the Book of Jonah, to man in general, this does
not belong to the essential character of the Israelitish reli­
gion. The God of the fathers, to whom the most precious
recollections are attached, the ancient historical God, remains
always the foundation of a religion.j
* Wisd. xix. 6. t See Gfrorer’s Philo.
+ We may here observe, that certainly the admiration of the power and
glory of God in general, and so of Jehovah, as manifested in Nature, is in
fact, though not in the consciousness of the Israelite, only admiration of the
power and glory of Nature. (See, on this subject, P. Bayle, Ein Beitray,
&e., pp. 25-29.) But to prove this formally lies out of our plan, since we
here confine ourselves to Christianity, i.e., the adoration of God in man
(Deum colimus per Christum. Tertullian, Apolog. c. 21). Nevertheless,
the principle of this proof is stated in the present work.
120 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER XII.

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF FEELING, OR THE MYSTERY OF PRAYER.

I s r a e l is the historical definition of the specific nature of the

religious consciousness, save only that here this consciousness
was circumscribed by the limits of a particular, a national
interest. Hence, we need only let these limits fall, and we
have the Christian religion. Judaism is worldly Christianity;
Christianity, spiritual Judaism. The Christian religion is
the Jewish religion purified from national egoism, and yet
at the same time it is certainly another, a new religion; for
every reformation, every purification, produces— especially in
religious matters, where even the trivial becomes important
— an essential change. To the Jew, the Israelite was the
mediator, the bond between God and man; in his relation
to Jehovah he relied on his character of Israelite; Jehovah
himself was nothing else than the self-consciousness of Israel
made objective as the absolute being, the national conscience,
the universal law, the central point of the political system*
If we let fall the limits of nationality, we obtain— instead of
the Israelite— man. As in Jehovah the Israelite personified
his national existence, so in God the Christian personified
his subjective human nature, freed from the limits of nation­
ality. As Israel made the wants of his national existence
the law of the world, as, under the dominance of these wants,
he deified even his political vindictiveness; so the Christian
made the requirements of human feeling the absolute powers
and laws of the world. The miracles of Christianity, which
belong just as essentially to its characterisation as the
miracles of the Old Testament to that of Judaism, have not
the welfare of a nation for their object, but the welfare of
man:— that is, indeed, only of man considered as Christian;
for Christianity, in contradiction with the genuine universal

* “ The greater part of Hebrew poetry, which is often held to be only

spiritual, is political.”— Herder.
 THE MYSTERY OF P RA Y E R . 121

human heart, recognised man only under the condition, the

limitation, of belief in Christ. But this fatal limitation
w ill be discussed further on. Christianity has spiritualised
the egoism of Judaism into subjectivity (though even within
Christianity this subjectivity is again expressed as pure
egoism), has changed the desire for earthly happiness, the
goal of the Israelitish religion, into the longing for heavenly
bliss, which is the goal of Christianity.
The highest idea, the God of a political community, of a
people whose political system expresses itself in the form
of religion, is Law, the consciousness of the law as an abso­
lute divine power; the highest idea, the God of unpolitical,
unworldly feeling is Love; the love which brings all the
treasures and glories in heaven and upon earth as an offering
to the beloved, the love whose law is the wish of the beloved
one, and whose power is the unlimited power of the imagina­
tion, of intellectual miracle-working.
God is the Love that satisfies our wishes, our emotional
wants; he is himself the realised wish of the heart, the
wish exalted to the certainty of its fulfilment, of its reality,
to that undoubting certainty before which no contradiction
of the understanding, no difficulty of experience or of the
external world, maintains its ground. Certainty is the highest
power for man; that which is certain to him is the essential,
the divine. “ God is love: ” this, the supreme dictum of
Christianity, only expresses the certainty which human
feeling has of itself, as the alone essential, i.e., absolute
divine power, the certainty that the inmost wishes of the
heart have objective validity and reality, that there are no
limits, no positive obstacles to human feeling, that the
whole world, with all its pomp and glory, is nothing weighed
against human feeling. God is love: that is, feeling is the
God of man, nay, God absolutely, the Absolute Being. God
is the nature of human feeling, unlimited, pure feeling, made
objective. God is the optative of the human heart trans­
formed into the tempus finitum, the certain, blissful “ is,”—
the unrestricted omnipotence of feeling, prayer hearing itself,
feeling perceiving itself, the echo of our cry of anguish.
Pain must give itself utterance; involuntarily the artist
seizes the lute that he may breathe out his sufferings in its
tones. He soothes his sorrow by making it audible to
himself, by making it objective; he lightens the burden
122 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

which weighs upon his heart by communicating it to the

air, by making his sorrow a general existence. But nature
listens not to the plaints of man, it is callous to his sorrows.
Hence man turns away from Nature, from all visible objects.
He turns within, that here, sheltered and hidden from the
inexorable powers, he may find audience for his griefs.
Here he utters his oppressive secrets; here he gives vent to
his stifled sighs. This open-air of the heart, this outspoken
secret, this uttered sorrow of the soul, is God. God is a
tear of love, shed in the deepest concealment over human
misery. “ God is an unutterable sigh, lying in the depths
of the heart;” * this saying is the most remarkable, the
profoundest, truest expression of Christian mysticism.
The ultimate essence of religion is revealed by the simplest
act of religion— prayer; an act which implies at least as
much as the dogma of the Incarnation, although religious
speculation stands amazed at this, as the greatest of mys­
teries. Not, Certainly, the prayer before and after meals,
the ritual of animal egoism, but the prayer, pregnant with
sorrow, the prayer of disconsolate love, the prayer which
expresses the power of the heart that crushes man to the
ground, the prayer which begins in despair and ends in
rapture.
In prayer, man addresses God with the word of intimate
affection— Thou ; he thus declares articulately that God is
his alter ego; he confesses to God, as the being nearest to
him, his most secret thoughts, his deepest wishes, which
otherwise he shrinks from uttering. But he expresses
these wishes in the confidence, in the certainty that they
will be fulfilled. How could he apply to a being that had
no ear for his complaints ? Thus what is prayer but the
wish of the heart expressed with confidence in its fulfil­
ment ?*f* what .else is the being that fulfils these wishes
* Sebastian Frank von Word in Zinkgrefs Apophthegmata deutscher
Nation.
t It would be an imbecile objection tó say that God fulfils only those
wishes, those prayers, which are uttered in his name, or in the interest of
the Church of Christ, in short, only the wishes which are accordant with
his w ill; for the will of God is the will of man, or rather God has the
power, man the w ill: God makes men happy, but man wills that he may
be happy. A particular wish may not be granted; but that is of no con­
sequence, if only the species, the essential tendency is accepted. The pious
soul whose prayer has lailed consoles himself, therefore, by thinking that its
fulfilment would not have been salutary for him. “ Nullo igitur modo vota
 THE MYSTERY OF PRAYER. 123

but human affection, the human soul, giving ear to itself,

approving itself, unhesitatingly affirming itself ? The man
who does not exclude from his mind the idea of the world,
the idea that everything here must be sought intermediately,
that every effect has its natural cause, that a wish is only
to be attained when it is made an end and the corresponding
means are put into operation— such a man does not pray:
he only works; he transforms his attainable wishes into
objects of real activity; other wishes which he recognises as
purely subjective he denies, or regards as simply subjective,
pious aspirations. In other words, he limits, he conditionates
his being by the world, as a member of which he conceives
himself; he bounds his wishes by the idea of necessity. In
prayer, on the contrary, man excludes from his mind the
world, and with it all'thoughts of intermediateness and de­
pendence ; he makes his wishes— the concerns of his heart,
objects of the independent, omnipotent, absolute being,\i.e.t
he affirms them without limitation. God is the affirmation *
of human feeling; prayer is the unconditional confidence of
human feeling in the absolute identity of the subjective and
objective, the certainty that the power of the heart is greater
than the power of Nature, that the heart’s need is absolute
necessity, the fate of the world. Prayer alters the course
of Nature; it determines God to bring forth an effect in
contradiction with the laws of Nature. Prayer is the abso­
lute relation of the human heart to itself, to its own nature;
in prayer, man forgets that there exists a limit to his wishes,
and is happy in this forgetfulness.
Prayer is the self-division of man into two beings,— a
dialogue of man with himself, with his heart. It is essential
to the effectiveness of prayer that it be audibly, intelligibly,
energetically expressed. Involuntarily prayer wells forth
in sound; the struggling heart bursts the barrier of the
closed lips. But audible prayer is only prayer revealing
its nature; prayer is virtually, if not actually, speech,—
the Latin word oratio signifies both: in prayer, man speaks
undisguisedly of that which weighs upon him, which affects
him closely; he makes his heart objective;— hence the

aut preces sunt irritae aut infrugiferae et recte dicitur, in petitions rerum
corporalium aliquando Deum exaudire nos, non ad voluntatem nostram,
sed ad salutem.”— Oratio de Precatione, in Declamat. Melancthonis, Th. iii.
* Ja-wort.
124 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

moral power of prayer. Concentration, it is said, is the

condition of prayer; but it is more than a condition; prayer
is itself concentration,— the dismissal of all distracting ideas,
of all disturbing influences from without, retirement within
oneself, in order to have relation only with one’s own being.
Only a trusting, open, hearty, fervent prayer is said to help;
but this help lies in the prayer itself. As everywhere in
religion the subjective, the secondary, the conditionating,
is the prima causa, the objective fact; so here, these sub­
jective qualities are the objective nature of prayer itself.*
It is an extremely superficial view of prayer to regard it
as an expression of the sense of dependence. It certainly
expresses such a sense, but the dependence is that of man
on his own heart, on his own feeling. He who feels himself
only dependent, does not open his mouth in prayer; the
sense of dependence robs him of the desire, the courage
for it, for the sense of dependence is the sense of need.
Prayer has its root rather in the unconditional trust of the
heart, untroubled by all thought of compulsive need, that
its concerns are objects of the Absolute Being, that the
almighty, infinite nature of the Father of men is a sympa­
thetic, tender, loving nature, and that thus the dearest, most
sacred emotions of man are divine realities. But the child
does not feel itself dependent on the father as a father;
rather, he has in the father the feeling of his own strength,
the consciousness of his own worth, the guarantee of his
existence, the certainty of the fulfilment of his wishes; on
the father rests the burden of care; the child, on the con­
trary, lives careless and happy in reliance on the father, his
visible guardian spirit, who desires nothing but the child’s
welfare and happiness. The father makes the child an end,
and himself the means of its existence. The child, in ask-
.ing something of its father, does not apply to him as a being
distinct from itself, a master, a person in general, but it
* Also, on subjective grounds, social prayer is more effectual than isolated
prayer. Community enhances the force of -emotion, heightens confidence.
What we are unable to do alone we are able to do with others. _ The sense
of solitude is the sense of limitation : the sense of community is the sense
of freedom. Hence it is that men, when threatened by the destructive
powers of Nature, crowd together. “ Multorum preces impossibile est, ut
non impetrent, ¡inquit Ambrosius. . . . Sanctae orationis fervor quanto
inter plures collectior tanto ardet diutius ac intensius cor divinum penetrat.
. . . Negatur singularitati, quod conceditur charitati.”— Sacra Hist, de
Gentis Hebr. ortu. P. Paul. Mezger. Aug. Yind. 1700, pp. 668, 669.
 THE MYSTERY OF PRAYER. 125

applies to him in so far as he is dependent on, and deter­

mined by his paternal feeling, his love for his child.* The
entreaty is only an expression of the force which the child
exercises over the father; if, indeed, the word force is ap­
propriate here, since the force of the child is nothing more
than the force of the father’s own heart. Speech has the
same form both for entreaty and command, namely, the
imperative. And the imperative of love has infinitely more
power than that of despotism. Love does not command;
love needs but gently to intimate its wishes to be certain
of their fulfilment; the despot must throw compulsion even
into the tones of his voice in order to make other beings, in
themselves uncaring for him, the executors of his wishes.
The imperative of love works with electro-magnetic power;
that of despotism with the mechanical power of a wooden
telegraph. The most intimate epithet of God in prayer is
the word “ Father;” the most intimate, because in it man
is in relation to the absolute nature as to his own; the word
“ Father ” is the expression of the closest, the most intense
identity,— the expression in which lies the pledge that my
wishes will be fulfilled, the guarantee of my salvation.
The omnipotence to which man turns in prayer is nothing
but the Omnipotence of Goodness, which, for the sake of
the salvation of man, makes the' impossible possible;— is,
in truth, nothing else than the omnipotence of the heart,
of feeling, which breaks through ail the limits of the un­
derstanding, which soars above all the boundaries of Nature,
which wills that there be nothing else than feeling, nothing
that contradicts the heart. Faith in omnipotence is faith
in the unreality of the external world, of objectivity,— faith
in the absolute reality of man’s emotional nature: the
essence of omnipotence is simply the essence of feeling.
Omnipotence is the power before which no law, no external
condition, avails or subsists; but this power is the emo­
tional nature, which feels every determination, every law,
to be a limit, a restraint, and for that reason dismisses it.
Omnipotence does nothing more than accomplish the will
of the feelings. In prayer man turns to the Omnipotence
of Goodness;— which simply means, that in prayer man
adores his own heart, regards his own feelings as absolute.
* In the excellent work, Theanthropos, eine Reihe von Aphorismen (Zurich,
1838), the idea of the sense of dependence, of omnipotence, of prayer, and
o f love, is admirably developed.
125 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTI ANITY.

CHAPTER X III.

THE MYSTERY OF FAITH— THE MYSTERY OF MIRACLE.

F a it h in the power of prayer— and only where a power, an

objective power, is ascribed to it, is prayer still a religious
truth— is identical with faith in miraculous power; and
faith in miracles is identical with the essence of faith in
general. Faith alone prays; the prayer of faith is alone
effectual But faith is nothing else than confidence in the
reality of the subjective in opposition to the limitations or
laws of Nature and reason,— that is, of natural reason. The
specific object of faith, therefore, is miracle; faith is the
belief in miracle; faith and miracle are absolutely insepar­
able. That which is objectively miracle or miraculous
power is subjectively faith; miracle is the outward aspect
of faith, faith the inward soul of miracle; faith is the mir­
acle of mind, the miracle of feeling, which merely becomes
objective in external miracles. To faith nothing is impos­
sible, and miracle only gives actuality to this omnipotence
of faith: miracles are but a visible example of what faith
can effect. Unlimitedness, supernaturalness, exaltation of
feeling,— transcendence is therefore the essence of faith.
Faith has reference only to things which, in contradiction
with the limits or laws of Nature and reason, give objective
reality to human feelings and human desires. Fai,th unfetters
the wishes of subjectivity from the bonds of natural reason;
it confers what Nature and reason deny; hence it makes
man happy, for it satisfies his most personal wishes. And
true faith is discomposed by no doubt. Doubt arises only
where I go out of myself, overstep the bounds of my per­
sonality, concede reality and a right of suffrage to that which
is distinct from myself;— where I know myself to be a
subjective, i.e., a limited being, and seek to widen my limits
by admitting things external to myself. But in faith the
very principle of doubt is annulled; for to faith the sub­
jective is in and by itself the objective— nay, the absolute.
Faith is nothing else than belief in the absolute reality of
subjectivity.
 THE MYSTERY OF F A I T H . 127

“ Faith is that courage in the heart which trusts for all

good to God. Such a faith, in which the heart places its
reliance on God alone, is enjoined by God in the first com­
mandment, where he says, I am the Lord thy God. . . .
That is, I alone will be thy God; thou shalt seek no other
G o d ; I will help thee out of all trouble. Thou shalt not
think that I am an enemy to thee,.and will not help thee.
When thou thinkest so, thou makest me in thine heart into
another God than I am. Wherefore hold it for certain that
I am willing to be merciful to thee.”— “ As thou behavest
thyself, so does God behave. If thou thinkest that he is
angry with thee, he is angry; if thou thinkest that he is
unmerciful and will cast thee into hell, he is so. As thou
believest of God, so is he to thee.”— “ If thou believest it,
thou hast it; but if thou believest not, thou hast none of
it.”— “ Therefore, as we believe so does it happen to us. If
we regard him as our God, he will not be our devil. But if
we regard him not as our God, then truly he is not our God,
but must be a consuming fire.”— “ By unbelief we make God
a devil.” * Thus, if I believe in a God, I have a God, i.e., faith
in God is the God of man. If God is such, whatever it may
be, as I believe him, what else is the nature of God than the
nature of faith ? Is it possible for thee to believe in a God
who regards thee favourably, if thou dost not regard thyself
favourably, if thou despairest of man, if he is nothing to
thee ? What else then is the being of God but the being of
man, the absolute self-love of man ? If thou believest that
God is for thee, thou believest that nothing is or can be
against thee, that nothing contradicts thee. But if thou be­
lievest that nothing is or can be against thee, thou believest
— what ?— nothing less than that thou art God.f That God
is another being is only illusion, only imagination. In de­
claring that God is for thee, thou declarest that he is thy own
being. What then is faith but the infinite self-certainty of
man, the undoubting certainty that his own subjective being
is the objective, absolute being, the being of beings ?
* Luther (Th. xv. p. 282 ; Th. xvi. pp. 491-493).
+ “ God is Almighty; but he who believes is a God.” Luther (in Chr.
Kapps Christus u. die Wdtgeschickte, s. ill). In another place Luther calls
faith the “ Creator of the G o d h e a d i t is true that he immediately adds,
as he must necessarily do on his standpoint, the following limitation:—
“ Not that it creates anything in the Divine Eternal Being, but that it
creates that Being in us ” (Th. xi. p. 161).
128 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

Faith does not limit itself by the idea of a world, a universe,

a necessity. For faith there is nothing but God, i.e., limitless
subjectivity. Where faith rises the world sinks, nay, has
already sunk into nothing. Faith in the real annihilation
of the world— in an immediately approaching, a mentally
present annihilation of this world, a world antagonistic to
the wishes of the Christian, is therefore a phenomenon
belonging to the inmost essence of Christianity; a faith
which is not properly separable from the other elements of
Christian belief, and with the renunciation of which, true,
positive Christianity is renounced and denied.* The essence
of faith, as may be confirmed by an examination of its
objects down to the minutest speciality, is the idea that that
which man wishes actually i s : he wishes to be immortal,
therefore he is immortal; he wishes for the existence of a
being who can do everything which is impossible to Nature
and reason, therefore such a being exists; he wishes for a
world which corresponds to the desires of the heart, a world
of unlimited subjectivity, i.e., of unperturbed feeling, of
uninterrupted bliss, while nevertheless there exists a world
the opposite of that subjective one, and hence this world
must pass away,— as necessarily pass away as God, or
absolute subjectivity, must remain. Faith, love, hope, are
the Christian Trinity. Hope has relation to the fulfilment
of the promises, the wishes which are not yet fulfilled, but
which are to be fulfilled; love has relation to the Being who
gives and fulfils these promises; faith to the promises, the
wishes, which are already fulfilled, which are historical
facts.
Miracle is an essential object of Christianity, an essential
article of faith. But what is miracle ? A supranaturalistic
* This belief is so essential to the Bible, that without it the biblical
writers can scarcely be understood. The passage 2 Pet. iii. 8, as is evident
from the tenor of the whole chapter, says nothing in opposition to an
immediate destruction of the world j for though with the Lord a thousand
years are as one day, yet at the same time one day is as a thousand years,
and therefore the world may, even bv to-morrow, no longer exist. That in
the Bible a very near end of the world is expected and prophesied, although
the day and hour are not determined, only falsehood or blindness can
deny. (See on this subject LUtzdberger.) Hence religious Christians, in
almost all times, have believed that the destruction of the world is near at
hand— Luther, for example, often says that “ The last day is not far off"
(e.g., Th. xvi. p. 2 6 ) or at least their souls have longed for the end of
the world, though they have prudently left it undecided whether it be near
or distant. See Augustin (de Fine Saeculi ad Hesychium, c. 13).
 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 129

wish realised— nothing more. The Apostle Paul illustrates

the nature of Christian faith by the example of Abraham.
Abraham could not, in a natural way, ever hope for pos­
terity ; Jehovah nevertheless promised it to him out of
special favour, and Abraham believed in spite of Nature.
Hence this faith was reckoned to him as righteousness, as
m erit; for it implies great force of subjectivity to accept as
certain something in contradiction with experience, at least
with rational, normal experience. But what was the object
of this divine promise ? Posterity, the object of a human
wish. And in what did Abraham believe when he believed
in Jehovah ? In a Being who can do everything, and can
fulfil all wishes. “ Is anything too hard for the Lord ? ” *
But why do we go so far back as to Abraham ? We have
the most striking examples much nearer to us. Miracle
feeds the hungry, cures men bom blind, deaf, and lame,
rescues from fatal diseases, and even raises the dead at the
prayer of relatives. Thus it satisfies human wishes, and
wishes which, though not always intrinsically like the wish
for the restoration of the dead, yet in so far as they appeal
to miraculous power, to miraculous aid, are transcendental,
supranaturalistic. But miracle is distinguished from that
mode of satisfying human wishes and needs which is in
accordance with Nature and reason, in this respect, that it
satisfies the wishes of men in a way corresponding to the
nature of wishes— in the most desirable way. Wishes
own no restraint, no law, no time ; they would be fulfilled
without delay on the instant. And behold ! miracle is as
Tapid as a wish is impatient. Miraculous power realises
human wishes in a moment, at one stroke, without any
hindrance. That the sick should become well is no miracle ;
but that they should become so immediately, at a mere
word of command,— that is the mystery of miracle. Thus
it is not in its product or object that miraculous agency is
distinguished from the agency of Nature and reason, but
only in its mode and process; for if miraculous power were
to effect something absolutely new, never before beheld,
never conceived, or not even conceivable, it would be
practically proved to be an essentially different, and at the
same time objective, agency. But the agency which in
essence, in substance, is natural and accordant with the
* Gen. xviii. 14.
I
130 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

forms of the senses, and which is supernatural, supersensual,

only in the mode or process, is the agency of the imagina­
tion. The power of miracle is therefore nothing else than
the power of the imagination.
Miraculous agency is agency directed to an end. The
yearning after the departed Lazarus, the desire of his rela­
tives to possess him again, was the motive of the miraculous
resuscitation; the satisfaction of this wish, the end. It is
true that the miracle happened “ for the glory of God, that
the Son of God might be glorified thereby; ” but the mes­
sage sent to the Master by the sisters of Lazarus, “ Behold,
he whom thou lovest is sick,” and the tears which Jesus
shed, vindicate for the miracle a human origin and end. The
meaning i s : to that power which can awaken the dead no
human wish is impossible to accomplish* And the glory
of the Son consists in this: that he is acknowledged and
reverenced as the being who is able to do what man is un­
able but wishes to do. Activity towards an end is well
known to describe a circle : in the end it returns upon its
beginning. But miraculous agency is distinguished from
the ordinary realisation of an object in that it realises the
end without means, that it effects an immediate identity of
the wish and its fulfilment; that consequently it describes
a circle, not in a curved, but in a straight line, that is, the
shortest line. A circle in a straight line is the mathematical
symbol of miracle. The attempt to construct a circle with
a straight line would not be more ridiculous than the
attempt to deduce miracle philosophically. To reason, mir­
acle is absurd, inconceivable; as inconceivable as wooden
iron or a circle without a periphery. Before it is discussed
whether a miracle can happen, let it be shown that miracle,
i.e., the inconceivable, is conceivable.
What suggests to man the notion that miracle is conceiv­
* “ To the whole world it is impossible to raise the dead, but to the Lord
Christ, not only is it not impossible, but it is no trouble or labour to him.
. . . This Christ did as a witness and a sign that he can and will raise
from death. He does it not at all times and to every one. . . . It is
enough that he has done it a few times ; the rest he leaves to the last day.”
— Luther (Th. xvi. p. 518). The positive, essential significance of miracle
is therefore that the divine nature is the human nature. Miracles confirm,
authenticate doctrine. What doctrine ? Simply this, that God is a Saviour
of men, their Redeemer out of all trouble, i.e., a being corresponding to the
wants and wishes of man, and therefore a human being. What the God-
man declares in words, miracle demonstrates ad oculot by deeds.
 THE MYSTERY OF F AI T H .

able is that miracle is represented as an event perceptible

by the senses, and hence man cheats his reason by material
images which screen the contradiction. The miracle of the
turning of water into wine, for example, implies in fact
nothing else than that water is wine,— nothing else than
that two absolutely contradictory predicates or subjects are
identical; for iu the hand of the miracle-worker there is no
distinction between the two substances; the transformation
is only the visible appearance of this identity of two contra­
dictories. But the transformation conceals the contradic­
tion, because the natural conception of change is interposed.
Here, however, is no gradual, no natural, or, so to speak,
organic change; but an absolute, immaterial one; a pure
creatw ex nihUo. In the mysterious and momentous act of
miraculous power, in the act which constitutes the miracle,
water is suddenly and imperceptibly wine: which is equiva­
lent to saying that iron is wood, or wooden iron.
The miraculous act— and miracle is only a transient act—
is therefore not an object of thought, for it nullifies the very
principle of thought; but it is just as little an object of
sense, an object of real or even possible experience. Water
is indeed an object of sense, and wine also; I first see water
and then wine; but the miracle itself, that which makes
this water suddenly wine,— this, not being a natural pro­
cess, but a pure perfect without any antecedent imperfect,
without any modus, without way or means, is no object of
real, or even of possible experience. Miracle is a thing of
the imagination; and on that very account is it so^agreeable :
for the imagination is the faculty which alone corresponds
to personal feeling, because it sets aside all limits, all laws
which are painful to the feelings, and thus makes objective
to man the immediate, absolutely unlimited satisfaction
of his subjective wishes.” * Accordance with subjective
inclination is the essential characteristic of miracle. It is
true that miracle produces also an awful, agitating impres­
sion, so far as it expresses a power which nothing can resist,
-— the power of the imagination. But this impression lies
only in the transient miraculous act; the abiding, essential

* This satisfaction is certainly so far limited, that it is united to religion,

to faith in God: a remark which however is so obvious as to be superfluous.
But this limitation is in fact no limitation, for God himself is unlimited,
absolutely satisfied, self-contented human feeling.
 T HE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

impression is the agreeable one. A t the moment in which

the beloved Lazarus is raised up, the surrounding relatives
and friends are awestruck at the extraordinary, almighty
power which transforms the dead into the living; but soon
the relatives fall into the arms of the risen one, and lead
him with tears of joy to his home, there to celebrate a festi­
val of rejoicing. Miracle springs out of feeling, and has its
end in feeling. Even in the traditional representation it
does not deny its origin; the representation which gratifies
the feelings is alone the adequate one. Who can fail to
recognise in the narrative of the resurrection of Lazarus the
tender, pleasing, legendary tone?* Miracle is agreeable,
because, as has been said, it satisfies the wishes of man
without labour, without effort. Labour is unimpassioned,
unbelieving, rationalistic; for man here makes his existence
dependent on activity directed to an end, which activity
again is itself determined solely by the idea of the objective
world. But feeling does not at all trouble itself about the
objective world; it does not go out of or beyond itself; it
is happy in itself. The element .of culture, the Northern
principle of self-renunciation, is wanting to the emotional
nature. The Apostles and Evangelists were no scientifically
cultivated men. Culture, in general, is nothing else than
the exaltation of the individual above his subjectivity to
objective universal ideas, to the contemplation of the world.
The Apostles were men of the people; the people live only
in themselves, in their feelings; therefore Christianity took
possession of the people. Vox populi vox Dei. Did Chris­
tianity conquer a single philosopher, historian, or poet of
the classical period ? The philosophers who went over to
Christianity were feeble, contemptible philosophers. A ll
who had yet the classic spirit in them were hostile, or at
least indifferent to Christianity. The decline of culture
was identical with the victory of Christianity. The classic
spirit, the spirit of culture, limits itself by laws,— not indeed
by arbitrary, finite laws, but by inherently true and valid
ones; it is determined by the necessity, the truth of the

* The legends of Catholicism— of course only the best, the really pleasing
ones— are, as it were, only the echo of the keynote which predominates in
this New Testament narrative. Miracle might be fitly defined as religious
humour. Catholicism especially has developed miracle on this its humorous
side.
 THE MYSTERY OF FAI TH. 133

nature of things; in a word, it is the objective spirit. In

place of this, there entered with Christianity the principle
of unlimited, extravagant, fanatical, supranaturalistic sub­
jectivity ; a principle intrinsically opposed to that of science,
of culture.* With Christianity man lost the capability of
conceiving himself as a part of Nature, of the universe. As
long as tine, unfeigned, unfalsified, uncompromising Chris­
tianity existed, as long as Christianity was a living, practical
truth, so long did real miracles happen; and they necessarily
happened, for faith in dead, historical, past miracles is itself
a dead faith, the first step towards unbelief, or rather the
first and therefore the timid, uncandid, servile mode in
which unbelief in miracle finds vent. But where miracles
happen, all definite forms melt in the golden haze of
imagination and feeling; there the world, reality, is no
truth ; there the miracle-working, emotional, i.e., subjective
being, is held to be alone the objective, real being.
To the merely emotional man the imagination is imme­
diately, without his willing or knowing it, the highest, the
dominant activity; and being the highest, it is the activity
of God, the creative activity. To him feeling is an imme­
diate truth and reality; he cannot abstract himself from his
feelings, he cannot get beyond them: and equally real is
his imagination. The imagination is not to him what it
is to us men of active understanding, who distinguish it
as subjective from objective cognition; it is immediately
identical with himself, with his feelings; and since it is
identical with his being, it is his essential, objective, neces­
sary view of things. For us, indeed, imagination is an
arbitrary activity; but where man has not imbibed the
principle of culture, of theory, where he lives and moves
only in his feelings, the imagination is an immediate, in­
voluntary activity.
The explanation of miracles by feeling and imagination
is regarded by many in the present day as superficial But
le t any one transport himself to the time when living,
present miracles were believed in; when the reality of
* Culture in the sense in which it is here taken. It is highly charac­
teristic of Christianity, and a popular proof of our positions, that the only
language in which the Divine Spirit was and is held to reveal himself in
Christianity is not the language of a Sophocles or a Plato, of art and
philosophy, but the vague, unformed, crudely emotional language of the
134 T HE ESSENCE O F CHRISTI ANITY.

things without us was as yet no sacred article of faith ;

when men were so void of any theoretic interest in the
world, that they from day to day looked forward to its
destruction; when they lived only in the rapturous prospect
and hope of heaven, that is, in the imagination of it (for
whatever heaven may be, for them, so long as they were
on earth, it existed only in the imagination); when this
imagination was not a fiction but a truth, nay, the eternal,
alone abiding truth, not an inert, idle source of consolation,
but a practical moral principle determining actions, a prin­
ciple to which men joyfully sacrificed real life, the real
world with all its glories;— let him transport himself to
those times and he must himself be very superficial to pro­
nounce the psychological genesis of miracles superficial
It is no valid objection that miracles have happened, or are
supposed to have happened, in the presence of whole assem­
blies : no man was independent, all were filled with exalted
supranaturalistic ideas and feelings; all were animated by
the same faith, the same hope, the same hallucinations.
And who does not know that there are common or similar
dreams, common or similar visions, especially among im­
passioned individuals who are closely united and restricted
to their own circle ? But be that as it may. If the explana­
tion of miracles by feeling and imagination is superficial,
the charge of superficiality falls not on the explainer, but
on that which he explains, namely, on miracle; for, seen in
clear daylight, miracle presents absolutely nothing else than
the sorcery of the imagination, which satisfies without con­
tradiction all the wishes of the heart*
* Many miracles may really have had originally a physical or physiological
phenomenon as their foundation. But we are here considering only the
religious significance and genesis of miracle.
 T H E MYSTERY OF THE RESURRECTI ON. ' 135

CHAPTER XIV.

THE MYSTERY OP THE RESURRECTION AND OF THE

MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION.

T h e quality of being agreeable to subjective inclination

belongs not only to practical miracles, in which it is con­
spicuous, as they have immediate reference to the interest
or wish of the human individual; it belongs also to theo­
retical, or more properly dogmatic miracles, and hence to
the Resurrection and the Miraculous Conception.
Man, at least in a state of ordinary well-being, has the
wish not to die. This wish is originally identical with the
instinct of self-preservation. Whatever lives seeks to main­
tain itself, to continue alive, and consequently not to die.
Subsequently, when reflection and feeling are developed
under the urgency of life, especially of social and political
life, this primary negative wish becomes the positive wish
for a life, and that a better life, after death. But this wish
involves the further wish for the certainty of its fulfilment.
Reason can afford no such certainty. It has therefore been
said that all proofs of immortality are insufficient, and even
that unassisted reason is not capable of apprehending it, still
less of proving it. And with justice; for reason furnishes
only general proofs; it cannot give the certainty of any
personal immortality, and it is precisely this certainty which
is desired. Such a certainty requires an immediate personal
assurance, a practical demonstration. This can only be given
to me by the fact of a dead person, whose death has been
previously certified, rising again from the grave; and he must
be no indifferent person, but, on the contrary, the type and
representative of all others, so that his resurrection also may
be the type, the guarantee of theirs. The resurrection of
Christ is therefore the satisfied desire of man for an im­
mediate certainty of his personal existence after death,—
personal immortality as a sensible, indubitable fact.
Immortality was with the heathen philosophers a question
in which the personal interest was only a collateral point.
136 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

They concerned themselves chiefly with the nature of the

soul, of mind, of the vital principle. The immortality of the
vital principle by no means involves the idea, not to mention
the certainty, of personal immortality. Hence the vague­
ness, discrepancy, and dubiousness with which the ancients
express themselves on this subject. The Christians, on the
contrary, in the undoubting certainty that their personal,
self-flattering wishes will be fulfilled, i.e., in the certainty of
the divine nature of their emotions, the truth and unassail­
ableness of their subjective feelings, converted that which to
the ancients was a theoretic problem into an immediate fact,
— converted a theoretic, and in itself open question, into a
matter of conscience, the denial of which was equivalent to
the high treason of atheism. He who denies the resurrec­
tion denies the resurrection of Christ, but he who denies the
resurrection of Christ denies Christ himself, and he who
denies Christ denies God. Thus did “ spiritual” Christianity
unspiritualise what was spiritual! To the Christians the
immortality of the reason, of the soul, was far too abstract
and negative; they had at heart only a personal immortality,
such as would gratify their feelings, and the guarantee of
this lies in a bodily resurrection alone. The resurrection of
the body is the highest triumph of Christianity over the sub­
lime but certainly abstract spirituality and objectivity of the
ancients. For this reason the idea of the resurrection could
never be assimilated by the pagan mind.
As the Kesurrection, which terminates the sacred history
(to the Christian not a mere history, but the truth itself), is
a realised wish, so also is that which commences it, namely,
the Miraculous Conception, though this has relation not so
much to an immediately personal interest as to a particular
subjective feeling.
The more man alienates himself from Nature, the more
subjective, i.e., supranatural or antinatural, is his view of
things, the greater the horror he has of Nature, or at least
of those natural objects and processes which displease his
imagination, which affect him disagreeably.* The free, objec-
* “ I f Adam had not fallen into sin, nothing would have been known of
the cruelty of wolves, lions, bears, &c., and there would not have been in
all creation anything vexatious and dangerous to man . . . ; no thorns, or
thistles, or diseases . . .; his brow would not have been wrinkled; no foot,
or hand, or other member of the body would have been feeble or infirm.”—
“ But now, since the Fall, we all know and feel what a fury lurks in our
 THE MYSTERY OF THE RESURRECTI ON. 137

tive man doubtless finds things repugnant and distasteful in

Nature, but he regards them as natural, inevitable results,
and under this conviction he subdues his feeling as a merely
subjective and untrue one. On the contrary, the subjective
man, who lives only in the feelings and imagination, regards
these things with a quite peculiar aversion. He has the eye
of that unhappy foundling, who even in looking at the love­
liest flower could pay attention only to the little “ black
beetle ” which crawled over it, and who by this perversity of
perception had his enjoyment in the sight of flowers always
embittered. Moreover, the subjective man makes his feelings
the measure, the standard of what ought to be. That which
does not please him, which offends his transcendental, supra-
natural, or antinatural feelings, ought not to be. Even if
that which pleases him cannot exist without being associated
with that which displeases him, the subjective man is not
guided by the wearisome laws of logic and physics, but by
the self-will of the imagination; hence he drops what is dis­
agreeable in a fact, and holds fast alone what is agreeable.
Thus the idea of the pure, holy Virgin pleases him ; still he
is also pleased with the idea of the Mother, but only of the
Mother who already carries the infant on her arms.
Virginity in itself is to him the highest moral idea, the
cornu copice of his supranaturalistic feelings and ideas, his
personified sense of honour and of shame before common
nature.* Nevertheless, there stirs in his bosom a natural
feeling also, the compassionate feeling which makes the
Mother beloved. What then is to be done in this difficulty
of the heart, in this conflict between a natural and a supra-
flesh, which not only burns and rages with lust and desire, but also loathes,
when once obtained, the very thing it has desired. But this is the fault of
original sin, which has polluted all creatures ; wherefore I believe that
before the Fall the sun was much brighter, water much clearer, and the
land much richer, and fuller of all sorts of plants.”— Luther (Th. i. s. 322,
323* »329“,Tantum
337)- denique abest incesti cupido, ut nonnullis rubori sit etiam
púdica conjunctio.”— M. Felicis, Oct. c. 31. One Father was so extraordi­
narily chaste that he had never seen a woman’s face, nay, he dreaded even
touching himself, “ se quoque ipsum attingere quodammodo horrebat.”
Another Father had so fine an olfactory sense in this matter, that on the
approach of an unchaste person he perceived an insupportable odour.”—
Bayle (Diet. Art. Mariana Rem. C.). But the supreme, the divine prin­
ciple of this hyperphysical delicacy is the Virgin Mary; hence the Catho­
lics name her Virginum Gloria, Virginitatis corona, Virginitatis typus et
forma puritatis, Virginum vexillifera, Virginitatis magistra, Virginum
prima, Virginitatis primiceria.
138 T HE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

natural feeling ? The supranaturalist must unite the two,

must comprise-in one and the same subject two predicates
which exclude each other.* Oh, what a plenitude of agree­
able, sweet, supersensual, sensual emotions lies in this com­
bination !
Here we have the key to the contradiction in Catholicism,
that at the same time marriage is holy and celibacy is holy.
This simply realises, as a practical contradiction, the dog­
matic contradiction of the Virgin Mother. But this wondrous
union of virginity and maternity, contradicting Nature and
reason, but in the highest degree accordant with the feelings
and imagination, is no product of Catholicism; it lies already
in the twofold part which marriage plays in the Bible,
especially in the view of the Apostle Paul. The super­
natural conception of Christ is a fundamental doctrine of
Christianity, a doctrine which expresses its inmost dogmatic
essence, and which rests on the same foundation as all other
miracles and articles of faith. As death, which the philo­
sopher, the man of science, the free objective thinker in
general, accepts as a natural necessity, and as indeed all
the limits of nature, which are impediments to feeling, but
to reason are rational laws, were repugnant to the Christians,
and were set aside by them through the supposed agency
of miraculous power; so, necessarily, they had an equal
repugnance to the natural process of generation, and super­
seded it by miracle. The Miraculous Conception is not less
welcome than the Resurrection to all believers; for it was
the first step towards the purification of mankind, polluted
by sin and Nature. Only because the God-man was not
infected with original sin, could he, the pure one, purify
mankind in the eyes of God, to whom the natural process
of generation was an object of aversion, because he himself
is nothing else but supranatural feeling.
Even the arid Protestant orthodoxy, so arbitrary in its
criticism, regarded the conception of the God-producing
Virgin as a great, adorable, amazing, holy mystery of faith,
transcending reason.f But with the Protestants, who con­

* “ Salve sancta parens, enixa puerpera Regem,

Gaudia matris habens cum virginitatis nonore.”
Theol. Schol. Mezger. t. iv. p. 132.
+ See e.g. J. D. Winckler, Philolog. Lactant. s. Brunsvigse, 1754, pp.
247-254.
 THE MYSTERY OF T HE RESURRECTION. 139

fined the speciality of the Christian to the domain of faith,

and with whom, in life, it was allowable to be a man, even
this mystery had only a dogmatic, and no longer a practical
significance; they did not allow it to interfere with their
desire of marriage. With the Catholics, and with all the
old, uncompromising, uncritical Christians, that which was
a mystery of faith was a mystery of life, of morality.*
Catholic morality is Christian, mystical; Protestant morality
was, in its very beginning, rationalistic. Protestant morality
is and was a carnal mingling of the Christian with the
man, the natural, political, civil, social man, or whatever
else he may be called in distinction from the Christian;
Catholic morality cherished in its heart the mystery of the
unspotted virginity. Catholic morality was the Mater
dolorosa; Protestant morality a comely, fruitful matron.
Protestantism is from beginning to end the contradiction,
between faith and love; for which very reason it has been
the source, or at least the condition, of freedom. Just
because the mystery of the Virgo Devpara had with the
Protestants a place only in theory, or rather in dogma, and
no longer in practice, they declared that it was impossible
to express oneself with sufficient care and reserve concern­
ing it, and that it ought not to be made an object of specu­
lation. That which is denied in practice has no true basis
and durability in man, is a mere spectre of the mind; and
hence it is withdrawn from the investigation of the under­
standing. Ghosts do not brook daylight.
Even the later doctrine (which, however, had been already
enunciated in a letter to St. Bernard, who rejects it), that
Mary herself was conceived without taint of original sin, is
by no means a “ strange school-bred doctrine,” as it is called
by a modem historian. That which gives birth to a miracle,
which brings forth God, must itself be of miraculous divine
origin or nature. How could Mary have had the honour of
being overshadowed by the Holy Ghost if she had not been
from the first pure ? Could the Holy Ghost take up his
abode in a body polluted by original sin ? If the principle
of Christianity, the miraculous birth of the Saviour, does
not appear strange to you, why think strange the naive,
well-meaning inferences of Catholicism ?

See on tliis subject Philos, und Christenthum, by L. Feuerbach.

140 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER XV.

THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST, OR THE PERSONAL

GOD.

