The Essence of Christianity

Nevertheless the Christians have celebrated the incarnation as a work of love, as a self-renunciation of God, an abnegation of his majesty —Amor triumphat de Deo; for the love of God is an empty word if it is understood as a real abolition of the distinction between him and man. Thus we have, in the very central point of Christianity, the contradiction of Faith and Love developed in the close of the present work. Faith makes the suffering of God a mere appearance, love makes it a truth. Only on the truth of the suffering rests the true positive impression of the incarnation. Strongly, then, as we have insisted on the contradiction and division between the divine and the human nature in the God-man, we must equally insist on their community and unity, in virtue of which God is really man and man is really God. Here then we have the irrefragable and striking proof that the central point, the supreme object of Christianity, is nothing else than man, that Christians adore the human individual as God, and God as the human individual. “This man born of the Virgin Mary is God himself, who has created heaven and earth.” – Luther (Th. ii. p. 671). “I point to the man Christ and say: That is the Son of God.” – (Th. xix. p. 594.) “To give life, to have all power in heaven and earth, to have all things in his hands, all things put under his feet, to purify from sin, and so on, are divine, infinite attributes, which, according to the declaration of the Holy Scriptures, are given and imparted to the man Christ.” “Therefore we believe, teach, and confess that the Son of Man … now not only as God, but also as man, knows all things, can do all things, is present with all creatures.” “We reject and condemn the doctrine that he (the Son of God) is not capable according to his human nature of omnipotence and other attributes of the divine nature.” – (Concordienb. Summar. Begr. u. Erklär. art. 8.) “Unde et sponte sua fluit, Christo etiam qua humanam naturam spectato cultum religiosum deberi.” – Buddeus (l. c. l. iv. c. ii. § 17). The same is expressly taught by the Fathers and the Catholics, e. g., “Eadem adoratione adoranda in Christo est divinitas et humanitas… Divinitas intrinsece inest humanitati per unionem hypostaticam: ergo humanitas Christi seu Christus ut homo potest adorari absoluto cultu latriae.” – Theol. Schol. (sec. Thomam Aq. P. Metzger. iv. p. 124). It is certainly said that it is not man, not flesh and blood by itself, which is worshipped, but the flesh united with God, so that the cultus applies not to the flesh, or man, but to God. But it is here as with the worship of saints and images. As the saint is adored in the image and God in the saint, only because the image and the saint are themselves adored, so God is worshipped in the human body only because the human flesh is itself worshipped. God becomes flesh, man, because man is in truth already God. How could it enter into thy mind to bring the human flesh into so close a relation and contact with God if it were something impure, degrading, unworthy of God? If the value, the dignity of the human flesh does not lie in itself, why dost thou not make other flesh – the flesh of brutes the habitation of the Divine Spirit? True it is said: Man is only the organ in, with, and by which the Godhead works, as the soul in the body. But this pretext also is refuted by what has been said above. God chose man as his organ, his body, because only in man did he find an organ worthy of him, suitable, pleasing to him. If the nature of man is indifferent, why did not God become incarnate in a brute? Thus God comes into man only out of man. The manifestation of God in man is only a manifestation of the divinity and glory of man. “Noscitur ex alio, qui non cognoscitur ex se” – this trivial saying is applicable here. God is known through man, whom he honours with his personal presence and indwelling, and known as a human being, for what any one prefers, selects, loves, in his objective nature; and man is known through God, and known as a divine being, for only that which is worthy of God, which is divine, can be the object, organ, and habitation of God. True it is further said: It is Jesus Christ alone, and no other man, who is worshipped as God. But this argument also is idle and empty. Christ is indeed one only, but he is one who represents all. He is a man as we are, “our brother, and we are flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone.” “In Jesus Christ our Lord every one of us is a portion of flesh and blood. Therefore where my body is, there I believe that I myself reign. Where my flesh is glorified, there I believe that I am myself glorious. Where my blood rules, there I hold that I myself rule.” – Luther (Th. xvi. p. 534). This then is an undeniable fact: Christians worship the human individual as the supreme being, as God. Not indeed consciously, for it is the unconsciousness of this fact which constitutes the illusion of the religious principle. But in this sense it may be said that the heathens did not worship the statues of the gods; for to them also the statue was not a statue, but God himself. Nevertheless they did worship the statue; just as Christians worship the human individual, though, naturally, they will not admit it.

