BR 121 .F68 1906 Foster, George Burman, 1858- 1918. The finality of the THE DECENNIAL PUBLICATIONS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO THE DECENNIAL PUBLICATIONS ISSUED IN COMMEMORATION OF THE COMPLETION OP THE FIRST TEN YEARS OF THE UNIVERSITY'S EXISTENCE AUTHORIZED BY THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES ON THE RECOMMENDATION OF THE PRESIDENT AND SENATE EDITED BY A COMMITTEE APPOINTED BY THE SENATE EDWARD CAPPS STARR WILLAKD COTTING ROLLIN D. SALISBURY JAMES ROWLAND ANGELL WILLIAM 1. THOMAS SHAILER MATHEWS CARL DARLING BUCK FREDERIC IVES CARPENTER OSKAR BOLZA JULIDS 8TIEGLITZ JACQUES LOEB THESE VOLUMES ARE DEDICATED TO THE MEN AND WOMEN OP OUR TIME AND COUNTRY WHO BY WISE AND GENEROUS GIVING HAVE ENCOURAGED THE SEARCH AFTER TRUTH IN ALL DEPARTMENTS OP KNOWLEDGE THE FINALITY OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION THE FINALITY OF THE CHRIS TIAN RELIGION BY GEORGE BURMAN FOSTER PEOFESSOR OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION THE DECENNIAL PUBLICATIONS SECOND SERIES VOLUME XVI CHICAGO THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS r.)06 Copyright 1906 by THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Published January, 190o Composed and Printed by le University of Chicauo Press Cliicago, Illinois, U. S. A. TO POWELL BEXTON REYNOLDS MY FIRST GREAT TEACHER ''Our age is, in every sense of the word, the age of criticism, and everything must suljmit to it. Religion, on the strength of its sanctity, and law, on the strength of its majesty, try to withdraw themselves from it; but by so doing they arouse just suspicions, and cannot claim that sincere respect which reason pays to those only who have been able to stand its free and open examination." — Kant. PKEFACE In the summers of 1902 and 1903 the author had the privilege to deliver two courses of lectures before the Har- vard Summer School of Theology, to ministers and students for the ministry of many of our Protestant denominations. Those who heard the lectures expressed profound interest in them and earnestly solicited their speedy publication. These are those lectures, but greatly enlarged, even to the extent of additional chapters. It should also be said that the more popular style of the lecture has been eliminated for the most part, though in places not entirely, and a more technical and formal treatment adopted. The delay in their publication has been due to a com- bination of hindrances. Without recounting them to the reader, they yet constitute the author's apology to his original audience, which had the right to expect the book at a much earlier date. In this connection he may say that the second volume — the increasingly constructive part of the work — is expected to appear in the early spring. The author may not claim originality, in the strict sense of the word, for this book. Still, the constructive idea is his, the plan and process of the argument are his, thoughts which are shared by others are independently his, and even the thoughts which are not his by creation are yet his by patient reflection in the course of wide study in philosophy and theology. However, he has sought to write an effective rather than an original book. His sources have been indi- cated sufficiently, he trusts, either in the text or in footnotes. The book is a mirror of the development of the author's own experience — a development, moreover, which has not yet come to a close; a fact which is also mirrored in the xii Preface book. He believes that a multitude of thoughtful men and women are passing through an experience similar to his own; and that a greater multitude will travel, with bleeding feet, the same via dolorosa tomorrow and the day after. It is a pathetic and tragic, or inspiring and illuminating, spectacle, according as one looks at it. Be that as it may, to all such the author offers himself as fellow-pilgrim, not without some hope that they may be a little less lonely for his comrade- ship, a little less bewildered for his guidance, and a little less sorrowful and discouraged for his own joy and hope. At all events, he has said what he sees, as was his duty, in a straightforward way, obedient to Robert Browning's advice: "Preach your truth; then let it work." Hence the reader will find no orthodoxy in this book under the mask of liber- alism, and no liberalism under the mask of orthodoxy; but yea is yea and nay is nay, under the firm conviction that whatever is more than these cometh of evil. If the author should sometimes hold back the truth for prudential reasons, he does not see how his fellow-pilgrims could know when he was tellinsr what he believed to be the truth, and when he was holding the truth back for reasons of policy. Liberals will complain of the superfluousness of the chapter on the dissolution of authority-religion. They will say that such a standpoint has been long overcome. The author admits that the battle has been fought and won as regards the question of principle. But it is a fact that the fruits of the victory have not yet been fully harvested. In practice, authority-religion is in full force in all our denomi- nations in some parts of the country, and in some of our denominations in all parts of the country. The church's theological Christ still supplants the real Jesus of history, whose spirit alone is the life of our spirit ; sacraments instead of the fellowship of Christian persons are set up as the media- tion of salvation ; and an external religion of historical occur- Preface xiii rences is substituted for the invisible impression made by persons. The watchword, "Christianity is an historical re- ligion," is superficially true, but fundamentally false. It means that Christianity is a religion of historical "facts" — "redemptive facts," Heilsthatsachcm, they are called — not so very many and not so very certain, neither so many nor so certain as they used to be — whereas it is at bottom a religion of spirit and of personality. It is not a religion of facts, but of values; and values are timeless; that is, Christianity is an eternal religion which is in, but not of, the historical. In the mystery of creative personalities, fructified, indeed, by the stream of history, fountains are opened from which higher values, unattainable by us men of ourselves, stream forth from eternity into the human world. Personalities are the channels of divine grace. Signs are not wanting that this truth is beginning to dawn upon the bearers of the authority cult. The author hopes to have contributed some- what toward realizing in practice — especially in his own denomination, the Baptist, where for long a Catholicizing tendency has been subverting the basic principles of the denomination — the triumph in principle of the religion of persons and not of things, of freedom and not of external authority, of ethical ideality and not of ecclesiastical force or politics. He has but to add that the chapter in question was written as it now stands before the appearance of Saba- tier's posthumous work on the same subject ; and he believes that his briefer, more closely articulated discussion has a mission. Finally, the reader is referred to Introduction for exposi- tion of the plan and purpose of this book. G. B. F. Chicago, December 12, 1905. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTORY Chapter I. Introduction 3 Chapter II. Historical Survey 23 PART I. AUTHORITY-RELIGION ( = SUPERNATURALISM) AND NATURALISM Chapter III. The Formation of Authority-Religion - - 51 Chapter IV. Dissolution of Authority-Religion - - 76 Chapter V. The Changed View of the World and of Life 148 Chapter VI. The Naturalistic and the Religious View of the World 196 PART II. THE FINALITY OF CHRISTIANITY AND THE IDEA OF DEVELOPMENT Chapter VII. The Essence of the Christian Religion : The Problem of Method 279 Chapter VIII. The Essence of the Christian Religion : Sources of the Life of Jesus - - - 325 Chapter IX. The Essence of the Christian Religion : Jesus 395 INTKODUCTORY CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1. The title that would be given to the discussion which herein follows would be different both in different periods of history and in different ecclesiastical and doctrinal move- ments in the present time. An apologist for Catholic orthodoxy would name his work the infallible papacy, or use some equivalent form of words; for Protestant orthodoxy, the infallible Book, Christianity a revealed religion, the deity of Christ, or some kindred terminology ; for Christian rationalism, the divinity of the innate ideas, or eternal truths of reason which are the essence of Christianity, or, in Locke's phrase, the reasonableness of Christianity; for liberal theology of the older type, the perfectibility of re- vealed religion;' of the modern type, the absoluteness of Christianity;^ for those who accept the hypothesis of the universality and endlessness of "becoming" and "develop- ment," the finality of the Christian religion, as above, inas- much as this caption frankly accentuates the issue as it lies in the minds of most thinkers today. 2. Since the subject as worded by Catholic and Protestant orthodoxy assumes the abstract transcendence of God, the dualism between the human and the divine, and, conse- quently, an apocalyptic revelation, it is manifest that the orthodox treatment rests upon speculative presuppositions which are now entirely discredited, and employs a method of argumentation — namely, the passage from the divine to the human, from the perfection of the revelation to the per- 1 E. g., Keug, Briefe iiber die PerfectibiUfat der geoffenbarten Religion, 2£'. g., Troeltsch, Die Absolutheit des Christenthums. 3 4 The Finality of the Cheistian Keligion fection of the religion, from authority to experience — which is not accorded validity in the modern world. This would seem to be a sufficient justification for abandoning orthodox titles for our book. But the titles of rationalism, with its deistic externality, its unverifiable passage from the innate- ness to the divinity of the essential Christian conceptions, and especially its insensibility to the psychological and his- torical origin of all the so-called innate ideas, are quite as little in harmony with our present convictions of immanence and growth. The word "perfectibility" expresses, as some- thing to be established, what the subsequent discussion assumes, that is, the constant modification and development of Christianity. Thus, it is the obverse side^ of our treat- ment and, as such, is correspondingly appropriate as the title of this work. Against the use of the word "absolute" it may be urged that the validity and content of the term are anew under debate. In the old apologetics the word signified "detachedness"' from all conditions of otherwise human process and occurrence. From the point of view then in vogue one could thus consistently speak of "Chris- tianity as the absolute revelation;" for revelation was defined as a kind of unhistorical miraculous supernaturalism, and Christianity was thought of as revelation rather than religion. But according to a later scientific terminology, "absoluteness" came to signify that Christianity, as compared with the relative truths of other religions, is the absolutely perfect form of religion. This signification of the expression has its source in modern evolutionism, especially in Hegel's phi- losophy. But since the expression is retained both by those who accept — e. g., Troeltsch — and those who reject — e. g., Kaftan — these presuppositions, it easily contains something vague and indefinite — as, indeed, is the case with these very 1 "Perfectibility " assumes finality and proves progress ;" finality " assumes progress and proves ultimateness. Introduction thinkers themselves, who use the word with significantly dif- ferent nuances; Kaftan, as a rule, having in mind "revela- tion" when he uses it; Troeltsch, "religion." The fact that Ritschl inveighed against further use at all of the word has had its weight: The absolute ! how queer that sounds ! I still faintly remember that I too busied myself with the word iu the days of my youth when the Hegelian terminology threatened to draw me also into its vortex. That was long ago. In a measure the word has grown strange to me. I found that there was no far-reaching thought in it.' According to this, the word would seem to point to heights that are either too dizzy or too barren for human experience, and on this account the tendency grew up to discard it from the vocabulary of scientific and reflective thought. In view of these general remarks, it may now be said that it is inadmis- sible to use the expression, in connection with our subject, in the old apologetic sense of "unrelatedness," of Losgeldstheit, as the Germans happily say, since in that sense there is no recognition of the historicalness and consequent relativity of Christianity, which is the very conception that gives sting and interest to the problem under consideration; but also that, needless as it would be to choose a title that is repellent to many from the outset, it does not follow that we may not properly interchange the word with "finality," when it is understood beforehand that we use it in the general signifi- cation it has come to have in the current discussion of this subject. Usage has already made the term to include — not forgetting the nuances referred to above — (1) the horizon of universal religious history; (2) the recognition of all non- Christian religions as relative truths; and (3) the appre- ciation of Christianity as that form of religion which rounds out these relative truths to the "absolute." But this third 1 RiTSCHL, Theologie und Melaphysik, 2d ed., p. 18. 6 The Finality of the Christian Religion statement already points to the significance of the title which I have chosen: The Finality of the Christian Religion. The word "finality" is used not so much in the sense of the Latin finis as in that of the Greek reXo?, /. c, final not as last, but as the perfect, the consummate, or, last because perfect. Is Christianity the ultimate religion? The word, unlike "abso- luteness," suggests no thought of the "unrelated," the "un- become;" rather it has no meaning save in relation to the conceptions of development, continuity, history, on account of which our problem in its present form has emerged. It is for this reason that its superior appropriateness to those other titles is evident. 3. Further support of this title will be informally involved in the exposition of the nature of the problem, to which we now pass. The problem is due to the method and results of historical science in the field of religious phenomena, to the recognition of the principles of development, and to the modern evolutionistic metaphysics of the "absolute." The religio- historical method employed by the science of comparative religion puts, a priori, Christianity on a stage with other religions and strips it of its character as unique religion. It investigates, for example, the kinship between any given Christian phenomenon and the parallel phenomenon in other religions, and determines what "moments" Christianity has borrowed from other religions. Formerly, the finality of the Christian religion was based upon its isolatedness and singu- larity. But, from the point of view of comparative religion, the very fact that Christianity is an historical religion involves its relationship and interaction with other religions, as against its supposed isolatedness ; and the fact that it has drawn thoughts and ideas and values from other relierions raises doubt as to its supposed singularity. Will the study* of the various religions yield the scientific conclusion that Introduction Christianity is the absolutely perfect religion, or, perhaps, that up to the present time it is but the relatively highest amonfif the relisfions? Will historical science sustain our traditional assurance that Christianity is not one religion among many, but, as Harnack maintains, the religion, ultimate and incomparable? Again: development, the working hypothesis of the science of religion, is believed to be a valid concept when applied to humanity as a whole. Humanity is forever progressing. In that case, is Jesus final, or may some new Master arise in the evolutionary development of the race who shall supersede Him, as He superseded Moses, for example? If Christian experience is to be referred to the historical personality of Jesus, it would appear that the finality of Christianity is dependent upon the finality of Jesus. But can Christianity be bound to an historical, therefore relative, personality of the distant past, and yet continue to be the ideal religion of our forever- advancing humanity?^ Even granting that the finality of the Christian religion is not indissolubly connected with the finality of its Founder,^ can it be shown — as in that case it. must needs be shown — that the adaptability of the Christian religion, originating as it did in comparatively simple rela- tionships, is equal to the inconceivable complexity of the future of humanity, and that its ideality will remain ascend- ant, no matter what the moral elevation to which the race 1 " Can we say that the influence, the spirit, the principle, whatever we may call it, which was first expressed in the life of Christ, is really universal? Can we say that it has shown itself able to overcome or to assimilate all other influences, and that it is certain to do so still more in the future? .... Has Christianity been only one force among others, struggling with them in such a way that the result is like a mechanical resultant which cannot specially be attributed to either of the conflicting elements'? Or has the action of these upon it always produced a reaction, like the reaction of a living being upon an environment suited to it, so that the new element was taken up into it, and made the means to the development of a higher life?" — E. Caied in New World, Vol. VI (1897), p. 12. 2 There is valid objection to the word " Founder," since sects, not religions, are *' founded." This will be taken up in a much later connection. 8 The Finality of the Christian Keligion may mount? This would be tantamount to showing that the Christian type of religion, and this alone, has inner right in the spiritual development of the race, that this type of religion is an inalienable constituent of human nature, or, in Tertullian's words, meris Jmmana natiiraliter Christiana. But when we pass on to philosophy, we are told that the category of development is applicable not merely to the study of religion, not merely to human history in general, but to Reality as a whole. Our mode-philosophy preaches to us that there is nothing static, nothing fixed, nothing final, but that mutation and process characterize all that is; nay, that it belongs to the very nature of the "absolute" to grow. Can Christianity, then, be final? Thus it has come about that our religion, with a Master and a message which claim to be the same yesterday, today, and forever, is summoned before the judgment seat of a progressive humanity, like all other professed finalities, and that the human heart, with its tumultuous experiences, is querying whether there be, amid the flux, some Eternal Rock whereon it can find strength and stay and rest. From this description of our task, it appears that our discussion belongs under the head of apologetics. It is the business of apologetics, first, to vindicate the religious view of the world and judgment of life against anti-religious con- ceptions; secondly, to support the superior content of the Christian religion to that of the pre-Christian and extra-Chris- tian religions ; thirdly, to adduce the reasons for believing that Christianity is the ultimate religion. System requires that this task should be accomplished in the order here indicated. But I am not now concerned with systematic apologetics, and need therefore devote but incidental treatment to the first and second part of this program, as auxiliary to my main purpose. My purpose is to disengage the third part Introduction 9 from the others and devote to it an orderly, but not an apologetically formal, examination from the point of view of modern culture. Our inquiry is, as was set forth a moment ago, whether we may regard "Christian" as the permanent adjective by which we must define the growing ideal of humanity ; whether, as Goethe puts it in his wonderful tale, the Fisherman's hut can widen into the temple of the Universe. It is manifest that a discussion of this problem involves a close definition of the essential spirit of Christianity. The nature of Christianity has been revealed in two historic forms: religion of authority, and religion of the spirit,' or of freedom, or of personality, or of the moral consciousness of man. Our first duty is to trace the rise, development, and dis- integration of Christianity as authority-religion ; our second is to define Christianity as religion of the spirit, with a view to determining whether the highest spirit of the modern world can and will in the long run call itself Christian. But religion of the spirit is opposed by Naturalism on the one hand, as by authority-religion on the other. The treatment will accordingly fall into two sections: the first destructive, being a criticism of supernaturalism and naturalism; the, second constructive. To be sure, there will also be a pre- liminary chapter upon the history of the treatment of the subject up to the modern standpoint, reserving, however, contemporaneous discussion for fuller examination under our constructive endeavor. 4. Quite as controversial as the main subject itself is the method by which the problem is attacked. Both the religio- historicaP and the dogmatic or normative^ methods have their able representatives. Is the judgment, " Christianity I This was written before Sabatier'a book with this title appeared. See my preface. 2£. g., Troeltsch. 3 E. g., Kaftan. 10 The Finality op the Christian Religion is the final religion," a judgment of existence, or is it a judgment of value ? Must the criterion as to which religion. is the more worthful, which has claim to unique validity, be borrowed from one's own judgment ; that is, from a judgment which has been Christianly formed ? If so, it is not a scientific judgment, but an affair of faith. If the judgment in question be religio-historical — that is, scientific — it may indeed have universal validity, but it is not "absolute;" if it be a value-judgment, it may be absolute for him who enacts it indeed, but cannot on that account claim universal validity. While the position of this work is that both the methods in question are indispensable to the fulfilment of our task — the religio-historical to determine what the reality is in whose finality we are interested, the normative to evaluate that reality— the ultimate decision of the matter is an affair of faith rather than of empirical science, and is therefore the prerogative of the normative method. But it is just on this account that it is necessary to show that a value- judgment may also have universal validity. Inasmuch as this question of method, however, is an integral part of the constructive task, the consideration of the steps by which one may come to approve a certain religion as the best must be postponed rather than treated at length in an introduc- tion. But this brief reference to plan and method may satisfy the preliminary need of the reader. He will perceive that my question is not primarily that of the passing and the permanent in Christianity, but, rather, whether there be any permanent or not. Supposing the difficult task of dis- tinguishing between form and substance, principle and phe- nomena, spirit and manifestation, has been accomplished, there still remains the question as to whether the finality of the essential nature of Christianity can be maintained. 5. Among current problems in theology this is one of the^ Introduction 11 most serious and important. Professor Kaftan says' that Christianity stands or falls with its conviction that it has the perfect knowledge of God, so far as that knowledge is attainable for men who dwell upon the earth. Recently, reviewing Harnack's Das Wesen des Christenthums, he again declares that no one of the great forms of Christianity which have successively arisen in the church has ever been shaken in its conviction of the "absolute" importance and significance of Christianity. "Each one of these forms," he says in so many words, "has built in one way or another on the Deity of Christ .... throug^h Him the Eternal God has become a fact in the history of humanity."^ With this faith Chris- tianity stands or falls, not indeed for the individual, but as concerns its existence and duration in history. And Her- mann agrees with Kaftan's grave judgment. To the very nature of Christianity, he says, belongs the conviction that it contains the real truth for all men ; as Christians we have the conviction that the essence of religion is expressed perfectly in Christianity, and in Christianity alone. "Jesus brought into history an ahsolutum,'''' he declares. Jesus is not simply prophet, for a prophecy can continue without the prophet. But Jesus is redeemer, and redemption cannot exist dis- sociated from the redeemer. Jesus stands not simply upon the summit of humanity, but over against humanity; and, consequently, Christianity is not the climax of religious development, but stands over against religion, as a redeemer over against the redeemed. So, in substance, Hermann. And when Troeltsch, dominated in his theological thinking by the ideas of evolution and of historical relativity, doubts all this, Hermann, like Kaftan, replies that it is a question of the life and death of Christianity, and that if the con- sistent thinker (they do not think that Troeltsch is consistent) ^Dogmatik, p. 24. 2 ChristUche Welt, 1902, No. 14. 12 The Finality of the Chkistian Religion comes to occupy the position of Troeltsch, lie will not stop there, but go on to the naturalistic monism of Haeckel. These, not to mention Fairbairn' and others, are great and represen- tative theologians, and their words may reinforce our sense of the seriousness of the situation. At all events, significance must be attached to the unanimity with which apologists assert that Christianity as a fellowship of believing Chris- tians stands and falls with the confession of the revelation of the living God through Jesus Christ, and thus with the certainty of its own absoluteness and supernaturalness, much as we may hesitate with regard to the demonstrative value of the assertion. 6. The justification for our undertaking this debate is a consideration to which attention must be given at some length in these introductory remarks, inasmuch as objections will doubtless be urged against both the substance and the stand- point of the discussion. a) In our time of interrogation of every belief which solicits our adhesion, of the shaking of everything that can be shaken in order that those things which cannot be shaken may be seen to abide, the looming up of our question was only a question of time. The scientific impulse has awakened among us, as it has among every healthy and intellectual people; and those who are called to realize this impulse feel themselves under the conscientious obligation, on behalf of truth and without regard to con- ventions, fears, or prejudices, to make everything an object of investigation which can be an object of human knowl- edge. After its long examination of nature, science is now ordering all history before its judgment seat. As science requires the whole region of nature, even that concerning which the Sacred Scriptures have expressed opinion, so does 1 Philosophy of the Christian Religion (last part). Inteoduction 13 it enter the whole region of history, even that in which the Christian revelation has been unfolded. Science also judges every form of cognition and thought; even that which was valid at the time of the bearers of the revelation, and which determined their own thought and discourse. And science knows no other law than its own and no other authority than truth. Thus it was inevitable that our question should arise, after the whole region which we call Christianity was inundated. The waters of criticism show no consideration for values, but follow, like inundations, their own laws. This inevitability of the onward march of science is itself a vindication of the right to raise our question. h) But it is expected as well that the discussion shall be of real service to the modern religious interest. For one thing, it should contribute toward the formation of a theological conscience which will insist upon scientific honesty and consistency in dealing anew with the most difficult and " dangerous" questions. Alms from other sciences is no honor to theology and is no need of religion. The true theologian will not extend pity toward Christianity with its claim to absoluteness or finality, as one sometimes does to an old man in his dotage. Instead of holding Christianity to be a senile affair, dependent upon forbearance, the theologian must approach his religion with the most scientific exaction in virtue of his own strong confidence in its living power. If the result of his scientific reflection should be the conviction that no theory can retire the abstract possibility that Chris- tianity may be surpassed somewhere, sometime, through a still profounder disclosure of the supreme Keality, it would but strengthen all of us in the invaluable work of rendering to science the things that are science's and to God the things that are God's. It would then appear as never before that the Christianity with which science With its genetic method 14 The Finality of the Christian Keligion has to do is not the whole of Christianity, any more than the light with which optics has to do is the whole of light. And the confession of the theologian that he is not com- petent with the instruments at his disposal to adduce scien- tific proof of the finality of the Christian religion in obedi- ence to the demands of the church, only disappoints and even irritates the "intellectualists" indeed, yet may very well turn out to the furtherance of the gospel. Theological science now recognizes the limits of its capacity, as does every other science. We no longer believe that science, even though it be theological, is in a position to solve the supreme questions and riddles of human life. Into the mystery of religion and of Christianity it is not able to penetrate. But, for another thing, a critical examination of our problems may fairly be expected to render, in one particular, a much-needed service to the ministry. After generous allowance has been made for exceptions — and this should, indeed, be generous — the ministry, in matters where science has the right to adjudicate, is too sure where science doubts. Veraciousness of character, the sense for truth, verity and purity of personal conviction,' courage and power of dispo- sition— these are the great desiderata of the ministry in modern culture, and these qualities can be developed and matured, in the case of many, by encouraging them to face, 1 Of the situation in England, J. Allanson Picton writes as follows: " The real reason for moral failures in education is that we have ceased to believe in the old creeds, and have not the moral courage to acknowledge it to ourselves. Or, if we acknowledge it to ourselves, our case is still worse, for we maintain a lying pretense before others. Teachers are compelled to recite formally, as though they believed them, Bible stories and professions of faith which both intellect and conscience reject Preachers delude themselves and their hearers with ingenious sophistries such as in the market would incur a charge of obtaining money under false pretenses. And yet, amid this mephitic atmosphere of falsehood, we expect that loyalty of soul, and truth in the inward parts, and simplicity of character shall flourish. Surely the time has come when lies and hypocrisy should be swept out from the Temple of the Lord. For these choke prayer and make worship almost a blasphemy." Introduction 15 at the cost of honest pain, the scientific doubt as to the finality and indispensableness of our Christian faith.' It is in this connection that I may anticipate the opposition to the following critical dissolution of Christianity as an author- ity-religion. First, in Harald Hoffding's somewhat keen remark : To make religion a problem may be offensive to many. But thought, where it is once awakened, must have the right to investi- gate everything, and only thought itself can draw the bounds to thought. Who else should do this? He who has espied no problem has naturally no reason to think; but such a one has no reason to keep others from thinking. Whoever fears the loss of his spiritual house of refuge, let him keep away. No one wishes to rob a poor man of his only lamb — then the poor man may not need- lessly drive it along the crowded thoroughfare, and demand that traffic shall stop on his account. Moreover, experience shows that it is the rams rather than the lambs which loudly proclaim, in season and especially out of season, that they are offended and scandalized. It is not so much the really spiritually poor as it is the obstinate and blustering ecclesiasts who raise such a clamor when free inquiry enters upon its rights to bestir itself in the religious, as in every other region.'- Secondly, it must be borne in mind that the retirement in principle of Christianity as authority -religion has been brought about by no single individual. Partly, the soil and climate to which this type of our religion was indigenous have changed, and it is on this account that it is ceasing to survive there, and not because it has been logically refuted ; just as Apollo and Minerva have perished, not through logical refu- tation, but through the modification of the human conscious- ness out of which these ideas sprang. Partly, again, the i"Itis absolutely necessary that the future preacher live through in his own experience the whole critical inquiry, historical and dogmatic, that he epitomize in himself the crisis of the times, in order that he may mature that personal convic- tion which will enable him to say: 'This is mine, this have I conquered for my- self.' Thus study has a profound ethico- religious significance." — A. Schweitzer. 2 Beligionsjihilosophit', pp. 2 f. 16 The Finality of the Chkistian Religion retirement of authority- religion has been brought about by a process of immanent criticism carried on by our religion itself in the course of its history. Alien criticism on the part of any single individual could be estopped; but the religion's own self-criticism is structural, and therefore irresistible. With the addition of but little of my own, I follow docilely along the track of this criticism as it has been objectively consummated in the course of the centuries, and attempt simply to harvest the results. Thirdly, the retirement of Christianity as author- ity-religion is the negative side of the work of a return to the religion of Jesus, which was the religion of freedom, of the spirit. The ultimate test of truth with him was neither authority nor speculation, but experience. For him life was the criterion of life. Nothing is farther from the truth than to say that he grounded his glad message of the kingdom of God on external authority. Nothing so little corresponds to his procedure as a compulsory dogma. Jesus' grounds of faith are all without exception of a moral kind. He even said that a moral word from Moses was worth more as evidential value in his gospel than if one should rise from the dead. His reasons are not hostile to Reason, but to the dormant will, to the antagonisms of the flesh. With the freedom of a prophet, and not with the servility of a Pharisee, his whole attitude to authority lends the most reassuring support to the modern struggle for the autonomy of the human spirit as against its heteronomy, whether the principle of that heteronomy be declared to be the Church or the Book. Fourthly, it is because we have been leaning more upon the historical guarantees of faith which authority proffers, than upon the ever-living God, that every critical question begets disquie- tude and rancor in the clergy ; for it is precisely such guarantees upon which the corrosive work of criticism is felt. Moreover, until we relinquish our authority-religion in actual practice Introduction 17 there will be a contirmance of this religious alarm, which is always a characteristic mark of an age which has become partly sensitive, partly fatigued and faith-weak. Fifthly, it may be indicated, finally — what will be apparent later — that Christianity as an authority-religion is based upon the old static view of reality, a Wcltanschauimg which is now an overcome standpoint; and that Christianity as primarily a religion of freedom, of the will, of the moral consciousness, belongs to the new view of reality as process, becoming, development. These considerations are enumerated to justify to the ministry the first negative section of this book, even though it involves a retirement of clericalism — a retirement in which ministers themselves should rejoice. One thing in particular should be borne in mind. The section devoted to authority-religion is rather the history of the logical than of the historical criticism of the subject. It is this circumstance which must explain the absence of any setting forth of the relative justification of the authoritative tradition and institution of the past when viewed against the background of the history which produced them and which they in turn served. Historical criticism would be thus appreciative. But logical criticism is concerned, not with the historical value of the system of authority, but with its inner consistency and with its truth from the standpoint of the modern view of the world and judgment of life. Thus the fulfilment of my task precludes an expression of the veneration and valuation which I accord to the system of religious control, with its pedagogic urgency upon historic life. Due attention to this limitation of method in compassing my end will save from misunderstanding and hostility. To be sure, in all these remarks I have not pushed the liberty to criticise authority-religion to its full extreme. 18 The Finality of the Christian Religion Were I to do so, I should have to point out that the task of science is neither to quiet nor to disquiet ; nor is it its task to serve ecclesiastical preference or complacency — the time has gone by when science was constituted a handmaid of the church — but to give honor to the truth. There is a courage of truth which deserves recognition because it is the fulfilment of a duty. Of all things, religion is not served by unveraciousness, to which, moreover, the diplomatic veiling of the truth belongs. From intelligent laymen I anticipate less trouble. But of three things they, too, should be assured. First, "I have never desired, nor do I now desire, to disturb the contentment or the faith of anyone. But where these are already shaken, I desire to point out the direction in which I believe a firmer soil is to be found."* Secondly, there are historical situa- tions, and the present is one of them, when an unsettled faith is not an unmitigated evil. It belongs to that experience in which one makes the transition from tutelage to one's major- ity, from passive dependence upon tradition, in which one simply has faith in another's faith, to the active organization of convictions of one's own. Faith is not simply a gift, it is also a task. Thus, it is not simply the amount that one be- lieves, but it is how one comes hy his belief, and what one does with it, that is decisive of character, even as to have eked the merest livelihood out of inhospitable Scotch hills may be both cause and effect of more human virility than to have laid up much goods for many years from more produc- tive climes. Our age is not one in which faith can bulk large. But, as it is not the amount that one gives that makes one a true giver, so it is not the quantity that one believes that makes one a true believer. The main thins is one's interior attitude to the world and to life, and not the 1 With Strauss, The Old Faith and the New, pp. 9f. Introduction 19 quantum of the credal output. Thirdly, much spiritual distress will be averted if one will but learn to distinguish between what is cause and what is effect in religion. Psy- chologically considered, we have a series of subjective psy- chic states which we call religion: feeling and need, fear and hope, enthusiasm and resignation, joy and sorrow. There is also a series of objective doctrinal traditions and religious institutions which are likewise called religion, authority- religion. Now, in which is the essence of religion — in the subjective religiosity, or in the historical objective elements ? Psychological and historical investigation yields the conclu- sion that it is in the former. Religion in the peculiar sense of the word is a state of the human subject. The objective historical doctrinal traditions and institutions are not pri- marily cause, but effect; are never end in themselves, but only means to the end of expressing and arousing subjec- tive religious life in the soul. An objective historical re- ligion lives only so long as it finds confessors. The service to the reader of the subsequent criticism of the stability of authority-religion will depend largely upon the attention which he bestows upon these introductory observations.^ 7. If the subsequent discussion in its negation of authority- religion may fail, because of its destructive mission, to win the sympathy of clericalism at the one extreme, the method and conclusion of its construction in the section devoted to 1 "We live in a time of transition. There is a lack of harmony between our faith and our knowledge and life. To bring free knowledge and the free unfolding of life into harmony with that which is of most worth, is an inescapable task. This task may not be accomplished in the way of speculation and of construction. A new type of life must be formed which does not fear criticism, nor express its freedom by mocking its fetters, but, with glad confidence, expresses its deepest experiences in a 'Psalm of Life.' So long as such a type of life is not reached, many men will suffer injury in their souls — now cleaving with diseased overtension to something which does not harmonize with their personal life or with the requirements of intellectual honesty; now allowing their secret anxiety to drive them to fanatical hatred toward those who do not believe as they do; now becoming hyper-critical and blas6; and now consumed in restless reflection. It is not said that those who receive greatest injury also suffer greatest pain." — Hoffding, op. ctt., pp. 340, 341. 20 The Finality of the Christian Religion the religion of personality may very well count upon opposi- tion from the side of naturalism at the other extreme. Nat- uralism allows room only for demonstrable knowledge, not for personal conviction; for existential judgments, not for judgments of worth. To be sure, the witness of history would probably support the opinion that in scientific candor and thoroughness naturalism is superior to clericalism. And, indeed, it has its elements of truth to which it owes its spread and popularity. Briefly said, they lie in the energetic effort to protect the right of the objective world against our petty human overstrained subjectivity. Its recognition of the great orders pervading the whole cosmos as well as human existence, and its emphasis of inexorable objective fact over against subjective desires, form the inalienable kernel of truth of this view of the world, which must be honored, moreover, from the Christian side also. One can even say that its manifest endeavor after the unvarnished truth is a genuinely Christian feature, and, as the development of natural science proves, has flowered out directly on the soil of Christian civilization. The error of naturalism, like that of materialism, consists in its approach to the denial of spirit — in the degree in which it ignores the importance which the thinking subject with its activities necessarily has for the apprehension of the single object as well as for the construc- tion of the whole view of the world. And it is but of a piece with this when naturalism denies the naturalistic underiva- bility of personality. A consideration of this point, which would lead us too far afield for an introduction, is a prime matter for discussion in a later connection. So far as our subject is concerned, naturalism is in the right in holding that Christianity as an historical reality is, like every other religion, an object of religio-historical in- quiry. And it is right also in maintaining that there is no Introduction 21 other method for the investigation of Christianity than the general historico-critical method, and that no other qualities are necessary in the investigator than those required by religio-historical investigation in general. But naturalism errs in refusing to recognize that the historical investigation of Christianity, like every historical science, has its limits precisely at the points where the divinatory creative word or the value-judgment of the investigator becomes necessary in order to the vivification of the material which has been aggre- gated in an objectively critical way ; and that this is especially true of the investigation of the history of Jesus and of the apostolic or prophetic Christians of all times. In a word, naturalism, clinging too closely to natural science and mathe- matics in its study of the human, fails to do justice to the whole of the human, and hence to the Christianly human. Thus if clericalism be false by excess, naturalism is false by defect; and after we have gone the full length with natural- ism, the question must still be raised whether the last word concerning single personalities, as concerning historic Chris- tianity as a whole, must not be metahistorical — a word, there- fore, which the scientific method is not competent to utter. Furthermore, while its criticism of an external revelation as defined by clericalism is doubtless well taken, naturalism fails to recognize at anything like its true worth the idea of an inner, ethico-religious revelation. But perhaps the limits of naturalism may be best indi- cated by taking a special case. I refer to the old question of the sinlessness of Jesus, or, positively expressed, the religio-ethical perfection of Jesus. The religious need is thought to require its affirmation, since it is believed thai he could not have been mediator between God and man, had he lacked this perfection. This leads to the familiar con- struction that Jesus is the embodiment of the ideal of 22 The Finality of the Christian Keligion humanity. Now, naturalism rightly points out that the total data of the inner and outer life of Jesus are not in our possession, and that therefore our judgment in reference to the matter is founded on a basis inadequate to satisfy the demands of the scientific conscience. But it overlooks the main point, namely, that the criterion of what is sinful and what is sinless does not have its origin in science as con- strued by naturalism, and cannot be employed by naturalism without admitting a world of values of which by hypothesis it knows nothing. Naturalism thus can neither affirm nor deny sinlessness. But on that account it cannot consist- ently oppose another judgment on the data which springs from other sides of the human spirit than the merely theo- retical. But enough has been said to indicate our purpose to decline to accept uncritically the naturalistic conception of development and immanence, as also its contention that natural science is the whole of science, and that the natural- science method can disclose the whole of reality. To recapitulate: After a chapter containing the history of thought on the subject, the discussion is divided into two parts: "Authority-Religion (= Supernaturalism) and Naturalism," and "The Finality of Christianity and the Idea of Development." In the first part the rise, develop- ment, and disintegration of Christianity as authority-religion are traced; also, the history and critique of naturalism are summarized. In the second part the constructive task is attacked. To this end the respective merits of the dogmatic and the religio-historical methods are examined. Finally, in the light of the mystery and underivability of personality, on the one hand, and of evolution, on the other, the problem of the book is discussed. CHAPTEE II HISTORICAL SURVEY The old form of the new controversy was called, by a title more appropriate than any other, the perfectibility of revealed religion. And it seems advisable to introduce the discussion of the new controversy by an outline history of the old. Is revelation progressive? From the point of view of antecedent probability opinion has divided. Since revelation had its origin in the Most Perfect of all beings, the position that it was perfectible was in contradiction with the concept of revelation and amounted to a defamation of its origin. So one party said. But since revelation was divine instruc- tion of an imperfect, developing human being, the idea of the perfectibility of revelation seems to be the truer one. So the other party said. And this party could urge, as a presumption in support of its contention, the perfectibility of an earlier revelation by a later in the relation of the New Testament to the Old. If the Old Testament required to be completed by the New, is there any antecedent improba- bility that the New Testament itself needed to be supple- mented by new revelations still? Is the New Testament revelation capable of still further perfecting? That was the old problem. In favor of the finality of the revelation, it was urged that it was such to the Christian consciousness; to the latter, it was the last, highest, definitive. The thesis was also supported by an appeal to the New Testament itself. It taught that the advent of Christ was practically the end of the world — an end post- poned for a little, that all peoples might know of his arrival, 23 24 The Finality of the Christian Religion and be invited to faith. Before Christ all was preparatory ; he is fulfilment. Beyond what was given to humanity in his person and doctrine, since the fulness of the Godhead dwelt bodily in him/ nothing objectively higher could be given — no further objective progress in revelation was pos- sible. In all the future there can be only subjective progress in the appropriation of what was proffered in Christ. Those who thus defended the finality of revelation quoted the great words of Ephesians: "Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the ful- ness of Christ."'" But the party of the perfectibility of the Christian religion could quote Scripture also. It was thought that the author of the fourth gospel somewhat transformed and added to what was delivered by Jesus; that he drew upon the Alexandrian philosophy for this purpose ; and that he sought to protect these additions from the reproach of falsification by saying that Christ himself pointed to a subsequent ob- jective development^ of his teachings — not denying that Christ would still be the principle of this development. Jesus had been far from able to communicate all truth to his disciples, on account of their slow power of comprehen- sion.* When he tried to tell them of deeper things, they did not catch his meaning. He had to leave such matters to the Paraklete,^ who should be sent on his own departure, and who would make clear to the disciples the things that Jesus had said and they had not grasped. The Paraklete would also set forth new truth.* Now, it was to these Johannean passages concerning the Paraklete that appeal was made by those who maintained 1 Col. 2:9. 2Eph. 4:13. 3 John 16: 14. * John 16:12. 5 John 14 : 20. « John IG : 13; cf. note 3. Historical Survey 25 the legitimacy and necessity of an objective perfectibility of the religion founded by Jesus. One first of all thinks of the Montanists in this con- nection. They distinguished four ages of the church: the period of natural religion or the innate idea of God ; the period of the law and the prophets, or the Childhood of the Church; the period of the gospel, or the Youth of the Church; and, lastly, that of Montanus, or the period of the Paraklete, that is, the ripe Manhood of the Church. The rule of Faith, indeed, remained unchanged and incapable of improvement. Further developments would be mainly dis- ciplinary, though theoretical disclosures were not excluded. It is from Tertullian,' "On the Veiling of Virgins," that we gain most information on this point: The rule of faith, indeed, is altogether one, alone immovable and irreformable; the rule, to wit, of believing in one only God omnipotent, the Creator of the Universe, and his Son Jesus Christ This law of faith being constant, the other succeed- ing points of discipline and conversation admit the novelty of cor- rection; the grace of God, to wit, operating and advancing even to the end. For what kind of (supposition) is it, that, while the devil is always operating and adding daily to the ingenuities of iniquity, the work of God should either have ceased, or else have desisted from advancing? whereas the reason why the Lord sent the Para- klete was, that, since mediocrity was unable to take in all things at once, discipline should, little by little, be directed and ordained, and carried on to perfection by that Vicar of the Lord, the Holy Spirit What then is the Paraklete's administrative office but this .... the advancement toward " the better things " (Eccles. 3:1)? Nothing is without stages of growth. Look how creation advances little by little to fructification So, too, righteousness — for the God of Righteousness and of creation is the same — was first in a rudimentary state, having a natural fear of God : from that stage it advanced, through the law and the 1 The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. IV, pp. 27 f . Tertullian, eccentric and rigoristic. identified himself with Montanism about 201 or 202 A. D., and became one of its most energetic and influential advocates. 26 The Finality of the Christian Religion prophets, to infancy; from that stage it passed, through the gospel, to the fervour of Youth; now, through the Paraklete, it is setthng into maturity. Again, in his "On the Resurrection of the Flesh,"' Ter- tullian writes: Almighty God, by pouring out his spirit in these last days {i. e., in Montanism) hath reanimated men's faltering faith; and cleared from all obscurity and equivocation the ancient scriptures of both God's testaments by the clear logic of their (sacred) words and meanings. He goes on to say that God has now dispersed all the per- plexities of the past through "the new prophecy, which de- scended in copious streams from the Paraklete." This is the first instance of a theory of development which assumes an advance beyond the New Testament and the Christianity of the apostles. No criticism is offered here, but the reader is reminded that the theory jeopardizes the "sufficiency of Scripture," a consideration of which Tertul- lian does not seem to have been aware. The Catholic church rejected this attempt at a further development of Christian revelation; but not the general theory, as her prin- ciple of tradition, for example, shows. On the contrary, she applied it.^ Moreover, according to Catholic doctrine, the 1 The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. Ill, p. 594, 2 Vincent of L6rium in his "A Commonitory," chap, zxiii, says : " But some one will say perhaps, Shall there, then, be no progress in Christ's church ? Certainly, all possible progress. For what being is there, so envious of men, so full of hatred to God, who would seek to forbid it ? Yet on condition that it be real progress, not alteration of the faith. For progress requires that the subject be enlarged in itself, alteration that it be transformed into something else. The intelligence, then, the knowledge, the wisdom, as well of individuals as of all, as well of one man as of the whole church, ought, in the course of ages and centuries, to increase and make much and vigorous progress ; but yet only in its own kind ; that is to say, in the same doc- trine, in the same sense, and in the same meaning." In an apt and beautiful figure Vincent proceeds to compare the growth of religion in the soul to the growth of the body, which, though in process of years it is developed and attains its full size, yet remains still the same. ( The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series. Vol. XI, pp. 147 f.) Historical Survey 27 Holy Spirit continues to work in the church, and to develop doctrine and institution. But in the later Middle Ages this Catholic development of Christianity came more and more to be recognized as dis- figuration; hence in a part of the Franciscan order there grew up an Enthusiasm similar to the old Montanism. As compared with the profligacy and pride of the clergy, the poverty of the mendicant orders seemed alone to be the per- fect life. Thus once again three ages of the church were dis- tinguished: the carnal life till Christ; the half -carnal, half- spiritual, till the time of the mendicant orders; finally, the purely spiritual age founded by St. Benedict and brought to full development by Franciscans, especially Joachim. With the full dawn of the age of the Spirit, which Joachim expected in the year 1260, the institutions of the second period — church, papacy, Monasticism, humanity of Christ, sacraments — would vanish as to form and abide only as to their innermost content. The Spirit of itself alone will work immediately and inwardly. Instead of the outer his- torical gospel, there will be the eternal gospel, whose essence is precisely immediacy, freedom from all letter.* In his eloquent way, Joachim declared that, as the splendor of the sun is to that of the stars and the moon, as the most holy place is to the forecourt and sanctuary, as spirit to letter, as law in the heart to that on tables of stone, so was the new eternal gospel to that of the Old and New Testa- ments. The latter, therefore, is annulled by the former — the three ages are those of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In the last age all figurative knowledge ceases, and the truth of the two Testaments appears unveiled," 1 Kael MOller, Kirchengeschichte, Vol. I, p. 579. 2 In this connection appeal was made to 1 Cor, 13:9 f. 28 The Finality of the Christian Religion While it cannot be denied that both the Montanistic and the Franciscan theory of development were a protest against a false externality and static finality of religion, and an attempt toward a return to a true internality, yet the form of this supposed new revelation was fantastic, and the content was of an enthusiastic, ascetic character. Moreover, what was mainly an objectionable content was brought to light by this supposed continuation of the Holy Spirit in ecclesias- tical regimes, namely, illumination, independent of and transcending the written Word of God. According to Luther, it was this that the two extremes, orthodox Catholi- cism and enthusiasm, had in common,^ The Reformers were of the opinion that nothing was to be gained by further new revelation. They believed that any further development of Christianity could consist only in a return to its original pure form in biblical Christianity — a return which, accord- ing to extremists, amounted to a duplicated and copied apos- tolic church. Thus the fountain of divine revelation which flowed steadily on in the Catholic church had been drained from the Protestant point of view, and its living water was stand- ing in the vessel of Sacred Scripture. Later the dogma of inspiration was elaborated in minute detail; the Bible eo ipso was divinely revealed; the primitive form of the manifesta- tion of the Christian life and doctrine was normative for all subsequent time; modern Christians, as compared with first Christians, were assigned second rank ; and to live a Chris- tian life was to imitate Christ much as the real copied the world of ideas in primitive Platonism. Let the new age and the new man be a duplicate of primitive Christianity — and so ecclesiastical Protestantism petrified, judaized, external- ^Art. Smalcald., VIII, 4: "Quid quod etiam Papatus simpliciter est merus onthusiasmus, quo Papa gloritur, omnia jura esse in scrinio sui pectoris, et quidquid ipse in ecclesia sua sentit et jubet, id spiritum et justum esse, etiamsi supra et contra scripturum et vocale aliquid statuat et praecipiat." Historical Survey 29 izedj Thus in the seventeenth century ecclesiastical Protes- tantism vied with Roman Catholicism in identifying a definite historical form of the manifestation of Christianity with its abiding essence.^ This identification of the two, of Christianity's spiritual essence with a given historical mani- festation, is none the less a perversion of the proper relation between the two, because it was partly due to opposition to a one-sided independentism which tended to dissolve the con- nection between the essential and the historical. But it was by this one-sided independentism that further development was effected. On account of the stationariness referred to above, demand at length arose — nor could it fail to arise — to uncover (using again the former figure) another living fountain, which should be all the more free and copi- ous, albeit it was not quite pure Christianity that flowed from it. This new fountain, in opposition to orthodoxy, was the human spirit's own self-reflection, self-exploration. In many ways the stage of knowledge at which the biblical writers lived was transcended. First, in secular matters, in astronomical and geographical knowledge, and the like. But, secondly — so it was set forth by Baumgarten, Semler, and others, in Germany, and by early deists in England — the religious views and teachings of biblical authors depend in a measure upon the character of their secular knowledge. 1 Instead of Protestantism freely developing' by means of the friction of its various confessions, on the one hand, and its conflict with Socinianism and Armin- ianism — i. e., initial rationalism — on the other hand, it narrowed itself all the more into a rigid finality, and became a spiritless, formal thing, an obstinate, controver- sial theology which failed only in speculative ability and ecclesiastical solidity of perfect similarity to mediaeval scholasticism. Toward the end of the seventeenth century Pietism (Spener) was an effort to rejuvenate religion petrified in the strait-jacket of orthodoxy. But, founded on feeling for the most part, without solid scientific basis, dominated by scrupulosity aii 1 illiberality in the practical life, Pietism was not qualified to consummate the reformation. It was not until the second half of the eighteenth century that a new period of development was ushered in by tha reawakened philological and historico-critical investigation — the imnulse t) which originated not frmi within, but from without the church, from new muvoiuuiits ui luo human spirit and new historical situations. 30 The Finality of the Christian Religion Therefore, if the latter required and was capable of rectifi- cation and perfectibility, it could not be otherwise with the former. In order for God to have given to the authors of the Old and New Testaments perfect religious concepts, he would have had to transform their other ideas, the rest of their knowledge, and thereby he would have contravened the law of his operations, discernible everywhere, namely, the law of successivity. These reflections were put forth by Semler, who, consequently, found in biblical revelation only the beginning of the true knowledge of God, capable of progressive perfectibility, i. e., development. Lessing, in his Er^ziehung des Menschengeschlechts,^ revived the Montanistic comparison of the various periods of revelation with the various stages of human life:^ the Old Testament period to Childhood, the New to Youth, the age of reason to Manhood. He defended the Old Testament against deistic attacks on the ground that its employment of rewards and punishments was characterized by the pedagogic wisdom with which a parent deals with a child. But he also held that the Old Testament was an elementary book beyond which the race had passed. According to Lessing, the New Testament was only a better book of the same kind, teaching the doctrine of immortality and future retribution, for exam- 1 " Education of the Human Race." 2 It is remarkable that in Lessing's day the theologian Teller independently returned to the same old mode of treating the subject ; for, according to Teller, Christianity has passed through several stages : a first and necessary child-age of unconditioned faith; a second age of rational Christianity, for which the apostles afford the starting-point, which, however, afterward stopped half-way and misled many to unbelief; from these two, by means of progressive illumination — for man can never bo too much enlightened — the third stag© of full knowledge and saving virtue was developed, a standpoint of manliness and majority which yet acknowl- edges the merits of the two antecedent epochs. Teller was not a deist, for he did not seek to pass back from the historical and positive to the natural, and did not seek, in that which precedes, historical revelation and development, but he permitted revelation to emerge through the historical process itself — and the above three stages of revelation are the form which his idea of the perfectibility of Christianity assumes. I may add that Teller's attention to the general subject is attributed by him to the scattered thoughts relating to the subject in Semler's writings. Historical Survey 31 pie, on which the Old Testament was silent, though the latter revealed the unity of God. But as the Old Testament had been outgrown, so also would the New Testament be — - not merely formally, by the transformation of revealed propo- sitions into truths of reason, but also materially, by the dis- covery of nobler incentives to virtue than the future rewards offered in the New Testament. In connection with this latter he found in the mediaeval idea of an eternal gospel more than mere enthusiasm [Schwdrmerei). It will come, it will surely come, the time of consummation, when man, his understanding more and more convinced of an ever better future, will yet not have to borrow from that future the motive to conduct; when he will do the good because it is the good, not because arbitrary rewards are promised which shall rivet and strengthen his inconstant gaze — the inner reward is better. It will surely come, the time of the new, eternal gospel, which was promised us in the elemen- tary books of the New Covenant. Perhaps certain enthusiasts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had received a ray of this new, eternal gospel, and erred only in announcing its dawn so near. Perhaps their threefold age of the world was not such an empty vagary, when they taught that the New Covenant must become as antiquated as the Old had become.^ The German Krug^ also wrote letters on the perfectibility of the Christian religion. The Christian religion as con- tained in the New Testament documents one cannot honor absolutely, he contended, as the ne plus ultixi of religious and moral knowledge, without doing violence thereby to reason and even to Scripture itself; but one must accord to this religion necessity and capacity for further development. 1 Die Erziehung des 2Ienschengeschlechts, sees. 85-88. See Lessing's Werke, Vol. XII, pp. 368 ff. 2 Brief e iiber die Perfectibilitdt der geoffenbarten Religion, pp. 10-83. See also Flatt, Ideea einer Perfectibilitdt der gOttlichen Offenbarung, and Tieftrunk. Die Religion der MUndigen. 32 The Finality of the Christian Religion And this not merely in the sense that the New Testament is to be more perfectly appropriated subjectively, both theoreti- cally and practically, by the individual Christian and by Christianity in its entirety, but also in the sense that the sum of religious and moral knowledge laid down in the New Tes- tament can and must be rectified objectively by means of further human reflection. According to Krug, there are both historical and philosophical reasons for this: philosophical, because an absolutely perfect revelation is not possible, and, if possible, would not be useful. Even Deity can communi- cate no absolutely perfect knowledge to man, because it must else transform a finite spirit into an infinite, or vio- lently hinder it from using communicated knowledge anew in order to the attainment of higher insight. Therefore, the concept of the absolute perfectibility of revealed religion contains a contradiction in itself ; a knowledge communicated at a given point of time cannot be absolutely perfect. More- over, that the communication of an unimprovable revelation, its possibility assumed, would yet not conform to the end of all religion, particularly the Christian, is easily shown. If instruction is to bring true help, it must be given according to the capacity of the scholar; consequently, it must pro- gress step by step with the scholar, as his capacities and knowledge gradually develop. Had Jesus really intended to establish a perfect and inviolable religious norm for all time — and here the philosophical reasons pass over into the historical — he would have had to set forth his teachings differently from what he did; not merely popularly and occasionally as he did, but also, at least to his most trusted disciples, as a definite and unified doctrinal formula. Add to this — -so Krug continues — -that the apostles increased in knowledge after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and that the Scriptures require criticism, and you have pure proof Historical Survey 33 that Jesus did not intend to set up a final, unchangeable religious theory — could not and would not. He was appointed by God to give the human spirit only the first impulse, as it were, to start it in further investigation con- cerning religious and moral objects. It is at this point that the German Ammon' took up the line of development. Ammon conceived this perfectibility of Christianity more definitely as the development of Chris- tianity into world-religion. He deals with the transforma- tions which it had to experience in its transition from exclusively Jewish soil to pagan, in its contact with Greek philosophy and German racial character, and the like. He urges that Christianity, even in its Protestant form, is by no means the same as the primitive Christianity of Christ. In all these changes he found progress to greater freedom, and he defined the task of the times in reference to Christianity to be the exalting of the ideal in Christianity more and more above the real and empirical, which hitherto had been made the main thing. Not the religion, but its doctrinal character, was changed thereby.^ With Schleiermacher reflection returns from the finality of the religion to the perfection of its Founder, as set forth in his discussion of the Person of Christ — the only dogma, in fact, which Schleiermacher's Gkmhenslehre (dogmatics) contains. Aside from this dogma, there may be, indeed, valuable philosophy in his doctrine of God and of the world, and inestimable critical contribution in his dissolution of ecclesiastical doctrinal formulations; but the really positive side of his work consists in what he elaborates concerninsr the Person of Christ. It would not be too much to say, indeed, that Schleiermacher's Christology is the last attempt, '^ Die Forthildung des Christenthums zur Weltreligion, Vol. II, Part 2, pp. 221 ff. Ammon was a critical Kantian. ^Ibid. See also preface to Vol. I, pp. viii f. 34 The Finality of the Christian Religion worthy of note, to make the ecclesiastical Christ acceptable to the spirit of the modern world. And though at this point our historical survey threatens to encroach upon the subse- quent main body of our work, a jDrief reproduction of Schleiermacher's thought must here be given. Sec. 91 of his Olaubenslehre, being translated, is as follows : We have communion with God only iu such a living communion with the Redeemer as that wherein his free activity displays his absolutely sinless perfection and blessedness And sec. 93: Since the self -activity of the new collective life' is originally in the Redeemer and issues from him alone, he as historical individual must be at the same time archetypal, i. e., the archetypal must be completely historical in him, and every historical moment^ of the same must contain the archetypal. As previously indicated, the writings hitherto under review gave free expressions concerning the perfectibility of revealed religion. But what precisely was to be understood as included under perfectibility was left in obscurity. It seemed to be the New Testament revelation in general. But, as said already, we have now come to a time when thought began to be directed to the consciousness of Christ. Is Christ's consciousness that beyond which it is impossible to pass ? It is in the discussion of this question that the powerful influence of Schleiermacher came to be felt. He urged the Urhildlichkeit, consequently the Uniibertreff- barkeit,^ of Christ. But Schleiermacher limited this Urbild- lichkeit to the religious region, to the God-consciousness of 1/. e., the Christian community. 20f course, Schleiermacher uses "moment" here in its philosophical significa- tion. Perhaps I should add that the " archetypicalness " ( Urhildlichkeit) of Christ in Schleiermacher's system takes the place of "deity" of Christ in orthodoxy, and of For6iid, " type," " model," "example," in rationalism. 3 " Unsurpassableness." Historical Survey 35 Christ, in order to head off the assumption that by means of the Urbildlichkeit attributed to him he must have excelled in all the knowledge and capability which have been other- wise developed in human society. This position leaves room for the rectification of (if need be), and the advancement upon, Christ's views concerning nature and history, and also for progress in the adaptability of means in order to the actualization of his sentiments in the world. Schleiermacher further held — agreeing at this point with Hegel — that in matters religious the popular form of Christ's teachings and life can and should be surpassed. But this is only to tran- scend the temporal manifestation, not the essence, of his religion. Those temporal, and therefore limited, forms were not competent to embody the essence fully. Hence the more these forms were shattered and better ones put in their place, the more the essence would be exhibited in its origi- nal purity and Urbildlichkeit. With Urbildlichkeit Schleiermacher also affirmed the sinlessness of Jesus; that is, he identified the personified archetypal perfection of the historical person of Jesus with the idea (Idee) of sinless perfection. The Person of Christ is the actualization of the idea of human kind as such in its pure ideality. It is in this connection that we have Schleier- macher's famous regress from the work of Christ to his Person, or from the energy and constancy of God-conscious- ness in the Christian community to the essential sinlessness (UnsudlichkeH) and archetypal religious perfection of Christ. Schleiermacher apprehends the historical person of Jesus immediately as itself the personified idea of Chris- tianity, and then passes from the human perfection of Jesus to his absoluteness. One might formulate Schleiermacher's procedure as follows: Given Jesus as a full and real human being — as against the church's Christ with an abbreviated 36 The Finality of the Christian Keligion humanity; required to appropriate in a rational way those characteristics from the church's Christ which are necessary if he is to continue to be our divine redeemer and arche- type. This absoluteness, as set forth in Schleiermacher's Christology, is the last thread which fastens the modern to the old-church apprehension. But this is not the place to show that Schleiermacher's "Redeemer" was not the "God- man" of the church, nor was he the historical Jesus of modern science — much as it is due to Schleiermacher that for the nonce Christ was viewed as a man in the full sense of the word, as modern culture demanded, and yet as divine Redeemer, object of faith and worship for all time, as tradi- tional piety desired. Historical criticism has corroded Schleiermacher's portrait of the Christ quite as thoroughly as his criticism disintegrated in principle the ecclesiastical portrait. Henceforth, critical elaboration of the historical life of Jesus is to be the test of the dogma of the Person of Christ. Schleiermacher's Christ is as little a real man as is. the Christ of the church; critical examination of the gospel brings us no nearer to Schleiermacher's Christ than it does, to the church's Christ.' But instead of thus anticipating, let us turn rather to Hegel's conception of the absoluteness of Christianity. Listening to many voices out of the past, and especially to Schelling out of the present, Hegel attempted, among other things, a speculative reproduction of the dogmas of the church. With these, and especially with Schelling, he sought to show how the Christian religion is related to the idea of divine immanence in the world. The Hegelian speculation combined two ideas which apparently exclude each other— 1 Still it is the imperishable merit of Schleiermacher to have made for our cen- tury the christological problem a specifically religious problem. His exposition of the doctrine of Christ's Person in sees. 93 ff. of his Glaubeiislehre, where he says that "die stetige Kraftigkeit seines Gottesbewusstseins, welche ein eigentlichers. Sein Gottes in ihm war," is perhaps his most abiding contribution to theology. HisTOKioAL Survey 37 "absolute" and "process." In the history of thought it had been the custom to conjoin "absolute" and "substance," "absolute" and "person," "absolute" and "principle;" but modern speculation has given us "absolute process." But that which is in process is spirit, and the essence of the absolute spirit is idea, thought. It is in the finite spirit that God arrives at a consciousness of himself,' first in unclear feeling, then in idea where the thought is still restricted to sensible pictures and images — /. e., religion in the form of popular metaphysics or of dogmas — finally in thought. In philosophy and religion there is the same con- tent: the unity of the absolute and the finite spirit. But Christianity is the religion in which this process of unifica- tion has attained its consummation, and is therefore the absolute religion — especially at the stage in which it is constructed into the absolute philosophy, which is Hegel's. The dogmas of the church are converted into metaphysical concepts. Thus the Hegelian philosophy looked for the truth of religion in logical and metaphysical categories rather than in the facts and experiences of feeling (Schleiermacher), and in volition (Kant). Corresponding to the centrality of the dogma of the incarnation of the divine Logos in Chris- tianity, we have the culmination of the self-actualization of spirit in humanity.^ 1 In Hegel's Phenomenolopie — e. g., pp. 14, 15, 24 — his point is plainly this: Th 3 absolute is essentially resultant, is what it is, in fact, first at the end, and its nature consists in its self-becoming. The self-consciousness of the absolute Spirit is religion. Religion is the divine Spirit's knowledge of itself through the media- tion of the finite spirit. Thus — so one might conclude — religion in the last analysis is not an affair of man, but it is essentially the supreme determination of the absolute Idee itself, so far as it has to flnitize itself in order to become knowledge of its own self through this finitization. 2 That Pfleiderer's system deviates from, and in some ways is independent of, Hegel's, may be seen from the following: "As there is no essential relation between these metaphysical ideas and the person of Jjsus, he is made arbitrarily, as anyone else might have been, an illustration and example of absolute idea to which he stands in no more intimate relation than the rest of the human race; whereby the special historical importance of the originator of the Christian community, and of 38 The Finality of the Christian Religion Finally Strauss appears upon the scene. Taking up Schleiermacher's Christology, he urges that from the stand- point of modern science valid considerations may be adduced against it. For one thing, it is hard to draw the line between what does and what does not belong to religion, in the claims of Jesus. The imperfection of his other knowledge — knowledge physical, metaphysical, historical — his faith in angels, demons, in a heaven above and a hell below — these views could not be held by Jesus, so Strauss thinks, without their exercising a corrupting influence even on what was peculiarly religious in his experience. For another thing, the ideality of Jesus for mankind in all time and space is impossible on the grounds of the particularity and historical conditionateness of Jesus as a man living in a given time and place. Furthermore, the sinlessness of Jesus is not only historically undemonstrable in the nature of the case, but inconsistent with the position, indispensable to the Chris- tian faith, that Jesus was a true and real man who passed through a true and real human development.' As against Hegel, Hegelian that he was, he maintained that the distinc- tion between an essence that would be something other than the totality of its phenomena is illogical; and consequently the prerogative of being ne plus ultra for all time must be denied every historical personality without exception. "The idea," he says, thinking of Hegel, "does not shake out its full content in a single exemplar!" While Hegel in his Phenomenologie had professed his belief in the absoluteness of Christianity, he had also taught that the Christian spirit is only one form of the manifestation of the absolute spirit. the first model of its religious and moral life, is not only left without explanation, but is lost altogether — a result which not only does violence to the religious con- sciousness, but is unsatisfactory to historical science." — Pfleidekee, Introduction to Steauss, Life of Jesus, p. xviii. 1 Soe " Der Christus des Glaubens und der Jesus der Geschichte : Eine Kritik des Schleiermacher'schen Lebens Jesu," in Vol. V of Steauss's Oesammelte Schriften. Historical Survey 39 But in that case the absohite spirit could have like forms of manifestation after Christianity as well as before it. That such will not be the case dare not be assumed, Strauss said, but must be proved — proved "better than Hegel has done in his self- and system-contradictory designation of Chris- tianity as the absolute religion." Logically, "Strauss closes the discussion of the problem in its old form. In 1871 he published the sad testament of his final thought, his last book. The Old Faith and the New. There Strauss exhibited Christianity in the form created by traditional dogma. Confounding Christian religion and ecclesiastical dogma — or, better, in oblivion to Christianity as religion of the spirit, of freedom and personality, treating the Christian religion as coincident with ecclesiastical authority-religion — he raised the question: "Are we still Christians?" and answered it in the negative.' And, as we shall see, if Strauss was right in his idea of Christianity, he was also right in his answer. In recent years the problem has been revived in theologi- cal Germany, where the writings and addresses upon the^ many phases of the subject, both scientific and religious,, have been characterized by unusual intensity of feeling andl breadth of scholarship. This revival of the discussion is due to the embarrassment into which apologetic theology has been precipitated by the aggression of religio-historical inquiry and the obtrusion of the religio-historical method into its work. That inquiry has stimulated a desire on the part of many for a new religion adapted to raze the decaying structure of the old faith. Others think that they have found a substitute for Christianity in Brahminism, or 1 " My conviction, therefore, is, if we would not evade difficulties or put forced constructions upon them, if we would have our yea, yea, and our nay, nay; in short, if we would speak as honest, upright men, we must acknowledge we are no longer Christians."— 3'/ie Old Faith and the New, p. 107. 40 The Finality of the Christian Religion Buddhism, or " theosophical religion," or similar forma- tions. More important still, professional teachers of the church in Germany declare that, as the result of the religio-histori- cal labor of our time, the claim of Christianity to be the absolute, the true, the final religion, unsurpassable and in- comparable, is open to grave doubt. They compare Jesus, subsuming him under the category of ''religious personal- ity," with all other geniuses of religious history. They apply the laws of religious development — laws discovered elsewhere — to Christianity and to the history of the reli- gious life mirrored in the Bible. And they conclude that all history is flux, is movement, development, and that religious history presents the picture of an incessant process of purifi- cation. Hence the claim of Christianity to be the climax and close of all is to be at least re-examined ; all the more so since every religion claims to rest on revelation, self-communication of Deity. Moreover, the culture of a country and age pro- foundly atfects the religious life indigenous thereto. Per- haps, then, our modern cultural epoch also requires a new religion, or at all events a radical reformation of Christianity. Thus questions crowd anew upon German scholars. The work of religious history is disquieting. A weakening fear whether Christianity is tlie religion and Christ the one Savior, beside whom there is none other, has taken posses- sion of men's souls. Two ways of resolving the difficulty have suggested themselves to the bearers of the religious interests of Ger- many. The one is to contest the right of religious history in theology. It is more in accord with strength of faith and Christian self-certainty to say that Christianity is self- dependent, and must be understood out of itself, i. e., from the standpoint of Christianity. What Christianity, consid- HiSTOEiCAL Survey 41 ered as religion, signifies to our hearts, is independent of the religious historian, if not inaccessible to him. Not assailing the element of truth in this consideration, others see — and see rightly — that it yet does not follow that the theologian concerned with putting Christianity into right relations with the phenomena of our sciences and our civili- zations may be indifferent to the facts of religious history simply because they are embarrassing to his presuppositions. It would seem to amount to a jiractical surrender of the universal validity of Christianity, in the very moment of its theoretical defense, to conceive thus that it is not possible, with a good conscience, to hold to the superiority of the Christian religion to all others over and against the simple facts of religious history. It is only the unenviable pre- rogative of the Catholic church to close its eyes in this manner to those apologetic problems and burdens which God in his providence has laid athwart our path. But more heroic German scholarship has supported another way of approaching the difficulty. May we, per- haps, be able to forego the claim to the absoluteness of Christianity, and thus escape the whole problem? Can we not simply grant that Christ is one beside others, or, rather, primus inter pares; that "Christianity is the most vigorous, most concentrated, revelation of religious energy, among all religious upheavals" ?' Do we thus sacrifice anything essen- tial to Christianity, or do we not thus do justice to its peculiarity which we cannot forego? As a matter of fact, we come here to the kernel of the question. Everything depends upon the meaning of the absoluteness^ or finality which we would vindicate to Chris- iTeoeltsch, oiJ. cit., p. 77. 2 It was the fashion a generation or two ago among Unitarians to describe Christianity as the "absolute religion," on the foundation of the ancient command- ments interpreted in their universal sense as love to God and love to man. So Theodore Parker, e. gr., contended. 42 The Finality of the Christian Religion tianity, of the necessary presupposition of the Christian faith in Christ in this connection; depends also upon what way we would secure to the results of religious history their rights in the matter. So the representatives of this second stand- point urge. In the constructive part of the present work the influence of their great debate will be detected by the well-informed theologian on every page, where arguments are reproduced and weighed, and an independent position, related now negatively, now positively, to their discussion, is reached, but not without grateful obligation to their learn- ing and leadership. A brief statement of the literary output of that debate may be of service to the reader. Professor Ernst Troeltsch, of Heidelberg, is the central figure and has shown most interest in the right of religio-historical work, as the title of his book indicates: Die Ahsolutheit des Christenthums und die ReligionsgescliicMe} He broached the subject in his previous writings: "Die christliche Weltanschauung und die Gegenstromungen,"^ " Die Selbstandigkeit der Religion," and "Geschichte und Metaphysik."^ In the beginning of his development, Troeltsch was ready to grant with a good degree of confidence a Sonderstellung — /. e., a place by itself and apart — to Christianity in the total phenomenon of reli- gion; but, pressed by his opponents, especially by Professor Julius Kaftan, of Berlin, in his articles " Die Selbstandigkeit des Christenthums," and "Erwiderung: (1) Die Methode; (2) Der Supernaturalismus,"* he was subsequently on the point of abandoning the concept of absoluteness as "dog- matic." Nevertheless, he is now inclined again to maintain, and to seek to prove, that Christianity is the absolute religion.^ 1 Tabingen und Leipzig, 1902. "^Zeitschrift fur Theologie und Kirche, 1893-94. 3 Ibid., 189.")-96, and 1898. * Ibid., 1896 and 1898. ^ Theologischer Jahreshericht, Vol. XVIII, p. 510; Theologische Arbeiten des Rheinischen wissenscluifUichen Prediger-Vereins, N. F., Vol. No. 4, p. 103. Historical Survey 43 This fluctuation indicates the conscientiousness of the investi- gator who is ready to revise his position ever anew. It may also illustrate perhaps that one allows himself to be driven too far afield from connection with the collective Christian consciousness, when one alienates from Christianity its char- acter as absolute religion reposing on revelation. It would seem to be due to this feeling that other opponents have arisen against Troeltsch; e. g., Reischle/ "Historische und dogmatische Methode;" Traub,^ "Die religionsgeschichtliche Methode und systematische Theologie," and Wobbermin/ "Das Verhaltnis der Theologie zur modernen Wissenschaft und ihre Stellungf im Gesamtrahmen der Wissenschaft."* Mention should be made of the important discussions by Professor Harnack/ in his Die Aufgabe der theologischen Facultdten und die allgemeine Religionsgeschichtej^ Nieber- gall, Ueher die Absolidheit des Christenthums;^ Heinrici, Diirfcn wir noch Christen hleihen?^ Adolf Jiilicher, Moderne Meinungsverschiedenheiten iiber Methode, Aufgahen und Ziele der Kirchengeschichte;^ and Ihmels, Die Selhstandig- keit der Dog mat ik gegenuber der Religionsphilosophie. With the exception of Jtilicher, these, from different stand- points, are, with varying decisiveness, opponents of Troeltsch in the controversy. 1 Theologische Rundschau, 1901. ^ Zeitschrift fur Theolojie und Kirche, 1901. 3 ibid. ■•Recently, Theologische Arbeiten der Bheinischemoissenschaftlichen Prediger- Vereins, N. F., No. 5. 5 In criticism of Harnack, J. Estlin Carpenter, in Christianity and the Religions of the World, p. 107, writes: " It is claimed for Jesus that he is net one master among many, but the Master; his religion is 'the religion,' or, as one might say, religion itself, final and complete. If this*, plea be preferred as a reason for neglecting the study of other great manifestations of thj religious consciousness, because India or China can teach us nothing .... if it means that we are to turn our backs on Plato and ignore Wordsworth, it must be disowned. If it implicitly affirms that no seer to come may rise to still greater heights of insight or character, once more it must be rejected, for one cannot employ the achievements of the past to limit the possibilities of the future. « Giessen, 1901. i Tubingen und Leipzig, 1900. 8 Leipzig, 1901. 9Erlangen und Leipzig, 1901. 44 The Finality of the Christian Religion Troeltsch's own contention may be summarily reproduced as follows: In chap. 1 he sets out with the question of the origin of the theory of the absoluteness of Christianity. Christianity has been drawn into the stream of religious evolution by modern historical science. Therefore effort is made to safeguard the normative validity of Christianity as the perfect actualization of the concept of religion or as the "absolute religion." Thus the evolutionistic apologetics, as presented from different sides by Schleiermacher and Hegel, is closely related to the orthodox-supernatural apologetics. Chap. 2 gives a critique of this construction of Christianity as absolute religion. The basic concept is erroneous: a universal concept of religion is exalted to norm or ideal, and treated at the same time as impelling power in the historical life of the individual. This substitution has shown in its results that it is impossible. Moreover, the proof of an "absolute" realizing of the universal concept in historical development, especially in Christianity, which manifests itself in all its phases in historical particularity, has mis- carried. Besides, the concept, dominating this whole structure of thought, of a development, and of a unitary gradual development at that, causal and teleological at once, has proved to be equally false. But then, again, the eo ipso correct opposition to the universal concept and its employment as norm has only led many precipitately to erect concrete Christianity to the dignity of a norm for all religion. In the place of all these efforts, chap. 3 urges the full recognition of relativism, but also of its limitation at the same time. There is no objection to the expression — ■ none to saying that Christianity is a "relative phenomenon," that it ever sustains definite historical relations. But we do not thus fall into boundless and aimless relativism. The thought of relativity by no means excludes a valuation Historical Survey 45 ( Wertung) of historical phenomena. Such valuation shows, however, that only a few great generic types of the spiritual, especially of the religious, life come into consideration as really worthful, or through which abiding values are won, but also that they can be subordinated to the idea of a com- mon normative goal, and may be considered as tendencies converging to such goal. The idea of development can be employed in this sense also. But in doing so one must forego the absolute actualization of the concept. Chap. -4 shows that, on the basis of this strictly historical mode of treatment, a justification of Christianity as the highest religious truth, valid for us, is possible. Comparison of various religions indicates that Christianity is the acme of previous religious history, at the same time being the point of convergence of all known developmental tendencies of religion. In this way it is made extremely improbable that it will ever be outclassed. Room is thus prepared for the faith, transcending science, that we really possess in Jesus Christ communion with God, and his salvation, and therefore are bound to him for all time. In what sense, then, may we speak of the absoluteness of Christianity? Chap. 5 is devoted to this question. Naive absoluteness is peculiar to the religious life. In the case of Jesus this naive absoluteness is nothing but the consciousness of his mission; in the case of the Christian, nothing but the consciousness of his uplift to fellowship with God. The Christian religion may rightly share this claim to absoluteness with other religions. But when one seeks to monopolize this claim to absoluteness, in opposition to claims of other religions, by the use of supernatural, rational, or evolutionistic views, one finds on his hands only an artificial product which collapses before the energy and rigor of historical science. These scientific authentications of an exclusive absoluteness must yield. What remains? 46 The Finality of the Christian Religion On the one hand, faith which surrenders with naive absolute- ness to the power of Jesus and lives in God through him ; on the other, scientific comparative religion, which, however, can accord to Christianity only the first place among the religions which have hiiherio appeared upon the broad plain of human history. So Troeltsch. As Kaftan is the best-known opponent of Troeltsch, it may be desirable to reproduce the main features of his position. It is as follows: The gist of the controversy, he says, is as to whether the method and results of the science of religious history are compatible with the further judgment that Christianity is the only true religion. The controversy is not exactly new; only there is a new way of employing religious history on the part of modern theology and phi- losophy of religion. The old dogmatic prepossession of the sole truth of Christianity is declared to be remedilessly undermined thereby. Kaftan makes two concessions, (a) The old view which knows only pagan error and idolatry besides Christianity (and Judaism) is not compatible with the findings of religious history, to which it is incumbent upon us to readjust ourselves. But we have Christian prece- dent for this. The ancient church saw in Hellenic philoso- phy a preparation for Christianity. So, similarly, we today may look upon the religious development of humanity from the positive point of view of a truth in process of becoming, and of a divine preparation. (6) It is further correct that the proposition, Christianity is the only true religion, does not admit of demonstration religio-historically ; just as little as, or even less than, it can be proved by mere historical means that Christianity is the highest form of religious life. But when it is said — Kaftan now taking the offensive — that the religio-historical method is competent to exclude Christianity from being specifically distinguished from all Historical Survey 47 other religions, it must be pointed out that this is an exaggeration. Other such exaggerated inferences have been wont to attach themselves to the advancement of scientific investigation. Thus, its advocates declare materialism to be the pure and necessary result of the natural-science method. Thus, too, there was a time when they believed that they could transform morality into a natural science on the basis of statistics. Common to all these contentions is the erroneous opinion that method of itself alone can deter- mine what is true and what is not. There is a tendency in many religions to refer their origin to a special revelation of deity. History makes this ■evident. And it belongs to the essence of Christianity to attach decisive importance to this circumstance in its own case. But does historical method require us to treat this that is common to all religion as an error to be relegated simply to psychology for explanation? Why not conclude, rather, that we have here an element of the religious life which points to a corresponding truth ? At all events, on the supposition that divine reason is the pilot of history and that religion is an integral factor of human life in history, such a conclusion is not to be set aside as a priori impossible. But religious history does not decide the question one way or the other. The question must be stated differently for those who acknowledge that Christianity is the climax of religious development. The question is whether this connection between Christianity and special divine revelation is not absolutely essential, that Christianity cannot be main- tained without this connection. And the answer is that specific appreciation of Christ as revelation and the peculiar- ity of the Christian religion belong together, stand and fall together. Rob revelation of its supernatural character, and it becomes stale, flat, and unprofitable. Christianity is the religion of a special revelation of God — that or nothing. 48 The Finality of the Christian Religion Christianity is restricted to divine revelation in Jesus Christ, and would not and could not be without it. Therefore it is the only true religion. So Kaftan, And there the matter may rest until we have seen the fortunes of supernaturalism and of rationalism before the judgment seat of history. PAET I AUTHORITY-RELIGION (= SUPERNATURALISM) AND NATURALISM CHAPTEK III THE FORMATION OF AUTHORITY- RELIGION 1. In real religion the desire for blessedness is always a desire for God who has revealed himself. Every religion cherishes the conviction that it has arisen from revelation of God. This revelation has been variously conceived: ethical and non-ethical, universal and particular. As to theories, there have been three ways of conceiving of this fundamental religious notion, all of which are open to grave objections: the traditionalistic, the rationalistic, the mystic; though there is an element of truth in each of them. It is the tradition- alistic— that is, the ecclesiastical — conception of revelation with which we are mainly concerned in the discussion of Christianity defined as authority-religion. According to the traditionalistic apprehension, revelation is the tradition through which a series of ideas, as the content of the faith of pious men, has come down to us. More definitely, accord- ing to this view, revelation is the Bible. In this connection, therefore, it is my task to indicate briefly the church's pro- gressive reduction of revelation to the form and content of the biblical tradition. The universalistic side of the Pauline doctrine of revela- tion, with which we may as well begin, was still further developed in the old Greek church when, more and more, educated philosophic Greeks came to accept Christi- anity. John of Damascus,^ who in this point closed the Greek development of dogma, held that the knowledge of the existence of God is implanted in all men. The revelations of God in creation, in the Mosaic law, and in Christ 1 Defide orthodox., I, 1 : " God did uot leave us in absolute-ignorance. For the knowledge of God's existence has been implanted by Him in all by nature." 51 52 The Finality of the Christian Religion are all related to this natural idea of God only as an ascend- ing series of more powerful means of its reinforcement. Justin Martyr' and Clement" of Alexandria taught that God permitted the divine Logos to descend on all men from the beginning. The whole human race is partaker of the Logos, so that all who live according to reason can be called Chris- tians— with this difference, however, that while the heathen have but scattered seeds of the Logos, the Christians have in Jesus the whole Logos. But now that the Christian revelation is offered to mankind, its believing acceptance is viewed as the only means of salvation ; hence a Christian particularism for the present grows up by the side of this universalism in reference to the past. The liberal view of a universal activity of the divine Logos was so altered that the Greek Fathers could refer the traces of the genuine knowledge of God among the heathen to the Jews, from whom they had appropriated it.* Originally the proposition was that whoever in any age or among any people lived and taught according to reason were Christians. Now it is declared that whatever of good belonged to the heathen belongs to the Christians, for they are the heirs of the Jews.* 1 Justin, Apol., I, 46: "We havo been taught that Christ is the first-born of God, and we have declared that He is the Word of whom every race of men were partakers; and those who lived reasonably are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists; as among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and men like them; and among the barbarians, Abraham, and Ananias, and Azarias, etc. So that even they who lived before Christ, and lived without reason, were wicked and hos- tile to Christ, and slew those who lived reasonably." ^C'L'EUE^T, Strom., I, 7: "For the husbandman of the soil which is among men is one; He who from the beginning, from the foundation of the world, sowed nutritious seeds; He who in each age rained down the Lord, the Word." 3 "The Jews of Alexandria looked upon their own religion as a revealed philoso- phy resting upon the oracles of the Old Testament, to which all the wisdom of the Greeks was related either as borrowed or as a preparatory stage. For they either ascribed to the Spirit of God only the sacred writings of the Jews, in which case the Greeks must have stolen from them, or they allowed a certain activity of the divine reason in the Greek thinkers and poets, but proclaimed at the same time the supe- riority of the absolute revelation which has been granted to Moses." — Wehxle, Beginnings of Christianity, Vol. I, p. 177. ^ Justin, Apol., I. 44: "And so, too, Plato, when he says, 'The blame is his who chooses, and God is blameless,' took this from the prophet Moses and uttered it. The Formation of Authority-Religion 53 Time was when there was the same assumption of a universal and original revelation on the part of the old Latin church. To be sure, this revelation was viewed as ordinary and natural, rather than as the gift of the Logos, to which the extraordinary and the supernatural were later supplied, Tertullian assumes a knowledge of God which is independent of special revelation, and which belongs to the divine endowment of humanity, and is common, therefore, to all peoples. To establish the truth of Christianity, he appeals to the witness of the soul, which is naturally Christian. He says that all the essential principles of the Christian faith may be developed out of this soul, provided it has not been perverted by false philosophy.' Hence Chris- tianity, together with the whole Old Testament revelation, is only an institution which the gracious God has founded simply that men may be the more easily and surely saved.^ But here we have the entering of the wedge — this supply- ing of the extraordinary and supernatural to the ordinary and natural, that salvation may be facilitated. First, there was the great difficulty of attaining salvation prior to and apart from the addition of the extraordinary divine revelation to ordinary and natural. Then, at length, this difficulty became an impossibility in the judgment of the Western Church, For Moses is more ancient than all the Greek writers. And whatever both philoso- phers and poets have said concerning the immortality of the soul, or punishments after death, or contemplation of things heavenly, or doctrines of the like kind, they have received such suggestions from the prophets as have enabled them to under- stand and interpret these things." II 8,13: Speaking of the Greeks, "each man spoke well in proportion to the share he had of the spermatic Word, seeing what was related to it ... . All the writers were able to see realities darkly through the sowing of the implanted word that was in them." See B.