T he fundamental dogmas of Christianity are realised wishes

of the heart;— the essence of Christianity is the essence of
human feeling. It is pleasanter to be passive than to act,
to be redeemed and made free by another than to free one­
self; pleasanter to make one’s salvation dependent on a
person than on the force of one’s own spontaneity; plea­
santer to set before oneself an object of love than an object
of effort; pleasanter to know oneself beloved by God than
merely to have that simple, natural self-love which is innate
in all beings; pleasanter to see oneself imaged in the love-
beaming eyes of another personal being, than to look into
the concave mirror of self or into the cold depths of the
ocean of Nature; pleasanter, in short, to allow oneself to be
acted on by one’s own feeling, as by another, but yet funda­
mentally identical being, than to regulate oneself by reason.
Feeling is the oblique case of the ego, the ego in the accusa­
tive. The ego of Fichte is destitute of feeling, because the
accusative is the same as the nominative, because it is
indeclinable. But feeling or sentiment is the ego acted on
by itself, and by itself as another being,— the passive ego.
Feeling changes the active in man into the passive, and the
passive into the active. To feeling, that which thinks is the
thing thought, and the thing thought is that which thinks.
Feeling is the dream of Nature; and there is nothing more
blissful, nothing more profound than dreaming. But what
is dreaming ? The reversing of the waking consciousness.
In dreaming, the active is the passive, the passive the active;
in dreaming, I take the spontaneous action of my own mind
for an action upon me from without, my emotions for events,
my conceptions and sensations for true existences apart from
myself. I suffer what I also perform. Dreaming is a double
refraction of the rays of light; hence its indescribable charm.
It is the same ego, the same being in dreaming as in waking;
 TH E MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST. 141

the only distinction is, that in waking, the ego acts on itself;
whereas in dreaming it is acted on by itself as by another
being. I think myself-—is a passionless, rationalistic posi­
tion ; I am thought by God, and think myself only as thought
b y God— is a position pregnant with feeling, religious. Feel­
in g is a dream with the eyes open; religion the dream of
waking consciousness: dreaming is the key to the mysteries
of religion.
The highest law of feeling is the immediate unity of will
and deed, of wishing and reality. This law is fulfilled by
the Redeemer. As external miracles, in opposition to natural
activity, realise immediately the physical wants and wishes
of m an; so the Eedeemer, the Mediator, the God-man, in
opposition to the moral spontaneity of the natural or rational­
istic man, satisfies immediately the inward moral wants and
wishes, since he dispenses man on his own side from any
intermediate activity. What thou wishest is already effected.
Thou desirest to win, to deserve happiness. Morality is the
condition, the means of happiness. But thou canst not fulfil
this condition; that is, in truth, thou needest not. That
which thou seekest to do has already been done. Thou hast
only to be passive, thou needest only believe, only enjoy.
TKou desirest to make God favourable to thee, to appease
his anger, to be at peace with thy conscience. But this
peace exists already; this peace is the Mediator, the God-
man. He is thy appeased conscience; he is the fulfilment
of the law, and therewith the fulfilment of thy own wish
and effort.
Therefore it is no longer the law, but the fulfiller of the
law, who is the model, the guiding thread, the rule of thy
life. He who fulfils the law annuls the law. The law has
authority, has validity, only in relation to him who violates
it. But he who perfectly fulfils the law says to i t : What
thou wiliest I spontaneously will, and what thou com-
mandest I enforce by deeds; my life is the true, the living
law. The fulfiller of the law, therefore, necessarily steps
into the place of the la w ; moreover he becomes a new law,
one whose yoke is light and easy. For in place of the merely
imperative law, he presents himself as an example, as an
object of love, of admiration and emulation, and thus be­
comes the Saviour from sin. The law does not give me the
power to fulfil the law ; no! it is hard and merciless; it only
142 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

commands, without troubling itself whether I can fulfil it,

or how I am to fulfil i t ; it leaves me to myself, without
counsel or aid. But he who presents himself to me as an
example lights up my path, takes me by the hand, and im­
parts to me his own strength. The law lends no power of
resisting sin, but example works miracles. The law is dead;
but example animates, inspires, carries men involuntarily
along with it. The law speaks only to the understanding,
and sets itself directly in opposition to the instincts;
example, on the contrary, appeals to a powerful instinct
immediately connected with the activity of the senses, that
of involuntary imitation. Example operates on the feelings
and imagination. In short, example has magical, i.e., sense-
affecting powers; for the magical or involuntary force of
attraction is an essential property, as of matter in general,
so in particular of that which affects the senses.
The ancients said that if virtue could become visible, its
beauty would win and inspire all hearts. The Christians
were so happy as to see even this wish fulfilled. The
heathens had an unwritten, the Jews a written la w ; the
Christians had a model— a visible, personal, living law, a
law made flesh. Hence the joyfulness especially of the
primitive Christians, hence the glory of Christianity that it
alone contains and bestows the power to resist sin. And
this glory is not to be denied it. Only, it is to be observed
that the power of the exemplar of virtue is not so much the
power of virtue as the power of example in general; just
as the power of religious music is not the power of religion,
but the power of music; * and that therefore, though the
image of virtue has virtuous actions as its consequences,
these actions are destitute of the dispositions and motives
of virtue. But this simple and true sense of the redeem­
ing and reconciling power of example in distinction from
the power of law, to which we have reduced the antithesis of
the law and Christ, by no means expresses the full religious
significance of the Christian redemption and reconciliation.
In this everything reduces itself to the personal power of
* In relation to this, the confession of Augustine is interesting: “ Ita
fluctuo inter periculum voluptatis et experimentum salubritatis : magisque
adducor . . . cantandi consuetudinem approbare in ecclesia, ut per oblecta-i
menta aurium infirmior animus in affectum pietatis assurgat. Tamen cum
mihi accidit, ut nos amplius cantus, quam res quae canitur moveat, pcenali-
ter me peccare confiteor.’’-—Confess. 1. x. c. 33.
 THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST. 143

that miraculous intermediate being who is neither God alone

nor man alone, but a man who is also God, and a God who
is also man, and who can therefore only be comprehended
in connection with the significance of miracle. In this, the
miraculous Redeemer is nothing else than the realised wish
of feeling to be free from the laws of morality, i.e., from the
conditions to which virtue is united in the natural course of
things; the realised wish to be freed from moral evils instan­
taneously, immediately, by a stroke of magic, that is, in an
absolutely subjective, agreeable way. “ The word of God,”
says Luther, for example, “ accomplishes all things swiftly,
brings forgiveness of sins, and gives thee eternal life, *and
costs nothing more than that thou shouldst hear the word,
and when thou hast heard it shouldst believe. If thou be-
lievest, thou hast it without pains, cost, delay, or difficulty.” *
B ut that hearing of the word of God which is followed by
faith is itself a “ gift of God.” Thus faith is nothing else
than a psychological miracle, a supernatural operation of
God in man, as Luther likewise says. But man becomes
free from sin and from the consciousness of guilt only
through faith,— morality is dependent on faith, the virtues
of the heathens are only splendid sins; thus he becomes
morally free and good only through miracle.
That the idea of miraculous power is one with the idea of
the intermediate being, at once divine and human, has his­
torical proof in the fact that the miracles of the Old Testa­
ment, the delivery of the law, providence— all the elements
which constitute the essence of religion, were in the later
Judaism attributed to the Logos. In Philo, however, this
Logos still hovers in the air between heaven and earth, now
as abstract, now as concrete; that is, Philo vacillates be­
tween himself as a philosopher and himself as a religious
Israelite— between the positive element of religion and the
metaphysical idea of deity; but in such a way that even
the abstract element is with him more or less invested with
imaginative forms. In Christianity this Logos first attained
perfect consistence, i.e.f religion now concentrated itself ex­
clusively on that element, that object, which is the basis of
its essential difference. The Logos is the personified essence
of religion. Hence the definition of God as the essence of
feeling has its complete truth only in the Logos.
* Th. xvL p. 490.
144 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

God as God is feeling as yet shut up, hidden; only Christ

is the unclosed, open feeling or heart. In Christ feeling is
first perfectly certain of itself, and assured beyond doubt of
the truth and divinity of its own nature; for Christ denies
nothing to feeling; he fulfils all its prayers. In God the
soul is still silent as to what affects it most closely,— it only
sighs; but in Christ it speaks out fully; here it has no
longer any reserves. To him who only sighs, wishes are
still attended with disquietude; he rather, complains that
what he wishes is not, than openly, positively declares what
he wishes; he is still in doubt whether his wishes have the
force of law. But in Christ all anxiety of the soul vanishes;
he is the sighing soul passed into a song of triumph over its
complete satisfaction; he is the joyful certainty of feeling
that its wishes hidden in God have truth and reality, the
actual victory over death, over all the powers of the world
and Nature, the resurrection no longer merely hoped for,
but already accomplished; he is the heart released from all
oppressive limits, from all sufferings,— the soul in perfect
blessedness, the Godhead made visible.*
To see God is the highest wish, the highest triumph of
the heart. Christ is this wish, this triumph, fulfilled. God,
as an object of thought only, i.e., God as God, is always a
remote being; the relation to him is an abstract one, like
that relation of friendship in which we stand to a man who
is distant from us, and personally unknown to us. However
his works, the proofs of love which he gives us, may make
his nature present to us, there always remains an unfilled
void,— the heart is unsatisfied, we long to see him. So long
as we have not met a being face to face, we are always in
doubt whether he be really such as we imagine him ; actual
presence alone gives final confidence, perfect repose. Christ
* “ Because God has given us his Son, he has with him given us every­
thing, whether it be called devil, sin, hell, heaven, righteousness, life ; all,
all must be ours, because the Son is ours as a gift, in whom all else is
included.”— Luther (Th. xv. p. 311). ‘ ‘ The best part of the resurrection
has already happened; Christ, the head of all Christendom, has passed
through death and risen from the dead. Moreover, the most excellent
part of me, my soul, has likewise passed through death, and is with Christ
in the heavenly being. What harm, then, can death and the grave do
m e?”— Luther (Th. xvi. p. 235). “ A Christian man has equal power
with Christ, has fellowship with him and a common tenure.” (Th. xiii.
p. 648.) “ Whoever cleaves to Christ has as much as he.” (Th. xvi.
P- 574-)
 THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST. 145

is God known personally; Christ, therefore, is the blessed

certainty that God is what the soul desires and needs him
to be. God, as the object of prayer, is indeed already a
human being, since he sympathises with human misery,
grants human wishes; but still he is not yet an object to
the religions consciousness as a real man. Hence, only in
Christ is the last wish of religion realised, the mystery of
religious feeling solved:— solved however in the language of
imagery proper to religion, for what God is in essence, that
Christ is in actual appearance. So far the Christian religion
may justly be called the absolute religion. That God, who
in himself is nothing else than the nature of man, should
also have a real existence as such, should be as man an
object to the consciousness— this is the goal of religion;
and this the Christian religion has attained in the incarna­
tion of God, which is by no means a transitory act, for
Christ remains man even after his ascension,— man in heart
and man in form, only that his body is no longer an earthly
one, liable to suffering.
The incarnations of the Deity with the Orientals— the
Hindoos, for example— have no such intense meaning as^the
Christian incarnation; just because they happen often they
become indifferent, they lose their value. The manhood of
God is his personality; the proposition, God is a personal
being, means: God is a human being, God is a man. Person­
ality is an abstraction, which has reality only in an actual
man.* The idea which lies at the foundation of the incarna­
tions of God is therefore infinitely better conveyed by one
incarnation, one personality. Where God appears in several
persons successively,these personalities are evanescent. What
is required is a permanent, an exclusive personality. Where
there are many incarnations, room is given for innumerable
others; the imagination is not restrained; and even those
incarnations which are already real pass into the category
of the merely possible and conceivable, into the category of
fancies or of mere appearances. But where one personality
is exclusively believed in and contemplated, this at once

* This exhibits clearly the untruthfulness and vanity of the modem

speculations concerning the personality of God. If you are not ashamed
of a personal God, do not be ashamed of a corporeal God. An abstract
colourless personality, a personality without flesh and blood, is an empty
shade.
146 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

impresses with the power of an historical personality;

imagination is done away with, the freedom to imagine
others is renounced. This one personality presses on me
the belief in its reality. The characteristic of real person­
ality is precisely exclusiveness,— the Leibnitzian principle
of distinction, namely, that no one existence is exactly like
another. The tone, the emphasis, with which the one
personality is expressed, produces such an effect on the
feelings, that it presents itself immediately as a real one,
and is converted from an object of the imagination into an
object of historical knowledge.
Longing is the necessity of feeling, and feeling longs for
a personal God. But this longing after the personality of
God is true, earnest, and profound only when it is the
longing for one personality, when it is satisfied with one.
With the plurality of persons the truth of the want
vanishes, and personality becomes a mere luxury of the
imagination. But that which operates with the force of ne­
cessity, operates with the force of reality on man. That which
to the feelings is a necessary being, is to them immediately
a real being. Longing says: There must be a personal God,
i.e., it cannot be that there is not; satisfied feeling says: He is.
The guarantee of his existence lies for feeling in its sense
of the necessity of his existence the necessity of the satis­
faction in the force of the want. Necessity knows no law
besides itself; necessity breaks iron. Feeling knows no
other necessity than its own, than the necessity of feeling,
than longing; it holds in extreme horror the necessity of
Nature, the necessity of reason. Thus to feeling, a subjec­
tive, sympathetic, personal God is necessary; but it demands
one personality alone, and this an historical, real one. Only
when it is satisfied in the unity of personality has feeling
any concentration; plurality dissipates it.
But as the truth of personality is unity, and as the truth
of unity is reality, so the truth of real personality is— blood.
The last proof, announced with peculiar emphasis by the
author of the fourth Gospel, that the visible person of God
was no phantasm, no illusion, but a real man, is that blood
flowed from his side on the cross. If the personal God has
a true sympathy with distress, he must himself suffer dis­
tress. Only in his suffering lies the assurancp of his reality;
only on this depends the impressiveness of the incarnation.
 T HE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST. 147

To see God does not satisfy feeling; the eyes give no

sufficient guarantee. The truth of vision is confirmed only
by touch. But as subjectively touch, so objectively the
capability of being touched; palpability, passibility, is the
last criterion of reality; hence the passion of Christ is the
highest confidence, the highest self-enjoyment, the highest
consolation of feeling; for only in the blood of Christ is
the thirst for a personal, that is, a human, sympathising,
tender God allayed.
“ Wherefore we hold it to be a pernicious error when
such (namely, divine) majesty is taken away from Christ
according to his manhood, thereby depriving Christians of
their highest consolation, which they have in . . . the pro­
mise of the presence of their Head, King and High Priest,
who has promised them that not his mere Godhead, which
to us poor sinners is as a consuming fire to dry stubble,
but he— he the Man— who has spoken with us, who has
proved all sorrows in the human form which he took upon
him, who therefore can have fellow-feeling with us .as his
brethren,— that he will be with us in all our need, according
to the nature whereby he is our brother and we are flesh of
his flesh.” *
It is superficial to say that Christianity is not the religion
of one personal God, but of three personalities. These
three personalities have certainly an existence in dogma;
but even there the personality of the Holy Spirit is only
an arbitrary decision which is contradicted by impersonal
definitions; as, for example, that the Holy Spirit is the gift
of the Father and Son.*)* Already the very “ procession ”
of the Holy Ghost presents an evil prognostic for his per­
sonality, for a personal being is produced only by generation,
not by an indefinite emanation or by spiratio. And even the
Father, as the representative of the rigorous idea of the God­
head, is a personal being only according to opinion and asser­
tion, not according to his definitions; he is an abstract idea,
a purely rationalistic being. Only Christ is the plastic per­
sonality. To personality belongs form; form is the reality

* Concordienb. Erklär. Art. 8.

+ This was excellently shown by Fanstus Socinus. See his Defens. Ani-
madv. in Assert TheoL Coll. Posnan. de trino et uno Deo. Irenopoli, 1656,
c. 11.
143 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

of personality. Christ alone is the personal God; he is

the real God of Christians, a truth which cannot be too often
repeated.* In him alone is concentrated the Christian
religion, the essence of religion in general. He alone
meets the longing for a personal God; he alone is an
existence identical with the nature of feeling; on him alone
are heaped all the joys of the imagination, and all the suffer­
ings of the heart; in him alone are feeling and imagination
exhausted. Christ is the blending in one of feeling and
imagination.
Christianity is distinguished from other religions by this,
that in other religions the heart and imagination are divided,
in Christianity they coincide. Here the imagination does not
wander, left to itself; it follows the leadings of the heart; it
describes a circle, whose centre is feeling. Imagination is
here limited by the wants of the heart, it only realises the
wishes of feeling, it has reference only to the one thing
needful; in brief, it has, at least generally, a practical, con­
centric tendency, not a vagrant, merely poetic one. The
miracles of Christianity— no product of free, spontaneous
activity, but conceived in the bosom of yearning, necessi­
tous feeling— place us immediately on the ground of com­
mon, real life; they act on the emotional man with irresistible
force, because they have the necessity of feeling on their
side. The power of imagination is here at the same time
the power of the heart,— imagination is only the victorious,
triumphant heart. With the Orientals, with the Greeks,
imagination, untroubled by the wants of the heart, revelled

* Let the reader examine, with reference to this, the writings of the
Christian orthodox theologians against the heterodox ; for example, against
the Socinians. Modem theologians, indeed, agree with the latter, as is well
known, in pronouncing the divinity of Christ as accepted by the Church
to be unbiblical; but it is undeniably the characteristic principle of Chris­
tianity, and even if it does not stand in the Bible in the form which is
given to it by dogma, it is nevertheless a necessary consequence of what is
frund in the Bible. A being who is the fulness of the Godhead bodily,
who is omniscient (John xvi. 30) and almighty (raises the dead, works
miracles), who is before all things, both in time and rank, who has life in
himself (though an imparted life) like as the Father has life in himself,—
what, if we follow out the consequences, can such a being be, but God ?
“ Christ is one with the Father in w ill; ”— but unity of will presupposes
unity of nature. “ Christ is the ambassador, the representative of God; ”—
but God can only be represented by a divine being. I can only choose as
my representative one in whom I mid the same or similar qualities as in
myself; otherwise I belie myself.
 THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST. 149

in the enjoyment of earthly splendour and glory; in Chris­

tianity, it descended from the palace of the gods into the
abode of poverty, where only want rules,— it humbled itself
under the sway of the heart. But the more it limited itself
in extent, the more intense became its strength. The wan­
tonness of the Olympian gods could not maintain itself
before the rigorous necessity of the heart; but imagination
is omnipotent when it has a bond of union with the heart.
And this bond between the freedom of the imagination and
the necessity of the heart is Christ. A ll things are subject
to Christ; he is the Lord of the world, who does with it
what he will; but this unlimited power over Nature is
itself again subject to the power of the heart;— Christ com­
mands raging Nature to be still, but only that he may hear
the sighs of the needy.
 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM.

C h r is tis the omnipotence of subjectivity, the heart released

from all the bonds and laws of Nature, the soul excluding
the world, and concentrated only on itself, the reality of all
the heart's wishes, the Easter festival of the heart, the ascent
to heaven of the imagination:— Christ therefore is the dis­
tinction of Christianity from heathenism.
In Christianity, man was concentrated only on himself, he
unlinked himself from the chain of sequences in the system
of the universe, he made himself a self-sufficing whole, an
absolute, extra- and supra-mundane being. Because he no
longer regarded himself as a being immanent in the world,
because he severed himself from connection with it, he felt
himself an unlimited being— (for the sole limit of subjec­
tivity is the world, is objectivity),— he had no longer any
reason to doubt the truth and validity of his subjective
wishes and feelings.
The heathens, on the contrary, not shutting out Nature
by retreating within themselves, limited their subjectivity
by the contemplation of the world. Highly as the ancients
estimated the intelligence, the reason, they were yet liberal
and objective enough, theoretically as well as practically, to
allow that which they distinguished from mind, namely,
matter, to live, and even to live eternally; the Christians
evinced their theoretical as well as practical intolerance in
their belief that they secured the eternity of their subjective
life only by annihilating, as in the doctrine of the destruc­
tion of the world, the opposite of subjectivity— Nature. The
ancients were free from themselves, but their freedom was
that of indifference towards themselves; the Christians were
free from Nature, but their freedom was not that of reason,
not true freedom, which limits itself by the contemplation
of the world, by Nature,— it was the freedom of feeling and
imagination, the freedom of miracle. The ancients were so
enraptured by the cosmos, that they lost sight of themselves,
 CHRISTIANITY A ND HEATHENISM. 151

suffered themselves to be merged in the whole; the Christians

despised the world;— what is the creature compared with the
Creator ? what are sun, moon, and earth compared with the
human soul ? * The world passes away, but man, nay, the
individual, personal man, is eternal. If the Christians severed
man from all community with Nature, and hence fell into
the extreme of an arrogant fastidiousness, which stigmatised
the remotest comparison of man with the brutes as an im­
pious violation of human dignity; the heathens, on the other
hand, fell into the opposite extreme, into that spirit of de­
preciation which abolishes the distinction between man and
the brute, or even, as was -the case, for example, with Celsus,
the opponent of Christianity, degrades man beneath the
brute.
But the heathens considered man not only in connection
with the universe; they considered the individual man,
in connection with other men, as member of a common­
wealth. They rigorously distinguished the individual from
the species, the individual as a part from the race as a whole,
and they subordinated the part to the whole. Men pass
away, but mankind remains, says a heathen philosopher.
“ W hy wilt thou grieve over the loss of thy daughter ? ”
writes Sulpicius to Cicero. “ Great, renowned cities and
empires have passed away, and thou behavest thus at the
death of an homunculus, a little human being! Where is
thy philosophy ? ” The idea of man as an individual was
to the ancients a secondary one, attained through the idea
of the species. Though they thought highly of the race,
highly of the excellences of mankind, highly and sublimely
of the intelligence, they nevertheless thought slightly of the
individual. Christianity, on the contrary, cared nothing for
the species, and had only the individual in its eye and mind.
Christianity— not, certainly, the Christianity of the present
day, which has incorporated with itself the culture of hea­
thenism, and has preserved only the name and some general
positions of Christianity— is the direct opposite of heathen­
ism, and only when it is regarded as such is it truly com­

* “ How much better is it that I should lose the whole world than that
I should lose God, who created the world, and can create innumerable
worlds, who is better than a hundred thousand, than innumerable worlds ?
For what sort of a comparison is that of the temporal with the eternal ?
. . . One soul is better than the whole world.”— Luther (Th. xix. p. 21).
 152 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

prehended, and untravestied by arbitrary speculative inter­

pretation ; it is true so far as its opposite is false, and false
so far as its opposite is true. The ancients sacrificed the
individual to the species; the Christians sacrificed the
species to the individual Or, heathenism conceived the
individual only as a part in distinction from the whole of
the species; Christianity, on the contrary, conceived the
individual only in immediate, undistinguishable unity with
the species.
To Christianity the individual was the object of an imme­
diate providence, that is, an immediate object of the Divine
Being. The heathens believed in a providence for the indi­
vidual only through his relation to the race, through law,
through the order of the world, and thus only in a mediate,
natural, and not miraculous providence; * but the Christians
left out the intermediate process, and placed themselves in
immediate connection with the prescient, all-embracing, uni­
versal Being; i.e., they immediately identified the individual
with the universal Being.

But the idea of deity coincides with the idea of humanity.

All divine attributes, all the attributes which make God God,
are attributes of the species— attributes which in the indi­
vidual are limited, but the limits of which are abolished in
the essence of the species, and even in its existence, in so
far as it has its complete existence only in all men taken
together. My knowledge, my will, is limited; but my limit
is not the limit of another man, to say nothing of mankind;
what is difficult to me is easy to another; what is impossible,
inconceivable, to one age, is to the coming age conceivable
and possible. My life is bound to a limited time; not so the
life of humanity. The history of mankind consists of nothing
else than a continuous and progressive conquest of limits,
which at a given time pass for the limits of humanity, and

* It is true that the heathen philosophers also, as Plato, Socrates, the

Stoics (see e.g. J, Lipsius, Physiol. Stoic. 1. i. diss. xi.), believed that the
divine providence extended not merely to the general, but also to the par­
ticular, the individual; but they identified providence with Nature, law,
necessity. The Stoics, who were the orthodox speculatists of heathenism,
did indeed believe in miracles wrought by providence (Cic. de Nat. Deor. L
ii. and De Divinat. L L ); but their miracles had no such supranaturalistic
significance as those of Christianity, though they also appealed to the supra*
naturalistic axiom: “ Nihil est quod Deus efficere non possit.”
 CHRISTIANITY A ND HEATHENISM. 153

therefore for absolute insurmountable limits. But the future

always unveils the fact that the alleged limits of the species
were only limits of individuals. The most striking proofs
of this are presented by the history of philosophy and of
physical science. It would be highly interesting and in­
structive to write a history of the sciences entirely from
this point of view, in order to exhibit in all its vanity the
presumptuous notion of the individual than he can set limits
to his race. Thus the species is unlimited; the individual
alone limited.
But the sense of limitation is painful, and hence the in­
dividual frees himself from it by the contemplation of the
perfect Being; in this contemplation he possesses what
otherwise is wanting to him. With the Christians God is
nothing else than the immediate unity of species and indi­
viduality, of the universal and individual being. God is the
idea of the species as an individual— the idea or essence of
the species, which as a species, as universal being, as the
totality of all perfections, of all attributes or realities, freed
from all the limits which exist in the consciousness and
feeling of the individual, is at the same time again an indi­
vidual, personal being. Ipse suum esse est. Essence and
existence are in God identical; which means nothing else
than that he is the idea, the essence of the species, con­
ceived immediately as an existence, an individual. The
highest idea on the standpoint of religion is : God does not
love, he is himself love; he does not live, he is life; he is not
just, but justice itself; not a person, but personality itself,—
the species, the idea, as immediately a concrete existence.*
Because of this immediate unity of the species with indi­
viduality, this concentration of all that is universal and real
in one personal being, God is a deeply moving object, enrap­
turing to the imagination; whereas, the idea of humanity
has little power over the feelings, because humanity is only
an abstraction; and the reality which presents itself to us in
distinction from this abstraction is the multitude of separate,
limited individuals. In God, on the contrary, feeling has
immediate satisfaction, because here all is embraced in one,
i.e.t because here the species has an immediate existence,—
* “ Dicimur amare et Deus ; dicimur nosse et Deus. Et multa in hunc
modum. Sed Deus amat ut charitas, novit ut veritas, etc.”— Bernard, (d©
Consider. 1. v.).
154 T HE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

is an individuality. God is love, is justice, as itself a subject;

he is the perfect universal being as one being, the infinite
extension of the species as an all-comprehending unity. B u t
God is only man's intuition of his own nature; thus the
Christians are distinguished from the heathens in this, that
they immediately identify the individual with the species—
that with them the individual has the significance of the
species, the individual by himself is held to be the perfect
representative of the species— that they deify the human
individual, make him the absolute being.
Especially characteristic is the difference between Chris­
tianity and heathenism concerning the relation of the in­
dividual to the intelligence, to the understanding, to the
vov9. The Christians individualised the understanding, the
heathens made it a universal essence. To the heathens, the
understanding, the intelligence, was the essence of man; to
the Christians, it was only a part of themselves. To the
heathens therefore only the intelligence, the species, to the
Christians, the individual, was immortal, i.e., divine. Hence
follows the further difference between heathen and Chris­
tian philosophy.
The most unequivocal expression, the characteristic sym ­
bol of this immediate identity of the species and individu­
ality in Christianity is Christ, the real God of the Christians.
Christ is the ideal of humanity become existent, the com­
pendium of all moral and divine perfections to the exclu­
sion of all that is negative; pure, heavenly, sinless man,
the typical man, the Adam Kadmon; not regarded as th e
totality of the species, of mankind, but immediately as one
individual, one person. Christ, i.e., the Christian, religious
Christ, is therefore not the central, but the terminal point
of history. The Christians expected the end of the world,
the close of history. In the Bible, Christ himself, in spite
of all the falsities and sophisms of our exegetists, clearly
prophesies the speedy end of the world. History rests only
on the distinction of the individual from the race. Where
this distinction ceases, history ceases; the very soul of his­
tory is extinct. Nothing remains to man but the contem­
plation and appropriation of this realised Ideal, and the
spirit of proselytism, which seeks to extend the prevalence
of a fixed belief,— the preaching that God has appeared, and
that the end of the world is at hand.
 CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENI S M. 155

Since the immediate identity of the species and the indi­

vidual oversteps the limits of reason and Nature, it followed
of course that this universal, ideal individual was declared
to be a transcendent, supernatural, heavenly being. It is
therefore a perversity to attempt to deduce from reason the
immediate identity of the species and individual, for it is
only the imagination which effects this identity, the imagi­
nation to which nothing is impossible, and which is also the
creator of miracles; for the greatest of miracles is the being
who, while he is an individual, is at the same time the ideal,
the species, humanity in the fulness of its perfection and
infinity, i.e., the Godhead. Hence it is also a perversity to
adhere to the biblical or dogmatic Christ, and yet to thrust
aside miracles. If the principle be retained, wherefore deny
its necessary consequences ?
The total absence of the idea of the species in Christi­
anity is especially observable in its characteristic doctrine
of the universal sinfulness of men. For there lies at the
foundation of this doctrine the demand that the individual
shall not be an individual, a demand which again is based
on the presupposition that the individual by himself is a
perfect being, is by himself the adequate presentation or
existence of the species* Here is entirely wanting the
objective perception, the consciousness, that the thou belongs
to the perfection of the /, that men are required to consti­
tute humanity, that only men taken together are what man
should and can be. A ll men are sinners. Granted; but
they are not all sinners in the same w ay; on the contrary,
there exists a great and essential difference between them.
One man is inclined to falsehood, another is not ; he would
rather give up his life than break his word or tell a lie ; the
third has a propensity to intoxication, the fourth to licen­
tiousness ; while the fifth, whether by favour of Nature, or
from the energy of his character, exhibits none of these
vices. Thus, in the moral as well as the physical and in­
tellectual elements, men compensate for each other, so that,

* It is true that in one sense the individual is the absolute— in the

phraseology of Leibnitz, the mirror of the universe, of the infinite. But in
so far as there are many individuals, each is only a single, and, as such, a
finite mirror of the infinite. It is true also, in opposition to the abstrac­
tion of a sinless man, that each individual regarded in himself is perfect,
and only by comparison imperfect, for each is what alone he can be.
156 T HE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

taken as a whole, they are; as they should be, they present

the perfect man.
Hence intercourse ameliorates and elevates; involun­
tarily and without disguise, man is different in intercourse
from what he is when alone. Love especially works won­
ders, and the love of the sexes most of all. Man and
woman are the complement of each other, and thus united
they first present the species, the perfect man* Without
species, love is inconceivable. Love is nothing else than the
self-consciousness of the species as evolved within the dif­
ference of sex. In love, the reality of the species, which
otherwise is only a thing of reason, an object of mere
thought, becomes a matter of feeling, a truth of feeling; for
in love, man declares himself unsatisfied in his individuality
taken by itself, he postulates the existence of another as a
need of the heart; he reckons another as part of his own
being; he declares the life which he has through love to be
the truly human life, corresponding to the idea of man, i.e.,
of the species. The individual is defective, imperfect, weak,
needy; but love is strong, perfect, contented, free from
wants, self-sufficing, infinite; because in it the self-con*
sciousness of the individuality is the mysterious self-con­
sciousness of the perfection of the race. But this result of
love is produced by friendship also, at least where it is
intense, where it is a religion,f as it was with the ancients.
Friends compensate for each other; friendship is a means
of virtue, and more: it is itself virtue, dependent however
on participation. Friendship can only exist between the
virtuous, as the ancients said. But it cannot be based on
perfect similarity; on the contrary, it requires diversity, for
friendship rests on a desire for self-completion. One friend
obtains through the other what he does not himself possess.
The virtues of the one atone for the failings of the other.
* With the Hindoos (Inst, of Menu) he alone is “ a perfect man who
consists of three united persons, his wife, himself, and his son. For 'man
and wife, and father and son, are one.” The Adam of the Old Testament
also is incomplete without woman ; he feels his need of her. But the Adam
of the New Testament, the Christian, heavenly Adam, the Adam who is
constituted with a view to the destruction of this world, has no longer any
sexual impulses or functions.
+ “ Hee sane vires amicitiae mortis contemptum ingenerare . . . potu-
erunt: (juibus pene tantum venerationis, quantum Deorum immortalium
ceremoniis debetur. Illis enim publica salus, nis privata continetur. ”— Vale­
rius Max. L iv. c. 7.
 CHRISTIA NI TY A ND H E A T HEN ISM. 1 57

Friend justifies friend before God. However faulty a man

may be, it is a proof that there is a germ of good in him if
he has worthy men for his friends. If I cannot be myself
perfect, I yet at least love virtue, perfection in others. If
therefore I am called to account for any sins, weaknesses, and
faults, I interpose as advocates, as mediators, the virtues of
m y friend. How barbarCus, how unreasonable would it be
to condemn me for sins which I doubtless have committed,
b u t which I have myself condemned in loving my friends,
who are free from these sins! v
But if friendship and love, which themselves are only
subjective realisations of the species, make out of singly
imperfect beings an at least relatively perfect whole, how
much more do the sins and failings of individuals vanish in
the species itself, which has its adequate existence only in
the sum total of mankind, and is therefore only an object of
reason 1 Hence the lamentation over sin is found only where
the human individual regards himself in his individuality
as a perfect, complete being, not needing others for the realisa­
tion of the species, of the perfect m an; where instead of
the consciousness of the species has been substituted the
exclusive self-consciousness of the individual; where the
individual does not recognise himself as a part of mankind,
but identifies himself with the species, and for this reason
makes his own sins, limits and weaknesses, the sins, limits,
and weaknesses of mankind in general. Nevertheless man
cannot lose the consciousness of the species, for his self-
consciousness is essentially united to his consciousness of
another than himself. Where therefore the species is not
an object to him as a species, it will be an object to him as
God. He supplies the absence of the idea of the species by
the idea of God, as the being who is free from the limits and
wants which oppress the individual, and, in his opinion
(since he identifies the species with the individual), the
species itself. But this perfect being, free from the limits
of the individual, is nothing else than the species, which
reveals the infinitude of its nature in this, that it is realised
in infinitely numerous and various individuals. If all men
were absolutely alike, there would then certainly be no dis­
tinction between the race and the individual But in that
case the existence of many men would be a pure superfluity;
a single man would have achieved the ends of the species.
i 58 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

In the one who enjoyed the happiness of existence all would

have had their complete substitute.
Doubtless the essence of man is one, but this essence is
infinite; its real existence is therefore an infinite, recipro­
cally compensating variety, which reveals the riches of
this essence. Unity in essence is multiplicity in existence.
Between me and another human being— and this other is
the representative of the species, even though he is only
one, for he supplies to me the want of many others, has for
me a universal significance, is the deputy of mankind, in
whose name he speaks to me, an isolated individual, so that,
when united only with one, I have a participated, a human
life;— between me and another human being there is an
essential, qualitative distinction. The other is my thou,—
the relation being reciprocal,— my alter ego, man objective to
me, the revelation of my own nature, the eye seeing itself.
In another I first have the consciousness of humanity;
through him I first learn, I first feel, that I am a man : in
my love for him it is first clear to me that he belongs to
me and I to him, that we two cannot be without each other,
that only community constitutes humanity. But morally,
also, there is a qualitative, critical distinction between the
I and thou. My fellow-man is my objective conscience;
he makes my failings a reproach to m e; even when he does
not expressly mention them, he is my personified feeling of
shame. The consciousness of the moral law, of right, of
propriety, of truth itself, is indissolubly united with my
consciousness of another than myself. That is true in which
another agrees with me,— agreement is the first criterion of
truth; but only because the species is the ultimate measure
of truth. That which I think only according to the standard
of my individuality is not binding on another; it can be
conceived otherwise; it is an accidental, merely subjective
view. But that which I think according to the standard
of the species, I think as man in general only can think,
and consequently as every individual must think if he
thinks normally, in accordance with law, and therefore
truly. That is true which agrees with the nature of the
species, that is false which contradicts it. There is. no
other rule of truth. But my fellow-man is to me the re­
presentative of the species, the substitute of the rest, nay,
his judgment may be of more authority with me than the
 CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENI S M. 159

judgment of the innumerable multitude. Let the fanatic

make disciples as the sand on the sea-shore; the sand is
still sand; mine be the pearl— a judicious friend. The
agreement of others is therefore my criterion of the normal­
ness, the universality, the truth of my thoughts. I cannot
so abstract myself from myself as to judge myself with
perfect freedom and disinterestedness; but another has
an impartial judgment; through him I correct, complete,
extend my own judgment, my own taste, my own know­
ledge. In short, there is a qualitative, critical difference
between men. But Christianity extinguishes this quali­
tative distinction; it sets the same stamp on all men alike,
and regards them as one and the same individual, because
it knows no distinction between the species and the indi­
vidual : it has one and the same means of salvation for all
men, it sees one and the same original sin in all.
Because Christianity thus, from exaggerated subjectivity,
knows nothing of the species, in which alone lies the redemp­
tion, the justification, the reconciliation and cure of the sins
and deficiencies of the individual, it needed a supernatural
and peculiar, nay, a personal, subjective aid in order to
overcome sin. If I alone am the species, if no other, that
is, no qualitatively different men exist, or, which is the same
thing, if there is no distinction between me and others, if
we are all perfectly alike, if my sins are not neutralised by
the opposite qualities of other men: then assuredly my
sin is a blot of shame which cries up to heaven; a revolting
horror which can be exterminated only by extraordinary,
superhuman, miraculous means. Happily, however, there
is a natural reconciliation. My fellow-man is per se the
mediator between me and the sacred idea of the species.
Homo homini Deus est. My sin is made to shrink within
its limits, is thrust back into its nothingness, by the fact
that it is only mine, and not that of my fellows.
i6o THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER X V II.

THE CHRISTIAN SIGNIFICANCE OF VOLUNTARY CELIBACY AND

MONACHISM,

T h e idea of man as a species, and with it the significance

of the life of the species, of humanity as a whole, vanished
as Christianity became dominant. Herein we have a new
confirmation of the position advanced, that Christianity does
not contain within itself the principle of culture. Where
man immediately identifies the species with the individual,
and posits this identity as his highest being, as God, where
the idea of humanity is thus an object to him only as the
idea of Godhead, there the need of culture has vanished ;
man has all in himself, all in his God, consequently he has
no need to supply his own deficiencies by others as the
representatives of the species, or by the contemplation of
the world, generally ; and this need is alone the spring of
culture. The individual man attains his end by himself
alone ; he attains it in God,— God is himself the attained
goal, the realised highest aim of humanity; but God is
present to each individual separately. God only is the
want of the Christian ; others, the human race, the world,
are not necessary to him ; he is not the inward need of
others. God fills to me the place of the species, of my
fellow-men ; yes, when I turn away from the world, when
I am in isolation, I first truly feel my need of God, I first
have a lively sense of his presence, I first feel what God is,
and what he ought to be to me. It is true that thé religious
man has need also of fellowship, of edification in common ;
but this need of others is always in itself something ex­
tremely subordinate. The salvation of the soul is the fun­
damental idea, the main point in Christianity; and this
salvation lies only in God, only in the concentration of the
mind on him. Activity for others is required, is a condition
of salvation; but the ground of salvation is God, immediate
reference in all things to God. And even activity for others
 CELIB A CY A N D MONACHISM. 161

has only a religious significance, has reference only to God,

as its motive and end, is essentially only an activity for God,
— for the glorifying of his name, the spreading abroad of
his praise. But God is absolute subjectivity,— subjectivity
separated from the world, above the world, set free from
matter, severed from the life of the species, and therefore
from the distinction of sex. Separation from the world,
from matter, from the life of the species, is therefore
the essential aim of Christianity* And this aim had its
visible, practical realisation in Monachism.
It is a self-delusion to attempt to derive monachism from
the East. A t least, if this derivation is to be accepted, they
who maintain it should be consistent enough to derive the
opposite tendency of Christendom, not from Christianity,
but from the spirit of the Western nations, the occidental
nature in general. But how, in that case, shall we explain
the monastic enthusiasm of the West ? Monachism must
rather be derived directly from Christianity itself: it was
necessary consequence of the belief in heaven promised to
mankind by Christianity. Where the heavenly life is a
truth, the earthly life is a lie ; where imagination is all,
reality is nothing. To him who believes in an eternal
heavenly life, the present life loses its value,— or rather, it
has already lost its value: belief in the heavenly life is
belief in the worthlessness and nothingness of this life. I
cannot represent to myself the future life without longing
for it, without casting down a look of compassion or con­
tempt on this pitiable earthly life, and the heavenly life
can be no object, no law of faith, without, at the same time,
being a law of morality: it must determine my actions,"f
at least if my life is to be in accordance with my faith: I
ought not to cleave to the transitory things of this earth.
I ought not;— but neither do I wish ; for what are all things
here below compared with the glory of the heavenly life

* “ The life for God is not this natural life, which is subject to decay.
. . . Ought we not then to sigh after future things, and be averse to all
these temporal things ? . . . Wherefore we should find consolation in heartily
despising this lit'e and this world, and from our hearts sigh for and desire
the luture honour and glory of eternal life.”— Luther (Th. 1. s. 466, 467).
+ “ Eo dirigendus est spiritus, quo aliquando est iturus.”— Meditat. Sacrae
Joh. Gerhardi. Med. 46.
i “ Aifectanti ccelestia, terrena non sapiunt. JEternis inhianti, fastidio
sunt transitoria.”— Bernard. (Epist. Ex Persona Helise Monachi ad Parentes).
162 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

It is true that the quality of that life depends on the

quality, the moral condition of this; but morality is itself
determined by the faith in eternal life. The morality cor­
responding to the super-terrestrial life is simply separation
from the world, the negation of this life; and the practical
attestation of this spiritual separation is the monastic life.*
Everything must ultimately take an external form, must
present itself to the senses. An inward disposition must
become an outward practice. The life of the cloister, indeed
ascetic life in general, is the heavenly life as it is realised
and can be realised here below. If my soul belongs to
heaven, ought I, nay, can I belong to the earth with my
body ? The soul animates the body. But if the soul is in
heaven, the body is forsaken, dead, and thus the medium,
the organ of connection between the world and the soul is
annihilated. Death, the separation of the soul from the
body, at least from this gross, material, sinful body, is the en­
trance into heaven. But if death is the condition of blessed­
ness and moral perfection, then necessarily mortification
is the one law of morality. Moral death is the necessary
anticipation of natural death; I say necessary, for it would
be the extreme of immorality to attribute the obtaining of
heaven to physical death, which is no moral act, but a natural
one common to man and the brute. Death must therefore
be exalted into a moral, a spontaneous act. " I die daily,”
says the apostle, and this dictum Saint Anthony, the founder
of monachism,f made the theme of his life.
But Christianity, it is contended, demanded only a spiri­
tual freedom. True; but what is that spiritual freedom
which does not pass into action, which does not attest itself
in practice ? Or dost thou believe that it only depends on
thyself, on thy will, on thy intention, whether thou be free
from anything ? If so, thou art greatly in error, aud hast
4t Nihil nostra referti n hoc aevo, nisi de eo quam celeriter excedere.”— Ter-
tullian (Apol. adv. Gentes, c. 41). “ Wherefore a Christian man sho ild
rather be advised to bear sickness with patience, yea, even to desire that
death should come,— the sooner the better. For, as St. Cyprian says,
nothing is more for the advantage of a Christian than soon to die. But
we rather listen to the pagan Juvenal when he says: ‘ Orandum est ut sit
mens sana in corpore sano.’ ”— Luther (Th. iv. s. 15).
* “ Ille perfectus est qui mente et corpore a seculo est elongatus.”— De
Modo Bene Vivendi ad Sororem, s. vii. (Among the spurious writings of
St. Bernard.)
t On this subject see “ Hieronymus, de Vita Pauli Primi Eremite.”
 CELIB A CY A ND MONACHISM. 163

never experienced what it is to be truly made free. So

long as thou art in a given rank, profession, or relation, so
long art thou, willingly or not, determined by it. Thy will,
thy determination, frees thee only from conscious limitations
and impressions, not from the unconscious ones which lie in
the nature of the case. Thus we do not feel at home, we
are under constraint, so long as we are not locally, physically
separated from one with whom we have inwardly broken.
External freedom is alone the full truth of spiritual freedom.
A man who has really lost spiritual interest in earthly trea­
sures soon throws them out at window, that his heart may
be thoroughly at liberty. What I no longer possess by
inclination is a burden to me ; so away with it ! What
affection has let go, the hand no longer holds fast. Only
affection gives force to the grasp ; only affection makes pos­
session sacred. He who having a wife is as though he had
her not, will do better to have no wife at all. To have as
though one had not, is to have without the disposition to
have, is in truth not to have. And therefore he who says
that one ought to have a thing as though one had it not,
merely says in a subtle, covert, cautious way, that one ought
not to have it at all. That which I dismiss from my heart
is no longer mine,— it is free as air. St. Anthony took the
resolution to renounce the world when he had once heard the
saying, “ If thoü wilt be perfect, go thy way, sell that thou
hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in
heaven ; and come and follow me.” St. Anthony gave the
only true interpretation of this text. He went his way, and
sold his possessions, and gave the proceeds to the pour.
Only thus did he prove his spiritual freedom from the
treasures of this world.*
- Such freedom, such truth, is certainly in contradiction
with the Christianity of the present day, according to which
the Lord has required only a spiritual freedom, i.e., a free­
dom which demands no sacrifice, no energy,— an illusory,
self - deceptive freedom a freedom from earthly good,
which consists in its possession and enjoyment ! For cer­
tainly the Lord said, “ My yoke is easy.” How harsh, how
* Naturally Christianity had only such power when, as Jerome writes to
Demetrius, Domini nostri adhuc calebat cruor et fervebat recens in creden-
tibus fides. See also on this subject G. Arnold.— Von der ersten Chriaten
Genügsamkeü u. Verschmahung ailes Eigermvtzes, 1. c. B. iv. c. 12, § 7-16.
164 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

unreasonable would Christianity be if it exacted from

man the renunciation of earthly riches! Then assuredly
Christianity would not be suited to this world. So far from
this, Christianity is in the highest degree practical and
judicious ; it defers the freeing oneself from the wealth and
pleasures of this world to the moment of natural death
(monkish mortification is an unchristian suicide);— and
allots to our spontaneous activity the acquisition and en­
joyment of earthly possessions. Genuine Christians do not
indeed doubt the truth of the heavenly life,— God forbid !
Therein they still agree with the ancient monks; but they
await that life patiently, submissive to the will of God, i.e.,
to their own selfishness, to the agreeable pursuit of worldly
enjoyment.* But I turn away with loathing and contempt
from modern Christianity, in which the bride of Christ
readily acquiesces in polygamy, at least in successive poly­
gamy, and this in the eyes of the true Christian does not
essentially differ from contemporaneous polygamy; but yet
at the same time— oh! shameful hypocrisy !— swears by
the eternal, universally binding, irrefragable sacred truth of
God’s Word. I turn back with reverence to the miscon­
ceived truth of the chaste monastic cell, where the soul
betrothed to heaven did not allow itself to be wooed into
faithlessness by a strange earthly body !
The unworldly, supernatural life is essentially also an
unmarried life. The celibate lies already, though not in
the form of a law, in the inmost nature of Christianity.
This is sufficiently declared in the supernatural origin of
the Saviour,— a doctrine in which unspotted virginity is
hallowed as the saving principle, as the principle of the
new, the Christian world. Let not such passages as, “ Be
fruitful and multiply,” or, “ What God has joined to­
gether let not man put asunder,” be urged as a sanction
of marriage. The first passage relates, as Tertullian and
Jerome have already observed, only to the unpeopled
earth, not to the earth when filled with men, only to the
* How far otherwise the ancient Christians! “ Difficile, imo impossible
est, lit et praesentibus quis et futuris fruatur bonis.”— Hieronymus (Epist.
Juliano). “ Delicatus es, frater, si et hie vis gaudere cum seculo et postea
regnare cum Christo.”— lb. (Epist. ad Helioaorum). “ Ye wish to have
both God and the creature together, and that is impossible. Joy in God
and joy in the creature cannot subsist together.”— Tauler (ed. c. p. 334).
But they were abstract Christians. And we live now in the age of concilia­
tion. Yes, truly!
 CELIB A CY A N D MONACHISM.

beginning, not to the end of the world, an end which

was initiated by the immediate appearance of God upon
earth. And the second also refers only to marriage as an
institution of the Old Testament. Certain Jews proposed
the question whether it were lawful for a man to separate
from his wife; and the most appropriate way of. dealing
with this question was the answer above cited. He who
has once concluded a marriage ought to hold it sacred.
Marriage is intrinsically an indulgence to the weakness or
rather the strength of the flesh, an evil which therefore
must be restricted as much as possible. The indissoluble­
ness of marriage is a nimbus, a sacred irradiance, which
expresses precisely the opposite of what minds, dazzled and
perturbed by its lustre, seek beneath it. Marriage in itself
is, in the sense of perfected Christianity, a sin,* or rather a
weakness which is permitted and forgiven thee only on con­
dition that thou for ever limitest thyself to a single wife.
In short, marriage is hallowed only in the Old Testament,
but not in the New. The New Testament knows a higher, a
supernatural principle, the mystery of unspotted virginity.*)*
“ He who can receive it let him receive it.” “ The children
of this world marry, and are given in marriage: but they
which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and
the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given
in marriage: neither can they die any more: for they are
equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being
the children of the resurrection.” Thus in heaven there is
no marriage; the principle of sexual love is excluded from
heaven as an earthly, worldly principle. But the heavenly
life is the true, perfected, eternal life of the Christian.
W hy then should I, who am destined for heaven, form a tie
which is unloosed in my true destination ? Why should I,
who am potentially a heavenly being, not realise this pos­
sibility even here ? J Marriage is already proscribed from
* ** Perfectum autem esse nolle delinquere est.”— Hieronymus (Epist ad
Heliodorum de laude Vitee solit). Let me observe once for all that I inter­
pret the biblical passages concerning marriage in the sense in which they
have been interpreted by the history of Christianity.
+ “ The marriage state is nothing new or unwonted, and is lauded and
held good even by heathens according to the judgment of reason.”— Luther
(Th. ii. p. 377a).
J “ Prasumendum est hos qui intra paradisum recipi volunt debere cessare
ab ea re, a qua paradisus intactus est. — Tertullian (de Exhort, cast. c. 13).
“ Ccelibatus angelorum est imitatio.”— Jo. Damasceni (Orthod. Fidei, L iv.
c. 25).
166 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

my mind, my heart, since it is expelled from heaven, the

essential object of my faith, hope, and life. How can an
earthly wife have a place in my heaven-filled heart ? How
can I divide my heart between God and man ? * The Chris­
tian's love to God is not an abstract or general love such as
the love of truth, of justice, of science; it is a love to a
subjective, personal God, and is therefore a subjective, per­
sonal love. It is an essential attribute of this love that it
is an exclusive, jealous love, for its object is a personal and
at the same time the highest being, to whom no other can
be compared. “ Keep close to Jesus [Jesus Christ is the
Christian's God], in life and in death; trust his faithfulness:
he alone can help thee, when all else leaves thee. Th y
beloved has this quality, that he will suffer no rival; he
alone will have thy heart, will rule alone in thy soul as a
king on his throne.”— “ What can the world profit thee
without Jesus ? To be without Christ is the pain of h e ll;
to be with Christ, heavenly sweetness.”— “ Thou canst not
live without a friend: but if the friendship of Christ is not
more than all else to thee, thou wilt be beyond measure sad
and disconsolate.”— “ Love everything for Jesus’ sake, but
Jesus for his own sake. Jesus Christ alone is worthy to be
loved.”— “ My God, my love [my heart]: thou art wholly
mine, and I am wholly thine.”— “ Love hopes and trusts
ever in God, even when God is not gracious to it [or tastes
bitter, non sapit] ; for we cannot live in love without sorrow.
. . «. „ For the sake of the beloved, the loving one must
accept all things, even the hard and bitter.”— “ My God and
my all, . . . . in thy presence everything is sweet to me,
in thy absence everything is distasteful . . . . Without
thee nothing can please me.”— “ Oh, when at last will that
blessed, longed-for hour appear, when thou wilt satisfy
me wholly, and be all in all to me ? So long as this is not
granted me, my joy is only fragmentary.”— “ When was
it well with me without thee? or when was it ill with
me in thy presence ? I will rather be poor for thy sake,
than rich without thee. I will rather be a pilgrim on earth
with thee, than the possessor of heaven without thee.
Where thou art is heaven; death and hell where thou art
* “ Quae non nubit, soli Deo dat operam et ejus cura non dividitur ;
pudica autem, quae nupsit, vitam cum Deo et cum marito dividit.”—
Clemens Alex. (Paedag. 1. ii.).
 CELIB A CY A N D MONA CHISM.

not. I long only for thee.”— “ Thou canst not serve God
and at the same time have thy joys in earthly things: thou
must wean thyself from all acquaintances and friends, and
sever thy soul from all temporal consolation. Believers in
Christ should regard themselves, according to the admoni­
tion of the Apostle Peter, only as strangers and pilgrims on
the earth.” * Thus love to God as a personal being is a
literal, strict, personal, exclusive love. How then can I at
once love God and a mortal wife ? Do I not thereby place
God on the same footing with my wife ? N o ! to a soul
which truly loves God, the love of woman is an impossibility,
is adultery. “ He that is unmarried,” says the Apostle
Paul, “ careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how
he may please the Lord; but he that is married careth
for the things that are of the world, how he may please
his wife.”
The «true Christian not only feels no need of culture,
because this is a worldly principle and opposed to feeling;
he has also no need of (natural) love. God supplies to him
the want of culture, and in like manner God supplies to him
the want of love, of a wife, of a family. The Christian im­
mediately identifies the species with the individual; hence
he strips oft*the difference of sex as a burdensome, accidental
adjunct.f Man and woman together first constitute the true
man; man and woman together are the existence of the race,
for their union is the source of multiplicity, the source of
other men. Hence the man who does not deny his man­
hood, is conscious that he is only a part of a being, which
needs another part for the making up of the whole of true
humanity. The Christian, on the contrary, in his excessive,
transcendental subjectivity, conceives that he is, by himself,
a perfect being. But the sexual instinct runs counter to
this view; it is in contradiction with his ideal: the Christian
must therefore deny this instinct.
The Christian certainly experienced the need of sexual
love, but only as a need in contradiction with his heavenly

* Thomas & Kempis de Imit. (l.'ii. c. 7, c. 8 , 1. iii. c. 5, c. 34, c. 53, c. 59).