§ 22

Man is the God of Christianity, Anthropology the mystery of Christian Theology. The history of Christianity has had for its grand result the unveiling of this mystery – the realisation and recognition of theology as anthropology. The distinction between Protestantism and Catholicism – the old Catholicism, which now exists only in books, not in actuality – consists only in this, that the latter is Theology, the former Christology, i. e., (religious) Anthropology. Catholicism has a supranaturalistic, abstract God, a God who is other than human, a not human, a superhuman being. The goal of Catholic morality, likeness to God, consists therefore in this, to be not a man, but more than a man – a heavenly abstract being, an angel. Only in its morality does the essence of a religion realise, reveal itself: morality alone is the criterion, whether a religious dogma is felt as a truth or is a mere chimera. Thus the doctrine of a superhuman, supernatural God is a truth only where it has as its consequence a superhuman, supernatural, or rather antinatural morality. Protestantism, on the contrary, has not a supranaturalistic but a human morality, a morality of and for flesh and blood; consequently its God, at least its true, real God, is no longer an abstract, supranaturalistic being, but a being of flesh and blood. “This defiance the devil hears unwillingly, that our flesh and blood is the Son of God, yea, God himself, and reigns in heaven over all.” – Luther (Th. xvi. p. 573). “Out of Christ there is no God, and where Christ is, there is the whole Godhead.” – Id. (Th. xix. p. 403). Catholicism has, both in theory and practice, a God who, in spite of the predicate of love, exists for himself, to whom therefore man only comes by being against himself, denying himself, renouncing his existence for self; Protestantism, on the contrary, has a God who, at least practically, virtually, has not an existence for himself, but exists only for man, for the welfare of man. Hence in Catholicism the highest act of the cultus, “the mass of Christ,” is a sacrifice of man, – the same Christ, the same flesh and blood, is sacrificed to God in the Host as on the cross; in Protestantism, on the contrary, it is a sacrifice, a gift of God: God sacrifices himself, surrenders himself to be partaken by man. (See Luther, e. g., Th. xx. p. 259; Th. xvii. p. 529.) In Catholicism manhood is the property, the predicate of the Godhead (of Christ) – God is man; in Protestantism, on the contrary, Godhead is the property, the predicate of manhood (Christ) – man is God. “This, in time past, the greatest theologians have done – they have fled from the manhood of Christ to his Godhead, and attached themselves to that alone, and thought that we should not know the manhood of Christ. But we must so rise to the Godhead of Christ, and hold by it in such a way, as not to forsake the manhood of Christ and come to the Godhead alone. Thou shouldst know of no God, nor Son of God, save him who was born of the Virgin Mary and became man. He who receives his manhood has also his Godhead.” – Luther (Th. ix. pp. 592, 598).235 Or, briefly thus: in Catholicism, man exists for God; in Protestantism, God exists for man.236 “Jesus Christ our Lord was conceived for us, born for us, suffered for us, was crucified, died, and was buried for us. Our Lord rose from the dead for our consolation, sits for our good at the right hand of the Almighty Father, and is to judge the living and the dead for our comfort. This the holy Apostles and beloved Fathers intended to intimate in their confession by the words: Us and our Lord – namely, that Jesus Christ is ours, whose office and will it is to help us … so that we should not read or speak the words coldly, and interpret them only of Christ, but of ourselves also.” – Luther (Th. xvi. p. 538). “I know of no God but him who gave himself for me. Is not that a great thing that God is man, that God gives himself to man and will be his, as man gives himself to his wife and is hers? But if God is ours, all things are ours.” – (Th. xii. p. 283.) “God cannot be a God of the dead, who are nothing, but is a God of the living. If God were a God of the dead, he would be as a husband who had no wife, or as a father who had no son, or as a master who had no servant. For if he is a husband, he must have a wife. If he is a father, he must have a son. If he is a master, he must have a servant. Or he would be a fictitious father, a fictitious master, that is, nothing. God is not a God like the idols of the heathens, neither is he an imaginary God, who exists for himself alone, and has none who call upon him and worship him. A God is he from whom everything is to be expected and received… If he were God for himself alone in heaven, and we had no good to rely on from him, he would be a God of stone or straw… If he sat alone in heaven like a clod, he would not be God.” – (Th. xvi. p. 465). “God says: I the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth am thy God… To be a God means to redeem us from all evil and trouble that oppresses us, as sin, hell, death, &c.” – (Th. ii. p. 327.) “All the world calls that a God in whom man trusts in need and danger, on whom he relies, from whom all good is to be had and who can help. Thus reason describes God, that he affords help to man, and does good to him, bestows benefits upon him. This thou seest also in this text: ‘I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt.’ There we are taught what God is, what is his nature, and what are his attributes, – namely, that he does good, delivers from dangers, and helps out of trouble and all calamities.” – (Th. iv. pp. 236, 237.) But if God is a living, i. e., real God, is God in general, only in virtue of this – that he is a God to man, a being who is useful, good, beneficent to man; then, in truth, man is the criterion, the measure of God, man is the absolute, divine being. The proposition: A God existing only for himself is no God – means nothing else than that God without man is not God; where there is no man there is no God; if thou takest from God the predicate of humanity, thou takest from him the predicate of deity; if his relation to man is done away with, so also is his existence.