\OB, ChristUche Gnosis, pp. 526 S. iTertdllian, Adv. Marcion., I, 10: ''The volume of Moses does not all initiate the knowledge of the Creator .... The greater part of the human race, although they knew not the name of Moses, much less his writing, yet knew the God of Moses .... From the beginning the knowledge of God is the dowry of the soul. .... God has for his witness this whole being of yours." sTertullian, ApoL, 18: But, that we might attain an ampler and more authoritative knowledge at once of Himself, and of His counsels and will, God has added a written revelation," etc. 54 The Finality op the Christian Religion all the more so with the development of the doctrine of sin as brought in by the fall of Adam and inherited by his descendants. Pelagius held, in a way, to an inner, consequently univer- sal, revelation,^ to which the special Christian revelation was supplied as auxiliary. Against this — against posse non peccare and liberum arhitrium — Augustine affirmed the necessity of external revelation and of the agency of the Holy Spirit in order to the appropriation of this revelation. Fallen man had no revelation in his heart till one was donated him from without, and no ability to lay hold of the revelation, and hence the Holy Spirit must apprehend it for him.^ The church was custodian of both revelation and Spirit. To be sure, this theory was formulated in the interest of the absolutism of the church. But the conse- quent limitation of revelation in time and place is evident. It is an absolute supernaturalism, which we have here both on the objective and the subjective side: on the objective side, revelation is anti-historical; on the subjective, anti-psycho- logical. There is a botany, said to be valid in certain countries, according to which the Great Spirit, having created the trees of the forest, comes in the night each spring and sticks the leaves and blossoms on the branches. So, according to Augustine, the great human tree, blasted by sin, grows nothing from within that is divine; revelation is external, particularistic, miraculous ; and only such revelation saves. And this Augustinian position recurs in Scholas- ticism. The thought of Thomas Aquinas on the subject is complex and elaborate. He held that we knew some things concerning God and salvation through the reason, but even these are included in revelation, on which account iQne of the charges against him at the Syuod of Carthage was that he taught: "Quoniam et ante adventum Domini fuerunt homines impeccabiles, i. e., sine peccato." 2 De gratia Christi, 25. The Formation of Authority-Religion 55 alone one may rely upon them. Other truths — e. g., Trinity — transcend the range of reason and are accessible only in the church on the ground of revelation ; that is, authority. But reason has a function in regard to the truths of revela- tion, as revelation has a function in regard to the truths of reason; for while revelation gives validity to the truths of reason which the latter is not capable to accord, reason, incompetent indeed to prove in this region, may yet refute objections raised against the dogmas of revelation.' The more rigidly the reformers clung to the dogma of hereditary sin, the more importance they had to attach to special or particular revelation as the only means of salva- tion. According to the Formula of Concord, the human reason since the fall was entirely blind in spiritual things; that is, in matters relating to religion and morality. It was unable to know anything in this region in its own strength. Hence it was clear that the way of salvation was not to b© found without special revelation.^ Calvin, however, claimed that there was a natural consciousness of God in fallen man,, but only in the form of feeling. "We lay it down as a, position not to be controverted, that the human mind, even by natural instinct, possesses some sense of a Deity." ^ Still Calvin goes on to urge that this natural revelation does not suffice. But, however men were chargeable with sinfully corrupting the seeds of divine knowledge, which, by the wonderful operation 'Thomas Aqoinas, Summa theol., p. I, Qu.,1, Art. 1: "Ad eaetiam, quaededeo ratione humana iavestigari possunt, necessarium fuit, hominem iustrui revelatioae divina, quia Veritas de Deo per rationeminvestigata a paucis et per longum tempus et cum admisione multorum errorum hotnini proveniret. Necessarium igitur fuit praeter philosophicas disciplinas, quae per rationem investigantur, sacram doctri nam per revelationem haberi." His point is further worked out in Suinma cath.fid contra Gentiles,!, i. See also American Journal of Theology , October, 1900, p. 680 2 "Concerning this matter, the following is our faith, doctrine and confession to wit : that the understanding and reason of man in spiritual things are wholly blind, and can understand nothing by their proper power," etc. See Sohaff, Creeds of Christendom, Vol. Ill, p. 107. 3 Institutes, I, 3, 1. 56 The Finality of the Christian Religion of nature, are sown in their hearts, so that they produce no good and fair crop, yet it is beyond doubt, that the simple testimony magnificently borne by the creatures to the glory of God, is very insuflScient for our instruction. For as soon as a survey of the world has just shown us a deity, neglecting the true God, we set up in his stead the dreams and phantasms of our own brains; and confer on them the praise of righteousness, wisdom, goodness, and power, due to him.' We need an assistance other and better than natural revela- tion to direct us to the Creator of the world, he says. Zwingli also ascribes to human reason a knowledge of God, but only of the existence of God, not of his nature. Many wise men have independently attained to a knowledge of the existence of God, but a knowledge of his nature is possible only through God's special revelation. The Socinians occupied a singular position. They denied hereditary sin, which to the mind of the orthodox party made special revelation necessary. But they also maintained rigid- ly the necessity of special revelation, denying the possibility of natural religion, and deriving all knowledge of God from external revelation. This Socinian standpoint grew out of a skeptical view of the human cognitive faculty. It is largely true that in this system religion was only an external, and by no means essential, addendum to morality. It holds that the feeling of right and wrong is innate in every man, and whoever follows this feeling is obedient to God, though he may never know or think that there is a God. The orthodox theologians of the seventeenth century^ com- bined and systematized with architectonic genius the previous development of the doctrine of revelation into more accurate and rigid definitions. They carefully distinguished between natural revelation and revelation of God in the narrower sense, i. c, supernatural revelation through the Bible. Thelatter was defined as that external act of God in which he disclosed him- 1 Institutes, I, 5, 15; see also I, 5, 1. '^E. g., Quenstedt, HoUaz, Gerhardt. The Formation of Authority-Religion 57 self in his book for their saving instruction. And there was salvation in no other way. Particular revelation meant the damnation of those who did not have it. As for the Catholic there was no salvation outside of the church, so for Protestant orthodoxy there was no salvation apart from the revelation of the Book. And saving revelation and the Book were coinci- dent. The Book is thus the basis of authority-religion. And thus also the process by which saving revelation suffered pro- irressive reduction to the literature of the Bible was concluded. The Book as a whole, distinctionless, became divine author- ity in all matters of faith and practice. And revelation is a supernatural communication of doctrines guaranteed to be divine by the miraculous mode of their origin.* 2. Of the proof of divine revelation little need be said at this point. In the period and process of the formation of authority-religion appeal was made to miracle and prophecy as proof. And of these two, main dependence was put upon prophecy, defined as prediction. In the early church many were convinced of the divinity of Christ, for example, on account of the agreement of so many ancient and particular predictions of the Old Testament about him, as well as on account of his own fulfilment of his own prophecies. But in the first Christian centuries difficulty was felt with this proof, inasmuch as both miracles and prophecies were possible through demoniac powers. It was on this account that more definite criteria were necessary to distinguish true divine miracles and prophecies from the demoniacal. The moral character of the prophets and workers of miracles, and the beneficent design and effect of their doctrines and deeds, were declared to constitute the touchstone required. But effort was made to distinguish true miracle and 1 Whereas we now see that revelation is not the mechanical communication ef a message from without, but the opening of the inner nature of specially prepared men to receive indications of the will of God in their own moral nature and in the world. 58 The Finality of the Christian Religion prophecies, not only for the demoniacally supernatural, but also from the works of nature and natural predictions. To be sure, only a few of the earlier ecclesiastical writers attempted these more accurate definitions. The author of the Clementine Homilies held only those predictions to be divinely inspired prophecies which could not be otherwise accounted for. Augustine held that miracle was only rela- tive and subjective, and denied that there was any such thing as absolute miracle. He set up as criteria of mira- cle only (a) the unusual or the extraordinary or the excep- tional, and (6) the astonishment or wonder of the person who perceives the phenomenon.^ It was the Scholastics who first sharply defined miracles in a way that would serve authority- religion. A phenomenon does not become a miracle, they urged, from the circumstance that its cause is unknown to this person or that, or that it cannot be explained by refer- ence to some particular law of nature; but a miracle is a phenomenon whose cause is absolutely unknown to all, and which cannot be explained by reference to all the forces lodged in the whole creation.^ Finally, miracles and predictions were held to be attestations of revelation not only by the Protestant state churches, but by all the so-called dissenting bodies as well. If anything, more emphasis is placed upon miracles as proofs in Protestant orthodoxy than in Catholicism.^ 'Augustine, De utilitate credenti, 16, See Pfleideeer, Grundriss der christ- lichen Glaubens- uiid Sittenlehre, 3d ed., p. 100: " The naive faith in the reality of miracles, extra-biblical as well as biblical, which the church shared along with the whole of antiquity, rested on the poetic supernaturalism of the antique view of the world, which Augustine brought to dogmatic expression in the two-edged formula that, since the will of God is one with the nature of things, nothing willed of God can be against nature, and therefote miracle is merely against known nature." 2 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theol., 1, 105, 7. 3 Throughout this development we see the intellectualistic apprehension of mira- cles. Their ethico-religious value was not seen until the function of myth, legend, sagas, poesy in the history of religion had been recognized. The "miracle" may be boarer of divine revelation without having anything to do with "law" asd its "yiolation." The Formation op Authority-Religion 59 3. But it is not enough that the revelation be proved ; it must be preserved. Revelation that saves was the immediate possession of but few men, even among its contemporaries, since it was individual divine communication in a given time and space. For the after-world it would be entirely lost, if some institution was not hit upon to hand it down. God's revelation was in documents of a dead past. The church canonized and interpreted them; and it did both, if in appearance historically, yet in fact dogmatically, according to the status quo of doctrine and practice in the early non- heretical churches, the most important of which were founded by the apostles themselves. But original revelation was also preserved and perpetuated through extra-canonical tra- dition. This unwritten tradition was a source of redemptive truths for the Catholic church. These traditions came to be divided into three classes: divine, ecclesiastical, apostolic. Divine traditions were such doctrines and practices as were communicated by Christ and his apostles, but were not to be found in the Scriptures. Apostolic traditions are such defi- nitions as were made by the apostles with the co-operation of the Holy Spirit, but are not contained in the epistles. Ecclesiastical traditions are such customs as have little by little come to have the power of law in the church. This last covered the abuses against which Protestantism rebelled, and which formed the outer occasion for the ultimate Protes- tant delimitation of the saving revelation to canon of Scrip- ture alone. The canon of Scripture was Word of God. Hence divine dignity belonged to it. Consequently, in relation to eccle- siastical development in history on the one hand, and to human thought and speculation on the other, it had norma- tive and judicial power. The Scripture was "Word of God" — that is, revelation — in such a way that the two are interchangeable, identical. Consequently a thing could no 60 The Finality of the Christian Keligion more be Word of God if it did not belong to the Sacred Scriptures than something could belong to the Scriptures which was not Word of God. By virtue of the latter, the Scriptures must be pure and free from all mere human constituents; by virtue of the former, "integrity" belongs to the Scriptures ; i. e., nothing that has ever belonged to the Word of God has been lost in history. Nor is there need of any other Word of God outside of the Bible. Hence the Bible must be "sufficient," and universally intelligible in all matters pertaining to salvation — i. e., "perspicuity" was affirmed.' 4. From the foregoing it appears "that ecclesiastical tradition and the Sacred Scriptures are the channels through which the divine revelation of redemption, communicated to certain individuals in ancient times, flowed to later genera- tions. As a consequence, two questions arose : Were those channels so solid and tight that nothing of their content could go to waste in the passage? and. Were they so pure that nothing alien to the content could mingle with it? This would be too much to expect, were they mere human agencies to which the divine content was intrusted. The need here may be illustrated from the modern effort to recover the empirical Jesus of history. Through textual criticism a pure text is sought from among manifold variants. From among the gospels one, say Mark, is assigned priority and primacy. We then pass from the gospel back to its documentary sources, from these to the traditions on which they rest, and finally from tradition to the facts. But the integrity and purity of the revelation are jeopardized from the very beginning. For even an eye- and ear-witness of 1 It may be added that Protestants denied and Catholics aflBrmed the canonical dignity of the Apocrypha; that Protestants placed equal value on the Old and the New Testaments ; that the Socinians held that the Old Testament could be dispensed with and put a graded valuation upon its different parts, willing to accord to the Old Testament an historical rather than a dogmatic value. The Formation of Authority-Religion 61 the words and deeds of Jesus would, if left to his own intellectual power, fail to catch all in that initial apprehen- sion, and of that which he did apprehend much would appear in a subjective light, and all would be modified in the very apprehension by what the mind supplies in the activity of appropriation. Then in the course of time something would be obliterated from the memory of this witness, and much would suffer transformation again accord- ing to his own spiritual bent or his theoretical point of view. And upon occasion of oral and written reproduction, imper- fection and peculiarities of exposition would lead to further corruption of the content. Thus, supposing that the eye- and ear-witness was not a writer, but that the tradition was orally propagated for a generation or two, all these additions and subtractions and changes and transformations would increase more and more. Therefore, if the content of this revelation — without which, by hypothesis, no man could be saved — was to be passed on by Scripture and tradition undi- minished and uncorrupted to the after- world, it was necessary for God to do something more than merely to give this con- tent to humanity and then leave it to make its own way through history. He must care for its encasement in a form. He must give ideas and words. He must in very fact speak through the prophets and in Christ. He must write through evangelists, and he must make decisions through bishops and popes. In short, he must supply to revelation the infalli- bility of the church and the inspiration of the Scriptures. According to Catholic teaching, the church cannot err in her exposition of the doctrines of faith and practice, since she is guided by the Holy Spirit.' And it is not merely in absolutely essential matters that she cannot err, but also in other things which she prescribes to be believed and done, 1 Catech. Rom., 1, 10, 18 : " ecclesia errare non potest in fidei ac morum disciplina tradenda, cum a spiritus aneto gubernetur." 02 The Finality of the Christian Religion whether they be contained in the Scriptures or not/ If one asks where this infallible church is to be sought, the answer was : In the totality of believers and bishops. Yet their universal agreement is but an ideal. In reality the answer comes to be: A majority of believers and bishops, especially when the latter are convened in synods in order to oppose the corruption of the faith on the part of heretical minor- ities. Councils, especially ecumenical, have always arro- gated to themselves the guidance of the Holy Spirit; and in modern times their infallibility, which Athanasius and Augustine did not acknowledge, has become the prevalent view in the church. But the contingency of this note showed itself, for example, in the Arian controversy. In many synods as large as those which were later esteemed orthodox, and not less legal, the Arian party conquered, and yet the decisions of such synods were not acknowledged subsequently by the church. Furthermore, when later all ecclesiastical power came to be more and more concentrated in the Roman bishop, as the development went on, the popes fell into contradiction, partly with themselves, partly with the great Reformation synods of the fifteenth century. Luther and other reformers appealed to this fact of history in order to prove the unfitness of the bishops in matters of ecclesiastical doctrinal authority, even apart from the proof drawn from the content of synodal and papal decisions. All the more was the infallibility of the Scriptures insisted upon, of which Catholic ecclesiastical infallibility was but a con- tinuation. Finally, as the way out of this whole difficulty, disclosed by a study of the history of councils, bishops, and 1 Bellaemin, De eccl. milit., 14: "Nostra sententia est, ecclesiam absolute non posso errare nee in rebus absolute necessariis, nee in aliis quae credenda vel facionda nobis propouit, sine habeantur expresse in seriptura, sine non . . . . et cum dicimus, ecclesiam non posse errare, id intelligimus tam de universitate fldelium, quam episcoporum, ita ut sensus sit ejus propositionis : ecclesia non potest errare, i. e. id quod tenent omues fldeles tanquam de fide, et similiter id quod docent omncs episcopi tanquam ad fidem pertinens, necessario est verum ot de fide." The Formation op Authority-Religion 63 popes, the infallibility of the pope alone was declared. It was easier for him to be unanimous with himself.' Turn now to the formation of the doctrine of the inspira- tion of the Scriptures. While the theory was excogitated on Protestant soil, the idea, common indeed to all ancient peoples, is pagan in origin. Everywhere its purpose has consistently been to exclude the activity of the human in order to insure the immediate divinity of the oracle. Even according to the Scriptures, it is God who spoke by the mouth of the prophets.^ The words of holy men did not issue from their own will, but from the impulse of God's s[)irit.^ Therefore the Scriptures are inspired by God, and of course verbally.* The disciples on trial were not to think what they should say; it would be given them.^ Similarly, the ancient church assumed that the Old Testament was in- spired, and when a New Testament arose, it was thought to be inspired also by the Spirit or the Logos. This inspira- tion belonged even to the historical books of the Bible. Even in very ancient times, however, some difficulty was felt as to the historical writers in the Bible — the lack of the Holy Spirit working through them, Luke's explicit self-depend- ence, troubled the Fathers. Moreover, some of the Fathers inconsistently distinguished different degrees of inspiration in the Scriptures. For example, Origen, under Greek influ- ence, conceived that the biblical writers wrote according to their own power of comprehension and memory, and turned 1 A recent sidelight upon the pope's own feeling as regards his infallibility may be found in an article by a distinguished Roman Catholic scholar and cleric, in the Independent of January 28, 1904, p. 198. In explaining the late pope's refusal to condemn Loisy's book, he says: "Perhaps the dead pontiff remembered how he had been fooled into signing the document which declared the three witnesses of First John authentic. It is an open secret that when that decree came out Cardinal Vaughan hurried off to Rome and saw the pope. On learning how the scholarly world, as well as the early Fathers, rejected the text as spurious, Leo XIII declared that Mazella, the Jesuit cardinal, had deceived him by saying the disputed text was in the Fathers. Leo XIII would not have his fingers burned a second time." 2Actsl:16; 4:21; c/. Matt. 1 :22; 2:15. 32 Peter 1:21. *2Tim. 3:16. 5 Matt. 10:19, 20. 64 The Finality of the Christian Religion away from the letter and single word, to which the truth was not bound, to the universal truth of their writings. Moreover, in the Middle Ages we find, along with traditional strict views, very free judgment concerning inspiration. The Renaissance, too, brought more liberal views of the Scriptures, as of other literary survivals of antiquity. And Luther, as is well known, found much that was unprofitable, human, and transitory in the Old Testament, and he declared that the New Testament was of very unequal value. As for the latter, he said that the epistle of James was an epistle of straw, irreconcilable with Paul, and he had little use for the Revelation and Hebrews; while in his controversy with Zwingli he rigidly adhered to the letter, "Hoc est corpus meum." So we see at once literal inspiration and most liberal looseness in Luther's idea of inspiration. Zwingli tended to the position of the equal binding authority of all parts of Scripture. Calvin would treat the whole Bible as if God spoke immediately from heaven.' But the historical situation of Protestantism came to be a difficult one. The authority of the church had been renounced, and if the human spirit needed an external author- ity, as came to be supposed, only the Bible remained. But the Bible was no absolute authority, such as their Catholic opponents enjoyed, if a single word could be doubted. To discriminate between the Old Testament and the New Testa- ment, as Luther did, and to grade the New Testament — to distinguish between human and divine elements, between what was binding and what was not — ^is to introduce the disturbing factor of subjectivity, and is tantamount to admit- ting that the Bible is not an external regulative power of an absolute kind. No limits can be set to the critical under- standing in that process of valuation. And it was the rec- ognition of these facts that consistently led from Luther of 1 Institutes, I, 7, 1. The Formation of Authority-Religion 65 the sixteenth to Quenstedt and others of the seventeenth century. It was different with the Catholics. They accorded regulative authority to tradition and church along with the Scriptures; hence they could neglect things that were in the Scriptures. Indeed, not the Scriptures, but the church, enjoyed primacy. The Protestants, however, would build all on the Scriptures, while it might be to the interest of the Catholics to emphasize the mixed character of the Scriptures.^ As indicated above, no real theory of inspiration was elaborated till Protestant orthodoxy. Still it may be well to repeat that the historical basis of the theory is the bibli- cal view of the prophetic inspiredness. As in heathen man- tic art, so in Hebrew prophecy, the receiver of the revelation is passive. The New Testament idea is not different. Every- thing which is written i-s inspired of God, and is profitable." The biblical idea of the inspiration of the biblical books was transferred by the rising church from the Old Testament to the New Testament not later than the end of the second cen- tury. All the time the presupposition is the formal divine authority of "Word of Bible," but without having developed a formal inspiration theory. Even the period of the Reformation knew none. It simply uncritically presupposed the divine origin of the Scriptures and the infallible authority of their doctrines. It was a long time after the consumma- tion of the identification of "Word of Bible" and "Word of God" before the rise of a formal theory concerning the ori- gin of the biblical books, and still longer before this theory iBellaemin, De verfto rfiy., 1, 15: "Aliter Deus adfuit prophetis, aliter histf)- ricis. Ulis revelavit f utura et simul adstitit, ne aliquid falsi admiscerent in scribeml< > ; his non semper revelavit ea, quae scripturi erant, sed excitavit duiitaxat, ut scriberent ea, quae vel viderant, vel audierant, quorum recordabantur, et simul adstitit, ne quid falsi scriberent, quae assistentia non excludebat laborem." 2The whole so-called "pneumatic" interpretation of Scripture, which har- monizes the contradiction between the biblical letter treated as divine authority and the new religious consciousness, is connected indissolubly with this idea. 66 The Finality of the Christian Religion attained its dogmatic conclusion. But this identification of "Word of God" and Sacred Scripture led necessarily to the formation of the orthodox inspiration theory, according to which the antique and biblical ideas of divine inbreathing were accentuated. In particular, the inspiration of persons was supplanted by inspiration of books, which, in origin, con- tent, and form, were referred to the absolutely supernatural activity of the Holy Spirit, in a way that excluded all human participation of the biblical authors apart from the mere mechanical business of writing. The theory in its details is as follows : (a) That the sacred writers were moved to write at all was due to the divine impulse and command, i. e., im- pulsus ad scrihendum; (b) in the next place, what they should write was given them by the Holy Spirit, i. e., sug- gestio rerum; (c) in addition, the form and manner of the writing were from the Spirit, i. e., suggestio verhorum. The immediate divine inspiration of matter and words — without distinguishing between dogmatic and historical, moral and geographical, and without caring whether the writers under- stood what they wrote or not — this came to be the orthodox church doctrine. In oral proclamation the human instru- ments furnished only the tongue, in the written only the pen; therefore God alone is the author of the Book.' To be sure, difficulties suggested themselves. One such was due to the unity of authorship and diversity of style and exposi- tion. But this difficulty was resolved by the supposition that the Holy Spirit accommodated himself to the stage of culture and to the individuality of each writer; that is, the iSuch a theory was indispensable to the Protestant opposition to the Roman Catholic church. If word of Scripture and teaching of church are set over against each other as word of God and word of man, then all active human participation in the origin of Scripture must be absolutely excluded. If the Scripture is in any least possible particular word of man, it is no longer absolute authority. Therefore, the orthodox doctrine of inspiration answered a question of life and death for ortho- doxy, and answered it in the only way it could be answered in order to keep intact the thesis of the absolute authority of the Bible. Subsequent gradual departure from the theory has carried with it at the same time the gradual dissolution of orthodoxy. The original orthodoxy is the only consistent orthodoxy. The Formation of Authority-Religion 67 Holy Spirit let each writer choose such words as the writer would have chosen had he been left to himself. But this was to get out of one difficulty only to fall into another, inasmuch as the inspiration of the words was endangered by such a supposition. In view of this difficulty, it was at length admitted that inspiration of words was subordinate to that of idea. Still another dangerous point was connected with blemishes of style, not in keeping with the divine dignity, since the Old Testament was not written in pure Hebrew, nor the New in pure Greek. The older dogma- ticians tried to avert the danger by the most artificial dis- tinctions and the most violent makeshifts. But one could not stop with inspiration of words as such ; for words, since they are composed of letters, could not be inspired if letters were not. Hence the discovery that the Hebrew vowel-points were not as old as the consonants of the text was another great embarrassment. Learned con- tradiction was undertaken, the nerve of the proof being an argumentum e sileritio. Moreover, the equal age of vocals and consonants was accepted in the Helvetian Formula, Canon 2. But this was only the beginning of the danger which threatened the ecclesiastical theory of inspiration from the side of textual criticism. For, supposing the text had been divinely given verbally, even literally, to the writers, what guarantees that the text was thereafter accurately copied ? Critical labors brought to light thousands of dissimilarities and variations in the different codices. Thus the work of the Holy Spirit in inspiring the Scriptures was exposed to frustration through the factors of human weakness and care- lessness. The fallible human spirit, to whom one sought to give an infallible guide in the Scriptures, was thus set up as judge again concerning that Scripture in listing the divers readings. Nothing remained for the church but to choose one of the horns of a dilemma: either to hold on to the 68 The Finality of the Christian Keligion textus receptus as divinely inspired, and to declare that the miracle of inspiration was repeated through a series of tran- scripts during the Christian centuries ; or to accept the results of criticism, and, in that case, the consequences which flow from criticism. But the church declined to choose. The way out at first was rather to deny the fact in question. The Reformed church did this in the Helvetian Formula. Then there also arose the question of lost books to be considered, and the policy was to affirm that many of them were in fact in the canon as constituents of other books ; or to declare that, if they were lost, they were not sacred books, or at least they were not sacred for all time ; or to declare that, if they were sacred, they were not canonical ; e. (/., Paul's letter to Laodicea. So much as regards subtractions from the canonical books. But what if there be additions, i. e., books not genuine? Conditions were not yet ripe for our later prob- lem of the authenticity of biblical books. The question was not. Are the Scriptures authentic ? but, Are they inspired ? What does it matter as to the human writer on the hypothesis of their divine authorship ? Early Protestant theologians had no need to set out, as in more modern times, from the veracity of the authors or the genuineness of the writing, in order to prove the divinity of the Scriptures. Such considerations, together with others, such as the excellence of content, the sublimity of expression, even miracles and prophecies, estab- lished according to them a mere human faith, a moral proba- bility which, however great, could never become absolute certainty, i. e., divine faith. Calvin, in particular, warned the church against building faith in the divine word upon the sand of human reasons and conclusions. It is true that if we were inclined to argue the point, many things might be adduced which certainly evince, if there be any God in heaven, that he is the Author of the Law, and the Prophets, The Formation of Authority-Keligion 69 and the Gospel. Yet it is acting a preposterous part to endeavor to produce sound faith in the Scriptures by disputations.^ According to Catholics, the rock upon which faith in the Scriptures should be built was the church, the last court of appeal. But the fundamental presupposition of Catholicism — namely, the divinity of the church — was rejected by Protestants. On the other hand, according to the correct insight of those old theologians, Calvin especially, rational proofs drawn from miracles, fulfilment of prophecy, excellence of doctrine, still more so from antiquity and genuineness of the writings, yielded only probability. Besides, such mode of proof was but to make — contrary to the formal principle of Protestantism — ^the human reason the last court of appeal concerning the Scriptures. But if neither church nor reason suffices, whereon shall we build our faith in the Scriptures? As if, so the answer ran, any far-fetched proofs, either from the church or the reason, were needed! This is just as if one should inquire, How shall we learn to distinguish light from darkness, white from black, sweet from bitter? For the Scripture exhibits as clear evidence of its truth, as white and black things do of their color, or sweet and bitter things of their taste.^ But what is this but (a) to set up a highly subjective crite- rion, and (6) to leave the ultimate decision to fallible man, to whose nature just this feeling belongs? Neither the one nor the other, Calvin replies. Religion appearing, to profane men, to consist wholly in opinion, in order that they may not believe anything on foolish or slight grounds, they wish and expect it to be proved by rational arguments, that Moses and the prophets spake by divine inspira- tion. But I reply that the testimony of the Spirit is superior to all reason. For, as God alone is a sufficient witness of himself in his own word, so also the word will never gain credit in the hearts 1 Institutes, I, 7, 4. ^ibid., I, 7, 2. 70 The Finality of the Christian Keligion of man, till it be confirmed by the internal testimony of the Spirit. It is necessary, therefore, that the same Spirit, who spake by the mouths of the prophets, should penetrate into our hearts, to convince us that they faithfully delivered the oracles which were divinely entrusted to them.' So, then, this feeling that the divine word is true is yiothing human, hut is itself divine. It is not our spirit that assures us of the truth of the Scriptures, but that same divine Spirit by which the Scriptures were inspired. If the divine Spirit speaks in our hearts, then we no longer believe on the foreign authority of the church, nor on the authority of our own understanding or feeling, both of which are untrust- worthy, but on the authority of the "internal testimony of the Holy Spirit," to which we subject our judgment. Still, in those hours when the divine witness is weak within us, proofs of probability may serve as reinforcement. Here, then, the orthodox system seems to have found a rock on which it could firmly rest, independent equally of fallible church and fallible reason. But it is precisely at this point that the feet begin to slip and the position is lost, never to be recovered again. For, on the one hand, the Pietists and Quakers — e. g., Barclay — pointed out that if it is an inner revelation of the divine Spirit whereby the Scrip- ture is first known as divine, then it is not the Scripture, but just that inner working of the divine Spirit, which is the last court of appeal. On the other hand, the rationalists, more dangerously, showed how the orthodox system transcends itself at this point; for if it is the inwardly felt witness of the Spirit which makes me certain of the divinity of the Bible, then it requires but little reflection to give rise to a further question: Who guarantees to me that this feeling in me, which yet is, by hypothesis, not of me, originates from the working of the divine Spirit? Between the Bible 1 Institutes, I, 7, 4. The Formation of Authority-Religion 71 and the human spirit is introduced this tertium quid, the divine Spirit, witnessing in the latter of the former. But who witnesses to the divinity of this witness? Either, only itself again, but that is to say, no one; or, something, be it feeling, be it thought, in the human spirit, thus according primacy to the latter. 5. Supposing that the divine revelation, from its home in the distant past, has been conveyed to us in its perfection and purity, by means of Sacred Scripture, still it must be further brought into us, if it is to save us. Now, it is by means of interpretation that we appropriate its contents. Interpre- tation, as seen from its history, is of two kinds: ecclesiastical and scientific. The latter inquires as to the character of the writing to be interpreted ; the former knows this beforehand, knows that it is a sacred divine writing, and on this account knows also that it will find nothing in it as a whole that is not true and worthy of God the author. The latter judges of an author after it has interpreted him ; the former, before,, assuming that the worth of the book has been predetermined. According to ecclesiastical interpretation, which clings to the* idea of the divine worthiness of all that is canonical, true; understanding of a passage is not attained so long as an edify- ing content is not reached. But what if, as a matter of fact, there is no such edifying content, but just the opposite? In all such cases, histori- cally, two possibilities were at the option of the interpreter: if he occupied the author's standpoint in religion and moral- ity, in spirituality and culture, in stage and tendency, thert all was found to be edifying and worthy of God as it stood; but if the interpreter was on a higher moral plane, or waa different in culture from the author, then he was offended at the unedifying passage, and the offense was removed by what, a man of science would adjudge to be violent interpretations. It was the allegorical method which was thus made to cover 72 The Finality of the Christian Keligion a multitude of sins — the pneumatic method of interpretation is but a slight modification of the same thing. From this view-point one did not deny that now and then the wording of a passage led to something unimportant, unedifying, or even unworthy of God the author; but such could not possibly be the mind of the Spirit. Hence the wording was only somehow an index pointing to a deeper meaning in the back- ground. Moreover, it is plainly to be seen that by this method all the extra-scriptural doctrines and customs of the church could be easily imported into the Scripture, there- by securing divine authority for these later constituents of authority-religion. But if subsequent development could be thus biblicized, the Bible could also be so interpreted as to say nothing irrational in the opinion of those of other times and nations. The method, however, was not without its dangers to an authority-religion. Since the method is morally and scientifically groundless, it is also utterly law- less and subjective. In the course of history, diverse and even contradictory interpretations of Scripture were not only possible, but actual. One's own good pleasure in matters of faith could easily become the norm. Then one of the evils would return from which, by hypothesis, revelation was to rescue man, namely, trusting to his own understand- ing in spite of its folly and its sin. Hence the church must intervene. She must elaborate a criterion for interpretation. For the Romanist, the line of Scripture interpretation must be drawn according to the standard of Catholic faith and ecclesiastical tradition. The synod of the Council of Trent made it ecclesiastical law that no one was to trust his own sagacity in matters of faith and practice, but everyone must submit to ecclesiastical interpretation, since it belongs to the church alone to decide upon the true meaning.' The Bible, according to Bellarmin,^ must be interpreted by the same 1 Council of Trent, Sess. IV. 2 De verba Dei, 3 : 3. The Formation of Authority-Keligion 73 spirit which indited it ; but where was that Spirit to be found save in the official representatives, the assembly of bishops in unity with Christ of the Catholic church?' The Reformers^ rejected allegorical interpretation, but the Protestant confessions returned to it, in a measure. Socinians and Arminians, consistent with their Pelagian proclivities, would acknowledge nothing anti-rational as result of inter- pretation. For example, if dogmas like the incarnation and substitutionary atonement seem to be in the Scriptures, it is better to treat the passages in which they are found as figures of speech, and so be able to give them a difPerent interpreta- tion. But the Arminians asked: In cases where the meaning of Scripture is doubtful and opposite views are possible, how could one come to a decision except by preferring that mean- ino^ which contained no contradiction to sound reason ? This principle spread all the more as scientific culture and the so- called vulgar Aufkldrung increased. The principle, if not expressed, was implied and used by both supernaturalists and rationalists; for at this time the difference between the two was only one of degree; i. e., the degree of subjectivity in the interpretation of the Scriptures. At this time two 1 There is a movement — certainly in France and Germany — within Catholicism to effect a reconciliation between the church and the scientific views of the present. But the gulf between the spirit of modern science and the spirit of Catholicism is greater than these liberals would think. Between the principle of free investigation — indispensable to science, even to biblical science — and the principle of an absolute doctrinal authority — indispensable to Catholicism, even to liberal Catholicism^ yawns an unbridgeable gulf. For him who acknowledges an absolute doctrinal authority there is no region in which, directly or indirectly, the effects of canonical decisions do not make their official and meddlesome incursions. But since Protes- tant orthodoxy likewise recognizes an infallible authority, what is true of Catholicism in this particular is true of it — the principle is the same — and all efforts to conceal or "sugar-coat" that principle do not mitigate or excuse its moral and scientific offensiveness. No evasion is possible : either free investigation or infallible doc- trinal authority ; the opposition in principle is an exclusive opposition. Moreover, by virtue of their principle itself. Catholic and Protestant orthodoxy cannot change. They can only triumph or — go down. 2 Rejecting authority of church and of reason, the Protestants began to say that the Scriptures are self-interpreting. But this is only a figure of speech. On the one hand, the Scriptures can be only object of interpretation; on the other, possibly criterion ; but the interpreter is the human mind- 74 The Finality of the Cheistian Religion scholars, Ernesti and Semler, did much to advance hermeneu- tics, and yet they found it expedient to seek some connecting link between the real meaning of biblical writers and the meaning that interpreters in ecclesiastical interests had found in them. It amounted to a return of the allegorical method in the following form : the sacred writer, or the person whose words he reports, said something, but he should have said something else; moreover, he would have said some- thing else had the people of that early day been as^ enlightened as modern interpreters. But since he did not, he had to adapt himself to the prepossessions of his contempo- raries. As in Origen's day it was allegory, so now it is accommodation which transforms biblical ideas into the pure gold of rational religious concepts. God gave pure truth to the writers; they knew it to be such, but they veiled or modified it — adapted it in some way to fit the condition and culture of the constituency. At this point great Spinoza comes into the development.' Much of the Bible, he says, has as little authority for us as it had for Jesus and his apostles. In his rationalistic way he excluded all thought of demons and angels as unreal. Moreover, precisely the teaching ignored or excluded by the hypothesis of accommo- dation had been set forth in the most detailed and serious manner, and most frequently, by Jesus and the apostles, and hence they must have acted against their own ends to have used such a method.^ He also called attention to the unethical element in the principle of accommodation. Besides, how was one to know where there was accommodation and where there was not? There was no way but to assume it. But what basis was there for the assumption, since all men pay tribute to their times, that is, are historically conditioned ? And now a great change comes over the theory of iSee his theologico-political tractate, chap. 3. "^E.g., Matt. 13 : 39 ; chaps. 24, 25 ; Luke 10 : 18 ; Rom. 3 : 2.'5 ; 1 Cor., chap. 15 ; 1 Thess. 4:13 ff. The Formation of Authority-Religion 75 accommodation in view of these considerations. Con- scious accommodation was transformed into unconscious accommodation. Instead of the writers' adaptation to their times, they shared in the ideas of their time.' The upshot was two parties. One said: "This I cannot believe; there- fore the biblical writer did not say it ; hence the interpreta- tion is not binding upon the interpreter, either religiously, or dogmatically, or ecclesiastically." Another — e. g., Spinoza — said that it was perverse to presuppose the absolute divinity of the Scriptures as a principle of interpretion ; that it was one thing to investigate the minds of the prophets, another to investigate the mind of God. But since that old day, the theologian adds: Historical interpretation, the alone scientific, can yield only historical results; but since, for science, the historical is the relative, the outcome for author- ity-religion is manifest. The absolute biblical revelation is relativized by interpretation. The alternative is to return to an infallible book, infallibly interpreted, and infallibly appropriated.^ iSee ScHLEiEEMACHEE, Glaubeiislehre, Vol. I, pp. 224, 223. 2 In recent times there is a final form of the theory of accommodation, called neither conscious nor unconscious, but the exercise of the pedagogic sense. What, for example, seems exaggeration in the Scriptures is there for pedagogic purposes. It must be pointed out, however, that we have here the same old presupposition of an infallible book, and that we must approach it with that prepossession and appropriate hypothesis. CHAPTER IV DISSOLUTION OF AUTHORITY -KELIGION 1. The consistent conception of the supernatural divinity of the Sacred Scriptures, from the point of view of authority- religion, was presented in the last chapter. The canonical books of the Scriptures, identical with the concept "Word of God," were immediately referred to the sole activity of the Holy Spirit as their real author, whom the human writers of the separate writings served as passive instruments, so that the fides humana, based on their own human relation to the content of their writings, is of but small importance compared with the fides divina, based on the testimonium S2:)iritus scmcti. As already indicated, this ecclesiastical doctrine of inspiration was gradually developed indeed, but with inner consequentialness and necessity. As soon as the Scriptures were declared to be the sole sure source of infor- mation concerning the saving revelation of God, and there- by the sole authority for the knowledge which faith possesses, it was but a simple consequence of the Protestant principle that, by means of the most rigid doctrine of inspiration which the mechanical view of the world of the seventeenth century could render congenial. Scripture and Word of God should be immediately and completely identified. The conclusion which this necessitates is simple enough. No human author- ity claiming unconditional validity to come in between man and God — this is the Protestant principle. The Sacred Scripture is the sole source of the knowledge of salvation — ■ this was the historically necessary concrete apprehension of the elder Protestant formal principle. Therefore the Scrip- tures must be conceived as immediately divine, God as their sole author, and any actually human mediation of their con- 76 Dissolution of Authority-Religion 77 struction must be excluded. So long as the two premises exist, the rigid doctrine of inspiration is the only correct conclusion. For the rest, as estimated above, Protestant dogmatics — in opposition to the Catholic affirmation that the Scriptures were authenticated by the church, therefore de- pendent on the recognition of the latter — appealed to the inner witness of the Holy Spirit as immediate divine authen- tication, in the hearts of believers, of the supernatural divin- ity of the Sacred Scriptures. Here, then, is the point at which criticism must set in. The question could not fail to arise: How is that inner witness to be recognized as divine and infallible? This con- viction that the Spirit witnesses to the immediate divinity of the Bible as a whole, how can one know that it is a conviction produced by the divine Spirit, and not rather by one's own opinion or imagination — by what infallible mark or rule can this be settled? This is the shape the question took for the Arminians. Biblical proof-texts, quite apart from the ques- tion whether they are correctly interpreted or not, can prove nothing here, where the question is as to the supernatural divinity of the Scriptures, and therefore of the proof-texts themselves. It would be a manifest circle to hold, on the authority of the Bible, that a certain inner excitation is the work of the Spirit, and then to hold that the Bible is divine on the authority of that inner excitation. Besides, the Jews and Mohammedans have the same abstract right to appeal to the inner witness of the Spirit which declares to them that some of these books are not divine. The same inner witness to his Bible which the Christian thinks he perceives, speaks in the Turk as affirming and approving his Koran — a proof that it is only the common prepossession which everyone has imbibed from his childhood for the sacred books of his reli- gion. So English Deists urged. Reimarus said : Let us suppose that a purely rational, suppositiouless man has never heard of the Bible, Koran, or sacred books. Now put the 78 The Finality of the Christian Religion Bible into his hands, and, instead of detecting an inner witness to its absolute divinity, he would recognize specifically different ele- ments in it, parts of which were extremely human. ^ If the opinion that this voice of God speaks in the heart of the Bible-reader arises from defective knowledge^ of the human spirit and its emotions, the supposed detection of such a voice must be abandoned entirely with increasing psychological investigation. The theologian Michaelis wrote : I must honestly say that, firmly as I am convinced of the truths of revelation, I have never in my life detected such a witness of the Holy Spirit. And so what one formerly called the supernatural witness of the Holy Spirit came to be apprehended by the modern, even supernatujalistic, theologian as the spiritual, that is, the ethico-religious, energizing of one's nature, which the Christian feels in the use of the Scriptures. But thus conceived this tes- timony proves, not the divine dignity, but the high human worth of the Scriptures.^ In sum: Authority-religion affirms the inerrancy of the Sacred Scriptures on the assumption that their origin is due to inspiration. But its doctrine of inspiration rests ultimately upon the testimonium spiritus sancti internum. It is in regard to this basis that the critical questions first arise : Is the entire Bible embraced in this inner witness of the Holy Spirit ? Does such testimony relate to the assumed mode of the origin of the Sacred Scriptures ? Does this doctrine 1 Fragmenta, p. 39. 2Ancient psychology survived still, according to which manifestations of the mysterious inner life of the soul, mental processes, were the manifestations of some external agent. In ancient times "it was not we ourselves, but a demon, an angel, or a spirit that was the efHcient cause; sometimes this agent is conceived of as in- timately connected with our soul, but at others he is an entirely extraneous being. Here we have the origin of the conception, not only of demoniacal possession, but of that of the Holy Spirit."— Weenle, Beginnings of Christianity, Vol. I, p. 6. 3 Dogmatik, p. 92. While the above considerations are decisive against the theory in question, they must not be misunderstood and misapplied. That many single utterances and whole connections of thought of the Sacred Scripture are immediately ailecting and convincing for a pious heart and moral conscience — this is the testimony of all Christians. But this must not be confounded with the argu- ment criticised above, which is that the Holy Spirit bears immediate testimony to the supernatural divinity of the book as a whole. Dissolution of Authority-Religion 79 «,ccord with the actual character of these Scriptures, and with the express declarations of their human authors ? From interrogation of the Christian consciousness in regard to this matter, as well as from an examination of the historic and literary facts, it becomes clear that an affirmative answer cannot be given to these questions. Is faith in the divinity of the Bible, then, to be given up ? By no means, cry the Socinians and Arminians. Apart from the outer witness of the church and the inner witness of the Spirit, and more surely than by both, the supernatural divinity of the biblical books is to be proved by their genuineness, and the truth of their doctrines is to be proved by the accuracy of biblical history ; in a word, the Jides divina is to be proved by the fides humana. If, as the evangelists narrate, Christ did so many deeds which transcend the limits of nature and human nature, and if he rose from the dead, then it follows that everything that he taught must be true and divine; for God would not have given him this power had he taught untruth. The divine purpose of the miracles was to confirm all that Jesus taught. What is thus true of Jesus was true of the apostles as well, and on this account their teaching must likewise be authority for us. But now the accuracy of the biblical narratives, especially of the evangelical narratives, is capable of thorough proof. The evangelists, for example, could and would tell the truth. They could, for they were eye- and ear -witnesses of the events which they narrate; or else were companions of those that were; or else, like Paul, had direct revelation which took the place of personal intercourse with Jesus. Therefore, if their writings are not accurate and trustworthy, no writings of antiquity can be thought of as true. But they would tell the truth, and only the truth. For one thing, the religion they propagated forbade lying. For another thing, what motive could they have had for lying ? And, still 80 The Finality of the Christian Eeligion further, their religion was offensive to the people they sought to win; this would not have been the case had they lied, for in that case they would have made the religion attractive. And, besides all this, even if they had set out to lie, they could not have invented such stories as the miraculous birth, the resurrection, and the healing with a word.' In a word, the contention with which we have now to do in this form of the argument is that the evidence proves historicity, and that historicity proves the supernatural divinity of the Book. Here, then, is the new ground upon which was built the supernatural divinity of the book-religion. But, strange to say, the very first authors of this method of proof were not quite sure that the new ground was firm. Faustus Socinus put the main stress on the resurrection of Jesus, yet he him- self raises the question whether the resurrection stories might not be accounted for from internal causes. Again, while he finds Mark entirely trustworthy — since Mark was a com- panion of Peter — still he says he is glad Mark does not give any doctrines of importance which do not belong to Matthew and John, And while Episcopius doubts the genuineness of no single book of the New Testament, he yet finds it worth while to assume that only one is genuine. He proposes to found dogmatic faith on historical faith, and yet knows that only probability belongs to the latter. It is in this connection that, much later, Lessing's inci- sive argumentation powerfully influenced the development. Lessing distinguished between historical belief and religious faith, an epoch-making distinction. The reports which we have of ancient predictions and miracles can at best be no more reliable than it is possible for historical truths to be ; and if historical truths cannot be demonstrated, neither must they be believed in as firmly as demonstrated truths. But if they are only so reliable, why does one make them 1 Thus Socinus and Limborch. Dissolution of Authority-Religion 81 infinitely more reliable in using them ? Because, he answers, one builds on them quite other and more things than one is warranted in building on truths which are only historically proved. If no historical truth can be demonstrated, then nothing can be demonstrated through historical truths. That is (Lessing's famous saying): "Accidental truths of history can never become proof of necessary truths of reason." Lessing does not deny that prophecies were fulfilled in Christ, that Christ did miracles; he denied that miracles could be proved, since their truth had ceased to be proved by present miracles ; he denied that they could and should obligate him to the least faith in Christ's teach- ings, since they are nothing but reports of miracles. He accepted these teachings on other grounds. Moreover, what is it to hold an historical proposition for true; to believe an historical truth ? Is it in any least particle anything other than to allow this proposition, this truth, validity; to have nothing to urge against it ? Is it to build another historical truth thereon, to deduce another historical truth therefrom ? Suppose — -so Lessing continues — I have nothing to urge historically against the proposition that Christ raised the dead; must I on that account hold that God had a Son, consubstantial with himself ? What is the connection between my inability to urge anything worth while against the witness to the former and my obligation to believe some- thing against which my reason rebels ? Because I have nothing to urge historically against Christ's own resurrec- tion, must I therefore hold that just this risen Christ was the Son of God ? One must not leap from historical truths into an entirely different class of truths. But it may be said that Christ, who raised the dead and was himself raised, himself declared that God has a Son of the same essence, and that he is that Son. Good ; but that Christ said this is, alas, no more than historically certain. But do you pursue 82 Try. Finality of the Christian Keligion me furtL ji and say: "Oh, but tLis is more than historically certain, for inspired historians who cannot err vouch for it." Alas, alas, it is only historically certain that these historians were inspired and could not err! "This, this, is the nasty broad ditch over which I cannot bound, often and earnestly as I have made the leap. If anyone can help me, let him do it, I beseech him." ^ Lessing's contention, to recapitulate, is then that, grant- ing the historical character of the biblical books, they could never give more than extreme probability, but that religious faith requires certainty. He recognizes — and it is of abid- ing and momentous importance — the heterogeneity of his- toric belief and religious faith. " When will one cease to hang nothing less than all eternity on a spider's thread?" he cries. Because no trustworthy witness can be produced against a miracle, to require a change in all our metaphysical and moral concepts, and in fundamental ideas of the nature of deity — this, according to Lessing, is a Mera/Sacri? et? dXXo ^evo In leaving this survey, it may be well to signalize the net I results: (a) In authority-religion the Bible is an effect to ' be referred to miraculous divine causalities. The eighteenth- century criticism of deist, rationalist, and mystic, and the historico-critical movement of the nineteenth century, are decisive against this foundation of the value of the Bible. The Bible was not "automatically composed," is due rather to the "free caprice of the writers," and exhibits scientific and historic errors, expresses local and personal passions — in a word, has all the marks of a deliberate human composi- tion. (6) From a history of the origin and fixation of the canon, it is clear that the a priori declaration of the coin- cidence of canonicalness and immediate divineness has no Dissolution of Authority-Religion 113 historical support. From both points of view, the way the Bible came about, its constitution, origin, and history, wit- ness against its immediate miraculous derivation as set forth by authority-religion. Today we must get at the importance, meaning, and significance of the Bible in some other way. Its revelation-value must be based on its record of the inner experiences of great-souled persons wrestling with the crises of their fate. 3. The dissolution of the Protestant apologetic which appealed to prophecy defined as prediction, in order to prove the immediate supernatural derivation of the Bible, may be considered to be complete. In the early Christian centuries the orthodox church declared that the New Testament was an infallible inter- preter of Old Testament utterances. But from Justin's Dialogue with Trypho and Origen's Against Celsus it is evi- dent that proofs from prophecy so viewed were questioned, not only by heathen who may have lacked proper appercep- tion for understanding the Old Testament, but also by Jews who thought that the Christians gave an interpretation to prophecies that was contrary to their original meaning. The already often-mentioned allegorical method of interpretation, like a parallelogram of forces, served to resolve such in- equalities. But with the collapse of the method the solution was discredited. In early Protestantism a new method obtained, by which the New Testament interpretation of Old Testament pas- sages was harmonized with the local meaning of those pas- sages. The hypothesis that such passages had a double meaning — the one immediate, the other remote — was resort- ed to. It was assumed that the psychological basis of this hypothesis was a dual consciousness on the part of the Old Testament writers. But in opposition to this hypothesis it was pointed out, first, that certain New Testament quotations 114 The Finality of the Christian Keligion expressly exclude the immediate meaning; and, secondly, that the so-called dual consciousness was psychologically improbable, that it were better for theologians to assume but one human consciousness and discard so vulnerable an hypoth- esis. Still the position was not immediately abandoned. It survived in the contention that the prophet had a glim- mer of the more remote higher meaning of the utterances along with the immediate sense and purpose. To this modi- fied assumption of the double meaning of prophecies, Socin- ians and Arminians added another rule, which had to do with the word "that it might be fulfilled" — holding that these words only indicate that there is a similarity in the passages, or that the Old Testament passage admits of application to the New Testament event, not exactly that it predicts that event. The German rationalists, with their usual vigor, urged that the Old Testament contained no prophecies, i. e., defi- nite predictions concerning Jesus Christ, no description of the life, vocation, sufferings, death, and resurrection of Jesus ; but that all the prophetic descriptions of the Messiah and messianic kingdom referred to the historical and human, to be explained without resort to miraculous prevision. It was not uniformly said — there were exceptions — that Jesus and the apostles erroneously interpreted the Old Testament prophecies contrary to their original meaning. Rather, it was said that they did not introduce these passages or prophecies, but applied them freely as we now apply passages of Scrip- ture to persons and events without thinking that the pas- sages had the reference which we give them; i. e., the Old Testament was used for purposes of edification. But the rationalists were forced by their opponents to face the question as to whether Jesus' own references to his death and resurrection were mere edificatory passages. It was said that only violent interpretation can ignore prediction here. Dissolution of Authority-Religion 115 The rationalists made a twofold reply: first, the hypothesis that Jesus, as soon as he grew clear as to his duty and com- prehended the historical situation, foresaw the empirical inevitability of his death, and that thus no miraculous super- naturalism is required to explain his forebodings ; or, secondly, such narratives are a New Testament case of vaticinia post eventum. And it must be granted that either of these "hypotheses is sufficient to cast a fatal doubt upon the argu- ment from predictive prophecy as employed in the religion of authority. The truth seems to be that, owing to the histori- cal necessity of vindicating the new religion by appeal to the traditional canonical authority, apologists had to find proof in the Old Testament that the life and works of Jesus were messianic, or else have no proof at all that would meet the case ; and so they culled from the Old Testament those passages that appeared to have messianic reference. To sum up: At first men thought that "prophecy" referred to the distant future and not at all to the present. Then they attributed a dual consciousness to the writer's mind. Afterward they made a typical interpretation of the prophecies. Lastly they reversed their first position and held that the prophecies referred to the present and not to the future. It was now incumbent upon them to give a psychological explanation of the New Testament usage of Old Testament passages. Briefly expressed, the develop- ment ran through the following stages: prophecy may have (a) literal reference to the future; (6) typical reference to the future; (c) dual reference to the present and the future; (d) no reference to the future. 4. The evidential value of miracles is the mainstay of authority-religion. Instead of being naturally or historically or psychologically mediated, miraculous events are due to immediate particular volitions of Deity' by virtue of which 1 The so-called "religious" miracle of the Eitschlians does not have any place in this historical discassioa. 116 The Finality of the Christian Religion there are causes without their usual effects, or effects without their usual causes- — metaphysical miracle. Hence the writ- ings, the rule of faith and practice, in which the miraculous narratives are imbedded, are likewise traceable to divine causality; but, if so, are infallible and divinely authori- tative. This doctrine of miracles as means of proof of the divinity of Christianity remained unshaken in the church down to modern times. Not that it enjoyed immunity from attack. The opponents of Jesus said that he did miracles by the help of demonic powers. In the early centuries, when this reproach was repeated, the church fathers met it by pointing to the moral character and teaching of Jesus, which were unthinkable were he in league with the devil. But, logically, there is something suspicious in this argument, inasmuch as it is said both that the miracles proved the teachings divine and that the teachings proved the miracles divine. This de- fect in the proof from miracles, however, was attributed to those miracles which were capable of producing only a fides humana, while the fides divina could be effectuated only by the inner witness of the Spirit. The lack of cogency of this proof from the inner witness has been set forth in a previous connection. But those who saw this put all the greater stress upon the proof from miracles, while restrict- ing the miraculous to the fewest possible cases. Indeed, there have ever been church teachers who have degraded biblical miracles, partly, to the great miracle of nature as a whole; partly, to the moral effects of Christianity. But whether Philo declared that the miracles of Moses were child's play as compared with the truly great miracle of creation ; or Augustine and Luther reproached the obtuseness of the multitude who wonder only at the miraculous; or Luther depreciated nature miracle in favor of Spirit miracle — in all these expressions neither the possibility, nor the Dissolution of Authoeity-Religion 117 reality, nor the cogency of miracle as proof, was assailed. Even Calvin made much of the proof from miracles, though he harshly criticised the Lutherans for their doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ, saying that they did not feel sure of omnipotence unless they tore the whole fabric of nature into pieces by a self-made miracle/ It was Spinoza who first gave the concept of miracles a blow which resounded first in England among the deists, then in Germany, and which had great influence on all the sub- sequent development of theology. It may be said that there has been a strained relation ever since, as regards the miracu- lous, between philosophy and ecclesiastical Christianity. A reproduction of his argument follows. To begin with, the conception of God as Absolute does not comport with the idea of single ads which the Absolute was said to perform in the course of time.^ This consideration was urged against the thinkableness of miracles. For the rest, Spinoza's investigation concerning miracles fell into two parts, philo- sophical and exegetical. The former investigated the possi- bility and demonstrative power of the miraculous; the latter, the reality of miracles. As to the possibility of miracles, there were two questions: Is a miracle compatible with the nature of God in his relation to nature ? Can a miracle be known by man as miracle ? The former concerns the objective, the latter the subjective, possibility of miracles. The former, according to Spinoza, can be affirmed only by him who puts God and nature in juxtaposition as two sepa- rate substances, in such a way that the activity of the one i/ns<., IV, 17, 25. 2 Leibnitz thought that he found an essential alleviation of the conceivability of miracles by making higher beings, e. g., angels, instead of God, the authors of miracles in most cases. By virtue of their exaltation above nature, they could produce results in nature that could not be explained from nature's own forces. Moreover, being finite beings, their agency did not contradict the idea of the con- summation of single acts (Theodicee, III, 249J. Of course, this uncritically assumes the existence of angels. 118 The Finality of the Christian Religion excludes that of the other. If the laws of nature are some- thing in themselves, and the act of the Divine will is some- thing different therefrom, then, since one such act of will originally posited the laws of nature, another such act can wholly or partially suspend those laws. But, according to Spinoza, God and nature are not two, but one. "Deus sive substantia sive natura.'" The laws of nature are the will of God in independent actualization. Therefore an occur- rence contravening the laws of nature contradicts the will of God. To affirm that God does something contrary to the laws of nature is tantamount to affirming that he does some- thing contrary to his own nature. The subterfuge of the distinction between the supernatural and the contra- or anti-natural falls away of itself from this point of view. For if nature, as the self-realization of the Divine Being, is homogeneous with the latter, then it is infi- nite, and, if infinite, there can be nothing apart from it nor above it. This consideration aside, if by hypothesis miracle occurs in nature, but not according to the laws of nature, then the otherwise universal validity and operation of those laws are interrupted in the case of miracle. But this inter- ruption of inviolable order is in contradiction of that order. Thus, since nothing occurs in nature save according to its laws, it follows that the term "miracle" is to be understood only relatively; i. e., with reference to the opinions of men. It designates a phenomenon whose natural causes we do not know. Hence miracle is subjective. How, now, psychologi- cally, does it come to be thought of as objective ? There are 1 still, this expression must be interpreted in the light of the following : " The supposition of some that I endeavor to prove .... the unity of God and nature (meaning by the latter a certain mass or corporeal matter), is wholly erroneous." — Spinoza to Oldenberg, Letter XXI. Underlying Spinoza's theory of miracles is his religious philosophy, of which this same letter gives fine summary: "I hold that God is of all things the cause immanent, as the phrase is, not transeunt. I say that all things are in God and move in God, thus agreeing with Paul, and, perhaps, with all the ancient philosophers, though the phraseology may be different; I will even venture to affirm that I agree with all the ancient Hebrews, in so far as one may judge from their traditions, though these are in many ways corrupted." Dissolution of Authority-Religion 119 three stages: First, I do not know that the phenomenon in question has a natural cause ; secondly, the phenomenon in question does not have a natural cause; thirdly, the imme- diate cause of the phenomenon is God. Does this carry con- viction with it? Suppose that there is sense in the argu- ment that a phenomenon which does not have a natural cause must be produced of God; then everyone who denies the natural causation of a phenomenon must know the whole scope of causation ; otherwise there would remain the possi- bility that the given phenomenon had had a natural force unknown to us as a cause. Since now no one can safely claim such a comprehensive natural knowledge, miracle, even if it were objective, could never be certainly known by us as such. "You seem to many to take away the authority and value of miracles, whereby alone, as nearly all Christians believe, the certainty of the divine revelation can be established," writes Oldenberg to Spinoza. "As regards miracles, I am of the opinion that the revelation of God can be established only by the wisdom of the doctrine, not by miracles, or, iiL other words, by ignorance," replies Spinoza. " In what sense^ do you take miracles and ignorance to be synonymous and. equivalent terms?" inquires Oldenberg again. I have taken miracles and ignorance as equivalent terms because those who endeavor to establish the truth of religion by means of miracles seek to prove the obscure by what is more obscure and completely unknown, thus introducing a new sort of argument, the reduction, not to the absurd, as the phrase is, but to ignorance Do we possess sufficient knowledge of nature as to be able to lay down the limits of its force and power, or to say that a given thing surpasses that power? No one could go so far without arrogance. We may, therefore, without presumption, explain miracles as far as possible by natural causes. When we cannot explain them, nor even prove their impossibility, we may well suspend our judgment about them, and establish religion, as I have said, solely by the wisdom of its doctrines.' 1 Letters XX-XXIII. 120 The Finality of the Christian Religion As result of this philosophical investigation, Spinoza carried over into the exegetical investigation the objective as well as the subjective impossibility of miracles, together with their incapacity to prove the immediate divinity of the biblical tradition in which they were imbedded. According to him, everything narrated in the Scriptures must have occurred naturally or not at all. In this connection, Spinoza has the merit of being among the first to show that, accord- ing to the mode of speech of the Hebrews and its popular end, the Bible referred natural or historical phenomena immediately to God as first and universal cause, without intending thereby to exclude particular middle causes.* Summing up, to the questions, Can miracles occur? Can they be known as such? Can a miracle prove the divinity of revelation? Are the biblical narratives to be understood as necessarily involving miracles? — Spinoza gave a negative answer. The religion of authority, or traditionalism, treas- ures tradition only on the basis of its origin, instead of its worth, its serviceableness in the spiritual development of humanity — and stays it on authority; and, in doing so, not only forfeits its availability, but also makes any independent investigation of truth impossible. Without agreeing with Spinoza's affirmation of the impossibility of miracle — ^a necessity of his philosophic system — the appreciation of the biblical tradition on the basis, not of its miraculous origin, but of its historical and psychological function, to which Spinoza pointed two hundred and fifty years ago, is at once the overthrow in principle of authority-religion and a support of the religion of personality. And the supersession of his rationalism by our pragmatism but supplies the appropriate philosophical presupposition to his own conclusions in this field. i£. g., 1 Sam. 9: 15, 16: " God sent Saul to Samuel." ButSaul's going to Samuel ■was due, according to the narrative, to tlie search for his father's asses. See Gen. 9:3; Pss. 104: 4,5; 147: 15, 18; etc. Dissolution of Authority-Religion 121 Hume put the question as follows: Can the biblical nar- ratives— nay, any narratives — make a miracle — /. e.^ a deviation from the course of nature — credible? If Spinoza attacked the possibility and efficacy of miracle on the basis of certain philosophical presuppositions, Hume attacked the credibility of miracle on the ground that human testimony is inadequate to accredit such occurrence. The following is an outline of his argument: We put confidence in the tes- timony of historical writers because we are in the habit of finding that their statements agree with the facts. But this rule, like all others, is not without its exceptions. Ever according to the character, partly of the statements, partly of the supposed facts, there are degrees of deviation of state- ments from facts, consequently degrees of the credibility of statements. Thus the statements of but a few, or contra- dictory statements of many, would be more frequently unreli- able than what several men had said harmoniously. But, with the most desirable character of the witness, it still depends upon the nature of the facts witnessed whether we can believe the witness or not — that is, the incredibility of a given fact is enough to weaken the credibility of an other- wise reliable man. This is the case even if the fact lies within the limits of the natural. What if the accredited fact be a miracle ? A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, and since a fixed, exceptionless experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle which is drawn from this behavior of the supposed fact is as complete as possible from experience. What kind of character must a witness have to authenticate such an occurrence as that wine was drawn from a jar in which there was only water? He must belong to a class of witnesses from which no deception or delusion ever comes. In other words, the falseness of the witness must be a greater miracle than the fact accredited by him. But what human witness offers such certainty? In 122 The Finality of the Christian Keligion all history we find no miracle which was (a) attested by a sufficient number [b] of sufficiently expert persons to exclude the possibility of self-deception, who (c) would be so honest that an intentional deception would be unthinkable. Thus the grounds of the truth of miraculous narratives are insufficient. But, to take a step farther, there are reasons which tell against the truth. So many examples of invented miracles and prophesyings which have been unmasked as deceptions in all ages, either by clear proof or by reveal- ing their discrepancy, prove sufficiently the strong bent of the human race to the miraculous and the extraordinary, and should make us distrustful toward all narratives of this kind. Finally, we have no witness to a miracle against which a bulk of counter-evidence may not be adduced. Besides, miracles are said to occur in every religion, as proof of the exclusive divinity of that religion. Moreover, there are non-biblical miracles which exceed biblical ones in documentariness and credibility. The result of all these considerations is, accord- ing to Hume, that no human witness for miracles of any kind rises to probability, much less to historical certainty. Even supposing there were historical certainty, there still remains the character of the miraculous event opposing the historic evidence. Therefore we can assume as a principle that no human witness suffices to prove a miracle and to make it a sure basis of a religious system.' It is significant that Kant^ introduces his conception and criticism of miracle in connection with his discussion of redemptive faith. What gives to the life of Jesus its redeem- ing power ? he asks. It is simply and only his good will — that will which, by its moral perfection, endures victoriously the temptation of the world and suffering till death. Posit the redeeming power in anything other than the moral will, and 1 Human Understanding, chap, x, and Essay on Miracles, etc. ^Religioti innerhalb der blossen Vernunft, Zweites Stuck, Abschnitt II. Dissolution of Authority-Religion 123 redemption and the "good principle" cease to be an object of rational faith. That other power, which is not moral will and good disposition, and yet which is said to be valid either as condition or as criterion of a life that redeems, is a super- natural, wonder-working power. In that case redemptive faith is based on faith in miracle, which Christ himself stigmatized and rejected: "Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe." Miracle as an outer sign does not belong to moral faith, but to a religion which consists in outer signs, in ceremonies, and in cultus. The presence of God is announced by means of an external, sensible fact; i. e., a miracle. Faith in miracle is explained by the char- acter of this kind of religion. Historical development avoids leaps, requires steady transition in its external course. If, now, there shall be an end to religion of mere cultus and observance, and the birth of a religion founded in spirit and truth, then the survival of faith in miracles in the beginnings of such religion will be psychologically the redemption-faith, and the miracle-faith may be combined in this historical transition. But it is a different matter when miracle-faith is dogmati- cally made the basis of redemption-faith, the wonder-working power a condition of the redeeming power. Proportion- ately, faith in redemption loses its practical and truly religious importance when it is based on faith in miracles. The object of the miracle-faith is an external fact; but faith in a fact [Begebenheit) is not religious, but historical. Mir- acle is a siipcrnatui'al affair occurring in contradiction to natural laws, through whose temporary abrogation alone it is possible. An outer fact is knowable only through outer experience; only facts of a natural-legal character can be experienced; natural causality is the condition of all outer experience. Consequently there is no experience of miracle. Whether miracle be possible or not, our experience of miracle 124: The Finality of the Christian Religion is not possible. Equally impossible is it for an outer occur- rence to have redeeming power. It would be redemption by magic for an occurrence independently of me and my disposition to redeem me! Miracle-faith is not 7-eligious. A theistic miracle would be an act of God in violation of the natural order of things. Now, it is only through the order of nature that we can form an idea of the divine mode of operation. If, however, there be divine activities which disrupt and abrogate the natural order of things, we can then form no idea any longer of the divine agencies. Theistic miracle annuls the possibility of a theistic idea, and there- with itself as well. But in that case theistic miracle can no longer be distinguished from demonic, since the criterion of evaluation is gone. Miracles are possible only in violation of natural laws. The latter admits of no exception. They are valid without exception, or not at all. If there be miracle, there are no natural laws, therefore no natural science, no theoretical knowledge. Thus Kant opposed miracles in behalf both of the religious and of the scientific interest. Brief mention may now be made of how subsequent time sought partly to work out the criticisms by Spinoza, Hume, and Kant still further, and partly to limit their criticism. a) Reflection reverted to the vindication of the possibility of miracle. The efPort to renew, despite Spinoza, the dis- tinction between the supernatural and the anti- or contra- natural, was innocuous. More significance is to be attached to the school of Schelling and Hegel, according to which the possibility of miracle was sought to be proved from the rela- tion of spirit to nature, and from that of the finite spirit to the absolute. What is willed in the spirit of truth and purity is willed in the Spirit of God, and it is only a postu- late of reason that nature does not strive against such a will. Therefore Christ was a worker of miracles, and the time of Dissolution of Authoeity-Religion 125 his work on earth was a time of signs and wonders. But Strauss replied that the Divine Will is the existence and persistence of the laws of nature, and that therefore a human will at one with the divine would obey those laws, and abstain from every irruption into nature which varied from the ordered human activity in nature. According to another Hegelian modification, miracle is a determination of nature by Spirit in such a way that nature is able to offer no oppo- sition to the will of the Spirit. Since nature is not the ground of its own self, but Spirit is the principle of its becoming, nature is also incapable of being a limit to Spirit. This power was fully embodied in Christ, since through the purity of his will he was free from nature as was no other man. The greater miracle was not his foregoing the use of means, but his using them ; for in using means and media- tions he did not give free course to a mode of action which was alone natural to his supernatural character. But it was easy for Strauss to point out that all this leads to absurdities. It cannot do otherwise if one seeks to deduce concrete events or facts from a concept so indefinite as the power of Spirit over nature. As Hegel's philosophy of art could have been written without his having ever seen a single creation of the artistic genius, so the Hegelian doctrine of miracles supposes no acquaintance with miraculous stories. To be sure, Spirit has power over nature, but not the Spirit that desires to make inroads into nature, to fly, or to walk on water; but that Spirit which moves quietly in nature as nature's law and formative impulse; that Spirit which becomes lord of nature, not by magic, but by patient toil as understanding and will. HegeFs view of miracle is as if one were not satisfied with eating cherries, pears, apples, but wanted to eat fruit as such I h) Next, the knowability of miracle, which Kant denied, was re-examined by naturalists and rationalists, supplying nothing new, however. To be sure, the defenders of mira- 126 The Finality of the Christian Religion cles appealed to the limitedness of human knowledge as a defense, while Spinoza had inferred the unknowability of miracles therefrom. Centuries ago the power and utility of steam, as known today, would have seemed unbelievable. According to the principle of skeptical criticism, it would have once been declared an impossibility for ships to run without rudder and sail. Similarly, at the time of Jesus things happened which appear now to be impossibilities. Kant had already anticipated this argument, and character- ized it as juggling. It is required that the laws of the miraculous shall be made known as accurately as the laws of steam and electricity, before we validate the comparison. c) As to the reality of miracles, the Catholic miracles were so exaggerated and incredible that Protestants were led to deny the continuance of miracles in Christianity after the apostolic age. But it was urged that the Protestant point was not well taken ; for, if miracles are possible once, they are possible always. Granted! was the reply; but miracle was needed at the beginning of Christianity, not for its propaga- tion through the centuries. To which the rejoinder was: What greater need than a miracle now to settle the attack of science and philosophy against miracle ? Finally, Paulus in his naturalistic explanation of the gospel narratives was continuous with Spinoza's thought of the silence of the Bible concerning middle or secondary causes. Those who aban- doned miraculous supernaturalism had recourse to one of two alternatives: (1) explanation by insertion of the natural causes — rationalism; or (2), since this was difficult with re- gard to so distant a past, the mythical and legendary hypoth- esis. The latter, having been efPectively employed by Nie- buhr in secular history, and having already served a good turn in the explanation of non-Christian religions in such a way as to set aside the idea of deception as a source of those religions, came at length to be adopted, by those who made Dissolution of Authority-Religion 127 themselves competent to have an opinion on the subject, as that hypothesis which best satisfied at once the intellectual and the religious interests of the human spirit. According to this point of view, the miraculous story is not at first the cause, but the product or expression, of faith — not the faith of a single individual, but the collective faith of a community. Thus, on the one hand, the myth is no longer, as in antique thought, held to be historical reality, but, on the other, it is not held to be illusion and superstition — this would be a coarse error, pardonable in eighteenth-century rationalism, but not in the historically trained thought of modern science. It is precisely myths, and their concomitant rites in which mythical material is dramatically visualized, which, disen- gaged from their temporal form, and erected to a continuous process, everywhere became the most original and the most powerful mode of expression of the peculiar genius of every religion. As to the value of miracle for purposes of proof of the divinity of religion, Lessing's famous statement was made much of: "The accidental truths of history can never prove the eternal truths of reason." Lessing did not believe in the cogency of the argument from miracles. To him the spirit cannot be authenticated by the unspiritual ; for the spiritual is higher, and is self -authenticating. The self-authenticating authority of faith rendered proof unnecessary. To believe in miracle is not the same as to believe in Christ. One may believe in Christ without believing in miracles, and vice versa. So Lessing. Most recent thought surrenders miraculum, but retains mivabile. By the latter is meant, not supernatural powers, but natural powers of a higher order. But on this hypoth- esis all power of proof is likewise gone; for this is equivalent to denying miracle as an effect in nature caused by a divine power not in nature. Besides, even the higher order of 128 The Finality of the Christian Religion nature is still nature, and cannot authenticate a religious founder that is above nature. This is but a new device which apologists — or, rather, ecclesiastical diplomatists — have of explaining the miracles of the past. They invoke the action of laws as yet unknown which are supposed to have modified the course of the laws we at present know; that is, miracles are in violation of the laws which we know, but in harmony with the laws which we do not know. But how is it possible for them to know that miracles are in harmony with laws that we do not know? "At Cana Jesus took water to make wine, and on the hillside of Galilee he took the five loaves to make bread, just as in ten thousand vineyards today he is turning the moisture of the earth into the juice of the grape,, and in ten thousand fields is turning carbon into corn.'" Paulsen somewhere says that nonsense has one advantage in common with sense: you cannot refute it. True; yet it may be pointed out that, while this is an argument from analogy, it is a misfit. One might say that as moisture of the earth was turned into grape-juice in Galilee then, so it is moisture that makes grape-juice here and now; or, that as it was Jesus who turned moisture into grape-juice then, so it is he who does it now. Similarly, in case there was only water in the jar at one moment, while at the next wine was drawn from the jar by his power then, we might assume that the same phenomenon would recur today under the same conditions. But to argue that as Jesus turns qaoisture into grape-juice in the vineyard, so he turned water into wine in the jar, is to overlook the main items, which are the difference between the soil and the jar, the mediation of the grapevine, and the element of time, and the fact that the grape-juice in the grape is not wine^in a word, it is to overlook that there is no anal- ogy at all between what purports to be a result of particular immediate volition of Jesus, on the one hand, and the orderly 1 " The Word and Way," June 2, 1904 ; address by President A. H. Steong. Dissolution of Authority-Keligion 129 gradual processes of nature on the other. Moreover, the assertion that it is Jesus who turns the moisture of the earth into the juice of the grape not only assumes what is required to be proved, but has no warrant in Scripture, since he tells us that it is his Father' who does such things ; nor in reason, which stops with natural causation and the ultimate principle of unity underlying it. In general, the tacit syllogism of the distinofuished dogmatician and ecclesiastic is as follows : The kind of occurrence which certainly happens today could have happened in the past, since nature is uniform; miracles, witness what goes on in grapevines and cornstalks, occur today ; therefore miracles occurred in the past ; witness the turning of water into wine at Cana ! And yet we wonder that the intelligent public has lost confidence in its religious leaders. One more instance from the same address of this sort of apologetic must suffice: "The virgin birth of Christ may be an extreme instance of parthenogenesis, which Professor Loeb has demonstrated to take place in other than the lowest forms of life, and which he believes to be possible in all." Whether the phenomenon in question took place artificially or not the sentence does not make evident. The analogy would be very defective between artificial parthenogenesis due to the combination of elements by a scientific expert after long experimentation, and the virgin birth from which all laboratory agency was excluded. It is probably natural parthenogenesis the orator has in mind, in which case he but escapes one difficulty to fall into a greater. Such par- thenogenesis virtually means that the virgin is both father and mother of the child. The natural derivation of the child is manifestly as complete on this hypothesis as if there had been paternal mediation. But such explanation does violence to the narrative which refers the fatherly origin of Jesus 1 Matt. 6: 25-32, especially vs. 30. 130 The Finality of the Christian Eeligion immediately to the Holy Spirit; that is, the explanation denies the fact to be explained. His explanation of the miracle supersedes necessity of miracle, destroying its evi- dential value. How can natural parthenogenesis prove the supernatural genesis of Jesus ? And this leads to the formu- lation of the decisive objection to this whole point of view, namely, in order to save the fact it denies the principle, or vice versa. Besides, as already said, its naturalistic expla- nation of miracles annuls their evidential value for authority- religion. The net results of this long controversy over miracles may now be gathered up: (1) Spinoza fell into dogmatism when he affirmed the impossibility of miracles.' Still, to the scientific under- standing of the world and to the intellectual habitude super- induced by science, a miracle cannot be admitted. While the scientist may confront a phenomenon which he cannot explain — that is, refer to its non-miraculous antecedents — yet the decisive consideration is that he can never discover that it has no such antecedents. For, in order to know that a phenome- non is inexplicable accoi'ding to natural laws, he must know these laws altogether, in all their possible combinations and applications. Hence it is quite as dogmatic to affirm the possibility as the impossibility of miracle. That a given occur- rence was miracle could be authenticated only by divine reve- lation declaring it to be so. How, then, could miracle attest revelation ? If revelation authenticates miracle, what authen- ticates that revelation ? Revelation proving the miracle, miracle proving the revelation — that is, that something supernatural has been revealed — -this is the vicious circle in 1 still, even today, an increasing number of good people feel painfully the dis- cord jarring at every point between the portentous procession of miracles attributed to the past, and the ordinary work-a-day world as we know it. To them it seems as if the benevolence of God was jeopardized by the possibility of miracle; otherwise, why did ho, who would turn water into wine for a wedding festival, not suspend the nature of fire to burn up hundreds of little children at the Iroquois Theater dis- aster in Chicago ■? Dissolution of Authority-Religion 131 which authority-religion has ever revolved, and which is but aggravated by the additional consideration that it views revelation itself as miracle.' (2) If we reject the hypothesis of myth and legend, Hume's main contention has never been answered. Today we witness no miracles. Among Protestants, with the excep- tion of a very small number of fanatics, even the most ardent defenders of the supernatural no longer allow that miracles play any part whatever in their own lives. Catholic ortho- doxy proceeds in this matter more consistently than evan- gelical orthodoxy. The former draws no limits to miracles, treats the present as the past, abides by the standpoint of the Jews of whom Paul said that they seek after a sign. But her evangelical sister uncritically and strategically limits miracles, in the true sense of that word, to the Bible. ^ According to her opinion, the time in which God revealed himself by miracle has gone by. It is not present occur- rences, but those long past, by means of which she erects a wall of partition between belief and unbelief. She pays tribute in general to the consciousness of our time, and judges concerning nature and history as the modern man is wont to do. But she exempts one region, the narratives and teachings of the Sacred Scriptures, from this judgment. Why ? The Bible is the Word of Grod, she says. Here is the arch-miracle, for the sake of which faith in the other miracles is exacted. It goes without saying that God's Word cannot be doubted. But that words which proceeded out of the mouths of men are God's words, and have divine iThe Catholic church, ou deciding what revelation is, is consistent in including in that decision a determination of what is and what is not miracle. Nothing may be honored as miracle which is not sanctioned as such by apostolic and ordained authority. 2 However one may think concerning miracle, it is impossible for historical science to believe in Christian miracle and to deny the non-Christian. And much as one may find something supernatural in the ethical energies of the inner life, there is no way to construe the mounting of the Christian above the temporal and the sensible as supernatural, and that of Plato and Epictetus as natural. 132 The Finality op the Christian Keligion infallibility — ah, this is the miracle, its base and apex at once. But it is this which contradicts all the rules according to which we estimate otherwise human words and writings, and requires us to forego independent thought precisely at the point where we are conscious of being most justified and most obligated to such thought. Now, Hume met orthodoxy in the right way here. Ancient narratives, construed as descriptions of actual occurrences, tell us of the miraculously supernatural. Is the tradition reliable ? Was the eye- witness so sharp an observer that we must assume a deviation from the laws of nature rather than an error in observation and tradition ? This question is legitimate, and Hume, prior to the use of the legendary hypothesis, answered it in the right way. Miraculous narratives, like the biblical, originating from no observer who possessed sufficient knowl- edge of the relations and laws of nature to have a right to pronounce upon such matters, have no scientific importance. And the orthodox exaction of "faith" in stories out of rela- tion with everything we know must forever be no less antagfonistic to the hiofher activities of true faith than it is stultifying to science and common-sense. An intelligent man who now affirms his faith in such stories as actual facts can hardly know what intellectual honesty means. (3) Not simply the idea of testimony, however, but the idea of God and of nature, which underlies miracles, bears the stamp of imperfection. According to Paul, as well as modern thought, God is not only all, but in all. But in that case the natural order is not distinct from the divine activity, does not run a separate course, is not something by itself. Each must be the same in principle — so far Spinoza was right. We may not suppose that there is a twofold activity in God, a natural and a supernatural. Rather, natural law is itself the will of God ; in which case it is impossible to see how God beside this will of his could have another will, how Dissolution of Authority-Religion 133 anything could happen which did not happen according to law. But belief in the miraculous logically implies that the natural and historical order is not so constituted that all of the divine ends admit of being attained hereby, God finds resistance to be overcome in his own moral order. As Hoff- ding says, it is as if there were two Gods, the one operative in the customary course of things, the other correcting in single instances the work of the first.' At all events, in such belief we waver hither and thither between God and nature; we seek the help of God only as a stop-gap on occasions when we think that nature cannot serve our purpose, and the result is that we neither feel ourselves at home in nature nor are we fully at peace with the all-ruling providence of God.^ It is customary to commend faith in the miraculous as the only faith that is in a position to give God the honor which is his due, to lay hold of his grace, to recognize the glory of Christ, to appropriate the fruit of his life and death, and, amid universal uncertainty, to find a firm rock on which one may securely stand. This is an illusion. The opinion is that, because such faith rendered this service in former times, it can do so now and forever. Really, we honor God more highly when we take the thought seriously that in nature and history law is the sole and perfect revelation of his will, than when we seek another and supposably greater revelation above this one. For the ordinary loses in signifi- cance when we set the exceptional over against it, and we obstruct our understanding of the true greatness of God when we seek to see it in a few strange stars of the night, instead of in the daily sunshine which is the source and sustenance of life. What we need in order to see the glory of God is 1 Op. cit., p. 26. 2 "In reference to God we may not even speak of possibility which is not at the same time actuality. God does what he does, and it is impossible for him to do it in any other way, impossible from the beginning to the end." — Wimmee, My Struggle for Light, p. 28. 