“ Felix ilia conscientia et beata virginitas, in cujus corde praeter amorem
Christi...............nullus alius versatur amor.”— Hieronymus (Demetriadi,
Virgini Deo consecrate).
f “ Divisa est . . . . mulier et virgo. Vide quant» felicitatis sit, quae
et nomcn sexus amiserit. Virgo jam mulier non vocatur.”— Hieronymus
(adv. Helvidium de perpct. Virg. p. 14. Th. ii. Erasmus).
168 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

destination, and merely natural, in ther depreciatory, con­

temptuous sense which this word had in Christianity,— not
as a moral, inward need— not, if I may so express myself, as
a metaphysical, i.e., an essential need, which man can expe­
rience only where he does not separate difference of sex from
himself, but, on the contrary, regards it as belonging to his
inmost nature. Hence marriage is not holy in Christianity;
at least it is so only apparently, illusively; for the natural
principle of marriage, which is the love of the sexes,— how­
ever civil marriage may in endless instances contradict this,
— is in Christianity an unholy thing, and excluded from
heaven.* But that which man excludes from heaven he
excludes from his true nature. Heaven is his treasure-
casket. Believe not in what he establishes on earth, what
he permits and sanctions here: here he must accommodate
himself; here many things come athwart him which do not
fit into his system; here he shuns thy glance, for he finds
himself among strangers who intimidate him. But watch
for him when he throws off his incognito, and shows him­
self in hi3 true dignity, his heavenly state. In heaven he
speaks as he thinks; there thou hearest his true opinion.
Where his heaven is, there is his heart,— heaven is his heart
laid open. Heaven is nothing but the idea of the true, the
good, the valid,— of that which ought to be; earth, nothing
but the idea of the untrue, the unlawful, of that which ought
not to be. The Christian excludes from heaven the life of
the species: there the species ceases, there dwell only pure
sexless individuals, “ spirits; ” there absolute subjectivity
reigns:— thus the Christian excludes the life of the species

* This may be expressed as follows: Marriage has in Christianity only a

moral; no religious significance, no religious principle and exemplar. It is
otherwise with the Greeks, where, for example, “ Zeus and Here are the
great archetype of every marriage” (Creuzer, Symbol.); with the ancient
Parsees, where procreation, as “ the multiplication of the human race, is the
diminution of the empire of Ahriman,” and thus a religious act and duty
(Zend-Avesta); with the Hindoos, where the son is the regenerated father.
Among the Hindoos no regenerate man could assume the rank of a Sany-
assi, that is, of an anchorite absorbed in God, if he had not previously paid
three debts, one of which was that he had had a legitimate son. Amongst
the Christians, on the contrary, at least the Catholics, it was a true festival-
of religious rejoicing when betrothed or even married persons—supposing
that it happened with mutual consent— renounced the married state and
sacrificed conjugal to religious love.
 . CE L IB A C Y AND MON A CHISM. 169

from liis conception of the true life; he pronounces the

principle of marriage sinful, negative; for the sinless, posi­
tive life is the heavenly one.*
* Inasmuch as the religious consciousness restores everything which it
begins by abolishing, and the future life is ultimately nothing else than the
present life re-established, it follows that sex must be re-established.
Erunt . . . similes angelorum. Ergo homines non desinent . . . ut
apostolus apostolus sit et Maria Maria.”— Hieronymus (ad Theodoram
Viduam). But as the body in the other world is an incorporeal body, so
necessarily the sex there is one without difference, i.e., a sexless sex.
170 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER X V III.

THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN, OR PERSONAL IMMORTALITY.

T h e unwedded and ascetic life is the direct way to the

heavenly, immortal life, for heaven is nothing else than life
liberated from the conditions of the species, supernatural,
sexless, absolutely subjective life. The belief in personal
immortality has at its foundation the belief that difference
of sex is only an external adjunct of individuality, that in
himself the individual is a sexless, independently complete,
absolute being. But he who belongs to no sex belongs to
no species; sex is the cord which connects the individuality
with the species, and he who belongs to no species, belongs
only to himself, is an altogether independent, divine, abso­
lute being. Hence only when the species vanishes from
the consciousness is the heavenly life a certainty. He who
lives in the consciousness of the species, and consequently
of its reality, lives also in the consciousness of the reality
of sex. He does not regard it as a mechanically inserted,
adventitious stone of stumbling, but as an inherent quality,
a chemical constituent of his being. He indeed recognises
himself as a man in the broader sense, but he is at the same
time conscious of being rigorously determined by the sexual
distinction, which penetrates not only bones and marrow,
but also his inmost self, the essential mode of his thought,
will, and sensation. He therefore who lives in the conscious­
ness of the species, who limits and determines his feelings
and imagination by the contemplation of real life, of real
man, can conceive no life in which the life of the species,
and therewith the distinction of sex, is abolished; he regards
the sexless individual, the heavenly spirit, as an agreeable
figment of the imagination.
But just as little as the real man can abstract himself
from the distinction of sex, so little can he abstract himself
from his moral or spiritual constitution, which indeed is
profoundly connected with his natural constitution. Pre­
cisely because he lives in the contemplation of the whole,
 THE CHRISTIAN HEA VEN. 171

he also lives in the consciousness that he is himself no

more than a part, and that he is what he is only by virtue
of the conditions which constitute him a member of the
whole, or a relative whole. Every one, therefore, justifiably
regards his occupation, his profession, his art or science, as
the highest; for the mind of man is nothing but the essential
mode of his activity. He who is skilful in his profession,
in his art, he who fills his post well, and is entirely devoted
to his calling, thinks that calling the highest and best. How
can he deny in thought what he emphatically declares in
act by the joyful devotion of all his powers ? If I despise
a thing, how can I dedicate to it my time and faculties ? If
I am compelled to do so in spite of my aversion, my activity
is an unhappy one, for I am at war with myself. Work is
worship. But how can I worship or serve an object, how
can I subject myself to it, if it does not hold a high place
in my mind ? In brief, the occupations of men determine
their judgment, their mode of thought, their sentiments.
And the higher the occupation, the more completely does a
man identify himself with it. In general, whatever a man
makes the essential aim of his life, he proclaims to be his
soul; for it is the principle of motion in him. But through
his aim, through the activity in which he realises this aim,
man is not only something for himself, but also something
for others, for the general life, the species. He therefore
who lives in the consciousness of the species as a reality,
regards his existence for others, his relation to society, his
utility to the public, as that existence which is one with
the existence of his own essence— as his immortal exist­
ence. He lives with his whole soul, with his whole heart,
for humanity. How can he hold in reserve a special exist­
ence for himself, how can he separate himself from mankind ?
How shall he deny in death what he has enforced in life ?
And in life his faith is this: Nec sibi sed toti gentium se
credere mundo.
The heavenly life, or what we do not here distinguish
from it— personal immortality, is a characteristic doctrine
of Christianity. It is certainly in part to be found among
the heathen philosophers; but with them it had only the
significance of a subjective conception, because it was not
connected with their fundamental view of things. How
contradictory, for example, are the expressions of the Stoics
172 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

on this subject! It was among the Christians that personal

immortality first found that principle, whence it follows as
a necessary and obvious consequence. The contemplation
of the world, of Nature, of the race, was always coming
athwart the ancients ; they distinguished between the prin­
ciple of life and the living subject, between the soul, the
mind, and self: whereas the Christian abolished the distinc­
tion between soul and person, species and individual, and
therefore placed immediately in self what belongs only to
the totality of the species. But the immediate unity of the
species and individuality is the highest principle, the God
of Christianity,— in it the individual has the significance of
the absolute being,— and the necessary, immanent conse­
quence of this principle is personal immortality.
Or rather: the belief in personal immortality is perfectly
identical with the belief in a personal God;— i.e., that which
expresses the belief in the heavenly, immortal life of the
person, expresses God also, as he is an object to Christians,
namely, as absolute, unlimited personality. Unlimited per­
sonality is God; but heavenly personality, or the perpetua­
tion of human personality in heaven, is nothing else than
personality released from all earthly encumbrances and
limitations; the only distinction is, that God is heaven
spiritualised, while heaven is God materialised, or reduced
to the forms of the senses: that wliat in God is posited only
in abstracto is in heaven more an object of the imagination.
God is the implicit heaven; heaven is the explicit God.
In the present, God is the kingdom of heaven; in the future,
heaven is God. God is the pledge, the as yet abstract pre­
sence and existence of heaven; the anticipation, the epitome
of heaven. Our own future existence, which, while we are
in this world, in this body, is a separate, objective existence,
— is God: God is the idea of the species, which will be first
realised, individualised in the other world. God is the
heavenly, pure, free essence, which exists there as heavenly
pure beings, the bliss which there unfolds itself in a pleni­
tude of blissful individuals. Thus God is nothing else than
the idea or the essence of the absolute, blessed, heavenly
life, h^re comprised in an ideal personality. This is clearly
enough expressed in the belief that the blessed life is unity
with God. Here we are distinguished and separated from
God, there the partition falls; here we are men, there gods;
 THE CHRISTIAN H E A V E N . 173

here the Godhead is a monopoly, there it is a common

possession; here it is an abstract unity, there a concrete
multiplicity*
The only difficulty in the recognition of this is created by
the imagination, which, on the one hand by the conception
of the personality of God, on the other by the conception of
the many personalities which it places in a realm ordinarily
depicted in the hues of the senses, hides the real unity of
the idea. But in truth there is no distinction between the
absolute life which is conceived as God and the absolute life
which is conceived as heaven, save that in heaven we have
stretched into length and breadth what in God is concen­
trated in one point. The belief in the immortality of man is
the belief in the divinity of man, and the belief in God is
the belief in pure personality, released from all limits, and
consequently eo ipso immortal. The distinctions made
between the immortal soul and God are either sophistical
or imaginative; as when, for example, the bliss of the in­
habitants of heaven is again circumscribed by limits, and
distributed into degrees, in order to establish a distinction
between God and the dwellers in heaven.
The identity of the divine and heavenly personality is ap­
parent even in the popular proofs of immortality. If there
is not another and a better life, God is not just and good.
The justice and goodness of God are thus made dependent on
the perpetuity of individuals; but without justice and good­
ness God is not God ;^-the Godhead, the existence of God,
is therefore made dependent on the existence of individuals.
If I am not immortal, I believe in no G od; he who denies
immortality denies God. But that is impossible to me : as
surely as there is a God, so surely is there an immortality.
God is the certainty of my future felicity. The interest I
have in knowing that God is, is one with the interest I have
* “ Bene dicitur, quod tunc plene videbimus eum sicuti est, cum similes
ei erimus, h. e. erimus quod ipse est. Quibus enim potestas data est lilios
Dei fieri, data est potestas, non quidem ut sint Deus, sed sint tamen quod
Deus est: sintsancti, futuri plene beati, quod Deus est. Nec aliunde hie
sancti, nec ibi futuri beati, quam ex Deo qui eorum et sanctitas et beatitudo
est.”— De Vita solitaria (among the spurious writings of St. Bernard).
“ Finis autem bonse voluntatis beatitudo est: vita setema ipse Deus.”—
Augustin, (ap. Petrus Lomb. 1. ii. dist. 38, c. 1). “ The other man will be
renovated in the spiritual life, i. e., will become a spiritual man, when he
shall be restored into the image of God. For he will be like God, in life, in
righteousness, glory, and wisdom.”— Luther (Th. i. p. 324).
*74 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

in knowing that I am, that I am immortal. God is my

hidden, my assured existence ; he is the subjectivity of sub­
jects, the personality of persons. How then should that not
belong to persons which belongs to personality ? In God I
make my future into a present, or rather a verb into a sub­
stantive ; how should I separate the one from the other ?
God is the existence corresponding to my wishes and feel­
ings : he is the just one, the good, who fulfils my wishes.
Nature, this world, is an existence which contradicts my
wishes, my feelings. Here it is not as it ought to be ; this
world passes aw ay; but God is existence as it ought to be.
God fulfils my w is h e s —this is only a popular personifica­
tion of the position: God is the fulfiller, i.e., the reality, the
fulfilment of my wishes.* But heaven is the existence
adequate to my wishes, my longing thus there is no
distinction between God and heaven. God is the power by
which man realises his eternal happiness; God is the abso­
lute personality in which all individual persons have the
certainty of their blessedness and immortality; God is to
subjectivity the highest, last certainty of its absolute truth
and essentiality.
The doctrine of immortality is the final doctrine of reli­
gion; its testament, in which it declares its last wishes.
Here therefore it speaks out undisguisedly what it has
hitherto suppressed. If elsewhere the religious soul con­
cerns itself with the existence of another being, here it openly
considers ouly its own existence; if elsewhere in religion
man makes his existence dependent on the existence of God,
he here makes the reality of God dependent on his own
reality; and thus what elsewhere is a primitive, immediate
truth to him, is here a derivative, secondary truth : if I am
not immortal, God is not G od; if there is no immortality,
there is no God;— a conclusion already drawn by the Apostle
Paul. If we do not rise again, then Christ is not risen, and
all is vain. Let us eat and, drink. It is certainly possible
* “ Si bonum est habere corpus incorruptible, quare hoc facturum Deum
volumus dasperere ? ”— Augustinus (Opp. Antwerp, 1700, Th. v. p. 698).
t “ Quare dicitur spiritale corpus, nisi quia ad nutum spiritus serviet ?
Nihil tibi contradicet ex te, nihil in te rebellabit adversus te...........Ubi
volueris, eris. . . . . Credere enim debemus talia corpora nos habituros, ut
ubi velimus. quando voluerimus, ibi simus.”— Augustinus (1. c. pp. 703,705).
“ Nihil indecorum ibi erit, summa pax erit, nihil discordans, nihil mons-
'truosum, nihil quod offendat adspectum ” (L c. 707)., “ Nisi beatus, non
vivit ut vult.” (De Civ. Dei, 1. 14, c. 25.)
 THE CHRISTIAN H E A V E N . *75
to do away with what is apparently or really objectionable
in the popular argumentation, by avoiding the inferential
form ; but this can only be done by making immortality an
analytic instead of a synthetic truth, so as to show that the
very idea of God as absolute personality or subjectivity is
per se the idea of immortality. God is the guarantee of my
future existence, because he is already the certainty and
reality of my present existence, my salvation, my trust, my
shield from the forces of the external world ; hence I need
not expressly deduce immortality, or prove it as a separate
truth, for if I have God, I have immortality also. Thus it
was with the more profound Christian mystics ; to them
the idea of immortality was involved in the idea of Gocl ;
God was their immortal life,— God himself their subjective
blessedness : he was for them, for their consciousness, what
he is in himself, that is, in the essence of religion.
Thus it is shown that God is heaven ; that the two are
identical. It would have been easier to prove the converse,
namely, that heaven is the true God of men. As man con­
ceives his heaven, so he conceives his God ; the content of
his idea of heaven is the content of his idea of God, only
that what in God is a mere sketch, a concept, is in heaven.
depicted and developed in the colours and forms of the
senses. Heaven is therefore the key to the deepest mysteries
of religion. As heaven is objectively the displayed nature
of God, so subjectively it is the most candid declaration of
the inmost thoughts and dispositions of religion. For this
reason, religions are as various as are the kingdoms of heaven,
and there are as many different kingdoms of heaven as there
are characteristic differences among men. The Christians
themselves have very heterogeneous conceptions of heaven.*
The more judicious among them, however, think and say
nothing definite about heaven or the future world in general,
on the ground that it is inconceivable, that it can only be
thought of by us according to the standard of this world, a
standard not applicable to the other. A ll conceptions of
heaven here below are, .they allege, mere images, whereby
* And their conceptions of God are just as heterogeneous. The pious
Germans have a German God, the pious Spaniards a Spanish God, the
French a French God. The French actually have the proverb : “ Le bon
D ieu est Français.” In fact, polytheism must exist so long as there are
various nations. The real God of a people is the point d'lumneur of its
nationality. „
 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

man represents to himself that future, the nature of which

is unknown to him, but the existence of which is certain.
It is just so with God. The existence of God, it is said, is
certain; but what he is, or how- he exists, is inscrutable.
But he who speaks thus has already driven the future world
out of his head; he still holds it fa3t, either because he does
not think at all about such matters, or because it is still a
want of his heart; but, preoccupied with real things, he
thrusts it as far as possible out of his sight; he denies with
his head what he affirms with his heart; for it is to deny
the future life, to deprive it of the qualities by which alone
it is a real and effective object for man. Quality is not
distinct from existence; quality is nothing but real exist­
ence. Existence without quality is a chimera, a spectre.
Existence is first made known to me by quality; not exist­
ence first, and after that quality. The doctrines that God
is not to be known or defined, and that the nature of the
future life is inscrutable, are therefore not originally re­
ligious doctrines; on the contrary, they are the products
of irreligion while still in bondage to religion, or rather
hiding itself behind religion; and they are so for this reason,
•that originally the existence of God is posited only with a
definite conception of God, the existence of a future life
only with a definite conception of that life. Thus to the
Christian, only his own paradise, the paradise which has
Christian qualities, is a certainty, not the paradise of the
Mahometan or the Elysium of the Greeks. The primary
certainty is everywhere quality; existence follows of course
when once quality is certain. In the New Testament we
find no proofs or general propositions such a s: there is a
God, there is a heavenly life; we find only qualities of the
heavenly life adduced;— “ in heaven they marry not.”
Naturally;— it may be answered,— because the existence of
God and of heaven is presupposed. But here reflection in­
troduces a distinction of which the religious sentiment
knows nothing. Doubtless the existence is presupposed,
but only because the quality is itself existence, because the
inviolate religious feeling lives only in the quality, just as
to the natural man the real existence, the thing in itself, lies
only in the quality which he perceives. Thus in the pas­
sage above cited from the New Testament, the virgin or
rather sexless life is presupposed as the true life, which,
 THE CHRISTIAN H E A V E N . 177

however, necessarily becomes a future one, because the actual

life contradicts the ideal of the true life. But the certainty
of this future life lies only in the certainty of its qualities,
as those of the true, highest life, adequate to the ideal.
Where the future life is really believed in, where it is a
certain life, there, precisely because it is certain, it is also
definite. If I know not now what and how I shall b e; if
there is an essential, absolute difference between my future,
and my present; neither shall I then know what and how
I was before, the unity of consciousness is at an end, per­
sonal identity is abolished, another being will appear in my
place; and thus my future existence is not in fact distin­
guished from non-existence. If, on the other hand, there
is no essential difference, the future is to me an object that
may be defined and known. And so it is in reality. I am
the abiding subject under changing conditions; I am the
substance which connects the present and the future into a
unity. How then can the future be obscure to me ? On
the contrary, the life of this world is the dark, incompre­
hensible life, which only becomes clear through the future
li f e ; here I am in disguise; there the mask will fa ll; there
I shall be as I am in truth. Hence the position that there
indeed is another, a heavenly life, but that what and how it
is must here remain inscrutable, is only an invention of re­
ligious scepticism, which, being entirely alien to the religious
sentiment, proceeds upon a total misconception of religion.
That which irreligious-religious reflection converts into a
known image of an unknown yet certain thing, is origi­
nally, in the primitive, true sense of religion, not an image,
but the thing itself. Unbelief, in the garb of belief, doubts
the existence of the thing, but it is too shallow or cowardly
directly to call it in question; it only expresses doubt of
the image or conception, i.e., declares the image to be only
an image. But the untruth and hollowness of this scepti­
cism has been already made evident historically. Where
it is once doubted that the images of immortality are real,
that it is possible to exist as faith conceives, for example,
without a material, real body, and without difference of
s e x ; there the future existence in general is soon a matter
of doubt. With the image falls the thing, simply because
the image is the thing itself.
The belief in heaven, or in a future life in general, rests
178 TH E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

on a mental judgment. It expresses praise and blame; it

selects a wreath from the flora of this world, and this
critical florilegium is heaven. That which man thinks
beautiful, good, agreeable, is for him what alone ought to
b e ; that which he thinks bad, odious, disagreeable, is what
ought not to be; and hence, since it nevertheless exists, it is
condemned to destruction, it is regarded as a negation. Where
life is not in contradiction with a feeling, an imagination, an
idea, and where this feeling, this idea, is not held authorita­
tive and absolute, the belief in another and a heavenly life
does not arise. The future life is nothing else than life in
unison with the feeling, with the idea, which the present life
contradicts. The whole import of the future life is the aboli­
tion of this discordance, and the realisation of a state which
corresponds to the feelings, in which man is in unison with
himself. An unknown, unimagined future is a ridiculous
chimera: the other world is nothing more than the reality
of a known idea, the satisfaction of a conscious desire,
the fulfilment of a wish; * it is only the removal of limits
which here oppose themselves to the realisation of the idea.
Where would be the consolation, where the significance of
a future life, if it were midnight darkness to me ? N o!
from yonder world there streams upon me with the splen­
dour of virgin gold what here shines only with the dimness
of unrefined ore. The future world has no other signifi­
cance, no other basis of its existence, than the separation
of the metal from the admixture of foreign elements, the
separation of the good from the bad, of the pleasant from
the unpleasant, of the praiseworthy from the blamable.
The future world is the bridal in which man concludes
his union with his beloved. Long has he loved his bride,
long has he yearned after her; but external relations, hard
reality, have stood in the way of his union to her. When
the wedding takes place, his beloved one does not become
a different being; else how could he so ardently long for
her ? She only becomes his own; from an object of yearn­
ing and affectionate desire she becomes an object of actual
possession. It is true that here below, the other world is

* “ Ibi nostra spes erit res.”— Augustin. “ Therefore we have the first
fruits of immortal life in hope, until perfection comes at the last day, where­
in we shall see and feel the life we have believed in and hoped for.”—
Luther (Th. i. s. 459).
 THE CHRISTIAN H EA V EN . 179
only an image, a conception ; still it is not the image of a
remote, unknown thing, but a portrait of that which man
loves and prefers before all else. What man loves is his
soul. The heathens enclosed the ashes of the beloved dead
in an um ; with the Christian the heavenly future is the
mausoleum in which he enshrines his soul.
In order to comprehend a particular faith, or religion in
general, it is necessary to consider religion in its rudimentary
stages, in its lowest, rudest condition. Religion must not
only be traced in an ascending line, but surveyed in the
entire course of its existence. It is requisite to regard the
various earlier religions as present in the absolute religion,
and not as left behind it in the past, in order correctly to
appreciate and comprehend the absolute religion as well as
the others. The most frightful “ aberrations,” the wildest
excesses of the religious consciousness, often afford the
profoundest insight into the mysteries of the absolute
religion. Ideas, seemingly the rudest, are often only the
most childlike, innocent, and true. This observation applies
to the conceptions of a future life. The “ savage,” whose
consciousness does not extend beyond his own country,
whose entire being is a growth of its soil, takes his country
w ith him into the other world, either leaving Nature as it
is, or improving it, and so overcoming in the idea of the
other life the difficulties he experiences in this.* In this
limitation of uncultivated tribes there is a striking trait.
W ith them the future expresses nothing el£e than home­
sickness. Death separates man from his kindred, from his
people, from his country. But the man who has not extended
his consciousness, cannot endure this separation ; he must
come back again to his native land. The negroes in the
W est Indies killed themselves that they might come to life
again in their fatherland. And, according to Ossian’s
conception, “ the spirits of those who die in a strange land
float back towards their birthplace.” f This limitation is
th e direct opposite of imaginative spiritualism, which makes
* According to old books of travel, however, there are many tribes which
do not believe that the future is identical with the present, or that it is
better, but that it is even worse. Parny (Œuv. Chois, t. i. Melang. ) tells
of a dying negro-slave who refused the inauguration to immortality by
baptism in these words: “ Je ne veux point d’une autre vie, car peut-être y
serais-je encore votre esclave.”
+ Ahlwardt (Ossian Anm. zu Carthonn.).
i8o THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

man a vagabond, who, indifferent even to the earth, roams

from star to star; and certainly there lies a real truth at
its foundation. Man is what he is through Nature, however
much may belong to his spontaneity; for even his spon­
taneity has its foundation in Nature, of which his particular
character is only an expression. Be thankful to Nature!
Man cannot be separated from it. The German, whose God
is spontaneity, owes his character to Nature just as much
as the Oriental. To find fault with Indian art, with Indian
religion and philosophy, is to find fault With Indian Nature.
You complain of the reviewer who tears a passage in your
works from the context that he may hand it over to ridicule.
Why are you yourself guilty of that which you blame in
others ? Why do you tear the Indian religion from its
connection, in which it is just as reasonable as your absolute
religion ?
Faith in a future world, in a life after death, is therefore
with “ savage ” tribes essentially nothing more than direct
faith in the present life— immediate unbroken faith in this
life. For them, their actual life, even with its local limita­
tions, has all, has absolute value; they cannot abstract from
it, they cannot conceive its being broken off; i.e., they be­
lieve directly in the infinitude, the perpetuity of this life.
Only when the belief in immortality becomes a critical
belief, when a distinction is made between what is to be left
behind here, and what is in reserve there, between what here
passes away, and what there is to abide, does the belief in
life after death form itself into the belief in another life; but
this criticism, this distinction, is applied to the present life
also. Thus the Christians distinguish between the natural
and the Christian life, the sensual or worldly and the spiritual
or holy life. The heavenly life is no other than that which
is, already here below, distinguished from the merely natural
life, though still tainted with it. That which the Christian
excludes from himself now— for example, the sexual life—
is excluded from the future: the only distinction is, that he
is there free from that which he here wishes to be free from,
and seeks to rid himself of by the will, by devotion, and by
bodily mortification. Hence this life is, for the Christian, a
life of torment and pain, because he is here still beset by a
hostile power, and has to struggle with the lusts of the flesh
and the assaults of the devil.
 THE CHRISTIAN HEA VEN.

The faith of cultured nations is therefore distinguished

from that of the uncultured in the same way that culture in
general is distinguished from inculture: namely, that the
faith of culture is a discriminating, critical, abstract faith.
A distinction implies a judgment; but where there is a
judgment there arises the distinction between positive and
negative. The faith of savage tribes is a faith without a
judgment. Culture,on the contrary,judges: to the cultured
man only cultured life is the true life; to the Christian only
the Christian life. The rude child of Nature steps into the
other life just as he is, without ceremony: the other world
is his natural nakedness. The cultivated man, on the con­
trary, objects to the idea of such an unbridled life after
death, because even here he objects to the unrestricted life
of Nature. Faith in a future life is therefore only faith in
the true life of the present; the essential elements of this
life are also the essential elements of the other: accordingly,
faith in a future life is not faith in another unknown life;
but in the truth and infinitude, and consequently in the per­
petuity, of that life which already here below is regarded as
the authentic life.

As God is nothing else than the nature of man purified

from that which to the human individual appears, whether
in feeling or thought, a limitation, an evil; so the future life
is nothing else than the present life freed from that which
appears a limitation or an evil. The more definitely and
profoundly the individual is conscious of the limit as a limit,
of the evil as an evil, the more definite and profound is his
conviction of the future life, where these limits disappear.
The future life is the feeling, the conception of freedom from
those limits which here circumscribe the feeling of self, the
existence of the individual. The only difference between the
course of religion and that of the natural or rational man is,
that the end which the latter arrives at by a straight line,
the former only attains by describing a curved line— a circle.
The natural man remains at home because he finds it agree­
able, because he is perfectly satisfied; religion which com­
mences with a discontent, a disunion, forsakes its home and
travels far, but only to feel the more vividly in the distance
the happiness of home. In religion man separates himself
from himself, but only to return always to the same point
 182 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

from which he set out. Man negatives himself, but only to

posit himself again, and that in a glorified form: he nega­
tives this life, but only, in the end, to posit it again in the
future life.* The future life is this life once lost, but found
again, and radiant with all the more brightness for the joy of
recovery. The religious man renounces the joys of this world,
but only that he may win in return the joys of heaven; or
rather he renounces them because he is already in the ideal
possession of heavenly jo ys; and the joys of heaven are the
same as those of earth, only that they are freed from the
limits and contrarieties of this life. Religion thus arrives,
though by a circuit, at the very goal, the goal of joy, towards
which the natural man hastens in a direct line. To live in
images or symbols is the essence of religion. Religion sac­
rifices the thing itself to the image. The future life is the
present in the mirror of the imagination: the enrapturing
image is in the sense of religion the true type of earthly
life,— real life only a glimmer of that ideal, imaginary life.
The future life is the present embellished, contemplated
through the imagination, purified from all gross matter;
or, positively expressed, it is the beauteous present inten­
sified.
Embellishment, emendation, presupposes blame, dissatis­
faction. But the dissatisfaction is only superficiaL I do
not deny the thing to be of value; just as it is, however, it
does not please m e; I deny only the modification, not the
substance, otherwise I should urge annihilation. A house
which absolutely displeases me I cause to be pulled down,
not to be embellished. To the believer in a future life
joy is agreeable— who can fail to be conscious that joy
is something positive ?— but it is disagreeable to him
that here joy is followed by opposite sensations, that it
is transitory. Hence he places joy in the future life also,
but as eternal, uninterrupted, divine joy (and the future
life is therefore called the world of joy), such as he here
conceives it in God; *for God is nothing but eternal, unin­
terrupted joy, posited as a subject. Individuality or per-
* There everything will be restored. “ Qui modo vivit, erit, nec me vel
dente, vel ungue fraudatum revomet patefacti fossa sepulchri.”— Aurelius
Prud. (Apotheos. de Resurr. Camis Hum.). And this faith, which you con­
sider rude and carnal, and which you therefore disavow, is the only consis­
tent, honest, and true faith. To the identity of the person belongs the
identity of the body.
 THE CHRISTIAN HEA VEN. 183

sonality is agreeable to him, but only as unencumbered by

objective forces ; hence, he includes individuality also, but
pure, absolutely subjective individuality. Light pleases him;
but not gravitation, because this appears a limitation of the
individual; not night, because in it man is subjected to
Nature: in the other world, there is light, but no weight,
no night,— pure, unobstructed light.*
As man in his utmost remoteness from himself, in God,
always returns upon himself, always revolves round him­
self ; so in his utmost remoteness from the world, he always
at last comes back to it. The more extra- and supra-human
God appears at the commencement, the more human does
he show himself to be in the subsequent course of things,
or at the close: and just so, the more supernatural the
heavenly life looks in the beginning or at a distance, the
more clearly does it, in the end or when viewed closely,
exhibit its identity with the natural life,— an identity
which at last extends even to the flesh, even to the body.
In the first instance the mind is occupied with the sepa­
ration of the soul from the body, as in the conception
of God the mind is first occupied with the separation of
the essence from the individual;— the individual dies a
spiritual death, the dead body which remains behind is the
human individual; the soul which has departed from it is
God. But the separation of the soul from the body, of the
essence from the individual, of God from man, must be
abolished again. Every separation of beings essentially
allied is painful. The soul yearns after its lost half, after
its body; as God, the departed soul yearns after the real
man. As, therefore, God becomes a man again, so the soul
returns to its body, and the perfect identity of this world
and the other is now restored. It is true that this new
body is a bright, glorified, miraculous body, but— and this is
the main point— it is another and yet the same body,"f* as
God is another being than man, and yet the same. Here
we come again to the idea of miracle, which unites contra­
dictories. The supernatural body is a body constructed by

* “ Neque enim post resurrectionem tempus diebus ac noctibus numera-

bitur. Erit magis una dies sine vespere.”— Joh. Damascen. (Orth. Fidei
1. iL c. 1).
t “ Ipsum (corpus) erit et non ipsum erit.”— Augustinus (v. J. Ch. Doe-
derlein, Inst. Theol. Christ. Altorf, 1781, § 280).
184 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY .

the imagination, for which very reason it is adequate to the

feelings of man: an unburdensome, purely subjective body.
Faith in the future life is nothing else than faith in the
truth of the imagination, as faith in God is faith in the
truth and infinity of human feeling. O r: as faith in God
is only faith in the abstract nature of man, so faith in the
heavenly life is only faith in the abstract earthly life.
But the sum of the future life is happiness, the everlast­
ing bliss of personality, which is here limited and circum­
scribed by Nature. Faith in the future life is therefore
faith in the freedom of subjectivity from the limits of
Nature; it is faith in the eternity and infinitude of person­
ality, and not of personality viewed in relation to the idea
of the species, in which it for ever unfolds itself in new
individuals, but of personality as belonging to already
existing individuals: consequently, it is the faith of man
in himself. But faith in the kingdom of heaven is one
with faith in God— the content of both ideas is the same;
God is pure absolute subjectivity released from all natural
limits; he is what individuals ought to be and will b e : faith
in God is therefore the faith of man in the infinitude and
truth of his own nature; the Divine Being is the subjective
human being in his absolute freedom and unlimitedness.
Our most essential task is now fulfilled. We have reduced
the supermundane, supernatural, and superhuman nature
of God to the elements of human nature as its fundamental
elements. Our process of analysis has brought us again
to the position with which we set out. The beginning,
middle and end of religion is M a n .
 PART II.

T H E F A L S E OR TH E O LO G ICAL E SSE N C E
O F R E L IG IO N

CHAPTER X IX .

THE ESSENTIAL STANDPOINT OF RELIGION.

T h e essential standpoint of religion is the practical or sub­

jective. The end of religion is the welfare, the salvation,
the ultimate felicity of man; the relation of man to God is
nothing else than his relation to his own spiritual good;
God is the realised salvation of the soul, or the unlimited
power of effecting the salvation, the bliss of man* The
Christian religion is specially distinguished from other
religions in this,— that no other has given equal prominence
to the salvation of man. But this salvation is not temporal
earthly prosperity and well-being. On the contrary, the
most genuine Christians have declared that earthly good
draws man away from God, whereas adversity, suffering,
afflictions lead him back to God, and hence are alone
suited to Christians. Why ? Because in trouble man is
only practically or subjectively disposed; in trouble he has
resource only to the one thing needful; in trouble God is
felt to be a want of man. Pleasure, joy, expands man;
trouble, suffering, contracts and concentrates him; in suffer­
in g man denies the reality of the world; the things that
* “ Prater salutem tuam nihil cogites; solum quae Dei sunt cures.”—
Thomas k K. (de Imit. L i. c. 23). “ Contra salutem proprium cogites nihil.
Minus dixi: contra, prater dixisse debueram.”— Bemhardus (de Consid. ad
Eogenium Pontif. Max. 1. ii.). “ Qui Deum quaerit, de propria salute solH-
citus est.”— Clemens Alex. (Cohort ad Gent.).
186 TH E ESSEN CE OF CHRISTIANITY.

charm the imagination of the artist and the intellect of

the thinker lose their attraction for him, their power over
him; he is absorbed in himself, in his own soul. The soul
thus self-absorbed, self-concentrated, seeking satisfaction in
itself alone, denying the world, idealistic in relation to the
world, to Nature in general, but realistic in relation to man,
caring only for its inherent need of salvation,— this soul is
God. God, as the object of religion,— and only as such is
he God,— God in the sense of a nomen proprium, not of a
vague, metaphysical entity, is essentially an object only of
religion, not of philosophy,— of feeling, not of the intellect,
— of the heart’s necessity, not of the mind’s freedom: in
short, an object which is the reflex not of the theoretical
but of the practical tendency in man.
Religion annexes to its doctrines a curse and a blessing,
damnation and salvation. Blessed is he that believeth,
cursed is he that believeth not. Thus it appeals not to
reason, but to feeling, to the desire of happiness, to the
passions of hope and fear. It does not take the theoretic
point of view ; otherwise it must have been free to enunciate
its doctrines without attaching to them practical conse­
quences, without to a certain extent compelling belief in
them; for when the case stands thus : I am lost if I do not
believe,— the conscience is under a subtle kind of constraint;
the fear of hell urges me to believe. Even supposing my
belief to be in its origin free, fear inevitably intermingles
itself; my conscience is always under constraint; doubt,
the principle of theoretic freedom, appears to me a crime.
And as in religion the highest idea, the highest existence is
God, so the highest crime is doubt in God, or the doubt that
God exists. But that which I do not trust myself to doubt,
which I cannot doubt without feeling disturbed in my soul,
without incurring guilt; that is no matter of theory, but a
matter of conscience, no being of the intellect, but of the
heart.
Now as the sole standpoint of religion is the practical or
subjective standpoint, as therefore to religion the whole, the
essential man is that part of his nature which is practical,
which forms resolutions, which acts in-accordance with con­
scious aims, whether physical or moral, and which considers
the world not in itself, but only in relation to those aims or
wants: the consequence is that everything which lies behind
 T H E ES SEN TIA L STANDPOINT OF RELIGION. 187

the practical consciousness, but which is the essential object

of theory— theory in its most original and general sense,
namely, that of objective contemplation and experience, of
the intellect, of science * — is regarded by religion as lying
outside man and Nature, in a special, personal being. A ll
good, but especially such as takes possession of man apart
from his volition, such as does not correspond with any
resolution or purpose, such as transcends the limits of the
practical consciousness, comes from God; all wickedness,
evil, but especially such as overtakes him against his will
in the midst of his best moral resolutions, or hurries him
along with terrible violence, comes from the devil. The
scientific knowledge of the essence of religion includes the
knowledge of the devil, of Satan, of demons.f These things
cannot be omitted without a violent mutilation of religion.
Grace and its works are the antitheses of the devil and his
works. As the involuntary, sensual impulses which flash
out from the depths of the nature, and, in general, all those
phenomena of moral and physical evil which are inexplicable
to religion, appear to it as the work of the Evil Being; so
the involuntary movements of inspiration and ecstasy appear
to it as the work of the Good Being, God, of the Holy Spirit
or of grace. Hence the arbitrariness of grace— the com­
plaint of the pious that grace at one time visits and blesses
them, at another forsakes and rejects them. The life, the
agency of grace, is the life, the agency of emotion. Emotion
is the Paraclete of Christians. The moments which are for­
saken by divine grace are the moments destitute of emotion
and inspiration.
In relation to the inner life, grace may be defined as
religious genius; in relation to the outer life as religious
chance. Man is good or wicked by no means through him­
self, his own power, his will; but through that complete
synthesis of hidden and evident determinations of things

* Here and in other parts of this work, theory is taken in the sense in
which it is the-source of true objective activity,— the science which gives
birth to art,— for man can do only so much as he knows: “ tantum potest
quantum scit.”
+ Concerning the biblical conceptions of Satan, his power and works, see
Liitzelberger’s “ Grundziige der Paulinischen Glaubenslehre,” and G. Ch.
Knapp’s “ Vorles. iiber d. Christl. Glaubensl.,” § 62-65. To this subject
belongs demoniacal possession, which also has its attestation in the Bible.
See Knapp (§ 65, iii. 2, 3).
188 TH E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

which, because they rest on no evident necessity, we ascribe

to the power of “ chance.” Divine grace is the power of
chance beclouded with additional mystery. Here we have
again the confirmation of that which we have seen to be the
essential law of religion. Religion denies, repudiates chance,
making everything dependent on God, explaining everything
by means of him; but this denial is only apparent; it merely
gives chance the name of the divine sovereignty. For the
divine will, which, on incomprehensible grounds, for in ­
comprehensible reasons, that is, speaking plainly, out of
groundless, absolute arbitrariness, out of divine caprice, as
it were, determines or predestines some to evil and misery,
others to good and happiness, has not a single positive
characteristic to distinguish it from the power of chance.
The mystery of the election of grace is thus the mystery of
chance. I say the mystery of chance ; for in reality chance
is a mystery, although slurred over and ignored by our
speculative religious philosophy, which, as in its occupation
with the illusory mysteries of the Absolute Being, i.e., of
theology, it has overlooked the true mysteries of thought
and life, so also in the mystery of divine grace or freedom
of election, has forgotten the profane mystery of chance.*
But to return. The devil is the negative, the evil, that
springs from the nature, but not from the w ill; God is the
positive, the good, which comes from the nature, but not
from the conscious action of the will; the devil is involuntary,
inexplicable wickedness; God involuntary, inexplicable good­
ness. The source of both is the same, the quality only is
different or opposite. For this reason, the belief in a devil
was, until the most recent times, intimately connected with
the belief in God, so that the denial of the devil was held to
be virtually as atheistic as the denial of God. Nor without
reason; for when men once begin to derive the phenomena
of evil from natural causes, they at the same time begin to
derive the phenomena of good, of the divine, from the nature
of things, and come at length either to abolish the idea of
God altogether, or at least to believe in another God than
the God of religion. In this case it most commonly happens

* Doubtless, this unveiling of the mystery of predestination will be pro­

nounced atrocious, impious, diabolical. I have nothing to allege against
this; I would rather be a devil in alliance with truth, than an angel in
alliance with falsehood.
 T H E ESSEN TIA L STANDPOINT OF RELIGION. 189

that they make the Deity an idle inactive being, whose

existence is equivalent to non-existence, since he no longer
actively interposes in life, but is merely placed at the summit
of things, at the beginning of the world, as the First Cause.
God created the world : this is all that is here retained of
God. The past tense is necessary; for since that epoch the
world pursues its course like a machine. The addition: He
still creates, he is creating at this moment, is only the result
of external reflection; the past tense adequately expresses
the religious idea in this stage; for the spirit of religion is
gone yrhen the operation of God is reduced to a fecit or
creavit. It is otherwise when the genuine religious con­
sciousness says: The fecit is still to-day a facit. This,
though here also it is a product of reflection, has neverthe­
less a legitimate meaning, because by the religious spirit
God is really thought of as active.
Religion is abolished where the idea of the world, of so-
called second causes, intrudes itself between God and man.
Here a foreign element, the principle of intellectual culture,
has insinuated itself, peace is broken, the harmony of reli­
gion, which lies only in the immediate connection of man
with God, is destroyed. Second causes are a capitulation
of the unbelieving intellect with the still believing heart.
It is true that, according to religion also, God works on man
by means of other things and beings. But God alone is
the cause, he alone is the active and efficient being. What
a fellow-creature does is in the view of religion done not
by him, but by God. The othgr is only an appearance, a
medium, a vehicle, not a cause. But the “ second cause ” is
a miserable anomaly, neither an independent nor a dependent
being: God, it is true, gives the first impulse, but then ensues
the spontaneous activity of the second cause.*
Religion of* itself, unadulterated by foreign elements,
knows nothing of the existence of second causes; on the
contrary, they are a stone of stumbling to it; for the realm
of second causes, the sensible world, Nature, is precisely

* A kindred doctrine is that of the Concursus Dei, according to which,

God not only gives the first impulse, but also co-operates in the agency of
the second cause. For the rest, this doctrine is only a particular form of
the contradictory dualism between God and Nature, which runs through
the history of Christianity. On the subject of this remark, as of the whole
paragraph, see Strauss: Die Chrietliche Glaubenslehre, B. ii. § 75, 76.
190 TH E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

what separates man from God, although God as a real God,

i.e., an external being, is supposed himself to become in the
other world a sensible existence.* Hence religion believes
that one day this wall of separation will fall away. One
day there will be no Nature, no matter, no body, at least
none such as to separate man from God: then there will be
only God and the pious soul. Religion derives the idea of
the existence of second causes, that is, of things which are
interposed between God and man, only from the physical,
natural, and hence the irreligious or at least non-religious
theory of the universe: a theory which it nevertheless
immediately subverts by making the operations of Nature
operations of God. But this religious idea is in contradic­
tion with the natural sense and understanding, which con­
cedes a real, spontaneous activity to natural things. A nd
this contradiction of the physical view with the religious
theory, religion resolves by converting the undeniable ac­
tivity of things into an activity of God. Thus, on this view,
the positive idea is God; the negative, the world.
On the contrary, where second causes, having been set in
motion, are, so to speak, emancipated, the converse occurs;
Nature is the positive, God a negative idea. The world is
independent in its existence, its persistence; only as to its
commencement is it dependent. God is here only a hypo­
thetical Being, an inference, arising from the necessity of
a limited understanding, to which the existence of a world
viewed by it as a machine is inexplicable without a self-
moving principle;— he is no longer an original, absolutely
necessary Being. God exists not for his own sake, but for

* “ Dum sumus in hoc corpora, peregrinamur ab eo qui summe es t”—

Bernard. Epist. 18 (ed. Basle, 1552). “ As long as we live, we are in the
midst of death.”— Luther (Th. i p. 331). The idea of the future life is
therefore nothing else than the idea of true, perfected réligion, freed from
the limits and obstructions of this life,— the future life, as has been already
said, nothing but the true opinion and disposition, the open heart, of reli­
gion. Here we believe— tnere we behold; i.e., there there is nothing
besides God, and thus nothing between God and the soul; but only for
this reason, that there ought to be nothing between them, because the
immediate union of God and the soul is the true opinion and desire of
religion. “ We have as yet so to do with God as with one hidden from us,
and it is not possible that in this life we should hold communion with him
face to face. All creatures are now nothing else than vain masks, under
which God conceals himself, and by which he deals with us.”— Luther (Th.
xi. p. 70). “ If thou wert only free from the images of created things, thou
mightest have God without intermission.”— Tauler (1. c. p. 313).
 T H E ESS EN TIA L STANDPOINT OF RELIGION. 191

the sake of the world,— merely that he may, as a First

Cause, explain the existence of the world. The narrow
rationalising man takes objection to the original self-subsis­
tence of the world, because he looks at it only from the sub­
jective, practical point of view, only in its commoner aspect,
only as a piece of mechanism, not in its majesty and glory,
not as the Cosmos. He conceives the world as having been
launched into existence by an original impetus, as, according
to mathematical theory, is the case with matter once set
in motion and thenceforth going on for ever: that is, he
postulates a mechanical origin. A machine must have a
beginning; this is involved in its very idea; for it has not
the source of motion in itself.
A ll religious speculative cosmogony is tautology, as is
apparent from this example. In cosmogony man declares
or realises the idea he has of the world; he merely repeats
what he has already said in another form. Thus here, if
the world is a machine, it is self-evident that it did not
make itself, that, on the contrary, it was created, i.e., had a
mechanical origin. Herein, it is true, the religious con­
sciousness agrees with the mechanical theory, that to it
also the world is a mere fabric, a product of Will. But
they agree only for an instant, only in the moment of crea­
tion ; that moment past, the harmony ceases. The holder
of the mechanical theory needs God only as the creator of
the world; once made, the world turns its back on the
Creator, and rejoices in its godless self-subsistence. But
religion creates the world only to maintain it in the per­
petual consciousness of its nothingness, its dependence on
G od * To the mechanical theorist, the creation is the
last thin thread which yet ties him to religion; the religion
to which the nothingness of the world is a present truth
(for all power and activity is to it the power and activity
of God), is with him only a surviving reminiscence of youth ;
hence he removes the creation of the world, the act of
religion, the non-existence of the world (for in the begin­
ning, before the creation, there was no world, only God),

* “ Voluntate igitur Dei immobilis manet et stat in seculum terra . . .