Nevertheless Protestantism, at least in theory, has retained in the background of this human God the old supranaturalistic God. Protestantism is the contradiction of theory and practice; it has emancipated the flesh, but not the reason. According to Protestantism, Christianity, i. e., God, does not contradict the natural impulses of man: – “Therefore we ought now to know that God does not condemn or abolish the natural tendency in man which was implanted in Nature at the creation, but that he awakens and preserves it.” – Luther (Th. iii. p. 290). But it contradicts reason, and is therefore, theoretically, only an object of faith. We have shown, however, that the nature of faith, the nature of God, is itself nothing else than the nature of man placed out of man, conceived as external to man. The reduction of the extrahuman, supernatural, and antirational nature of God to the natural, immanent, inborn nature of man, is therefore the liberation of Protestantism, of Christianity in general, from its fundamental contradiction, the reduction of it to its truth, – the result, the necessary, irrepressible, irrefragable result of Christianity.

THE END

1

The opening paragraphs of this Preface are omitted, as having too specific a reference to transient German polemics to interest the English reader.

2

For example, in considering the sacraments, I limit myself to two; for in the strictest sense (see Luther, T. xvii. p. 558), there are no more.

3

“Objectum intellectus esse illimitatum sive omne verum ac, ut loquuntur, omne ens ut ens, ex eo constat, quod ad nullum non genus rerum extenditur, nullumque est, cujus cognoscendi capax non sit, licet ob varia obstacula multa sint, quæ re ipsa non norit.” – Gassendi (Opp. Omn. Phys.).

4

The obtuse Materialist says: “Man is distinguished from the brute only by consciousness – he is an animal with consciousness superadded;” not reflecting, that in a being which awakes to consciousness, there takes place a qualitative change, a differentiation of the entire nature. For the rest, our words are by no means intended to depreciate the nature of the lower animals. This is not the place to enter further into that question.

5

“Toute opinion est assez forte pour se faire exposer au prix de la vie.” – Montaigne.

6

Homini homine nihil pulchrius. (Cic. de Nat. D. l. i.) And this is no sign of limitation, for he regards other beings as beautiful besides himself; he delights in the beautiful forms of animals, in the beautiful forms of plants, in the beauty of nature in general. But only the absolute, the perfect form, can delight without envy in the forms of other beings.

7

“The understanding is percipient only of understanding, and what proceeds thence.” – Reimarus (Wahrh. der Natürl. Religion, iv. Abth. § 8).

8

“Verisimile est, non minus quam geometriæ, etiam musicæ oblectationem ad plures quam ad nos pertinere. Positis enim aliis terris atque animalibus ratione et auditu pollentibus, cur tantum his nostris contigisset ea voluptas, quæ sola ex sono percipi potest?” – Christ. Hugenius (Cosmotheor., l. i.).