134 The Finality of the Christian Keligion not miracle, but an open eye for the world in which we live. And our deepest needs and longings, our desire for reconcil- iation and peace, our thirst after righteousness, life, and blessedness — these find their satisfaction more surely when we hear in them the voice of Him who has imbedded them in our nature, to reveal his love to us, than when we seek some guaranty outside of us that we dare rely on him, and need fear no illusion. So, too, a human Christ who does no more and no less than interpret to us the eternal revelation of God in human nature, and opens our eyes to see it, is no less adapted to reconcile us and lead us into sonship than the superhuman entity of the church which, with his epiphany and his performances, has no place in the pale of the natural life of humanity. And the same remark may be made of a human Christianity. Christianity is not miraculous stories — no matter how many nor how miraculous they may be — but the Spirit of Christ. (4) And so, while the modern man abstains from denying the possibility of miracles, he yet does not believe in miracles, i. e.,as they exist and function in authority-religion.' Audit is even impossible for him to comprehend how a Christian can ascribe more worth to them than Jesus himself did, especi- ally when we remember that Jesus lived in a time when miracles did not evoke the irresistible objections which have banished them from every scientific modern mode of thought. Moreover, the modern type of piety resists the fancy that a Christian of the twentieth century can receive any sort of religious or moral benefit from the fact that Jesus multiplied the loaves or miraculously knew that a piece of money was in the mouth of a fish. But — though I anticipate in saying so in this connection — while we do not believe in this iBy "religious miracles" the Ritschlians mean single events — within the divinely guided total process— which are especially important and clear, perhaps also specially striking and powerful, disclosures of God's reign redemptively and providentially, no matter whether they be naturally mediated or not. This is cor- rectly thought out, and has no connection with the metaphysical miracle in the system of authority-religion under criticism. Dissolution of Authority-Religion 135 antiquated and obsolete form of an anthropomorphic theol- ogy, we yet do believe steadfastly in the activity of God in us and around us and above us ; we do believe in his help con- formably to the order which he has established in the moral world; and we so believe, not on the basis of any external authority whatsoever, but on the basis of our own moral experience, which has taught us that honest, heartfelt prayer, and the mounting upward of heart and conscience to God, providentially result in unspeakable blessings, in true out- pourings of Spirit, of moral energy, of pardon, of comfort, of faith, and of hope. (5) While war has long been waged against miracle ; while in the consciousness of humanity faith in miracle has been increasingly shaken; while miracle has come to be a burden instead of a support to religion, it is yet still true that it is more difficult for Christianity to detach itself from miracle than it is for any other religion whatsoever. This is mainly because the doctrine of the bodily resurrection of Jesus has, been propagated into the very center of Christian conviction,, has so fixed its stamp upon this religion that the latter seems, to many to stand or fall with the historicity of that event. "If Christ be not risen, our faith is vain, we are yet in our sins," writes Paul. Is it not well to ask ourselves whether we are in a position to participate experientially in this Pauline proposition ? We are dependent upon the narratives of the gospels and the witness of Paul, to form an idea of what occurred after the death of Jesus. But these are by no means so consistent as to render assent to the actuality of the occurrences a requirement of conscience. This importance attached to the bodily resurrection is far out of proportion to the evidence therefor.' The narratives yield a fluctuating 1 "I quite recognize for myself that the story of his [Christ's] physical resurrec- tion has been believed on for less evidence than in this age would be required for the establishment of identity where the value of five pounds might be in question." J. Allanson Picton, The Religion of the Universe, p. 215. 136 The Finality of the Christian Religion image which eludes all assured evaluation. Shall we base our highest and holiest, our whole religious life, on an occur- rence of which no one can make a perfectly distinct picture ? And is it, indeed, necessary that we build our salvation on this occurrence? Is there no other foundation of salva- tion? Are not the truths of our faith, God's love and grace, his commandments and kingdom, reliable in and of them- selves ? Do they need a visible authentication ? Are we not children of God if we say with love and confidence, Abba Father? Do we not have forgiveness of our sins if we are penitent, and believingly seek his grace? Is Jesus not our reconciler if his Spirit dwells in us and fills us with the peace of God? Is our faith in eternal life vain and baseless if Jesus be not bodily risen, and did not show himself for a certain length of time to his disciples? What of Old Testa- ment worthies who of course did not believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus? Of John the Baptist? No, no: we are not required to base all this on an occurrence which admits of so diverse appreciation, both as to its documentariness and as to its nature. Our faith rests on a different foundation, and we need not fear its collapse if an idea which, in initial Christianity, became the means of its historical unfolding, proves to be transitory and alien to the essentials of Chris- tianity. We can imperturbably leave unanswered the question as to what really took place on Easter morn, and as to how the disciples came by their conviction that Jesus was risen, and we can treat the biblical narratives in question like other miraculous narratives. Jesus is the Living One, no matter whether he appeared corporeally to his disciples or not. He lives and rules in the world through his Spirit. Our convic- tion that this is true must ever be a matter of "faith and not of sight." This matter is of so serious importance to many good people that I venture to restate my position from a slightly Dissolution of Authority-Religion 137 different angle of vision. The bodily resurrection is a fact which can or cannot be maintained by historical science. Any such fact is to be proved in the scientific way that other facts are proved, or else it is not to be proved, as science counts proof, at all. If it is to be proved, it is to be proved to everyone — the most unbelieving; a scientific pagan, for instance. And the attitude to the fact is independent of all personal disposition, Christian or non-Christian, good or bad. If the fact is not proved — and not convincingly proved — to the scientific intellect and conscience, religion can never make it a duty to let that pass as proved which has not been in truth proved; can never make it a duty to proceed less critically, less conscientiously, in so cardinal a matter. In other words : The acknowledgment of a single historical fact is a thing of knowledge and not of faith. Faith — let this not be forgot- ten— is directed only to that which is of a timeless charac- ter, which can disclose itself as immediately present to any- one anywhere. Whoever substitutes an historical fact for such object of faith externalizes faith, holds religion down to a stage which has been overcome in the world-historical movement, and complicates religion in insoluble contradic- tion with all the rest of our life. Faith in the divine truth of Christianity is not founded on the bodily resurrection of Jesus, as is the case in authority-religion, but on its new content, the world of love and grace. Is it retorted that this world is a mere subjective web, an illusion, if it be not authenticated by the tangible support of a corporeal resurrec- tion? But what is this but to fall back upon the stage of mediaeval Catholicism, and make the reality of the spiritual dependent upon sensible embodiment? What is this obsti- nate affirmation of historical faith but a confession of unfaith in the omnipresence of the spiritual and divine life — the advocacy of a religion of "signs and wonders" at the expense of a religion of Spirit and personality? If one will not do 138 The Finality of the Christian Religion this, let him cease the amalgamation of history and faith which has brought such unspeakable bewilderment and woe upon modern humanity! (6) "Das Wunder ist des Glaubens liebstes Kind." Goethe was right. Miracle is faith's dearest child, that is, product. Here, as elsewhere, it is characteristic of authority- religion to treat that as cause which is primarily effect. It is often said concerning the miraculous narratives of the Bible that they narrate what actually took place, or else they are lies and those who wrote them liars. Are these the only two possibilities ? It would be far nearer the truth, far more indicative of historical sense and religious insight — -of some remove, on the part of him who so judges, from the coarse vulgarity and stupidity of a Wordsworth's Peter Bell — to say that, in the nature of the case, a miraculous story can- not be a lie nor its source mendacious. Certainly, apart from the alternative, reality or lie, there is a third, which is neither of the two, i. c, poesy. No one judges the parablea of Jesus, e. g., according to the principle that they are actual or mendacious accounts. One sees in them, not reality, but truth — truth in pictures. This is the essence of poesy, and everyone knows that it is precisely poesy that is able to express the highest truths.' Thus, also, do we most honor biblical miraculous narratives when we seek to under- stand them as poesies. So when we speak of faith, when we confess faith, we do not, just on that account, speak the language of knowledge as science counts knowledge; for such 1 " What's this, Aurora Leigh, You write so of the poets, and not laugh? Those virtuous liars, dreamers after dark, Exaggerators of the sun and moon, And soothsayers in a tea-cup?" "I write so Of the only truth-tellers now left to God, The only speakers of essential truth. Opposed to relative, comparative. And temporal truths." — E. B. Browning, in Aurora Leigh. Dissolution of Authoeity-Keligion 139 knowledge leaves no room for the subjective, the human, the personal ; nor do we speak the language of the market, where the petty individual interests of men crowd and clash; but we speak another, a marvelously living language, the divine language of Eternity — the language of poesy. Confession of faith is poesy of faith! And in this poesy of faith the human spirit finds its fullest freedom, and at the same time a bond of fellowship which embraces all that is human; in this poesy the most distant is present; the past, the dead, is living. What the philosopher, who sought his formula in other centuries and in a foreign language, has excogitated, in order to explain the world to knowledge, the critic of knowl- edge independently accepts or rejects. But what the collect- ive spirit of a people has grown, what the saint has sung, be it never so remote from us, echoes in our hearts today, awakens in their depths a life of their own, as if we had participated in the old production and the old song. To me it would be a hard, insufferable yoke of the letter, because reason and conscience alike rebel against it, were I required to confess that Jesus stilled the storm on the sea with a word, or that he walked on the surface of the water with- out sinking. But then this would be no confession of faith at all — a consideration to which, strangely enough, our church leaders are blind; it would be historical knowledge, actual or supposed. If we are to> derive a real confession of faith from these narratives, we must interpret them as poesies of faith in which the human heart has embodied or symbolized its faith in the peace-producing power of the Spirit of Christ, its confidence in that courage of faith which mounts over all the abysses of life. And we discover the language of our own faith in these poesies of faith, the language of the heart, which proclaims the divine in the pictures and parables of the human. How harshly spirits pounce upon one another when they argue over the 140 The Finality of the Christian Keligion story of creation, or of the birth, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus! But when Father Haydn confesses his pious faith, and his song of creation soars and swings, then they all sing with their hearts: "The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork." And when our children sing " In the beauty of the lilies Christ was bom across the sea," or when the Hallelujah shouts the victory over death and the grave — it is our own hearts' faith which cries Amen! to what the devout genius has confessed in his faith. Then we no longer believe as Catholic or Protestant, as orthodox or liberal, as old or new; we believe as human, and speak and hear the language of the Eternal Humanity. It but remains to indicate in compact summary the sig- nificance of this movement of logical criticism consum- mated mainly in the eighteenth century. The religion of authority, basing its claim to finality upon the idea that it is divine and that no other is, proves its divineness by appeal to the form of the origin of its religious truths. The argu- ment of its orthodox supernaturalistic apologetics runs as follows: Sharing, to start with, in the old world-view that the intellect has primacy in human nature, and knowledge in religion, it affirms that man was originally endowed, when miraculously created by omnipotent fiat, with a perfect knowl- edge of God. But man lost this light of knowledge through the darkness of the sin of the great fall. But, for all that, there yet remained the original and basal impulse toward God, and the postulate of a proffer once yet again of the divine truth in its completeness. This, however, does not hinder all that is human from remaining subjective, fallible, sinful, and weak. Therefore man needs the help that comes only from superhuman divine power. This proffered help is Dissolution of Authority-Religion 141 known as divine — here is the crux of that old argument — directly in its form, which has no analogy ivith the way that human things come about. In addition, this help, in its con- tent and effect as well, proclaims itself to be divine, in the last analysis, by manifest interruption of the psychic legality of human life. The miracle, in the heart of nature and of history, of the supernatural and superhistorical origin and beginning of Christianity, and the ever-recurring miracle of conversion — now erected into signal demonstrative value, to be examined in a moment — assure the specialty of this causality, and authenticate the proffered help of a Truth and Power of God fundamentally exempt from all human fallibil- ity and weakness. The reference of Christianity to the absolute causality of God, and the consequent demarkation against all that is human and historical, against the merely relative truths and forces of the latter, exhaust the require- ment of finality on the part of the religion of authority. Let it be repeated that the gist of the argument for this finality on the part of orthodox supernaturalism is the use it makes of the category of causality. Christianity is directly due to the miraculous causality of God, and nothing else is. Hence, revelation by direct and exclusive supernatural com- munication of ideas, and the Bible by exclusive miraculous inspiration, and conversion by "miracle of grace." Strictly speaking, revelation has no history, the Bible no history, and conversion no psychology. In a static world they are themselves static. Isolated, incomparable, disparate, refer- able to divine miracle as their cause, they constitute the finality of the Christian religion. But how may one know that these phenomena are imme- diate effects of such miraculous divine causality? What is the proof of it? Now, it is precisely the knowledge and proof of this old apologetic which have been irretrievably undermined, as this chapter has shown, mainly by the ration- 142 The Finality of the Christian Religion alistic criticism of that all-destroying eighteenth century. However little religious value rationalism may have — and the writer does not think that it is very great — -it yet has the merit of working as a disintegrating solvent upon the static finalities of the church, whose survivals are an irritat- ing and injurious anachronism in this modern world. ^ Today this issue of rationalism is being unintentionally and collaterally duplicated by historical science. But since it is historical science which seems to exclude the possibility of establishing from any point of view the finality of the Christian religion, thus setting our own task, an examination of its merits had better be post- poned for the more positive part of this work. Still, brief reference to its effects upon orthodox finalities is desirable here, all the more so since its conclusions did not escape recognition in the previous part of this chapter. As will be seen later, the new view of the world in general includes a remainderless historical treatment of all human things, which is the outcome of the widening of the horizon backward into the past and sideward over the entire breadth of the present. It is this movement which has contributed to the shattering of the original naive confidence of every regnant type of culture and system of values in their own inviolability. These types have become historical objects by the side of others, between which not miracle, but only comparison, can yield criterion of their respective values. Thus it would seem that modern history was the end of any dogmatic formation which hypostasizes its naive claim to validity by the use of the concept "revelation." On the basis of developmental history of peoples, civilizations, and constituents of culture, a history founded upon critical analy- sis of sources and psychological inferences of analogy, 1 The main defect of rationalism is not so much that it is unhistorical, as is often asserted with so little insight, but that it is iutellectualistic, thus sharing in the presupposition of orthodoxy. Dissolution of Authority-Religion 143 historical science resolves all dogmas, civil and ecclesiasti- cal, into the flux of process, judges all phenomena with sympathetic righteousness, articulates and unifies all that happens in the long human story into a general view of the becoming of humanity. This picture of the whole, con- structed in part by the synoptic imagination, is the presup- position of all judgments concerning the norms and ideals of humanity. Therefore historical science is the basis of all thought concerning values and norms, the means of self- reflection on the part of mankind, as regards its nature, its origin, and its hopes. It is impossible that this new way of looking at things should not profoundly affect all future "appreciations" of Christianity. Like all great movements of the human spirit, Christianity also shares this naive confidence in its normative truth, and apologetic reflection has ever solidified this confi- dence by the blank unmediated opposition of Christianity to all that is non-Christian, depreciating the latter to a homogeneous mass of human error and vice; exalting the former to immediate divine dignity, accredited as such by outer and inner miracle, as we have already seen. All that is Christian is held to be in history, but not of history, not even through history. "Secular" history is the region of sin and error, but ecclesiastical history presents absolute truth, proved to be such because miraculously authenticated to be due to divine communication. This, we saw, was the old position. Now, it is not only rationalism, but modern historical science, arising from rationalism and continuous therewith, which has unconsciously wrought in a disintegrating way upon this structure of thought built by the apologetics of orthodox supernaturalism. The articulation of Christianity, without remainder, as an individual phenomenon, into the course of other great individual productions, especially into 144 The Finality of the Christian Keligion the universal organism of religious history, goes triumphantly on. By so much do the orthodox-apologetic isolation of Christianity over against the rest of historical reality, and the specification of this isolatedness as formal characteristic of its finality, suffer refutation. In a word, Christianity is drawn into the process which relativizes all that is historical, and hence the static finality given it by authority-religion is gone. Whether any conception of Christian finality is pos- sible, or even pertinent, in the light of universal historical relativity is precisely the problem for our further reflection. One thing more, and this long chapter shall close. While one cannot attend to all the modifications of orthodoxy in modern times — and one need not do so, since at root they are the same — there is yet a single endeavor and tendency that deserves to be signalized by special mention. I refer to the development of thought formerly represented by Frank,^ now by his pupil and disciple, Ihmels." While orthodox Protestantism rests its case upon the miraculous causation of biblical Christianity, and orthodox Catholicism upon that of ecclesiastical Christianity in addition, thus both in common upon an outer miracle in history, the Frankian orthodoxy appeals in a singular way to the inner miracle of conversion. In the experience of conversion or regeneration, all objective realities of faith are authenticated to the Chris- tian. This experience is the specific peculiarity which serves better to isolate and thus absolutize Christianity than the traditional marks of its isolatedness. It will be observed that this modern form of orthodox- supernaturalistic apologetics pays tribute likewise to ration- alism and historical science, since it subordinates the outer miracle to the inner, and assigns to the latter only the function of guaranteeing the absolute certainty of redemption. 'i^ System of Christian Certainty. iDie chrisfliche Wahrheitsgewissheit, ihr letzer Grund und ihre Entstehung (1901); Die SelbstCindigkeit der Dogmatik gegeiiUber der Beligionsphilosophie (1901). Dissolution of Authority-Religion 145 The significance of this standpoint is the relegation of super- natural authentication to psychological immanent factors. It is claimed that on the basis of these factors the transeunt factors of a metaphysical and historical nature — namely, the miraculous work of God on innately sinful man, and the miraculous revelation of "redemptive facts" authenticating themselves in the Bible — are to be reached. Any outer miracle, not unconditionally necessary to the affirmation and validation of this inner miracle of conversion, may be sac- rificed upon the altar of historical science. Common to the old and the new orthodoxy — as, indeed, to all theology — is the endeavor to substantiate the normative validity of Chris- tian truth. Common to the two again is the method of arriving at this normative validity by means of a principiant isolation or singularity of Christianity. The difPerence between the two is that this exceptionalness of Christianity with the old is historical, but with the new is psychological. But in each case the special mark is this unrelatedness, together with the causal miracle by which it is validated; only, for the Frankian form of the orthodox apologetics, the miracle (of conversion) is psychological and immanent, effected on the basis of the Bible and authenticating the divine origin of the Bible. It is evident that the considerations which cast doubt upon miracles in general, and which have already been mar- shaled, lose none of their weight when urged against this new position. Besides, no abstract impossibility of a strict denial of miracle can nullify the relative and limited character of the history of the genesis of Christianity, as exhibited by the new history and the old rationalism. But what is thus true with reference to the external is true also for the internal of this new method of immanence. If the historical reality, said to be effect of which God is direct cause, is partly char- acterized by error and evil, so similarly is it true of the psy- l-tG The Finality of the Christian Religion chological reality in which error and sin are still manifest. As historical science is articulating biblical Christianity into the pre-biblical and the extra-biblical, that is, relativizing Christianity, so psychological science articulates the phe- nomenon of conversion, hitherto interpreted as miracle, into antecedent psychic experiences, thereby relativizing it. It goes without saying that the orderliness of conversion as aerainst its miraculousness neither discredits the fact nor dis- parages its value, despite its need of a different explanation from that of miracle, and its failure to serve the Frankian argument. Besides, as fixedness and cataclysm, necessary correlatives in the old view of the world which reacted in human consciousness to reproduce themselves in experience there, more and more yield to the becoming and order of the new world-view, which will likewise react in human experience to mirror themselves there, that old apparent discontinuity in the human moral consciousness, naturally interpreted by the old faith as the "miracle of conversion," will also give way to a more continuous and healthy religious development, to be interpreted by the new faith from the point of view of order and not of miracle. The familiar consideration may be added that here, as elsewhere, reflection cannot pass imme- diately from a finite effect to an infinite cause. It need only be added that the valuation of what is called conversion by complacently referring it to the miraculous causality of God, thus referring it to what it came from, instead of valuing it by what it leads to — roots instead of fruits — has inflicted sufficient injury upon personal and ecclesiastical life to con- vince the most desperate apologist that this line of argument does not serve the religious interest, to say nothing of the scientific. It is true of "conversion," as of everything else, that "things are what they are" and not what they come from. And if by anticipation the reader has caught the suggestion that the dignity of things, even Christian things. Dissolution of Authority-Religion 147 is disclosed, not in their cause, but in tlieir end; not in the form of their origin, but in the worth of their content; not in their structure, but in their function; not in their credentials, but in their service — then he has already entered upon a more excellent way than any religion of authority has ever known, k Then, too, has he exchanged the world of Thomas Aquinas for that of Kant and Lotze and Charles Darwin. In this new world there is no room for the theory or Christianity's exclusive supernaturalness, over against which all besides is not God's work, but man's ; for in this new world the opposi- tion of human and divine is overcome, and all is human and all is divine at one and the same time. CHAPTER V THE CHANGED VIEW OF THE WORLD AND OF LIFE On February 17, 1900, Rome witnessed a concourse of men such as the great city on the Tiber, accustomed as it has been to imposing spectacles throughout its history, has rarely ever seen. But this time the crowd had not gathered to greet a triumphant Csesar at the head of his victorious legions, nor yet to gaze at the vicegerent of God on earth in the pomp of clerical retinue. These men had come from the ends of the earth to do honor to a poor wandering knight of the spirit, who, after eight years' imprisonment in a dungeon, suffered death at the stake — had come, that is, to unveil a monument in memory of Giordano Bruno on the very spot where, three hundred years before, a tumultuous and checkered human life ended on a pile of fagots. Why did the nineteenth century, just before closing its doors, think that it must pay precisely this man a homage so pure and so enthusiastic ? There have been deeper and clearer thinkers, rounder and riper characters, than the martyr- philosopher whose form was tossed up and down by the waves of the great popular movement of the sixteenth century. To be sure, it was a right brave word which he, the judged, flung in the face of his judges: "You pronounce the sentence with greater fear than I receive it, perhaps." But such bravery is not so rare ; it fills the breasts of countless men and women whose crosses and pyres the history of the world passes by without even naming their names. Or was the name of Giordano Bruno to furnish the watchword in the great battle of the spirit against that power which ever preaches a relentless crusade against any stirring of a free humanity? Was the monument at that place of execution 148 The Changed View of the World 149 to be a witness of the faith that the glow of the spirit cannot be stifled by the heat of fire? All this may have contributed to the surprising resurrection of the memory of an almost forgotten man. Still, the main thing was Giordano Bruno's type of mind, or attitude of spirit, which made him the herald of a new time that only the closing nineteenth cen- tury was in a position to understand and appreciate. The picture of nature of the new time, whose outline science sketched at first with sober sense and cool intellect, was painted by Bruno in shining colors, presageful of a time when this picture of nature would satisfy, not only the head of the thinker, but also the fantasy of the poet ; nay, reawaken in the heart of man pious faith, worship, holy revelations. How long and how thoroughly this new picture of the world could render such service we have yet to see. According to our plan, we shall now briefly outline this new thought of life and the world in its bearing upon our problem. But before we take up the conception on account of wdiich Giordano Bruno suffered his martyr's death — the conception of the boundlessness of the world — certain aspects of the development which prepared the way therefor should engage our attention. It would seem as if continuity with humanistic antiquity was never entirely broken. Under the auspices of the Byzantine government, which survived the ruin of the ancient world, the Hellenic peninsula preserved, in antiquated and pedantic form, the literary and philosophical tradi- tions of antiquity, its taste for classical learning, and its love for the great philosophers, Plato and Aristotle. Here the writings of these thinkers were studied in the original at a time when Greek was not only a dead language, but absolutely unknown in the Occident.' Italy was in close contact with Greece. Greek scholars flocked to Italy in great numbers, causing a veritable migra- 1 Weber, History of Philosophy, p. 262. 150 The Finality of the Christian Religion tion from the Orient, when Byzantium and the last remains of the Eastern Empire fell into the hands of the Turks (1453). This event raised Italy to the position which she had occupied in literature, art, and philosophy two thousand years before. Thus it was in Italy that the connection with antiquity was preserved, in consequence of which Italy became the birthplace of the "modern man" and the cradle of "modern thought." Along with the immediate relation of Italy to the great- ness of earlier times, a leading capacity for her vocation was due to the favorable course which her own history took at the outg^oinoj of the Middle Acres. The decentralization which is the precondition of free development had struck root most of all directly in Italy. The self-dependence of single cities was the natural occasion for the pronounced formation of local peculiarities, which survive in the great cities of Italy to the present day. These urban peculiarities were possible only through political self-dependence, and through the liveliness of the passionate struggle of existence by which the cities were protected. What was true of the cities was true of individuals within the cities. The violence of party conflicts, the republican necessity to take part in them, the importance which, in eternal alternations, attaches to the fortunes of a powerful personality — all this was a school of character from which independent individuals, conscious of their independence, must emerge. Thus, the Italy of the Renaissance shows a proud growth of indi- vidualism. Thus, too, as said above, it is the birthplace of the modern individual, who sees his duty in the realization of his endowment, and his right in the development of his energies. Along with these remarks another matter should be men- tioned. The liberalizing influence of the Orient, with its survival of the free human thought and life of antiquity, The Changed View of the World 151 reached the Occident through the crusaders, who invaded the Orient in the name of the Roman faith, but brought back nothing but heresies. But the main consideration is that, when the literature of antiquity once more saw the light, the Italians were able to make it their own in a quite special and independent manner, since it was the work of their own past, bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh. The great importance to the his- tory of culture of this general return to the literature of antiquity — its history, philosophy, and poetry — was that it revealed to men the existence, outside the pale of the church, of a human intellectual life, following its own laws, and con- fident that it was competent in and of itself, and by its own strength, to arrive at truth and to determine the criteria of truth; while authority-religion maintained that, of himself, man was incapable of knowing the truth, and consequently that it must be determined for him by processes other than his own. Moreover, the works of antiquity served as models for the guidance of thought until thought had learned to work independently. Here there is a striking parallel between Renaissance and Reformation. As the Reformation signified a return of the religious consciousness from the Catholic tradition to the biblical, from the doctrines of the church to the literature of the Bible, so Renaissance was a return of learned culture from scholasticism to the early Roman and Greek literature. In both cases the appeal was from the reproductive to the productive, from the traditionary to the original, from the ecclesiastical to the humane. And both were convinced that they thereby came more closely to the pure, the genuine, the true. To be sure, the parallel reaches farther: this procedure, for both the scientific and the religious consciousness, was a stage on the way from authority to freedom, from servility to independence, from heteronomy to autonomy in both thought and life. That is. 152 The Finality of the Christian Religion there was for both the transition, along the pathway of an- tiquity ah'eady indicated, from mediseval dependence on the authority of the church and of Aristotle, to the independent choice of cntthorities first, then to the beginning of original and uncontrolled investigation on the part of science, and to the critical primacy of personal experience of faith on the part of religion. It is thus the verdict of history that the human spirit is not satisfied, either in science or in religion, with regress from one authority to another, however preferable the latter may be to the former. Certainly, in its present advanced state of development, the human mind cherishes the unconquerable assurance that it possesses within itself the norm of its life and of its thought, with the deep-seated desire to realize itself, religiously, sesthetically, scientifi- cally, morally, by obeying its own law. The assent of our- selves, not to external authority, however good, but to our- selves— this is the beginning of all certainty in whatever region of life. But we are getting ahead of our story and must return to history. Scholasticism itself aided in the transition to modern times, not alone by its gradual self -dissolution, but also by positive contributions. As one can find the religion of the Reformation like a warm stream flowing through the Dead Sea of a former ecclesiasticism, so one can also find free thought before the thirteeenth century. As, in the ninth century, the Catholic Scotus Erigena denied eternal punishment; in the twelfth, the Catholic Abelard declared that the teachings of Greek philosophers were superior to those of the Old Testament; in the thirteenth, a great number of Catholics refused to believe in the miraculous conception and resurrection of Christ, and Thomas Aquinas and Dun Scotus found themselves obliged to prove, with all arts of logic, the need of revelation and the credibility of the Bible; so also was there, on the part of many ecclesias- The Changed View of the World 153 tics, a freedom of thought which was forerunner of the theo- logical parties of Protestantism and the new learning and science in general. Dun Scotus, in particular, by his emphatic affirmation of individual liberty, proclaimed a new principle, an anti-authoritative power, which grew from cen- tury to century, and finally led to the emancipation of the religious conscience and the downfall of ecclesiastical tradi- tion, nay, of biblical tradition (which is also ecclesiastical), as the supreme authority in matters of faith and conscience. Then there was Occam with his nominalism — precursor of John Locke. Nominalism weakened at once the alliance between faith and science, the church and the world. It mirrored the ruling purpose of the age to shake off the yoke of Christian Rome. Desirous of promoting the welfare of the church, nominalism was at bottom a mass of tendencies hostile to Catholicism. Political, intellectual, and religious strivings to emancipate peoples, languages, arts, sciences, philosophy, from ecclesiastical control were concealed beneath its seeming devotion to the church. In addition, free thought eagerly seized upon the literary masterpieces of antiq- uity, which are made known by Greek emigrants, and which the timely invention of printing hel^Ds to render accessible to all. The scientific spirit of the age and its naturalistic bent, admirably assisted by the invention of the compass and the telescope, triumphs in the discovery of America and of the solar system. The contemplation of these new and infinite worlds arouses feel- ings of enthusiasm and confidence which become more and more dangerous to scholasticism and the authoritative system of the Church.^ Still, the Middle Ages were no period of utter darkness. In the world of learning we have just seen that it would be difficult to draw any line of demarkation between them and the time of the Renaissance. The Middle Ages have rendered important contributions to intellectual development, deepen- 1 Weber. 154 The Finality of the Christian Religion ing the intellectual life, sharpening and exercising the powers of thought, using with great energy the limited means of culture at their disposal. It would not be difficult to specify points in which mediaeval thought displays signal excellence. For example, there is its fundamental thought that there is one single cause of all things, valuable for accustoming men to abstract from differences and details, and preparative for accepting the interconnection of all things according to law. Such a thought is a preparation for a conception of the world determined by science. Again, poor in material, the Middle Ages were rich in forms. They developed unparalleled acuteness in drawing distinctions and building up arguments. This would func- tion, as it did, in the critical investigation of their own pre- suppositions, which had so long been regarded as fixed and inviolable. Finally, the Middle Ages — this was their greatest merit — were absorbed in the inner world of the life of the soul, and held that the eternal fate of personality was determined by the events of the inner life. They prepared the way for a thorough investigation of the great problem of spirit. Nevertheless, the Middle Ages failed to work out these free and fruitful motives, freely and fruitfully. Their architectonic genius was ambitious to combine all the elements of existence — natura, gratia, and gloria- — into one magnificent graduated and ascending system of reality. But the elements collected from so many different sides were only artificially united ; their attempt at summa and synthesis seems to have been premature. The philosophy of Aristotle was, indeed, calculated to display existence as an uninterrupted ascending scale ; but Aristotle himself was not able to work out his significant conception. Moreover, since his conception tended to monism, such an ecclesiastical thinker as Thomas Aquinas, e. g., would have to effect an The Changed View of the Woeld 155 entire breach with these consequences, and to set up a dualism in their stead. There must be a dualism between soul and body — in order to make room for the angels! A similar dualism appears in ethics: a dualism between the Greek cardinal virtues, wisdom, justice, courage, and self-mastery, and the theological virtues, faith, hope, and love. There was dualism again between the Aristotelian natural development and not only the ecclesiastical dogma of creation, but miracu- lous intervention in general. Close inspection reveals this dualism all along the line. But it was precisely the business of mediaeval thought to check such inspection. Thought had to acrree with the doctrines of the church. Aristotle was ecclesiasticized. Therefore deviation from Aristotle was heresy. Therefore thought and inquiry were arbitrarily checked in order that the scientific edifice erected by the church might not be shaken. "The Aristotelian philosophy, which in its own time denoted such an enormous advance, was now set up as valid for all eternity.'" Exact natural science could not develop. The principle of authority rejected a freer and further investigation of problems and established dualism as a permanent result. The prin- ciple of authority is itself a form of dualism, having place only in a dualistic Weltanschauung. In general, there was to be no new knowledge. Men were to nourish themselves on the scanty content they already had, and to interpret that content, by violence if need be, as the church wished. Small wonder that there arose a great hunger after fulness of content, and a great enthusiasm for the new riches streaming in from all sides in the century of the Renaissance ! But if the church could not allow outer experience free play, much less could she venture to give inner experience its own way. 1 Hoffding. 156 The Finality of the Christian Religion The dogmatist ever held watch over the mystic, so often carried by the tides of his inner life beyond the limits of the feeling sanc- tioned by the Church as right and true. The Church said that it was dangerous for men to withdraw into themselves, and thus come into immediate contact with the highest, for so they might become independent of the Chiu-ch. She suspected that self-knowledge, no less than knowledge of nature, offered possibilities of spiritual freedom and opened the way to a very different conception of the world from that presented by theology.' But it was not only the attitude of the church to religious self -absorption or introspection that checked the development of inner experience. Dualism was at work here also, hindering the recognition, both of the actual operation of laws within the inner sphere, as well as of natural inter- connection between the psychical and the physical. Con- sequently a freer and more comprehensive conception had to be developed before the life of the soul could be rightly understood. What, then, is the meaning of Renaissance? Renais- sance signifies a rebirth of the Greek type of life and view of the world, say of the age of Pericles. In that age there was the naive unity of man with nature, the deification of nature, the happy enjoyment of life which was restrained and transfigured only by the influence of the beautiful. To this antique naturality mediaeval world-flight was opposed. Here we see the dualism of man with nature outside of him and within him, the flight from nature's demonic charms into cloister cells, the castigation of the body, the contempt of beauty, the most zealous care for the salvation of the soul, absorption in contemplation and asceticism. It was inevi- table that the ascetic, negative side of primitive Christianity should pass into ascendency in the conflict of the new religion with the unbridled sensualness of the pagan world; that is, should widen the opposition of flesh and spirit to 1 HOffding, History of Modern Philosophy, Vol. I, p. 9. The Changed View of the World 157 the utmost, and prefer a one-sided, rigorous spiritualism. It feared that a premature conclusion of peace on the part of the spirit with naturality would involve the sacrifice of its purity and sublimity, of the very foundation of Christian morality itself. Furthermore, Christianity found in the Roman Empire a civic life which was implicated by a thousand roots with pagan faith and cultus, which seemed to Christians to be superstition and demonic idolatry — a state which offered little that was satisfying to the more ideal needs and endeavors of the better spirits; which forced the whole existence of humanity, regardlessly and remainderlessly, under the discipline of its civic customs and orders. Thus, the Christian could have no inner interest, no profound and active participation in this state. To the Christian the state was the embodiment of Satanic world-power, the very counterpart of the heavenly kingdom of God. Two survivals from eai'ly Christianity — the imminent return of Christ to establish an earthly mes- sianic kingdom, and the idea that the present world was under the dominion of the devil — exercised a powerful influence on the moral disposition. On the one hand, these led to watchfulness, pruning, abnegation, and to marvelous heroism and hope. But, on the other hand, they rendered a healthy and clear appreciation for real life, and its moral tasks and relations, quite impossible. Christians lost sight of the historical ends of society. Improvement of the world would seem to them a matter of superfluity, and even of unbelief. There was no motive for self-forgetful and ministrant toil in the interest of the great objective ends of the life of the race. Care for the salvation of one's own soul, anxiety that the soul should be unspotted by the wicked world, tense expectation of the speedy end of the world — these overbore interest in moral society, and dulled the sense for the positive moral worth of society, and the 158 The Finality of the Christian Keligion feeling of obligation to produce homely human values. Even the family, like the state, lost its higher ideal worth, and was treated as a necessary evil, which the elite should avoid. But it still remained true that the natural impulse to social unification and organization, and to the corre- sponding practical initiative of the inner life, could not be repressed, and therefore sought and found satisfaction in the forms of ecclesiastical community. A new world arose beyond and above the natural-moral world. The church organized itself as supernatural civitas dei, in opposition to common civic society. Monks and nuns, as the 6lite of the ecclesiastical piety, became representatives of suj^ernatural virtue, of superhuman sanctity ; the theologians became bearers of supernatural revealed knowledge ; priests became bearers of s^ipernatural sacramental work, blessings, and curses; bishops, above all, became bearers of supermdural authority and power lent them by Christ and his aj^ostles, which were as superior to all secular rule as the light of the sun is to that of the moon. Thus, the mediaeval church built a second world above the natural human world, with the claim that the former alone was true and good and beautiful. Now, at the end of the Middle Ages comes the humanistic cry : Back from the unnaturalness of ecclesiastical com- pulsion to original nature and beautiful humanity ; back from cloister and monastic orders to state and family and school ; back from ecclesiastical nonage to independent search for truth, from the restrictions of the ecclesiastical traditional forms of art to find the true laws of beauty in nature herself ; back from the fatherlandless world- theocracy of the Roman Church to a new national self- consciousness, kindled by the models of classic patriots ; back from the ecclesiastic conception of man as 7ion posse non peccare, as damned and doomed in the heart of his being, The Changed View or the World 159 to be rescued only by ecclesiastical agency, to some conviction of natural endowment and resident forces, to goodness and truth and beauty — endowment and forces which can be developed and organized by contact with the great realities of history and of nature ! This is Humanism. It is a new efPort to appreciate the unity of reality, "to assert the law-abidingness and authorization of natural human life." The assertion of the worth and the rio^ht of the human and the natural over agfainst the ecclesiastical and supernatural, of the here over against the hereafter — that was the spirit of the period which we call Renaissance. Can Humanism be Christian Humanism? The latter is the exact opposite of authority-religion, and is alone the type of Christianity consonant with the modern view of human life, generic and individual. Thus, the cry was. Back to Greece ! only as a stadium forward on the way to Man, It is yet to be the contention of this book that the adjective "Christian," properly understood, sets forth the structural and abiding characteristic of the Human, But I hasten to urge now that Humanism was not fully human. It was false by defect. There was the dis- covery of man, but not of the whole man ; of man exten- sively in history, but not intensively in spirit ; of the man of sense, but not of conscience. Heteronomy is not entirely overcome by the transfer of the seat of authority from tra- dition without to nature within. Authority is thus peripheral still, and awaits, to be truly autonomous, the discovery of the center of the inner life which is the conscience and moral will, where alone its seat constitutionally is. Thus, the extensive discovery of Humanism must be supplemented by the intensive discovery of the Reformation. If the former widened the bounds of the outer world, the latter widened those of the inner. Humanism without the adjec- tive "Christian" is not fully and really human. 160 The Finality of the Christian Eeligion By way of summary, "Weber's comprehensive statement is admirable: From the middle of the fifteenth centm-y on, western Europe experienced a series of surprises. Led by the Greek scholars who settled in Italy, she entered directly into the promised land, which the Arabians of Spain had in part revealed to her : I mean, antiquity with its literature, philosophy, and art. The historical horizon of our fathers, which originally bounded the Catholic era, grows larger and extends far beyond the beginnings of Chris- tianity. The Catholic Church, outside of which nothing but darkness and barbarism seemed to prevail, was now regarded simply as the daughter and heir of an older, richer, more diversified civilization, of a civilization more in accord with the genius of the western races. The Romance and Germanic nations of Em'Ope feel closely akin to these Greeks and Romans whom the chmrch excluded from her pale, but who were, in so many respects, superior to the Christians of the fifteenth century in all the spheres of human activity. The Catholic prejudice, according to which there can be neither salvation nor real civili- zation nor religion nor morality beyond the confines of the church, gradually disappears. Men cease to be exclusive Catholics and become men, humanists, and philanthropists in the broadest sense of the term. Not merely a few stray glimpses of the past, but the whole history of Aryan Europe, with its countless political, literary, philological, archaeological, and geographical problems, are unrolled before the astonished gaze of our ancestors.' So much with reference to man's discovery of humanity, to the replacement of church-man by man; of the state of God by the states of the peoples ; of the ideal of angelic life by that of human life, with the common human feelings and thoughts and purposes.^ 1 History of Philosophy, pp. 281, 282. - In this connection the difference between the old and the new guarantees of certainty may be mentioned. For the old, the guarantee is superhumanness ; for the new, true and genuine humanness. For the old, the guarantee reposes on the basis of the disesteem of our nature and endowment ; for the new, on the basis of profound regard for humanity. Behind, not simply the scholastic, but also the biblical consciousness, there lies the decadence of personal life, of personal humanity; behind ours, its renaissance. In the whole biblical and scholastic view there is profound distrust with reference to the power of personality, of humanity; with us, a conquering faith in the worth of one's own inner life is veritably constitutive. The Changed View op the World 101 Almost simultaneous with man's discovery of himself was his acquaintance with the real form of his earthly habita- tion. Of this matter also Weber's brief account may suffice : The Catholic universe consisted of the world known to the Romans, i. e., of the Mediterranean valley and the southwestern part of Asia, with northern Europe added. But now Columbus discovers the New World. Vasco da Gama sails around the Cape of Good Hope and finds the sea-route to India; above all, Magellan succeeds in making the tour of the earth. These discoveries verify an hypothesis with which the ancients had long been familiar — the hypothesis that our earth is a globe, isolated and suspended in space. What could be more natural than to infer that the stars, too, float in space without being attached to anything, and that the spheres of Aristotle are mere illusions ? The earth is now con- ceived as a globe, but everybody still regards it as the immovable center around which the heavenly spheres revolve. Tycho Brahe directs the first attack against the traditional and popular cos- mography by placing the sun in the center of the planetary system; but he still believes that the solar system revolves around the earth. This theory, which had already been advanced by several of the ancients, and which Copernicus presents merely as hypothesis, is confirmed by the splendid labors of Kepler, who discovers the form of the planetary orbits and the laws of their motion; and of Galileo, who teaches that the earth has a double motion, and with a tele- scope of his own construction, discovers the satellites of Jupiter and the law of their revolution.^ To such discoveries as these, add now the inventions of the time — gunpowder, printing-press, compass, as well as telescope ! These were the weapons before which the old science trembled. How characteristic the old anecdote con- cerning Cremonini (when Galileo had discovered the satel- lites of Jupiter) that he would never look through a telescope again, because it refuted Aristotle ! With these means of investigation the new science possessed an inexhaustible fountain from which it could draw independent strength, cast- ing off the yoke of every authority, and receiving from the 1 Op. cit., pp. 283, 284. 162 The Finality of the Christian Religion hands of nature that gift of God after which the whole Renaissance yearned and struggled — the freedom of the spirit. Of all the modern discoveries, the Copernican theory proved to be the most influential. The appearance of the Celestial Revolutions is the most important event, the great- est epoch, in the intellectual history of Europe. It marks the beginning of the modern world. It revealed to us the infinite. In particular, as bearing upon our thesis, for the transcendentalism of authority-religion, it necessitated the substitution of the modern principle of divine immanency, with all the reliofious and theolocrical revolutions entailed thereby. It made both Bruno's metaphysics and his fate possible. The heliocentric theory aroused great ecclesiastical alarm. It is wonderful to think how positive great and good men were in the maintenance of error as the absolute truth, and how readily they condemned others who sought to correct those errors in order to promote world-betterment. In the sixteenth century the common belief still was, of course, that the earth was stationary, and Protestants as well as Roman Catholics were led to regard Copernicus and others as "atheists and impious teachers." This is among the utterances of Martin Luther: People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolved, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is, of course, the best way. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy, but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and not the earth. Even Melancthon, with more scholarly mind, bore the fol- lowing testimony: The eyes are the witnesses that the heavens revolve in the space of twenty-four hours. But certain men, either from the love of The Changed View of the World 163 novelty or to make a display of ingenuity, have concluded that the earth mores; and they maintain that neither the eighth sphere nor the sun revolves. Now it is want of honesty and decency to assert such notions publicly, and the example is pernicious. It is the part of a good mind to accept the truth as revealed by God and to acquiesce in it. The earth can be nowhere except in the center of the universe.' Every schoolboy knows how Galileo was treated by devout \ ecclesiastics of his day, whose minds were fixed in error's chains and shut against the light. John Calvin proved to his own satisfaction, and that of many followers, from the Scriptures "that the heavens, sun, and moon move about the earth, which stands still in the center." The Copernican system w^as condemned by the famous John Owen, a great Puritan leader, who referred to it as a "delusion and arbi- trary hypothesis contrary to Scripture." Even John Wesley shared in the common error and regarded unfavorably the new ideas, which, he said, "tend to infidelity." Fromundus said that the utter futility of the Copernican theory was shown by this, that, if it were true, "buildings and the earth itself would fly off with such a rapid motion that men would have to be provided with claws like cats, to enable them to hold fast to the earth's surface." A digres- sion may be pardonable that one may meditate upon the similar state of things today. Human nature is much the same in all ages. Man's history is like the course of develop- ment generally in creation. It takes place by action and reaction, by positive and negative forces, by a law of per- 1 They were as sure that the old view of the heavens was as essential to Christian faith as many of our ecclesiastics of today, untrained in critical and philo- sophic thought, feel sure that, e. g., the inspiration dogma, or the dogma of the deity of Christ conceived as the second one of the three persons of the Trinity, is an integral element of the Christian religion. The opposition to these dogmas today is no more painful to the feelings of such ecclesiastics, is no more pernicious and criminal in their sight, than was the assault upon the Ptolemaic astronomy in the eyes of Luther and Melaucthon. If indignation and pained feelings on the part of our modern churchmen be evidence iu favor of these dogmas, Luther and Melancthon outclassed them — some of them — in adducing such evidence in favor of the old astronomy I 164 The Finality of the Christian Religion manence, growth, and change. The two factors appear in human history as in all the lower works of God. There they are known as the Old and the New, Conservatism and Prog- ress. This twofold division of elements, and the corre- sponding antagonism, is the very essence of history. The mistakes referred to, with countless others, the new ideas introduced and battles fought, are the inevitable manifesta- tions of life in all human advance. The conflict we see today in religion, in industry, in business, in politics, between the Old mid the New, is a scientific Jiecessiiy. It is human nature. Men become classified and differentiated according to these two great factors, the conservative or fossilized and the progressive. New ideas take possession of certain people. They are costly things to cherish and espouse. They require sacrifice and suffering. To champion the new means a battle with the people who are intrenched in the old ideas, and whose varied interests are bound up in them. It means enemies who are heartless and cruel, even among those who pretend great devotion to Him whom they com- placently speak of as '■'■our Christ,'''' but who was crucified by the same spirit they manifest, because he introduced revolutionary ideas into the world. This is the story of all human advance in all ages. Many are the lessons taught by these reflections; only two can be named here. They who become identified with a righteous, unpopular cause, and, in the face of great diffi- culties, firmly contend for the Truth, are among heaven's nobility. The unspeakable comfort is theirs that they are following the voice of God in their own souls, and that "the right the day will win" and prove an untold blessing to the world. The greatest need today in society is that of men and women everywhere who will stand for Progress, and the overthrow of those gigantic blunders which even now curse The Changed View of the World 165 the world and prevent the coming of the social order when true religion and true science will be joined together again. But, important as these observations are, I must speedily return from this digression to the prosecution of my main task. We have seen that as the Humanistic movement of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries widened the historical horizon, so a series of favorable events, as well as inferences of bold, genial thought, transformed the scientific picture of nature. By the new astronomic theory the Ptolemaic system was shattered, and an apprehension of cosmic rela- tions, which now underlies our whole scientific view of the world, was put in its place. But, what concerns us more just now, it was through this new knowledge that man was led to lift up his eyes from the confines of earthly existence to the boundlessness, perhaps the infinitude, of the universe. The exchange of the geocentric for the heliocentric stand- point seemed to assign to man himself a role in the system of existence entirely different from that which he had been wont to imagine. Difficult and painful as it might be, man had to wean himself from the thought that his friendly and familiar dwelling-place was the one around which the whole universe revolved. He had to dismiss the beautiful idea that the occurrences which transpired on this earth were fraught with cosmic destinies. The earth is but an ordinary satellite of a planet which is itself only a star among number- less stars, a mere vanishing-point in the illimitable All. This grain of sand on the shore of the infinite sea, how could centrality and supremacy be still accorded to it? And that which takes place upon its surface, how could it be decisive of the fate of the shoreless All? Thus, as soon as the con- ception of the universe ceased to be geocentric physically, it had to be magnified spiritually, so that the cosmic evolution was no longer to be contemplated from the limited point of 166 The Finality of the Chkistian Religion view of mankind, with its needs, wishes, and hopes. Herein lies the significance of Copernicanism. But if it thus casts men down, it also lifts them up, inasmuch as this new knowl- edge was a triumph of critical reason over the crudeness of sense-perception — a consideration to which we must return in the following chapter, as a leading point in the count against naturalism. Now, it was this Copernican doctrine that Bruno so enthusiastically promulgated throughout Europe. From the new astronomical theory he drew the necessary metaphysical consequence of the infinity of the world, thus falling into conflict with the old religion and confession, as well as with the authority of Aristotle, which sanctioned the church's belief in the finitude of the world. As already said, Bruno was burned in Rome, a martyr of modern science, precisely two thousand years after Socrates drank the hemlock. For the rest, I am concerned only with the effect that Copernicanism logically has upon the ecclesiastical form of Christianity. The traditional religion was inveterately con- volved with that old, naive world-scheme. That old picture of nature was both anthropomorphic and geocentric. The world was considered to be limited; everything that existed belonged in a definite place; indeed, it was non-existent, if it did not. The earth was the center of the world, of which the vault of heaven, not so far away, was the outermost limit. What happened on the earth decided the fate of the whole creation. This was the Aristotelio-mediseval scheme of the world. Because Aristotle had incorporated this con- ception in his system, and because his system was in harmony with the circle of biblical ideas, both were taken up by ecclesiastical theology, and were thus regnant until the modern period. Aristotle said : "All men believe that there are gods, and assign the uppermost places to the Deity." The expressions "high" and "low" originally had literal The Changed View of the World 167 meaning. The antithesis between heaven and earth was one with the antithesis between the divine and the human or transitory, the perfect and the imperfect. In each case what was the one was not the other. Heaven is God's throne; the earth is his footstool. If there be several heavens, circle upon circle, God's seat is the highest of them all. Nar- ratives of the ascent of Jesus into heaven and of his descent into hell, Paul's experiences with the seventh heaven, and the like, all presuppose the old world-view. So do angelic visitations and ministries. The program of redemption was decreed in heaven and executed on earth; and so forth. Now, in view of the immeasurable extension of the hori- zon which Copernicanism and modern natural science have consummated, it becomes evident that every determination of place is dependent upon the place of the observer, and that there is no longer any absolute distinction between the heavenly and the earthly regions, nor between the natural places within the earthly regions. Every place is deter- mined by its relation to every other place, as, similarly, every cause is determined by its relation to every other cause.. Fixity yields to motion, absoluteness to relativity. The sharp,, clear framework within which the content of religious ideas; had been localized falls away. To begin with, the God-idea is profoundly affected by this apprehension, inasmuch as not until now were the conditions ripe for its universality and immediacy. Indeed, not until the rise of this new concep- tion could the idea of monotheism enjoy full fruition, since polytheism may very well survive even after the number of the gods has been reduced to but one. Hitherto ecclesi- astical monotheism had been polytheistic. It follows, more- over, that all notion of human particularity must be alienated from the idea of the divine Personality, so much so as to make Personality an inadequate analogy by means of which our imagination seeks to represent God. For another thing, 168 The Finality of the Christian Keligion according to the new cosmic conception, the idea of the externality of the Divine is in principle overcome, and that of metaphysical immanence is unavoidable. Along with this, the old idea of a concatenated series of causes regress- ing step by step to a "First Cause," an unmoved Mover, to which all is linked — quite as Zeus threatened to hang the world on a summit of Olympus — is retired, and the idea of an immanent principle of unity of all reality is put in its place. Nature no longer receives its life from an alien hand. "It befits him to move the world /row within,'^'' said Goethe.^ Thus religious ideas experience an internalizing and spiritualizing, conformably to the new apprehension of the world. In consequence, creation is no longer to be con- ceived as free miraculous acts of an external creator, anthro- pomorphically pictured, but as a work from within; not as single, finished acts, but as beginningless and endless, self- consistent divine work — "My Father worketh hitherto;''''^ not as an arbitrary and contingent work, but as a lawful, purposeful work ordered by divine reason. Nor can revela- tion be thought of longer in terms of the old view of the world. According to the latter, there are a Below and an Above, between which two poles all the acts of sacred his- tory from paradise to parousia are consummated. But when the Below and the Above, the stage of all these acts, vanish, what becomes of the acts themselves, in which faith had visualized the divine revelation ? Revelation is no longer to be conceived as an external, visible act between heaven and earth, but as a spiritual process in the heart of man; no longer as the miraculous communication of divine 1 " Was war' ein Gott, der nur von aussen stiesse, Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen liesse ! Jft.ni zieniVs die Welt im innern zu betvegen, Natur in Sich, Sich in Natur zu hegen, So dass, was in ihm lebt and webt und ist, Nie seine Kraft, nie seinen Geist vermisst." — Goethe, Gott unci Welt, "Proemion," 2 John 5: 17. The Changed View of the World 169 instruction, of a legal and statutory character at that, but as an immanent divine self-expression and self-realization. And "heaven" itself is no longer a locality, but an ideal; not a cosmic region, but a cosmic value. The same is true of hell. The stories of the ascension of Jesus into heaven and of his descent into hell must be interpreted accordingly, thereby ceasing to be records of historical and cosmological facts. After all, it may well have been a correct ecclesiastical instinct which pronounced a sentence of annihilation against Giordano Bruno in Rome. For the new cosmology in fact razes the whole mediaeval structure of the church. It is the promise and potency of all heresies. If the world be boundless, there can be no second world beside it, beyond it, to which the church in her faith and sacrament possesses the keys. Nor can the claim of the church be honored that all power has been given to her in heaven and on earth. And the "grace" by which man is "saved" cannot be something acosmic, non-human, to be sacramentally — or doctrinally — mediated by an ecclesiastical institute. Nor does the Beyond, the Supernatural, lie outside of the world, or our earth, or ourselves. It is in the dust beneath our feet, in every human soul, in every living thing. The tran- scendent is lived within us; it lives in every throb of the heart; it glows in every spirit. The infinite is both behind and before telescope and microscope: and it is one and the same. The infinite is in the finite, the supersensible in the sensible; the cosmic and the theistic, the human and the divine, are not exclusive, disparate, incommensurable. Thus the new picture of the world yields a new insight into the depths of the pious human heart. As its world is greater and more mysterious, more awe-inspiring, more all-embracing, so is its God. Therefore the martyr of the new Cosmos did not undermine religion, but ransomed it. He led man 170 The Finality of the Chkistian Religion out into the open. Vision and love are no longer hemmed in by fixed bounds that they cannot pass. If we pause to think of this rescue of religion by the new view of the world, we see that it is the same old path which the devout human heart has taken once yet again, just when it might seem that the hour for the death of religion has struck. Just when the folly of the omniscience and om- nipotence of man was narrowing religion, comprehending heaven and earth by the dogmas of their wisdom, piloting the whole world according to their own will by the magic formulas of their prayers and offerings, a pious genius gradually led the omniscient and omnipotent to that which they did not and could not know and do — to the lilies of the fields and the birds of the air, as to whose bloom and life man was at the end of his wits, because this life welled up out of the infinite itself; then on to man himself, in whose soul were hidden abysses of life which no one could fathom, but which yet caught the echoes of a compassion, a righteousness and perfection, whose home and hearth are in the bosom of the infinite, in the heart of the heavenly Father; and they whisper to man that he is not what he has become, but what he is endowed to become; that he is an infinite becoming. The death of religion! — this is rather that theology which would only interrogate the fathers of the church and the decisions of the councils, in. order to solve all the riddles of the world, and give man an infallible, all-suflBcient answer to the questions of his life. The grave of religion! — this is rather that faith in a world which, at the hands of a master in Israel, had become so narrow and petty, so finite, that any scribe thought that he could conceive it and categorize it with his concepts. And if the picture of nature of the new time had done nothing more than redeem us from this limitedness, infuse in us again a sacred feeling of reverence, of respect for the The Changed View of the World 171 infinite, unsearchable Life, it would yet have done more thereby for the rejuvenation and reanimation of religion than we can even today realize. The release of the cosmos from its fixity and finitude was the first step to the freedom of the human spirit from the stability of opinion and convention in religion, and to the unsealing of new fountains of life and power. But the world of time, no less than the world of space, has undergone immeasurable extension, both to speculative and to scientific thought. Speculatively, Professor Harald Hoffding has recently reminded us again that it follows from the very concept of time that each single moment must lie between two other moments. Accordingly, there can be neither a "first" moment nor a "last" moment. Time has no "befyinninoj" and no "end." But to the religious consciousness, in its mythical and dogmatic form, at home in the old world-scheme — for the matter of that, to the New England apprehension — there was but a short time before the end, and only a comparatively short time stretched between "creation" and "judgment day." Between these two "fixed" points the great religions and redemptive events find their atomistic and unhistorical locations. But reflective thought has made it perfectly clear that, as there are no fixed and absolute bounds to cause and space, so there are none to time. First a fixed world, then a moving world between fixed points, then a moving world — that is the order in regard to all three. To the relativity of cause and space must now be added that of time. The influence of this new conception upon the ecclesi- astical type of Christianity is too obvious to require minute elaboration. First, eternity can no longer be conceived as "before" and "after" time, or as making intermittent encroachments in the time-series, but must be thought of as 172 The Finality of the Christian Religion immanent in all time, informing it, giving it consistency and content. As eternity does not signify a distant time, past or future, so it does not signify everlastingness, but the continuity and permanence of the worthful amid the mutations and illusions of the temporal. Thus, as the Divine is in all cause and all space, so is it in all time, on which account the latter, no less than the former, has become inwardized and spiritualized. From this it is but a step to the position that values have undergone trans- valuation and transference. The old religious conviction expected genuine happiness only in the hereafter. This world had value only in so far as it prepared for that. Without a country here, the saint's fatherland was the heavenly Beyond. Now the new secular goods have dis- placed the old sacred, in a large degree. The goods, even of a spiritual kind, have been retracted from "heaven" to earth. Man seeks to develop his resident energies in the work of this life. The task of keying together the manifold of his nature into the whole of a moral personality is attended to now. Along with the transition from the old tran- scendent to the modern immanent eternity, awakening, animation, intensification of the entire humanity have been characteristic of the new regime. Science and art have found measureless possibilities. The state becomes what the Germans call a Kidturstaat, seeking independence of the church. Nations grow to spiritual individualities, and attain to high spiritual and moral power. Especially has the drawing down of goods from heaven to earth, from eternity above time to eternity in time, inspired the great social movement, with its strenuous and invincible endeavor to accord property, culture, and the enjoyment of life to every individual. All this, and such as this, tends to make this world the complete and exclusive world of man. There is the passing of the depreciation of material goods, peculiar The Changed View of the World 173 to the former mode of thought. At present they seem to have become indispensable for the development even of spiritual energies. Religious hope of a life beyond pales before a faith in a glorious future on this side. The total result of all these movements is the establishment of man in the circle of the secular life, from which it had been once supposed that it was the main function of religion to extricate him. Now, admitting peril here, certainly much that may well be matter for grave misgivings — to be taken up in the next chapter — the production and discovery of values here and now on this bank and shoal of time do not evacuate the hereafter of its worthful content; nor does the fillinor of human vocations and institutions with energy and value unfit humanity, for the untried and unknown experiences of the immortal life. And it is a distinct gain that the old ecclesiastical dualism, the worst of all dualisms, between "joyless labor" here and "laborless joy" there, should be overcome; that as no person, so also no period of time, should be treated as mere means to an end, no past or present as mere means to a future; but that, as "there come up the stream murmurs and scents from the infinite sea," so every moment should have an inde- pendent and worthy existence of its own, because filled with its own share of eternity. Moreover, if values be here, the criterion of values must be here, and not simply at the "judgment day": "the history of the world is the judgment of the world," as Schiller said. To this change in conviction touching time and eternity must be supplied the change as regards "historical facts" at particular points of time and salvation. The old super- naturalistic conception paradoxically held at once that Christianity was, strictly speaking, anti-historical and yet founded on historical facts! The divine and the eternal miraculously broke into the time-series at a special point, or 174 The Finality of the Christian Eeligion points. Orthodox-ecclesiastical thought restricted thus the' redemptive efficiency to past deeds, past facts, past "reve- lations," past persons, in a way that is little short of a species of atheism; that is, at all events, apparently a polytheistic survival. If God is God of the living and not of the dead, he is eternal and omnipresent in all history, and his revelation is to be found, not simply in documents of a dead past, but in the living present. Indeed, nothing in the past that is in the past only, and not also in the present, saves the human soul today.' Furthermore, according to the old faith, the divine and eternal, entering thus into time, controlling its entire further course, itself remained unchangeable. But the modern scientific idea of development, with its ceaseless progress, makes truth a child of its time. Truth, to do its work, must correspond to a given situation; all insti- tutions, norms, ideals, criteria, convictions, must undergo 1 Rudolf Eucken, one of the foremost living philosophers, in his book entitled Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion, depicts this aspect of the modern situation so impressively that I cannot deny myself the privilege of transcribing the relevant paragraph here : "The new critical mode of thought manifests itself first of all in a profound change of attitude to history. Therefore it is felt at a point of the highest importance for an historical religion. The demand for the expulsion of all subjective addition and for the naked exposure of the exact state of the case produces a harsh collision with the old, sacred tradition. This tradition had been previously accepted unhesitatingly as pure truth. But it now becomes a mere picture (Bild), a problematic phenomenon, a mirroring of facts in the subject, nay, in a whole series of subjects. Not merely error, but "tendency" also, although unconsciously, has corrupted much here. Often there is a wide gulf between picture and fact. It requires a conscientious and methodic investigation to get at the truth here. Historical criticism grows up. Ultimately it must be applied to religious tradition also. It must correct the traditional picture at many points. Where there was once thought to be an harmonious whole, the sharp observer now discovers great deviations and contradictions. This is true, not only in collateral matters and single data, but in fundamental things; e. g., the New Testament contains fundamentally dilfereut portraits of Jesus, opposite conceptions of Christianity. That which was the main thing to the faith of a later time is not seldom wanting in the classic documents, or else is there only in slightest beginnings. An unprejudiced examination cannot be blind to the wide gulf between ecclesiastical dogma and the Bible. Add to this now the question of the genuineness of sources, with its discussions, now passionate, now microscopic. The important thing is not whether criticism should turn out to be positive or negative, but that it should be thought that the tradition requires scientific criticism at all in order to its trustworthiness. The Divine is no The Changed View of the World 175 continuous metamorphosis conformably to the requirements of a living present. A truth once true is not on that account true forever; a good once good is not on that account good forever; "whatever is, is right," until some- thing better is possible, whereupon the old right becomes immediately wrong. That which suffices for its own time just on that account cannot suffice for all time. How great a change is this from the static truths, the static norms, the static right, of the old static world! This new conviction must stigmatize every fixation of a content of thought and of faith as an intolerable yoke. All tying down of life to the models and goods of a particular time becomes, in the long run, a vain damming back of the inexhaustible floods of life. To erect evolution into a fundamental law of history is to proclaim the fluidity of all spiritual magnitudes, to relativize truth, and to obliterate all static finalities or absolutes from life. Can religion forego such absoluteness and unchangeability of its truth? Can the longer naively accepted. It is appropriated only by man's painstaking labor of thought. His reflecting and reasoning destroy irrevocably the halo of sanctity ■which formerly enveloped the biblical tradition. The glaring daylight of critical illumination unmercifully chases away the dreamy twilight in which the religious fantasy spun wondrous threads between heaven and earth. Thus religion loses in just the measure that history gains. Prec4se inspection itself, the accurate fixing of a special time, this necessary result of a critical mode of thought, is unfavorable to an historical religion. It hinders the blending of one's own life with that of a disparate age. Thus Protestantism can no longer pass as a simple restoration of primitive Christianity. '"But this upheaval of the historical basis of the religious life reaches still farther. History in general no longer seems fit to be the basis of religion. For the thought to which the modern world delivers up the guidance of its life is not able to acknowledge history as the fountain of eternal truths. Such truth must be capable of immediate realization. It must offer itself to everyone and to every age. Then it must be founded in the timeless nature of reason. However deeply an occurrence of the past may enter into the historical order, and persist to our day, it does not on that account become a part of our own life. We cannot immediately experience it. We cannot even test its validity. We cannot transform it into a personal possession. But, according to our modern convictions, religious truths require precisely this, above all else." (P. 31.) The reader may remember that Kant, too, said this a cencury ago: "That historical faith is duty and belongs to salvation is superstition." To which I wish to add with emphasis: Criticism is not properly called destructive or constructive, negative or positive, but true or false. If the latter, let it be corrected; if the former, then what one does about it depends upon what sort of man one is. 176 The Finality of the Cheistian Religion Divine partake of the flux and change of time without being belittled and destroyed? And can man, doomed to absorption in the process of becoming, and in the tasks of time, still yearn for a kingdom of eternity ? Finally, reference may be made to the self-dependence of the time-series, according to the new view of the world and of life — self-dependence and self -development of the world of time as of the world of space. The bearers of the new faith still speak of God ; but is there a path from nature, as con- ceived by the modern man, to God? Where is there room for God in an infinite world self-dependent, self-developing, self -lawgiving ? Do we find anything which does not belong to world, to nature, and to history ? What is there for God to do, if all that takes place in the world does so according to resident forces and eternal laws, and if, according to the conservation of energy, the sum of these forces cannot be increased or diminished? Is not this world entirely self- sufficient, with its own laws of development, by which it is led in its infinite evolution according to inviolable law ? Cer- tainly, as the "supernatural" is excluded by the new cosmol- ogy, so the superhistorical is excluded by the new history. Motive power of its own is recognized within the domain of the human and historical; goals of its own are designated; phenomena are directly concatenated, and ultimately com- bined into a single great system. Every special performance is to be understood from the standpoint of this system. The supreme endeavor is not construed as an isolated miracle, but as a climax of a continuous movement, as issuing from universal conditions and surroundings. It is clear that this rejection of the encroachment of transcendental powers is a decisive opposition to the traditional religion. But it may not be to all religion, since the negation of miracle is not eo ipso the negation of God. Still, the questions raised above are sufficient to indicate what a profound change the The Changed View of the World 177 traditional God-idea must undergo, if it is to be retained as a constitutent of the new view of the world. "God is dead!" cried Nietzsche.' In a sense that is true; but he dies to live. Meaning to postpone naturalistic monism till the next chapter, I but briefly revert to the thought expressed already in discussing the world of space. A God outside the cosmos is dead. And it may very well be that, as the quarrel between materialism and idealism has turned out to be mostly a mere matter of words, so the contrast between the theistic conception and the cosmic conception, in modern religious thought, may likewise be verbal. But if this be true, it is only because the poverty of the ecclesiastical cosmos has yielded to its enrichment with all the ethical and rational values, to its qualification with all the ontological attributes, and to its equipment with all the physical energies, which were predicated of the transcendent God of the old world- scheme. But if a rose by any other name would be as sweet, so would God; all the more so, since he does not care by what name we name him, but only that we do his will and receive his grace. Thus, if the modern man no longer believes in the trinitarian God of mediaeval dualism; if he has learned that such a conception, which the church yet calls Christian, is foreign to the teaching of Jesus, and is more like the neo-Platonic philosophy than like the Sermon on the Mount, he does believe, for all that, in the living God of the gospel, however differently conceived, whose all-embra- cing activity is consummated as an omnipresent principle of the order in nature — the world of space — and as the supreme 1 With equal propriety Nietzsche could have said : " Man is dead ! " for the man who was the correlate of the God of whom Nietzsche was thinking is dead. Things became different within their development. So with man, consciousness and energy of will are transformed; a new psychological capacity is developed. Seethe masterly treatment of this subject in Dilthey, "Ueber oberrheinische Gedankenbildungen im Zeitalter der Reformation;" also, Harnack, "Ueber die Bedeutungder Reforma- tion," Christliche Welt, 1899. Bonus elaborates the thought with specific applica- tion to Germany in the Christliche Welt of the same year: "Zur Germanisierung des Christentums." 178 The Finality of the Christian Religion law of the good in history, in the moral world — the world of time. What is the attitude of the new philosophy to the tradi- tional religion? As we have seen, our heritage from the eighteenth century is, among other things, a new view of nature; from the nineteenth century, a new view of history. The ground was washed away from under the old religious conceptions by both views. "But perhaps" — so it might be proposed — "religion can find refuge, during the march of events and changes, in the inner sanctuary of the soul, and maintain there securely its old-time relations to supramun- dane powers." But the assault of the new culture has pressed on into this innermost citadel of all, on which account it would seem that religion, as hitherto understood, had lost final foothold, and that dissolution was unavoidable. Let us see how the case stands at this decisive point. We are now concerned with the inner nature of man which lies at the base of religion. In primitive religions, life of a spiritual kind consisted, first of all, in an intercourse and self-communication between man and man ; but, secondly, with powers outside and above our human region — powers, however, which were shaped anthropomorphically, man thus appropriating them for his own use. Thus man communed with a soul-like nature, apparently akin to himself, filled with psychic forces. This was held to be true of nature singly and as a whole. The gods of the older religions were only larger men; and intercourse among them was like that among men. Of course, a certain moralization of the gods followed upon the moralization of men. But even with the uplifting of Deity to a moral ideal, no breach with the human mode of life ensued; rather, the immediate condition of man, his psychic competency, remained the fundamental standard which controlled all reality, even the ideas concerning what was revered as superhuman. Far-seeing and profound spirits The Changed View of the Wokld 179 could not escape the limitations of the whole, though many tried hard to lift the idea of God above the concepts of the merely human, and the religious above what Spinoza calls the "affects" of the merely human. But, on the whole, reli- gious matters remained at the old standpoint till the modern period effected a great revolution of life. One prime feature of the primitive view of things was the uninterrupted connection between man and the world, an easy flowing over of life from the one side to the other. Psychical and natural, inner and outer, were not yet differ- entiated. The interior of each bore a good part of that of the other. But the modern period came to feel that such compact was surreptitious and even impossible. To this reaction there appeared to be a gulf between man and man's surroundings. The contrast between the two came to be uppermost in human consciousness. But primacy was shifted from environment to man, from object to subject. Kant proclaimed the sublimity of the spirit above nature. The starting-point in life lay in the subject. Everything unfolds from the subject. But, at the same time, the great world remained inwardly present; to forego it entirely seemed impossible. Hence a pathway from subject to object had to be found. The lost external possessions had to be won anew. How was this to be done ? What belonged merely to the particularity of the subject, to its subjectivity, was to be rigidly kept aloof from outer things, and excluded from the image and idea of outer things. The soul could win back the estranged world only in case it contained in itself a world-force; i. e., in case it was able to set up an impersonal, affectionless, objective activity. The modern world believed that it had actually lit upon such a world- force, such an activity, and that it was thinking^ thought — thought disengaged from all human desires, and akin to things therefore. How accurate and unerrino- nature's activ- 180 The Finality of the Cheistian Religion ities are ! So said Newton, and Descartes and his school. If only there was in man such a mechanism, a nature — but called mind! — acting with nature's inerrancy, then the dis- integration of such old absolutes as an infallible church and an infallible book could be easily endured. Then a Spinoza could write even ethics with geometrical precision. And so it was thought which reunited man with the world. It was the work of thought which built up for man again a new, truer life. It was before the forum of pure thought that all else must make good its claim to reality. Clear and distinct thought — this must yield what is true for the future. Whereupon the rummaging, and criticising, and sifting of the whole traditional life began. Everything must be tested, as by fire, by this new absolute, by this pre-Kantian primacy of "The Theoretical Reason;" and whatever cannot stand this test must be remorselessly ban- ished. There was no need of so many absolutes : mechanical church, mechanical book, mechanical thought — competition for first honors was inevitable ; and this was the period when clear and distinct thought — "clear" and "distinct," these were the great adjectives — was to have its "innings." The beginning of a new epoch of spiritual life was unmistakable. The old, naive kind of life is now definitively overcome. Life no longer rests on immediate impressions of the senses, or on historic authorities, but on thought alone. A rational culture, an age of reason, begins; it is the demands of thought which now control human activity and give it direction. This exaltation of thought above sensibility affected the form of the old life first; afterward the content as well. There was a dislocation of relationship between sense and spirit. The center was transferred to within the life of the human spirit. Instead of the sensible being an essential constituent of life, it was treated rather as a mere manifes- The Changed View of the World 181 tation and representation of processes of thought. It was not the immediate impression and enjoyment of the sensible, but its service of the ends of thought, or its enhancement of the spiritual life, that now seemed of real worth. For example, formerly a sensible element belonged to the com- pleteness of an act. Legal business was not valid without a sharply defined act perceptible to the senses. Political authority was ex cathedra, in some special place, as imperial dignity in the city of Rome, The idea of the state was not separated from the personality of the ruler. So with trade and traffic, so with various branches of toil of the human spirit — dependence on the sensible. Everywhere the sen- sible was no indifferent sign or symbol, but an indispensable and solid constituent of life. Noiv the modern period con- summates an emancipation of the spiritual from such con- straint and dependency. Everywhere there was a turning away from the sensible to thought, idea, ideal. Even nature became a system of invisible forces and laws. Even state and society became magnitudes of thought, which developed consequences and made claims from the necessity of their concepts. And man comes to himself in his thought. Now, religion could not escape the effects of so important a change. The traditional religion was rudely shocked. We must bear in mind that at the downfall of antiquity, Christianity experienced an intimate, an apparently insepa- rable, amalgamation of the spiritual and the sensible. This amalgamation — a welcome foothold against painful doubt to the ancients — became an indispensable means for the spiritual education of the peoples in the Middle Ages. The Reformation began to make the spiritual more free. But it was from conduct and personal conviction, rather than from the central doctrines, that it lifted the sensible. It meant a terrible shaking up for Catholicism especially, but also for all ecclesiastical Christianity, when the modern period took 182 The Finality op the Cheistian Religion up and carried through to a finish this changed relation between the spiritual and the sensible. For precisely the main doctrines of traditional Christianity thus lose their inner support and necessity. Thus, for example, the doctrine of the redemption of humanity by the blood of Christ; the doctrine of the bodily resurrection as a condition of immor- tality; the doctrine of sacraments, binding, as they do, spiritual efPects down to sensible processes; the doctrine of the visible church as an essential part of religion. All this, and such as this, seemed to the modern mode of thought an expression of a stage of life which was now overcome. The old faith fastened the full reality of religious processes to the sensible, saw their convincing proof in the sensible; the new thought came to look upon the sensible as hindrance and repression of that spiritual substance which had to prove its actuality by its own energy. What the old mode valued as deepest religion, the new treated as mythology. But what amounted to the greatest assault and danger for the traditional religion was the dissolution, or at least the dissipation, of the center of the life of the human spirit. This signified an inner transformation of the life-process which resulted in an entirely new idea of reality and in a depreciation of all previous values. As it was peculiar to the old, deep-seated view to relate every property or quality of matter to a fixed substance, so, similarly, every human experience and act was related to a substance, a fixed center, called a soul; to an ego which felt and strove; to an entity which was the agent and bearer of consciousness. This controversy over the substance of the soul awakened great interest in France and England, As man viewed himself, the inner reality, as substance, so he looked upon the outer reality from the same point of view. Indeed, the supreme reality of God was conceived in the same way — as substance, a fixed center of attributes. Personality was substance. The Changed View of the World 183 But this is not all. In harmony with the old type, the magnitudes and contrasts which excite the personal, especially those of good and evil, became world-ruling agencies. A life of subjective passions radiated from man into all reality. As man, so all besides. But all this was now changed. To the modern demand for secular life all this was narrow and insufferable. There came to be a direct entrance into the breadth and truth of things. There was a necessity for the energetic expulsion of all turgid subjectivity. There was an heroic emancipation from the old personal and affectional form of life. There was a warfare of man against that which had hitherto been valued as his deepest essence, but which now was degraded to a lower stage and a most painful hindrance. Nothing but thought, however, could effect such an emancipation. Hence thought is detached from the soul- life, becomes self-activity on its own resources, is transformed into a process, without any agent or bearer but itself. "Process" — that is the magic word of the modern period.. Psychology no longer studies a soul-substance in which faculties inhere, but describes a progressive synthesis of experience. Theology is no longer the science of a Grod- substance in which attributes are infixed ; for God is no longer Being, but Becoming. All the multitude of static entities, excluding each other, have widened out into process. And so psychic activity was cut loose from a soul-substance; God-activity, from a God-substance; world-activity, from a world-substance. The old soul, the old God, the old world, were gone. Process, laws, methods — these take their place. No wonder violent controversies arose in Germany, which led to the dissolution of the Hegelian school ; contro- versies which turned essentially on the personality of God and the immortality of the soul. And it must be admitted, I think, that had this new culture remained at this stage, 184 The Finality of the Christian Religion it would have clashed, not simply with the traditional form of Christianity, but with the entire nature of Christianity. The very peculiarity of Christianity is that it exalts psychic internality to a self-dependent world, and makes this world the center of all reality. If this internality is, not the goal, but the secondary by-product, of cosmic processes, the ground is taken away from under Christianity. Hence the controversy over personality becomes a matter of life and death for Christianity. It suffices to mention but one important particular. Religion, in the old faith, was conceived as communion between the soul and God; and this might very well be, if God is a personal substance and the soul is a personal substance. But with God resolved into a process of becoming, and the soul resolved into a progress- ive synthesis of experience — itself a passing moment in the dialectic process of reality, a fleeting thought of the Thought — then the conception of religion as communion between man and God must be abandoned; for from such a point of view all the old possibilities of personal relationships — love and grace, faith and confidence — become mere anthro- pomorphisms. Inasmuch as the movement which began in driving the soul-life from nature, in the mechanicization of nature, ended in driving the soul-life from man, in the mechanicization of man, it becomes clear that, not this or that religion, not this or that morality, but religion and morality in general must perish from the face of the earth, if the fact and right of personality cannot be maintained over against the conception of reality as thought, and that thought as deterministic process. Postponing the question of naturalism, into which this development empties, till the next chapter, mention may be made here of the way in which Personality has come to its rights over against "logical" evolution, or, for that matter, evolution in its entirety. It is not, however, that The Changed View of the World 185 the idea of process and of evolution was surrendered. It is not that its merit has not been great. It has. If it be asked — and in saying this I but epitomize my whole contention again — why, contrary to the manifest intention of the Founder, the religion of Jesus soon took its place among the authority-religions of the old world, why it lost its original path and supported itself on external authority — tradition, pope, or book — the answer is that it is because reality — i. e., matter, soul, God — was subsumed under the category of substance, which was thought to be static. The static was authoritative in science and morality and religion. Being static, it was final, absolute. Thus the finality, the absoluteness, of the Christian religion could be easily held in that old world of the static absolute. So, too, rationalism, with its system of static concepts, innate and logical, had the presuppositions for adhering to the finality of the Christian religion. Rationalism and orthodoxy, in the last analysis, are one; each has its static finality ; and the static in the case of each comes under the head of intellectualism. But — let it be repeated — what a great, world-historical change has taken place! The Platonic, mediaeval, rationalistic world of the static — the Hegelian, Darwinian world of process, becoming, evolution — how great the contrast! In principle, the religion of authority has already yielded to the religion of the moral consciousness of man, the might of force to the might of ideals. This is the great merit partly of the movement of thought just outlined. Very well, then. Is, now, the conviction of the finality of the Christian religion tenable in this new world of ours, where the fixed has yielded to flux, being to becoming, absoluteness to relativity, force to ideals ? Having seen that Christianity is no longer absolute as a religion of authority in a world of static entities, can it be shown that it is absolute as a religion of ideals in a 186 The Finality of the Christian Religion world of evolution and immanence? That is the great problem. Not if there be no ideals. And there are no ideals if there be no personalities. But precisely the correction which recent times have administered to Hegelianism is the insight that the essence of spirit is not thought, but will, and that the concept of personality must be supplied to that of evolution. It is due partly to the influence emanating from Kant's Primacy of the Practical Reason, partly to Romanticism, partly to Schopenhauer, and partly to the new voluntaristic psychology, as well as to the modern preponderance of interest in the practical as against the contemplative life, that will is now held to be the final fact in human nature, and man's active faculties more primary than his thinking powers. ^ Among psychologists there is quite general agree- ment today that (a) a living being is first immediately con- scious of its own self as a being pleasurably or painfully influenced by outside things, and gets in this ieeiing judg- ments of value and impulses of ivill which immediately issue therefrom; (6) an idea of the character of what it is that influences it, and an impulse to know the source of this influence more accurately, arise only secondarily. This objective consciousness, unfolding from a "big buzzing con- fusion" on to concepts, begets of itself no impulse of will, but can only guide the will which determines of itself it.j own goal. Even the impulse to knowledge on and up to its highest form is, without doubt, originally awakened and guided by practical motives. Thus the essence of us is forward-strivingf to a sroal which the will itself wills. Ideas are like signboards, auxiliary and instrumental, as we go on our destined way, but do not supply either the energy for the journey or the values at the goal. The energy and the value 1 Knowledge for the sake of knowledge, truth for truth's sake — this is elliptic, and means knowledge for the sake of the worth of knowledge, truth for the sake of the ivorth of truth. The Changed View of the World 187 are not knowledge, but the will and its goods ; not ideas, but ideals and their realization. The immense, I will say the epoch-making, effect of this new appreciation of the function of the will upon the fabric of doctrinal and practical Christianity must grow increas- ingly manifest to all who read the signs of the times. If intellect have primacy in man, knowledge becomes the chief good. Sin is error, a defect in knowledge. Reli- gion becomes dogma and intellectual adhesion to dogma. Salvation consists in a rectification of knowledge. This rectification is effected by the communication of better, of absolutely certain, knowledge, which is the revelation. But the inerrancy of the book or the infallibility of the pope is the indispensable prerequisite of the certainty of redemption, from this whole standpoint. It is the standpoint of salva- tion by knowledge, common to orthodoxy and rationalism, to neo-Platonism and Buddhism, to Thomas Aquinas and Hegel. "Blessed are the rich, for they do not need the kinofdom of heaven." But if it be the will to which central- ity and supremacy belong in the human spirit, then the primary evil is not an error of the intellect, but the evil state of the heart. And what must be set right is not directly a set of ideas, but the bent of the will. The agency to be employed is not now "sound doctrine," so much as sound personalities. As fire kindles fire, and not some theory about the nature of flame, so persons save persons. Thus revela- tion is the content of holy personalties whose base and roots are God, not of sacred doctrines. We are saved, not by ideas, but by ideals. Thus, too, the revelation which Jesus brought is himself ; and Kant was right when he said that there was nothing good in the world save a good will alone. In these observations I but roughly specify a single item in the antithesis of the old world and the new as regards the ideals of life. The interest of neo-Platonism, c. g., is per- 188 The Finality of the Christian Religion feet and pure knowledge; therefore it is directed to the causality of existence, to the ground of all things. Its effort is to abstract ultimate principles from a given multiplicity of phenomena, and to reduce the entire course of the world to permanent formula. This final formula is God. Astatic idea is its absolute. The finality of the Christian religion, accordingly, would be the stability of this idea. But the interest of the new world is perfect conduct. Therefore it is turned to the future, is teleological. Its concern is to forge values out of the given hurly-burly of experiences; not to know, but to receive, the Good that transcends all other values. This Chief Good is God. There rest, here motion. For neo-Platonism the means to the end is, accordingly, the scientific method, the logical exercise of the understand- ing. To be sure, it is aware that this means can only approximately attain the goal; ecstasy must come in and do the rest, with its preliminary asceticism. For the world of Kant and Darwin the means to the end is faith ; i. e., not a cognitive function, but a deed of the will. Faith is produc- tive; it creates a world of values on the basis of a decisive impression, a world which is truth only to the subject. Accordingly, to the Greek world the practical life of man was only auxiliary to the perfect Gnosis ; for our modern biological point of view, knowledge is only auxiliary to the perfect formation of character. For the former, the active moral life was not in objective connection with the supreme goal, but was only secondary and subordinate. Therefore contemplation and, for its sake, asceticism had to be put above practical activity. But today it is the willing and doing of the good itself that is the chief good, and world-flight at best can only be a pedagogic means in order to one's dominion over the world, or else an integral part of that dominion. Furthermore, that old world was not able to maintain its ascetic-contemplative ideal of life as universally valid ; other- The Changed View of the World 189 wise it would have had to deny itself its rich world of cul- ture. Consequently it created a "twofold morality" — one for man as an isolated being, one for man as member of society; one for the philosopher, one for the man on the street. But the new world has an ideal of life only for man as a member of society, and radically rejects any life without relations to others. Finally, the secondary subordinate ideal of life — the practical — the old world sought to express and actualize by means of law; the new world, by life, believing that the life will move the will of others to goodness. Primacy of the intellect in man ; the ascetic-contemplative life the highest life; knowledge the chief good; dogma, or "sound doctrine," the essence of Christianity and the con- tent of revelation, such content guaranteed by infallibility of pope or book, whose credentials are necessarily miraculous ; saving faith, first of all holding things to be true because pope or book says so, the finality of the Christian religion consisting in the miraculously authenticated divinity of its doctrines — this is all of a piece, and it all fits into the old Greeco-Roman and mediaeval world, with its static cosmology, and its static empire and hierarchy over the spirit. The primacy of the will in man; the practical-moral life the highest life ; character the chief good ; ideals the essence of the Christian religion and the content of revelation, which latter is the history of great souls and the soul of history ; ideals valued teleologically and not causally ; faith not assent, but moral action ; the finality of the Christian religion in its ideals — this, too, is all of a piece and fits into the modern dynamic and biological world. This long chapter, aiming to give a comprehensive sur- vey of the changed views of the world and of life, may not properly close without reference to two other matters, I refer, first, to the radical revolution of method in both science and religion. It began, say, with Bacon, and resulted 190 The Finality of the Christian Keligion in the collapse of the old mode of procedure. In its very germ, it contained the autonomy of science which plays so great a role today. The new method may be expressed in one word: observation. It is through observation that science has changed masters. Formerly science was a captive of dogma; now it is a captive of nature. No longer bound to the formal doctrine of the church, it now keeps to the con- crete doctrine of experience. It was deductive; now it is inductive. Formerly one subjected reality to the categories of the understanding; now one subjects the understanding in sovereign obedience to facts. Formerly one said things must be so, therefore they are so; now one says things are what they are, and one looks at them and into them to see what they are. At the same time, the old identification of faith and knowledge was broken. The breach, scarcely per- ceptible at first, grew swiftly greater ; the nineteenth century finished it by the great development of experimental science, until the breach became a yawning chasm. At the outset it looked as if there was to be a similar movement in religion. Luther, e. g., was a man of expe- rience in religion, as Bacon in science. Indeed, it seemed at first as if the whole Reformation was to be a return from the age-long dominant a iiriori procedure to direct observa- tion of religious facts. The Reformation in many ways was a movement of experience. The reformers, to be sure, would keep intact the spiritual authority of the Scriptures, at the expense of the traditional authority of Catholic dogma ; and they also appealed to an historical argument, viz., the out- standing superiority of the original revelation. But where, ultimately, did the reformers find the guarantee of this argument and the badge of this superiority ? In personal experience. When Luther, in the name of the Christian conscience, reinforced by the witness of the Bible, broke the iron bands of the papal system, he but undertook a similar The Changed View of the World 191 work in another region, and applied the same method in another sphere, that Bacon, the English philosopher, intro- duced in science. Both Luther and Bacon, each in his place, desired to be true to the reality of facts. Therefore Bacon made what he called profane science ; Luther, what he called religious truth, dependent on observation and expe- rience. For both, action preceded knowledge. This experimental character of the new religious move- ment, however, had the tragic misfortune not to understand itself or to be understood — due to the existence in statu quo of the old view of the world in general. It was soon lost in a new scholasticism, all the more regrettable since it bore the Protestant name, and was a contradiction to the nature of that very faith which it expounded. Science kept to its method, and has gone on conquering and to conquer; reli- gion did not, but is belatedly now returning to it, after the new scholasticism has succeeded in keeping the 4lite of two generations from Christianity. The second matter to which I wish to refer is the taking up of the spiritual leadership of modern humanity by the peoples of the North. Think of the difference between the peoples of the North — Germany, Britain, America — and the peoples of the South — Italy, Spain, even France. Who are the people today that have the liveliest part in taking possession of the world in political, commercial, and colonial ways ? Where do you find the greatest capacity of adapta- bility, combined with the tensest, toughest energy ? Where are the creative agencies of our civilizations ? On what is our literature nourished ? Whence our philosophy ? Whence the new views and the ruling ideas of our science ? In a word, whence the substance, the form, and the tendency of our thought ? The answer cannot be in doubt. There was Charles Darwin, with his fundamental thought, who has fixed the spiritual type which is peculiar to the genius of 192 The Finality of the Christian Religion the peoples of the North. This type is so little like that of the Greek-Latin genius that it almost seems to contain its negation. Let it be repeated: For that old southern genius all is stable, for the northern all is flux; for the southern everything has become, for the northern all is becoming. If you think of the mode of the elaboration of their thought, the Latin is more analytic, the Anglo-Saxon more intuitive; the Latin believes rather in the logical nexus of ideas, the Anglo-Saxon in the organic concatenation of reality. The South remains faithful to its old Roman heritage and sees things from the legal point of view; the North, from the moral point of view. But enough has been said to impress the reader with how great a change it is from the old to the new. For the old view, reality was static substance ; for the new, dynamic consciousness. For the old the primacy was in the intellect ; for the new, in the will. For the old, the mind was passive in knowing ; for the new, active. For the old, man came into possession of his chief good by the contemplative vision of God; for the new, by the energetic service of man. For the old, man was saved by imperturbableness and peace; for the new, by trouble and struggle and sorrow. For the old, man was saved by belief; for the new, by doubt — and it is just possible that there is more faith in the new doubt than in the old belief. Once, in this matter of salvation, knowledge preceded conduct; now conduct precedes knowl- edge. Once, being was before becoming; now, becoming is before being. It is a great change. Once, the great matter was the conformity of conduct to a model under the eye of authority; now, it is the development of character under the responsibility of freedom. And the former was peculiar to the genius of the South as the latter is to the genius of the North. A moment's reflection will convince us that Christianity The Changed View of the World 193 as an authority-religion belongs to the old static view of reality; and that Christianity as a religion primarily of the will/ of freedom, of the moral consciousness, belongs to the new view of reality. Not without its ideals, the old was a religion of ideas ; not without its ideas, the new is a religion of ideals. And in this Christ is distinctly on the side of the modern man. There is an impressive illustration of this in the story of Christ's interview with Pilate. Pilate asked: "Art thou a king? But where is the sign?" In his static world, Pilate's first thought was of the kingdom of force. But Jesus was not to conquer by the might of force. Jesus, seeing Pilate puzzled, came to the rescue: "Thou sayest it, I am king: to this end I was born and for this cause came I into the world, that I might bear witness to the truth." But this was but to shift the problem for Pilate. Truth? — that was but a new kind of force. It set Pilate to thinking, not now of the Csesars, but of the Greek lOnce again, this is to say that theonomy is not heteronomy, but autonomy. Whence the red of the rose? From the sun, you say. True, but the sun did not reach out its red hand and paint the red on the rose from without. The red of the rose comes from the rose's own heart, but it does not come from its own heart without the influence of the sun. And it does not come from the sun without the activity of the rose. Somehow the activity of the sun and the self-activity of the rose come to be one and the same thing. There would be contradiction were theonomy to equal heteronomy; were God a stranger and external to our being; were his will imposed upon us from without like a law differing from that of our true nature. There is the inner presence of God in man, and its mysterious and ceaseless working within all the manifestations of man's personal life. God lives in us. We live in God. Our freedom is his authority. His authority is our freedom. His spirit makes us what we are. His voice is the voice of our conscience. To obey the will of God is to obey our own law. To obey our own law is to obey the will of God. There are no longer two laws : a divine law over against the law of conscience. There are no longer two truths : a supernatural truth over against the natural truth. There are no longer two powers : a power that is the order of nature and of history, and another power that is other and different from the order of nature and of history. There are no longer two societies: a divine society in the Trinity and a human society outside the Trinity^aud there is no longer a divine society and authority over against civil society and temporal authority. There is but one life, one society, one general culture, one religion, one education, one eternal divine purpose in all, running through all and unto all. It is this principle which is at once a principle of freedom and of authority, which is now, and is to continue, to assert itself against the dogmatic view of the world which the cosmology of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the history of the nineteenth century have destroyed. 