et voluntate Dei movetur et nutat. Non ergo fundamentis suis nixa sub-
sistit, nec fulcris suis stabilis perseverat, sed Dominus statuit earn et firma-
mento voluntatis suae continet, quia in manu ejus omnes fines terra.”—
Ambrosius (Hexaemeron. L i. c. 61).
192 TH E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

into the far distance, into the past, while the self-subsistence
of the world, which absorbs all his senses and endeavours,
acts on him with the force of the present. The mechanical
theorist interrupts 'and cuts short the activity of God by
the activity of the world. With him God has indeed still
an historical right, but this is in contradiction with the
right he awards to Nature; hence he limits as much as
possible the right yet remaining to God, in order to gain
wider and freer play for his natural causes, and thereby for
his understanding.
With this class of thinkers the creation holds the same
position as miracles, which also they can and actually do
acquiesce in, because miracles exist, at least according to
religious opinion. But not to say that he explains miracles
naturally, that is, mechanically, he can only digest them
when he relegates them to the past; for the present he begs
to be excused from believing in them, and explains every­
thing to himself charmingly on natural principles. When
a belief has departed from the reason, the intelligence, when
it is no longer held spontaneously, but merely because it is
a common belief, or because on some ground or other it
must be held; in short, when a belief is inwardly a past
one; then externally also the object of the belief is referred
to the past. Unbelief thus gets breathing space, but at the
same time concedes to belief at least an historical validity.
The past is here the fortunate means of compromise between
belief and unbelief: I certainly believe in miracles, but,
nota bene, in no miracles which happen now— only in those
which once happened, which, thank. God! are already plus
quam perfecta. So also with the creation. The creation is
an immediate act of God, a miracle, for there was once
nothing but God. In the idea of the creation man transcends
the world, he rises into abstraction from i t ; he conceives it
as non-existent in the moment of creation; thus he dispels
from his sight what stands between himself and God, the
sensible world; he places himself in immediate contact with
God. But the mechanical thinker shrinks from this im­
mediate contact with God; hence he at once makes the
prccsens, if indeed he soars so high, into a perfeclum ; he
interposes millenniums between his natural or materialistic
view and the thought of an immediate operation of God.
To the religious spirit, on the contrary, God alone is the
 THE ES S EN TIA L STANDPOIN T OF RELIGION. 193

cause of all positive effects, God alone the ultimate and also
the sole ground wherewith it answers, or rather repels, all
questions which theory puts forward; for the affirmative of
religion is virtually a negative; its answer amounts to
nothing, since it solves the most various questions always
with the same answer, making all the operations of Nature
immediate operations of God, of a designing, personal, extra­
natural or supranatural Being. God is the idea which sup­
plies the lack of theory. The idea of God is the explanation
of the inexplicable,— which explains nothing because it is
supposed to explain everything without distinction; he is
the night of theory, a night, however, in which everything
is clear to religious feeling, because in it the measure of
darkness, the discriminating light of the understanding,
is extinct; he is the ignorance which solves all doubt by
repressing it, which knows everything because it knows
nothing definite, because all things which impress the intel­
lect disappear before religion, lose their individuality, in the
eyes of divine power are nothing. Darkness is the mother
of religion.
The essential act of religion, that in which religion puts
into action what we have designated as its essence, is prayer.
Prayer is all-powerful. What the pious soul entreats for
in prayer God fulfils. But he prays not for spiritual gifts*
alone, which lie in some sort in the power of m an; he
prays also for things which lie out of him, which are in the
power of Nature, a power which it is the very object of
prayer to overcome; in prayer he lays hold on a super­
natural means, in order to attain ends in themselves natural.
God is to him not the causa remota but the causa próxima,
the immediate, efficient cause of all natural effects. A ll
so-called secondary forces and second causes are nothing
to him when he prays; if they were anything to him, the
might, the fervour of prayer would be annihilated. But in
fact they have no existence for him ; otherwise he would
assuredly seek to attain his end only by some intermediate
process. But he desires immediate help. He has recourse
to prayer in the certainty that he can do more, infinitely
more, by prayer, than by all the efforts of reason and all
the agencies of Nature,— in the conviction that prayer pos-
* It is only unbelief in the efficacy of prayer which has subtly limited
prayer to spiritual matters.
194 TH E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

sesses superhuman and supernatural powers.* But in

prayer he applies immediately to God. Thus God is to
him the immediate cause, the fulfilment of prayer, the
power which realises prayer. But an immediate act of God
is a miracle; hence miracle is essential to the religious
view. Religion explains eveiything miraculously. That
miracles do not always happen is indeed obvious, as that
man does not always pray. But the consideration that
miracles do not always happen lies outside the nature of
religion, in the empirical or physical mode of view only.
Where religion begins, there also begins miracle. Every true
prayer is a miracle, an act of the wonder-working power.
External miracles themselves only make visible internal
miracles, that is, they are only a manifestation in time and
space, and therefore as a special fact, of what in and by
itself is a fundamental position of religion, namely, that God
is, in general, the supernatural, immediate cause of all things.
The miracle of fact is only an impassioned expression of
religion, a moment of inspiration. Miracles happen only
in extraordinary crises, in which there is an exaltation of the
feelings: hence there are miracles of anger. No miracle is
wrought in cold blood. But it is precisely in moments of
passion that the latent nature reveals itself. Man does not
always pray with equal warmth and power. Such prayers
are therefore ineffective. Only ardent prayer reveals the
nature of prayer. Man truly prays when he regards prayer
as in itself a sacred power, a divine force. So it is with
miracles. Miracles happen— no matter whether few or
many— wherever there is, as a basis for them, a belief in
the miraculous. But the belief in miracle is no theoretic
or objective mode of viewing the world and Nature; miracle
realises practical wants, and that in contradiction with the
laws which are imperative to the reason; in miracle man
subjugates Nature, as in itself a nullity, to his own ends,
which he regards as a reality; miracle is the superlative
expression of spiritual or religious utilitarianism; in miracle
all things are at the service of necessitous man. It is clear
* According to the notion of barbarians, therefore, prayer is a coercive
power, a charm. But this conception is an unchristian one (although even
among many Christians the idea is accepted that prayer constrains God);
for in Christianity God is essentially feeling satisfied in itself, Almighty
goodness, which denies nothing to (religious) feeling. The idea of coercion
presupposes an unfeeling God.
 TH E ESS EN TIA L STANDPOINT OF RELIGION. 195

from this, that the conception of the world which is essential

to religion is that of the practical or subjective standpoint,
that Ged— for the miracle-working power is identical with
God— is a purely practical or subjective Being, serving,
however, as a substitute for a theoretic view, and is thus no
object of thought, of the knowing faculty, any more than
miracle, which owes its origin to the negation of thought.
I f I place myself in the point of view of thought, of investi­
gation, of theory, in which I consider things in themselves, in
their mutual relations, the miracle-working being vanishes
into nothing, miracle disappears ; i.e., the religious miracle,
which is absolutely different from the natural miracle,
though they are continually interchanged, in order to
stultify reason, and, under the appearance of natural science,
to introduce religious miracle into the sphere of rationality
and reality.
But for this very reason— namely, that religion is re­
moved from the standpoint, from the nature of theory—
the true, universal essence of Nature and humanity, which
as such is hidden from religion and is only visible to the
theoretic eye, is conceived as another, a miraculous and
supernatural essence; the idea of the species becomes the
idea of God, who again is himself an individual being, but
is distinguished from human individuals in this, that he
possesses their qualities according to the measure of the
species. Hence, in religion man necessarily places his
nature out of himself, regards his nature as a separate
nature; necessarily, because the nature which is the object
of theory lies outside of him, because all his conscious
existence spends itself in his practical subjectivity. God
is his alter ego, his other lost half; God is the complement
of himself; in God he is first a perfect man. God is a need
to him ; something is wanting to him without his knowing
what it is— God is this something wanting, indispensable
to him ; God belongs to his nature. The world is nothing
to religion,*— the world, which is in truth the sum of all
reality, is revealed in its glory only by theory. The joys of

* “ Nature enim remota providentia et potestate divina prorsus nihil est.”

— Lactantius (Div. Inst. lib. 3, c. 28). “ Omnia quse creata sunt, quamvis
ea Deus fecerit valde bona, Creator! tamen comparata, nec bona sunt, cui
comparata nec sunt; altissime quippe et proprio modo quodam de se ipso
d ix it : Ego sum, qui sum.”— Augustinus (de Perfectione Just. Horn. c. 14).
196 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

theory are the sweetest intellectual pleasures of life ; b u t

religion knows nothing of the joys of the thinker, of the
investigator of Nature, of the artist. The idea of the
universe is wanting to it, the consciousness of the really
infinite, the consciousness of the species. God only is its
compensation for the poverty of life, for the want of a sub­
stantial import, which the true life of rational contempla­
tion presents in unending fulness. God is to religion the
substitute for the lost world,— God is to it in the stead of
pure contemplation, the life of theory.
That which we have designated as the practical or sub­
jective view is not pure, it is tainted with egoism, for
therein I have relation to a thing only for my own sa k e;
neither is it self-sufficing, for it places me in relation to an
object above my own level. On the contrary, the theoretic
view is joyful, self-sufficing, happy; for here the object
calls forth love and admiration; in the light of the free
intelligence it is radiant as a diamond, transparent as a
rock-crystal. The theoretic view is aesthetic, whereas th e
practical is unsesthetic. Religion therefore finds in God a
compensation for the want of an aesthetic view. To th e
religious spirit the world is nothing in itself; the admira­
tion, the contemplation of it is idolatry; for the world is a
mere piece of mechanism* Hence in religion it is God
that serves as the object of pure, untainted, i.e., theoretic
or aesthetic contemplation. God is the existence to which
the religious man has an objective relation; in God the
object is contemplated by him for its own sake. God is an
end in himself; therefore in religion he has the significance
which in the theoretic view belongs to the object in general.
The general being of theory is to religion a special being.
It is true that in religion man, in his relation to God, has
relation to his own wants as well in a higher as in the lower
sense: “ Give us this day our daily bread; ” but God can
satisfy all wants of man only because he in himself has no
wants,— because he is perfect blessedness.
* “ Pulchras formas et varias, nitidos et amoenos colores amant oculi.
Non teneant hiec animam meam ; teneat earn Deus qui h®c fecit, bona qui-
dem valde, sed ipse est bonum meum, nonhsec.”— Augustinus (Confess. 1. x.
c. 34). “ Vetitiautem sumus (2 Cor. iv. 18.) converti ad ea qua videntur.
. . . Amandus igitur solus Deus est: omnis vero iste mundus, i.e. omnia
sensibilia contemnenda, utendum autem his ad hujus vitae necessitatem.”—
lb. de Moribus Eccl. Cathol. 1. i c. 20.
 CONTRADICTION IN THE EX ISTENCE OF GOD. 197

CHAPTEE XX.

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.

B e l i g io n is th e re la tio n o f m a n to h is ow n n a tu re ,— th e rein
l i e s i t s t r u th a n d i t s p o w e r o f m o ra l a m e lio r a t io n ;— b u t to
h i s n a tu r e n o t re c o g n ise d a s h is ow n, b u t re g a rd e d a s a n o th er
n a t u r e , se p a ra te , n a y , c o n tra d istin g u ish e d fro m h is o w n :
h e r e in lie s i t s u n tru th , i t s lim ita tio n , i t s co n tra d ic tio n to
r e a s o n a n d m o r a li t y ; h erein lie s th e n o x io u s so u rc e o f r e li­
g io u s fa n a tic ism , th e ch ie f m e ta p h y s ic a l p rin c ip le o f h u m a n
s a c r ific e s, in a w ord, th e prima materia o f a l l th e a tro c itie s,
a l l t h e h o rrib le sc e n e s, in th e t r a g e d y o f re lig io u s h isto ry .
The contemplation of the human nature as another, a
separately existent nature, is, however, in the original con­
ception of religion an involuntary, childlike, simple act of
the mind, that is, one which separates God and man just as
immediately as it again identifies them. But when religion
advances in years, and, with years, in understanding; when,
within the bosom of religion, reflection on religion is
awakened, and the consciousness of the identity of the
divine being with the human begins to dawn,— in a word,
when religion becomes theology, the originally involuntary
and harmless separation of God from man becomes an
intentional, excogitated separation, which has no other
object than to banish again from the consciousness this
identity which has already entered there.
Hence the nearer religion stands to its origin, the truer,
the more genuine it is, the less is its true nature disguised;
that is to say, in the origin of religion there is no qualitative
or essential distinction whatever between God and man.
A n d the religious man is not shocked at this identification;
for his understanding is still in harmony with his religion.
Thus in ancient Judaism, Jehovah was a being differing
from the human individual in nothing but in duration of
existence; in his qualities, his inherent nature, he was
entirely similar to man,— had the same passions, the same
human, nay, even corporeal properties. Only in the later
198 TH E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

Judaism was Jehovah separated in the strictest manner

from man, and recourse was had to allegory in order to
give to the old anthropomorphisms another sense than that
which they originally had. So again in Christianity : in
its earliest records the divinity of Christ is not so decidedly
stamped as it afterwards became. With Paul especially,
Christ is still an undefined being, hovering between heaven
and earth, between God and man, or in general, one amongst
the existences subordinate to the highest,— the first of the
angels, the first created, but still created ; begotten indeed
for our sake ; but then neither are angels and men created,
but begotten, for God is their Father also. The Church first
identified him with God, made him the exclusive Son of God,
defined his distinction from men and angels,,and thus gave
him the monopoly of an eternal, uncreated existence.
In the genesis of ideas, the first mode in which reflection
on religion, or theology, makes the divine being a distinct
being, and places him outside of man, is by making the
existence of God the object of a formal proof.
The proofs of the existence of God have been pronounced
contradictory to the essential nature of religion. They are
so, but only in their form as proofs. Religion immediately
represents thè inner nature of man as an objective, external
being. And the proof aims at nothing more than to prove
that religion is right. The most perfect being is that than
which no higher can be conceived : God is the highest that
man conceives or can conceive. This premiss of the onto­
logical proof— the most interesting proof, because it pro­
ceeds from within— expresses the inmost nature of religion.
That which is the highest for man, from which he can make
no further abstraction, which is the positive limit of his in­
tellect, of his feeling, of his sentiment, that is to him God—
id quo nihil majus cogitavi potest. But this highest being
would not be the highest if he did not exist ; we could then
conceive a higher being who would be superior to him in
the fact of existence ; the idea of the highest being directly
precludes this fiction. Not to exist is a deficiency ; to exist
is perfection, happiness, bliss. From a being to whom man
gives all, offers up all that is precious to him, he cannot
withhold the bliss of existence. The contradiction to the
religious spirit in the proof of the existence of God lies only
in this, that the existence is thought of separately, and
 CONTRADICTION IN THE EX ISTENC E OF GOD. 199

thence arises the appearance that God is a mere conception,

a being existing in idea only,— an appearance, however,
which is immediately dissipated; for the very result of the
proof is, that to God belongs an existence distinct from an
ideal one, an existence apart from man, apart from thought,
— a real self-existence.
The proof therefore is only thus far discordant with the
spirit of religion, that it presents as a formal deduction the
implicit enthymeme or immediate conclusion of religion,
exhibits in logical relation, and therefore distinguishes, what
religion immediately unites; for to religion God is not a
matter of abstract thought,— he is a present truth and reality.
But that every religion in its idea of God makes a latent, un­
conscious inference, is confessed in its polemic against other
religions. “ Ye heathens,” says the Jew or the Christian,
“ were able to conceive nothing higher as your deities
because ye were sunk in sinful desires. Your God rests on
a conclusion, the premisses of which are your sensual im­
pulses, your passions. You thought thus: the most excel­
lent life is to live out one’s impulses without restraint; and
because this life was the most excellent, the truest, you
made it your God. Your God was your carnal nature, your
heaven only a free theatre for the passions which, in society
and in the conditions of actual life generally, had to suffer
restraint.” But, naturally, in relation to itself no religion
is conscious of such an inference, for the highest of which
it is capable is its limit, has the force of necessity, is not a
thought, not a conception, but immediate reality.
The proofs of the existence of God have for their aim to
make the internal external, to separate it from man.* His
existence being proved, God is no longer a merely relative,
but a noumenal being {Bing an sich) : he is not only a
being for us, a being in our faith, our feeling, our nature,
he is a being in himself, a being external to us,— in a word,
not merely a belief, a feeling, a thought, but also a real exist­
ence apart from belief, feeling, ami thought. But such
an existence is no other than a sensational existence;
* At the same time, however, their result is to prove the nature of man.
The various proofs of the existence of God are nothing else than various
highly interesting forms in which the human nature affirms itself. Thus,
for example, the physico-theological proof (or proof from design) is the self-
affirmation of the calculated activity of the understanding. Every philo­
sophic system is, in this sense, a proof of the existence of God.
200 ’ T H E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

i.e.t an existence conceived according to the forms of our

senses.
The idea of sensational existence is indeed already in-
volved in the characteristic expression “ external to us." It
is true that a sophistical theology refuses to interpret the
word “ external ” in its proper, natural sense, and substitutes
the indefinite expression of independent, separate existence.
But if the externality is only figurative, the existence also is
figurative. And yet we are here only concerned with exist­
ence in the proper sense, and external existence is alone the
definite, real, unshrinking expression for separate existence.
Real, sensational existence is that which is not dependent
on my own mental spontaneity or activity, but by which I
am involuntarily affected, which is when I am not, when I
do not think of it or feel it. The existence of God must
therefore be in space— in general, a qualitative, sensational
existence. But God is not seen, not heard, not perceived
by the senses. He does not exist for me, if I do not exist
for him; if I do not believe in a God, there is no God for
me. If I am not devoutly disposed, if I do not raise myself
above the life of the senses, he has no place in my conscious­
ness. Thus he exists only in so far as he is felt, thought,
believed in ;— the addition “ for me ” is unnecessary. His
existence therefore is a real one, yet at the same time not
a real one;— a spiritual existence, says the theologian. But
spiritual existence is only an existence in thought, in feeling,
in belief; so that his existence is a medium between sensa­
tional existence and conceptional existence, a medium full of
contradiction. O r: he is a sensational existence, to which
however all the conditions of sensational existence are want­
ing consequently an existence at once sensational and not
sensational, an existence which contradicts the idea of the
sensational, or only a vague existence in general, which is
fundamentally a sensational one, but which, in order that
this may not become evident, is divested of all the predicates
of a real, sensational existence. But such an “ existence in
general” is self-contradictory. To existence belongs full,
definite reality.
A necessary consequence of this contradiction is Atheism.
The existence of God is essentially an empirical existence,
without having its distinctive marks; it is in itself a matter
of experience, and yet in reality no object of experience. I t
 CONTRADICTION IN THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 201

calls upon man to seek it in Reality: it impregnates his

mind with sensational conceptions and pretensions; hence,
when these are not fulfilled— when, on the contrary, he
finds experience in contradiction with these conceptions, he
is perfectly justified in denying that existence.
Kant is well known to have maintained, in his critique of
the proofs of the existence of God, that that existence is
not susceptible of proof from reason. He did not merit, on
this account, the blame which was cast on him by Hegel.
The idea of the existence of God in those proofs is a
thoroughly empirical one; but I capnot deduce empirical
existence from an d priori idea. rl]he only real ground
of blame against Kant is, that in laying down this position
he supposed it to be something remarkable, whereas it is
self-evident. Reason cannot constitute itself an object of
sense. I cannot, in thinking, at the same time represent
what I think as a sensible object, external to me. The
proof of the existence of God transcends the limits of
the reason; true; but in the same sense in which sight,
hearing, smelling transcend the limits of the reason. It is
absurd to reproach reason that it does not satisfy a demand
which can only address itself to the senses. Existence,
empirical existence, is proved to me by the senses alone;
and in the question as to the being of God, the existence
implied has not the significance of inward reality, of truth,
but the significance of a formal, external existence. Hence
there is perfect truth in the allegation that the belief that
God is or is not has no consequence with respect to inward
moral dispositions. It is true that the thought: There is a
God, is inspiring; but here the is means inward reality;
here the existence is a movement of inspiration, an act of
aspiration. Just in proportion as this existence becomes a
prosaic, an empirical truth, the inspiration is extinguished.
Religion, therefore, in so far as it is founded on the exist­
ence of God as an empirical truth, is a matter of indifference
to the inward disposition. As, necesiarily, in the religious
cultus, ceremonies, observances, sacraments, apart from the
moral spirit or disposition, become in themselves an im­
portant fact: so also, at last, belief in the existence of God
becomes, apart from the inherent quality, the spiritual
import of the idea of God, a chief point in religion. If
thou only believest in God— believest that God is, thou art
202 T H E ESSEN CE OF CHRISTIANITY.

already saved. Whether under this God thou conceivest a

really divine being or a monster, a Nero or a Caligula, an
image of thy passions, thy revenge, or ambition, it is a ll
one,— the main point is that thou be not an atheist. T he
history of religion has amply confirmed this consequence
which we here draw from the idea of the divine existence.
If the existence of God, taken by itself, had not rooted
itself as a religious truth in minds, there would never have
been those infamous, senseless, horrible ideas of God which
stigmatise the history of religion and theology. The exist­
ence of God was a common, external, and yet at the same
time a holy thing:— what wonder, then, if on this ground the
commonest, rudest, most unholy conceptions and opinions
sprang u p !
Atheism was supposed, and is even now supposed, to be
the negation of all moral principle, of all moral foundations
and bonds: if God is not, all distinction between good and
bad, virtue and vice, is abolished. Thus the distinction lies
only in the existence of G od; the reality of virtue lies not
in itself, but out of it. And assuredly it is not from an
attachment to virtue, from a conviction of its intrinsic
worth and importance, that the reality of it is thus bound
up with the existence of God. On the contrary, the belief
that God is the necessary condition of virtue is the belief
in the nothingness of virtue in itself.
It is indeed worthy of remark that the idea of the em­
pirical existence of God has been perfectly developed in
modern times, in which empiricism and materialism in
general have arrived at their full blow. It is true that
even in the original, simple religious mind, God is an em­
pirical existence to be found in a place, though above the
earth. But here this conception has not so naked, so prosaic
a significance; the imagination identifies again the external
God with the soul of man. The imagination is, in general,
the true place of an existence which is absent, not present
to the senses, though nevertheless sensational in its essence.*
* “ Christ is ascended on high, . . . that is, he not only sits there above,
but he is also here below. And he is gone thither to the very end that he
might be here below, and fill all things, and be in all places, which he
could not do while on earth, for here ne could not be seen by all bodily
eyes. Therefore he sits above, where every man can see him, and he has to
do with every man.”— Luther (Th. xiii. p. 643). That is to say: Christ or
God is an object, an existence, of the imagination j in the imagination he is
 CONTRADICTION IN TH E EX ISTENC E OF GOD. 203

Only the imagination solves the contradiction in an exist­

ence which is at once sensational and not sensational;
only the imagination is the preservative from atheism. In
the imagination existence has sensational effects,— existence
affirms itself as a power; with the essence of sensational
existence the imagination associates also the phenomena of
sensational existence. Where the existence of God is a
living truth, an object on which the imagination exercises
itself, there also appearances of God are believed in.* Where,
on the contrary, the fire of the religious imagination is
extinct, where the sensational effects or appearances neces­
sarily connected with an essentially sensational,existence
cease, there the existence becomes a dead, self-contradictory
existence, which falls irrecoverably into the negation of
atheism.
The belief in the existence of God is the belief in a
special existence, separate from the existence of man and
Nature. A special existence can only be proved in a special
manner. This faith is therefore only then a true and living
one when special effects, immediate appearances of God,
miracles, are believed in. Where, on the other hand, the
belief in God is identified with the belief in the world,
where the belief in God is no longer a special faith, where
the general being of the world takes possession of the
whole man, there also vanishes the belief in special effects
and appearances of God. Belief in God is wrecked, is
stranded on the belief in the world, in natural effects as the
only true ones. As here the belief in miracles is no longer
anything more than the belief in historical, past miracles, so
the existence of God is also only an historical, in itself
atheistic conception.

limited to no place,— he is present and objective to every one. God exists

in heaven, but is for that reason omnipresent; for this heaven is the ima­
gination.
* “ Thou hast not to complain that thou art less experienced than was
Abraham or Isaac. Thou also hast appearances. . . . Thou hast holy
baptism, the supper of the Lord, the bread and wine, which are figures ana
forms, under and In which the present God speaks to thee, and acts upon
thee, in thy ears, eyes, and heart. . . . He appears to thee in baptism,
and it is he himself who baptizes thee, and speaks to thee. . . . Every­
thing is full of divine appearances and utterances, if he is on thy side.”—
Luther (Th. ii. p. 466. See also on this subject, Th. xix. p. 407).
 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER X X L

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE REVELATION OF GOD.

W ith the idea of the existence of God is connected the idea

of revelation, God’s attestation of his existence, the authen­
tic testimony that God exists, is revelation. Proofs drawn
from reason are merely subjective; the objective, the only
true proof of the existence of God, is his revelation. God
speaks to man; revelation is the word of. G od; he sends
forth a voice which thrills the soul, and gives it the joyful
certainty that God really is. The word is the gospel of life,
— the criterion of existence and non-existence. Belief in
revelation is the culminating point of religious objectivism.
The subjective conviction of the existence of God here
becomes an indubitable, external, historical fact. The ex­
istence of God, in itself, considered simply as existence, is
already an external, empirical existence; still, it is as yet
only thought, conceived, and therefore doubtful; hence the
assertion that all proofs produce no satisfactory certainty.
This conceptional existence converted into a real existence,
a fact, is revelation. God has revealed himself, has demon­
strated himself: who then can have any further doubt?
The certainty of the existence of God is involved for me in
the certainty of the revelation. A God who only exists
without revealing himself, who exists for me only through
my own mental act, such a God is a merely abstract,
imaginary, subjective God ; a God who gives me a know­
ledge of himself through his own act is alone a God who
truly exists, who proves himself to exist,— an objective God.
Faith in revelation is the immediate certainty of the reli­
gious mind, that what it believes, wishes, conceives, really
is. Religion is a dream, in which our own conceptions and
emotions appear to us as separate existences, beings out of
ourselves. The religious mind does not distinguish between
subjective and objective,— it has no doubts; it has the
faculty,not of discerning other things than itself, but of seeing
 CONTRADICTION IN TH E R E V E L A T IO N OF GOD. 205

its own conceptions out of itself as distinct beings. What

is in itself a mere theory is to the religious mind a practical
belief, a matter of conscience,— a fact. A fact is that which
from being an object of the intellect becomes a matter of
conscience; a fact is that which one cannot criticise or
attack without being guilty of a crime; * a fact is that which
one must believe nolens volens; a fact is a physical force,
not an argument,— it makes no appeal to the reason. 0 ye
shortsighted religious philosophers of Germany, who fling
at our heads the facts of the religious consciousness, to stun
our reason and make us the slaves of your childish super­
stition,— do you not see that facts are just as relative, as
various, as subjective, as the ideas of the different religions ?
Were not the gods of Olympus also facts, self-attesting
existences ? + Were not the ludicrous miracles of paganism
regarded as facts ? Were not angels and demons historical
persons ? Did they not really appear to men ? Did not
Balaam's ass really speak ? Was not the story of Balaam’s
ass just as much believed even by enlightened scholars of
the last century, as the Incarnation or any other miracle ?
A fact, I repeat, is a conception about the truth of which
- there is no doubt, because it is no object of theory, but of
feeling, which desires that what it wishes, what it believes,
should be true. A fact is that, the denial of which is for­
bidden, if not by an external law, yet by an internal one.
A fact is every possibility which passes for a reality, every
conception which, for the age wherein it is held to be a fact,
expresses a want, and is for that reason an impassable limit
of the mind. A fact is every wish that projects itself on
* The denial of a fact is not a matter of indifference; it is something
morally evil,— a disowning of what is known to be true. Christianity made
its articles of faith objective, i.e., undeniable, unassailable facts, thus over­
powering the reason, and taking the mind prisoner by the force of external
reality : herein we have the true explanation why and how Christianity,
Protestant as well as Catholic, enunciated and enforced with all solemnity
the principle, that heresy— the denial of an idea or a fact which forms an
article of laith— is an object of punishment by the temporal power, i.e., a
crime. What* in theory is an external fact becomes in practice an external
force. In this respect Christianity is far below Mohammedanism, to which
the crime of heresy is unknown.
+ “ Prsesentiam ssepe divi suam declarant.”— Cicero (de Nat. D. L ii.).
Cicero’s works (de Nat. D. and de Divinatione) are especially interesting, be­
cause the arguments there used for the reality of the objects of pagan faith
are virtually the same as those urged in the present day by theologians and
the adherents of positive religion generally for the reality of the objects of
Christian faith.
206 TH E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

reality: in short, it is everything that is not doubted simply

because it is not— must not be— doubted.
The religious mind, according to its nature as hitherto
unfolded, has the immediate certainty that all its involun­
tary, spontaneous affections are impressions from without,
manifestations of another being. The religious mind makes
itself the passive, God the active being. God is activity;
but that which determines him to activity/which causes his
activity (originally only omnipotence, potentia) to become
real activity, is not himself,— he needs nothing,— but man,
the religious subject. A t the same time, however, man
is reciprocally determined by God; he views himself as
passive; he receives from God determinate revelations,
determinate proofs of his existence. Thus in revelation
man determines himself as that which determines God, i.e.,
revelation is simply the self-determination of man, only
that between himself the determined, and himself the de­
termining, he interposes an object— God, a distinct being.
God is the medium by which man brings about the recon­
ciliation of himself with his own nature: God is the bond,
the vinculum substantiale, between the essential nature— the
species— and the individual. '
The belief in revelation exhibits in the clearest manner
the characteristic illusion of the religious consciousness.
The general premiss of this belief i s : man can of himself
know nothing of God; all his knowledge is merely vain,
earthly, human. But God is a superhuman being; God is
known only by himself. Thus we know nothing of God
beyond what he reveals to us. The knowledge imparted
by God is alone divine, superhuman, supernatural know­
ledge. By means of revelation, therefore, we know God
through himself; for revelation is the word of God— God
declaring himself. Hence, in the belief in revelation man
makes himself a negation, he goes out of and above himself;
he places revelation in opposition to human knowledge and
opinion; in it is contained a hidden knowledge, the fulness
of all supersensuous mysteries; here reason must hold its
peace. But nevertheless the divine revelation is determined
by the human nature. God speaks not to brutes or angels,
but to men; hence he uses human speech and human con­
ceptions. Man is an object to God, before God perceptibly
imparts himself to man; he thinks of man; he determines
 CONTRADICTION IN THE R E V E L A T I O N OF GOD. 207

Lis action in accordance with the nature of man and his

needs. God is indeed free in w ill; he can reveal himself or
n o t; but he is not free as to the understanding; he cannot
reveal to man whatever he will, but only what is adapted
to man, what is commensurate with his nature such as it
actually is ; he reveals what he must reveal, if his revelation
is to be a revelation for man, and not for some other kind
of being. Now what God thinks in relation to man is
determined by the idea of man— it has arisen out of reflec­
tion on human nature. God puts himself in the place of
man, and thinks of himself as this other being can and
, should think of him ; he thinks of himself, not with his
own thinking power, but with man’s. In the scheme of
his revelation God must have reference not to himself, but
to man's power of comprehension. That which comes from
God to man, comes to man only from man in God, that is,
only from the ideal nature of man to the phenomenal man,
from the species to the individual. Thus, between the
divine revelation and the so-called human reason or nature,
there is no other than an illusory distinction;— the contents
of the divine revelation are of human origin, for they have
proceeded not from God as God, but from God as deter­
mined by human reason, human wants, that is, directly from
human reason and human wants. And so in revelation
man goes out of himself, in order, by a circuitous path, to
return to himself! Here we have a striking confirmation
of the position that the secret of theology is nothing else
than anthropology— the knowledge of God nothing else
than a knowledge of man !
Indeed, the religious consciousness itself admits, in rela­
tion to past times, the essentially human quality of revela­
tion. The religious consciousness of a later age is no longer
satisfied with a Jehovah who is from head to foot a man,
and does not shrink from becoming visible as such. It
recognises that those were merely images in which God
accommodated himself to the comprehension of men in
that age, that is, merely human images. But it does not
apply this mode of interpretation to ideas accepted as
revelation in the present age, because it is yet itself steeped
in those ideas. Nevertheless, every revelation is simply a
revelation of the nature of man to existing men. In revela­
tion man’s latent nature is disclosed to him, because an
208 T H E ESSEN CE OF CHRISTIANITY.

object to him. He is determined, affected by his own

nature as by another being; he receives from the hands of
God what his own unrecognised nature entails upon him as
a necessity, under certain conditions of time and circum­
stance. Reason, the mind of the species, operates on the
subjective, uncultured man only under the image of a
personal being. Moral laws have force for him only as the
commandments of a Divine Will, which has at once the
power to punish and the glance which nothing escapes.
That which his own nature, his reason, his conscience says
to him, does not bind him, because the subjective, un­
cultured man sees in conscience, in reason, so far as he
recognises it as his own, no universal objective power;
hence he must separate from himself that which gives him
moral laws, and place it in opposition to himself, as a dis­
tinct personal being.
Belief in revelation is a childlike belief, and is only
respectable so long as it is childlike. But the child is de­
termined from without, and revelation has for its object
to effect by God’s help what man cannot attain by himself.
Hence revelation has been called the education of the
human race. This is correct; only revelation must not be
regarded as outside the nature of man. There is within
him an inward necessity which impels him to present moral
and philosophical doctrines in the form of narratives and
fables, and an equal necessity to represent that impulse as
a revelation. The mythical poet has an end in view— that
of making men good and wise; he designedly adopts the
form of fable as the most appropriate and vivid method of
representation; but at the same time, he is himself urged
to this mode of teaching by his love of fable, by his inward
impulse. So it is with a revelation enunciated by an in­
dividual. This individual has an aim; but at the same
time he himself lives in the conceptions by means of which
he realises this aim. Man, by means of the imagination,
involuntarily contemplates his inner nature; he represents
it as out of himself. The nature of man, of the species—
thus working on him through the irresistible power of the
imagination, and contemplated as the law of his thought
and action— is God.
Herein lie the beneficial moral effects of the belief in
revelation.
 CONTRADICTION IN THE R E V E L A T IO N OF GOD. 209

But as Nature “ unconsciously produces results which

look as if they were produced consciously/* so revelation
generates moral actions, which do not, however, proceed
from morality;— moral actions, but no moral dispositions.
Moral rules are indeed observed, but they are severed from
the inward disposition, the heart, by being represented as
the commandments of an external lawgiver, by being placed
in the category of arbitrary laws, police regulations. What
is done is done not because it is good and right, but because
it is commanded by God. The inherent quality of the deed
is indifferent; whatever God commands is right* If these
commands are in accordance with reason, with ethics, it is
w e ll; but so far as the idea of revelation is concerned, it
is accidental The ceremonial laws of the Jews were re­
vealed, divine, though in themselves adventitious and arbi­
trary. The Jews received from Jehovah the command to
steal;— in a special case, it is true.
But the belief in revelation not only injures the moral
sense and taste,— the aesthetics of virtue; it poisons, nay
it destroys, the divinest feeling in man— the sense of truth,
the perception and sentiment of truth. The revelation of
God is a determinate revelation, given at a particular epoch:
God revealed himself once for all in the year so and so,
and that, not to the universal man, to the man of all times
and places, to the reason, to the species, but to certain
limited individuals. A revelation in a given time and
place must be fixed in writing, that its blessings may be
transmitted uninjured. Hence the belief in revelation is,
at least for those of a subsequent age, belief in a written
revelation; but the necessary consequence of a faith in
which an historical book, necessarily subject to all the con­
ditions of a temporal, finite production, is regarded as an
eternal, absolute, universally authoritative word, is— super­
stition and sophistry.
Faith in a written revelation is a real, unfeigned, and so
far respectable faith, only where it is believed that all in the
sacred writings is significant, true, holy, divine. Where, on
* “ Quod crudeliter ab hominibus sine Dei jussu fieret aut factum est, id
debuit ab Hebrais fieri, quia a deo vitae et necis summo arbitrio, jussi bellum
ita gerebant.”— J. Clericus (Comm, in Mos. Num. c. 31, 7). “ Multa gessit
Samson, quae viz possent defend!, nisi Dei, a quo homines pendent, instru*
mentum fuisse censeatur.”— lb. (Comm, in Judicum, c. 14, 19). See also
Luther, e.g. (Th. i. p. 339, Th. xvi. p. 495).
 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

the contrary, the distinction is made between the human

and divine, the relatively true and the absolutely true, the
historical and the permanent,— where it is not held that
all without distinction is unconditionally true; there the
verdict of unbelief, that the Bible is no divine book, is
already introduced into the interpretation of the Bible,—
there, at least indirectly, that is, in a crafty, dishonest
way, its title to the character of a divine revelation is
denied. Unity, unconditionality, freedom from exceptions,
immediate certitude, is alone the character of divinity.
A book that imposes on me the necessity of discrimina­
tion, the necessity of criticism, in order to separate the
divine from the human, the permanent from the temporary,
is no longer a divine, certain, infallible book,— it is degraded
to the rank of profane books; for every profane book has
the same quality, that together with or in the human it con­
tains the divine, that is, together with or in the individual
it contains the universal and eternal. But that only is a
truly divine book in which there is not merely something
good and something bad, something permanent and some­
thing temporary, but in which all comes as it were from one
crucible, all is eternal, true and good. What sort of a
revelation is that in which I must first listen to the apostle
Paul, then to Peter, then to James, then to John, then to
Matthew, then to Mark, then to Luke, until at last I come
to a passage where my soul, athirst for God, can cry o u t:
E u r e k a ! here speaks the Holy Spirit himself I here is some­
thing for me, something for all times and men. How true,
on the contrary, was the conception of the old faith, when
it extended inspiration to the very words, to the very letters
of Scripture ! The word is not a matter of indifference in
relation to the thought; a definite thought can only be ren­
dered by a definite word. Another word, another letter—
another sense. It is true that such faith is superstition;
but this superstition is alone the true, undisguised, open
faith, which is not ashamed of its consequences. If God
numbers the hairs on the head of a man, if no sparrow falls
to the ground without his will, how could he leave to the
stupidity and caprice of scribes his Word— that Word on
which depends the, everlasting salvation of man ? W hy
should he not dictate his thoughts to their pen in order to
guard them from the possibility of disfiguration ? “ But i f
 CONTRADICTION IN THE R E V E L A T IO N OF GOD. 211

man were a mere organ o.f the Holy Spirit, human freedom
would be abolished ! ” * Oh, what a pitiable argument S Is
human freedom, then, of more value than divine truth ?
Or does human freedom consist only in the distortion of
divine truth ?
And just as necessarily as the belief in a determinate
historical revelation is associated with superstition, so ne­
cessarily is it associated with sophistry. The Bible contra­
dicts morality, contradicts reason, contradicts itself, innum­
erable times ; and yet it is the Word of God, eternal truth,
and “ truth cannot contradict itself/’f How does the be­
liever in revelation elude this contradiction between the
idea in his own mind of revelation as divine, harmonious
truth, and this supposed actual revelation ?. Only by self-
deception, only by the silliest subterfuges, only by the most
miserable, transparent sophisms. Christian sophistry is the
necessary product of Christian faith, especially of faith in
the Bible as a divine revelation.
Truth, absolute truth, is given objectively in the Bible,
subjectively in faith ; for towards that which God himself
speaks I can only be believing, resigned, receptive. Nothing
is left to the understanding, the reason, but a formal, sub­
ordinate office ; it has a false position, a position essentially
contradictory to its nature. The understanding in itself
is here indifferent to truth, indifferent to the distinction
between the true and the false ; it has no criterion in itself ;
whatever is found in revelation is true, even when it is in
direct contradiction with reason. The understanding is
helplessly given over to the haphazard of the most ignoble
empiricism ;— whatever I find in divine revelation I must
believe, and if necessary, my understanding must defend it ;
the understanding is the watchdog of revelation ; it must
let everything without distinction be imposed on it as truth,
— discrimination would be doubt, would be a crime : con­
sequently, nothing remains to it but an adventitious, indif­

* It was very justly remarked by the Jansenists against the Jesuits :

“ Vouloir reconnoitre dans l’Ecriture quelque chose de la foiblesse et de
l’esprit naturel de l’homme, c’est donner la liberté à chacun d’en faire le
discernment et de rejetter ce qui lui plaira de l’Ecriture, comme venant
plûtot de la foiblesse de l’homme que de l’esprit de Dieu.”— Bâyle (Diet,
art. Adam (Jean) Rem. E.).
t “ Nec in scriptura divinæfas sit sentire aliquid contrarietatis.”— Petrus
L. (1. ii. dist. ii. c. i. ). Similar thoughts are found in the Fathers.
 TH E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

ferent, i.e., disingenuous, sophistical, tortuous mode of

thought, which is occupied only with 'groundless distinc­
tions and subterfuges, with ignominious tricks and evasions.
But the more man, by the progress of time, becomes
estranged from revelation, the more the understanding
ripens into independence,— the more glaring, necessarily,
appears the contradiction between the understanding and
belief in revelation. The believer can then prove revelation
only by incurring contradiction with himself, with truth,
with tiie understanding, only by the most impudent assump­
tions, only by shameless falsehoods, only by the sin against
the Holy Ghost #
 CONTRADICTION I N THE N A T U R E OF GOD. 213

CHAPTER X X II.

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD IN GENERAL.