9

De Genesi ad litteram, l. v. c. 16.

10

“Unusquisque vestrum non cogitat, prius se debere Deum nosse, quam colere.” – M. Minucii Felicis Octavianus, c. 24.

11

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

12

“Les perfections de Dieu sont celles de nos âmes, mais il les possede sans bornes – il y a en nous quelque puissance, quelque connaissance quelque bonté, mais elles sont toutes entières en Dieu.” – Leibnitz (Théod. Preface). “Nihil in anima esse putemus eximium, quod non etiam divinæ naturæ proprium sit – Quidquid a Deo alienum extra definitionem animæ” – St. Gregorius Nyss. “Est ergo, ut videtur, disciplinarum omnium pulcherrima et maxima se ipsum nosse; si quis enim se ipsum norit, Deum cognoscet.” – Clemens Alex. (Pæd. 1. iii. c. 1).

13

For religious faith there is no other distinction between the present and future God than that the former is an object of faith, of conception, of imagination, while the latter is to be an object of immediate, that is, personal, sensible perception. In this life and in the next he is the same God; but in the one he is incomprehensible, in the other comprehensible.

14

Inter creatorem et creaturam non potest tanta similitudo notari, quin inter eos major sit dissimilitudo notanda. – Later. Conc. can. 2. (Summa Omn. Conc. Carranza. Antw. 1559. p. 326.) The last distinction between man and God, between the finite and infinite nature, to which the religious speculative imagination soars, is the distinction between Something and Nothing, Ens and Non-Ens; for only in Nothing is all community with other beings abolished.

15

Gloriam suam plus amat Deus quam omnes creaturas. “God can only love himself, can only think of himself, can only work for himself. In creating man, God seeks his own ends, his own glory,” &c. – Vide P. Bayle, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Philos. u. Menschh., pp. 104–107.

16

Pelagianism denies God, religion – isti tantam tribuunt potestatem voluntati, ut pietati auferant orationem. (Augustin de Nat. et Grat. cont. Pelagium, c. 58.) It has only the Creator, i. e., Nature, as a basis, not the Saviour, the true God of the religious sentiment – in a word, it denies God; but, as a consequence of this, it elevates man into a God, since it makes him a being not needing God, self-sufficing, independent. (See on this subject Luther against Erasmus and Augustine, l. c. c. 33.) Augustinianism denies man; but, as a consequence of this, it reduces God to the level of man, even to the ignominy of the cross, for the sake of man. The former puts man in the place of God, the latter puts God in the place of man; both lead to the same result – the distinction is only apparent, a pious illusion. Augustinianism is only an inverted Pelagianism; what to the latter is a subject, is to the former an object.

17

The religious, the original mode in which man becomes objective to himself, is (as is clearly enough, explained in this work) to be distinguished from the mode in which this occurs in reflection and speculation; the latter is voluntary, the former involuntary, necessary – as necessary as art, as speech. With the progress of time, it is true; theology coincides with religion.

18

Deut. xxiii. 12, 13.

19

See, for example, Gen. xxxv. 2; Levit. xi. 44; xx. 26; and the Commentary of Le Clerc on these passages.

20

Augustine, in his work Contra Academicos, which he wrote when he was still in some measure a heathen, says (l. iii. c. 12) that the highest good of man consists in the mind or in the reason. On the other hand, in his Libr. Retractationum, which he wrote as a distinguished Christian and theologian, he revises (l. i. c. 1) this declaration as follows: – Verius dixissem in Deo. Ipso enim mens fruitur, ut beata sit, tanquam summo bono suo. But is there any distinction here? Where my highest good is, is not there my nature also?

21

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

22

Kant, l. c., p. 80.

23

To guard against mistake, I observe that I do not apply to the understanding the expression self-subsistent essence, and other terms of a like character, in my own sense, but that I am here placing myself on the standpoint of onto-theology, of metaphysical theology in general, in order to show that metaphysics is resolvable into psychology, that the onto-theological predicates are merely predicates of the understanding.