194 The Finality of the Christian Keligion and Roman philosophers, of Socrates and Cicero, Plato and Aristotle, and of the termination of the whole philosophical development in skepticism and despair of knowledge. So Pilate now thought that Jesus meant to conquer, not by the might of physical force, but by the might of intellectual force — force in either case. So Jesus finally corrected Pilate by saying, ?io/, "He that heareth my voice is of the truth" — that would be to conquer by the might of force again — hut, "He that is of the iridli heareth my voice." And what does that mean? It is, indeed, a kingdom of the children of the truth that Jesus rules over. But it is not unpersonal, scientific truth of which Jesus was thinking. Jesus was no man of science. He founded no academy, walked in no porch, gathered about him thus no scholars, strictly speaking, that they might learn the wisdom of the world from him. But Jesus was a man of life, King in the kingdom of life, and those he gathered about him he taught the art of life — a life which was not of this world, which made different men out of them from what they were before. He was not King, in the kingdom of concepts; he was King in the kingdom of the ideal; and he would conquer, not by the might of force, physical or intellectual — militarism, mechan- ism, or miracle, the compulsion of logic or of oratory! Poor Pilate did not understand this, as the multitude today do not understand it, because — because, they are not of the truth; have no inner kinship, no bent to the truth. Pilate, with sigh or scorn, and with the satiety of a cultivated Roman, familiar with truth over which philosophers debated, asked: "What is truth?" "J am truth," says Jesus. Truth is personal. And so Christ and conscience are continuous. We are saved by ideals, their dynamic and their temptation. It is because Jesus is like us that he can fasten on to our lives. It is because he is greater than we are that he bows us down in repentance and builds us up in faith. The Changed View of the World 195 What, now, is the conclusion of the whole matter? It is this: The eternal gate to the eternal city of the gospel is the fact of conscience. The power which Christianity has over man is precisely equivalent to the duty-feeling. By virtue of our humanity we owe to Christianity the obedience of the heart. We subject ourselves to the gospel, not to become different from what we are by endowment and nature, but in order to become and remain men in the strictest sense of the word. Christianity turns directly to the sole enduring and permanent element of our human life — the eternal gospel to the eternal man — and lays the greatest possible stress on that, on the duty-consciousness. And so the conditions of faith in the present are also its eternal conditions, perfectly human and accessible to man; for the timeless can be in all time. The difficulties of the present situation are apparently very great ; in reality, very small. For the pathway remains free and open today as yesterday, yesterday as today. It is open to the humblest, not to the wisest ; to him who does, not to him who knows. You learn to walk it through obedience, not through knowl- edge. But this obedience is required by conscience before it was required by Christ. Christ is simply continuous with conscience, Light of our light, Ideal of our ideal. Conscience of our conscience ; and so personal force saves personal life — just this, and nothing else besides. Faith has its origin in obedience to duty; it has its goal and consummation in obedience to the God of Jesus Christ, the supreme fountain of duty in us and of revelation in history. "He that willeth to do my will shall know," said Jesus to the assembled multitude. This is the great word in which the Son of man appealed from his gospel, rejected by man, to that Gospel regnant in man through the power of conscience; and this word remains forever the basis of all human life and of all Christian certainty. CHAPTER VI THE NATURALISTIC AND THE RELIGIOUS VIEW OF THE WORLD The first part of our task is done. We have tried to show that it belongs to the nature of Catholic and Protestant orthodoxy to be certain that they have absolute truth, that apart from their doctrine there is no truth and no salvation. But the recognition of the autonomy of reason is speedily becoming a fact in the modern world — reason understood broadly and deeply, and not narrowly. And reason is the unimpeachable judge in all questions pertaining to the true and the false, the good and the bad. There is no court of appeal above reason, no "revelation" even by which reason is abridged; on the contrary, the truth of any supposed revelation, the authority of any given tradition, must be tested before the forum of the moral and spiritual reason of man. This, once for all, is the element of truth in rationalism — a system of thought to be rejected as a whole. We can- not, at our peril, go back to the subjection of reason to external authority, be it book or church, God or man. My faith rests on the spontaneous assent of my reason and my conscience. In a deep and abiding sense, I myself am the one who makes the authority for myself; therefore my character is to be judged by my master as well as by my obedience. And I must take this authority ever anew from case to case, as a living and workable auxiliary to experience. I reserve the right to examine every point. An authority which would bind my reason and my conscience, by means of its pronouncemerJts concerning truth and error, good and bad, would bind me to believe what I, using my own reason, must hold to be untrue. This cannot be; this I cannot 196 Naturalistic and Religious World-Views 197 acknowledge without self-abdication and self-blasphemy, without surrendering the crown of manhood which is the self-certainty of spirit. That I am inwardly bound only by my reason and my conscience, and not by any authority out of me, this is not only the Magna Charta of Protestantism, but the form of that inner ethical disposition which it was the mission and merit of Jesus to organize and consummate. The deliberate repudiation of self-dependence and self- accountability, the voluntary surrender to an infallible ex- ternal authority, blind obedience in matters of faith and conscience — in a word, the foregoing in principle of the use of my reason and my conscience — this is tantamount to the denial of the omnipresence of God, who is Living Love and Wisdom, in the life of humanity. And to say this is entirely consistent with the conviction, which we should gratefully cherish, that all men begin their development with childlike adhesion to authorities and models, and that these have great humane and pedagogic importance. But the doctrine of static infallibility, on the one hand, with its correlate of permanent human nonage, on the other, is immoral; and the recognition of this doctrine is no better, since its logical issue is the annihilation of one's spiritual self. Consequently, not the scientific interest simply, but the religious and moral most of all, have demolished the principle of absolutism of Catholic and Protestant ortho- doxy, and a further development of religion is the order of the day. Demolished, did I say? The tree seems full- fruited. Zeitgeist is a mighty support. Force, not ideals, is god, and force tends to absolutism. Absolutism in busi- ness, which is mammonism; in government, which is mili- tarism— this repression of individuality, this faith in force and unfaith in ideals, is an expression in another form of the orthodoxies which build on some sort of institutional infallibility; and the former reinforce the latter. There is 198 The Finality op the Christian Religion an attraction and fascination on the part of each for the other. Thus the outlook for absolutism seems favorable. Moreover, the positivism of science without philosophy, r. e., naturalism — to be examined immediately — likewise plays into the hands of this other positivism of external authority. Nevertheless, I do not believe in the triumph of any of these absolutisms. The victory is not with the strong, not with force, but with ideals. Unless occidental philosophy shall go down, the autonomy of reason will not perish. Faith in force may now and then win a battle, but not the campaign. There seems to be something like a law of periodicity in historical life, according to which militarism and mammonism have their day; but they have their day and cease to be. Faith in ideas and ideals, crucified by the vulgar authorities and infallibilities and absolutes of the empirical reality round about — it is a tragic law of the world-order itself — rises again in the power of the Spirit, crying: "I am the First and the Last, and the Living One, and I was dead and, behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of hell." It is even so, for this faith is faith in freedom, in truth, in righteousness, faith of reason in its own self.' But with this r6sum6 of the whole previous discussion the first part of our task is ended; and we might at once turn our eyes to the future, were it not that, as we burst open the two-leaved gates of brass of the prison-house of the religious dogmatism of the past, we are confronted with the worse slavery of the naturalistic dogmatism of the 1 "The system of spiritual absolutism, carried to its utmost conclusion, makes men automata, who believe and do what they are commanded, without doubt, with- out examination, without any responsibility of their own. Reason and conscience, made superfluous by the sole virtue of obedience, fall into a process of decay, and at last of atrophy, like unused organs. The correlative of complete absolutism is idiotism, and I do not believe that idiotism is a principle of progress."— Professoe Paulsen, Philosophia Militans, p. 78. If this seem somewhat harsh, it must be borne in mind that it lies in the nature of reason to react with inner hostility against every external authority that demands absolute subjection in spiritual and moral things. Naturalistic and Religious World-Views 199 present. As there can be religion without the old super- naturalism, so there can be science without the new natural- ism. It is not supernaturalism and naturalism, but religion and science, that express and realize structural needs of the human spirit. And the conflict is not between science and religion, but between science and supernaturalism, religion and naturalism — the members of each pair being mutually exclusive, while supernaturalism and naturalism are not so hostile as one might suppose at first thought. Both extremes agree in denying meaning to the world; supernaturalism supplying the meaning from without, naturalism substituting therefor adaptation without purpose. In particular is super- naturalism friendly to naturalism,' since the miraculous agency postulated by supernaturalism is the more con- spicuous and masterful, the more tightly closed the mathe- matico-mechanical system of naturalism turns out to be. But, religion without supernaturalism, science without natur- alism— that is our thesis. To be sure, it goes without saying that the rejection of supernaturalism — the conclusion of the first part of this, book — is not tantamount to the denial of siipernaturey any more than the rejection of naturalism — our present task — is. tantamount to a denial of nature. Indeed, were it correct to understand nature in the sense of empiricism, revelation as. effect of God must be supernatural, and dualism would thus remain the world-view indispensable to faith. But it may be shown that such empiricism is indefensible. And we are led to a discussion of the subject, inasmuch as, while super- naturalism makes the further development of religion impos- sible, naturalism is the virtual negation of all religion.'^ 1 It is a just observation of Professor Harald HOffding that materialism and' theology often enjoy a better mutual understanding than either has for the critical philosophy. See op. cit., p. 174. 2PHYSICDS (= Geoege J. ROMANES), Candid Examination of Theism, pp. Si t., recognizes this for himself in the following pathetic passage: "And now, in conclu- sion, I feel it desirable to state that any antecedent bias with regard to Theism which 200 The Finality of the Christian Keligion "The scientific dogmatism of the present" was the phrase by which we designated naturalism. But one must not seem to deny that naturalism has had a long history. It did not begin today or yesterday, but it is very old — old as philosophy, as human doubt and reflection. Originally, re- ligion satisfied all the needs of the human spirit, the cogni- tive stress of man as well. Religious ideas contained the explanation of existence in whole and in part. But with the rise of independent science a new kind of explanation, dif- ferent from the religious, arose likewise. Naturalism accepts the scientific explanation of reality and rejects the religious. And it must be admitted that if it be the function of religion to solve riddles, to understand and explain reality as science counts understanding and explanation, naturalism has made I individually possess is unquestionably on the side of traditional beliefs. It is therefore with the utmost sorrow that I find myself compelled to accept the conclu- sions here worked out ; and nothing could have induced me to publish them save the strength of my conviction that it is the duty of every member of society to give his fellows the benefit of his labors for whatever they may be worth. Just as I am con- fident that truth must in the end be most profitable for the race, so I am persuaded that every individual endeavor to attain it, provided only that such endeavor is un- biased and sincere, ought, without hesitation, to be made the common property of all men, no matter in what direction the results of its promulgation may appear to tend. And so far as the ruination of individual happiness is concerned, the result of this analysis has been to show that, whether I regard the problem of Theism on the lower plane of strictly relative probability, or on the higher plane of purely formal con- siderations, it equally becomes my obvious duty to stifle all belief of the kind which I conceive to be the noblest, and to discipline my intellect with regard to this matter into an attitude of the purest skepticism. And forasmuch as I am far from being able to agree with those who afiirm that the twilight doctrine of the 'new faith' is a desirable substitute for the waning splendor of 'the old,' I am not ashamed to con- fess that with this virtual negation of God the universe to me has lost its soul of loveliness; and although from henceforth the precept to 'work while it is day' will doubtless but gain an intensified force from the terribly intensified moaning of the words that 'the night cometh when no man can work,' yet when at times I think, as think at times I must, of the appalling contrast between the hallowed glory of that creed which once was mine and the lonely mystery of existence as now I find it — at such times I shall ever feel it impossible to avoid the sharpest pang of which my nature is susceptible. For whether it be due to my intelligence not being sufficiently advanced to meet the requirements of the age, or whether it be due to the memory of those sacred associations which to me at least were the sweetest that life has given, I cannot but feel that for me, and for others who think as I do, there is a dreadful truth in those words of Hamilton : " Philosophy having become a meditation, not merely of death, but of annihilation, the precept knoru thyself has become trans- formed into the terrible oracle to CEdipus— 'Mayest thou ne'er know the truth of what thou art.' " Naturalistic and Religious World-Views 201 out its case against the validity of religious ideas. But if there is more and other to reality than can be exhibited by the scientific process of explanation, there may be room for religion whose motive may be worthful and whose ideas valid in the expression and development of sides of the human spirit other than the scientific. Naturalism — so its whole history testifies — belongs in its way to that false intellec- tualism of which we saw that orthodoxy and rationalism were likewise forms, and concludes that, because religious ideas are not valid for science, they are illusory, and at all events serve no important end in the development of the spiritual life of the individual and of the race. If naturalism has the merit of giving to science the things that are science's, which is yet not quite true, its error is — so its whole history at- tests— in refusing to religion the things that are religion's; for it falsely assumes that the whole of religion is the religious idea, and that the invalidation of the religious idea for pur- poses of scientific knowledge is its invalidation for any pur- pose whatever. After so much by way of orientation, we may return to history. For twenty-five centuries the naturalistic and the religious view of the world have been in conflict — the latter going back to prehistoric antiquity, the former dating from the days of Thales, father of western science and philosophy. Everywhere, where men begin to form thoughts concerning the whence and the how of the reality round about them, naturalism has emerged. Certainly in the philosophic sys- tems of Leucippus and Democritus and Epicurus it is already a thoroughly fashioned standpoint. Even in times when "believing," antinaturalistic, and supernaturalistic systems were officially dominant and apparently universally acknowl- edged, it has still existed and remained a latent and quietly feared opponent. Thus it did not arise for the first time in the modern systems of materialism or positivism: in the 202 The Finality of the Christian Keligion systdme de la nature and the Vhomme machine; in the materialistic reaction against the idealistic natural specula- tion of Schelling and Hegel ; in the materialistic controversy of the last century; in the naturalistic writings of Moleschott, Czolbe, Vogt, Btlchner, Haeckel; and in the naturalistic tendency and mood newly and peculiarly formed by Darwin- ism. On the contrary, it has simply blossomed out more tropically than ever before. But, old as it is, its age is no reproach and no proof against it; rather, its age is a proof that it is not so much an accidental as, in a certain sense, a necessary phenomenon. It is as idle as it is unworthy to treat this phenomenon as a child of the modern passion to doubt, of iniquity or obduracy. Old as naturalism is, it is ever much the same in its diverse historical forms and phases, in its motives and methods, in its aims and proofs, in its concomitant sentiments, sympathies, and antipathies. Not to set out from a finished and unitary principle of its own, but primarily to be criticism and opposition to other views — this is common to naturalism in all its forms, ancient and modern. It grows up everywhere as opposition to super- naturalism — the negative dos^matism of which the latter is the positive — whether that supernaturalism be the naive mythological explanation of the cosmic process on the part of primitive religions, or the supernaturalistic popular meta- physics which is wont to accompany every higher religion. Naturalism befriends one of the most commendable impulses of human nature, the impulse to explain and comprehend — and to do so on the basis of simple, familiar, and ordinary causes. Natural investigation owes its marvelous triumphs primarily to the consistency with which it rejects all search for ends, and knows only of cause and efPect in the legal system of the corporeal world. Aversion to teleology is characteristic of all naturalistic systems. But, for another thing, the ideal of naturalism is the mathematico-mechanical Naturalistic and Religious World-Views 203 calculability of all natural connections and sequences, the remainderless rationalization of reality, the transparency and explicability to the intellect of all that is and takes place. The model of naturalism is the universe of astronomy, with its precisely calculable and inviolable interconnection of the heavenly bodies, with its transparent relations of a purely mechanical character obeying rigid necessity. To transfer the same clearness and penetrableness, the same necessity and calculableness, to all that is — in a word, to "astronomize" all reality, natural and historical, mental and moral — this is the ideal and goal of naturalism. Finally, it is but a step from this to the conception of a cosmos of being and becom- ing which is self-explicable, self-understandable, upborne by its own unbroken and all-sufficient causality and legality, self-dependent, self-contained — a God, indeed, that is self- sufficient and self-dependent. Naturalism "deifies law and outlaws the Deity." In the light of history, and of these statements, we may now approach our problem more intelligently. Although historically the religious view of the world has been asso- ciated with supernaturalism, and the naturalistic has built upon natural science to a very large degree, the conflict, it will be attempted to show, has not been between religion and science, but between naturalism and supernaturalism, involving a conflict of science with supernaturalism and of religion with naturalism. In other words, in opposition to the thesis of supernaturalism there has arisen the antithesis of naturalism, leaving us the problem of finding some means of synthesizing the elements of truth in both positions. The old religious world-view was, in its philosophic aspect, dual- istic supernaturalism. After the animistic stage of thought had been outgrown, there arose in human thinking a dualism of the natural and the supernatural. There was a back- ground of natural mechanical order, a sort of ongoing from 204 The Finality of the Christian Religion itself and of itself of the processes of nature with regularity of sequence; but at any time there might be irruptions of super-physical force having a personal or quasi-personal source. This was conceived to be analogous to man's action upon nature, but to be effected without means, or without known means. Such miraculous interventions were necessarily mysterious, not only not understood, but hopelessly unintel- ligible. Not only did they transcend the known laws of nature, but involved a suspension or violation of those laws. The universe of material objects and of spirits was conceived to have been brought out of nothingness into existence by the creative fiat of the divine will; and once this was done it was left to go on by itself for the most part, although there were interventions from time to time in acts of special providence in answer to prayer, in "revelation," and in miracles on other occasions. One of the most important evidences of the supernatural control of nature was thought to be the numerous examples of special adaptations in nature. For instance, the adaptations of organisms to their environ- ment, and of organs to the needs of the organism, were held to be unmistakable evidence of a special purpose and activity on the part of a Creator viewed as a particular being. Thus, as integral elements of the old religious world-view, there were teleology, mystery, and dependence, and these were thought to require dualistic supernaturalism ; that is, the dualism of matter and God, of natural and miraculous, of science and faith. As a protest against this supernaturalistic world-view, as already stated, naturalism arose. Its chief sources of strength are its harmony with the knowledge- process in man in one particular, namely, explaining the unknown by reference to the familiar, its continually increas- ing body of confirmatory scientific facts, and its affinity to Zeitgeist in general. Especially, with every fresh accession to the realm of the orderly and intelligible through the Naturalistic and Religious World-Views 205 efforts of scientific investigation, the apologists of orthodoxy, who thought they had to defend miracle-causality as the essence of the religious view of the world, were beaten back from position after position. As already seen, the transition from the Ptolemaic to the Copernican astronomy undermined many of the suppositions of the supernaturalists. Newton's mechanical laws applied to the physical universe made many think — devout as Newton himself remained — that God was being banished from the universe. Religion took refuge in the realm of the organic, whose evident adaptedness was thought to be a conclusive proof of the existence of an order- ing intelligence. Surely, so it was hoped, the mechaniciz;a- tion of reality will call a halt at the kingdom of the organic. But finally in the nineteenth century Darwinism came, with its plausible theory in explanation of the origin of species, including man, by natural selection through the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence. By means of this formula it was claimed that not only all physical events, but all mental, moral, religious, and social facts, could be explained. It was a further application of Laplace's dictum: "I have no need of the hypothesis of God," Astronomy that began with the macrocosm ended with microcosm. All existence was mechanicized. The law of the conservation of energy, together with the nebular hypothesis and Darwinism, seemed to eliminate definitely from the world all mystery, depend- ence, teleology (end or providence). If mysteries remained, they were simply unsolved but soluble problems of science; the universe was to be completely understood without faith ; if there was dependence, it was relative only, the dependence of one part on another part of the self-dependent whole ; if there was adaptation, it was not in the purpose, but in the result only ; it was fully accounted for by natural causes. This naturalistic view of the world has strong affinities for materialistic monism, which regards atoms as the ultimate 206 The Finality of the Christian Religion reality, and for energetic monism, which regards the ultimate reality as physical force. But, as against such gnosticism, it has become very common to combine naturalism with an agnosticism which knows that, apart from the world of natural science, all else is unknown or even unknowable. On the moral side, the outcome of all this is either super- ficial optimism or despairing pessimism. From discussions in previous chapters — and the argu- ments need not be reproduced in this connection — it is evident that science, and any philosophy which undertakes to synthesize the results of natural knowledge in a self-consistent world-view, make for the overthrow of the old dualistic super- naturalism with which the religious world-view seemed to be so intimately related. But does the overthrow of this old theory necessarily involve the fall of religion ? Both super- naturalism and naturalism think so. Our contention is that both are wrong. The religious view of the world, reduced to its lowest terms, demands mystery, dependence, and teleology. It is the merit of supernaturalism to grant these, while it is the demerit of supernaturalism in the interest of its doctrine of miraculous causality to negate the scientific principle of natural causation. It is the merit of naturalism to honor the scientific principle according to which nature is interpreted by nature as one might interpret one passage in a book by comparing it with other passages in the same book — a prin- ciple without whose application we understand nothing con- formably to the scientific type of understanding and the in- tellectual habitude corresponding thereto. But if it is the demerit of supernaturalism to deny the scientific principle of the inviolability of legal and causal sequence, it is the demerit of naturalism to assume that the categories of law and cause exhaust reality, thus leaving no room for the religious need of mystery, dependence, and teleology. Our thesis is, once again let it be said, that, while religion demands these three Naturalistic and Religious World-Views 207 factors, science allows their possibility and even lends some countenance to them, and the most defensible philosophy, which may be called spiritualistic evolutionism, establishes their reality. In other words, to defend against supernatural- ism the ideal of understanding and explaining reality which science requires, and against naturalism the ideal of mean- ing and worth which are the kernel of the religious interest — this is at once the task and the salvation of the modern man. And if it be necessary neither for science to deny mystery, dependence, and teleology, in order to affirm law and cause as it must conceive law and cause, nor for religion to deny these scientific principles in order to affirm the depth, dependency, and meaning of things, it is evident that science and religion are in no intrinsically irreconcilable conflict, in which case — the interest of knowledge and of life being thus secure — we may very well be willing to class both super- naturalism and naturalism among our little speculative sys- tems that have their day and cease to be. It is for this reason, indeed, that we conceive it to be the modern thinker's foremost duty to disengage religion from supernaturalism and science from naturalism. 1. Mystery in religion. — It is customary to find mystery interesting, especially if there is prospect of a surprising explanation; but mystery in religion is more serious than interesting. It is, moreover, inexplicable to science. To say so seems to offend science. The scientist is stimulated by a mystery which he can subject to investigation and hope to unveil sooner or later, but a mystery which forever remains mysterious in the nature of the case he is inclined to treat as an absurdity. To be sure, there are patronizing scientists who, with large-hearted tolerance, accord to religion, and to religion alone, the prerogative to possess insoluble mysteries ; but just on that account they relegate religion to the intellec- tually immature, while they themselves confine themselves to 208 The Finality of the Christian Religion the region of rational reality. Butatjieart they think that science and mystery are exclusive, in the sense that what is explained is not mysterious and what is mysterious is not explained. The difficulty thus presented is common to both Catholic and Protestant peoples. Mystery is an outstanding fact in Catholicism, which requires men to accept religion with mystery, or to give up the former with the latter. Re- jecting the Catholic apprehension of religion, Protestantism is in an even more embarrassing dilemma on account of its attempt at a rationalization of religion. As a reward for this attempt it hopes to gain a stronger hold upon thinking men, and to render their renunciation of religion or their playing with it all the more difficult. But there is a certain opposition between doctrines, theories, systems of thought, on the one hand, and mystery, on the other. The more a system of doctrine overcomes the irrational, the more perfect it seems to us. The Elder Protestantism, belonging to a time when heaven and earth were still full of real mysteries, did not feel the need of rationality so powerfully. But, as we have already had occasion to remark, when, beginning with New- ton's great discovery, the cosmic mechanism seemed to be deciphered ; when, further, in all regions of life and of science a thirst for the understanding of the origins and laws, even of the spiritual world, grew up, the modern theologians felt more and more that mystery was like a foreign substance in an organism, and sought to resolve or remove it. To replace the mysterious with the rational — can theology be honored as a science and omit this task ? But, if it succeeds, it trans- forms religion into a doctrine, which the layman has to learn and to understand, and the apologist to prove! And the practical outcome of the proof will ever be — it is the blunt lesson of history — the adaptation and subordination of the religious view of the world to the world-view of natural sci- ence. Hence everything will be clear; all diversity will be Naturalistic and Keligious World-Views 209 reduced to identity and continuity; all that is qualitative will be reduced to the quantitative; all individualities will be explained as points of the culmination or conjunction of continuous processes; the moral and religious will be re- duced to the psychical, the psychical to the physiological, the physiological to the mechanical — and, because a piece of pie is triangular, pie possesses no quality save triangu- larity! And, once yet again, how like each other are intel- lectualism (both orthodox and rational) in religion, and naturalism in science! But when rational theology no longer ventured to speak of mystery in religion, did the lamb of religion and the lion of naturalism quietly lie down together ? Did not the repre- sentatives of exact science demean themselves rather coolly toward those who believed that they could dispense with mys- tery in religion? For all alike, did not mechanism become materialism and materialism pessimism in religion, with its austere and bitter comfortlessness (Strauss)? To be sure, they were free from superstition of every kind, because every- thing was clear to them — God and the world and the human soul. Were they thus free? On the contrary, superstition, so often driven to its last ditch and demolished, began again to lift its head and to attract multitudes of dissatisfied men, and engaged to produce exact scientific proof for its miracles. And it is a well-known fact that it is precisely among the cultured classes today that a tendency has arisen, and is on the increase, which is veering from the Jack o'Lantern lu- minosity of a mysteryless religion, from the radiant and remainderless rationality of the "religion of science," across to the hoary and mysterious wisdom of the Orient, and expects salvation from Brahmanic gnosis or Buddhistic rou- tine of redemption. Mysticism and Occultism — these are the glaring opposites, the nemesis of that rational theology which understands all mystery and all knowledge, but has 210 The Finality of the Christian Religion not love. But still more damaging, perhaps, for this theology is the further fact that a tendency has branched off from it which is satisfied with only the ethical promotion of man, and contents itself at best with a few religious sentiments and presentiments. But if this is the consistent and final out- come, what becomes of religion peculiarly so called ? What further necessity ? It would be difficult to give a satisfactory answer to this question. A great part of the educated Protestant world is undoubt- edly transported into a difficult situation by this development of matters. Many who cannot give up religion fly to the old supernaturalism and hold to a double bookkeeping, as it is called, or torture themselves with the unfruitful problem of mediation between knowledge and faith. Real religion is not investigated. Most men think that they know without further ado what religion is. The circumstance that from childhood we have been instructed in religion may be the cause of this. But religion is no doctrine simply, and no subjective conviction simply, though it produces both; it is an historical reality and must be studied in its history. Shall we study it in the Elder Protestantism? In that case we should attain to a world of mysteries and riddles. The doctrine of the Trinity, of the two natures of Christ, of predestination, and the like, would belong to these mysteries. But these are not the mysteries with which one deals in a discussion of naturalism. Nor do we have in mind the myth, saga, legend of religion in its pre-theological stage — mys- teries due to the supposed intercourse of man with invisible beings. Nor yet again are we concerned with the nimbus of the miraculous which envelops founders of religions. It is not the mysteries of religion, be it dogma or cult, with which we have to do in this connection, but mystery in the world of nature and of man. With these observations, we must now come into closer Naturalistic and Religious World-Views 211 quarters with our subject. Naturalism, for one thing, denies mystery in the world of reality, but religion needs it. Piety seeks the deep in things. It is drawn toward the Hidden, the Un-understood, the Mysterious. It is more than humility, it is adoration; and adoration is the experience of mystery. And it is precisely here that piety clashes most violently with the sense and sentiment of naturalism, which not only searches the searchable, but denies the Unsearchable toward which piety turns as the flower to the sun. The clash is not an outer impingement, but an inner contrariety. Naturalism, with its materialistic supplementation of natural-science investiga- tion, would rob piety of its freedom and right and air and light ; naturalism, with its ideal of the penetration and clari- fication of the whole world, would not leave even a cloud or two of moisture and of mystery to shield the sensitive, easily wounded feelings of the human heart from the dry, harsh light of an absolute intellectuality. But is science competent to solve the problem of being? Because science succeeds in indicating the situation of single points in their relation to other points along the curve of reality, can it enjoy not simply this peripheral, but also a central contemplation of the points, interpreting and valuing them from the center as regards their function and signifi- cance for the whole? Does naturalistic contemplation, find- ing and prescribing law and rule, measure and number, there- by comprehend all that there is of a thing? Have things only an outside, but no inside? As man is more than in- tellect and knowledge, must not the reality with which he is associated be more than sequence according to law? Meet- ing and matching the adorable capacity of the human soul, there is the wonderful, the mysterious, the deep, hidden char- acter of things, of all being — unsearchable mysteries over which we hover, abysmal depths by which we are upborne. In a world which was not so, and could not be felt to be so, 212 The Finality of the Christian Religion piety could not live. Piety cannot endure superficiality. Clear as the naturalistic atmosphere may be, it is too thin and rarefied to be breathed freely. Of course, it is true that what we first typically and peculiarly name and love as mystery, and the gentle thrill of veneration in the presence of the deep of phenomenon and its eternal divine abyss, has its special abode and kingdom in the world of the heart and of history, in their experiences, riddles, and profundities. But it has its abode in nature and in natural existence, too. Piety makes demands upon the essence and worth of the world, in its every lineament, modification, and behavior. The mystery with which it has to do is no intermittent, ex- ceptional, or isolated feature of existence ; it is an immanent and constant mystery. It is an error of Ritschlianism to assume that if it can protect the region of the conscious, of the historical, of the spiritual, from being overrun by natural- ism— if it can defend the reality, the dignity, the self- dependence of the personal over against naturalism, it can then very well surrender nature to this world-view. But this procedure is mistaken generosity and bad tactics — this abandonment of nature as indifferent or as hopeless to naturalism, sacrificing it to materialism. The materialistic view of nature is as certainly inadequate and partial as the naturalistic view of Spirit. There is more in the meanest flower that blows, in the tiniest insect that dances in a sun- beam, in the veriest worm or clod, than naturalism can exhibit with its scanty stock of categories — with its "cause" and "law" and "weight" and "measure." As against Ritschlian- ism, if piety be right, as man is God's man, so nature is God's nature, and must bear branded upon it the marks by which this is known — must be in some humble degree the home and hearth of Him who is indeed the Abysmal, the Unsearchable, the Inexplicable, whose name is Wonderful, and whose ways are past finding out. And nature brought Naturalistic and Eeligious World-Views 213 under law and sequence is none the less mysterious; for a formulated mystery is a mystery still. Hitherto I have been urging the religious objection to naturalism, but this last remark brings me to the scientific objection, which is both acute and decisive. Bluntly stated at the outset, it is that the naturalistic explanation explains everything by nothing. To see this it is necessary to reflect upon the relation of "description" and ''explanation" to each other, to the positing of laws, and to knowledge in general. The purpose of all investigation is to know the world. But to know what, how many, and of what kinds things are, does not satisfy the impulse to know. We want to look into them, to know how they came to be, why they are, why they are when they are and as they are. The tirst step of knowledge is to apprehend things and events in the world, to group them, pertinently and exhaustively to describe them. But what I have described I have not understood, but only proposed to understand. For the first time, the described thing now stands there in all its mystery before me, and I must now begin to resolve this mystery; for description is not explanation, but prerequisite of explana- tion. The next step to this end is the discovery and exposi- tion of laws — the regularity of occurrence, the inviolable order of connection and sequence in things and events — equipping them with the idea of necessity. I can now ad- vance beyond the merely given, can conclude to its effects and ascend to its causes. Order, survey, stability, come into my knowledge, which begins to be real knowledge. For what we call knowledge is not a mere cognition of phenomena in their accidental and individuated manifoldness and promis- cuousness, but is the discovery and exhibition of the laws and general forms of occurrence. Otherwise we should assfrefirate curiosities, but not know. To discover legality in all happen- ing is the first step toward the goal of inquiry. We are still 214 The Finality of the Christian Religion far from having taken this step, and it is more than doubtful whether we shall ever succeed in having done so. But if we should succeed, should we really have substituted explanation for description, understanding in the place of mystery? Manifestly not. To be sure, it is often meant so. One thinks that one has understood when one has seen: "This is always so, it has always behaved this way." This opin- ion is naive. All that it amounts to is that the region of the merely described has become larger and the riddle harder. For now we are confronted with things phis their still more marvelous laws! Laws are no forces and impell- ing grounds. They make nothing happen and clear up nothing. And as formerly of things, so now of laws, we want to know how they came to be, and whence, and why pre- cisely these rather than others. And to describe them in turn but stimulates more and more the demand for explanation, whose function it is to answer these very questions. Natural science knows this better than ever. It calls the pre-explana- tory process "only historical," and for the merely historical would substitute aetiology, causal explanation, a more funda- mental explanation, which in turn would make these laws superfluous, because it penetrates so deeply into the nature of things that it sees why they follow just those laws and no other rules of change, of development, of becoming. It is at this point that the transition is made from natural science to naturalism. Naturalism is an endeavor at con- sistent simplification, and at gradual regressus in a large fashion. Because it sets out to explain and understand — and, of course, according to the maxim, "Principia non temere esse multiplicanda," to explain in the use of princi- ples as few, simple, and transparent as possible — it is incum- bent upon it to try first of all to refer all phenomena to one unitary self-identical arch-phenomenon, which admits noth- ing outside of itself or above itself, which is a law unto itself Naturalistic and Religious Wobld-Views 215 and to everything else. It is further incumbent upon it to refer this, its all-phenomenon, to a form that is as simple and clear as possible, and then to refer this its legality to as few and luminous laws as possible, which are themselves to be determined by calculation and formula— and, behold, all is plain, there is no more mystery, the Abyss has yielded up her secrets to the omniscience of Naturalism ! The "central" explanation of naturalism is added to the "peripheral" of science ! But let us look into this regressus, this magic wand, of naturalism a little more closely. Let us take as an illustra- tion the formation of a crystal. Naturalism would have "explained" it, and not merely described it, if it had not stopped with exhibiting the forms and laws according to which a crystal so formed arises necessarily out of the bit- tern, but had gone on to see why, why always, and why of inner necessity, these forms and processes of organization arose from the mixture of the lye, from the co-operative molecular forces, from other previously given and more transparent conditions. In this way, moreover, the "law"% would be explained, and thus in turn really made super- fluous. One must make clear to one's self when and where- explaining takes the place of description : it is when processes may be resolved into simpler processes from whose combina- tion they arise. It is precisely this which science tries to. do, and naturalism hopes that this will be definitively and fundamentally done, and the mystery of existence thereby resolved. But such regressus to the simpler is "explana- tion" only in case the simpler is itself "clear" and not, merely simple; that is, only in case I can see why and how the simpler itself was brought about and took place; only in case, that is, the question as to why ceases, because I, perceiving the process, immediately see at the same time that it is self-evident, unquestionable, and not requiring to 216 The Finality of the Christian Religion be established. If this is not the case, the regressus has only befooled me. I have only the unexplained in place of the unexplained, description in the place of description, and have merely adjourned the whole problem. Naturalism sup- poses that the problem ever becomes simpler by means of these easy adjournments, and finally reaches a point where, having become entirely simple, it is solved of itself, since at such a point to describe and to understand are one and the same thing. This last point is said to be the forces of attraction and repulsion with which the least self-identical particles of matter are equipped, and from whose infinitely manifold interplay all higher forms of activity, all combi- nations of higher phenomena, emerge. But the crucial question still remains: Whence, then, thus affirming the universal sameness and unity of the ultimate particles and forces, come the principles of manifoldness, for this our world, consisting of pure manifoldness, and the grounds of the combinations to higher unities and to higher result- ants of force? But, apart from this, it is clear that we have not even here reached the last point. For is "attraction" at a distance, vis a fronts, a matter which is clear of itself, and not rather the most vexatious basic riddle which chal- lenges explanation ? And therefore one seeks to penetrate to the last point of^ll, and to attempt the last regress of all — the setting aside of all special "forces," the regress of all motion and of all "action" to impact which elucidates all that is enigmatic, and the modus operandi of which is set forth by the law of the parallelogram of forces so univocally and inviolably. Law? Set forth? And therefore only description still? Certainly only description, and nothing in the least explained. Suppose it were true, which yet is pure Utopia, that all riddles and mysteries of nature are to be referred to the "push and pull" of matter in motion and its simplest laws, they would be simply swallowed up in one Naturalistic and Religious World-Views 217 general riddle which resides at the bottom of all things, and is all the more colossal since it comprehends all besides. For impact, the transference of motion, combination of motion according to the law of the parallelogram of forces — all this is pure description of processes whose inner ground we do not k)iotv as science reckons knowledge, which simply confront us; they are, indeed, but they are not clear, not self-evident, but one of Haeckel's WeUrdtsel, into which he pours such a flood of — darkness! The same sphinx which was apparently — but only apparently — banished from pe- riphery and foreground now stares at us from the center and bottom of things. In every instance, we absolutely do not know why precisely these things well up from the un wither- ing fountain of nature, nor what that fountain is, nor what is still concealed in its mysterious depths. To refer the mystery of a to b, which is no clearer than a, and that of b to c, which is no clearer than either, and so on, is to explain nothing; and — a matter to be elaborated later — to say that there is nothing in a but its being causally and legally referred to 6, and nothing in b but its being thus referred to c, and so on, is to fail to account for the manifoldness of all and the novelty and uniqueness of each. In brief: We have seen that empiricism, which naturalism erects into a world-view, ojffers in every case an explanation which is useful and sufficient as regards the concatenation of phenomena and the conditions under which they are produced; but in every case we have also seen the failure of empiricism to render a final explanation. For passivity always implies activity, the external implies the internal, mechanism implies spontaneity, the acquired implies the original. If everything couM be explained by the external, this external would again imply something external to itself; that is to say, something else beside itself ; and, if we must always go in this way from one thing to something else, we shall never reach true being. 218 The Finality of the Christian Religion To explain the internal by the external, activity by passivity, spontaneity by mechanical laws, the primitive by the acquired, is to explain everything by nothing.^ 2. The naturalistic negation of dependence and teleology — these may be treated together — is dogmatic and indefen- sible. It will be observed that the word "dependence" — so significant in Schleiermacher's Glauhenslehre — is used instead of the word "creation." To be sure, the Christian idea of creation, the creation-faith one would better say, does not possess the character of a scientific explanation of the world. But it is so burdened with inadequate ideas, especially with the anthropomorphic, that it may be well not to use it. Still, this faith has a content which piety cannot surrender without sustaining irreparable injury — namely, the deep self-authenticating conviction that we and, with us, all existence do not repose in our own strength and self-suffi- ciency, but on foundations outside empirical reality. For this reason we shall not be particular to avoid the old term. The sound kernel of the old creation-faith is the primacy of Spirit; and if it be urged that life is a product of physical and chemical forces, the answer of both scientific and philo- sophic reflection is that this force, that nature itself, is Spirit.^ 1 " I do not believe that humanity will ever limit its inner relation to reality to scientific knowledge. If man were a purely intellectual being, he might content himself with the fragments of knowledge which natural inquiry little by little aggre- gates. But he is not mere understanding, he is also and above all else a willing and feeling being. And it is in this side of his nature that religion has its deepest roots. Feelings of humility, reverence, yearning after the perfect, with which his heart is filled as he contemplates nature and history, determine his inner relation to reality more immediately and more profoundly than the concepts and formula of science are able to do. From these grows the confidence that the world is not a senseless play of blind forces, but the revelation of a good and great Being, which he may joyously acknowledge to be akin to his own innermost being. For the peculiar essence of every religious faith is the confidence that the special nature of reality reveals itself to me in that which I love and adore as the highest and the best — is the certainty that the good and the perfect, toward which the deepest yearning of my own will tends, is the ground and the goal of all things Man is more than a registering appa- ratus of the real; therefore he has not merely science, but also poetry aud art, faith and religion." — Padlsen, Einleitung in die Philosophic, p. 8. 2 " Once materialism is abandoned and dualism found untenable, a spiritualistic monism remains the one stable position. It is only in terms of mind that we can Naturalistic and Religious World-Views 219 In this connection it is desirable to specify in a few sentences what is inalienable to this old faith — call it feeling of dependence with Schleiermacher, or idea of creation with the church — and thus indicate the terms upon which it can enter into pact with modern intellectual life. For one thing, this faith does not engage to decide the problem as to whether the world is limited or unlimited in space and time — a prob- lem which, moreover, it does not appear that the "critical" philosophy can solve, but can only exhibit as an antinomy. But our faith is not out of harmony with either side of the antinomy, and is even more in harmony with the suspended judgment of critical thought. For another thing, unlike scientific philosophy, as just pointed out, it does not pass upon the question as to the essence of matter. All it requires touching this issue is the recognition that the world — the presupposition of our finitude, indeed — is, according to the will and purpose of God, the basis and raw material of our conduct and of a divine kingdom of moral personalities, wherein no person is cast to the void when the pile is com- plete, no one is mere means, but all are also ends. Inci- dentally, it may be added that no mortal blow is given to this faith by the scientific transformation of the geocentric picture of the world which underlies the biblical story of creation. In view of the degradation of the earth to a tiny body in the cosmic system, faith cannot, indeed, contest the extension of the eternal purpose of redemption to other worlds than ours, and it is true that our traditions and our training have inured our feelings to the idea that all the stars were set agoing for the sake of the Star of Bethlehem, The imagi- nation of the apostle seems to have had this reach: For it was the good pleasure of the Father .... through Him to reconcile all things unto Himself, having made peace through understand the unity, activity, and regularity that nature presents. In so under- standing we see that nature is Spirit." — Waed, Naturalism and Agnosticism; see Vol. 11, pp. 205-83. 220 The Finality of the Christian Keligion the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things upon the earth, or things in the heavens.* It is simply required that the creation-faith shall cling to the conviction that the mind and will of God are disclosed to us in the kingdom of God on earth as revealed in Jesus Christ — a kingdom that in idea admits of extensive but no intensive enrichment. Finally, present-day science forges forward still to an evolutionary theoretical explanation of the present structure of the world, especially of the present biological forms of the organic world. And the question which vitally affects Christianity — it will soon be the burden of the rest of this chapter — is as to whether our faith in general and our creation-faith in particular can justify its fundamental opposition to the evolutionistic metaphysics, if metaphysics it may be called, of the naturalistic view of the world which has claimed modern natural science as its ally. Since this faith requires the recognition that development itself, with the formations that emerge thereby, is the actual- ization of "creative" divine ends and must serve the absolute purposes of God, it is evident that naturalistic evolutionism is incompatible therewith. "With these words upon the subject, the interests of faith which require to be maintained in their integrity are stated. Man and man's world dependent for their existence and con- tinuance upon God, whose eternal purpose is expressed and fulfilled in them — such is the conviction and language of religion ; the cosmos self-dependent temporally and spatially, and purposeless as religion counts purpose — such is the con- viction and language of naturalism, which claims thereby to utter the necessary inference from the outcome of natural science ; this is the square issue joined by religion and natu- ralism, and the reader should not fail to appreciate how grave and far-reaching the issue is. To this end it may not iCol. 1:19, 20. Naturalistic and Religious World-Views 221 be amiss, at the risk of what to some may seem to be needless and irksome repetition, to recapitulate the historical develop- ment of thought and experience which is responsible for the present situation, so painful for all those who cannot repu- diate the new science without unveraciousness and self -stulti- fication, nor surrender the old eternal values, into the making of which the blood of the race has gone, without leaving life cold and bare as granite. However brave, or, rather, stoical and imperturbable, the countenance may be, it cannot quite conceal the deep pain and pathos as its treasures one by one melt away, and the friendly and familiar universe is robbed of "its soul of loveliness." It is the collision between science and religion, as it con- cerns the world of nature, with which we have still to do. Modern investigation has undoubtedly shown that the picture of nature with which the traditional form of religion is in- separably convolved is untenable. The conception of nature held by ecclesiastical Christianity still corresponds to that old, naive mode of thought which obtained till the seventeenth century. It was the ancient cosmology. Christianity did not forsake it, but appropriated it. The supramundane Deity forms the starting-point of life; the world is a work of his wisdom and goodness, a witness of his glory. Man is so related to God as to be exalted above all merely natural and animal existence. The turning-point in the world's history is man — his fall and restoration decide the fate of all besides. Even lower nature seems to point to the kernel of it all, to the mighty drama whose center is the life and passion of the Redeemer. This picture has suffered disintegration through the incessant and indefatigable work of modern natural science. The revolution of astronomy, the establishment of modern exact science, the rise of a scientific doctrine of evolution, have point by point reversed man's relation to nature. Man's 222 The Finality of the Christian Religion abode has shriveled to nothingness over against the infinitude of the world; nature has won complete self-dependence over against man — man, first and last, its creature and not its lord, himself appropriated by nature, reduced to nature, trans- formed to a nature-being. How profoundly the inveterate religious ideas are affected by these changes! As a consequence of the Copernican revolution, the whole picture of reality of the older religious conviction was destroyed. The religious fantasy of the home beyond the stars, the opposition of heaven and earth mortised into the very structure of Christian dogmas, the beyond of time and space — this was gone. The hypothesis of God became super- fluous in every science, even that of religion itself. And if our earth came to be but a dot compared with the shoreless- ness of the All, how could the little drama enacted here determine the weal and woe of immeasurable existence ? But the elder Christianity made it central in its cardinal doctrines of creation and judgment, of sin and grace. Can such a Christianity still maintain itself as a "world-power" when it represents only the special experience of this grain of sand on the shore of the infinite sea? To this astronomic change as regards the extension of nature must be supplied the change in the inner structure of nature effected by the exact sciences. Vital, psychic, inner forces, impulses, ends, were banished therefrom, and natural law took their place — inviolable, universal natural law. Nature became a closed system. It is here that the clash is severest upon church doctrine — on account of the problem of miracle, the affirmation of intervention in the course of nature in the interest of religious ends. The idea of such intervention involved no great difficulty so long as the order was something superimposed upon things by God, was a habit of the divine conduct ; but it was different when natural law came to be looked upon as residing in things, as belong- Natukalistic and Religious World-Views 223 ing to the essence of things, and when the same simple funda- mental forms were recognized in the infinite manifoldness of phenomena. Thereupon miracle became a violation of that essence; and irruption at one point was looked upon as a negation of the total order of nature. Nature without miracle — this amounts to a confession of scientific faith, and has transformed sensible miracle from a support to a burden of faith, so far as the scientific habitude of mind is concerned. There is no church doctrine whose integrity is not shattered by this development. And miracle is only the climax of the collision between the natural-science and the religious mode of thought. Nature pursues its course unmindful of man's weal or woe, indifferent to his fate. Earthquake and storm, water and fire, overwhelm and destroy without respect of persons, careless of spiritual values. " Nature is cruel, man is sick of blood ; Nature is stubborn, man would fain adore." Natural science went on its unerring way, and more and more won general assent. But one region of nature offered unconquerable resistance, as already said, till the nineteenth century — the region of organic life, culminating in man. How could organism, so complex, so adaptive, so fine, owe its origin to a mechanical collection of lifeless elements? Here was an impregnable fortress into which the disciples of religion could retire. Here was the evidence of the power of Reason operating purposefully. But now, at the end of the ages, the modern doctrine of evolution grew up, and the natural-science mode of thought was transferred to this last abode of religion. The forms of living beings likewise fell into flux; even the highest organism seemed to be a result of slow growth from imperceptible beginnings. But the impelling power of this movement was not force controlling from within, but the actual clash of living beings in the struggle of existence, the ceaseless selection of the stronger 224 The Finality of the Christian Religion in this struggle, which slowly, little by little, in illimitable time, produces purposeful formations without there being any purpose! The last region of nature is thus conquered by the natural-science mode of thought. And thus religious faith lost this support also. Man, with his whole being, is sucked into nature. Hence natural impulse, the impulse of self-preservation, determines his "conduct." No longer is there anything intrinsically true, intrinsically good, but the true and the good are such in so far as they are means to self-preservation, on account of their "utility" in the struggle of existence. Being useful, however, they must "adapt" themselves ever anew to the changing situation. Thus all intrinsically valid and eternal truth, the ethical apprehension of existence, yields to a biological conception which knows nothing absolute, nothing worthful in itself. Is this mode of thought compatible with religion? with Christianity? Does not Christianity exalt man above all that is merely natural, honor a supramundane core in him, fulfil him with eternal truth? It is idle to reproach individuals for this state of things. No one did it. It is bound up in the bundle of life of the modern world which has been in the making for half a millennium. It is an irrepressible conflict between two views of the world. To be sure, a pitiable apologetic would like to show that the case is not so bad as at first sight it seems, that there are "gaps" in modern investigation, and that there is therefore still room for the old way of looking at things. Such attempts are to be set aside as depotentia- tion and obscuration of the problem. One should publicly and honorably admit the profound chasm between the reli- gious and scientific views of the world. But if one must thus grant the untenability of the traditional religious ideas over against modern natural science, does one thereby assent necessarily to the disintegration of all religion? Only on Naturalistic and Religious World-Views 225 one condition: only in case the world of natural science is known to be all there is of reality, is itself total and ultimate reality ; only in case this world is so self-constituted, so self- closed, that we can nowhere burst through it or get beyond it. That such is the case is extremely doubtful, from both the religious and the scientific points of view. For how has this modern scientific picture of the ivorld arisen? It is not self-evident that this picture embraces us men without remainder. This picture is not a donation to man apart from any pains of his own. It was wrested from the ideas of immediate sense-perception by the hardest of conflicts. The senses are on the side of the old view of the world, natural and religious — hence the kinship between naturalism and supernaturalism ! But the new picture of nature by modern science is a creation of spiritual labor. The new world is not a datum, not something found already made; it is formed hij mail's own strength. How could we form it without disclosing thereby our spiritual character, and in- troducing it into our work? This is the imperishable merit and message of the Kantian epistemology — with Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, as forerunner, since he pro- claimed the thinking self as the fixed point over against all doubt, and especially as the starting-point for the construc- tion of our world. To begin with the subject ; not to pass from the world to man, but from the man to the world; to transfer the center of gravity from the object to the subject — this is characteristic of that modern mode of thought which con- serves our values. And Kant is the master of them who know from this standpoint. To set out from the subject involves a complete transformation, a reversal, of the old picture of the world. "Matter" appears no longer as a communication, or donation, to the senses, but as a product of the labor of thought. Attention is directed to the prog- ress rather than to the result of knowledge. Activity is duly 226 The Finality or the Christian Religion recognized. The investigator is not forgotten in the inves- tigation of nature. This mode of thought is entirely compat- ible with natural science, but not at all with naturalism, i. e., the equating or identifying of sensible nature with reality. For naturalism may be defined as any philosophy which views the world of the senses, given in space and time, as the sole reality. (In naturalistic morality man as a sense-being is the measure of all things, the judge concerning good and evil.) It is characteristic of naturalism to leave out of account, in its picture of the world, the thinking spirit and its activity, and on this account naturalism reverts to the pre-critical view of the world. Criticism has made it clear that we do not have the whole of reality in the picture of the world sketched by nature-science, that reality has something else along with it— a something else of which the fact of natural science itself is the most striking proof, being itself a creation of the think- ing spirit, spanning and elaborating phenomena. So, then, natural science itself announces a jjZms over and above sensible nature. Is this j^^'^^^ totally revealed and exhausted in this announcement? Are this j;Z?/esit novels .... who does not praise Harnack's Das WesendesChristenthums? .... We must guard against the illusion of supposing that such a Christ picture sketched in modern style is the result of scientific histori- cal investigation and related to the antique Christ picture as truth to error ! " — Das Christusbild des urchristlichen Glaubens in religionsgeschichtlicher Beleuch- tung, pp. 1-9. 3 Alfred Loisy, V^vangile et f^glise CParis: Picard et Fils, 1902). 294: The Finality of the Christian Religion ecclesiastical development. Loisy attacks with great ability this principiant Protestant supposition. Harnack refuses to interpret Catholicism as immediate issue of the gospel. He finds the gospel in Protestantism even only after stripping off the Catholic survival. It is only in the religiosity of the present that he finds the kernel of the primitive gospel. Therefore, says Loisy, he protestantizes and modernizes the gospel. The essence of the gospel is in the ecclesiastical reality empirically unfolding itself throughout the mighty reaches of history. Harnack's loyal prosecution of histori- cal study in the use of the historical method is self-decep- tion, since he gives us only his own subjective predilection in the garb of history.' Because he seeks the essence one- sidedly in the primitive form of Christianity, he must seek this primitive form in a new and unitary religious idea. The upshot of it all is that Harnack has to hold something to be the essence of the gospel that was only secondary to Jesus' mode of thought, which was entirely of an eschatological tendency. To Jesus, the essence was not in the new, but, for the most part, in that which was common to him and Judaism. The essence is not the unchangeable stability and effect of that simple, new idea, in the face of the fact that nowhere does the church show anything that is unchangeable. Everything is in constant transformation and appropriation, as was the case with the preaching of Jesus itself. The gospel is throughout a complex phenomenon, and its expression in the church is complex, living, change- able— appointed to constant regenerations and adaptations. Harnack's conception is not the historical picture of the thing at all, but a radical formula of individualistic Prot- estantism, of Protestantism sundering itself from the collect- ive unity of the church. The gospel is the root of the church ; the church is the living and inexhaustible fruitage 1 In this particular judgmeut Loofs agrees with Loisy. The Problem of Method 295 of the gospel. The essence is the actual history itself. The church and gospel in every particular are fluid and open magnitudes. Therefore the unchangeable essence cannot be construed at all, but lies before us in the totality of the living church and its activities. So Loisy. And so the battle of opinion goes on. This r^sum^ of scholarly and serious opposition to Harnack's book has been given here because of the conclusion to which it points. Taken all together, it shows that "essence of Christianity" contains difficult and unsolved problems. In view of these diverse judgments, the methodic question must be raised again and pursued in every direction. What does the expression "essence of Christianity" mean? What presup- positions does the search for the essence of Christianity involve ? What are the means that contribute as a matter of course to the solution of the problem ? Are the meaning and aim of this task so simple and self-evident after all? Must the task be set, and is the problem soluble ? How far is it a really historical problem ? Is the historical-inductive stand- point the only one, or are there other means at our disposal? If so, what are they? These questions are by no means merely academic; they are of vital practical importance. The fluctuating judgments, distressing the religious world, are partly due to differences concerning these methodic pre- suppositions. An examination of the method of our thought is in all cases of complicated problems a means of proper access to the heart of the matter itself. 5. Instructed by this exploitation of opinion, guided by these pathfinders, we may now attempt to specify and to unify all the factors which together constitute presupposition and method to be employed in answering the question : What is Christianity? a) Since, for reasons given, neither Catholic nor Protestant orthodoxy, nor even Aufkldrung, would have raised this 296 The Finality of the Christian Keligion question, the necessity for our doing so may be explained at the outset. That necessity is due to the rise of the conception of historical relativism. It is historical relativism which has ensued upon the critical dissolution of the static supernatural- ism of the orthodoxies and finalities of the church. And it is historical relativism which replaces the natural right, natural morality, and natural religion of the Avfkldrung — in each of which there was a survival of static supernaturalism in the form of ready-made innate ideas of right, morality, and religion, exempt from the laws of time-progression. They ivere before they became, according to this rational- istic supernaturalism. Now, it is the triumph of historical relativism over the former absolute dogmatic positivism, of every kind, that has necessitated the query as to the perma- nent, the eternal, the unchanging in Christianity, since the latter can no longer assert dogmatically its exemption from the fate of all the rest of our spiritual possessions. The historic fortunes of the Christ-concept is a serious illustration of what is meant here. To bes^in with, there was the Jewish portrait of Christ. His first disciples greeted him as the Jewish Messiah ; the mighty Lord of the judg- ment day ; the restorer of Israel ; the supernatural man who held the sword of destruction in one hand, and the messaofe of peace and of pardon in the other. All that the gloomy imagination of the Jew, with his fantasy inflamed from tribulation, had pictured about the redeemer of the chosen people, was transferred to Christ. He was to establish the earthly kingdom of God in the blood of his foe, and the faithful were to reign with him. He is at once mild and terrible — the Jewish picture of Christ. A century goes by. The gentiles, won by indefatigable missionaries, enter in vast multitudes into the Christian congregations. Philosophers leave their schools to be bap- tized into the rising church. The Greek spirit, entering The Pkoblem of Method 297 with them, represses the Jewish spirit. The bloody Messiah from the race of the Maccabees gradually vanishes from Christian feeling. Instead of him, there is now the shining countenance of the Word of God, the Logos. The tran- scendental mode of thought of Greek philosophy penetrates into the Christian tradition, and henceforth, in the eyes of the faithful, Christ is the perfectly beautiful, perfectly pure, per- fectly good Being in whom the wisdom of God became flesh. Other centuries have flown. The antique world is nause- ated with itself. The successors of the mighty peoples of the olden times are aweary of life and impuissant. They fly to the wilderness or to the cloister. The joy of life is gone. Wisdom's last word now is : Forego fatherland, family enjoy- ment, and the duties of society. Privation, asceticism, casti- gation, voluntary martyrdom, mortification of the flesh — this is now the ideal. The reign of the monk has begun, and slowly the shining form of the Greek Christ vanishes, while the sallow countenance of the oriental Christ, the Byzantine Christ, is visible, like a pale moon, on the horizon: the gaze into emptiness, dreamily staring, features long- drawn, the body emaciated, cheeks hollow — the typical idea of the monk and the ascetic. Other centuries take their flight. Incoming German tribes spread the veil of ignorance and rawness over all Europe. The sluggish barbarian blood flows in the veins of the church. Darkness settles over the chaos of the Middle Ages. The Greek Christ of an Origen and of a Chrysostom no longer speaks to the peoples of the eleventh century. They are not able to understand him. They need a God whom they can see or touch. They need a sensible representation of the Savior. The priest lifts the host above the altar, and the Christ that can be sensibly apprehended, the Christ who imparts himself to believers by letting himself be eaten by them, becomes visible in the mass of the Catholic church. 298 The Finality of the Christian Religion Other centuries go by. Luther and Calvin thunder. In the Renaissance, old Greeks rise from the dead. The Bible is given back to the believer. The Christ portrait of the Middle Ages is given up by a part of Christendom. Schools of learning are founded. Doctors of theology take the place of priests, and for two centuries theological warfare is the order of the day in the church and on the field of battle. Nothing seems so important as the confession of a painfully elaborated dogmatic. Religion has fallen back into the quintessence of scholasticism, and Christ has now become a doctor of theology, a cold Christ, exacting obedience, rationalistic, inexorable toward those who are not of his opinion, trumpet- ing a damnatory judgment upon millions of human beings who have not accepted his dogmatics, for the very good reason that they had never heard tell of it. Still more time flies; and meanwhile a few philosophers lift their voices; the French Revolution shakes the world; historical criticism is born; the Christ-concept of the Prot- estant theologians of the seventeenth century is forsaken; a new Christ portrait arises — rather, an art gallery of new Christ portraits: the romantic Christ, the socialistic Christ, the prophetic Christ, the mystic Christ, the rationalistic Christ, the idyllic Christ. It is an instructive fact that there have never been so many different conceptions of the person of Christ as since the time when historians began to exhibit the history of his life! And at present, under the dominion of individualism, each Christian represents to himself the personality of Christ according to his special inclinations and interests. To the historian it is evident that each of these portraits of Jesus is historically conditioned, the first no less than the last ; that each is what it is because the ideals of life, the type of piety, and the view of the world in general, synchronous therewith, are what they are. Each is relative to the age The Problem op Method 299 from whose soil it sprang. Thus we have here an impressive illustration of that historical relativism which renders our question necessary. For we instinctively ask : Which one of these portraits of Christ is genuine? Or are there several equally justified concepts of the Christ ? Or are we all the victim of illusion? Amid this flux of the relative, is there an absolute? Let it be understood also that the historic diversity of the underlying religiosity itself is quite as great as that of the ideas of the Christ which serve to express and realize that religiosity. But if one examine Christianity in its contemporaneous forms today, one will be led to the same conclusion which was reached by a review of its historic stages. What does it mean that adherents of occidental Christianity send mis- sionaries to the devotees of oriental Christianity? What does it mean that confessional opposition is so sharp and fundamental that one confessor will hesitate to honor a different confessor as Christian? How much is common to the tendencies and parties that are called Christian? And is it that which is common to all — to Occident and Orient; to Greek, Roman, and Protestant; to Orthodox, Rational- ist, Pietist, and Humanist — that is the really Christian? What is it that shall determine the answer? It is said, as we have seen, that primitive Christianity — or, more defi- nitely, the Christianity of Christ — must constitute the cri- terion. But, in that case, what if there are no Christians any more? Thus, whether one looks at the past or at the present, all is change, all is relative, all is conflict; and hence one falls into doubt. We do not begin life with doubt. At the beginning of life whatever is is valid expression of reality. But when experience discloses to us contradictory elements, when what was reality to the consciousness of one age ceases to be real to that of another, then doubt arises, and the ques- tion as to which of these elements possesses the true reality, 300 The Finality of the Christian Keligion and the need of a criterion of reality or validity, are awakened. This is true for religious reality as for all else. Had Chris- tianity been a self -identical entity, in every age homogeneous with its first beginnings down to empirical details, doubt would never have arisen as to what it was ; it would have been exempt from the judgment of relativity, and the quest for norm would have been superfluous, much as it is true that worse fates than these would in that event have overtaken the new religion. But, on the modern supposition of histori- cal relativism, doubt was inevitable, and the task of deter- mining the essence could not but be set. To be sure, there is one hypothesis upon which the task would be unnecessary, upon which the problem would not even arise. If essential Christianity and empirical Chris- tianity were coincident extensively and intensively; if, as Loisy says, the essence is the actual history itself, such would be the case. But there are two considerations that weigh against this hypothesis: first, the self-contradictory elements in Christian history, as has already become apparent; and, secondly, the pervasion of the historical with moral evil. Instead of essential Christianity having radical error and evil as inalienable constituents, it must be, as our supreme ethico- religious value, the critical touchstone for the demarkation of those phenomena which proceed from the pure impulse of the essence, from those other phenomena which issue from error and sin — from obtuseness and triviality, from passion and short-sightedness, from folly and malice, and from indifference and mere worldly sagacity. Indeed, our whole purpose in seeking a true conception of the essential in our religion is that we may be able, not merely to ignore the unessential, but also to escape and condemn the anti-essential. b) Granting, then, the need of setting the task in ques- tion, it is important to arrive at some decision as to what the expression itself, "the essence of Christianity," signifies. The Problem of Method 301 Professor Troeltsch^ says that Chateaubriand, in his G&nie du Christianisme, was the first to use the expression "essence of Christianity" — on a very confused historico- empirical basis, however. The expression points, then, to its source in the historical conception and art of romanticism, after Lessing and Herder had sought for similar concepts. The men of German idealism and German romanticism, and, since then, general usage, say "Christendom." Troeltsch continues : They mean thereby the whole of the Christian life, understood in the fulness of its historical phenomena, arising out of an impell- ing idea. The essence of Christianity is a spiritual unity devel- oping itself in the manifoldness of Christian history, a unity of which the majority is unconscious, and which is first to be apprehended by an historical abstraction The expression signifies therefore the application of a methodic fundamental thought and of a most extensively approved presupposition of modern general history. The development of an idea, of a value, of a circle of thought, of an end, is a great coherent complex. Each of these grows with its activity. Each develops consequences. Each appropriates and masters foreign material. And each opposes constant aberrations from the main direction and obtrusive opposi- tions. The essence of such a complex is the abstract concept, the abstraction peculiar to history, hj means of which the whole known and minutely investigated scope of coherent formations is under- stood on the basis of an impelling and self-developing fundamental thought. The essence can be found only by a survey of all the phenomena connected with this thought. Its discovery requires the employment of historical abstraction, the art of divination which takes in the whole at a single glance, and at the same time the exactness and fulness of the methodically elaborated facts. Troeltsch thus gives a masterly statement of the signifi- cance of the expression "essence," much as it is true that he mixes it up with the discussion of the methodic procedure. It is apparent that he is continuous with the German ideal- ism which created the concept. There is a sense also in I Christliche Welt, 1903, No. 21. 302 The Finality of the Chbistian Religion which modern historical science has simply developed that concept further, only partially absolving it from its special philosophical presuppositions. To be sure, modern history — as will be set forth more fully in a moment — is prone to forego such abstractions as all too difficult. But it cannot in truth forego them. Such abstractions are the chief aim of history, and first make this science of value. It is only through them — -intimately connected, of course, with exact detailed investigations — that history becomes what it is designed to be — the wider experience of the life of man, the orientation on the part of the living by means of the collective experience of the life of the race, so far as a picture of that life can be obtained. But to return. We mean by "essence of Christianity," then, the organizing and productive principle of the fulness of that phenomenon of life which we call Christianity. The suggestion which we gain by asking analogous questions is helpful. What does the expression '"essence of the Renais- sance" signify? Of Greek culture? Roman law? Of Vedism, or Buddhism, or Islam? Or, perhaps, a more illumi- nating question would be: What is meant by the "essence" of the English language? Is it to be found in that which is common to it with other languages ? Is its essence coincident with the primitive form of that language? But we do not speak Old English any more; it is a dead language. Is the essence a fixed sum of words ? But it is precisely the words that are not fixed, old ones always dropping out, new ones coming in, and those that remain underg-oincr chano;e in pronunciation and meaning. Is the essence only the Anglo- Saxon words? But the words of Greek and Latin origin have been anglicized, and seem to be of as much value as any others. If the statement that the essence of the English language, a syncretistic language, is our language-speaking propensity expressing and realizing itself in a specific modi- The Problem of Method 303 fication of words and their arrangements, which are distin- guished by well-known marks from those of other languages — if this statement seem mere words, it yet has the illus- trative importance of showing that essence is not mere idea, or principle, or spirit — this in correction of Troeltsch — nor the fulness of the phenomenon itself — this against Loisy; not the spirit, or principle, or idea unexpressed, and not the sum of its expression, but the spirit plus its specific form- making tendency, the form itself being ever variable and transitory. Thus, while the essence of Christianity, a syn- cretistic religion, is a "life," and not merely dogma, or cult, or institution, it is, for all that, a life to which it structurally belongs to externalize itself in these three ways, much as they are accident and not essence — the process, but not the product, of externalization, belonging therefore to the essence. But this threatens to transcend the bounds of the present chapter. c) The presupposition which underlies the idea of essence is the vital question next to be considered. The general methodic presuppositions of modern historical thought are transferred to the study of Christianity. What constitutes modern historical thought? It involves the investigation of facts, but presupposes the methodic criticism of sources, the reconstruction of facts in the use of the analogy of the human experiences with which we are psychologically famil- iar, and the origination of a causal system embracing with- out exception all phenomena. If it is the methodic cardinal proposition of the science of today that we have to explain every condition as the causally determined development out of a preceding one, this excludes on principle the appearance of any condition, event, action, or personality which is not explicable out of the preceding conditions and according to the laws of genesis in general. ' IPFLEIDEEEE, Evolution and Theology, p. 9. 304 The Finality of the Christian Religion Thus, the historical investigation of the essence of Chris- tianity includes a series of presuppositions of the most important and decisive character. (1) For one thing, it foregoes the old dogmatic historical science, with finished standard. It does not appeal to a biblical or ecclesiastical normative truth, authenticated by divine authorization. Miracle ceases to be means for sepa- ration and determination of the essence, for the isolation of the divine and essential in Christianity. But the normative validity of the tradition, hitherto safeguarded by miracle, vanishes with the abandonment of miracle as a means to the end of knowing the Christian essence. Likewise, the way is open then for the free criticism of the ecclesiastical dogma given with the tradition or grown out of it. Criticism loses its peculiar logical opponent; that is, criticism and miracle are mutually exclusive. The investigation of the essence may explain these dogmas, no longer identified with the essence, in a historico-psychological manner as arising from the spiritual process itself. It may even consider the criti- cism and dissolution of these dogmas as a part of the move- ment of the essence. And it may characterize new formations as an outflow of the essence itself. But the criticism with which this chapter began sufficed to show that the determi- nation of essence was not restricted to miracle, nor to the church and the authority of the church. Such dogmatic procedure is now discredited. (2) But, for another thing, any exposure of the essence by identifying the idea of Christianity with the truth of natural religion, or with a universal concept of religion, or with universal ethico-religious postulates, is to be rejected. Of all these things historical science knows nothing. The freedom of the science would be abridged by the blind adoption of these categories which it did not originate and cannot control. Besides, the essential thing in Chris- The Pkoblem of Method 305 tianity — let this be said even now — is no such self-identical universality, so that everything not coincident therewith becomes unessential. But the essential is the content of the religious fundamental reality which is never finished and never closed so long as it is living and belongs to history — a content revealing itself in its historical manifestation, con- sciously or unconsciously determining its unfolding, and central in its own thinking and willing. Thus both a super- natural and natural dogmatism are excluded from the pre- suppositions of our task. These, whether unchangeable orthodox criteria or unchangeable rational truths, are dead entities, and we may not seek the living among the dead. The essence must be a magnitude wliich possesses inner vitality and mobility, productive powers of propagation. It must be a self-developing spiritual principle.* (3) But, still further, our presupposition may not be what might be called ortholinear evolution. It is granted, with Pfleiderer, that all reality is causally interconnected ; but, all the same, history is not nature; and the creative efficiency and spontaneity of personality must be taken into account when we form our conception of causation in the historical region. The idea of causality is not concerned with the necessity of a phenomenon, but only with the connection of a phenomenon with antecedent phenomena. Such an idea does not deny novelty and originality in the new that may arise. And room must be made for regressions and aberra- tions, for miscarriages and catastrophes, for caprice and irrationality, for moral weakness and moral wrong ; and like- wise room must be made for the epoch-making celerity of progress, for the genius, for the great and characteristic, for the supremely worthful, under conditions of cause and time. The tendency as far as possible to reduce everything to one level, and to efface what is special and individual, may spring in 'In this discussion the word "principle" is never used in antithesis to per- sonality. The exclusive opposition of the two is not a necessity of thought. 