T he grand principle, the central point of Christian sophistry,

is the idea of God. God is the human being, and yet he
must be regarded as another, a superhuman being. God is
universal, abstract Being, simply the idea of Being; and
yet he must be conceived as a personal, individual being;—
or God is a person, and yet he must be regarded as God, as
universal, i.e., not as a personal being. God i s ; his exist­
ence is certain, more certain than ours; he has an existence
distinct from us and from things in general, i.e., an indi­
vidual existence; and yet his existence must be held a
spiritual one, i.e., an existence not perceptible as a special
one. One half of the definition is always in contradiction
with the other h alf: the statement of what must be held
always annihilates the statement of what is. The funda­
mental idea is a contradiction which can be concealed only
by sophisms. A God who does not trouble himself about
us, who does not hear our prayers, who does not see us and
love us, is no God; thus humanity is made an essential pre­
dicate^ God;— but at the same time it is said: A God who
does not exist in and by himself, (Jut of men, above men, as
another being, is a phantom; and thus it is made an essen­
tial predicate of God that he is non-human and extra-human.
A God who is not as we are, who has not consciousness, not
intelligence, i.e., not a personal understanding, a personal
consciousness (as, for example, the “ substance ” of Spinoza),
is no God. Essential identity with us is the chief condition
of deity; the idea of deity is made dependent on the idea of
personality, of consciousness, quo nihil majus cogitari potest.
But it is said in the same breath, a God who is not essen­
tially distinguished from us is no God.
The essence of religion is the immediate, involuntary,
unconscious contemplation of the human nature as another,
a distinct nature. But when this projected image of human
214 TH E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

nature is made an object of reflection, of theology, it becomes

an inexhaustible mine of falsehoods, illusions, contradic­
tions, and sophisms.
A peculiarly characteristic artifice and pretext of Chris­
tian sophistry is the doctrine of the unsearchableness, the
incomprehensibility of the divine nature. But, as will be
shown, the secret of this incomprehensibility is nothing
further than that a known quality is made into an unknown
one, a natural quality into a supernatural, i.e., an unnatural
one, so as to produce the appearance, the illusion, that the
divine nature is different from the human, and is eo ipso an
incomprehensible one.
In the original sense of religion, the incomprehensibility
of God has only the significance of an impassioned expres­
sion. Tlius, when we are affected by a surprising pheno­
menon, we exclaim : It is incredible, it is beyond conception !
though afterwards, when we recover our self-possession, we
find the object of our astonishment nothing less than incom­
prehensible. In the truly religious sense, incomprehensibility
is not the dead full stop which reflection places wherever
understanding deserts it, but a pathetic note of exclamation
marking the impression which the imagination makes on
the feelings. The imagination is the original organ of
religion. Between God and man, in the primitive sense of
religion, there is on the one hand only a distinction in rela­
tion to existence, according to which God, as a self-subsis-
tent being, is the antithesis of man as a dependent being;
on the other hand, there is only a quantitative distinction,
i.e., a distinction derived from the imagination, for the dis­
tinctions of the imagination are only quantitative. The
infinity of God in religion is quantitative infinity; God is
and has all that man has, but in an infinitely greater
measure. The nature of God is the nature of the imagina­
tion unfolded, made objective.* God is a being bonceived
under the forms of the senses, but freed from the limits of
sense,— a being at once unlimited and sensational. But
what is the imagination ?— limitless activity of the senses.
God is eternal, i.e., he exists at all times; God is omni­

* This is especially apparent in the superlative, and the preposition super,

vTep, which distinguish the divine predicates, and which very early— as, for
example, with the Neo-Platonists, the Christians among heathen philoso­
phers— played a chief part in theology.
 CONTRADICTION IN THE N A T U R E OF GOD. 215

present, i.e., he exists in all places; God is the omniscient

being, i.e., the being to whom every individual thing, every
sensible existence, is an object without distinction, without
limitation of time and place.
Eternity and omnipresence are sensational qualities, for
in them there is no negation of existence in time and space,
but only of exclusive limitation to a particular time, to a
particular place. In like manner omniscience is a sensa­
tional quality, a sensational knowledge. Religion has no
hesitation in attributing to God himself the nobler senses:
God sees and hears all things. But the divine omniscience
is a power of knowing through the senses while yet the
necessary quality, the essential determination of actual
knowledge through the senses is denied to it. My senses
present sensible objects to me only separately and in
succession; but God sees all sensible things at once, all
locality in an unlocal manner, all temporal things in an
untemporal manner, all objects of sense in an unsensational
manner.* That is to say: I extend the horizon of my
senses by the imagination; I form to myself a confused
conception of the whole of things; and this conception,
which exalts me above the limited standpoint of the senses,
and therefore affects me agreeably, I posit as a divine reality.
I feel the fact that my knowledge is tied to a local stand­
point, to sensational experience, as a limitation; what I
feel as a limitation I do away with in my imagination,
which furnishes free space for the play of my feelings.
This negativing of limits by the imagination is the positing
of omniscience as a divine power and reality. But at the
same time there is only a quantitative distinction between
omniscience and my knowledge; the quality of the know­
ledge is the same. In fact, it would be impossible for me to
predicate omniscience of an object or being external to
myself, if this omniscience were essentially different from
my own knowledge, if it were not a mode of perception of
my own, if it had nothing in common with my own power
of cognition. That which is recognised by the senses is as
much the object and content of the divine omniscience as
of my knowledge. Imagination does away only with the
* “ Scit itaque Deus, quanta sit multitude) pulicum, culicum, muscarum
et piscium et quot nascantur, quotve moriantur, sed non scit hoc per mo­
menta singula, imo simul et semel omnia.”— Petrus L. (L i. dist. 39, c. 3).
216 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

limit of quantity, not of quality. The proposition th at

our knowledge is limited, means: we know only some
things, a few things, not alL •
The beneficial influence of religion rests on this extension
of the sensational consciousness. In Religion man is in the
open air, sub deo; in the sensational consciousness he is in
his narrow confined dwelling-house. Religion has relation
essentially, originally— and only in its origin is it some­
thing Holy, true, pure, and good— to the immediate sensa­
tional consciousness alone; it is the setting aside of the lim its
of sense. Isolated, uninstructed men and nations preserve
religion in its original sense, because they themselves re­
main in that mental state which is the source of religion.
The more limited a man’s sphere of vision, the less h e
knows of history, Nature, philosophy— the more ardently
does he cling to his religion.
For this reason the religious man feels no need of culture.
Why had the Hebrews no art, no science, as the Greeks
had ? Because they felt no need of it. To them this need
was supplied by Jehovah. In the divine omniscience man.
raises himself above the limits of his own knowledge ; * in
the divine omnipresence, above the limits of his local stand­
point ; in the divine eternity, above the limits of his time.
The religious man is happy in his imagination; he has all
things in nuce; his possessions are always portable. Je­
hovah accompanies me everywhere; I need not travel out
of myself; I have in my God the sum of all treasures and
precious things, of all that is worth knowledge and remem­
brance. But culture is dependent on external things; it
has many and various wants, for it overcomes the limits of
sensational consciousness and .life by real activity, not by
the magical power of the religious imagination. Hence the
Christian religion also, as has been often mentioned already,
has in its essence no principle of culture, for it triumphs
over the limitations and difficulties of earthly life only
through the imagination, only in God, in heaven. God is
all that the heart needs and desires— all good things, all
blessings. “ Dost thou desire love, or faithfulness, or truth,
or consolation, or perpetual presence ?— this is always in him

* “ Qui scientem cuncta sciunt, quid nescire nequeunt?”— Liber Meditat.

c. 26 (among the spurious writings of Augustine).
 CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD . 217
without measure. Dost thou desire beauty ?— he is the
supremely beautiful. Dost thou desire riches ?— all riches
are in him. Dost thou desire power ?— he is supremely
powerful. Or whatever thy heart desires, it is found a
thousandfold in Him, in the best, the single good, which is
God.” * But how can he who has all in God, who already
enjoys heavenly bliss in the imagination, experience that
want, that sense of poverty, which is the impulse to all
culture? Culture has no other object than to realise an
earthly heaven; and the religious heaven is only realised
or won by religious activity.
The difference, however, between God and man, which is
originally only quantitative, is by reflection developed into
a qualitative difference; and thus what was originally only
an emotional impression, an immediate expression of admi­
ration, of rapture, an influence of the imagination on the
feelings, has fixity given to it as an objective quality, as
real incomprehensibility. The favourite expression of re­
flection in relation to this subject is, that we can indeed
know concerning God that he has such and such attributes,
but not how he has them. For example, that the predicate
of the Creator essentially belongs to God, that he created
the world, and not out of .matter already existing, but out
of nothing, by an act of almighty power,— this is clear,
certain— yes, indubitable; but how this is possible naturally
passes our understanding. That is to say: the generic idea
is clear, certain, but the specific idea is unclear, uncertain.
The idea of activity, of making, of creation, is in itself a
divine idea; it is therefore unhesitatingly applied to God.
In activity, man feels himself free, unlimited, happy'; in
passivity, limited, oppressed, unhappy. Activity is the
positive sense of one’s personality. That is positive which
in man is accompanied with jo y ; hence God is, as we have
already said, the idea of pure, unlimited joy. We succeed
only in what we do willingly; joyful effort conquers all
things. But that is joyful activity which is in accordance
with our nature, which we do not feel as a limitation, and
consequently not as a constraint. And the happiest, the
most blissful activity is that which is productive. To read
is delightful, reading is passive activity; but to produce
what is worthy to be read is more delightful still. It is
* Tauler, 1. c. p. 312.
2 18 THE ESSEN CE OF CHRISTIANITY.

more blessed to give than to receive. Hence this attribute

of the species— productive activity— is assigned to God ;
that is, realised and made objective as divine activity. But
every special determination, every mode of activity is ab­
stracted, and only the fundamental determination, which,
however, is essentially human, namely, production of what is
external to self, is retained. God has not, like man, produced
something in particular, this or that, but all things; his
activity is absolutely universal, unlimited. Hence it is
self-evident, it is a necessary consequence, that the mode in
which God has produced the A llis incomprehensible, because
this activity is no mode of activity, because the question
concerning the how is here an absurdity, a question which
is excluded by the fundamental idea of unlimited activity.
Every special activity produces its effects in a special
manner, because there the activity itself is a determinate
mode of activity; and thence necessarily arises the question:
How did it produce this ? But the answer to the question:
How did God make the world ? has necessarily a negative
issue, because the world-creating activity in itself negatives
every determinate activity, such as would alone warrant
the question, every mode of activity connected with a de­
terminate medium, i.e., with matter. This question illegiti­
mately foists in between the subject or producing activity,
and the object or thing produced, an irrelevant, nay, an
excluded intermediate idea, namely, the idea of particular,
individual existence. The activity in question has relation
only to the collective— the All, the world; God created all
things, not some particular thing; the indefinite whole, the
All, as it is embraced by the imagination,— not the deter­
minate, the particular, as, in its particularity, it presents
itself to the senses, and as, in its totality as the universe,
it presents itself to the reason. Every particular thing
arises in a natural w ay; it is something determinate, and
as such it has— what it is only tautology to state— a
determinate cause. It was not God, but carbon that pro­
duced the diamond; a given salt owes its origin, not to God,
but to the combination of a particular acid with a particular
base. God only created all things together without dis­
tinction.
It is true that according to the religious conception, God
has created every individual thing, as included in the whole;
 CONTRADICTION I N THE N A T U R E OF GOD. 219

— but only indirectly; for he has not produced the indivi­

dual in an individual manner, the determinate in a deter­
minate manner; otherwise he would be a determinate or
conditioned being. It is certainly incomprehensible how out
of this general, indeterminate, or unconditioned activity the.
particular, the determinate, can have proceeded; but it is
so only because I here intrude the object of sensational,
natural experience, because I assign to the divine activity
another object than that which is proper to it. Religion
has no physical conception of the world; it has no interest
in a natural explanation, which can never be given but with
a mode of origin. Origin is a theoretical, natural-philo­
sophical idea. The heathen philosophers busied themselves
with the origin of things. But the Christian religious con­
sciousness abhorred this idea as heathen, irreligious, and
substituted the practical or subjective idea of creation,
which is nothing else tihan a prohibition to conceive things
as having arisen in a natural way, an interdict on all physical
science. The religious consciousness connects the world
immediately with God; it derives all from God, because
nothing is an object to him in its particularity and reality,
nothing is to him as it presents itself to our reason. A ll
proceeds from God:— that is enough, that perfectly satis­
fies the religious consciousness. The question, how did
God create ? is an indirect doubt that he did create the
world. It was this question which brought man to atheism,
materialism, naturalism. To him who asks it, the world is
already an object of theory, of physical science, i.e., it is an
object to him in its reality, in its determinate constituents.
It is this mode of viewing the world which contradicts the
idea of unconditioned, immaterial activity: and this con­
tradiction leads to the negation of the fundamental idea—
the creation.
The creation by omnipotence is in its place, is a truth,
only when all the phenomena of the world are derived from
God. It becomes, as has been already observed, a myth of
pást ages where physical science introduces itself, where
man makes the determinate causes, the how of phenomena,
the object of investigation. To the religious consciousness,
therefore, the creation is nothing incomprehensible, i.e., un­
satisfying ; at least it is so only in moments of irreligious­
ness, of doubt, when the mind turns away from God to
220 THE ESSEN CE OF CHRISTIANITY.

actual things; hut it is highly unsatisfactory to reflection,

to theology, which looks with one eye at heaven and with
the other at earth. As the cause, so is the effect. A flute
sends forth the tones of a flute, not those of a bassoon or
a trumpet. If thou hearest the tones of a bassoon, but hast
never before seen or heard any wind-instrument but the
flute, it will certainly be inconceivable to thee how such
tones can come out of a flute. Thus it is here:— the com­
parison is only so far inappropriate as the flute itself is a
particular instrument. But imagine, if it be possible, an
absolutely universal instrument, which united in itself all
instruments, without being in itself a particular one; thou
wilt then see that it is an absurd contradiction to desire a
particular tone which only belongs to a particular instrument,
from an instrument which thou hast divested precisely of
that which is characteristic in all particular instruments.
But there also lies at the foundation of this dogma of
incomprehensibility the design of keeping the divine
activity apart from the human, of doing away with their
similarity, or rather their essential identity, so as to make
the divine activity essentially different from'the human.
This distinction between the divine and human activity is
“ nothing.” God makes,— he makes something external to
himself, as man does. Making is a genuine human idea.
Nature gives birth to, brings forth; man makes. Making
is an act which I can omit, a designed, premeditated, ex­
ternal act;— an act in which my inmost being is not im­
mediately concerned, in which, while active, I am not at
the same time passive, carried away by an internal impulse.
On the contrary, an activity which is identical with my
being is not indifferent, is necessary to me, as, for example,
intellectual production, which is an inward necessity to me,
and for that reason lays a deep hold on me, affects me
pathologically. Intellectual works are not made,— making
is only the external activity applied to them;— they arise
in us. To make is an indifferent, therefore a free, i.e.,
optional activity. Thus far then— that he makes— God is
entirely at one with man, not at all distinguished from h im ;
but an especial emphasis is laid on this, that his making is
free, arbitrary, at his pleasure. “ It has pleased God ” to
create a world. Thus man here deifies satisfaction in self-
pleasing, in caprice and groundless arbitrariness. The fun­
 CONTRADICTION I N THE N A T U R E OF GOD. 221

damentally human character of the divine activity is by the

idea of arbitrariness degraded into a human manifestation
of a low kind ; God, from a mirror of human nature, is con­
verted into a mirror of human vanity and self-complacency.
And now all at once the harmony is changed into discord ;
man, hitherto at one with himself, becomes divided :— God
makes out of nothing ; he creates,— to make out of nothing
is to create,— this is the distinction. The positive condition
— the act of making— is a human one ; but inasmuch as all
that is determinate in this conception is immediately denied,
reflection steps in and makes the divine activity not hu­
man. But with this negation, comprehension, understanding
comes to a stand ; there remains only a negative, empty
notion, because conceivability is already exhausted, i.e., the
distinction between the divine and human determination is
in truth a nothing, a m hil negativum of the understanding.
The naïve confession of this is made in the supposition of
“ nothing ” as an object.
God is Love, but not human love ; Understanding, but
not human understanding,— no ! an essentially different
understanding. But wherein consists this difference ? I
cannot conceive an understanding which acts under other
forms than those of our own understanding ; I cannot halve
or quarter understanding so as to have several understand­
ings ; I can only conceive one and the same understanding.
I t is true that I can and even must conceive understanding
in itself, i.e., free from the limits of my individuality ; but
in so1 doing I only release it from limitations essentially
foreign to it ; I do not set aside its essential determinations
or forms. Beligious reflection, on the contrary, denies pre­
cisely that determination or quality which makes a thing
what it is. Only that in which the divine understanding
is identical with the human is something, is understanding,
is a real idea; while that which is supposed to make it
another— yes, essentially another than the human— is objec­
tively nothing, subjectively a mere chimera.
In all other definitions of the Divine Being the “nothing ”
which constitutes the distinction is hidden ; in the creation,
on the contrary, it is an evident, declared, objective nothing ;
— and is therefore the official, notorious nothing of theology
in distinction from anthropology.
But the fundamental determination by which man makes
222 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

his own nature a foreign, incomprehensible nature is th e

idea of individuality or— what is only a more abstract
expression-?—personality. The idea of the existence of G-od
first realises itself in the idea of revelation, and the idea of
revelation first realises itself in the idea of personality. God
is a personal b e i n g t h i s is the spell which charms the ideal
into the real, the subjective into the objective. A ll predi­
cates, all attributes of the Divine Being are fundamentally
human ; but as attributes of a personal being, and therefore
of a being distinct from man and existing independently,
they appear immediately to be really other than human,
yet so as that at the same time the essential identity always
remains at the foundation. Hence reflection gives rise to
the idea of so-called anthropomorphisms. Anthropomor­
phisms are resemblances between God and man. The
attributes of the divine and of the human being are not
indeed the same, but they are analogous.
Thus personality is the antidote to pantheism; i.e., b y
the idea of personality religious reflection expels from its
thought the identity of the divine and human nature. The
rude but characteristic expression of pantheism i s : Man is
an effluence or a portion of the Divine Being; the religious
expression is : Man is the image of God, or a being akin to
God;— for according to religion man does not spring from
Nature, but is of divine race, of divine origin. But kinship
is a vague, evasive expression. There are degrees of kin­
ship,' near and distant. What sort of kinship is intended ?
For the relation of man to God there is but one form of
kinship which is appropriate,— the nearest, profoundest,
most sacred that can be conceived,— the relation of the
child to the father. According to this, God is the father of
man, man the son, the child of God. Here is posited at
once the self-subsistence of God and the dependence of man,
and posited as an immediate object of feeling; whereas in
pantheism the part appears just as self-subsistent as the
whole, since this is represented as made up of its parts.
Nevertheless this distinction is only an appearance. The
father is not a father without the child; both together
form a correlated being. In love man renounces his inde­
pendence, and reduces himself to a part; a self-humiliation
which is only compensated by the fact that the one whom
he loves at the same time voluntarily becomes a part also;
 CONTRADICTION I N THE NA T U RE OF GOD. 223

that they both submit to a higher power, the power of the

spirit of family, the power of love. Thus there is here the
same relation between God and man as in pantheism, save
that in the one it is represented as a personal, patriarchal
relation, in the other as an impersonal, general one,— save
that pantheism expresses logically and therefore definitely,
directly, what religion invests with the imagination. The
correlation, or rather the identity of God and man is veiled
in religion by representing both as persons or individuals,
and God as a self-subsistent, independent being apart from
his paternity:— an independence which, however, is only
apparent, for he who, like the God of religion, is a father
from the depths of the heart, has his very life and being in
his child.
The reciprocal and profound relation of dependence be­
tween God as father and man as child cannot be shaken by
the distinction that only Christ is the true, natural son of
God, and that men are but his adopted sons; so that it is
only to Christ as the only-begotten Son, and by no means
to men, that God stands in an essential relation of depen­
dence. For this distinction is only a theological, i.e., an
illusory one. God adopts only men, not brutes. The ground
of adoption lies in the human nature. The man adopted
by divine grace is only the man conscious of his divine
nature and dignity. Moreover, the only-begotten Son him­
self is nothing else than the idea of humanity, than man
preoccupied with himself, man hiding from himself and the
world in God,— the heavenly man. The Logos is latent,
tacit man; man is the revealed, expressed Logos. The
Logos is only the prelude of man. That which applies to
the Logos applies also to the nature of man* But between
God and the only-begotten Son there is no real distinction,
— he who knows the Son knows the Father also,— and thus
there is none between God and man.
It is the same with the idea that man is the image of
God. The image is here no dead, inanimate thing, but a
living being. “ Man is the image of God,” means nothing
more than that man is a being who resembles God. Simi-
* “ The closest union which Christ possessed with the Father, it is pos­
sible for me to win. . . . All that God gave to his only-begotten Son, he has
given to me as perfectly as to him.”— Predigten etzlicher Lehrer vor und zu
Tauleri Zeiten. Hamburg, 1621, p. 14. “ Between the only-begotten Son
and the soul there is no distinction.”— lb. p. 68.
224 T HE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

larity between living beings rests on natural relationship.

The idea of man being the image of God reduces itself
therefore to kinship; man is like God, because he is the
child of God. Resemblance is only kinship presented to
the senses; from the former we infer the latter.
But resemblance is just as deceptive, illusory, evasive an
idea as kinship. It is only the idea of personality which
does away with the identity of nature. Resemblance is
identity which will not admit itself to be identity, which
hides itself behind a dim medium, behind the vapour of the
imagination. If I disperse this vapour, I come to naked
identity. The more similar beings are, the less are they to
to be distinguished; if I know the one, I know the other.
It is true that resemblance has its degrees. But also the
resemblance between God and man has its degrees. The
good, pious man is more like God than the man whose re­
semblance to Him is founded only on the nature of man in
general. And even with the pious man there is a highest
degree of resemblance to be supposed, though this may not
be obtained here below, but only in the future life. But
that which man is to become belongs already to him, at
least so far as possibility is concerned. The highest degree
of resemblance is that where there is no further distinction
between two individuals or beings than that they are two.
The essential qualities, those by which we distinguish things
from each other, are the same in both. Hence I cannot dis­
tinguish them in thought, by the reason,— for this all data
are wanting;— I can only distinguish them by figuring them
as visible in my imagination or by actually seeing them. I f
my eyes do not say, There are really two separately exis­
tent beings, my reason will take both for one and the
same being. Nay, even my eyes may confound the one
with the other. Things are capable of being confounded
with each other which are distinguishable by the sense and
not by the reason, or rather which are different only as to
existence, not as to essence. Persons altogether alike have
an extraordinary attraction not only for each other, but for
the imagination. Resemblance gives occasion to all kinds
of mystifications and illusions, because it is itself only an
illusion; my eyes mock my reason, for which the idea of an
independent existence is always allied to the idea of a deter­
minate difference.
 CONTRADICTION IN THE N A T U R E OF GOD. 225

Religion is the mind’s light, the rays of which are broken

by the medium of the imagination and the feelings, so as to
make the same being appear a double one. Resemblance is
to the Reason identity, which in the realm of reality is
divided or broken up by immediate sensational impressions,
in the sphere of religion by the illusions of the imagination ;
in short, that which is identical to the reason is made sepa­
rate by the idea of individuality or personality. I can dis­
cover no distinction between father and child, archetype and
image, God and man, if I do not introduce the idea of per­
sonality. Resemblance is here the external guise of iden-
. t i t y ;— the identity which reason, the sense of truth, affirms,
but which the imagination denies; the identity which
allows an appearance of distinction to remain,— a mere
phantasm, which says neither directly yes, nor directly no.

?
226 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER X X III.

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SPECULATIVE DOCTRINE OF GOD.

T he personality of God is thus the means by which man

converts the qualities of his own nature into the qualities
of another being,— of a being external to himself. The
personality of God is nothing else than the projected per­
sonality of man.
On this process of projecting self outwards rests also the
Hegelian speculative doctrine, according to which man's
consciousness of God is the se^-consciousness of God. God
is thought, cognised by us. According to speculation, God,
in being thought by us, thinks himself or is conscious of
himself; speculation identifies the two sides which religion
separates. In this it is far deeper than religion, for the
fact of God being thought is not like the fact of an external
object being thought. God is an inward, spiritual being;
thinking, consciousness, is an inward, spiritual act; to
think God is therefore to affirm what God is, to establish
the being of God as an act. That God i3 thought, cognised,
is essential; that this tree is thought, is to the tree acci­
dental, unessential. God is an indispensable thought, a
necessity of thought. But how is it possible that this
necessity should simply express the subjective, and not the
objective also ?— how is it possible that God— if he is to exist
for us, to be an object to us— must necessarily be thought,
if he is in himself like a block, indifferent whether he be
thought, cognised or not ? N o! it is not possible. We are
necessitated to regard the fact of God being thought by us,
as his thinking himself, or his self-consciousness.
Religious objectivism has two passives, two modes in which
God is thought. On the one hand, God is thought by us,
on the other, he is thought by himself. God thinks himself,
independently of his being thought by u s: he has a self-
consciousness distinct from, independent of, our conscious­
 S P E C U L A T I V E DOCTRINE OF GOD. 227

ness. This is certainly consistent when once God is con­

ceived as a real personality; for the real human person
thinks himself, and is thought by another; my thinking of
him is to him an indifferent, external fact. This is the
last degree of anthropopathism. In order to make God free
and independent of all that is human, he is regarded as a
formal, real person, his thinking is confined within himself,
and the fact of his being thought is excluded from him,
and is represented as occurring in another being. This
indifference or independence with respect to us, to our
thought, is the attestation of a self-subsistent, i.e., external,
personal existence. It is true that religion also makes the
fact of God being thought into the self-thinking of God;
but because this process goes forward behind its conscious­
ness, since God is immediately presupposed as a self-existent
personal being, the religious consciousness only embraces
the indifference of the two facts.
Even religion, however, does not abide by this indifference
of the two sides. God creates in order to reveal himself :
creation is the revelation of God. But for stones, plants,
and animals there is no God, but only for m an; so that
Nature exists for the sake of man, and man purely for the
sake of God. God glorifies himself in m an: man is the
pride of God. God indeed knows himself even without
m an; but so long as there is no other me, so long is he only
a possible, conceptional person. First when a difference
from God, a non-divine is posited, is God conscious of him­
self ; first when he knows what is not God, does he know
what it is to be God, does he know the bliss of his Godhead.
First in the positing of what is other than himself, of the
world, does God posit himself as God. Is God almighty
without creation ? No ! Omnipotence first realises, proves
itself in creation. What is a power, a property, which does
not exhibit, attest itself ? What is a force which affects
nothing ? a light that does not illuminate ? a wisdom which
knows nothing, i.e., nothing real ? And what is omnipo­
tence, what all other divine attributes,if man does not exist?
Man is nothing without God; but also, God is nothing
without man; * for only in man is God an object as G od;
* “ God can as little do without us as we without him.”— Predigten
etzlicher Lehrer, &c., p. 16. See also on this subject— Strauss, Christl.
(jlaubend. B. L § 47, and the author’s work entitled, P . Bayle, pp. 104, 107.
228 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

only in man is he God. The various qualities of man first

give difference, which is the ground of reality in God. The
physical qualities of man make God a physical being— God
the Father, who is the creator of Nature, i.e., the personi­
fied, anthropomorphised essence of Nature; * the intellec­
tual qualities of man make God an intellectual being, the
moral, a moral being. Human misery is the triumph of
divine compassion; sorrow for sin is the delight of the
divine holiness. life, fire, emotion comes into God only
through man. With the stubborn sinner God is angry;
over the repentant sinner he rejoices. Man is the revealed
God: in man the divine essence first realises and unfolds
itself. In the creation of Nature God gQes out of himself,
he has relation to what is other than himself, but in man
he returns into himself:— man knows God, because in him
God finds and knows himself, feels himself as God. Where
there is no pressure, no want, there is no feeling;— and
feeling is alone real knowledge. Who can know compassion
without having felt the want of it ? justice without the
experience of injustice ? happiness without the experience
of distress ? Thou must feel what a thing i s ; otherwise
thou wilt never learn to know it. It is in man that the
divine properties first become feelings, i.e., man is the self­
feeling of God;— and the feeling of God is the real G od;
for the qualities of God are indeed only real qualities,
realities, as felt by man,— as feelings. If thfe experience of
human misery were outside of God, in a being personally
separate from him, compassion also would not be in God,
and we should hence have again the Being destitute of
qualities, or more correctly the nothing, which God was
before man or without man. For example:— Whether I
be a good or sympathetic being— for that alone is good
which gives, imparts itself, bonum est communicativum sui,
— is unknown to me before the opportunity presents itself
of showing goodness to another being. Only in the act of
imparting do I experience the happiness of beneficence,
the joy of generosity, of liberality. But is this joy apart

* “ This temporal, transitory life in this world (i.e., natural life) we have
through God, who is the almighty Creator of heaven and earth. But the
eternal untransitory life we have through the Passion and Resurrection of
our Lord Jesus Christ. . . . Jesus Christ a Lord over that life.”— Luther
(Th. xvi s. 459).
 S PE C U L A T I V E DOCTRINE OF GOD. 229

from the joy of the recipient ? N o ; I rejoice because he

rejoices. I feel the wretchedness of another, I suffer with
h im ; in alleviating his wretchedness, I alleviate my own ;
— sympathy with suffering is itself suffering. The joyful
feeling of the giver is only the reflex, the self-consciousness
of the joy in the receiver. Their joy is a common feeling,
which accordingly makes itself visible in the union of hands,
of lips. So it is here. Just as the feeling of human misery
is human, so the feeling of divine compassion is human. It
is only a sense of the poverty of finiteness that gives a sense
of the bliss of infiniteness. Where the one is not, the other
is not. The two are inseparable,— inseparable the feeling
of God as God, and the feeling of man as man, inseparable
the knowledge of man and the self-knowledge of God.
God is a Self only in the human self,— only in the human
power of discrimination, in the principle of difference that
lies in the human being. Thus compassion is only felt as
a me, a self, a force, i.e., as something special, through its
opposite. The opposite of God gives qualities to God,
realises him, makes him a Self. God is God, only through
that which is not God. Herein we have also the mystery
of Jacob Bohme’s doctrine. It must only be borne in mind
that Jacob Bohme, as a mystic and theologian, places out­
side of man the feelings in which the divine being first
realises himself, passes from nothing to something, to a
qualitative being apart from the feelings of man (at least in
imagination),— and that he makes them objective in the
form of natural qualities, but in such a way that these
qualities still only represent the impressions made on his
feelings. It will then be obvious that what the empirical
religious consciousness first posits with the real creation of
Nature and of man, the mystical consciousness places before
the creation in the premundane God, in doing which, how­
ever, it does away with the reality of the creation. For if
God has what is not-God, already in himself, he has no
need first to create what is not-God in order to be God.
The creation of the world is here a pure superfluity, or
rather an impossibility ; this God for very reality does not
come to reality; he is already in himself the full and rest­
less world. This is especially true of Schelling’s doctrine
of God, who though made up of innumerable “ potences ”
is yet thoroughly impotent. Far more reasonable, therefore,
230 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

is the empirical religious consciousness, which makes God

reveal, i.e., realise himself in real man, real nature, and
according to which man i$ created purely for the praise
and glory of God. That is to say, man is the mouth of
God, which articulates and accentuates the divine qualities
as human feelings. God wills that he be honoured, praised.
Why ? because the passion of man for God is the self-
consciousness of God. Nevertheless, the religious conscious­
ness separates these two properly inseparable sides, since
by means of the idea of personality it makes God and man
independent existences. Now the Hegelian speculation
identifies the two sides, but so as to leave the old contra­
diction still at the foundation;— it is therefore only the
consistent carrying out, the completion of a religious truth.
The learned mob was so blind in its hatred towards Hegel
as not to perceive that his doctrine, at least in this relation,
does not in fact contradict religion;— that it contradicts it
only in the same way as, in general, a developed, consequent
process of thought contradicts an undeveloped, inconsequent,
but nevertheless radically identical conception.
But if it is only in human feelings and wants that the
divine “ nothing ” becomes something, obtains qualities, then
the being of man is alone the real being of God,— man is
the real God. And if in the consciousness which man has of
God first arises the self-consciousness of God, then the
human consciousness is, per se, the divine consciousness.
Why then dost thou alienate man’s consciousness from him,
and make it the self-consciousness of a being distinct from
man, of that which is an object to him ? Why dost thou
vindicate existence to God, to man only the consciousness
of that existence? God has his consciousness in man,
and man his being in God ? Man’s knowledge of God is
God’s knowledge of himself? What a divorcing and
contradiction! The true statement is this: man’s know­
ledge of God is man’s knowledge of himself, of his own
nature. Only the unity of being and consciousness is truth.
Where the consciousness of God is, there is the being of God,
— in man, therefore; in the being of God it is only thy own
being which is an object to thee, and what presents itself
before thy consciousness is simply what lies behind it. If the
divine qualities are human, the human qualities are divine.
Only when we abandon a philosophy 6f religion, or a
 S P E C U L A T I V E DOCTRINE OF GOD. 231

theology, which is distinct from psychology and anthro­

pology, and recognise anthropology as itself theology, do
we attain to a true, self-satisfying identity of the divine
and human being, the identity of the human being with
itself. In every theory of the identity of the divine and
human which is not true identity, unity of the human
nature with itself, there still lies at the foundation a divisioii,
a separation into two, since the identity is immediately
abolished, or rather is supposed to be abolished. Every
theory of this kind is in contradiction with itself and with
the understanding,— is a half measure— a thing of the
imagination— a perversion, a distortion; which, however,
the more perverted and false it is, all the more appears to
be profound.
232 T HE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER XX IV.

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE TRINITY.

R e l ig io n gives reality or objectivity not only to the human

or divine nature in general as a personal being; it further
gives reality to the fundamental determinations or funda­
mental distinctions of that nature as persons. The Trinity
is therefore originally nothing else than the sum of the essen­
tial fundamental distinctions which man perceives in the
human nature. According as the mode of conceiving this
nature varies, so also the fundamental determinations on
which the Trinity is founded vary. But these distinctions,
perceived in one and the same human nature, are hyposta-
sised as substances, as divine persons. And herein, namely,
that these different determinations are in God, hypostases,
subjects, is supposed to lie the distinction between these
determinations as they are in God, and as they exist in man,
— in accordance with the law already enunciated, that only
in the idea of personality does the human personality
transfer and make objective its own qualities. But the
personality exists only in the imagination; the fundamental
determinations are therefore only for the imagination
hypostases, persons; for reason, for thought, they are mere
relations or determinations. The idea of the Trinity con­
tains in itself the contradiction of polytheism and mono­
theism, of imagination and reason, of fiction and reality.
Imagination gives the Trinity, reason the Unity of the per­
sons. According to reason, the things distinguished are
only distinctions; according to imagination, the distinctions
are things distinguished, which therefore do away with the
unity of the divine being. To the reason, the divine per­
sons are phantoms, to the imagination realities. The idea
of the Trinity demands that man should think the opposite
of what he imagines, and imagine the opposite of what he
thinks,— that he should think phantoms realities.*
* It is curious to observe how the speculative religious philosophy under­
takes the defence of the Trinity against the godless understanding, and yet,
by doing away with the personal substances, and explaining the relation of
 THE CONTRADICTION I N THE TRINITY. 233
There are three Persons, but they are not essentially dis­
tinguished. Tres personce, but una essentia. So far the
conception is a natural one. We can conceive three and
even more persons, identical in essence. Thus we men are
distinguished from one another by personal differences, but
in the main, in essence, in humanity we are one. And this
identification is made not only by the speculative under­
standing, but even by feeling. A given individual is a man
as we are; punctum satis; in this feeling all distinctions
vanish,— whether he be rich or poor, clever or stupid, cul­
pable or innocent. The feeling of compassion, sympathy, is
therefore a substantial, essential, speculative feeling. But
the three or more human persons exist apart from each
other, have a separate existence, even when they verify and
confirm the unity of their nature by fervent love. They
together constitute, through love, a single moral personality,
but each has a physical existence for himself. Though they
may be reciprocally absorbed in each other, may be unable
to dispense with each otheT, they have yet always a formally
independent existence.- Independent existence, existence
apart from others, is the essential characteristic of a
person, of a substance. It is otherwise in God, and neces­
sarily s o ; for while his personality is the same as that of
man, it is held to be the same with a difference, on the
ground simply of this postulate: there must be a difference.
The three Persons in God have no existence out of each
other; else there would meet us in the heaven of Christian
dogmatics, not indeed many gods, as in Olympus, but at
least three divine Persons in an individual form, three Gods.
The gods of Olympus were real persons, for they existed
apart from each other, they had the criterion of real person­
ality in their individuality, though they were one in essence,
in divinity; they had different personal attributes, but were
each singly a god, alike in divinity, different as existing
subjects or persons ; they were genuine divine personalities.
Father and Son as merely an inadequate image borrowed from organic life,
robs the Trinity of its very heart and soul. Truly, if the cabalistic artifices
which the speculative religious philosophy applies in the service of the
absolute religion were admissible in favour of finite religions, it would not
be difficult to squeeze the Pandora’s box of Christian dogmatics out of the
horns of the Egyptian Apis. Nothing further would be needed for this
purpose than the ominous distinction of the understanding from the specu­
lative reason,— a distinction which is adapted to the justification of every
absurdity.
234 T HE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

The three Persons of the Christian Godhead, on the con­

trary, are only imaginary, pretended personsr assuredly
different from real persons, just because they are only
phantasms, shadows of personalities, while, notwithstand­
ing, they are assumed to be real persons. The essential
characteristic of personal reality, the polytheistic element,
is excluded, denied as non-divine. But by this negation
their personality becomes a mere phantasm. Only in the
truth of the plural lies the truth of the Persons. The three
persons of the Christian'Godhead are not tres Dii, three Gods;
— at least they are not meant to be such;— but unus Devs,
one God. The three Persons end, not,,as might have been
expected, in a plural, but in a singular; they are not only
Unum— the gods of Olympus are that— but Unus. U nity
has here the significance not of essence only, but also of
existence ; unity is the existential form of God. Three are
one: the plural is a singular. God is a personal being con­
sisting of three persons.*
The three persons are thus only phantoms in the eyes of
reason, for the conditions or modes under which alone their
personality could be realised, are done away with by the
command of monotheism. The unity gives the lie to the
personality; the self-subsistence of the persons is annihi­
lated in the self-subsistence of the unity— they are mere
relations. The Son is not without the Father, the Father
not without the Son: the Holy Spirit, who indeed spoils the
symmetry, expresses nothing but the relation of the two to
each other. But the divine persons are distinguished from
each other only by that which constitutes their relation
to each other. The essential in the Father as a person is
that he is a Father, of the Son that he is a Son. What the
Father is over and above his fatherhood, does not belong to
his personality; therein he is God, and as God identical
with the Son as God. Therefore it is said: God the
Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost:— God is
in all three alike. “ There is one person of the Father,
another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But
* The unity has not the significance of genus, not of unum but of unus.
(See Augustine and Petrus Lomb. 1. i. dist. 19, c. 7, 8,9.) “ H i ergo tres,
qui unum sunt propter ineffabilem conjunctionem deitatis qua ineffabiliter
copulantur, tvnus Deus e s t (Petrus L. 1. c. c. 6.) “ How can reason bring
itself into accord with this, or believe, that three is one and one is three ?
— Luther (Th. x. iv. p. 13).
 THE CONTRADICTION I N T HE TRINITY. 235

the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy

Ghost, is all one; ” i.e., they are distinct persons, but with­
out distinction of substance. The personality, therefore,
arises purely in the relation of the Fatherhood; i.e., the
idea of the person is here only a relative idea, the idea of a
relation. Man as a father is dependent, he is essentially
the correlative of the son; he is not a father without the
son; by fatherhood man reduces himself to a relative,
dependent, impersonal being. It is before all things neces­
sary not to allow oneself to be deceived by these relations
as they exist in reality, in men. The human father is, over
and above his paternity, an independent personal being; he
has at least a formal existence for himself, an existence apart
from his sonr; he is not merely a father, with the exclusion
of all the other predicates of a real personal being. Father­
hood is a relation Which the bad man can make quite an
external one, not touching his personal being. But in God
the Father, there is no distinction between God the Father
and God the Son as God; the abstract fatherhood alone con­
stitutes his personality, his distinction from the Son, whose
personality likewise is founded only on the abstract sonship.
But at the same time these relations, .as has been said,
are maintained to be not mere relations, but real persons,
beings, substances. Thus the truth of the plural, the truth
of polytheism is again affirmed,* and the truth of mono­
theism is denied. To require the reality of the persons is to
require the unreality of the unity, and conversely, to require
the reality of the unity is to require the unreality of the
persons. Thus in the holy mystery of the Trinity,— that is
to say, so far as it is supposed to represent a truth distinct
from human nature,— all resolves itself into delusions,
phantasms, contradictions, and sophisms.*)*
* “ Quia ergo pater Deus et filius Deus et spiritus s. Deus cur non dicuntur
tres Dii ? Ecce proposuit hanc propositionem (Augustinus) attende quid
respondeat . . . Si autem dicerem: tres Deos, contradiceret scriptura
dicens: Audi Israel: Deus tuus unus est. Ecce absolutio qusestionis: quare
potius dicamus tres personas quam tres Deos, quia scil. illua non contradicit
scriptura.”— Petrus L. (1. i. dist. 23, c. 3). How much did even Catholicism
repose upon Holy W r it!
+ A truly masterly presentation of the overwhelming contradictions in
which the mystery of tne Trinity involves the genuine religious sentiment,
is to be found in the work already cited— Tkeantkropos. Eine Reike von
Aphorismen— which expresses in the form of the religious sentiment what
in the present work is expressed in the form of the reason; and which is
therefore especially to be recommended to women.
236 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SACRAMENTS.

As the objective essence of religion, the idea of God, resolves

itself into mere contradictions, so also, on grounds easily
understood, does its subjective essence.
The subjective éléments of religion are on the one hand
Faith and Love ; on the other hand, so far as it presents
itself externally in a cultus, the sacraments of Baptism and
the Lord’s Supper. The sacrament of Faith is Baptism,
the sacrament of Love is the Lord’s Supper. In strictness
there are only two sacraments, as there are two subjective
elements in religion, Faith and Love : for Hope is only faith
in relation to the future ; so that there is the same logical
impropriety in making it a distinct mental act as in making
the Holy Ghost a distinct being.
The identity of the sacraments with the specific essence
of religion as hitherto developed is at once made evident,
apart from other relations, by the fact that they have for
their basis natural materials or things, to which, however,
is attributed a significance and effect in contradiction with
their nature. Thus the material of baptism is water,
common, natural water, just as the material of religion in
general is common, natural humanity. But as religion
alienates our own nature from us, and represents it as not
ours, so the water of baptism is regarded as quite other
than common water ; for it has not a physical but a hyper­
physical power and significance ; it is the Lavacrum regenc-
rationis, it purifies man from the stains of original sin,
expels the inborn devil, and reconciles with God. Thus
it is natural water only in appearance ; in truth it is
supernatural. In other words: the baptismal water has
supernatural effects (and that which operates superna-
turally is itself supernatural) only in idea, only in the
imagination.
And yet the material of Baptism is said to be natural
water. Baptism has no validity and efficacy if it is not
 T HE CONTRADICTION I N THE SACRAMENTS. 237

performed with water. Thus the natural quality of water

has in itself value and significance, since the supernatural
effect of baptism is associated in a supernatural manner
with water only, and not with any other material. God, by
means of -his omnipotence, could have united the same
effect to anything whatever. But he does not; he accommo­
dates himself to natural qualities; he chooses an element
corresponding, analogous to his operation. Thus the natural
is not altogether set aside; on the contrary, there always
remains a certain analogy with the natural, an appearance
of naturalness. In like manner wine represents blood;
bread, flesh.* Even miracle is guided by analogies; water
is changed into wine or blood, one species into another,
with the retention of the indeterminate generic idea* of
liquidity. So it is here. Water is the purest, clearest
of liquids; in virtue of this its natural character it is
the image of the spotless nature of the Divine Spirit.
In short, water has a significance in itself, as water;
it is on account of its natural quality that it is conse­
crated and selected as the vehicle of the Holy Spirit. So
far there lies at the foundation of Baptism a beautiful,
profound natural significance. But, at the very same time,
this beautiful meaning is lost again because water has a
transcendental effect,— an effect which it has only through
the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit, and not through
itself. The natural quality becomes indifferent : he who
makes wine out of water, can at will unite the effects of
baptismal water with any material whatsoever.
Baptism cannot be understood without the idea of miracle.
Baptism is itself a miracle. The same power which works
miracles, and by means of them, as a proof of the divinity
of Christ, turns Jews and Pagans into Christians,— this
same power has instituted baptism and operates in it.
Christianity began with miracles, and it carries itself for­
ward with miracles. If the miraculous power of baptism
is denied, miracles in general must be denied. The miracle-
working water of baptism springs from the same source as
the water which at the wedding at Cana in Galilee was
turned into wine.
The faith which is produced by miracle is not dependent
* “ Sacramentum ejus rei similitudinem gerit, cujus signum est.”— Petrus
Lomb. (1. iv. dist. 1, c. i)%
238 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

on me, on my spontaneity, on freedom of judgment and

conviction. A miracle which happens before my eyes I
must believe, if I am not utterly obdurate. Miracle com­
pels me to believe in the divinity of the miracle-worker. *
It is true that in some cases it presupposes faith, namely,
where it appears in the light of a reward; but with that
exception it presupposes not so much actual faith as a
believing disposition, willingness, submission, in opposition
to an unbelieving, obdurate, and malignant disposition, like
that of the Pharisees. The end of miracle is to prove that
the miracle-worker is really that which he assumes to be.
Faith based on miracle is the only thoroughly warranted,
well-grounded, objective faith. The faith which is pre­
supposed by miracle is only faith in a Messiah, a Christ in
general; but the faith that this very man is Christ— and
this is the main point— is first wrought by miracle as its
consequence. This presupposition even of an indeterminate
faith is, however, by no means necessary. Multitudes first
became believers through miracles; thus miracle was the
cause of their faith. If then miracles do not contradict
Christianity,— and how should they contradict it ?— neither
does the miraculous efficacy of baptism contradict it. On
the contrary, if baptism is to have a Christian significance
it must of necessity have a supernaturalistic one. Paul
was converted by a sudden miraculous appearance, when
he was still full of hatred to the Christians. Christianity
took him by violence. It is in vain to allege that with
another than Paul this appearance would not have had the
same consequences, and that therefore the effect of it must
still be attributed to Paul. For if the same appearance had
been vouchsafed to others, they would assuredly have
become as thoroughly Christian as Paul. Is not divine
grace omnipotent? The unbelief and non-convertibility
of the Pharisees is no counter-argument; for from them
grace was expressly withdrawn. The Messiah must neces­
sarily, according to a divine decree, be betrayed, maltreated
and crucified. For this purpose there must be individuals
who should maltreat and crucify him : and hence it was a
* In relation to the miracle-worker faith (confidence in God’s aid) is
certainly the causa efficient of the miracle. (See Matt. xvii. 20; Acts vi. 8.)
But in relation to the spectators of the miracle— and it is they who are in
question here— miracle is the causa effidens of faith.
 T HE CONTRADICTION I N THE SACRAMENTS. 239

prior necessity that the divine grace should be withdrawn

from those individuals. It was not indeed totally with­
drawn from them, but this was only in order to aggravate
their guilt, and by no means with the earnest will to con­
vert them. How would it be possible to resist the will of
God, supposing of course that it was his real will, not a
mere velleity ? Paul himself represents his conversion as a
work of divine grace thoroughly unmerited on his part; *
and quite correctly. Not to resist divine grace, i.e.y to
accept divine grace, to allow it to work upon one, is already
something good, and consequently is an effect of the Holy
Spirit. Nothing is more perverse than the attempt to re­
concile miracle with freedom of inquiry and thought, or
grace with freedom of will. In religion the nature of man
is regarded as separate from man. The activity, the grace
of God is the projected spontaneity of man, Free Will made
objective, f
It is the most flagrant inconsequence to adduce the ex­
perience that men are not sanctified, not converted by bap­
tism, as an argument against its miraculous efficacy, as is
done by rationalistic orthodox theologians ; { for all kinds
of miracles, the objective power of prayer, and in general all
the supernatural truths of religion, also contradict experience.
He who appeals to experience renounces faith. Where ex­
perience is a datum, there religious faith and feeling have
already vanished. The unbeliever denies the objective
efficacy of prayer only because it contradicts experience;
the atheist goes yet further,— he denies even the existence
of God, because he does not find it in experience. Inward
experience creates no difficulty to him ; for what thou
experiencest in thyself of another existence, proves only
that there is something in thee which thou thyself art not,
* “ Here we see a miracle surpassing all miracles, that Christ should have
so mercifully converted his greatest enemy.”— Luther (Th. xvi. p. 560).
t Hence it is greatly to the honour of Luther’s understanding and sense
of truth that, particularly when writing against Erasmus, he unconditionally
denied the free will of man as opposed to divine grace. “ The name Free
Will,” says Luther, quite correctly from the standpoint of religion, “ is a
divine title and name, which none ought to bear but the Divine Majesty
alone ” (Th. xix. p. 28).
Z Experience indeed extorted even from the old theologians, whose faith
was an uncompromising one, the admission that the. effects of baptism are,
at least in this life, very limited. “ Baptismus non aufert omnes pcenali-
tates hujus vitae.”— Mezger. Theol. Schol. Th. iv. p. 251. See also Petrus
L. 1. iv. dist. 4, c. 4 j 1. ii. dist. 32, c. 1.
240 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTI ANITY.

which works upon thee independently of thy personal will

and consciousness, without thy knowing what this myste­
rious something is. But faith is stronger than experience.
The facts which contradict faith do not disturb it; it is
happy in itself ; it has eyes only for itself, to all else it is
blind.
It is true that religion, even on the standpoint of its
mystical materialism, always Tequires the co-operation of
subjectivity, and therefore requires it in the sacraments; but
herein is exhibited its contradiction with itself. And this
contradiction is particularly glaring in the sacrament of the
Lord’s Supper; for baptism is given to infants,— though
even in them, as a condition of its efficacy, the co-operation
of subjectivity is insisted on, but, singularly enough, is
supplied in the faith of others, in the faith of the parents,
or of their representatives, or of the church in general.*
The object in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is the
body of Christ,— a real body; but the necessary predicates
of reality are wanting to it. Here we have again, in an
example presented to the senses, what we have found in
the nature of religion in general. The object or subject in
the religious syntax is always a real human or natural sub­
ject or predicate; but the closer definition, the essential
predicate of this predicate is denied. The subject is sen­
suous, but the predicate is not sensuous, i.e., is contradic­
tory to the subject. I distinguish a real body from an
imaginary one only by this, that the former produces cor­
poreal effects, involuntary effects, upon me. If therefore the
bread be the real body of God, the partaking of it must
produce in me immediate, involuntary sanctifying effects; I
need to make no special preparation, to bring with me no
holy disposition. If I eat an apple, the apple of itself gives
rise to the taste of apple. A t the utmost I need nothing
more than a healthy stomach to perceive that the apple is
an apple. The Catholics require a state of fasting as a
condition of partaking the Lord’s Supper. This is enough.
I take hold of the body with my lips, I crush it with my
* Even in the absurd fiction of the Lutherans, that “ infants believe in
baptism,” the action of subjectivity reduces itself to the faith of others,
since the faith of infants is “ wrought by God through the intercession of
the god-parents and their bringing np of the children in the faith of the
Christian Church.”— Luther (Th. xiii. pp. 360, 361). “ Thus the faith of
another helps me to obtain a faith of my own.”— lb. (T. xiv. p» 347a).
 THE CONTRADICTION I N THE SACRAMENTS. 241

teeth, by my oesophagus it is carried into my stomach; I

assimilate it corporeally, not spiritually* Why are its
effects not held to be corporeal ? Why should not this body,
which is a corporeal, but at the same time heavenly, super­
natural substance, also bring forth in me corporeal and yet
at the same time holy, supernatural effects ? If it is my
disposition, my faith, which alone makes the divine body a
means of sanctification to me, which transubstantiates the
dry bread into pneumatic animal substance, why do I still
need an external object ? It is I myself who give rise to
the effect of the body on me, and therefore to the reality of
the body; I am acted on by myself. Where is the objective
truth and power ? He who partakes the Lord’s Supper
unworthily has nothing further than the physical enjoyment
of bread and wine. He who brings nothing, takes nothing
away. The specific difference of this bread from common
natural bread rests therefore only on the difference between
the state of mind at the table of the Lord, and the state of
mind at any other table. “ He that eateth and drinketh
unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not
discerning the Lord’s body.” f But this mental state itself
is dependent only on the significance which I-give to this
bread. If it has for me the significance not of bread, but of
the body of Christ, then it has not the effect of common
bread. In the significance attached to it lies its effect. I
do not eat to satisfy hunger; hence I consume only a
small quantity. Thus to go no further than the quantity
taken, which in every other act of taking food plays an
essential part, the significance of common bread is externally
set aside.
But this supernatural significance exists only in the
imagination; to the senses, the wine remains wine, the bread,
* “ This,” says Luther, “ is in aumma our opinion, that in and with the
bread, the body of Christ is truly eaten; thus, that all which the bread
undergoes and effects, the body of Christ undergoes and effects ; that it is
divided, eaten and chewed with the teeth propter unionem ¿acramentalem.”
(Plank’8 Gesch. der Entst. des protest. Lehrbeg. B. viii. s. 369). Elsewhere,
it is true, Luther denies that the body of Christ, although it is partaken of
corporeally, “ is chewed and digested like a piece of beef. (Th. xix. p. 429.)
No wonder ; for that which is partaken of is an object without objectivity,
a body without corporeality, flesh without the qualities of flesh ; “ spiritual
flesh,” as Luther says, i.e., imaginary flesh. Be it observed further, tnat the
Protestants also take the Lord’s Supper fasting, but this is merely a custom
with them, not a law. (See Luther, Th. xviii. p. 200, 201.)
t 1 Cor. xi. 29.
242 THE ESSENCE O F CHRISTI ANITY.
§

bread. The Schoolmen therefore had recourse to the pre­

cious distinction of substance and accidents. A ll the acci­
dents which constitute the nature of wine and bread are still
there; only that which is made up by these accidents, the
subject, the substance, is wanting, is changed into flesh and
blood. But all the properties together, whose combination
forms this unity, are the substance itself. What are wine
and bread if I take from them the properties which make
them what they are ? Nothing. Flesh and blood have
therefore no objective existence; otherwise they must be
an object to the unbelieving senses. On the contrary: the
only valid witnesses of an objective existence— taste, smell,
touch, sight— testify unanimously to the reality of the wine
and bread, and nothing else. The wine and bread are in
reality natural, but in imagination divine substances.
Faith is the power of the imagination, which makes the
real unreal, and the unreal real: in direct contradiction
with the truth of the senses, with the truth of reason.
Faith denies what objective reason affirms, and affirms what
it denies* The mystery of the Lord’s Supper is the
mystery of faith : f — hence the partaking of it is the high­
est, the most rapturous, blissful act of the believing soul.
The negation of objective truth which is not gratifying to
feeling, the truth of reality, of the objective world and
reason,— a negation which constitutes the essence of faith,—
reaches its highest point in the Lord’s Supper; for faith
here denies an immediately present, evident, indubitable
object, maintaining that it is not what the reason and senses
declare it to be, that it is only in appearance bread, but in