24

Malebranche. (See the author’s Geschichte der Philos., 1 Bd. p. 322.) “Exstaretne alibi diversa ab hac ratio? censereturque injustum aut scelestum in Jove aut Marte, quod apud nos justum ac præclarum habetur? Certe nec verisimile nec omnino possibile.” – Chr. Hugenii (Cosmotheoros, lib. i.).

25

In religion, the representation or expression of the nothingness of man before God is the anger of God; for as the love of God is the affirmation, his anger is the negation of man. But even this anger is not taken in earnest. “God … is not really angry. He is not thoroughly in earnest even when we think that he is angry, and punishes.” – Luther (Th. viii. p. 208).

26

Luther, Concordienbuch, Art. 8, Erklär.

27

Luther, Sämmtliche Schriften und Werke, Leipzig, 1729, fol. Th. iii. p. 589. It is according to this edition that references are given throughout the present work.

28

Predigten etzlicher Lehrer vor und zu Tauleri Zeiten, Hamburg, 1621, p. 81.

29

“That which, in our own judgment, derogates from our self-conceit, humiliates us. Thus the moral law inevitably humiliates every man when he compares with it the sensual tendency of his nature.” – Kant, Kritik der prakt. Vernunft, 4th edition, p. 132.

30

“Omnes peccavimus… Parricide cum lega cæperunt et illis facinus pœna monstravit.” – Seneca. “The law destroys us.” – Luther (Th. xvi. s. 320).

31

“Das Rechtsgefühl der Sinnlichkeit.”

32

“This, my God and Lord, has taken upon him my nature, flesh and blood such as I have, and has been tempted and has suffered in all things like me, but without sin; therefore he can have pity on my weakness. —Hebrews v. Luther (Th. xvi. s. 533). “The deeper we can bring Christ into the flesh the better.” – (Ibid. s. 565.) “God himself, when he is dealt with out of Christ, is a terrible God, for no consolation is found in him, but pure anger and disfavour.” – (Th. xv. s. 298.)

33

“Such descriptions as those in which the Scriptures speak of God as of a man, and ascribe to him all that is human, are very sweet and comforting – namely, that he talks with us as a friend, and of such things as men are wont to talk of with each other; that he rejoices, sorrows, and suffers, like a man, for the sake of the mystery of the future humanity of Christ.” – Luther (Th. ii. p. 334).

34

“Deus homo factus est, ut homo Deus fieret.” – Augustinus (Serm. ad Pop. p. 371, c. 1). In Luther, however (Th. i. p. 334), there is a passage which indicates the true relation. When Moses called man “the image of God, the likeness of God,” he meant, says Luther, obscurely to intimate that “God was to become man.” Thus here the incarnation of God is clearly enough represented as a consequence of the deification of man.

35

It was in this sense that the old uncompromising enthusiastic faith celebrated the Incarnation. “Amor triumphat de Deo,” says St. Bernard. And only in the sense of a real self-renunciation, self-negation of the Godhead, lies the reality, the vis of the Incarnation; although this self-negation is in itself merely a conception of the imagination, for, looked at in broad daylight, God does not negative himself in the Incarnation, but he shows himself as that which he is, as a human being. The fabrications which modern rationalistic orthodoxy and pietistic rationalism have advanced concerning the Incarnation, in opposition to the rapturous conceptions and expressions of ancient faith, do not deserve to be mentioned, still less controverted.

36

“Nos scimus affici Deum misericordia nostri et non solum respicere lacrymas nostras, sed etiam numerare stillulas, sicut scriptum in Psalmo LVI. Filius Dei vere afficitur sensu miseriarum nostrarum.” – Melancthonis et aliorum (Declam. Th. iii. p. 286, p. 450).

37

St. Bernard resorts to a charmingly sophistical play of words: – ”Impassibilis est Deus, sed non incompassibilis, cui proprium est misereri semper et parcere.” – (Sup. Cant. Sermo 26.) As if compassion were not suffering – the suffering of love, it is true, the suffering of the heart. But what does suffer if not thy sympathising heart? No love, no suffering. The material, the source of suffering, is the universal heart, the common bond of all beings.

38