306 The Finality of the Christian Keligion some minds from a praiseworthy sense of truth, but it has proved misleading. More frequently, however, we get the habit, conscious or unconscious, of refusing greatness any recognition at all, and of throwing down everything that is exalted.' Causation is not iron necessity. Perhaps an appeal to the practical consequences of this presupposition may be as effective a way as any of exposing its unsatisfactoriness. In the first place, on this hypothesis all the formations of Chris- tianity must be considered as causally necessary revelations of the essence of Christianity, and not only causally, but teleologically necessary as well — each necessary in its place even in every item of its most concrete and motley manifold- ness. But in that case the essence of the process could not be rationally erected into a criterion of criticism and correc- tion of particular stages of the development; that is, of one- sidednesses and injurious accretions, for example. Our Protestant conviction especially would protest against the application of such a presupposition as the one in question. We cannot consider the whole of Catholicism as the teleo- logically necessary, organic unfolding of the Christian essence. On such apprehension. Protestantism would be impossible. With all historical righteousness toward Catholi- cism, with full recognition of the fact that primitive missions emptied directly into Catholicism, and that Protestantism has Catholicism as its presupposition, it is still true that Protestantism means a breach with the fundamental idea of Catholicism. In any event, Protestantism is an his- torical catastrophe and a regress to forsaken truths of primitive Christianity. Thus, whoever shares the Prot- estant conception of Christianity cannot carry out the organic evolution theory. But, in the second place, a similar remark may be made with reference to the appli- cation of the Christian essence, as critical principle, to extra- Christian religions. The prosecution of Christian missions 1 Haenack, op. cit., p. 54. The Problem of Method 307 requires such service of the essence — a service, however, that would be meaningless upon this theory of necessary- development. Thus the essence cannot be extracted from each item of the whole course and totality of phenomena. A distinction is to be made between phenomena and phe- nomena— that is, between such phenomena as express the essence and such as obscure, or pervert, or even obliterate it. And the concept of the essence is not merely an extrac- tion from the phenomena, but a criticism of the phenomena; and this criticism is not merely the testing of the incomplete by the ideal at work in it, but a sundering of what is in accordance with the essence from what is contrary to it. (4) The determination of the essence is, at all events, an historical task; whether it is simply and only an historical task depends upon the scope and depth which one may accord to the historical method. Upon this important matter we must now reflect patiently. Scholars are no longer so sure as to what constitutes the historical method as they were a generation ago. Before we enter upon the discussion, a general observation may be indulged in. Method is the decisive feature common to all the sciences. It is the ethics of science, so to speak. As the way by which one overcomes his sorrows — whether by drowning them in an intoxicating bowl or by utilizing them in living faith — is of more moral importance than the release itself, so the method by which one gains one's results is of more scientific importance than the results gained. In the exact sciences we observe, describe, explain. Classification is simply a labor-saving device in the interest of explanation — enabling us to explain a multitude of things at once instead of having to do so one at a time. It has been customary to consider observation and description as means simply to the end of explanation; but there seems to be a reaction today in the interest of ascribing more scientific dignity to the task of 308 The Finality of the Christian Religion observing and describing. Particularly is this true as regards historical science. Explanation signifies the refer- ence of the phenomenon to be explained to its causal ante- cedents, or the articulation of it in that system of occurrences where it originally belongs. Without doubt this is the crux of demonstrative science — it supposes the interrelation of all reality under the law of cause and effect; that is, the principle of natural causation, which, in turn, has for its presupposition the ultimate unity of all existence. But, aside from observation, description, explanation, the human mind is constantly engaged in another, a very different, kind of activity, viz., valuation, appreciation, estimation. Our attitude toward reality or existence is not merely that of perceiving and understanding; reality excites our feeling so that we express judgments assigning or denying it worth. For example, we observe and describe a rainbow, numbering and locating its colors; we also explain it by referring the colors to the refraction of light by drops of water; but, in addition to the activity of perception and understanding, as science counts understanding, we exclaim: "The rainbow is beautiful!" This last is an estimation of worth, a value- judgment, and it has its source in a side of our nature different from the former activity which yields the existence- judgment. Think of the difference between the attitude of a thirsty man to water and that of the scientist or the artist as such ! Of special significance are the judgments of value which we pass on human actions, our own as well as those of other men. And if we think of existence as a whole, and value it according to our experience of weal or woe from it, we pass beyond the ethical to the religious appreciation. Now, waiving the ultimate question — the problem of prob- lems— of the relation between cause and worth or value, or between existence-judgment and value-judgment, or, if one please to state the same thing differently still, between expla- The Problem of Method 309 nation and valuation, it is evident that the enactment of the latter does not depend upon the solution of the former; that, for example, the judgment that the rainbow is beautiful does not wait upon the scientific explanation of its origin. With these general remarks in mind, we may return to the question of historical method. Is the historical method descriptive, or explanatory, or teleological, for lack of a better word to express it from the point of view of a value-judgment science? The Windelband'-Rickert^ school of history designates the method idiographic. The Dilthy-Wundt school^ designates the method nomothetic — the idiographic being virtually the descriptive, the nomothetic virtually the explanatory. There remains the teleological — one may not be misunderstood if one calls it the Carlyle school, the great man-theory of history. It is the teleological study of history for moral and practical purposes. By way of elucidation it may be said that the idiographic method, if not also teleo- logical, is a direct means to the latter, so that they are not sharply discriminated, and, for our own purpose, may be united. Some understanding, now, of the merits of this controversy will do much to help us on our way. According to the Windelband-Rickert view, natural science seeks, as the fruition of its process, universal law; but historical science, particular facts. In the language of formal logic, the goal of the former is the general, apodictic judgment; that of the latter, the single assertory proposition. The distinction con- cerns the relation between the universal and the particular — recognized since Socrates as the most fundamental fact of all scientific thought. Antique metaphysics divided here — Plato seeking the Real in unchangeable genera or concepts; Aristotle, in teleological self -developing individuals. Modern ^ Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft (Strassburg, 1900). ^Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung. 3 See Wundt's Methodenlehre, and, for brief treatment, his Einleitung, pp. 67 fif. 310 The Finality of the Christian Keligion natural science has substituted natural law for the Platonic idea. Thus, in their knowledge of reality, empirical sciences seek either the universal in the form of natural law, or the individual as historically determined; either the ever self- identical form, or the content of an actual occurrence, viewed as single and self-determined. The former are law-sciences, the latter occurrence-sciences; the former nomothetic, the latter idiographic. This methodic opposition classifies only the treatment, not the content, of knowledge itself. As a matter of fact, the same subjects may be made object of both nomothetic and idiographic investigation, since the opposition of uniform and unique is in a certain sense relative. That which under- goes no noticeable change within a vast period of time, and may therefore be treated nomothetically in its unchangeable form, may yet appear to a wider survey as something valid only for an, after all, limited stretch of time ; that is, as some- thing happening but once. Thus a language in all its par- ticular usages is controlled by its law of form, which remains the same throughout all the mutation of expression; but, on the other hand, this whole special language itself, together with its whole special regularity of form, is yet only a single transitory phenomenon in human linguistic life in general. The same is true of the physiology of the body, of geology, in a certain sense even of astronomy ; and thus the historical principle is carried over to the region of the natural sciences. The classical example of this is the science of organic nature. As systematic, it is of a nomothetic character, so far as it may consider the types of living beings, ever self-identical within the multi-millennial observation of man, as their regu- lar form. As evolutionary history, exhibiting the whole series of earthly organisms as a process of derivation or trans- formation, whose repetition is not at all probable in any other world — a process gradually shaping itself in the course The Problem of Method 311 of time — it is an idiographic, historical discipline. From such a point of view Kant could already speak of a future "archaeology of nature." The whole speculative development has shown a decisive preference for the nomothetic form of thought. But interest in the great historical reality is effecting a change to the idiographic. The two agree in having experiences, the facts of perception, for their starting-point. Both agree in dis- trusting what the naive man so uniformly thinks he expe- riences. For their basis both require a scientifically trained and a logically tested experience. The difference between natural investigation and history begins with the problem of the utilization of facts for purposes of knowledge. At this point the former seeks laws, the latter seeks forms. In the former, thought presses on from the establishment of the particular to the apprehension of universal relations ; in the. latter, it is limited to the sympathetic delineation of the particular. For the natural investigator, the single object of his observation never as such has scientific worth; it serves him only so far as he may believe that he is justified in considering it as type, as specimen of a genius ; he reflects on only those characteristics which will yield insight into a uniformity. But the task of the historian is to reanimate some formation of the past in its total individual aspect. He fulfils a task with reference to what was once actual, similar to that of the artist with reference to that which is in his fantasy. It follows from this that the predominant inclina- tion in scientific thought is to abstraction; in historical, to visualization, or, better perhaps, to intuition. This becomes all the more clear when one compares the results of the investigation of each. However fine-spun the analytic labor of historical criticism in its elaboration of tradition, its goal is the disentanglement of the true form of the past, in living distinctness, from the mass of material. What it presents — 312 The Finality of the Christian Religion these are pictures of men and of human life, with the whole wealth of their peculiar development, preserved in their full individual vividness. Thus, risen from oblivion to new life, dead languages, vanished peoples, with their faith and forms, their struggles for power and freedom, their poetry and thought, speak to us through the mouth of history. But the world which natural inquiry builds up before us is very different. However intuitive its starting-point may be, the goal of its knowledge is theories, in the last analysis mathematical formulations of the laws of motion. In a genuine Platonic manner, it leaves behind the individual thing of sense, which arises and passes away, and mounts to a knowledge of the legal necessities which rule all process in timeless unchangeability. Out of the rainbow world of sense it builds a system of conceptions and constructions, in which it supposes that it apprehends the true essence of things back of phenomena, colorless and changeless, without the earthy smell of sense-qualities upon its garments — the triumph of thought over perception! Indifferent to the transitory, it casts its anchor in that which abides eternally the same ; it does not seek the transitory as such, but the unchangeable form of change — the nomothetic method! These two methods are waging a profound warfare for the regulative influence on man's general view of the world and life. The great question is : Which is more valuable for the whole purpose of our knowledge — knowledge of laws, or knowledgfe of events? the understanding of universal time- less being, or of individual temporal phenomenon? The idiographic school grants that the knowledge of uni- versal laws has practical worth — rendering foreknowledge of future contingencies, as well as purposeful encroachment of man in the course of things, possible. But, none the less, all purposeful activity in the collective life of humanity is de- pendent upon the experiences of historical knowledge. Man The Problem of Method 313 is an animal that has history. His civilized life is an historical connection, solidifying from generation to generation ; if one would enter into living co-operation with this connection, one one must have an understanding of its development. But the main point that this school urges is not such utility, but the inner worth of knowledge. It is not the personal satisfaction of discovery that is meant. This may be equally true of all knowing. The degree of this satisfac- tion is determined not so much by the importance of the object as by the difficulty of the investigation. But there is an objective and theoretical distinction in the worth of the knowledge of objects. The degree of this worth is the degree in which they contribute to the whole of knowledge. The particular remains an object of idle curiosity unless it is able to become a bailding-stone in a larger edifice. Thus, even "fact," in a scientific sense, is a teleological concept. Not just any actual thing is a fact for science, but only that from which science can learn some- thing. This is especially true for history. Many an event takes place which is no historical fact. Science sifts out the useful and lets the useless go. But this articulation of single knowledge into a great whole is by no means limited to the inductive subordination of the particular under a generic notion or under a general judgment. Such an end may be fulfilled by the disposition of a single characteristic as an important element in a com- prehensive view. The preference for the generic is a one- sidedness of Greek thought, propagated from the Eleatics to Plato, who found both true being and true knowledge in the universal. Continuous therewith, Schopenhauer denied the merit of genuine science to history, because it ever appre- hends only the particular and never the universal. To be sure, it must be granted that it is natural for the human understanding to apprehend the common content of scattered 314 The Finality of the Christian Religion individuals; but the more it strives after concept and law, the more must it leave the individual as such behind, for- gotten and sacrificed. This is seen especially in the modern attempt to make a "natural science out of history." What does such an induction of laws ultimately leave of the con- crete life of a people? Only a few trivial generalities. But, in opposition to this, it must be firmly maintained that all interest and appreciation, all the reason's valuation of man, is related to the particular and to what happens but once — das Einmalige, as Windelband says. Our feelings are quickly dulled as soon as the object to which they are directed is multiplied, or as soon as a case is seen to be but one among a thousand. "It is not the first time," we often say ; and its significance is evident. All our feeling of worth has its roots in the once-happening, in the incomparableness of the object. Our relation to personalities indicates how all living estimation of worth depends on the singularity of the object. At this point, moreover, there is an integration of the moral method in the idiographic — of the didactic, and the hero with his deeds is accentuated as the center of history — Carlyle's well-known standpoint, which need not, therefore, be further stated. In addition, it is also the contention of the idiographic school that historical science makes little demands upon psychology, a nomothetic science. The notoriously small degree to which the laws of the psychic life have been formulated has never stood in the way of the historian; common sense, tact, and genial intuition have stood him in good stead to understand his heroes and their deeds. It may very well be doubted whether the modern apprehension of elementary psychical processes, according to mathematics and natural law, has yielded a mentionable contribution to our understanding of actual human life. Legality of happening in history is not denied by the The Problem of Method 315 idiographic school ; rather, they grant that the two moments of human knowledge, idiographic and nomothetic, may be referred to a common source. The causal explanation of the single occurrence with its reduction to universal law suggests the thought that it must be possible, in the last analysis, to comprehend the historical idiom on the basis of the universal natural legality of things. Thus Leibnitz thought that ulti- mately all vdriMs de fait have their sufficient grounds in vSrit^s 6ternelles. But he postulated this for the divine thought, not for the human. Subsumption under law does not help us to analyze the datum in time to its ultimate grounds. In all that is historically and individually experienced there is a remainder that is incomprehensible — something inexpressible, indefinable, ineffable. Thus, the ultimate and innermost essence of personality resists analysis by means of categories, and this that is incomprehensible appears to our consciousness as the feeling of the causeless- ness of our being; that is, of individual freedom, Underivable self-dependence, universal conformity to law — these coexist in history. All efforts fail to derive the particular from the universal, the "many" from the "one," the "finite" from the "infinite," the "existent" from the "essence." This is a chasm which the great systems of philosophy have never been able to conceal or to fill up. Law and occurrence remain side by side as ultimate incom- mensurable magnitudes of our idea of the world. History photographs and values the occurrence, but does not seek after the law. It is a worth-science rather than a cause- science. It is hoped that the foregoing is a fair, but sympathetic, reflection of the contention of the idiographic school.^ The opposition to this on the part of the nomothetic school, 1 See RiCKERT, op. cit., pp. 305-517; Windelband, op. cit., pp. 8-27; Praeludien, pp. 211-80; Troeltsch, Historisches bet Kant. 316 The Finality of the Chkistian Religion since it accepts the definitions and determinations of the former, may be more briefly and summarily presented. What occurs in nature, occurs numberless times; there- fore the natural investigator orders his facts under abstract laws. Therefore natural science is nomothetic, and only the universal has interest for it. What history narrates happens only once; for history, therefore, the individual is worthful, and it seeks to understand the individual by sympathetically living therein. So the idiographic school, in brief. To this the nomothetic school replies that a purely formal characteristic is not in and of itself appropriate as a distinc- tion between concepts which interest us above all else by their content, not on account of the greater or less scope of the facts capable of being subsumed under them. Such a characteristic is not at all appropriate, if it does not actually suit, and is therefore a priori introduced, even by those who wish to employ it, as a rule having exceptions. That formal characteristic is, however, false in a twofold sense. In the first place, it is not true that the singular plays no role in natural investigation. Almost the whole of geology, e. g., consists of singular facts. Yet one would hardly be willing to affirm that the investigation of the ice- age, because this probably existed but once, does not belong to the domain of natural science, but is relegated to the sympathetic living over again on the part of the historian. On the other hand, it is not true, in the second place, that history has nothing to do with the regular as such. Since the days of Polybius, historians, so far as they were not mere annalists, have not omitted to indicate simultaneous occur- rences and analogous connections in different times, and to employ such historical parallels in the interest of certain conclusions. Whatever one may think of the scope of this comparative treatment, one will not deny its right in the The Problem of Method 317 region of historical inquiry any more than in the region of natural inquiry, where conditions demand that singular phe- nomena should engage our attention. However, as is the case with most false affirmations, a grain of truth remains here after allowance is made for the false. Historical facts bear a singular character in wider scope than do natural phenomena. Still, for all that, the characteristic is, as such, even in the cases where it fits, a wrong characteristic, because it is a merely /orma? one. As such it forces upon us precisely the question as to what are the properties which belong to the material content of the phenomena — properties from which that outer characteristic is the result. If the question is put in this way, the answer can only be that the motives of act- ing personalities are dependent in a higher degree on individ- ual conditions, and that with the reciprocal action of many such motives with outer conditions the processes must neces- sarily be of a more singular character than natural phenom- ena, partly in consequence of the general character of psuchic processes, partly in consequence of their complex nature.' As one goes over this controversy carefully, one becomes convinced, I think, that the opposition of the two methods, the nomothetic and the idiographic, is, as is not infrequently the case in controversies, complementary and not exclusive. Philosophically, the nomothetic, taken by itself alone, rests on a monistic view of the world; the idiographic, taken by itself alone, on a pluralistic view of the world. But since the unity and the multiplicity of reality are alike real, and equally real, an exclusive monism and an exclusive pluralism are alike partial and inadequate. The truth of the former is its recognition of the interaction and system of reality; of the latter, the relative independence, originality, and value iThe above is Wundt's critique for substance as given in his Einleitung in die Philosophie. But see also his Logik, Vol. II, 2. Abschnitt; and also his Vdlker- psychologie. Vol. 1, 1, p. 15, etc. ; Paul, Principien der Sprachgeschichte, Einleitung; W. DiLTHEY, Ueber eine beschreibende und vergleichende Psychologic. 318 The Finality of the Cheistian Eeligion of the individual. Each conception, indeed, has its difficul- ties, and a complete solution of the problem of the unity and multiplicity of existence seems to be impossible. But there is no absolute opposition between them. Hence there need be no absolute opposition between the nomothetic and the idiographic method. Since historical reality is interrelated, there may be a nomothetic science of history, with its comprehensive generalizations; and history cannot forego such generalizations and yet satisfy the human impulse to know, on the one hand, and the human need to capitalize the experience of the past in the service of our pilgrimage along the untried and perilous paths of the future, on the other. Nevertheless, there is sometimes an erroneous and danger- ous extreme in the nomothetic treatment of the historical, for which the idiographic contention serves as a valuable cor- rective; this in addition to the independent right and worth of the idiographic method in its discovery and appreciation of the facts and values of the historical in general. The nomothetic method easily lends itself to a false application of the natural-science conception of "necessity" to historical reality. There is an ambiguity in the word "necessity" which is all too easily forgotten by a type of mind which has a passion for causal explanation. Psychological-causal necessity is one thing; logical and ethical necessity is quite another. It is only empirical-inductive history that has to do w4th psychological-causal necessity. Here necessity sio^nifies nothinof more than the affiliation of an occurrence with antecedent forces which investigation exhibits, without considering the combination of cause and efPect other than actual connection confirmed by analogous processes known in experience. Such historical science takes everything from the standpoint of the finished occurrence, and seeks only the relation of an event to a motive. No consideration is given to the manifold possibilities with which the agent reckons. But The Problem of Method 319 this psychological-causal necessity of explanation does not coincide with the logical-ethical necessity of decision on the part of him who thinks and acts. But it is this latter which the historian should have in mind when he speaks of the unfolding, the working-out, the bodying-forth, of a principle. And it is pure personal decision and inner conviction that are regulative for the estimation of necessity in this sense. To draw an illustration from the main subject in hand: it is of no importance, so far as the question of essence is con- cerned, to know and describe as a necessity of the psycho- logical-causal kind the development of primitive Christian missions into Catholicism, of Catholicism into Protestantism, etc. This proves nothing at all as regards what the histori- cal development oiight to have been in order to correspond with the essence, and would actually have been if the essence had been fully received and honored. Therefore the determi- nation of the essence is not so much a psychological-causal task as a personal ethical judgment concerning the cor- respondence of a phenomenon of history with the idea and impulse of Christianity. But by so much as the task involves an ethical value-judgment, it is manifest that the idiographic method is indispensable. The nomothetic will assist in the divinatory abstraction, of which Troeltsch makes so much; but in and with this there must be a criticism, founded in ethical personality, measuring phenomena by the essence; and for this the idiographic method is our main instru- ment. Perhaps we may now set forth the net results of this intricate controversy so far as it affects the subject under consideration. How far can strict adhesion to the historic method, combining, as indicated, features from both the nomothetic and idiographic school, bring us on our way as we seek to discriminate the essence of the Christian religion ? It may facilitate our statement if we begin at the periphery 320 The Finality of the Christian Religion and pass gradually toward the center as far as the limitations of the method and the nature of the problem will allow. First, then, the historical method should serve us as we seek to distinguish between an historical fact and an historical- science fact, thus saving us from attaching importance to the unimportant. It is not meant that the contingent has no right in history, for actual history contains much that is contingent — a fulness of phenomena which are not naturally connected with a given essence, but are aggluti- nated thereto in the course of the unfolding and realization of the essence, and, possibly, at times powerfully influencing the development. Thus, contact with the antique, the situ- ation of the Middle Ages, etc., account for much that is contingent, which, however, are apparently welded with our religion, but are yet no organic part of it and no natural product or expression of it. But while this is true, it must be recognized that such accidental phenomena may have their right and function as coefficients to enhance and strengthen the essence with which they have become asso- ciated.' Whether, now, a phenomenon of history is contin- gent or organic to the essence; whether, if contingent, it is neutral or coefficient — this is an elusive and difficult point which only long familiarity with the historical method, in- strumental in detecting, comparing, and weighing influences, can enable even a personality pervaded with religio-ethical impulses and trained in exact-historical work to solve. Secondly, the historical material, usually bulky, must be exhumed from half-buried, distorted, and fragmentary tradi- tion, and so ordered as to be accessible to higher, scientific treatment. This includes the discovery of sources and their criticism. It also imposes the nice and delicate task of reconstructing and relating the facts with just the color and emphasis which they possessed in the living situation. 1 See Harnack, op. cit., p. 172. The Problem of Method 321 That is, the complex of phenomena must be restored by the genius and skill of the constructive imagination. This is, indeed, preliminary work. But it cannot be omitted by the historian who seeks to know historical reality — as little by the historian of the Christian religion as by any other historian. To get at the naked skeleton of historical fact through, and by means of, the legendary traditions, the whispered rumors, the partisan chronicles, the traditions derived from still more original sources — this is a task always to be attempted, never perhaps to be entirely accom- plished. And this is the task of the idiographic method. But it is evident that this criticism is only substructure and preparation for higher historical science. It puts at the dis- posal of the latter the isolated historical fact and the simple historical series of facts as immediately derived from the sources; it prepares the material; it is restricted, however, to the material in its particularity ; what the material signi- fies for human thought — that is, signifies scientifically in the higher sense — is another question. This criticism says nothing as to what higher — and at the same time deeper — connections control these facts and these series of facts as a whole. At this point the historian — of Christianity as of all else — must put himself under the guidance of the nomo- thetic method. But is not this method metaphysically con- ditioned? Without doubt; so is the idiographic; so, con- sciously or unconsciously, is all method. The nomothetic method has displaced the method of miraculous supernatu- ralism which was content to see the hand of God in history; and of ideology with its transcendence of ideas — an offshoot of the identity-philosophy of the post-Kantian idealism with its deductive writing of history. It is inductive, much as it operates with a definite presupposition; that is, with the assumption that all that occurs in the course of history is in accord with an uninterrupted connection of cause and effect — 322 The Finality of the Christian Keligion an assumption which does not necessitate the obliteration of the distinction between the natural and the historical. Ideology, like supernaturalism, sets out from the opposite presupposition of the thought of divine encroachment in the world of historical happening — ideas as emanations of the Absolute are incorporated in history, geniuses are super- historically fructified. The thought of causality, however — let it be repeated — according to which phenomena are concatenated, is purely historical causality, which does not raise the question of deterministic necessity, but only of the affiliation of a phenomenon with its antecedent, and not only does not deny, but leaves room for novelty and originality in every new situation or event that arises — the new and original not, however, therefore exempt from law and cause. Thus, applying this to our problem, while the determi- nation of the essence of the Christian religion grows out of the method and spirit of the empirical-inductive writing of history, it is yet a task of a higher order; it lies at the point of transition from empirical-inductive history to the philoso- phy of history. And if one chooses to say that the deter- mination of the essence is a purely historical task, "purely historical" must signify a whole Weltanschauung, and the controversy thus becomes a matter of words. But it must be borne in mind that the historical method, narrowly conceived, yielding only exact-historical results, is an inadequate instru- ment in this field. It cannot determine the peculiar char- acter and the peculiar worth of the Christian religion in contradistinction to all other religions ; nor the Weltan- schauung belonging structurally to the Christian religion in contradistinction to other actual or possible Weltanschauun- gen. It is for this reason that the writer doubts the propriety of the above-mentioned widening of the scope of historic method, or of limiting the treatment of the question as to the essence of the Christian religion to a purely historical The Peoblem of Method 323 consideration. Rather, the question must also be treated and evaluated in a religio-philosopliical manner; in fact, philoso- phy in general must be marshaled into service before the task is done. Nevertheless, historical investigation does come first, first in its idiographic aspect, then in its nomothetic. For the Christian religion is from one point of view an historical magnitude. That is, it entered into the history of humanity at a definite time, and has undergone historical unfolding and development since that time. Moreover, an historical treatment of the Christian reliorion must be relio^io-historical today. We must compare Christianity with other religions of humanity; we must ask what "moments" it has in com- mon with them, and what other "moments" form its specific differentia. And we must then seek to fathom and explore those ultimate inner facts of consciousness which lie behind both those marks common to all religions and those specifi- cally peculiar to the Christian religion. In this way we pre- pare for the "divinatory abstraction," of which Troeltsch rightly makes so much. Thirdly, in all the foregoing discussion there is a painful defect which it is difficult to obviate. Religion is intensely personal, and science can never fathom the depth nor illumine the mystery of a personality, however lowly. All greatness in the spiritual world is, however, born out of the sublime enthusiasm of towering personalities. Only persons can understand and interpret persons; but what person is great enough to understand and interpret Jesus? To Renan, for example, Jesus was the hero of a tragedy; but is not the weakness of Renan's delineation of Jesus due to a lack of congeniality with his hero? Renan was too small for po great a subject. What was true of him is true more or less >of all. Hence it will never be granted to any single individ- ual to say the last word on this subject. By so much as the solution of the problem is dependent 324 The Finality of the Christian Religion upon psychic forces, upon the content and quality of ethico- religious personality, by so much is a strictly objective and impartial determination of the essence impossible. More- over, just on this account it is a task whose solution can be proved to, and forced upon, no one. There is too much of a personal and subjective nature in the solution for one to be unconditionally convinced, to say nothing of the inevitable prepossession or passion which renders serene and disin- terested judgment impossible. Certainly it is a subject from which the smatterer, the doctrinaire, the fanatic, and the specialist should alike refrain. Finally, determination of essence is construction of essence, since the task is personally conditioned. That is, it is not simply a datum to be received, but a reality to be created ever anew. Hence the significance of the influence of per- sonal subjective presuppositions. But if the conception of Christianity is conditioned by the personal attitude toward it, this personal attitude is conditioned in turn by the age of the world in which one lives, the type of civilization of which one is a member, the stage of culture to which one belongs, and the local and temporal currents or drifts from which one, try hard as one may, cannot hold himself aloof. All in all, therefore, the task is not simply scientific, but moral, and thus belongs to man's larger vocation of forming an ethical personality through pain and struggle, perplexity and sorrow. Once personal, man must be free — free lord even of the essence of the Christian religion. CHAPTER VIII THE ESSENCE OP THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION: SOURCES OF THE LIFE OF JESUS Did Jesus of Nazareth ever live? We have never seen his face. Nor do we possess a single line in his handwriting. He does not seem to have been anxious to follow the example of Moses and leave "his teaching" behind him on tables of stone for humanity, or to deposit it in books, as the prophets did. Nor do we even have a narrative concerning Jesus in the handwriting of those who claim to have walked and talked with him in the way. Centuries of waste and revolu- tion intervene between our oldest records of that life and the original autographs, which, as said, we do not have. Furthermore, these oldest records are not a biography of the life of Jesus, but gospel ; not Jesus' gospel, but '' Gospel of [?'. e., about] Jesus Christ." The material for writing a life of Jesus, in the strict sense of that word, does not exist. A few fragments of that life, bits of memorabilia from the life of Jesus — that, at best, is all. And among these the historic- pragmatic connection is wanting. Moreover, for those who tried to apperceive Jesus it was a psychological necessity to assign him a place in their circle of religious ideas — in the sphere of the Israelitish hope. They proclaimed him as Messiah. What we really have is the portrait, or portraits, that they painted ; we do not have his face. It is an apoca- lyptic picture painted in glowing oriental colors — a creation of Jewish longings, perhaps? Mention was made in the previous chapter of many quite specifically different por- traits of Jesus throughout history, most of them different from the Jewish one. Portraits sometimes are ideal pro- ductions of the artistic imagination, to which no original 325 326 The Finality of the Christian Religion corresponds. Such are some of these Jesus-portraits; pos- sibly they all are. Did Jesus really live? Did not some artistic spirit produce the picture? But, then, could he have done it without himself being a Jesus ? Still, not every artist is the ideal he paints, not every novelist the hero he depicts. We should like to say that the soul of the artist must have been a Jesus-soul, else he could not have drawn the Jesus- character; but we are not quite sure that the statement would be true. But it is fair to ask: Who was the master that painted this Jesus ? What has become of his works ? Only bits of leaves blown about by a careless breeze are left, and they were gathered up in our gospels. But these scraps do not appear to have been artistically pieced together. All in all, we hesitate to take seriously such an hypothesis of the origin of our Jesus. The supposition is too great a strain upon literary-historical and aesthetic possibility. But there are other possibilities, more plausible perhaps. Perhaps Christ is the embodiment of an idea: the idea of a redeemed people, or of a divine humanity, or of a political or popular movement. So scholars, whom historical science does not make sure that Jesus existed, have sometimes wondered. At this writing the sensation of the hour in theological Germany is a brilliant and effective pastor^ who has concluded that Jesus was an ideal construction of a definite social circle. "The fate of Christ is the fate of the proletariat in the Roman Empire, embodied in a plastic form, in a typical ideal picture. The type of the repressed part of humanity, this is Christ." To the objection that a Christianity without the Jesus of history would be like Hamlet with Hamlet left out, he makes a reply that should cause us to stop and think, viz. : We have had fifteen centuries of Christianity without the Jesus of history, but only with the Christ of faith, and we must choose between denying that lA. Kalthoff. See his Das Christus-Problem: Grundlinien zu einer Social- Theologie (1903) Sources of the Life of Jesus 327 these centuries have been Christian — a strange provi- dence!— and affirming the ideality of the Jesus-figure. It is of the essence of faith, he also says, to fix and visualize its peculiar principle. Each age must do this anew. What we need is a new symbol, a new object! fication which shall function as serviceably in our religion today as the antique portrait did in primitive Christianity. Is not our religious collective spirit vigorous enough to create a new Christ- portrait for our time? Instead of being impatient or indifferent toward such reflections as the foregoing, we may put them to a good use. a) Speculation is able to assign limits to the competency of historical science. As the nature that is known does not exist apart from the mind that knows, so neither does history that is known exist apart from the mind that knows. It is as impossible epistemologically for biblical science to pass from the portrait to the face, from the Christ of faith to the Jesus of history — that is, to the bare Jesus-in-himself — as it is for natural science to get behind phenomena to the thing- in-itself . Signs are not wanting that the Kantian Ding-an- sich has been expatriated from metaphysics only to be naturalized in biblical science. As in the knowledofe of all objects, so in that of Jesus, the mind is creative in knowing, the mind constructs its object, and in doing so contributes to that which is known somewhat from its own apperceptive possessions. In knowing Jesus, as in other knowledge, it is impossible for the knower to subtract his own contribution to the known object (since by this contribution alone does he know), and thereby have as remainder the pure Jesus-in- himself. Nor can the historic method detach Jesus from his articulate place in the historical concatenation and exhibit him as a simple, isolated, objective entity. A being thus out of relations would not be at all. In view of these con- siderations, one must recognize the elements of truth in the 328 The Finality op the Cheistian Keligion idealist contention, much as one may be unable to go to its extremes. b) Rigid limitations must also be assigned to the practical value of historical science. The functional value of the Jesus of the gospels to us in no wise depends upon the scientific recovery of the exact genesis and structure of his consciousness. Nowhere does the biolos^ical exercise of function depend upon a scientific knowledge of the organ. Paradoxical as it may seem, the function precedes and, in a certain sense, determines the organism — a fact that, mutatis mutandis, lends some color, rather than otherwise, to the standpoint of Kalthoff and his predecessors. The practical value of water has not tarried for the chemist's determina- tion of its constituents. To be sure, the chemist's attitude to water, like that of the artist, has value for life; but the practical attitude of thirst, or of industry, is the primary test of the value of water. So, too, the historian's exposi- tion of Jesus will ever remain subordinate to the worth of Jesus as evinced in his practical effectiveness in the lives of his confessors. It is a fact that the certainty, among Chris- tian people, that Jesus ever lived is a conviction of religious faith, and not a conclusion of scientific investigation. It is only in mathematics and deductive logic — sciences irrelevant to the subject-matter in question — that we have what may be called strictly certain knowledge. Natural-science knowl- edge, where experimentation and verification are possible, affords a high degree of certainty. But as regards all tradi- tion, there is only probability, possibility, and no knowledge at all. In the region of knowledge, therefore, doubt is either abnormal, as would be the case in mathematics, or a duty of conscience, as is the case with respect to all knowledge that rests upon human tradition. In the region of religious faith, doubt does not arise from lack of knowledge, but from want of receptivity to the moral worth of the world. Religious Sources of the Life of Jesus 329 certainty has its roots in the will and conscience rather than in the theoretical -understanding ; it reposes in principle upon no science, not even biblical science. As a matter of fact, it is what the conscience and will possess from the content of the personality of the Christ portrayed in the gospels and the epistles, rather than the proofs which the science of history marshals, that is, and is to be, the source of the church's assurance that he belongs to the world of objective reality, and not to the creations of the literary artist, or of a people's poesy, or of the symbolic imagination of a religious community. Jesus is an object both of knowledge and of faith. It is as a constituent of history that he is an object of knowledge — of a science whose instrument is not faith; but for faith Jesus comes into consideration as revelation of God to the inner life of man ; therefore not at all as science evaluates him, but according to his supersensible worth and meaning. Faith views Jesus suh specie aeternitatis ; science views him suh specie icmporis. But perhaps the limitations of the practical value of his- torical science in this region may be best appreciated by taking an example. What is the basis of our certainty that Jesus was not "holden of death," but lives in divine glory? Is this certainty an historical certainty founded upon histori- cal narratives ? It is neither the one nor the other. The point is not that the historical narratives of the resurrection are not of such a nature as to produce historical-science certainty, though that is true. It is that nowhere is historical-science certainty a cause of which religious certainty is the effect. The certainty in question is a conviction of the religious view of the world, a religious certainty, which we lay hold of at our peril merely on the witness of another, or even of historical science, but of which likewise we are willing to be robbed by no one, nor again by historical science. This religious certainty may very well be compatible, indeed, with 330 The Finality of the Christian Religion an historical attitude toward Jesus, but in and of itself it has nothing to do with historical investigation as such. Much scientific confusion and religious distress today are directly traceable to the failure of the historian to recognize that he can no more prove, by historical means, that Jesus now lives, than he can contest it. All efforts to provide, in the use of the means of historical science, a substructure of historical phenomena for this confession, transcend the prerogatives of such science, and do not even have the merit of an apolo- getic demonstration, to say nothing of a conquest of historical territory. "But that Jesus, not lives now, but lived — does not our conviction that he lived repose upon the science of history?" Does it? Rather, do we not pass from the certainty that Jesus is suh specie aeternitatis to the certainty that he is sub specie temporis? In other words, as already indicated, is our religious certainty dependent here upon our historical certainty, or vice versci? What is the psychological fact in the case? If our religious certainty reposed upon our historical certainty, then, since the latter, in the nature of the case, never transcends probable certainty, the former would never transcend probability, and, moreover, would be at the mercy of the vicissitudes of historical science. We are more certain that Jesus existed than historical science can make us be, and we are more certain because our religious apprehension of the glory of his inner life reacts upon our study of the outer biography, inducing an historical certainty in excess of the competency of science to engender. The author is convinced that an interrogation of the con- sciousness of Christians will verify his position that they pass from their value-judgment to their existence-judgment, from their conviction of the worth of Jesus to their conviction that he is an historical character. Hence, too — a distinction with an important difference — it is not he who does not have the Sources of the Life of Jesus 331 historical certainty that Jesus existed that is none of his ; it is he who has not the spirit of Jesus that is none of his,' The author does not wish to seem to deny that there are difficulties in connection with this matter which have not yet been cleared up. Today there are two kinds of spirits which dream of a Christianity without Christ: the weak and the strong. The weak are those who have received all the price- less blessings which we possess in Christianity, only at third or fourth hand. They have been refreshed, nourished, led by these blessings — whence they came is of little concern to them. They live upon their patrimony or upon the goods of others ; but such goods have never become their very own ; they have never come to the fountain. The others are the strong. They know very well that Christianity sprang from Christ. But one does not now need him longer. Were they to be quite frank, they would say that he, not entirely unlike miracles, had come to be something of a hindrance. But would it not poorly serve the expansion of Christianity, the pervasion of the world with Christianity, and one's own peace and joy in Christianity, to drain off the fountain? Is not their view much the same as if we were to sever the connec- tion of our arteries with the heart whence our blood comes? To be sure, one cannot always sit at the fountain. One must often labor in the distance, in dry and barren lands ; and one can hold out a long time, can live long there upon the forces and juices one has brought with him. But he cannot endure his privations in the long run, except at the expense of his health. The weak of whom we are thinking are not yet Christians. The strong — they should consider whether their redemption requires a redeemer any longer, whether they are such perfected children of God that they no longer need the child of Bethlehem. We do not yet see God face to face, nor walk in eternal light. We still need the friend 1 Rom. 8:96. 332 The Finality of the Christian Keligion who leads us tlirougli the dark hour of life and the darker hour of death. c) But granting that the weak depend too much upon the historical, and the strong too little, for the interest of a true religious certainty, our query still remains as to the histori- cal certainty concerning Jesus and his life. History here is not only subject to the limitations which speculation detects and practice discloses; it is also limited by the scantiness of the data and the difficult access thereto. Tradition has preserved nothing certain concerning his early development. Nor are we in a position to reconstruct psychologically his inner development on the basis of the confessions of the grown man. We cannot even show a development of Jesus during the period of his public ministry. The fragmentary character of the tradition, as already said, is known to all. The tradition is not a single unitary complex, but frequently a collection of isolated particulars, brief communications concerning experiences and confessions of Jesus in many various situations. Not seldom the situation itself is tradi- tionary. "In all cases it is important not to appreciate the single saying of Jesus as anonymous, timeless, lifeless, dog- matic sentence and assign it a place in the system of Jesus, but to reconstruct the situation in which it was spoken, could be spoken, and to conclude from the confession therein made to the personality of Jesus" (Deissmann). Moreover, the eye trained in such matters easily detects that the original portrait of Jesus has been painted over. This is due, not only to the true-hearted sentiments of the popular faith with its delight in the marvelous, but also to conscious dogmatic or ecclesiastical tendency. Furthermore, the investigation of Jesus is singularly complicated by the circumstance that the same particular is handed down in variations even in the oldest sources themselves. It is difficult, sometimes impos- sible, to determine which should have preference. Finally, SOUECES OF THE LiFE OF JeSUS 333 the historian has to reckon with another difficulty. Behind the venture of historical labor, scarcely a century old, there lie almost two thousand years of religio- contemplative, artistic, poetic, liturgic, and dogmatic work upon the form of Jesus. All this has created an apperceptive content which exercises powerful mastery over the historical material, and also an atmosphere which refracts the light coming from the far-ofp countenance of the Nazarene. It is the historian's task to pass as best he may through the halo to the plain brow itself, and — a test of the historian's character! — to see the great — nay, the greatest — in the simplicity of the unadorned reality. For it is not in Messiah, and Logos, and two-nature entity, and second person of the Trinity, and host, and ubi- quity, and the like, that the greatness — nay, the Godlikeness — of Jesus lies, but in the real and full human quality of his inner life; in such things, for instance, as the clearness of his moral discernment and the energy of his moral purpose. But this remark is to anticipate. It is our own purpose to take the path of history for a time. The purpose of the foregoing discussion is to avoid false expectations. Histori- cal certainty is not religious certainty ; the latter is generi- cally different from the former. Nor does religious certainty depend upon historical certainty in the sense that is usually supposed. In the subject under consideration historical knowledge is very limited. Strictly speaking, all knowledge in this region is probable knowledge. But we wish to avail ourselves of the benefit of it, such as it is, as we seek to know Jesus and to determine his place in religion. For the rest of this chapter, it is necessary to determine the sources of the life of Jesus. ^ 1 During the remainder of this chapter the author is wholly dependent upon a century of fine scientific work on the synoptic problem, in which he has had no part. Other men have labored, and he has entered into their labors. The net result of the century's work has been given in Professor Wernle's book. Die Quellen des Lebens Jesu. It is from this book, together with Professor Bousset's Was ivissen wir von Jesus f that the substance of what follows in this chapter has been derived. 334 The Finality of the Cheistian Religion In the year 90 of the first century the Jew Josephus writes his Aniiquities, in which he tells of the murder of James "the brother of the so-called Christ."' This is the sole testimony from a Jewish historian of the time of Jesus. Another famous passage^ is a Christian fabrication. About the year 120 we have the first definite testimony from a Roman historian. In his Annals^ Tacitus gives an account of the first Neronian persecution of the sect of Christians, "whose founder, Christ, was condemned in the reign of Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilate." So much for the non-Christian narratives concerning Jesus — brief mention indeed. Some explanation may be given for the scantiness of the notices. But the fact is still somewhat distressing, although it need not be disconcerting. We have only Chris- tian witness to Jesus, which should be all the more sharply and rigidly tested on that account. Let us interrogate the oldest Christian informant, the apostle Paul. We learn from Paul, however, very little con- cerning the person and life of Jesus. He values Jesus not lower than the highest, but he does not present much about his career. Jesus' prohibition of divorce,* Jesus' word con- cerning the right of the minister to maintenance from the community,^ the narrative of the last meal on the night of the betrayal,^ the summing-up of the witness for the resurrec- tion of Jesus' — purely occasional, almost incidental, com- munications to his churches; nothing documentary concern- ing Jesus himself — this is all. Paul may have orally given to his converts much more than we know of. But of this we are not sure. Paul did not lay much weight upon what he received from tradition. According to his own beliefs, he obtained his gospel from divine "revelation," not from human tradition. And he had good reasons of his own for assert- IXXI, 9, 1. 3XV, 44. 59:14. 715:4 ff. 2XVIII, 3, 3. n Cor. 7:10. 611:23ff. Sources of the Life of Jesus 335 ing his self-dependence, and his independence of tradition. The Jesus whom he preached is the Son of God who came down from heaven in order to die and to rise again for our justification. Everything depends upon the main features of this drama of history ; compared with it, all else is subordinate. Not the teacher, not the wonder-worker, not the friend of publicans and sinners, not the antagonist of Pharisees, is the important thing to Paul. The crucified and risen Son of God is all in all. It follows naturally from the essence of the Pauline gospel that this historically oldest witness, which we know, is the scantiest source of all for our own knowledge of Jesus. Present-day investigation of Jesus has been concentrated upon the four gospels. We have received these gospels from the hands of tradition ; according to tradition, two gospels are by Matthew and John, who were apostles ; two others, by disciples and companions of apostles — Mark the companion of Peter, Luke of Paul. Thus Irenseus and Justin Martyr. Mark and Luke are not of apostolic origin. Whether the first and fourth gospels have apostles for their authors is a ques- tion which these gospels themselves can answer more surely. We pass, then, to ask the gospels themselves concerning their authors and origin. What we can gain by way of answer is not much. No single gospel names the name of its author. As to the gospels of Matthew and Mark, there is no statement in them which gives us a hint as to who their authors are. Were it not for the tradition concerning their authors, no man would ever arrive at the thought that the first gospel was written by Matthew, the second by Mark. The author of the third gospel begins by telling us the plan and purpose of his gospel.^ The third gospel is a relatively late work, preceded by a longer literary development. Its author does not belong to eyewitnesses — probably not even 1 Luke 1 : 1-4. 336 The Finality of the Christian Religion to those who took down immediate narratives of eyewitnesses. He distinguishes three stages: (a) eyewitnesses who orally narrate what they have seen and heard; (6) the "many" who seek to fix the oral tradition of eyewitnesses in coherent expositions, with more or less skill, yet incomplete, inaccurate, in poor arrangement; (c) finally he himself, who, apparently using the works of his predecessors, does his best to produce a narrative that shall be complete, accurate, and properly connected. Hence this evangelist himself assigns us the task of finding out what we can concerning his predecessors and sources. The self-witness of the fourth gospel is peculiar. The words, "We beheld his glory,'" in the prologue, lead to the question as to who it is that speaks — whether an individual, whether a company of people, whether personal eyewitnesses or enthusiastic believers. The narrative is anonymous and objective. Not until the thirteenth chapter is there mention made of "the disciple whom Jesus loved," thus introducing in a striking manner a person hitherto unknown to us — the favorite disciple, the confidant of Jesus, who stands in the foreground of the narrative from now on. But often as he is mentioned, he is not the main person, save once,^ but a figure which recedes behind Peter, the main person^ other- wise known to us. This exception is of much importance: While Peter denied, the favorite disciple remained faithful under the shadow of the cross, received the testament of the dying Jesus, and witnessed to the truth of his death. We immediately learn here that the favorite disciple is to be the witness, the authority, under which the tradition of the fourth gospel is to be placed. But in that case the whole purpose of this subordination of Peter to the favorite disciple now grows clear. The main point of interest is not items 1 John 1:14. 2 19; 23 £f., 35. 313: 23 ff. ; 18: 15; 20: 10; 21 : 7 f . ; 21 : 20-23. These passages should be carefully examined with a view to the relation of primacy between Peter and John. Sources op the Life of Jesus 337 about the two disciples; it is the tradition. The tradition with the authority of the favorite disciple is to be co-ordi- nate with, if not superior to, the tradition founded on the authority of Peter. While, however, the earlier evangelical tradition seeks to win confidence without reliance on author- ity, but simply by the plain, objective character of its nar- ratives— the informants not appearing at all — this younger branch of tradition provides audience and validity for itself by constantly advancing an authority. But this self-witness becomes very complicated on account of the closing words of the twenty-first chapter. A number of men, the " we," assm-e us that the favorite disciple is precisely the disci- ple who bears witness to these things, and has written this, and we know that Iiis witness is true. To be sure, the whole twenty-first chapter has the appearance of an addition to the gospel, which closed with 20: 30 f. It has been supposed that the entire twenty- first chapter was the work of another author after the death of the favorite disciple. But it is noteworthy that the style and manner are the same as those of the rest of the gospel. Besides, the " we" themselves tell us that the favorite disciple wrote " these things," i. e., the twenty-first chapter also. The idea is not that there are two authors, an earlier and a later, but that the authority of the favorite disciple and author of the whole shall be fortified at the end by the authority of the " we." But this procedure seems strange to us. An apostolic witness, the authority of the fourth gospel, and yet his name does not suffice, but requires the witness of the "we" who know and declare that the testimony of the witness is true! Finally, we are enthely in the dark as to the names of the witnesses and of the "we." 1 Thus it appears that the fourth gospel purports to be of apostolic derivation and authority in an entirely different manner from the first three gospels. It is also evident that the self-witness in the fourth gospel raises more riddles than it solves. Besides, the manner of this self-witness awakens the strongest doubts and suspicions, instead of convincing one of the trustworthiness, of the gospel. 1 Weenle. 338 The Finality of the Christian Religion The difference between the fourth gospel and the synoptics is apparent to anyone who has read the gospels at all atten- tively. But it is greater than at first appears. There are two different Jesus-pictures, the synoptic and the Johannine. We shall, first, present these differences and, secondly, try to account for them. (a) The material which the two groups, the synoptic and the Johannine, have in common is scanty. Much at both the beginning and the end of the evangelical history is common. But between the beginning and the end the two groups seldom coincide. On inspection we find that the differences in the common material are very great. (&) Among the differences, that of the chronology of the two groups is strik- ing. The synoptic narrative reckons with one feast of the Passover; the Johannine, with three.^ According to the Johannine, Jesus' ministry lasted three years; according to the synoptic, scarcely one. So, too, the day of Jesus' death is different in the two groups: in the synoptic the 15th Nisan f in the Johannine, the 14th.* Nor do they agree as to time and mode of the beginning of Jesus' ministry,* (c) To dif- ferences of time must be added those of place. According to the synoptic narrative, Galilee is the theater of the entire work of Jesus, save a trip through Perea and a little while in Jerusalem before his death; according to the Johannine, Jerusalem is the center of his operations during the whole time. The Johannine also refers to a stay of Jesus in Sama- ria,^ for missionary purposes; but in the synoptics Jesus forbids his disciples to preach there.*^ (cZ) In comparing the stories at the beginning and at the end of the two groups, we detect the greatest diversities in the material common to both. John the Baptist is a different sort of man in the two: in 'John 2: 13; 6: 4; 13:1. *C/. Mark 1 : 14 and John 3: 24. 2 Mark 14 : 12. 5 John 4 : 4-42. 3 John 18 : 28. 6 Matt. 10 : 5 ; cf. Luke 9 : 53. Sources of the Life of Jesus 339 the synoptics, primarily a preacher of penitence, prophet of judgment, who arouses the mass of the people, also prophet of the coming Messiah; in John, simply and only witness to Jesus, sent into the world to point men to Jesus, to pro- claim the divine sonship and pre-existence of Jesus, and his atoning death. And yet, according to the synoptics, John is in prison, doubting whether Jesus is the one who was to come or not.^ The baptism of Jesus, accordingly, has different significance in the two groups: according to the synoptics, it was Jesus who learned there the certainty of his messianic calling; according to the fourth gospel, it was John the Baptist who learned it. The descent of the Spirit on Jesus is the sign for the Baptist by which he recognizes the mes- sianity of Jesus.^ It is only for this reason that the evan- gelist mentions the baptism of Jesus. When we turn to consider the history of the passion in the two groups, we find that, according to the synoptics, the whole narrative of the death of Jesus and of the discovery of the empty tomb rests on the witness of three women: Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome (whom Matthew describes as mother of Zebedee, while Luke replaces her with Johanna).' For the disciples have all fled, and are scattered; had it not been for the women looking on from a distance, the Christian community would have known nothing of the particulars of the death of Jesus. But, according to the fourth gospel, Mary the mother of Jesus, her sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene, and along with them the favorite disciple, stood, not afar off, but by the cross of Jesus.* Here, these four persons are the witnesses in the tradition of the death of Jesus. Mary Magdalene alone remains from the synoptic group: she alone is mentioned afterward as witness of the empty grave; the new feature is the presence of the mother of Jesus and of the favorite dis- 1 Matt. 11 : 1 ff. 2 John 1:33. 3 Mark 15: 40; 16: 1. * John 19 : 25, 35. 340 The Finality of the Christian Keligion ciple. With such diverse groups of witnesses, the content of the witness — the last words of Jesus — different as it is, need cause no surprise. Much prominence is given to the miracles of Jesus in the fourth gospel and the synoptics. And yet the difference between the two sets of narratives is great. The most frequent miraculous deeds of Jesus, the healing of the possessed, John knows nothing about. What he nar- rates are pure miracles of omnipotence. The miracles of the synoptic Jesus, moreover, issue from his human sympathy; the Johannine Jesus did his miracles as signs of his divine power.' All the differences mentioned so far are striking and note- worthy enough. But they are of little moment when com- pared with the main difference: the wholly different character of the discourses of Jesus. Whenever did any two men in the world speak more diversely than the synoptic and the Johannine Jesus? This may be seen, first of all, in the form of the discourses. The Johannine Jesus may utter two or three sayings that are like the words of the Mountain Sermon; parables like the synoptic parables there are none. Where is there a synoptic parable like these: "I am the door of the sheep," "I am the good shepherd," "I am the true vine," "I am the light of the world"? At bottom, the whole synoptic preaching of Jesus has ever the same content: the promise of the speedy coming of the kingdom of God and of the judgment, and the requirement that his hearers shall do the will of God and be prepared by repentance for the great change. Everything else, even the message of God's fatherly love and of the forgiveness of sins, is joined to this promise and this requirement. So, too, Jesus' con- troversies with his opponents and with the Pharisees revolve around this main question : What constitutes the doing of the will of God? However certain it may be that the synoptic 1£. fir., 2: 11; 11: 4. Sources of the Life of Jesus 341 Jesus held that he was the Messiah, he is yet reticent con- cerning his messianic mystery, and puts in the foreground his cause instead of his person: God's kingdom and God's will. The great picture of the future, the energy of will directed entirely and absolutely to this future, remains the synoptic center of the whole preaching of Jesus. How different it is in the Johannine gospel ! Instead of the promise of the coming kingdom of God and the judgment, the message of the Son of God and Redeemer who has already appeared; instead of the requirement to do God's will and, by purity of heart and brotherly love, to be pre- pared for the kingdom of God, the command to believe on the Son of God who has come from heaven;' in brief, the perso7i everywhere instead of the cause. Jesus himself is the content of all his discourses. The eye is turned back- ward to the pre-existence of Jesus, to his coming from heaven, instead of forward to parousia. Instead of the kingdom of God, Jesus himself ! Hence, from now on it is not good and evil, but believing and unbelieving, which are the decisive opposites before God and man. Although much is said in the farewell discourses concerning brotherly love and keeping the commandments as marks of true disciple- ship, yet faith is presupposed. These are the cardinal differences of the discourses. Still many others might be mentioned.^ There is the strange way in which Jesus spoke to the people of Galilee of eating his flesh and drinking his blood ^ more than a year before he ate the farewell supper with his disciples. There, too, is the way that the discourses of Jesus attach importance to the spirit as the future repre- sentative of Jesus and as the condition of all new life and knowledge:* while the synoptic Jesus, apart from a brief iJohn6:29. 2C/. John 2:19 ff.; 3:14ff.; 6:51; 7:33; etc., with Mark 8: 31. 3 John 6 : 51-63. *3:5il.; 8:38f.; 11:16; etc. 342 The Finality of the Christian Keligion sentence/ does not discourse upon the spirit at all. But all this is not the main thing, which is the complete absorption of the kingdom of God by the Son of God who came from heaven, and the change of the requirement connected there- with, to do the ivill of God, into the requirement to have "faith." The great difference in the attitude of Jesus to his people, to the Jews, follows from this cardinal difference between the two groups. In the synoptics we see the publicans and sinners, the Pharisees, the scribes, members of the Sanhe- drin, and the multitude of the people. Jesus occupied a position of his own to all these groups. He is the friend of publicans and sinners, the foe of Pharisees, the rival of the scribes, the preacher of repentance, physician and comforter, in one person, to the people. In the Johannine gospel, on the other hand, publicans and sinners have vanished, the scribe likewise; the Pharisees and high -priests remain. The most frequent designations are "the Jews" and the "Pharisees;" but the Pharisees are no longer those who are zealous for the law, they are simply the kernel of the Judaism that is unbelieving, and hostile to Jesus. For John there is only a single party-forming criterion: faith in Jesus the Son of God, or unbelief; other differences he does not cognize. There is no controversy, therefore, concerning the will of God and the law. In the synoptics, conscience is opposed to artificiality, veraciousness to hypocrisy, morality to cult, love and humanness to religious egoism and con- ceitedness; but in John it is simply and only that faith is opposed to unbelief. Since, however, the Jewish people as a whole persisted in this unbelief and, in this unbelief, finally crucified Jesus, Jesus' personal attitude to the Jews must likewise be different. They confront each other from the very beginning'^ as foes. Instead of the love of the 1 Mark 13: 11. 2John2:24. Sources of the Life of Jesus 343 synoptic Jesus, seeking and saving till death, there is a hostile feeling in the Johannine Jesus, heartless and cold. He tells them openly that they are not Grod's and not Abra- ham's children, but the devil's,' and in the high priestly prayer he does not pray God for the world, but only for believers.^ How different his attitude to the Greeks who pressed in to see him at the feast,^ from that to the Jews! The Jews for the devil, the Greeks for Jesus and for God ! We are reminded at once of the Greek Logos, mentioned in the prologue,* working in the wide, wide world. But with that thought we have entirely left the horizon of the synoptic Jesus. Thus the differences between the Johannine and the synoptic narratives are great and manifold. The number already mentioned may be easily increased by any reader of the Bible. But may they be harmonized ? To some extent. We read in the synoptics some things that are akin to the Johannine account, and it may be that the author of the fourth gospel sought to supplement the synoptic tradition by the tradition of the favorite disciple. So, at all events, the harmonists have ever told us. There is some synoptic material that is akin to the Johannine.^ Likewise much that is in John may be treated as supplementary to the synoptic tradition. E. g., the Galilean fishermen leave their calling and follow Jesus without having previously heard a word about him. May not John, chap. 1, be the key to this remarkable performance? May not John's narrative supplement the account in Luke 10:38 ff. ? Again, compare the account of Jesus before Caiaphas, Matt., chap. 26, with that of Jesus before Annas, John, chap. 18. Such attempts to harmonize the two groups, the Johannine iChap.8. 217:9. 312:20. n:9ff. 5See Mark 14:2; Matt. 23:37; 11:27; Mark 5:34; Matt.8:10; Mark 6:5; Matt. 10:32f. ; Mark 4:llf. As to what was said concerning the doing of the will of God, compare John 17 : 7. 344 The Finality of the Christian Religion and the synoptic, will never cease to impress many Bible readers. Yet they come to a point at last where all such attempts fail, and where the sober sense for truth rebels. If the synoptics narrate impossible miraculous stories, what argument follows therefrom in favor of changing the water into wine, or of the resuscitation of Lazarus after he was dead four days? That the three synoptists do not utter a syllable concerning these greatest miracles of all that Jesus did, suffices of itself to destroy all credit of the Johannine tradi- tion on the subject.^ Or, let one take up the narrative of the crucifixion. One must choose between the testimony of the three women whom Mark names, and the testimony of the favorite disciple and the mother of Jesus, of whose presence at the cross the synoptic tradition knows nothing. Addition and combination are excluded here where each series of witnesses hears entirely different words from Jesus. But especially must all harmonizing efforts fail when we come to the preaching of Jesus. Jesus simply did not speak both in the synoptic and the Johannine way. He spoke either as a layman, a poet, a prophet, or as a theologian. He either bore witness concerning the kingdom of God, and the will of God, or always concerning his own person. He looked either forward to his coming again, or backward to his exist- ence in heaven. He preached either that doing the will of God is the only way into the kingdom of God, or that all depends upon faith in his divine sonship. Let the reader ask himself seriously whether the synoptic Jesus could have said to the people of Jerusalem, "I am the light of the world,"" and, conversely, the Johannine Jesus, to Nicodemus, "Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God."^ And if importance be attached to faith in the synop- 1 Luke's parable, 16: 19-31, tells us that, even if Lazarus should rise from the dead, the unbelieving Jews would not repent. This, probably, is the germ of the Lazarus story in John. It translates Luke's parable into history. 2John8:12. 3MarklO:18. Sources of the Life of Jesus 345 tics, it is without exception confidence in the power of God working through Jesus that is meant, and not the confession of faith that Jesus is the Son of God who came down from heaven. It is merely the word "faith," sundered from all its content, that makes the comparison on the part of the so-called harmonists possible. The word is the same, the thing itself is as different as possible ; but the thing is the matter of importance. All such efforts at mediation between John and the synop- tists are shattered on the simple facts of the case. The historical narrative, the preaching, the Christ-picture, are different. In the last analysis the difference in the Christ- portrait reduces itself to the simple formula : here man — there God. In the synoptics, the man Jesus of Nazareth, intrusted by God with the messianic calling and with the power of the spirit — the man Jesus who, even in moments of supreme exaltation and consciousness of God, remained conscious of this great distance from God ("no one is good but God"); who also, like every other son of man, bows in deepest rever- ence in prayer to the Father.^ In John, the God through whom the world was made; God with God before the begin- ning of all things," who, even after he had come down from heaven for our redemption, constantly remains conscious of his divine origin and divine dignity; reveals the power of God in miracles of omnipotence ; even in prayer prays not for himself, but for others;^ voluntarily submits to death, since he has power not to die;^ and gloriously returns to the Father from the grave, after a disciple confesses : " My Lord and my God."^ Any attempt to add together and harmonize this and the synoptic Jesus can only serve to the obliteration and de- struction of that which is full of strength and power in each. We are thus confronted with the necessity of making a choice: Either the synoptics — or John. And as historical 1 Matt. 11:25. 2Johnl:ltf. 311:42. * 10:18. 5 20:28. 346 The Finality op the Christian Keligion source, John must surrender the field to the synoptics. Jesus was such a one as the synoptics delineate, and not the one introduced by John. Not that this is the last word concerning the Johannine tradition. In and of itself it is conceivable that single old and valuable memorabilia may be preserved in a quite secondary historical source. Concerning this point opinion varies today even among investigators who agree in giving historic preference to the synoptic gospels rather than to the Johannine. Into this matter we do not need to enter. Suffice it to say that, as between the synoptic and the Johannine Christ, there can be no doubt as to which is the historical. But what is the explanation of the difference between the two? How did such a different, such a new, evangelical picture arise by the side of the older synoptic picture ? May one gather up the threads which pass from the latter to the former ? (a) Between the synoptics and the fourth gospel there comes in the gospel which Paul preached, and deposited in his letters. It is the great message of the Son of God whom God sent in love from heaven to earth in order to redeem and reconcile man by his death and resurrection, and, accordingly, the message that faith in the Son of God alone saves us, and already assures us even now of eternal life ; united therewith are the powerful propositions concerning sin and grace, the spirit, the ordinances, election. John approached the subject from this Pauline preaching. It is from this standpoint that he considers Jesus. It is inconceivable to John that Jesus should have thought and spoken of himself otherwise than as the Pauline disciple believed. Accordingly, we should have the deep, weighty thoughts of Paul in John's gospel as the words of Jesus himself. (6) We are on Greek soil ; the Greek atmosphere envelops us. This is evident at once from Sources of the Life of Jesus 347 the prologue. In the beginning was the Logos, the divine reason, and the Logos was with God, and (a) God was the Logos, Jesus Christ the embodiment of the Logos, the incar- nate reason. The light of the Logos first shone in the great world of the gentiles and the Jews, hindered all the while by darkness and ignorance. Then it becomes man in Jesus in order to reveal itself visibly and tangibly to man. The deity of Christ, manifest everywhere in the fourth gospel, is also Greek. Men are to honor the son as they honor the father. ' In all this the gospel goes farther than Paul. The gospel of the Jew Paul took on the full meaning of a revealed God first on Greek soil, (c) Finally, however — and this is the main point — the evangelical portrait of the fourth gospel rests on an overmastering _/9e?"so«aZ impression of the redeem- ing power of Jesus himself This evangelist — so much is evident in every line — found God through Jesus, and, with God, life and full satisfaction." What Jesus said in the gospel is at bottom a full, jubilant confession of what Jesus had become to the disciple who wrote the gospel. First of all and most of all, Jesus was to this author himself the way, the truth, and the life, the lamb of God who bore his sins, the water of life and the bread of life, the good shepherd and the vine, the light of the world, the resurrection and the life ; and because Jesus was this to him, it was self-evident to him that Jesus had said all this about himself. The whole world-historical power of the fourth gospel rests on the gen- uine and enthusiastic thankfulness, which, because genuine and living, passes over involuntarily to the reader. We do not learn from this book what in particular Jesus was, how he lived, what he said. But we learn the impression Jesus made upon one of the greatest of his disciples. And this impression may be set forth in the simple statement that there are two kinds of lives and two kinds of worlds: with Jesus or 15:23; 20:28; 14:9; 5:18; 10:33. 2iO:ll. 34:8 The Finality of the Christian Religion without Jesus ; and that he who has Jesus has God, and, with him, all things. What follows from the exclusion of the fourth gospel from the series of sources? Luther, the Pauline disciple, and Schleiermacher, the philosopher and defender of religion, subordinated the synoptics in worth and content to the fourth gospel. The preference of modern Christians for John is easily understood. Do not the synoptics contain much that is foreign and unintelligible to us: belief in demons and miracles, signs of Jewish limitations and narrowness, end-of-the-world sentiments? Yet we gain rather than lose by the subordination of John. We gain God and Jesus himself really, and the sense for the main thing on which all else depends before God and eternity, (a) God, the Father- God, is central, although all the synoptics tell about Jesus. For Jesus himself it is God that is the main concern: God's kingdom, God's judgment, God's will, God's fatherly love. Everywhere and always he points men from himself to the Father, It is not saying "Lord, Lord," but doing the will of God, that leads into the kingdom. "Why callest thou me good, there is none good but one, that is, God." It is God alone, and not Jesus, who decides concerning one's place in the kingdom of God. Jesus prays to the Father, Lord of heaven and earth, the Father-God: "Father, not as I will, but as thou wilt." This Father-God speaks to us in sunshine and shower, in the lily's glory and the bird's care-free life, in all providence and vicissitudes of our earthly lot, in Jesus' victory over demons, in Jesus' words, in Jesus' death. Upon the whole life of Jesus is written: soli Deo gloria, (b) And Jesus himself belongs entirely on the side of humanity. Grant that he was Messiah, Son of God, King of the king- dom of God; and grant that his intimacy with the heart of God was incomparable — still, with all this, he never ceased to be man, real and full man, creature, who bows with us in Sources of the Life of Jesus 349 deepest reverence before the Alone Holy, the Alone Good. And he was tempted like ourselves; he struggled; he asked and leai-ned ; he believed, hoped, and prayed ; he rejoiced with exceeding great joy, and was sorrowful unto death. Dying was a grievous and bitter thing to him, so much so that h© hoped almost to the end that there might be some turn in affairs by which he might be saved; and yet he kept his hold upon God in filial fidelity of faith, (c) All this we have only in the synoptics, not in John. But the most important matter of all for us is the answer to the great question: What is the main thing in the sight of God? What is it that decides concerning life and death? It is at this point that John leaves us entirely in the lurch. His ever-recurring answer is : Believe in the Son of God, who came down from heaven ; believe that Jesus is this Son of God. This answer has dominated Christianity even to this day — not to its advan- tage, for one can affirm it without getting a hair's-breadth nearer to God, without being the slightest vestige a better man. The synoptic Jesus answers differently. It is he who does the will of God that enters the kingdom of God. It is he whom Jesus calls mother, brother, sister. What is this will of God? The answer is clear: uprightness, brotherly love, humility, seeking after the kingdom of God, Whoever gives his life to doing the will of God has set foot upon the right path. The new life dawns which Jesus knows that he was sent to awaken and protect. We may now turn more definitely to the synoptic problem. The difference between the first three gospels and John is apparent to every reader. But the agreement, often verbal, of the former among themselves is also apparent. What, then, is the reciprocal relation of these writings? This question is all the more pressing on account of the differences in these writings — differences, e. g., as regards the infancy stories, the resurrection stories, the witnesses of the death of 350 The Finality of the Christian Keligion Jesus, his last words. Above all else, each of the three gospels has its quite specific character. Mark is a brief, charming narrative of the deeds of Jesus, with an extremely scanty selection of words; even these words are narrated as deeds. Matthew and Luke give a wealth of story and dis- course; but Matthew is of Judaic, legal coloring, its author betraying acquaintance with the Hebrew text of the Old Testament; while Luke has little of the national-leofal, but paints Jesus for his gentile-Christian readers as the Savior of the poor and the sinful. The problem due to this union of identity and diversity is the so-called synoptic problem. If it were a question of a purely literary historical character, we would relegate it to the specialists. But the conception which we have of Jesus and of the gospel in general depends in good part upon which one of the three gospels we consider basic. Our hope of finding in the synoptics, without further ado, the genuine oldest tradition proves to be deceptive. The differences already mentioned prove this. Where do we find the oldest traditions in the synoptics? What narratives are derivative and historically unavailable? An investigation of this problem alone can bring us a step farther with our question : Who was Jesus? As we discuss the sources of the synoptics, there are three propositions about which there can be no doubt: 1. Mark is a source of Matthew and Luke. 2. Besides Mark, a common Greek source of discourses underlies Matthew and Luke. 3. Finally, Matthew and Luke each has his separate fund of tradition. We may begin with the first of these propositions. 1. To the most superficial examination it is evident that the entire material of Mark is almost wholly contained in Matthew and Luke. If we did not have Mark at all, we Sources of the Life of Jesus 351 should not be much worse o£P, so far as our knowledge of Jesus is concerned, since almost the entire content of Mark is to be read in Matthew and Luke. How is this to be explained? Either Mark must be a source or it must be an excerpt of Matthew and Luke. Now, we know for a certainty that Luke knew and used older, more incomplete evangelical writings. Since, now, Luke's gospel contains almost all of Mark, it is natural to consider the latter one of the sources of the former. Mark, therefore, will not be an excerpt from Matthew and Luke ; but then it is their source. It is true that there are items in Mark which are wanting in Matthew and Luke ; e. (/., Mark 3:20 f.; 7:32£P.; 8:22-25. Is it surprising that they tell nothing of the supposed dement- edness of Jesus, and as little of the pains and circumstan- tialness of his healing ministry? Another time the two longer gospels supplement each other. Luke leaves out Mark material which Matthew has read. Matthew leaves out some that Luke repeats. Matthew, e. g., does not give the little episode of the flight of Jesus,' the mysterious wonder-worker,^ the widow's mite^ — traditions which belong to the most certain and most valuable facts which we have concerning Jesus. And it is easy to understand that a later evangelist would take ofPense at so unchurchly an anecdote as that of the wonder-worker. In a similar manner we can assign reasons for many omissions. Why should Luke tell his gentile readers of Jesus' reluctant attitude toward the gentile woman referred to in Mark 7 : 2-4-30 ? That would seem to have contradicted Jesus' bearing at the beginning in Nazareth, Luke 4:25ff. What interest would Luke's circle of readers have in Jesus' controversies with the Pharisees concerning washing of hands, etc. ? Even Mark had to elucidate this for his readers, 7: 1-23. 2. The disposition of the short gospel is precisely that of 1 Mark 1 : 35-38. 2 Mark 9 : 38-40. 3 Mark 12 : 41-44. 352 The Finality of the Christian Religion the two longer gospels also. If two authors use almost the whole material of a third in the arrangement in which this third gave it/ this fact is a cardinal proof that the third is their source. 3. Add to this that the wording of the Mark gospel is taken over by Matthew and Luke, only in better Greek. 4. The short gospel, as against the two longer ones, represents an earlier stage of Christian apologetics. Thus, the employment of Mark by Luke and Matthew becomes clear when we take into account the content of the three writings. All our gospels are, indeed, confessions of faith. They are designed to awaken, to fortify faith in Jesus, and to defend that faith against attacks and doubts from within and from without. No evangelist would have occupied so cool an attitude toward Jesus that he would have been willing or able to give a mere historical narrative without any prac- tical end. It is just on this account that they all belong, to a certain degree, to the apologetic missionary literature of primitive Christianity. If this be exactly as true of Mark as of the other gospels, it shows also that the former represents an earlier stage of this apologetics. Mark recognized the story of John the Baptist as " begin- ning of the gospel of Jesus Christ," and described the Baptist as a forerunner who points to one greater than himself.^ But his exposition awakens scruples. The Baptist appears first and Jesus afterward. The Baptist seems the greater: he baptizes Jesus, and does he not baptize with the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins? These samples are taken into account by Matthew and Luke, Matthew inserts a conversation between Jesus and the Baptist, in which the Baptist represents himself as the less, Jesus as the greater 1 Many items which seem at first sight to tell against this statement do not in fact do so, as closer examination will convince the reader. 2 Mark 1:1-11. Sources of the Life of Jesus 353 who should baptize him; while Luke' takes pains to set the Baptist forth as the lesser forerunner of the great redeemer.' How this apologetics ended with John we have already seen. Mark drew up his whole narrative in enthusiasm for Jesus; and yet it contains much that is incomplete, much that is offensive to later eyes. Unwarily he let the people of Nazareth speak ^ of the carpenter vocation of Jesus, and he told how Jesus' relatives once considered him insane.* On no side did he describe the ability of Jesus as unlimited, not even in morals. Jesus did not allow himself to be called ''good,"^ did not know the day and the hour of his return,*^ was not able to decide concerning places in the kingdom of God.' Jesus asked the demon his name ;* he asked who it was that touched his clothes;'' what it was his disciples disputed about ;^° how long the epileptic had been sick." Even his miraculous power was limited.'" While we today ascribe the greatest historical fidelity to Mark on account of these features, his earliest Christian readers were painfully affected by so many defects in his picture of Jesus, so many con- venient vulnerable points for Jewish and Greek mania for ridicule. Hence we see that now Matthew, now Luke, then again both together, are careful to remove such offenses, now by simple silence, now by correction, again by elucida- tion. E. (J., he was not the carpenter, but the carpenter's son;'^ not, "he could do no miracles," but "he did none;"" not, "Why callest thou me good? No one is good but God," but, "Why do you ask me who is good," etc. — so writes 1 Luke, chaps. 1 and 2. 6 13 ; 32 ; cf. Luke. 2 See Luke 1 : 41 especially. UO : 30 ; cf. Luke. 3 Mark 6:3; cf. Matthew, Luke. 85:9; cf. Matthew. *3: 21 ; cf. Matthew, Luke. "S: 30; c/. Matthew. 510: 18; cf. Matthew. 10 9: 33; cf. Matthew, Luke. "9: 21 ; cf. Matthew, Luke. 126: 5; cf. Matthew; 1: 32, 34; 3: 10; cf. Matthew; 8: 23-25; cf. Matthew, Luke; 8:12; c/. Matthew. 13 Matt. 13 : 35 ; Luke 4 : 22. i* 13 : 58, 354 The Finality of the Christian Keligion Matthew.^ The most difficult problem for all Christians of the primitive period was the death of their Messiah — all the more so, since Jews and Greeks began their assault at this point. Mark had done much to parry this thrust, yet much too little to suit those who came after him. Something so gloomy, comfortless, mantled the story of the passion, that there was relief only in the story of the resurrection. Is this the Son of God whose soul was sorrowful unto death in Gethsemane,^ who was betrayed by one of his disciples, who was overcome by his foes, who died with the cry of God- forsakenness?^ Compare with this the exposition given in the two longer gospels. Luke* cancels the mortal distress of Jesus in Gethsemane. Matthew^ removes every appearance of helplessness : legions of angels were at his disposal. Pilate, with much more energy in Luke than in Mark, announces the complete innocence of Jesus.^ Matthew' enlarges upon the punishment of the traitor, Matthew and Luke point to the penal wrath of God upon murderous Jews.^ While Matthew adduces a mighty nature-miracle to bear witness to the innocence of the crucified Jesus, the whole impression of the death of Jesus has become more consolinij in Luke. Not with the cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" does the Redeemer die; no, he dies supplicating par- don for his murderers, opening the gate of Paradise to the believing sinner, commending his spirit to God. Thus the two evangelists have given satisfactory answer to a whole series of assaults and scruples. But the resurrection message forms a last oppressive problem. Paul's narrative was about the appearances of Jesus. He does not say a word about the grave that was found empty." Mark tells of the appearances of Jesus in Galilee where he had advised his disciples that 1 Matt. 19:17. * Luke 22: 39 f. 7 Matt. 27 : 3-10. 2Markl4:33f. 5Matt.26:53. 8 Matt. 27:25; 23: 28 ff. 315:34. 6 Luke 23: 1-23. HCor. 15:5ff. Sources of the Life of Jesus 355 he would meet them/ In addition to this, he tells how the three women — they alone and not the disciples — found the grave empty, but told no one anything concerning what they had seen and heard. ^ How much this left to be proved and elucidated! Luke says that not merely the women, but the disciples themselves, found the grave empty ;^ Matthew, that the women saw, not merely the empty grave, but the Risen One himself;* both, that the women were not silent concern- ing their experience.^ Wherefore was Galilee the theater of the appearances? In and about Jerusalem Jesus had frequently appeared to the disciples;® and not as spirit, but as body, eating and drinking!' According to Matthew, the answer of the Jews to the message of the empty tomb was: Theft on the part of the disciples.* To this Matthew gives the reply of the Christians: Impossible! the grave was watched by Roman soldiers." The proof that the predictions of the Old Testament were fulfilled in the life of Jesus has ever been viewed as of pri- mary importance, together with the proof of miracles, in the defense of Christianity. That there is so little of this proof in Mark is to be explained by the fact that his gentile- Christian readers did not yet have this interest in the Old Testament and its predictions. In this matter the later evan- gelists supply much that is supplementary. According to Luke, Jesus appeared in Nazareth with a preaching which treated of the fulfilment of messianic predictions.'" Thus, too, the last thing that the Risen One did before his departure was to open the eyes of his disciples to see in him the fulfilment of Old Testament predictions." Especially did Matthew supplement the proof of the oracles that were fulfilled in all iMark 14:28; 16:7. 5 Matt. 28 : 8 ; Luke 24 : 9. 9 27:62-66; 28:11-15. 216:8. 6 Luke, chap. 24. lo Luke 4:17-21. 3 Luke 14:12-24. '24:36-43. "24:44f. *Matt. 28:9f. « Matt. 28:15. 356 The Finality of the Christian Religion places of Mark's narrative wherever there was any occasion to do so. Two of these supplementations are especially instructive. A later time was offended at the Messiah's working in Galilee. Matthew found the way out of the difficulty: Galilee is mentioned by the prophet Isaiah.^ According to Mark, Jesus frequently forbade those who were healed from speaking about his miraculous deeds. This was an extremely surprising feature, since a miracle was proof of the mission of Jesus. Matthew finds the explanation of this behavior in the Old Testament: Jesus is Isaiah's Servant of Jehovah in his quiet, humble bearing.^ Thus what was so surprising was converted into a proof of his messiahship. In connection with this argument from prediction, Matthew and Luke supply the infancy stories to the narrative of Mark. Mark begins by saying that a man, Jesus of Nazareth, came to the Jordan, and at his baptism received the gift of the Spirit and the divine call: "Thou art my Son."^ To many Christians there was much lacking in this statement: no indication that Jesus was the expected son of David, and Nazareth his home instead of Bethlehem! Matthew and Luke made good these defects, and at the same time, each in his own way, answered the troublesome question why Jesus appeared as a Nazarene, notwithstanding his birth in Beth- lehem. Luke says that he was a resident of Nazareth, but that a miraculous, divine dispensation of secular history had caused him to be born in Bethlehem. Matthew says that he was born in Bethlehem according to the Scriptures, but that the fear and bloodthirstiness of Herod had caused him to flee thence, and finally to take up his abode in Nazareth, in order that, in this way, a series of divine oracles might be fulfilled. Mark knows nothing of all these difficulties, nor of the attempts to overcome them. To him Jesus becomes Son of God by divine election and by the equipment of the Spirit at the moment iMatt. 4:14f. 212:17. 3 Mark 1:9-13. Sources of the Life of Jesus 357 of his baptism.' But the later evangelists use the title "Son of God" to introduce him as one who was begotten by no earthly father, but by the creative power of the Spirit.^ In this way the strange incongruity arises of one who is begot- ten by the Holy Spirit being subsequently endowed with the Holy Spirit. This is a striking evidence that the short gospel is source of the two longer ones. Finally, there are legendary additions to the later gospels.^ This main outcome of a study of this kind, viz., Mark is a source of Matthew and Luke, is sufficiently established by the fourfold series of proofs: material, disposition of material, language, content. This result is a good reward of a century's work.* We may turn now to the Greek source of discourses of Jesus, which is employed in common by Matthew and Luke. We find the same text in two writings, Matthew and Luke, and neither of these writings can be referred to the other. 1. Subtract the Mark narrative from Matthew and Luke, and they agree, in addition, in the tradition of parts of great coherent discourses. The Sermon on the Mount, which we analyze as follows: Discourse on righteous- Matt. ,5: : 3-48 ; Luke 6:20-49; ness 7: 1-6, 12-27 11:33; 12 : 58 f . ; 16:17f. Discourse on prayer 6; 7; ; 9-13 ; :7-ll 11 : 2-4, 9-13 Treasures and care 6; : 19-34 12 : 22-34 ; ll:34f.; 16,13 1 Mark 1:11. 2 Luke 1 : 85 ; Matt. 1 : 18. 3 Matt. 14:28-31; 17:24-27; Matt. 16:18f., introducing an ecclesiastical concept into the extremely unecclesiastical preaching of Jesus ; cf. Mark 2 : 14 with Matt. 9 : 9. A great series of such observations might be introduced whereby the priority of the short gospel to the two long ones becomes evident. * Weenle. 358 The Finality of the Christian Religion Discourse on missions 8 : 19-22 9 : 57 to 9:37f.; 10:16,21-24 10:5-16,23-25, 40 f.; 11 : 20-27 ; 13 : 16 f. Discourse on John 11 : 2-19 7 : 18-35 ; 16:16 Discourse on Beelzebub 12:22-37 11:14-23 Discourse on demand of 12 : 38-45 11 : 29-32 ; sign 24-26 Discourse on Pharisees 23 : 1-39 11 : 39-52 ; 13 : 34 f . Parables of the kingdom 13 : 31-33 13 : 18-21 Discourse on confession 10 : 26-39 12 : 2-9, 51-53 ; 14 : 26 f . Discourse on discipleship 18 : 7, 12-22 15 : 3-7 ; 17 : 1-4 Parousia 24 : 26ff., 37-51 17 : 23-37; 12 : 39-46 Parable of the wedding 22 : 1-14 14 : 16-24 Parable of the talents 25 : 14-30 19 : 12-27 To these discourses of Jesus may be added: Discourse of John the Matt. 3:7-12 Luke 3 : 7-9, 16 f. Baptist Temptation conversation 4 : 3-10 4 : 3-12 Centurion of Capernaum 8 : 5-13 7 : 2-10 ; 13 : 28-30 2. The arrangements of the parts of discourse which are common to Matthew and Luke are entirely different. Luke inserts them, together with other material, in two interpola- tions, into the Mark narrative.' But Matthew interweaves them with the Mark narrative in suitable places. The principle of arrangement being so different, it follows that the one evangelist does not copy from the other, but that both follow a common source in which the discourses lay before each separately. 1 Luke 6 : 20-8 : 3 ; 9 : 51-18 : 14. Two or three times do the two coincide. SOUECES OF THE LiFE OF JeSUS 359 3. The text of the discourse, now in Luke, now in Mat- thew, is more original, is older. On the whole, Luke's elaboration of the text is greater, so that very frequently the original is to be found with Matthew. In twofold regard has Luke changed the content and spirit of the dis- courses. In the first place, he removes or paints over the national-legal features as much as possible in the interest of his gentile-Christian readers — as Mark had done before him. It is only in Matthew, and not in Luke, that we read that great explanation given by Jesus concerning his attitude toward the law,' the prohibition of the heathen and Samaritan mission,' the requirement to observe all that the scribes teach.^ Compare also Matt. 5 : 18 with Luke 16 : 17. Therefore, Luke also abridges the discourse against the Pharisees and scribes.* But Luke not only removes the original color out of the source, but substitutes therefor what was later and foreign: the so-called social trait, the intentional favoring of the poor simply as poor and the preaching of the selling of goods^. and of alms. Luke 6:24-26; 12:33 ( = Matt. 6:20); Luke* 6 : 37 ; 11 : 41 — these belong to the violent changes on the part; of Luke. Here and there, in many other instances still, Luke has changed, where Matthew has preserved for us, the original wording.^ If, however, it might seem from all these examples that, though Matthew so frequently offers the original, in the end Matthew is simply the source from which Luke derived his discourses, this seeming is at once destroyed by the opposite observation that in other passages the text of Luke is more original than that of Matthew. Matthew transforms the "Jonah sign," which can be nothing in its context but a part of Jesus' preaching of repentance, into a kind of proof of the resurrection miracle, and in this way turns Jesus' magnificent refusal of any proof by outer sio-n iMatt.r):17f. 2i0:5. 323:3. * Luke 11: 39-52; c/. Matt., chap. 23. 5 Luke 11:13; Matt. 7:11, "good;" Luke 17: 25; 7:35, c/. 7:29f. 360 The Finality of the Christian Religion into its very opposite.' Where we read in Luke a short requirement of repeated forgiveness, the Matthew parallel offers the outlines of a later ecclesiastical discipline of penance.