* “ Videtur enim species vini et panis, et substantia panis et vim non

creditor. Creditur autem substantia corporis et sanguinis Christi et tamen
species non cernitur.”— Bernardus (ed. Bas. 1552, pp. 189-191).
t It is so in another relation not developed here, but which may be men*
cioned in a note : namely, the following. In religion, in faith, man is an
object to himself as the object, i.e., the end or determining motive, of God.
Man is occupied with himself in and through God. God is the means of
human existence and happiness. This religious truth, embodied in a cultus,
in a sensuous form, is the Lord’s Supper. In this sacrament man feeds upon
God— the Creator of heaven and earth— as on material food ; by the act of
eating and drinking he declares God to be a mere means of life to man.
Here man is virtually supposed to be the God of God : hence the Lord’s
Supper is the highest self-enjoyment of human subjectivity. Even the
Protestant— not indeed in words, but in truth— transforms God into an ex­
ternal thing, since he subjects Him to himself as an object of sensational
enjoyment
 THE CONTRADICTION I N THE SACRAMENTS. 243

reality flesh. The position of the Schoolmen, that according

to the accidents it is bread, and according to the substance
flesh, is merely the abstract, explanatory, intellectual ex*
pression of what faith accepts and declares, and has therefore
no other meaning than this : to the senses or to common
perception it is bread, but in truth, flesh. Where therefore
the imaginative tendency of faith has assumed such power
over the senses and reason as to deny the most evident
sensible truths, it is no wonder if believers can raise them­
selves to such a degree of exaltation as actually to see blood
instead of wine. Such examples Catholicism has to show.
Little is wanting in order to perceive externally what faith
and imagination hold to be real.
So long as faith in the mystery of the Lord’s Supper as
a holy, nay the holiest, highest truth, governed man, so long
was his governing principle the imagination. A ll criteria
of reality and unreality, of unreason and reason, had dis­
appeared : anything whatever that could be imagined passed
for real possibility. Religion hallowed every contradiction
of reason, of the nature of things. Do not ridicule the absurd
questions of the Schoolmen ! They were necessary cpn-
sequences of faith. That which is only a matter of feeling
had to be made a-matter of reason, that which contradicts
the understanding had to be made not to contradict it.
This was the.fundamental contradiction of Scholasticism,
whence all other contradictions followed of course.
And it is of no particular importance whether I believe
the Protestant or the Catholic doctrine of the Lord’s Supper.
The sole distinction is, that in Protestantism it is only on
the tongue, in the act of partaking, that flesh and blood are
united in a thoroughly miraculous manner with bread and
wine ; * while in Catholicism, it is before the act of par­
taking, by the power of the priest,— who however here acts
only in the name of the Almighty,— that bread and wine
are really transmuted into flesh and blood. The Protestant
prudently avoids a definite explanation ; he does not lay
himself open, like the pious, uncritical simplicity of Catho-
* “ Nostrates, præsentiam realem consecrationis effectum esse, adfirmant ;
idque ita, ut turn se exserat, cum usus legitimus accedit. Nec est quod
regeras, Christum hæc verba : hoc est corpus meum, protulisse, antequam
discipuli ejus comederent, adeoque panem jam ante usum corpus Christi
fuisse.”— Buddeus (L c. L v. c. 1, §§ 13, 17). See, on the other hand,
Concil. Trident Sessio 13, cc. 3, 8, Can. 4.
244 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

licism, whose God, as an external object, can be devoured

by a mouse : he shuts up his God within himself, where he
can no more be torn from him, and thus secures him as well
from the power of accident as from that of ridicule; yet,
notwithstanding this, he just as much as the Catholic con­
sumes real flesh and blood in the bread and wine. Slight
indeed was the difference at first between Protestants and
Catholics in the doctrine of the Lord's Supper! Thus at
Anspach there arose a controversy on the question—
“ whether the body of Christ enters the stomach, and is
digested like other food ? ” *
But although the imaginative activity of faith makes the
objective existence the mere appearance, and the emotional,
imaginary existence the truth and reality; still, in itself or
in truth, that which is really objective is only the natural
elements. Even the host in the pyx of the Catholic priest
is in itself only to faith a divine body,— this external thing,
into which he transubstantiates the divine being, is only a
thing of faith; for even here the body is not visible, tangi­
ble, tasteable as a body. That is : the bread is only in its
significance flesh. It is true that to faith this significance
has the sense of actual existence;— as, in general, in the
ecstasy of fervid feeling that which signifies becomes the
thing signified;— it is held not to signify, but to be flesh.
But this state of being flesh is not that of real flesh; it is
a state of being which is only believed in, imagined, i.e., it
has only the value, the quality, of a significance, a truth
conveyed in a symbol.f A thing which has a special signi­
ficance for me, is another thing in my imagination than
in reality. The thing signifying is not itself that which is
signified. What it is, is evident to the senses; what it
signifies, is only in my feelings, conception, imagination,—
is only for me, not for others, is not objectively present.
So here. When therefore Zwinglius said that the Lord’s
Supper has only a subjective significance, he said the same
thing as his opponents; only he disturbed the illusion of
* Apologie Melancthon. Strobel. Numb. 1783, p. 127.
t “ The fanatics, however, believe that it is mere bread and wine, and it is
assuredly so as they believe ; they have it so, and eat mere bread and wine.”
— Luther (Th. xix. p. 432). That is to say, if thou believest, representest to
thyself, conceivest, that the bread is not bread, but the body of Christ, it
is not bread ; but if thou dost not believe so, it is not so. What it is in
thy belief that it actually is.
 THE CONTRADICTION I N THE SACRAMENTS. 245

the religious imagination; for that which " is ” in the Lord’s

Supper, is only an illusion of the imagination, but with the
further illusion that it is not an illusion. Zwinglius only
expressed simply, nakedly, prosaically, Vationalistically, and
therefore offensively, what the others declared mystically,
indirectly,— inasmuch as they confessed * that the effect of
the Lord’s Supper depends only on a worthy disposition or on
faith; i.e., that the bread and wine are the flesh and blood of
the Lord, are the Lord himself, only for him for whom they
have the supernatural significance of the divine body, for
on this alone depends the worthy disposition, the religious
emotion.f
But if the Lord’s Supper effects nothing, consequently is
nothing,— for only that which produces effects, is,— without
a certain state of mind, without faith, then in faith alone
lies its reality; the entire event goes forward in the feelings
alone. If the idea that I here receive the real body of the
Saviour acts on the religious feelings, this idea itself arises
from the feelings; it produces devout sentiments, because
it is itself a devout idea. Thus here also the religious sub­
ject is acted on by himself as if by another being, through
the conception of an imaginary object. Therefore the pro­
cess of the Lord's Supper can quite well, even without the
intermediation of bread and wine, without any church
ceremony, be accomplished in the imagination. There are
innumerable devout poems, the sole theme of which is the
blood of Christ. In these we have a genuinely poetical cele­
bration of the Lord’s Supper. In the lively representation
of the suffering, bleeding Saviour, the soul identifies itself
with him ; here the saint in poetic exaltation drinks the
pure blood, unmixed with any contradictory, material ele­
ments; here there is no disturbing object between the idea
of the blood and the blood itself.
But though the Lord’s Supper, or a sacrament in general,
is nothing without a certain state of mind, without faith,
* “ Even the Catholics also. “ Hujus sacramenti effectus, quem in anima
operatur digne sumentis, est adunatio hominis ad Christum.”— Concil.
Florent. de S. Euchar.
+ “ If the body of Christ is in the bread and is eaten with faith, it
strengthens the soul, in that the soul believes that it is the body of Christ
which the mouth eats.”— Luther (Th. xix. p. 433; see also p. 205). “ For
what we believe that we receive, that we receive in truth.”— lb. (Th. xvii.
P. 557).
246 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

nevertheless religion presents the sacrament at the same

time as something in itself real, external, distinct from the
human being, so that in the religious consciousness the true
thing, which is faith, is made only a collateral thing, a con­
dition, and the imaginary thing becomes the principal thing.
And the necessary, immanent consequences and effects of
this religious materialism, of this subordination of the human
to the supposed divine, of the subjective to the supposed
objective, of truth to imagination, of morality to religion,—
the necessary consequences are superstition and immorality :
superstition, because a thing has attributed to it an effect
which does not lie in its nature, because a thing is held up
as not being what it in truth is, because a mere conception
passes for objective reality; immorality, because necessarily,
in feeling, the holiness of the action as such is separated
from morality, the partaking of the sacrament, even apart
from the state of mind, becomes a holy and saving act.
Such, at least, is the result in practice, which knows nothing
of the sophistical distinctions of theology. In general :
wherever religion places itself in contradiction with reason} it
places itself also in contradiction with the moral sense. Only
with the sense of truth coexists the sense of the right and
good. Depravity of understanding is always depravity
of heart. He who deludes and cheats his understanding
has not a veracious, honourable heart; sophistry corrupts
the whole man. And the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper is
sophistry.
The Truth of the disposition, or of faith as a requisite to
communion, involves the Untruth of the bodily presence of
God ; and again the Truth of the objective existence of the
divine body involves the Untruth of the disposition.
 THE CONTRADICTION OF F A I T H A ND L O V E . 247

CHAPTER XX VI.

THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE.

T h e Sacraments are a sensible presentation of that contra­

diction of idealism and materialism, of subjectivism and
objectivism, which belongs to the inmost nature of religion.
But the sacraments are nothing without Faith and Love.
Hence the contradiction in the sacraments carries us back
to the primary contradiction of Faith and Love.
The essence of religion, its latent nature, is the identity of
the divine being with the human ; but the form of religion,
or its apparent, conscious nature, is the distinction between
them. God is the human being ; but he presents himself
to the religious consciousness as a distinct being. Now,
that which reveals the basis, the hidden essence of religion,
is Love ; that which constitutes its conscious form is Faith.
Love identifies man with God and God with man, conse­
quently it identifies man with man ; faith separates God
from man, consequently it separates man from man, for
God is nothing else than the idea of the species invested
with a mystical form,— the separation of God from man is
therefore the separation of man from man, the unloosening
of the social bond. By faith religion places itself in contra­
diction with morality, with reason, with the unsophisticated
sense of truth in man ; by love, it opposes itself again to
this contradiction. Faith isolates God, it makes him a
particular, distinct being : love universalises ; it makes
God a common being, the love of whom is one with the
love of man. Faith produces in man an inward disunion,
a disunion with himself, and by consequence an outward
disunion also ; but love heals the wounds which are made
by faith in the heart of man. Faith makes belief in its
God a law: love is freedom,— it condemns not even the
atheist, because it is itself atheistic, itself denies, if not
theoretically, at least practically, the existence of a parti­
cular, individual God, opposed to man. Love lias God in
 248 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

itself: faith has God out of itself; it estranges God from

man, it makes him an external object.
Faith, being inherently external, proceeds even to the
adoption of outward fact as its object, and becomes histori­
cal faith. It is therefore of the nature of faith that it can
become a totally external confession; and that with mere
faith, as such, superstitious, magical effects are associated*
The devils believe that God is, without ceasing to be devils.
Hence a distinction has been made between faith in God,
and belief that there is a God.f But even with this bare
belief in the existence of God, the assimilating power of
love is intermingled;— a power which by no means lies in
the idea of faith as such, and in so far as it relates tc
/ external things.
The only distinctions or judgments which are immanent
to faith, which spring out of itself, are the distinctions of
right or genuine, and wrong or false faith; or in general, of
belief and unbelief. Faith discriminates thus: This is true,
that is false. And it claims truth to itself alone. Faith has
for its object a definite, specific truth, which is necessarily
united with negation. Faith is in its nature exclusive.
One thing alone is truth, one alone is God, one alone has
the monopoly of being the Son of God; all else is nothing,
error, delusion. Jehovah alone is the true God; all other
gods are vain idols.
Faith has in its mind something peculiar to itself; it
rests on a peculiar revelation of God ; it has not come to
its possessions in an ordinary way, that way which stands
open to all men alike. What stands open to all is common,
and for that reason cannot form a special object of faith.
That God is the creator, all men could know from Nature;
but what this God is in person, can be known only by
special grace, is the object of a special faith. And because
he is only revealed in a peculiar manner, the object of this
faith is himself a peculiar being. The God of the Christians
is indeed the God of the heathens, but with a wide differ­
ence :— just such a difference as there is between me as I am
to a friend, and me as I am to a stranger, who only knows
me at a distance. God as he is an object to the Christians,
is quite another than as he is an object to the heathens.
* Hence the mere name of Christ has miraculous powers.
+ “ Gott glauben und an Goit glauben. ”
 THE CONTRADICTION OF F A I T H A N D LOVE. 249

The Christians know God personally, face to face. The

heathens know only— and even this is too large an admis­
sion— “ what,” and not “who,” God is ; for which reason they
fell into idolatry. The identity of the heathens and Chris­
tians before God is therefore altogether vague; what the
heathens have in common with the Christians— if indeed
we consent to be so liberal as to admit anything in common
between them— is not that which is specifically Christian,
not that which constitutes faith. In whatsoever the Chris­
tians are Christians, therein they are distinguished from
the heathens; * and they are Christians in virtue of their
special knowledge of God ; thus their mark of distinction is
God. Speciality is the salt which first gives a flavour to
the common being. What a being is in special, is the being
itself; he alone knows me, who knows me in specie. Thus
the special God, God as he is an object to the Christians,
the personal God, is alone God. And this God is unknown
to heathens, and to unbelievers in general; he does not
exist for them. He is, indeed, said to exist for the heathens ;
but mediately, on condition that they cease to be heathens,
and become Christians. Faith makes man partial and
narrow; it deprives him of the freedom and ability to esti­
mate duly what is different from himself. Faith is im­
prisoned within itself. It is true that the philosophical, or,
in general,, any scientific theorist, also limits himself by a
definite system. But theoretic limitation, however fettered,
short-sighted and narrow-hearted it may be, has still a freer
character than faith, because the domain of theory is in
itself a free one, because here the ground of decision is the
nature of things, argument, reason. But faith refers the
decision to conscience and interest, to the instinctive
desire of happiness; for its object is a special, personal
Being, urging himself on recognition, and making salvation
dependent 011 that recognition.
Faith gives man a peculiar sense of his own dignity and
importance. The believer finds himself distinguished above
other men, exalted above the natural man; he knows him­
self to be a person of distinction, in the possession of
peculiar privileges; believers are aristocrats, unbelievers
plebeians. God is this distinction and pre-eminence of
* “ If I wish to be a Christian, I must believe and do what other people
do not believe or do.”— Luther (Th. xvi. p. 569).
250 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

believers above unbelievers, personified* Because faith

represents man’s own nature as that of another being, the
believer does not contemplate his dignity immediately in
himself, but in this supposed distinct person. The con­
sciousness of his own pre-eminence presents itself as a con­
sciousness of this person; he has the sense of his own
dignity in this divine personality.f As the servant feels
himself honoured in the dignity of his master, nay, fancies
himself greater than a free, independent man of lower rank
than his master, so it is with the believer.J He denies all
merit in himself, merely that he may leave all merit to his
Lord, because his own desire of honour is satisfied in the
honour of his Lord. Faith is arrogant, but it is distinguished
from natural arrogance in this, that it clothes its feeling of
superiority, its pride, in the idea of another person, for
whom the believer is an object of peculiar favour. This dis­
tinct person, however, is simply his own hidden self, his per­
sonified, contented desire of happiness: for he has no other
qualities than these, that he is the benefactor, the Redeemer,
the Saviour— qualities in which the believer has reference
only to himself, to his own eternal salvation. In fact, we
have here the characteristic principle of religion, that it
changes that which is naturally active into the passive.
The heathen elevates himself, the Christian feels himself
elevated. The Christian converts into a matter of feeling,
of receptivity, what to the heathen is a matter of spon­
taneity. The humility of the believer is an inverted arro­
gance,— an arrogance none the less because it has not the
appearance, the external characteristics of arrogance. He
feels himself pre-eminent: this pre-eminence, however, is
not a result of liis activity, but a matter of grace; he has
been made pre-eminent; he can do nothing towards it him­
self. He does not make himself the end of his own activity,
but the end, the object of God.
* Celsus makes it a reproach to the Christians that they boast: “ Est
Deus et post ilium nos.” (Origenes adv. Cels. ed. Hceschelius. Aug. Yind.
1605, p. 182).
t “ lam proud and exulting on account of my blessedness and the forgive­
ness of my sins, but. through what ? Through the glory and pride of
another, namely, the Lord Christ.”— Luther (Th. ii. p. 344). “ He that
glorieth let him glory in the Lord.”— 1 Cor. i. 31.
X A military officer who had been adjutant of the Russian general
Miinnich said : “ When I was his adjutant I felt myself greater than now
that I command.”
 THE CONTRADICTION OF F A I T H AND LOVE. 251

Faith is essentially determinate, specific. God according

to the specific view taken of him by faith, is alone the true
God. This Jesus, such as I conceive him, is the Christ, the
true, sole prophet, the only-begotten Son of God, And this
particular conception thou must believe, if thou wouldst
not forfeit thy salvation. Faith is imperative. It is there­
fore necessary— it lies in the nature of faith— that it be
fixed as dogma. Dogma only gives a formula to what faith
had already on its tongue or in its mind. That when once
a fundamental dogma is established, it gives rise to more
special questions, which must also be thrown into a dogma­
tic form, that hence there results a burdensome multiplicity
of dogmas,— this is certainly a fatal consequence, but does
not do away with the necessity that faith should fix itself
in dogmas, in order that every one may know definitely
what he must believe and how he can win salvation.
That which in the present day, even from the standpoint
of believing Christianity, is rejected, is compassionated as .
an aberration, as a misinterpretation, or is even ridiculed,
is purely a consequence of the inmost nature of faith.
Faith is essentially illiberal, prejudiced; for it is concerned
not only with individual salvation, but with the honour of
God. And just as we are solicitous as to whether we show
due honour to a superior in rank, so it is with faith. The
apostle Paul is absorbed in the glory, the honour, the
merits of Christ. Dogmatic, exclusive, scrupulous particu­
larity, lies in the nature of faith. In food and other matters,
indifferent to faith, it is certainly liberal; but by no means
in relation to objects of faith. He who is not for Christ
is against him; that which is not Christian is antichristian.
But what is Christian ? This must be absolutely determined,
this cannot be free. If the articles of faith are set down in
books which proceed from various authors, handed down
in. the form of incidental, mutually contradictory, occasional
dicta,— then dogmatic demarcation and definition are even
an external necessity. Christianity owes its perpetuation
to the dogmatic formulas of the Church.
It is only the believing unbelief of modern times which
hides itself behind the Bible, and opposes the biblical dicta
to dogmatic definitions, in order that it may set itself free
from the limits of dogma by arbitrary exegesis. But faith
has already disappeared, is become indifferent, when the
252 T HE ESSENCE OF CHRISTI ANITY

determinate tenets of faith are felt as limitations. It is

only religious indifference under the appearance of religion
that makes the Bible, which in its nature and origin is
indefinite, a standard of faith, and under the pretext of
believing only the essential, retains nothing which deserves
the name of faith ;— for example, substituting tfor the dis­
tinctly characterised Son of God, held up by the Church,
the vague negative definition of a Sinless Man, who can
claim to be the Son of God in a sense applicable to 110
other being,— in a word, of a man, whom one may not
trust oneself to call either a man or a God. But that it
is merely indifference which makes a hiding-place for itself
behind the Bible, is evident from the fact that even what
stands in the Bible, if it contradicts the standpoint of the
present day, is regarded as not obligatory, or is even denied;
nay, actions which are essentially Christian, which are the
logical consequences of faith, such as the separation of
believers from unbelievers, are now designated as un­
christian.
The Church was perfectly justified in adjudging dam­
nation to heretics and unbelievers,* for this condemnation
is involved in the nature of faith. Faith at first appears to be
only an unprejudiced separation of believers from un­
believers ; but this separation is a highly critical distinction.
The believer has God for him, the unbeliever,.against him;
— it is only as a possible believer that the unbeliever has
God not against him ;— and therein precisely lies the ground
of the requirement that he should leave the ranks of un­
belief. But that which has God against it is worthless, re­
jected, reprobate; for that which has God against it is itself
against God. To believe, is synonymous with goodness; not
to believe, with wickedness. Faith, narrow and prejudiced
refers all unbelief to the moral disposition. In its view
the unbeliever is an enemy to Christ out of obduracy, out
of wickedness.*)* Hence faith has fellowship with believers
only; unbelievers it rejects. It is well-disposed towards
believers, but ill-disposed towards unbelievers. In faith
there lies a malignant principle.
* To faith, so long as it has any vital heat, any character, the heretic is
always on a level with the unbeliever, with the atheist.
t Already in the New Testament the idea of disobedience is associated
with unbelief. “ The cardinal wickedness is unbelief.”— Luther (xiii. p. 647).
 THE CONTRADICTION OF F AI T H A N D LOVE. 253

It is owing to the egoism, the vanity, the self-complacency

of Christians, that they can see the motes in the faith of
non-christian nations, but cannot perceive the beam in their
own. I t is only in the mode in which faith embodies itself
that Christians differ from the followers of other religions.
The distinction is founded only on climate or on natural
temperament. A warlike or ardently sensuous people will
naturally attest its distinctive religious character by deeds,
by force of arms. But the nature of faith as such is every­
where the same. It is essential to faith to condemn, to
anathematise. A ll blessings, all good it accumulates on
itself, on its God, as the lover on his beloved; all curses,
all hardship and evil it casts on unbelief. The believer is
blessed, well-pleasing to God, a partaker of everlasting
felicity; the unbeliever is accursed, rejected of God and
abjured by men : for what God rejects man must not receive,
must not indulge ;— that would be a criticism of the divine
judgment. The Turks exterminate unbelievers with fire
and sword, the Christians with the flames of hell. But the
fires of the other world blaze forth into this, to glare
through the night of unbelief. As the believer already here
below anticipates the joys of heaven, so the flames of the
abyss must be seen to flash here as a foretaste of the await­
ing hell,— afe least in the moments when faith attains its
highest enthusiasm.* It is true that Christianity ordains
no persecution of heretics, still less conversion by force of
arms. But so far as faith anathematises, it necessarily
generates hostile dispositions,— the dispositions out of
which the persecution of heretics arises. To love the man
who does not believe in Christ, is a sin against Christ, is to
love the enemy of Christ. *f* That which God, which Christ
does not love, man must not love; his love would be a
contradiction of the divine will, consequently a sin. God,
it is true, loves all men; but only when and because they
are Christians, or at least may be and desire to be such.

* God himself by no means entirely reserves the punishment of blas­

phemers, of unbelievers, of heretics, ior the future; he often punishes them
in this life also, “ for the benefit of Christendom and the strengthening of
faith : ” as, for example, the heretics Cerinthus and Arms. See Lutner
(Th. xiv. p. 13).
+ “ Si quis spiritum Dei liabet, illius versiculi recordetur : Nonne qui
oderunt te, Domine, oderam ?” (Psal. cxxxix. 21); Bernhardus, Epist. (193)
ad magist. Yvonem Cardin.
254 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

To be a Christian is to be beloved by G od; not to be a

Christian is to be hated by God, an object of the divine
anger.* The Christian must therefore love only Christians
— others only as possible Christians; he must only love
what faith hallows and blesses.' Faith is the baptism of
love. Love to man as man is only natural love. Christian
love is supernatural, glorified, sanctified love; therefore it
loves only what is Christian. The maxim, “ Love your
enemies,” has reference only to personal enemies, not to
public enemies, the enemies of God, the enemies of faith,
unbelievers. He who loves the men whom Christ denies,
does not believe Christ, denies his Lord and God. Faith
abolishes the natural ties of humanity; to universal, natural
unity, it substitutes a particular unity.
Let it not be objected to this, that it is said in the Bible,
“ Judge not, that ye be not judged; ” and that thus, as
faith leaves to God the judgment, so it leaves to him the
sentence of condemnation. This and other similar sayings
have authority only as the private law of Christians, not as
their public law ; belong only to ethics, not to dogmatics.
It is an indication of indifference to faith, to introduce
such sayings into the region of dogma. The distinction
between the unbeliever and the man is a fruit of modem
philanthropy. To faith, the man is merged in the believer;
to it, the essential difference between man and" the brute
rests only on religious belief. Faith alone comprehends in
itself all virtues which can make man pleasing to God ; and
God is the absolute measure, his pleasure the highest law :
the believer is thus alone the legitimate, normal man, man
as he ought to be, man as he is recognised by God. Wherever
we find Christians making a distinction between the man
and the believer, there the human mind has already severed
itself from faith; there man has value in himself, independ­
ently of faith. Hence faith is true, unfeigned, only where
the specific difference of faith operates in all its severity. If
the edge of this difference is blunted, faith itself naturally
becomes indifferent, effete. Faith is liberal only in things
intrinsically indifferent. The liberalism of the apostle Paul
presupposes the acceptance of the fundamental articles of
faith. Where everything is made to depend on the funda-
* “ Qui Cliriatum negat, negatur a Christo.”— Cyprian (Epist E. 73, § 18,
edit. Gersdorf.).
 THE CONTRADICTION OF F A I T H A ND LOVE. 255

mental articles of faith, there arises the distinction between

essential and non-essential belief. In the sphere of the
non-essential there is no law,— there you are free. But
obviously it is only on condition of your leaving the rights
of faith intact, that faith allows you freedom.
It is therefore an altogether false defence to say, that
faith leaves judgment to God. It leaves to him only the
moral judgment with respect to faith, only the judgment as
to its moral character, as to whether the faith of Christians
be feigned or genuine. So far as classes are concerned,
faith knows already whom God will place on the right
hand, and whom on the le ft; in relation to the persons who
compose the classes faith is uncertain; but that believers
are heirs of the Eternal Kingdom is beyond all doubt.
Apart from this, however, the God who distinguishes be­
tween believers and unbelievers, the condemning and re­
warding God, is nothing else than faith itself. What God
condemns, faith condemns, and vice versd. Faith is a con­
suming fire to its opposite* This fire of faith regarded
objectively, is the anger of God, or what is the same thing,
h ell; for hell evidently has its foundation in the anger of
God. But this hell lies in faith itself, in its sentence of
damnation. The flames of hell are only the flashings of
the exterminating, vindictive glance which faith casts on
unbelievers. . •
Thus faith is essentially a spirit of partisanship. He who
is not for Christ is against him.f Faith knows only friends
or enemies, it understands no neutrality; it is preoccupied
only with itself. Faith is essentially intolerant; essentially,
because with faith is always associated the illusion that its
cause is the cause of God, its honour his honour. The God
of faith is nothing else than the objective nature of faith— -
faith become an object to itself. Hence in the religious
consciousness also the cause of faith and the cause of God
are identified. God himself is interested: the interest of
faith is the nearest interest of God. “ He who toucheth
you,” says the prophet Zachariah,“ toucheth the apple of

* Thus the apostle Paul cursed “ Elymas the sorcerer” with blindness,
because he withstood the faith.— Acts xiii. 8-11.
t Historically considered, this saying, as well as the others cited pp. 384,
385, may be perfectly justified. But the Bible is not to be regarded as an
historical or temporal, but as an eternal book.
256 T HE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

His eye.” * That which wounds faith, wounds God, that

which denies faith, denies God himself.
Faith knows no other distinction than that between the
service of God and the service of idols. Faith alone gives
honour to God; unbelief withdraws from God that which is
due to him. Unbelief is an injury to God, religious high
treason. The heathens worship demons; their gods are
devils. “ I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice,
they sacrifice to devils, and not to G od: and I would not
that ye should have fellowship with devils.” + B u t the
devil is the negation of God; he hates God, wills that there
should be no God. Thus faith is blind to what there is of
goodness and truth lying at the foundation of heathen wor­
ship ; it sees in everything which does not do homage to its
God, i.e., to itself, a worship of idols, and in the worship of
idols only the work of the devil. Faith must therefore,
even in feeling, be only negative towards this negation of
G od: it is by inherent necessity intolerant towards its oppo­
site, and in general towards whatever does not thoroughly
accord with itself. Tolerance on its part would be intoler­
ance towards God, who has the right to unconditional, un­
divided sovereignty. Nothing ought to subsist, nothing
to exist, which does not acknowledge God, which does
not acknowledge fa ith :— “ That at the name of Jesus
every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things
on earth, and things under the earth; and that every
tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the
glory of the Father;” J Therefore faith postulates a future,
a world where faith has no longer an opposite, or where
at least this opposite exists only in order to enhance
the self-eomplacenc^ of triumphant faith. Hell sweetens
the joys of happy believers. “ The elect will come forth to
behold the torments of the ungodly, and at this spectacle
they will not be smitten with sorrow; on the contrary,

* “ Tenerrimam partem lramani corporis nominayit, ut apertissime in-

telligeremus, eum (Deum) tarn parva Sanctorum suorum contumelia lsecU,
quam parvi verberis tactu humani visus acics laeditur.”— Salvianus, 1. 8, de
Gubern. Dei.
t i Cor. x. 20.
X Phil. ii. io, 11. “ When the name of Jesus Christ is heard, all that is
unbelieving and ungodly in heaven or on earth shall be terrified.”— Luther
(Th. xvi. p. 322). “ In morte pagani Christianus gloriatur, quia Christus
glorificatur.”— Divus Bernardus. Sermo exhort, ad Milites Twnpli.
 THE CONTRADICTION OF F A I T H A ND L O V E . 257

while they see the unspeakable sufferings of the ungodly,

they, intoxicated with joy, will thank God for their own
salvation.”*
Faith is the opposite of love. Love recognises virtue even
in sin, truth in error. It is only since the power of faith has
been supplanted by the power of the natural unity of man­
kind, the power of reason, of humanity, that truth has been
seen even in polytheism, in idolatry generally,— or at least
that there has been any attempt to explain on positive
grounds what faith, in its bigotry, derives only from the
devil. Hence love is reconcilable with reason alone, not
with faith; for as reason, so also love is free, universal, in
its nature; whereas faith is narrow-hearted, limited. Only
where reason rules, does universal love rule; reason is itself
nothing else than universal love. It was faith, not love, not
reason, which invented Hell. To love, Hell is a horror; to
reason, an absurdity. It would be a pitiable mistake to
regard Hell as a mere aberration of faith, a false faith. Hell
stands already in the Bible. Faith is everywhere like itself;
at least positive religious faith, faith in the sense in which
it is here taken, and must be taken unless we would mix
with it the elements of reason, of culture,— a mixture which
indeed renders the character of faith unrecognisable.
Thus if faith does not contradict Christianity, neither do
those dispositions which result from faith, neither do the
actions which result from those dispositions. Faith condemns,
anathematises; all the actions, all the dispositions, which
contradict love, humanity, reason, accord with faith. A ll
the horrors of Christian religious history, which our believers
aver not to be due to Christianity, have truly arisen out of

* Petrus L. 1. iv. dist. 50, c. 4.** But this passage is by no means a declara­
tion of Peter Lombard himself. He is far too modest, timid, and dependent
on the authorities of Christianity to have ventured to advance such a tenet
on his own account. N o! This position is a universal declaration, a charac­
teristic expression of Christian, of believing love. The doctrine of some
Fathers of the Church, e.g., of Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, that the punish­
ment of the damned would have an end, sprung not out of Christian or
Church doctrine, but out of Platonism. Hence the doctrine that the punish­
ment of hell is finite, was rejected not only by the Catholic but also by the
Protestant church. (Augsb. Confess, art. 17). A precious example of the
exclusive, misanthropical narrowness of Christian love, is the passage cited
from Buddeus by Strauss (Christl. Glaubensl. B. ii. s. 547), according to
which not infants in general, but those of Christians exclusively, would
have a share in the divine grace and blessings if they died unbaptized.
K
258 T H E ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

Christianity, because they have arisen out of faith. This

repudiation of them is indeed a necessary consequence of
faith; for faith claims for itself only what is good, every­
thing bad it casts on the shoulders of unbelief, or of mis­
belief, or of men in general But this very denial of faith
that it is itself to blame for the evil in Christianity, is a
striking proof that it is really the originator of that evil,
because it is a proof of the narrowness, partiality, and in­
tolerance which render it well-disposed only to itself, to
its own adherents, but ill-disposed, unjust towards others.
According to faith, the good which Christians do, is not
done by the man, but by the Christian, by faith; but the evil
which Christians do, is not done by the Christian, but b y
the man. The evil which faith has wrought in Christendom
thus corresponds to the nature of faith,— of faith as it is
described in the oldest and most sacred records of Chris­
tianity, of the Bible. “ If any man preach any other gospel
unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed,”*
avaOefia earco, Gal. i. 9. “ Be ye not unequally yoked together
with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness
with unrighteousness ? and what communion hath light with
darkness ? And what concord hath Christ with Belial ? or
what part hath he that believeth with an infidel ? And what
agreement hath the temple of God with idols ? for ye are
the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell
in them and walk in them; and I will be their God, and
they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among
them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the
unclean thing; and I will receive you,” 2 Cor. iv. 14-17.
“ When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with
his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them
that know not God, and that oljey not the Gospel of our
Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting
destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the
glory of his power; when he shall come to be glorified in
his saints, and admired in all them that believe,” 2 Thess.
i. 7-10. “ Without faith it is impossible to please God,”
Heb. xi. 6. “ God so loved the world, that he gave his
only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him, should
not perish, but have everlasting life,” John iii. 16. “ Every
* “ Fugite, abhorrete hunc doctorem.” But why should I floe from him ?
because the anger, i.e., the curse of God rests on his head.
 THE CONTRADICTION OF F A I T H A ND LOVE. 259

spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh

is of G od: and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus
Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is the
spirit of antichrist,” 1 John iv. 2, 3. "W ho is a liar, but
he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ ? He is antichrist
that denieth the Father and the Son,” 1 John ii. 22.. “ Who­
soever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ,
hath not G od: he that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he
hath both the Father and the Son. If there come any unto
you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your
house, neither bid him God speed: for he that biddeth him
God speed, is partaker of his evil deeds,” 2 John ix. 11.
Thus speaks the apostle of love. But the love which he
celebrates is only the brotherly love of Christians. “ God
is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe,”
1 Tim. iv. 10. A fatal" specially! ” “ Let us do good unto
all men, especially unto them who are of the household of
faith,” GaL vi. 10. An equally pregnant “ especially! ” “ A
man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition
reject; knowing that he that is such is subverted,and sinneth,
being condemned of himself,” * Titus iii. 10, 11. “ He that
believeth on the Son hath everlasting life : and he that
believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of
God abideth on him,” -f* John iii. 36. “ And whosoever shall
offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it were
better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck,
and that he were cast into the sea,” Mark ix. 42; Matt, xviii.
6. “ He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but
he that believeth not shall be damned,” Mark xvi. 16. The
distinction between faith as it is expressed in the Bible and
faith as it has exhibited itself in later times, is only the
distinction between the bud and the plant. In the bud I
cannot so plainly see what is obvious in the matured plant;
and yet the plant lay already in the bud. But that which
* There necessarily results from this a sentiment which, e.g., Cyprian
expresses: “ Si vero ubique haeretici nihil aliud quam adversarii et anti-
christi nominantur, si vitandi et perversi et a semet ipsis damnati pro-
nuntiantur; quale est ut videantur damnandi a nobis non esse, quos constat
apostolica contestatione a semet ipsis damnatos esse.” Epistol. 74. (Edit, cit.)
t The passage Luke ix. 56, as the parallel of which is cited John iii. 17,
receives its completion and rectification in the immediately following v. 1 8 :
“ He that believeth in him is not condemned ; but he that believeth not is
condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only
begotten Son of God.”
260 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

is obvious, sophists of course will not condescend to recog­

nise; they coniine themselves to the distinction between
explicit and implicit existence,— wilfully overlooking their
essential identity.
Faith necessarily passes into hatred, hatred into persecu­
tion, where the power of faith meets with no contradiction,
where it does not find itself in collision with a power foreign
to faith, the power of love, of humanity, of the sense of
justice. Faith left to itself necessarily exalts itself above
the laws of natural morality. The doctrine of faith is the
doctrine of duty towards God,— the highest duty of faith.
By how much God is higher than man, by so much higher
are duties to God than duties towards man; and duties
towards God necessarily come into collision with common
human duties. God is not only believed in, conceived as
the universal being, the Father of men, as Love:— such
faith is the faith of love;— he is also represented as a per­
sonal being, a being by himself. And so far as God is
regarded as separate from man, as an individual being, so
far are duties to God separated from duties to man:— faith
is, in the religious sentiment, separated from morality, from
love* Let it not be replied that faith in God is faith in
love, in goodness itself; and that thus faith is itself an
expression of. a morally good disposition. In the idea of
personality, ethical definitions vanish; they are only col­
lateral things, mere accidents. The chief thing is the
subject, the divine Ego. Love to God himself, since it is
love to a personal being, is not a moral but a personal love.
Innumerable devout hymns breathe nothing but love to the
Lord; but in this love there appears no spark of an exalted
moral idea or disposition.
Faith is the highest to itself, because its object is a divine

* “ Faith, it is true, is not “ without good works,” nay, according to

Luther’s declaration, it is as impossible to separate faith from works as to
separate heat and light from fire. Nevertheless, and this is the main point,
good works do not belong to the article of justification before God, i.e., men
are justified and “ saved without works, through faith alone.” Faith is thus
expressly distinguished from good works; faith alone avails before God, not
good works ; faith alone is the cause of salvation, not virtue ; thus faith
alone has substantial significance, virtue only accidental; i.e., faith alone
has religious significance, divine authority— and not morality. It is well
known that many have gone so far as to maintain that good works are
not necessary, but are even “ injurious, obstructive to salvation.” Quite
correctly.
 T HE CONTRADICTION OF FAI TR AND LOVE. 261

personality. Hence it makes salvation dependent on itself,

not on the fulfilment of common human duties. But that
which has eternal salvation as its consequence, necessarily
becomes in the mind of man the chief thing. As therefore
inwardly morality is subordinate to faith, so it must also be
outwardly, practically subordinate, nay, sacrificed, to faith.
It is inevitable that there should be actions in which faith
exhibits itself in distinction from morality, or rather in con­
tradiction with it;— actions which are morally bad, but
which according to faith are laudable, because they have
in view the advantage of faith. A ll salvation depends on
faith : it follows that all again depends on the salvation of
faith. If faith is endangered, eternal salvation and the
honour of God are endangered. Hence faith absolves from
everything ; for, strictly considered, it is the sole subjective
good in man, as God is the sole good and positive being :—
the highest commandment therefore is : Believe ! *
For the very reason that there is no natural, inherent
connection between faith and the moral disposition, that,
on the contrary, it lies in the nature of faith that it is in­
different to moral duties,f that it sacrifices the love of
man to the honour of God,— for this reason it is required
that faith should have good works as its consequence, that
it should prove itself by love. Faith destitute of love, or
indifferent to love, contradicts the reason, the natural sense
of right in man, moral feeling, on which love immediately
urges itself as a law. Hence faith, in contradiction with its
intrinsic character, has limits imposed on it by morality : a
faith which effects nothing good, which does not attest itself

* “ Causa fidei . . . . exorbitantem et irregulärem prorsus favorem habet

et ab omni jure deviare, omnem captivare rationem, nec judiciis laicorum
ratione corrupta utentium subjecta creditur. Etenim Causa fidei ad multa
obligat, quæ alias sunt voluntaria, multa, imo infinita remittit, quæ alias
præcepta ; quæ alius valide gesta annullat, et contra quæ alias nulla et
irrita, fiunt valida . . . ex jure canonico.”— J. H. Boehmeri (Jus Eccles.
lib. v. tit. vii. § 32. See also § 44 et seq.).
t “ Placetta de Fide, ii. Il ne faut pas chercher dans la nature des
choses mêmes la veritable cause de l ’inseparabilité de la foi et de la pieté. Il
faut, si je ne me trompe, la chercher uniquement dans la volonté de Dieu
. . . Bene facit etnobiscum sentit, cum illam conjunctionem (i.e., of sanctity
or virtue with faith) a benifica Dei voluntate et dispositione repetit ; nec id
novum est ejus inventum. sed cum antiquioribus Theologis nostris com­
mune.”— J. A. Ernesti. (Vindiciæ arbitrii divini. Opusc. theol. p. 297.)
‘ ‘ Si quis dixerit . . . qui fidem sine charitate habet, Christianuni non esse,
anathema sit.”— Concil. Trid. (Sess. vi. de Justif. can. 28).
 262 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

by love, comes to be held as not a true and living faith.

