The Essence of Christianity

§ 4

The distinction between the “heathen,” or philosophic, and the Christian God – the non-human, or pantheistic, and the human, personal God – reduces itself only to the distinction between the understanding or reason and the heart or feelings. Reason is the self-consciousness of the species, as such; feeling is the self-consciousness of individuality; the reason has relation to existences, as things; the heart to existences, as persons. I am is an expression of the heart; I think, of the reason. Cogito, ergo sum? No! Sentio, ergo sum. Feeling only is my existence; thinking is my non-existence, the negation of my individuality, the positing of the species; reason is the annihilation of personality. To think is an act of spiritual marriage. Only beings of the same species understand each other; the impulse to communicate thought is the intellectual impulse of sex. Reason is cold, because its maxim is, audiatur et altera pars, because it does not interest itself in man alone; but the heart is a partisan of man. Reason loves all impartiality, but the heart only what is like itself. It is true that the heart has pity also on the brutes, but only because it sees in the brute something more than the brute. The heart loves only what it identifies with itself. It says: Whatsoever thou dost to this being, thou dost to me. The heart loves only itself; does not get beyond itself, beyond man. The superhuman God is nothing else than the supernatural heart; the heart does not give us the idea of another, of a being different from ourselves. “For the heart, Nature is an echo, in which it hears only itself. Emotion, in the excess of its happiness, transfers itself to external things. It is the love which can withhold itself from no existence, which gives itself forth to all; but it only recognises as existing that which it knows to have emotion.”230 Reason, on the contrary, has pity on animals, not because it finds itself in them, or identifies them with man, but because it recognises them as beings distinct from man, not existing simply for the sake of man, but also as having rights of their own. The heart sacrifices the species to the individual, the reason sacrifices the individual to the species. The man without feeling has no home, no private hearth. Feeling, the heart, is the domestic life; the reason is the res publica of man. Reason is the truth of Nature, the heart is the truth of man. To speak popularly, reason is the God of Nature, the heart the God of man; – a distinction however which, drawn thus sharply, is, like the others, only admissible in antithesis. Everything which man wishes, but which reason, which Nature denies, the heart bestows. God, immortality, freedom, in the supranaturalistic sense, exist only in the heart. The heart is itself the existence of God, the existence of immortality. Satisfy yourselves with this existence! You do not understand your heart; therein lies the evil. You desire a real, external, objective immortality, a God out of yourselves. Here is the source of delusion.

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

Thus reason is the essence of Nature and Man, released from non-essential limits, in their identity; it is the universal being, the universal God. The heart, considered in its difference from the reason, is the private God of man; the personal God is the heart of man, emancipated from the limits or laws of Nature.231

§ 5

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

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

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

§ 6

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

§ 7

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