^ Matthew^ makes Jesus himself speak what, accord- ing to Luke,* was a citation from a foreign source — "There- fore also said the Wisdom of God." Finally, we have two certain instances, viz., the parable of the wedding and the parable of the talents, where at times the one evangelist remains faithful to the text of the source, and the other leaves it; and we can thus reconstruct the original text merely by the reciprocal stripping off of the additions. Compare Matt. 22:1-14 with Luke 14:15-24. It is pre- cisely this reciprocity of relation that is the telling proof that not the one evangelist is dependent upon the other, but rather both upon a source. And, to be sure, the source must have been written in Greek, since it would be impossible for two different translators of the Syriac text into the Greek wording to coincide so completely as is the case in several long parallels of Matthew and Luke. Finally, we have two excellent proofs that the assumption of two such main sources along with Mark really explains the complicated relation of the gospels : on the one hand, the so-called doublets of Matthew and Luke; on the other, the distinct compilation of Matthew from discourses and history. The explanation of the doublets is extremely simple: they occur in both sources. Four of these doublets, which are in both Matthew and Luke, follow: To him that hath shall be given — 1. Luke 8: 18 ; ^ , 2. Luke 19:26 ) g Matt. 13: 12 \ ^^^^^^ Matt. 25: 29 ^ Source On bearing the cross — 1. Luke 9:23 ) ^ , 2. Luke 14:27 ; g Matt. 16:24 \ ^^^^^ Matt. 10:38 \ ^^^^^^ 1 Luke 11 : 29 f . ; cf. Matt. 12 : 40. 3 Matt. 23 : 34. '^Ijukell: 31.; cf. Matt. 18: 15 3. * Luke 11: 49. Sources of the Life of Jesus 361 On finding and losing the life — 1. Luke 9:24 ) ^^, 2. Luke 17:.33 ) ^ Matt. 16:25 J ^^^^^^ Matt. 10:39 ^ Source Discord in the family — 1. Luke 21:16 ) ^^^r^ . 2. Luke 12: 52 } ^ Matt. 10:21 \ ^^''^ Matt.l0:35 \ Source Above all, the two-source theory explains the duplication of the missionary discourse in Luke/ whose different audi- ences— the Twelve and seventy disciples — cannot be ex- plained away by saying that both times the content of the discourse is the same. The other proof of the two-source theory is found in Matthew considered by itself. His gospel is composed of two elements : discourses,^ and history in which single words and brief conversations are interwoven. It is highly significant that five times— viz., 7:28; 11:1; 13:53; 19:1; 26:1— does Matthew use a special formula, "and it came to pass when Jesus had finished these sayings," as leading over to the thread of the narrative, and that four of these five passages really lead from one source to another. Therefore, if we had only our Matthew, we should conclude from this kind of composition that he had combined a discourse source with a narrative source, and still let us know the places of the com- bination. And it agrees with this again that Luke may be divided into a Mark narrative and two interpolations. In and of itself, the coincidence of Matthew with Luke in the same series of sayings would not yet lead to the assumption of a common older discourse source. But the wholly different arrangement of these discourses, their divergent text, now Matthew, now Luke using the more original, the doublets of the words of the Lord in Matthew and Luke, the twofold character of Matthew (discourses and history with special formula of combination), lead convincingly to this assumption, 1 Luke, chaps. 9 and 10. 2 Matt, chaps. 5-7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 18, 23, 24, 25. 362 The Finality of the Christian Keligion without our thereby transcending the limits of our knowledge^ and having recourse to supposition. But Matthew and Luke have, respectively, exclusive mate- rial. If one strips off the material of Mark and the common discourse portions from the entire material of Matthew and Luke, those narratives and words of the Lord remain which each has of himself alone. It is quite certain that they have not invented all this material that is peculiar to each. Here, too, we may assume sources; i. e., older traditions. But since we have no parallel tradition, the question of the origin of these traditions, the distinction between given material and the additions of the evangelists, is specially difficult. Provi- sionally the fact is sufficient that, in addition to Mark and the Logia, there are sources peculiar to each, Matthew and Luke, and that the whole synoptic material is derived from these three sources. What, now, is the result for the investigation of the life of Jesus? To be sure, we are not yet at the end of our way, but the path has become freer, the material with which we have to deal has been somewhat sifted, and instead of the synoptics themselves we have something of their sources. The most important thing of all is that Matthew and Luke are derivative, composite works. As we seek to answer the question, Who was Jesus ? we do not take them into account for their own sake alone, but only for the sake of the sources communicated by them. Thus, too, the greater worth of Mark grows upon us. The results are illuminating at once. With the Vorgeschichten of Matthew and Luke we have nothing whatever to do in investigating the life of Jesus; the problem of the miraculous generation of Jesus is no longer of interest to that inquiry. Our oldest tradition con- cerning Jesus begins when Jesus comes from Nazareth to Jordan to be baptized of John. Equally so, all supplemen- Sources of the Life op Jesus 363 tations of Mark on the part of Matthew and Luke are to be excluded from the passion and resurrection stories. And in the course of the history of Jesus, the proof from prediction, and many another feature in Matthew and Luke, recede behind the simpler exposition of Matthew. But this regress from the synoptics to their sources does not seem to signify such a profound change in the evangelical picture as does the regress from John to the synoptics. In the main points the exposition of Jesus and of his gospel remains the same. This is a sign that these sources are closer to the historical kernel. But the final difficult problem remains. Are the three ascertained sources — Mark, discourse source, the separate source of Matthew and of Luke — really the last court of appeal in our inquiry ? Do they not themselves presuppose still older, more original writings? What worth attaches to these latter writings for our question: Who was Jesus? Is Mark the author of the Mark gospel?' The Papias tradition belongs to those which can be neither refuted nor proved. It is therefore possible. The gospel gives a certain prominence to Peter, as we might expect would be the case on the part of him who was his companion and mouthpiece. The narrative of Jesus' appearance in Galilee begins with the call of Simon (1 : 10), and the author would conclude with the narrative of Jesus' appearance to Peter (16:7). When the Twelve are chosen, Simon receives the name of Peter (3: 10). It is he who first utters the messianic confes- sion (8: 29). To be sure, he is also the "Satan" whom Jesus rebukes (8 : 32 f.), and the disciple who denies him (14: 66-72). The untheological, lay character of Mark could be easily referred to the Galilean fisherman. But would the latter have thought so little in a national-Judaic way as the evan- 1 Concerniug Mark himself, see Acts 12: 12; 13: 5-13; 15:39; Col. 4: 10; Philemon, vs. 24; 2 Tim. 4:11; 1 Pet. 5: 13. 364 The Finality of the Christian Eeligion gelist? Did the evangelist receive all liis miraculous stories from Peter himself ? Critics today are inclined to the judg- ment that Petrine tradition may have been taken up into Mark indeed, but that the evangelist is more than the mouth of Peter ; that the equation, Mark = Peter = Jesus, is inad- missible. The question as to the Paulinism of Mark is far more important. At times Mark lived in the society of Paul. Then, will not his conception of Jesus be determined by the great Pauline thoughts? This is not the case in a specially strict sense. It is John, and not Mark, who shows us the kind of gospel that would be written on the basis of the Pau- line theology. Where is there an echo of the view of human inability to do God's will? Where does Jesus speak as the Son of God from heaven, the reconciler of all men through his blood? Where does faith in him appear as the sole requirement of God, in place of doing the will of God? Where do we see anything of the Pauline grace, of the Pauline Holy Spirit, in Mark? All the main theological thoughts of Paul are foreign to Mark. The worth of the gospel consists, above all else, in its disclosure of the thoughts of the earliest Christians in their pre-Pauline stage. It is not meant to deny any influence of Paul in Mark. That greatest revolutionary spirit of the Christian church encroached too deeply into the course of history for any subsequent Christian writing to escape his impress entirely. Mark bears effective witness to the fact that it was through Paul that Jesus was taken from the Jews and given to the gentiles. He writes his gospel for the law-free gentile Chris- tians, and so presents Jesus to them that limitedness, nation- alism, Judaism, recede — no Davidic genealogies, no word concerning jot and tittle in the law that is to be kept, no limitation of missions to Israel.' The gospel must first be preached to all the gentiles before the end comes.^ There- 1 But see Mark 7: 27. 2 13:10. Sources of the Life of Jesus 365 fore, if one understands by Paulinism the universalism of missions and freedom from the Jewish law, then, but only then, is Mark to be said to be influenced by Paul, But even if one admit dependence of Mark upon Peter and Paul, that yet does not explain this writing. It belongs on the boundary of the apostolic age, but gives information concerning the eyewitnesses of Jesus, although it is mixed up with much tradition that is uncertain and faded. It was probably written after the catastrophe of the Jewish people in the year 70; otherwise the words of Jesus concerning the total destruction of the temple would hardly appear at the beginning of his discourse on the future.' The local coloring of this gospel also points to this time of transition. Mark mentions all sorts of localities, where Jesus labored: besides Capernaum, the land of the Gerasenes, Bethsaida, Gennesaret, Dalmanutha, Csesarea Philippi. But he has no idea of all these places, and is able to give none ; yet he speaks, e. g., of the "mountain," as if there were only one, or at least only one known, mountain in Galilee. But if he be thus remotely related, temporally and locally, to the life of Jesus, the absence of any clear view on his part of the life and work of Jesus becomes intelligible. At first sight, at least, it may seem that he is able to give an excellent picturesque descrip- tion of single scenes. But a clear picture of the connec- tion of events is wanting throughout, and even the picture of particulars frequently vanishes on closer examination. Mark gives no answer to a cardinal question in the investiga- tion of the life of Jesus: Why did Jesus go to Jerusalem? All this comports with the tradition, so far as the latter itself declares that Mark was no eyewitness of Jesus, but that he merely elaborated the preaching — i. e., the practical, not historical, discourses — of Peter. 1 13: 2. See also 12: 1-9, pointing to the event of the year 70 as punishment for the murder of the " Son." 366 The Finality of the Christian Keligion But, in view of all this, the desire must awaken in us to get still closer to Jesus, on the basis of Mark to go back still farther. First of all the question arises whether Mark is not preceded by older evangelical writings, whether we may detect written sources of Mark. In that case we should take one step farther backward toward the fountain as we seek to answer the question: Who was Jesus? The proof depends on whether single sections are distinguished by marks of earlier origin. In one important instance this is probably the case. In chap. 13 a small apocalyptic fragment from the beginning of the Jewish war seems to have been taken up by the evangel- ist. The main proof is as follows: The entire gospel seems to have been written after the year 70, else the saying con- cerning the destruction of Jerusalem would hardly have occurred as it does.' But a large part of chap. 13 seems to have been written before that catastrophe: "But when ye see the abomination of desolation standing where he ought not (let him that readeth understand), then let them that are in Judea flee unto the mountains."^ The simplest explana- tion of this contradiction is this: "Let him that readeth understand" refers to a prophetic fugitive piece from the beo:innincr of the tribulation of the Jewish war, and counsels flight. The author of this fugitive piece seems, indeed, to have expected the desecration, but not the destruction, of the temple; he hoped for the coming of the Son of man in the moment of supreme need. This fugitive piece — we know not whence it came, nor all that it contained — the evangelist Mark seems to have taken up and interpreted as revelation of Jesus to Peter, James, John, and Andrew. All this is hypo- thetical indeed, but an hypothesis which solves a real riddle. But this is about the only case where we can discover, with some probability, a written basis of Mark. It may be 113:2. 213:14. Sources of the Life of Jesus 367 that a source of discourses lay before Mark in some such shape. No one can know this definitely, because no one knows definitely the discourse-source in scope and content. The fact that Mark communicates to us so little of the words of Jesus, is so little concerned to give a clear conception of the gospel of Jesus, is most intelligible on the hypothesis that he knows a discourse-source and supposes the same to be known by his readers. But this is hypothesis and nothing more. We must be content with observing that — perhaps with the exception of chap. 13 — we can nowhere indicate with certainty a written source of Mark, We can speak only of traditions which reach Mark in an oral way. To disengage these traditions from the Markan addition, and to follow them backward in their genesis and growth, is the final task of the synoptic problem. It may as well be said at the out- set that only probabilities and possibilities are in store for us. There is no strict knowledge in this res^ion. The sole evidence of the correctness of the solution is the more or less strong evidence with which it is in a position to simplify and clarify the complicated and opaque situation. We gain the best insight into the origin of this gospel when we consider Mark as a compiler. He gets hold of a rich fulness of old traditions; he himself supplies two things thereto : first, the combination of the particular material to a coherent evangelical narrative; secondly, the constriiciion of the same by means of a leading or guiding idea. If we detach and remove these regulative ideas and the means of combination, we then have as residuum the single traditions, as they came into the hands of Mark, and have again taken one step closer to Jesus. The whole Mark gospel is controlled by one cardinal idea : Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. The point is to awaken faith in this article of faith, to prove it, and to defend it. 368 The Finality of the Christian Religion The entire gospel is an apology. Hence the way it is introduced: "Beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." It is Mark's purpose to lead all his readers, whom he thinks of as gentiles and gentile Christians, to the confession which the pagan centurion made: "Of a truth, this man was Son of God.'" The whole narrative serves this end. The proof which Mark adduces for his thesis is the proof from miracles, with which all the ancient Christians proved the divine sonship of Jesus. Hence miracles are prominently put in the foreground of the narrative, and the teachings of Jesus recede into the background. Consequently the histori- cal picture is much obscured, "the person of Jesus distorted into the grotesque and the fantastic."^ His spiritual lofti- ness, the glory and depth of his message, do not receive their just dues in the presence of the great apparatus of miracle. Nature-miracles, moreover, are prominent along- side of healing miracles: stilling of the tempest, walking on the sea, feeding of four thousand and of five thousand, sending of the demons into the herd of swine, withering of the fig tree by his word. And according to Mark it is pre- cisely these great miracles which are said to have led the disciples to faith in the Son of God.^ And his readers are to be led to faith in the Son of God by these miracles also. But Mark knows still other proofs, besides miracles, that Jesus is the Son of God. Voices from heaven declare him to be such.* Demons, therefore superhuman beings, confess that he is the holy one of God, the Son of the Most High God.* These are proofs from the spirit world. The fulfil- ment of Old Testament prophecy is a proof of which he does not make much use.® Miracle is the main proof. 115:39. 41:11; 9:7. 2 Weenle. 5 1 : 24 ; 3 : 11 ; 5 : 7. 3 See 4: 41; 6:52; 8:21; 8:22-26; 8:29. 61:2; 12:10; 14:27. Sources of the Life of Jesus 369 But the foes of the Christians soon come forward with their serious objection : Can one crucified be the Son of Grod ? Therefore the second main task of this writing is the de- fense of the death of Jesus. To associate Son of God and cross — it is this also which Mark would lead his readers to do. Then the cross would cease to be an offense. In the very face of the death of Jesus to exclaim, " This is the Son of God'" — such is the goal to which the Christians are to attain. Therefore the teaching of Jesus that the Messiah must suffer and die immediately ensues when the disciples confess: "Thou art the Messiah." From that point on the whole narrative is so arranged as to prepare us for the death of Jesus, and to break the force of the blow of that death, by means of the forebodings of Jesus, the predictions of the Scriptures, and anticipatory occurrences. Finally, the resurrection follows the death — God's omnipotent con- fession of his Son, which transforms the offense into a triumph. But the enemies of the Christians have a final objection, which Mark has to answer: Why did not the Jews believe in Jesus, if he was proved to be the Son of God by so many miracles? Does not the fact of the unbelief of the Jews signify a failure of Jesus which tells powerfully against his high dignity? Mark gives a noteworthy answer: Jesus did not desire to be recognized by the Jewish people as Messiah. Therefore he forbade both demons and disciples to declare the mystery of his divine sonship.^ He also commanded those who were healed to keep silent as to his miraculous power.^ He did still more to hinder the faith of the Jews in him. He spoke to them in parables — that is, in riddles and mysteries — in order that "those without," the Jewish people, might not understand him, but be hardened, accord- ing to the word of Isaiah, while he honored his disciples U5:39. 21:25, 34; 8:12, 30; 9:9. 31; 44; 5: 43; 7 :36; 8: 26. 370 The Finality of the Christian Keligion alone with an interpretation of his words of mystery,' Con- sequently, the unbelief of the Jews cannot tell against Jesus, since he foreknew it, and even intentionally brought it about. At this point it is especially clear how Mark has supplied his own ideas to the tradition concerning Jesus, and how only the removal of these ideas brings us closer to the historical Jesus. There is his unfortunate theory of parables: the conception of parable as mystery, the distinction between those who are "without" and the initiated, the purpose of obduracy. All this is perverse, because no single parable corresponds to the theory, no single parable was spoken by Jesus in the interest of the obduracy of anyone; but each parable was spoken to make his teaching clear and intelligible. But, in order to make the fund of tradition serve his leading ideas, Mark is obliged first of all to draw up the material into a coherent narrative. It may be assumed that for a long time most of the narratives passed singly from mouth to mouth, before Mark combined them into a con- tinuous story. Even so, the combination is quite loose, external; each portion may be easily taken out of its framework. If we examine this framework, what do we find to be the outer course of events which was given to Mark? Information concerning the itinerant life of Jesus in Galilee; frequent trips across the sea; the names of a number of localities where something took place; finally, mention of Perea, of Jericho as a station on the way to Jerusalem. This well-nigh exhausts his knowledge of the outer course of affairs. It is in this framework that he places the rich material of tradition. Mark does the best he can in the absence of any conception of development, of history in the strict sense of the word. It is simply an aggregate of single pictures into which modern fantasy has first tried to introduce some pragmatic connection. U: lOff. Sources of the Life of Jesus 371 This is best known by examining Mark's means of com- position. First of all, there are the general introductions and transitions.' We see here the compiler or redactor of tradition. Originally these stories were not related to one another. There is no evidence that they followed in this series. We have compositions of the evangelist before us, with the connecting links and words that he supplies. Another device of composition is interpolation. One story is inserted in another. In the narrative of the sending out of the Twelve and of their mission Mark inserts the account of the death of John the Baptist.^ Thus, too, he inserts the anointing at Bethany ^ between the decision of the hierarchy to kill Jesus and the offer of Judas to serve them. Further- more, the conversation with the scribes concerning Beelzebub* is inserted in the narrative of the kindred of Jesus who feared that he was beside himself. Uniformly, Mark is the first to make the connections. Originally, these narratives do not belong together. There are other examples of such connec- tions: the insertion of the purification of the temple in the narrative of the fig tree that was cursed,^ the weaving of the story of the woman with issue of blood into the story of Jairus.^ We thus see that it was a cardinal device of Mark to interconnect single loose traditions by means of such interpolation. Naturally, there are also examples of inner connection. Why does the controversy concerning the precepts of puri- fication, separated from all other controversies, appear in the midst of the story of feeding the people?' Mark finds Jesus as un-Jewish, as free, as in the narrative, so important to him, of the heathen woman, before which he puts that controversy: the Jesus who discarded Jewish precepts is, to Mark, the same protector of gentile Christians as the Jesus iSeel:14, 39; 6:6; 2:13; 3:7£E.; 4:1; 5:21; 3:10fF.; 6:55f.; 1:45: 6:31. 2 Chap. 6. 3 Chap. 14. * Chap. 3. 5 Chap. 11. 6 Chap. 5. '7:1-23. 372 The Finality of the Christian Keligion who had compassion on the gentile woman. We see here also how Mark spins a situation suitable to a narrative that is given to him. He has before him the narrative of Jesus' helpful meeting with the gentile woman; in this matter Mark requires a situation in the land of the gentiles, and therefore Jesus must make a journey into the region of Tyre. The great conversation groups of Mark belong to this inner connection — words of Jesus in which his power to foro-ive sins, his intercourse with publicans, his opposition to fasts and to sabbatic rigorism in contrast to scribes, Phari- sees, and the disciples of John, are set forth. ^ There, too, are the controversies of Jesus with hierarchs, Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes, which illustrate Jesus' attitude to the question of authority, to law and prophecy.^ We have a third group of conversations in the main sayings of Jesus concern- ing marriage, children, wealth, voluntary renunciation, the duty of servants.^ It was the kindred content which led Mark to group these conversations together. In like man- ner a number of series of sayings are associated on account of kinship of theme.* All these series are then arranged in the framework of the gospel in a temporal order. And it is to be assumed that it was the evangelist who gave the con- versations their present position, who transplanted the one in Galilee, the other in Perea, and a third in Jerusalem. The sayings and conversations of themselves contain no reminder of a definite temporal and local situation; so far as anyone can see, the words concerning divorce or children might have been spoken at the beginning of the Galilean ministry quite as well as at the end. If, now, one would appreciate all these sayings and conversations historically, one must first of all cut out the factual connection, the temporal sequence, the arrangement or articulation in the 12:1-3,6. 211:27—12:40. 3 Chap. 10. U:l-34; 6:8-11; 7:1-23; 9:33-50; chap. 13; 8:31—9:1. SOUECES OF THE LiFE OF JeSUS 373 framework of the narrative, in order to consider this material as it was when Mark came by it. The result remains the same whatever be the part of the gospel which one may investigate : the data are single stories, single conversations, single words, which Mark combined to a whole. Mark brought into the arrangement single domi- nant ideas which determined the material: proof of the divine sonship of Jesus, defense of his death, explanation of the unbelief of the Jews. If, on the basis of Mark, one would pass backward still closer to Jesus, one must become as free as possible both from the ideas of Mark and from the arrangement of his material. Only the material itself, not what Mark has made out of it, is historically valuable. The investigation of these single traditions leads us, how- ever, quite over into the region of guessing and groping. Still, much will become clearer if we will but attentively consider it. Single narratives there are which quite defi- nitely betray their derivation. Thus, immediately at the beginning, in the prominence of the call of the first disciples, the healing of Peter's mother-in-law, the flight of Jesus, Peter is so conspicuous that we can easily recognize Petrine memorabilia. In connection with specially important and striking traditions, special companions appear, manifestly vouchers, to whom these narratives are attributed. Mys- teries concerning the future of Jesus were communicated only to Peter, James, John, and Andrew.' More frequently, only the first three appear as witnesses. They alone were witnesses of the resurrection of the dead," the transfiguration of Jesus,^ the prayer in Gethsemane;* but of the transfigura- tion they gave no narrative during the lifetime of Jesus. For the narrative of the crucifixion of Jesus and of the empty grave the authorities are the three women: Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome ; 1 13 : 3. 2 5 : 37, 3 9:2. * Chap. 14. 374 The Finality of the Christian Religion but of that which they saw and heard at the grave they did not say anything to anyone. It looks as if secret traditions, not known from the beginning and not known to all, had been introduced here. Moreover, they are by no means the most certain traditions as to content. Frequently single narratives give us a hint still of the more simple facts which underlie them, and from which little by little the present form of the tradition has taken shape. This is true especially of the conversations. It is striking how frequently ilie Pharisees, the scribes, confront Jesus as closed groups. As such the earliest Christianity knows them and lives in conflict with them. These hostile groups are carried back into the narrative of Jesus, who of course did not see himself confronted everywhere in Galilee by whole societies of rabbis. How such opposition solidified into "history" is vividly illustrated by the narrative concerning the woman with an issue of blood.' The facts are extremely simple: (1) Jesus forgave sins; (2) this was considered blasphemy by the scribes; (3) Jesus and his disciples met this reproach with the proof from miracles. Out of these three elements the narrative concerning the woman with the issue of blood is formed, on which account the scribes must sit in the house where Jesus held his reception. Or take account of the meal with the publicans.^ How is it that the Pharisees come all of a sudden into this company and in the house of Levi? Simply because single elements — Jesus eating with publicans, scandal of the Pharisees with reference to his freedom, the justification of Jesus — are combined to a whole through the tradition. Still more frequently single miraculous narratives favor us with some insight into earlier stages of the tradition. The narrative of the cursing of the fig tree is, in Mark, a crass miraculous story ;^ it arose, however, from a simple par- 12:1-12. 22:15£E. 311; 12 ff., 20 ff. Sources of the Life of Jesus 375 able, which Luke has preserved for us.^ Mark himself gives us two forms of the tradition of the stilling of the tempest,^ which coincide in the main thing — astonishment at Jesus' storm-controlling power. The first form looks like a fore- stage of the second, and underlying it originally is a still simpler narrative of the wonderful calmness and trust in God on the part of Jesus in the midst of the storm. And thus in the case of many miraculous stories it may be assumed that they have gradually received their present form in the course of oral tradition. Notwithstanding these additions and changes, one may rate very highly the historical worth of the traditions communicated to us by Mark. We possess here a great series of the words of the Lord, which give us, in connection with the discourse-source, the clearest idea of Jesus. And, also, the reflection of the historical occasion of these words, the questions of opponents or disciples which they answer, frequently give us valuable hints as to the original meaning of the words. Only few of the narratives can fairly be said to be pure inventions, although it is frequently impossible to disengage the real occurrences from the exaggerated tradi- tion, whose first literary fixation waited forty years! Even so, it is not simply the total impression of the powerful, the original, the creative, but also many a single detail, derived from reality, that speaks to us from these narratives. Jesus, sleeping in the wild storm through all the anxiety of the disciples;^ the restless doer of good, who is too busy to eat, and about whom his neighbors are alarmed;* the one who of nights seeks solitude, who flees multitude and disciples ever with the watchword: Forward to new tasks ;^ the friend of children;' the man of compassion,^ of anger and sadness,^ of 1 Luke 13:6-9. 43:20. 71:41. 2 Mark 4:35-41; 6:45-52. 51:35 ff. 83:5. 34:38. 6 9:36; 10:16. 376 The Finality of the Christian Keligion love and sympathy for the rich man who seeks so earnestly after g-oodness' — these and a hundred similar brief notices and instantaneous pictures speak for themselves. Naturally, we can speak here only of possibilities, probabilities, as is the case with reference to all the particulars of history. But how unassuming and tendencyless, how fresh and joyous, does Mark reflect everything ! This speaks in a high degree in behalf of his being the pure mouth of good tradition, and the writer of what eyewitnesses themselves narrated to him. And so the fact remains that this gospel, in spite of every- thing, is a work of extraordinary value, a compilation of old and genuine materials which are loosely arranged and placed under a few regulative thoughts — a gospel composed perhaps by that Mark whom the New Testament knows, and of whom Papias heard from the mouth of John. We are under the necessity of concluding from the large discourse-material in Matthew and Luke to a common dis- course-source. To be sure, the latter is an x, and it will be well to define at once clearly what we know and what we do not know about this x. We do not know the scope of the source. We only know that the common discourses of Matthew and Luke belong to this scope. We do not know the arrangement of the discourses in the source; we only know that the single sayings of Jesus were grouped, not according to their temporal sequence, but according to homogeneity of theme; e. g., precepts concerning missions, John the Baptist, Pharisees and scribes, return of Christ, etc. Very frequently we do not know the wording of the source ; we know it with certainty only where Matthew and Luke verbally agree, or where one of them has undoubtedly changed the text which the other has faithfully handed down. And it will be well to bear in mind constantly the limits of our knowledge as we seek to know who Jesus was. 110:21. SOUKOES OF THE LiFE OF JeSUS 377 The language of the source which Matthew and Luke employed was Greek, for it is in the Greek wording that they coincide. But was this the original language ? We are led to this question by the remark of Papias that Matthew wrote the words of the Lord in Hebrew — /. c, Syriac — and every- one then translated them as best he could. We now know that with reference to our Matthew gospel this tradition is false, since it is neither an original Hebrew work nor does it come from the apostle Matthew. What Papias says, however, may have some sort of reference to that discourse-source. This is, indeed, a possibility which can be neither refuted nor proved. So precious is the material of the words of the Lord which the collection of sayings contains that an eye- witness could very well be its author. Its linguistic char- acter is such that one is at times reminded of a Semitic basic text. And if the apostle Matthew were actually its author — *. (?., its compiler — one could understand as a last resort how the name of Matthew was mistakenly attached to that gospel which appropriated this discourse-source. But there is no certainty in the matter. And that Matthew and Luke were dependent upon the same Greek fund does not quite comport with the information that there were so many different translations. But the question in general is as to whether this collec- tion of sayings is a unitary work, composed by one man. As in the case of Mark, we find one place where an alien written piece has been accepted: Matt. 23: 34-39; Luke 11: 49-51; 13 f. It is the threatening of penal judgment for all the blood unrighteously shed and the cry of woe over Jeru- salem. As Luke shows us, we have here a citation, and the speaker is the Wisdom of God. It is the Wisdom of God that sends prophets, wise men, scribes, to the Jewish people ; but in vain; those sent are cruelly maltreated. Now, there- fore, all the righteous blood from Abel the righteous to 378 The Finality of the Christian Keligion Zachariah, son of Barachiah, who was killed between the temple and the altar, shall come upon this generation. In vain did Wisdom devote its loving care to Jerusalem ; there- fore their house shall be left to them desolate, and no longer shall they see Wisdom until they say: "Blessed is he that Cometh in the name of the Lord." All this is wholly enig- matic and impossible in the mouth of Jesus — how could Jesus have sent forth wise men and scribes? — but plain enough when one takes into account that it is a citation. Now, Josephus says that a Zachariah, son of Baruch, was murdered in the temple by Zealots in the year 68 A. D. Thus the date of this citation is gained: we have a Jewish apocalyptic fragment from some Wisdom document shortly before the year 70. Thus, too, it becomes clear that the death of Jesus does not at all come into consideration in this threatening of judgment; the "how often" becomes clear also which contradicts the entire synoptic narrative of the single visit of Jesus to Jerusalem. While Luke gives the words as a citation, Matthew simply has translated them into the words of Jesus. Perhaps the passage cited did not belong to the discourse-source from the beginning. In other ways one espies here and there that the logia has had a history before it reached Matthew and Luke, Jewish — nay. Judaic — elements coexist in it with words of great spiritual freedom, even in the logia of Matthew, which has better preserved the wording of the source than Luke. At the beginning of the discourse on righteousness, on missions, on Pharisees, there are harsh national-Jewish utterances: Jesus the fulfiller of the law even to jot and tittle,' prohibition of gentile and Samaritan missions,^ obliga- tion to observe all that the scribes taught.* In these utter- ances an exclusively Jewish party inimically disposed toward Paul and his work claims Jesus. But if one reads the logia iMatt. 5:17f. 210:5. 3 23:3. Sources of the Life of Jesus 379 itself, one sees that its spirit is strictly moral, not at all Judaically limited. The discourse on the Pharisees con- demns the hypocritical Jewish legality, which neglects great matters in favor of the petty. The discourse on righteous- ness, instead of stopping with the iota and tittle of the law, presses on into the interior of moral disposition with the courageous word: "Ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time — but I say unto you!" And in the same discourse-source there was the narrative of the pagan cen- turion of Capernaum, who put Israel to shame by his faith, and, in connection therewith, the word concerning the parti- cipation of many gentiles in the kingdom of God, instead of the "Children of the Kingdom," i. e., the Jews.' Finally, it is the whole ground-stock of this discourse which hands down to us the kernel of the gospel in its uncorrupted purity and freedom. How the contradiction of so diverse spirits in the same writing is to be explained we do not surely know. It was written in different stages, of course; passed through various editions. This is of importance for the question: Who was Jesus? in order that those all too limited, narrow- hearted parts be not uncritically referred to Jesus himself. In the historical employment of these discourses it is important to bear in mind that the source itself would give no temporal, but an objective, compilation of the words of the Lord, and that it was Matthew and Luke who first temporally articulated them in the framework of the gospel narrative. From this it follows that we know nothing what- ever concerning the time and place of these discourses. The only reason for transferring the words against Pharisees and scribes to the last days of Jesus in Jerusalem is that the evangelist Matthew found in that passage of the Mark narrative a fitting point of connection for this discourse; but Matthew knew as little about the matter as Luke, who 18:5-13. 380 The Finality of the Christian Religion located, the discourse in Galilee. It further follows from this that these great discourses were never received from Jesus, but owe their composition throughout to the hands of a compiler. It is customary to admire Jesus' oratorical talent and gift of composition in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. In truth, single words from all parts of the life of Jesus are gathered together, because they are united in the same theme: the will of God, righteousness. And the themes are not those of Jesus, but of the primitive com- munity. In the course of more than three decades this tradition of the words of the Lord may have lost some things that were valuable, and preserved features that were supplied later. But, on the whole, the historical value of this discourse is greatest of all. Together with the words of the Lord in Mark, they give us the truest insight into the heart of the gospel. A final specially difficult question remains: What impor- tance attaches to those narratives and words which either Matthew alone, or Luke alone, delivers to us? Matthew alone communicates to us the great number of parables and single words of Jesus. The parables of the treasure in the field and of the pearl, of the tares, and of the draw-net,' of the unmerciful servant,' of the day-laborers called at different hours,^ of the two sons,* of the wise and the foolish viro^ins,'' belono^ in the series of the other certain parables of Jesus. Only a few of them — e, g., the tares and the draw-net, the wise and the foolish virgins — have been worked over or elaborated, since they answer somewhat too distinctly questions and doubts, not of Jesus, but of later Christianity. Mention may be made of the following say- ings: the words of the Lord concerning alms, prayer, and 1 Matt., chap. 13. 2 chap. IS. 3 Chap. 20. ••Chap. 21. 5 Chap. 25. Sources of the Life of Jesus 381 fasts;' single sayings concerning the sabbath;^ the word con- cerning the angels of the little ones,* concerning those circumcised for the sake of the kingdom of God/ concerning the reward of the twelve apostles f the closing word concern- ing the last judgment.® Many of these sayings are extremely enigmatic — the angels of the little ones, those circumcised for the sake of the kingdom of God — but they are not there- fore inconceivable m the mouth of Jesus. At times we distinctly detect later elaboration. The compilation of the words concerning alms, prayer, fasts, originates from a good Jewish Christian compiler, who, of course, placed more emphasis on the thought of reward than Jesus did. The closing words concerning the last judgment do not come directly from Jesus. Jesus did not consider himself as the judge of the world, nor would he have said that all the gentiles were judged solely according to whether they sup- ported the itinerant Christian brothers or not. All this is the mode of thought of apostolic and post-apostolic times, ever faithful in one main point: the high appreciation of mercy, the original spirit of Jesus. But with this the historically valuable material peculiar to Matthew is exhausted. What remains that is peculiar to him comes under the rubric of legend. This is especially true of the genuinely Catholic word to Peter.' It will not do to interpret the words in a Protestant way, to the effect that not Peter, but only the faith, the disposition which Peter then expressed, was the rock of the church. The Catholics are entirely right in apprehending the word in a Roman-Catholic sense, but precisely thereby is the evidence furnished that Jesus did not speak the word, but that it is a saga of a later time, glorifying Peter. Under this same head of legend chaps. 1 and 2 belong ; also the whole edition in Matthew of the story of the passion and the resurrection (the Judas legend, the iChap.6. 2i2:5£E.,llf, 318:10. *19:10-12. 519:28. 625:31-46. 7i6:16ff. 382 The Finality op the Cheistian Keligion wife of Pilate, nature-miracles at the death of Jesus, the watch at the grave, and so forth). It is not meant that Matthew himself invented these narratives; frequently, as in the infancy stories, several hands have been active therein. In all these cases, the sole task of the investigator is to get at the motive of these legends, which is usually evident. Thus in the infancy stories, Jewish instinct of legitimation (Davidic genealogy), apologetic proof of fulfilled predictions (Bethlehem and so forth), connection of the new tradition of Bethlehem with the old of Nazareth (Matt., chap. 2), new interpretation of the Son of God and of his origin (con- ceived by the Holy Spirit), defense of this faith against the slanderous interpretations of the Jews (dream of Joseph), have co-operated in the given order until the narrative came to be in the form which we now read in the first two chapters. The quite late and the quite early coexist in this gospel as nowhere else. Everywhere is the gospel far removed in point of time from the person of Jesus. But it has preserved old traditions with special fidelity. Since Luke writes in the prologue of many who attempted evangelical authorship before him, the question as to further ivritten sources naturally arises. Their 2^ossible employment by Luke may be assumed. Certainty is scarcely demon- strable in the matter. Some believe that he used a written Syriac tradition in chaps. 1 and 2. There is a striking difference in style between the fine Greek prologue^ and the subsequent nar- rative of a Semitic color. The piety of chaps. 1 and 2 is Jewish-Christian. Nevertheless, conclusion to a written source seems somewhat hasty. The language of this chap- ter is, on the whole, the Greek of the Septuagint, which was accessible to Luke; that he attached importance in the prologue to finer expression is not surprising in the 1 Luke 1:4. Sources of the Life of Jesus 383 case of this man, who is highly capable of linguistic varia- tion. Added to this, it is hardly possible for this chapter ever to have existed by itself, since its main thoughts are none other than those of the entire gospel. It is the evangel- ist Luke who connects the Nazareth tradition and the Beth- lehem prediction with a world-historical providence; who answers Mark's question, "Is not the Baptist greater than Jesus?" by parallelizing the stories of their birth and by the constant degrading of the Baptist below Jesus. All this has importance only in connection with the entire gospel, not by itself alone. It has further been supposed that source and redactor could be distinguished by the circumstance that the former considers Jesus as son of the Davidic Joseph, and therefore speaks disingenuously of the "father," the "parents" of Jesus; while the redactor Luke subsequently introduces the later view of the fatherless generation of Jesus by the insertion of 1 : 34 f . But even this assumption is not neces- sary; is, indeed, improbable, since a parallel is drawn up intentionally between the miracle as regards Elizabeth and the greater miracle as regards Mary ; also between the unbe- lief of Zachariah and the faith of Mary. Luke could still call Joseph "father," since it was through him that the Davidic genealogy reached Jesus. The supposition is more plausible that Luke received, shaped, elaborated all kinds of earlier, partly Jewish-Christian traditions, with rich feeling for poesy and precious apprehension of the sentiment of so many faithful, pious souls in the time of Jesus. There»is another reason why we can say scarcely anything more certain, as to the main part of his gospel, concerning his sources. Luke has so composed his writing that he has broken into almost all other sources of material with two great interpolations of Mark. Within these interpolations, however, he has himself formed new connections out of the discourse-source and the fund peculiar to him taken together, 384 The Finality of the Cheistian Religion everywhere severing the old connections of his sources, and in this way robbing us of the possibility of knowing what belonged together originally. We have no other recourse than to separate the single sections from the artificial framework of Luke, and test the worth of each by itself alone, as we must do in the case of Mark also. Above all else, we are attracted by the many parables which Luke alone delivers to us, on which, moreover, the unique worth of his writing depends.^ Here, if anywhere, is the supposition warranted that Luke found these parables in a written source. But the evangelist is responsible for the location of the narratives, the place in which they now appear, and very frequently for the framework ; that is, the introduction and the explicative conclusion. The degree in which Luke occasionally ignores the original meaning of a parable, and forces upon it an alien, artificial meaning, is best seen in the parable of the good Samaritan. Its original purpose is manifest from its content, from the opposition of priest and Levite there, Samaritan here: mercy is better than sanctity, even if the merciful is a Samaritan, and the saint a priest or Levite. The effect of the contrast is similar to that aimed at in the parable of Pharisee and publican. And what does Luke make out of it? He puts it in the missionary group of chap. 10, because it is simply the Samaritan that interests him, because he finds something here concerning the relation between Samaritans and Jews. Ordinarily, a Jew will know nothing of a Samaritan. To a Jew, a neigh- bor is simply one of his own blood. But here a Samaritan is neighbor to a Jew. Hence, the introductory question: "Who is my neighbor?" which is repeated at the close: "Who is the neighbor to him that fell among thieves?" And the answer is that the inquiring Jew must call the 1 See chaps. 7-18. Sources of the Life of Jesus 385 Samaritan his neighbor. But how strangely artificial is this conclusion, where everyone would expect the opposite ques- tion ; how completely do the priest and Levite thereby drop out of the question ! It all becomes simple and grand, if the frame be stricken off and the parable speak for itself alone. But the case does not stand much better with all the frame- works of the Lukan parables. They are almost all artificial ; only at times the artificiality must be set to the account of some earlier tradition. The two parables of chap. 16 have passed through various hands until they have found their present form. In the case of the rich man and Lazarus, Luke or some earlier writer seems to have invented the second half, from 16 : 27 on. The parable has its natural conclusion where the rich man receives the answer that their lots are now changed.' From this we know that we are never to count a rich man blessed on account of his riches, nor a poor man unhappy on account of his proverty ; and this was the point. The conclusion/ on the other hand, which treats the possibility of the conversion of the rich man's brothers: Do law and prophets suffice? Is a resurrection from the dead necessary? — this conclusion leads the reader to entirely different thoughts, and suits the false introduction^ which addresses the parable to the Pharisees, with whom, however, it has nothing whatever to do. Uniformly our joy in the parables grows in the degree that we succeed in freeing ourselves from the interpretative reflections of the evan- gelist, and in surrendering ourselves to the original power of the parable itself. Apart from the parables, Luke has preserved some words of Jesus spoken on the spur of the moment, which cast a clear light upon his character and his consciousness of his calling ; e. g., the word about the falling of Satan from heaven;* about the fire which Jesus came to kindle;* the answer to U6:25. 216:27-31. 316: 14 f. ■*10:18. 512:49 f. 386 The Finality of the Christian Religion him who desired a judgment in the controversy with his brother concerning his inheritance;' etc. More important still, for the wealth of the tradition from which Luke drew, are the single short stories or notices, which Luke reflects as he found them : the names of the women accompanying Jesus f the refusal of the Samaritans to receive him, together with the impression which this made upon the disciples;^ Mary and Martha;^ Jesus' answer to the woman who cried, "Blessed is the one that bore him;"^ the reference to Herod the Fox;® Zacchseus.^ It is, of course, conceivable that Luke drew these exceedingly valuable items from some lost evan- gelical writing. Along with this there are, of course, numerous instances in which the evangelist has communicated extremely doubt- ful traditions, even in case he did not invent them. Among these is the narrative of the ten lepers, only one of whom, a Samaritan, manifested gratitude.** We know that Luke can- celed the prohibition of the Samaritan mission in the logia,® and substituted therefor everything that was favorable to the Samaritans : such writing is tendential. A genuine word of the Lord'** underlies the narrative of the healing of one with the dropsy on the sabbath day." As occasion to this a miraculous story is formed, whose wording has the appear- ance of Mark 8 : 1-6. The beginning of Jesus' preaching in Nazareth'" seems to belong entirely to Luke. His datum was the rejection of Jesus at Nazareth,'^ from which he shaped his new narrative, introducing Jesus as fulfiller of prophecy, and representing him as gaining from his rejection by his father-city an intimation of his rejection by his fatherland. And yet in this connection Jesus is said to have spoken to the Nazarenes of his miracles in Capernaum, which, however, I12:13f. * 10: 38-42. '19:2-10. WC/. Matt. 12:11. 124:16-29 2 8:2f. 5ii:27f. 8i7:ii-i9. u Luke 14: 1-6. 13 Mark, chap. 6. 39:21f. 613:31£P. 9Matt.lO:5. Sources of the Life op Jesus 387 he had not yet done! In the narrative concerning the sinful woman ^ Luke seems to have combined all sorts of different material: the parable of the two debtors, the anointing by a sinful woman, the anointing at Bethany in the house of Simon according to Mark, to which he then supplies a new conclusion himself. The raising of the widow's son at Nain,^ and Peter's miraculous draught of fish,^ are drawn from current legfends. It has been supposed that Luke drew the special features of his account of the passion and the resurrection from an earlier source: the thieves on the cross, the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, etc., were derived from such source. All this is entirely uncertain: if Luke did employ tradition, they need not have been written as yet ; above all, they need not have been historically reliable. It is not true that Luke enriched the earlier exposition of Mark by the story of the thieves on the cross; but Luke replaced Jesus' violent cry of agony in Mark with a more consoling saying. So, too, he canceled the words of Mark, which pointed to the appear- ances of Jesus in Galilee, in favor of his Jerusalem resurrec- tion stories. There are also many affecting details — the healing of the soldier's ear,* the look that Jesus gave Peter,^ the sorrowful, tender word to the women of Jerusalem^ — which can scarcely be rescued by pushing them back from Luke himself to some earlier tradition. These additions must have arisen some time. But the large part the evangelist took in the formation and shaping of his narratives is by no means in a position to abridge the worth of his large, rich treasure of priceless parables and stories, by means of which Jesus himself speaks to us freshly and originally. The outcome, therefore, is that the fund peculiar to the two evangelists, in spite of its very mixed character, has claim enough upon our gratitude. 1 Luke 7:36-50. 2 7:11-17. 3 5:4-9. -122:51. 5 22:16. « 23: 28-31. 388 The Finality of the Christian Keligion We are at the end of a long way. In the first place, we must limit our material to the four canonical gospels as sources. Then, John drops away, and the synoptics remain. Next, their sources must be substituted for them: Mark, the logia, the fund peculiar to Matthew and Luke each — ^ these are to be put in the foreground. Finally, the investigation of these sources discovers more original — but also, of course, more scanty — traditions. These traditions, which Mark and the logia have collected, which appear singly here and there in the special fund of Matthew and Luke, are our last court of appeal as we seek to answer the question : Who was Jesus ? In the course of this long way, much has everywhere fallen away which, for a millennium, has belonged to the stable picture of Jesus. What remains seems at first sight to be miserably poor and scanty. But if it were only firm and reliable! If it only sufficed to give us an answer to the cardinal question: Who was Jesus? It does not belong to this chapter to answer this question. But, as indicated in a previous footnote, since the substance of this discussion has been drawn — often, indeed, by rough translation — from Professor Wernle, an historical critic of the first rank, the chapter may very well close with a repro- duction of an outline answer to the question as given by him. In the next chapter we shall return to the question in a larger way, on our own account. What can we know of Jesus himself ? What can we know ? Wernle' s answer is as follows: On the basis of the earliest or oldest sources, we can write no biography, no so-called " Life of Jesus." This would ever have been possible, were Mark a strictly historical document, and did the discourse portions actually belong where Matthew or Luke has placed them. But the discourses in their source lack all temporal fixation, and Mark is only a compiler of single traditions, which he first — so runs the hypothesis — Sources of the Life of Jesus 389 "unified to a whole. Mark, moreover, lacks all personal knowledge of localities, and he equally lacks any clear knowl- edge of the temporal course of the life of Jesus. And in matters concerning which Mark as historian leaves us in the lurch, how can we know anything better today ? It is only of a very few words of Jesus, accordingly, that we know when and where they were spoken. Thus, too, the possibility of tracing an inner development of Jesus must be surren- dered. Any distinction between a Galilean period of Jesus and a Jerusalem period — this is entirely in the air. One clear point is that the messianic faith did not exist from the beginning, but from a definite time, in the circle of the dis- ciples. Also, we may learn from Mark that Jesus did not forecast his death from the beginning. The earliest sure memorabilia reach back to the point where Peter and his companions become disciples of Jesus. Valuable historical single material, building-stones of the life of Jesus, are not wanting. But the plan of the building is lost beyond recov- ery, because the earliest disciples attached no importance to such historical connection, but rather cared only for that in the single words and deeds of Jesus which awakened faith, required obedience. This would not be so great an injury, could we but ascer- tain with sufficient clearness what Jesus did and willed. It is precisely here, however, that we confront the final, the greatest, difficulty. We said that the last court of appeal which we reach in the investigation of the sources is those oldest traditions which Mark and the logia have compiled, whose gleaning Matthew and Luke preserve. But, evermore, traditions are something other than Jesus himself. They contain the possibility of corruption and transformation. Primarily, they reflect the faith of the earliest Christians — a faith which grew up in the course of four decades, which underwent 390 The Finality of the Christian Religion change also. Between Jesus and us there is ever the faith of the primitive community as the immediate object of inquiry. From this it follows that in all the points where the faith of the primitive community itself is in movement and flux we have the greatest difficulty in laying hold of Jesus him- self. These points are: Ckristology, pictures of the fuiure, belief in miracles, attitude to the law and to the ncdion. Immediately in the conception of Jesus great titles confront us: ^'Christ," "Son of God," "Son of man." We see how the primitive community sought to interpret the person of Jesus by means of these titles, and, indeed, on the basis of their faith in his resurrection, which suddenly exalted this person into miraculous glory. But what attitude Jesus him- self assumed toward these views — this we know far less clearly. It would be an excess, of course, to deny that he had faith in his messianic calling ; but at what time he began to hold that he was the Messiah, and in what sense; what precisely he had in mind by it; whether he called himself "Son of God," and in what sense; whether the title "Son of man" is one that he gave himself; whether he definitely promised his return — these are questions which we can only partially and approximately answer, just because it is the faith of the primitive community which is primarily given to us. The death and resurrection of Jesus are combined with his messianic dignity, for the primitive community. The suffering Messiah — this is the Christian confession. But what was Jesus' own thought concerning this? Did he definitely foretell his death ? How did he conceive his death ? It is very much easier to ask these questions than it is to answer them. All the thoughts of Jesus concerning the worth and the necessity of his death are first of all thoughts of the primitive community; only this do we know definitely. Whether Jesus himself utters them — this is precisely the question. As regards the future hope, all Christians confess- SOUECES OF THE LiPE OF JeSUS 391 edly remained pronounced Jews ; was this true of Jesus in the same degree ? Who dares assert that he knows accurately how Jesus thought of the great catastrophe, and what the disciples first supplied? The whole problem is clear as soon as Mark, chap. 13, is before us. It is incredibly difficult to say: Thus Jesus hoped, thus he did not. In studying the question of the Son of man, shall we ever come to see Jesus himself clearly? A sifting of the miracle-faith of the primitive community is entirely impossible — a sundering of the real Jesus from the miraculous saga of the primitive community. What we clearly know is simply the miracle-faith and the miracle-apologetics of the oldest Christianity. We infer, e. g., from Jesus' answer to the Baptist, "The blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised," that the Christians at the time of the redaction of the logia believed in a multitude of such miracles, even in several cases of resuscitation from the dead. But it does not follow from this that Jesus spoke the words in this form, let alone that he had awakened several from the dead. Our oldest traditions-, show that already all things were held to be possible to Jesus :; but how he himself thought on this subject is scarcely access- ible to us. Finally, upon the appearance of Paul, questions concerning the law and missions became burning in the primi- tive community. It was sought to draw Jesus himself into the controversy. To one he becomes patron of the gentile missions ; to another, of Jewish missions. What was Jesus* attitude to these questions? Had he had such a question at all ? Is not every attempt idle to know something from him which did not lie in his horizon ? Was Mark right when he attributed freedom and breadth to him ? Was Jesus so nar- row as Matthew pictured him? And, then, the breach with Israel, the rejection of the temple — did all this stand so clearly before his soul as we now read it, or even more clearly than his limited disciples could apprehend it? 392 The Finality of the Christian Keligion We go forward in all these problems only when we set out from this fact: that which we firmly have in our hands is the faith of the primitive community. That faith can be an efPect, in whole or in part, of which Jesus is cause; that faith can also be carried back into the word and life of Jesus. There is therefore no reason for despair or resignation. A part of the work is already done when the task and difficul- ties are clearly known. And, finally, all this is not the main thing. They are mostly problems of periphery. What Jesus was, and what he willed, do not depend upon the answer to these questions. The main thing is how Jesus viewed God, the world, and man, and how he answered the cardinal question: What is the main thing in the sight of God? What is religion? This, however, we know and see in the clear light of day. From the fulness of his parables and sayings, and from numerous memorabilia of the moment, Jesus speaks to us as clearly and definitely as if he were our contemporary. No man in the world can say it is uncertain and obscure as to how Jesus thought concerning this main matter, which is also the main matter for us today still. When we approach history with the question. Who was Jesus? the thing we desire to know first of all is: What has this man hoped, believed, loved ? What did the name of God signify to him ? How did he view man and his powers? With what senti- ment did he look upon the process of the world? What ideal of humanity filled his soul? By what standards did he judge the worth of man, good and evil, sin and duty? It is wonderful how in all these points the great discourses of the logia give us the same answer as the conversations of Mark and the parables which only Luke or only Matthew has. And they are always clear, definite answers — simple, unsought, springing from the depth of the heart and not from the logic of the understanding. And as to the main point: Sources of the Life of Jesus 393 Upon what does all depend before God ? Wliat decides con- cerning heaven and hell? we can see that a thoroughgoing change in the thought of the disciples could not destroy historical fidelity. For all authors and compilers of the evangelical writings since the earliest time, faith in Jesus the Messiah is the primary thing which separates Christian and non-Christian — the fundamental presupposition for all the conclusions that follow. But they have first carried this back into the words of Jesus. In the words of Jesus, the main thing is confidence in God, piwiti) of heart, merciful- ness, humility, placabilitu, yearning — tliis and nothing else besides. This is God's will, as is set forth in the Sermon on the Mount, Who does it is Jesus' mother and sister and brother. And if Christianity, millennium at a time, has forgotten that which its Master first of all and most of all willed, today it shines forth from the gospels once yet again as clearly and wonderfully as if the sun had just risen, and banished all the ghosts and shadows of night with its tri- umphant beams. If, then, along therewith, much with reference to this man is and abides enigmatic, this does not frighten us ; we can see that it must be so. We divine that the soul of which this great, wonderful new thing took possession for the first time, in order that through it there might be a power redeeming humanity, must be seized by entirely different sentiments and excitations than the average of us petty men; that here on the summit of history, from contact of God with humanity, of the eternal with transitoriness, mysteries, wonders, super- human thoughts as to vocation, must shine forth which, clad in the passing garb of temporal Jewish ideas and words, strike us in many ways as bizarre and strange. Even this we can understand, viz., that precisely this mystery of a crea- tive revelation-person has become the greatest agency for founding community, that faith in Jesus founded the church. 394 The Finality of the Christian Eeligion : But today all this, which was once of secondary importance, has now come to be primary for us who are sated with Chris- tology and yearn after God. The closer we get to Jesus in the tradition, the more does everything dogmatic and the- ological recede. We see a man who, through his clear word, helps us rightly to understand ourselves, the world, above all else God; and who goes with us in the extremities and con- flicts of the present, as a most faithful friend and leader upon whom we may confidently rely. How far now this result of an investigation of the source is destructive, or liberating and uplifting, remains to be decided by the reader himself. CHAPTER IX THE ESSENCE OP THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION: JESUS So, THEN, we have hearkened, as was our duty, to a rehearsal, sufficient for our purpose, of the net results of a century of scientific work by specialists upon the synoptic problem. While the presuppositions, method, and conclusions of only a single scholar. Professor Wernle, have been repro- duced, they are yet typical. Henceforth, the difficulties which confront us, as we strive to know who the real Jesus was, what he said and did, and what he wanted, must be faithfully and dispassionately dealt with by apologists. Even at the risk of irksome prolixity, it is advisable to give a brief recapitulation of these difficulties at the begin- ning of this chapter. Jesus left no literary remains. Even if he did write in the sand, according to the story about the adulteress, we still do not know what he wrote. Evangelical proclamation as the gospel history mainly is, we yet do not possess a single word directly from the preacher himself. Everything is mediated to us through others. It is a duty of conscience today to be seized with the significance of this fact. The limitations of authenticity thus drawn cannot be honorably forgotten by the apologist. Immediately after the crucifixion of Jesus, his disciples — those of them who walked and talked with him in the familiar and friendly Galilean period — worshiped him as a divine being, throned in heaven, possessing all power and authority, judging the living and the dead, and so on. This conviction of theirs — of this there can be no reasonable doubt — suffused, transfigured, altered what they had for- merly experienced in their association with the man Jesus. 395 396 The Finality of the Christian Religion In tliis new light of the dehumanization and spiritualization of Jesus, if not of his complete deification, it was psychologi- cally inevitable that all the features and episodes of his life and history should shine and be interpreted. The memora- bilia of the earthly life of Jesus suffered emotional recon- struction. Many original colors have vanished in the golden glory, from the supernal sky, which lies upon the whole scene. Upon the stratum of historical fact are superposed strata deposited by the faith and feeling of the disciples. These strata are not always easily distinguishable, so that one can say of the record : This is fact ; this is interpreta- tion or embellishment of the fact. The exact certainty which science seeks is unattainable, and the whole gamut of prob- ability must be run.^ Intimately connected with the difficulty just mentioned is the fact that, as soon as the first disciples and primitive com- munity became firmly convinced that Jesus was the Messiah, they could not help transferring to him a catalogue of predicates, concepts, and stories. There w^as at that time a messianic dogmatics which, fluctuating in particulars, was quite definite in main outline. The whole Old Testament had long been investigated from the messianic point of view, and interpreted with scholastic artificiality. The picture of the future Messiah, thus gained, was a picture in detail; it embraced ontological and official predicates, heroic and 1 It is on this account that I have availed myself of every opportunity in this discussion to point out how unendurable the present situation is to the Christian who fails to understand that the Object on which his faith reposes, to which it is directed, is not one of the objects in the region which historical science has both the right and the duty to explore. It is because the Object of faith is supposed to be in the region of historical inquiry, and because historical science converts certainties into problems, that ecclesiastical authority seeks to set limits to scientific pursuit, thus fomenting strife and injuring religion. One cannot too earnestly asseverate that the principle of Christianity is not to be found in historical data which science can doubt, but in the filial relationship to God, with which science can have nothing whatever to do. The task of the present is to conduct the religion of nonage, bound to external authorities, to this super-historical religion of personality ; and the opportunity of the free discussion of all questions is essential to the fulfilment of this task. Jesus 397 redemptive deeds, even matters biographical. Since all this was treated as genuine prediction — although most of it was drawn from a sophistical exegetical fantasy — it was of necessity believed to have been fulfilled in the Messiah; that is, in Jesus. Thus, at a single stroke, a second unreal history takes its place by the side of Jesus' real history. Features of a construed Messiah are combined with the actual features of the person of the real Jesus. To reach Jesus, we must strip ofp the messianic adornment ; and this is no easy task. Critical historians — e. g., Gunkel, Bousset, Wernle, Pfleiderer — are gradually settling down to the conclusion that the messianic dogmatics, instead of growing solely from the learning of the scribes, has been powerfully influenced by other religions. It was a time of rapprochement, and even of coalescence, of civilizations and cultures from every quarter of the globe. No religion could remain exempt from the universal tendency. It is inconceivable that Chris- tianity, arising at such a time, should exist in isolated and incommunicable grandeur. Here unneighborly exclusive- ness would not be possible, were it impossible in the case of Judaism. As many peoples were becoming one people, many civilizations one civilization, so the many religions were becoming one religion; that is, world-religion was struggling into existence along with other world-experiences. A religion for the whole world must be made by the whole world. It was, as Gunkel says, an age of religious syncre- tism. In general, it was a step of progress in the history of religion, an advance from folk-religion toward individualism in religion. But we are confronted with a new difficulty here: In every age of religious development and transfor- mation, of exchange and expansion, the new life turns out to the advantage of the almost forgotten and antiquated elements in the old. It is because religion is ever partly 398 The Finality of the Christian Religion tradition that this may be so. At the beginning of the Christian era it was not otherwise. By virtue of the spirit- iializing, ethicizing, and individualizing of religions, time- honored rites and obsolete features of cult win new strength and significance. As mysteries and as sacraments, they penetrate into the religion that has become personal; they force their fantastic reflexes upon the religious view of the world, and they dovetail their mythological tales into the story of revelation. In the three centuries before the Chris- tian era Judaism was powerfully affected by this syncretism ; even pharisaism was by no means able to escape it. If now we must accept a Jewish syncretism (or gnosticism) as a fact — a Christian also — the question necessarily arises, even in the first century, as to whether Jesus himself, or certainly the earliest tradition concerning him, was influenced by these syncretistic conditions. If the phenomena to be examined cannot be explained from legalistic Judaism, nor from the religious peculiarity of personality, the attempt to refer them to alien influences seems commendable. But it is evident that such a question is extraordinarily subtile and difficult. How far does the peculiarity of personality reach? How far may one make allowances for paradoxes consistently with the organic unity of consciousness, and in view of the human capacity for holding contradictory positions at one and the same time?' At what point does causal explanation begin to offer an apology? Do the universal historical cir- cumstances in a given case admit of influence from this or that "mythologomenon" ? Religio-historical investigation suffers all too frequently from artificially isolating its prob- lem. But even deeper wounds are inflicted upon it by that comparative mythology which causally connects everything 1 Professor Wassermann has sought to show that theoretically even Jesus shared in the verbal-inspiration dogma of his day, but that practically he evinced a free and critical attitude to the Old Testament which was in contradiction to his theory. An illustration, if true. Jesus 399 with everything else, tears down fixed hedges, easily bridges intervening chasms, and spins combinations out of super- ficial similarities. The danger here is from the pernicious inflaence of the naturalistic milieu and regressus, previously discussed, which sees nothing epochal and novel in the his- torical world, as well as nothing outstanding and normative in the psychological. Were one to believe a certain histori- cal school, one would conclude that Israel was the only sterile race ethico-religiously, having borrowed all from other peoples, and that Jesus was the only man to whom spontaneity and originality had been denied. So much was he a child of his time that he was in no sense the architect of his own character and fortune. With the naturalistic wand of "religious history" this school deftly sets aside every spontaneous feature. To explain everything in this manner is to explain it away — rather, in the last analysis, is to explain everything by nothing. Nevertheless, the abuse of this combination under discussion ought not to prevent its sober critical use. Jesus did appear in an age of reli- gious syncretism. This is one of the circumstances which render the investigation of his career so difficult. We must be prepared for all sorts of oddities which cannot be explained from the Old Testament. On the other hand, the explanation of many problems becomes less difficult, since in this way new possibilities of explanation are opened up. A further difficulty comes from another quarter. The four gospels, which are our main sources for the evangelical history, are neither biographies nor strictly memorabilia, but books for purposes of evangelization and edification. They use their material much as a popular preacher retells the Parable of the Prodigal Son, imaginatively reconstruct- ing it, supplying all sorts of embellishments, and adapting it to the practical ends in view, unmindful to a degree of fidelity to the literal story. To awaken faith, to supply 400 The Finality of the Christian Religion certainty to an awakened faith — this is the end which the evangelists had in view. On this account the documentary witness suffers. In another direction the books are rendered all the more valuable thereby: they surely exhibit, not the facts concerning Jesus, but the faith of their authors, and the source and strength of the inner life of their authors. But without pursuing the point further, it suffices to remind ourselves yet again that we may not use the evangelical story as a source without taking into account the ends which the authors had in view. The tradition of our four gospels presents a new diffi- culty. Their original text has not remained unchanged. And the most important changes occurred in the second century. Up to that time the text was in a state of flux, checked since by the canonical formation. Motives of edification and evangelization still obtained, on which account changes, now slight, now serious, were made in the interest of adaptation and effectiveness. The endeavor to harmonize the books, to correct the text of the one gospel by that of the other, is easily understood in their light. While it is worth while to mention this difficulty, the difficulty is not great, and should not be exaggerated. Jesus spoke the Aramaic language. It is inevitable that, by translating from one language into another, something of the original content should be lost, and that something of an alien content should take its place. The idiom and genius of one language cannot be exactly translated into another. In its earliest youth, Christianity was translated from the Semitic and Jewish mode of thought and feeling, and wedded to the Greek spirit. Only in the garb of this spirit do we possess the sayings of Jesus, and the charac- terizations of him. Still, the original idiom is discernible in spite of the transposition into a new language. Neverthe- less, we are forced to the conclusion that we do not surely Jesus 401 know that we have any strictly authentic words of Jesns, since we have his words only in the form of a foreign lan- guage. Finally, there is the difficulty incident to the circum- stance that the apostle Paul follows immediately upon Jesus — a hero of powerful personality, trained in scholastic theology, mighty in word and pen, inflexible of will and lively of temperament, indefatigable in work, but yet as earnest and zealous for "doctrines" as for souls. Won by Jesus whom he had not known, he became lifelong servant and missionary of the Christ throned in the heavens, and preached his apostolic gospel of the crucified and risen Son of God. It is an awe-inspiring tribute to the power of Paul that to this day the gospels are read by most people in the light of the Pauline theology. In the entire course of the centuries the understanding of the gospels has been inti- mately associated with this theology. The latter has been a system of control, so that the most objective and impartial investigator has ever feared that he has not entirely escaped understanding the gospels according to Pauline thoughts. Similar in so many ways, as theologians Paul and Jesus are "disparate." And Paul is not to be divorced from his the- ology, which is also his religion. Determined to know none save Jesus Christ, his Christ was in many ways just his. It is true that Paul is the second founder of Christianity. Indeed, a burning question of the hour is whether the watchword must be: "Jesus and Paul," or "Jesus or Paul."^ To blast and tunnel the way through the solidified Pauline construction to the real Jesus of Nazareth is a task that must tax to the utmost all the energies and skill of his- torical and theological science.^ 1 See Wrede, Paulus, and my review thereof in the American Journal of The- ology, July, 1905. 2 But it must be done in the interest of the emancipation and autonomy of per- sonality, as well as of the purification and potentiation of religion. This is my 402 The Finality of the Christian Religion A catalogue of difficulties! And there are others still — such as the strange method of that time, now of spiritualiz- ing sacred texts, now of taking figurative expressions liter- ally. Disregard of such matters would result in necessary misunderstandings. "If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? and though in a land of peace thou art secure, yet how wilt thou do in the pride of Jordan?"^ These difficulties all vanish at a single stroke for those who believe in the inspi- answer to Steerett's effort, based on an obsolete Hegelianism, to be witty — which is as follows: "The historian, especially the historian who believes in the modern doctrine of development, should be the last one to make the crab-cry ' back.' .... This is the real 'yellow peril' in our modern occidental world. It is the spirit of the anti-Christ, the anti-logos, the anti-rational, and the anti-progress view of the world, as a process of development towards full realization of humanity into a Kingdom or Republic of God on earth. '• Everyone who is raising the crab-cry is flying in the face of our western form of civilization, and aiding and abetting the ' yellow peril.' " Even the cry ' Back to Jesus '— to the historical Jesus, who lived and died and was buried centuries ago — means a negation of the hard-earned forms of Christian culture of the intervening centuries. And, put it in the subjective form of the reli- gious feeling that was in the heart of Jesus, as Sabatier and Harnack do, it is a further reversion to the oriental type; a large advance toward esoteric Buddhism. Harnack's lectures are professedly ad pojndum academicum, to those afflicted with the various ailments of modern culture. He does not, after all, take modern culture seriously. Or, he does, and he does not. But in devastating historical Christianity he runs into such utter subjectivism as leads logically, as it always historically has led, towards the oriental, pessimistic view of man and the world. Rational authority there is none. The freedom of capricious feeling soon tires, and non- existence becomes a welcome goal. The freedom of oriental thought is the freedom of non-existence — all forms of empirical, historical existence being bad. " Literally, back to anything means, and finally leads back to, blank. And that is where the cry, back to the historical Jesus, and then, back to a personal feeling in the heart of one man out of millions of men — that is, back to Jesus apart from historical Christianity— leads. It is back to a feeling of an unmediated relation to God — back to Neo-Platonic ecstasy— a swoon of man's rational nature, and then an awakening to a pessimistic view of reality— to despair and a longing to cease to be, a longing for Nirvana, an absorption in Brahma, in the unconscious. " So back to Jesus of history— back to a Christ without historical Christianity- back to a filial feeling in the heart of Jesus — all this backwardness is one of nega- tion that ends in nothing that we can know— nothing that can validate itself — a supersensuous something that eludes our grasp, and soon passes away into an illu- sory form of abnormal consciousness."— TAe Freedom of Authority, pp. 85, 86. See the entire brilliant passage, pp. 79 ff., in which, however, Sterrett fails to see that the value of the effort to get back to the historical Jesus consists partly in its abortiveness. iJer. 12:5. Jesus 403 ration of the gospels, in the old orthodox sense of the word. On such a standpoint one needs only to narrate and — to harmonize. As in the storm and stress of life we often recall the halcyon days of youth, with their peace and rest, so we may pathetically turn our wistful eyes to the certainty and comfort which once reposed upon the inspiration dogma. But we have been driven from Eden out into the wilderness, and must henceforth earn the bread of life by the sweat of our brow. For, as we have often said, the assumption of the inspiration of the text has been shattered, definitively and irretrievably shattered. Out in the wilderness, we must now blaze out a path amid the thorns by means of criticism. But this is gain. Criticism is better than dogmatism, as manhood is better than childhood. We are saved by doubt as well as by faith. It is to the critical movement that we owe the necessity of re-examining the traditional determina- tion of what the Christian religion essentially is, what the gospel of Jesus is, what religious faith is. And little by little we are coming to see that the co?itent of religious faith is exposed to no peril from historical criticism. What must that faith be, if it is in essence a reality exempt from the vicissitudes to which all that is in the region of criticism is subjected? Criticism has pressed this question upon us; and we cannot be too grateful that it has done so. Criticism has compelled us to withdraw our faith from false objects, and to concentrate it upon its true object. And the object of faith is not the Bible with which historical criticism deals, but rather the spirit of the gospel, known, not by science, but by obedience; nor is it theology and dogma, since these are expressions or creations of faith, and cannot therefore be the object of faith. The object to which faith is directed is like the eternal vital force of spring — whoever criticises this? — and not like some one season's output of leaves and 404 The Finality of the Christian Religion flowers and fruits, upon which every eye is critically turned. The great eternal values and forces — it is upon these that faith lives; and these forces and values are inaccessible to criticism, but immediately cognizable on the part of the inner life of him who is of a humble and contrite heart. It is not within the sphere of the power of science to say the last word concerning the highest and deepest question of man. Science is man's servant, not his lord.' It is hoped that, without wandering farther from our main purpose in this chapter, these observations may so commend themselves to the plain Christian as to save him from distress as he may peruse the following pages. He will readily see that these remarks apply to our scientific effort to know Jesus. Did Jesus do this or that, go here or there, say this or that ? Where was he born ; when did he die; how long did he live; what was the length of his min- istry? As a matter of fact, we do not surely know. But nothing concerning him of which critical inquiry can make us uncertain is an object of religious faith. The spirit and ideals and forces and value of that life — these are what faith needs; but these are known only by being experienced, and not by literary and historical criticism. It is not meant that criticism brings us no help. Nothing is to be compared with the great gift of religious personalities which criticism has rescued from the debris of inspired words as a blessed substitute for the latter. What is the dogmatic Jesus — - critically corroded with each new world- view — as compared 1 Since writing the above, I have been pleased to come upon these words from Peofessor Hermann Schultz, now deceased : " Faith in the historical Christ does not at all involve deciding points of historical science, as, for instance, the problems with which the investigations of the life of Jesus have to deal. It is not at all a question of anything that scientific criticism could throw doubt upon, of anything merely past [italics mine], but of an active personality that has stamped itself as living on the spiritual history of man, and whose reality as it is in itself anyone can test by its effects, as immediately as he can test the reality of the nature that sur- rounds him and the relations in which he stands." I think I ought to add that this is a truth which I have been heralding for years in my own country — as the voice of one crying in the wilderness, however! Jesus 405 . — . 1 with the human Jesus; what is Paul's theology as compared with Paul's person; what verses of the Psalms as compared with psalmists; what messianic predictions as compared with the prophets; what many narratives as compared with their narrators; what opinions as compared with history! Thus, too, it is the human Jesus as expression of the personal life of God that faith craves and criticism allows. It is the personality of Jesus for which faith cares — cares, however, because in Jesus we find a nowhere else existing revelation of the divine will, and a nowhere else postulated aim of human life. The Christian is one who knows God in the man Jesus, one for whom Jesus is the personality which determines his relation to God. One more remark and we may turn to the main task of this chapter. We accept the conclusion of criticism that the data at our disposal are inadequate for the writing of a biography of either the outer or the inner life of Jesus, in the strict sense of that word. Even the foregoing recapitu- lation of difficulties would justify our doing so. In addition, Bousset says: Our sources admit of a survey of only a small part of the life of Jesus, the brief period of his public ministry We do not know anything with certainty concerning the duration of the ministry of Jesus We can no longer sketch an historical picture of the ministry of Jesus in Galilee according to its devel- opment and its temporal course, since the generally timeless expo- sition on the part of our evangelists, with their often intentional objective (sachlichen) arrangement of the words and deeds of Jesus, does not afford us the means for such a sketch It is very little that we know of Jesus if we approach the source to attempt to write a life of Jesus, or, as it is now called, a history of Jesus in its development and in its pragmatic connection. Almost everywhere we are in the midst of uncertainties and guesses. One will do well, therefore, to give up all efforts at a "life" or a "history" of Jesus.' I Jesus, pp. 1-10. 406 The Finality of the Christian Religion With this judgment even Holtzmann agrees: For a biography in the modern sense materials are wholly wanting. All that the older sources tell us is concerned with the public ministry of Jesus; and that embraces, it must be admitted, only a small portion of his lif e.^ So critical historians in general. But of no great ancient hero of religious history can a strict biography be written. In this respect Jesus is not alone. The externalities of his life, the delineations of the details of his ministry, questions of chronology — such matters to which great and scholarly works have been devoted, need not detain us. But to under- stand the personality of Jesus, to apprehend his answer to the eternal questions of the human heart, to hearken to his testimony as to what these questions are — it is this for which we so much care. Not a narration of conditions and facts, but an understanding of the man Jesus, of his disposition and thoughts, of his purposes and feelings — this is our present task. Who was he, and what did he want? And, especially, what can a man who holds the modern view of the world think of Jesus, do with him ? Time was when, at the mention of the name Jesus, many thought of church doc- trine, of Christology, dogma, the old creed, which lay like a veil upon the personality of Jesus; they thought of the veil, of the wrappings woven by speculation, of the deity; of the "conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the virgin Mary;" of resurrection, descent into hell, ascent into heaven; of return on the clouds ; of miracle upon miracle ; of the whole church belief in its massive formation with its materialism and its magic! Today we live in a world characterized by nothing so much as by the absence of any psychological soil in which these fantasies can find nourishment. If these things constitute the Christian religion, that religion is already an antiquated affair, a relic that is worthless to the 1 Life of Jesus, p. 78. Jesus 407 cultivated classes. Christological dogmas really signify for many children of our time a sarcophagus of the personality of Jesus and of his religion, and are responsible for the sad ignorance concerning Jesus and the essence of his religion. One casts aside the gold with the dross. One flees from Christology as from a ghost, without ever having seen Jesus. Therefore we must do what we can ever and ever again to return to Jesus, that we may see him himself, and not through the spectacles of a church or a dogmatics. So only can we win an independent judgment concerning his impor- tance for us.* In all too many ways, ecclesiastical Chris- tology is a curtain which hides the sun of the life of Jesus. Many a one who would find joy in the sun has seen only the curtain, and carelessly passed by, or been offended. Through the curtain to the sun, from the dogmatic picture of the Christ to the historical picture of Jesus — so much as in ua lies ! But this historical picture of Jesus, as sketched by the synoptists, is it not full of offense to a man who holds the- modern view of the world? The reader may answer at the close of this chapter. For the rest, we shall begin at the periphery of interest^ and pass gradually to the center of importance. 1. As a child of his time, Jesus held the popular view concerning the world: the kingdom of the dead below; the terrestrial world above it; then, above the latter, heaven with its inhabitants. Heaven is a locality, a firmament, where God dwells, surrounded by angels and spirits. This heavenly world is the eternal world; all that belongs to it is eternal. For him the earth, not so very extensive, is the center of the universe. So Jesus thought and spoke; and it is clear that he could not have done otherwise. Even if he knew of uni- 1 " The teaching of Jesus is one thing, the doctrine concerning Jesus another. There have been times when the church was the most dangerous foe of the gospel, and the gospel the most dangerous foe of the church." — Eoseggee. 408 The Finality of the Christian Religion versal gravitation, the infinitude of the world, of natural laws, it would have been impossible for him to have clothed his knowledge in words which his hearers could have under- stood. They would not have grasped what he said. But there is no evidence that Jesus had such knowledg-e. Like other men, he spoke the language of his time, and expressed his thoughts in the pale of the civilization in which he moved. Again, Jesus spoke, in common with his countrymen, of the demonic. He held the antique psychology according to which an alien spirit could enter and inhabit a human body. He attributed certain sins, also a great number of infirmi- ties, diseases, cerebral and nervous derangements, to the entrance of demons into the bodies of unfortunates; and he healed such by driving out the demons. Likewise, he shared with his times in the idea of angels. The Old Testament faith in angels was gradually formed from many sources, not without the assistance of an alien influence ; and it persisted in the New Testament. Jesus believed in angels, good and bad ; in their offices, activities, rank. It was a form in which his faith in the living power of God in the history of redemp- tion, in the divine providence specially watchful over the fiiKpoi, as well as in the spiritual character and comprehen- sive width of the kingdom of God, expressed itself. While he believed in miracles, it appears, at all events, that he knew that he was not sent to do miracles. What, now, shall we say to these things ? First, as to his view of the world. Is the natural and metaphysical knowl- edge of Jesus authoritative and final? There was a time when men thought so. What he said upon such subjects was believed to be among the ideas which men were required to hold as permanently true. But for the church to occupy such a standpoint today — pardonable, perhaps, prior to the rise of modern science — is but another instance Jesus 409 of the way in which we so often injure a good cause by extravagant and unwarranted claims. It is a pity that it cannot go without saying in every ecclesiastical community that it was not Jesus' information in this region that has kept him alive and powerful in our advancing humanity. Indeed, it may be said, in general, that if Jesus had brought us nothing but an extension of our knowledge, a few scholars would still think of him gratefully perhaps as a great dis- coverer, but most men would use the knowledge without thinking of him at all. How many today ask who started the habit of eating with knives and forks, wearing clothes, living in houses? As we use the knowledge, who thinks of those who began chemistry, physics, printing, writing? No, a mere extension of our knowledge on the part of Jesus would not keep him alive among us. Besides, a knowledge itself which once signified a marvelous progress comes to be something commonplace in the course of time; for "whether there be knowledge, it shall pass away," is always passing away. But, on the other hand, it is gratuitous to declare that Jesus was in error on this subject, for he never taught anything about it. Nothing could be more perverse than the effort which some iconoclasts make to reduce the impor- tance of the message of Jesus to such traditional ideas as these which he uncritically held in common with his people. Secondly, as to his belief in demons, and the theory of diseases connected therewith. It seems true that, in common with the medical authorities of his time and place, he explained certain phenomena of disease by referring them to demonic agencies; also that certain human sins were referred by him to such superhuman origin. In the Old Testament the idea of Satan and of demons grew up from different starting-points, partly under alien influence, as was the case with the idea of angels, already mentioned, and came to be an essential feature of the then picture of the 410 The Finality of the Cheistian Eeligion world. This idea passed over into the New Testament period, and, as said, was held by Jesus himself. By way of criticism, it may be said that the Satan idea can serve in a pictorial way to set forth the great opposition between the kingdom of God and the fearful kingdom of sin with its attendant evils, to establish faith in the overcoming of all the forces which are opposed to God, and to spur the Christian to earnest warfare and indefatigable watchfulness. Thus, the practical religious content of the idea of Satan and demons can be, and ought to be, a matter of experience and certainty to the Christian. But this is not true of the form of the idea of a personal Satan and his demons. If we are not able to deny, neither are we to affirm, the existence of such beings. From the standpoint of the changed view of the world as presented by modern science, scruples arise against the assumption of a real encroachment of Satan and of demons into our lives. Besides, what is the relation of these beings to the infra-mundane bearers and forces of moral evil? What is their relation to the power and provi- dence of God ? These questions have never been cleared up. The most that can be said is that the Satan idea may be per- missibly used only as a pictorial comprehensive expression for the kingdom of sin and its mysterious sway, provided that those who so use it do not on that account surrender the terrible seriousness of Jesus' conception of the power of sin. One may occupy a similar attitude today with reference to the angel idea. The content of that idea — viz., God's minute providential care, especially for the fiiKpoi — may be a fact of experience not exposed to moral doubt ; but this is not so as to the form. From the standpoint of the world- view exhibited by modern science, we cannot conscientiously assume the irruption of angelic agencies into the natural order of the world — much as it is true that science does not Jesus 411 require the denial of superhuman spiritual beings. The angel idea may still serve as a poetic visualization of the providence of God, provided that the full reality of the biblical faith in providence be not injured or abridged thereby. Now, does this critical and skeptical attitude toward angels and demons, discrediting in a sense Jesus' ideas on the subject, require us to lower our estimate of the personal- ity of Jesus? Let the remark be repeated here also that Jesus taught nothing upon the subject, did not profess to teach anything; hence it is gratuitous to raise the question: Did Jesus err in this region? It is all the more gratuitous when we remember that, sharing in the beliefs of his times upon the matter, he yet attached less moral and religious value to such ideas than did his countrymen. Besides, are modern ideas, often naively assumed by the modern man to be final because modern, a condition of pure and power- ful personality, of the right relations of personality God- ward and man-ward? "What is this but a new form of the identification of sound character with sound beliefs, thus replacing the old orthodoxy by a new orthodoxy, with all the ills entailed by such a procedure ? We cannot too earnestly keep from laying to our souls the flattering unction that we moderns, on account of our freer and broader view of the world, are therefore better men. It becomes us rather to be impressed with how unspeakably difficult it is for us to con- quer for ourselves fixed hearts and great serious wills in this new world. We do not throw our inkstand at Satan, as Luther did, though it might not be such a bad thing for us to do; yet it is on Luther's broad shoulders that modern civilization rests. Upon this general subject even Renan expressed himself as follows: The principles of our positive science are offended by the dreams which formed part of the ideal scheme of Jesus. We know 412 The Finality of the Cheistian Religion the history of the earth; cosraical revolutions of the kind expected by Jesus are only the results of geological or astronomical causes, the connection of which with spiritual things has never yet been demonstrated. But in order to be just to great masters, they must not be judged by their share of popular prejudices. Columbus discovered America, though he started from very erroneous ideas; Newton believed his foolish explanation of the Apocalypse to be as true as his theory of the world. Shall we place an ordinary man of oiu: own time above a Francis of Assisi, a St. Bernard, a Joan of Arc, or a Luther, because he is free from errors which they pro- fessed? Is it desirable that we should measure men by the correct- ness of their ideas of physics, and by the more or less exact knowledge which they possess of the real condition of the world? We must better understand the position of Jesus and the princi- ples underlying his power Let us not impose our petty and bourgeois programmes on these extraordinary movements that are so far above our ordinary conceptions The idea of Jesus was the most revolutionary idea ever existent in a human mind; it should be taken in its totality, and not with those timid suppres- sions which deprive it of precisely that which has made it of service in the regeneration of mankind.' A similar attitude toward Jesus' belief in miracles, is a duty of fair-mindedness. The whole ancient world, with the exception perhaps of the few thinkers w^ho were the bearers of Greek science and philosophy, accepted miracles. On this point, also, there is no reason to believe that Jesus' knowledge was in any way superior to that of his contem- poraries, who had not the least idea of an order of nature under the reign of law. Besides, not a few of the stories of marvelous cures effected by him are entirely credible. Living, thinking, acting in the invisible world of God, by faith aglow with that divine world, inspired by it, excep- tional grandeur must have enveloped his person ; unusual psychic power must have dwelt in him.'' At a time when 1 Life of Jesus, chap. 7. 2 While Jesus' personal impression was the main means of healing, the records do not set this forth as the only means. Exorcism, threatening, the use of the hands, the use of spittle, etc., are mentioned. The religio-historical study of these Jesus 413 the popular belief was that healing was to be effected by religious practices, when disease was in general regarded as a punishment for sin, or act of demon, and not as effect of natural causes, healing was considered a moral act. Hence it was easy to believe in Jesus as the great healer. In such a state of knowledge the presence of a man greater than average men, treating the patient with gentleness, and giving him, by tangible signs, assurance of his recovery, is frequently a decisive remedy. Who would dare to assert that in many cases, certain injuries always excepted, the touch of a gentle and beauti- ful woman is not worth all the resources of pharmacy? Cure is effected by the mere pleasure of seeing her. She gives what she can, a smile, a hope, and it is not in vain.' At all events, however, so far as the modern man is con- cerned, he can no longer believe in miracles. As we have seen, such a faith is not only contradiction to his thought, but to his changed faith in God. He has learned to believe in a God of order, in a God whose weaving of the world is so fine and sure that it requires no correction from him. But the modern man does not value the person and message of Jesus any the lower because Jesus shared the thought of his time on this subject, especially when it is remembered that, in an age when faith in miracle was as common as belief in natural law now is, and confronted no scientific objections, Jesus did not ascribe the traditional value to miracle. Did he not exclaim, in tones of complaint and accusation: "Unless ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe" ? Did he not urge that the moral messages of practices is of much importance. For example, the use of spittle was not on account of its chemical properties, but it belonged to the general art of exorcism. How far did Jesus share in the current method of exorcism, and what was distinc- tively his own? The difference is partly in the character of the praying of Jesus on such occasions; exorcists often used the name of God, but as a formula of adjura- tion, Jesus in real petition. His end was service of others, not self-glorification. But the main thing was the personal impression of Jesus; and if we ask the further question. On what did that rest? we are at the limits of our historical knowledge. 1 Kenan again. See, upon this point, Haenack, What is Christianity? pp. 58, 59. 414 The Finality of the Christian Religion Moses and the prophets were of far more worth than the rising of one from the dead (and he did not except himself in this remark)? Finally, the preceding chapter warrants the conclusion that Jesus himself did not assign that critical importance to his mirac- ulous deeds which even the evangelists, Mark and the others, all attributed to them; in all essential points he must have thought of them quite otherwise than his evangelists.