But this limitation does not arise out of faith itself. It is
the power of love, a power independent of faith, which
gives laws to it; for moral character is here made the
criterion of the genuineness of faith, the truth of faith is
made dependent on the truth of ethics:— a relation which,
however, is subversive of faith.
Faith does indeed make man happy; but thus much is
certain: it infuses into him no really moral dispositions.
If it ameliorate man, if it have moral dispositions as its con­
sequence, this proceeds solely from the inward conviction
of the irreversible reality of morals:— a conviction indepen­
dent of religious faith. It is morality alone, and by no
means faith, that cries out in the conscience of the believer:
thy faith is nothing, if it does not make thee good. It is
not to be denied that the assurance of eternal salvation,
the forgiveness of sins, the sense of favour and release from
all punishment, inclines man to do good. The man who has
this confidence possesses all things; he is happy; * he be­
comes indifferent to the good things of this world; no envy,
no avarice, no ambition, no sensual desire, can enslave him ;
everything earthly vanishes in the prospect of heavenly
grace and eternal bliss. But in him good works do not
proceed from essentially virtuous dispositions. It is not
love, not the object of love, man, the basis of all morality,
which is the motive of his good works. N o ! he does good
not for the sake of goodness itself, not for the sake of man,
but for the sake of G od;— out of gratitude to God, who has
done all for him, and for whom therefore he must on his
side do all that lies in his power. He forsakes sin, because
it wounds God, his Saviour, his Benefactor, f The idea of
virtue is here the idea of compensatory sacrifice. God has
sacrificed himself for m an; therefore man must sacrifice
himself to God. The greater the sacrifice the better the
deed. The more anything contradicts man and Nature,

* See on this subject Luther, e.g., T. xiv. p. 286.

t “ Therefore good works must follow faith, as an expression of thank­
fulness to God.”— Apol. der Augs. Conf. art. 3. “ How can I make a
return to thee for thy deeds of love in works ? yet it is something accept­
able to thee, if I quench and tame the lusts of the flesh, that they may not
anew inflame my heart with fresh sins.” “ If sin bestirs itself, I am not
overcome ; a glance at the cross of Jesus destroys its charms.”— Gesangbuch
der Evangel. Briidergemeinen (Moravian Hymn-book).
 T H E CONTRADICTION OF F A I T H A ND L O V E . 263

the greater the abnegation, the greater is the virtue. This

merely negative idea of goodness has been especially realised
and developed by Catholicism. Its highest moral idea is
that of sacrifice; hence the high significance attached to
the denial of sexual love,— to virginity. Chastity, or rather
virginity, is the characteristic virtue of the Catholic faith,—
for this reason, that it has no basis in Nature. It is the
most fanatical, transcendental, fantastical virtue, the virtue
of supranaturalistic faith;— to faith, the highest virtue, but
in itself no virtue at all. Thus faith makes that a virtue
which intrinsically, substantially, is no virtue; it has there­
fore no sense of virtue ; it must necessarily depreciate true
virtue because it so exalts a merely apparent virtue, because
it is guided by no idea but that of the negation, the contra­
diction of human nature.
But although the deeds opposed to love which mark Chris­
tian religious history, are in accordance with Christianity,
and its antagonists are therefore right in imputing to it the
horrible actions resulting from dogmatic creeds; those deeds
nevertheless at the same time contradict Christianity, because
Christianity is not only a religion of faith, bnt of love also,—
pledges us not only to faith, but to love. Uncharitable
actions, hatred of heretics, at once accord and clash with
Christianity ? how is that possible ? Perfectly. Christianity
sanctions both the actions that spring out of love, and the
actions that spring from faith without love. If Christianity
had made love only its law, its adherents would be right,—
the horrors of Christian religious history could not be im­
puted to i t ; if it had made faith only its law, the reproaches
of its antagonists would be unconditionally, unrestrictedly
true. But Christianity has not made love free; it has not
raised itself to the height of accepting love as absolute.
And it has not given this freedom, nay, cannot give it,
because it is a religion,— and hence subjects love to the
dominion of faith. Love is only the exoteric, faith the
esoteric doctrine of Christianity; love is only the morality,
faith the religion of the Christian religion.
God is love. This is the sublimest dictum of Christianity.
But the contradiction of faith and love is contained in the
very proposition. Love is only a predicate, God the subject.
What, then, is this subject in distinction from love ? And
I must necessarily ask this question, make this distinction.
264 T HE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

The necessity of the distinction would be done away with

only if it were said conversely: Love is God, love is the
absolute being. Thus love would take the position of the
substance. In the proposition “ God is love,” the subject is
the darkness in which faith shrouds itself; the predicate is
the light, which first illuminates the intrinsically dark sub­
ject. In the predicate I affirm love, in the subject faith.
Love does not alone fill my soul: I leave a place open for
my uncharitableness by thinking of God as a subject in dis­
tinction from the predicate. It is therefore inevitable that
at one moment I lose the thought of love, at another the
thought of God, that at one moment I sacrifice the person­
ality of God to the divinity of love, at another the divinity of
love to the personality of God. The history of Christianity
has given sufficient proof of this contradiction. Catholicism,
especially, has celebrated Love as the essential deity with
so much enthusiasm, that to it the personality of God has
been entirely lost in this love. But at the same time it has
sacrificed love to the majesty of faith. Faith clings to the
self-subsistence of God; love does away with it. “ God is
love,” means, God is nothing by himself: he who loves,
gives up his egoistical independence; he makes what he
loves indispensable, essential to his existence. But while
Self is being sunk in the depths of love, the idea of the
Person rises up again and disturbs the harmony of the
divine and human nature which had been established by
love. Faith advances with its pretensions, and allows only
just so much to Love as belongs to a predicate in the ordi­
nary sense. It does not permit love freely to unfold itself;
it makes love the abstract, and itself the concrete, the fact,
the basis. The love of faith is only a rhetorical figure, a
poetical fiction of faith,— faith in ecstasy. If faith comes
to itself, Love is fled.
This theoretic contradiction must necessarily manifest
itself practically. Necessarily; for in Christianity love is
tainted by faith, it is not free, it is not apprehended truly.
A love which is limited by faith is an untrue love.* Love
knows no law but itself; it is divine through itself; it needs

* The only limitation which is not contradictory to the nature of love is

the self-limitation of love by reason, intelligence. The love which despises
the stringency, the law of the intelligence,‘ is theoretically false and prac­
tically noxious.
 T HE CONTRADICTION OF F A I T H A ND LOVE. 265

not the sanction of faith; it is its own basis. The love

which is bound by faith is a narrow-hearted, false love,
contradicting the idea of love, i.e., self-contradictory,— a
love which has only a semblance of holiness, for it hides in
itself the hatred.that belongs to faith; it is only benevolent
so long as faith is not injured. Hence, in this contradiction
with itself, in order to retain the semblance of love, it falls
into the most diabolical sophisms, as we see in Augustine’s
apology for the persecution of heretics. Love is limited by
faith; hence it does not regard even the uncharitable
actions which faith suggests as in contradiction with itself;
it interprets the deeds of hatred which are committed for
the sake of faith as deeds of love. And it necessarily falls
into such contradictions, because the limitation of love by
faith is itself a contradiction. If it once is subjected to
this limitation, it has given up its own judgment, its in­
herent measure and criterion, its self-subsistence; it is
delivered up without power of resistance to the promptings
of faith.
Here we have again an example, that much which is not
found in the letter of the Bible, is nevertheless there in
principle. We find the same contradictions in the Bible as
in Augustine, as in Catholicism generally; only that in the
latter they are definitely declared, they are developed into
a conspicuous, and therefore revolting existence. The
Bible curses through faith, blesses through love. But the
only love it knows is a love founded on faith. Thus here
already it is a love which curses, an unreliable love, a love
which gives me no guarantee that it will not turn into
hatred; for if I do not acknowledge the articles of faith, I
am out of the sphere of love, a child of hell, an object of
anathema, of the anger of God, to whom the existence of
unbelievers is a vexation, a thorn in the eye. Christian
love has not overcome hell, because it has not overcome
faith. Love is in itself unbelieving, faith unloving. And
love is unbelieving because it knows nothing more divine
than itself, because it believes only in itself as absolute
truth.
Christian love is already signalised as a particular,
limited love, by the very epithet, Christian. But love is
in its nature universal. So long as Christian love'does not
renounce its qualification of Christian, does not make
266 T HE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

love, simply, its highest law, so long is it a love which is

injurious to the sense of truth, for the very office of love is
to abolish the distinction between Christianity and so-called
heathenism ;— so long is it a love which by its particularity
is in contradiction with the nature of love, an abnormal,
loveless love, which has therefore long been justly an object
of sarcasm. True love is sufficient to itself; it needs no
special title, no authority. Love is the universal law of
intelligence and Nature;— it is nothing else than the reali­
sation of the unity of the species through the medium of
moral sentiment. To found this love on the name of a
person, is only possible by the association of superstitious
ideas, either of a religious or speculative character. For
with superstition is always associated particularism, and
with particularism, fanaticism. Love can only be founded
on the unity of the species, the unity of intelligence— on
the nature of mankind; then only is it a well-grounded
love, safe in its principle, guaranteed, free, for it is fed by
the original source of love, out of which the love of Christ
himself arose. The love of Christ was itself a derived
love. He loved us not out of himself, by virtue of his own
authority, but by virtue of our common human nature.
A love which is based on his person is a particular, exclusive
love, which extends only so far as the acknowledgment of
this persqn extends, a love which does not rest on the
proper ground of love. Are we to love each other because
Christ loved us ? Such love would be an affected, imitative
love. Can we truly love each other only if we love Christ ?
Is Christ the cause of love? Is he not rather the apostle
of love ? Is not the ground of his love the unity of human
nature ? Shall I love Christ more than mankind ? Is not
such love a chimerical love ? Can I step beyond the idea
of the species ? Can I love anything higher than humanity ?
What ennobled Christ was love; whatever qualities he had,
he held in fealty to lo ve ; he was not the proprietor of love,
as he is represented to be in all superstitious conceptions.
The idea of love is an independent idea; I do not first
deduce it from the life of Christ; on the contrary, I revere
that life only because I find it accordant with the law, the
idea of love.
This is already proved historically by the fact that the
idea of love was by no means first introduced into the con-
 T H E CONTRADICTION O F F A I T H A ND L O V E . 267

sciousness of mankind with and by Christianity,— is by no

means peculiarly Christian. The horrors of the Eoman
Empire present themselves with striking significance in
company with the appearance of this idea. The empire of
policy which united men after a manner corresponding with
its own idea, was coming to its necessary end. Political
unity is a unity of force. The despotism of Rome must
turn in upon itself, destroy itself. But it was precisely
through this catastrophe of political existence that man
released himself entirely from the heart-stifling toils of
politics. In the place of Rome appeared the idea of
humanity; to the idea of dominion succeeded the idea of
love. Even the Jews, by imbibing the principle of humanity
contained in Greek culture, had by this time mollified their
malignant religious separatism. Philo celebrates love as
the highest virtue. The extinction of national differences
lay in the idea of humanity itself. Thinking minds had
very early overstepped the civil and political separation of
man from man. Aristotle distinguishes the man from the
slave, and places the slave, as a man, on a level with his
master, uniting them in friendship. Epictetus, the slave,
was a Stoic; Antoninus, the emperor, was a Stoic also:
thus did philosophy unite men. The Stoics taught * that
man was not born for his own sake, but for the sake of
others, i.e., for love: a principle which implies infinitely
more than the celebrated dictum of the Emperor Antoninus,
which enjoined the love of enemies. The practical principle
of the Stoics is so far the principle of love. The world is -
to them one city, men its citizens. Seneca, in the sublimest
sayings, extols love, clemency, humanity, especially towards
slaves. Thus political rigour and patriotic narrowness were
on the wane.
Christianity was a peculiar manifestation of these human
tendencies;— a popular, consequently a religious, and cer­
tainly a most intense manifestation of this new principle of
love. That which elsewhere made itself apparent in the
process of culture, expressed itself here as religious feeling,
as a matter of faith. Christianity thus reduced a general
unity to a particular one, it made love collateral to faith;
and by this means it placed itself in contradiction with
* The Peripatetics also ; who founded love, even that towards all men,
not on a particular, religious, but a natural principle.
268 T HE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

universal love. The unity was not refepred to its true

origin. National differences indeed disappeared; but in
their place difference of faith, the opposition of Christian
and un-Christian, more vehement than a national anta­
gonism, and also more malignant, made its appearance in
history.
A ll love founded on a special historical phenomenon
contradicts, as has been said, the nature of love, which
endures no limits, which triumphs over all particularity.
Man is to be loved for man’s sake. Man is an object of
love because he is an end in himself, because he is a
rational and loving being. This is the law of the species,
the law of the intelligence. Love should be immediate, un­
determined by anything else than its object;— nay, only
as such is it love. But if I interpose between my fellow-
man and myself the idea of an individuality, in whom the
idea of the species is supposed to be already realised, I
annihilate the very soul of love, I disturb the unity by the
idea of a third external to u s ; for in that case my fellow-
man is an object of love to me only on account of his re­
semblance or relation to this model, not for his own sake.
Here all the contradictions reappear which we have in the
personality of God, where the idea of the personality by
itself, without regard to the qualities which render it
worthy of love and reverence, fixes itself in the conscious­
ness and feelings. Love is the subjective reality of the
species, as reason is its objective reality. In love, in reason,
the need of an intermediate person disappears. Christ is
nothing but an image, under which the unity of the species
has impressed itself on the popular consciousness. Christ
loved men: he wished to bless and unite them all without
distinction of sex, age, rank, or nationality. Christ is the
love of mankind to itself embodied in an image— in ac­
cordance with the nature of religion as we have developed it
— or contemplated as a person, but a person who (we mean,
of course, as a religious object) has only the significance of
an image, who is only ideal. For this reason love is pro­
nounced to be the characteristic mark of the disciples. But
love, as has been said, is nothing else than the active proof,
the realisation of the unity of the race, through the medium
of the moral disposition. The species is not an abstraction;
it exists in feeling, in the moral sentiment, in the energy of
 T HE CONTRADICTION OF F A I T H A ND LOVE. 269

love. It is the species which infuses love into me. A

loving heart is the heart of the species throbbing in the
individual. Thus Christ, as the consciousness of love, is
the consciousness of the species. We are all one in Christ.
Christ is the consciousness of our identity. He therefore
who loves man for the sake of man, who rises to the love
of the species, to universal love, adequate to the nature of
the species* he is a Christian, is Christ himself. He does
what Christ did, what made Christ Christ. Thus, where
there arises the consciousness of the species as a species,
the idea of humanity as a whole, Christ disappears, without,
however, his true nature disappearing; for he was the sub­
stitute for the consciousness of the species, the image under
which it was made present to the people, and became the
law of the popular life.

* Active love is and must of course always be particular and limited, i.e.,
directed to one’s neighbour. But it is yet in its nature universal, since it
loves man for man’s sake, in the name of the race. Christian love, on the
contrary, is in its nature exclusive.
270 T HE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER X X V II.

CONCLUDING APPLICATION.

In the contradiction between Faith and Love which has just

been exhibited, we. see the practical, palpable ground of
necessity that we should raise ourselves above Christianity,
above the peculiar stand-point of all religion. W e have
shown that the substance and object of religion is altogether
human; we have shown that divine wisdom is human wisdom;
that the secret of theology is anthropology; that the absolute
mind is the so-called finite subjective mind. But religion
is not conscious that its elements are human; on the contrary,
it places itself in opposition to the human, or at least it does
not admit that its elements are human. The necessary
turning-point of history is therefore the open confession,
that the consciousness of God is nothing else than the
consciousness of the species; that man can and should raise
himself only above the limits of his individuality, and not
above the laws, the positive essential conditions of his
species; that there is no other essence which man can think,
dream of, imagine, feel, believe in, wish for, love and adore
as the absolute, than the essence of human nature itself.*
Our relation to religion is therefore not a merely negative,'
but a critical one; we only separate the true from the false;
— though we grant that the truth thus separated from false­
hood is a new truth, essentially different from the old.
Religion is the first form of self-consciousness. Religions
are sacred because they are the traditions of the primitive
self-consciousness. But that which in religion holds the
first place— namely, God— is, as we have shown, in itself
and according to truth, the second, for it is only the nature
of man regarded objectively; and that which to religion is
the second— namely, man— must therefore be constituted

* Including external nature; for as man belongs to the essence of Nature,

— in opposition to common materialism; so Nature belongs to the essence of
man,— m opposition to subjective idealism; which is also the secret of our
“ absolute” philosophy, at lea3t in relation to Natuft. Only by uniting
man with Nature can we conquer the supranaturalistic egoism of Christianity.
 CONCLUDING APPLICATION. 271

and declared tlie first. Love to man must be no derivative

love; it must be original. If human nature is the highest
nature to man, then practically also the highest and first
law must be the love of man to man. Homo homini Dens
est:— this is the great practical principle:— this is the axis
on which revolves the history of the world. The relations
of child and parent, of husband and wife, of brother and
friend— in general, of man to man— in short, all the moral
relations are per se religious. Life as a whole is, in its
essential, substantial relations, throughout of a divine nature.
Its religious consecration is not first conferred by the blessing
of the priest. But the pretension of religion is that it can
hallow an object by its essentially external co-operation; it
thereby assumes to be itself the only holy power; besides
itself it knows only earthly, ungodly relations; hence it
comes forward in order to consecrate them and make them
holy.
But marriage— we mean, of course, marriage as the free
bond of love * — is sacred in itself, by the very nature of the
union which is therein effected. That alone is a religious
marriage, which is a true marriage, which corresponds to the
essence of marriage— of love. And so it is with all moral
relations. Then only are they moral,— then only are they
enjoyed in a moral spirit, when they are regarded as sacred
in themselves. True friendship exists only when the
boundaries of friendship are preserved with religious con­
scientiousness, with the same conscientiousness with which
the believer watches over the dignity of his God. Let
friendship be sacred to thee, property sacred, marriage sacred,
— sacred the well-being of every man; but let them be
sacred in and by themselves.
In Christianity the moral laws are regarded as the com­
mandments of God; morality is even made the criterion of
piety; but ethics have nevertheless a subordinate rank,
they have not in themselves a religious significance. This
belongs only to faith. Above morality hovers God, as a
being distinct from man, a being to whom the best is due,

* Yes, only as the free bond of love; for a marriage the bond of which is
merely an external restriction, not the voluntary, contented self-restriction
of love, in short, a marriage which is not spontaneously concluded, spon­
taneously willed, self-sufficing, is not a true marriage, and therefore not a
truly moral marriage.
272 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

while the remnants only fall to the share of man. A ll those

dispositions which ought to be devoted to life, to man— all
the best powers of humanity, are lavished on the being who
wants nothing. The real cause is converted into an im­
personal means, a merely conceptional, imaginary cause
usurps the place of the true one. Man thanks God for
those benefits which have been rendered to him even at the
cost of sacrifice by his fellow-man. The gratitude which
he expresses to his benefactor is only ostensible: it is paid,
not to him, but to God. He is thankful, grateful to God,
but unthankful to man.* Thus is the moral sentiment
subverted into religion ! Thus does man sacrifice man to
God! The bloody human sacrifice is in fact only a rude,
material expression of the inmost secret of religion. Where
bloody human sacrifices are offered to God, such sacrifices
are regarded as the highest thing, physical existence as the
chief good. For this reason life is sacrificed to God, and it
is so on extraordinary occasions; the supposition being
that this is the way to show him the greatest honour. If
Christianity no longer, at least in our day, offers bloody
sacrifices to its God, this arises, to say nothing of other
reasons, from the fact that physical existence is no longer
regarded as the highest good. Hence the soul, the emotions
are now offered to God, because these are held to be some­
thing higher. But the common case is, that in religion
man sacrifices some duty towards man— such as that of
respecting the life of his fellow, of being grateful to him—
to a religious obligation,— sacrifices his relation to man to
his relation to God. The Christians, by the idea that God
is without wants, and that he is only an object of pure
adoration, have certainly done away with many pernicious
conceptions. But this freedom from wants is only a meta­
physical idea, which is by no means part of the peculiar
nature of religion. When the need fot worship is supposed
to exist only on one side, the subjective side, this has the
invariable effect of one-sidedness, and leaves the religious
* “ Because God does good through government, great men and creatures
in general, people rush into error, lean on creatures and not on the Creator;
— they do not look from the creature to the Creator. Hence it came that
the heathens made gods of kings . . . For they cannot and will not per­
ceive that the work or the benefit comes from God, and not merely from the
creature, though the latter is a means, through which God works, helps us,
and gives to us.”— Luther (T. iv. p. 237).
 CONCLUDING APPLICATION. 273

emotions cold; hence, if not in express words, yet in fact,

there must be attributed to God a condition corresponding
to the subjective need, the need of the worshipper, in order to
establish reciprocity.* A ll the positive definitions of religion
are based on reciprocity. The religious man thinks of God
because God thinks of him; he loves God because God has
first loved him. God is jealous of man ; religion is jealous
of morality; f it sucks away the best forces of morality ; it
renders to man only the things that are man’s, but to God
the things that are God's; and to him is rendered true,
living emotion,— the heart.
When in times in which peculiar sanctity was attached
to religion, we find marriage, property, and civil law re­
spected, this has not its foundation in religion, but in the
original, natural sense of morality and right, to which the
true social relations are sacred as such. He to whom the
Eight is not holy for its own sake will never be made
to feel it sacred by religion. Property did not become
sacred because it was regarded as a divine institution, but
it was regarded as a divine institution because it was felt to
be in itself sacred. Love is not holy because it is a predicate
of God, but it is a predicate of God because it*is in itself
divine. The heathens do not worship the light or the
fountain because it is a gift of God, but because it lias of

* “ They who honour me, I will honour, and they who despise me shall be
lightly esteemed.”— 1 Sam. ii. 30. “ Jam se, o bone pater, vermisvilissimus
et odio dignissimus sempiterno, tamen confidit amari, quoniam se sentit
amare, imo quia se amari prsesentit, non redamare confunditur. . . . Nemo
itaque se amari diffidat, qui jam amat.”— Bernardus ad Thomam (Epist.
107). A very fine and pregnant sentence. If I exist not for God, God
exists not for me; if I do not love, I am not loved. The passive is the
active certain of itself, the object is the subject certain of itself. To love is
to be man, to be loved is to be God. I am loved, says God ; I love, says
man. It is not until later that this is reversed, that the passive transforms
itself into the active, and conversely.
t “ The Lord spake to Gideon: The people are too many that are with
thee, that I should give Midian into their hands; Israel might glorify
itself against me and say: My hand has delivered me,”— i.e., “ Ne Israel
sibi tribuat, quae mihi debentur. ” Judges vii. 2. “ Thus saith the Lord :
Cursed is the man that trusteth in man. But blessed is the man that
trusteth in the Lord and whose hope is in the Lord.”— Jer. xvii. 5. “ God
desires not our gold, body and possessions, but has given these to the
emperor (that is, to the representative of the world, of the state), and to us
through the emperor. But the heart, which is the greatest and best in
man, he has reserved for himself;— this must be our otfering to God— that
we believe in him.”— Luther (xvi. p. 505).
 274 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

itself a beneficial influence on man, because it refreshes

the sufferer; on account of this excellent quality they pay
it divine honours.
Wherever morality is based on theology, wherever the
right is made dependent on divine authority, the most
immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and
established. I can found morality on theology only when
I myself have already defined the Divine Being by means
of morality. In the contrary case, I have no criterion of
the moral and immoral, but merely an immoral, arbitrary
basis, from which I may deduce anything I please. Thus,
if I would found morality on God, I must first of all place
it in God: for Morality, Right, in short, all substantial
relations, have their only basis in themselves, can only have
a real foundation— such as truth demands— when they are
thus based. To place anything in God, or to derive anything
from God, is nothing more than to withdraw it from the test
of reason, to institute it as indubitable, unassailable, sacred,
without rendering an account why. Hence self-delusion, if
not wicked, insidious design, is at the root of all efforts to
establish morality, right, on theology. Where we are in
earnest about the right we need no incitement or support
from above. We need no Christian rule of political right:
we need only one which is rational, just, human. The right,
the true, the good, has always its ground of sacredness in
itself, in its quality. Where man is in earnest about ethics,
they have in themselves the validity of a divine power. If
morality has no foundation in itself, there is no inherent
necessity for morality; morality is then surrendered to the
groundless arbitrariness of religion.
Thus the work of the self-conscious reason in relation to
religion is simply to destroy an illusion:— an illusion, how­
ever, which is by no means indifferent, but which, on the
contrary, is profoundly injurious in its effect on mankind;
which deprives man as well of the power of real life as of
the genuine sense of truth and virtue; for even love, in
itself the deepest, truest emotion, becomes by means of
religiousness merely ostensible, illusory, since religious love
gives itself to man only for God’s sake, so that it is given
only in appearance to man, but in reality to God.
And we need only, as we have shown, invert the religious
 CONCLUDING APPLICATION. 275

relations— regard that as an end which religion supposes to

be a means— exalt that into the primary which in religion
is subordinate, the accessory, the condition,— at once we
have destroyed the illusion, and the unclouded light of truth
streams in upon us. The sacraments of Baptism and the
Lord’s Supper, which are the characteristic symbols of the
Christian religion, may serve to confirm and exhibit this
truth.
The Water of Baptism is to religion only the means by
which the Holy Spirit imparts itself to man. But by this
conception it is placed in contradiction with reason, with
the truth of things. On the one hand, there is virtue in
the objective, natural quality of water; on the other, there
is none, but it is a merely arbitrary medium of divine grace
and omnipotence. We free ourselves from these and other
irreconcilable contradictions, we give a true significance to
Baptism, only by(regarding it as a symbol of the value of
water itself. Baptism should represent to us the wonderful
but natural effect of water on man. Water has, in fact, not
merely physical effects, but also, and as a result of these,
moral and intellectual effects on man. Water not only
cleanses man from bodily impurities, but in water the scales
fall from his eyes: he sees, he* thinks more clearly; he feels
himself freer; water extinguishes the fire of appetite. How
many saints have had recourse to the natural qualities of
water in order to overcome the assaults of the devil! What
was denied by Grace has been granted by Nature. Water
plays a part not only in dietetics, but also in moral and
mental discipline. To purify oneself, to bathe, is the first,
though the lowest of virtues.* In the stream of water the

* Christian baptism also is obviously only a relic of the ancient Nature -

worship, in which, as in the Persian, water was a means of religious purifi­
cation. (S. Rhode: Die heilige Sage, &c., pp. 305, 426.) Here, however,
water baptism had a much truer, and consequently a deeper meaning, than
with the Christians, because it rested on the natural power and value of
water. But indeed for these simple views of Nature which characterised
the old religions, our speculative as well as theological supranaturalism has
neither sense nor understanding. When therefore the Persians, the Hindoos,
the Egyptians, the Hebrews, made physical purity a religious duty, they
were herein far wiser than the Christian saints, who attested the supra-
naturalistie principle of their religion by physical impurity. Supranaturalism
in theory becomes anti-naturalism in practice. Supranaturalism is only a
euphemism for anti-naturalism.
276 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

fever of selfishness is allayed. Water is the readiest means

of making friends with Nature. The bath is a sort of
chemical process, in which our individuality is resolved
into the objective life of Nature. The man rising from the
water is a new, a regenerate man. The doctrine that
morality can do nothing without means of grace has a valid
meaning if, in place of imaginary, supernatural means of
grace, we substitute natural means. Moral feeling can
effect nothing without Nature ; it must ally itself with the
simplest natural means. The profoundest secrets lie in
common everyday things, such as supranaturalistic religion
and speculation ignore, thus sacrificing real mysteries to
imaginary, illusory ones; as here, for example, the real
power of water i3 sacrificed to an imaginary one. Water
is the simplest means of grace or healing for the maladies
of the soul as well as of the body. But water is effectual
only where its use is constant and regular. Baptism, as a
single act, is either an altogether useless and unmeaning
institution, or, if real effects are attributed to it, a super­
stitious one. But it is a rational, a venerable institution,
if it is understood to typify and celebrate the moral and
physical curative virtues of water.
But the sacrament of water required a supplement.
Water, as a universal element of life, reminds us of our
origin from Nature, an origin which we have in common
with plants and animalg. In Baptism we bow to the power
of a pure Nature-force; water is the element of natural
equality and freedom, the mirror of the golden age. But
we men are distinguished from the plants and animals,
which together with the inorganic kingdom we comprehend
under the common name of Nature;— we are distinguished
from Nature. Hence we must celebrate our distinction,
our specific difference. The symbols of this our difference
are bread and winQ. Bread and wine are, as to their
materials, products of Nature ; as to their form, products of
man. If in water we declare: Man can do nothing without
Nature; by bread and wine we declare: Nature needs man,
as man needs Nature. In water, human mental activity is
nullified; in bread and wine it attains self-satisfaction.
Bread and wine are supernatural products,— in the only
valid and true sense, the sense which is not in contradiction
 CONCLUDING APPLICATION. 277

with reason and Nature. If in water we adore the pure

force of Nature, in bread and wine we adore the super­
natural power of mind, of consciousness, of man. Hence
this sacrament is only for man matured into consciousness;
while baptism is imparted to infants. But we at the same
time celebrate here the true relation of mind to N ature:
Nature gives the material, mind gives the form. The sacra­
ment of Baptism inspires us with thankfulness towards
Nature, the sacrament of bread and wine with thankfulness
towards man. Bread and wine typify to us the truth that
Man is the true God and Saviour of man.
Eating and drinking is the mystery of the Lord’s Supper;
— eating and drinking is, in fact, in itself a religious a c t; at
least, ought to be so.* Think, therefore, with every morsel
of bread which relieves thee from the pain of hunger, with
every draught of wine which cheers thy heart, of the God
who confers these beneficent gifts upon thee,— think of man!
But in thy gratitude towards man forget not gratitude
towards holy Nature! Forget not that wine is the blood
of plants, and flour the flesh of plants, which are sacrificed
for thy well-being! Forget not that the plant typifies to
thee the essence of Nature, which lovingly surrenders itself
for thy enjoyment! Therefore forget not the gratitude
which thou owest to the natural qualities of bread and
wine ! And if thou art inclined to smile that I call eating
and drinking religious acts, because they.are common every­
day acts, and are therefore performed by multitudes without
thought, without emotion; reflect, that the Lord’s Supper
is to multitudes a thoughtless, emotionless act, because it
takes place often ; and, for the sake of comprehending the
religious significance of bread and wine, place thyself in a
position where the daily act is unnaturally, violently in­
terrupted. Hunger and thirst destroy not only the physi­
cal but also the mental and moral powers of man; they rob

* “ Eating and drinking is the easiest of all work, for men like nothing
better: yea, the most joyful work in the whole world is eating and drinking,
as it is commonly said : Before eating no dancing, and, On a full stomach
stands a merry head. In short, eating and drinking is a pleasant necessary
work;— that is a doctrine soon learned and made popular. The same pleasant
necessary work takes our blessed Lord Christ and says : * I have prepared
a joyful, sweat and pleasant meal, I will lay on you no hard heavy work . . .
I institute a supper,* &c.”— Luther (xvi 222).
278 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

him of his humanity— of understanding, of consciousness.

Oh! if thou shouldst ever experience such want, how wouldst
thou bless and praise the natural qualities of bread and
wine, which restore to thee thy humanity, thy intellect!
It needs only that the ordinary course of things be inter­
rupted in order to vindicate to common things an uncommon
significance, to life , as such, a religious import. Therefore
let bread be sacred for us, let wine be sacred, and also let
water be sacred ! Amen.
APPENDIX.
 APPENDIX.

E X P L A N A T IO N S — R EM AR K S— IL L U S T R A T IV E CITATION S.

§ 1.
M an has his highest being, his God, in himself; not in himself as
an individual, but in his essential nature, his species. N o indi­
vidual 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-condi donating,
the self-limitation of the species. Thus man has cognisance of
nothing above himself, of nothing beyond the nature of humanity ;
bu t 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 lias towards man, are of a religious nature.* M an 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 o f man also. Feeling makes
God a man, but for the same reason it makes man a G<>d. How
often in deep emotion, which alone speaks genuine truth, man
exclaims to m a n : 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
m a n ; we feel ourselves worthless, we sink into nothing, even in

* “ Manifestum igitur est tantum religionis sanguini et affinitati, quantum

ipsis Diis immortalibus tributum : quia inter ista tain sancta vincula non
magis, quam in aliquo loco sacrato nuaare se, nefas esse credebatur.”— Valer.
Max. (L ii. c. i.)
282 APPENDIX.

the presence of human greatness. The purely, truly human emo­

tions 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 posi­
tive, definite human feelings, the object of fear and love, and there­
fore he is a positively human bein g; for there is nothing more in
God than what lies in feeling. If m the heart there is fear and
terror, in God there is an ger; if in the heart there is joy, hope,
confidence, in God there is love. Fear makes itself objective in
an ger; jo y 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 (Melanctnon) —
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 bein g; rel gion 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 its e lf; 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. U t zelotypus vir dicitur, qui
rivalem pati n equ it: 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 heing were altogether peculiar and
apart, were essentially different from the impressions wnich 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 w ith the
impressions produced by the la tte r; 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.
 APPENDI X. 283

§ 2-
Feeling alone is the object o f feeling. Feeling is sympathy; feeling
arises only in the love of man to man. Sensations man has in isola­
tion; feelings only in community. Only in sympathy does sensa­
tion rise into feeling. Feeling is aesthetic, human sensation ; only
w hat is human is the object of feeling. In feeling man is related
to his fellow-man as to him self; 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 fe e lin g p a r tic ip a te d sensa­
tion is feeling. He who has no need of participating has no feeling.
B u t what does the hanH, the kiss, the glance, the voice, the tone,
the word— as the expression of emotion— impart 1 Emotion. The
very same thing which, pronounced or performed without the appro­
priate tone, without emotion, is only an object of indifferent percep­
tion, 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.
I t 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, abol­
ished:— only there, I say, is religion made a mere matter of feeling,
or conversely, feeling the chief point in religion. The last refuge
o f theology therefore is feeling. God is renounced by the under­
standing ; he has no longer the dignity of a real object, of a reality
which imposes itself on the understanding; hence he is transferred
to feelin g; 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.
A n d as certainly as I exist, so certainly does my feeling e x is t; and
as certainly as my feeling exists, so certainly does my God exist.
T he 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. I f 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.
284 A P P E N DI X.

§ 3-
God is man*8 highest feeling o f self\freed from all contrarieties or
disagreeables. God is the highest being ; therefore, to feel God is
the nighest 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 ibis') God. But the highest degree of the power of feel­
ing is also tne nighest degree of the feeling of self. In the feeling
of the low I feel myself lowered, in the feehng of the high I feel m y­
self exalted. The feeling of self and feeling are inseparable, other­
wise 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 bein g; 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 1 But when dost thou feel thyself free ? W hen
thou feelest God. To feel God is to feel oneself free. F or ex­
ample, 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 conscious­
ness 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 ac­
tivity. The sense of pain m an organ is nothing else than the
sense of a disturbed, obstructed, thwarted a c tiv ity ; 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 ohtainest 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 ? N o ; 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.
 APPENDI X. 285

§ 4.
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 s u ch ; feeling is the self-con­
sciousness of in dividuality; the reason has relation to existences,
as things ; the heart to existences, as persons. I am is an expres­
sion of the h ea rt; I think, of the reason. Cogito, ergo sum ? N o !
Sentioy 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. O nly beings of the same species under­
stand each other; the impulse to communicate thought is the in­
tellectual impulse of sex. Reason is cold, because its maxim is,
audiatur et altera pars, because it does not interest itself in man
a lo n e ; but the heart is a partisan of man. Reason loves all im­
partiality, 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 s a y s : Whatsoever thou dost to
this being, thou dost to me. The heart loves only its e lf; does not
get beyond itself, beyond man. The superhuman God is nothing
else than the supernatural h ea rt; 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 a l l; but it only recognises as existing that which it
knows to have emotion.” * 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 m a n ;— a distinc­
tion however which, drawn thus sharply, is, like the others, onlv
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 h e a r t; therein lies the evil. You desire a real, external,
objective immortality, a God out of yourselves. Here is the source
of delusion.
* See the author’s “ Leibnitz.”
236 APPENDI X.

B a t as the heart releases man from the limits, even the essential
limits of N ature; reason, on the other hand, releases Nature from
the limits of external finiteness. I t is true tnat Nature is the light
and measure of reason :— a truth which is opposed to abstract
Idealism. Only what is naturally true is logically t r a e ; 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 N ature;— and this truth is the barrier against
crude materialism. Reason Í3 the nature of tilings 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 on e; 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. I f 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 I What else then does reason do than re­
move external disturbances, influences, and obstructions, so as to
present a thing as it ought to be, to make the existence correspond
to the id ea ; 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 i t
I f 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 i t ; 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 thnt
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 violeutly 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 1 But reason has no partiality
for this or that species of things. It embraces with eoual interest
the whole universe : it interests itself in all things and beings w ith­
out 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
 APPENDI X. 287

itself. To reason alone belongs the great work of the resurrection

and restoration of all things and beings— universal redemption and
reconciliation. N ot even the unreasoning animal, the speechless
)lant, the unsentient stone, shall be excluded from this universal
Ìestival. But how would it be possible that reason should interest
itself in all beings without exception, if reason were not itself uni­
versal and unlimited in its nature '/ Is a limited nature compatible
with unlimited interest, or an unlimited interest with a limited
nature 1 B y what dost thou recognise the limitation of a being but
by the limitation of his interest ? A s 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 thè 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.*

§ 5-
Nature, the world, has no value, no interest fo r Christians. The
Christian thinks only of himself and the salvation o f his soul. “ A te
incipiat cogitatio tua et in te finiatur, nec frustra in alia distendaris,
te neglecto. Procter salutem tuam nihil cogites. D e 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 X I I grad, hum il. 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 idlum...... Res vestra in ancipiti sita est :
. * [Here follows in the original a distinction between Herz, or feeling directed
towards real objects, and therefore prnctically sympathetic ; and Gemuth, or
feeling directed towards imaginary objects, and therefore practically unsym­
pathetic, 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.]
238 APPENDI X.

salus dko animamm vestrarum.— Arnobius (adv. gentes, L ii. c. 61).

Quaero igitur ad quara rera scientia referenda s it; si ad causas
rerum naturalium, quae beatitudo erit mihi proposita, si sciero unde
Nilus oriatur, vel quicquid de coelo Physici delirant?— Lactantius
(Instit. div. 1. iii. c. 8). Etiam curiosi esse prohibemur....... Sunt
enira qui desertis virtutibu* et nescientes quid sit Deus...... magnum
aliquid se a^ere putant, si universam istam corporis molem, quam
mundum nuneupamus, curiosissime intentissimeque perquirant.......
Keprimat igitur se anima ab hujusmodi vanae cognitionis cupiditate,
si se castam Deo seryare disposuit. Tali enim amore plerumque
decipitur, ut (aut) nihil putet esse nisi corpus. — Augustinus (de
Mor. Eccl. cath. 1. i. c. 21). D e terrae quoque vel qualitate vel
positione tractare, nihil prosit ad spem fu tu ri, cum satis sit ad
scientiam, quod scripturarum divinarum series comprehendit, quod
Deus suspendit terram in nihilo.— Ambrosius (Hexaemeron, 1. i. c.
6). Longe utique praestantius est, nosse resurrecturam carnem ac
sine fine victuram, quam quidquid in ea rnedici scrutando discere
potuerunt.— Augustinus (ae Anima et ejus orig. 1. iv. c. 10).” “ L e t
natural science alone......It is enough that thou knowest fire is
hot, water cold and moist...... Know how thou oughtest to treat th y
field, thy cow, thy house and child— that is enough of natural
science for thee. Think how thou mayest learn Christ, who w ill
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 ana 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 ilia omnia (created
things) te autem nescit, Beat us avtem qui te scit, etiam si ilia nesciat.
— Augustin (Confess, 1. y. c. 4). Who then would, who could
exchange the blessed Divine Being for the unblessed worthless
things of this world ? I t 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 heathen­
ism ; 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 sen­
timent and belief. Hence the culture of modern Christian na­
tions is so little to be derived from Christianity, that it is onlv
to be explained by the negation of Christianity, a negation which
 APPENDIX. 289

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
them selves 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 con­
tained in the Christian faith, in faith in C hrist; they did not
reckon the treasures and riches, the arts and scienqes 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.
“ W hy 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 1 Christ himself says that the children of this world are
w iser 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) 1 ”—Luther
(Th. xix. p. 37). Quid igitur nos antecellimus 1 Num ingenio,
doctrina, morurn moderation# illos superamus ? Nequaquam. Sed
vera Dei agnitione, invocation# et cdebratione prcestamus.— Melanc-
thonis (et al. Declam. Th. iii. de vera invocat. Dei).
§6.
In religion man has in view himself alone, or, in regarding him-
/self 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 incar­
nation 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. Goa
suffers—suffers for m e—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 1 H e that spared not his own Son, but
gave him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give
us all th in g s V’— Rom. viii. 31, 32. “ God commendeth his love
towards us, in that, w hile 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
D eum patrem........et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum filium
D ei........Deum ex D eo........ qui propter nos homines et propter nos-
tram salutem descendit et incarnatus et homo factus est passus.”—
Fides Nicaenae Synodi. “ Servator........ex praeexcellenti in homi­
nes charitate non aespexit carnis humanae im becillitatem, sed ea
indutus ad communem venit hominum salutem.”—Clemens Alex.
T
290 APPENDIX.

(Stromata, 1. vii. ed. Wirceb. 1779). “ C h ristiano« autem haec

universa docent, providentiam esse, maxime vero divinissimum et
propter excellentiam amori» erga homines incredibilissimum provi-
dentiae opus, dei incamatio, quae propter nos facta est.”— Gregorii
Nysseni (Philosophiae, L viii. de Provid. c. i. 1512. B. Rhenanus.
Jo. Cono interp.) “ Venit siquidera universUalis creator et Dominus :
venit ad homines, venit propter homines, venit homo.”— D ivus Ber-
nardus Clare v. (de A d ventu 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). “ 0 homo propter quem
Deus factus est homo, aliqutd magnum te credere debes” S. 380, c.
2). “ Quis de se desperet pro quo tam humilis esse voluit Filius
D e i? ” Id. (de Agone Chr. c. 11). “ Quis potest odire hominem
cujus naturam et similitvdinem videt in humanvtate D e il Revera qui
odit ilium, odit Deum.”— (Manuale, c. 26. Among the spurious writings
of Augustine.) “ Plus nos.amat Deus quamfilium pater.......Propter
nos filio non pepercit. E t quid plus addo ? et hoc filio justo et noe
filio unigenito et hoc filio Deo. E t 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 tan­
tum erigit et ab immortalitatis desperatione liberat, quain 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 cuius mater est miseria, non accessisset.”— D.
Bernardus (Tract, de X II. gradibus hum. et sup.). “ Ecce.omnia tua
sunt, quae habeo et unde tibi servio. Verum tarnen vice versa tu
'magis mihi sends, quam ego tibi. Ecce coelum et terra quae in
ministerium hominis creasti, praesto sunt et faciunt quotidie quae-
cunque mandasti. E t hoc parum est : quin etiam Angelos in mini­
sterium hominis ordinasti. Transcendit autem omnia, quia tu ipse
homini servire dignatus es et te ipsum daturum ei prom isisti.—
Thomas à Kempis (de Imit. 1. iii. c. 10). “ Ego omnipotens et
altissimus, qui cunda creavi ex nihilo me homini propter te humi-
liter subjeci...... Pepercit tibi oculus meus, quia pretiosa fuit anima
tua in conspectu meo ” (ibid. c. 13). “ F ili 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
Immani, 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 F ilii
Dei èv capai (pavepw'àérros angelis hominibusque patefactam esse
dicunt magnitudinem sapientis bonitatis divinae.”— J. A. Ernesti
(Dignit. et verit. ine. Filii Dei asserta. Opuse. Theol. Lipsiae, 1773,
pp. 404, 405. How feeble, how spiritless compared with the ex­
pressions 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 Aeres. Ule injurias passus est, ne tu injuriam
 APPENDIX. 2 )i
tuam doleres.”—Ambrosius (de fide ad Gratiauum, 1. 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 h ea rt!—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 m e “ That it is which moves me ; I love
thee for thy love, that thou, the creator, the supreme prince, be-
cainest 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 m y 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 w illingly
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 H oly Spirit is always labouring that he may guide and teach
us.” “ A h ! 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 m ercy-seat: we look at each other con­
tinually. H e 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 (Gesang-
buch der Evangelischen Briidergemeine. Gnadau, 1824). We see
clearly enough from the examples above given, that the deepest
m ystery 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
dihgendi Deum, Deus est. Modus sine modo diligere........Qui
D om ino confitetur, non quoniam sibi bonus est, sed quoniam bonus
est, hie 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,
292 A P P E NDI X.

which, however, is first realised in heaven).— Bernhardus, Tract,

de dilig. Deo (aa 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 reli­
gious 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.”

§ 7-
Because God suffers man must suffer. The Christian religion is
the religion o f suffering. “ Videlicet vestigia Salvatoris sequimur in
theatris. Tale nobis scilicet Christus reliquit exemplum, queni
flevisse legimus, risisse non legimus.”— Salvianus (I. c. 1. v i § 181).
“ Christianorum ergo est pressuram p ati in hoc saeculo et lugere,
quorum est aeterna vita.”— Origenes (Explan, in Ep. Pauli ad Kom.
1. ii. c. ii. interp. Hieronymo). “ Nemo vitam aeternam, incorrupti-
bilem, immortalemque desiderata nisi eum vitae hujus temporalis,
corruptibilis, mortalisque poeniteat...... Quid ergo cujnmus, nisi ita
non esse ut nunc sumus ? E t quid ingemiscimus, nisi poeniiendo,
quia ita sumus ? ”— Augustinus (Sermones ad pop. S. 351, c. 3). “ Si
quidem aliquid melius et utilius saluti hominum quam p ati fuisset,
Christus utique verbo et exemplo ostendisset....... Quoniam per
multas tribulationes oportet nos intrare in regnum Dei.”— Thomas
k Kempis (de Imit. 1. ii. c. 12). When, however, the Christian reli­
gion 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. I t is precisely the distinc­
tion between Catholicism and Protestantism, in relation to this sub­
ject, 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 suffer­
ings and sorrows of M aryland 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...... Cnrist 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 jo y over thv suffering ; the suffering was thine, but thy
merit is mine ! ” “ I know of no joys but those which come from
 APPENDIX. 293

th y sufferings.” “ It remains ever in my mind that it cost thee thy

blood to redeem me.” “ 0 my Im m anuel! 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 won-
drously 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
C h rist It is they, forsooth, who have first made out what true
Christianity is— they rely solely on the divine word of the H oly
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.
W hat 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.

§8.
The mystery of the Trinity is the mystery o f participated, social
lift— the mysteryof I and thou. “ Unum Deum esse confitemur.
Non sic unum Deum, quasi solvtarium, 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, prod eat
herba. E x quibus apparet, Deum cum aliquo sibi proximo ser-
mones his de rebus conserere. Necesse est igitur aliquem ei adfuisse,
cum quo universa condens, colloquium miscebat.”— Athanasius (Con­
tra Gentes Orat. Ath. Opp. Parisiis, 1627, Th. i. p. 51). “ Professio
enira consortii sustulit intelligentiam singularitatis, quod consortium
aliquid nec potest esse sibi ipsi solitario, neque rursum solitudo
solitarii recipit: faciamus...... Non solitario convenit dicere : fa ci­
amus et nostram.”— Petrus Lomb. (1. i. dist. 2, c. 3, e.). The Pro­
testants explain the passage in the same way. “ Quod profecto
aliter intelligi nequit, quam inter ipsas trinitatis personas quandam
de creando homine institutam fuisse consitltationem.”— Buddeus
(comp. Inst. Theol. dog. cur. J. G. Walch. 1. ii. c. i. § 45). “ ‘ L et us
m a k e’ 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 ‘ u s’ 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 consul­
tations, but compacts take place between the chief persons in the
Trinity, precisely as in human society. “ N ihil aliud superest,
quam ut consensum quemdain 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
294 APPENDIX.

Filium D ei...... precemur, ut spiritu sancto suo, qui nexus est et

vinculum mutui amoris inter aeternum patrem ac filium, sponsi et
snonsae pectora conglutinet.”— Or. de, Conjugio (Declam. Melancth.
Th. iii. p. 453).
The distinctions in the Divine essence o f the Trinity are natural,
physical distinctions. “ Jam de proprietatibus personarum videamus
...... E t est proprivm solius patris, noh 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 1. iii. de Trinitate. “ Nos filii Dei sumus, sed non talis liic
filius. Hie enim verus et proprius est filius originef non adoptione,
veritate, non nuncupatione, nativitate, non creatione.”— Petrus L.
(I. i. dist. 26, cc. 2, 4). “ Quodsi dum eum aeternum confitemur,
profitemur ipsum Filium ex Patre, quomodo is, aui genitus est,
genitoris frater esse p otent?...... Non enim ex aliquo principio
praeexistente Pater et Filius procreati sunt, ut fratres existimari
queant, sed Pater principium Filii et genitor e s t : et Pater Pater
est neque ullius Filius fuit, et Filius Filius est et non frater.”—
Athanasius (Contra Arianos. O rat II. Ed. c. T. i. p. 320). “ Qui
(Deus) cum in rebus quae nascuntur in tempore, sua bonitate
effecerit, ut suae substantiae prolern quaelibet res gignat, sicut komo
gignit hominem, non alterius naturae, sed ejus cujus ipse est, vide
quam impie dicatur ipse non genuisse id quod ipse est.n— Augustinus
(Ep. 170, § 6. ed. Antwp. 1700. “ U t lgitur in natura hominum.
filium dicimus genitum de substantia patris, similem p a tr i: ita
secunda persona Filius dicitur, quia de substantia Patris natus est
et ejus est imago.”— Melancthon (Loci praecipui Tlieol. W ite-
bergae, 1595, p. 30). “ As a corporeal son has his flesh and blood
and nature from his father, so also the Son of God, bom of the
Father, has his divine nature from the Father of Eternity.”—
Luther (Th. ix. p. 408). H. A. Roe I, 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. Yitringa, who de­
clared it an unneard-of thesis, and maintained : “ Generationem
Filii Dei ab aeterno propriissime enunciari.” Other theologians
also contended against Roel, and declared : “ Generationem in D eo
esse maxime veram et propriam.”— (Acta Erudit. Supplem. T. i. S.
vii. p. 377, etc.). That in the Bible also the Filius D ei 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 tru th .'
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. N o ! 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
jo y and life, to suffering and death.”
 APPENDIX. 295

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 tne 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 sensuous­
ness, 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 con­
tents 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 D ivine Trinity, has the human body as an essential, per­
m anent attribute. Ambrosius : “ Scriptum est Ephes. i. : Secun­
dum 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. “ Zeug­
nisse der h. Schrift und Altvater von Christo/7 and Petrus L. 1. iii.
dist. io,"'cc. 1, 2. See also on this subject Luther, Th. xix. pp.
464-468.) In accordance w ith this the United Brethren say : ‘‘I
w ill ever embrace thee in love and faith, until, when at length my
lips are pale in death, I shall see thee bodily.” “ Thy eyes, thv
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
D om ine 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 fierepro te, quam
dulce erit gaudere de te. Sed quid hujusmodi secreta colloquia
proferimus in publicum ? Cur ineffabiles et innarrabiles affectus
communibus verbis conamur exprimere? Jnexperti talia non in-
telligunt. 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.”—(D e modo bene vivendi. Sermo
x. id.) Adspectum Christi, qui adhuc inadspectabilis et absens
amorem nostrum meruit et exercuit, frequentius scripturae com­
mémorant. Joh. xiv. 3 ; 1 Joh. iii. 1 ; 1 ret. i. 8 ; 1 Thess. iv. 17.
A cq u is nonjucundum credat videre corpus illud, cujus velut in ­
strum ente usus est filius D ei ad expianda peccata, et absentem
tandem amicum salutare ? ”— Doederlein (Inst. Theol. Chr. L ii. P.
ii. C. i i Sect. ii. § 302. Obs. 3). “ Quod oculis corporis Christum
visuri simus, dubio caret.”—J. Fr. Buddeus (Comp. Inst. Theol.
Dogm. 1. ii. c. iii. § 10).
The distinction between God with the Son. or the sensuous
God, and God without the Son, or God divestea of sensuousness,
is nothing further than the distinction between the m ystical 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
296 A P P E N D I X.

the reality of sensuousness through the reason itself, and practi­

cally, 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, m spirit, in metaphysical existence, in G od ; love, friendship,
perception, the world in general, give me what thought does not,
cannot give me, nor ought to give me. Therefore Í 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. M y 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 m ink
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 dis­
criminating ana limiting criticism ; for his mind is always beclouded
by the vapours which rise from the unextinguished ardour of his
feelings. H e never attains to abstract, j.e.t 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? O f the
Trinity, on the other hand, they said that it could only be known
through revelation, Why not through reason; because it con­
tradicts reason, i.e.t because it does not express a want of the
reason, but a sensuous, emotional w ant 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 tradi­
tional, i.e., revealed. The antithesis of revelation and reason re­
duces 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 o f; just as the individual
man does not unfold his powers at ail 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 &ira( \ey6 fieva. “ Einmal ist alies wahre
nur.” The true is born but once. Hence a man’s own works often
 APPENDI X. 297

appear to him in later years quite strange and incomprehensible.

He no longer knows how he produced them or could produce them,
ie., he can no longer explain them out of himself, still less repro­
duce 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 sub­
sequent age. to claim for them a supra- and extra-human, i.e., an
imaginary, illusory origin.

§ 9-
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 tim e w ill
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 necessariae.”—D uns Scotus (ap. Rixner, B. ii. p. 78).
But only necessary existence is existence. If I am not necessary:
do not feel m yself necessary, I feel that it is all one whether I
exist or not, that thus m y 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.
D ei P. i i 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 exclu­
sively true and real. “ Sanctus Dominus Deus omnipotens in
principio, quod est in te, in sapientia tua, quae nata est de sub­
stantia tua, fecisti aliquid et de nihilo. Fecisti enim coelum et
terrain non de te, nam esset aequale unigenito tuo, ac per hoc et
tibi, et nullo modo justum esset, ut aequale iibi esset, quod in te non
esset. E t aliud praeter te non erat, unde faceres ea D eus........E t
ideo de nihilo fecisti coelum et terram.”—Augustinus (Confessionum
1. x ii c. 7). “ Vere enim ipse est, quia ineommutabilis est. Omnis
enim mutatio facit non esse quod erat........E i ergo qui summe est,
non potest esse contrarium nisi quod non est.— Si solus ipse incom-
mutabilis, 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 parijicari Deo, si autem non
habuisset initium durationis et esse, in hoc parijicaretur Deo.”—
(Albertus M. 1. c. Quaest. incidens 1). The positive, the essential
in the world is not that which makes it a world, which distinguishes
it from G od—this is precisely its finiteness and nothingness—but
298 APPENDI X.

rather that in it which is not itself, which is God. “ A ll cfreatures

are a pure nothing...... they have no essential existence, for their
existence hangs on the presence of God. I f 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.
1. yii. 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 atgue consistunt, et finis eorum in D ei voluntatem recurrit,
et ejus arbitrio resolvuntur.”— Ambrosius (Hexaemeron. 1. i. c. 5).
“ Spiritus enim a Deo creati nunquam esse desinunt...... Corpora
coelestia tam diu conservantur, quamdiu Deus ea vult permanere.”
— Buddeus (Comp. 1. 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).
“ Tne end will come sooner than we think.”— Id. (Th. xi. s. 536}.
B y 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.r2Q3). Identical with the belief in the creation out of
nothing is tne 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, <fcc.) “ 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).

§ 10.
The Crtation in the Israelitish religion has only a particular,
egoistic aim and purport. The Israelitish religion is the religion o f
the most narrow hearted egoism. Even the later Israelites, scat­
tered throughout the world, persecuted and oppressed, adhered
with immovable firmness to the egoistic faith 01 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.” “ A ll the
heathens are nothing for him (G od); 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
 APPENDI X. 299

as (numerous as) the grains of corn.” “ I f 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...... N o 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 any one smite an Israelite on the cheek, it is
the same as if he smote the cheek of the divine majesty.”— Eisen-
mengers (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 ju st and on the unjust. Y et 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.

§ 11 .
The idea 0/ Providence is the religious consciousness o f mavis dis­
tinction from the brutes, from Nature in general. “ Doth God take
care for oxen 1 ” (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
creaturi8 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. Cbemnitii (Loci
theol. Francof. 1608, P. i. p. 312). “ Nunquid enim cura est Deo de
bobus ? E t sicut non est cura Deo de bobus, ita nec de aliis irra-
tionalibus. 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. (1. 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 G<>d.
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 110 distinction be­
300 APPENDI X.

tween 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 m ay
have without religion. The religious consciousness adm its this
when it sa y s: he who denies providence abolishes religion, places
man on a level with the b rutes;—thus declaring that the provi­
dence in which the brutes have a share is in truth no providence.
Providence partakes of the character of its ob ject; hence the pro­
vidence which has plants and animals for its object is in accordance
w ith 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 exist­
ence. 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 bru tes; hence providence is
nothing else than man’s consciousness of the necessity of his exist­
ence, 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 con­
ception without basis, without reality. The truth of providence is
lov<5. God loves men, not brutes, not p lan ts; for only for man’s
sake does he perform extraordinary deeds, deeas 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, w ith
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 : D oth God take care for oxen ? but with rational crea­
tures made in his likeness, that they may live for ever w ith him .”
Luther (Th. ii. s. 156). God is first with him self in man ; in man
first begins religion, providence; for the latter is not som ething
different from the former, on the contrary, religion is itself the
providence of man. H e who loses religion, i.e.f faith in him self,
faith in man, in the infinite significance of his being, in the neces­
sity of his existence, loses providence. H e alone is forsaken who
forsakes him self; 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 ? N o ! 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 reli­
gious events, means, and institutions which God has ordained exclu­
sively for the salvation of man, in a word, in m iracles; for the means
of grace, the sacraments, belong to the class of providential miracles.
“ Quamquam autem haec consideratio universae naturae nos adm onet
de D eo........tamen nos referamus initio mentem et oculos ad omnia
 AP P E NDI X . 301

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 condderent etiam vestigia D ei impressae
naturae.M e la n c th o n (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 cai'ne 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. 28 1). But
if things are created only for the sake of man, they are also pre­
served only for the sake of man. And if things are mere instru­
ments 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

P rovidentiam tollit, totam D ei substantiam tollit et quid dicit nisi

)eum non esse ?........Si non curat humana, sive nesciens, cessat
omnia 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 (1. c. 1. iv.). wAristotle 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 him self.........But what is
such a God or Lord to us ? of what use is he to us ? Luther (in
W alch’s Philos. Lexikon, art. Yorsehung). 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
m ystery of theology is anthropology, that the substance, the
content of the infinite being, is the w finite ” being. “ God sees
men,” m eans: in God man sees only h im self; “ 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.
302 APPENDIX.

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 regredì, etc.........U t igitur invocatio vere fieri
possit, cogitemus Deum sic adesse suo opificio, non, ut Stoici fin-
gunt, alligatum secundis causis, sed sustentantem naturam et m ulta
suo Uberrimo consilio moderantem......... Multa facit prima causa
praeter secundas, quia est aqens liberum — Melanctlion (Loci de
Causa Peccati, pp. 82, 83, ed. cit.) “ Scriptura vero tradit, D eum
in actione proviaentiae 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 effeclum
producere, quam ipsarum dispositio et natura ferat 3) quod posit is
ausis secundis in actu, Deus tamen effectum possit impedire,
mutare, mitigare, exasperare......... N on igitur est connexio causarum
Stoica in actionibus providentiae Dei.”— M. Chemnitius (L c. pp.
316, 317). “ Liberrime Deus imperat naturae— Naturam saluti
hominum attemperai propter Ecclesiam......... Omnino tribuendus
est D eo hie honos, quoa possit et velit opitulari nobis, etiam cum a
tota natura destituimur, contra seriem omnium secundarum causa­
rum...........E t multa accidunt plurimis hominibus, in quibus mirandi
eventus fateri eos cogunt, se a Deo sine causis secundis&zwaXos esse.”—
C. Peucerus (de Praecip. D ivin at gen. Servestae, 1591, p. 44). “ Ille
tamen qui omnium est conditor, nullis instrumentis indiget N am
si id continuo fit, quicquid ipse vult, velie 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.v—J. L. Y ives (1. c. 102).
“ How is this to be reconciled Ì 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. W ho 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.
H e 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 feel­
ing 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
 AP P E NDI X . 303

months. And he prayed again, and the heavens gave rain and the
earth brought fprth 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 what­
soever 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 veiy 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 vanishesinto nothing. “ Mutantur quoque ad preces ea quae ex
naturae causis erant sequutura, quemadmodum in Ezechia contigit,
rege Juda, cui, quod naturales causarum progressus mortem mina-
bantur, dictum est a propheta D e i : Moneris et non vives ; sed is
decursus naturae ad regis preces mutatus est et mutaturum se Deus
»raeviderat.”— J. L. Vives (1. c. p. 132). “ Saepe fatorum saevitiam
{ enit 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
ro República.”— Orígenes (adv. Celsum. S. Glenio int. 1. viii.).
Í luman 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 th a t; therefore I
entreat thee that thou give it me.” “ He who so prays and per­
severes unabashed does right, and our Lord God is well pleased
w ith him, for he is not so squeamish as we men.”— Id. (T. xvi.
p. 150).
304 A P P E N DI X .

§ 12 .
Faith is the freedom, and blessedness which feeling finds in it­
self Feeling objective to itself and active in this freedom, the
reaction o f feeling against Mature, is the arbitrariness o f the
imagination. The objects o f fa ith therefore necessarily contradict
Nature, necessarily contradict Reason, as that which represents the
nature o f things. “ Quid magis contra fidem, quam credere nolle,
quidquia non possit ratione attingere 'I...... 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, riec 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 perm anet: 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 pro-
fluit, 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 hie quaeris
naturae ordinem in Christi corpore, cum praeter naturam sit ipse
partus ex virgine.”— Petrus Lomb. (1. iv. dist. 10, c. 2). “ Laus
fidei est credere quod est supra rationem, ubi homo abnegat intel-
lectum et omnes sensus.” (Addit. Henrici de Vurimaria. ibid. dist.
12, c. 5.) “ A ll 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 Lora 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 ? W ho
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 m iracle; but
not common, visible miracle, which is an object even to the bold
eye o f curiosity and unbelief in general; not the appearance, bu t
the essence of miracle ; not the fact, but the miraculouspower, 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
 APPENDI X. 305

manifest itself in special visible signs, for the furtherance of dog­

matic ends. “ Some have said that signs were the revelation of the
Spirit in the commencement of Christianity and have now ceased.
Tnat 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 aho 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 nis 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 nealth.”— Luther (Th. i. p. 508),
B u t— and that alone is decisive— it is not necessary that I should
use natural means in order to be cured; I can be cured imme­
diately 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
'L uther in tne 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 signi­
ficance 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
U
3o 6 A PP E N D I X.

for us, who are chosen.”— lb. (Th. ix. p. 142). The natural means
which God employs when he does no miracle, have no more signi­
ficance than those which he employs wheu he performs miracles.
I f 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 whicli
Christ anointed the eyes of the blind man to whom he restored
sight, as the staff with which Moses divided the sea (“ God cpuld
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 N atu re; there exists only the
will of God, against which all things and powers are nothing. I f
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 w ith
faith, which does not contradict faith, which is not thrust upon it,
whetner 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). W hy then use a natural means also 1 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 tnee.” 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 w ith
faith, the expression with the fact. Miracle is the terminus techni-
cus of faith

§ 13-
The Resurrection o f Christ is bodily, i.e., personal immortality,
presented as a sensible indubitable fact.
“ Resurrexit Christus, absoluta res est.— Ostendit se ipsum dis-
cipulis 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. 1, S. 361, c.
8. See also on this subject Melancthon, L o c i: de Resurr. Mort.).
 APPENDIX. 307

“ 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. O f 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).

§ 14 -
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 i 9 “ 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
(iroXiTevfxa, dvitas 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. 1. ii. c. 6). “ Coelum
de m undo: homo supra mundum?'— Ambrosius (Epist. 1. vi. Ep.
38, ed. cit.). “ Agnosce o homo dignitatem tuam, agnosce gloriam
conditionis humanae. Est enim tibi cum mundo c<yrpus...... sed
est tibi etiam sublimius aliquid, nec omnino comparandus es
caeteris creaturis.”— Bernardus (Opp. B asil 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 Celsum. ed. Hoeschelio, p. 370). “ Totusquidem
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. aevotiss. 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 omni­
bus curis et impedimentis omnium quae sunt praeter Deum oblivis-
citur, nihilque praeter Deum attendens quasi se solam, solumque
Deum existimans,” etc.— De Nat. etDign. Amoris Divini, cc. 14,15.
(Ib.) “ Quid agis frater in saeculo, qui major es m undo?”— Hier­
onymus (ad Heliod. de Laude Vitae solit.).
308 APPENDIX.

§ 15.
The celibate and monachism— of course only in their original,
religious significance and form— are sensible manifestations, neces­
sary consequences, of the sujrranaturalistic, extramundane character
of Christianity. It is true that they also contradict C hristian ity;
the reason of this is shown by implication in the present w ork ; but
only because Christianity is itself a contradiction. They contra­
dict exoteric, practical, but not esoteric, theoretical C hristian ity;
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 B ib le; 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. A nd this conversion was the more pressing, the nearer
the Christians supposed the day of judgm ent and the destruction
of the world •—periculum in mora. There was not tim e or oppor­
tunity for a hfe of quietude, for the contemplation of monachism.
H ence there necessarily reigned at that tim e 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, 1. c. p. 2 56) cum fides inciperet, ad fidelium
imbedllitatem se magis demittebant, cum autem evangelii prae-
dicatio sit magis ampliata, oportet et Pontifices ad perfectam con-
tinentiam 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 separa­
tion from life, from the body, from the world,—this first hyper-
cosmic then anti-cosmic tendency, is a genuinely biblical disposi­
tion and spirit. In addition to the passages already cited, and
others universally known, the following may stand as exam p les:
“ H e that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life
eternal.” “ I know that in me, that is, in m y flesh, dw elleth no
good thing.”— Rom. vii. 18. (“ Veteres enim omnis vitiositatis in
agendo origenes ad corpus referebant.”—J. G. Rosenmiiller 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 w ith C hrist”—Phil. i. 23. “ W e are confident
and willing rather to be absent from the body and present w ith the
Lord.”— 2 Cor. v. 8. Thus, according to these passages, the parti-
tion-wall between God and man is the body (at least the fleshly,
actual bod y); thus the body as a hindrance to union with God is
something worthless, to be denied. That by tlije world, which is
denied in Christianity, is by no means to be understood a hfe of
mere sensuality, but the real objective world, is to be inferred in a
1 opular manner from the belief that at the advent of the Lord, i.e..
 APPENDIX. 309

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, supematuralistic 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
muudi, 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
yenit.”— Seneca (Nat. Ou. L iii. c. 29). I t is the principle of life
immanent in the world, tne essence of the world itself, which evolves
this crisis out of itself. 1 Aqua et ignis terrenis dominantur. E x
his ortus et ex his interitus est.”— (Ibid. c. 28.) “ Quidriuid est, non
erit; nec peribit, sed resolvetur.”— (Idem. Epist. 71.) Tne Christians
excluded themselves from the destruction of the world. “ And he
shall send his angels with a great sound of a tru m pet; 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 com6 to pass, and to stand before
the Son of Man.”— lb. 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
singttlas comploret animas. Quis tam superbae impotentisque arro-
gantiae 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 liumanis......
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 vin­
dicated 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
3 io APPENDIX.

cosmical principle of development :— all which developed itself in .

Christendom developed itself only in contradiction with the original J
nature of Christianity because by the existence of God in the
flesh, i.e., by the immediate identity of the species with the indivi­
dual, 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,
)laced the destruction of the world in the distant future, because,
Ìiving 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, ana thus
aid 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. 1. vii. c. 25). He who places
immortality in himself abolishes the principle of historical develop­
ment. The Christians did indeed, according to Peter, expect a new
heaven and a new earth. But with this Christian, i.e., superter­
restrial 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 areal 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 o f
the regenerate Christian world. “ Virgo genuit mundi salutem ; virgo
peperit vitam universorum........... Virgo portavit, quem mundus
iste capere ant 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 p ia virgo praefertur, dicente Apostolo (1 Cor. vii.). Bonum
conjugium, per quod est inventa posteritas successions humanae ;
sed melius virginitas, per quam regni coelestis haereditas acquisita
et coelestium meritorum reperta successio. Per mulierem cura
successit : p>er virginem salus tvenit”— (là.. Ep. 81.) “ Castitas
jungit hominem coelo.......Bona est castitas conjugalis, sed melior
est continentia vidualis. Optima vero integritas yirginalis.”— D e
modo bene vivendi; Sermo 22. (Among the spurious writings of
Bernard.) “Pulchntudinem hominis non concupiscasi’— (Ibid. S. 23.)
“ Fomicatio major est omnibus peccatis........... Audi beati Isidori
verba : Fomicatione coinquinari aeterius est omni peccato.”— (Ibid.)
“ Virginitas cui gloriaemerito non praefertur? Angelicae? Angelus
habet virginitatem, sed non camem, sane felicior, quam fortior in
hac parte.”— Bernardus (Ep. 113, ad Sophiam Virginem). “ M e­
mento semper, quod paradisi colonum de possessione sua mulier
ejecerit.”— Hieronymus (Ed. Nepotiano). ' ‘ In paradiso virginitas
conversabatur....... Ipse Cnristus 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
 APPENDIX. 311

incarnatus est. E t ipse virginitatem veram et perfectam esse, in se

ipso demonstravit. Unde hanc nobis leqem non statuit (non enim
omnes capiunt verbum hoc, ut ipse dixit) sed opere nos erudivit.”—
Joan. Damasc. (Orthod. Fidei, 1. iv. c. 25).
Now if abstinenoe 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 1 — 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. A ll 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' propa­
gated from Adam down to us, simply because its propagation is the
natural act of generation. This is the mystery of Christian original
sin. “ Atque hie quam alienus a vero sit, etiam hie reprehenditur,
quod voluptatem m 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. (1. iv. dist. 31, c. 5). “ Omnes in peccatis nati
sumus, et ex camis delectatione concepti culpam originalem nobis­
cum traximus.”— Gregorius (Petrus L. 1. ii. dist. 30, c. 2). “ Firmis-
sime tene et nullatenus dubites, omnem hominem, qui per concubitwm,
viri et mvlieris concipitur, cum originali peccato nasci......Ex his
datur intelligi, quid sit originalepeccatum, scl. vitium concupiscentiae,
quod in omnes concupiscentialiter natos per Adam in travit”— (Ibid.
c. 3, see also dist. 31, c. 1.) “ Peccati causa ex came est.”— Ambrosius
(ibid.) “ Christus peccatum non habet, nec onginale traxit, nec suum
ad d id it: extra voluptatem camalis libidinis venit, non ibi iu it
complexus maritalis....... Omnis generatus, damnatus”— Augustinus
(Serm. ad Pop. S. 294, cc. 10, 16). “ Homo natus de mvliere et ob hoc
cum reatu.”— Bemardus (de Consid. 1. ii.). “ Peccatum quomodo
non fuit, ubi libido non defuit?...... Quo pacto, inquam, aut sanctus
asseretur conceptus, ciuide spiritus non est, ne dicam de peccato est?”
— Id. (Epist. 174, edit. cit.). “ A ll that is bom into tne world of
man and woman is sinful, under God’s anger and curse, condemned
to death.” “ A ll 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 Dirtn.”— Luther (Th. x v i 246,
573). It is clear from these examples, that “ carnal intercourse”—
even a kiss is carnal intercourse— is tne radical sin, the radical evil
of m ankind; 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. u 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,
 312 APPENDI X.

disquieting contradiction, that Nature is a product of God, and yet,

as it actually is, does not harmonise with God, i.e., with the Chris­
tian sentiment.
Christianity certainly did not pronounce the flesh as flesh, matter
as matter, to be something sinful, impure ; on the contrary, it con­
tended vehemently against the heretics who held this opinion and
rejected marriage. (See for example Augustin, contra Faustum,
1. 29, c. 4, 1. 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., nega­
tions, 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 j«»y of matter in itself, matter proving
itself by activity. Every jo y is self-activity, every pleasure a mani­
festation of force, energy. Every organic function is, in a normal
condition, united with enjoym ent; 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 plea­
sure 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, whicli is natural, normal, insepar­
able 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 supernatural Ism. Where,
as in Christianity, a supernatural, spiritual oody is regarded as the
true, eternal body, i e., a body from which all objective, sensual im­
pulses, 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, supematuralistic, heavenly virtue, it can­
not and must not be lowered into a common object of d u ty ; it
stands above the law, it is the virtue of Christian grace and free­
dom. “ Christus hortatur idoneos ad coelibatum, ut donum recte
tueantur ; idem Christus iis, qui puritatem extra conjugium non,
 APPENDI X. 313

retinent, praecipit, ut pure in conjugio vivant.”— Melancthon. (Re-

sponsio ad Colonienses. Declam. T. iii.). “ Virginitas non est jussa,
sed admonita, quia nimis est excelsa —D e modo bene viv. (Sermo
21). “ E t qui matrimonio jungit virginem suam, benefacit, et qui
non jungit, melius facit. Quod igitur bonum est; non yitandum est,
et quod est melius eligendum est. Itaque non lmponitur, sed pro-
ponitur. E t ideo bene Apostolus d ix it: De virginibus autem
praeceptum non habeo. consilium autem do. U bi 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 repelitum.i>—Ambrosius (Liber, de viduis). That is to say :
celibacy, abstinence from marriage, is no law in the common or
Jew ish 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. W hat 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 Chris­
tian, 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
sen tim en t; 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 acknow­
ledged for its own sake is not acknowledged at all, w hile yet there
is a deceitful show of acknowledgm ent 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 f
Commixtio carnis scilicet, cujus concupiscentiam Dominus stupro *
adaequavit......... Ideo virginis principalis sanctitas, quia caret stupri
affinitati.”—Tertullianus (de Exhort. Cast. c. 9). “ E t de ipso con-
jugis melius aliquid, quam concessisti, monuisti.”—Augustinus
(Confess, x. c. 30). “ It is better to marry than to burn.”— 1 Cor.
vii. 9. But how much better is it, says Tertullian, developing this
text, neither to marry nor to burn........“ Possum dicere, quod per-
m ittitur bonum non est”—(Ad Uxorem, 1. i. c. 3.) “ D e minoribus bonis
est conjugiam, quod non meretur palmam, sed est in remedium........
Prima institutio habuit praeceptum, secunda indulgentiam. D idi-
314 APPENDIX.

cimus enim ab Apostolo, humano generi propter vitandam fornica-

tionem indultum esse conjugium.”— Petrus Lomb. (1. 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, cer­
tainly 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 un­
holy. 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 i t ; he does not wish for? he rather con­
temns the means in its e lf; he seeks only the end m 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, ne 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 i t ! 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 turu
away with mock modesty from every sensuous picture, every naked
statue» as if they were angels ; to this day they repress, even b y
legal force, every open-hearted, ingenuous self-confession’even of the
most uncorrupt sensuality, only stimulating by this public prohibi­
tion the secret enjoyment of sensuality. What then, speaking
briefly and plainly, is the distinction between Christians and
heathens in tnis 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 m ea n : the former,
where they sin, sin with their conscience, the latter against their
conscience; the former sin simply, the latter d o u b ly ; the former
from hypertrophy, the latter from atrophy of the flesh. The specific
crime of the heathens is the ponderable, palpable crime of licen­
tiousness, that of the Christians is the imponderable, theological
crime of hypocrisy,— that hypocrisy of which Jesuitism is indeed
 APPENDI X. 315
the most striking, world-historical, but nevertheless only a parti­
cular manifestation. “ Theology makes sinners,” says Lutner—
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 : “ L a dévotion trouve, pour faire
de mauvaises actions, des raisons, qu’un simple honnête homme 11e
saurait trouver.”— (Pensées Diverses.)

§16.
The Christian heaven is Christian truth. That which is 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. u Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats ; but God shall
destroy (Karapy^aei, 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 110
candle, neither light of the sun.”— Ib. x x ii 5. “ Comedere, bibere,
vigilare, dormire, quiescere, laborare et caeteris necessitatibus
naturae subjacere, vere magna miseria est et affiictio 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). I t 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 divin a
revelatio illuxit..... .novimus, non solum mentem, sed affectus per-
pwrgatos, neque animam tantum, sed etiam corpus ad immortali-
tatem assumptum iri suo tempore.”— Baco de Verul. (de Augrn.
Scien. 1. i.). On this account Celsus reproached the Christians with
a deriderium corporis. But this immortal body is, as has been
already remarked, an immaterial, i.e., a thoroughly fanciful, sub­
jective 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 tne emotive imagination, the satisfaction of the un­
limited, supra)]aturalistic desire of happiness, to Which the actual,
objective body is a limitation.
A s 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 iw>/*ara, spirits, and
3 16 APPENDIX.

declares tliem to be higher than men. The later Christians ex­

pressed 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, con­
ceptions : indeed, these contradictions lay in the nature of the case,
necessarily resulted from the fundamental contradiction of the re­
ligious 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. I t 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. i. Nevertheless it is the same in such a way that every­
thing burdensome, everything contradictory to transcendental
feeling, is removed. “ Immo sicut dicit Augustinus : Detrahentur
vitia et remanebit natura. S uperexcrescentla autem capMorum et
unguium, est de superfluitate et vitio naturae. S i enim non peccasset
homo, crescerent ungues et capilli qus usque ad determinaiam quan-
titatem, sicut in leonibus et avibus.”— (Addit. Henrici ab Vurimaria,
ibid. edit. Basiliae, 1513.) What a specific, naïve, ingenuous, con­
fident, 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. W hy 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
)ossess ; because, from fear of their understanding, which has
Îong been at issue with their faith, from fear of risking their feeble
faith by bringing it to the light, that is, considering it in detail,
they suppress the consequences, the necessary determinations of
their faith, and conceal them from their understanding.

§ 17-
What faith den ies on earth it affirms in heaven ; what it renounces
here it recovers a hundredfold 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 ana 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 bjr no means merely spiritual, it is equallv corporeal,
sensuous— a state in which all wishes are fulfilled. “ Whatever thy
 APPENDIX. 317

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.” “ D ost thou
desire to see acutely, and to hear through walls, and to be so light
that thou mayst be wherever thou w ilt 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. “ lllic ipsa
indisrentia 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 unlim ited 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 witnout fatigue,
w ithout 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 , w ill be visible to bodily eyes. (See, for example, Augustin.
Serm. ad Pop. p. 277, and Buddeus, Comp. Inst. Th. 1. ii. c. 3, § 4.)
But in this difference we again have only the contradiction between
the abstract and the real G od ; the former is certainly not an object
of vision, but the latter is so. “ Flesh and blood is the wall between
m e and Christ, which w ill be torn away........There everything w ill
be certain. For in that life the eyes will see, the mouth taste, and
the nose smell i t ; the treasure w ill shine into the soul and life........
F aith will cease, and I shall behold with my eyes.”—Luther (Th. ix.
P- 595)* It is d e ar from this again, that God, as he is an object of
religious sentiment, is nothing else than a product of the imagina­
tion. The heavenly beings are supersensuous sensuous, immaterial
material beings, i.e., beings of the im agination; but they are like
God, nay, identical with God, consequently God also is a super-
sensuous sensuous, an immaterial material being.
§ 18.
The contradiction in the Sacraments is the contradiction of natur­
alism 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 Baptism i atque
iaeo verba ilia domini nostri Jesu C hristi: N isi quis renatus fuerit
ex aqua et Spiritu sancto, ad metamorpham aliquam detorserit,
anathema sit.—Concil. Trident. (Sessio vii. Can. ii. de Bapt.) D e
3i 8 A P P E N D I X.

substantia hujus sacramenti sunt verbum et elementum........N on

ergo in alio liquore potest consecrari baptismus nisi in aqua.—
Petrus Lomb. (]. iv. dist. 3, c. 1. c. 5). Ad certitudinem baptism i
requiritur major quam unius gvttae quantitas........N ecesse est ad
valorem baptismi fieri contortum physicum inter aquam et corpus
baptizati, ita ut non sufficiat, vestes tantum ipsius aqua tin g i......
Ad certitudinem baptismi requiritur, ut saltern 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 adliibendam esse, exemplo Joannis........
non minus vero et Apostolorum Act. viii. 36, x. 47, patet.— F.
Buddeus (Com. Inst. Th. dog. 1. 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, alm ighty power of the Word of
God, who instituted tlie 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 m ight.............as
St. Augustine also hath ta u g h t: i acceaat verbum ad elementum
et fit sacramentum.’ ” “ Baptize them in the name of the Father,
Arc. Water without these words is mere water.............W ho w ill
call the baptism of the Father, Son, and H oly Ghost mere water ?
Do we not see what sort of spice God puts into this water?
W hen sugar is thrown into water it is no longer water, but a
costly claret or other beverage. W hy then do we here separate
the word from the water and say, it is mere w ater; as if the word
of God, yea, God himself, were not w ith and in the w ater........
Therefore, the water of Baptism is such a water as takes away sin,
death, ana unhappiness, helps us in heaven and to everlasting life.
It is become a precious sugared water, aromaticum, and restorative,
since God has mingled him self therewith.”—Luther (Th. xvi. p.
I0 5).
A s w ith the water in Baptism, which sacrament is nothing
without water, though this water is nevertheless in itself in­
different, so is it w ith 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 tam diu
continent Christum, quamdiu retinent illud temperamentum, cum
quo connaturaliter panis et vini substantia perm aneret: ut econtra,
quando tanta fit temperamenti dissolutio, illorumque corruptio, u t
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
 APPENDIX. 319

render bread recognisable as such, must be present, for conse­

cration to be possible.— (lb. p. 284.) For the rest, Catholic tran-
substantiation, the conversio realis et physica totius panis in corpus
Christi, is only a consistent continuation of the miracles of the
Old and N ew Testaments. B y 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 mpde 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 knojv 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. Came-
rarius, ed. Strobel, Halae, 1777, p. 446). Hence the Protes­
tants 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.)

A n 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, ana 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
liamque discrimen inter manducationem oralem et naturalem
tenendum est. E tsi enim oralem manducationem adseramus
atque propugnemus, naturalem tamen non admittimus............
Omnis equidem manducatio naturalis etiam oralis est, sed non
vicissim <yralis 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
320 APPENDIX.

et vinum modo naturali et sensibili, corpus et sanguinem Cliristi

simul equidem aim pane et vino, at modo supematurali et insen -
sibili, qui adeo etiam a nemine mortalium (nor, assuredly, by any
God) explicare potest, revera interim et ore corporis acdpiamus.”—
Jo. Fr. Buddeus (1. c. Lib. v. c. i. § 15).

§ 19-
Dogma and Morality, Faith and Love, contradict eajch other in
Chrikianity. 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; per­
sonality seeks dominion, is greedy of g lo ry; 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 th in g s ;
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 signifi­
cance of grace, favour : God is a gracious master, as in Judaism he
was a severe mas tier. 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, con­
demn its o b ject; thus it is a groundless, unessential, arbitrary,
absolutely subjective, merely personal love. “ He hatn 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 w ill 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. I f 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 H oly Spirit...... it is believed that G od
would be good and kind even if he consigned all men to damnation.
‘ Is not Esau Jacob’s brother? said the Lord. Y e t 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 01 faith. But the
idea of obligation and meritoriousness allies itself only with a deed,
 APPENDIX. 321

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 iust 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, modem expression for sovereignty) distinguishes from
himself as a predicate which he can either have or not have with­
out 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 supre­
macy. (On the divine arbitrariness, see also J. A. Ernesti’s treatise
previously cited : “ Vindiciae arbitni divini.”)
FaiXh has vrithin 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
d u t y ; duties to men are only derivative, subordinate. The unbe­
liever is thus an outlaw *— a man worthy of extermination. That
which denies God must be itself denied. The highest crime is the
crime laesae majestcUis Dei. To faith God is a personal being— the
supremely personal, inviolable, privileged being. The acme of per­
sonality is nonour; hence an injury towards the highest personality

* “ Haereticus usu omnium jurium destitutus est, ut deportatus.”—J. H.

Boehmer (1. c. L v. Tit. vii. § 223. See also Tit. vL)
X
322 APPENDI X.

is necessarily the highest crime. The honour of God cannot be dis­

avowed as an accidental, rude, anthropomorphic conception. For
is not tbe personality, even the existence of God, a sensuous,
anthropomorphic conception ? L et 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 precat us
fuerit, pro eorum arbitrio poenas lu ito ; quicunque vero idem scelus
erga Deum admiserit...... lapidibus blasphemiae causa obruitur.”
— (Lev. xxiv. 15, 16. See also Deut. x i l , 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 im-
pios, ut injustos, nisi profanus nemo deliberat: quum parentem
omnium et dominum omnium non minus sceleris sit ignorare, quam
laedere.” — Minucii Fel. Oct. c. 35. “ U bi erunt legis praecepta
divinae, quae d ic u n t: honora patrem et matrem, si vocabulum
patris, quod in homine honorari praecipitur, in Deo impune vio-
latur ? Cypriani Epist. 73 (ed. Gersdorf). “ Cur enim, cum datum
sit divinitus nomini liberum arbitrium, adulteria legibus puniantur
et sacrilegia permittantur ? A n 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 mule-
tantur, quid de Ulis statuendum censemus, qui jidem pervertere
comantur ? ”— Paulus Cortesius (in Sententias (Petri L.) iii. L dist.
vii.). “ Si enim illustrem ac praepotentem virum nequaquam ex-
honorari a quoquam licet, et si quisquam exhonoraverit, decretis
legalibus reus sistitur et injuriarum auctor jure damnatur : quanto
utique majoris piacvli crimen est, injuriosum quempiam Deo esse ?
Semper enim per dignitatem injuriam perferentis crescit culpa
facientis, quia necesse est, quanto major est persona ejus qui contu-
meliam patitur, tanto major sit noxa ejus, qui facit.” Thus speaks
Salvianus (de Gubemat. Dei, 1. vi. p. 218, edit, c it) — Salvianus,
who is called Magistrum Episcoporum, sui saeculi Jeremiam, Scrip-
torem Christianissimum, Orbis ckristiani rnagistrum. 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 D ei 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 nega­
tion 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 d eath : “ E go
vero ingenue praefatus, me nunquam privatas injurias fuisse per-
secutum,” and parted from him with a sense of being thoroughly
sustained by the B ib le : “ A b haeretico homine, qui airroKardicpiTos
peccabat, secundum Pauli praeceptum discessi.”— (Ibid. p. 120.) Thus
it was by no means a personal natred, though this may have been
conjoined,— it was a religious haired which brought Servetus to
 APPENDI X. 323

the stake—the hatred which springs from the nature o f 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 men­
tioning the punishment of death,* but agreed with the Genevans in
this— “HorrendosServeti 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
him self 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 ; V ita Bezae, p.
207 •, V itae Theol. Exter. Francof. 1618.) W e 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 pro­
fession of .the faith by force was certainly maintained by most of
the lights of the Church, but there nevertheless lived in them the
m ost 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 a d d s: ft Quamquam melius
procul dubio gladio coercerentur, illius videlicet, qui non sine causa
gladium portat, quam in suum errorem multos traj icere permittautur.”
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 01 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 o n ly : on the fundamental articles of
faith freedom is not allowed. W hen, 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 ultim ate 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,
* 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. 1. v. Tit. vii.
e-9- §§ i. 155. 157, 162, 163.
324 APPENDIX.

edit, cit.)—accursed— “ apostoli........in epistolis haereticos exsecrati

sunt ” (Cyprianus, ib. § o)—a lost being, doomed by God to hell
and everlasting death. “ Thou hearest that the tares are already
condemned and sentenced to the fire. W hy then w ilt thou lay
many sufferings on a heretic ? Dost thou not hear that he is already
judged to a punishment heavier than he can bear ? W ho art thou,
that thou w ilt interfere and punish him who has already fallen
under the punishment of a more powerful master ? W hat would I
do against a thief already sentenced to the gallows ?......God has
already commanded his angels, who in his own tim e w ill be the
executioners of heretics.”—Luther (Th. xvi. p. 132). W hen there­
fore the State, the world, became Christian, ana 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
]>olitical, practical condemnation, and the eternal punishment of
îell 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 D ivine judgm ents of faith w ith
the sword, which makes earth a heaven to believers, a hell to un­
believers. “ Docuim us........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. N ow
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 w ill 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. n o , 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. (D e
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. Boeh-
mer, 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 jyeccatum in Deum. But God, in the view of faith,
 APPENDIX. 325

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 o f 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 com­
mands and wills that we should cleave to his word alone...... W hat
I cannot love with God, I must h a te ; if they only preach some­
thing 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 s a y : I nate 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 ana love are two things.
Faith endures nothing, love endures all things. Faith curses, love
blesses : faith seeks vengeance and punishment, love seeks forbear­
ance and forgiveness.” “ Bather 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.). A s
Luther distinguishes the person from the enemy of God, so Augus­
tine 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., with­
out God? N othing: 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. I t 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 outw ardly; the true God, God as ne 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.
326 APPENDIX.

“ Diligendus est propter Denm, D eus 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 I
§ 20.
Faith separates man from man, puts in the place of the natu­
ral 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 Apo­
stolus, jugum ducere cum infidelibus........Sit ergo inter nos et illos
maxima separation—Hieronymus (Epist. Caelantiae matronae)........
“ Prope ninil gravius quam copulari alienigeniae........... Nam cum
ipsum conjugium velamine sacerdotali et benedictione sanctificari
oporteat: quomodo potest conjugium did , ubi non est fidei concordia ?
........Saepe plerique capti amorefeminarum fidem suam prodiderunt.”
— Ambrosius (Lp. 70, Lib. ix.). “ N on enim licet christiano cum
gentili vel judaeo inire conjugium.”—Petrus L. (1. 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 concernin';
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 Lom ­
bard 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 brother­
hood 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 matremplus 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 peccaturq, et
miseriam ? ”— Bernard us (Epist. iii. E x persona Heliae monachi
ad parentes suos). “ E tsi impium est, contemnere matrem, con-
temnere tamen propter Christum piissimum est.”— Bernardus (Ep.
104. See also Ep. 351, ad Hugonem novitium). “ Audi sententiani
Isidori: m ulti canonicorum, monachorum............ temporali salute
suorum parentum perdunt animas suas........Servi D ei qui paren-
tum suorum utilitatem procurant a D ei amore se separata .”— De
modo bene vivendi (S. vii.). “ Omnem hominem ftdelem judica tuuni
esse fratrem.”—(Ibid. Sermo 13). “ Ambrosius dicit,‘longe plus nos
debere diligere filios quos de fonte levamus, quam quos camaliter
genuimus.”—Petrus L. (1. 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 infan-
tibus esse peccatum, debet aliquod esse discrimen infantium Ethni-
 APPENDIX . 327

CTrum, gm manent rei, 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). “ U t Episcopi y el
Clericiin 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 o f morality.
This has been declared very decidedly by Protestantism. The doc­
trine 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. O f Love and the
Fulfilment of the Law.) I t is certainly here s a id : “ W hat 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 olyect 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 1
The morality which proceeds from faith has fo r its principle and
criterion only the contradiction o f Nature, o f 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. Dog­
matic miracles have therefore moral miracles as their consequence.
Antinatural morality is the twin sister of supernatural faith. A s
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. (Sammtl. W. B. vi. 151), has been specially deve­
loped 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
m orality In faith, Protestantism has brought man back to the
standpoint of primitive Christianity; but in life, in practice, in mo­
rality, it has restored him to the pre-Christian, the Old Testament,
328 APPENDIX.

the heathen, Adamitic, natural standpoint. God instituted mar­

riage in paradise ; therefore even in the present day, even to Chris­
tians, the command M ultiply ! is valid. Christ advises those only
not to marry who “ can receive ” this higher rule. Chastity is a
supernatural g ift; 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 neverthe­
less commanded to us all ? Are not all men included in the com­
mand 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 ? W ill 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. W hat speaks against chastity speaks
against faith also, and what speaks for faith speaks for chastity.
One stands and falls w ith the other ; w ith a supernatural faith is
necessarily associated a supernatural morality. Protestantism tore
this bond asunder: in faith it affirmed C hristianity; in life, in
practice, it denied Christianity, acknowledged the autonomy of
natural reason, of man,—restored man to his original rights. Pro­
testantism rejected celibacy, chastity, not because jt contradicted
the Bible, but because it contradicts man and nature. “ H e w ho
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 wonclers that men are accustomed to eat and drink.”—
Luther (Th. xix. pp. 368, 369). Does this unbelief as to the possi­
bility and reality of chastity accord w ith the Bible, where celibacy
is eulogised as a laudable, and consequently a possible, attainable
state? N o ! It is in direct contradiction with the Bible. Pro­
testantism, 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 w ith 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. A fter that
he gave the world to his Son Christ, that we tlirough 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
 APPENDI X. 329

Christian a Christian only through this, that he believes in Christ.

I t 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 thin gs; 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
I t 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 Jby Christianity. But “ Christ did not come 011
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 en d s; there worldly justice, the
sword, war, litigation, prevail A s 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 naturae.”— 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. In 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. O f this division, this disunity, this chasm, Catholicism
knows nothing. What it denies in heaven, t.&, 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
came non camaliter vivere, tecum pugnare quotiaie.”— Hieronymus
(Ep. Furiae Rom. nobilique viduae). “ Quanto igitur natura am-
plius vindtur et premitur, tanto major gratia infunditur.”— Thomas
a K. (Imit. 1. iii. c. 54). u Esto robustus tam in agendo, quam in
patiendo naturae contraria? — (Ibid. c. 49.) “ Beatus ille homo, qui
 330 APPENDIX.

propter te, Domine, omnibus creaturis licentiam abeundi tribuit,

qui naturae vim facit et concupiscentias camis fervore spiritus
crucifigit ” (c. 48). “ Adhuc pron dolor! vivit in me verus homo,
non est totus crucifixus.”— (Ibid. c. 3 4 , 1. iii. c. 1 9 , 1. ii. c. 12.) A n d
these dicta by no means emanate simply from the pious individuality
of the author of the work B e 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. Bemhardi Abbatis per Alexandrum papam
I I I. anno Ch. 1164. Litt. apost......primo ad. Praelatos Eccles.
G a llic .: “ In affiictione vero corporis sui usque adeo sibi mundum,
seque mundo reddidit crucifixum, ut confidamus martyrum quoque
eum merita obtinere sanctorum, etc.” I t was owing to this purely
negative moral principle that there could be enunciated within
Catholicism itself the grass opinion that mere martyrdom, without
the motive of love to God, obtains heavenly blessedness.
It is true that Catholicism also in practice denied the supra-
naturalistic morality of Christianity; but its negation has an essen­
tially 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 cha­
racter, his religious principle and conscience. A dhuc proh dolor /
vivit m 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 con­
sequences. This experience Protestantism made use of, or rather
this experience called forth Protestantism. I t made the illegiti­
mate, 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
I its still Christian conscience, by Christianity itself, pronounced it to
be Christian;— no wonder, therefore, that now at last modem Chris­
tianity not only practically but theoretically represents the total
negation of Christianity as Christianity. When, however, Pro­
testantism 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. “ B y faith Abraham offered up Isaac.”— Heb. xi. 17. “ Quanto
major Abraham, qui unicum filium volúntate jugvlavit...... 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
 A P P E NDI X. 331

Daumer and Qhillany. In the Christian religion also it is only

blood, the sacrifice of the Son of Man, which allays God’s anger ana
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 Ula duo voluit spedebus panis et vini.”—
Bernard, (edit. cit. pp. 189-191). “ Subalia autem specie tribus de
causis carnem et sanguinem tradit Christus et deinceps sumendum
instituit. U t fides sciL haberet meritum, quae est de his quae
non videntur, quod fides non habet meritum, ubi humana ratio
praebet experimentum. E t ideo etiam ne abhorreret animus quod
cemeret oculus; quod non habemus in usu carnem, crudam comedere
et sanguinem Inhere...... E t etiam ideo ne ab incredulis reliqioni
christianae insultaretur. »Unde Augustinus: N ihil rationabilius,
quam ut sanguinis similitudinem sumamus, ut et ita veritas
non desit et ridicidum 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
valu e;— 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 Goa ;— so the contradiction of
the Eucharist with numan 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 ana drinking. ^“ A ll
ancient Christian doctors...... teach that the body of Christ is not
taken spiritually alone by faith, which happens .also out o f the
Sacraments, but also corporeally; not alone b y believers, by the
pious, but also by unworthy, unbelieving, false and wicked Chris­
tians.” “ 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 differ­
ence of the Eucharist ? Eating and drinking. Apart from the
Sacrament, God is partaken of spiritually; in the Sacrament he is
artaken of materially, i.e, he is eaten and drunken, assimilated
E y 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
332 APPENDIX .
holy when by means of them thou c6mest in contact with the H oly
One ? Thus if God is eaten and drunken, eating and drinjdng is
declared to be a divine a c t ; and this is what the Eucharist ex-
resses, though in a self-contradictory, mystical, covert manner,
S ut it is our task to express the mystery of religion, openly and
honourably, clearly and definitely. Life is
God; the enjoyment of
lifeistheenjoymentof God ; trueblissin life is truereligion'. Bu t
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 ex­
pressed mystery of religion itself. A ll 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 u n ite; that
which is not,which is believed in and hoped for, is infinite.

§ 21.

The Christian religion is a contradiction. It is at once the re­

conciliation and the disunion, the unity and the opposition, o f 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 re a lly ; 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. W hat he
did not experience in his nature as God, he did not experience in
truth, in substance. And, incredible as it is, the Christians them­
selves 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,*
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

* On this subject I refer to Liitzelberger’s work : “ Die Kirchliche Tradition

über den Apostel Johannes und seine Schriften in ihrer Grundlosigkeit nach­
gewiesen,” and to Bruno Bauer’s “ Kritik der Evangelischen Geschichte der
¡Synoptiker und des Johannes ” (B. iii.).
 APPENDIX. 333
tliou 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 aeruuinas corporis et infirmum
doloris humani divinae connectis naturaeV’— Ambrosius (de incarnat.
domin. sacr. cc. 4, 5). “ Juxta hominis naturam proficiebat sapien-
tia, 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.”— Gre­
gorius in homil. qliadam (ap. Petrus Lomb. 1. iii. dist. 13, c. 1).
“ Proficiebat ergo humanus sensus in eo secundum ostensionem et
aUorum 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). “ U t 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 p o test:
non quod ipse dubitaverit, sed quod modum aessit 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 Goa 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 confijtetur proprie et vere
substantialem differential!! naturarum post ineffabilem unionem,
ex quibus unus et solus extitit Christus, in ea salvatum, sit con-
demnatus.”— 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
 334 AP P E N D I X .
#
incarnation as before it, since each nature excludes the conditions
of the other, although both are united in one personality, in an in­
comprehensible, 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 con­
founded, 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 lie 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 G o d ; 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.
Erklar. 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 i t ; 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
d icitu r: 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. 1. 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 simpli-
cÍ8 simum; thus the U nity 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 distin ct; thus the
incompatibility of the divine and human attributes contradicted
the unity of tne 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 con­
 A P P E NDI X. 335
tradiction 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-reni ‘ ^ 1 ’ ‘ ' 1'
majesty— Amor triumphal
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. O nly 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 Cnris-
tians 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 s a y : That is the Son of God.”— (Til. xix.
. 594.) “ To give life, to have all power in heaven and earth, to
£ ave 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 H oly 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 accordingto 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
(1. c. 1. 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). I t is certainly
said that it is not man, not flesh ana blood dv itself, which is wor­
shipped, but the flesh united with God, so that the cultus applies
not to the flesh, or man, but to God. JBut 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 them­
selves adored, so God is worshipped in the human body only be­
cause 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
336 AP P E NDI X .

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 nim.
I f the nature of man is indifferent, why did not Goa become incar­
nate in a brute? Thus God comes into man only out o f 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 : I t 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 indi­
vidual, though, naturally, they will not admit it.

§ 22.

M an is the God o f Christianity; Anthropology the mvstery 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) A n ­
thropology. 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 its e lf: 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
 APPENDIX. 337

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 b lo od ; 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 s e lf ; Pro­
testantism , 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 H ost as on the cross ; in Protestantism, on the contrary,
it is a sacrifice, a gift of G o d : God sacrifices himself, surrenders
him self 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 ; m Protes-,
tantism , 011 the contrary, Godhead is the property, the pre­
dicate of manhood (Christ)—man is God. “ This, in time past,
the greatest theologians nave done—they Jmve fled from the
manhood of Christ to his Godhead, ana attached them selves
to that alone, and thought that we should not know the man­
hood 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 bom of the Virgin
Mary and became man. H e who receives his manhood has also
his Godhead.”—Luther (Th. ix. pp. 592,598).* Or, briefly thus : in
Catholicism, man exists for God ; in Protestantism, God exists for
m an.t “ Jesus Christ our Lord was conceived for us, bom 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 Alm ighty Father, and is to judge the living
and the dead for our comforr. This the holy Apostles and beloved
Fathers intended to intim ate in their confession by the words : U s
and our Lord—namely, that Jesus Christ is ours, whose office and
w ill 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
* In another place Luther praises St. Bernard and Bonaventura because they
laid so much stress on the manhood of Christ.
f 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
itB true result—the absoluteness of man. '
338 APPENDIX.

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 give? himself to man and will be his, as man gives him­
self 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. I f he is a father, he must have
a son. I f 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.”— (T h x v i p. 465). “ God says :
I the Alm ighty Creator of heaven and earth am thy G od...... 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.) “ A ll 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 1 ^ 1 1 1 ‘ 1
good to him, bestows benefits
m this t e x t : ‘ 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
G o d ; 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 d e ity ; 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 Protes­
tantism, 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
 APPENDI X. 339

itself nothing else than the nature of man placed out of man, con­
ceived 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.

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