* Thus, since Jesus' thought here was a part of his heri- tage, and as such is a valuable witness to his full and real humanity; since it is no positive element in his instruction, like the forgiveness of sins ; since the influence of his strong but sympathetic personality must have had marvelous heal- ing power over the souls of those who trusted him in that age of the theory and belief in question ; and since, for all that, he never saw in the miracle the central and decisive thing for faith, we do not judge with historic righteousness if we fail to honor him as the same unitary and rich person- ality, after we have been forced to hold a view of the world different from his. Much as it is true that in these points there is a deep, unbridgeable gulf between Jesus and the modern man, that in these points reconciliation is impos- sible, still nothing would be more foolish than to locate the essence of Christianity and the importance of the personality of its Founder in those ideas which Jesus shared with the children of his time, in which he, like everyone else was dependent upon the intellectual niveau of his people, of the then view of the world in general. It is only after that view of the world becomes scientifically untenable that it is a sin against the holy spirit of truth to seek by artificial and arbitrary means to conserve it. 2. Passing to what is of more importance, biblical scholarship seems to have settled down to the conclusion 1 IIaenack. Jesus 415 that Jesus, in common with the entire primitive Christian- ity, expected the immediate advent of the kingdom of God. His idea of the kingdom of God was not that of modern philosophy — e. g., the Kantian idea; nor of modern theology, especially of the Ritschlian type, which is also Kantian. According to the latter, the kingdom of God is the gradually growing fulfilment of the will of God, a slow permeation of all human relationships with the leaven of the gospel. But, according to Jesus, the kingdom of God comes from heaven, suddenly, as a finished entity — comes through God's power alone, and without man doing any- thing toward its coming. The Messiah will come, the dead be raised, judgment take place, rewards and punishments be bestowed, the world end, and this kingdom be set up. Man's part is to prepare for this crisis by repenting of his sins. As fairly representative of this interpretation on the part of special investigators, the following from Bousset' may sufiice: Jesus did not say to the people: *' The moment has arrived for you to do something that the king- dom may come, for you to compel its coming;" that was the cap- tivating messages of the fanatical patriots, who sought to effect insurrections in Galilee at that time. But to Jesus it was abso- lutely certain that the everyday doings and the earthly labor of man could not bring the coming of the kingdom one finger's breadth nearer. For him the coming of the kindom was some- thing entirely miraculous and future. The living almighty God, and he alone, will set up his miraculous kingdom. Thus, the kingdom of God, as Jesus preached it, was not an already present and infra-mundane reality, but was entirely in the sphere of the future, and entirely in the sphere of the miraculous, the apocalyptic, the cataclysmic. It is just God's kingdom; the Almighty God himself brings it when heaven and earth pass away, when the dead are awakened, when he conquers and destroys the devil and his angels. 1 Op. cit., p. 37. 416 The Finality op the Christian Religion How strange all this sounds to the man of today, with his categories of immanence and development and continuity and unity! Obliterate it from our heritage, and how impos- sible it would be for the modern consciousness to originate it as a system and form of that consciousness! But our query just now is as to the effect it should all have upon our appre- ciation of Jesus. The history of the messianic idea, complex, difficult, sometimes bewildering in its details and ramifica- tions, need detain us but for a moment. The idea has passed through manifold forms and stages, from the human and earthly to the superhuman and heavenly. As the Jew, on account of adverse fortunes, bitter and blasting, ceased to expect a kingdom from man and man's world through human instrumentalities, but began to dream apocalyptic dreams, born out of misery and defenselessness, of a kingdom of God from heaven, a physical-hyperphysical magnitude, that should be miraculously let down upon earth, so, similarly, his inflamed imagination pictured a King in whom super- human attributes were integrated, even if many of the human were not alienated. This King, or Messiah, was a heavenly man, a human-superhuman entity: Son of David, Son of God, Son of man, Son of the Most High. We commit an unpardonable anachronism when we make these words sig- nify liumanity and the ideal man of our modern thought. It was a veritable Messiah whose advent Jesus expected in the near future — leaving out of account for the present the question whether he thought that he himself was that Mes- siah; and it is with this fact that we now have to reckon. For, as many suppose that they must, from loyalty to Jesus, believe in angels and demons and miracles, so they also sup- pose that they must share his Messianism, that they must confess all that Jesus thought on the subject as their faith. But it is a fact that there is no way by which we can liuow that there was this objective reality, a being here designated Jesus 417 Messiah. With scientific sobriety we abstain from denying the existence of such a being; we cannot refute the affirma- tion that he exists, just as we cannot refute the affirmation that Apollo exists; but the point is that the soul, with its passionate demand for certainty in religious matters, cannot assure itself that the Messiah did or does exist. It is not enough that we cannot deny, we must be able to affirm. Not being Jews of that day, with Jewish antecedents and environ- ment, we would not construct a messianic concept in our modern world, were that concept to be obliterated from our minds. That is, the concept is antiquated ; but nothing that grows old and passes away amid the mutations of the tem- poral belongs to the essence of the gospel. Our valuation of Jesus, therefore, must make allowance for our conscientious duty to decline to share his messianic opinions. Much that was in his world of thought has sunk forever in the stream of time. The picture which Jesus inherited of the world and its processes is gone forever. We cannot entice it from the Dead Sea of the past; and we would not if we could. We may not forget the new products of thought and toil in the long human story of these nineteen hundred years. And if faith be indissolubly connected with that old picture of the world, I do not see how we could ever attain to the faith to which "all things are possible." But we have at length learned that to have faith does not mean to hold a set of opinions; does not even mean to think what Jesus thought. We are not required to confess Jesus' confession in order to be counted within the pale of Christianity. If it be true that every man is a unique miracle in the world, that the like of him was never born before and never will be again, then it is also true that every faith is unique in the world ; then it is true for psychological reasons that one cannot confess what another man has believed, were this other man even Jesus himself. The other man's faith would be no warranty for 418 The Finality or the Christian Keligion my faith ; the truth and sincerity of his confession would not prove the truth and sincerity of mine. And Jesus requires no blind faith. What the gospel that saves requires is that I confess, not Jesus' confession, but my own — with Jesus- like pains, courage, sincerity, and in the use of all the means at my disposal. Certainly, as regards the point at issue, we know the world did not come to an end, that the kingdom did not come, that the existence of a pre-existent Messiah is not a necessity of thought or of faith; and therefore Jesus would himself be the last one to exact of us an adhesion to opinions which are impossible to us precisely because we have his spirit. But shall we think less highly of him because he held these opinions? In answer to this question, it is suffi- cient to point out that Jesus could have had a heart as holy as God's heart, a disposition and purpose of love and service toward man equal to God's himself, for any effect that his opinions on the subjects in question might have had. What difference does it make, then, as to what he thought about such matters? Still, these remarks must be urged with a certain reserva- tion. It is not correct to say without further ado that Jesus absolutely spiritualized and transcendentalized (verjenseitigt) the future hopes of his people. When he told the Sadducees that they neither marry nor are given in marriage in that blessed future, this is a spiritualiza- tion; but in all probability Jesus said nothing entirely new in the remark; he uttered a conviction of the really pious people of his time. And, on the other hand, when Jesus preached of the futtne, he did not think of a colorless, purely heavenly beyond; it was a future on this earth, in this land — at all events, on a transfigured earth — of which he thought. We must not be led astray by the expression "kingdom of heaven," which Matthew so often puts into the mouth of Jesus. Even if Jesus used the expression, we know that it signifies nothing but the kingdom of God. Jesus did not shrink from painting the joys of the blessed future in full sensible colors. He says that the himgry shall be filled. He speaks of Jesus 419 eating and drinking, and of sitting down with the patriarchs, in the kingdom of God; he is pleased to depict the joys of that future time as a feast, a wedding festival; he foretells a time when he shall drink of the fruit of the vine with his own. It shows a defective understanding of the popular naivete and childlikeness of the preaching of Jesus, when we try to see in all this only parable and figurative expression. However grievous it may be to us, we have to accustom ourselves to see how fully Jesus was a child of his time, a true son of his people.' But by so much as this last statement is true, by so much again must we acquit Jesus of including error in his peculiar and positive message. His conception of the messianic king- dom and of the mode of its coming was in part temporal and transitory; but his practical conviction of the kind of man that shall be a member of it, of the condition of membership therein, is of permanent and essential significance. But did Jesus think that, not the latter, but the former, was the more important matter? Did he consider that as central which the logic of history has shown to be peripheral ? So I under- stand Loisy to contend. If this be true, it is not without precedent among the world's epoch-makers. But I am not able to see that the facts warrant Loisy's conclusion that Jesus did not know the kernel of his own gospel, that his vital interest was in the heritage from his people rather than in the new moral and religious disposition to which he would lead his human brothers. But more of this later. However, invalidating his traditional messianic concept as of abiding theoretical value, we must not fail to do justice to its practical worth for Jesus and the new religious com- munity. By a little fertilizing with something which does not organically belong to the soil, that soil may grow and ripen a fruit which it could not otherwise do. Let us state the case again. Jesus and his followers hoped for a super- natural kingdom of the Messiah, which should terminate iBoussET, op. cit., pp. 40, 41. 420 The Finality of the Chkistian Religion the history of the world. They looked for a city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Pilgrims and strangers on the earth, they desired a better country, that is, a heavenly. Glorious future ! Thus a great expectation and yearning filled their souls. Patience and fortitude, brotherly love and hopefulness, self-denial and unworldli- ness grew up under the warm sunshine of their apocalyptic and eschatological dreams. Once originated, these eternal values could persist after the dreams in connection with which alone they could have found foothold in our poor human soil had faded away. The virtues and tasks empha- sized by the ethics of Jesus were essentially such, and were such from historical necessity, as were conditioned by ex- pectancy and enthusiasm. And the great archetypal and symbolical importance of this ethic reposes on these consid- erations. All human life which has any worth of its own is led on in expectation, and can derive instruction from the heroic day of Jesus. Nothing great is ever accomplished without enthusiasm. Suppose, then, the object to which Jesus directed hope was illusory; still the human qualities of the subject — namely, expectancy, enthusiasm, patience, kindness, unworldliness — evoked and fertilized by that great messianic thought, qualities which could not have been grown in that old soil without that thought, are of eternal moment. Once grown, they have unwithering, self-propa- gating vitality, and the thought which served as coefficient of their generation may pass away. To surrender the object, the New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven, but to keep these high spiritual qualities of the subject, and direct them to the commonplace and homely tasks of life, to vocation, family, fatherland, and humanity; to devote our- selves to the immanent and present with the all-absorbing devotion that the Great Dreamer did to the transcendent and eschatological — to do this is to be inwardly like him Jesus 421 by being outwardly and theoretically unlike him. And we judge Jesus with righteous judgment, not when we identify him with the miraculous supernaturalism of his eschatology, but when we adore him as the Author of this new disposi- tion with these high human qualities, and of the vast infinite hopes which these qualities require us to cherish for the future of the human race. We are saved by hope. Life is no funeral procession, but a victorious march, precisely because of the lively expectations, illusory^ or not, which precipitate all the energies of the human soul into activity. But we may go still farther. The messianic idea occupied a similar place in the world-view of Jesus that teleology holds in that of many a modern thinker. This world is not an endless play of blind caprice, but has a goal — an end and goal that is in God's hands, and in God's plan. "The far- otf divine event toward which the whole creation moves" is a popular phrase among modern men. It is not Jesus' thought of its imminence, nor ours of its remoteness, that is the constitutive essence in either case ; but it is rather the idea of a meaning in things, and that that meaning is good. We may not share Jesus' expectation that a great unknown world shall emigrate into this world; but our end is near, and our entrance into the mystery of the beyond, where as Jesus' disciples we may hope to be nearer to God. Beneath the fantastic and dramatic preaching of Jesus on the king- dom is embedded the idea of this hope of the nearness of God. The kingdom of God coming to us as in the thought of Jesus, our going hence to the kingdom of God, are alike forms of the eternal truth of the presence and blessing of God as the soul's abiding portion. But if the kernel of the coming of the kingdom is the nearness of God, we may still pray, in the spirit of Jesus, although not in the literal immediate sense of his word: "Thy kingdom come !" 1 See F. W. Robertson's great sermon, " The Illusoriness of Life." 422 The Finality or the Christian Religion 3. Did Jesus hold that he was himself the Messiah for whom his people hoped ? No point in the life of Jesus has been the subject of more controversy in recent years than this. "Did Jesus hold that he was more than a man," asks Weinel, "and how high up in the scale of being did he rank himself?" "I believe," Weinel continues, "it is our scien- tific duty to confess that we can no longer answer this ques- tion with certainty."' And Bousset, who thinks that Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, admits that, when we approach the mystery of the self -consciousness of Jesus, we no longer tread upon firm ground. Our uncertainty is due to two causes. One is our natural expectation that a man like Jesus would have observed modest reticence concerning the mys- tery of his person, and concerning his supreme faith in him- self as well. Would not the messianic title be an offense to the simple and humble spirit of him who would not be called '•good," and who taught his disciples to call no man "rabbi" even ? But the main cause is the difficulty of distinguishing between what was the faith and conviction of the primitive community, and what was Jesus' own opinion. We must ever bear in mind that from the first the portrait of Jesus was sketched from the standpoint of faith, and not from that of critical historical fidelity. At the time of the literary activity upon which we are dependent for our information, the historical man Jesus was of little moment as compared with the heavenly being of a Paul or a John. In the earliest beginnings of Christianity the messianic glory of Jesus was sought in the future, not in the present. But gradually the human, historical life of Jesus was supplied with deeper and deeper messianic color, until his earthly life was nothing from beginning to end but a constant irradiation of divine glory. The difficulty is to distinguish in the picture that which is original and that which is born of the faith and enthusiasm of the community. 1 Jesus im neunzehnten Jahrhundcrt, p. 282. Jesus 423 As an additional consideration, there is the difficulty inci- dent to the manifold modifications which the messianic idea underwent in the course of its history, and to the question whether there was a modification to which Jesus could turn as an appropriate self-designation. Or, was the designation inappropriate, misleading, and dangerous, while he was nevertheless under both psychological and historical neces- sity to assume it? A thorough examination of the Jewish messianic ideal, its genesis, development, and function, is a task by itself. For our purpose it suffices to say that the idea of Messiah is, in all its forms, a creation of the Jewish national mind, and embodies the popular yearning after a glorious renewal of the kingdom. Israel a world-power, as under King David — this was the goal of their desires. The basis of this hope in a golden future was that a hero of God would overthrow the ruling powers in a decisive conflict. This hero was Israel's future king; that is, the Messiah. A new Jerusalem would arise. The Jews of the diaspora would return. Then would come the final drama: death, resurrection, judgment. How this picture, from being earthly and historical, came to be^ supernatural and apocalyptic, was briefly indicated in a. former paragraph. As the most interesting factor, it remains; to remark that the Messiah could appear only in case the people were pure. Here is the movement with which the Baptist could associate himself. It is this moral precipitate alone which could make the idea acceptable to Jesus. Or„ must he accept it, even if its moral content was not adequate' to keep it from being, on account of other considerations, repulsive to him? But did Jesus assume the title ? It is a question of fact. It is Jesus who is the Messiah. This is the fixed point, the basic article of faith of primitive Christianity. But did this faith of the primitive community have its roots in the faith 424 The Finality of the Cheistian Religion of Jesus himself? It is beyond question that, according to the view and exposition of our evangelists, Jesus was the Messiah from the very beginning of his ministry, and was accredited as such by his own words and deeds, and by both superhuman and human witness. The infancy stories, the temptation stories, the account of the beginning of his min- istry as fulfilment of the law and of promise — these are all messianic. So is the narrative of his baptism, where Jesus was made Son of God by reception of the Spirit from heaven. Yet all these messianic designations of Jesus have been critically contested, and it would seem, on good grounds. Toward the end of his life, in the region of Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asked his disciples who the people thought he was; and they said: "John the Baptist, or Elijah, or one of the prophets." But why is it that the people did not know that Jesus was the Messiah, in spite of so many miracles which he had already done, in spite of his messianic self -witness, and in spite of the voice of demons, to which a higher knowledge was universally ascribed? On this occasion, according to the record, the disciples expressed their faith in the messianity of Jesus for the first time. This seems incredible, from all that had gone before. If all the ante- cedent messianic words and deeds are historical, then the scene on the way to Csesarea Philippi could not be possible; if the latter is historical, then the exposition of the evan- gelists who introduce Jesus as Messiah from the beginning cannot rest on historical memorabilia, but only on dogmatico- apologetic presuppositions and postulates. We cannot escape this alternative. Moreover, why did Jesus forbid his dis- ciples to speak of his messianity ? If he himself put forward messianic claims, would he not wish that this faith of his disciples should be made known to all the people and be shared by as many as posssible? It is difficult to form an idea of a Jewish Messiah who would be such only in secret. Jesus i25 It is for this reason that critics like Martineau, Wellhausen, Lagarde, Havet, and Wrede think that Jesus never desired to be held as the Messiah. To be sure, the reply is made that Jesus forbade the announcement of his messianity from pedagogic wisdom and caution, because he feared the people might hold him to be a political Messiah, while he was a spiritual Messiah. But is this reply entirely satisfactory? Would not the simple way to avoid this misunderstanding on the part of the people have been for Jesus to say plainly that he was the Messiah, not, however, in the old Jewish sense, but in this or that new sense? Is it not most sur- prising that Jesus, who made free to reinterpret the law, never gave any such new interpretation to the traditional messianic concept? And yet the prayer of Zebedee's sons for places of honor, and other incidents, show that even the disciples, to say nothing of the people, needed instruction on the subject. Surely, pedagogic wisdom and caution would have prompted Jesus to an unequivocal word which would have saved his disciples and friends from false expectations. Thus, while the position that Jesus claimed to be the Messiah is self-evident to our evangelists, it is not secure on that account. Some students urge, indeed, that the whole process of the trial of Jesus is best understood on the supposition that he was attacked as false Messiah, and put to death on account of his claim to be "king of the Jews." But the historicity of his messianic confession before the sanhedrists is not any too well authenticated, since no disciple was an eyewitness, and since the apocalyp- tic prediction, Mark 14:02, doubtless issued from the con- sciousness of the primitive community. And as for his death, the critique which his life and words courageously and constantly executed upon the morals and religion of the leaders of the people would account for that, without the supposition of messianic pretensions on his part. It would 426 The Finality of the Christian Keligion seem to be a tragic law of the world-order itself that the bearer of the higher ideal should fall a victim to the vulgar reality round about him ; and Jesus of all men could not be an exception to the workings of this law. No one has pene- trated more profoundly into the historical inevitability of the death of Jesus than has Professor Julius Kaftan : Jesus was confronted by the party of the Pharisees who ruled the peoijle of Israel. It was the Pharisees who nailed Jesus to the cross. The Sadducees were only instruments in their hands. The respectable people of the world stood too far from him for them to come into any conflict with him. Again, the publicans and sinners received him with joy. His real foes in Israel were the Pharisees, the devout, or a part of the devout, who waited for the salvation of Israel. Thus it ever was. The prophets of God were persecuted and killed in the name of God. In the name of God, also, was the only begotten Sou of the Father nailed to the cross. For it was precisely in this relation to the Pharisees that the condition was fulfilled under which a mortal conflict could arise : the principiant opposition within the same basic view. Jesus preached the coming of the kingdom. The Pharisees expected its coming. Jesus, with his disciples, actively strove after righteousness. The Pharisees, on their part, were concerned to plant and nurture righteousness, as they understood it, among the people. They, Jesus and the Pharisees, met on the basis of the same fundamental view. But the principiant opposition was inconceivably great. Jesus preached and pracficed the love of God, which sought to create a new man unto eternal life, in con- nection with the death of the old man. The Pharisees counted on a fulfilment of the divine promises, corresponding to the natural heart; on the satisfaction, not of base sensual lusts indeed, but of ambition, of power, of national pride; in short, of the most char- acterful impulses of the morally cultivated natural man. There, a supramundane kingdom which is developed primarily as a king- dom of moral righteousness in the world ; here, a supernatmal world-kingdom in this world. There, a righteousness of disposi- tion, which evinces and expresses itself in self-denial and love; here, a righteousness in the observance of religious precepts, with which one can pose before men. Of necessity did the conflict arise, Jesus 427 since both parties claimed the people for themselves, and claimed also that they had God's truth. And a reconciliation, a compromise, was impossible. Jesus could not be derelict to his calling which the Father had given him, the fulfilment of which was his meat and his drink on earth. And as little could the Pharisees change. Publicans and sinners are converted when God's tnith touches their heart ; but they do not change whose worldly minds have been indissolubly united with faith in God ; they do not change who are convinced of carry- ing on God's cause by their worldly acts and inclinations. For these conversion is too late. Therefore the conflict was unavoid- able. Here, if anywhere, we may speak of an historical necessity. But in the world it is the children of the world who reap the first victory. They employ means against which the Holy One of God is powerless, just because he is the Holy One of God. Thus the conflict ended in blood inevitably.^ These sober and convincing words point to a sufficient cause for the crucifixion of Jesus, apart from the hypothesis of his messianic self-designation, though the latter may, for all that, be maintained on other grounds. It is well to put the matter in this form, since critics like Bousset declare that criticism overshoots the mark when it seeks to shake such firm points of the tradition as Pilate's inscription on the cross, "King of the Jews," the messianic confession of Jesus before the Sanhedrim, of which mention has just been made ; and the triumphal entry as Messiah into Jerusalem. And Deissmann does not hesitate to assert that the present controversies over our subject scarcely signify a progress in knowledge, and that they are possible only because violence is done to the sources. What, then, may be said in support of the opposite posi- tion, that Jesus did claim to be the Messiah? While from the foregoing: it would seem that no decision can be surely reached on the basis of an appeal to single passages of the tradition, yet there is one narrative which lends 1 Dogmatik, 4th ed., pp. 570-72. 428 The Finality of the Christian Keligion powerful support to the contention that Messiah is a desig- nation used by Jesus of himself. It is the account of the scene at Csesarea Philippi, to which we wish to revert again. Pfleiderer remarks that precisely the circumstance of the striking contradiction of the passage to the evangelist's pre- suppositions is the strongest proof of the historicity of the Petrine confession at Ceesarea Philippi, and that the assign- ment of a definite locality also tells in the same direction. According to the narrative, Jesus, toward the end of his Galilean ministry, propounded the question to his disciples as to who he was, and Peter answered that he was the Christ. At the same time, Jesus strictly commanded them to keep silent touching the mystery. It seems highly probable that originally the meaning of this narrative was that Jesus here spoke with his disciples for the first time concerning the mystery of his person, and that the disciples in turn first made the confession of his messianity. And the fact that it is one of the few synoptic narratives which are locally, and even in a sense temporally, fixed, constitutes no little right to our honoring this tradition as historical, notwithstanding Wrede's brilliant opposition thereto.' Bousset suggests that the preservation o'f the indifferent outer circumstances of place and time shows how worthful the narrative was to the community from the very beginning. Of more value is the point, which he makes in common with Pfleiderer, that the narrative relates something that could not have been invented by the later community — something absolutely paradoxical to them. For the faith of that community the messianity of Jesus was the most certain, the most self- evident, the most valuable thing in connection with him. And yet it was only toward the end of his life that Jesus spoke of it! Where the community came to form the tradi- tion from its own point of view, as a matter of course it had ' See his Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien. But see also J. Weiss' refu- tation, Das alteste Evangelium, Jesus 429 Jesus to testify from the very beginning to his messianity. According to the fourth gospel, John the Baptist and the first disciples knew from the very beginning that Jesus was the Messiah. Occasional passages in the first three gospels are to the same effect. According to Mark/ messianic desig- nations of Jesus occurred at the beginning of his career, in contradiction to the scene at Csesarea Philippi. To all this we have already referred. The point now is that this char- acter of the scene at Csesarea Philippi, so paradoxical to the faith of the community, guarantees its historicity. It is true that, according to the narrative, Jesus did not say in so many words, "I am the Messiah;" but, if we would save ourselves from quibbling, certainly from hypercriticism, we must admit that what he said amounted to this. If the dis- ciples came to him with the question that was in the air at that time, "Art thou the Messiah ? " and if he denied that he was, it would seem that the denial should have been made explicitly and unconditionally; in which case the primitive community would never have been able to attribute the messianic name to him as they did. This brings us to the heart of the matter. As we have already stated, it is an indisputable fact that the early Chris- tian community believed Jesus to be the Messiah. How did this belief originate? Supernaturalists are of the opinion that it was due to the miraculous appearances on Easter Day. Those visions were objective, they tell us. But if psychology is to be trusted, an objective vision, instead of being a scientific concept, is rather a contradiction in terms. Here, as usual, supernaturalists fail to distinguish between what is cause and what is effect in religion. They refer those experiences of the disciples to a purely magical order. And they posit something absolutely new in the souls of the disciples without any psychological mediation. Historical 12:10; 2:19f.; 2:28. 430 The Finality of the Christian Keligion science must repudiate the entire supernaturalist position on this subject. While we do not surely know how the dis- ciples, their hopes blasted by the crucifixion, came to attach their familiar messianic predicates to Jesus, an hypothesis of great reasonableness is that they did so on account of the revival or persistence of the effect which Jesus' own messianic confession during his lifetime made upon them. "Blessed art thou, Simon, son of Jonas, for flesh and blood have not revealed it to thee (that I am the Messiah), but my Father in heaven!" In these words Jesus told his disciples, in the most unmistakable terms, that he was the Messiah. "The excitement that must have been created among: the disciples by this confirmation of Simon's daring words can scarcely be described.'" On the basis of this confession of Jesus, which they could not long forget, it was easily pos- sible, psychologically, for the disciples to return, after a temporary collapse of their hopes, to a conviction formerly cherished on the basis of his own solemn declaration. Rea- soning backward from the belief of the first community to the grounds and source of that belief, it appears that the balance of probability is on the side of the position that Jesus considered himself to be the Messiah in some form, and that he had communicated his conviction to his dis- ciples.^ "The balance of probability" — but no such cer- tainty as one could be expected to hang his destiny upon. Weinel's conception of our scientific duty must be respected. But assuming — for the sake of the argument, if for no other reason — this conclusion to be most in accord with the facts, we may now approach the question of main impor- tance to us: What shall be the modern man's appreciation of Jesus in the face of this claim to be the Messiah ? 1 OSCAK HOLTZMANN, op. cit., p. 325. 2So also Weenle: "The belief of the disciples in their Messiah must be older than Jesus' death, for it could not entirely arise after that death, which was such a grievous disappointment to so many expectations. If it is older than Jesus' death, it is incredible that Jesus did not share it, and yet suffered it to be held." Op. cit., p. 44. Jesus 431 a) As already said, we have no way of ascertaining whether there was a personal being corresponding to the messianic idea. It is true that the Messiah of the Jews came to be evaluated ever higher, until he came to be the Messiah of humanity for Paul, and the Logos of the entire cosmos for John. It is further true that the confession, Jesus is the Messiah, became the religious creed of the peoples of the Roman world-empire, and has remained the religious creed of all the races sharing directly or indirectly in the intellectual heritage of that empire, in the civilization of the Graeco-Roman world. A heavenly being pre-existing in divine glory dwelt on this earth for a brief period, died, rose again, and returned to his former, though more glori- ous, mode of existence in heaven, whence he shall come again to judge the living and the dead — this idea — or, rather, this drama — has probably been the most potent fac- tor in the history of religion. Certainly, the incarnation, death, and resurrection of this being from heaven were made the fundament of religion in occidental civilization. It is the kernel of Paulinism, and puts Paul on the side of ecclesi- astical orthodoxy. Nevertheless, in obedience to the require- ments of the changed view of the world and of life, which we discussed at length in a previous chapter, the time has arrived when both the religious and the scientific interest compel us to urge that the messianism of Jesus is not a necessary article of faith. If one will designate the character of this view, one may not avoid the expression " myth." We do not use it to offend anyone. It has nothing offensive to us. A doctrine which has given to mil- lions of hearts the best that they have; a doctrine without which a Luther, a Paul Gerhard, and a John Sebastian Bach could not have been; a doctrine which still today comforts thousands and thousands of good and earnest contemporaries, and fills them with peace; which has lent the most impressive expression to the ethical thoughts of divine love and grace as of human sinfulness — such a 432 The Finality of the Christian Religion doctrine we treat with reverence. But the thought that a divine being left heaven, entered into a human shell, and then died, but to ascend to heaven again, is not changed thereby in its nature. Whoever cannot put his faith in it, for him it is in essence neces- sarily a mythological idea.' This is well said. To be sure, Arthur Bonas may be right in his conviction that religion cannot get on without myth, and that what we need is a new myth in connection with our new view of the world, to take the place of the former myth which was adapted only to the old world-view in harmony with which it was developed. And such men as Kalthoff are to be reckoned with, as they seek to show that the reli- gious dynamic for all the past Christian centuries has- resided, not in the message and merit of the historical man Jesus, but in the mythological being from heaven of the Pauline reflection. Hitherto Christianity has been messi- anity. But it does not follow that this must be so for the future. Paul must decrease and Jesus increase — indeed, it would seem that the age of Jesus has come. Whatever may be true with reference to these matters, one thing is certain ; it is of absolute importance to the best life of the human spirit in all the future that the values which constitute the kernel of the messianic mythology be embodied in the new view of the world as the very essence of it also. To think through this point and set it forth should be the burden of modern theology. The sin of ecclesiastical orthodoxy today is its determination to treat the idea of divine grace and love as indissolubly united with the messianic idea, and to demand that the modern man shall consequently accept both or reject both. But if the new world-view is to continue in its essen- tial features, the well-being of the bearers of culture is dependent upon the surrender of the idea that divine grace and love — nay, the divine judgment as well — are a foreign 1 Weede, Paulus, pp. 103, 104. Jesus 483 importation from "heaven" through messianic mediation into our world, and upon the acceptance of the idea that these divine vahies are original and organic in the natural and historical order — nay, that they are indigenous to the soil and substance of reality itself. That this is true is the contention of this book, and the grounds of its defense of the finality of the Christian religion. With such a conception we can endure the loss of the old myth, dear and hallowed as it is to us by the most precious memories and hopes with which our lives have been blessed, inasmuch as once yet again the glory of the latter covenant excels the glory of the former. But to return. If we are not able to affirm that there was a pre-existent personal being who dwelt in heaven but came down to earth, neither are we able to assume that Jesus had access to better knowledge upon the subject than man has. Such an assumption would jeopardize the integ- rity of his human nature. If this is to imply that Jesus was in error, it is difficult to see how we can escape the implica- tion. But since he disclaimed omniscience, he thereby tacitly admitted the possibility of erring in opinion. On the hypothesis we are at present employing, it is a fact that he was mistaken as to the point of time of the advent of the Messiah. The fantastic idea that a dead person should return upon the clouds of heaven chills the modern intellect quite as much as belief in a pre-existent personal Messiah. If Jesus so shared in the antique psychology and cosmology as to believe the former, it seems probable that he could quite as easily believe the latter. Nevertheless, it is doubtful whether "error" is the right word to use with reference to those ideas, transitory and imperfect though they be, in which one participates by virtue of his being a child of his time. We cannot at once demand that Jesus be a real and full man, and depreciate him for sharing in the limitations 434 The Finality of the Chkistian Keligion of the human. Besides, it would be difficult to mention an idea, however indispensably it may have once functioned, that does not become antiquated in the course of time; and yet we would hesitate to class all that is antiquated as erroneous. Moreover, the unreality of the pre-existent mes- sianic individual, once granted, was of no serious importance. Ontologically, Santa Claus is unreal, but morally, so to speak, he is the most real being in the world, since he is the embodiment and personification of the most real and most worthy sentiments and services of the human heart. Simi- larly, the messianic idea stood for realities which supplied the dynamic for a people's whole career. b) But that idea was not entirely worthy; could Jesus therefore worthily accept it? We know very little when we know that Jesus claimed to be the Messiah of his people, unless we also know which form of the messianic idea he acknowledged, how it appeared in his consciousness, what motive he had for assuming it, and what end it served. We have said that the idea had a long development and under- went a thorough metamorphosis. New forms arose; old ones persisted; old and new modified each other. There was the national Messiah — fantastic in form, political, worldly, sarkic in content, and fanaticizing in effect. And there was the apocalyptic theological Messiah, in some re- spects moral and spiritual — so much so that even John the Baptist was supposed by some to be the Messiah. These were the two extremes of the idea; and between them there were all sorts of combinations and modifications, so that Harnack desperately declares that in Christ's time there was a siu'ging chaos of disparate feeling, in regard to this one matter. At uo other time, perhaps, in the his- tory of religion, and in no other people, were the most extreme antitheses so closely associated under the binding influence of religion.' 1 Op. cit, pp. 135, 136. Jesus 435 And Jesus was the Messiah! Which Messiah? At the one extreme, a Davidic king, the ideal of a theocratic king; at the other, a heavenly, spiritual being, existing with God before the world was, but coming at the end of the ages on the clouds of heaven and surrounded by angels — such were the poles of the messianic idea. How much of this was an integral part of the self -consciousness of Jesus? It is psy- chologically inevitable that the messianic idea should modify Jesus' consciousness, as well as that it should modify the idea. Thus, psychology lends countenance to the painful judgment of Wernle: At the same time, it is obvious that that which is inadequate in the idea of the Messiah here wins its first and last victory over Jesus. In his prophecy of the second coming Jesus yields its due to the faith of the age. Here for a moment the wild fancies of later Judaism, the magic world of the ancient popular belief, intrude in the midst of the grand simplicity of Jesus' consciousness of his call.^ But this judgment should not give us much pain, after all, since it amounts to saying, let it be repeated, that Jesus could not be a child of man at all without being a child of Tiis time. Such participation in the transitory, the temporal, the illusory, does not disqualify him to be the home of the permanent, the eternal, the real. But which Messiah was Jesus? Conditioned by Wernle's remark, we answer: None that his people knew of; none that they wanted; none that they could understand. Or, rather, if he did take their messianic idea, as Wernle further says, he destroyed it in taking it. In a word — illustrative of the influence of Jesus upon all that he touched — he effected the humanization of the Messianic ideal, in antithesis to its theocratization. Herein is the greatness of Jesus. In particular, no trace can be found of a stiff ei-ing Messiah in lOp. cit., pp. 51, 52. 436 The Finality of the Christian Keligion all Judaism, prior to Jesus. It is a sufferer whom God anointed and sent to be a savior — this is Jesus' personal, bold faith. And he did not arrive at this conviction through instruction or speculation, but through suffering, in the broad sense of that word. We but drop down to the Judaic level when we so often say that he knew that he was the Messiah in spite of his suffering. Who was Jesus? The son of a carpenter — good enough father for a savior. Jesus was a simple country child, without any higher education or knowledge. In his native town no one paid any particular attention to him. Up to his thirtieth year he was an artisan. He was not a star that dwelt apart, but was kindly with his kind. "Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing, onward through life he goes, Each morning sees some task begun, each evening sees its close. Something attempted, something done has earned a night's repose." During his last years he was a homeless, wandering prophet and servant of the common people. Poor in worldly pos- sessions, at length an outcast from his own people, repudiated by his countrymen as an enemy to their religious laws and customs, he was at last nailed to the cross, of which he had had forebodings. Never did he reach out after sovereignty over the kingdoms of the world ; never did he claim for him- self God's miraculous power; never did he flee from the pri- vations of life to avoid suffering — all this is mirrored in his temptations. He grew up as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised, and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and as one from whom men hide their face he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for oin: transgressions, he was Jesus 437 bruised for our iniquities : the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.' This is what the prophet thought it meant to be sent and anointed of God. That Jesus occupied the same high pro- phetic level is evident from his reproduction of the same conviction : Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the gen- tiles lord it over them; and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it is not so among you: but whosoever would become great among you, shall be your minister: and whosoever would be first among you, shall be servant of all. For verily the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give his life as a ransom for many.^ This brief answer to the question raised above is not meant to be adequate, but to indicate that, as a man of sor- rows, as a suffering servant of his brethren, gaining bitter experience in his dealings with his people, did Jesus arrive at his new idea of a suffering Messiah, at the thought of the necessity of suffering, and even of death. Here, as elsewhere, ideas grow out of the life. That Jesus should have arrived at the conception of such a human Messiah, as against the heavenly Messiah of his people's hopes, belongs to his chief glory, and has its roots in his own humanity.^ Usa. 53:2-6. 2 Mark 10:42-45. The closing figure of speech has no ecclesiastical -dogmatic signification. 3 How did Jesus come to know that he was the Messiah'? Our task does not carry us into this problem. But a suggestive quotation or two from works upon the subject may be given : "It is, then, a complete mistake to suppose that Jesus' experience at his bap- tism loses in value and significance when it is no longer understood as an objective occurrence in the outside world, but is regarded as an incident of his inner spiritual experience. The really important thing, from the point of view both of the history of the world and of the history of religion, is, after all, the awakening of Jesus' belief in himself as the Messiah This belief was first implanted deep in his consciousness on the day he was baptized by John in the Jordan." — O. Holtzmann, op. cit., p. 137. " It is only honest to confess that this origin [of the messianic consciousness] is a mystery for us : we know nothing about it. All we can say is how this conscious- ness did not arise in Jesus. It was not through slowly matured reflections of an intellectual nature; such are never the basis of certainty Nor, again, was it 438 The Finality of the Christian Religion In these remarks we reach the threshold, of a problem whose solution brings us into the heart of the matter. Since Jesus was not the warlike, kingly liberator of his people's expectation; since he treated the picture that loomed up before him of an imperial kingdom on earth as a Satanic temptation; since, on the contrary, he exhibited the pro- phetic features of a great merciful savior of the poor, the sick, the shunned, the incarcerated, the lost* — especially the features of a redeemer of sinners; in a word, since he was a suffering Messiah, w^iy did he appropriate the mes- sianic title at all? Why should he seek to clothe his self- consciousness in the narrow national Jewish idea? There was no harmony between Jesus and the messianic idea — did he then have a messianic consciousness? As we have seen, the weight of evidence seems to support the position that he did. And the solution of the riddle is the pressing problem of biblical scholarship. Harnack is of the opinion that Jesus, when he could no longer avoid the conviction that owing to the influence of his surroundings; the voices of demons and of the world might make a man of genius vacillate; they could never impart a divine certainty to him. The fact, too, that Jesus appears from the very first with unswerving con- stancy and immovable certainty as oue sent by God causes us to abandon bnth explanations." — Weexle, op. cit., p. 45. So, too, Harnack. Wernle does not think, as Holtzmann does, that the consciousness of his call dates from his baptism, since it does not depend upon voices and visions, but upon compulsion. " How the certainty arose in the soul of Jesus, which drove him into publicity and led him to martyrdom, will remain forever hidden from us. In chasteness and wisdom history has left the birth hour of the self-consciousness of Jesus a mystery. We may know the means whereby the prophetic energy of his inner life was ulti- mately released; in John the Baptist the carpenter from Galilee saw the hero of God who called it forth. And it was when John baptized him that Jesus for the first time experienced the full certainty of his mission and his anointing; in prayer he heard an old familiar word from the Psalms as a voice from heaven : ' Thou art my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.' The messianic certainty of Jesus — it is his self-consciousness — we may not conceive to be a dogmatic, excogitated convic- tion, which was the result of reflection or of exegetical study. It did not arise at a definite moment of his life as a firm, quiet possession. Rather, from all that we may learn from the sources, it was a prophetic certainty, a divine gift, which as such had to riijen. It is a certainty which dawned, then faded again; which shone forth in great revelatory moments with heavenly clearness, but then shrank trem- blingly back again in humility and simplicity."— Deissmann in Beitrage zur Wetter- entivicklung der christlichen Religion, p. 106. iLuke 4:16-22, Jesus 439 he was the promised Messiah, must at first have felt this knowledge to be a terrible burden — adding, however, that "in saying this we have gone too far.'" Wernle does not think that the statement does go too far, "All the great redemptive activity of Jesus has no place in the Jewish con- ception of Messiah."^ If, then, that which is great in Jesus is not a consequence of the messianic idea, is not expressed by that idea, but is an original addition of his own, why did he avail himself of the title ? The Messiah is Israel's future king — that and nothing else. But Jesus did not feel that he was that. If he used the concept, he had to replace its content by another. Why did he, contrary to his own counsel, put new wine into an old bottle? What he said would happen in such cases did happen : the bottle broke and the wine was spilled, "He accepted the idea under compulsion, because it was the outer form for that which was final and highest. He labored with it, broke it up, recast it." This explanation of Wernle's seems most reasonable. How could he who turned the pompous king of a material utopia into the tragic figure of the cross do otherwise than regenerate the messianic concept? In this connection we may understand why Jesus postponed even till the close of his life any public claim to be the Messiah. All the while Jesus was confronting an insurmountable inner difficulty. The inadequacy of the messianic title to express the reality that he knew he was; the disparateness^ even, between that title and his innermost consciousness, was a source of struggle and pain to him. Whether Mes- siah of Zealot or of rabbi, whether an earthly Davidic Mes- siah or a super-earthly, heavenly being, the Messiah was yet a national king for national ends, demolishing Rome and setting up a world-power at Jerusalem. And Jesus, a man of the people, a layman, a physician, a shepherd, a servant; 1 Op. cit., p. 140. 2 Op. clt., p. 48. 440 The Finality of the Christian Keligion a lover and forgiver of his enemies; a friend weeping with those that weep, rejoicing with those that rejoice; a wan- derer who had not where to lay his head, and did not be- lieve in the value of utopia, and cared nothing for this world's empty glory — how unmessianic was his whole life and work and thought! The messianic title as expression of the innermost essence of the person of Jesus was as insufficient and dangerous as the Jewish people's kingdom of God and thought of judgment were to that which Jesus brought in his preaching. And while Jesus could speak artlessly of God's kingdom and judgment, and could pour the new spirit into the old forms, he did not find himself in the same situation when he transferred the messianic title to him- self. For kingdom of God and judgment were still in the futmre. In the moment in which Jesus publicly accepted the messianic title he made the future present.' Hence the silence of Jesus was the best means at his dis- posal. Mention was made, a few pages back, of the objec- tion to this raised by such critics as Martineau and others. Why did he not instruct the people as to the way in which he would have his messianity understood ? Bousset's answer to this seems satisfactory, namely, that it ignores the inner fineness and tenderness of the wrestling self -consciousness of Jesus, and the volcanic character of the ground on which he stood. A public messianic confession of Jesus would not have had the logical effect to be expected from his mes- sianic content which was new and unassimilable to them, but would have been almost wholly determined by their own apperceptive mass; and the result would have been explosive. All Jesus' opponents would have massed against him in deadly hostility. But we have not yet done with our main question: Why did Jesus at once refuse to proclaim himself as Messiah, and yet take to his innermost essence such strange messianic 1 BoussET, op. cit., p. 86. Jesus 441 hopes? Because, from other considerations, it was neces- sary for him to do so. If he was to be intelligible to him- self, the messianic thought was indispensable to him, as the idea of the kingdom of God and judgment was indispensable if he was to be understood by the people. If Jesus did not consider himself to be the Messiah, then he must have thought of himself as a prophet. This by itself would possibly be suflScient to explain all that was extraordinary in his mode of life. But Jesus could not come forward as a prophet — e. g., like John — because the prophet always points to one higher than himself, and thereby assigns a provisional character to him- self; while Jesus knew himself to be God's final messenger, after whom none higher can come. That is the decisive consideration. The superhuman self -consciousness of Jesus, which knows nothing higher than itself save God, and can expect none other, could find satisfactory expression in no other form but that of the messianic idea.' If the record is to be relied upon at all, it is certainly true that Jesus believed that he communed with God more intimately than anyone else had done. He spoke the last decisive word; he fulfilled; he was God's last messenger — such was his conviction. The sureness and strength of his work, the sunniness, clearness, and freshness of his whole being, reposed upon this foundation. On the basis of the sources, his super-prophetic consciousness, the consciousness of being fulfiUer, of sitting regnant forever on the throne of history, cannot be stricken from the portrait of his person w'ithout destroying it. But in his surroundings the mes- sianic thought afforded him the sole possibility of giving 1 Wernle, op. cit.. Vol. I, pp. 44, 45. In making this quotation. I do not wish to seem to imply agreement with Wernle's introducing the word " superhuman " in this manner. If it refers to something other than human, we know neither that it is worthier than the ideally human, nor indeed what it is. Besides, the word points in the opposite direction from that humanization of the messianic ideal on the part of Jesus which Wernle, too, recognizes. It may save from misunderstanding, also, if we distinguish between Jesus' own conception of his finality and the ethico-religious content of his personality, and find his dignity in the latter rather than in the former. 442 The Finality op the Christian Keligion expression and form to this his consciousness, inasmuch as that thought exhibited the figure of the final royal fulfiller, as popular hope had sketched it in the earthly colors so attractive to the people. Thus, for Jesus, the messianic thought was the sole possible form of his inner consciousness, and yet — an insufficient form; a necessity — but also a grievous burden, under which he went on his way in silence almost to the end of his life; a conviction in which he never found real joy.' Before seeking to draw conclusions from this brief dis- cussion, we may refer to the special forms in which the messianic consciousness of Jesus came to expression. The title "Son of David," best describing the earthly side of the messianic hope, Jesus explicitly repudiated.^ Nor was the title "Son of God" a self -designation.^ The only remaining messianic self -designation of Jesus is "Son of man." But did he use it? "Would that we knew for certain!" exclaims Wernle. Most investigators admit that the phrase is really a messianic title of dignity. The synoptists mean it to be such when used of Jesus. The fact that historically and philologically it meant homo, a human being, must not blind us to the fate of the designation according to which it was dehumanized by so much as it was messianized. This, how- ever, does not render it impossible that Jesus, in case he used it, reverted to the original significance of the title. However this may be, in the time of Jesus the Messiah-man was no longer the earthly king from the house of David of the popular hope, but a super-earthly being, coming down from heaven where he was with God from the beginning of 1 BoussET, op. cit., p. 88. 2 Matt. 12 : 35 ff. 3 "Son" does not appear to be used in the sense of a title in Matt. 11:27. So, also, BocssET. But Weenle thinks it is "the expression of the closest intimacy with God, of the most absolute trust in him" (p. 53). But, for one thing, the joy that he had in the word is not consistent with the sorrow that the messianic title gave him; and, for another, it nowhere signifies primarily the filial feeling over which Jesus is rejoicing here. The identification of "Son of God" and "Messiah" lacks documentary support from Jewish literature. Jesus 443 the world, appearing with divine glory, even judging the world, arrogating thus the rightful prerogative of God alone. It is probable, therefore, that if Jesus appropriated the title, he meant thereby to reject its national, and to accept its supramundane, content. But did Jesus appropriate the title? May it not be a deposit of later tradition? Certainly one is struck by the fact that he speaks of himself in the third person, as though of someone else, and that he prophesies his coming as if he was already removed from earth. It is as easy to conceive of these forms of expression being used by the disciples after Jesus' death as it is difficult to imagine Jesus himself employing them while he was still in their midst.' In the mouth of Jesus this constant speaking of himself in the third person seems affected, and inconsistent with the otherwise sobriety and simplicity of his speech — though with our modern changed custom and consciousness we may not at all be in a position to pass judgment upon what was affectation in that day, and what was not. It may be further pointed out that in some synoptic pas- sages the later evangelist has introduced the title "Son of man" where originally there was only an "I" in the tra- dition.^ Finally, it seems strange enough that Jesus, a plain man walking on the earth, should have any liking for the apparently fantastic claims to the dignity of "Son of man" as understood in late Judaism. The title pointed to pre-existence and to judgeship of the world. But if we are to trust the oldest tradition, Jesus never thought of ascrib- ing a pre-mundane existence to himself; nor did he claim to be judge of the world. In view of these considerations, one may well refuse to be BO certain as the church has been that Jesus called himself the Son of man; at all events, one can make the asser- 1 Weknle, op. cit.. Vol. I, pp. 53, 54. 2£. g., cf. Matt. IC: 13 with Mark 8:27. 44J: The Finality of the Christian Eeligion tion only with a certain reservation. One thing is impor- tant: If Jesus ever did speak of himself as the Son of man, he can only have done so a short time before his death, and in the expectation of that death. To be sure, the keenest critical scruples have been urged against the historicity of Jesus' predictions of his death. But the scene in Geth- semane refutes the critics. It points backward. Jesus' clearness as to his fate, and his resignation to the will of God, must have been the gradual result of his struggling. Intimations, growing stronger and stronger, must have per- vaded his soul before Gethsemane. It could not have been otherwise. The fruitlessness of his endeavor with his people grew increasingly apparent — the certainty that they walked the way of ruin and were rejected of God. All the darker must the fate of his own life have seemed to him, all the surer the intimation that his work would bring him to a cruel end. And it is all the more probable that toward the end Jesus spoke to his disciples of his bitter and gloomy forebodings. If there be historicity anywhere, that of Jesus' intimations of his passion and death would seem to be assured. Our understanding of Jesus' thought of the Son of man, or his intimations as regards the Son of man, is dependent upon this consideration. Facing his fate, Jesus turned to Daniel's promise, and related it to himself. Death and de- struction staring him in the face, he kept his confidence in his cause and his God intact in this form. After his death he will be the Son of man coming in glory on the clouds of heaven. In this connection the limits to be assigned to Jesus' use of the title are evident. This title was not a constant and ever-recurring self-designation on the part of Jesus. Only at the end of his life, and in a few instances, did he use it. Thus, the stereotyped way the synoptists represent Jesus as Jesus 445 using the title is not historical. It is not the earthly, but the dogmatic, Jesus of the community that is uppermost in their minds. With these data in our possession — the conclusion of the study of specialists — we may revert to our original ques- tion: Supposing Jesus put forth messianic claims, how should our attitude toward him be affected thereby today ? Are we sorry he did so ? We must admit, with Wernle, Wrede, and others, I think, that the "titles turned out to the misfortune of the new religion." Jesus' expurgation of the titles of their tra- ditional "superhuman" — that is, therefore, subhuman con- tent— did not prevent the Jewish Christian from reinstating them approximately in their old positions, or else informing them with perverted new ideas; nor the gentile Christians, by physical-metaphysical speculations, from replacing the historical Jesus with a mythological being. The question is as to which is of primary importance, the human historical Jesus, or a mythological being from heaven; and which is to be reverenced, Jesus himself or his titles. Another question already mentioned, perplexing and torturing enough, ever obtrudes: Was it Jesus of Nazareth, the empirical man of Galilee, that supplied the dynamic with which ecclesiastical Christianity has won its victories during all these centuries; or was it the sum of Messiah predicates of which he was the hypothetical bearer ? Was Jesus the power, or, so to speak, the mere peg on which the power was hung ? At all events, if the mythological being has been the real in the past and Jesus the doketic, the tables . must now be turned, since a myth found out loses its power. Jesus-ism must take the place of messianism. And whether this great change shall prove to be a further development of historical Christianity, or a new religion; whether it means a period of religious disintegration and chaos, or a new life 446 The Finality of the Christian Religion for the soul which may be in birth-throes today, is an alter- native which must fill all serious minds with the keenest anxiety and pain of which they are capable. But these reflections are carrying us too far afield. Our purpose now is to show that the energy and worth of the character of Jesus are not abridged by his appropriation of the messianic title. For one thing, the reincorporation into that title, on the part of his followers, of the old content which he repudiated — repudiated at the cost of his life — was a perversity and misfortune for which he cannot righteously be held responsible. He did his utmost to destroy that con- tent, on the one hand, and to make his followers morally and religiously incapable of hospitality to it, on the other. For another tiling, while the messianic idea, like the angelic, was propagated into the place of primacy, the occupation of which was the prerogative of God alone, nothing of this kind is traceable in the thought of Jesus himself. Jesus did not transcend the limits of the purely human. He did not put himself alongside the Almighty God. If he bound his disciples to himself, it was but to lead them beyond him- self to the living God. He would not himself be the goal, but only the way to the heavenly Father. Instead of iden- tifying himself with God, he sharply separated himself from God, saying that no one was good save God alone. He put himself on the side of humanity in its struggle after good- ness. He came to be baptized of John, which was a baptism of the forgiveness of sins and of repentance. To the woman who pressed upon him with stormy enthusiasm, he answered: "Yea, rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it."' He said that whoever heard and kept Gocfs word was his mother, brother, sister.^ He never demanded faith in himself, in the sense that he demanded faith in God. In all his parables he put man face to face with the living iLuken:27f. 2Mark3:33f. Jesus 447 God, leaving his own person entirely in the background/ Even in his appropriation of the idea of Son of man he never transcended the human limits, placing himself on the side of God. For it is inconceivable that Jesus, who with the utmost energy urged his disciples to fear God, who could cast both soul and body into hell, should have arrogated to himself the divine judicial prerogative. It is evident that the synoptists at this point reflect the dogmatics of the com- munity, and not the opinion of Jesus. But, more important still, to the mind of Jesus the main thing was not the messianic idea, but his own self -conscious- ness. He was the treasure; the idea was the earthen vessel which held the treasure. He himself, not the idea, was the gospel. His greatness is to be discovered, not in the title which he employed, but in his power to overcome the evil and danger to which the title exposed him. If the story of his temptation means anything, it means that he mastered the title instead of its mastering him. The messianic dream had conquered all others; he conquered it. He was the Life; it was the tool of the Life — a tool which had been 1 "All religious worship, all supplication in prayer, directed to Jesus, all treat- ment of him as a divine Lord of the universe, is untenable from the modern point of view. All this was not only justifiable, but necessary, so long as Jesus, in his humanness, was at the same time 'very God,' i. e., the second one of the three per- sons of the Trinity. But this latter conviction once abandoned, such attitude as stated above to the man Jesus amounts to an abatement of the worship which is due God alone, to a confusion of the divine and the human, and to an injury to the unity of the religious life. The Protestant rejection of the cult of saints arose from the deepest religious feeling. Must not the retention of a divine worship of Jesus awaken a similar emotion, now that great changes of life and of concepts compel us to include the personality and work of Jesus entirely within the picture of humanity which has been deepened from within 1 At this decisive point there is no middle ground between Yea and Nay."— Professoe Eudolp Eucken, op. cit., pp. 434 f. Still, this statement of Eucken omits a consideration of decisive importance. It is true that God is the solo object of religious faith and worship. But, for the Christian, it is the God of whom such a one as Jesus can with good conscience be the prophet. While wo know nothing of the extra-historical existence and activity of Jesus, we trust and worship the God the content of whose will is best known from the moral goodness of the man Jesus of history. Jesus thus has abiding importance to the life of prayer. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." Jesus is source and guarantee and determinant of that specific relationship to God which is called Christian, 448 The Finality of the Christian Keligion constructed for the destruction of Israel's enemy, but which it was his high mission to reconstruct and retemper into an instrument of healing and mercy for the nations. The idea did not make the Life ; the Life picked up the clumsy misfit idea, cleansed it, reorganized it, humanized it, and assigned it a function to himself and to others, for which by nature it was disqualified — even as that Life has ever regenerated the natural into the spiritual, caused old things to pass away, and made all things new. Do we ask ourselves what the moral energy of that Life must have been to be able to chanofe an idea whose content was a sword into an idea whose content was the cross, an idea whose content was a kingdom of might into one whose content was a kingdom of love? In the face of hell, and of the accumulated inertia of centuries of tradition, Jesus did precisely this. For his time and his surroundings, the thought of a suffering and dying Messiah was something uncanny, unheard of, indeed. It is doubtful whether Jesus could have gained the thought of a suffering and dying Messiah out of the Old Testament even. It is doubtful whether the thought is there. It was only on the basis of their faith in the Crucified that the church of Jesus imported it into the Old Testament.' Jesus stood entirely alone among his people, alone in isolated and incommunicable grandeur, in the presence of the ways of God that are past finding out and of a task that was over- powering. It was his mission to ennoble and transfigure suffering and defeat — the greatest scandal to all Jewry; to make sufferingr for the sake of service the crown of all that the church could believe of the Messiah. Jesus consum- mated his task under partial dependence on the thought of the Son of man: the form in which he could render intel- ligible both the personal relation of trust between him and God, and the conviction that the cup which he drank was 1 "Isa., chap. 53, is, manifold as the possible interpretations are, not mes- sianic."—Bousset, op. cit., p. 96. Jesus 449 pressed to his lips by the Father's hand. Nevertheless, it is not in the expression "Son of man," it is in Gethsemane, that his life's quiet, deep greatness and its innermost ground of certainty unveil themselves to us. Finally, in his humaniza- tion of the messianic idea, to which we have already referred, it is clear that the real values of life were to him human, not messianic; i. e., so far as the messianic was not human. And this is consistent with his central thought of the infinite worth of man, to which we shall turn presently. It is not the messianic, it is the human, that is divine. Jesus' con- sciousness of his super-prophetic significance was a human consciousness. He transcended the authority of the past; he was more than kings and prophets, than David and Solomon and Moses, than temple and tradition, than custom and institution ; but all this is due to his filial intimacy with God, to his joy in God, to his sense of his mission in doing the will of God, to the moral and spiritual wealth of his dis- position, to his love and service for all men. But these are not messianic, but human, possibilities; otherwise his gospel is no gospel to man. These are not messianic predicates save as Jesus humanized messianism. They are not im- ported into the race by a supposititious being from heaven, but born out of the race, of which Jesus is the "bright con- summate flower." And we should receive the suggestion that a sense of justice ought to prompt us to credit Jesus, and the race of which he is the best representative, with the production of those values which hitherto have been venerated as the gift of a heavenly being whose mythological character cannot be refuted; and that we should find the divine in human personality rather than in mythological figures. If, now, Jesus humanized messianism, we may keep the human and let the messianic go. We are not Jews of the first cen- tury. Left to ourselves, our religious life would not origi- nate the messianic concept. It is not now, and it never was, 450 The Finality of the Cheistian Keligion the messianic that is divine ; it is the human that is divine ; it is the 7nen who forgive their enemies, and do good to those who despitefully treat them and speak evil of them, that are the children of God. Instead of the messianic title honor- ing Jesus, he honored it; it was not it, it was he, that was great ; and if we are to venerate greatness, we must venerate him rather than it. If his effect upon the title was its morali- zation, we cannot possibly go astray if we find the divine in the moral and not in the messianic. If thus his appropriation of the title was its destruction; if the way he used it revealed his spirit and his judgment of values ; and if necessity was upon him in his time and place, the expression of divine reality in Jesus should shine more luminously to the modern man than ever before, as he sees that the title constituted a part of the humiliation, rather than the honor, of Jesus. Leaving this whole controversy for good and all, what, once yet again, is the conclusion of the whole matter ? Even suppose we grant that all the high things which the evan- gelists say of Jesus, and put into his mouth as deep mys- teries which he said of himself, were indeed his own opinion of his position in the world and toward the world, still this is not the main thing on which emphasis is to be placed. It may seem wonderful to us today that a man who shared "the common needs of common men, hunger for food, hunger for God;" who considered doing the will of God his meat and drink, and being servant of all his real greatness, could believe that he was King of the kingdom of God, that a heavenly being inhabited him in objective reality. And today some will reject Jesus on this account as an Ekstatiker and fanatic ; others will cancel all these passages from the gospels as spurious; still others will hold themselves obli- gated by these utterances to confess all these thoughts as their confession of faith — easy transition to the additional Jesus 451 confession of the doctrine of tlie Trinity and of the two natures, as taught by the old Greek church. But a Satan could do all this and be a Satan still. Besides, at that time many held that they were the promised Messiah; many believed in a real indwelling of an alien spirit, good or bad, in their breast; Paul believed that "Christ" and the "Holy Spirit" dwelt in him after the analogy of the idea according to which a demon dwelt in a sick person. It was therefore simply an idea of the time, according to which the violent, the unconscious, the overmastering, the heroic and tragic, in man was due to the habitation of man by an alien being. That Jesus believed such of himself is simply evidence that he had power above his power; not that he exalted himself, nor that there was a special divine being in him. If the form of his valuation of his precious inner possession was borrowed from the categories of his time, we know psycho- logically that he could not have done otherwise; and in our appropriation and appreciation of the incomparable wealth of the content of his consciousness we should not stumble at the strangeness of its form. We may not forget that he chose death on the cross, rather than the messianism and miraculism and materialism of his people ; the thorny path of preaching and serving and suffering, rather than the King's highway of glory. It is enough: no one can yield himself to the influence of this Man and not become different from what he was before ; from being a natural man one will become a spiritual man; old things will pass away, and all things will become new. 4. We have been observing the strange world in which Jesus lived — a world of angels and demons, of miracles and messianism. Jesus partook of that world, thought its thoughts and felt its feelings. But we do not live in that world; no angel speaks to us, no demon dwells in our sick, no miracle relieves our distress, no king of glory comes on 452 The Finality of the Cheistian Religion tlie clouds of heaven, and no cataclysm replaces the natural and moral order of our world. That old world is forever lost to us. But can we lose it and keep Jesus ? May Jesus still be the Lord and Leader of life? May he still be the source of strength and peace and joy ? In deliberating upon these questions, we have just opposed his morals to messian- ism, in part to his own messianism. It was suggested that the worth and permanence of the former are not only not seriously imperiled by the latter, but that they nullify the error and danger in the latter. But, in the very midst of these deliberations, we meet with a new difficulty, arising from Jesus' moral views them- selves. Are the precepts and practices of Jesus consistent with the accredited modern ethical principles ? Are obedi- ence to the moral counsels of Jesus and the fulfilment of the tasks of modern civilization compatible? Do the morally necessary cultural tasks of our time lie outside the horizon of his aims and thoughts ? What if Jesus' own words sepa- rate us from Jesus' own self, while we yet know that it is through the deep binding of our lives to him that new life can begin with us, which is well-pleasing to God? It is to this serious problem that we should now address ourselves. a) Apologists have sought to establish the thesis that Jesus was positively interested in the social and secular goods and ideals of the natural life of man. And many passages from the gospels may be adduced in support of this conten- tion. His high appreciation of the family life may be inferred from his earnest protest against the current frivo- lous practice of divorce, and from his spiritual interpretation of the commandment against adultery. Any reference to his own celibacy should recognize his words concerning those who were "eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake." And his seemingly harsh conditions of discipleship, hating father and mother, may be but a reflection of the religious Jesus 453 energy and heroism of his soul. Certainly such a passage is offset by his condemnation of those children who withdrew help from their parents and diverted it to purposes of cult. Nor may we forget that in the relation of father to son and son to father Jesus found the best expression of his peculiar religious proclamation. Jesus loved children, and saw in the childlike disposition of humbleness and trust the typical disposition for his kingdom. Likewise, one may make out a case in favor of Jesus' interest in science and art. That he did not prosecute such science as the scribes knew, that he was no student of their scholasticism, may very well be set down to his credit. That he was willing to be crucified for the truth's sake will make him forever sacred to men of science. And if he was no artist by profession, his parables, his portraits of different types of men, show that he was artist by the grace of God. His joy in the world of nature points in the same direction. Again, there is "the struggle of existence" in which the modern man is engaged. He stands in the midst of indus- trial and social and political warfare. The laborer is seeking a larger share in the goods of life. And there is no victory for him without this warfare. Political warfare is a natural necessity in order to the attainment of social right, social justice and freedom. Now, can the man who is struggling up out of economic and social need, and conquering better conditions of living, count on the friendship of Jesus in this matter? "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." Are humility and meekness political virtues ? " Love your enemies, bless them that curse you." Is this a doctrine of congress and parliament? But apologists reply that Jesus died on the cross because he brought not peace, but a sword. He had not only the meekness of the lamb, but the wrath of the lion. His "blessed are the meek" does not exclude a "blessed are 454 The Finality of the Christian Religion those wlio fight for God's cause on earth, for righteousness, for freedom, and against repression and robbery of one's neighbor," The denunciations of the twenty-third chapter of Matthew reveal a spirit that is capable of war. h) The above is the usual vindication of the position that Jesus had an interest in the things to which the modern man devotes his life. But it must be earnestly protested that the vindication is only apparent. It is both superficial and, for the most part, irrelevant. And it is made under a miscon- ception of the merit and worth of Jesus, of the meaning and purpose of his work. The inner as well as the outer remote- ness of Jesus from us is not grasped by these apologists. There was no natural science to Jesus, such as we know; nor had the thought of natural law begun the concatenation of reality in the midst of which men lived. Dominion over nature had not been widened and deepened by methodic investigation. For Jesus neither the form nor the fruit of scientific work existed. He did not know the aim of such work. It is true that this might be so, and yet Jesus' lead- ership in moral knowledge not be affected thereby, since scientific success is not always conjoined with the simplicity and sagacity of moral wisdom. Moral insight does not spring from science, but from conscience. Still, the fact remains that Jesus did not know of the vocation which we call scientific, and had no interest in it. The same may be said with reference to art, and many other things. As an example to be followed it would be difficult for a bearer of modern culture to select a man less adapted to his purpose. But it is more important to note that he had no deeper interest in the work and tasks of which he did know. Farming, trading, money-making — he said nothing which shows that he realized the dignity and value of these forms of life. He does not seem to have thought that the worth of a man depends, as a rule, upon the service which he renders society in Jesus 455 sucli ways as these. If he had thought that fidelity to one's vocation had the moral worth which the experience of life shows that it has, it would seem that he who desired above all things to help men in their moral needs would have touched upon it somehow. But the gospels do not say that he did. Real righteousness and vocational fidelity are insepa- rable, according to our ethical principles. All the work of civilized life brings care, feeds care ; yet we ought to be care-free — the sparrows are. But we are not sparrows, and need more than sparrows do — need what nature of itself does not give. It is not true to fact to say that nature about Jesus was kindlier than that which we know. Things were not so idyllic there as Renan has made out. The seed grew of itself indeed, but it had to be sown then as now. One man could live on locusts and wild honey, but all could not. How can one use what one has so as to get more ? How can one save the fruits of his toil ? How can one find tools, and fit one's tools to one's tasks? Such questions of care as these arise out of, and in connection with, the work of civil- ized man; and the only way to be free from such care is to have nothing to do with such work. But to work, to accu- mulate, to possess — there is no progress and no civilization apart from these activities. It is objected that Jesus meant simply that a disciple should keep a free heart in the midst of his earthly calling. And it is true that he did mean this; but he meant more than this. By his "care not" he meant indifference to a life of gain. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth," is a precept that makes capital impos- sible.' Man is summoned to choose between eternal and earthly good. The earthly treasure which we seek becomes a master which keeps us from serving God. The Protestant doctrine that we can serve God by seeking earthly treasures 1 Hermann, Die sittlichen Weisungen Jesu. To this work I shall be indebted in the following discussion of the subject. 456 The Finality of the Christian Keligion is no doctrine of Jesus. We are not wholly Christian with a good conscience when we at once insist upon the obligation to obey the traditional words of Jesus and continue in the possession of our goods, or, as Jesus would say, in the service of capital. It is lack of clearness on this point that helps to cripple our entire Christianity. And biblical inter- pretation still suffers from inability to abstract from the twentieth-century consciousness, and to reconstruct the situa- tion in which Jesus lived and the view of life which he held. Did Jesus treat the orders of society with indifference ? Did he even sharply insist upon detachment from them ? Should his followers feel that family ties were fetters that had to be broken? It certainly seems so. Thus, what was required in order that men might be united with him then, separates them from him now. Again, what was his attitude to the state? "Resist not evil," he says. Would not the precepts and the universalizing of the standpoint of Jesus put an end to the state? The exercise of authority and power over others is the essence of the state. To affirm the precept, "Resist not evil," is to cast aside as worthless the instruments of right which the arm of the law wields. The modern man is full of enthusiasm for the secular and the cultural. He stands with both feet upon the earth; he seeks to enjoy his natural life, and to make it as beautiful and lovely as possible. He embraces the now and the here, and is a world-child with full consciousness. The same is true of modern peoples as well as of modern individuals. But Jesus brings us into conflict with the social tasks to which we all desire to cling. We would care for our families. We would hold that the ties which bind us to our fellow-men are sacred. We would safeguard the family as an indispensable means of moral development. We suffer our liberty to be abridged by civil order, which, however, we recognize as a suitable agency to serve the collective life Jesus 457 of man. We co-operate in the interest of the progress and growth of law. Yet we succeed in no political task without doing violence to others in the conflict of forces in the state. But how can we thus participate in the life of the state, and yet maintain the disposition which will triumph through meekness? "So shall it not be among you," said Jesus, as he described the function of the state. Shall we admire the words of Jesus and yet do the opposite to them? Thus, when one looks beneath the surface, one sees that the precepts of Jesus show no interest for the morally necessary forms of modern life. The labor of the scientist, fulfilment of one's secular calling, the perpetuity of the human race through family life, political and economic advancement, popular education, city sanitation, and the like — in all this the words and practices of Jesus and the convictions and interests of modern civilized life are pro- foundly dissimilar. No citation of a passage here and there in the gospels can invalidate this general conclusion. Jesus was a man of tremendous earnestness and energy; and if he had shared our modern interest in these avenues of life, and our sense of their indispensableness to human well-being, we should not have been left in such ignorance on this matter. There is not one of these forms of life in which Jesus can be imitated or his precepts obeyed, and civiliza- tion not be menaced thereby. To imitate him would mean the downfall of modern culture. Must we, then, choose between obedience to the precepts of Jesus,' since the church worships him as God,^ and the lA few years ago the question, "What would Jesus dol" was propounded as a panacea for all our social ills. But who today would trust himself to describe his own life and conduct, had he been born two thousand years ago as the son of the Jewish people °l But what is an impossibility looking backward is also such looking forward. The gospels are not a kind of automaton from which one can mechani- cally gain a fixed and finished answer for each case, in every age and every situation. 2 One should reflect upon the moral danger lurking in the ecclesiastical dogma of Jesus' deity, rendering his precepts infallible and universally binding. 458 The Finality of the Christian Keligion morally earnest pursuit of the tasks of civilized life? Or may we candidly and calmly acknowledge the opposition which we have exhibited, and yet not allow ourselves to be disengaged either from Jesus or from the cultural labor to which God in his providence has called us? Whether we can still confess Jesus Christ as our Leader and Lord is a question of the life and death of Christianity. May we be at once outwardly detached from the precepts of Jesus and inwardly bound to his person? Nay, may the former be a condition of the latter? c) Rejecting, as we have, all modernization of Jesus by exegetical diplomacy as of evil, we may now turn first of all to the two historical attempts to mediate between the opposites which we have described : one is the Catholic scheme, the other the Protestant. (1) No sooner had the Catholic church entered upon its world-career than it discovered the opposition between the world's secular life and the precepts and practices of Jesus. Like all serious Christianity, that church sought to adhere strictly to the words of Jesus. But it also sought to do the world's work and to honor the natural life of man. The well-known solution of the problem at which this church arrived was to assign the two indispensable and incompatible tasks to two different classes of Christians. One class should acquire possessions and power, and perpetuate the species; the other, obey the precepts of Jesus — not exegeti- cally elaborate and change them until they became assimil- able by secular life, but obey them as they are, in their straightforwardness and severity. The former class accumu- lated the goods which were necessary to the saint in his earthly life ; the latter acquired a merit which could accrue to the advantage of the former, making amends, indeed, for the defective obedience of the former. Thus, an opposition which threatened the dissolution of Christian society came Jesus 459 to be built into its very structure. It is only in the light of this division of labor that the Catholic ethic can be understood. Moreover, the device keeps the impression alive that the imitation of Jesus is a lofty calling which is beyond the reach of the common run of humanity. Besides, provision is thus made for levity and seriousness, for natu- rality and angelicalness, in the church, thereby guaranteeing the practicability of the Catholic type of Christian society. As a contrivance for the combination of these two widely divergent tendencies, the Catholic church is an excellent political institution. But the best political institution is worthless when it comes to the solution of a moral question. In the case in hand, the moral problem, in whose mastery the Christian grows and ripens, was not solved by the Catholic device, but fundamentally evaded. The opposition should have been fought out and adjusted on the theater of the inner life of each individual himself. By substituting an institutional opposition for a moral, a quantitative division for spiritual discernment, the problem was solved all too easily. Men, the serious no less than the frivolous, who are satisfied with such a political solution of a moral question, shirk the real moral struggle, and forego the true moral relationships. The grossest immorality among the "perfect" in monastic orders was in part the fruit of the principles which underlie the monastic life. Still more, the worst feature of that life was not its immorality even ; it was the very ideal of perfection itself ! It was the merit of Luther to have seen this. (2) But how far did Luther's insight penetrate into this subject? To live in the natural and social orders of the world according to their laws, to fill the particular place in existence which has fallen to one's lot without one's own choice even — this, if anything, according to Luther, must be the will of God. To fall in line freely 460 The Finality of the Christian Keligion and heartily with the order of the world, as specialized in family, vocation, social and civic life, was to obey God. In other words, subjection to the morally necessary was obedience to God, of which there could be no doubt. To assign the human will other goals than this was to release it from the order of the world, and to sacrifice it to caprice. How could one be sure what a dutiful life was, if it were a life in detachment from the morally necessary? And what constitutes the discipline of life, if to prosecute one's natural tasks be not to remain in the school of God? Thus, from Luther's standpoint, the fundamental defect and injury of the monastic life was its caprice and its negation of natural discipline. But the point of most importance is that, in the determination of what was mor- ally necessary, Luther set out, not from the precepts of Jesus, but from the requirements which result from one's natural position in the world, interpreted as the will of Almighty God who assigns one one's existence. The old church set out from the precepts of Jesus as the invariable, and sought to square human life by them as criteria, to dis- criminate the morally necessary by them. Luther reversed the procedure, and accorded primacy to the common and secular needs of man. But Luther was not conscious of the significance of the step that he was taking. To obey God, as he counted obedience, meant to disobey Jesus; he did not see this; and the proof that he did not is that nowhere did he charge disobedience to the commandments of Jesus upon adhesion to the monastic ideal as such. Luther launched his anathemas against the monastic ideal on the basis of his conviction that the order of the world was itself the criterion of what was morally necessary, was itself the sure revelation of the will of God. But Luther never learned this from the tradition of the life of Jesus. Had he been questioned upon the subject, he would have said Jesus 461 that it was the monastic ideal of the angelic life, and not the Protestant ideal of fidelity to secular callings as obedi- ence to God, that was most nearly continuous with the precepts and practices of Jesus. For Luther was a vera- cious and courageous man, and not a connoisseur in the new diplomatic art of modernizing Jesus. It must not be supposed that the Catholics made no attempt to mitigate the evils of the dualism between the angelic ideal of the monks and the morally necessary requirements of the natural life of man. As Hermann points out, the life in secular callings was poisoned by the church. Men were compelled to live in the secret reproach that they had not chosen the path of the perfect, although it was open to them also. But the usual ingenuity of the church came to the rescue. The church announced that their kind of life was necessary or useful for the church, and that the perfect kind of life was only counseled, not required. But this was a fatal admission. It could not long silence the reproach. To those repressed and stunted Christians the question must come home sooner or later as to what is the unconditionally necessary, not for the church, but, please God, for their own selves. If it is monastic detachment from the world that is perfection, then the God who is perfect, and who wills that we ought to be perfect too, does not merely "counsel" that perfection. It could not be long until appeal was made from the God of the monk *who is a ghost, to the living God of conscience who is a reality. In the monk the moral ruin is the greater, because in his moral dream of perfection his conscience sleeps. In Christian peoples conscience can remain alive, but tortured with uncertainty and tuirest. What is lacking to both is moral obedience.^ The monk in his caprice is proud; the others have no certitud^. 1 Hermann, op. cit., p. 21. 462 The Finality of the Christian Religion But Luther did not attain to a full solution of our problem. As already indicated, he was not aware that his new principle excluded the necessity and the possibility of full discipleship of Jesus. Competition and conflict in the world's work were not, to his conscious thought, incompat- ible with rigid obedience to the precepts of Jesus, with strict imitation of the life of Jesus. Luther did not solve the question which he precipitated, and the outcome of the Reformation at this point was not progress, but regress, even as compared with the Catholic church itself. Rome was in possession of instruments of authoritative compulsion by means of which some adjustment of the opposites under review could be made. The new Protes- tantism inherited Rome's problem of both living in the modern world and obeying the words of Jesus, but did not have Rome's means to solve it. The evangelical Christian was committed to the principle, not of outer, but of inner, certitude and stability; not of authority and institution, but of freedom and personality. But, lacking inner composure and strength, yet engaged in a terrible struggle for their very existence, disquieted by torturing questions, the new churches could not master the old unresolved antinomy; and, in their effort to save themselves from anarchy and atomism, they had recourse to a confessionalism and a bib- licism which were, and are, but a sorry copy of the Catholic model. They came to the conclusion that confessions of dogmatic certainty would give stability and unity to faith. It was but a repetition of the old non-moral method of solv- ing a moral problem. In addition, they tried to be blind to the idea that there were unsolved problems in the moral region. Hence they drew a veil as completely as possible over the contrast between the words of Jesus and life as it had to be lived in the new world. And it would not be far from true to say that this is about the way the case stands today.* 1 But see recapitulation at the close of this chapter. Jesus 463 The Catholics have had the advantage over the Protestants, first, of the realization of the contrast between the meek and merciful Jesus and the craving for power and posses- sions; and, secondly, of the moral value of the unrest of the Christian in contact with the world. Protestantism has split into two great streams: pietism, which considers the primary duty to be obedience to the traditional words of Jesus; secularism, which makes subjection to the order of the world of first importance. The question still remains: Shall we resort to the words of Jesus as the final court of appeal to decide what the will of God concerning us is, or shall we interpret the order of the world and the endowments of our own selves as the will of God? The Reformers had the right attitude toward one term of the opposition. Their greatness consisted in the insight that the natural duties of life in vocation and society were the will of God, in the doing of which one found God — a truth which' they could not read in their Bibles. Natural forces have given stamp and direction to human life ; and to recog- nize in them the will of the Creator and Father of us all, to discern that he is the godless man who suffers the precepts of any authority, biblical or ecclesiastical, to keep him from hearkening to this revelation of God — it is this conviction of primitive Protestants which constitutes their imperishable merit. They had the right view concerning life in the world, viz., that participation in state, family, vocation — God-ordained natural orders — was doing the will of God. d) But what, then, were they to do with the words of Jesus? They did not know; they could not tell. As to this term of the opposition, they had not overcome the Catholic standpoint. Must the Christian hearken to every word of Jesus not expressly directed to some individual of that day, or must he do so only in case such a word in his judgment appertains to him in his special situation and call- 464 The Finality of the Cheistian Religion ing? It was inability to answer this question that caused plants which the heavenly Father did not plant to shoot up on Protestant soil. But sitppose that the nse of the words of Jesus led to such an end, would that have been an abuse of them, had Jesus himself meant that every man must fol- low them blindly, without apprehending their truth? Jesus never required that his words should be followed blindly, without our understanding them. It was not the subjection of the servile, but the obedience of the free, that he prized. The worth of his words in his sight is not in their keeping man in a state of nonage, but in their helping him on into his moral majority and self-dependence. It is not his words at all as such, but the morally necessary, that must be obeyed, and his words only in case they mirror the morally necessary for us and in our situation. This is his will ; and to obey his will may be to disobey his words. It is the application of the historico-scientific method to the study of the Bible that has given us the advantage over the former generations who sought to answer our question. "We can appreciate the difference between Jesus' historical situation and ours as they could not. In the absence of the historical sense, they could treat all the words of Jesus as directed to themselves. But biblical investigation makes this impossible. - As we have seen, Jesus knew nothing of many of the moral and social tasks w^hich today we cannot escape. Besides, he had a view of the world which made him indifferent to the great historical future of society. In his opinion, society had no future. In his opinion, the end of the world was at hand. Hence to accumulate capital, to advance science and art, to ameliorate economic and political conditions, to improve the tools of our toil — nay, to fulfil the first great commandment to multiply and replenish the earth — how could he feel moral obligation in any of these directions with his thought of an imminent cosmic catas- Jesus 465 trophe? His ethics was "end ethics." But there was no end; and human relationships to the world have necessarily turned out to be entirely different from what Jesus expected. The ethic of Jesus was eternity ethic: history assigned the Christian the task of making peace with the world and its culture. Hence the great compromise, as seen in Catholicism with its clergy and laity, and in Protestantism with both a pale survival of the Catholic scheme of clergy and laity, and also the pietism and secularism already mentioned; the great compromise between the primitive gospel and the later world, between religion and culture, between "God's cause" and the world's business. And so it is Jesus' historical situation and his appre- hension of the world that separate us from him. We owe this insight to historical investigation. We are not con- fronted with the end of the world, but with an infinitude of tasks which the God of nature and of history has set to us. Conceiving the situation as Jesus did, he acted veraciously in it; conceiving the situation as ive do, it would be self- deception or worse for us to act as he did. We can be like his character only by being unlike his conduct. Veracious- ness led him to have no interest such as ours in the secular and social life. Veraciousness such as his leads us to a life that is the opposite of his. Imitation of Jesus ends in nn- veraciousness. Subjection to his precepts is separation from himself. He who severs himself from the world sinks into barbarism which is the definitive secularization of a human being; that is, is precisely one of the evils from which Jesus would save man, Jesus' standpoint was as far removed from unfree subjection of the personal to the natural as to the traditional. In his situation he summoned both the traditional and the natural before the judgment seat of the morally necessary; and now that his words have in turn become traditional, obedience to his will requires us to 466 The Finality of the Cheistian Religion apply his own principle to his own words. The attempt to imitate Jesus in the absence of any moral necessity in our situation for doing so has long injured the cause of Jesus ; and we should be grateful that historical study has exhibited the impossibility of such a work of supererogatioa, and effected our emancipation from the yoke of the local and temporal. But our separation from the local and the temporal in Jesus is of far less importance than the deep binding of our lives to the eternally good that is in him. This latter, how- ever, this inner obedience of the free man to him, scientific investigation cannot effect. There is that in Jesus which has a right to be on its own account. It is not by scientific labor, but by moral intelligence, that we recognize Jesus as our Leader still, and see the luminous truth of his words, which, employed as rules, separate men from the truth, and therefore from himself. To know Jesus is not to know his words, but the fountain of his disposition from which his words well up. To know Jesus is not to know his words, but to know the unity of his moral thoughts which are the creation of a will that is one with the eternal will. The words of Jesus are not new, but he was. He was moral personality as such. And because he was, a higher reality is disclosed to us in his person. Precisely in our century of criticism this fact has become clearer than ever before. The dignity and worth of his person as simple human moral personality, as embodiment of the eternally good, are incom- parably greater than that ontological substance or entity in which his greatness consisted according to the trinitarian and christological dogmas of an unmoral ecclesiasticism. It is for this reason that serious minds are no longer practi- cally concerned with the forms in which the church sought to exhibit the worth of his person; they gaze upon himself and his being as he shines in the gospels. To every honest Jesus 467 inquiring heart he is himself the truth which he gave to humanity. He released the morally good from its intricate combination with cult and virtuosity, and with the maze of popular tradition, in which it appeared in Judaism as in every folk-religion. He set forth this good, not as the un- understood law of an inscrutable God, but as a unitary dis- position of love and purity, which makes us children of the Father in heaven, whose disposition toward us is the joy and strength of our lives. It is this disposition, identical in Jesus and God, which uplifts us above sin and misery, and teaches us to believe that the guilt of the lost son is for- given, and that something new and wonderful, the glory of God himself, has dawned upon the earth. To appreciate more fully what this disposition is, we must see it against the background of servility and heter- onomy both to tradition and to nature. (1) As to the former, it amounts to an inquiry into Jesus' attitude to pharisaism. What was the gist of Jesus' polemic against the Pharisees? Harnack says that Jesus preached a "better righteousness." But the prophets had already preached that better righteousness. "The people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me." "Create in me a clean heart, O God." Scrupulosity in the performance of cult on the part of those who forgot justice and mercy was an abomination in the sight of God. At best, Jesus but excelled the righteous among his people in the energy with which he urged this prophetic message; perhaps also in developing that message until its full con- tents were exposed. He called the Pharisees hypocrites, but he did not mean by this that they were one thing and pretended to be another. He knew that they were not hypocrites in the ordinary sense of the word — those men who were ready to be slaughtered by Rome in the interest of the inviolability of their law. Nevertheless, so fearful 468 The Finality of the Cheistian Religion was the spiritual ruin of these men that he said they were ripe for hell ! To be sure, he also told them that they did not do what they said ; that they did not fulfil the require- ments which they themselves made. But they did not come short in deeds of the ordinary kind; they were ever zealous people. What they failed in was a trivial matter in their ej^es, for which they had no time, because the main thing with them was the most scrupulous fulfilment of the law that was at all possible. To win a veracious disposition, unified in the consciousness of eternal right — they did not bend their energies to this. They tried to fulfil the law indeed, but that they might adduce proof thereby of their righteous- ness, and attain something entirely difPerent. They would serve two masters, which, in the opinion of Jesus, is excluded by the nature of the will. Amid the multiplicity of single precepts which they sought to apprehend as accurately as possible, they overlooked right, mercy, faithfulness, by means of which a hearty human fellowship might arise — the one thing which was the animus of the law. They were not of the truth. They made an intolerable burden out of the law; but they did not themselves feel the burden, because it was easy for them to do the unintelligible, and because they correctly saw that it was easily possible to reach perfection in the light of the un-understood. They themselves supposed that they were well-nigh perfect, and held that they were excellent slaves. But the growth of moral thought — they did not hold it worth while to care about this, because they did not seek the truth. To fulfil the law was their central concern; but to win a veracious, unified, autonomous, inventive disposition of inexhaustible love was all in all to Jesus. And it was just such a will as this in all these its characteristics that, in the nature of the case, Pharisaism could not generate. Instead of veracious- ness, self-deception; instead of unity, divisive and decen- Jesus 469 tralized multiplicity; instead of autonomy, heteronomy; instead of inventiveness, woodenness and mechanicalness ; instead of love, legality — this was pharisaism. To identify the precepts of tradition with the morally necessary, blindly to adhere to them, not to know that "the common needs of common men, hunger for food, hunger for love, hunger for God," have right of way as against any cult or creed, any institution or tradition, however venerable or majestic — this is the spirit of pharisaism. The eternal Pharisee ! He still says that we must have "objective" precepts which specifically tell us what we ought to do. He still comes with his quantitative stand- ards, with his weights and measures and figures, into the moral world. He ever multiplies systems of control, instead of maturing moral personality and trusting conscience. He still substitutes an atomism of deeds for continuity of char- acter, and thus enthrones immoralism in the center of the moral world. He ever forgets that a man can do the good only when, in obedience to his own choice, he follows his own knowlege of truth. The Pharisee would be rio^ht if he merely meant that we need law, custom, personal authority. Disesteem of these is at once childish and dangerous. But the Pharisee means that I do the good already when I com- ply with these forces, and, what is still worse, that I come to know the good from what I learn from precepts. The Pharisee says I have no eyes of my own with which I can see what is good and what is not good; while the truth is that, if I see at all, I must see with my own eyes, since I have no others with which I can see. How did Jesus deal with the inertness and unveracious- ness which underlie this entire apprehension of the moral? The answer to this question brings out the significance of his moral thoughts for us. In his bitter warfare against the self-deception of the 470 The Finality of the Christian Religion righteous about him, he made incontestably clear what it was that constituted inner truthfulness and purity of the will. In Jesus' opinion, we can will only one thing, accord- ing to the very constitution of the will itself. Try as we may, we cannot serve two masters. The inner man sinks into darkness, if the will cannot concentrate its inclinations in one direction, in the thought of an eternal goal. But, if we are to do this, we must know the goal. Did Jesus think that it was his task to tell men what this goal was? It does not appear that he did. He knew that his people had the kernel of the law, love to God and to neighbor, both together. He knew that the knowledge sprang from every man's own heart as to who his neighbor was; that therefore every man found in himself a judge of his own unmercifulness. What Jesus did, rather, was to make it perfectly clear that we cannot at all learn from any word from without what the good is, but must generate the unchangeable tendency of our wills out of our own selves. And the way he did this was to vindicate moral righteous- ness against piety toward tradition, and to make the mean- ing of love clear. To Jesus, God was the everlasting portion of the human sonl. The rule of God in us is our blessedness. To substi- tute goods for God means our moral overthrow. We can become free, living, good, only when we let all else go that we may have God. True righteousness is love to God. But the Pharisees developed from this fundamental thought of piety the conclusion that we must hearken above all else to what tradition delivers to us as the will of God. But to pursue one's life in this way is to be defenseless in the presence of a fearful danger. One is thus betrayed into a piety which destroys moral sincerity. Of the command- ments which one receives from tradition one will accord- ingly value those as the most important which tell one how Jesus 471 one should directly relate one's self to God. Jesus saw that this was so in the case of the zealous, righteous people about him. They went to ever greater pains to develop to their full consequences the traditional precepts concerning the service of God. In the righteousness of such service Jesus saw the decay of living morality, the carcass about which the eagles gathered. Jesus was absolutely opposed to the subordination of the common needs of common men to the requirements of cult. He witnessed the bloom of a religion that would live on the death of the moral. And he showed how the evil could be overcome. If a tradition pur- porting to come from God is expected to acquaint us with what is good and what is not, religion preponderates over moral disposition. We are protected from this evil when we see that moral earnestness, veraciousness of willing, is the beginning of religion, in which the living God is truly sought. Living the moral life is the way to the reality for which religion stands. Jesus saw in moral knowledge an original element in all real religion. It is impossible for the soul to yearn after God himself, if it does not know what the good is. For God is good. If we are to find God and follow him, we must know the good. Jesus fought the error that we must first know God and understand his com- mandments in order to know the good. He held that man of his own self could judge as to what was right. He told even Pharisees that they could. If we turn now to his interpretation of the commandment of love, we find Jesus unfolding the same moral thought. He makes clear what the disposition of love is. The goal of love is that personal fellowship in which each has joy in all, for which each would willingly sacrifice everything else. To originate and deepen such fellowship is the unchangeable and eternal will of love. The will of love can will nothing else. To love one's enemy, therefore, is not 472 The Finality of the Christian Religion an exceptional accomplishment, which one may admire, but not understand; certainly not a moral abnormality which is repellent, but a vivid example of the will that wills nothing but personal fellowship. If enmity could set limits to love, love would be limited from without and unfree. On reflec- tion, one sees that it thus belongs to the very essence of love to love one's enemies. Again, love does not wait upon, is not guided by, pre- cepts. Real love gives precepts to itself. The relation of love is determined from within, not from without. Love does not have to be told that its goal is fellowship; it knows this of itself. The best way to this goal is the only way that love knows. Whither love goes, and the way it goes, is not determined by any precepts whatsoever; otherwise its free confidence is overpowered by fear or its energy resolved into inertness. The veracious self-dependence of love as the kernel and star of the moral life — this is the innermost meaning and message of the Master. Willing as the heroic Pharisee was to suffer martyrdom for his "faith," in the absence of this love he was nothing. It is not in obedience to precepts, not even the precepts of Jesus, that the love of which Jesus thinks has either origin or goal or method. The love that he requires may violate his precepts, and the hate that he disallows keep them. It is not precepts, it is love, that kindles love, the love in one man becoming the temporal beginning of love in another man. It is when love does begin that man has life in him- self. Once arisen, love functions of itself. Love does not receive laws; on the basis of its own apprehension it gives itself laws. Love does not depend upon lovableness, but unrolls and irradiates its inner wealth, like God's sun. It has the sublime composure of creative power; it has divine genius and authority. It is this love, and this alone, that Jesus says is required of men. Men could keep no sabbath, Jesus 473 observe no fast or rite or ceremony, cherish no custom or cult, confess no creed, obey no precept, revere no tradition; but love, fontal, autonomous, adaptive, never-failing — this they must have or perish. In the opinion of Jesus, it is precisely the rise in man of this free power of love that is man's redemption. And love is never ended and never complete. No moral task ever is. To know only limited tasks is not to have attained the inner vitality and freedom of the moral disposi- tion. It belongs to the nature of love that the fulfilment of one task but makes a new and greater task possible. A will that sets bounds to its endeavor for fellowship with men has no moral character. The generation — i. e., choice — of hearty fellowship with others as our only goal involves the recognition in us of unlimited capacity to work toward such a goal. If we have real love, we shall recognize that we have no right to all our rights, that all is not ours to use which is ours legitimately to own. To do its work and reach its goal, love will be ready to sacrifice everything but itself. This is the self-denial that Jesus requires — not a senseless throwing away of one's own powers, but their utmost tension, their entire concentration upon the great cause. (2) Bvit in these last remarks we have already transcended the thought of Jesus as to the relation of moral personality to the precepts of tradition, and encroached upon its relation to the natural. According to Jesus, the self-dependence of the inner life is to be maintained against the latter, no less than against the former. Pleasure and pain, appetite and passion, enjoyment and sorrow — these are not ends; they are but so much raw-material at the disposal of the self, as it organizes and matures moral personality, whose essence is love. Jesus requires spiritual discipline which endures no residue of the merely sensual, but absolutely subordinates all that is sensual as means to ends of spirit. More especially, 474 The Finality of the Christian Keligion he has no thought of compassing this moral task as an external work ; it is done from within, out of the disposition itself, as a satisfaction of one's own willing and craving. This triumphing of the inner life over these lords in the kingdom of the world, by converting them into servants of moral personality; this remainderless ethicization of the pre-ethical and sub-ethical power of human nature — this is an inalienable element of the moral thought of Jesus. From natural, sensible determinateness to ripen to full spiritual moral personality; from natural, sensible fellowship to grow into a kingdom of spirits which has abiding worth, sub specie aeternitatis — this is the meaning of life according to the thought of Jesus. And Jesus himself, though he came eating and drinking, and was called a wine-bibber and a glutton, was yet inwardly free from the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. He would lead his disciples to this freedom — a freedom which had not yet dawned upon the thought of his forerunner. And this free- dom reposed upon a seriousness to which the strenuousness of the Baptist had not attained — a seriousness which did not manifest itself by wearing a cloak of camel's hair and eating locusts and wild honey, but by losing the life to save it, by plucking out the right eye and cutting off the right hand, by going through life maimed rather than losing soul and body in hell ! That these words are not a demand for outward works is evident from his doctrine of repentance which called for a change of the disposition itself. He ever pressed behind the single deed to the disposition: Make the tree good and the fruit will be good. Out of the heart come the pure thoughts which will purify the man. But enough has been said to indicate the center of the moral thought of Jesus. It is the unity, the wholeness, the internality, and freedom of a personality, whose content is moral love. It was this which he defended, at the cost of Jesus 475 his life, against the pharisaic and the pagan ethic of the "natural man." His ethic was an ethic, not of the "situa- tion," not of "environment" not of the socius, but of a tense ethical individualism;^ and it is diametrically opposed to that modern ethic which makes happiness the formal con- stituent of virtue, and seeks to deduce the laws of conduct from the laws of comfort; which insists that not the inten- tion of the doer, but the result of the deed, is the test of the ethical value of an act; which, reducing the moral law to impotence by depriving it of its distinctive characteristic, necessity, degrades it to a matter of latitude and longitude, temperature and cuisine; which robs it of its essential sanction, the punishment inseparably bound up with its violation, and denies the organic instinct of conscience that retribution must follow upon evil-doing. But, in the light of this long exposition, we may now return to the problem of obedience to the precepts of Jesus on the part of the bearers of modern civilized life. The formulation of a few propositions must suffice. First: Love, or the will directed to the fellowship of autonomous beings, is the disposition, of which Jesus is archetype, and which alone is good. According to his inter- pretation of love, this disposition is a unitary, self-dependent, inexhaustible will. It is in the light of this thought that we must approach those words of Jesus which seem to divorce us from our morally necessary social tasks, from our striving after possessions and power. It is an error to borrow the moral thoughts of Jesus from such words. We must seek his moral thoughts in the unity of his disposition. The question should then be raised: How are such single words to be understood on the basis of his disposition, and of the special situation in which it was his lot to live? iThis is corroborated by the way in which he puts the individual naked and alone before God's judgment throne. 476 The Finality of the Christian Keligion Second: Careful account must be taken of the special situation in which the words were spoken. Must the key to the words of Jesus which transgress the customary mode of thought of man be found in Jesus' expectation of the speedy end of the world? Not entirely, great as was this influence upon him. The words of Jesus receive their peculiar tone from their being directed to an eternal goal, on which account all that intervenes between the individual and that goal can be only relatively and limitedly willed. Third: The most common and injurious misconception in the explanation of those words is to treat them as laws which ought to be fulfilled in every instance and under all circumstances. This is an impossibility. The all-important fact is that they are not a necessary expression in all space and time of the disposition of Jesus. They are not what such a disposition must organically and unchangeably will. The character of his own intercourse with men testifies that he had no thought of paralyzing human energies, sealing the fountain of natural human joys, and despoiling his sur- roundings for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. If he had meant those words to be universal rules, he would have been much worse than the lawgivers he combated. Such an apprehension of his words is possible only for those — and their name is legion — who care more for his words than they do for himself. They present the sorry spectacle of a harsh opposition to that very moral knowledge which Jesus possessed, and to which he would win others. Fourth: What is the moral method to which the disposi- tion of Jesus points? We follow Jesus, not when we obey his words, but when we are like-minded with him ; when we, on the basis of this disposition, and as autonomously as he in our bearing toward the traditional and the natural, seek the path to the eternal goal from the standpoint of our own situation and endowment. But if we would follow any Jesus 477 words whatsoever solely because they are handed down as the words of Jesus, although we do not find his disposition, therefore himself, in them, and although we do not under- stand them as true, then we thereby offer resistance to this Man who would bind us to himself in order to save us from the darkness of self-deception. This false obedience to the words of Jesus comes under the head of what was once spoken of as salvation by works. But the love which is self- dependent, inventive, ready to sacrifice, is not the product of the isolated individual, but is kindled in him, inasmuch as it is only persons that save persons. It is this love that we understand to be morally necessary. And we condemn ourselves when we detect that we lack it. To substitute obedience to the words of Jesas for the possession of this love is a pharisaic makeshift on the part of those who find servility to law an easier way of salvation than the freedom of love. But it is precisely the strenuous effort involved in obeying precepts that is so attractive to these people, proud of their strength. They fail to see that it was in a love ready for any sacrifice that the total energy of the soul of Jesus was exhausted. Fifth: Are, then, these words of Jesus worthless? Far from it. They are themselves glorious witness of inner freedom and power. It is precisely through these words and through the bearing of Jesus toward the speedy end of the world that his energy is imveiled. He fulfils everything which flows from his conviction, as that which is self-evident, and requires the same thing of his disciples. Modern Chris- tians think that they are obliged to share the eschatological mood and conviction of Jesus, and yet they guard against treating; the thino^s of this world as indifferent and futureless ! This is, to say the least, intellectual confusion. Jesus acted according to his conviction — such modern Christians have no convictions according to their acts. The truth is that we do 478 The Finality of the Christian Keligion not have the same world-view that Jesus had, that we there- fore live in a different world. But the disposition which Jesus had in his world we should have in ours, namely, the will to follow, as really as he did, our own convictions in our own conduct. Only such acts are veracious as grow from the agent's own will. Whoever, like Jesus, presses on to a veracious and loving act, must wage war against the con- venience which would receive sufficient guidance from what others say. Man cannot be brought to moral conduct by a sum of precepts which limit his autonomy. Jesus therefore made free path for moral disposition. Sixth : From the finality and supremacy of the moral dis- position of the individual in the ethical thoughts of Jesus, it follows that, after all, the goods of civilized life — family, vocation, state, science and the like — are only relative values. It cannot be too earnestly asseverated that this conviction is integral in the thought of Jesus and inalienable in the Chris- tian religion. Only persons, no other form or content of human society, have absolute value. The spirit of Chris- tianity, as long as it remains true to itself and like the spirit of Jesus, is a spirit which remains indifferent to secular tasks and interests as such, but which is directed solely to the last and highest good of personality, fellowship of love with man and with the holy God. Heart purity which can stand before God in judgment, and love which does deeds that are merciful and unmerited, helpful and needful, to the brothers for God's sake, even as such deeds are experienced from God — these are the basic thoughts of Christian ethics, the content of the individual and social ethics of Christianity. To walk in the lijjht of the Eternal and before the face of God, undisturbed by divisive and bewildering impulses in the world enmeshed in sensible goods and interests — this is the heart of genuine Christianity. And the Christian must not forget that the products of his labor in industry, in science. Jesus 479 in art, in the state, open a gulf which threatens to devour his future. There is redemption for his personal life only when his moral knowledge transports him above all this glory. It is all over with Christianity when this strong tendency to the personal, the supramundane, which after all was the kernel of the eschatology of Jesus, is paralyzed and atro- phied. It is one of the difficult questions of today whether we can maintain this principle of the Christian life, once thought of as unassailable, unconquerable, all-illumining, against that revolution in the modern world to which Chris- tian ethics seems questionable, imperfect, and positively dangerous. The truth is that that very spirit and disposi- tion of Jesus which, after all, made modern culture possible, because it made the modern man possible, must ever turn around and save us from that culture; otherwise personal life will decay, if not through its toil, at least through the luxuriance of the products of its toil which smother con- science and eclipse the countenance of God.' And while it may be true that moral light falls upon a wider area of life in the present than was the case with Jesus, still not only was his moral power to live according to the light greater than ours, but it is only as we are ourselves organized and energized by that power which, in him, was sufficient for the complete extensive and intensive ethicization of his nature, that we can create for ourselves free personalities, whose content is love, in the use of the material that both the traditional and the natural place at our disposal. 1 Culture, art, and science may be very undeveloped beside high piety, highly developed beside a low state of religion. It lies in the nature of religion that all energetic piety, conscious of possessing the one thing needful, must be inclined to face these interests, when they make claim to satisfy the soul, with a certain hos- tility, and that every genuine religion in its earliest realization is indifferent to them. A highly developed society easily seduces the rest of the world. The one thing needful can be neither art nor science nor wealth, but the perfect moral fel- lowship born of the love of God. For Christianity, the moral alone is the decisive factor in judging the value of human life. The Christian can be '' happy," even when the goods of culture and of wealth are denied him. 480 The Finality of the Christian Religion 5. We are searching for the abiding importance of the person of Jesus and for the permanent element in his teach- ing. We have seen that it was not belief in angels, in spirits, and in the hereafter that constituted his peculiarity and his power. It was not his working of miracles, nor his belief in demons; he knew that he was not sent to do miracles, and his belief in demons he shared with his times. Besides, there were casters-out of demons enough before and since his day. Nor was the annunciation of the speedy coming of the kingdom of God peculiar to him; it had already been made by the Baptist, and had long been the thought of Pharisees and Zealots. Certainly, the claim to be the Messiah does not constitute his peculiarity. Apart from the debatable question whether he claimed for himself on earth the title of Messiah, there is the further question as to the special character of his messianic idea, and the kind of Messiah he wanted to be — not the folk-Messiah cer- tainly, for it was precisely this Messiah that was the "devil" in the temptation stories. Nor does the claim to be the incar- nate God on earth amount to a peculiarity; others subse- quently made it for Jesus; Jesus never made it for himself, and would not have understood what was meant by it. Indeed, if the oldest sources are to be trusted, Jesus said nothing even as to his pretemporal existence with God, or of his return to heaven. Finally, as we have also shown, his moral pre- cepts are not universally valid. Some of them were applicable only to his own time and place ; perhaps more narrowly still, to the mode of life of his immediate disciples. Nor were his moral ideas, taken distributively, new. What then? He was new, and his power to make men new was new likewise. And the unity, wholeness, spirituality, and simplicity of his moral thoughts, as well as the freshness, liveliness, and beauty of their presentation, were new, although the opinion to the contrary of certain modern Jewish scholars of superior char- Jesus 481 acter and learning must be respected. What was certainly new was the disposition and self-consciousness of Jesus. From these there gradually sprang up in his soul a value- judgment that was new also, namely, that not things, not even sacred things, but that persons only, are worthful. Faith in the infinite worth of the human personality in the sight of God — if there was anything new in the thought of Jesus, it was this. Jesus felt the worth of man as man, and dared to hope that man could become the home of the moral values and the religious blessedness which he felt in himself. He cherished this hope for publicans and harlots, for out- casts and prodigals, for Samaritans and gentiles, for his enemies, and especially for children, in whom he experienced the true essence of man. With this general position a dis- tinguished Jewish scholar agrees, as may be seen from the following : The rabbis and the rabbinic religion are keen on repentance, which in their eyes is second only to the law; but we do not, I think, find the same passionate eagerness to cause repentance, to save the lost, to redeem the sinner. The refusal to allow that any human soul is not capable of emancipation from the bondage of sin, the labor of pity and love among the outcast and the fallen, go back to the synoptic gospels and their hero. They were hardly known before his time. And the redemptive method which he inaugurated was new likewise. It was the method of pity and love. There is no paltering with sin; it is not made less odious; but instead of mere threats and condemnations, the chance is given for hope, admiration, and love to work their wonders within the sinner's soul. The sinner is afforded the ojoportuuity of doing good instead of evil, and his kindly services are encouraged and praised. Jesus seems to have had a special insight into the nature of certain kinds of sin, and into the redeemable capacity of certain kinds of sinners. He perceived that there was a certain untainted humility of soul which some sins in some sinners had not yet destroyed, just as he also believed and realized that there was a certain cold, formal, negative virtue which was practically equivalent to sin, and far less capable of reformation. Overzealous scrupulosity, and the pride 482 The Finality of the Christian Religion which, dwelling with smug satisfaction upon its own excellence, draws away the skirts from any contact with impurity, were espe- cially repugnant to him. Whether with this sin and with its sinners he showed adequate patience may perhaps be doubted, but it does seem to me that his denunciation of formalism and pride, his con- trasted pictui"es of the lowly publican and the scrupulous Pharisee, were new and permanent contributions to morality.^ 1 C. G. MONTEFIOEE, in Hibbert Journal, July, 1905, pp. 665, 666. Montefiore's reference to the harshness of Jesus' treatment of his enemies leads us to wonder whether Jesus both prayed, "Father, forgive them," and also called them serpents and vipers and children of hell, and " anticipated, at least without regret, and apparently with satisfaction, their everlasting destruction and pain" (p. 659). This quotation seems a bit overdrawn. For the rest, to criticise thus the denunciations of Jesus is to find fault with the prophetic temperament as such; to make no allow- ance for orientalism in the use of figures of speech ; and to neglect to explain how otherwise the tremendous moral earnestness of Jesus could adequately express itself, and the sinners be brought to repentance. Besides, may not what Jesus said have been true 1 Still, I do not wish to seem to deny that there are difficulties here, both historical and moral. One thing seems clear, however : Not alone our human affec- tion for Jesus, but his own moral merit as well, are excluded by the ecclesiastical conception of his sinlessness. Such a wooden conception of his abstract, bare sin- lessness would be abandoned, did not one need it in order to establish, with Anselm, the possibility of a spotless " satisfaction " to God. Jesus confronts us as knowing what sin was— knowing, too, not from divine omniscience. It is simply sanctimo- nious superficiality to spirit away his words : " Why callest thou me good? One is good, God alone." His temptation was no isolated episode in his life; the story is symbolic of his development. Jesus had a hard fight with sin. No development is a human development without this fight. Still, there does not seem to have been any breach with his past. He was no penitent, such as Paul, or Jonathan Edwards. And the impression of his purity of heart and moral elevation is overmastering to this day. His development to purity and to consummate goodness ought not to be considered by us as unhuman because incomprehensible. Think, analogously, of the difference between the musical genius of a Beethoven and the mediocre endowment of most men 1 Would it increase our love for Beethoven, or serve the cause of music, to excogitate the formula that he had no ups and downs in his musical development, that his music was so much a gift that it was no task also? And do we say that his genius was unhuman and impossible, because we cannot fathom it? In what region can we fathom the profundity of genial personalities? It is often said that Jesus' call to repentance and denunciation of sin presupposes his sinlessness. I do not wish to deny it; but if Beethoven should hear our ''rag-time" music, would he not cry with fiery indignation : " Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish?" and would such a cry prove his musical flawlessness ? Others tell us that even transient moral obscurations and weaknesses at the period of growth must necessarily have left permanent scars on the conscience and have hindered him from subsequent prophetic tasks. But this position is psychologically wholly false. Furthermore, was it impossible for Jesus to say the Lord's Prayer with his disciples without expressly omitting the a(j>e? ? " Still, I do not wish to seem dogmatic, and I bow before Jesus as the best we know. I simply wish to avoid any look of a doketic view of the his- torical Jesus; also, to recognize that the idea of the absolute sinlessness of Jesus is no result of historical study. The sources are too meager, and the question leads into those depths of the inner life which no historical observation penetrates. Jesus 483 We indicated above that it was on the basis of Jesus' own worth and worthiness that he had faith in the worth of man as man. How else could such faith be accounted for? The people whom he saw were little suited to inspire such faith. He saw men murdered and mowed down like grass, and treated worse than one treats oxen that fall into the ditch. Nor did Jesus indulge a weak feeling of Buddhistic pity for poor humanity, nor was the idea of "the universal brother- hood of man" known to him. He set out from a reality of which he was immediately aware. With all his reverence before God, whose throne was heaven and whose footstool was the earth, with high regard for the greatness of his people, for Moses and the prophets, for the Baptist, whom he called the greatest of them that were born of woman, he yet felt the dignity of his own personality, and therewith the worth of human personality in general. It was the worth of man as such which had come to be appreciated by him, and by him alone — any man being worth more than all the world besides. His own inner nobility was the source of his value- judgment — a value- judgment which is a proof that he did not consider his own nature to be different in essence from that of other men. The ecclesiastical affirmation of this dif- ference is the logical negation of the gospel. He believed in the hid treasure in the field, because he himself bore a rich treasure in his own bosom. He knew that God was the Father of man, because he knew that he was himself a Son of the Father. To awaken in others the slumbering conscious- ness of the nearness of God, of kinship with God, the sense of the membership of men one with another, the pjrivilege and possibility of the noble kind of thought, feeling, and willing of which he was conscious in himself — this was his peculiar task. But do the presuppositions and conditions for the success of this task exist? Are the structure and function of the 484 The Finality of the Christian Religion universe such as to indicate that their chief end is the origination and consummation and conservation of moral per- sonality ? Is the Will that is in at the heart of things like- minded with Jesus in this matter? This is the religious question as the modern man would frame it. For Jesus it would simply be the question as to the character and end of God. It is Jesus' thought upon this subject to which we should now turn. Who was Jesus' God, and what was Jesus' attitude of mind toward him ? a) The reality of God seems to have been an immediate certainty to Jesus. His certainty was not grounded in the authority of tradition. To have God simply through the recollection of others, or through one's own recollection, is to forget God. Nor was God an object of human inquiry and investigation to Jesus. He excogitated no theistic argument, as also he elaborated no psychology of the divine mind. The basis of his conviction of the existence of God was practical and experiential, rather than authoritative or speculative. To be sure, God was a reality to the fellow- countrymen of Jesus also. But to them the counterpart of this reality was the reality of their national life and dominion. Faith in the former could not abide without faith in the latter. But the people were broken, scattered, bleeding. Hence faith in the corresponding reality of God grew uncer- tain, distressed, joyless. Their sense of the worth of God ebbed and flowed with the sense of their own worth and the evidence of their own dignity. But for Jesus, God was a reality independently of the fate and future of the nation as such. His faith in God was not dependent upon his faith in the national existence and hopes, but upon the worthiness of his own personality and the worth of man, since faith in God combines both faith in man and work at the perfection of personality. It was because God was to him a reality far transcending all else, even his faith and thought as regards Jesus 485 his people, that he was in a position to exalt the preaching of the kingdom of God into a higher sphere. This was the mystery in his preaching of the kingdom of God. b) The God in whom Jesus had faith was a living God, present in the world as a father with the children in the father's house. His people had lost faith in the presence of a living God piloting history. They lifted up their eyes to the great future. They believed in a God, far-off now, who would draw nigh again in that future. Their faith had be- come hope. Those who held themselves rather aloof from the popular piety and the inflamed national hopes, the specifically religious, the legally minded, scribe-taught circles, lost the soil of reality from under their feet, and the sense for reality at all. They created a pseudo-reality in their schools of learning, in their quiet chambers, with the roll of the law; in place of the living reality of God, not entirely lost indeed, there were the spider's webs of their scholasti- cism, in which they thought that they apprehended the true will of God, the learned and acute intei-pretation of the Scriptures, joy in disputation and in odd subtleties, and the high regard and venera- tion of numerous scholars.' At first sight it might seem that Jesus did not oppose to this attitude a God who was a present reality. He preached a kingdom of God that was to come, as we have seen; and we must not replace his eschatological, apocalyp- tic, catastrophic expectation by our modern ethical, evolu- tionistic, philosophic concept of the kingdom of God. But when we probe to the heart of the matter, we see also that Jesus expected nothing in the future save what he himself experienced in the present, namely, the nearness of God, the vision of the Invisible, the stilling of the hunger and thirst for God, the victory of the good over the evil. This future for which he hoped was already present in his own soul. However, we do not think rightly of Jesus when we 1 BoussET, op. cit., pp. 49, 50. 486 The Finality of the Christian Religion picture his soul as a deep, clear, placid mountain lake. He fought and suffered; the storms and waves of his inner life were not unlike ours. We have not a high-priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmity. In the days of his flesh he offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears, unto Him that was able to save him from death. He must have doubted and wrestled con- cerning his God, concerning the knowledge of his will, and resignation to that will. But his God spake to him — spake to him out of the resistance of the multitude, out of the hostility of his enemies, out of the cordiality of his friends, and out of the gratitude of the needy. And he grew sure of God as a present reality. But he must reconquer this sureness ever anew in quiet hours. He entered into his closet, and when he had closed the door, he prayed to his Father which seeth in secret. Out on the mountain-top at the blush of dawn, or in the moonlit garden of Gethsemane, prayer comforted him; for he heard his Father's voice in the solitude. The field through which he wandered com- forted him; for it told him that not all the seed fell in good ground, but some among thorns and thistles, some on rocks and beaten path. Out of everything did his heavenly Father speak distinctly and clearly, comforting and strength- ening words — his heavenly Father, generous and magnani- mous, devoted to the service of others — clothing lilies, watching sparrows, numbering the hairs of his children's heads, making their carking anxiety about food and raiment unbelief and impiety. Out of the Sacred Scriptures of his people did this God speak to him. But it seems that it was in prayer that God spake most powerfully and most immedi- ately to Jesus. Whether he experienced moments of ecstasy, like Buddha and Paul, may not be so surely known. Stories like the baptism and temptation seem to suggest as much. What remains only inner experience to such petty Jesus 487 souls as ours often takes the shape of hearing and seeing in mighty prophetic spirits. A present, living reality — that was Jesus' God. Never was God so living a reality in any other man's life. Jesus breathed in the reality of God. All that was in his life was religion, as all in the life of the great masters was music or art or science. In all his words Jesus directed his own soul and the souls of his hearers to God in every situation of life. In the case of Jesus, faith in God as his Father was a feeling of the abiding nearness of God; the filial consciousness which knows nothing distant, strange, unfamiliar, unhomelike in his Father ; the jubilant certainty that God had completely disclosed his heart to him. The son knoweth the Father. Jesus felt that there was a depth and intimacy of God's fatherliness toward him which was exceptional, unshared, unique. Not that he held that he was co-ordinate with God. The church's thought on this subject would have been poor comfort to his devout and dependent spirit. To his pious soul God never ceased to be his God. c) Jesus' God is the holy will that rules over the world and over history, and is thus best thought of as spiritual,, personal reality. Still, Jesus did not so nearly approach abstract language when he spoke of God. His thoughts in reference to God may be gathered around two words. King and Father; the former symbolizing the power and glory and awfulness of God; the latter, the love and grace and faithfulness of God. This conclusion is rendered anteced- ently probable by a consideration drawn from the history of religion in general, and the revelation-religion por excel- lence in particular. If what God, in his brooding over man, had already accomplished of self-revelation prophesied and necessitated new stages of revelation ; and if there is unity in God's revelation — as indeed there must be, since God is 488 The Finality of the Christian Keligion one God — there is already a presumption in favor of this conclusion; for the history of religion shows that belief in God dawned in the personification of nature-powers exciting fear and awe, on the one hand, and in animistic ideas, fore- runners of ancestor-cult, on the other. The evolution of the former led to the idea of the power and majesty of the divine, that is, to the conception of God as King; of the latter, to the moral nature of the divine, that is, to the conception of God as Father, by whatever name in each case the wor- shiper named him. The Father-name is of very ancient coinage, and, instead of its application to God being original with Jesus, all the higher religions have given this title to God. The ancient Greeks called God "the father of gods and men." We are also his offspring, says a poet quoted by Paul.^ In the canonical writings of the Old Testament God is frequently called the Father of Israel.^ In post- exilic apocrypha God is spoken of as the Father of the individual.^ But this refers to a discussion of little impor- tance, since the greatness of the word "father" suffers no injury by the surrender of the traditional opinion that the application of the name "Father" to God was new with Jesus. Not to dwell upon extra-Christian religions, we are concerned rather with the fact that both of the ideas under consideration belong to the Jewish and Christian religions. Old Testament theology exhibits the development of the idea of God, passing from a primitive stage belonging to the sphere of nature-religion on to a degree of spiritual and iThe quotation is from a curious poem by Aratas, a native of Cilicia, Paul's own province, who lived about 300 B. C. It opens with an invocation to Zeus : From Zeus begin : and never let us leave His name unloved. With Him, with Zeus, are filled all paths we tread and all the marts of men; Filled, too, the sea and every creek and bay: And all, in all things, need we help of Zeus; For we, too, are his offspring. 2Deut. 14:1; 32:5f.; Hos.2:l; Isa.l:4; 30:9; 43:6; 45:11; 63:16; 64:7; Jer. 3:4, 14,19; 31:8,20; Matt. 2:10; cf. Psa. 103:13. 3 Sir. 23 : 1, 4 ; 51 : 10 ; Wisdom 2 : 13, 16, 18 ; 14:3; Tob. 13:4; Enoch 62 : 11 ; etc. Jesus 489 moral character, the highest conceivable within the limits of the national consciousness. Here, too, the notion of kingliness grew from the natural, fatherliness from the his- torical and from the moral. God is taskmaster, law-giver, judge; but, also, Israel's creator, redeemer, protector. The nation knew itself to be, not only servant who experi- ences the master's power and vigor, but also son, first-born, heir, who experiences the father's love. While the idea of kingliness is dominant in pre-Christian Judaism, it can by no means be said that the name " Father " as applied to God is to be regarded as merely exceptional — it is there organically. This brief reference to the subject is sufficient for the purpose of this discussion. Assuming orderliness and development in revelation, we should naturally expect to find the two moments recurring in the faith of Jesus. And this is what we do find. . On the one hand, the thought of Jesus is affiliated upon the Old Testament conception of the holy, supramundane God, who is to be obeyed and feared. He confesses the "God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob," the "God of Israel," To his faith, God is "Lord of heaven and earth," to whom "all things are possible." "Heaven is his throne, the earth his footstool," "Jerusalem the city of the great King." Especially does all human fear vanish before the fear of "Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell." On the other hand, God is Father to the faith of Jesus. But did Jesus consider that God was the Father of all men? The burden of the apostolic testimony seems to be that God is "the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," and our Father through him. In John's gospel Jesus as the Son is the correlative to Father — words which have deep sig- nification in this gospel; and the fatherliness of God to other men is grounded in their relation of faith and life in the only-begotten Son. And there does not seem to be any 490 The Finality op the Christian Keligion distinct or definite passage in the synoptics in which Jesus teaches explicitly that God is the equal Father of all man- kind. But other considerations may be urged on account of which we may not let the matter rest here. There is some objection to the extra-scriptural phrase " fatherhood of God." In the popular mind, "fatherhood" is a word with an onto- logical connotation, and refers to the structural constitution and character of God. Thus the word directs attention to what God is metaphysically rather than morally. But such a conception is foreign to the mind of the biblical writers in general, and to Jesus in particular. It is certain that Jesus' faith is moral-religious, not speculative ; grounded in the experience of the benefits received from God, not in an analysis of the ontological essence of God. As Jesus attempted no proof of the existence of God (he needed none, nor did he seem to think that anyone else did), so he con- structed no definition of God, aspired to no psychology of the divine mind, had nothing whatever to say of the inner mechanism of deity. He couched his faith in symbols — King, Father — appropriate to the heart and will, not in concepts — Infinite, Absolute, World-Ground, First Cause — intended for the speculative understanding. His use of the word "Father" is to express a certain moral attitude, purpose, feeling of God toward man; therefore the fatherliness, not the fatherhood, of God. Of God's metaphysical relation to man Jesus seems to have known nothing. That side of the inscrutable Power over all things, which is akin to man, is the only thing that Jesus knew of God; more he did not desire or need to know. Morally, God is the Father of all men, in varying degrees indeed, for fatherliness and filial- ness are correlative terms. Thus, there was of necessity a cordiality, a complacency, an intimacy, in God's fatherliness toward Jesus, and toward those whom Jesus brought into filial relations to God, which could not obtain between God Jesus 491 and the impious. Nevertheless, the everlasting truth must not be overlooked that the absence of filialness in man does not extirpate the fatherliness of that God whom Jesus had in mind when he said: "Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you; that ye may be sons of your Father which is in heaven : for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.'" Furthermore, if God were universal King and not universal Father would not sin have to be interpreted as a rebellion against authority, or an insult to dignity, rather than the cruel and guilty thing that it is — a wound inflicted upon the heart of love ? How can sin be made to appear exceed- ing sinful if it be not seen to be impiety toward a father, and how can misery be known at its depths if it be simply due to the disobedience of a servant to his master, and not to the loneliness and degradation and remorse of a lost child that has exiled itself from the father's home? Such, at least, would seem to be fairly implied in Jesus' own par- able of the Prodigal Son. Thus it appears, that to Jesus, God is King and Father. But these two are not like the two foci of an ellipse, but the center of a circle. The king is fatherly, and the Father is kingly.^ Kingliness is ethicized by fatherliness, and father- liness is energized by kingliness. God as King is the all- controlling power, the will on which all is dependent; God as Father is the eternal goodness by which this will. Lord of heaven and earth, is determined and moved. These two thoughts of God not only do not conflict, but reciprocally condition and require each other. Fatherliness attains its fruition when the Almighty, protecting his supremacy to be sure, exalts man to himself in free, prevenient, unmerited love; and almightiness finds its paramount and worthy task in the endowment of man with the kingdom of God. And iMatt. 5:44, 45. 2 Matt. 11:25 f. 492 The Finality of the Christian Eeligion yet these words should be modified by the addition that, in the faith of Jesus, the real center of the center is fatherli- ness rather than kingliness; for God is love. What man needed most of all to learn was just the truth, immediately certain to Jesus, that The All-Great, were the All-Loving too — So, through the thunder comes a human voice Saying, "O heart I made, a heart beats here! Face my hands fashioned, see it in myself!"* Does Jesus' thought or man's need go beyond this? Is it not the absolute religion? The question of the novelty of Jesus' thought of God has often been raised. What is there in his God-faith that, in the long historical movement, has the merit of progress, of originality? What, in his belief, is to be credited to in- heritance and environment ? Suppose that by some alchemy the possession which he shared with his predecessors and contemporaries could be disengaged, would the residuum, if there be a residuum, be fairly the limit of his originality, the source and measure of his influence upon the doctrine of God ? There are considerations decisive against the adequacy and justness of this standard. For one thing, it will appear that, while many, perhaps all, of his thoughts of God may be discovered among the sayings of men of religious genial- ity prior to his day; while, moreover, as a true son of Israel, he would never think of proclaiming a new God ; yet no religious genius had cherished all of his thoughts, nor held them in the same combination and with the same em- phasis. All the tones or notes of a musical masterpiece may be detected elsewhere; but the harmony is new, its con- structive idea is original, its influence peculiarly its own. The composer of the production did not cull out the notes from other compositions, and piece them together in an out- 1 RoBEET Beowning, " Epistle " (end). Jesus 493 ward and mechanical whole; the masterpiece is not an aggregate of tones from without, but the evolution of a musical life from within. So, similarly, Jesus' belief con- cerning God may exist in its separate constituents elsewhere, but he was no eclectic putting opinions together in an arbi- trary whole foreign to his own consciousness of God. His belief was unitary, aus einem Gussj to it is to be accorded the originality of wholeness and harmony, of inwardness and depth. But, for another thing, the measure of his influence upon the doctrine of God may not be narrowed to the novelty of his contribution in ideas to that doctrine. For the dignity of his personality, the character of his own reactions of will and feeling against the God-idea, the way the theistic belief appeared in him, invest even the same beliefs in others with a value and an authority in excess of what they would otherwise deserve. Grant that what eTesus says of God has no more intrinsic truth than what Moses, or Jeremiah, or Plato had said of him ; still, by so much as the religious energy of his human personality is higher than theirs, by so much will the weight of the influence of what he says be greater than theirs. The origin of a belief may not be due to Jesus, but its power, its creativeness, its his- torical fruitfulness, may be seen, after varying fortune, to depend ultimately on him alone. Therefore, in estimating the influence of Jesus' thought of God, it is not enough to ask: "Did he say anything new? May it not be derived from what has gone before ? Would it not be more accurate to say that it is only 'relatively' new?" To be sure, there have been mediations and developments; to be sure, one torch kindles another, one prophet awakens another, even the Great Prophet; but how does it come that a helpful in- sight, a saving thought, is loosely inherited, from one generation to another, like a dead stone, till some strong personality seizes it and strikes fire from it? So, for cen- 494 The Finality of the Christian Keligion turies, a great and blessed thought of God, message of a Jonah or a Jeremiah, had fallen unappreciated and impotent, until that thought attained full fruition in the soul of Jesus. But liow did Jesus' faith in God come to be what it was ? Given his faith in the worth of man, his life of service for man, and the question is easily answered. His faith in God was born of the conviction that the Power which sends rain and causes the sun to shine, which clothes flowers, birds, and men, which lets them live and lets them die, has the same sense of the worth of man, the same joy in man, which he himself had and which he required of others. He could say nothing higher of God than what he required of man, namely, that he was kind to friend and foe alike, to the good and the evil. God is like man as man ought to be. God is Father, man is child. And if man knows how to give good gifts, God does too. But Jesus knew the humanness of God more especially from himself. Jesus could not help thinking that that which he felt as the highest and divinest in himself was also the highest and divinest in God. His own heart, pure as it was, felt itself drawn in compassionate pity and redeeming love to the misery of sin- ners ; hence he felt sure that such holy and healing love had its home in the bosom of the Eternal, Because Jesus was merciful, he thought of God as the merciful Father, who seeks the lost sheep till he finds it. God is like Jesus — this is the gospel. No school doctrine, no preaching of repent- ance even like John's, but the glad message that the dis- position and bearing of the Eternal Will toward man are like those of the merciful, pleading Nazarene — this is the best that we dare to believe. That the love of God does not decrease, but increases with the measure of guilt, that the greatest sinner is precisely as such the object of the greatest compassion of God — this is the new, incomprehensible, wonderful revelation which the words of Jesus announce and Jesus 495 his person guarantees. That God forgives sins, and founds a new fellowship between man and himself, as if sin had never intervened — this it is which constitutes the center of the gospel. God is like Jesus! Perhaps this is too good to be true. Certainly, the modern man has come to see that God is a terrible God. The enthusiastic optimism of Jesus is likely to be met with bitterness and derision on the part of those who know nothing of the mild and friendly features of the divine countenance. We cannot forget some grim and lurid descriptions of the history of life on our planet, written by a Huxley, or a John Stuart Mill, or a Schopenhauer, or, for the matter of that, the latest socialist. If God is indeed the God without whose will no sparrow falls from the roof and no hair from our heads, he is also the God who pilots the long catastrophic development of our earth, who pitilessly destroys man and man's works in the fury of the sea and the fire of the land; he is also the lord and leader of the cruel struggle of existence which wipes out whole peoples from the face of the earth, no matter how faithfully and vigorously they struggle to exist; he is the God who lets the hopes and seeds of the individual man's life pitilessly perish. Is this God concerned in the genesis and maturity of moral personality ? Where is pity ; where is forgiveness ? What more can be expected of us than to bow in fear, abase- ment, and resignation before this God of our day who is so mighty, and whose power is often so painfully mysterious? The church is right in saying that Jesus is but an excep- tion, an episode — as men of science would say, a "sport," in the process of the world — for a cross-section of reality as a whole discloses no image and superscription of his spirit as characteristic of the entire development. God is not like Jesus; he is like Herod, or Caiaphas, or Nero. And we turn from this bewildered and bleeding con- 496 The Finality op the Cheistian Keligion sciousness of the modern man back to Jesus only to find that Jesus had no TModic6e. He wrote no justification of the ways of God to man. We find no hint of such a thing — the best proof that he did not anxiously elaborate an "idea" of God, but lived in him. It may be that the burden of the problem was somewhat alleviated for Jesus, since he considered the devil to be the immediate cause of moral evil, of suffering and temptation — a consideration which has lost its cogency to the modern mind. Still, Jesus thought that God was Lord over the devil and could hinder his works, if he so willed; hence the problem remained at bottom much the same for Jesus as for us. A man should pray God, said Jesus, not to lead him into temptation. How can one also call this God Father? The violent paradox of calling this God an all-good Father is the greatest, the most daring thing the human spirit has ever ventured. But it is just the great mystery of religion to endure such contradictions, to live upon them. There is abundant indication in the record that Jesus so lived. In full and true humility, he bowed before the almighty and enigmatic God. It was a leaf from the innermost life of his own soul when he said: "Be not afraid of them which kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will warn you whom ye shall fear: fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell: yea, I say unto you, fear him."^ And these are terrible words. Jesus was spared nothing. God cast disillusion upon disillusion, pain upon pain, in his path. The beginning of his work was hopeful in the glad Galilean time. "All men seek thee. Master," said the disciples, as the unshepherded multitudes flocked after him. But it did not last. With a supreme effort, the tide of his popularity lingered up among the rocks for a moment; but it was only for a moment; it could 1 Luke 12 : 4 f . Jesus 497 not stay; soon it went back to sea; and the next time the tide came in it was not the sunlit wave of fame, but the cold remorseless billow of death and hell. Soon "there was much murmuring among the multitudes concerning him; for some said, He is a good man; others said. Nay, he is not a good man, he deceiveth the people."' "From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. Jesus said therefore unto the twelve. Would ye also go away?" "While Jesus yet spake cometh Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, and with him a multitude with swords and staves."^ "Be ye come out, as against a thief, with swords and with staves to take me. When I was daily with you in the temple, ye stretched forth no hands against me"^ — so Jesus said out of wounded love. "But," he goes on to say, as he explains it all to himself, "this is your hour and the power of darkness." "Then said Pilate to the people, I find no fault in this man. And they were the more fierce, saying. He stirreth up the people teaching throughout all Jewry."* "And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads and shooting out their lips" — so did that wild mob that once shouted hosanna, now heaping nameless cruelties and indignities upon him as the horrors of the cross thickened around him. So it was — a brief period of popularity, then standstill, regress ; scorn, derision, and hostility from the influential; the perfidy of the masses; the clear consciousness of the abortiveness of his work; the intimation, passing into certainty, of his own melancholy fate, the dumb helplessness of the few who remained faith- ful to him; betrayal from the circle of his friends; infinite solitude and forsakenness; and a death of torture. Jesus experienced the conviction that God was a terrible God, and that a mysterious darkness and dreadfulness encom- passed him, even for those who stood closest to him. And 1 John 7: 12. 2 Mark 14:43. 3 Luke 22: 53. ■* Luke 23:5. 498 The Finality of the Cheistian Religion yet Jesus, in every moment of his life, said to the God who stood before his soul surrounded with impenetrable mystery: "Father!" To this God he fled when the bitter disillusions of his life menaced his peace: "I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and the understanding and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemeth good in thy sight." ^ Facing the overthrow of his cause and his own doom, in Gethsemane he agonized: '■'■Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; never- theless, not my will, but thine be done" — "the deepest religious words ever spoken," as Professor Harald Hoffding remarks. With this great "nevertheless," peculiar to true faith, all his life through he built a bridge between the almighty, enigmatic God of eternity and finite man. In contemplating this spectacle, Harnack writes: The Christian faith is not, as is so often said, a sweet trans- figuration of the earthly life, or a pleasant supplement to the toil and hardships of life. No; it is decision for God and against the world. It is concerned with eternal life, with the recognition that there is a kingdom of holiness and love in and above natm'e, a city not built with hands, whose citizens we all ought to be. This message is connected with the requirement of repentance and self-denial, and we feel that a choice must be made — a choice which decides concerning our inner life. Is victory possible in this warfare ? And is the issue one of a higher reality compared with which the world is nothing? Or do we perhaps deceive our- selves concerning our feelings and presentiments? Are we perhaps completely identified with the struggle of unfree natme, with the struggle of our earthly existence, and are we waging a pitiable war with oiu: own shadows and with ghosts ? These are the questions of questions and the doubts of doubts. Now, ever since there has been Christian faith, they are solved by a look at Jesus Christ — solved not in the form of philosophic demonstration, but by a look of trust at the picture of his life. When God and all that is holy threaten to sink into shadows, or when judgment breaks over us; 1 Matt. 11 : 25. Jesus 499 when the mighty impressions of the inexorable life of nature over- master us, and the bounds between good and evil seem to melt away; when we ourselves become dull and sated, despairing of ever knowing God in this dark world, then this person is able to save us. Here a life was lived entirely in the fear of God, stead- fast, unselfish, and pure; here shines a loftiness and love which draws us to itself. Here all was ceaseless war with the world, bit by bit one earthly good after another was lost, until at length the life itself went down in ignominy, and yet — no soul can escape the impression: Who so dies, dies well; he does not die, but lives. It was in this life and death that the certainty of an eternal life and of a divine love, which overcomes all evil, yea, even sin itself, first dawned upon humanity. The worthlessness of the world and of all earthly goods, as compared with a glory that death cannot touch, has dawned upon humanity.' Thus, for one modern man, the interpretation of reality in terms of Jesus gives courage and heart to live and to hope, in the face of the destruction of all earthly goods, even of life itself. So will it always be. To him who enters into Jesus' experience of God and faith in God^ Paul's triumphant assurance is even today not impossible: "I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.'"^ But if it be true that these great words mean : God, in spite of suffering, even they do not express the height and depth of Jesus' experience of God, for Jesus experienced God i)i suffering. To experience God in pain is redemption. But does the supreme practical value for life of the valuation of God in terms of Jesus prove the truth of such valuation? Is that idea or belief which works best to be judged as true on that account ? Perhaps so ; perhaps not. The question is the burden of the latest movement of phi- 1 Reden unci Aufsatze, Vol. II, pp. 13 f. 2 Rom. 8: 38 f. 500 The Finality of the Christian Religion losophy. In all ultimate questions we seem to be shut up to practical solutions only. Still, some considerations may be adduced to vindicate the right and verity of the judg- ment that reality as a whole is most justly and worthily appraised in terms of that part of it which Jesus constitutes. Certainly, if an artist should be praised according to his best picture, or a man according to his best life, or our race according to its best civilization, we may not hesitate to treat reality in general thus generously. It is to our credit to do so; and let us reverently hope that reality may be duly appreciative. And we may further judge that, as the best moments of our individual lives are but samples of what our whole life can yet become, as the highest human type is what the entire human race may yet be able to realize, so the best exemplar of existence, which, so far as we know, is Jesus, is an illustration of the consummation of the cosmic movement, as reasonably to be hoped for as devoutly to be wished.' Does not the steady upward struggle of existence — as Tennyson puts it, the "eternal process moving on" — of which we already have so long a record, guarantee that the ideal and goal cannot be badness instead of goodness, hate instead of love? Good alone is for its own sake, and evil for the sake of the good; even as the ugly in art is not for its own sake, but for the sake of the beautiful. History affords a certain confirmation of this conception. It exalts to its true honor the good which was once defamed, in which no beauty was once seen that man should desire it; and exhibits the nothingness of the base and the bad. There were Pilate and Jesus! How the rCles have changed! Long ago Pilate would have sunk into the sea of eternal oblivion which has swallowed up so 1 To be sure, this suggestion can have no weight to that ecclesiastical dogmatism ■which affirms that Jesus does not have his origin in the race, but is an alien and ▼isitor, and which also denies the unity and continuity of the natural and historical world. Jesus 501 many procurators and high-priests, had not his name been fastened to the memory of a Man whom he allowed to be nailed to the cross. The story of the crucifixion will not be told to the end of time to honor Pilate and Caiaphas, but to prove that the cause of truth and righteousness cannot perish from the earth, but is the permanent interest of humanity. Thus is iniquity ceaselessly annihilated in the recollec- tions which humanity preserves of its own life. Is the thought preposterous, that this recollection is a fragment of an Absolute Recollection in the Divine Consciousness, and that persistence in this Eternal Consciousness is the real being for spiritual things, rather than that transitoriness in the temporal consciousness of the individual ? ^ But to return to Jesus. Fear, abasement, resignation, are not the only aspects of consciousness which the behavior of reality warrants. From this beginning we may lift up our eyes to the summit of faith to which Jesus led human- ity: "our Father who art in heaven." To believe as Jesus believed is not simply to rise above the visible world, and to see behind the bewildering manifoldness the all-embracing, all-sustaining work of God, but also to cast ourselves upon the bosom of God, and hold him steadily by the hand. The very perfection and fruition of faith is that I — a mote in a sunbeam, a fugitive thought, it might seem, of the Eternal Mind — that I loose myself from the flight of phenomena and speak to him, the Infinite and Incomprehensible, and say "I, I and Thou— Thou my Father, I thy child;" that I dare be certain that I am more to him than the works of his hands; that he will — not shelter me from suffering and pain — but lead me with a fatherly and friendly hand. I dare to be certain that I can conquer eternal worth, if I but 1 Such, at all events, is the thought of many philosophers, e. g,, Paulsen, to whom lam indebted for this query. See his System der Ethik, pp. 256 f. 502 The Finality op the Cheistian Eeligion receive him and his world into my life. For the goal of his manifold eternal work is the creation of a divine kingdom, not of this world. To this kingdom shall belong all men who have become and desire to become free personalities, rooted and grounded in eternity — instead of being transi- tory nature-beings, fugitive creatures of the moment, ruled by the world of sense and its laws. The laws of this king- dom are the values of the divine world: righteousness and truth, faithfulness and kindness, love and purity. And for us to have faith is to know — nay, to be certain and to expe- rience— that we are called to this divine kingdom — we with our weaknesses and pettinesses, our earthliness and our sin- fulness. To experience the certainty that our sins, which separate us from God, are forgiven — this is the innermost, blessedest mystery of faith. "All things are possible to him that believeth," for the believer takes his stand with God and in God's world. The earth lies chained at his feet. Quietly and composedly he can look that sphinx in the eye which is called life. Whatever may come, comes from the Father's hand. When the storm breaks, the believer may bow his head, but not let go the Father's hand, which will lead him to the end of life's little day. "It is thy will," he says; "thy will, not mine, be done." The man of faith knows that all that happens is only that he may be more firmly rooted in eternity, that he may grow up more and more into God's world. All things are possible to faith, even what might seem impossible — that a heart, enmeshed in the sweet habits of pleasure and passion, should awaken from its stupid dream and turn to the light ; that a will, old and set in self- ishness and sin, should become receptive and hungry for goodness; that old things should pass away and, behold, all things become new. If the God of Jesus is the God of the whole world, if God is like Jesus in disposition and purpose, the faith that the end of creation is the production of moral Jesus 503 personalities, and that man as man is to be valued in terms of this possibility, is as reasonable as indispensable, much as there are times when our faith must wince and writhe under what seems to be the blind, raw force of some hard blow of destiny which comes crashing into our lives, or into the lives of others around us. There is one other item, of quite a different character, which our discussion may not omit. It is Jesus' worship of God. His worship would be conditioned by his concep- tion of God. It has been said by some students that Jesus' thought of God did not overcome the standpoint of either extra-mundane transcendence or national particularism. As regards the former, it may perhaps be admitted that Jesus' intellectual conception of God is not philosophically accept- able, since he seems to have conceived of God as an indi- vidual being, alongside of other individual beings. It is not, however, his theoretical apprehension of God, any more than of the world, to which all future generations could hope to turn for light. It is, instead, his religious relation to God, which is of more importance by far. His uniform employment of the symbol "Father" when he speaks of God, or to God, however, is in harmony with the philo- sophic idea of immanence rather than of transcendence. The important matter is that, for Jesus, God is a purely spiritual reality; that there is nothing material or nature- like in him. His belief is doubtless reflected in the great words, which probably he never spoke: "God is spirit: and they that worship him must worship in spirit and truth.'" His whole communion w4th God was spiritual and personal — and it is this relation of life, rather than any conclusion of speculation, that is of abiding value to humanity. As regards the latter, both the affirmative and the nega- tive side of the question have been supported. It has been 1 John 4:24. 504 The Finality op the Christian Religion maintained that, after all, Jesus' God was the folk-God rather than the Father-God. While there is the absence of any indication that Jesus was interested in the popular hope of a triumph of the Jewish people over the nations, yet it does not appear that extensively his thought was universally hu- man. His conversation with the Syrophoenician woman, his explanation that he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, his apparently harsh word that bread should not be taken from the children of the house and given to the dogs^ — all this points in that same direction. There is also his instruction to his disciples, that they should not go to the gentiles, nor into the cities of Samaria, but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.^ It does not appear that Jesus ever visited the heathen evangelistically ; only where, them- selves unsought, they met him and preferred request for help, did he as an exception allow himself to be importuned, as in the case of the Syrophoenician woman and the cen- turion of Capernaum. And the supposition would seem to be warranted that his surprise at the faith ^ of the latter indicates that he had not seriously canvassed the possibility of heathen faith. To be sure, other words* seem to support the position that he expected many to come from the east and from the west into the kingdom. But do these words exceed the expectation of the prophets that only a remnant of Israel should be saved, and that many gentiles would join the remnant and together worship on Mount Zion, but that the people of God would always be Israel, and Jerusalem the center of the cult? In harmony with this view, at the Last Supper Jesus said it was the twelve tribes of Israel over which his disciples, under him, should rule.^ Of such rule over the nations of the earth Jesus nowhere spoke, if the consensus of critical opinion be correct that the account of 1 Matt. 15:24 ff. 2 Matt. 10:5. 3 Matt. 8: 10. * Luke 13 : 28 f . = Matt. 8 : 11 f . 5 Luke 22 : 29. Jesus 505 the last judgment' does not come from Jesus, but from the ecclesiastical evangelist; and that the command to preach the gospel in all the world^ and to baptize all peoples^ like- wise has later origin in the ecclesiastical consciousness, as indeed the approximately trinitarian formula itself betrays. It does not appear that Jesus ever meant to found a new church, or, in his piety, to pass beyond the horizon of the piety of his people.* There are traces in the parables that the evangelists were inclined to credit Jesus with their own conviction of the universal destiny of Christianity.^ Says Schnedermann : In all this Jesus did not find himself in disagreement with the totality of his people, with the broad masses and their leaders. No one, the Baptist excepted, had ventured to go so far as Jesus. But one could hear him as Israelite, be led by him, and expect the things that he would bring, and yet ever remain on Israelitish soil. Even Schultz says as much: Jesus did not separate himself from the worship of Israel — although he showed personally no need of it — and he did not oppose the sacred usages of his people, unless their fui'ther main- tenance was inconsistent with the great principles of piety and morality.® While thus a case may be made out for the extensive particularism of Jesus, nevertheless, intensively, the particu- larism of the old religion was broken from within by him. The correlate of the spirituality and internality of the law is its universality ; of the love of God and his lordshijD over heaven and earth, the coequality of all peoples in privileges of worship; of the infinite worth of man, the humble, child- like soul not satisfied with the world, purity of heart, and iMatt. 25:31 f. 2 Matt. 24:14. 3 Matt. 28:18 f. * If, as his eschatology seems to involve, he did not think this world had a future, he could not have anticipated the future world-career of the church. But if he builded wiser than he knew, the inexhaustible power of his inner life is not on that account any the less real and worthful. 5 Luke 14 : 21 ff. ; Matt. 21 : 43. 6 Outlines of Apologetics, translated by A. B. Nichol, p. 208. 506 The Finality of the Christian Religion the resolute will that can dare all for the highest, as the sole indispensable condition of bliss in God. The simple human duties are the real content of God's will. Man's love that is born of the love of God sets free from all limits of national narrowness and personal egoism. The Samaritan cannot be- come neighbor to the Jew, and not have the privilege of loving and worshiping the God of the Jews. Supposing, then, that Jesus' standpoint is tantamount to the overcoming in principle of particularism, even if he did not in thought and practice draw the full conclusions which flow from his principles, he is thereby but an illustration of what has been true in the case of every epoch-making personality; nay, of what is inevitable to, and indicative of, genuine human nature everywhere. But this look of particularism may not fairly be construed into a blemish upon the perfect spirituality of his worship. Dogma played no rOle in his gospel. To hold right doctrine as central and right life as peripheral, to say "Lord, Lord," and not do the will of the Father in heaven — everyone knows how offensive this was to Jesus ! No law intervened between Jesus and God. The law was abrogated through disposition. Jesus freed worship from the legal- istic, juristic, casuistic — from circumcision, tithing, sabbath- keeping, prayer-saying, almsgiving. He placed the soul, not before custom and usage, regulation and letter, not before the petty and painful fulfilment of the law, but immediately before the living God. With him it was sursiim corda to pure spiritual heights. Nor did he require a mediation by means of cult between the worshiper and God. The presupposition of cult is that deity is satisfied if the temple is cared for, if sacrifices are offered, if sacred customs are properly observed. This being fulfilled, life may then go on in its natural bent. But the whole sacred cult of his people signified nothing to the piety of Jesus. His life was lived, far removed from the temple and its cult. Worship Jesus 507 is the fulfilment of the divine will. It is not sacrifice, but mercy, that God requires; not clean hands, but a clean heart; not pompous "service," but holiness of life; not hearkening to traditions, but love, fidelity, righteousness, and purity. Jesus unconditionally exalted placability toward the brother and the care for one's parents above service at the altar. Jesus effected an inner emancipation of piety from cultus. All external and ritual action was to yield to morality as conceived by religion. One stone shall not be left upon another of the temple, he said, with little concern. But so precious was the temple to the religious party that his words cost him his life. Nor did Jesus place the value upon mysticism in worship which is to be found in most religions. Mysticism is the attempt to enter into com- munion with God by means of the excitation of the feelings. Not this, but simple, obvious, common morality was the way to God. Mystical feeling is very easily betrayed into extra- ethical or unethical conduct. Nor did Jesus establish any new forms in which piety should express itself. He lived in a day when mysteries and sacraments energetically strove for the victory over the internalizing and ethicizing of the faith in God. From all this Jesus was far removed. He knew no sacrament. He did not baptize. At the last meal — meal, that is what it was — the bread and wine were sym- bols of his death. But it seems that ideas from pre-Christian and sub-Christian religion conquered admission into the new religion. If faith and personal relation of the believer to God were the main thing, it was thought that the "objective," the material, that mysterious media, outer acts, could not be dispensed with. To the Christians' baptism soon became a bath in water, with marvelous, purifying, consecratiug effect — an effect produced 1 With reference to Paul, Weede, Paulus, pp. 70, 71, writes as follows : "Finally, a word concerning the sacraments. Here especially is the point where one can see that the coarse, massive view — nay, one must say it, the superstitions and magic of 508 The Finality of the Christian Religion through the element of consecrated water; the giving of a name at baptism, a means of protection against evil spirits. The meal became a miraculous, sacred food by means of which communion with God and eternal life were granted to the believer, or a sacri- ficial act to be constantly repeated. Of all this we find nothing in the simple gospel. The earthly Jesus did not institute the act of baptism. It is an institution of his church. The meal has its point of connection in the impressive act of Jesus on the evening before his death. But it is not at all certain that Jesus intended the act to be repeated by his disciples. And the assumption that Jesus meant to found a sacrament — an act which, as outer perform- ance over and above personal, believing relation of man, mediates a super-earthly, spiritual blessing to man — contradicts the entire bearing and spirit of Jesus. It is here that we see the gospel of Jesus in its unsurpassable purity — a gospel whose intrinsic power must work again and again in an emancipating way, against all malformations and all sensualizing of religion. Jesus brought his disciples the spiritual personal God; with Jesus all depends upon the personal, not upon things (Dinglichen und Sachlichen)} To which may be added the noble words of Schultz: Because Jesus promulgated no external laws and ordinances that must grow old, but eternal and fundamental ideas, he has created something that can renew itself afresh in every new age. It can be justly said that the gospel of Jesus is no "positive" reli- gion like the others, that it has nothing statutory and particular- istic about it — that it is therefore religion itself.^ folk-religion — are by no means foreign to Paul. He has by no means purely spiritual, symbolical ideas of the sacred acts of baptism and the Lord's Supper, which, more- over, are not his creations. Of course, he can, and does, find symbol in them also, but in their real essence they are as certainly sacraments — i. e., acts which work in a nature-like manner — without personality with its feeling and disposition coming^ in consideration thereby." Wrede then refers to the significance of the substitu- tionary baptism of living Christians for the dead, that the latter may have the bless- ings of baptism, and be assured of their resurrection from the dead. Next, he speaks of the idea that unworthy eating and drinking at the supper cause sickness and even death, as a purely magical result. Also of the way that Paul expects the bodily ruin of a sinful member banished from the church; etc. See 1 Cor. 15: 29; 11:30 f.; 5:5; Rom. 6:3f.; Gal. 3:27; Rom. 6:3 ff. ; 1 Cor. 10:3 f.; 16-21. However one may interpret the Pauline passages upon this subject, it is clear that Paul's thought has lost something of the simplicity of the gospel of Jesus, with its insist- ence upon the unmediated relation between the divine Father and his children. But see my review of Wrede in American Journal of Theology, July, 1905, pp. 546 ff. 1 BoussET, Op. cit., pp. 53 f. 2 Op. cit., p. 215. So, also, Harnack in Das Wesen. Jesus 509 6. Of the importance which Jesus attached to his death there is little that can be said with certainty. According to the conclusions of historical criticism, there are but two passages in the synoptics bearing upon the subject; the giving of his life a ransom for many, and the words at the Last Supper. As regards the latter, Bousset fairly repre- sents critical opinion when he says that in the present situ- ation of things we may not claim to understand with certainty the original meaning of the Last Supper of Jesus. Did the events of the last meal-time have anything directly to do with the thought of his death ? Doubt upon the sub- ject is at present widespread among exegetes and historians who approach the problem in a scientific spirit. Certainly, Jesus never thought of instituting a "sacrament," as some churches of Christendom have supposed. Leaving the Last Supper out of account, the single word concerning the ransom^ remains. But the character of that tradition being what it is, a permanent and binding dogma of the Christian faith may not be built, consistently with sound morals, upon such a singular and isolated word. It is also improbable that Jesus would have raised the ques- tion as to the j^urj^ose of his suffering and death, if his thoughts remained in a state of intimation and conflict until Gethsemane. It may be that Jesus conceived his death in a presageful way as ransom for many. According to Jewish tradition, the martyred brothers of the Maccabean period repeatedly expressed in their prayers the thought that the wrath of God upon his people would be stayed through their unmerited suffering. Thus may Jesus, mindful of this thought, have expressed the hope that the wrath of God for many of his people might be averted through his own suffering. As a matter of fact, a deep and eternal tinith is hidden in this faith in the substitutionary suffering of the righteous and in the infinite worth of martyrdom. But we do not see clearly here. The only thing that is certain is that Jesus never conceived and expressed the idea that the divine forgiveness of sin is dependent 1 Mark 10:45. 510 The Finality of the Chkistian Religion in principle upon his death, or upon the substitutionary " satisfac- tion " consummated in his death. The parable of the Prodigal Son, and the unconditioned certainty with which Jesus all his life long" preached a present, gracious, sin-forgiving God, protest powerfully against that traditional dogma.' These words are quoted, not as dogmatically final, but as exegetically and historically representative among critical students of the Bible. They are dogmatically valuable as indicating that the treatment of the death of Jesus sundered from his life should be abandoned. The sufiPering, cross, and death of Jesus are the crown and consummation of his life. In quietness and simplicity, in soberness and bravery, Jesus trod the via dolorosa appointed him of the Father. In undiminished trust in the heavenly Father, in unbroken confidence in his own divine mission, he opened up a new moral world, ennobled suffering and defeat, and created faith in the eternal worth of martyrdom. At the cross Jesus per- fected himself as " the leader of the times and the peoples to God."' We are at the end of our long way once more. And our recapitulation must be comparatively brief, Jesus partici- pated in the theoretical views of his people concerning nature, spirits, man, and God. Like all concepts, histori- cally and psychologically conditioned, those, whether true or false, must change as our times or types change. The condition of our retaining his concepts in harmony with our inner life is that we be transplanted into his historical situa- tion, and transformed into his psychological temperament and intellectual requirements. Jesus, in common with the folk-consciousness, and cer- tainly with pious enthusiasts, lived in the lively expectation 1 BOUSSET, op. cit., p. 101. 2 It is probably true that the resurrection of the body of Jesus belongs to the experience of the Christian community rather than to his own. Jesus 511 of the speedy termination of the history of the race. The national messianic expectation furnished form and frame for his faith. The result was the diversion, in good degree, of his attention from earthly and human relations. Culture and historical work, life in the family and in the state, in art and in science, were accorded no immediate worth and no positive importance. He did not expect that the "kingdom of God" should be actualized by means of long historical struggle on the firm soil of nature and of human life, by means of the discovery and production of values. One's sole duty was to prepare for its reception on its appearance in a supernatural manner out of "heaven." Yet no life in pain and anguish, no asceticism in the sense of self-torture! No funeral march, but pseans of victory! But, also, no ecclesi- astical organization; for this was as unnecessary as partici- pation in culture and social life ! But in all this there is something of great typical and symbolical importance. All human life that is of any value is fired by expectancy and enthusiasm. It is ours to change the object, but nurture, these qualities of the subject. We seek in vain in the life of Jesus for the positive tasks and goods which are valid for our modern ethical point of view; but depth, concentration, and expansion of soul — which is greatest of all — may be gained by brooding over the heroic days of the Master. To be sure, one can find anything in the New Testament by employing pertinent exegetical skill ; detailed instructions how one should live and eat and dress, how one should treat social, and sexual, and political questions. Very early did the church resort to this art, and made passages mean prac- tically the opposite, sometimes, of what they clearly and dis- tinctly meant actually. In the absence of any historical sense, this was often done unconsciously. That it was done at all was due to the fixation of the form and content of human life in one historical situation as model and authority 512 The Finality of the Christian Religion for that life in another and different historical situation, with their vast deviation in the region of interests and ideals. It may be that such a procedure has its great historical jus- tification, but it has its perils as well. The history of ortho- doxy is the tragic history of these perils. But reference is made to this subject simply to introduce a statement with reference to the scheme of the ecclesiastical reinterpretation of primitive Christian ideas in which Jesus shared. What was to be done with the opposition between the ideas of Jesus adjudged to be unchangeably authoritative, and the new duties which history developed ? between the kingdom coming in a transcendent and supernatural way, and the human tasks in state and society and family and vocation? Shall the ideas of Jesus be fixed or changed? A practical solution became an urgent necessity. The Catholic solution, we have seen, was a division of labor — the monk living the perfect life according to primitive Christian ideals; the laymen, the imperfect life, supplemented by merit of monks, according to human ethics. By this combination of the ideals of Jesus and of primitive Christianity with the reali- ties of the historical life, ethical continuity with the original values was supposed to be preserved. The fatality and falsehood at the core of this scheme have been previously indicated. It is a sorry compromise which forgets that the spirit of Christianity allows no division of Christians into such classes. It was a makeshift for the evasion of the ideal. It involved the unethical and dangerous distinction between duty and merit. The great problem of the relation to Jesus and to primitive Christianity was not so clear to Protestants as to Catholics. The Protestant attitude arose from the need to protect the rights of free conscience. Protestantism found an eternal content in primitive Christianity which the complicated hierarchical system of Catholicism had rendered nugatory. Hence the "return" to primitive Christianity. Jesus 513 The correlate to this was the liberation of life from Catholic authority. Life in the world ought not to be depreciated in favor of the cloister life. Not by self-appointed asceticism, but by inner devotion to the will of God and by trust in God, was man to attain the end of his being. Secular life was not something to be reluctantly tolerated under the pressure of necessity, but to be nurtured and developed; and the individual should find his vocation, evince his dignity, and mature his personality, in the faithful and intelligent co- operation in this development. But the Reformers did not fairly face the problem of the relation of all this to the ideals and expectations of Jesus and primitive Christianity. How were the precepts and beatitudes of Jesus related to the conditions and tasks of the modern human life? This ques- tion they did not answer. Later theologians of liberal mind exhibited such words of Jesus as ideal leaven which pervaded the long historical process and led to the unfolding of the kingdom of God in the orders and forms of the secular life. The ideas of "second advent" and "judgment day" were removed to the horizon where they furnished a background, dim and distant as blue mountains there. One has learned and experienced so much since the days of Jesus! It was an error to expect the advent so soon! If we cannot explain the error away, it is at least unimportant! Like Catholicism, Protestantism believes itself to be in ethical continuity with Jesus. These theologians did not realize that we can pre- serve from primitive Christianity only what we can put into practice in our new relations to culture and to life. To practice New Testament ethics is one thing; to clothe our own ethical principles in the garb of biblical formulas is quite another. The fact that is habitually overlooked is that our relation to culture and life is fundamentally dif- ferent from what was the case with Jesus and primitive Christianity. 514 The Finality of the Christian Religion Recent theologians, with still clearer insight, are making progress in the solution of the problem. Not to renew primitive Christianity, as pietism sought ; not to be oblivious to the fact that, not only in primitive Christianity, but even in the words and ideas of Jesus, there is a pZzts which does not belong to the eternal and essential gospel ; and, finally, not to shrink back from the indispensable but perilous task of releasing the gold from the dross, the kernel from the shell, the gospel in its purity and simplicity from time- historical beliefs — this is the duty of the hour; a duty which no calumny and ridicule, no loss and no cross, should prevent the lover of his kind from consummating. Already historical study has convinced reasonable people that Jesus bears the marks of the definite historical relations under which he arose. Man in general is no man at all. Jesus was a par- ticular man, a Jew who lived and thought and loved and hoped in a definite time and place. "But many features of his origin and development are psychological and historical riddles," it is said. Of course. But we have no way of solving such riddles except by psychology and history. Besides, there are many other psychological and historical riddles. Some of these we may never be able to solve. But we have done with allowing such considerations to deter us from studying historical and psychological phenomena his- torically and psychologically. "But you employ the human as criterion of the Christian; you even apply the standard of human experience as you seek to understand Jesus, and to purify his true human picture from all additions and dis- figurations; and you thus assume a critical attitude, as you do toward other humanly imperfect products of their time; you do not allow even what he says to pass unexamined as truth." It is even so. But it is unavoidably so, save to a blind faith. To censure us for this is as perverse as it is to censure us for hearing with our own ears and seeing with Jesus 515 our own eyes, as we have already abundantly shown. Be- sides— so sternly must we remonstrate with our opponents — to erect, independently of experience, the sayings of Jesus as such into a norm of life for every time and place is immoral, since it tends to destroy the originality, certitude, and autonomy of the moral. "But you simply take from the life of Jesus what you can use in your own spiritual house- hold; and what you can use you call the 'essence,' the 'essentials.'" It is even so. It is what has always been done. It explains the different types of Christianity that have arisen successively and contemporaneously. The fixa- tion of the essence is not a gift, but a task ; not the cause of a type of experience, but the effect; not simply intellectual, but moral; and not absolute, but relative. It is impossible, without further ado, to make primitive Christianity, an oriental movement, bearing the stamp of Jewish origin, per- haps of Persian influence — primitive Christianity to be reached by us by getting behind the Greek thoughts and conceptional formations with which it coalesced; primitive Christianity whose modern development has proceeded under cultural relations, intellectual, sesthetical, ethical, social, which it did not itself produce, and which were not pre- supposed at the time of its origin; I say it is impossible to make primitive Christianity as such the criterion of our theory and practice in life for all time. What then? It does not on that account lose its great value. It is forever there as a fountain of life from which all later times may drink, may draw what is useful under their circumstances. Wherever its influence upon the human is felt, the result will be an inwardizing and deepening and concentrating of the life of the spirit. Jesus especially will ever accompany our struggling race on its weary way, supplying it dynamic and whispering his great "Excelsior !" But what we use of his, and hoiv we use it, will of necessity be determined by 516 The Finality of the Christian Religion our own self-dependent experience of life, and by our rela- tions which both set our tasks and yield our goods — tasks and goods of which Jesus had nothing to say, partly because he did not know them, partly because they are incompatible with the sole end which he knew. In a word, we may not replace the human by the specifically Christian, not even by the Christianity of Jesus; but we may deepen and broaden the human — nay, first make it fully and truly human — by the power and gospel of the person of Jesus, Then, once more, what did he do and what was his spirit? Deeply as Jesus participated in the ideas of his people; certainly as he expected no breach with Judaism, any more than Luther with the Catholic church; continuous as he was with the past, he yet was hiraself a new creation and the great liberator. If it be said that other teachers of his day and nation had taught all that he did, the answer is that, whether this be true or not, they taught much more than he did, and that in their teaching they did not grade things according to their real worth. They attached impor- tance to the unimportant, and did not unerringly discriminate and signalize the eternal. Paradoxically stated, the addition which Jesus brought was a great subtraction. He sought to simplify the moral by expelling from it all that was not moral, the religious by expelling from it all that was not religious. Nothing in morals but morality, nothing in re- ligion but religion — it was this which the reality-loving spirit of Jesus so immediately discerned. And his process of simplification was at the same time a process of liberation. His gospel inwardly frees from the national. From the kingdom-of-God hope of his contemporaries he releases the single idea of the rule of God, spiritualizes and transfigures it, until it becomes in principle universal. The international character of the Christianity of Paul is but an outward un- folding and expression of the intensive universality of the Jesus 517 message and Man of Galilee. But universality means indi- viduality. The religion of Jesus is personality-religion. "The soul and its God, God and the soul" — this phrase of Harnack has been much criticised; but, while it is not ex- haustive it is yet constitutive of the Christian religion. Again, Jesus liberated religion from cult. On this subject the old eternal prophetic fire flamed forth from his spirit. Love is better than law; duty to parents, than gifts to the temple treasury; placability, than altar service; mercy, than tithes; the sacredness of man, than the sacredness of tradi- tion. So, too, he freed religion from the letter. "Ye have heard that it hath been said by them of the olden time .... J say unto you." He did not hesitate to appeal from the commandment of Moses to the eternal order of creation. If there was in some ways an attitude of dependence upon the Scriptures, there was also that of skepticism and criti- cism. His was no book-religion, but experience-religion. Furthermore, as Wernle has brilliantly discussed, Jesus freed religion from the theologians. As religion is not cult, not institution, so it is not dogma, nor formula, nor theory. Religion is too simple for the theologians. They cannot teach religion any more than they can teach grass to grow, birds to sing, or lovers to love. "I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and the understanding and hast revealed them unto babes." Religion once free, it could freely unfold itself from within. The strength and purity of Jesus' faith in God were a result. The form of his faith in God, the God-idea, may be changed, but the content will hardly be surpassed. Even as to the form, the word "Father," which he used as a symbol for the mysterious, all-encompassing, almighty Power, whose interior depth is unfathomable by us, is not likely to be superseded. The faith of Jesus overcame that 518 The Finality of the Christian Religion of the law-religion in a distant, hard, incomprehensible Majesty; and that of extra-Christian redemption-religions in distinctionless universal Existence. God is a majestic Being of Living Love and Purpose and Wisdom. The cor- relate to the idea of this Father-God is the idea of man as his child. Hence it is almost true that not nature, only man existed for Jesus — nature only as symbol of human life and its laws. As akin to God, man was felt by Jesus to be of infinite worth and worthiness. Let man live accord- ingly, hope accordingly, and let him be treated accordingly, said Jesus. So, too, Jesus would have religion expressed in terms of morality, and morality beautified and energized by the light and life of religion. If morality be the fruit of religion, religion is the root of morality. And Jesus was what he taught, and taught what he was. But it must be that God is as good as Jesus is. Then we may have the faith which the gospel requires — faith in God the Father, in his fatherly grace in forgiving sins, and in an eternal life. Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries 1 1012 01247 2959 Date Due ^18^ FACULTY Ji .iV """SBC f) ■1'?^